Why Purpose and Money Don’t Have to Be at Odds: Honoring Yourself in Career and Life

Welcome to the Honor U Podcast. I'm your host Melissa Culleton, a former corporate exec who spent 20 years in the game before walking away to build a business in life that actually feels good. Now I serve as a private advisor to high-performing people and businesses helping them stay aligned, intentional, and truly successful on their own terms. This podcast is where we talk about what it really means to honor yourself, your vision, and the life you're here to lead. Let's get into it. Hey guys, welcome back to the podcast. Excited to have you here as always. This week I am actually being interviewed by someone who I have known for a little while and has been in my network for a while. She offered to do a little bit of a podcast swap, meaning I'm on her podcast and she's allowed me to use that file to put on my podcast and I thought it would be kind of cool to showcase a little bit of a different style this week and especially since I don't necessarily get the chance to be interviewed and then share it here. So I think it's an opportunity to hear a little bit more about my story, how I think about success, especially a line success, meaning if we don't have the resources we want in our life to fulfill our soul's desires, then we feel lack of success. Or if we are not really in touch with our fulfillment and our purpose, then we don't really have a true to gosh feeling of success. So we talk a lot about that. We talk a little bit about the stories that I share in relation to how I got to doing what I do today. And we also do a little bit of digging into what led me to the work I do today, how going to school and my upbringing and all that stuff put me on the path to where I am today. So I really hope you enjoy it. It was very enjoyable to do and I so appreciate my friend interviewing me because it gives you guys a little bit of a flavor and a little bit more information about me personally than if I'm just doing podcast sharing information with you. So enjoy and always always let me know what you think, send me an email, go to my website, connect with me, all the things. Alright guys, until next week, keep honoring yourself. Melissa, welcome. So good to see you. Thank you. Good to see you. I'm so happy to be here today. Yeah, so tell us a little more about what it is that you're doing right now and what is your purpose and mission. It just starts off with a pretty banger question. Go right for it. We'll be done in 10 minutes. Okay, so what I do today is I'm a consultant in a coach. So effectively I work one to one in small pod groups and also for businesses and helping them with their sales and performance. I would say, yeah, how I mean gosh, it's been such a journey getting here because a long time ago I had a life coach. I was like probably my late 20s, early 30s and when I had worked with her, I was like, oh my gosh, this is what I want to do for a living. And I didn't do it. I didn't do it. I didn't do it. Because I think even back then, you know, I don't think there was as many people talking about being an entrepreneur or being a founder going out on their own. And obviously I came from a pretty traditional environment where my parents just work, you know, work jobs. And so I just really didn't have the understanding of what that even meant. So I took tons of courses over the years while still doing a full-time job in corporate America. And finally, two and a half years ago, I decided to go for it. So I got my life coaching certification, my human design coaching certification. And so now what I do is one to one with people and work with them on there, what I call a line success. And essentially, all that really means is that they've got two things that are very important in life, which is purpose and fulfillment. And also the funds or resources or revenue that they would like in order to, you know, fulfill the desires that they have in their life and live the kind of life that they want. And that's how I define a line success. I would say my purpose, though, you know, I define that not just myself, but for everybody as fulfilling my soul's desires. And that was something that I had to learn how to do because I kept saying I want to know my purpose. I want to know my purpose. And I thought it was just one thing. And then a handful of years ago, I started seeing a practitioner who was a life coach and acupuncturist. And through that journey, what I've come to realize and how I define purposes, fulfilling your soul's desires. And first of all, it takes a lot of pressure off because then it's not just one thing like everybody thinks it is, but it's more so pushes you in this direction of building a relationship with yourself so that you can understand what your soul's desires are because that definition is very easy and very simple. The not so easy, not so simple, perhaps work is then learning how to get to know yourself, connect with yourself, and actually know which your soul's desires are and deciphering that between that and what your mind is telling you versus what everybody else is telling you. So very long-winded way to say that's what I do and that's how I see purpose for myself and everybody else. I love it. And thank you for that answer. Of course we want to know what are your soul's desires as you know you uncovered them at this point in time. Yeah. Well yeah, I mean I think that's the other thing that's beautiful about this. It can be ever evolving and that's the other thing that I think gets people as they feel like oh I've found my purpose and then they start running toward that and that they kind of run out of steam or you know something happens where they're like I'm confused. I thought I had my purpose all sorted out and now I don't really engage with it anymore. So I would say it's ever evolving even for myself but I mean my soul's desires are a lot of different things. I would say you know connecting deeply with people is something that I know my soul just yearns for. Helping people find the success that really really resonates with them and that they really love and they're really connected to as a huge part of what my soul really desires and loves. Nature is something that I absolutely have to have almost you know like go like get me in the woods take me to the woods and I also would say just you know learning I've always been a big learner and I've always really honored that that's actually one thing that's been really consistent over my lifetime is that I've been able to hear and honor. So yeah it's it's a lot of different things I would say but those are probably the big ticket items in my life for for hearing my soul desires and executing on those. It's beautiful. Yeah it's a beautiful process to listen and to learn how much do you see that you know people that you work with struggle converting that or kind of know those aspects or realize or figure out those aspects at some point of time. But then like you added that financial the money income aspect to that formula. Yeah. And like combining the kind of like okay I think for many people the first set speaks to their soul in some shape or another right or they might not have the other things or exchange them for some other things but um it's kind of like as soon as you introduce the second part of that equation it's kind of throwing the monkey wrench in and the bicycle if you will. The money part or the phasing right away okay now I need to make 10,000, 15,000 whatever a month with that. Yeah I mean I I think the half-do part kind of gets me right I mean the whole purpose of what I think I work with people on is that we don't inject half-do's you know and I think that it means different things to different people right so there's a lot of people who a certain amount of money is perfectly fine and it makes them really settled in life I always kind of say like money doesn't necessarily buy happiness but I think that's like a kind of an old outdated rhetoric a little bit too and I don't think that just because you're a millionaire you're happy because we all know that that's not true and we all know tons and tons of people even in the public space that have had really hard times when they've had rich rich they're rich and famous right and hard times meeting like they didn't want to be on the surface anymore so hard right so I I don't necessarily attribute money to okay if you have this amount of money now you're happy right and that's why I use the word success and not necessarily happiness and then the other vertical is making sure that we're focusing on the mindset the emotional capacity the fulfillment the purpose your desires honoring yourself right there's kind of like these two things but if you have all of that but then you're financially really strapped or struggling it's hard to really enjoy that because that's kind of our new age form of survival right like back in the day it was like where's our food coming from and we have to grow our gardens and we have to hunt our food and now like that part of it is what sort of feeds those basic needs in life now so if you're not even having enough money to feed your basic needs, it's really hard to feel successful without that, right? Because you're literally don't have something in your life that's giving you your basic needs. So, roof over your head, food, transportation, etc. Now, there's a whole, you know, whole rabbit hole I could go down here with the fulfillment and the purpose and all of that stuff, because having that feeling, despite the other part of the equation, is a lot of the work I do as well, right? So, if you don't have money right now, how can you feel those other things? And I do think that is hugely possible. And so, it's kind of why I keep them a little bit separated, too, to some degree. But, I think I just went on a tangent and now I'm losing track of the question. That's fine. Maybe I misunderstood. I thought that you said that the formula, kind of for when you work with people, it's kind of the fulfillment, right? Finding that thing for you. And then the other was also the success in monetary terms. Or, yeah, or however, or easy. Yeah, yeah. It's like a, think about it like two plus two equals four kind of thing, right? So, in my mind to really, as a person on the earth currently today, to truly feel that success that feels right for you. And that is different for everybody. The part of the equation is the money plus or resources. I mean, money can be exchanged for a lot of things. Like, maybe it's just resources. So, like, maybe, maybe someone lives on a blueberry farm and they're completely sustained their own selves. You know, they might not need tons of money, but they have the resources to live the kind of life that they that feels fulfilling and purposeful to them. So, that is definitely part of the equation. And so, it's important for me to include that because I think what a lot of a lot of people do is they either have one or the other, right? There's a lot of people have a lot of money. They don't feel purposeful or fulfilled. They're not, they don't feel like their success is actually true success because they have a bunch of money in the bank, but they don't have any connection with the work they do. They don't feel purposeful. They don't know how to connect with their soul. They don't know how to honor themselves. They've maybe they've done all those things to get that money for everybody else, but themselves, right? Maybe they've done it because mom and dad told them to do. Maybe they did it because they felt like society said that's what they were supposed to do. And then I, and then with the entrepreneurs that I work with, I find that they are actually doing very purposeful work, feeling very fulfilled, but then they're frustrated because they don't have the resources in their life that they would love to have in order to feel successful. So, I don't know if that answers the question or not, but that's that's definitely my way of working at it. And it went a lot of times just what I see is when people have one or the other or neither, they just don't feel successful. Not to be confused with generalized happiness. Yeah. And I think it's back to the moment when you were working with the life coach, you said, in your late 20s. Yeah. And that's far went off where that thought idea. Yeah. So I started my career in athletic training. So I liked sports. That was my direction. I liked sports. I like playing sports. I got injured in sports. I didn't have anybody to take care of me when I got injured. So it didn't really go that great for me. And it was very disappointing. So it was around my junior year in high school. And I had like thoughts and desires of trying to be like, at least a collegiate athlete. But that felt like it ruined my my opportunity. So the next best thing was for me to actually work with athletes. So I went to school for six years to do that. My first job out of college was at a at a university. And I was teaching at that level students in athletic training. And I was athletic training with collegiate athletes. So I made at the time, it was $28,000 a year. So it was just really hard. You know, I was I went to school for six years. And I was told he wouldn't make a lot of money as an athletic trainer. But I didn't realize that I wouldn't not only not make a lot of money, but I could barely pay my bills. And I could barely pay my student loans. So that set me on a track pretty quickly to go hunting for money. And so I think that's a lot of what we do in our 20s, which is, yeah, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that. But I do think that's a lot of what's on our mind, right? So we were now in a moment where we have to start paying for everything in our life. I for the summer worked at a winery. And because my my other job was only 10 months long. So we're to the winery. They asked me to come on full time. And I was like, okay, they're going to pay me more. So let me do that. So I literally took all six years of my college degrees and went and worked at a winery managing the restaurant. Then they asked me to be in charge of their entire tasting room. So I kind of grew as far as I could grow as family on business. And that lasted about three years. And that was the point where I was like, what am I doing? Like what am I doing? Oh, it's a school for six years to do something. I'm not doing that. I paid for the certification. I paid for the college degrees. Like, what am I doing? You know, and there's nothing wrong with working at a winery. It just felt like I wanted more out of life than that. And like I said, it was kind of hitting a roof or a ceiling, hitting a ceiling because there's a family on business, you know? And so the people who are going to be in charge was the family. So I wasn't taking over the family anytime soon. So that's where one of the women that I worked with was like, you know, she knew how I was feeling. And she's like, you know, my sister, sister-in-law is a life coach and career coach. Maybe you should talk to her. And so I said, okay, yeah, let's do that. So I started talking to her. And I just loved it. I loved figuring out what I wanted to do. And I think it was that combined with how much it helped me and how much I realized how much coaches can help you in life. It's, you know, I think as humans, we try to do everything alone. We think we should do everything alone. And it's hard. And then if we're not hiring somebody to help us, it's our friends or our spouses. And then we can only get so much out of them because that's not their job. And a lot of times they just affirm us. They don't challenge us, you know? And if they do challenge us, if it's our spouse, we don't want to hear it. You know? So I just realized how beneficial it was. And much of my life, even though I was still very young at that time, much of my life was filled with friends and family. That would come to me for advice. So I felt like I was sort of a natural coach. And so that was kind of the spark, I think. And on and off throughout the years, I continued to be the person people would come to for help. And then I started doing management roles. And the best part of that was helping people find their success that they really enjoyed and loved. And a lot of it was coaching too because it's not just go do this. And then you'll get that. There's a lot of emotions that go on throughout the process, especially in the sales environment. You know, there's a lot of ups and downs, you get opportunities, you lose them, you work really hard on them and then they don't come your way. There's just a lot of emotional chaos in the sales environment. So I found myself, you know, yet again, being very much a coach and a a guide or and yeah, I mean, it just kind of stuck with me every since I had that opportunity back to work with a with a life coach and a career coach. And so to some degree, I feel like I was really meant to do it. I'm glad I didn't really pursue it when I was younger to be honest with you because even though it was really on my mind, it feels more correct for me now. If that makes sense, I think the experiences I've had throughout my career, the executive level that I got to, just all of that is is a great combination to help others. Yeah, so I think it was a great spark. I followed this spark throughout the years and then finally committed just two and a half years ago, officially. Yeah, I was going to ask you why do you think you when you had this spark and obviously you had already the experience of going to school, starting something and then pivoting. What do you think at that time? Obviously now, you know, hindsight is 2020 or you can see the value of these added experiences, but at the time when you had this spark, what do you think stopped you pursuing it then and there and how did you decide what were the main decision drivers to pursue, you know, whatever you decided to pursue in the interim? Well, unfortunately, I mean, this is unpacking a lot of my background in my life, I suppose, but unfortunately, unfortunately, however you want to look at it, I grew up in a household that didn't have a lot of money and so an extremely young age money was very important to me. I think seeing not having money in my little brain at the time when I was a kid said, you know what? Not having money causes a lot of pain and a lot of suffering and a lot of fighting and a lot of frustrations and I don't want that for myself and, you know, I thought I would have family so it got in my head really at our really young age. you know, I don't want to live paycheck to paycheck. I don't want creditor collectors calling. I want to send my children to college and I don't have children, but at the same, I thought I would have to. And you know, I wanted to send them to college and want them to have to pay for it like I did and my brother did. I wanted to go on vacations. Like we didn't really go on vacations. Like a special trip for us was very far in few between we didn't go on vacations. I didn't see the world when I was a young young person. So I just think I got it in my head based on my experience that I wanted to have money in my life. And I literally remember thinking of extremely young age come hell or high water. I will not live paycheck to paycheck. That was a branded thought in my head. So that just led me to pursue what I pursued and not pursue what I didn't pursue. It was a huge driver in my life. And I'm not gonna say back then, but I think most of my life and most of my career, I labeled that as ambition. I was like, well, I'm just ambitious. Now I kind of can look back, hindsight and see, yeah, I thought you think I'm ambitious. I do like succeeding. I do like crushing it. I like, you know, I have fun with that kind of stuff to speaking of my soul's desires, right? Like those are my soul's desires. Like she has fun working hard and doing things and doing cool things and executing. Like she has a lot of fun doing that. That's her playtime, right? But I think what was the major driver was that fear of not having the money I wanted in life. So every step I took and every decision I made in my career was pretty heavily weighted on, are you going to pay me more money? And advanced there was yes, I was pretty interested in listening to it, you had to say. And I wouldn't say that that drove everything because there's probably some other things I could have done for a decent amount of money. But I did try to stay in a realm of, you know, what I went to school for, which in my mind is more of a medical scientific background. And so I was able to get into clinical research, which that really latched me, you know, because I felt like it was combining multiple things for me that I enjoyed at the time, which was I wanted to make money. And I also, I like science. I like medical stuff, you know, that's what I went to school for. So I thought I was in a cool industry and I was making good money. So that was a big part of my driver and every step of the way in my career, that's typically how I made choices. There's probably only one time where I didn't base it off from money, but I actually did base it off burnout. So I was just kind of sick of being on the road. I was sick of hustling constantly. I just kind of got really burnt out of it. But I still was making good money. And I still at least said, I have to at least make the same amount of money, you know, I can't make less money. So I did take one job where it wasn't that wasn't the driver. But most of it was driven by money and by are you going to pay me more money? And so when I left my corporate career two and a half years ago, I had a little bit of severance, not much, but I had a little bit of severance. And I just thought, now's got to be the time. And my soul was begging for something different. I mean, when I left my career, I had my anxiety, and kept up to back and backed up again. And I, people might see this much different than I see it. And I'm sure there's a lot of mental health people out there that would not love me saying this. But personally, what I saw my anxiety as is my soul being like, will you please stop doing this? Could you please do the thing that you've wanted to do your whole life and stop basing it on just money? So I took the opportunity to finally listen and said to myself, I've always wanted to do this. And now that I have a little bit of severance to cover myself, maybe this was the opportunity for me to finally pursue something that is soul driven and not just simply mind driven, which is much of how I've lived my life from a career standpoint. Not to say the jobs that I took throughout my career weren't interesting to me. They were very challenging, which is the part I did like the part I think my soul did engage with. But it was just a moment in time that I was like, I think this is the right time. It was just, and I also had some some interesting moments along the way, you know, when I would stop and think about going back to an executive role, especially I would get very emotional. Like I remember one morning, I woke up as like four o'clock in the morning and it was just hanging out on my screened in porch and I just sobbed and it was just like just really felt like that was a massive message from my soul being like, can you please not go take me back? Like that's almost what I heard. It was almost like, please don't take me back there. Like a child was screaming and crying and like, please do not do that to me anymore. So that I just listened and it was hard and it's not been particularly rainbows and butterflies since it's happened because I've had to make sacrifices to make it work. But I think at that time, it was a major shift internally to say, for the rest of my life, I am living soul driven and not mind driven. And even if that means I have to make some sacrifices, I'm willing to do it. And that's what I'm committed to. And that's how I live my life now. So I was just, I don't know, it was just like, just felt like it was a switch that flipped almost. And I think part of it was my last couple years in corporate were, were hard. We're very, very hard. But I'm also a person who truly believes in the soul's journey and the soul's path and things happen the way they're supposed to happen so that you take the action you're supposed to take. And I think the last couple years of my corporate career were tough for a reason. If I had just kept out one of the jobs that I had prior to that, that was easy and I had a great team and the company treated me well and I was paid well, I could have just settled into that and been fine. But the last couple years were really, really hard. And so if it wasn't hard, I'm not so sure I would have made a different decision. You know, I might have just been hanging out there still doing that job because it was okay. It was fine. But I think the last couple years really pushed me to see truly what I was sacrificing and giving up for my external world, for my mind, for my ego in exchange for my soul really suffering. Hey, friend, I'm interrupting this episode very quickly to share something very, very personal with you. So seven years ago, I hit what I call my life's rock bottom. On the outside, I was very successful. I had the high title, I had the good salary, good house, good friends, all the things. But on the inside, I was having panic attacks, chronic anxiety and I couldn't drive my car. So that led me to learn how to have success and feel really awesome in life at the same time and feel fulfilled and purposeful and peaceful. And I took that seven years and I distilled it down into what I call today the honor you lab. It's a six week experience that gives you simple three step methodology you can use for the rest of your life to create a life that actually feels purposeful, fulfilling and peaceful to you. So if you are exhausted, dealing with stress symptoms and living for everyone but yourself, go to the show notes and join the honor you lab today. Okay, see you inside and back to the show. Thank you so much for sharing that and all of those aspects. I think it's through the conversations, through witnessing your story. It's also like I can see myself and there will be many people will be able to see themselves and you know it's people listen to that spark right that spark goes off for many people and usually it's not one moment. It's funny like I get asked like okay what was the moment and they're like it's not one moment before. It's a build and it's probably a build. Yeah and I think and kind of exactly what you were saying it's also this that it's not all bad right where you know in your previous journey there might be misalignment you know I can totally see myself making the choices based on the tokens right of the system and like oh you'll pay me more yeah I'll go you know and totally and at the moment I would explain it left right and center but now I can look back and laugh about it because I had different perspective like I see myself at least like character whatever this game character you have oh tokens let me adjust my north start back my direction you know because I also came from a challenging upbringing and essentially needing to provide and figure out everything myself so tokens were really yeah guiding for us yeah of course this is how I you know moved and adjusted my heart myself you know, and we all have very, very valid, valid reasons. So I appreciate you sharing so honestly. I wanted to ask you when we were done with school and you started the job, you know, in training and, you know, but it wasn't paying well. Did you enjoy the work? Did you enjoy the work itself? I enjoyed the work. I didn't particularly care for the environment. I was in. My boss was a little weird. He was very, very old school. So I didn't love the environment I was in. I would say I did enjoy the work. And that's what's, you know, that's what's really, I would say, tough for all of us, right? I think there's a lot of people enjoy their work, but they don't like the people that they work with. They don't know how to work with those people. And they, you know, John interrupts me one more time on a call. I think I'm going to drive to his house and slap him or something, right? Like those are the kind of things we deal with. And, and it's not, a lot of times it's not our work. And then I see a lot of people be driven to change or pivot based on people or environments. And that's, that's kind of what I did. And I, and I get it in a really big way because especially for, you know, very, very toxic environment, which I hear all day, every day from people with what they're dealing with in corporate America and how they're being treated. And then other environments too, like, I know there's a lot of teachers that go through stuff. And, you know, like it's not just the private sector. I think there's a lot of public sector roles too that are tough these days. So, um, yeah, I mean, I think I did enjoy the work, but it's, it's interesting because it's hard to say if I still would have continued to enjoy it, the hours were really tough, you know, like, for example, I covered baseball at the time and they would go and have double headers all weekend long. So, my life was literally, you know, Friday night games, all day Saturday games and all day Sunday games. And that was, and then I had to be back in the training room. You don't get days off. You have to go back, they'll get the day off, but then they want to come in and get treatment. So, then you're back in the training room on Mondays. So, you're, you're working, you know, all day, every day practically, especially if you're in season on the, with for peanuts. So, it's, it just doesn't make you feel particularly great about that. But I would say if, if, if we're like a job or I could work Monday through Friday working with athletes and not having to do the like crazy schedules that they have, maybe it would be a little bit more interesting, but I think at where I'm at today in my life, I think that would be a tough thing to do and enjoy because you're just so much of your life has taken up by a schedule that's not particularly of your choice. And there's most athletic trainers go days on and without jobs or without days off. So, even like the, you know, even the high level ones, in fact, they might probably have it worse because they're, they're working with professional athletes who need things all the time and they're getting paid to perform at a high level. So, their pressure on them is even higher sometimes. Yeah, and to your point, like, and I've thought about this in the past too, is how much is it the function or the area of your work? Yeah. Just like you said, versus the people, the environment. Yeah. And also, there's some of the logistics, right? The schedules, you know, whatever freedom that you have, right, in a way that's more aligned with your nature. Right. Yeah. I mean, I think that that's, and that's what's, you know, that's why I do what I do now, right? Because the definition of success is different for everybody and the amount of money that you want in order to live the life that you want is different for everybody. The things that are important for you are different for everybody and sometimes they're different at different stages too, you know, I think like new, new parents, for example, right? They might have different values than when their kids decide to leave the house and go to college and become adults themselves. Now, they're at a different life stage. So I think this definition for people of a line success can change over time. And that's, I think that's just kind of like the existentialism, existentialism of life, right? It's like one, you think you finally got to figure it out. And then it's like, oh, circumstances have just changed. Or like maybe, you know, I've heard people that loved their job, and then they get a new boss. And now they're like, now I hate my job. You're so right, you know, there's so many nuances to helping yourself be happy. And I usually say like, you know, from a work perspective, especially if you're pretty good, 75% of the time, like that's probably, I hate to say like, that's the bar. But, you know, if you're pretty okay with your boss and you're pretty okay with the environment and you love the work that you do, it's pretty solid. But yeah, I think it's a tough go because there are so many elements and aspects that influence your day to day when you work, especially in a company where you might interview with the with the boss and say, I like the boss, but you can't interview with the whole company. You can't, you know, you can't go through 1500, 2000, 100,000, talking to 100,000 people or however many people are at that company to decide if you like everybody or you're going to get along with everybody. It's really tough. You're just in an environment where you're doing things, working with systems you didn't choose, working with people you didn't choose. You know, it's like kind of like, you can't choose your family kind of things, you know. Yeah, I feel like, or my experience is when I talk to people, like yesterday I interviewed the founder of Padmatch and he's a exit from corporate also was he's boss essentially, you know, saying some deflating comment about him actually saving 10% you know, a significant amount in expenses for the company and just making like an insensitive remark to somebody who had done a great job and, you know, and he ended up like right away, right, he was deflated, the win was taken out of his sales, he was a high performer and really super nice, like guy who comes and like brings his heart and soul, you know, and is so positive and full of energy. And you know, when you walk away from a conversation like that, you're like, right, I mean, he, you know, that was like the impetus to start thinking, the wheels started, the exit started there and and that's probably not the worst case example, like you mentioned, you know, people experience tough stakeholders, tough bosses, tough environments, it doesn't even have to be the whole 100,000 people in the company. It's really the clients or the, you know, the people, the team that you will have to interact with, yeah, weekly basis that make the biggest difference in your quality of day to day. For sure, for sure. Yeah, it's, it's um, and you know, part of, part of my coaching and some of the things that I do with folks is I, you know, ultimately we're getting people to this feeling or idea of settling into definitions of a line success and then living it out. Much of the way I do that is teaching people how to honor themselves, which is a huge component to your overall well-being and happiness in life because there's so many uncontrollables external to you, especially when it comes to career if you do work for a company or you work in the private sector or public sector, it's there's so many dynamics that are involved and a lot of uncontrollables. So honoring yourself is is a big broad topic, but it can plug into so many different areas of life, specifically as it relates to figuring out how to deal with people. You know, like not not get yourself, you know, wrapped around 14 axles every single day if John interrupts you one more time on a call. And I do see people basically have things happen to them at work, they just take it, they don't honor themselves in any way and then they get out of they they spin out of control mentally because it's so frustrating to them, you know, what is happening and they have no idea how to honor themselves to get through that so that it doesn't basically ruin their whole experience and make them very unhappy. So your podcast is called? Yeah, yeah, the honor you podcast. Yeah, definitely check it out and so tell us more about that idea. I think it's a brilliant name. Thank you. You know, definitely definitely key. Yeah, yeah, I mean, if if if you're listening to this and You're those honor you words resonate for some reason and you're not 100% sure why or what that means I highly recommend there's a I don't have a number that I wish I did but Probably within the first I would say 10 episodes. There's a there's a podcast in there You know talking about what does that even mean? What is honoring you even mean and that's a that's a really good place to start for folks But essentially I started the podcast because seven years ago I had a really I kind of mentioned it a little bit earlier But seven years ago I was on my way to work. I had a panic attack. I Couldn't drive to work. I had turned around to home What should have taken me 20 minutes took me two hours? I had to call my boss. I was crying Thank God she was somebody who knows me really well So she totally covered for me and told my team like well, so can't she got sick she can't make it in today so we kind of covered it up and the next day I I figured I would be okay I Legitimately was like that was a weird blip on the radar like That that won't happen again Unfortunately, that is not the case and what was not the case I woke up and I just was really struck by very Chronic very well at the time it was a cute, but it turned a chronic anxiety Where I really struggled to drive I mean I couldn't even get out of my neighborhood Honestly, I would try to get down down the road. I couldn't even get a quarter mile down the road And I'd have turned around to home. It was just utter panic. I was just couldn't do it and so I started going to an acupuncturist and life coach and it just was one of those moments in my life that completely altered Everything about my life it completely changed the direction I was going in it completely changed how I saw the world I learned how to Have a relationship with myself, which is effectively what honoring yourself really means and I learned more about what my body soul actually means and it's not just some You know esoteric phrasing that people make a lot of money off from if they say the words mind body soul It was like what does that actually mean? What is your minds? You know, what is your mind's role in your life? What is your body's role in your life? And what is your soul's role in your life? So the last seven years I've just spent Many many many hours and many many sessions with my coach and after a while I think I kind of feel like it's turned into more of a mentorship than a coaching ship Just learning more and more about how to connect with yourself How to manage your mind how to manage your body how to manage your soul and how to relationship with all of them in Order to live the kind of life that feels as good as it can possibly feel to you and Also how to deal with things on a day-to-day basis so honoring yourself is To me a practice that needs to be plugged into every single day so that you're living a life according to how you truly want to live and what's really important to you many of us if not most of us can toward ourselves consciously and unconsciously to the To society to other people's expectations and Before we know it we're contorted into a pretzel that we don't even recognize anymore We don't we don't doing the job we want to do we're not married to the people we want to be married to anymore We don't sometimes some of us don't even have friends. We like anymore You know and we're and we're like what you kind of wake up and you're like what where am I? What is happening? Who are these people and so? I I really built the podcast around my experience and learning how to honor yourself and And how important that is to have that strong strong relationship with yourself in order to have the life that you want while you're here and Not having that constantly based on what other people want for you or society's expectations of you and Getting through the uncomfortableness of doing things or saying things or being things or Interested in things that are not an accordance with what you were supposed to do in your life and that's really hard for some of us It was incredibly difficult for me Which is again why I kind of attribute how I Ended up how I ended up I attribute that to to not having any relationship with myself whatsoever You know is very overriding a lot of things in my life because I wanted the money I wanted the success and I wanted the money and I was overriding my body. I was right overriding my soul I was letting my mind just completely do whatever it wanted to like a like a bratty child that was just out of control and never being checked so anxiety and those Yeah, yeah Very very limited in my life now Yep, not on medication anymore and again I say that not with a judgmental tone if you if that's something that you do and you have to do to live in your life. I I totally support of that For me personally it wasn't something I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I was very keen on getting off my anti-exiting medicine Which I was able to do and I could drive and all the things so Yeah, so now so now the podcast I I've got is effectively to support other people in their journey on life to consistently choose themselves consistently choose to build a relationship with themselves And there's different aspects of that right? You know how do you own yourself in relationships? How do you own yourself as a mother? How do you own yourself? And I did a great podcast with my mom because I'm not a mom so I wanted a mom to to give their POV on how do you do that as a mom? It's really really hard when you're caring for another human being or human beings and Yeah, so it's it's kind of how do you keep that I would say high performance in life and Getting you know the most out of life you can that feels wildly and radically aligned with who you are and what you want and What were you in the in this journey right over these years of honoring you? Like what were the biggest ah-haz or needle Movers if you will the kind of the integrated experience is that connected the dots for you on A level on a deep like felt soul level and instead of kind of what you say you can hear these phrases words hanging out there in the concepts books whatever like body mind soul Like what really like moved? Um well honestly, I think the the the Experience I just shared was a big one, you know, I mean it was unignorable. I I Couldn't continue ignoring myself You know and I I hate that that's how we are as humans you know like I hate that we're kind of beings of until something is so bad I Won't choose something different for myself and We often do get to like you know rock bottoms or you know the dark nights of the soul or you know however you define it I do think as human beings we we do that right we don't wake up until we're sort of forced to and I feel Just infinitely grateful that that happened to me obviously at the time I was just confused I was frustrated. I mean I was I had performer. I was ambitious. What do you mean like there were even people in my life where I would tell my story and they'd be like The literally didn't believe me Like didn't believe that I had anxiety didn't believe that I had panic attacks didn't believe I couldn't drive they literally were just like really Like yeah really not making this up Because I was so put together on the outside because I was such a high performer and I was a high achiever and I Did everything right in life right I got married to a great guy have Amazing parents. I have super awesome Friends I lived in a nice town. I had nice things. I had a great job and so That's the definition of comfort right so What would have to Was that or success right or yeah right yeah exactly like by all accounts on paper. I'm successful right And it just goes to show you never really know what is happening internally with people On the outside it looks one way on the inside. It's totally different And I know I you know I always tell the story as if it was that one day into your point. I think there's a build that ends up happening You know leading up to that point. No my best friend was dying of cancer, so death was in my face. A few years before that, my uncle had died tragically in a car accident. I had several car accidents throughout my entire life. I had a really good friend in high school, she died in a car accident. I had a guy who worked for me at the winery, died in a car accident. So there was like these, and so I think what was happening truly was my soul was asking for something. I wasn't giving it to her. And I completely overrid her for as long as I could, just, you know, basing my decisions on how much money am I making per year. And I think she was like, there was something that happened somewhere in my brain that was like, if you died today, I don't think I'd actually be satisfied or happy with what I've done with my life. And that just triggered me. I think it really freaked me out. It obviously gave me tons of anxiety. And driving was the closest thing to threatening my life that I had in my life, right? So driving in my mind, I think, was a threat because it was one of the few things in my life that could cause me to end my life tragically and quickly. And so that, I think, is what I became afraid of. And so at the end of the day, like, honestly, like what I came down to was I was afraid to die because I don't think I was living the kind of life I wanted to live, even though it was everything I ever wanted, right? Yeah. So that was, that was that. And I unfortunately, I think I was fortunately, I was actually, I was forced into it to some degree, right? Like, I, I suppose you could say I could have ignored it. I could have changed it. I could have, I could have stayed on multiple medications. I could have fed myself copious amounts of alcohol to numb out. I mean, there's a lot of things I could have done that said that would have just continued to override everything, right? And so, okay, now I have anxiety. Let me just cover it all up with all the things and not deal with it. It's for whatever reason I didn't do that. Thank God. And I just like, all right, here we go. We're going on a journey of finally figuring this stuff out and, and, and listening finally instead of constantly hearing a desire for something different and ignoring it. You know, as you were speaking, what came to me was that CSong, a bird set free, like, like a soul in the cage. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Long to be, like fighting to be set free. Yeah. And, and like, I think the thing that most of us don't realize and most of us certainly are not taught is our soul has a journey and we as humans in our own minds make choices every day to honor that or to keep trying to override it. And I think our soul fights like hell to get us to pay attention and a lot of us are very, very good at ignoring it because it is a different pathway because our soul doesn't think in terms of, oh, this make me money or well, this not make me money, right? That's not the soul doesn't give a shit about that. You know, like, that's not why she's here. It's not why she's come to this earth and got herself into a body. You know, and so I, I just think that so many of us, especially in today's day and age, we've sought like phones, right? We have so much that can distract us and so much that can take us off course and so much that can numb us out. I mean, we have more numbing tools in this world than we've ever had in our, in any of the lifetimes, right? So I think there's a lot of people who just succumb to that. They're not conscious of it. They don't even see it almost, right? And that's the point of all of it. If you want to call it, whatever you want to call it, like we're putting a matrix or we want to assimilate it, I don't know. But whatever you want to call it, we're just not awakened to that. And we're not taught that. We're kind of taught the opposite. It's like the consumerism. I mean, you know, it, to me, it's, it's all about being taught to live a life where you are externally motivated and there's, there's not this like turning inward and understanding what's in here. It's all about, let me grasp for as much as I can on the outside to make myself happy or make myself feel good or make myself feel like I'm living the kind of life I'm supposed to be living. And it's just, you know, like that's famous, famous kind of phrase. I wish I knew who said it originally, but it's like, go within, not without. And we go without all the time. We're looking constantly outward for the externalness of life to make us feel a certain way. And then when it fails, we either reach further and reach more or we give up or give in and say, fine, and we go in inward. And that's where we live. Instead of the graspy external, let me just try to get as much as I can from the outside world as possible in hopes that that does something for me. Yeah. So it's my courage and it's literally like going against gravity because anywhere you turn, when you are seeking, it will be reinforced. And 100% keep keep keep keep it on the outside. Yeah. Look over here. Look over here. Yeah. 100% 100% it makes the world go round, right? Yeah. I mean, it makes the world go round like why love ourselves when we can be sold, you know, weight loss drugs or weight loss programs or weight loss this or that. Right. Like it matches one little tiny example. It's like, don't love yourself. Hate yourself. Instead, that's actually that pays the bills a lot better. Thank you. So and again, that's just one little example. So yeah, I mean, I it's just a lot of this stuff again is you hear the words growing up, but you don't really know what they mean. And it can turn itself into esoteric or people thinking it's a little too woo, woo or I don't even know what. But to me, it's the foundation of life knowing that you have a higher self and there's a higher being and that there's a mind, body and soul. What does that actually mean, you know, truly, truly, what does that mean? So yeah, I'm glad it happened to me at the time. It really stunk and I wouldn't wish that on anybody, but I kind of would if it made them wake up. Yeah. And exactly. So pay attention. Listen to that spark. Yeah. That's light like glimmering and kind of tugging, tugging at you. And thank you so much for sharing the journey of honoring you, Melissa. How can people find you, connect with you and get more of you? Yeah, I'd love that. As we mentioned, the podcast is on Apple Spotify and pod bean. So you can search the honor you podcast and it should pop up my face on it. I'm often on LinkedIn and obviously my website's a great tool for people to connect with me as well. There's a contact me there. You can grab a free console. There's some of this resonated with you and you think to yourselves, that would be great to have in my life because I am life coach certified. So this is the foundation of my teachings. So www.malissacolitan.com and go to contact me or there's book of free consoles all over my websites. You can't really miss it. And then I'm on Instagram a little bit, but not necessarily daily trying to change that, but life of a business owner, right? So trying to do all the things. But yeah, that's probably the best places to find me. Awesome. Is there anything that I didn't ask that you would want to share? That's a good question. No, I don't think so. I mean, you know, a lot of what we talked about is very mechanical and very tactical and, you know, you and I have talked about this a lot. There's all sorts of things out there that will tell you how to be, what to be, who you are, label you. And even my stuff isn't necessarily the right answer, if you will, not to deter people from working with me or anything. But the idea really is, and the most important thing is, in my mind is that you go inward, you build that relationship with yourself and you find your own way and you, your purpose is fulfilling your soul's desires. And if you can have that relationship enough with yourself to connect with your soul and know what those desires are and execute on them, I have a really hard time believing you won't be pretty peaceful and happy generally speaking. And it's not to say bad things won't happen to you or around you because that's just life, but if you have that strong internal foundation, you get through those things a lot easier and a lot more peacefully and with support that you need. So, wasn't really, I guess, a question that you didn't ask me, but I think I would say just as a punctuation to our conversation, it's really important to understand that there's a million talking heads out there, millions, millions, millions of millions of talking heads out there that will tell you how to live your life. The important thing is that you figure out how to live your life based on you. And the other stuff around you is just kind of supportive tools that you can access if it supports you and helps you get there. But generally speaking, it's all about you and you. And figuring out how to connect to that. Yeah, I love that. Melissa, thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you for having me.