Episode 30: Can We Achieve Health and Well-being at Work?

Michelle Velan’s Contact Information:

• Website: www.wondersource.com
• Instagram: @michyvelan and @wondersource_
• Michelle on LinkedIn,  Wondersource on LinkedIn
• Wondersource Newsletter
• Book a call
• X: https://x.com/wondersource

Current Book Michelle is Reading: How to Make a few Billion Dollars by Brad Jacobs

Michelle's Favorite Podcasts: 

• Reclaim Your Freedom with Sara Zula 
• Manifestation Babe

     Michelle's Favorite Instagram:

• Cory Muscara

 

Laura & Christine’s Contact Information:

• Women's Career Mastery Program website 
• Follow Women's Career Mastery for updates on LinkedIn
• Christine Samuel
• Laura Casale
• Mastering Your Performance Review Course

Welcome to the Women's Career Mastery Podcast, the show that's dedicated to empowering women to redefine success and break through barriers. I'm your host, Christine, and my co-host, Laura, along with our amazing guests and experts. We are here to shatter the myths that has been hindering women's career fulfillment for far too long. So, if you're ready to master your career and take your life to the next level, join us in our journey together. The Women's Career Mastery podcast starts now.

 

Hello listeners! Today, we are diving into the most important topics we all need to discuss -- our health and wellbeing at work. We've got a special guest who's here to drop some serious knowledge on managing stress and self-care. She's breaking down the root causes of health issues, addressing the unique stress women face, in high pressure environments and sharing how education and empowerment can transform your well-being at work.

 

So, grab your coffee, get comfy and get ready for some game changing tips on mastering your physical and mental health at work.

 

But before we dive in, I want to share some exciting news. We've just launched an e-course called Performance Review Mastery. Designed to help you confidently ace your next review and level up your career with 4 easy to follow steps. Check it out at www.womencareermastery.com/performance-review-course.

 

Without further ado, I'll pass it over to my cohost, Laura.

 

Hello listeners. It's great to be back for another episode of the Women's Career Mastery podcast. Our guest for this episode is Michelle Velan. Michelle is an entrepreneur with 20 Plus years of sales experience, branding and marketing experience.

 

She holds an executive global master's in management from the London School of Economics, is Reiki level one, level two certified, and has a certificate in leadership coaching strategies from Harvard. She's passionate about helping people live healthier, happier, more empowered lives. And she has launched Wondersource, which is a global holistic health and success platform, helping employees thrive at work and life.

 

And the work that they do really helps to elevate workforces with their science backed approach to holistic health, mental wellbeing, and professional development, which has transformed many lives and fueled exceptional business outcomes. So, we are super excited to have Michelle join us on the podcast and learn a little bit more about this area.

 

So perhaps Michelle, you can get us started by sharing why you wanted to join us.

 

Yeah. So, thank you so much for having me here. I'm super excited to be here. So, I really just love what you're doing, and I feel very passionate about supporting business professionals to live healthy and thrive and being a woman myself who went through burnout and.

 

You know, being surrounded by lots of women, I feel particularly connected to empowering women. And also, as I've been on this journey with Wondersource, and I'm talking to a lot of people about this, I always hear from women that, I relate to this, I have hormonal imbalances, I feel stressed, I feel overwhelmed, and I just feel, based on everything I've learned, it doesn't need to be this way.

 

So, there's so much we can be doing for ourselves. And as leaders to support our employees. So, I'm just really excited to be here and to kind of continue spreading that message.

 

Yeah. Thank you, Michelle. We're happy to have you here. And I think we're going to start with, your story, like where were you and what makes you do what you do right now?

 

Yeah, absolutely. So well, firstly, I was always kind of very observant about brain health, and I experienced different people around me who had mental health conditions. So, I was always kind of trying to, understand it and support myself and support others. But several years ago, I was working in sort of high stress job as the head of sales, and I was experiencing insomnia.

 

And I was going to my doctor trying to get to the bottom of it and I was just recommended to meditate more, but I could tell I already did transcendental meditation. I was meditating a lot, and I just knew that there was something physically wrong with my body. I was going to bed, and I just like wired.

 

So, I did a lot of research, and I finally came across Functional Medicine. Which aims to get to the root cause of health issues. And after a lot of research, I found one practitioner. We did some tests, and we uncovered that my cortisol levels were just completely off balance. So, I was given a personalized protocol, a lot of which was, fixing my gut health, slowing down.

 

I stopped doing intermittent fasting and Barry's bootcamp, certain things that I thought were healthy, but for me, they were actually stressing out my body. Changed some of my diet. And. Really started to develop self-compassion and within 10 days, I was just amazed because within 10 days, I was sleeping through the night and feeling like so much better.

 

So, there was a lot of things after that, that I started to do and for a more sort of long-term sustainable change, but I was sleeping through the night after 10 days and it just like amazed me. And what I realized was. I could have easily been taking sleeping pills or anxiety pills because I wasn't sleeping and I felt very anxious, but really, I needed to get to the root cause of what was going on, which was, my gut health was not great.

 

I was doing things. I was rushing around. I just wasn't supporting myself in a way that was setting myself up to feel good and thrive. So, as I kind of went deeper into this, I realized like, wow, the healthcare system is not actually designed to sort of prevent issues. It's more like when we have something and there's such a connection between our mental health and our physical health.

 

And as I, you know, just started to learn more about how high the stats are with chronic illness and how stress is related to all this and diet and everything. I just felt like I knew too much, to not do something about it. So that's sort of how Wondersource came about.

 

Do you want to tell us more about Wondersource? Because I feel like there's a lot that you've pulled together to make that happen. Yeah, absolutely. So, Wondersource is, basically, we have different types of workshops, programs, one-to-one support, but it's essentially what our sort of signature program is.

 

We have what we call our mind body work program and it's these live classes with companies or teams. So, our mind program is led by a clinical psychologist and it's six sessions, all about what we believe that every sort of business professional should have. In a way to support themselves. We have our body program, which is also six sessions led by a functional medicine practitioner.

 

And there we cover inflammation, gut health, diet, sleep hygiene, all of these things that are required for us today. We have way more toxins in the environment and in our food. And we're on our phones more. We're way more connected. So, it's sort of setting us up, to build the foundation. And then we have a work series, which is led by a business coach, and it's all about things like learning to effectively communicate, set boundaries, manage stress, and so, yeah, around that, we have different things.

 

We have even hypnosis, we have tapping, we have, as I said, one-to-one support. We even have programs for women. We even do sessions on menopause, but the kind of core of what we're doing is a signature program. And then online setting.

 

It's very interesting because it seems like you are bringing the holistic aspects of well-being at work that sometimes we, you know, when you do work, it's like, it's all about deadlines, about getting the projects done, about, working, working and doing and doing. But it seems you see something like a gap of, you know, there's something that we need about.

 

Yeah. mental health, physical health, and also supporting people at work. Can you tell me, and I'm pretty sure this is based on your experience, how can we learn to manage stress first from the individuals, and secondly, if you can, from your base of Wondersources experience, how organizations can help, maintain the wellbeing of, the people that work there?

 

Yes, absolutely. So, I mean, on an individual level, there's so much we can be doing. And I'm gonna just sort of focus this more on stress, but to me there's also a little bit. In terms of, you know, we all have these kinds of unhelpful subconscious programming and stories we have, like, I'm not good enough, or my needs don't matter. Things that we may be picked up in childhood that I, I feel it's really important to kind of look at those because those are causing us to be, like, causing a lot of resistance and holding us back.

 

So, I can go deeper into all the mental health stuff, but in terms of a stress management on a day-to-day basis, to me, it's like getting into nature as much as possible. There are so many studies about how being in nature lowers your cortisol levels and things like that. I personally have found Tapping Emotional Freedom Technique to be so empowering. I do it daily. Guided meditations, visualization.

 

If I have a big meeting or even just, I'm working towards goals. I'm visualizing every day. I'm sitting in that visualization and I'm also like feeling in my heart like how that will feel because essentially, I'm like training my brain to be that person.

 

Breath work. And then also I would say like the diet and sleep. And so, with your diet, you want to be eating like healthy things and managing your sugar intake and, limiting alcohol ideally. And then also prioritizing sleep. I would say prioritizing sleep is such a big one. And unfortunately, a lot of us don't get a lot of sleep, but for me, if you can just manage your sleep and get a good night's sleep every night, it's so empowering for your stress levels and your mental health.

 

So as an employee, like, I mean, I've been through really good times, really bad times, and when the bad times come, the anxiety comes, it goes higher and higher, right? Like we just get really stressed out because we're trying so hard to fix the challenge or the problem that's going on. And that's all normal.

 

But to your point, and I've been experimenting with this myself. If you're not eating well, if you're eating lots of sugar, carbs at the time of the anxiety, it just compounds the anxiety. And if you stop it, it doesn't. So, like, how do you help? How do the people in organizations realize this or how do you help them, play with this so that they can be, functioning better or not dealing with such high levels of anxiety?

 

Yeah. So, I mean, one of the things is when they're going through the program. So, for example, I mentioned our body program, which is led by a functional medicine practitioner. A lot of people, we don't have access to doctors and, to these people who are, you on top of cutting-edge research to ask our questions.

 

So, they feel very empowered hearing this information. They're learning. They're writing down notes. So, I think there's part of it is just like, they have their questions answered. They sort of have the tools that they feel they need. And that in itself is empowering for them. They have like a path.

 

And then to kind of keep people on top of things, we have these different workbooks for each program. So, for example, for the body program, we have what we call our holistic workbook, and there's all these different sections where they're working through, like, each month, they have kind of a different topic, and over time, they're getting into the habit of prioritizing their well-being.

 

And so, it's not just like, you do what you do at once, or you do it when you're stressed or something. It's like, it's creating the habit of, investing in yourself and prioritizing your well-being on an ongoing basis.

 

So, What I heard from you, there are two themes, basically, one is self-care.

 

There's a lot of self-care, like, simple things that we think, like, it's, too simple to make an effect. Like, you know, walking, walking outside or just eating healthy food. And also, education, like, how important it is to educate ourselves of what makes us better, more like healthier or have a better well-being.

 

Yeah. I mean, I think it's very important. And I saw, let's say when COVID came about, everyone was talking about vitamin D. So, people started taking vitamin D, but there's elements of the vitamin D, like it's supposed to be vitamin D2, K3, like, because the combination. So, I do think that there's a need for education from a trusted resource because right now there is a lot of information out there, but it's like how it's curated and how it's presented to you, will affect how you absorb it and all of that.

 

But I guess one other thing that I would just add in terms of, how its helping people stay kind of healthy on an ongoing basis, like what we found is because the teams are doing these programs together, they're kind of like encouraging each other together. So, for example, they used to have cake in the afternoon and then they'll start to just be like, oh, you know, maybe we should have nuts.

 

And they're encouraging each other throughout the day. And it's kind of like. Making them feel accountable to each other, which is, not something that we were thinking it would do, but it's a really nice benefit. So, there's the knowledge that they gain and then there's like, then they practice it, and they see the difference, right?

 

They see the difference in the day when we eat the cake versus the nuts, right? We see like, we don't have the sugar spikes when you have the cake. So, you get tired after eating the cake, but you won't get tired after eating the nuts. Yeah, exactly. And, and I guess there's also like the, for me personally, I didn't know, like inflammation is at the root cause of all chronic illnesses.

 

This is like depression, cancer, everything basically. So, I didn't know that. And once I knew that it was like, wow, that's really something to be mindful of. So, I became a lot more mindful of how I can manage my inflammation levels and what I can be doing to support that. So, yeah. Now when people at work, sometimes they're so busy and they're so worried. There's so much thing to get done and not just the work, but also at home, balancing everything. How do you think? Ways to motivate us or people who are at work or busy to learn or to do self-care to educate themselves.

 

And I'm pretty sure a lot of people learn about it when they have like disease or they have things that, really affecting their health and they learn about it.

But do you, have any, advice for how, can we motivate? And also, maybe support, like how can an organization or leaders motivate people or their team to be more care about.

 

Well, I think one thing as a for example is like so much of your mental health and your kind of stress at work is based on your manager. So, if you have like a good manager, you have a much better experience. If you don't, then you have, a bad experience. So, I think part of it is also giving the tools to managers to lead themselves, to manage their stress levels.

 

Because I believe that most people want to be good bosses. They want to be good leaders, and they just don't necessarily know how to do that. They've never been trained and everything like that. So, I feel that that's one thing is like training managers, training top management. Then there's, there's other things in terms of like, employees are people.

 

So, it's like respecting people and kind of giving them maybe space to, for example, work from home three days, if that's, going to make you more productive, obviously, it depends. Every company is going to be different, right? So, for some companies, that's not going to be a possibility.

 

I think just meeting employees where they are and even asking them, like, what would be meaningful to you and showing your employees that they are cared for and giving these types of stress management or mental health, tools and, yeah. And I think in general, like valuing it as a leader, maybe to be talking about it more openly, not necessarily your, mental health struggles or something like that.

 

But just making it more like having conversations one to ones with your employees and asking where they're at and being genuinely caring about people. Yeah, I think there's a bunch of things, but a big one to me would be like, a lot of companies are buying these, let's say self-led apps and their intentions are good, I think.

 

But then the apps aren't used like the different companies we spoke to, not one person used the app. So, it doesn't feel really like, because they're not communicating about how to use it or, usage rates are low. Maybe employees don't really like it. So, I think it's, it's like. being a mindful individual and saying like, these are my employees. I genuinely care about them. Like what does that mean? And, thinking of solutions that are meaningful.

 

I really love what you say about, start with the managers because they're on the front lines and they are certainly busy. Right. But they don't know necessarily how to manage mental health and wellbeing of employees.

 

That was never on a list for a manager of skills. They really don't, and they don't know how to manage their stress. And, we had one company come to us and their managers were like crying in the office and do all kinds of things. And like I said, I, I believe that everyone wants to be a good leader, right?

 

It's not that they don't want to be, it's that they don't like to have the tools to be managing themselves and all of that. So, I think it's really important to train our managers. Train the managers and know what your employees need, but also what might trigger them. Right. So being real careful on what you say, and that takes practice too in training.

 

Like, what do you think about that, Michelle? Like, cause sometimes managers can say things that may seem normal or, the right thing to say. We're pushing a project and we're driving really hard, but something might come out to somebody the wrong way and that really impacts their mental health. Like how do you help in that situation?

 

Yeah. Well, I mean, I think it's always about remembering, like. None of us are perfect, I'm not suggesting that anyone should be perfect and it's kind of a constant thing for me is to just release judgment in general, release judgment of myself, release judgment of other people.

 

One of the things we talk about in our programs is vulnerability and empathy and we are teaching people how do you have empathy? What I'm seeing also is like, a lot of people just don't even know in a work setting, like, how am I supposed to talk to people?

 

You know, like, we feel more comfortable with our friendships outside of work, but there's a sort of, uncomfortableness when it comes to work. But what I would advocate is like being a human, like connecting more to your heart and we know how we want to be treated.

 

We know how we want to be seen and all of that. So, it's like taking those same thoughts and bringing it to other people, I guess, to your, question another thing where we have in our training is how to communicate effectively and set boundaries and things like that.

 

And that, to me, has always been an interesting one, because we're training very senior people in banks and everything. And this particular session is one that everyone is writing notes, has so many questions been shocked by what we're considering as effective communication.

 

It's a work in progress. It's nobody's going to be a perfect communicator overnight, but I think it's continuously learning those things and, leading. Yeah. As the leader. Yeah. Having an awareness of it even is huge. And then putting your leadership team to the signature program, it's a great way to start.

 

Like it's a great way to get it go, get it going. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, in the effect of communication we talk about that assertiveness is. We talk about the benefits and how to communicate effectively. And that in itself is just shocking to a lot of people that like, that is this sort of, way that let's say clinical psychologists would recommend you speak, in a work setting.

 

And so, yeah, I think there's a lot of it is actually what you said. Awareness, like people didn't know that was even a good way to communicate. It's very interesting because it seems like, at least from what I gather from this conversation is, well-being is a system.

 

It's not like, for example, the ideas of a manager were not really, care about their well-being and doesn't have the self-awareness, then the whole team will get the effect. And it just like spread, right? Especially in the higher leadership that can start with having that awareness, being care about their well-being and also well-being of others, then it will start making a, effect as well.

 

Do you have any, thoughts about, how to create a psychology safety environment in, like, you know, in team or when we work together? I do. Well, one of our days in our Mind Program is specifically on psychological safety for teams.

 

There was a study by, I think, Google and Accenture or maybe Gartner said that that's like the key ingredient to high performing teams is psychological safety. So, we've included it in our programming. And I mean, there's the actual program, the content that's in the session, but even just the fact that we're doing this, like, it's, it's not with the teams that we've been working with.

 

It's teams of senior management are in the same programs as the junior employees. So, they're all in this setting where they're learning these things together. And that in itself is like creating more of the employees are feeling like invested in by their companies and they're seeing that like, oh, wow, the senior people in this team care about this stuff enough to be sitting here with us and to be paying for this stuff.

 

So, I think that in itself is making people feel like safer. And plus, there's a clinical psychologist whose kind of there running the session. So, people are, asking them a lot of questions like what's best practice? Because people don't know.

 

And Michelle, I know we focus a lot on this podcast. It's all about women, right? So yeah. Women deal with stress a little bit differently than men. And maybe in these situations too, a woman manager versus a male manager, what are you seeing in that space? I know there are men listening to our podcasts and we thank them for that.

 

But I think also like, maybe is this more challenging for women? Because it's hard to say no, hard to create the boundaries. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there's lots of studies to show that women experience higher levels of stress. So that's there. And then stress based disorders, like depression, autoimmune, things like that are more common in women than men.

 

And also, neurologically studies show that women can have faster, longer and larger stress responses than men. Also, there's different state of health of women in the workforce report that came out by Parsley Health this year was showing that 41 percent of women at work have mental health conditions, 37 percent of those have an autoimmune condition.

 

So, definitely the stats support it. And I guess, as a woman, I mean, I can tell you what my friends are experiencing, the women in my families and stuff. You can see it, they're overwhelmed by things and anxious. And so, yeah, I definitely see that. And also, when we talk about Wondersource to women, they're always relating to all of it.

 

I think we're not saying that like the stress from work is causing all those statistics to happen and it's just that women have so many other stressors like we carry the burden of so many things work is just another thing that we have and that becomes overwhelming.

 

Exactly. They say that women are much more likely to put other people first before them, and they maybe don't even know what their needs are when they're highly stressed, and that's obviously going to cause a ripple effect when we're feeling very stressed and not, putting everyone else's needs when really what we need to do is probably step back.

 

We'll, give ourselves the love and care and, moments of stillness or whatever, but, yeah, that's, that's, I see why it's. It makes sense to me why it makes sense. Yeah. And I saw recently some statistics that showed women in the middle levels in organizations is a huge glut because they've had to step out.

 

So maybe they wouldn't have had to step out if the organization was paying attention and helping with, overall well-being. Yeah, well-being and from what we've seen in different studies that women want more support with like hormonal imbalances, fatigue, stress, they want more flexibility in their work schedule.

 

Yeah, so I do think there's a lot of ways that we can be better supporting women in the workplace. I mean, even for myself, like, I, I'm like a highly sensitive person. Have you ever, do you know the term highly sensitive person? Yes. So even for me, like, back in the day when I was working in my corporate jobs, like I could just tell there was, I can bring a lot to this job.

 

I know this for sure, but I don't necessarily like. Perform at my highest level. If I'm sitting here from nine to five beside everyone, like I'm much more productive sometimes if I'm at home, for example, so there's just, different ways I think people need to be supported and it would do us all a big service if we recognize that people are different and can bring a lot of value if we support them in their unique ways, you know, this conversations make me realize that.

 

It would be great if even an organization for profits, where we can bring or having awareness about health and not just a mental health right now it's great like they're more awareness of mental health and well-being, but also physical health. Because many people think that, like health, it doesn't, it's not really connected with jobs or anything, but it does affect the productivity and the performance and the well-being and, the environment and the culture of the work.

 

So, it seems like it's also very important to take care, or at least to have an awareness of the health, even physical health. Because, like if you get, you have a cold, yeah, I'm sick, you know, I cannot go to work. But like, if you have, for example, hormonal imbalance, it's like, yeah, I'm not really sick, but like it, those kind of like in between are the ones that are so, common, but it's not really spoken about.

 

Yeah, 100%. And it's and also mental health is completely related to physical health, and you can't have one without the other. So, you know, like, are the way that we talk to ourselves, is either supporting our physiology, or it's sort of sending stress hormones through our body.

 

So yeah, it's very much related and that's why we've set up the Body Program because we still sort of talk a lot about mental fitness at work. But to me, the body program is supporting people , even supplements can support your stress levels. Or magnesium can help you to sleep better, which also helps you with stress.

 

I also would like to be in a time where you could go to your management and say openly, I'm a hypersensitive person, or I'm dealing with an autoimmune condition. And so, I can't sit for eight hours a day. I have to be able to be in an environment where I can really move around.

 

And maybe that's easier because now we have standing desks and all now, but you know what I mean? Like just being able to, like I can work somewhere comfortably. I could say and speak about myself authentically and it is not held against me. Yes, absolutely. I mean, it's one of the reasons I want to be doing Wondersource as well.

 

I want to be bringing these conversations forward where I think, as you talked about, like women, as they get more and more senior, I feel that there's a sort of pressure that you don't want to speak out. You just want to kind of, you're, you know, grateful for where you're at or. But I think a lot of people are struggling and it would be helpful if we could.

 

Yeah. Yeah. Even, I mean, not even in leadership positions. I mean, I coach employees, they might have ADHD and they can't talk about that, but that's challenging to work in a busy environment with ADHD. Right? So, you need to have a place where that person can go maybe and sit in a quiet room for a period of time to get some specific project work done.

 

I'm not, I don't know, but like people are just afraid or not, comfortable sharing whatever it is that they have or their condition or their thing because they feel like it's going to be held against them. Yeah, and right now the stats for like chronic illness, for example, is 60 percent in the US. 60 percent of adults have like a chronic illness. And Harvard just did a report saying that 50 percent of the population will have a mental health condition.

 

So, these things are becoming very common, but we're still treating them as if it's like, not common.

 

We're in denial.

 

But at some point, I know you're busy, you're gonna be even busier because this is the right way to go. Thank you. And we thank you for having you here to bring this awareness to our audience. Where can we find you, Michelle? Yes, thank you so much. So, you can find me at Mishi Valen for my personal on Instagram and at Wondersource underscore, for Wondersource account.

 

And on LinkedIn, you can find me from my personal, as well as Wondersource's account. And also, we have an amazing newsletter for Wondersource. So, you can sign up on our website. Awesome. And we'll include all of them in the show notes for everybody.

 

Now, before we part, is there any other message that you want to share with our audience,

 

Well, I guess I can share one piece of advice That was really meaningful to me. So, there's so much advice that I've had over the years. That's really empowering. But one of my favorite things was, the more you learn to love yourself, the more successful you'll be.

 

So, I found that was really like an empowering thing for me to hear.

 

So, my approach to mental fitness is really about taking a holistic and proactive approach to mental health and well-being.

 

And I think we're all very different and everyone needs to prioritize where they're at. But for me, it was really about slowing down, developing a gratitude practice. Working to heal my inner child, working through subconscious stories and identities that had told me I wasn't worthy or good enough and challenging those managing stress, challenging, limiting beliefs, simple things, just to give you an example of what that means.

 

So, for example, for a while, I was noticing I wasn't making progress in one area of my business. And I said like, what do you love about the fact that you haven't had that success yet. And right away, it was like. I can relax. So, for a while, that was kind of the story that I had for everything.

 

When I asked myself, like, what was the deeper story going on? And when you look at that, it's, it's like, oh, if my subconscious thinks that I won't be able to relax, if I have a certain amount of success, it's not going to let me have that level of success, you know? So, it's just like challenging those things.

 

A big thing for me has been acknowledging and validating my emotions as they come up. So being present with my experience and just saying like, oh, hi, anxiety. Or even like, studies show that doing that it really lowers the effect of that emotion, and then creating an empowered vision and doing what we said, like visualization and journaling about it and taking aligned action and really rewiring my brain to be that person.

 

I think a big thing that I learned on my journey was that like, every day we're kind of practicing being the person that we want to be. And so, if you're complaining, for example, you're practicing doing that. Or if you're being like calm and kind of handling things and learning to be a bit still, you're practicing doing that.

 

And that's kind of rewiring your brain for that. So that was a really big thing for me and self-compassion. I'm so passionate about spreading the message of self-compassion. It's so important for us. I think so many people are running these stories in their heads that are just really not supportive.

 

And then basically just for all that. So, when we connect more to our heart and heal our unhelpful programming, like perfectionism, self-criticism, not valuing ourselves, unworthiness, that so many of us are carrying around, basically everything in life just becomes much easier. We start to value ourselves.

 

It becomes easier to set boundaries that honor our well-being. And then in turn, we're moving more confidently, we have more energy, we're able to be more focused and it just means we're much more productive at work and effective at what we're doing.

 

Michelle, your story is amazing. And the courage that you had to have to go through all of that, right?And then to come out of it and want to give it all to people, like, that's just so inspiring, really. Very moving. Thank you for doing what you do.

 

Thank you so much.

 

Ready for our lightning round questions?

 

Yes, absolutely.

 

Okay. More questions, short answers, if possible, but we like to have fun with these.

 

Michelle, where do you go for inspiration? So, biographies and podcasts. Right now, I'm listening to Sarah Zula a lot, who I absolutely love. Manifestation Babe and Cory Muscara.

 

Those are my favorites right now. Those are your podcast faves? Yes. Awesome. And what are you reading? What am I reading? Well, the last biography I read was by Brad Jacobs and “How to Create a Few Billion Dollars,” I think it's called. Oh, and it was just an absolutely incredible story.

 

He's a businessman who's created a few billion-dollar companies. But one of the things I love so much about it was he talks a lot about the power of, love and supporting your mental health and connecting to your heart. And he says, like, what does love to have to do with creating a few billion-dollar businesses?

 

And he talks about, well, creating a few billion-dollar businesses is very stressful and you can't do that if you're, not like in a good state and you get in a good state by connecting to your heart. So, I absolutely love that. Awesome. And give us those names. We're going to put them in the show notes to the book and the podcast.

 

Those are great references. What is one habit you adopted that has greatly improved your career?

 

So, on a daily basis, just like opening my mind to what's possible. And with that reprogramming, disempowering subconscious stories or identities or limiting beliefs.

 

Awesome.

 

What is one thing that keeps you moving forward each day? My morning routine, which consists of meditation, tapping, and visualization.

 

And what is the most valuable piece of advice you ever received? The more you love yourself, the more successful you'll be.

 

Oh, that's beautiful. That one's going on my wall too. That's a good one. Very good. Thank you so much, Michelle, for being here, being with us and for being you and sharing your missions and your message and, hope to see you next time.

 

Thank you so much for having me here. It was such a pleasure to talk to both of you and yeah, I can't wait to talk again. Yeah. Come back soon. Thank you.

 

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