Ep 043: Health is Wealth with Melissa Deally

Ever wonder what success actually means?

How do you get it?

And how do you keep it?

We all want it yet sometimes it feels only some of us get to have it.

Hi, Teresa Blair here. We are two badass entrepreneurs, bestselling authors, coaches and business mentors, who have had success filled success, question their own success and reclaimed it. Let's be real for a hot minute. 2020 has been a roller coaster ride, and many of us started to wonder if they'll lose the things that made them successful. So we got curious, Ron real about what success is truly about?

Can you put it in a box?

How can you get it?

Can people take it away? Or are you the one with the power?

Does it mean the same to all of us? Or are we the ones that created

from PGA golf pros to doctors, CEOs, entrepreneurs and spiritual mentors. We get together to meet with successful people from around the globe to dissect success for vibrant conversations and interviews. Make sure you click the subscribe button on the app store because each week we will drop a new episode to bust through the myths around success and dissect it's true meaning who's ready for the most badass and massive up level in their business? It is back what's back momentum land Teresa's signature six month business and mentorship accelerator is now open for enrollment

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Imagine where you can take your business into six months that we will work together,

ready to give your business the momentum you desire. Head to Teresa Lambert coaching comm backslash momentum to secure your coveted spots. Well hello friends Blair Kaplan Venables here with Teresa Lambert and we are here with another episode of dissecting success. And I am so excited because today, not only do we have a phenomenal guest, but she is a friend. I've done business with her. She's been a client of mine. I've watched her business grow. I've been a guest on her podcast and I'm so honored that she came back from a hike in the mountains to talk to us today. I want to introduce you to Melissa de she's an integrative health practitioner, registered health coach, speaker and host of the don't wait for your wake up call podcast. I've known Melissa for I don't even know how long because time has no essence and pandemic. But I've known her for many, many years, we networked together when I lived in the sky corridor. And I just think it's phenomenal with what she's doing. Not only have I watched her business grow, but we've actually gone on road trips together for business. We have spoken at events together and basically Yeah, like the world then shut down. But yeah, I'm just so honored to have her here as a guest today. And I'm excited to see where the conversation goes. So hi, Melissa, welcome so much do you want to introduce yourself Say hi, and maybe let us know what you just came home from?

Sure, I would love to and I just want to add not only have we done, you know road trips to speaking engagements for events since the pandemic, we've done some online ones as well. So lots of paths overlapping. And yes, I just came home from a wonderful back country hike with my oldest daughter. It's something that we've taken up since the pandemic hit because you know, we couldn't travel as far as we normally would. And we have discovered the joy of back country camping right in our own backyard. And it's so wonderful. It's wonderful to have that time to spend with my 23 year old daughter when neither of us are on devices. And we're just hanging out in nature and nature is so healing you know nature is what draws us out of our stressed out sympathetic nervous system into our rest and digest calm, parasympathetic nervous system. And I'm so grateful that she loves the mountains and that she loves to do this with me.

That's amazing. I you know, moving from the coastal mountains where you live to the desert mountains and Kamloops. I'm excited to start exploring the mountains here. But I know how healing it is because I've been on a I'm on I'm on a really long, deep healing journey. And I completely agree with the specialness of being off the grid and in the mountains in the forest. It's so lovely. So I want to start off with the age old question that I can't wait to hear what your answer is. But what does success mean to you?

Well, I think that's a very personal question because I think success is different to every single individual and, you know, maybe growing up I thought success was something different to what it is today because I was influenced by what I thought my parents thought success was or what their expectations of me for success were too. So even determining what success means, to me has been a journey. And where I've landed is that Success to me means freedom, it means the ability to set my own schedule, work, when I want to work and play when I want to play, you know, I just took Thursday, Friday off to go camp with my daughter, because I could but back when I was in the corporate world, I would have had to fill it out, you know, vacation request forms, and maybe you're maybe not got approved and all of that. And so just being able to block that in my calendar a month or two ahead, so that I have that time for me. And you know, I block time in my calendar every morning, I typically don't work with clients before 10am. Because in my work with clients, I am giving so much so I have to fill up my cup first every day. So I have a morning routine. And typically, I will not work with a client until 10am the odd time, I might, but then I have the choice, right because my calendar is blocked. And now I get to choose Is that something I want to do at 9am. And if I do that at 9am, When am I going to do what I need to do for me later in the day. But in the summer, my morning started out with either paddleboarding yoga, or an online gym class with my trainer. So one of those three, and in the winter, it's yoga gym, or maybe cross country skiing, or, you know, half a day downhill skiing. And I have the flexibility to choose that. So for me, it's all about freedom, much more so than it is is about the amount of money that I make. But the amount of money that I make is still important, not because I want money for me, it's because when I have more money, I can do more good in the world. And I can do that through my charity girls matter. And so you know, there is that, you know someone's have, the more money I have, the more I can help them. But that doesn't define success. For me. It's definitely the freedom.

Oh my gosh, I forgot you had a charity, you're just the nicest, best human. You're just girls matter. Yes, let's talk sorry, like sidebar, this is important. 30 seconds or a minute or however long you want. What is girls matter?

Girls matter. It's a nonprofit helping keep girls in school in Uganda, girls from rural villages that would otherwise be married off as teenagers because their parents can no longer afford them. And we're keeping them in school. Because the reality is, is that if we educate more girls, we actually can break the poverty cycle, one girl, one family, one village at a time, there's a stat and it's if India could educate just 1% more girls, they would grow their GDP by 5.5 billion. So that's the answer in pulling these third world countries out of poverty. It's not easy. But that's the answer. And so that's what I do with some co founders, focusing on girls in Uganda, because we have people on the ground there that help us with finding the girls in the selection process, etc.

Wow. You know, that just gave me goosebumps, Melissa, because it is such a beautiful thing to do. But I also feel like, it leads back to this whole idea that success means freedom. Right? It's it's the freedom to play to freedom to work when we want and there's all that like lifestyle side of it. Right? That, that I feel like so many of us enjoy, and it takes work to actually implement that in your business. Like I just want to put that do because I think sometimes, you know, we think that it's easy, but for a lot of us and I know Melissa you and I share this, we transitioned from corporate careers into entrepreneurship. And it was a whole wild world of unlearning, how to not pretend you're an employee that clocks in for yourself and like sits in front of a desk, even when you have nothing to do because you're like, I go to work. But bringing the guy bringing this back to girls matter. You know, it's also you know, you have the freedom and as you build your financial wealth, you have this ability to take others with you. And you know, I feel like by helping these girls in Uganda actually go to school and moving the needle forward about poverty, which is a huge, huge, huge, huge, huge problem in this in this world still, and we ignore it so often. But what do you do with that you give them the freedom to succeed because if they do not right now, they have no freedom to succeed because their life path has been decided for them based on circumstances that they were born in, and so it Just as like a, nobody can see this, but I'm literally having like my head into. Because, you know, at the most like in the most beautiful way, success is freedom. And you'll also be standing in not by, you know, having this mission with goals not so thank you. Thank

you My pleasure. And I want to say a couple of things there when you mention that transition from the corporate world and on tropeano, entrepreneurial ship and unlearning and then re learning. I was at that place when I was also wearing so many hats. And so one of the things that I've had to learn is also to let go and to find people that can support me and who can do my content writing and who can help me with my social media? And what am I really good at? And what do I hate that I need to hand off, etc. And so that's been a really interesting learning experience as well that, of course, you don't have in the corporate world, because so often you do what you're told to do. And that's the scope of your job. And you can do it really, really well. And, you know, move up through the ranks, etc. But you're not wearing as many hats as you tend to where as an entrepreneur, so definitely, that has been learning so that I can find that balance. And that's all around the time blocking so that I can create the time for me. And so I love that I'm in that place where I can now.

So powerful, sorry, Blair, you were gonna say something,

I was just gonna say, you know, the beginning, we talked about your hike and the you know, how being in nature is great for your nervous system. You know, have you noticed a big difference in your health, physical and mental health from being in corporate, to being an entrepreneur like and being in control of your schedule and having that freedom? Has there been a difference? And you to Teresa like, has there been a difference in both of your health, it's

100%. And I mean, for me, coming out of the corporate world, I didn't know anything about health and wellness compared to what I know now. I prioritize my health, I exercise I still lived in nature, etc. But compared to what I know, now, I didn't know anything. And so that's why I teach what I know now because I know other people are so busy in their corporate world, and they don't have time to go back to school for three years, like I did to learn it. All right. So but as I've learned it all, I've implemented all of those changes. When I was in the corporate world, I had no idea that self care was important. In fact, when I was at HCI, where Teresa also studied, that's where I learned that self care is selfless. And I came up with a mantra from a few different quotes that I saw that I teach all the time, self care is the most selfless act, because it allows you to show up and give the world the best of you instead of what's left of you. Well, when I have liked to have known that when my children were babies, and I thought I had to look after them, and look after my husband, and look after everybody else. And you know, maybe I would look after me after that if I wasn't already asleep, because I was so exhausted. And so that was a huge turning point for me was actually realizing that self care is not selfish, I thought it was. So to learn that it was selfless. And then to then learn to start blocking that time in my calendar so that I actually had that time for me. And then that's when I noticed just, life felt better. I felt happier. You know, I also implemented a gratitude journal through this and again, my brain starts looking for gratitude and happiness instead of what is programmed to do, which is to you know, look for danger to keep me safe. So in this day and age, we don't have to look for danger around every corner. So instead looking for that thing that I can write in my gratitude journal, and paying attention to it and noting that, I realized that I just feel so much happier in myself. And I also noticed that my teenage kids, they would still push my buttons, but I wouldn't respond in the same way because I wasn't feeling so hi strong, right? And so I just feel like I live in a much more complex Zen place and I know how positive that is for my internal organs and my immune system and my overall health. So you know, even since the beginning of COVID, I've been taking, you know, extra precaution to look after my immune system and I've not even ever had a sniffle a sore throat anything since February of 2020. And I think a lot of that comes down to how I care for myself.

Oh, Melissa, that's weak. So to my heart, you know, I also think particularly, um, you know, the hospitality and fast paced hotel and tourism well, that we were both in Yes, um, is kind of a double whammy corporate because it's a 20 473 165 day off the year. business where when everybody goes home, everyone networks and that in History works harder. And it is. I mean, it's such a like, there were so many modders in that industry, sorry, friends, I know who you are. And there is such a, you know, there was, I mean, I experienced this badge of honor around being busy, and the more you work, and the more you're pushing, the more, you know, you bring to the team, like, the more you're celebrated, right, like a, you're pulling the 16 hour days, seven days a week, like you rock, right. Like, it was the celebrated thing. And and so, you know, as you said that, and you're right, you know, we studied together at HCI. And I learned so much and, and for me, the big thing was learning that self care is the biggest form of self respect. And if I have any respect for myself, I better start treating myself better. Because you really, as you said to when we are our best selves, we show up differently, we respond differently. And so I pulled myself out of burnout while still working my my corporate career job, and I needed to go through that full transition. And understand that even in a corporate environment, we have ways to organize our schedules to pull back to not check the email, right? Like it take took a lot out of me, like it took probably everything, because the easy thing is to do what we always have done. But you know, that did so much to to my health and my happiness. And I actually felt like myself again. And after I left and and continuing on, you know, this is sort of been like two years for me now being full time. In my business, I more and more feel like myself, like it's it's almost as if, you know, we bury ourselves in the doing and all this stuff. And we're so wired to just go go, go, go go. And that works until it doesn't, and I love your podcast for that reading. Don't wait for a wake up call, like I waited for my wake up call, let's face it, like I was like, severely burned out. And my body was just like, lady, you got to stop and I was sick. And I put on weight and I was unhappy. And I was depressed. And I was forgetting things. And like all that stuff, right. And I know that is what you really like you're really brilliant at helping people to, you know, redesign that lifestyle side and the health side, to understand that there's so much more that goes into that self care piece than just like sitting cross legged on the floor and meditating or eating the right thing. Because one isn't, you know, one isn't enough, it's really a lifestyle redesign. So so I would love for you to just talk a little bit more about, you know, how do you support your clients to succeed on their health journey? And, you know, maybe also what was that like for you? Because I know that, you know, you've gone through big things, knowing you a little bit. So just tell us a little bit more, you know, how are you bringing what you've learned from this transition, how you learn to care for yourself now to your clients, and with what you do as an integrative health practitioner?

Sure, I would love to. And as you said, it's not just one thing, right? So often, in mainstream medicine, when something's wrong, they're looking at just one organ. But on the holistic side of health, we're looking at the whole being. And so when I'm working with people, they're very often people that are frustrated with mainstream medicine, looking for answers as to why they feel the way they do. possibly being told it's all in their head, and there's nothing wrong with them, or we don't know what's wrong with you, but here's a drug, you'll probably have to take it for the rest of your life. And they don't want to do that either. And so in my work with people, I use functional medicine labs, which get mailed to their home, so I work with the entire English speaking world. And we can look at where the body is out of balance. The body always wants to be in balanced nature always wants to be in balance, and our busy lifestyles that you were talking about before that doo doo doo world, which is so often the expectation in the corporate world, which is why when we're just trying to do our best, we get sucked into it, right? And that doo doo doo world is causing us high stress, we get stuck in our sympathetic nervous system, which is negatively impacting our sleep. And that can be a vicious Whammy, because our sleep can then make us less, less stress resilient and make our stress system worse. When the body's out of balance, you know that stress can impact our hormones. When we're stressed out, we're burning through our vitamins and our minerals. And so all of these things put the body out of balance and So I will run lab test to see where is the body out of balance, what is going on here. And very often the body is talking to us, and it's giving us symptoms. But we've been so programmed that if you get sick, you go to the doctor, they give you a pill and you get better, that we discount the way the body's talking to us. So you know, we might have a nasal drip, we might be having regular headaches, and we just write it off as seasonal allergies, or genetics, or maybe we have brain fog, and we're gaining weight, and we just write it off as it's aging, or we have, you know, sore joints, etc. And these are just some of the ways that the body talks to us, and is asking us to do something different. So what I have is a quiz that I have my clients do to start out, and it's called discover your toxic load quiz, because we also live in a toxic world. So on top of all of the stress that is triggering different health issues within our body, we have toxins coming into our body, through our waterways, our food systems, we're putting them on our skin with personal care products, etc. and the body was never designed to deal with these manmade chemicals, and it doesn't know what to do with them. And it has a hard time processing them and getting them back out. And so they get stuck in the body, they cause inflammation. The liver and the kidneys are designed to help the body detox, they don't want those toxins to get into our bloodstream. So they will actually try to save that save our bloodstream from the toxins by storing them in our adipose tissue or our fat, and then they just stay in our body. None of this is healthy for anyone. Because when that inflammation is created, that then trigger cells to turn on disease.

We've also been raised to think that what diseases we get is based on our genetics, we've been told if your mother and your grandmother had breast cancer, you're going to have breast cancer to the reality is, we now know through epigenetics, that it's the environment, plus the genes that determine whether those cells will turn on and you will have that disease. Now that's really powerful, because that environment factor is 90 to 95% of the equation. And you have control over that. So you can create a body that is inhospitable to disease that has healthy levels of inflammation, inflammation instead of chronic levels. And we don't have those cells turn on disease. So this is what I teach. This is how I help people, once we get those labs, I create a personalized wellness protocol for them in order to guide their body back into balance. And here's the beautiful thing, when the body gets back into balance, because we're sleeping better and stress levels are down. And our mineral levels are where they should be in our vitamin levels or where they should be, et cetera, et cetera, we've got rid of the yeast and bacterial overgrowth in the gut, the body will heal itself is just modern life has over here, way out of balance, and the body's too depleted, it can't bring itself back. But we I support the body and coming back into balance with the use of supplements and Herbes, etc. And then the body will heal itself. And when we create that environment where the body can heal, it heals very quickly. So when people start working with me and we start detoxing, inside three weeks, every single person starts noticing improvement is different for everyone because they're all coming to me at a different state of health. But it could be better sleep, it could be more energy, it could be less pain in their joints. It could be you know, digestion feels better, et cetera, et cetera. There's so many things that people are noticing in those first few weeks, but they know their body is starting to heal because they know they finally found a way to create that environment for their body to do so.