The Community, Connections & Commerce Podcast, presented by OUE & St. Clairsville Chamber - Community and Connections Season 2 Episode 10 with Joelle Moray

Episode Date: January 8, 2026

Welcome back to Community and Connections. We're back for Season 2. I'm your host, as always, Drake Watson, along with Wendy Anderson and Jason. And we are pleased to be joined this morning by founder and CEO of Integrate Wellness. Joelle Moray, Joelle, thank you so much for joining us this morning. Thanks for having me. Good morning, Joelle. Good morning.

Morning. So listen, I am so excited to have you here because I truly believe in what you do. first of all you are an amazing person so give me tell the audience a little bit about yourself I mean that I know you have a little bit now well where would you like me to begin yeah you're married you have children I am married I have two children that's a very busy part of life that's for sure yeah so I am an author a speaker and a corporate wellness coach I guess you could call it. And I help people manage their stress and their overwhelm and their anxiety and their burnout. Yes. You did. You helped me out a lot. Let me tell you. You did. You helped me out

so much. So Jason, meet Joao. Hi. Joao. Meet Jason. Nice to meet you. Yes. I decided to get to know you. Same. Same. Yeah. So what's your background? How did you get into helping people? Yeah. So I actually worked in corporate America for 15 years, more than 15 years. And so had a whole different whole different career and I've always been in around sort of helping things such as yoga meditation you know always sort of in community groups that sort of thing but always as you know hobby or just something that's been a passion of mine just sort of part of my lifestyle and as my career evolved and the world evolved I started more and more sort of turning that passion into my vocation right yeah which has

has been kind of an interesting transition. It's been a sort of a long sort of slow transition, sort of, you know, one little thing happened. And then, oh, that was cool. And then that sort of built on something else and that built on something else. And then I would stay on March 12th, 2020, the corporate world sent me home and said,

and said, go sit there. And I was like, okay. And like many, many other people really took a deep dive into my spirituality, into purpose of life, How do I want to spend my time? Because the way I was spending my time, like everyone else, was taken away. Right? And so if you don't do that, no, I was still employed there.

We were working from home, so not to misunderstand. But for the first time ever, I slowed down because I teach about slowing down. And we teach what we need is what I always say. We teach what we were gravitated towards what we need ourselves. And I definitely was in need of slowing down. And it was always a hard stop. you know you're going 100 miles an hour and then all of a sudden it's like take your laptop home see how that feels and don't ever come back i mean pretty much is what happened um and so and in fact

there are some people at that company they're still working from home five years later so pretty wild pretty wild transition right but anyway i don't mean to die of grass there and we don't have all that much time but i really took a deep dive into okay if the way i'm used to spend my day is no longer and if i ever had a choice and how i would spend my time what would that be and to me the answers became very, very clear. You know, we get these little nudges from the universe, right? Or whatever your source, God, spirituality, whatever that looks like for you, for me, it kept nudging. You're supposed to be over here doing this.

And that got louder and louder and louder. And so I decided to take the leap. So in 2023, I left the corporate world behind. And now I get to help people all day, every day, which is so cool. It's just so cool. I think, it's only been two years since I've been kind of. Wow. Seems longer than that.

It does. I know. It does. It feels like that's because. And actually, when I'm going to thank you for saying that because I think it feels longer because I think I'm, this is what I'm on this planet to do. Yeah. Right?

And it just feels much more aligned. So. And in March, when you, when COVID hit, you also then started, you had your integrate wellness then, right? Right? Yes. And then that's when you did online. Yes. So like a lot of other people, I thought, well, how can we get people together? So that's really when you and I met. That's exactly when we met. And so I'm like, I'm going to meet Wendy online. Like, hi, person that lives 10 miles away that I've never met. And it's actually less than 10 miles away. We live from each other. And so, yeah, so I started bringing people together online. And in that, that iteration, that kind of group was about goal setting. Remember, And it was about how, because again, in 2020, look into the lens of what we were all doing, you know, a lot of us were like,

what are we going to do now? Right. And how are we going to do this? And so that we're like, let's bring everybody together. And we had a sort of five or six part series on goal setting. But bringing people together in community is definitely a strength of mine. And I know, Wendy,

that is probably your number one strength is bringing people together. Oh, we have to. And so, yeah. So that sort of started in 2020 was let's get together online because that's, the only place we can. Right. And then it just kept evolving from there. And it was cool because I met a lot of people that I still consider very good friends

from that one, that Zoom. That's awesome. It was really impactful in my life. So you talk about your book, which I loved your book. You know I loved your book. My husband loved your book. Your husband was an inadvertent beta reader. He was.

And as we were traveling to our K. up we would listen to some of these the chapters as we were going you know and he would I never thought about that that is really cool I do that or I know somebody who does that or I know somebody who who kind of vaguely you know is familiar to me that what she's talking about so that was very cool to get him interacted with that book so when it did come out and it was it was published then I this past I bought all of my girls a copy of that book. So that would be my daughter-in-law's, my stepdaughter, and my daughter. Wow.

And because it was so important to me that they read that because it would resonate to each one of them and they're all different ages. Yeah. So that is so cool. So I thank you for that. Well, thanks for giving that away to Christmas. I appreciate that. So what we're really seeing with the book itself,

is that that's what was happening. People are, and still now, aren't just buying one copy. They're buying four and five copies because they're like, I just want to get this out. So we're seeing that book clubs are picking this up. And corporations, employee resource groups are picking this up as their sort of in-house kind of book study. So it's being used in workforce development. It's being used in leadership development. It's being used in company culture, all of that kind of thing.

And so it's been really cool to see that, again, bringing groups of people together for a common purpose. There's the theme. And not saying that individuals aren't reading it, but it seems to be a group discussion type of book, which is so cool. And I didn't really have an intention of that going in, but it's been so cool to see that evolving as it's come out.

Well, I know with my girlfriends, I lean to them. Like, I could read that book by myself. But as I read it, I lean into my group, my girl group. So we can have a conversation about it, because some things that I may not see in myself, someone else might see. I'm like, well, when do you do this? Or, you know what?

Maybe you ought to stop doing that and maybe try to, you know, redirect yourself. So it really is a way of connecting not only the content, but it's connecting souls. And I love that because that's what we're both about. We love to connect that way. For sure. Yeah.

Joelle, if you could remind everybody of the title of your book and where they could find it. Yeah, great question. I'm so glad you asked. I figured she'd like that question. Yes, thank you. The book is called What Are We Doing, Radical Self Care for the Hustle Culture? And it can be found on Amazon as well as Barnes & Noble.com.

It is available in hardback, paperback, Kindle, and Audible. And if you go the Audible route, you'll hear my lovely voice. So, you know, take me on a walk with you. Take me in a bed with you. And it sounds like, Wendy, of course, it sounds like you'd recommend it. I absolutely recommend it. it. I do. And I can't wait for part two. The sequel. It's in the works. I bet it is. I bet it is. Because you have learned, because you've met so many people. Now, I've seen you. I know you.

So I've seen that you've gone. People have hired you to go to their corporations and speak to their HR department or whatever. So tell us a little bit about that. Yeah. So that's actually sort of the main foundation of what I do. So working with groups. any work groups of people are gathering naturally. So typically at work to talk about burnout, stress, overwhelm, and very specifically how those things are showing up in your mental health, showing up in your physical health, how they're showing up in the culture of your company, and more importantly, what to do about it. So we go a little bit into the science and go into talking about how your body works and how

your brain works and how these things come together. And then, excuse me, I have to call. sorry um it's springtime yeah anyway um and we give people very very specific tools on how to manage these things all of the tools are evidence based i am a therapist so that's something to kind of so you are getting that sort of clinical i'm not your therapist not coming into your business as a therapist but you're definitely getting that clinically informed uh workshop when i'm there with you so it's all based on research evidence and we really take a deep dive into the collective, into the individuals, and into the culture of the workplace. And what companies are finding from doing

this is we always start with what are we trying to measure. What is what is the pain point for your particular organization? Sometimes it's burnout. Sometimes it's lack of engagement from employees. Sometimes it's employee turnover. Hey, we're seeing a lot of turnover and we're struggling to figure out why. Okay. Why are people leaving? You know, we have the disengagement. What used to be sort of be called a couple years ago is quiet quitting.

So people are showing up, you know, they're there in their seat. Oh, but they're not. But they're not there. Yeah. Right. They're not really engaged. Right. We start to see things like compassion fatigue where things are happening around you and there's

this like little voice in your head that's like, I don't care. Right. So it's not that fundamentally you do still care. But let's say, let's say, Wendy, someone comes to you with a problem. I know part of your job is fielding problems, right? Problem solving. Problem solving. It's like everyone comes to you.

When people come to Wendy, they are usually on fire. Right. Yeah. And so if you were in your normal, healthy self where you were not in burnout or overwhelm or whatever, you would be like, okay, I'm in, let's get this fixed for you. I'm going to do everything I can throw my resources at it. if you're in compassion fatigue, you're in the conversation, but in your brain, you're like, oh, my God, I don't care.

Go away. Right? And you're just not in it. And you're like, I don't care if this problem gets solved for them or not. And you see what I mean? So that's what we would call compassion fatigue. And that's a huge red flag that you are burned out. And it's time to take a step back and take a look at that.

It's not that you truly do care. right but in that moment you're just like oh my god i really don't care i don't care right that's scary it is scary that's really scary to have to be in that it is in so many people though find themselves in that way you know ask any public school teacher that you know right now at the end of may sure can you imagine because because they're like the students are done we're done you know and it's not again not that they don't care but in their they're like counting down the seconds until that final bell rings on Friday this week for most of them right um as we're filming or taping this on March, or May 19th, I guess it is today. And so you start, you see that

sometimes in, you know, health care fields, but also it doesn't matter really what you can be in a corporate position. Right. And you start to feel like, I don't care what this person is talking about. That's compassion fatigue. So we address those, those types of things. And so what's been really cool to see is in some cases we're, we're measuring that engagement. In other cases, we're trying to improve employee retention. In other cases, it's simply productivity, right? We want people to be more productive. And maybe your team is kind of hitting goals, but they're not exactly set in the world on fire. They're not exactly, you know, winning awards or whatever. They're not really, they seem to have stopped collaborating with each

other. No one's really bringing anything, you know, earth-shatteringly creative or innovative lately, right? So our innovation is down. Our ability to collaborate with each other seems to be waning. can't really figure out what's going on here. That's where I come in to help. So by teaching these tools, you are very specifically addressing mental health at work, which I'll come back to that in a second. But you're addressing burnout, compassion fatigue, all of those things. But you're also impacting people's ability to be more productive,

to be more innovative, to start to collaborate with each other again. Because when we see those things waning, it's really when you're like, Ooh, something's going on here. Right. Right. Because I'm thinking, like in the banking industry, there's actually a couple people that I know that are not very thrilled. They're just showing up.

Yep. Right? Yep. It's actually a sector I work in a lot. I have a lot. Is it the banking industry? Yes. Because they're just showing up.

However, and they feel like, but that's okay. I can put my. Bake it till you make it. Yeah. I can do that. I can put my. feet first and forward and I just keep moving on. But the problem that I see is that they're impacting people around them that they don't even know that they're impacting. Just because of

an attitude, you know, because our attitude has so much, am I, I mean, our attitude is so important in our everyday life. There's actually a name for it. So first of all, you're exactly right, but there's a name for that. It's called our circle of influence. And different interviews call it different things. Some call it the shadow of a leader. Some call it the circle of influence. Some call it the circle of influence but it is it's that ripple effect of the folks that are around you right you know and and that can really take a toll on the business and like you said the passion is gone and you know so if she doesn't care why should I care yep and that's so how do you how do you do that how do you deal with that I mean that's a yeah is that a longer podcast yeah like that's how you deal

that is you hire me to come in to be your corporate wellness coach So, I mean, truly, and that's why the name of my program is wellness works. And we say, you know, burnout is costly. Wellness works. And we bring these programs in to specifically address exactly what you're talking about. And it's not that these people are bad people. And it's not necessarily the culture or the place is whatever. But maybe it could be improved.

I'm not sure. But that's a huge indication that people are worn out. And so what we do is we come in and we teach very specific tools and methods on how to overcome that. one of my favorites is learning how to press pause I know Wendy you love that method I have done I have press pause listen I even do it at rotary I press pause if things just get like out of hand I just I literally put my hand right here and I press pause because it does take me to it I just it reminds me just slow down take a deep breath it's going to be okay and sometimes when I get anxious and I get

anxious a lot lately. That's what I do. So I love that. Yeah. And so it's, it's this paradigm that's difficult for people to understand that we actually get ahead by slowing down, right? And it's a hard concept for people to understand. The hustle culture teaches us and has taught us that the only way to produce is to keep producing. Go, go, go, go, go, go. Your butt is in your seat, 50 hours a week. That's how I know that you have produced something for this company. And in reality, the huge human brain is not designed for that. It is not designed for unsustained productivity. What it is designed for is moments of taking breaks so that you can thereby increase your capacity for more. You do not have capacity for more if you don't ever pause and slow it down. We're just trying

to slow you down enough to create a little more capacity. And we go really deep into this in the workshops that I teach. Precisely, this is what we do. Do you ever find folks that figure that they end up taking those pauses and taking those steps back but then they realize that you know they enjoy being out of it more so than being in it and then they really have this realization that maybe this really isn't what i want to do and it's you know almost it allows them to realize the action that they need to take yes great question for sure that can absolutely happen and again without taking the pause you're never going to get that clarity right and you're just suffering through your life unnecessarily, you're white knuckling it to retirement and it doesn't have to be that way.

You know, I think that's the biggest thing is it just doesn't have to be that way. Right. You know, and there is a place where you can be really energetic and bright and looking forward to things to do and have the energy that you, you know, wish that you had. There is a pathway to that. So it's not just about stopping or preventing burnout or stress. It's about thriving. You know, we want you to, we want you to be happy.

and productive and really truly the only way to do that is to take a little take a little break and so the question becomes well you know how do I take a break what I do on the break all those things and we go into that and I will go into that in a second but I wanted to talk about the mental wellness piece of work if that's okay yeah go ahead and I mentioned it for just a second so and if I'm rambling please feel really coming on obviously I could talk about this for a long time so I have a program that's 12 months long so bringing this down to 20 minutes in this podcast is a little challenging for me. I can talk about it for a long time. So one of the things that we hear from employees is we, and leadership, frankly, too, is, man, we've never talked about mental health at work.

We've danced around it. We maybe have checked a box or maybe we've just never talked about it at all. Right. And now we have provided a space where we are welcoming in these conversations. And we're making it normal we're normalizing a conversation to talk about mental health at work so if you jason if you had a dentist appointment on your calendar nobody would think twice about it sure right wendy if you had mammogram on your calendar nobody would think twice about it okay well see when you get back yeah but if you're like hey we're all going to meet in the conference room to talk about our mental health on Thursday at 1 p.m everyone's like what i'm too busy for that yeah yeah you're right i don't have time for this fluff stuff right why can't we just have a donut party on friday

and say, you know, great job on third quarter last year. You know, it's just so much more than that. And so we're really seeing, I mean, leadership and employees saying, wow, I just appreciate that the leadership of this company has acknowledged that I'm overwhelmed. So you can like your job and still be overwhelmed by it sometimes. And so this creates the space for that dialogue. And to your point, sometimes when you take that space, you might be like, you know what, maybe I feel misaligned because this isn't the right place for me.

Yeah. Sure. you know and or maybe I'm on the wrong bus maybe I'm on the wrong seat on the wrong bus maybe I'm on the right bus but in the wrong seat right and so the only way you're going to get that clarity is by slowing down but and it go ahead go ahead I was going to say could you say that you were in that position when you left the corporate world and oh yes a hundred percent of you could you tell us a little bit about that was an important piece of it all yeah that's exactly right but I didn't realize it right because I was really good at

what I did. And I don't mean that to sound like an arrogant. No, that's fine. That's fine. Yeah, you're that. But, but I, I was good at it. And I produced at a super high level, you know, winning awards all the time, constantly being promoted. Here's a bigger paycheck. Here's your five-figure bonus. I mean, that happened for 15 years, you know, and I had a reputation of, and I'm really proud of this still, but had a reputation of if you want something done, ask Joel. She'll get it done. You know, it'll be done quickly. It'll be done efficiently. she'll do it with a smile on her face and at the end of the day she's still got energy to go to the business after hours right because Wendy's like you may be in the business after hour so right

and so it never occurred to me to question yeah I'm good at this but am I fulfilled it never occurred to me to have that question with myself until I was forced to by sitting down on March 12th with nothing else to do so I recently had dinner with a former call from that industry as well as my former boss oh and we went to dinner and it was a lovely conversation my boss is no longer there either they left as well very telling and actually very validating for me thank you for leaving your job also made me feel a lot better so I had dinner with former boss and former colleague and the former colleague said to me you seem to be on fire in a good way, right? She said, you just seem to be doing all of these things. And she was like,

how come you never did that with us? And I said, because I wasn't given the space to do that. My talents were not being used to their full potential at this organization. I was brought in for a specific role for a specific reason. And it's stay in your lane. This is why we hired you. Do this job. And my true talents were not really used in the right ways. And so that's why I was feeling so burned out because I was trying to do a job that just wasn't I wasn't using my brain in the way that was to its highest potential and as soon as I left and now I have you know free reign to create and use my brain how how I best can right my productivity is skyrocketed my creativity is skyrocketed skyrocketed from that as well so interesting yeah so

but however if I was put on the right seat on the right bus at that organization organization, maybe I would still be there, right? And that's not like a regretful, no, reflection, but it's just very telling that if you're one of the reasons we sometimes feel burned out is because we're not being utilized to our full potential. We're not realizing our own full potential. Do you ever find that people, and we don't have a ton of time left, but do you ever find people that I won't call it pushback, but they have concerns about taking a break because that might lead to, you know, switching gears completely. And maybe that's not something that they can afford to do. You know, maybe it's not something that's in their best

interest financially or whatever their situation is to slow down. And that's the reason for some of these people to just go and go and go and go. Yeah, that's such a great question. And so that is something that people resist this conversation for. And here's what I'll say to that. So I'll go into what taking a break looks like, right? Okay. So fundamentally, taking a break does not have to be this super complicated situation. It does not have to be for a super complicated situation. It does not have to be for a super long period of time. If you're taking an extended break, we would call that a sabbatical. We would call that a micro-retirement.

Okay. What I'm talking about is a daily practice of a 10 to 12-minute break at some point in your day for a nervous system reset. It only takes about 12 minutes to give yourself enough capacity to go back and do more for the rest of your day. So that's the biggest thing I want people to hear is that. be intentional be intentional about yes yep so the first thing is to schedule it so just scheduling you know and whatever naturally would fit into your day so for some people at soon as you wake up

in the morning for other people it's midday at some point you know maybe it's the last 10 minutes of your lunch hour maybe it's some natural point in the day where you're like you know what I seem to always have a little bit of a of a slow down around 1.30 p.m. or whatever okay for other people, it's when the workday ends. It's a nice signal, right? Okay, I'm going to log off the computer, now I'm going to do my 12 minutes or 10 minutes or whatever. Some people, it's right before bed. So putting a pause, a pressing pause at some point where it's naturally makes sense in your day. So that's the first thing is to schedule it. The second thing is the timing it out. Anywhere from 10 to 12 minutes is ideal. If you got more than 12 minutes,

rock star status, right? That would be amazing. If you get 20 minutes, oh my God. I would hug you, but you want maybe a little more than five minutes, right? So somewhere in that range, but 10 to 12 minutes, there's some research that is out there that suggests that 12 minutes is this sort of real pinnacle point. Okay. And so, anyway, 10 to 12 minutes, you're going to time it out. The third piece of it is no technology and no talking on your break. This is not a time to scroll.

It's not a time to finalize your Instacart order. This is not a time to update your Amazon cart. This is not a time to go down the hall and check on your coworkers, see how they're doing. no technology no talking during your break fourth piece is move a little bit stand up stretch move your body somehow take a five minute walk around the block just stand up okay and the fourth part is press pause where you come back to wendy like what you were saying little maybe hand on the chest hand on the belly maybe close your eyes a couple of really deep belly breath little diaphragmatic breathing cleansing breaths and just do that little reset if you did that no talking no

technology move a little bit and come back and press pause for about 10 minutes a day, you're going to see a significant increase in your productivity, your creativity, your memory, your focus, all the things. Oh, that's amazing. Wow. That's all, that's all good stuff. And I could sense, I think all three of us have at least three more questions for you. Oh, yeah. We could probably go for hours, just the amount of depth that each one of those things that you touched on has. That's wonderful. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you so much for being here. Absolutely. Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it. You're welcome. Well, we want to thank once again, Joelle Moray from Integrate Wellness for joining us this morning.

We appreciate your generosity with your time. And for myself, Wendy Anderson and Jason, this has been Community and Connections.