Live Like a Girl with Dr. Mindy Pelz - Transforming from Within: Embracing Change, Self-Love & Authenticity with Nancy Levin

Episode Date: September 11, 2023

In this candid conversation, Nancy Levin, an advocate for embracing change and self-love, shares her personal journey of transformation and the power of being true to oneself. From navigating difficult moments to finding the courage to embrace authenticity, Nancy's story serves as a powerful reminder that true change starts from within. Join her as she discusses the importance of self-connection, holding space for one's desires, and reclaiming the power to live life on your terms. To view full show notes, more information on our guests, resources mentioned in the episode, discount codes, transcripts, and more, visit https://www.drmindypelz.com/ep196. NANCY LEVIN is a master life coach, podcast host, and best-selling author of six books including her latest, The Art of Change. She is the founder of Levin Life Coach Academy, offering in-depth coaching, training, and certification programs, and has coached thousands of people to live life on their own terms by making themselves a priority and setting boundaries that stick. Levin Life Coach Academy offers in-depth coaching, training and certification programs designed to support coaches to build sustainable businesses and help change lives, including their own! Check out our fasting membership at resetacademy.drmindypelz.com. Please note our medical disclaimer.

On this episode of The Resetter podcast, I am bringing you Nancy Levin, who is not only a life coach, not only has written some badass books, but she has such a beautiful heart and a magnetic spirit, I will tell you, you're going to fall right in love with this woman and feel her energy come through your ears. If you're watching this on YouTube, hopefully you'll see the beautiful smile that she has. but she also has so much wisdom to offer all of us. So I met Nancy at a Hayhouse conference a few months back, and we started talking about some of the books that she had written,

and one of them was called The Art of Change, and the other one is called Boundaries Will Set You Free. Two principles that I know for me, I need to learn better, and I know many of you are experiencing and stepping into this redesign of yourself into this new version of yourself and are looking to set better boundaries or looking how to navigate change. And so I wanted to bring her to all of you to talk about how we do that. So in this conversation, what you're going to hear is her story and it's jaw dropping. Her transformation story should be inspiration to us all. And I'm so grateful for her authenticity

and sharing this. But what I really also wanted to pull out of her was, not only inspiring us, but how do we take what she learned in her own transformation and start to apply it to our lives? Are there steps to change? Are there steps to setting boundaries? How do we know where the truth of our own life lies? How do we create a vision for our life? These are questions that we deeply discuss in this episode. So wherever you sit in your life, I hope that Nancy's words will help become a catalyst for you to become not only the best version of yourself, but to create a life that you deserve to live in. So Nancy Levin, this is a real treat, and I'm really excited to bring it to you.

So as always, enjoy. Hey, Dr. Mindy here, and welcome to season four of the Resetter podcast. Please know that this podcast is all about empowering you to believe in yourself again. If you have a passion for learning, if you're looking to be in control of your health and take your power back, this is the podcast for you. Enjoy. I have to start off outside of the fact that I'm pretty sure we would have this conversation if we were sitting down to a meal together. But outside of that, I just want to welcome you to my,

to my other home, the resetter podcast. I'm so happy you're here, Nancy. I am thrilled to be here with you. So before I dive in, I have to tell you, because the topic we're going to talk for everybody that's listening that I really want to dive into your brain on today is change. And I want to tell you that I was thinking about this this morning. How I like to change is I like to get little intuitive hits that I should change and I like to resist them. And I like to ignore them. And I like to ignore them. and I like to wait until those little whispers turn into massive screams. And then I change kicking and screaming like a little toddler. And then I get on the other side of change.

And I go, oh, that was so great. I should have done that earlier. Is that how most people approach change? Yes. Most people wait for a crisis. Most people wait for something heavy enough to force them to change. And I'm a big proponent now of rock your own foundation before it rocks you. It's scary, though.

That's so scary. It can be. It also can be really freeing, empowering, liberating. And ultimately, it's the way we take responsibility for our own lives. Okay, to dive into that a little bit more. other thing that I, in the conversations I've had with you that I really want everybody listening to understand is you not only went through a massive change in your life, which in my opinion, your massive change makes you an expert. But you had some, I think you called it the A team

of spiritual masters guiding you through this change. So that makes you even more of an expert. So talk a little bit about that because it's pretty impressive how you were guided through change. It is. I mean, I look back. on it and I am in awe of the gift I was given by the people I surrounded myself with. And so the massive change you're referring to is really ultimately me blowing up my marriage, which came in the form of my then-husband reading my journals to discover that I'd had an affair eight years earlier. Oh, wow.

This is why I don't have a journal either. So the day after the discovery, I destroyed over 70 volumes of my personal journal. Yeah. Oh, my God. You burned the house down. Pretty much.

And the way that this all occurred was that I was the event director at Hayhouse at the time, a position I would hold for 12 years, years and I was on my way home from one of our events that I had been producing and I had heard, I had seen actually as I had gone through security, a voicemail had come in and I listened to the voicemail. And all I heard was, I read your journals, you better get your ass home. There's hell to pay. and so I got myself home somehow and I found myself in my condo with him holding up pages of my journal saying I'm going to copy pages and send them to your friends, your coworkers, your family, so that they can know who the real Nancy is.

Because I had expended all my energy living. by the motto, never let them see you sweat. I had been projecting an image of perfection to the world. I had been managing the perception of others. I only wanted to be seen through the lens I wanted to be seen through. And while my marriage had been crumbling behind the scenes, it was certainly never anything I wanted anyone to know. I didn't want anyone to know that I was in an abusive marriage. I didn't want anyone to know the truth. And really, quite frankly, I didn't want to know the truth. Yeah.

And what happens is when we avoid the truth, we create chaos. And so I know that the part of me that wrote in my journal about the affair was setting a bomb to detonate eight years later because I didn't know how to get out at that time. Okay. I have so many questions before you go on. Great. Okay, so the first one is, how do we know what the truth is? I mean, this is literally something I've sat with in my own life.

Like, where is the truth? Where is the truth on many different places? Yeah. I don't know how you access that other than keep asking yourself questions. So I'd be curious your opinion on that. Yeah. And so what I've come to believe is that the truth is, a moving target sometimes. So there's a line in a poem that I wrote that says, a remembered truth

is a dead thing. And I think about that a lot because what might be true today may or may not be true tomorrow, I have to make the inquiry again. And I do think that that's how we discover what is true. We need to be in a self-connective practice, whether it's journaling or or meditating or whatever it might be, that has us in connection with what's true for us and to remember that it may shift or change or morph as we evolve. Okay, so if I just take, you know, we're going to geek out on words here. Yeah, since you write books, I write books. I'm like, I have a wall in my office where I take words that I think are really interesting and I just write them up there and I'm like, I don't,

I don't know where I'm going to use that, but I think that word's really interesting. So I'm geeking out on the word truth because here's where my brain goes. If I'm looking at information, information, I'm going to get really like woo-woo here for a moment. Information looks different based on who you are in the moment. And I'm not even sure that this reality is always the same reality. There are like, you know, infinite numbers of reality of the person called Mindy Pels. Right. So I have my perception that I'm using when I'm looking at the fabric of my life, I have that, who I am. I can only look at things through the lens of who I am.

and the fact that reality is a moving target. So what really is truth? Yeah. And I think that what's important here, too, is to distinguish the difference between fact and truth. Yeah. Oh, good. Go for it.

You know, just, you know, I think, because somewhere between fact and fiction is truth. Okay. Well, that gets us in the ballpark, maybe. Yeah. Because I think things, you know, there are things that are facts that still may not ring true or may not resonate. And so we also have to be curious about how we are relating to what we hold as true. Yeah.

Right. That's what I was thinking. I was thinking. So truth, in this scenario and in the scenario that I want to like, morph this conversation into around change is truth would mean being congruent with yourself. Yeah, being in alignment. Yeah. Yeah.

So what I just heard is that there was somewhere along your marriage, you were not being congruent with the soul that we call Nancy. Exactly. Yeah. And so if we were to take that, you're not being truthful. and congruent to yourself. Is that inner knowing have a sense, have a quality to it,

like you're tense all the time, you're quick to react, you're not sleeping, your people pleasing. Like, are all of those symptoms of not being truthful to your own soul's journey? Check, check, check, check.

Yeah. And, you know, for me also, It was, it was, you know, I, the way I have chosen in my life to numb out is through work, workaholism. Yeah. So I, I really dove into my job. I really dove into a place where I couldn't feel anymore. I kept myself so busy.

I kept myself so in service of others seeking. external validation, chasing all the gold stars, thinking all of that external stamp of approval would resolve something inside of me. And of course, it does not. And I just want to pause and say, I know you know this, but that's so many of us. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, the people pleasing, the peacekeeping, the conflict avoiding, not wanting to rock the boat. All of that keeps us a distance from our truth. Yeah. Yeah, and this is something I would say that even now in my 53-year-old journey,

I've been really like thinking, like coming back to what do I want? How do I want to live my life? What is my voice telling me? And in that asking that question, I realize I've never, I don't even think from the day I landed on this planet, I've asked myself that. Right, because so many of us are, oriented toward others. So we are living an other referenced life. We have our antenna focused on what do they think, what do they need, what do they want, what do they feel.

And the first invitation here really is to start tuning into what do I want, what do I need, what do I feel, what do I think. And for so many who have really been in that people, peacekeeping, conflict, avoiding place, and overgiving, overachieving, we tend to be devoid of connection to our own needs. And in fact, you know, I'm sure many people listening can relate to what I will say, I prided myself for ages on having no needs. I am self-sufficient. I am independent. I have no needs. I don't need anyone to take care of me. I will do everything all by myself all the time. Yeah. Yeah. And that I just want to point out those of you listening. I know so many people that listen to this podcast resonate with that, including me. Yeah. It's like, so that,

so that is a way to push away. Like we're pushing ourselves further away from our own soul's cries. Yes. And the more we meddle in someone. someone else's experience, what we're really doing is lowering the volume on our own. So I don't have to deal with me because I'm going to get all up in your business. And this is really one of the ways we cross our own boundaries first and foremost. We start, you know, mucking around in someone else's experience, someone else's emotions, thinking that we can somehow control their experience and we cannot. So, I mean, I resonate so much with that. If I go back to the other word you said, that is really interesting to me is chaos. So can we look at when our life gets

really chaotic? The first thing we would have to say is, okay, I created the chaos, which is something that is a huge step for a lot of people onto its own, onto their own. But I can tell you, I've been in chaotic states of my life before with like my head and my hand going, I know I created this, but A, why? Why would I create this kind of chaos? And B, how do I get myself out of it? So if we, like, go back to your story where you weren't living the truth of your soul's journey. So you created chaos that allowed your ex-husband to read the journal. Yep. So chaos is a catalyst?

Chaos is definitely a catalyst. It definitely is a catalyst. But like I said, and we were saying at the beginning, I think the idea is we don't want to wait for the chaos to catalyze us into action. Right, right. You know? I'm still muddling on that one, Nancy. I know. I know.

I know. No, it's not, it's not easy because so many of us. us feel like we just need that push. We want to stay, we are, you know, we want to stay complacent. People fear change. Change of the unknown. I think people, we fear the unknown. We want to know. If I'm going to change, I want to know what, what's next. And so if we don't know, right, we get, we get scared. But really, the unknown is where possibilities live. The unknown is where more options are available to us. And the other thing is we can always course correct. Well, but not in that situation. If you left your, you know, if you were wanting out of your marriage, like course

correcting that would have been a little more difficult. I guess you could have. Right. I mean, right. There were many circumstances involved that had it so that there was no, there was no way for us to move forward. It took about two years, I'll tell you. From that moment? Yes. Because I was so dedicated and devoted to not wanting anyone to know the truth. And I was so devoted to being the picture perfect, you know, husband and wife. And so I did every single thing I could to, you know, keep the ball underwater.

Yeah. So I know that there are people listening right now that are in that situation. whether it be a marriage or a job or a, you know, a house they're in or a town they live in. I mean, there's so many places that I see in this world that we get stuck. So once he made that phone call, once he left you that message and you got home, what did change start to look like? Like how did you go from that moment of what I would call an awakening to being able to get yourself to where you are today?

Yeah. You know, so for me, it was recognizing in that moment that I had a choice. I could either go back to sleep and keep pretending and stay numb and avoidant, or I could buck up and tell myself the truth first and foremost. Because any betrayal, so, you know, yes, it was a betrayal of my, marriage vows. However, it was also first and foremost a betrayal of myself. Yeah. Yeah. So I had to first get true with what's really going on here. And then I had to realize I, this is the moment in time. If I don't, if I don't choose something else now, everything will stay the same. Yeah. And so that was the

moment. Do you think, because people also, I'm thinking, you know, I've seen a lot of people, they struggle to change in their health. And I mean, this is, I would say, definitely a path that I've watched millions of people. And they justify where their health is at. So they're like, oh, I'm not that overweight. I'm not that sick. You know, it used to be worse. And so we justify to allow ourselves to stay in situations that don't work? Yes. So one of the concepts in all of my work is around underlying commitments. So the way this works is whenever there is a discrepancy between what I say I want

and what I'm actually experiencing, there is an old, outdated underlying commitment in the mix. So even if it's as simple as, you know, I say I want to, you know, change my relationship to my health. But what I'm experiencing is not getting off the couch and eating shitty food, you know? Yeah. This is the reality I work with every day. Exactly. Exactly.

What we have to start looking at is the choices we're making and the actions we're taking that take us away from what we say we want and that are in line with what is actually happening. So we start looking at understanding, even though I say I want to change my relationship to my health and live a healthy life, I'm actually more committed to comfort. I'm more committed to struggle. I'm more committed to whatever it might be. and more committed to being invisible. So we have to look at that.

And that old, outdated commitment served us when we were young. It served us in childhood at some point or else we never would have made this promise to ourselves. You know, I might have decided I'm going to commit to being invisible because that will keep me out of trouble. Mm-hmm. You know? So we have to honor. that we made that commitment at one time. And then we have to acknowledge that commitment that we made as a child is now the seed

of our self-sabotage as an adult. The very thing that kept us safe when we were young at one time is now pulling us down. Are there questions you can ask yourself to get? Because it's interesting, it's sort of the reverse of what I do with people when I'm trying to get them to the why they want to be happy. or why they want to be healthy. It's like give me your why. And what I've learned over the years is that you give me somebody with a big enough

why to be healthy and I can get them well like that. Like so, so easy. But if you give me somebody who says they want to lose weight that says they want to be healthy, but they can't tell me why from an emotional standpoint, I actually know I'm in trouble that we are not going to move forward with that person's health. Yes. So this is where I would say I'll bring in what I have coined my transformation equation. Change equals vision plus choice plus action.

So I would say the vision piece correlates with the why and the what of what life do you envision or how do you envision your life being different if the change you make is in relationship to good health. You know, what do you envision? What becomes possible for you? What is, what's available to you? It might, the Y parts might be, you know, being strong and healthy to see my grandchildren or whatever it is, you know, but to really be able to hold the vision of what becomes possible when this change is made. Yeah, if you don't know that, you've never been healthy, you don't know that. You don't know that. feeling. If you've never been in a positive, loving relationship, you don't know that feeling. So a tool I've used in my own life when I'm trying to make change and I can't get a hold of

why I want to do it is I go to the opposite of it. And I think, well, what happens if you're not going to do it? That's right. That's right. Exactly. Same. Exactly. Because every single choice we make and every action we take does only one of two things. Serves. our vision or sabotages it. So when we're looking at the vision that we're holding, you know, every choice we make is going to have consequences in one direction or another. So that's similar to what you're saying. If I make no changes, what does my life look like in five years? If I make the changes I want to make, what does my life look like in five years? So our vision, and you know, when I'm talking about,

about vision, I like to get really, I like to hone in on something specific. It doesn't have to be the vision for your whole entire life. It can just be a slice. Right. I like to take a big chunk of life and just figure it all out. But go ahead. Right. I don't. I like a slight. I like something that feels like manageable. So I like a slice of my vision as it relates to my health. and then being able to see the capacity expand for what's available. But then that vision becomes the gauge by which I make my choices and take my actions. So if I'm really holding around the vision or the why, like you said, then because we're making choices every single day, we're taking actions every single day that will impact our health.

Every minute a day. Many a day. Yeah. So to at least. stay conscious to that. Like, if I make this choice, what's going to happen? If I make that choice, what's going to happen? If I take this action, am I getting closer to my vision? If I take this action, am I moving farther away from my vision? And so we get to, in each moment of choice and action, consider the vision. Let that be the gauge. Okay. So that's what I'm thinking is,

and I'm just, you know, reflecting back to you. What I'm hearing is that where, change starts is in the vision of what you want in your life. And if you, and this is where, as somebody who loves division, I'm like, oh, okay, I can get behind this now. I can think about, okay, I want, this is what I want life to look like on a relationship level, on a money level, on a health level, like on a family level. Like, I could easily spout off all of those. but where I think I might fall, my ability to change falls apart is when on a day to day, if I come up against something that doesn't match my vision, I have to first say, like, be aware that it doesn't match my vision.

Like having dessert at 9 o'clock at night doesn't match my vision of how I want to go into a fasted state the next day. Right. So I have to be aware of it and then I have to make the bold choice. That's right. That I'm going to change. That's right. And that's the thing because so many of us are running on autopilot. So many of us live detached from our own experience. You know, we all have these avoidance strategies, many of which are food, alcohol, drugs or work or exercise or shopping. or, you know, there's, it can be anything. Yeah. But really all that avoid, though they're all the same in that. It's what do, what am I, what am I doing so that I can avoid feeling or dealing? You know?

So if I'm just putting my head down into work because I don't want to feel or deal with whatever is sort of knocking at me, that is the indication of I need to take a pause. I need to address what is knocking. I need to have a look here. So I'm not just going on autopilot. And the same. You know, it's like reaching for the fridge. Stop.

Pause. Pause for three minutes or five minutes. Even journal. What do I not want to feel or deal with right now that's having me want to numb out in some way? So with the fridge example, one of the things that I have seen about food is it often is filling it's filling an emptiness inside of us. So when we stand in front of the fridge and we have committed to maybe go into, I mean, this is so much of what I've seen with fasting. Yeah.

We've committed to go into like a 15 hour fast. It's only 10 hours in. And we're looking at the fridge and all the emptiness is coming up. Yes. And we don't have anything to feed ourselves to just, quiet those empty feelings. That alone can be almost too humanly difficult to handle. Yes. Depending how deep, how far down the hole of emptiness that goes.

So what are we do in that moment? Is there, are there little like band-aid strategies if we become aware of that? Oh, wow, I want to go eat because I want to fill this void inside of me. And when I look at what the void inside of me is, it's big and I don't know how to deal with it. So what do I do in that moment? Yes. So this is really the place where the self-connection, the self-love needs to be able to be contacted. And this is why I think about, you know, whatever practices of self-connection we have, we really need to build these muscles because, as I was saying before, you know, when we're chasing

something external, it's never going to fill that internal void we feel. We think food will fill it or we think, you know, work will fill it or we think shopping will fill it. But nothing is going to fill it. In fact, it will make us feel ultimately more empty or it will have us turn on ourselves. And so the cultivation of the relationship with ourselves, I believe, is at the heart of all of this. I believe we have to be able to rely on ourselves. And again, this can be cultivated by really listening to, how am I talking to myself? How am I avoiding what feels true? How am I beating myself up? You know, what is that inner critic crawl that's just running through me at all times, and how can I begin to shift that? And so for me, what I know

is I used to be someone who woke up in the morning, and my first thought was, what do I need to worry about today? Oh, yeah. Been there. And everything changed when I began to shift my thinking to what is the most self-loving action I can take today. What is the most self-honoring choice I can make today. So I can begin myself with my attention on me. What if you don't, I mean, and I'm just trying to go down to places that I know so many women have been at. And I've been there myself where it's like, I don't know what that action would look like because I got this 10 different things on my schedule. People need me to show up, do this, this, this, people need me to take care of them. So I don't know what self-nurturing and love would be in that on a day like that.

It can be small. So I'm all about micro-action or micro-choice. It can be today, I am going to spend five minutes with my coffee looking out the window before I do anything else. It can be that small. Yeah. And it may feel impossible at first. It may feel challenging at first. And the truth is that once you give yourself a taste of that, you will want more. Hmm. Okay. And I'll say two things right here because I always hear something like this around now. For anyone listening, for anyone listening, right, because- I've got about 10 things that my brain say, but go with two. Because really what I'm ultimately talking about is, can you give yourself permission to consider your own needs

at least as much as you're considering the needs of others, baseline, at least as much? Yeah. And for those of us who have been extreme people-pleasers, that is a challenge, just at least as much. That's really hard. Are you willing to give yourself permission to consider your needs even more than you're considering the needs of others? And then are you willing to consider your needs first before you consider the needs of others?

Now, nowhere in here did I say don't consider the needs of others. Just bring yourself to the forefront. And, you know, I often will hear. well, isn't that selfish? I was just going to say, I was like, oh, I'm going to ask that question. So I'm glad somebody else has asked it before me. Oh, yeah. Isn't it selfish?

Right. I'll tell you, I am on the bandwagon to reclaim selfish. I think selfish has gotten a really bad rap. I love that. Because I, we praise and pride ourselves on being selfless. And right there in that word, no self. We disappear. And here's the deal. It's not either or. It's not we're one or the other. We are both. We are every single quality. So I am selfish and I am selfless. And both are true. And I believe selfish,

self-care and self-love are three sisters whose job it is to support us in honoring ourselves. And often the next thing I'll hear is, well, I feel guilty when I put myself first. Right. Actually, one thing I was thinking is, yeah, I know those three sisters. They're not in my family. They're actually maybe second cousins. That was the first thing I thought. I was like, yeah, they're not my sisters or my cousins, those three.

Yeah. I'd like to bring them into the family a little bit more. Yes. So, you know, I look at guilt in this context as good. Guilt is an indicator you're on the right track. Guilt is the signal that you are paying attention to what you need. Wow. That is, that is profound because guilt is something that that is a deep, emotion I feel daily. Yep. And I, and I, and then I try to, like, I catch it. And I go, oh, what are you feeling guilty about? I'm guilty that I'm sitting on the couch. I'm guilty that I'm not spending more time with my, a friend or a loved one. So what, and then I try to

rectify the guilt. But what you're saying is it tells you you're on the right path to taking care of yourself. Taking care of yourself. And, you know, even what you said, you know, sitting on the couch, you know, how quickly we want to beat ourselves up for, you know, I know for me, a big disowned quality of mine was lazy. You know, I'm not lazy. And in fact, I overcompensate by being an overachiever. So there's no existence of lazy in me. And like I was saying about selfish, I am lazy and I'm an overachiever. We have to own all these pieces of ourselves instead of pushing parts of ourselves away. Yeah. Yeah, and this will be a total side note on the direction of this conversation, but I have to bring it back to the surface because my own brain is curious.

Sure. What's your, what's your Enneagram number again? Three. I thought so. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So because, you know, when you talked about not wanting others to see you, you know, see the pain that was going behind, I was like, oh, I bet she's a three. And those of you that don't know the Enigram, we'll do another episode on the anagram. Totally. But, but the lazy, parts really interesting because my my at the core I'm a nine on the anyagram which is required and I'm a Libra so like peace is really important to me and so I have come into this place in my life where I'm like okay when people are upset around me when situations are in chaos there is a lot of discomfort physical discomfort in my body and I think you know whether you know the

or not, a lot of women specifically have that is like, oh, God, now if I don't go fix all these situations, I have to sit with the discomfort in my body that almost makes me want to throw up right now. Yeah, I know it very well. I lived, you know, four and a half decades of my life like that. Yes. And a big shift came when I learned how to, you know, how to. to sit with my own discomfort, that my own discomfort's not going to kill me, and to hold others capable. Oh, say more about that. Yeah.

You know, so I'm just going to sort of go, I'm going to go all the way back to the beginning for me, which is that when I was born, I had an older brother who had been severely disabled. And so I, aside from being, you know, born from swimming in my mother's fear, anxiety, and neurosis, I also really quickly realized that his needs are more important than mine. So better I take care of my own needs. He died when I was two and he was almost six. And then the imprint on me right there was, if I am impregn, perfect like he is, I will die. Oh, wow. Nancy, that's huge. Yeah, huge. And then,

and my parents and I've had adult conversations about this, but then I went into this wanting to heal a grief in my parents that could never be healed. Yeah. And I expended a lot of energy wanting to heal, fix, save, and rescue. Yeah. And then fast forward to the man I ended up marrying, it was literally as if on day one, he said to me, hi, I'm broken. And I said, well, great, I'm superwoman. I will fix you. So many women have been there.

Right? Of course. And I felt like doubled down on it because I couldn't save my brother. I couldn't save my parents. Well, I'm going to save you. Wow. And obviously, the truth is we cannot save, fix, rescue anybody. Yeah.

And what happened, though, was that in the wanting and the devotion to fixing, saving, and rescuing and healing, I lost myself. Mm. Mm. And, yeah, that's, you know, so much of this, and I think especially, you know, at this age, you know, at this age, age and stage of our lives, this is a reclaiming of our life. This is a reinvention in that we are returning to the essence of the truth of who we are before we packaged ourselves to be digestible to everyone else around us. Okay, I got so much to say on that. For starters, I just, I just want to honor your authenticity and your vulnerability and your willingness to share that.

but because there will be people listening to this that just are sobbing right now because it's a reflection of what they've gone through. So thank you for doing that. Yes, of course. Here's where I go to and I always have to look at it through the menopausal lens. Of course. This is, because I have a metapausal woman, but this is a big premise of the book I'm writing right now is that when we look at our hormones, we have about 40 years where these hormones are up. So between like 15 to about 55, we're what I call locked and loaded with our neurochemical armor. And it's not just estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone, but it's also dopamine, serotonin, acetycholine, like it's all those neurotransmitters.

And I feel like now looking back at my life that those, that neurochemical armor blocked me from dealing with the truth often. And when that neurochemical armor came down somewhere in my mid-40s as it started to shed, the truth could not be held back anymore. And then I got aware recently, like in the last year, that what a blessing that was and that there's another 40 years of me. There's a 53 to 93. I plan on living over 100.

So there's another 40, 50 years of me without that neurochemical armor. So what if I looked at menopause as actually a redesign, a moment to redesign myself to be the woman I want to be at the back 40 years? That's what I just heard you say. Yes. Because, you know, and I don't remember, I feel like I feel like, I feel like. I talked to you about this when we talked another time, but what I've been exploring lately is that there's a part of me that knows that my teenage self had it right. I was a loner. I liked to be

very much on my own. I like to be with my books and my journal and do things, you know, in a way that just wasn't quite acceptable for my mother at that time. And, you know, then I sort of went out and did all the things. And then now, here I am, my 58-year-old self, really doubling down on how much I love to be with myself, how much I enjoy, how much more I appreciate myself single than partnered, how much more I need and want the space that I can give myself. And so it's almost like this through line and, you know, sort of puberty to menopause. Right. It fits the hormonal trajectory. One was you were coming into your hormonal, you know, glory. And one is you are exiting out. And this is, you know, again, you and I've chatted about this. And my audience hopefully knows this,

that this is part of what I'm trying to, the conversation I'm trying to crack open for women, is that these hormones do dictate the way that we behave. They dictate our relationships, the decisions we make. And when they're there, we operate in one way. And when they're gone, we operate it another way. But it's the in and out of those transition points that can be really the most vulnerable for us. So talk a little bit about where community, connection with other women, you definitely have to share some of the spiritual masters that helped you just because I was impressed. Nobody gets counsel from some of the people you got counsel from.

Yes. Yes. So, you know, I often say I always had a front row seat and a backstage pass to all of the events I was producing at Hayhouse. And it wasn't until I was in my own crisis that I was really able to absorb all the teachings. And what I also recognized is, you know, going back to me saying, you know, I wanted to uphold that image of perfection and never let them see me sweat. But, you know, I also learned that the people I feared revealing myself to the most were the ones who rallied around me the fiercest. And, you know, like I've said to you, my A team was Louise Hay, Wayne Dyer, Carolyn Mace, Marion Williamson, Cheryl Richardson, Debbie Ford, Reed Tracy. You know, like these were the people who were the scaffolding around me.

holding me while I rebuilt myself. I really resonate with what you're saying, especially knowing the traits of a three, how hard that had to have been. But what does it look like to make that first step to ask somebody that you deeply respect? How do you make, what's that first step to just say, hey, like, I'm hurting, I'm struggling,

my shit's falling apart here. And you're wise, I need your help. What does that first step look like? Yeah. So first, as I mentioned before, I had to admit to myself the truth that I already knew. Then I had to be willing to admit the truth to someone safe. So it didn't even begin as it morphed for sure into asking for help, which was its own hurdle at the beginning. for anyone else out there who has trouble asking for help.

But it had to first begin with being able to entrust something, entrust someone with something I had never shared before. Who'd you go to first? I actually, at that time, I went to Cheryl Richardson. She was a very close friend. And I let her know what was happening. And I actually called her in the car as I was on my way back to my apartment after I'd heard the voicemail.

And she had said to me, go get yourself a, go book yourself into a hotel. She knew that there was a hotel a couple blocks away from my house. She said, go book yourself at the St. Julian and then go home and just know you have an exit strategy and somewhere to go. And that changed everything for me. So it was one person. It just takes one person. I literally, it started with one person.

person. Yeah. And I, you know, it started with one person and then the next morning, I did end up coming back to my place, seeing him and then leaving the house that night. And went to the hotel. And the next morning is when he said, if you don't, if you're not home in a half an hour, I'm calling your parents and your sister. What was your thought with that? I got on the phone right away and called my parents. Yeah, that's what I would do. I'd be like, well, let me be. You did. I did. And so my parents, you know, they both got on the phone and I said, you know, it's highly likely we'll be getting divorced. And my mom said, what happened? And I said, well, I got home last night and he read my journals and discovered I had an affair eight years ago. And my

mother said, without skipping a beat, I'm so sorry you've been carrying this around all by yourself for eight years. And I will tell you that the dissolution of my marriage was the great healing with my mother. Yeah. Yeah, that's a, that is fierce mother love. That is mother love. I think I would hope that most mothers would have that kind of response. Yeah. That is, that is the fierceness of mother love. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. So if you're, if you're listening to this conversation, obviously, obviously. Obviously you're listening to this. And you're stuck. And some people are going to hear this and they're stuck in marriages like yours. And some people are stuck in jobs. And some people are stuck in health challenges. Help us understand what that first door out is. Because I think

we've given a lot of really interesting, you know, you can get some vision, you can take some self-care, you can find a loved one. But let's really speak to that person right. now, like how do we help them move in a new direction and just get some momentum in a new direction? Yes. So along with visioning, you know, comes this idea of wanting and needing and desiring, which we get really turned off to on some level at some point, that it's not safe to want or it's greedy to want or, you know, like I was saying, I prided myself on. not wanting. And there is this correlation between the wanting and the receiving. And most of us also still have this idea that life is a zero-sum game. If someone else has, I can't have. I'll go without.

Or if I have, someone else will go without. And it doesn't work that way. Nope. Right? Right. So we really start, you know, I'll always come back to this. Some way, to connect in and contact a small, simple desire, even, a small wanting, a small piece of the vision to hold in us to help us, really it's like to help conduct us toward and away from what will move us in the direction we want to go. And this can be, you know, going back to what I was saying before, recognizing when my impulses to go into what do they need, what do they think, what do they want, to pull it back in right there. What do I need in this moment? What am I feeling in this moment? What do I want in this moment? What do I think? Just to begin pulling,

it back in so that we're not outsourcing our thinking. We're not outsourcing our feeling, you know, so that we really are in charge of what's happening inside of us. That has to be the beginning point to take that responsibility and not not give it away. Because when we give away our power, you know, that's what we can go into blame and victim and all that. We can blame someone else for why our life isn't the way we want it to be. But the bottom line is our life isn't the way we want it to be because we have not taken the stand for ourselves in this way. Wow. You know, I resonate so much with what you just said. And I'm realizing that there were moments like for me in the last year, you know, everybody, I was telling a friend the other day

that everybody talked about the crisis they had in the pandemic. And I'm like, really, my emotional crisis was after the pandemic when life returned back to normal. Let me do air quotes. Right. Right. And, you know, full transparency, half my clinic was gone. And, you know, pulling them back in was hard. I had a whole, you know, new world that was emerging in my online world.

And team members had made a decision they didn't want to live in California anymore. And so they started, they moved out and my children were out of my home. And I was literally one day sitting on my couch crying going, where do my life go? Yeah. What happened? And all of a sudden I realized in that moment that I could choose what I wanted for dinner. Yes. I could choose what time I wanted dinner at.

I could choose if I didn't even want dinner. Like I took dinner as like my North Star. Because so much about dinner was about the family. It was like what time of the kids going to be home from from their activities. What did everybody want? Like it was so focused on everybody else. And I realized in that moment, I'm a take back dinner. And I told my husband, I was like, I don't, you're on your own for dinner. You know, this is what time I'm going to be eating dinner. Like if you want to join me, we can chat about it. But for the most part, I'm going to own dinner for myself. I love, I love this because this is what I'm talking about. It's something micro. It's something tangible, it's something concrete. And, you know, and you get to be with all of this. You get to want something or not want something. Yeah. You know, you get to make it happen. Whereas, again, just using dinner, I use this example all the time, even in terms of wanting, most women, I guarantee, most women listening, if the question is posed to you, what do you want for dinner? Your responses, I don't care. What do you want? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Or how many times as women do we go,

like, hey, let's go to lunch together? And then we're like, where do you want to go? I don't know. Where do you want to go? Because we don't know because we haven't trained ourselves to know. Exactly. And so part of this, even on the smallest, you know, the smallest scale that when you are asked, where do you want to eat? Or what do you want to eat to just pause? What do I want? Do I want fish? Do I want tofu? Do I want, you know, what am I in the mood for? And instead of outsourcing our desire to someone else.

Yeah. So profound. I know you all, I know your people are resonating with this because I've sat with so many women who can't find that center truth. So, and, you know, honestly, Nancy, I can sit here and chat with you all day. Like at some point, I'm like, oh, yeah, we're on a podcast. We should probably pay attention to that. So before people click off, I really want, how can you help, how can your wisdom help anybody who's listening at this moment that needs to now have a North Star and find their way out?

Yes. The quickest and easiest thing is to go to Nancyleven.com slash free. And you can download my transformation equation guide. that will guide you through this way to be able to make meaningful and sustainable change. So nancyleven.com slash free. And on my website, all the other goodies are there. Okay, well, that's amazing. And people still don't click off because the next question I have for you is the one

that we always finish up every episode with, but it ties in to everything we've talked about here and may be really helpful for people who are needing change. and that is do you have a self-love practice? I feel silly almost asking you this. Do you have a daily self-love practice? I do. What is it?

And then there's a second part to this question. Okay. I really want women to start owning what they're great at. So what's your superpower that you bring to the world? Oh, okay. So my self-love practice is actually fairly, fairly in depth and has steps. Oh, I love it.

Oh, go for it. This is why I was like, oh, this is going to be such a good question for her. Okay. Before I go to bed at night, I put my phone in airplane mode so I don't wake up to any notifications whatsoever. As I'm going to sleep, I do a meditation that in which I send love to a loved one. And then I have the loved one in my mind's eye move aside, and the love I'm sending out rebounds into me.

Wow. And I'm able to take that in. And so that's how I go to sleep. When I wake up in the morning, I meditate and I journal before I ever turn my Wi-Fi back on. So the last part of my day and the first part of my day is all. about me. Beautiful. Beautiful. So that, yeah. You know, I just want to make a comment on that. And again, because you've been with all the spiritual masters, Bruce Lipton actually taught me that. When I interviewed

him on my podcast, I asked him, okay, how do we change these subconscious patternings? And he said, you have to protect your brain and the input that comes in as you go to sleep and as you come out of sleep. And I started actually researching that and realizing that you are, you know, you go from beta, we're in beta wave right now. Then you go to alpha, theta, and delta when you go into sleep. So it's those mid waves where subconscious repatterning can happen. So that's a brilliant routine. Yeah. I mean, it's really changed so much for me. I've been doing it for many years now, and it has made a big difference. Amazing.

Okay. What's your superpower? You know, it's interesting. The first superpower that comes to me, and I would say this is so in line with everything we've been talking about today. I think my superpower is to be able to hold for myself and others what's true in the moment so that if you share with me something, today that is true. And tomorrow you share something else with me that is true. I can hold that with you

instead of judging you on what was true yesterday. Oh, that is good, Nancy. You are a good friend. I do. I think that is my superpower. Oh, and I think it's a superpower we all should take on because how many times have we gone to somebody and like barfed our problems all over them? And then the next day, we say something completely different and they don't know how to handle those two things because they may be an opposition. Well, I know you know this, but I am sure whether it was through the conscious or the subconscious, being in charge of all those events, even though you're probably in a high beta state, like trying to make sure the event didn't fall apart. you absorbed a hell of a lot of wisdom. That's what I just learned today. Yeah, I really did. I mean, I feel so, it was my dream job until until I knew I needed to make a shift. But it was, it was everything to me. Yeah. Amazing. So again, I'm just want to, how do people find you? You have this

incredible free quiz, like, but how do people find you if they want to dive into your work? Sure. My, my website, Nancy. 11.com. And if you just add the slash free, you'll be able to download my transformation equation guide. Everything's on my website, social media, my podcast, my training academy, all the things. Amazing. Well, thank you. You know, I think it's one thing to go through painful moments in your life and come out victorious. And then it's another thing to go through painful moments in your life. Come out victorious and want to turn around and teach others. And, you know, In my heart, I call that from pain to purpose, and you are a living example of that.

So thank you so much for bringing your wisdom to us today. This was a real delight. Thank you, Mindy. Thank you so much for joining me in today's episode. I love bringing thoughtful discussions about all things health to you. If you enjoyed it, we'd love to know about it. So please leave us a review, share it with your friends, and let me know what your biggest takeaway is.