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#131:How to Create More Time for What Matters Most with Michelle Niemeyer

• Polly Warren

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Have you ever wished for just ten more hours in the day? I know I have!
With all the roles we juggle, it’s no wonder so many of us are running on empty. The mental load is real. And when your day-to-day doesn’t bring you joy? That’s burnout waiting to happen.

In this episode, I’m joined by the brilliant Michelle Niemeyer, who shares her story of navigating burnout during a high-pressure legal career—while also managing divorce, perimenopause, and an autoimmune disease. Now, at 60, Michelle says she feels better than ever.

She shares how she made the courageous leap to a more joyful, spacious life—and how you can too. We talk about her beautiful philosophy called The Art of Bending Time, which is all about reclaiming your energy, your focus, and yes—even your hours.

In this episode, you’ll hear about:

  • Michelle’s journey from burnout to feeling the best she’s ever felt
  • What it really takes to leave a high-achieving career and follow a deeper calling
  • Her powerful method for reclaiming up to two hours a day
  • Why joy isn’t just a nice-to-have—it’s a compass

Download The Breath Check-Up - your FREE guide to understanding how well you're breathing right now.

Download my energising 5 Minute Morning Practice to get your day started in the best way possible.

To find out more about my membership The Inner Space go to: https://www.pollywarren.com/theinnerspace

Email me at: info@pollywarren.com
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Speaker 1:

Are you like me, riding the roller coaster of midlife and menopause and eager to get back to living your best life? Are you tired of low energy, a short temper and endless self-doubt? Well, it's time to stress less and shine more. It's time to ditch the worry, reclaim your mojo and tap back into the incredible woman you already are, because midlife isn't the end of anything. It's the beginning of becoming more you, more grounded, more radiant, more powerful than ever before. Join me each week for real, uplifting conversations to help you feel better, think clearer and live with more joy, purpose and ease. Because it's never too late and you're certainly not too old. So whenever you're ready, let the beautiful metamorphosis begin. Hello, hello, and welcome back to metamorphosis with me, polly Warren.

Speaker 1:

Now, if you are anything like me, it often feels like there just aren't enough hours in the day. I'm always amazed how suddenly it's four o'clock and the time, the day's just whizzed by and yet I've still got a load of things I want to do and some of the things I really need to do. So imagine if you could actually bend time and create more of it for yourself. It sounds pretty good, right? Well, that's exactly what this week's guest has done. I'm chatting to to Michelle Nymaier, who joined me all the way from sunny Florida via Zoom. Michelle has developed a philosophy she calls the art of bending time and she claims it can help you reclaim up to two hours a day to focus on the things that truly matter.

Speaker 1:

We dive into all of that towards the end of the episode, but first we explore the journey that led her there. So Michelle opens up about the intense burnout she experienced during her very successful legal career, all while navigating many midlife issues a lot of people face, so divorce, perimenopause, and, in Michelle's case, she was also experiencing or hibernating at that point an autoimmune disease, as she puts it. She was in the middle of a proper shitstorm. Yet today, at the age of 60, she says she feels better than ever. I love these stories. And she also totally overcame something which doctors believed that she couldn't. This conversation is packed with golden nuggets, powerful mindset shifts and some really inspiring energy. So, without further ado, please welcome the brilliant Michelle Nymaier. Welcome to the podcast. Michelle, it's been it's lovely to connect with you all the way over from Florida, so welcome, and I can't wait to you to get started today.

Speaker 1:

Thank you, polly, and I'm so excited to be part of your podcast, oh well, it's good to be, it's good that you're here, because I think we've got lots of crossover in what we do, and I really would like to just start about hearing a little bit about you and your journey really to this point in time. So, you're, you're a lawyer. Are you still a lawyer? You're, you were a lawyer, I am not a lawyer anymore.

Speaker 2:

You're not a lawyer anymore Legally, legally, I'm a lawyer. I've kept my bar membership. So technically, legally, I'm a lawyer. But I stopped practicing law about a year ago and was part of a very protracted, very planned exit where I carried through with the last of my clients and finished. I'm a litigator, so sometimes cases can take two, three, four years and I stuck with the last of my clients and finished. I'm a litigator, so sometimes cases can take two, three, four years and I stuck with the last client until I finally left practicing law because I didn't want to be that person who just abandoned someone who had a case that kept getting better and better.

Speaker 2:

And I'm excited to say my exit was like, in a lot of ways, my best, happiest, most fulfilling moment as a lawyer. It was wonderful and you know, and now what I do is I help people get a lot of times the people I work with don't know they're burned out. They are busy, busy professionals who think they need help with time management, and that's because they're constantly like they're on a habit trail, if you know what I mean. They're. They're like constantly just trying to. They're running on the treadmill trying not to fall off and they've lost track of who they are and what they want and what makes them happy. And one day they wake up and go. What happened to me and how do I get my life under control? And often those people look first for help with time management. It's what I did in that situation and I, in creating the program that I have really looked to. How do I serve the person who was me 15 years ago?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so, yeah. So you I mean you're were a lawyer, you've been a lawyer or most of your career, yes, yeah, but they've got a. But you came to a point in that career where you suddenly found yourself in a state of what we call burnout. Now, this term burnout is flung around a lot and it can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people. Can you just tell me what that looked like for you? What are the signs that you saw in yourself and what might be signs that other people might, might see in themselves? Because it's a, it's a creeper, isn't it? It doesn't just suddenly, yeah, Right.

Speaker 2:

It sneaks up on you and you don't know what's happening to you. I liken it to being a lobster in a pot of boiling water you don't know you're being cooked, right until it's too late. You're sitting in the water. It's like, hey, I'm in a hot tub and then you're dying. And and that, to me, is the symptom that I felt. I felt like I was dying inside. I didn't feel pleasure in things anymore that I had felt pleasure in. I resented things that in the past I felt like were accomplishments. I had found myself to be that person who. I would join a club, I would become a leader in the club and then one day I'd be doing all the work in the club and I hadn't realized there were a lot of things that I needed to work on in myself that would prevent that from happening. I just saw it as how come nobody's helping me? I'm doing all the work? I'd get frustrated, I'd get resentful in law. And it's really funny because I just yesterday had a. I was on a podcast with an ER doctor and and burnout for ER docs versus burnout for lawyers can be very, very different because for me, I didn't see a result from what I was doing for a long time. I could write a brief and not have an answer for six months and and you've, you've done all this work and then you just sit there and nothing happens, and nothing happens. And your client's getting frustrated because nothing's happening. And they're paying you money and they're like what's going on? This is taking too long and it's not under your control. With doctors it's the opposite. They work their butt off for these really long hours and then they go home and they're so fried that they can't enjoy their time at home. But it's a different kind of right. It's a different kind of impact. Like they're just go, go, go, go, go, go go for the time they're working when with lawyers it tends to be more of a slower burn and then one day you wake up and go wow, you know, this is just frustrating and it took me. I really didn't realize at the time it was burnout. Then one day you wake up and go wow, you know, this is just frustrating and it took me. I really didn't realize at the time it was burnout.

Speaker 2:

I ultimately, like I said, I just I felt like I didn't like my job and what I really didn't like was that environment, that aspect of it I had to relearn and it was conscious. That aspect of it I had to relearn and it was conscious I had to relearn how to look for the things that I enjoyed and then make make a point of getting more of those things every day. Yeah, and that's really the crux of what I teach people in the art of bending time is that when you reconnect with the part inside of you that lights up like a child and gets excited about things and has fun again and feels accomplishment from the things that you're accomplishing and has pride in the things that you should be proud of, when you reconnect with that person and you start really analyzing why did I feel good? What did I feel exactly? Who was I surrounded by? What was I doing in that moment that's when you start to come break out of that burnout and you start to be able to kind of make your life more deliberate in a way that gives you more of what you need, because a lot of times I think the reason people are getting burned out is they get caught up in this treadmill.

Speaker 2:

Like I said, you get caught up in this treadmill and it's not a treadmill of your own making, it's the course of whatever it is that you do professionally, or whatever it is that's expected of you as a parent, or whatever it is that's expected of you as a member of whatever groups you're part of, and you lose sight of the parts that. There's a reason you joined that to begin with. There's a reason you had kids to begin with. There's a reason you became a lawyer, became a doctor, became an accountant, became a consultant, whatever that thing is that you do, and yet when you've lost touch with that, that's when you get burned out yeah, yeah, I mean absolutely.

Speaker 1:

I mean I was a teacher for many years and I really relate to it in that sense, because I'm sure any teachers listening they know that as well.

Speaker 1:

It's like with all these jobs. You know you go into it because you love it, you go into it because you're seeing it like you, it's your purpose, and then you, over time, have so many roles, responsibilities, you have so many pressures piling up on you you, you just forget how to enjoy that job because it's there's no joy in it anymore and um, and that just just makes you feel more exhausted and you're that constant low level chronic stress is always there and ultimately that is what is just building up over time and that is just sapping all of your energy and so your cells and everything just become better function anymore and that is literally when your body just goes uh-uh, I'm not doing this anymore, I need some, I need to stop, I need to rest. And that is when, as you know we, we start feeling really fatigued, really irritable, really angry, really. You know all resent, resentment. That was really interesting what you said about resentment, because I think that resentment and frustration are key aspects to this.

Speaker 2:

And then detachment. In a lot of environments. I know this is true in law firms and it can be true as a teacher. You have no choice, right. As a teacher, you're in a room with kids, you're teaching, you can't escape and not be in that room. You have to be in that room. But maybe your form of detachment is and I've had, I remember, having teachers like this that your form of detachment is you sit at your desk with your face in papers or you're scrolling. You know, I don't know if some places allow teachers to have their phones accessible, some don't. You know, there's things you're doing where you're isolating and detaching and that detachment in a law firm takes the form of the lawyers got their door closed all the time or they're wearing headphones and they're not connecting with people.

Speaker 2:

Detachment is a really strong sign that you're getting burned out. Now it may be that you're doing those things to intentionally focus. That's something that I teach people in my program is when you need flow and you need to focus, you need to create a buffer for yourself, right, because otherwise constant distraction is a real problem. It's very hard to get flow state and to make things happen that way if you can't have that focus. But the flip side is you. You know you can use those same devices to shield yourself and hide absolutely shielding yourself and hiding.

Speaker 1:

You know there's something wrong and yeah, that detachment, it's just simply your body, isn't it? Your body's can't possibly focus on anything because it's just overwhelmed. There's too much going on. It's like it's kind of trying to keep itself, protect itself. It's just your natural response of trying to protect yourself, but in a way, it's chronic stress.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's all kinds of things in people and the chronic stress response is to withdraw we were talking just before.

Speaker 1:

We pressed record a little bit, how burnout symptoms have a huge similarity, a correlation to perimenopause and menopause symptoms, and how it can be very difficult to just to notice and to understand what is actually going on for you, because things like fatigue, brain fog, this detachment, this sense of um not being able to focus, joint pain, muscle pain, all of lack of you know, all of this, yeah, there is so much overlap and you were saying to me actually, when this happened to you, you were at that sort of stage in your life as well, so maybe you could talk to that a little bit.

Speaker 2:

I had what I will call a I'm going to use a profanity here shit storm coming together. Really at the same time, at 44 years old, I split up from my ex and separated, moved to my boat where I lived for eight years, which was an incredible chapter in my life, but, you know, not related to this, but kind of related to this so I moved out of my home, I changed my relationship status. I, within a couple of years of that, started having horrific, horrific, you know cold sweats in the night where I was soaking the bed, like just terrible, terrible hot flashes. Um, I had brain fog at that time. That was so bad.

Speaker 2:

At one point a man called me at my law practice and he was talking as if he had spoken to me before and I had no idea who he was and I looked at my notes. I had a really great computerized system to take notes and I looked at my notes and I was like, oh my god, I had five pages of notes from talking to this man. I had no memory of talking to him and I was like, like what is wrong with me? But you know, did I go doctor? No, of course not. I was terrified. They were going to tell me I had early Alzheimer's or something. It was crazy and you know. And then it what.

Speaker 2:

My response to those kinds of events typically and I knew that, like memory could be impacted by stress, and I knew that I was under an enormous amount of stress between getting divorced and having my own law practice and you know and and and right, all kinds of stuff, and so my response to that was typically to run. And so I ran a lot and you know I managed to wreck my knees doing that and I wasn't aware at the time that I was also just ramping up the cortisol Right Like it wasn't necessary. It helped in the moment, it really felt like it helped in the moment, and I never had another memory lapse like that again. But I didn't know until later. I was at that same time like perimenopause divorce. Later I was at that same time like perimenopause divorce and I was probably incubating an autoimmune disease. And you know, I truly believe that it was the confluence of all of that, that chronic stress, that triggered that autoimmune disease. And so you know what was it? Was it the chicken or the egg? It's really hard to know, but what I do know is there was a system of things that I did over time, especially after the autoimmune diagnosis, when I knew I had to take control of things like stress and I had to take control of things like my nutrition and my movement and my environment. That all of that together, I think, you know, really made a huge difference.

Speaker 2:

And one day I kind of I'm not going to say I woke up in some watershed moment and the harps were playing and the sky was beautiful, but I sort of realized one day wow, okay, I'm really happy, I feel good in my job, I'm enjoying the things about my job that I, for a while, just was numb to. I feel good in my body. I mean, I can honestly tell you that today, at 60 years old, my body feels better than it did in my 30s, and that's crazy right, but it was 30s, and that's crazy right, but it was. I didn't use to. I was chronically dehydrated, I was not sleeping enough, I was, you know, really treating myself like the last priority all the time.

Speaker 2:

And there was a time in my life when there was a massive, gigantic bottle of ibuprofen in my house at any given time and I was taking it every day. I don'tuprofen in my house at any given time and I was taking it every day. I don't have that stuff in my house anymore. I have. I've had guests come and say I've got a headache, do you have something? And I'm like I don't have any of that stuff.

Speaker 1:

There's a cvs downstairs so yes, so the autoimmune disease. Can I just ask what that that is?

Speaker 2:

Sure sure, it's a liver disease called primary biliary cholangitis PBC.

Speaker 1:

Okay, and you feel that might have been well, you don't know, I suppose, but it was something which came up at this particular time, under the stress, under the menopause.

Speaker 2:

It wasn't diagnosed until 2015. It wasn't diagnosed until 2015. A lot of this stuff I'm telling you about happened in like 2008 to 2010 or 11. But you know, autoimmunity takes a very long time to show itself. So was that there then? Maybe, I don't know. I didn't show any symptoms of it. I didn't show any symptoms of it. I I did have a hospital episode where and this was if you were to ask me for a watershed moment that forced me to change my life.

Speaker 2:

It was the night, the two nights in a row, that I couldn't go to sleep. I was every time I laid down on my back, I had this horrible pain in my abdomen and I thought it was appendicitis. And the first night I'm like, oh no, that's probably you know. And I finally fell asleep. Second night, same thing. It hurts so bad and I'm lying there in bed going. I'm going to be that stupid person who dies of sepsis because they didn't go to the hospital. Like I have this very high pain threshold and I was just like I need to go to the hospital. And at three in the morning I got in my car and took myself to the hospital and they thought I had gallstones. And they didn't. They did blood testing. The blood testing looked like gallstones, but the ultrasound didn't show any gallstones and the doctor said well, you know, sometimes when gallstones are developing or if it's in a weird location, like sometimes we can't see it, you should see a gastro. Now I am not like I hate doctors. I hate to say this. I just I was just on a podcast with a doctor, but I don't like the medical system, I don't like going to doctors, I don't like taking drugs for things. And so I hear that and I'm like okay, gallstones, that's like a lifestyle thing, I can fix this. And I proceeded to start a workout program eat differently. Within six months after that I was 40 pounds lighter. I was in the best shape of my life, literally since high school, my life literally since high school. I'm really doing great, feeling good.

Speaker 2:

I got a UTI and I go to the doctor because I knew I needed some kind of antibiotic. And the doctor says you know you haven't done blood testing in a really long time. Why don't we just run a panel? You know like I wouldn't check up and I said, fine, he runs the panel in the liver labs that had been elevated at the hospital, significantly elevated. They were about double normal. We're now more than triple normal and at that point he's like you really have to go see someone.

Speaker 2:

You, you know, and I went to a doctor and I was diagnosed with this very rare, very scary autoimmune disease where it, like most things and I'm going to tell people right now, you know, when you're good at medical research and all you see are the studies, or you go on Google and you see what Google says, sometimes they can really scare the shit out of you unnecessarily, right? So I'm looking at stuff that's telling me at that time no, this is being diagnosed more because of blood testing. I'm seeing things that are telling me that people with this disease live 10 years without needing a transplant. Well, and I'm like you know, wow, that's scary. And I'm seeing things that are saying that, you know, it's like at that point it was like two or three people in 100,000. Now it's up to about eight in 100,000 people are diagnosed with this disease and you know, thank God there is a drug for it that's been around for about 30 years. It used to be, you know, the. We've got all this sophisticated blood testing now. In the past people would show up in the er in liver failure because nobody knew they had this until it, until it almost killed them or it killed them. So you know I was lucky for it to have been found early.

Speaker 2:

It was stage two when I got it and the drug worked for me. But I also continued to do a lot of stuff with my lifestyle and I did a elimination diet at some point and realized I was allergic to gluten. So I don't eat gluten anymore. I don't use toxic chemicals cleaning my house. I've changed how I move my body. I exercise a lot, but I'm gentle with myself when I exercise. I'm not beating myself up anymore. It's really. It's so many different things and the result has been that I brought that result from stage two to stage zero. I was told when it started that wouldn't be possible.

Speaker 1:

Oh my gosh. I love stories like this because it just goes to show that we don't know everything and the body is amazing at healing itself from inside out If we give it the right conditions. You know, you do hear these stories again and again. And yeah, we believed everything the doctors tell us you wouldn't bother trying.

Speaker 2:

You know, when I talked to my doctor, she said well, I don't tell people that you can make that level of change and improvement. She's like it's absolutely possible, but most people aren't willing to put the work in or make the changes in their lifestyle that you need to make. And you know, I think that's that's key Now for me. It scared me, right? I, my life was at stake. I this wasn't any more like I want to lose 10 pounds or I don't like how my skin looks, or whatever. It was like I could die from this, and that really motivated me. There's a lot of motivation that comes from a I could die from this situation.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, absolutely, but also, so I don't know if I agree with that, because sometimes we need examples of people who have already done it. If you're told that you're not able, that it's not possible, then you tend to believe it and you kind of your mindset gets fixed on that, whereas if we believe that it's possible, then we're more likely to actually be able to kind of create that environment, create that change for ourselves.

Speaker 2:

I agree, and there's starting to be a shift in the mindset about it. For instance, my doctor did a patient symposium that was tied to a doctor's educational event she hosted in Miami last year and at that patient symposium they had somebody talk about nutrition and they had somebody talk about stress control and things you could do to modify your you know, just to deal with stress. And you know she did a meditation with everyone and you know it was. It wasn't what I'm doing. I can meditate, but I don't find it helps me a whole lot. I know a lot of people find mindfulness meditation is very helpful to them. Personally, for me, I'm much better in motion, so I would much rather go and walk along the water and feel the air on my body and see the water on the. You know the light on the water. And to me there's a note, there's like being still and listening to a guided meditation is like the quickest way for me to go crazy. Um, but, but I I do that in my own way.

Speaker 2:

I think by making a point of being present and making a point of noticing what are the details around me. And you know, I think a lot of people just don't slow down and that's when you start being on that treadmill.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it's interesting that you say that Cause I would say to you that, because I come across a lot of people who say I just can't, I just can't meditate, I can't sit still my, it's just virtually impossible for me. But there is an element of that which, okay, maybe that's just the kind of person that you are, but there's also an element of that is like, well, maybe your nervous system just has got to a place of a kind of a new baseline where it's it's really, really difficult for you to do that, because it doesn't feel safe enough to do that, because it's so foreign, because you haven't allowed yourself to do that. So there's a real, there is a process of retraining it to remember how to fully be still, uh, and it, you know, I think again, it is possible. But if you can actually find other ways of creating that joy and that stillness, then then great. So you got to this point where I mean it really does sound like a rock bottom, this kind of this merging of the burnout, of the perimenopause, of the autoimmune, and you said that it was those, that time in that, that time where you really did hit that low.

Speaker 1:

What would you say? And I'm just thinking of someone who might be listening and they're. They're feeling like shit. Life is just a lot at the moment. How did you claw your way back out of that? Now you said you know, I know you talk a lot about joy. You just talked a lot about nutrition, hydration, exercise, but what were the first steps that you took?

Speaker 2:

the first. So so, like I explained to you, I had kind of a two-step situation here, because there was the hospital and then there was the diagnosis a year later. So the first thing I did and it thankfully for me it was really helpful. Um, I had an assistant working with me at the time who was starting to be involved with Beachbody. Each body she had, um, she'd lost 30 or 40 pounds on one of their programs. Um, then she became a coach and ultimately she left working for me because she had doubled her income with coaching income and was like hey, cool, I can go, like be at home, take my kids to their various sports, whatever.

Speaker 2:

So when I had the hospital episode, she was no longer working for me, but I had seen her go through this metamorphosis and I had seen her literally run two full marathons two weeks apart. And I saw her in mile 25 of the second marathon and she was loping along like a deer, like like there was no pain, like she's just running along, like just like she's bouncing. And I'm like how is this even real, right, how do you do that? And I asked her at the time and she said that was when I found out that she'd been consistently doing these Beach body exercise programs. I knew she'd done a diet thing with them and that it was great cross cross training for her running. And as somebody who was a runner, who beat myself up with my running, I was like that sounds good and I need to lose weight and get in shape so I can get rid of this gallstone thing that they're telling me I might have. And so I called her up and said, hey, I want to do one of these programs. And then I found out that you could get a discount if you sign up being a coach, right?

Speaker 2:

So in that first year I'll call that phase one I drastically changed my eating habits. Already I learned about hydration, I learned about making sure I was getting enough sleep, I learned about drinking a shake that had protein and making sure I had more protein in my life. And as a coach, I was exposed for the first time ever because law firms aren't always real big in giving you this stuff I was exposed for the first time ever to personal development and the things that come with that. We were given access to Success Magazine. At their annual summit, they always had speakers who were big. You know we had Brendan Burchard spoke one year, rachel Hollis spoke one year. They were big, big name people that I knew nothing about any of this until I joined that world, which was really great, and I was never a very successful coach. I covered my expenses plus some and I won some really good trips, but I never made a big. You know, I didn't. I didn't become a big, giant success in the coaching world, but it wasn't my goal really.

Speaker 2:

So that was step one, so that was already a big shift. And then when I got this diagnosis, then it became like I'm researching like crazy, I am changing my diet to primarily raw foods. I am doing, I mean and I'm not doing that anymore, but I did it for quite a while Um, like I said, changing the cleaning products in my house, um, just a lot about stress management that I wasn't doing before. Breath work.

Speaker 2:

I discovered breath work during that timeframe, um, and and it was easier, I think, to make that shift in a way, because in the prior year I had already kind of gone on the weight loss journey, right, so that had made a change in how I was living and it made it easier for me to make extreme changes that I made and then to be able to kind of listen to my body and give myself grace and do the things I felt like I needed to do. And now I'm kind of in this nice happy equilibrium where I know, like my body knows, when it feels cruddy, I know what I need, I know when I'm feeling the things that don't feel right and I have a pretty good sense of what to do about them what I'm hearing is that it sounds like, because of the scare that you had, it was a massive, massive wake-up call to start truly listening to what was going on in your body and which and that spurred you to take the action.

Speaker 1:

And then, as you began to take the action and you were listening, you started to notice the positive changes to how you were feeling. And then that spurs you on even further to keep making the changes. And then, just that, now that amazing connection you obviously have with your body to be able to understand when it's a little bit off, when it's feeling good, so that you can and now you've got all those tools to be able to just tweak to, to help yourself go through life and and feel as good as you possibly can, which is which is amazing, which is so lovely, absolutely life-changing, perspective changing, and the other piece of it that came out of it was in my course to learn.

Speaker 2:

I went through a 42-week health coaching program that got me certified as a health coach, and what I do with my program is not per se health coaching, but I bring in a lot of the elements of that to help people who are really in that place. That I was 15 years ago when I was just drowning in this and I didn't even know, like I said, I was like the lobster in a pot. I didn't even know this was happening to me. At the time I wasn't feeling good. I was, you know, but I had reasons I could look at. I was going through a divorce. I was, you know, working really hard. I was, you know, but I had reasons I could look at. I was going through a divorce. I was, you know, working really hard.

Speaker 2:

I was struggling financially because, post 2008, I was in an area of law I was an insurance coverage litigator and most of my clients were construction businesses at that time and construction businesses were had no money and so I had half my clients were either like slow paying me or not paying me or calling me up and saying I'm sorry, michelle, I can only pay 10,000 of the $20,000 bill. Can you wait? Can you hang in there with me? And I'm like you know, of course, but you know it was painful. Yeah, and you know it's sometimes that happens. You just get it's like pile on, and you know it's sometimes that happens. You just get it's like pile on, right, yeah, bring it, give me some more.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, my God, exactly. So now you've got this, you've got all this experience and you have created this, your kind of foundational program, which is the art of bending time, which I really love, and it's kind of got you take people through various phases, and the first phase, as you said, is kind of almost about, like right, just tuning back into your body and getting that energy. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2:

So the first phases is I call it busyness detox and it is about getting clarity on who you are, rediscovering that light and that joy in yourself and what lights you up. That's the first. To me that's the most important thing and we keep coming back to it. The next part of it is the physical, the basic physical stuff, the making sure you're eating right, making sure you're getting at movement and making sure you're sleeping well, because if you're not getting any one of those things, it it messes you up.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

And then I get into some of the what I call the time suck ninja moves, which is first how to deal with your internal time sucks, Cause we're doing busyness detox. It's about you at that point. And then we go into another phase and that phase is more about to some dealing with what's outside of you. So there's another Time Suck Ninja module, which talks about your environment. Classic example for me I'm sitting right now in a home office that has a west-facing window in Miami Florida. What does that mean? I have brutal, brutal Western exposure sunlight that comes in this window.

Speaker 2:

And when I first moved into this apartment and I had the new home office, I was having to leave my desk with my laptop and sit in an internal den so that I wasn't blinded by the sunlight. And sitting in the den meant I was where my Netflix opportunities lie and it was affecting me. Working Like I would get in there and I'd get it wasn't that comfortable or that functional. Sitting on the couch with the laptop and the next thing I know the TV's on right Like it's just useless. So I invested in some very nice one percent blackout shades that now I don't look outside after about two in the afternoon because the sun would blind me. It gives me beautiful light to work with, but it's not distracting to me. Yeah, most people have something like that.

Speaker 2:

In a law firm I had an office across from the kitchen in my second year of practice and everybody came in and talked to me and I, you know, I read a study that said that it takes 15 minutes to gain flow state again after you've been distracted. So I mean, you think about that. So I recommend people turn off notifications, fix the external distractions. At that law firm I had a credenza behind my desk. I moved my computer to the credenza so that I had to physically turn my body around with my back to my door when I was focusing on writing something, so that at least people would get this hint like she's busy, leave her alone. Because there was a very strong cultural attitude in that firm about closing your door and I didn't want to be perceived as that person who hid behind a closed door all the time. Yeah, so you know there are things like that you can do.

Speaker 2:

And then then I I have a part about building habits and that's that's where you get into having a morning routine or having an evening routine If you find you can't sleep, having a way to you wind down and you get away from the screens. You have that cup of tea, you do journaling, whatever it is that works for you. I found for a lot of people they can't shut their brain off at night. Um, they hit a point where they they want to go to bed and they're lying in bed thinking about everything for tomorrow or thinking about everything they didn't get done today. And I have found having that something whether it's journaling, whether it's taking a moment for your calendaring for what's coming up, to just allow yourself to let go of what happened and to take on. Okay, so I've let it go and now I can relax and I can give myself the grace of that period of just calm and pleasant and enjoying whatever it is that I'm going to do for that moment, and then go to bed knowing that tomorrow I know what's coming up and I can come into it calmly and effectively and move into that day and it's possible to do that. And then what I do and I call my top level, taking flight. And one piece of that, I think, is a really special piece of the art of bending time and it's really all special and it's where all the magic happens is in the top level. Really, that's when you've gotten beyond this basic stuff of just like surviving again as your human self. But this takes first.

Speaker 2:

You do an analysis of three big goals. I ask people to do a personal goal, a business goal and one other thing, whatever of their choice. They go deep into strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and risks of reaching that goal. Of what they have to, maybe they have to buy things, they have to take classes, they have to join an organization, they need to, whatever it is they have to do. And then I do a very quick from one to 10.

Speaker 2:

Now that you've done this analysis, how much do you really want it? You would be shocked how many people are like oh, I don't know, maybe five or six, and this is their three big carry goals. This is the stuff they think they want in their life. And one of those goals, or you know, is like this burden they've been carrying around with them that doesn't fit who they are today. Maybe it's something they've been carrying around with them since they were 12 years old and they thought I always wanted to be a writer or I always wanted to do whatever the thing is it doesn't fit who they are today and they're still beating themselves up about it, they're still spending money on it, they're still putting their time into it. They might be taking time away from their families for it and when you get down to it, they don't really want it and they're not really doing everything they need to accomplish it because they don't really want it. It's shocking and that you think about how much burden that takes off someone, how much time that frees up for them to do the things they do really care about Right. So that's one thing we do, and it's shocking to me how many people I talk to who ditch one of their goals because it's not what they want. Then I have them build a team and it we I call it teamwork makes the dream work and we look at the goal and we go okay. And this is where we cross.

Speaker 2:

I talk about connecting the diets. We cross over between the business and the personal and acquaintances and close friends and I say listen, like, who do you know who might know about this? Who do you know who might know somebody who knows about this? Maybe you want to be a pilot and your pastor's spouse is a pilot, or somebody you know at work is a pilot, or has a partner who's a pilot and they might know things to help you get there faster or cheaper. Or you know and I use the pilot example with people because a lot of people have this perception that to become a licensed pilot you have to spend a huge amount of money, going to a flight school and all this kind of thing, and I'm not sure what your rules are in England, but in the United States there are clubs that do that, but most people don't even know about those clubs. Most people don't even know about those clubs. And if you join one of those clubs and the clubs on the planes and they have volunteers doing various things, it can get much less expensive and a whole lot more fun because you're making friends doing it.

Speaker 2:

It's a social center, it can create business opportunities through the people you're meeting and then the parts of your life start connecting together in ways that create synergies and multiply. And that's where the art of bending time falls is taking, not just being like I'm at work now, I'm at home now, and that whole work life balance thing I think is really destructive in a lot of ways, because we have told ourselves that to be successful, we have to be this in our personal life, and we have to be this in our work life and we have to be this into the community. And if we try to do all those things, we're just willing away at ourselves and we end up not having what we need. Yeah, but when we allow the things to connect together, the time we spend is multiplied and the impact of what we do emanates out into different parts of our lives. It's not isolated just to one or the other yeah, so it's.

Speaker 1:

So let me so the art of bending time, because you claim that this can kind of reduce, you know, save you two hours in a day. So you're actually you're utilizing all your contacts and your network and seeing what the crossover can be in exactly in your, in what you want to achieve and in your goals and your wants, and making it and making everything work for you, rather than feeling everything is disjointed and disconnected right, I'll give you a great example.

Speaker 2:

Amy, my former employee who became a very, very successful MLM Beachbody coach, left working in an office, continued to work with the people who she knew. From that I became one of her customers. Other people she knew connected through that, but she also very highly leveraged her children's private school. She spent a lot of money sending her kids to this school. She made a lot of money to spend a lot of money on school where she was involved with sports activities. She was connected to all these moms and the target market for that product is primarily moms in their 20s and 30s. Where do you find those moms? At the pickup line at school and at the sidelines at the sporting events and at the committee meeting or the PTO meeting, and so and those moms know other moms or they know somebody through their husband's work or whatever. And you know, like I said, I think we make a very big mistake when we talk about work-life balance and we try to, as I say, lobotomize our lives in a way that we're not leveraging the context we have.

Speaker 2:

My parents did not allow me to talk to their friends about what I was interested in after college because they felt it was an imposition on people and would make people feel uncomfortable. I had a wealth of potential contacts that could have helped me that I was just told nope, do it yourself, go to the newspaper and find a job. And in some ways that was great for me, because not many kids growing up in the suburb I lived in worked in a factory overnight in college. So I was exposed to things I might not have been exposed to, but I was. Also, I did not take advantage of certain opportunities I might've been able to, but you know, I really strongly encourage like people, cross those lines and don't hesitate to make.

Speaker 2:

It also allows you to make friends at work. One of the things we're discovering and I just read an article about this about how there's companies are having problems with retention and part of the reason they're having problems with retention is people don't feel like they have friends at work. And why don't? Why not? Because all they talk about at work is work. You're never going to have a close friendship with somebody if all you ever talk about is work yeah, I think, yeah, there's a lot.

Speaker 1:

there's a lot, really, that employers can take from this, because I think, I mean, I think, if you're employed by somebody else and often it's you feel this great pressure that you've got to perform in a certain way for your employer, so, in a way, and you don't, and you don't have that flexibility to be able to nurture more relationships.

Speaker 2:

Right, but in the employer's long-term best interest.

Speaker 2:

In most circumstances it's better for the employer if they're people both feel strong ties to the office because they have close friends at work and they're reaching out into the community they're part of. And people they know through other things know what they do at work, and being a lawyer is a classic example. No lawyer is going to be successful if they don't bring in business. But if all you do is talk about law at work and talk about whatever it is you do socially at that social event and people at social events don't know what you do professionally, how will you ever leverage those contacts? Yeah, you can't. And on top of that you feel pressure all the time for not being enough in one realm at that time or in another realm at the time that you've assigned it. So you know we're whole people. So why do we try to balance parts of our lives? We're not. We're whole people and by being a whole person you do get to get more bang for the buck, so to speak, out of your time, because you're using the time more efficiently.

Speaker 1:

What just struck me then was that as human beings, we're great at just trying to disconnect everything. It's like almost like doctors have done for years look at different parts of the body as if they're not connected to one another and, you know, specialize in a particular part. But actually, as we now know, the the mind, body connection, it all works together. And similarly with our, with how we live our lives. You've got work, you've got home, you've got, you know, everything's separate. But actually when we can combine everything and and live with wholeness in every sense, and be your real self everywhere you go.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so many people are wearing a different persona at work or at home, or at church or at the club they belong to. They come in with this and and that's exhausting. Yeah, it's very exhausting not to be able to be yourself, but most people, a lot of people, are not themselves ever. That's when you get burned out. You literally have stopped being yourself and taken on whatever these expectations are from every other. You know everything outside of you and then you're like you. You're the boiled lobster all of a sudden oh, my goodness, I totally resonate with that.

Speaker 1:

That was was me. For so long I was a different person for being a mom, being at work, being a daughter, whatever it was, and you're trying to do all of those different roles as well as you can, yeah, and you just can't.

Speaker 2:

You're not being you, you really can't. You can never succeed at not being you Not really, not fully, but if you can be you and bring yourself into every role and know what you need and what you want and what lights you up and what you're good at and you can find a way to pass off, and delegation is a beautiful thing, not micromanaging is a beautiful thing if you can learn what, okay, you excel at this and you love it. This is the part of your job that you just light up from and you manage a team of people, let's say, and you can take parts of the team's job that somebody else excels at and give them the chance to have the spotlight on them and feel important and feel like an integral, important part of the team, because you're not doing their thing or you're not micromanaging, hovering over them, telling them how to do it, and you want to talk about a waste of time.

Speaker 1:

Try micromanaging have you heard of the Japanese concept ikigai? Yes, yes, so it's a little bit like that, isn't it? I love that concept. It's about finding what you love. You know, what would the thing which really lights you up as you keep saying joy, you know when we can go, we can reconnect with what gives us joy. Then we can't help but be ourselves Finding out what you're good at, what your talents and your strengths are, what I think the other one is what the world needs, so it's kind of some sense of contribution or service to the world. And then I think, is it something to do with what you could be paid for?

Speaker 2:

Yes, and and so it's taking that. You know you may have a hobby that you love, that you're never going to make into a career, but you can have something you're exceptional at, that the world needs, that makes you feel amazing, that's a contribution to your society and you can get paid for it. How beautiful is that?

Speaker 1:

yeah, exactly that's the dream, isn't it? And that is, and that is if you can. That's when you're in your flow state and that is when, yeah, burnout is something over there.

Speaker 2:

It's not something that you're experiencing exactly and that line between work and home doesn't exist. When you're doing that, you're bringing in things. What I encourage people to do is bring in those things that light them up into all of their life. You get them at home and at work and if work is really stressing you out and you're getting what you need at home. There's an ebb and flow Sometimes. Work isn't always nirvana. It's not going to be perfect. It's never going to be joy and fun and roses and happiness every day. Everything has its hard parts, but if you get enough and it doesn't have to be a heck of a lot you get enough of that stuff that lights you up in your life and you make a point of it you're not going to be burned out, and it's having the ability to be able to notice.

Speaker 1:

We I did um an episode recently with my friend Lucy. We do something called Monday Thursday thoughts or Monday motivation, and we talked about glimmers and and that the ability to be able to be present enough to notice all these amazing little moments of joy around us which, when you're so busy and focused on work and and not present, you miss so many, so many of these small joys, whether that might just be drinking a cup of coffee with your face in the sun, or it might be a bird sitting on the tree and it's singing a song, or whatever that might be. It doesn't have to be a big thing, but it's being able to find the joy in those small things.

Speaker 2:

Exactly. And when you start that practice, you start to see more of that and you start to see less of the stuff that drains you and you know you'll carry that skill into your office. You'll carry that skill into your stressful environment where something's going wrong or it's difficult or it's challenging, but you'll start to see the things there too. You'll start to see that you appreciate that your coworker is also your good friend or that there's an aspect to the process of what you do that you really love.

Speaker 2:

I really love, in law, the research where I and this is again like the art of bending time, is it? This is me um grabbing things from all these different areas of research you've done and then making a really cool argument out of it and having this cohesive thing that happens there. That to me it's magic and it's really cool. And you know. But if I was to focus on the fact that I overcame dyslexia and reading is painful for me and lawyers read insane amounts of stuff and that just is torture for me, like, if I focus on that, I can be miserable in five minutes.

Speaker 1:

right, because that's what I'm focusing on yeah, it's how it's self-perspective, it's how we view the world and it's training that. So if anybody does want to find out more about you, if anyone is interested in working with you, michelle, where can they come and find you?

Speaker 2:

okay, they can find me at LinkedIn, but what I would recommend they do and I've got something that any of your listeners can connect to this and it's wonderful. Um, I have a community set up where I've got my clarity exercise I do with my clients, which I told you is like the cornerstone that I start with. Um, I have a lot of it's a, like a, it's like a guided meditation that I work with people on and that can be accessed by texting the word clarity to 33777. If you're in the United States or if you're outside the United States, go to michelleneemeyercom and you can connect that way and once you're connected, you know, opt into the emails or opt into the community, I can get that information to you.

Speaker 1:

Great, okay, amazing. Thank you so much. I've really enjoyed talking to you, hearing about your story. It's been really fantastic Everything you hearing about your story. It's been really fantastic everything you've said, I I get, and it's always good, though, to just keep reminding yourself, to just keep searching out that joy for trying to make life as easy as possible. I think we're all so good at over complicating things and striving too hard I'm a master at it just trying too hard and the more you can remember just that it can be easy it can be, the more joyful it's going to be oh yeah, and, and you know, I like to say, let's make the magic happen yeah, absolutely, and and take it on yourself, because we often feel like we're somehow controlled by the forces around us, and we're not.

Speaker 2:

We can control our own destiny and learning. That is probably the most important thing we can do yeah, we have our thoughts which we can control. We have our actions which we can control yes, and our perceptions, how we perceive things, is probably the most important thing. Yeah exactly.

Speaker 1:

We can see life as hard, as difficult, as not enough, or we can see it as easy, joyful, and then I love it, because then those things just become more and more and more Exactly. Thank you so much, michelle. It's been a real pleasure.

Speaker 2:

Thank you, polly, and I hope we keep in touch.

Speaker 1:

I really do hope you enjoyed that conversation as much as I did. Thank you so much for tuning in. It really does mean the world. Michelle's journey is such a powerful reminder that it's never too late to make a change. It's never too late to reclaim your time and certainly never too late to follow your joy. If you have found this episode helpful or inspiring, I would be so grateful if you could share it with a friend, with a family member or, even better, leave a quick review. It really does help more women find this podcast. And don't forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode of metamorphosis. Thanks again. Until next time, really do take a look after yourself. Have a fantastic rest of the week and lots of love. Take care bye.