RTL Episode 60: Create a Life You Love with Melissa Monte
On today's health episode, I am joined by Melissa Monte.
Melissa is a mindset coach and host of the popular podcast, Mind Love. She is an influential and thought-provoking explorer of the mindset and positive energy who teaches people the tools she used to overcome challenges in her own life.
Tune in to hear Melissa and I discuss:
The role of the mind in creating a life you love waking up for
How to dissipate the overwhelm
Acquiring the tools needed to overcome challenges
@mindlovemelissa
Episode 60 Transcript
Josephine Atluri (00:09):
On today's episode of Responding to Life: talking health, fertility, and parenthood, I am joined by Melissa Monte. She is an influential and thought provoking explorer of the mindset and positive energy. She's a mindset coach and host of the popular podcast Mind Love. After spending a decade, being what she calls a Guinea pig for bad decisions, she became obsessed with learning what makes us humans tick. Now Melissa teaches people the tools that turned her life around through raw stories and inspiring interviews, her podcast Mind Love highlights the incredible role of the mind and creating a life you love waking up for. So let's dive in and hear all about Melissa's experiences and her tips for improving one's mindset. Welcome to the show, Melissa. I'm so excited to have you on here today to talk about your experiences and also talking about mindfulness and mindset.
Melissa Monte (01:06):
I am excited to be here. It's always great talking to you.
Josephine Atluri (01:09):
Yeah. So, you know, in this podcast I bring on guests, who've demonstrated how they've responded to life versus just reacting to it. And granted, many of us don't necessarily start out that way. It's typically from those moments of reaction that we then are in a position that we may not like that causes us to seek out a different approach. So as a mindset coach and on your podcast, Mind Love, you help people with the role of the mind in creating a life you love waking up for. But before we dive into how you guide others to do that, I'm curious to know how did this happen in your own life? And if there was an aha moment.
Melissa Monte (01:47):
My life has been full of aha moments sprinkled throughout and it just depends on the severity of each aha moment. And so growing up, I really had a pretty charmed life; nothing exemplary, nothing awful. You know, I just, I grew up middle class. My parents were divorced - that was about the worst thing that happened to me, but I liked it. I had two Christmases and two birthdays and, and it wasn't until I was a teenager that life started to hit me hard back to back. I was sexually assaulted twice. I lost a close friend to suicide, and then I lost my dad to cancer. And so I was not equipped at all to deal with any of this. I didn't know how to really deal with hardship or adversity. And so I thought that I was being strong by just overpowering it - by ignoring it really.
Melissa Monte (02:43):
And looking back, I can see how it went from just cognitively ignoring it to where I needed something stronger as the years went on. And so not only was I numbing through alcohol and drugs and prescription drugs, I also up becoming pretty severely bulimic and I was just destroying myself without realizing it, because like I said, I was ignoring anything that didn't feel good. And it wasn't until I ended up in a terrible relationship with somebody that was emotionally manipulative, and turns out was secretly doing all sorts of illegal things, that I hit my rock bottom and I ended up in jail for one of his crimes. And so at that moment, it wasn't even the being in jail that was my rock bottom. It was all of a sudden realizing that my biggest worry in this jail cell was finding a private place to throw up my food and that there was something about that that just was like, I've ruined my life.
Melissa Monte (03:46):
How am I ever going to climb out of this? And when I was young, I remember playing like Super Mario and if I would lose a life too early in the game, I just hit the reset button and start over because I like to go in with like a clean slate and a full life force. And so there was something really painful about me not being able to hit the reset button on these things. I had a record. I had this eating disorder that people said I would have for my whole life. I had basically ruined all of the hard work I had done in childhood of getting honors grades and advanced placement courses and all of that and so I had to rebuild my life from nothing it felt like. And so I ended up moving to LA to get away from this person.
Melissa Monte (04:28):
He did follow me and kind of torment me for a few years, breaking into my house and throwing a brick through my windshield. And I finally moved away again. He ended up being arrested for a string of robberies and I was finally free. And I just remember deciding in that moment that I was not going to waste my freedom and I was going to rebuild my life. And so I started going to yoga and at first yoga was just a, another kind of means to work out. It was for the fitness aspect and also just something to do so I didn't have to be alone with my own thoughts, but slowly but surely the messages from the yoga classes and the mindfulness teaching started to seep through; making new friends in that community who are actually good people that were doing good things with their lives started to influence me.
Melissa Monte (05:19):
And it was really just one small decision at a time that I started to fix all the things that I felt like I had broken beforehand. And I think people expect there to be this one moment or this one big thing. But for me, it was a really long road out of there. I was making good decisions during the day, and then I would still be partying at night or it took me a really long time to face my eating disorder, but I started to face some of my depressive tendencies. And so I had a lot of ups and downs from that time on, that incident with my ex happened back when I was 22, I'm 36 now. And it wasn't until I was close to 30 years old that I really felt like I had a handle on my life. And so I'm a bigI'm just a big advocate for those, those small steps and trusting that they're going to build on top of each other, that eventually you're going to have a foundation that you feel more stable on, that you can then move out of. Because like I said, it wasn't just one thing for me, it was a lot of little decisions that were still intermixed with a lot of bad decisions until finally the good started to outweigh the bad.
Josephine Atluri (06:34):
Your story is amazing, Melissa. Thank you so much for your candor and sharing and there's so much to unpack over there. You know, I appreciate how you share with us that it wasn't one little moment that, you know, it was sort of this, it was a very long road for you. And I'm curious when you, when you speak to other people who find themselves in sort of in a, maybe a rut or in just a life that they don't want to be in and figuring out a way out of it can feel so overwhelming. Like you don't know where to start. Like even the, the tiniest of steps can feel so insurmountable and big. I'd love to hear how you sort of coach people on that, how you approach that in terms of your mindset and how people can just take that tiny little step forward.
Melissa Monte (07:32):
I think of a metaphor quite often, that's been helpful for me. And it's what I think of when I am feeling overwhelmed because I get overwhelmed pretty easily. And whenever there's a big goal, nowadays, my goals are a lot different than they used to be. Before it's like fix my eating disorder, stop killing myself one day at a time. But now it's like, okay, maybe it's a big goal in my business, but it's so easy to, or it could even actually be cleaning my house. That's the thing that happens most often right now, because I have a seven month old - it's hard to put him down and you know, you just look around and you see stuff everywhere, whether you're cleaning your house or, or it's the next big thing like, oh, I have a hundred things on my to-do list or how am I going to fix my life?
Melissa Monte (08:16):
I've ruined it in too many ways. I'm too far gone. But say you're driving across the country. You don't, if you're, if you're driving from San Diego to Maine, you're not constantly looking at all the steps to get there or else that drive would be overwhelming. You put in your destination and then you zoom back in to the very next step. And that's all you can think of is the next step. You're, you're making a next right turn. And then you're making a left turn. And so if I can remember that when I'm feeling overwhelmed that I don't need to have it all figured out. I don't need to know every step of this journey. I don't even need to fully believe that I can get there yet. And that sounds counterintuitive, but I have a lot of self doubt and I know that a lot of people have a lot of self doubt.
Melissa Monte (09:04):
And so when I have those feelings, like, I don't know if I believe that I can do this instead of thinking, well, there might be some truth to that. Or instead of being like, oh my gosh, I shouldn't even be thinking that or else I'm not going to get there. I just sort of let that thought float by and again, zoom back into the next step and get that thing done. And then the next step reveals itself to me. And I, I just focus on that and whenever I'm feeling the overwhelm, I come back to that very next step. And before I know it, I'm able to look back and I'm like, okay, well, I've done like 20 of these steps now - I've laid a foundation. And you start to build a new self belief that you can do this or that it's not as overwhelming as you think, or that I am the type of person who can fix this, or I am the type of person who moves forward on my goals.
Melissa Monte (09:53):
And so it's so important to just zoom back in and, and just look at the next thing that you have to do, because if you keep zooming out and trying to look at the big picture the whole time, it can be helpful sometimes when you're trying to regain your motivation, like, oh yeah, I'm trying to go there. Okay. But back to the next step. And so just come back to that one thing, and for me, that really dissipates my overwhelm and it gives me that one thing that I can do and one of my favorite quotes ever is by Alan Watts that says the secret of life is being completely immersed in what you're doing right here and right now. And I try to remember that too, when I'm coming back to that next step, because it's the overwhelm lives when we are, are too much in our heads, when we're overthinking things. Indecision is a form of pain. Do you think that you're going to work everything out when you're just thinking about it? You're like, well, if I think about it for longer than I'll, then maybe it won't be as messy in my head. Chances are it's going to be even messier. It's when you are actually involved in the physicality of what you're doing, when you're actually taking those actions, that things start to become clearer, that you start to fall into flow, that the next step reveals itself. So again, for me, it's all about that next step.
Josephine Atluri (11:11):
Well that is very wonderful advice. It's super tangible and accessible to zoom in - you're right. Because that zooming out process can be in itself so overwhelming that if you can just take those tiny little steps, it really does help you and like you said before, you know, it, you've already taken 20 steps towards all the things that you need to get done. Thank you for sharing that with us and in thinking about, you know, your experiences and now the life that you lead, I'm curious about how you face new challenges; especially ones that can be really overwhelming. Say, for example, now you are a new season of life as a mother and the road to get there. And probably in the midst of it right now is very challenging to you. How, you know, we have all of our experience, you know, in the back of her mind, it created our story and it's still somewhat a piece of us. So when you get in the thick of things and you feel yourself, you know, feeling like perhaps this just too much, how do you, do you use self-talk? Do you, what strategies do you use to combat sort of that idea of yourself in the past and how you handled situations like that before, so that you can proceed in a different manner today?
Melissa Monte (12:37):
When I look at my own healing, I don't see it as like this path with a destination. For me, healing has been acquiring an arsenal of tools that I can go to when I, when I need something different when I need to be lifted out of a depressive state, when I feel myself spiraling. And I used to think that I would just get to this place of like maybe spiritual enlightenment and none of this stuff would plague me, but now, well, now that I've done the work, I realized that doing the work is just getting used to doing the work. And so I tend to be I, a lot of things go based on my moods. And so I remember when I was trying to build my business and I was like, okay, I'll get into this solid routine and I got this morning routine with this afternoon structure and, and it was awesome for like nine days.
Melissa Monte (13:27):
And then I started to get burned out from my own routine. And I'm like, oh my gosh, maybe I'm just not the type of person who is able to be successful, who can keep structure at all. But what I've learned over time is that for me personally, I need changing structure. I need some sort of combination of novelty and structure at the same time. And so I'm constantly, re-evaluating like, okay, is what I'm still doing, working for me, or do I need to switch something up? And so when I'm doing, working on goals in my business, for example, or trying to create structure in a day with a morning routine that can look like, you know, choosing a different window nook to do my morning meditation, that can be okay now I'm not going to meditate in the morning anymore. I'm going to start meditating in the evening.
Melissa Monte (14:12):
And instead I'm going to go on long walks or when I'm trying to get myself out of a downward spiral, then that looks like looking inward for me, where I'm sitting in stillness and I'm asking myself, well, what's going to work for me today. And because I've been doing this for so long, I have a lot of tools under my belt that I can call too. So I actually keep a physical list - I call it my power list - and it's all the things that help me feel better. That help to light me up when I'm feeling down. And so that can be meditation. It can be a long walk. It can be eating a nourishing meal. It can be movement or dancing or singing, and I'll scan through those and ask, well, what is going to help me in this moment? And it changes day by day. When I was starting out with finding these practices, it was a lot, a lot more repetition than it is now because I had been turning off my inner voice for so long, overpowering it, ignoring it, that it was really hard to discern between that inner wisdom or the, my intuition or my inner voice, my inner guidance versus my programming or the negative thought habits that I had created, or let spiral out of control over the years.
Melissa Monte (15:31):
I really look at the internal state of my mind as being a series of habits. And so if I'm looking, if I'm looking inward and I'm just hearing negativity, then I, I know that I've just been letting that habit run rampant too long without disrupting it. And so there's been a lot of work to be done in not identifying with that loudest voice in my head and trusting that if it's not from a place of love, if it's not from a place of peace, then that is not my inner wisdom - that's just a negative thought habit. And so not identifying with that, just recognizing it for what it is - the mind's purpose is to create thoughts and I don't want to keep that one so I let it float out. I use visualization for this. I use maybe thinking of a more positive mantra to replace it with.
Melissa Monte (16:22):
So the replacement method and whatever is needed in that moment, I, I kind of feel into, but like I said, that took a lot of work to be able to feel into it and trust what I'm feeling. And that might be why it took me from age 22 to age 30 to sort of get a handle on my own healing, but it it's work that was so worth it because as the years go on, as I continuously practice, I get better and better. I get closer to this guidance. And I find that the more I actually act on the guidance immediately, instead of ignoring it for another day and let it becoming this, let it become this nagging voice. Then the more often I actually do feel guided even in the smaller moments. So for me, it's just a lot of tuning into myself and asking, what do I need in this moment? And trusting that what comes to mind first is the thing that's going to help.
Josephine Atluri (17:17):
And I love everything that you shared with us, Melissa, because all of those things are just so important, especially, you know, that, that piece about tuning in and asking ourselves the hard questions and, and coming from that place and knowing, and practicing, and really just practicing which things we want to let, in which thoughts we want to let in and which ones we can just let go. And you're right. It really doesn't happen overnight. It's definitely something that you have to keep working at and then over time, it starts to just happen without too much effort, I've found. And so you mentioned earlier that you now have a seven month old, so congratulations again. So thrilled for you. I would love to hear about this transition. You know, it's a different role that you're wearing in your life and it's a new season for you and how this new role has affected or, you know, caused transition in your life approach and your mindset.
Melissa Monte (18:21):
I think this has actually been so good for me on a ton of different levels. On one hand, it's one of the hardest things I've ever done. I've only really ever had to live for myself before and now I've got this little guy that relies on me for everything. But it's interesting because I have talked about how a lot of my healing has come from developing new habits and creating structure and routine. But like I said, in the beginning of all this, I had these more rigid routines and then I'd fall out of them and I'd beat myself up. And so now I'm a lot more flexible with myself, but I didn't realize how much I still was inflexible with certain, with certain parts of my routine. So like if I didn't do yoga for one day, I would feel so thrown off. And, and or if I didn't have the morning drink that I normally make, which is like this functional mushroom chai tea thing that I make every day, you know, for me, that was just like this little reward.
Melissa Monte (19:25):
But I started to realize if I missed that, I would just be thrown into a funk. And, and it sounds silly, but it was just like these little routines, these little structures were almost holding me up in a way, well, having a child, I realized like I can't keep structure for the life of me at this given moment. Some people have babies that are like, okay, they nap at 8:30 AM and then at 11:00 AM, no, my baby does whatever he wants, no matter how hard I try he tends to be pretty happy through it all, thankfully, but I have to be as flexible as he is for both of our sanity's. And so it's allowed me to relax into myself even more like I don't have a lot of time to do yoga, or if I do a lot of times, it's him sitting next to me and he might interrupt and start crying.
Melissa Monte (20:21):
So I've got to stop and breastfeed midway through my flow. And before, if somebody would have interrupted my yoga session, I'd be like, oh my gosh, like my whole day. And now it's just like, okay, this is what we're doing now. And so I've replaced it with different things that work for both of us. Like I go on a long walk every day, like, like usually between five and 10 miles, and it's one of my favorite things to do, and I live in the mountains, so I'll just like be exploring the forest. And and I, and so not only am I listening to what I need, I'm, I'm tuning in to him at the same time. And he's a part of me. And so it really does feel like it's unlocking this other part of my intuition or this other part of myself that I didn't know was there.
Melissa Monte (21:06):
I also realized that, you know, I've built a life on top of, or despite all of my past failures, mistakes, whatever you want to call them - I know arguably there are no mistakes - what I went through did lead me to where I am now. However, that doesn't always mean I fully cognitively believe that. There are times when I'm like, man, if I wouldn't have wasted those years or man, if I wouldn't have given up this for that guy or whatever it be, then maybe I'd be even in an even better place than I am now, but, but it's foolish to think that way and so now I can, I really only have what I have in this moment. And so coming back to what I was saying before is that I'm tuning into myself, I'm tuning into my baby and I'm just being so much more flexible with who I am now, what I expect from myself and you know, how the day goes.
Melissa Monte (22:03):
And instead of keeping to some expectation or of, of who I am of who I am now, I am, I'm sort of building it moment to moment, if that makes sense. And, and I used to sort of think that, you know, maybe I built a house of cards on top of all this stuff. If only people knew me back then, would they still see me the way they see me now because they've only known me as the host of Mind Love. And so I didn't really realize that that doubt existed so much until now I'm stepping into this mother role and I'm seeing myself as a mother and I'm seeing myself as this responsible person who can not only take care of herself, but also take care of somebody else and build a family and I think it's just starting to create even a bigger beliefs about myself that I didn't, that's replacing these seeds of doubt that I didn't know were there until I started to build on top of them. If that makes sense.
Josephine Atluri (23:07):
Yeah, no, it totally does make sense. And I love hearing from new parents especially because you get to hear an, you know, hear an anecdote, but also in your voice, it's such a transformational process and it really is so enriching, especially when you can tune in like you're doing and realizing, you know, the benefits and also seeing how, you know, you need to reevaluate certain things in life. So your examples are on, you know, flexibility and expectations and rigidity. And it's so true that, you know, parenthood definitely challenges those things and it kind of forces us to, to bend a little bit and in a good way, you know, it's, it's a great sort of experiment and an experience to see where we can allow ourselves to transform in order to, to now coexist with this new human in our lives. So I'm, you know, I just, I loved hearing how that's transformed and or how that has sort of evolved for you. I could keep picking your brain about your experiences. You have such a wealth of knowledge on everything that you went through and how you're, you know, paying it forward. I'd love to find out from you your gratitude for today. It's, you know, one of my favorite ways of shifting my mindset and shifting from perhaps a state of negativity into positivity.
Melissa Monte (24:43):
Today I mean, well, every day for the last seven months I feel like the thing I'm most grateful for is my baby. I'm just so obsessed with him. But and, and just not even just him, but who I am when I'm with him and what he brings out in me. And so he is my number one, but I am also very grateful for nature today. I went on a 10 mile walk this morning and I just went across the street into the woods and I was just exploring and I was, you know, showing my baby different things in nature, the rocks and the leaves and it just feels so healing. And, you know, in the last year, there's so many times where I can, there's been moments of feeling hopeless. Like, are we actually gonna create change? What's going to come out of this?
Melissa Monte (25:35):
And, and you know, it can get pretty dark if I spend too much time in the news. And so what I've been doing is stepping out of that and, and going by that quote I mentioned before about just being completely immersed in what's right here and right now, and even going on long walks, you know, you can find your mind wandering. And sometimes it's great. Sometimes it helps me unlock creativity for the next thing I'm going to do in my business. Sometimes it, all of a sudden I'll have an epiphany, but in other moments I'm like, okay, well, I'm ruminating now. And so I try to watch what I'm even doing on those long walks. And instead when I notice myself ruminating and we're feeling overwhelmed with the future or feeling regretful of the past, then I just come back to this moment and I try to just look at what's right in front of me, like, wow, look, how many birds are in the sky. Look how blue the sky is. Like, look how crystal clear the lake looks today. And so having that just right at my fingertips, where I live right now is, has been really lighting me up lately.
Josephine Atluri (26:37):
Well, that's wonderful. That's such a, a wonderful perspective on how to approach things and I love your gratitudes and I'm in the same boat as you, I'm completely obsessed with our newborns right now as well. So, you know, how can our listeners today connect with you, Melissa? I'd love for them to learn more about you and your podcast.
Melissa Monte (27:00):
Well, my website is mindlove.com and I have a podcast called Mind Love that you can find on any podcast platform. And I'm also on Instagram @mindlovemelissa. And finally, I send a short little note of inspiration every weekday morning that I call the Morning Mind Love that over 10,000 people subscribe to and they're always posting about it and sharing it because it's just a great way to start the day with a positive focus, and you can sign up for that right on the homepage of mindlove.com or if you're out and about just text the word morning to 3, 3, 7, 7, 7.
Josephine Atluri (27:35):
Wonderful. Well, thank you so much. I encourage all the listeners to check out your podcast. I was a guest on there, and it's always such a great conversation - I love hearing all the other episodes. Thank you again, Melissa, for joining me on the show today and for sharing all of your experiences and all of your takeaways.
Melissa Monte (27:53):
Thank you!
Josephine Atluri (27:54):
Thank you for listening to today's episode of the Responding to Life podcast. For more info on today's guest, check out the episode summary. I'd love to connect with you more, so be sure to check out my website, respondingtolifepodcast.com for links to previous episodes, articles I've written and interviews I've done on mindfulness, meditation and infertility and parenting. You'll also find free video meditations on my site and on my YouTube channel, Josephine Atluri Meditation. If you'd like to book a one-on-one session with me, you can do so on the website. You can also follow me on Instagram @josephineratluri for daily inspiration and mindfulness tips. Finally, I'd love for you to join my Facebook groups, to connect with a supportive community and receive greater insight and how to incorporate mindfulness into your life. Check out the Mindful Parenting Group with Josephine Atluri or the Empowering Infertility group. Thanks again for tuning in today. I look forward to sharing more conversations with you on how to respond to life in a more mindful way.