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Jan. 27, 2022

143. Your Pathway to Freedom - Creating a Foundation for Health, Happiness, and Success with Ellen Palmer

How to leverage your time and energy to maximize fun, connectedness, health and success.

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How to leverage your time and energy to maximize fun, connectedness, health and success.

 

ABOUT ELLEN

Ellen Palmer is an award-winning Certified Holistic Health & Life Design Coach + COO and Co-Founder of Healing Meals Community Project.

Prior to launching her own successful businesses, she enjoyed a 10-year career in Sales and Marketing for one of the world’s premier insurers and Fortune 100 companies.

After leaving her corporate career to focus on her own wellbeing, Ellen created The Ideal Life Method, which has helped thousands of people transform their busy lives, take control of their health and happiness, and develop the skills to create lasting change for themselves, their families and in their businesses.

 

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Transcript

Can't have fun until the work is done is it doesn't help anybody. So I think that's the message that I want people to receive and do with it what you will. You're not helping anybody in that model. If you're not joyful, if you don't have love in your heart, if you're not feeling generous, if you're not able to receive because your heads down, nobody wins.

 

Welcome, everybody. Today I'm excited to have Ellen Palmer with us to talk about how you can leverage time and energy to maximize fund, connectiveness, health and success in your life. Thanks so much for joining us today.

 

Ellen, I'm so excited to be here. Thank you for having me on.

 

Absolutely. Ellen is an award winning certified Holistic health and life design coach and the COO and co founder of the Healing Meals Community Project. She has launched, shown successful businesses. She enjoyed a ten year career in sales and marketing for a Fortune 100 company. And after leaving her corporate career to focus on her own well being, she created the Ideal Life method, which we're going to talk a little bit about that. And the other work she does. And when I first want to do is just share with you all listing one of the things that really excited me to bring Ellen on the show is sometimes you talk to people and they're very much in the work space or the left brain space or the Western wisdom space.

 

How do you want to word that? And sometimes people are they're in the right brain and they're in the Eastern wisdom or the heart and the spirit. And Ellen is one of those people that is engaging all of those areas, and that's something I think that's so important for us. And so if you wouldn't mind to share a little bit Ellen about your story, what got you started and how you help people?

 

Sure. So I'll go back to the beginning. I was always a little bit sick growing up. I had these random things that no one could identify until I God a little bit older. So I was in the Western traditional Western medicine protocols, prescription surgeries and procedures, and I never really felt better. But I had a high level of success. So I did well in school. I went on and had a corporate career, and the whole time I just didn't feel well. I was having seizures and they had anxiety and depression.

 

And I had a number of different surgeries and procedures to help with some kind ecological issues and some immune issues. And it was when my first son was born with some digestive issues that it caused me to stop and just say there's got to be a better way. I've done everything I can do, and I don't feel well yet. I'm having success, but I'm not able to enjoy it because I feel so awful every day. And now my poor son is going through the same thing.

 

So he had his first surgery at two months on his two month birthday. And they said, Absolutely not. Is this poor little boy again suffer like I have? So I just started going rogue. I was really curious when I started research integrative functional alternative medicine and found just incredible insight there with some phenomenal people to help me see that traditionally in medicine, folks are trained to diagnose symptoms and help you with symptom relief. But no one was getting at the root cause no one was looking lower in the world that I was living in anyway.

 

And so I did a ton of research. I brought it to my physician and I said, you know, I think I know what's been wrong with me all these years. Can you help me heal? And she said, I can't. It's not my science. And it was this massive light bulb that went off because I'm a science. Keep two. And I went, You're right. It's not the science of the medicine that I have been trying to implement to feel better in my life. And at the same time, I always had this passion for business.

 

In high school, I God to do some really cool business things and in College as well. And then I started working the day after I graduated. And I just have always had this passion for growing things and creating things. And so my passion for business, combined with my passion for feeling my very best and helping people do that, has just brought me to where I am today as a holistic health and life coach with some training and some feet on the ground experience. I've been doing this since 2008, and I feel just absolutely blessed to be able to live the lessons that I need to live every day by teaching others and helping a lot of people create a huge sense of freedom in their lives because of it.

 

So I feel like it's the most rewarding thing I've ever done. And I'm actually grateful for the discomfort I had growing up because it led me to so many unique truths that it hasn't been mainstream. It's becoming more and more mainstream, but it just wasn't. And there's just such God information and skill building out there for all of us to feel our absolute best and live our ideal.

 

Awesome. Thank you. There's an idea I've heard you've probably heard it, too, that if you look around nature, most animals are abundant with energy, unless, of course, they're sick or they've been hurt. But they don't need five hour energy drinks. They don't need coffee to get going in the morning. There's this natural balance, and they seem to intuitively know what works for them. Now. They still have to work. A lion has to run to catch its prey or whatever the animal is. But there's not the struggle.

 

There's not the stress. Or at least it doesn't appear to be in that sense, of. Well, I'm not sure about this. Or am I doing this right, or things such as depression or anxiety, where we question ourselves instead of simply being can you explain a little bit? What is it that people come to you for? Because I've heard this term before and sometimes even the word holistic over the last 25 years lease that I've read can mean so many different things to different people, depending on how they use it.

 

What does it look like when somebody comes to you? And how do you help them?

 

That's a great question. People usually come to me when they've been everywhere else and they just aren't feeling better or their business just isn't successful or their relationships just aren't where they want them to be. So they've tried other things they've read, they've done some workshops, or maybe they've done some reading, but they haven't been able to find that key that opens the lock for them. And so they come to me because maybe they're feeling just incredible low energy and they might have some digestive issues. They might not, but they just are direct.

 

God, they don't know why they've had every test in the book and they should feel great or they have been and worked with different business coaches, and they just aren't feeling the success that they want to feel in their business. And they've depleted their energy store while they're building their business. They Wade left sort of themselves in the way background of who they are and what they're doing. And so when someone finds me, they're really eager for change. And so someone asked me this question once in the interview because I feel like a ton of pressure, and they say no, because that was exactly my journey.

 

I had been everywhere. I had had optin surgeries and prescriptions and procedures and worked with life coaches and business coaches. And I still wasn't feeling it. So it doesn't feel like pressure at all. It feels so lovely just to have conversation with folks, to really, really pinpoint, to really get in there and understand and hear what someone is wanting to live. How do you want to feel every day do you want what kind of conversations do you want to have? What do you want to have in your bank account?

 

Is there an impact that you want to make in the world? What is it that you feel in your body? We're so busy getting things done and crossing things off our list and feeling that that satisfies this God part of our brain, which is get it done. Success is getting a lot of things done and getting paid well for it. Okay, yes. But at what expense? And so helping people really quiet down and share their deepest truth best they're aware of it of what they want to experience in their life is my greatest joy professionally and then unraveling that.

 

So I've God, this weird talent of being really really God, not untangle. So if you had the worst not in the world, you could hand it to me, and somehow I would break it all apart and I would sort it out. And that's what happens in health and life coaching. Holistically. We look at the whole person, how are they sleeping? What are they eating? How are they expressing themselves, or do they have the ability to express themselves? Do they have a clear understanding of what their magic is in the world?

 

And most people don't, you know, I could talk for hours and hours just on this one topic that we all are in businesses, right? We're entrepreneurs, and you might have a level of success, but do you really know what fuels your heart? Do you know what brings you joy? So that's a part of Holistic healing physically, too, and helping people understand what's at the root of why they're not feeling God and what's in the gap between how they're feeling and how they want to feel and just filling that with whatever they need.

 

It might be food sensitivity testing to understand is their energy and issue because of what they're eating is do they have a nutritional deficiency? Is there's some science there's testing for that? Is there some some leftover thought, belief and conditioning from when we're younger, which we can't all help but have that's preventing us from feeling comfort in our body, feeling a God energy alignment and being able to express that either in our relationships or in our businesses. It's if you look at it, it's understanding what's in the gap between where we are and where we want to be and how to really create a very unique blueprint by person for how to achieve the ideal.

 

So long way of saying is like in Holistic health, we look at the entire person's experience and who they want to be here and we move forward. So it's a different model than therapy, which I also think is very important, which I've engaged in throughout the course of my life, where there's a lot of look back. We use the path to inform the present, to create the future.

 

That's awesome. You know, there's there's so many things to me there interesting about what's going on in the entrepreneurial world, since online courses, online marketing, have PC sort of center stage in a lot of areas. I'm an online course creator. One of the different things, or maybe one of the things that's been amplified is this promise of this quick wealth or even a systematic wealth or formula. Well, I'm going to give you a formula. You're going to follow this formula that's going to and work. We know in just about any other part of our life, marriage, raising kids, being successful at sports.

 

There are certainly best practice, and we want to be aware of those. But I think there's not formulas simply because there are so many variables. I try to explain to people. For example, my father is a really successful insurance salesman in a company, and I'm nowhere near as God at what he does as he is. But he is truly he's a PC or to enter in his talents, which ends up making him kind of a poor teacher because he's blind to all the other strengths he has that others don't have that he assumes are part of the mix.

 

And when I see so many entrepreneurs struggling, we know the high failure rate depends on whose stature, but it's pretty high failure rates for entrepreneurs. And I find so often they're just focused on this one area and of the business itself, and they've left out their personal happiness. Are they excited about it? Are they eating well? Are they getting God sleep? Did they already have energy in the first place, like so many other variables? And when you realize there's so many more than at least it would perhaps adjust our expectations, say, oh, wow, you really kind of need to be prepared for this to where you only have that one or two extra variables if you're starting your business, whereas if you haven't figured out, for example, how to communicate with people in life and how to get along with people and how to operate in the business world, even in the corporate setting, where there's a lot more restrictions to then say, I'm just going to start a business out of nowhere is very unrealistic.

 

How do you help people look at or actually more in a different way? What are some of the most common blind spots for people? And I'll go specifically to entrepreneurs, and that's a huge part of our audience. What are some of those blind spots where people say, and it's frustrating when you're like, I'm doing what I was told to do. I'm following these things. I can see you're smiling like this frustration, but I'm doing it. I'm working hard host, I'm grind. I'm doing just what I was told.

 

I'm following the directions and not just I'm being a God boy. Like, Please be God to me. But really, I'm confused. Why isn't it working? What do you find people running into that maybe are those other obstacles that they're not seeing, even though they might be executing the game plan, the action plan to the letter?

 

It's so important that we understand that we are a mind, body and the spirit all the time. You can't separate that. So who you are, who you are. So the biggest blind spot is have you taken the time to get to know yourself? And it's this big, scary thing, except that it's not. There is a blueprint for getting to know yourself. We just don't teach it, right? We teach math and science and history and keyboarding and coding. But you have thoughts and feelings in one human body that you have for your entire life.

 

I mean, it is a valuable, valuable, valuable asset and we don't teach people how to work with those. Like, how do you understand? How do you communicate? Like you're saying, how do you feel your body appropriately so you can have a clear mind and make great decisions and have the energy to really connect with people and pause and listen to them. We don't teach people how to get to know themselves and how to truly care for the whole person. It's like, I think this notion of building a house like, we think a house is wood.

 

Like, oh, look, they built a house there's. The wood. A house is God nails, glass, concrete, all of these things God into the mix. And the most important thing that creates a solid home in a sustainable home that you'll have forever and ever and ever and ever and ever is a solid foundation. And so I think it's just so important that we stop and ask ourselves, what is the foundation of who we are? And we are human. So our foundation is we are a mind, body, and spirit, just like a house requires all of those things to put it together and keep it whole.

 

You have to take care of that over the years. But we also have to know how to take care of our mind, our body and our spirit. How do we do that? We're never taught. And so we end up by feeling like it's not for us. Success is not for us. I'm doing all the things I was supposed to do, and apparently it's not for me or I'm just not God enough. And so I feel like a failure. And energy creates energy. So failure energy creates more sense of failure, and then we just end up by being totally depleted and they just completely reliant God our energy to cut it out and to push even harder to achieve the success when really, that model is so flawed, because where are you in that entire equation?

 

You know, where is your physical health? Where is your emotional health? Where is your relationship health? How do you get to feel joy in any of that? And I've done that model, by the way, and I can tell you firsthand, it creates sickness. It creates a ton of anxiety and depression. And so a different model, I'm not saying better, but a different model is really learning the skill to know yourself and to take care of yourself. I do this exercise with corporate groups when I'm speaking, and I ask them to start with 168 hours in the week.

 

It's like, okay, we all have 168 hours. What do you need to focus on in order to be successful and happy? And there isn't one person that's ever said I need to take care of my health. Never. In the course of these 13 years, not one person has stopped to say that. They're like, oh, I couldn't live without my computer. I couldn't live without my sales skills. I couldn't live without my family. They're so supportive, and all those things really matter for sure. But if you don't take care of the one machine engine, beautiful body in mind and spirit that you have for your entire life, you're never going to have anything else.

 

So teaching people about how to fuel their body, God to fuel their mind and how to feel their spirit is what I do. I get to teach first God to learn it and unravel the model that I had, which is I just have to push harder. I just have to work more hours. I just have to meet more people. I just have to go to more networking events. I had to look at that model and realize that that was not working. And then I had to learn the very important personal skill of getting to know myself and how to take care of myself.

 

And so what do you need to eat? When do you need to eat? How do you need to eat? What is your relationship with food? It's not hard. It's actually it seems so complicated because we make it complicated, but it's super simple. We just need the blueprint. How do we understand the thoughts that we're having all day, every day? How do we understand our feelings and what they really mean when I learn to fire my mind? I did really well because all the thoughts that we're thinking are mostly not true.

 

So how do you bypass the mind so that you can really land into your own truth, not just information and statistics and knowledge? How do you know your own truth? And how do you manage your emotion so you can really connect with people? And then how do you feel your spirit? Your spirit is your connection to your purpose is our why. It's your experience. It's your intention and energy. It's not who. It's really the science of energy. It's quantum physics. It's like, how do you really understand while you're doing what you're doing in the first place in any area of your life, whether it's exercise or connecting in a relationship or getting a new job or taking on a new client.

 

Why are you doing that? So it's helping people pause and really understand those three intricately woven, beautifully connected elements of the whole.

 

It's so interesting to me that specifically, in the United States, we are a country founded by people who practice Christianity, who believe in something bigger than themselves, some divine force. And yet we're so I guess because we've been burnt by what can be done with religion, the dark side of what can be done by shady people, not the religion itself, not the way it was designed, but the reality of what can happen, that we stay away from these conversations. So the most we can say is mission or vision or your why or your purpose, which, to me, is fine.

 

I get it. I understand there's a shadow side that's come out. But as if there's not a shadow side in any other dimension of life, such as five hour any drinks and coffee for our physical dimension or crash diets or trying obsessively to be thin that we know also manifest in different ways. What I find so interesting, though, is if we consider our body, our mind and our spirit. And then I've heard some people say, no body, heart, mind, spirit, almost to just specifically identify physical, mental, emotional, spiritual.

 

And when you look at most of what Western approach to work is is its body mind. My mind has an idea, and I'm going to execute how my heart feels about it to almost that more emotional sense. I'll trick my heart or I'll tell it to get over it and my spirit. Well, you know what? I don't know. And this is not set as a criticism. I've done this. We've all done this well, I'll give a little over here, but, God, you need to make the money or whatever it is.

 

And it feels like we're missing something. To your point, we're selling ourselves short, and it's nobody's doing this to us because also now, at least. And this is an opinion. But once you reach a certain age, at least in the United States, if you have access to Internet is I mean, the information is out there. So if you're seeking at least it's a lot easier to get your hands on information. But to your point, a lot of people don't even know what it is they could be looking for.

 

Like you said, I I tried the success really hard, and then I stopped because it didn't work. And a friend of mine once shared an analogy, if you were a swimmer and your upper body was completely, like 99%, you're completely developed in your upper body. You're strong. And let's say your lower body, your legs, your leg strength was, let's say 50%. You're not very strong. You'll have people like that. But then they work on their arms more and their upper body more. You say, no, there's only so far you're going to get there's.

 

Only so far you're going to get, like you said, by going to the next networking meeting by sending another email. And there's this other part that I think more and more people are realizing. And if you're looking for it, you can see it. And if you're not, you can't see it. Usually it's in the eyes. It's that aliveness versus the zombies. And that's not meant to be ugly or put anybody down. We all have different times where we're driven or whatever it is. But you see people and people say, Why is that person so much more successful, this other person and someone like Jay Shetty, I just don't know if you know Jay Shetty is you look at him and his energy or Brendon Burchard.

 

There are certain people who are Tony Robbins or Oprah. There's this light that's going on in these people's eyes that there's something more that's being stirred there. It's not just execution. God, I think the biggest chEllenge is people are afraid to lose that. So right now, there's probably people listing this saying, okay, maybe at the moment I think it's something external. It's my family's, the problem. My job is the problem. And you and I both. That's a whole other conversation of okay, maybe the problem is internal.

 

But if I'm thinking I'm saying, okay, well, I'll assume for a second because let's say I've done enough management theory to say, okay, it's not my team. It's probably me. I'm the leader. And so I say, okay, I'll entertain this, since it's, of course, safer for me to not just blame everybody lash out on everybody. I can do that later. I'll first say that okay, maybe it's me, but there's this danger. I remember once my mom had suggested I God to a session of therapy, and I don't know if she saw something or not, but I was like, 1819, and I'm talking to the therapist, just generic stuff.

 

There was nothing, at least, that I'm aware of going on in my life. My mom is very intuitive, so that's why I'm not sure I have to ask her. I play Beach Vol ball, and I mentioned my rage sometimes on the valuable God, and how I tap into it and how I get ticked off. And it would fuel me. Or at least I thought that's how it worked. And he said, Well, are you willing let God, that said no. I'll become a lesser player because I only have the ability to motivate myself if I got mad because I felt sorry for the person.

 

If I beat them by too many points, it's really weird, like head dynamic. Instead of just saying, I'm going to go out and play my best volleyball, and if it happens to be that I beat them 150, so be it. They're out there competing. They're choosing to be. And if I lose 150, so be it. But all this stuff going on here prevented something that was just very natural. Just, dude, just go play volleyball. What is it? What do you tell that person that says, okay, Ellen, I'm open to considering this because there are other areas that are kicking my butt my life.

 

I'm bickering with my spouse. I'm not making time for my kids or whatever it is. But I'm scared because remember, and perhaps is a male. I'm tapped a little bit into the mail side, but of course, women are also providers. I'm scared that I'm going to lose my power, my mojo, and all this stuff I've worked for because maybe somewhere, but I'm 15 years, 20 years into my career. There's a lot at stake. How do you help somebody? Look at first of all, what are the current cost of them not changing?

 

And then say what's a safe way for me to perhaps address this without risking everything, because it feels to so many people and I talk to them, they're too scared to make a shift.

 

I always ask people, do you want to be committed to fear, or do you want to be committed to ease? And it's a tricky question, because those of us that are wired for success, it's not easy. So we think, like, will that models flaw? I guess I'm committed to fear. We're like, okay, let's just look at that. What are you afraid of? What are you afraid of? What are all of the things that you're telling yourself you either can't have aren't capable of, et cetera, because none of it is true.

 

But unless you're willing to ask yourself what you're committed to, you're never going to move forward. Right? People talk about stress in the same way. It's like, well, stress is my edge. If I lose my stress, I'm never going to be successful, because that's what motivates me. Like, okay, what is your fear there? There's a deep commitment to fear in that instance. It's like, well, I'm not going to live up. If I don't have that pressure, I am not going to be successful. Okay, well, then let's look at that.

 

Is that absolutely true? No, not necessarily. It's just looking at your life differently and saying, okay, what are all the variables that contribute to my earning potential? What are all the variables that contribute to my peace and ease and my relationships? What are all the variables that contribute to my energy? Let's God there. And so no one wants to talk about sleeping more, because that's a lazy model. And this is the land of opportunity. The United States tagline is a land of opportunity. So if you're not going out there and hustling for every opportunity, you're a failure.

 

So we gear our whole commitment towards opportunity, opportunity, opportunity at all costs. So I'm going to come back like, do you want to be committed to fear that you're not going to take advantage of these opportunities and have this wealth that you're looking for, or are you willing to look at the ease model? So the ease model looks like you were born a human. You are not a calculator. You are not a computer. You are not a dump truck. You are a human. So what does it take to have your engine thrive?

 

You need to fuel your body with real food, with what it was designed to take in, not Franken food. False God, your body was designed for plants, animals, and water. The end. That's all it was designed for. So if you're consuming all of these other things, it is going to break. Your body will break. And what that looks like is anger, frustration, anxiety, depression, low energy. And then we get into chronic conditions and disease. But that's how it mostly shows up. And we don't pay attention because you're like whatever.

 

I can blow that off. So let's come back to the Ease model. If you want to have success and freedom and joy and abundance, it is required that you fuel your life. Are you eating what your body was designed for? Are you sleeping? Entrepreneurs want to PC sleep up. I can do it in 3 hours. I can sleep 4 hours, and I can be massively successful. Okay, at what cost? So the fear model is I can't sleep or I won't be successful. The Ease model is the more I sleep, the more my brain rest.

 

I have a chance to reset my metabolism. All of those dead cells that are broken can leave my body can generate new cells. I have a clearer perspective. I have more energy to engage and connect. Incredible. So not by sleeping less. It's by giving your body what it needs. Remember, you're human. The Ease model requires that you rest it. Then I look at how we're using our time to be able to understand our relationship with time. If you're not willing to take care of the one thing that allows you to earn a paycheck, book a new speaking gig, create a new partnership, get married, walk on the beach, have children, partner, PC, ride your bike, whatever it is that you enjoy, you are in the fear model.

 

So taking time for putting you into your calendar, creating some space for silence so you can quiet the noise. We're here. We're living from here up in our brain. We're in our head all the time to your point where in the Ease model, we listen to our body when it's exhaust. And we say, you know what? The law of diminishing returns States that even though I might put more effort in, I'm not getting anything out. So how do I come back and use my time to put me on the calendar to relax, to connect, to feel peace, to feel a sense of ease, to tap into how I'm feeling, what's going on in my heart?

 

Am I really aligned here? Do I even want this partnership? Do I even want this new deal that's going to cause my business to take a huge left turn when I wanted to go right? If we're not using our time for us to tap into those things and to fuel ourselves, we're working a thousand times harder than we need to be. Ask me how I know I did that. I did that. And so the Ease model of successes. Yes. Our tagline is a land of opportunity, and there is such abundance, we just can't see it because we're heads down like I've been taught to do it this way.

 

This is the only way I know how to do it. And because I'm not achieving the success that I thought, I am obviously broken. No, there's tons fuel, sleep, drink water, pause, feel and learn how to set up your calendar so that you have a healthy balance of work and taking care of yourself. That model has open the flood gates in terms of opportunity and connection and a sense of freedom. In my business, where I'm not feeling like I used to work 88 hours per week, I literally did the math.

 

Like, really, this is ridiculous. Is it 80? Is it 65? Is it 90? Like there's 168 how many of them are using to work consistently? 85. Plus, I was changed to my desk in my laptop. It didn't help. I wasn't more successful. I wasn't. I make more money and feel a greater sense of freedom and have the opportunity to live in the world the way that I want because I take care of all those other things. Those are the priority. And then the opportunities align because I'm tapped into how I want to live and how I want to feel.

 

And so there's just this natural alignment. It's not just God woo where I'm just manifesting. Yes, I do manifest, but I tap into my heart. I tap into my spirit, my energy, my belief system. And then I allow myself to pay attention when things are coming my way that are in total alignment and when they're not. I.

 

Think that's so huge. There's so many things you said there that are worth commenting on. First of all, the idea of sometimes simultaneously trying to be unique, but trying to copy others. So somebody else did it. How do I get to be unique? Like, so and so you can't do what they did because then you're not unique. You remember, like in middle school kids, it's like, I'm a rebel. And here's my group of rebels that were all rebelling against conformed. It's like, okay, it's kind of a funny joke there.

 

The other thing is this really sort of sense of energy being something that again, I can decide how much energy my body is God have. I can make myself focus. I can make myself do these things. And I'm about to be 50. I still played Beach Wade on Fridays, and there's just kind of funny jokes. And our friends come down and they'll be like, how many games you played Wade? More on my 8th game. Like, at eight games, the ball might drop a foot in front of me, and I can't get it because I can't do what I used to do when I was 25.

 

This idea of what I'll retire later if you're younger. I mean, I'm only 49 and I God to tell you, I ain't God the energy that I did 20 years ago. And I do eat well, and I do get eight to 9 hours of sleep and whatnot. But this idea of, well, I'll get to my life later, obviously, in parenting. Well, the kids, if you're raising kids, they're only there for so long, usually, God willing, they eventually leave the house. And so you don't have forever.

 

So there's so many these things. And to me, it's just the difference between almost from a financial example constantly being one payment behind in your credit card, where you're always getting whacked with interest, because versus paying your credit card off every month, actually gaining on PC to 2% cash back bonus, even if you like. Of course, you go into that rap Hull of finances, but in essence, being on schedule, enjoying the whole process. And like you said, my God, there is so much abundance out there.

 

There's so many different ways to be successful. But our fear, at least for me, will drive you to make so many decisions that are poor, especially when you're overtired. And then why did this model that didn't work? We had to do this model. And now you're doing four models or five models with 20% of your effort, which by definition is you're already hosted. It's not going to happen and forget, even if you execute well, but even then, and I've done this. I've run multiple businesses at time, and there are new businesses.

 

Sometimes you can automate something like, okay, God, it down to sign. I can run three to 4 hours a week. That's different than okay, starting five projects or four projects at a time. You see so many people that here I'm going to put 20 hours into this one and 20 hours on this and 20 Thi and 20 of this. And so 80 hours, and I've got four part time jobs, and one of them is going to hit. And again, if we're a computer that can be plugged in the wall, and if that truly the mechanism is without any lifespan, which even life bulbs or computers still have a life span, you say, okay, that makes sense.

 

But the happiness, the joy, the things you can't fake that get people engaged with you. I just see that that's not possible. I'm going to ask us to jump a little sideways on something in the conversation, because one of the things that to me, it's not only a criteria I use by all, but it's something that when it jumps out at me, when somebody is involved in really making something happen for other people. And you and I talked a little bit about your Healing Meals community project.

 

When I see people that have the energy, it also indicates me, okay, this person, in some sense, has abundance or overflow of time, energy, compassion, money, whatever it is where they're able to do that. Would you mind sharing a little bit about that project and how it came about? And maybe. And I don't even know the story. This, did your shift of being able to have more balance in life allow you to do that? Was this something you did when you were working 80 hours or how did that come about?

 

Yeah, for sure. To your point, I want to circle back to this and I'll leave it in. Everyone is following someone else's model, and that's okay, as long as you are uniquely you. In course, creation in a podcast in a blog like be uniquely you because it's so magical that all of your life experiences came together so that you can share that. So trying to replicate someone else's business is not going to work for you unless you are uniquely you in that model. So in my life, what is uniquely need?

 

I suffered growing up like I had all of these really random things. I never felt God in my body. I had such digestive distress. I had heart stuff. I had headaches, Wade, these weird seizures. I just had a lot of weird stuff. I lot of gynecological stuff, and that has served me. So that was a part of a flash through my corporate career, which led to my consulting career, which led to my entrepreneurial career. It built three, four, if you count. Corporate built four businesses. And my unique experience having health chEllenges and finding my way to a better model has been infused in every single thing that I've done that I've been successful at.

 

So I want to just pause on that. Everything I've been successful at has incorporated my journey to healing physically, emotionally, and spiritually. So it's uniquely me. So when I'm developing courses, I infuse that if I'm doing speaking events, I infuse all of me into that. And so Healing Meals Community project is just something that I'm wildly passionate about. I feel so grateful that I God to be a part of this. And so we're an organization. We're just five years old now, and we make meals for families that are going through a health crisis.

 

And our chefs are teenagers. So we're a food is medicine protocol, and we're a youth development program. And that, for me, is the absolute intersection of joy and wisdom and freedom and compassion in success. I just when I was growing up, I was a member of Junior Achievement because I have this thirst for business. And so I had this whole model of empowerment as a youth as a teenager. So that's always stuck with me. And I've always tried to give back to younger folks. I have a number of them in my coaching practice.

 

But to be able to create an entire organization focused on the gifts and talents and magic of young people is so rich in so many different ways. It's so nourishing for my soul, but it's so nourishing for a community paired with the food is medicine protocol. So I got well, because I changed the way I was fueling my one body. So practically everything I was eating was causing a massive disruption in my body because I wasn't filling it with real food or I was filling it with food that was real, but my body was offended by.

 

And so changing what I feel my body with God me. Well, it boosted my energy. All of my issues cleared up. I was able to come off of so many different medications. I stopped having surgeries. And so food is medicine with youth empowerment is just the most beautiful integration I have. And that came from all of my other experiences. I'm 54 now, and we launched this five years ago. So it wasn't even 50 yet. And it just was this beautiful combination. And what it's also unique about this model is I didn't do it alone.

 

So in all of my other businesses that I've started, I've done them alone. And as any solopreneur knows, I can't even say the word solopreneur knows it is blood, sweat and tears at the cost of everything if you let it. And that was the model I knew. And so that's what I did. And what's so beautiful about this has been so healing because I started it with a partner and two other founders. And together we just built and collaborated and learned and grew together. I've grown a thousand fold in terms of my leadership skills and abilities by being in partnership in such collaboration as we build out this model.

 

In the ripple effect of this model, it's exponential in its return to the community and everyone that's involved in it. It's a very healing place. And we've served 77,000 meals to date, and we just moved into a new location. So the opportunity to do 40 or 50,000 meals just in this one year. So we feel really grateful. And I love the model. It's just an incredible way to do business as a nonprofit and see the ripple effect of kindness and nourishment in the world.

 

Wow. Congratulations for that. And thank you for doing that. That's awesome. Yeah. One of the other things you and I talked about when we were in the pre interview, there was something that I have this note here. I'm pretty sure you said this. It's a powerful statement. We were talking about the idea that the collateral damage of not including you and your ideal life is huge. What have you seen? And what does that look like for somebody who's saying, hey, am I including me in my life or not?

 

What does that look like for your clients? Let's say the before versus the after. Hey, I'm not versus after. Yes, I am. Here's what it looks like. And here's what I now have that I didn't have before.

 

Yeah. I think the collateral damage for folks that I work with is disease. It's chronic conditions. It's addiction. It's broken heart. It's a lot of relationship trauma. It's bankruptcy. The collateral damage of not having you in your business is emotional and physical bankruptcy at times. And I don't mean for that to sound so dramatic, but if you look at you, get this one life like, God willing, it's 88 years long. But not to your point. Earlier life is only happening now. So if you don't include you, there's no guarantee that there's going to be you and Holistic health.

 

We talk about something. You know this is going to sound. I'll let you all decide how you receive this. But do you want to live longer or do you want to die longer? And so the Dia longer model is success at all costs. You sacrifice personal joy. You sacrifice experiences because your heads down, working in your laptop where you're on planes or whatever else, and you don't ever actually get to feel what you want to feel. And when you're looking back on your life, is that what you wanted?

 

If you only get one and the answer is no, that to me, is the ultimate collateral damage that I have for me. Wasted an opportunity to feel. All the joy, all the love, all the expansion, all the abundance, all the generosity that I want to feel. And this model, especially among entrepreneurs. And I am one. So I want you to know I'm not throwing stones at that glass house. I am the glass house and I have rocks inside and outside and that I can't have fun until the work is done is it doesn't help anybody.

 

So I think that's the message that I want people to receive and do with it what you will. You're not helping anybody in that model. If you're not joyful, if you don't have love in your heart, if you're not feeling generous, if you're not able to receive because your hearts down, nobody wins. And I saw the collateral damage. My kids know me as a successful businesswoman who is always giving in the community and give so much. And I love that. And if I could have some time back with them and help them know for sure and they know they're like mom, you always think that you're the horrible mom.

 

I don't think I'm a horrible mom. I just wanted to experience it differently and I didn't, so I can't get that back. I don't want those regrets going forward. I don't the collateral damage I'm not willing to sacrifice anymore. I love my boys. I want to spend as much time with them as I can and be present doing it. And so the integration of all of what I've learned as a business woman, as a mother, as a wife, a partner, a friend, a daughter is life is happening now.

 

How do I want to live it now? And how can I set up my life so that I get to feel the fullness of that? How can I feel the best of my body? How can I spend my time creating experiences every day, not every week or month, or waiting for vacation, or waiting for the work to be done, or the kids to be in College, etc, etc, etc. We know how that goes. There's always something else. There's always something else. It's happening now. It's claiming it now.

 

It's developing the sole skills, as I call them, to really learn about yourself. Get in touch. It's not hard. We just haven't been taught it. And it's just skill. If you didn't know how to market, you would hire someone to market or you would learn how to market. You would take a class. The same is true for ourselves in terms of how to fuel ourselves and how to put ourselves on our calendar. It's just skill building, I guess.

 

Awesome. Alright, God, a few additional sort of rapid fire questions for you. So if you just share your kind of first thoughts on these, they don't have to be really long with just if you had your entire target audience in a room in a Stadium on a webinar, how it is, you could communicate to them and you could not just communicate to them, but give them one specific skill that they need most. What would that be?

 

How to raise their energy. And I don't mean through five hour energy drinks. I mean how to feel your energy and to expand it, because everything is energy. This PC, you, me, the money thing in our bank account, the houses to live in, it's all just energy and we have it at our access all the time. So how do we elevate our energy? So if energy creates energy and when the energy of fear or when the energy of being tired or in the energy of being angry or depressed or anxious, we're creating from that space, which just means we'll have more of that level of energy.

 

So if we can raise our vibration, we get to create from this place and feel higher vibrational result.

 

Awesome. Thank you. Second, what's the costly business mistake you ever made? And what did you learn from it?

 

Oh God, there's so much there. I'm going to use a specific example and there's a really positive outcome. So I invested in this program and because it was a large ticket item, I did what I was accustomed to doing and I learned how to do, which was to God it out. I spent three or four nights recording and rerecording and rerecording a webinar. At one point I was up to 73 times and I would not let myself go to sleep and I would just at all cost.

 

I was going to get this done because this was going to lead to so many other different things. It was so costly because I was exhausted. I injured my health, my immune system in the process. I frustrated my family to no end and it didn't. It just sent me back emotionally and spiritually and financially until I let that all God. And I said, okay, I just spent all my time doing that and I created this webinar. What do I want to do with it? And then I went out and I just started doing speaking events based on the material wasn't pre recorded.

 

I'm not a prerecorded person. If you sign up for one of my programs, you are getting me live, and I'm not knocking the model. It's just not who I am. Authentically. I like connecting with people. So I took that, and it turned into more revenue than I ever possibly could have generated with the recorded model. So I always feel like everything has incredible purpose. And what could have been the costliest mentally, physically and financially turned into a huge pivot in my business and just created such abundance for me in terms of my own energy and how I wanted to feel in my business as well.

 

That's awesome. My experience is similar. I did it the live method until I learned the recorded method. I'd been doing it for literally 15 years and then learned that I was wrong and then made less money than decided. Okay. Now I was right for me in the first place, regardless of everybody else. What's the best business decision you've ever made and how did you execute it?

 

Best business decision I ever made was getting over my fear and going after an actively intending speaking events. And so I'm I'm natural connecting with people. I love to be in one with people. I love hearing what people have to say. And I just I had to get over this limited thought or belief that it wasn't for me, that I just wasn't equipped for that. And everything I do now is so joyful because I get to engage with audiences either here with you on this podcast or for different PC event that I get booked for.

 

That's really just changed so much about my business. It's the best networking you can do. It's like opening the funnel of this is exactly who I am. This is my experience is what I have to share, and it just allowed me to scale the messaging around you, get this one life. Just what is your ideal live that it's different by person. So it's a much more scalable method for me to get this messaging out.

 

Awesome. What are you most excited about in your business right now?

 

In the healing meal business, we're really, really excited to develop even further diversity within our youth development program and working alongside our youth to continue to do that and to serve more meals. We have a huge opportunity to scale there and the collaborations that are coming together. Authentically. It's it's really fun for me. And then in my own business, it's this it's really engaging with audiences. I have a couple of group programs that I am really, really excited to roll out more frequently throughout the year. There's enough interest.

 

And so instead of doing it two times per year, we're going to be doing them quarterly. And then if the need arises, do them even more often. I'm excited to work with more people in the group setting.

 

Awesome. And what are you most excited about in your life right now?

 

I'm going through a really big transition. It was scary at first, and now I am really learning how to be unpartnered. I say the word divorce just feel so foreign to me, but and just building a new life with a really great collaborator with my life partner to this point, like we are co parenting and it feels beautifully aligned. And now it's just so fun to go out and experience the world as a single person and really engage with the world with this sense of just deep peace that I knew I was supposed to be in that relationship.

 

We have beautiful children and wonderful family, and we always will have that. And it just feels great to be unto myself and learning my lessons and sharing them as I God from a really different heart space. A very, very expensive heart space.

 

Awesome. Where can people connect with you to learn about your work? And you mentioned some of these programs you have that you're doing. They're helping people work and they learn more about that.

 

Sure. So my website is Ellen Palmer Wellness Com. I have I do one on one coaching, but I'm doing less and less of that. And doing this. I call it quantum coaching in groups. It's just so incredible how people learn from each other. And so I just have felt such an affinity, a calling to do more of this. And so one of the program is called Ideal Life Method, where it's a six week, five module program, which is a blueprint for people to learn about themselves and how to fuel their body, their mind and their spirit with a lot of practical application, one on one time with me and group coaching and specific modules that make this work so much easier with brief assignments.

 

And then the other is called the Fall Focus. And so it's a shorter program, four week program teaching people how to reboot their habits. Like everyone talks about food being the enemy, foods, not the enemy. Our habits around food and not knowing how to fuel ourselves is what's creating so much dysbiosis in the body. So that's a really exciting program, and it's a much shorter program for people, so it's a reboot, and people can find that on my website as well. Also on Instagram at Ellen Clark Calmer LinkedIn Ellen Palmer Wellness but the website has a lot of God information there.

 

I also have something that I created for your audience called the Sole Skills Cheat Sheet for entrepreneurs. If people God to Ellen Commer Wellness Com three day weekend that's there specifically for you, and it helps you really practically apply the things that we talked about here today to create some daily ritual around learning about yourself and how to fuel yourself. So I hope you will tap into that and really enjoy that and make it a practice. So we get God at what we practice. Are we practicing worry and getting God at worrying, or are we practicing abundance and awesome.

 

Thank you so much. For that. I will definitely be taking a look at that as well. So thank you so much for sharing your gifts, your story, your insight, your your truth with us. This has really been awesome. I'm really looking forward to the feedback we God from looking to sharing the video clips. Thank you again so much for joining us today and sharing your gifts with us.

 

Such a pleasure. Thank you for including me in your world. I'm happy to be a part of it.

 

Awesome. Alright, everybody, take advantage of the opportunities, the tools, the different insights either from this episode or definitely the downloads the courses normally take. Look at the download on that one as well. So as always, I look forward to helping you help more people and make more money in less time. Do what you do best so you can better enjoy your family, your friends, and your life. Thanks for listening.

 

Ellen PalmerProfile Photo

Ellen Palmer

Speaker, CEO, Award-Winning Coach, Corporate Wellness Specialist, Co-Founder & COO at Healing Meals Community Project

Ellen Palmer is an award-winning Certified Holistic Health & Life Design Coach + COO and Co-Founder of Healing Meals Community Project.
Prior to launching her own successful businesses, she enjoyed a 10-year career in Sales and Marketing for one of the world’s premier insurers and Fortune 100 companies.
After leaving her corporate career to focus on her own wellbeing, Ellen created The Ideal Life Method, which has helped thousands of people transform their busy lives, take control of their health and happiness, and develop the skills to create lasting change for themselves, their families and in their businesses.