001: Taking Big Leaps and Following Your Passion with Melissa Monte

Welcome to the first ever episode of Mind Love – the podcast that helps you unlock the power of your mind, raise your frequency and become your highest self.

In this episode you will learn a little about your host, Melissa Monte, and what to expect from the podcast.

Welcome, everybody, to the very first episode of Mind Love. I am so excited to be here. It feels like a lifetime in the making but probably for me, it has been. I chose today’s theme because it’s exactly what I’m doing right now. I’m leaping. I’m making a lot of life changes right now in order to devote my time to this and I couldn’t be more excited.

Mind Love is devoting the time to our mind that it so deserves. A lot of things in our life are run by our minds. Actually, everything is. Perception is key. That’s why the world’s most successful people always talk about staying positive and keeping a gratitude journal, power poses, all of these little tricks that help you have more control over your mind or your thoughts. It’s because the way we perceive the world dictates the way we interact with it. It all starts with the mind.

I’ve always been a naturally curious person. I am the person who dives in yelling, “All things are possible.” I’m definitely not a cynic. For as long as I can remember, I’ve been saying that life is like a videogame and you have to level up your character. I honestly believe that and it’s probably why I’m certified in everything from yoga to skydiving and I seek out experiences like ecstatic dance and sensory deprivation tanks and cryotherapy but I think life is about challenging yourself and really diving into the human experience, seeing what’s out there.

My goal with this podcast is to take my hours and hours of research and guinea pigging myself and bundle it up into a nice little package that’s under 30 minutes for you to enjoy, absorb and then implement into your daily lives, so you can start making those small changes one day at a time, but how did I get here? I’m going to take you back. I tend to be an over sharer, so we’re going to get deep here, but I’m a really firm believer that having an open dialogue about the things that we go through is really important for our own individual growth and to help us realize that we’re not alone. If you’re the type of person that likes to keep everything all rose buds and lollipops, more power to you and go ahead and skip to the six and a half minute mark. Otherwise, stick with me for a few minutes and we’re going to get real close real fast. Here it goes.

My life wasn’t always sunshine and savasana. Okay, so it kind of was sunshine until about the age of 16 and then tragedy struck again and again and again. In a two-year period of time, I had my first me too moment. I’m not sure if it’s appropriate to call it that but that’s what I feel comfortable with right now, so that’s what I’ll call it. I won’t get into all the details of that incident in this episode but I will say that it changed me a little bit and I did not realize it at the time. I told a few people to gauge their reactions and instead, it got all around the school and I felt like it was my fault, and it wasn’t my fault. It wasn’t just some bad drunken decision. It was one of my first times drinking ever and I was unconscious, and it’s what I woke up to.

I was still very much dealing with that, and then a very close friend committed suicide and it was the first time I had ever lost anybody. Then, my dad died of cancer. I was going into college with baggage. I really prided myself on the fact that I thought that it didn’t affect me, that I was just going to power through and that I was stronger than that. Something about that denial probably made it affect me more because it was this deep hurt that I was covering up and it was leading to a lot of bad decisions. I was binge drinking every single night. Some can call that college but it’s not healthy, and I was taking it further than most people I knew. People actually called me party girl because I was at every single party until 5:00 or 6:00 a.m. I was the last one going.

I also was addicted to a very high dosage of Adderall especially for my size that I took twice a day. By my sophomore year, I had developed a dangerous eating disorder. There were days that I didn’t leave my house because all I was doing was binging and purging. Thinking back on those days makes me want to cry. It was really hard and I would sit there and think I can never be with somebody because how will I hide this, or I’d get really anxious in social situations or going on trips with people because I was worried they’d find out. To top it off, as minor as it sounds, I even bit my nails down to the nail buds to where they were bleeding.

In reality, all of these things were a really big reflection of what was going on inside, just the deep, deep pain covered up by my laidback, nonchalant, let’s take a shot type attitude. I always wanted to be the fun one and the life of the party but really, I was just partying with people who didn’t really care about me, so I didn’t have to be alone and I didn’t have to feel what I was feeling.

If you think I should have hit rock bottom by now, I didn’t. I hit rock bottom when I ended up in a very dysfunctional relationship. It was extremely manipulative and I was sure he had been cheating on me. I decided the only way out of it was to get away, so I called a friend and went and stayed with her in Hawaii for 30 days.

When I got back, he said he had been doing better and that his mom had given him some money to get his jewelry business back off the ground. A few days later, we were arrested. I was in a jail cell with 20 other women, confused and angry.

There’s nothing like sitting in a jail cell for someone else’s crime to make you realize you’re hanging with the wrong crowd and you’re on the wrong path.

One morning, I was lying in bed after having slept till 2:00 p.m. because I was partying until dawn and a little voice in my head just said, “Get up. Get the F up,” so I did. I wish I could say it was that easy, that I just got up and made changes and here I am now, but that would be much too short of a story. It was a rollercoaster of ups and downs for years but I at least had this little seedling inside of me that I was going to try. The more I learned, the more I became obsessed with mastering the human experience and being my best self and getting the most out of this life that we have because I saw how easy it is to sink lower than I thought I would ever sink but how powerful and effective the right mindset is to dig your way out of that.

I found the book The Mastery of Love by Don Miguel Ruiz. This book was the first book that taught me that I was in control of my own happiness and that other people’s unhappiness, anger and blame are all symptoms of their own poison and it shouldn’t affect me. This book opened my eyes. I feel like personal growth has compound interest. You feel like you’re fairly moving along and then suddenly, you just shoot up. That’s been my experience over the last decade.

About nine years ago, I decided to move to LA to get away from all of the things that were dragging me behind. It was in LA that I took yoga teacher training and finally found a core group of people that are not just likeminded but they feel like second family to me, people whom I can bond over meditation and mindfulness and harnessing my inner peace. I now rent an office in a co-working space full of other entrepreneurs who are all figuring out what kind of value they can add to this world.

I’m married to the love of my life. He’s someone who pushes himself and pushes me just as hard, somebody that I can share all of these things with even if they sound quirky and he’ll dive into it with me. I’m at an executive level of a startup and now, I’m making this podcast with you, but I really believe that none of this would have been possible if I wouldn’t have worked on myself first. It’s like when you’re in an airplane and they tell you to place the oxygen mask on your own face before you try to help your children or somebody else. The same is true for self-love. You have to learn to love yourself before you can truly love others.

A lot of times, your life on the outside is a reflection of what’s going on inside and to be honest with you, I still have a lot of work to do, so we’re in this together just figuring shit out because life is complicated but there’s power in numbers and accountability. Some days, my life is like a culmination of every productivity book you’ve ever read and I feel like a powerhouse and other days, it’s chaos and immaturity and crying over cat videos on Facebook.

If I learned anything, it’s not to take yourself or life too seriously. Make time to play and above all, find gratitude. Gratitude is the gateway to abundance. It tells the universe that you are ready to receive even more of everything that this life has to offer, so I’m grateful for this journey and I’m even more grateful for each and every one of you because you’re helping make this dream possible for me.

I hope that in return, I can share the value by giving you something that you look forward to listening to each week. The mindLOVE podcast will dive into everything from productivity principles to lucid dreaming to breathing exercises that make you hallucinate, so get ready to raise your frequency, expand your consciousness and break free of the barriers that we’ve set for ourselves. You know, see what’s possible.

If you want to connect with other people and keep the conversation going about the topics we explore on this podcast, please join the Facebook group at mindlove.com/fbgroup. We’ll post weekly challenges and have some extra content that’s not on this podcast. If you like what I’m bringing to the table, please take a minute to subscribe and leave a review. Reviews are super helpful for the growth of this podcast and will entice even more exciting guests to come on the show. If you have any other feedback or tips for the show or just want to say hi, I would love to hear from you, so send me an e-mail at melissa@mindlove.com. That’s it for this week and I’ll see you next week for our first full length episode. Thanks for giving your mind a little love today. I’m your host, Melissa Monte.