Melissa 0:04
I’m a firm believer, and God sends you what you need. And I would have never thought this is what I needed to get ahead of my career because you know, career is one thing and sort of working on yourself is another thing. Like I separated those two things. And I think what I’ve found is, this foundation is about my life, and that life then spans into my career, my family, my friends, you know, my happiness. It’s all the same, it all comes from that same place.

Blake Schofield 0:44
Hi, I’m Blake Schofield, founder and CEO of The Bridge to Fulfillment®, mom to three, USA Today top 10 professional coach, and former corporate executive who got tired of sacrificing my life for a comfortable paycheck. My mission is to expand women’s perspectives and empower them to achieve greater impact at home and work without sacrifice. This is The Bridge to Fulfillment®.

Blake Schofield 1:18
Hello, and welcome to another episode of The Bridge to Fulfillment®. I am super pumped to have my client, Melissa, here today to share a little bit of insight about her personal journey. And I could not be more thrilled to have you here, Melissa, just watching and being a part of your journey has been such an honor. And I think that there’s so much wisdom in your journey that you can really share to make a huge impact for other people. So thank you for being willing to share and be here today.

Melissa 1:49
Absolutely. I am honored and blessed to be here. So thank you.

Blake Schofield 1:54
Yeah. All right, lady. So where do we start, I often like to start a little bit with just sharing a little bit about your background and what was going on in your life. What were you experiencing when we connected?

Melissa 2:06
I kind of looked at back at this, you know, there’s sort of a when you’re in it, you have an emotion. And then when you can look back at it, you have some of those same emotions, but you look at it in a different perspective. But knowing the knowledge I have now, I was just in a situation where I was completely out of alignment. We talked about that all the time. And I was worn out, I was frustrated. I was in a situation where my supervisors were not supporting my work style it was becoming the more I tried to speak up, it was just getting, getting worse. And you know, I was just exhausted, we were changing as a company, which was exciting. But I just kept thinking, Okay, if I can just get this done, I will get better. And you just keep doing that striving and it never ends. And so I was just so point, I was like, Okay, I need a coach, I’ve got to get out, I’ve got to figure out something else to do. But I was afraid financially to make that change. I had so many fears. And so I came across the program, and I reached out to you. And you know, it helped me sort of make that first leap.

Blake Schofield 3:13
It’s always amazing. And I hear this often from people who listen to the success stories, and they’re like, “Wow, the women on here seem so confident. It’s just like, you know, they just, it’s so easy.” But you know, it’s one of those things that and I was actually just on a client call earlier this morning, we were talking about that. That the path to clarity, in the journey that we take inside The Bridge to Fulfillment®, it becomes so abundantly clear why you were unfulfilled. It becomes so obvious what you need and don’t need in your life and what you can say yes and no to. And I think people often don’t understand that. And so it feels like this very hazy, how in the world am I going to get clarity?

Melissa 3:52
Yes.

Blake Schofield 3:53
Just even hearing you say that. It’s like, well, now I see it for what it is, I see that I was misaligned, I see that the value system and the way I worked was not a match. And I see how I just kept trying to make it better. But if you could take yourself back to what that experience felt like before you understood it. What did you think? What were you saying to yourself? And what were you feeling because I think that’s most likely somebody today that’s going to be listening to this, this feeling that and they don’t understand why just in the same way you didn’t.

Melissa 4:27
Yeah. I mean, the emotions were I felt like a failure. I felt like no matter what I was doing, wasn’t working. My confidence was completely stripped away. I felt like, you know, I had no, I was just lost. I mean, you’re just lost, you’re tired. You feel undervalued, you just feel like there’s no escape. You feel like you’re stuck in something. You can’t figure out a way out, you feel like financial if you make a move. What if you do the wrong thing, you know, fear can be a very toxic thing. And it just was fueling everything going around. But also, you know, I mentioned hopeless, I just felt like everything I was doing was not working. And it was making me feel worse about myself. I think that was the harder part, there was nothing that I was doing trying to alleviate the problem that was working. And it was just making me feel worse about myself. And situation.

Blake Schofield 5:24
Yeah. And I see this as a really common thing. I talk often about the breakdown cycle, right, which is what happens when we stay on a path that we’re not fulfilled in, and it’s not in alignment with us. And the longer we stay on there, trying to suck it up, make it work, believe that, you know, we should be grateful for what we have. The more and more our confidence gets stripped away, the more and more we feel trapped, the less and less the things we’re doing are actually working. And I think it’s so easy to believe that something’s wrong with us or we’re broken, or we’re failing.

Melissa 6:00
Yes.

Blake Schofield 6:01
Instead of being able to see that it’s just not a match. There’s the old saying, from Albert Einstein, this is a quote that helped me make it through in my most misaligned place in my life. It’s by Albert Einstein, “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live it’s whole life believing it’s stupid.” And I just feel so much emotional in that, because I see so many people internalizing what’s happening in their life and believing something’s broken or wrong with them, when in fact, that’s never the case. But if we don’t understand who we are, and what we’re gifted at, and how we work best and what we need to thrive, it’s very easy to get into the wrong place, or working in the wrong way. And thinks something’s broken, or something’s wrong with us.

Melissa 6:56
Yeah, I mean, I was definitely feeling like, I had to change everything about myself, in order to fit in to what was happening around me. And while they’re being a norm, I would say normal using word normals sort of tricky. But we all have to do things to kind of adjust. But when you lose yourself, yeah, it’s a totally different thing. You’re, you’re trying to fit into somebody else’s world that you have no autonomy anymore.

Blake Schofield 7:24
So how did you go from feeling like you were failing, trying to make something work that wasn’t working, feeling trapped? All of the things you just talked about? How did you move from that to being able to understand “Wait a second, just that I misaligned? And wait a second, there are other opportunities for me?” Can you think back? Like maybe what was the first one or two big like, Aha moments or shifts for you?

Melissa 7:50
I think the first was, you get to a point where you’re like, What do I have to lose? Like, you have to kind of have that courage to say, Okay, if I keep doing what I’m doing, I’m not gonna be any better as if I’m just like, at the, at the lowest of my life, like the, the things are equal. I had reached out to you about having this confronting conversation. I remember you saying to me, if you don’t do this, you will, I don’t know if it was, you will regret it. But if you don’t stand up for yourself, now, you won’t. And I thought, Okay, I’ve just got to do this. And I remember, having this conversation was so hard. And I had, it was something that I had to bring to the attention. It was something that had been done to me in the workplace. And it was very demoralizing to me and had really just further reiterated things that I already knew, but I wanted to speak up for myself. And I remember preparing for it. And I remember literally turning on music and dancing before having the conversation with them just to kind of get the energy up in my body, and then having the conversation. And when I got off the phone, I literally shouted that I had never stood up for myself my whole life. Like I had stood up myself at that moment. And it was the most amazing, amazing thing in this world. I’ve never felt anything like it. I mean, I think we all as women, on strong women, you have this about confidence to get you through things. But this was something I had literally never felt. And it was so empowering. So it was a moment where I knew everything was probably going to get ripped away from me. But I had something that was so hopeful from that moment of that feeling.

Blake Schofield 9:45
Yeah, that was a really interesting place in the journey and so beautiful to see all of these things that you had suffered and not shared and tolerated. That you making the decision that you were worth more than that. And I’m going to say something that might be difficult for those listening. And it’s always meant from a place of love. But you can’t be taken advantage of, unless to some degree you allow it. And I say that and it’s really hard when you feel like you’re a victim of an abusive boss, or a toxic workplace or a family relationship where you feel like you’re, you know, abused or undervalued in some way, emotionally, etc. But it is through the recognizing of what you’re no longer willing to tolerate. That changes your life. Something in that moment, helps you say no more.

Melissa 10:47
Yeah, you’re absolutely right, because I had, you know, continued to let it happen. And I was just afraid, I was afraid because I couldn’t see the other side. And you can’t see the other side when you’re in it. And that’s, that’s the hardest part is, is that. And, you know, I can’t speak to whether there was one thing related. But after I had that conversation, I was, I was let go, within a week or two, after I had that conversation. It was hard. But it was a gift. It was a gift that I couldn’t give myself, I couldn’t let go of that situation. But if I had just been let go and not spoken up for myself, it would have been a story where I would probably still be under the covers in my bedroom, you know, right now, just because I wouldn’t have felt as empowered. So something, you know, I, it didn’t turn out how I wanted it to at that moment. But I gained, I started to gain myself in that moment. And I saw, I saw light, it was a peak of a light, but it was there. And so I had that to go on.

Blake Schofield 11:54
I love that. And I think it’s important to share when you get to a place that you were at, in the situation, there was a lot of evidence that had been stacked, that was showing that it was inevitable. It was inevitable that this was not going to work, it was inevitable that that moment was going to come either you were gonna, you were gonna be allowed or they were gonna push. Yeah, you stepped into making the decision for yourself rather than allowing something to happen to you that was fairly inevitable. We had enough evidence to say this is what’s happening.

Melissa 12:30
Yes.

Blake Schofield 12:31
And that was powerful. Because in your whole life you hadn’t done that you would allow things to happen to you. It’s that back you had.

Melissa 12:38
Absolutely.

Blake Schofield 12:319
Pin yourself in a puzzle and a you know, a pretzel almost to be able to try and make other people happy. And it was a moment of saying enough. I choose me.

Melissa 12:49
Yeah, because I had just been taught I had two parents that were like, you work hard, you do whatever they tell you to do you show up every day, you don’t miss work. And you just essentially suck it up for the rest of your life, no matter what, because you can’t lose your job. I mean, granted, thank him if I came from a very different situation. But it was amazing how powerful that was for me, like I thought I had to take it. Because there were no other options. But, you know, my parents had given me the gift of going to college and being able, to be able to make those decisions. Because I had, I did was able to get an education and develop a career. But yet I felt like the person who had nothing. So yeah.

Blake Schofield 13:35
What did you learn through the beginning part of your journey, about your emotions, about some of your belief systems that should fundamentally shifted your stress levels, how you thought about how you went about your life?

Melissa 13:54
I think some of the biggest things for me was, was stopping the internal voices of there’s something wrong with you. You’re too sensitive. You and I had talked at one point about I think we labeled it almost like a feminine working style, like a very collaborative working style. And I began to think that there was something wrong with my innate abilities. And seeing that was just so eye opening. It’s like, there’s nothing wrong with me. I’m just not in the right place. I mean, it seems so simple to talk about now. But you have beaten yourself up so much because you’re trying to fit in that you lose every sense of anything. Like I wouldn’t have thought I could even do my job that I’ve been doing. You know, for the past 20 years. You’ve literally believed everything that you’re feeling around you. And when you start to take that first step, you start to see “Hmm, it’s not me. What I am okay, I am enough.” And there’s nothing I have to change about myself, I just have changed the situation I’m in. There’s nothing wrong with me.

Blake Schofield 15:08
That’s so powerful. On so many friends, we were talking before we started the podcast about how different our lives would have been if we knew this. And our, I’ve got, I would say, 20s. So if I had known this in my 20s, your life would have been knowing what you know now about yourself, how you thrive, what your secret sauce skills are, you’re in and how to stand in and understand how to stand in your value, how to use your emotions to work for you, as opposed to your emotions driving your life? How would that have changed the trajectory of your life? If you had known this? Let’s say coming out of college?

Melissa 15:49
Oh, wow, I think that, you know, coming out of college, I had a confidence, like, you’re, you’re so like, Okay, I have this degree, I’m ready to go, you know, I landed, I was so, so fortunate at the beginning of my career, I landed a job in big for public accounting, which you know, very little of the population does. And given the background, and the grades and things I have, they weren’t what a lot of people were doing, but I managed to nail an interview, be confident and get that job. And, but what happened was, you know, things that happened in the work, you hit inner toxic work environment, you’re working long, long hours, and under all the stress and it slowly starts chipping away at all of those things that you are. You let it kind of, you know, our identity my case, I let it take my confidence little by little, a male figure or any boss saying something to me, I let it chip and chip and let it, I believed what they were saying it was a constructive criticism. Much of it was not. Much of it was, you know, trying to change me or trying to say that there was something wrong with me, but in a different way. It wasn’t it wasn’t so obvious. And if I had not been more self confident, rooted in that self confidence, and been around people that were saying, you know, don’t, don’t let that get to you just, you know, you know who you are, be who you are. There’s nothing wrong with who you are. It could have been something that simple, it would have been so different. So having something like this that would have encouraged me and empowered me. Wow, I can’t imagine what I would be doing right now.

Blake Schofield 17:39
Thank you for sharing that. I I’ve been thinking about this question a lot. Because a couple months ago, I went to speak to a group of moms for National Charity League. And those who don’t know what that is, it’s a mother daughter group that is focused on right doing back doing charity, and which talks the moms and some of them asked like, what would you say do my daughter who had to start her career and then one of the women asks about burnout and children in the workforce. And I thought, Oh, my goodness. And so I just shared my perspective, which is if I had had this knowledge and understanding that I teach, I wouldn’t have gotten shingles at 28. I would have been a far more present mother, I wouldn’t have constantly been going to the cycle of hoping the next job or promotion was going to be would make me happy. Yes, I would have changed careers, at 30. When I knew what I was doing wasn’t aligned, I would have gotten back years of my life, and I didn’t and and I know that that was the exact path I needed to go on to save other people from the mistakes that I made. But often I think people look at The Bridge to Fulfillment® may have one perspective about what it is. And then they come through and they have a different one. And I think it’s because what we do is very different than what anyone else does. And so I’d ask your perspective, Melissa, you came into this journey thinking one thing, what is your perspective about this journey and what you’ve learned now having gone through it?

Melissa 19:17
It’s so it sounds so cliche to say it’s so much more, it’s so much more. But it it truly is, you know, I went into it thinking okay, Blake, you know, she’s gonna give me the five things that are gonna make me successful. And we’re gonna find my perfect career by answering 10 questions and you just think once I check all the boxes, and once I do all the exercises, I’m going to graduate and then I’m going to land that job and I’m gonna be happily ever after. And what I learned was, it wasn’t about checking those boxes. It wasn’t just about checking those boxes. The exercises were only the surface of you digging and finding and discovering yourself again. You discover yourself, discover what makes you tick, you discover how you think, you discover your innate abilities. And it’s so empowering. And it just keeps building and building. And then there’s a community of other women that you’re talking to that are going through the same things and have been through the same things. And it’s just something it’s way beyond what I thought it would be. And it’s not what I thought I needed, but it was what I needed. It was just amazing. It’s like, you know, I’m a firm believer, and God sends you what you need. And I would have never thought this is what I needed to get ahead of my career. Because, you know, career is one thing and sort of working on yourself is another thing. Like, I separated those two things. And I think what I’ve found is, this foundation is about my life, and that life, then spans into my career, my family, my friends, you know, my happiness, it’s all the same, it all comes from that same place. And this has helped me really get that firm foundation.

Blake Schofield 21:14
I always say how you do one thing is how you do everything, everything is interconnected. And I also think when we have struggles or challenges in our life, it can often be easier to see it in our careers, it feels safer to see it in the career, and say, I’m going through cycles of burnout, or I have this toxic boss or I got this new leader and we’re not getting along, or I dread going to work, or I’m not feeling a passion or an energy like I normally do. We can see there first because it feels as a society safer.

Melissa 21:49
Yeah

Blake Schofield 21:50
Talk about that. Knowing that, and knowing what you’ve experienced, can you share a little bit about your perspective about how you saw it in your career, but what you’ve learned about how everything was connected, how has this shifted or changed your personal life, your relationships, your level of happiness, etc?

Melissa 22:10
I think it’s, you know, from mine, the huge part of mine was his confidence piece. And then I think I’ve spoke to like, it’s sort of something that kind of comes and goes, or for me, my journey has been something that comes and goes. And it was something that growing up, my mother just was not very confident. And as much as she, I think tried to overcompensate for that, and instilled that in me. It just wasn’t an innate thing. And it’s like, I think she thought she was doing it, but it wasn’t happening. And so not having that foundation was something that was always off for me. And I think it was where I would allow me to excel in certain areas, but then I would keep falling back. I had this sort of back and forth all the time. And having sort of understanding that confidence and understanding how to use that. It’s given me the confidence just to even if it’s a small little thing every day, even if I’m going through a period of four or five days where I’m not feeling that great, or I’m having trouble getting started on something. I know that if I just do one little thing, and I just give myself permission to say, You know what, you’re just gonna do that one little thing. And it gives me the confidence and the motivation to keep going, it may take a little longer, and I’m like, You know what, but that’s okay. It doesn’t have to be what everybody else’s journey is, this is yours. But it’s, it’s that one thing and it has just fed into so many other things. And it’s made me so much more confident about that, which I know is going to lead to a much more confident professional future as well.

Blake Schofield 23:50
You mentioned earlier that you separated career and personal development. I think most people do. So before you came, you had done a lot of work for yourself personally through a lot of maybe more traditional methods that people would think of, right, counseling, therapy, etc. I’d love your perspective on how you would describe that versus this journey and experience.

Melissa 24:16
It’s interesting because I had I’ve been doing a lot of work with a therapist for, you know, sort of off and on over the years, but the past probably four, probably five years or more, I’d really been digging into some things and uncovering some things. And sort of getting to some of those root beliefs and causes. And it helped me get to a space where I could handle information. And I could process information and I think it helped me when this came along, to be able to take the information and use it in a different way and do it logically and it may not make sense but the two are point different, but they work together. I’m probably doing a terrible job of explaining this. But it’s just like they go hand in hand. And one is sort of like my therapy, I see as my sort of stable outsider to keep me grounded. And this is helping me to have that grounding. But then the, the bridge has helped me sort of connect that that grounding and expand, and go further. So it’s almost like, this is keeping me footed, and I can feel my feet. But this is helping me reach just a little bit farther, and see it in a little bit of a different way. And then you having to perspective has been amazing to most of the time, they’re very much aligned. And sometimes they’re very different, not that they’re contradicting each other. But they’re just giving you a different way to look at things.

Blake Schofield 25:55
So through this journey, in the bridge, you were exposed to I like to describe, especially somebody who got a degree in psychology, Dad has a PhD, sister has a Master. I watched my mom do, probably a decade worth of therapy herself, the methodologies that we use in The Bridge to Fulfillment® are, in my opinion, much more cutting edge. In terms of speed, and ability to create transformation very rapidly, because I think most people believe when you do some of the interpersonal work, it has to take a long time, it’s painful, you have to talk about all of this stuff. I’m interested in your perspective, knowing that you’ve now explored and experienced this, how would you describe some of the work that we do in The Bridge to Fulfillment® to help expand and transform your perspectives, your beliefs, your life, in a way that’s different?

Melissa 26:49
I was just thinking about an instance where, you know, in therapy, you’re thinking about things and, you know, things that are happening, and a lot of mine are rooted in belief systems, and childhood things in, you know, the way I was raised, or how my parents thought about things. And it sort of helps you get a perspective of, okay, this is where that kind of comes from, but I recall a session that we were doing with Britt, and she was going through something where, it was making you think about it a different way to not get sort of stuck in it, stuck in the root of it. And it was like, Okay, think about something that has happened to you, that, or that you believe, and if it’s somebody else, so in this case, it was something that my mom believed. And it was like, okay, so she’s on this side of the room, and she has her belief. That’s great. What do you believe? You’re on this side of the room? What’s your belief about what that situation was? As simple as that was, it was like, Okay, I don’t have to be stuck. In this. I can be over here exploring what I think. And I don’t have to be stuck in what was there all the time. But it just sort of helps you sort of go through those things and go, Okay, that doesn’t have to be part of my story. This isn’t part of my story. Is something totally different.

Blake Schofield 28:13
Yeah, because therapy, right, takes you back to what happened. And I think what we really focus on is how do you create what you want?

Melissa 28:23
Yes. And that’s exactly it was more about my thoughts, my decisions, what I saw for myself, and I think it was doing it with, you know, sort of a thankful thing to say, Okay, I understand that this is what was going on at the time. But this is my life now. And this is what I’m doing. And this is where I’m going.

Blake Schofield 28:41
And how has that enabled from a speed and an ability to transform your beliefs or transform your day to day? How has that been versus things you’ve done in the past?

Melissa 28:52
It’s different because I think you’d let go of them versus dwelling on them. Because I think and I still find myself kind of going back and forth sometimes, but, and that’s okay. But you realize, okay, it’s okay, think about this, but then, you know, keep moving. I think that I let I honor things and then let go of them and let them go versus having to go, oh, this happened to me. And, you know, I wish I hadn’t have received this message when I was five years old. And because of this, I just, I’ll just never do anything else. You could kind of get stuck in that, and it almost becomes a crutch. I think it’s important to understand it to uncover it, because I think that’s part of the journey, but being able to just let go and say okay, but what am I gonna do? What what do I want to do now? You know, and just sort of let that go. I think one time I remember visually, I don’t know if it was talking to you or something. It was just like, you know about letting it be a balloon and just have the thought honor the thought like that. Let it go. Just you know, let it go.

Blake Schofield 29:57
Yeah, there’s so much freedom in that. Because the amount of time that we can get stuck in the stories, right, it can literally just eat your life. And it destroys an ability for you to see reality for what it is. And that’s really if I have to look at your journey and say, Where do I see the most transformation? I see that when you came in, you were living in the stories when things were difficult or triggered you it was just a mental spiral. And you couldn’t get above and see the entirety of what was happening. Because it all became this emotional thing of it’s my fault. It’s my fault. Yes, that story was, and that was driving all of your experiences, fear and the stories. And today, look at the amazing transformation that you’ve had, where you go, Oh, yeah, those things have happened. But that’s not me. That’s not who I am. That’s not how I make choices. And then when circumstances come that are unexpected, you have a much clearer lens to look from and say, How do I feel about this? And what’s happening? And in what way do I want to use or choose to ignore if it doesn’t feel right, whatever’s coming my way? Yeah, that’s what I’m seeing pretty that’s so beautiful.

Melissa 31:18
Yeah, and things coming your way. That’s another thing where the confidence piece has played in is, it was sort of like things coming, you know, even in the past month or two things are coming at you. And it’s like, Okay, I’ve got to ask somebody what to do. I was like, never looking at myself. You know, because I almost began not to trust myself. Because I thought I can’t make a decision, because I, you know, I’m I’m a mess. But being able to go, No, you have the answer. It’s okay to seek advice, ask a friend, talk to him about it. But trust your gut, you have it, you’re smart, you’ve, the things you’ve done. Hello, you can do it. Make your decision. Make your choices, make your own choices.

Blake Schofield 32:04
And there’s such peace and power in that.

Melissa 32:07
It’s amazing. Because I have you know, I’ve told you, I think yesterday, somebody presented a position to me, and it was just sort of to keep money coming in the door. And it was so it was something I would have done the first year I worked versus, you know, fucking 20 years. And it’s like, you don’t want to look a gift horse in the mouth. But you’re like, what is this going to add to me? It’s going to add something financially, but I think it’s going to deduct so many other things and keep me from things. It’s not worth it. It’s not worth it. And it’s like I would have you know, been like, oh, well, you know, I can just do this. It’s like you talk yourself into it. And it’s like, Nope, don’t talk myself into things anymore. And I don’t try to fit into anything anymore.

Blake Schofield 32:48
And with that you have more space for the things that do.

Melissa 32:52
Yes. And that was what was so hard for me because I know I battle with yours. Like a blink, I have to keep money coming in the door. I have to take a job. I have to do something and yeah, right. Right now I’m not working. I’m sort of in between things. And I’m just relishing in it. And I’m like, but how can I use this time to keep going and learning and making myself better?

Blake Schofield 33:14
That’s awesome. Lady. It’s been so much fun. I know my time is almost up. So thank you for your graciousness today. So with that said, let me ask Is there anything I haven’t asked you that I should ask? Anything that’s just really on your heart that you want to share to help others?

Melissa 33:34
I think that my biggest thing is that, you know, if you think something’s wrong, speak up for yourself. If you aren’t happy, fight for yourself. And best thing is invest in yourself. Invest in what you need. Because if you keep doing the things that you’re doing, is going to end up costing you financially, probably more, is going to end up definitely costing you physically and mentally. And just, just invest in yourself. And you’re worth it. I mean, we’re all worth it. Be kind to yourself, believe in yourself.

Blake Schofield 34:17
Thank you so much. I appreciate it. And for those of you guys that were listening, I hope Melissa’s story has given you a doorway to possibility and shown you right that life can well maybe what’s the best way I want to say it is that you can create the life that you want. Even if today it feels dark, even if today you feel stuck, even if today you don’t know or understand your value, even if today you have a difficult time standing up or asking for what you want. There’s power and learning and understanding the skills to get over your fears. Know the right steps to take, really understand who you are and your inherent value and where you thrive. And when you understand those things, it creates massive ripple effect change for every single area of your life. So with that said, thanks again for joining, and until next time, have a great week.