Burnout, Breakdowns & Breakthroughs | How She Transformed Her Health and Life

Hello, heroines! This is Alex. I am here with Ingrida Makarajte. I just wanted to bring her into the group because, well, first of all, we've been laughing our butts off for the last 5 minutes, so that's always a good, a good vibe and a good energy. But I also know that her story is an interesting one and also one that could serve a lot as inspiration for you. Ladies. So Ingrida, welcome!

Thank you so much, Alex, for having me, and thank you so much for that laugh. That was so good.

Well, we'll aim to have a lot more of those. So, uh, as we aim to do that, why don't you introduce yourself and tell us where you're from and a little bit about what you do?

So I'm— I currently lived in Ireland, in Dublin, but from my accent, I'm Lithuanian, so I'm not giving up my accent. I just in love with the accent, not going to change it. And I'm a functional medicine practitioner, and I work with the gut, and I work with the hormones. You know, there's some gut issues. I do the testing like GI 360 or the gut. So that's for the gut. And then for the hormones, I like Dutch test to test. And then I create a protocol based on what test results are saying and how you answer the questions. I also do the body transformation programs for females. You know, those females who say, ah, the diet and exercise doesn't work anymore. So this is, yeah, at some stage we hit certain age and nothing starts working. So that's what I step in and help females to build strong and confident body. And then I have also group that I'm so passionate about. I'm just passionate about the growth. And where I interview amazing people. It's called Next Level Transformation Hub. I addicted to the sugar and I'm not gonna hide it, but I try to control. It's all about balance. So my favorite is chocolate cake and today I had like chocolate, chocolate cherries. Cherries were soaked in the alcohol and that made me laugh and we had a laugh with Alex. Just a little bit, you know, not too much.

Yeah, well, you know, it's good to have things that are good for the taste buds and good for the soul too.

Yeah, yeah, I love those buds, the taste buds, right?

That's it, that's it. Yeah, so Ingrid, I want to— how did you come to do what you do? Like, what's your— so what's your story?

Oh, the story is very long, but I'm gonna try and somehow to cut it. So I never was healthy. So my 20s were very much unhealthy. My teenage— teenage was also unhealthy. I had, I had very much quiet child, suppressed emotions. I never would say anything. I always would keep it to myself. And as a result of that, I had very, very bad stomach ulcers and very bad period pains, where literally stomach ulcers could come out of blue in the middle of the street, and the spasm would be so bad that you literally, if there is nowhere to lay down, you just lay down on the street and wait until it stops and then you can move. So, and sometimes you need to skip the school, but my attitude would be always to push, push, no matter how hard. I always said, life, push. And then in my kind of late 20s with this attitude and with a sugar diet, that kind of completely, I exhausted myself where one day I have to get up to go to work and I I just paralyzed. I can't get up. I don't understand what's going on. I literally, you can't get up. Your body doesn't work anymore. And I remember thinking in my mind, what is that I'm going to tell to my employer that I'm not able to come to work? Like I needed a serious excuse. That wasn't serious enough. I needed like to be hit by a car or something. So I got signed off. I don't know for how long, 3 or 4 weeks, I forgot, but it was a a while ago from work and then to recover. So I think it was like, you know, when you completely exhaust your adrenals, that's it. That's what happens. And yeah, and then I still didn't learn my lesson and I was always exhausted. I never was like a big or anything like that. Was like more jelly jelly kind of skinny, kind of fat, you know? And my biggest issue was energy. And one day I'm going to work, I'm climbing those stairs and it's just, Jesus, so hard those stairs. And I see this woman, I don't know, maybe 60s, in her 60s, something like older than me. At that time, I think I was just early 30s. And she's just running stairs without, like, so easy. And me being in 30s, not able to do the stairs. And I was thinking to myself, what was going to happen to me when I'm going to be her age? And that's how it started. So then my friend of mine, she's a human resources manager, asked me this question, so what's your hobbies, Ingrid? I was like, I have no hobbies because I'm study all life. It's like always study, so of course there's no hobby, hobbies. And then she goes to me and gives me this gym pass, right? And says, go, but this is free, like 7-day gym pass, just take it and just try it. And if you like it, sign up because it's amazing. They have so many classes. So that's how I started. I started with the gym, with the classes. I tried all of them and I really like it because it gave me energy. And then I sign up and then one year in, my nutrition start improving. Not that I know, but like you kind of go with the gut feeling that you crave more greens, less sugar. So like everything starts improving. And yeah, second year in, I started competing like a professional in bodybuilding, and bodybuilding led me to sports nutrition, sports nutrition into nutritional therapy, nutritional therapy into functional medicine. And then I'm doing this brain health, like neuron coding. And yeah, so it just— this, the whole journey, this is how it all started. Yeah, for me it was fun.

And what I love is that You started from a place that was a place of pain, right? Which I think a lot of the women in the group can relate because they're probably in a moment of pain right now because they've either just gotten separated or gotten divorced. So we have a choice, right? In those moments of time, we can either choose to be a victim or we can choose to say, yeah, this is not going to break me and this is going to change my life in a good way. So I just wanted to go back to what you said before about you were holding everything in. How did you learn or teach yourself to release what you were holding? And how did you then get in the habit of being able to voice what you were feeling instead of holding on to it?

Oh my gosh, Alex, that was the whole journey, like, uh, of, of that. First of all, I couldn't fit. I couldn't fit with, with people, you know, with the surroundings. I never was able to fit with other people because I just, I was thinking, what's wrong with me? I can't, because I wasn't able to express myself. Everything would be suppressed. Then I think I started, everything for me started with a self-development. So I started with, I don't remember which one the first self-development book was, but I read it and kind of made sense. And then I kind of become addicted with the books. Then the next step was like buying online courses. Then the next step was hiring the coaches. And then I got addicted to the coaches because like mentors and coaches hiring, even to this day, having few, not just one. Because it helps you to achieve what you want and to release way faster than doing everything on your own. You still can do it on your own, absolutely, but it takes a lot of time and a lot of kind of, am I doing it right? Am I doing, you know, the correct? But with a coach, yeah. And I still working on— there's still a lot of aspects in my life and life in certain areas and in in my personal life not working the way I would love, like, and I keep it to myself and I know I shouldn't be keeping, I know I should be saying things loud and clear, but I still have that bad habit from the past to keep that, you know, but like a lot, a lot, a lot, it's already, I'm able to say how I feel, I'm able to say a lot of things like happened. And the other, the biggest for me, I think, was the opening. I was last year, September, Tony Robbins Unleash the Power Within. Yeah. Did you go as well? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it was good. And that's how I met my mentor, Joseph McClendon III. That's how I got in neuroencoding. And that's how I got to know you, Alex, because we connected them through Bob. Like everything, it was just connection, connection, connection. And this were explosive, explosive move happen where you start like releasing everything, doing work with yourself, trying to understand what is it that still holds me back, trying like the way I do it, I always get those triggers during the day and the next day I journal these triggers, what do they mean, why certain person or Not just person, it could be something else. Why did I get irritated? And then next day, next morning, when I'm so clear, this, this, you just get up, I'll do the journal on those triggers to understand myself. And I see like so much, still so much wounds and emotions and are trapped in me. And so I do like every single morning, it's a must for me to start the morning like that to release. Something, you know, it's so hard. Like, if you don't do that, you never know that these blocks are there in you. And I even don't know what else is there. Every time someone says to me, even in today's Pom Pom call, someone says something, I was like, yes, that's for tomorrow morning to analyze. And yeah, it helps. It's especially, it's constant work. It's not like, and it's still a lot to be done, like in my case.

Yeah. Well, I think, you know, it's, it is a journey, right? And we just keep improving. We keep getting better every day, but I don't think there is, I don't believe there's an end point.

No. Yeah, absolutely.

It's all because there's always a next level there. It's never like we're never fully cooked, right? There's always something that needs to be or that we can probably look at.

And it's amazing to do that journey with your work on yourself, you know, to uncover. And the biggest as well, you know what else it was? Lying to yourself. When you don't have a solution, that's how I would lie to myself. So it makes me feel better because, you know, it's not that bad, you just lie to yourself. Look at my friends or look at something, they way worse than me, like, oh, that's okay, you know. And then wait a sec, is it really okay if you are behaving certain way or hiding something or whatever, you know? It's not okay. And like, catching up, but this lying to yourself, it's, it's as well like, it's way smaller than it was before.

Yeah, yeah. So based on your experience, for somebody who's new to the personal development world, somebody who hasn't read the books, hasn't done the seminars, isn't even aware that there is such a thing, right? Um, what would you— what would be your first step to get started? That— what's the first— yeah, what's the first step of the journey?

The first step of the journey: test yourself where you are with your self-love. So the first thing, step, what you do, take a poster and write the 4 magic words and put it on the mirror so you see it every morning. And those magic words are your name and I love you. Then look every morning in the mirror, under your eyes, and say these magic words. Oh my goodness, it's gonna be so uncomfortable at the beginning. I wouldn't face it. But then you start falling in love with, with yourself. Someone else was saying, oh, Andrew was saying, I was interviewing him, high five, give high five. I, I haven't done that, this thing yet.

Uh, and yeah, that comes from, um, Mel Robbins.

Mel Robbins, yeah, high five. Because it's, yeah, because you do like, you programming your brain to, to celebrate, you know, to kind of cheer yourself, you know, to be low. So the first thing is self-love. That's it, what you do. Just until you feel— you just have to keep doing that until you feel like you're in love. And when you're in love, you really, you start respecting yourself more. You start— you actually know then, well, what do I want? I still don't know what I want, but I will, I will, I will know. I do the work every morning and journals and things like that. If it's your kind kind of thing. Just spend a little bit of time, maybe in the morning, and see what comes up for you, you know. So, but that would be my, the only one advice to, to start. Don't rush, don't rush. Oh geez. Yeah, yeah.

And adding to that, I think, uh, be— give yourself grace, right? Because we have a tendency to give other people grace and forgiveness and, you know, all of these things.

Yeah.

And, but we don't do it to and for ourselves.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

And I can relate with everything what you said, Alex, and what I'm saying, because it's just, just experience that I'm living and doing and trying improving. And no, I'm not perfect. I'm still learning. I'm never going to be perfect because in my opinion, perfection doesn't exist. As you grow, You know, there's always the next level, you know, to go for. Yeah.

Yeah, I agree. Perfection is— I mean, Tony Robbins says it perfectly. He says perfection is the lowest standard, right? Because it holds us to an impossible standard and it keeps us in a cage because we try to be perfect. And that definition is different for everyone. Absolutely.

Absolutely. How about just jump, go now, and just figure out later how to do everything? I love that attitude. Whenever I want something, I just, just go and jump, and then we'll figure it out. And yeah, you do figure it out.

You do. And there's beauty in being able to do it that way because you learn along the way, right? And we, we don't learn by doing nothing. We learn by trying things and seeing what works and fixing what doesn't.

Exactly. Yeah, yeah, love it. Yeah, yeah. So it is a journey, a beautiful journey, self-development. If I would have known that when I was 20, oh my goodness, goodness, you wouldn't recognize me now. I don't know where would I be. But you know what, um, I think everything comes for reason. You have to experience everything so that you can then grow and go to that next level. Otherwise, it just, yeah.

So what is your favorite personal development book and why?

Oh, I don't really have it right now, but the first one that I read and then I reread it was Jack Canfield's Success Principles.

Ah, okay.

Oh, it's somewhere. Yeah, yeah, it's here. Can you see? I know you cannot see it.

I can't see it. It's too high on the shelf.

Yeah, it's too high on the shelf. But Jack Canfield's Success Principle, that was like before I started the business. I read it and then I reread it and he said such a— oh, and I forgot the name. Oh my good— Murphy something. John Murphy. He has something about powerful mind. This one is also good, but I can't remember. Yeah. And just the recent one that I'm started reading, I'm starting reading from the back of the book. Isn't that Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich?

Yeah.

I read that before, I think. Never could understand what he was saying. But I think I'm mature now enough to actually go, oh, I can't get enough. Oh my goodness. I read again the same chapter yesterday.

Yeah, so, but I think that's also part of the journey because there are things that I know I've heard over the years, and then one day somebody says it just the right way at the right time, and it's like, yeah.

And it's, yeah, that's exactly what happened to me. Some guy just said it randomly. And I just, yeah, I'm gonna get it, bought it straight away, read it, read it again. Oh my God, to prop to Derry that I get the same chapter.

Yeah. And sometimes we pick up different things when we reread things because we're at different moments in our life.

Yeah. Yeah. True. True. Yeah. That's exactly what it needed.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So what is one thing that you would recommend for women coming out of a divorce or the end of a long-term relationship, uh, who are trying to figure out what to do next or where to go from here? What would be your recommendation?

I just get the heart palpitations now. Oh my goodness, and that I would be the worst here to ask this question, but I think—

Why? No, go!

Okay, okay, okay. But based on my sister's experience, and that's what I don't want to do, go from one relationship into another relationship without giving a break and without staying on your own. And do the work on yourself first. Understand you. That's what I'm trying to do. I really want to understand myself. Like, when you don't understand a lot of things in yourself, how can you go in a new relationship? Like, how can you do this? I just— yeah, no. Learn yourself. Yeah, first learn yourself. Know your value, know what you want. And that's what I'm doing right now. I just really want to understand me, my value, what I want. And, uh, and then, yeah, I don't know. I don't know. I just say this thing, but I don't know if I don't know. Yeah.

And it's fine. It's exactly what it's supposed to be. So I wouldn't worry about it. And I happen to agree with you. I think that coming out of a relationship, being able to be okay with being alone and getting to know ourselves and getting to know what we want so we have that clarity.

Yeah. Um, but yeah, and then like in my sister's, in my sister's case, right, this chemistry came up, the new chemistry, and then she didn't have time to wait because there was this— the chemistry is very powerful. And then when it comes up, I'm like, you have to wait. But the chemistry, there's no way. The fire is there. Like, the fire is there. And then again, everything starts and then, ah, yeah.

But you can have fire there and have fun without jumping into a new commitment.

Yeah, that's a new approach. I like that. Right? Yeah.

Because who doesn't want to have fun? You want to have fun, I want to have fun.

I wanna have— let's do that.

So, yeah, yeah, all right, darling. Ingrida, thank you so much for your words of wisdom.