How to Reclaim Joy After Autoimmune Disease

In this storytelling episode, Michelle Niemeyer shares how she faced burnout and an autoimmune illness that forced her to stop and completely rethink how she lived her life. Through mindset shifts and her method, the Art of Bending Time, she learned how to reclaim energy, purpose, and health by aligning what truly matters: listening to her body. This is a fascinating story because You were a former attorney and now you've become a health coach after experiencing an autoimmune disease. So what is that autoimmune disease and how did it affect you?

Okay, so the autoimmune disease is something called primary biliary cholangitis. It is often referred to as PBC. It attacks the microscopic bile ducts in your liver. It's a little weird. A lot of people think liver disease is, you know, it's fatty liver or it's alcoholic cirrhosis or whatever. This is none of those things. It actually is your body is attacking those bile ducts and then cholesterol gets stuck. There's a whole process there. Lucky for me, there's a medication that helps. There are some other medications in the pipeline that can also help, you know, I was lucky to be one of the 60% who responds to Ursodial, which when I was diagnosed was the only option pharmaceutically. That is literally it's synthesized bear bile.

Bear bile.

Bear as in yes, the animal.

Grizzly bear.

Yes. From what I understand, somebody realized that bears don't get this disease, and they how who would But they—

Exactly.

But in traditional Chinese medicine, bear bile is used to treat various things related to the liver. And apparently that's why. And the other thing it's very good for, and it's used for sometimes, is people who have gallstones but can't have surgery. So they give them this drug and it essentially acts like Drano. And takes out the cholesterol, which can create gallstones or can, in my case, block the bile ducts. So it's really kind of interesting. So it's not steroids like you'd expect with autoimmunity or some kind of an anti— an immune suppressant. It's bear bile.

Is this something that you feel you have to be on for life now?

Yes. And I know this because I've tried to not take it. I'm the worst patient ever. I'm the patient who, when my numbers started looking good, I was like, oh yeah, well, let's see what happens now. And what happened when I stopped taking it, and I did have a doctor who was checking every month, my numbers went up immediately and they went up almost like you drew the line on a graph. It was— Predictable how they went up. So it was, you know, it's definitely something that I can't stop taking, unfortunately. There are some alternatives which I think might help a bit, but I don't know that I trust it enough to put my, my life on the line for it. One thing is tart cherry juice, which has a chemical in it which apparently does help Clear out your bile ducts. I don't know. I mean, I've read that and I did a cleanse at one point where I took tart cherry juice for a month and I had my blood testing done at the end of that month and it was lower than it normally is. So I'm thinking it did help.

Yes.

But I'm not sure I'd wanna trust it as the 100% solution.

Yes. And is it something you could do in combination with your medication?

I maybe, you know, it's, I would maybe.

Yeah.

I will tell you there have been times, there was a time around COVID when the medication that I take, there was, you know, I was a little concerned because there was a mention in an article I saw that Ursodiol might help people with COVID And God forbid, can you imagine if that had been grabbed onto It's a generic that's, you know, there's 5 manufacturers internationally that make this drug, and it's a relatively small population of people who use it. So if they had— if that had turned into like the drug du jour for COVID, it could have been a real disaster. And, and that, you know, certainly it's nice to have something in my back pocket, so to speak, if there were a situation like that.

Like I said, you're an attorney. And pretty stressed. And you talk about, you know, doing research around your work and everything, you talk a lot about burnout. So how did chronic stress or overworking contribute, or did it contribute to your autoimmune disease?

Well, we'll never know, right?

Yes, true.

I mean, do I believe it had an impact? Absolutely. I think that, you know, we know That stress has an impact on our health overall. It drives inflammation. It can drive changes in our microbiome. It can do all kinds of things that are harmful to us. And does that mean that it could help to trigger autoimmunity? I'm sure it can't hurt.

Yes.

They don't know what causes, what the trigger is with what I have. The doctors believe it has something to do with A chemical, but who knows. It's, it's 90% of the people who have what I have are women. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah, right? Isn't that interesting? And, and most of them are diagnosed in their 40s and 50s. So one theory is that, and, and for some reason, there's a theory about a particular type of chemical compound, and they think it may be something that's a color compound that's either in hair color or nail polish that triggers the disease.

Oh, wow.

But they don't know this for sure. And I've heard this now, you know, sometimes you hear this, sometimes you don't. Now I'm seeing things that say that there are differences in the microbiome with people who have this compared to people who don't. Maybe it's something about that, you know, who knows? There's no way of knowing. But what I can tell you is that, you know, I had experienced burnout really badly a couple years before I had symptoms that led to me being diagnosed. So I started feeling burned out, I will say, in about 2013, roughly. 2013, things got really bad. 2012 kind of too. 2014 in the spring, I had this episode where I went to the hospital. And I thought I had appendicitis. I had this horrible pain in my right, like kind of if you put your hand on top of your hip, like between your hip and your rib cage. I had this brutal pain when I laid down on my back and I couldn't figure out what that was. I, 2 nights in a row, the first night I tried to go to sleep, I couldn't sleep till about 2 in the morning. And the second night it happened, I literally laid there in bed looking things up on Google and thinking, This could be appendicitis, and I would be that person who would die from sepsis, right? I'd be that person who would lie there in bed going, oh my God, well, this hurts, but I'm strong. I, I don't need to go to the hospital.

And— I put my hand up for that one.

Yeah. So I, at 3 in the morning, I got in my car and I went to the emergency room. And—

Are we talking just not— so people understand, because that's what I was going to ask you about. What sort of signs did you have? So we're not talking about just A pain that sort of maybe takes time?

No, this was brutal. This was really bad pain.

Unimaginable.

It was really bad pain. And the weird part of it was that it hurt like heck when I laid down, but when I stood up, I was fine. So I'd lie down to go to bed again and it hurt, and then I'd get up and I'd walk around and I'd be okay, and I'd lie down and it hurt. It was the weirdest thing ever. Nobody could figure it out. So, you know, and prior to that, there had been symptoms, but I didn't know What those symptoms were. So for instance, brain fog. I had had an experience, and this was several years before, and this probably took years to develop to the point where I had these symptoms. I was not somebody who went to the doctor frequently, so I didn't have like— I wasn't going for checkups. They weren't looking at my blood every year. I didn't see it before I had this episode at the hospital. But I had had, like, you know, I'd had headaches sometimes, a lot, a lot of sinus headaches. They tried to convince me that I should get surgery in my nasal passages because of it.

Hmm.

I didn't. And I don't think I needed it, frankly. But I had had a lot of congestion. I'd had inflammation that, you know, caused me to have joint pain. Like I said, brain fog. At one point I had a phone call at work and this man called. I talked to him. He obviously had talked to me. And I looked back and I didn't remember talking to him. And I looked back at my phone notes from the day before and I had talked to that man for probably an hour and I had no recollection of talking to him. You know, and literally during the phone call I was looking for the notes and then I found the notes and I was like, what is going on? I thought I might have Alzheimer's or something, you know. And I was in my late 30s when that happened, or early 40s. It was really scary.

Wow.

And, you know, so that, like, there were little things like that, and then they wouldn't recur, so you wouldn't think much of it. Like pain in my joints that my grandmothers all talked— both talked about their knuckles hurting and stuff. I just assumed that was normal. I didn't do anything about it. So when I had this hospital experience, they thought I had gallstones. There were blood test results that were out of whack and it looked like gallstones. They did an ultrasound and there were no gallstones in the ultrasound. And the doctor kind of sent me away with this, well, we think it might be gallstones. Sometimes you just can't see the gallstone. It was all this assumption it was gallstones. Of course, you know, being somebody who really doesn't like going to the doctor, I'm looking at this going, gallstones are a lifestyle problem. I can fix this. I can change how I'm eating. I can exercise more. I can power through if it hurts, right? But I don't need to— I'm not going to let them do surgery on me for gallstones when they can't even see them. I proceeded in that year between the spring of '24 and into 2025. I lost 35 pounds. I became a Beachbody coach, which is a company here we have here in the States. That has, you know, workout programs and nutrition programs. And I was— their coaches are essentially a sales force in a multi-level marketing program. And I did that for the discount and for the accountability. And it was great. I loved it. I had— I made a lot of friends doing that. I just— it was never a career plan thing, but it was something that I really enjoyed. By the end of that year, I was in the best shape I'd ever been in. Like literally my high school weight, you know, feeling great, feeling better than I'd felt in years. And I got a UTI and I went to the doctor and he said, well, you haven't been here for a checkup for a while. Why don't we draw some blood? Now, I wasn't aware at that point that he had gotten the ER visit notes. He'd never called me or anything. He just had apparently been sent the records. And he did this blood work to see what was going on. And he calls me and he says, I want to make an appointment as soon as we can for you to come in and talk to me about your blood test results. And I'm like, what? Because I don't know about Australia, but in the United States, doctors don't call and ask you to come see them pretty much ever.

The emergency things they do. Yes.

I mean, unless it's like cancer, it's usually something very serious before they talk to you. So he brings me in and he shows me what the results were in the hospital. And at this point, the liver test results that were elevated, significantly elevated in the hospital, they were about double normal in the hospital, were now about triple normal. And so we're talking about at that point alkaline phosphatase, which is normally about 120 under our standard. Um, was 480.

Wow, that's incredible.

Yeah, it was really high.

That's what I was going to ask you, actually. If anyone's suspecting that they may have something like this, what is it on the blood test that's showing that you actually have this condition?

Okay, so, so what I was told at the time, and the most— the more current standards, I think, have changed a bit. When I was diagnosed What they required for a diagnosis was 3 times normal alkaline phosphatase and 2 times normal— it's AST and ALT. I can't remember what those mean exactly, but they're also liver enzymes that tend to show if there's inflammation or damage to the liver. If they find that pattern, Then they'll do another test for something they call anti-mitochondrial antibodies. And that is very definitive for PBC. And it used to be they would do a biopsy. They don't do biopsies most of the time now.

Mm-hmm.

But they do— a lot of places use something they call a FibroScan, which is like a specialized ultrasound that measures the rigidity of the tissue in your liver. And when they do that, they can tell if you've got cirrhosis or if you have fibrosis or how advanced the disease is. And that's what I've been having generally.

Yes.

I told you I had something come up in a CAT scan on a weird thing that I went to the emergency room for this year. And they just did a more— I mean, it's like the Cadillac of tests, which is called an MRE, magnetic resonance elastography. And that'll map out my entire liver and They literally had paddles on me while they did an MRI that made sound waves. And somehow that gives you a— it tests with the sound waves at the same time as they're doing the magnet.

Right.

I'll find out next week. I go to the doctor next week about that. But I don't expect they're going to find anything unusual. My blood testing is still totally normal and everything. I haven't had any symptoms. When I found out about that, obviously, it was really scary. Because when you look it up, PBC at the time, now about 22, I believe, people out of 100,000 get this disease. And that's because they're finding more of it with better blood testing. When I was first diagnosed, it was 8 in 100,000.

Wow.

And the thing, the articles I was seeing were saying things like 10 years, basically a 10-year lifespan after diagnosis if the drug doesn't work. Right? That would have been scary stuff.

Scary.

Or liver transplants. You know, a lot of the people who have this have— people have liver transplants if they're— if the medication doesn't work for them. Um, I'm— I know a woman who was diagnosed in her 30s and had a transplant by the time she was in her 50s, and now she's in her 70s and she's like, she's doing okay, she's doing fine, but she like, she had to have a transplant in her 50s. And she was diagnosed before they had the Ursodiol option, so I'm sure that that made a difference for her.

So even though you're on this medication, what lifestyle changes did you make, Michelle, that really— whether you felt really helped you? So someone listening to this episode feeling like either they've got some form of liver disease or they have this condition, what can help them? What did you do that really helped you?

Well, and this stuff, I mean, I do really believe that where I am today is because of my lifestyle as much as because this medication helps clear out my bile ducts. Because the things that I do to prevent further autoimmune activity are what's keeping me well. And I've reversed, at least I believe, we'll find out for sure when I get those results next week. The trend with my FibroScans has been that I've reversed from stage 2 damage to stage 0.

Wow.

And I've had, you know, my labs have gone not just into the normal range, but like into the bottom part of the normal range. I had a naturopath friend tell me, don't ever drink, like, don't drink tap water ever again.

Yeah.

Now, in the States, They actually just pulled the— we had fluoride in our tap water in Florida. They pulled it from the tap water in Florida. That's part of why he told me that. But there's chlorine and fluoride and a bunch of chemicals that are in tap water that you just, you know. So I use a Berkey filter, which filters out a whole lot of stuff. And I use that religiously. Even like when I visit my parents, I go to a place where I can buy filtered water and I don't drink the water at their house. For like a few days over Christmas. I don't drink the water. Eat a lot more vegetables. I hydrate a lot more than I used to. The vegetables I eat, I try to eat a lot of— there are certain cruciferous vegetables that are supposed to be very good for your liver. So things like kale, broccoli, um—

Cauliflower.

Yeah. Brussels sprouts. All these cruciferous vegetables are very helpful. Also, onions are supposed to be really helpful for some reason. Then I get into— I exercise more than I— I exercise more kindly to my body than I did. I used to be a runner and I ran and I really beat myself up. I don't do that as much now. I tend to— I walk everywhere. And I think that does make a difference.

Yes.

You know, I'm not so good about doing the weights and stuff, which I really need to do. I want to start that, but it's, you know, that's my next step in getting fit again. But I, you know, I walk everywhere. I go to the grocery store and I carry my bags of groceries home, and it's about 8 blocks from where I live. I walk my dog twice a day, and I usually take another walk for about an hour every day. Stress-wise, I would say I, it's not as much that I don't have a stressful life at all. Um, I'm an entrepreneur there. It has its own kinds of stresses.

Yes.

But, you know, I continued to practice law until just until last year. So I didn't stop law when this happened. I continued with law for a really long time, but I learned how to change my mindset. And that made a big difference. Big effort to change my mindset. I was already on that path anyway, but I went a lot farther on that path than I had before. So, you know, I really am very much a practitioner of, you know, looking at a problem and seeing it as a challenge with a growth versus a fixed mindset. I am very optimistic now where I didn't used to be. I have changed a lot about my sort of outlook and how I deal with the world. One of the things I teach in my program that's a big, big deal to me, and I think it's really important for everybody, is learning to identify those sparks that light me up and making sure I get those throughout my day.

Mm-hmm.

And when I say that, I don't mean things like going on big vacations and having the fancy car or having the fancy house or whatever that is. It's more like literally the simple pleasures that make you feel alive and happy. Having, you know, a cup of coffee with a— I did this this morning, you know, I go to this coffee place every morning and it's kind of a unique thing about Miami coffee because we're kind of part of Latin America but not. And so Americans drink Drip coffee.

I know, I've been there. It's terrible.

It can be terrible. It's not always terrible. If it's made well, it's not terrible. But I— it's, you know, it's different than espresso and, you know, cappuccino and whatever.

Did you do a particular practice, or was it more, uh, self-imposed, like thinking how to be grateful and mindful about things? Or did you—

It's a lot about mindfulness. It's a lot about in the present, and it's a lot about noticing. And one of the things I do with the people I work with is I actually have a guided meditation I bring them through that helps elicit memories. Often it's childhood memories of these things that made you feel like— made you laugh so hard you couldn't stop, made you feel incredibly proud, made you feel incredibly happy.

Yeah.

Like, or Incredibly excited about something that, you know, you have with anticipation for something. And the idea is finding what it is about those things and going really deep into that memory so that you remember, wow, I feel incredible when I move my body.

Yes.

And I ran in that race and I won the race, but it wasn't about winning. It was how my body felt. Or, you know, there's a lot of things like that that we don't really pay attention to. But when you do, when you figure that out, you can then proactively choose to have more of that in your life.

And that's—

and when you do that, it's— yeah, it's fuel.

Yes. Yes, exactly. And I love the way you said choose, because isn't that the crux of it all, is that We're choosing— either we're choosing negativity or we're choosing to change that for something more positive.

And that can be true about your work as well. So let's say— I'll give you an example, my example being a lawyer. I did not have family members who were lawyers. I did not have friends who were lawyers. I was a first-generation graduate degree in my family. And to, you know, I didn't really understand what I was getting into. I knew what lawyers looked like on television, and I knew what lawyers looked like in movies, and I knew what lawyers looked like in books I'd read. That's the exciting part, and that's the interactive part. And what I didn't realize, which didn't fit with who I am at all, was how much of my time would be spent isolated reading and writing. And I love to write. Like, I really do. Like, there's a piece of me that I'm— I used to be a great writer. Law school kills your writing skills. I used to be a great, like, creative writer. What I found was, you know, there are certain pieces of it that I really liked. But there was a lot about it that I didn't like. I didn't like the business of it. I didn't like the fact that as a litigator, there were things I had to do that were, for the most part, a complete and total waste of time, which translated into a waste of the money that my clients were paying me. And then I had to charge them for it. And I felt, I literally felt bad about charging my clients money to do stuff that I knew wasn't going to move the ball forward. But it had to be done. And then you waste your time spinning your wheels and the other side does things and you have to respond. And even when it's stupid, even when it's a complete waste of time.

Yeah.

And that part was very frustrating. So, you know, you can choose to enjoy the part that you can enjoy, right? And, but, you know, I mean, I ultimately chose to walk away from the profession in part because I don't like these aspects of the profession that I was really hopeful at some point would change, but nothing changes and it just doesn't seem to be getting better. I've always had a, I'll call it a through line in my life of mentoring and teaching people and helping them find those things that light them up.

Yes.

I did it with my clients. I did it with my employees when I was in a firm where I had staff that I worked with. And, you know, that's the part of what I loved about my job. So really, I'm carrying that into a different way of doing it.

Yes. I mean, mindset is just so, so important because everyone knows the mind-body connection and how our thoughts, you know, our body's listening all the time. And certain parts of our body will— I believe certain parts of our body will resonate to what you're thinking or saying to yourself, and then it'll go to that part of the body that it resonates with. So, you know, yeah.

And some of those things can be things that— it's not about your job, it's not, you know, it could be things that went back to your childhood or back to your, you know, various things, you know. Can I say that it was my job as a lawyer? I don't know. I mean, I, you know, I dealt with some mean people and there were times when it was really stressful.

Yes.

But the times for me that it was stressful were not about the law part. They were about running a small business and having times when my clients couldn't pay me and I had bills to pay and, you know, things like that. And there were some things about, you know, my history where I And this, I'm sure, happens to lots of people. It was very interesting. I went through therapy after I had my— I got divorced around the same day, like 2008. I realized in that process that I did not— I would— I pushed anger down so deep I barely felt it, if I felt it at all, and I never expressed it. As a child, I was punished for having tantrums as a little kid. I was sent to my room and, you know, like I was punished for that. So what did I learn? I learned not to express my anger because I'd get in trouble. I, you know, the irony of that is that if you look at things like traditional Chinese medicine, anger lives in your liver.

It lives in your liver.

So where did my autoimmune disease decide to come out? My liver. That's right.

Wherever it resonates, that's where it's going to go. And you had— yeah, it's amazing, isn't it, how the connection between our emotions, our mindset, how we, um, respond to the world.

Yeah.

Show up in different places in our body.

And I will say that was something that, as you practice as a lawyer, a lot of your job Is to be able to deal with people who are jerks and do it in a way where you're suppressing your emotions.

Yes, stopping from saying what you really want to say.

You can't scream and yell at your opposing counsel and throw something at him in the courtroom, even though he might deserve that, right? So, you know, that is something that, again, like, I— after I learned that at home, I was also— it was reinforced in how I In my career, in how I did my job.

That is so interesting. And you know, you have this— when I was also reading about you, you have this saying that this work-life balance that everybody talks about, you say it's a bit more like, that's BS. And yeah, so what is the healthier way do you find to balance things, especially when you're sick or stressed?

Yeah, so, so here's the thing about work-life balance that I have a big problem with. We are whole human beings.

Yes, yes.

We're whole human beings. No, right? We have, we have things we love. We have things that are interesting to us. We have things that are good for us. We have, you know, and, and that we're good at. We have Ways that we want to contribute in the world. And when we compartmentalize our life into little boxes so that we have our work box and our home box and our community activities box, and we somehow try to draw a line between them where we don't cross the line. To connect those dots, carry our whole self into all of those places, we're denying part of our essence essentially in different aspects of our lives.

Mm.

We're also missing out on opportunities, and this is where it comes into the time management part of it. Um, I'll give you an example. Let's say You really like painting. You— I don't know how your educational system is in Australia, but in the States, like, this is one that's dear to me. I loved art as a kid.

Yes.

I spent hours and hours and hours painting and drawing and sculpting and making things and all that. But I was a straight-A student. And when you had really good grades in school, you were discouraged from continuing in those classes, things like art and music and, you know, things that make you happy. You're just— you're discouraged from taking those after a while because once you're at a certain point in high school, they want you to take the advanced math and they want you to take a science class and they want you to take, you know, all these things, and there's only so many hours in the class day. So you start dropping stuff that makes you happy. I'm using art as an example because I did this. So I am not skilled at art. I'm not highly skilled. I won't say, you know, I like to say about the things that I paint, that doesn't suck. It's never gonna go— nobody's ever gonna ask me to have like a gallery opening with my With my art, but, you know, I enjoy it and I have a great deal of fun with it. So let's say I decide I want to get more into painting and I want to take classes and I'm looking for a way to do it inexpensively and in a way that I can have a community of people that I do this with and all that. Let's— that's something that's not work-related. And let's assume that I work for a minute in a business because I have— I've had my own business for years, but let's assume that I work in an office and I don't generally talk about my personal stuff at work because I see this idea that work-life balance and I don't talk about home at work. I've got people I work with who might also be interested in that or might have a sibling who does painting or might have a friend or their spouse or who knows what, right? They might know somebody who could give me some guidance and help me find those resources in my community. But if I never opened my mouth and said something to the people at work about my interest in something that's not work-related, I would never find that out.

That's right. That's right.

And then let's take that a step further. Let's say that I do do this. And this is something I literally have a homework assignment where I make my clients do this, and some of them aren't comfortable with it. you're gonna go to work and you're gonna talk to people at work about your outside interest and see if they know somebody who they could connect you to, whether it's them or somebody else. So let's say, let's take that a step farther. I go to work and I talk to some of the people I know at work and I say, listen, I'm looking for a place where I can paint and maybe I can have some community around it or take some classes and not have to, you know, not have it be like college tuition level expenses. And do you know anybody? And I have a colleague who says, oh yeah, my cousin does that and goes to this place, and they connect you to their cousin. Now you've developed a deeper relationship with the person at work who before that was just another person on your team, and you had a transactional relationship about what you do at work.

Yeah.

Now you've met their cousin and you've shared a personal interest. Which gives you a step toward a much more friendly and connected relationship than just being colleagues on the same team. It's so—

it makes so much sense.

And from a time perspective, their cousin might have just saved you hundreds of dollars and time in finding the path to get to do what you did.

Yeah.

And it happened because you Broke down the wall between the work box and the life or home box. And that's another piece of it, frankly, the whole concept of work-life, as if work has no life.

Mm.

You spend a third of your time probably working. And so what does that mean if we treat it like work is death or work is bad and then life is only what happens outside the office?

And when you think about it, the majority of your day is work. 8 hours.

Yes.

Usually for— usually for people is 8 hours. And 8 hours of your day you're spending with your colleagues, not with your family, not with your friends, but with your colleagues. So if you don't ever— like you say, if it's always this transactional kind of experience, well, that's really Can be so lonely. You can— you can—

It can be, and it can also be limiting. Like I said, you're, you're literally limiting your opportunity to grow. Yes, in your relationships, in your knowledge, in your whatever it is that you want to accomplish.

And that has a profound— without people—

And you're creating a mindset that work isn't life. And, you know, if you, if you see one of the things they know now, and, and You know, there, there are studies that show this. The physical impact of stress is completely different depending on how you— the meaning you place on that stress.

Yes. Yes.

One person can see something as fun and challenging and exciting, and another person can see it as a panic-inducing stress fest because— and it's the same event. It totally depends on the meaning you give it. So if you learn to see the thing that some people see as stressful as a challenge and as exciting, if you, if you feel that adrenaline rush as excitement and not as fear, it completely changes the physical impact of it on you. How can you—

what tip can you give to someone on how to start Reframing, because sometimes when we have a negative outlook or doom and gloom for years, it's not easy just to say, you know what, start seeing the joy in something. Because—

And it is, you're right. And, and, you know, the, the concept of toxic positivity, you know.

Oh yeah.

And that, that can be real, right? I mean, how many of us have had somebody be like, oh, you need to smile more, right? And it's just freaking annoying because it's— sorry, you know. And, and, you know, that's not helpful. But one thing you can do, you know, like I said, that doing the— this stepping back and figuring out what lights you up can be really helpful in just a general baseline sense of, of like your everyday— like I call it the sparks that light you up. It's like fuel that you scatter in throughout your day to get some of that stuff that even if everything else sucks That day, at least you got your cup of coffee, or you saw the water as you were walking someplace, or you took care of your plants in your house and you feel good about that, or whatever that is for you. You looked, you smiled at your kid and your kid responded and it felt good. The other thing though is learning how to step back from a situation Literally to just take a moment because people get so drawn into the drama, drawn into the stress of something without taking a moment to step back and look at it and kind of look at it in a broader sense.

Yeah.

And say, you know, okay, first of all, is my feeling that I'm reacting, what I'm— how I'm responding and what I'm feeling about this, is this even real? Or is this something that I've conditioned, I've been conditioned to feel because of things that aren't relevant right now, today, in this situation? Is just being able to even do that, step back and go, okay, you know, I know this feels scary, but like, I'm basing this on facts that people are telling me. Do I even know those facts are true? And do I know that what they're saying is going to happen is really going to happen? Or are there other options? Is there a way around it? Is there a positive side effect to this? And there's so many times where something we see as a setback opens up an opportunity that we hadn't even considered.

That's exactly right. Sometimes those setbacks might be exactly what needed to happen.

Right.

It's not always bad.

And sometimes we've been holding on so tight to something that we've been draining ourselves and fighting and trying so hard with something that isn't maybe the better path. And sometimes letting go is the best thing you can do. Oh, but until you let go, you won't know it.

Yeah, letting go is huge. It's huge. And it's not like you're giving away— some people worry, I think, about this term letting go. They're letting go a part of themselves. Well, you know, you're just kind of like letting go of belief or a behavior And then replace it with something a little—

And redirecting in a way that works better.

Exactly. You know, so shifting, like you say, about bending time.

Right. And, and so the, you know, the whole concept of bending time is really about— we all have the same number of hours in the day and days in the week and all that, and yet we have people who get tons of stuff done and people who get nothing done. So how do you do better? How do you get more done and still stay sane and happy and have fun and live a great life? Because getting more done without that is worthless. So how do you have that great life? And part of it is knowing what lights you up and make— and some of that, that's free and it doesn't take time. You just have to know about it. You have to figure it out. But then there are so many things you can do. And I teach people a lot of these things to make the impact of the time you're spending more impactful, more focused, especially with actual presence and being focused.

Yeah.

So part of it is your physical and your mental health. If you're physically and mentally healthy, you can stay focused longer. And just doing that, you'll get more done because you won't be chasing the squirrels, so to speak, right? You'll be on task. And if you're on task, you're going to get more done. Learning how to deal with your environment and make sure that things are not distracting you. Getting rid of notifications. I tell people to turn off their notifications.

Yes.

Silence your phone if you need to be focusing on something or remove it from your space or turn off the notifications completely. I don't have any email notifications or anything that pops up on my computer because when I'm at my computer, I'm focused. And I don't want emails popping up in my face and making and taking away that focus. Lots of different things you can do, and I teach people about how to do that. And then it's about mindset. It's about building habits that reinforce those things. And then it's about making a plan, deciding what really matters to you. So if you have, you know, you want to have goals, We— part of what makes us have meaning in life and feel good is to know that we're making progress. And by the way, the thing that's funny is there are studies that show it's not about achieving the goal. Once you achieve the goal, it's over. And there's like— that lasts about 2 minutes, like the excitement about achieving the goal. It's about the progress you're making and the learning that you're doing and the expansion of your life as that is happening.

Yeah.

And so you want to have, you want to have some big goals and you want to know what you need to get there. Because when you're just dreaming of it, but you're not focused on how to do it and making it happen, it's just a dream. It's not, it's nothing. It's just, you know, it's, it's imagination at that point without any action.

If you do bring some of that into your life, and change what you've been doing, how you can move the needle on your health in so many ways. Because then you achieve in one area and all of a sudden you feel inspired to then achieve in healthier eating or achieve in better exercise or connection with people. And all of those things compounded have definitely have an effect on your health.

Yes. And to bring that circle to its conclusion, I can absolutely tell you, I created The Art of Bending Time after I made the changes because of my autoimmune disease.

Mm-hmm.

And I realized all of a sudden, like, kind of— I won't say like woke up one day and said, aha, but it was kind of like that. I realized I loved my job again. And I was happy and I was feeling really good and everything was wonderful. Like, I was really feeling better than I had in years, and I was way more focused, and I was getting more work done with less time than I had in ages. And the reason for that was because the health brought back focus, and the focus made me effective and productive.

Your story is one of such inspiration, Michele, and of really good sound advice on how you can move your life forward. You don't— just because you get a diagnosis doesn't mean you have to be stuck there and sit there.

No. And it doesn't mean that, you know, this is a sad thing that I see. I'm part of a listserv with people who have PBC, and there seems to be 2 different groups. And one group is the people who are like Eeyore, who are like, you know, I've got this wrong with me and I've got that wrong with me and I can't do this and I can't do that. And there are the other ones who are Taking advantage of any opportunity they can to do more and to do the best they can. Part of that for me was really stepping outside of what had been up to that point. I was very much raised in the mindset of traditional medicine. You go to the doctor, they give you a drug, they tell you what to do, whatever. I didn't like doctors and I didn't like taking drugs, so I kind of avoided it to some degree. But I had had, thankfully for me, a minimal amount of exposure through people I knew to alternative medicine. I had a family member who beat stage 4 pancreatic cancer with nutrition.

Wow.

And that, you know, and acupuncture. And that was a big, obviously a big awakening in my family about what's possible. And that happened before my diagnosis. So I was able to draw on that. But, you know, I really embraced that and made a point of learning about it. You know, most people don't go to a health coaching school when they're a full-time attorney.

Absolutely don't.

And it was a 42-week program and I spent about 10 to 12 hours a week on classwork. I mean, it wasn't like it was some hour-a-week thing. You know, it was a significant investment in time and in money and in And, you know, everything else. But at that point, the point of it was not to change careers. It was just to figure out how to fix me so that I wouldn't end up, you know, dead in 10 years like some of the stuff in Google said. And, and that's worked out well.

It has. You look amazing, you sound amazing, and you've got this fantastic career happening. Thank you, Michele, so much for coming on and sharing your story and what you do and how you help people, because It is key. What you're working on is, I feel, is absolutely key. You can go to so many different practitioners, even alternative, but the mindset has to be open. Like you said, the people in the group, some are like, oh, I've got this, and others are like, what can I do about it? All of Michele's details will be in the show notes. You can contact her if you like what you've heard, which I certainly have. I think it's amazing what you're doing.

Thank you.

You know, reach out to her, you know, especially if you have a condition, because changing your mindset, changing your lifestyle can have— play a significant part in improving your, your state of life. Thanks, Michele. It was a pleasure. Bye.

Have a good day.