Ep. 193 Fall in love with the process with guest Michelle Micalizzi
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[00:00:00] Welcome to the bold goal crusher podcast for anyone looking to stop letting life get in the way and start crushing bold goals. I'm your host, Sara Mayer, and I'm thrilled to navigate this journey with you because it's time to start boldly achieving without working double time. So let's dive in.
Sara Mayer: Hello, Bold Gold Crushers. I'm super excited today to introduce you to my guest, but also my friend, Michelle Micalizzi. She is a seasoned health coach, personal trainer, and registered yoga teacher with over four decades of experience. experience in the industry. Throughout her career, she has obtained certifications from Villanova University and the National Academy of Sports Medicine.
Sara Mayer: She is proud to be a registered member of Yoga Alliance and with a master's degree in administration [00:01:00] specializing in organizational behavior from St. Michael's College. She has honed her experience, but also successfully owned and operated. Multiple businesses. She's had the opportunity to work with prominent companies like Revlon focusing on the salon professional market through her marketing company, alongside her dedicated team, her passion lies in empowering individuals to live healthy, joyful, and abundant lives by harnessing the transformative power of exceptional nutrition.
Sara Mayer: Michelle, I'm so excited to have you on the show
Michelle Micalizzi: today. I just feel super privileged to be here and just, this is the best way for us to spend time together. Too busy people. It's just what the heck, let's do a podcast.
Sara Mayer: Oh yeah. I totally agree. And for those of you who have listened for a while, you know that I'm very involved in fundraising for the leukemia and lymphoma society and other charities.
Sara Mayer: And that's how, [00:02:00] actually how Michelle and I met in, what was that 2021? Oh, it feels like a lifetime ago.
Michelle Micalizzi: I've been involved with LLS since I came to Arizona in 2009. So it could have been at any time we had the LLS community. But I think that you and I started engaging more purposefully in about 2019
Sara Mayer: I would say.
Sara Mayer: Yeah. Yeah. And then we ran for woman of the year in 2021. So I think that's why you beat me. There's no winners or losers. It all goes to the same place.
Michelle Micalizzi: Hey, you know what? I really feel like if you had to be runner up to anybody, it would be you and you're right. We're working to end cancer.
Michelle Micalizzi: So there are no losers, of course we were competing. I did. Yeah.
Sara Mayer: Yeah. It was a collaborative effort. I, it was a great experience. It was a tough time to be fundraising though, because it was, if you remember back to 2021, 2020 gets the bad rap, but [00:03:00] 2021, almost the entire year was shut down.
Michelle Micalizzi: It was interesting because I had been nominated three times for a woman of the year. And I really emotionally knew that I would need to wait until my dad passed. So my dad was diagnosed with lymphoma and I would say 2005 and he was I have to do the math on that, but he was given five years to live and he, we got 12 and we got 12 because of the research that LLS does.
Michelle Micalizzi: Ultimately all research that has had a major significant impact on cancer research has happened through the lukoma. Leukemia lymphoma society. So I knew that I wanted to do it, but I knew it would be too emotional. I am an over overly emotional Irish Italian Catholic girl. And so I needed to wait until my dad had passed to be able to really dig into the stats and that kind of thing.
Michelle Micalizzi: So on my dad's deathbed, I actually called LLS when he was dying and said, I accept the nomination.
Sara Mayer: And what a commitment and testament to your father as well. I run in [00:04:00] memory of my brother and so I think that's the only thing we can do is try and make sure that other families don't have to go through what we go through.
Michelle Micalizzi: And I think getting the gift of time with my dad was the biggest gift. And so I could have waited until if I was being super competitive, I guess I could have waited until after the pandemic, but I felt that never in the history of ever, did we have more of a need than during the pandemic, because there were so many people who couldn't leave the house and needed our help.
Michelle Micalizzi: And we did the best we could to deliver a. Virtual distance poker run that was through five different runs throughout different areas here in, in Arizona. But it became pretty evident once we were at the insurance level that I couldn't protect people from the potential liability of doing a run like that during, motorcycle poker run with people.
Michelle Micalizzi: I tried the best I could to have a distance, get technology in place, but when it became clear that I couldn't. Really protect LLS from the liability, the potential who [00:05:00] knows what I had to pull that run. I will deliver that at some point. I will do a poker run in honor of LLS at some point.
Sara Mayer: And I think the reason I bring this up is, we are on the bold goal crusher podcast and both Michelle and I have the same goal and it's. Super bold, and that's to find an end to cancer. And one of the things that when you do have something that's so big is that it takes many years. It takes lots of money and it takes lots of people collaborating to achieve that goal and a shared vision.
Sara Mayer: And sometimes as. You're listening here. You may have a big wild goal that may not seem attainable, but that doesn't mean it's not something that you don't try to achieve.
Michelle Micalizzi: It's interesting. You're talking about this. Cause I tried yesterday to get some time to do a little reel. I've been doing like a little 32nd reel every day with a quick thought.
Michelle Micalizzi: And yesterday's thought was about falling in love [00:06:00] with the process. And I'll deliver that at some point today, most likely if I get, if I can squeeze it in. I think if you're only driven by attaining the goal, then you'll quit. Yeah. But you have to fall in love with the process.
Michelle Micalizzi: And I think one of the things I love about you is that you love the process. You love it. The whole LLS, I want you, you're like super inspiring. You're super excited about the. Process of fundraising, the process of connecting with people in the getting dressed up for the gala. And I can't wait to dress up with the, with you this year, and doing your hair and putting on the dress and you don't move through the room.
Michelle Micalizzi: Okay, I'm here. You move the room with purpose and you are always moving quick and you are busy, because you love the process. Now, if we, and I'm going to say when we achieve the goal of, curing cancer, you will choose another process. Because that's the way you're wired, so if you're trying to lose weight or you're trying to gain a position at work or your whatever it is that you're doing, if you don't love the process, the daily, then you'll [00:07:00] always feel like you're losing.
Michelle Micalizzi: Yeah. And I was a gymnast and I recently have been reconnected with one of the girls that I came up with, her name is Dr. Kim Lanin. She made the national team, her parents and Bella Oli were my coach. Oh, wow. And Kim was one of the few rare people. Okay. And it's super rare of all the billions of girls that are doing gymnastics, only six.
Michelle Micalizzi: Make the national team every year and Kim made the national team and I didn't though I could say I failed because I wasn't one of the six. Genetic freaks basically that made the team, or I got injured or I could let that beat me up, or I could realize that the process of becoming a gymnast and learning to love the process of doing Romanian drills over and over and over and over again, no trick at the end of it for a very long time.
Michelle Micalizzi: That's how gymnasts learn. They learn the components over literally years. And then one day, those components are put together, and you throw a trick, and if you throw it well enough, [00:08:00] you end up on a national team. But if you don't fall in love with doing sit ups... You're never going to get there. I did 2000 sit ups a day for about four years without missing a day.
Michelle Micalizzi: I had a bet. Oh wow. I couldn't do twice as many sit ups for twice as long as him. And I think he, he did a thousand and he lost track around 200 and I doubled them by a wide margin. So I fell in love with the process of doing 2000 sit ups every day.
Sara Mayer: Yeah. And I love that you bring up the process because so many times we have these goals and we don't know how.
Sara Mayer: To do it, or we're looking at people who have already done it and they're in their chapter 25 and we're in our chapter 20 or maybe 20, but maybe one
Michelle Micalizzi: or you're just thinking about it, you're like, I don't know how to do that,
Sara Mayer: yeah. And it's so easy to give up because you may not see the results quickly, or you may find something else that you're [00:09:00] interested in.
Sara Mayer: So how do you stay focused on the goal to keep going?
Michelle Micalizzi: It's not about the result. You were, I love listening to the calm app and Jay Sheedy a couple of nights ago, my husband and I have been listening to the calm app as we go to bed, which is cool. This is my trick to get my husband to meditate.
Michelle Micalizzi: So we were in bed and Jay Sheedy was talking about the struggle. If you're doing a puzzle was one of the the analogies he used and it's a 10 piece puzzle and you complete it, you don't feel a lot of like achievement. But if you do one of those crazy thousand piece, multiple colors, takes over your whole kitchen table puzzle.
Michelle Micalizzi: When you put that last piece in, you're like, whoa. But when you're working on a puzzle like that, you're feeling achievement every time you look at it. Because even if you get the whole edge, you ever done a puzzle, you get the whole edge. You're like, wow, you got to celebrate the small wins as you're making them along the way.
Michelle Micalizzi: But you literally have to fall in love with the do as opposed to the end. And then, what happens is you're right. You could be on your way to one goal and [00:10:00] something I always call myself an opportunist. Yeah. I have a goal that's way out there. But if something comes along that goes, wow, that's a cool, shiny object.
Michelle Micalizzi: It might make sense for me to explore that a little bit. And then you go down that, that path a little bit like, Nope, and you back up and then you get back on the other goal or, but now you've learned something. So you've shifted a little bit with that goal looks like changes because you're always evolving.
Michelle Micalizzi: And changing if you are purpose driven as opposed to goal driven. Yeah.
Sara Mayer: Yeah. And I love that you use the term purpose driven versus goal driven. And that really goes back to setting goals at the beginning of the year. Many people set goals at the beginning of the year and they're like, I'm going to do this, and this.
Sara Mayer: And then March rolls around and they're like I checked a lot of email.
Michelle Micalizzi: I'm in the, I'm in the health and fitness business and I do a resolution chat. I have done resolution challenges every year. Okay. But the first thing is I don't just do a month long resolution challenge. 90 days is what I do because if you, most people, [00:11:00] 99 percent of people are going to give up within the first 21 to 30 days.
Michelle Micalizzi: They never make it to 90 days, but if you make it to 90 days, you're more likely to keep a goal. So I say that. It can't be about the goal. It has to be about what your why is, so if your why is I'm going to lose weight because I don't want to be diabetic. Maybe you didn't at least lose 50 pounds, but you're not on diabetes medicine.
Michelle Micalizzi: So there's a plus, right? So I think setting our goals around why is more important than sending them around particular numbers. Or how you want to feel when you get to a certain location, cause if I look at all the goals that I've set in my life, I've hit many of them, but some of them I haven't.
Michelle Micalizzi: Some of them I care that I have it and some of them I don't care that I have it. The goal every day is to be the best human being that you can be. Yeah. Ooh, I love that. Because if you're waging your value on whether or not you get the big check or the promotion or the, the, you lose the weight, then that's a really flat way of living.
Michelle Micalizzi: Your goal should be, you know what? Every day I'd wake up in the [00:12:00] morning. I dust myself off. I weigh in with okay, where am I at today? If I'm on the yoga mat every day, I show up a different person because some days my back is tight. Some days it's not. Some days I fly. Some days I'm just like laying down and breathing, so the first thing is waking up and decide, okay, where am I truly honestly at today? And then doing the best you can with what you've been given that day. If at the end of the day you can say with what God gave me today, I did my very best. You're winning. Yeah. And you just, wash your
Sara Mayer: feet. Yeah.
Sara Mayer: And I think it's so important to celebrate the wins. I hear that message from you throughout our talk today, where many times people don't stop and celebrate those wins or they think it needs to be something like a big production. If I achieve this, I'll go on a vacation. Oh, but I can't afford to go on a vacation or whatever.
Michelle Micalizzi: So I love pressure based thing. Yeah. Yeah. And I
Sara Mayer: love that you talk about celebrating those little wins, especially in that puzzle. I'm not a big puzzle person, but I did have a friend who did the, where is Waldo [00:13:00] puzzle.
Michelle Micalizzi: That's amazing,
Sara Mayer: right? Yeah. No, thank you. I'm good.
Michelle Micalizzi: Yeah. And I think that acknowledging on the inside is important.
Michelle Micalizzi: Because I could look going back to my gymnastics days. I could say I didn't win an Olympic medal. So I'm a failure. Yeah. No I never feel like I'm losing. Yeah. I feel like I'm winning every day, whether I hit those big numbers or those, that big goal or not, because every day I show up with my a game and your a game is it changes, like some days I say, you know what, I got out of bed.
Michelle Micalizzi: I made my bed. I looked at it. Yeah. Acknowledging where you are and I think that this is what happens for folks that when I look at a big goal I'm never even going to bother starting because I can't even get out of bed today. So how am I going to, how am I going to start a big goal like that?
Michelle Micalizzi: The reality is like throughout your life, you're going to have stuff happen. That's going to keep you like, you're going to wake up and say, today's a crap day. Today, my cousin died of cancer [00:14:00] today. My, my cousin overdosed today. My dad died today. I injured myself. Today is not an update, so you can't give up on the long game because you have one down day or one down month or a couple down years, you have to stay committed to being the best you can be.
Michelle Micalizzi: And if you do that, if you can say, you know what, I'm going to do the best I gave with what God gave me every day, then you're always winning. And people who win. Yeah. So if you're constantly feeling like a winner, you're going to attract more winners in your life. Okay. That are thinking that way. And you're going to create a winning lifestyle around you because winning is the way you operate.
Sara Mayer: Yeah. I also think there's a lesson in losing, I think about when I was growing up, I'm an equestrian, so I've ridden horses. My Almost my whole life. And I was around a lot of people who were winning all the time. And when they first lost, [00:15:00] they didn't not know how to handle that.
Michelle Micalizzi: It wants you.
Michelle Micalizzi: That's the thing. You can lose and still be winning on the inside. So if you wake up that day and I didn't know that you were an equestrian, that's really cool. I've known you all these years and I didn't know that I love horses. I think I grew up between a sheep farm and a horse farm.
Michelle Micalizzi: So I love animals and yes, there was a manure thing going on, but I think that when you're a winner, you realize that losing as part of it, if you're not failing or I always say, if people don't like you, you haven't met enough people. Yeah. If you're out there meeting people and you're doing the thing and you're a achievement based and you're goal based and you're doing projects, if you haven't rubbed somebody the wrong way, you're not meeting enough people.
Michelle Micalizzi: If you haven't lost it, losing is
Sara Mayer: part of winning or you're playing it safe.
Michelle Micalizzi: Yeah. Which, there's no fun
Sara Mayer: in that. Yeah. A lot of people I do find that I work with play it safe. I really want to do this, but [00:16:00] I'm going to do this instead because it's realistic. Oh, I hate that word.
Michelle Micalizzi: Absolutely hate it. I loved oh my God, the comedian. He talked about his dad being an accountant. He did the the Grinch guy, what's his name? Oh, geez. It'll come back later. Jim Carrey. Oh, Jim Carrey talks about his dad. His dad was an amazing comedian, but he decided to be an accountant because that was safe and realistic.
Michelle Micalizzi: And then he got fired anyway. And Jim Carrey says, you're going to have loses anyway. So you might as well do it, have the losses being doing what you want to do. Yeah. I think that you can. Get a JLB. Yeah. And do the cubicle thing, which there's nothing wrong with that. If that makes you happy, but if you are every day going into a nine to five and you're just beside yourself, miserable, I don't know, it's not really living.
Michelle Micalizzi: I'd rather be beside myself, miserable and broke and struggling as an entrepreneur than to be beside myself, [00:17:00] miserable and stuck in a cubicle. Yeah. And you may or may not get the promotion at work. So you might as well, be realistic, build your side hustle on the side. You got kids to feed, you got a family to feed fine, but don't give up on your hustle.
Michelle Micalizzi: Because of
Sara Mayer: your hustle. Yeah. You know what I mean? And I think it's so interesting. People are like, Oh, chasing the promotion or chasing the raise. I'm an entrepreneur. I can give myself a raise and a promotion anytime I want. I can change my title, whatever. And in fact, Or a pay motion. Yeah.
Sara Mayer: Or a demotion. And in fact, to a spam, I got an email the other day that my bonus went through and I didn't know I authorized a bonus. So I was very excited. I was celebrating my bonus.
Michelle Micalizzi: I, I actually bonus last night. I like during my sleep, I cycled twice with my health coaching business. And so I woke up to 108 bucks.
Michelle Micalizzi: So there's their dinner.
Sara Mayer: So one of the things that you do is a new year challenge. Tell me a little bit about that. What does [00:18:00] that entail and what does that look like? So I
Michelle Micalizzi: do a lot of challenges throughout the year. I do an 11 day challenge, which is like a quick jumpstart. And I do a 30 day reset, which you're a part of right now.
Michelle Micalizzi: Yeah. And I also do A yearly, but reset thing somewhere in January. So the 11 day challenge, I have a team of folks that I work with both personally that I work with, but I'm part of a giant team and we all get together and support each other in 11 day reset where we're doing a protein pacing intermittent fasting program where it's a down and dirty.
Michelle Micalizzi: It's a really great tool for me. If I go. On vacation and I come back and I want to reset. That's a great way to do it. It gets on metabolism reset. And then there's a 30 day reset, which is a little longer and a little less extreme as far as the fasting part of it, but still a way of to set a habit to jumpstart you a little longer.
Michelle Micalizzi: And then the relentless resolution challenge that I usually do at the beginning of the year, that challenge, I don't just talk about health and fitness. I talk about the big picture. Yeah. Cause to me, I think health and fitness is just part of the big picture. And I [00:19:00] say to people, Hey what are some of the things that you're working on this year?
Michelle Micalizzi: And let's move the needle in the right direction. What would it look like for you if next year, these five things that you chose were different. Yeah. Then all of these things, we have Facebook groups where we're constantly supporting each other as a group, but everybody has access to me 20, literally 24 seven.
Michelle Micalizzi: So I take all those years that I worked in social work and all those years as a personal trainer and a health coach and a yoga teacher. And I'm pouring that in and then there's some folks that I work with that also want to grow a business. And so I'm business coaching those folks to grow a similar business as they envision it to be.
Michelle Micalizzi: I know what my business wants to look like and they might want their business to look slightly different or emulate me. And so I work with them on growing their own business as well, whether it be as a coach like me or as a brand partner or an influencer on social media.
Sara Mayer: Ooh, I love it. So you're involved in a lot of different things.
Sara Mayer: So if somebody is listening to the show and they're like, Ooh, I just love this conversation, how would they get in touch with [00:20:00] you? And how, what might they expect?
Michelle Micalizzi: So you can find me on social media, just about everywhere. If on Facebook and Instagram, it's Michelle Michelizzi 13. If you want to find like where everything is in one place, you can go to choose healthy change.
Michelle Micalizzi: com. And that's my website. You can, check me out and my social media links are there, or you can text me or call me or send me a carrier pigeon to four eight zero.
Sara Mayer: Awesome. I love it. I just love this conversation and I love what's evolved over the years as far as our friendship. Thank you so much for being on the show and just being you're truly an inspiration. And I know lots. Lots of people out there can benefit from working with you.
Michelle Micalizzi: Thank you very much for having me on.
Michelle Micalizzi: And I look forward to working with you personally, but also to continuing to chip away at this cancer thing so that we can have a different world in the future and supporting you professionally as well. I'm also always very impressed by everything you're doing. So you're
Sara Mayer: so kind. Thank you so much.
Sara Mayer: All right, everyone, it's time to get out there and [00:21:00] crush your goals and everything that gets in the way. So you do not have to work double time. So let's get to it. Thank you.
Thank you for tuning into the bold goal crusher podcast where we crush goals and everything that gets in the way. I always love to support my community.
I look forward to seeing you crush your goals this year.
