Mike and Chaya sit down with Michele Price, a seasoned leadership development expert who specializes in empowering women and non-binary individuals. Through the lens of her indigenous heritage and identity, Michele shares insights on dismantling biases and the challenges women face in the current socio-political climate.

We Also Cover:

• The evolution of leadership styles, particularly among women
• Societal changes on women's rights and representation
• Empathy and relationship building in leadership
• Indigenous philosophy and the community collective
• How generational healing can transform family legacies and communities
• The power of asking questions

Quotes:

• "In our culture, we didn't punish people for being different. We paid attention to what the differences were in our children, and we supported that."
• "When you build healthy relationships with people and authentic relationship with people, leadership becomes so easy."
• "Life's not about hitting a home run every time. The winningest teams in baseball focus on getting on base. How are you going to get on base?"
• "And I always remind them, yes, you have an individual journey. That's important. And it's also important for you to remember: what do you bring to the collective journey? Because it affects you."

About Michele Price:

With over 40 years of experience in leadership development, Michele Price specializes in guiding women and non-binary individuals through transformative leadership journeys. Drawing from Indigenous wisdom, social justice, and the GADUGI framework, they empower leaders to dismantle bias, embrace empathy, and foster holistic self-leadership. Through their podcast 'Verbal Vortexes' and newsletter, they help leaders align with their vision while navigating the complexities of collective and individual purpose.

Connect with Michele:

• https://www.linkedin.com/in/micheleprice/
• https://breakthroughbusinessstrategies.substack.com/

As always, thanks for lending us your ears and keep igniting that spark!

Stay Connected:

• Website: https://sparklaunchpodcast.com/
• ADHD Coaching & Workshops: https://www.sparklaunch.org/
• Chaya on Instagram
• Mike on Instagram
• Want To Be a Guest? https://sparklaunchpodcast.com/booking

Mike Cornell: 00:00:00

You've landed at Spark Launch, the guide star for embracing what it means to be neurodiverse. I'm Mike Cornell, joined by CEO of Spark Launch, Chaya Mallavaram.

Here we navigate mental health triumphs and tribulations from all across the spectrum, charting a course through the shared experiences that unite us and discovering how to embody the unique strengths within neurodivergent and neurotypical alike. Igniting your spark and launching it into a better tomorrow. Hello there. I'm Mike.

Chaya Mallavaram: 00:00:34

I'm Chaya.

Mike Cornell: 00:00:35

And today we welcome Michele Price, who has over 40 years of experience in leadership development, specializing in guiding women and non binary individuals through transformative leadership journeys.

Drawing from indigenous wisdom and the Gadugi framework, they empower leaders to dismantle bias, embrace empathy, and foster holistic self leadership.

Through their podcast, verbal vortexes and newsletter, they help leaders align with their vision while navigating the complexities of collective and individual purpose. Welcome, Michele.

Michele Price: 00:01:07

Thank you.

Chaya Mallavaram: 00:01:07

Welcome to the show, Michele. 40 years is a lot, so share us your wisdom and how do you see leadership has evolved and where do you like to see it go?

Michele Price: 00:01:22

That's a big question. Leadership is evolving in the sense that women are starting to really embrace their voice very differently.

And having been on this journey for a really long time, I also have had the experience. I was, I was growing up and I was a young woman when we received a lot of rights that right now are being challenged.

So, yes, I was a teen when roe versus way went through. I saw women like Ann Richards be governor of Texas instead of who we have now.

I had women modeling for me how to stand in their power, like Barbara Jordan. So the world's really different. And while we are making some gains, we're also experiencing some fascinating losses.

As I'm watching us start to navigate changes in structure, I can attest to.

Chaya Mallavaram: 00:02:20

The fact that I very recently found my voice.

And for me, one of the things is when you build healthy relationships with people and authentic relationship with people, leadership becomes so easy, right? It's not about power. It's not about authority. It's about what do we have to contribute?

And let's bring all our contributions together and just solve the problem that's in front of us.

Michele Price: 00:02:50

When you are an entrepreneur at heart, you see things differently.

And I very specifically will state my journey as an entrepreneurial one because I did not walk through, or even choose to walk through it from a professional perspective that some of my sisters in leadership inside of big companies have.

I learned really early, but it took me a lot of skinning my knees and bumping my shins to figure out that I was an entrepreneur, because it wasn't modeled for me. Both my parents, they were accountants. Their dynamic and their choice of a professional life was really different than what was natural for me.

And it took a little while for me to figure that out, you know, because like any kid, you pay attention to what's modeled for you, and then you start exploring and examining and going out in the space of seeing what you can do, do it didn't feel good. Now I will hold my hand up and say, I'm very lucky. As an Aries kid, I've always had a voice. Both my parents, who are now past will chuckle.

I can hear their spirits chuckling with me, like, yeah, we never had to worry about you speaking up for yourself. And so that allowed me to ask a whole different set of questions that I found most people even ask.

Chaya Mallavaram: 00:04:16

So you embraced leadership yourself. You didn't let anyone assign that to you. In the corporate world where I worked for 22 years, it's a whole, it's different scene there.

It's all politics. And being a neurodivergent person, I absolutely hate politics. I would not do anything just to impress someone.

And so I didn't have, I didn't fit into the traditional leadership, and I never even tried because I didn't want to change my form to be somebody else. But I've seen that with other people, even women, and it just feels not genuine.

Just, they have to be somebody who they are not just to fit into that role. And that breaks my heart. And you also talked about leading from the heart, which is what everybody should be doing, not just entrepreneurs. Right.

Even. Even people in traditional roles. Leadership in the corporate world should all be leading from the heart, which is the feminine energy.

I like to see it as energy, which we both. We have the masculine and feminine energy inside of us. All of us do. And so that job should be done from the heart, from love, from empathy.

And there's no need to have that superiority complex. And displaying that one is bigger or greater or has more power than the other.

Michele Price: 00:05:52

Yeah, that was definitely something we didn't know 40 years ago. We didn't know about neurodivergence.

It's only been recently that there's even been expanded assessments, and people started asking a whole new set of questions so that women could start identifying. Oh, so that's why that kept happening. Oh, so that's what's going on for me.

And, yeah, that's a big part of when you have a long arc of time, like a 44 decades, to be able to look back on, reflect on, as well as bring forward pieces of wisdom, you're able to own who you are in a really different way that only really can come from time. Yes. Is there a lot that I knew about myself as a young woman? Definitely.

I was lucky in the sense that I had parents who, as much as they, there were things that I did receive conditioning from them. They weren't the same kind of parents that most of my colleagues, friends, whatever you would call that age group experience.

My parents weren't as domineering or interfering when it came to my identity. Now, did they have expectations around behaviors, you know, that were pretty generationally anchored? Yes.

And it was interesting because I had a very open minded mother and a father who knew a lot more than most men around holistic health than his generation would. But then he was also very anchored in very strict social conditioning. So there was a lot of that I had to overcome.

And it's fascinating when you give yourself permission to just ask yourself questions instead of going by what I see a lot of people do, and that is they have default behavior that's highly conditioned from whether it's the culture they grew up in or it's the family they grew up in or its generational dynamics that they grew up in. And I was just always the kid who was asking questions right out from the get go.

You know, I specifically remember, and I can closing my eyes because I can see it still sitting in the middle of a circle of a bunch of great aunts and my great grandmother on my father's side. I always had an affinity, a special love for elders. Can't tell you why. Something I brought into this lifetime.

And while my cousins were outside playing with each other, I was in the house asking questions, asking my great aunts and my great grandmother tell me about when I was just full of questions. And, you know, that memory didn't resurface itself until I had a global business radio show for ten years.

And I used to interview a lot of New York Times best selling authors.

And it's always fascinating to me to watch how some experts focus so much on their expertise that they bring to a conversation, and others really understand what a dance and interview can be. And I was lucky enough to have one who really understood the dance. And he would ask me questions as much as I would ask him.

And he said, you know, I'm hearing. I'm hearing really different things from you in this interview than I normally have he's like, one, I can tell you've actually read the book.

Two, you're bringing your own insights and your own expertise into my body of work. I'm curious to ask you, do you remember when you first started asking these kind of questions?

And just by him asking me that, I immediately went back to that timeline, and I saw that time in my life, and I'm like, well, now that you asked me. And then I shared what I just shared with you about sitting around the circle with all my great aunts and great grandmother.

I said, so I guess I've been asking these questions since I was a little girl.

Chaya Mallavaram: 00:09:59

The power of asking questions. You were in an environment where you were allowed to ask questions. Not everybody has that opportunity.

In fact, back in my school, we were not allowed to ask stupid questions, and there's no stupid question as we know that.

Because being a neurodivergent person, you have a lot of questions because there's this huge inner world going on, and we need answers for everything because we are just not going to take something because it was given to us. And that's where you see that rebellious side.

It breaks my heart when I see kids rebelling and being punished for being rebellious because they actually have some message. They might not know how to verbalize it, but they are rebelling against something that's being forced or they just don't understand why.

And so you also talked about conditioning, and that happens a lot, right? We are so conditioned, and it's passed on the generational trauma, and we then pass it on to the next generation if we don't heal ourselves.

And that's why healing is so important that we don't pass it on to the next generation. And neurodivergent children, they don't take it, so they fight it, which is amazing, actually.

So, coming back to you, you are so lucky to have embraced your strengths from very early on. A lot of us, we followed the rules. We tried to follow the rules, and. And that's where a lot of trauma came from.

But I went to a very strict, common school where we had to follow the rules. Especially when you're a child, I think you don't have a lot of power, and so you just have to listen.

But you're one of the lucky ones to have lived in their strengthen and owned up for your own leadership, because you don't need anyone to tell you that.

Michele Price: 00:12:10

I definitely got into trouble. So it's not that I. Not that I had an easy road of it.

Chaya Mallavaram: 00:12:17

Of course. That's how we learn.

Michele Price: 00:12:19

Yeah, yeah. And I'm also grateful because, you know, being an only child, I've come to really appreciate reflective time.

So my mother brought something really interesting to that dynamic. She came from a family of five.

She was the oldest girl, and so she was always expected to do a lot of caregiving for brothers and sisters or stuff around the house to grow up on a farm, so, you know, farmer mentality.

And one of the things I remember her telling me, and I can actually, when she told me that, it sparked a memory and I could go back and I actually saw some of it, and that is, much as I loved my. And it's going to make me cry. So I'm just warning you ahead of time.

As much as I loved my grandmother, their generation was harsh, and she learned very early that I didn't respond to that.

And I was lucky enough to have a mother who advocated for me and who would say things to bring attention and help everybody in the family understand that being harsh with children doesn't actually do anything for you. And so what she shared was, I was about three years old.

My parents were living in my grandparents house, which was only about five houses off the bay in a little town called Laporte, which is about 45 minutes from Houston here. And it was a white house. I remember that.

And I was outside playing, and I decided to throw mud at the house, you know, experimenting, what can I do with this mud? And my grandmother got really mad. She came out there, and she was about to spank me.

And my mother came out and said, no, she's being a three year old. And so watching those dynamics and really paying attention to them also anchored for me.

So not only as a mother, was I the kind of mother who paid attention to what are the strengths that I see surfacing and coming out of my child as he's growing? But I did the same thing in business.

I would literally ask, okay, so what are the strengths of this person, and what am I noticing in how they interact with others and where do their strengths shift, and then they aren't strengths anymore. So, for example, on my startup grind team, I had all of us take multiple assessments.

Cause I'm really great at using the data from assessments and then asking questions and helping people learn about themselves. And we were all exploring because, you know, being on a startup growing team like that, a local chapter, that's all voluntary work.

And so my concern was, how can everybody bring their strengths to the table, but also feel fulfilled in what we're doing? Because it is voluntary work. So you have to think about it a little differently.

Pay and how do we make sure we get accomplished what we need to accomplish so that we're able to, you know, fulfill our obligation as a chapter.

And we were continuously experimenting and paying attention to noticing what was of ease for one team member that wasn't of ease for another team member. And then there were still times when we didn't meet objectives.

And so instead of saying, okay, we need to figure out a new way to do this, I started exploring. Talk to me and tell me, what were you feeling when you did this aspect of that role? What were you feeling when you did this aspect?

Where did you notice that shift or change for you?

And I was able to discern from asking those really different kind of questions where it was time for us to learn a new handoff point from one team member to the next, because, like, we have one team member, that's just, they're brilliant when it comes to more of a politicking type of relationship, but you don't want to put all of the onus for building community relationships on them. So we learned to discover, I'm the initiator, I'm the one who sees people's strengths.

I was able to actually make that quick assessment and then pass off that knowledge to our other team members. And then they could all say, okay, so what? What does this founder need? Who's got the strengths to actually help, or the network to help that founder?

And it allowed us to dance better together.

And I find so often that's something that women, and it's not that men can't ever do it, but they tend to have to spend more time developing a side of themselves that hasn't been supported, whether it's from their childhood, whether it's from in business, whether it's even just societal things, things that haven't been supported.

I was lucky enough, though, that the people that I handpicked to be part of my team, the men who were involved, had stronger development of their feminine qualities. And I think that's one of the things that allowed us to dance so well together.

So would it be fascinating if people would start asking themselves different questions when.

Mike Cornell: 00:17:34

It comes to men and harnessing that power and looking for that more of emotional place and more emotional support?

Go back to those societal expectations that your men are often rewarded for doing the opposite of that, particularly in leadership roles or any kind of power roles. The less you tap into those feminine qualities, the more you're often rewarded. And the more you're able to advance.

And that's part of that indoctrinated bias that's really in sheathed in that environment.

Michele Price: 00:18:09

That's really the crux of power imbalance inside of business.

And it's funny, because have you ever noticed how when a famous leader makes a mistake and everybody starts dissecting it, I just kind of sit there and I watch it, and I'll come into conversations and I will just drop an anchor that makes such ripples. And I'll go, what were they rewarded for? If you're going to pick apart their behaviors and their actions, what were they rewarded for?

And if they were rewarded for something that's in conflict with what you think the outcome should be, then the problem's not the person, the problem's the structure.

Chaya Mallavaram: 00:18:48

Beautifully said. We've been told we have to be perfect, and that's the problem. And perfection has been rewarded, right?

From school, somebody gets a better grade because they were able to reproduce what they read even though they didn't understand. Right. A lot of people have told me that they were really good at memorization. They didn't understand it.

Their memory was so good, they would just spit it out. Right? So. But that's been rewarded from day one, from school. So it's about saying something perfectly is rewarded than the action behind it.

So something, in your example, when a leader makes a flaw, or if they are stuttering or they are stammering, their words are not coherent, whatever they are made fun of. Right. Or they actually judged for that superficial aspect than what's really behind what the values, what their action, what the impact.

Actually, it's really about the impact. Does it match? Do their words match their action? And does the impact is, of course, left to the universe, but at least if their intentions are good.

Michele Price: 00:20:06

Yeah. And that's why what I do inside leadership containers is really different, because I do bring an indigenous lens to it.

And that's where a lot of what I talk about comes from. In our culture, we didn't punish people for being different. We paid attention to what the differences were in our children, and we supported that.

You know, it's funny because it's reminding me of something that I'll correct people on. Not because I like correcting people, but because I want them to actually start seeking the truth.

And that is a lot of times people will talk about math, law, and I'm going, and I'll go, stop. If you're going to talk about Maslaw, you need to know. You need to be accurate with this.

Maslow went and lived with the Blackfeet nation, and he spent time and learned from them. But then he came back and he put a white man's lens on it, and he warped it so that it would fit what would make him famous. It wasn't accurate.

If you actually study what the Blackfeet Nation talked about, self actualization is the foundation of what allows us all to be fully supported.

And that's what's really different about indigenous cultures, not just the Blackfoot nation, but all indigenous cultures that are here on Turtle island, or you guys call the United States of America. As we focus more on how do we thrive as a community and how does each person contribute to that, being able to thrive. And people were not punished.

We didn't punish our two spirit people. In today's world, they call them trans. We didn't. We didn't punish people for being who they were. We looked at how do they fit in the circle of life?

Because we also honor and respect all beings, not just human beings. We don't take up more oxygen than we give to the animals, the trees, the rock, the air, the water, because we're all interconnected.

And anytime one of those things in that circle is more valued than the other, it throws things out of balance. And a visual that I'll give people that they get a big kick out of.

It's kind of a gross one, but most of us have all had acne, if you'll envision the circle of which we talk about all the time.

And man has become this huge pimple on the circle because they are literally toxic and trying to extract and accumulate instead of be integrated with everything that's in the circle.

Mike Cornell: 00:22:45

I love that analogy, actually. Hey, the more visual, the better. I love that stuff.

And also, I mean, maybe this is, like, a little bit of, like, my negative brain, but, you know, anything that tends to refer to humans as some sort of parasites, I tend to, like, always like that analogy because, yeah, that is how we unfortunately have decided to operate as we've become more advanced, as more like parasites than something that is symbiotic. And as part of the entire ecosystem, we are each individual ecosystem as part of a larger ecosystem.

And the more parasitic we are, that's the more biases pop up, the more hatred pops up. And so we get back to the work that you're doing in trying to hone in on everything.

And we land at the place of restoring equity to nature, to socialization, to the zeitgeist. One of my favorite words.

And I guess I'd like to hear a little bit about your framework for restoring equity, particularly when it comes to nonbinary and female leadership in these, mostly historically, men and straight men roles in various industries.

Michele Price: 00:24:09

I find that usually the easiest way to have the conversation is to remind everybody that one were individuals that also live within a collective. Because what I've listened to and heard before is where people will kind of hone in onto whatever is personal for them.

And I always remind them, yes, you have an individual journey. That's important. And it's also important for you to remember how and what do you bring to the collective journey? Because it affects you.

You influence it, and it affects you. And so I tend to talk about things from the perspective of their spaces, stages, cycle and timing.

And a question that I have received as well as asked is, why do I. Why? Why does it feel like I keep facing the same problem? And what I've learned over time is I'm not facing the same problem.

I'm facing a new phase of the problem. I'm in a different stage of the problem. I'm in a different place in the cycle, and it's a different timing.

And until I actually address it on all phases, stages and the cycles and timing, that's when it's going to be resolved and heal. It's not about being punished, which a lot of people tend to. That's the binary position that they'll take on that.

It's that if we try to address everything that needs to be addressed at once, we would fry our systems. We're not designed to be able to do it in. Does it mean we never have any kind of quantum leap? No, of course we do.

There are going to be times, especially when it comes to intergenerational healing.

Sometimes there's people in the cycle of your family who are more better prepared to do the depth of healing that needs to happen for inner generations. And the reason I can speak so strongly to that is because that's me. I'm the medicine woman in our family.

I've been the medicine woman in our family for multiple generations.

And so some of the work that I'm doing now, it's not just making things better for my granddaughter, it's actually going back and changing the timeline for ants. And that's something that really can kind of stretch people's thinking or feeling if they've never been exposed to that.

When you recognize how important it is to be honoring who people are as individuals, as well as the role they play, whether it's in the family, in the community, or in the collective, it's much easier to do it from a place of non judgment. And if I do nothing this lifetime but one help clear the things that have happened historically in my family, I will have helped the collective.

Chaya Mallavaram: 00:27:00

So many questions there.

Michele Price: 00:27:03

Yeah. It's almost impossible to meet them all. It's been a lifetime. It's been a lifetime for me, learning it, and it's been a lifetime on top of a lifetime.

For example, my mother died a couple of years ago, and my mother had dementia. So my son and I had a very different lens for how we thought about dealing with my mother's death.

Whereas when someone dies and you don't know when you know you're not, when someone has dementia, it's almost like you're preparing the whole time they are losing their mind for their. Their past. And so I said to my son, I said, I think I'm going to do grieving different with mother.

He said, mom, I don't think you get to choose that. I said, I'm going to show you you're wrong. Not because I want you to be wrong, but because I want you to expand. What can grieving look like?

He's like, all right. And I love how he is open minded to be experimental with me. How are you going to go about doing that? I said, one, I'm going to intend it.

I'm intending that grieving with my mother is going to be different. It does. It's not. I am intending that my grieving process with my mother is going to be more fun. I'm telling it. You will be more fun.

You will bring me joy. And it did.

So I'm sitting there on the sofa one day, I'm meditating, and I'm looking at some of the things that surfaced in the last few years of her life while she could still communicate with me cognitively. And I was like, okay, so what was it about that that bothered her? What was, what's at the core of that that potentially needs to be healed now?

I'm going to tell you. A bottle for my grandparents. My mother's mother was my least favorite. She came across as a very cold, hardened, not a very loving person.

And so I just didn't spend time around her. I. She came to me that day when I was meditating, and she said, granddaughter, we need to talk. And I'm like, well, I haven't heard from you in years.

What do you want? She's like, there's a lot you don't know. And she proceeded to share with me the challenges of being an independent woman in her lifetime.

What it did to her and how it harmed her, and how she shut things down or used things as protective measures. All the things that the family would make fun of her for were her protective.

And by hearing that part of her journey, it allowed me to know what I needed to work on to help not just heal my mother, but her too. That's where ancestral healing can knock down a whole row of trees.

Not that we're trying to get rid of trees, but that's just a metaphor, so roll with it. It allows us to knock down a whole row of trees and farm.

From understanding a core experience of someone who chose to pass on a piece and chose to pass on a peace. And chose to pass on a peace. That's when quantum healing can happen.

Chaya Mallavaram: 00:29:59

I'm into all that, so I totally get it. And you talked about non judgment, and that's why we can't judge people, because we don't know their baggage. We just don't know.

And same with my grandmother. She lost her husband really young, I think, early twenties, and she had two sons, my father and my uncle.

And she wanted to go work in a factory, but her brothers never allowed her, because the society, what would they think if this woman worked in a factory? So she didn't. She never did. And so she was never given that permission by her brothers, by her own family. But somehow I saw that entrepreneur in her.

Even without actually working traditionally, she had built this whole community around her because she had built this whole support system around her, because how else would she raise her two sons? And she was so smart.

And I wonder, oh, my God, if that woman was given this opportunity in the real world, I don't know how many problems she would have solved, right? And I know I need to heal that as well for my grandmother. But how do you, what is your technique of healing your ancestor?

Michele Price: 00:31:28

My spiritual journey started when I was seven years old and I had an out of body experience. So my spiritual journey actually started before my entrepreneurial journey.

And they've both gone along in parallel, and sometimes one has weaved up and interacted with the other.

And now that I'm in what I call the third phase of life, I'm actively weaving it into the work that I do with clients, because I'm at that point where the vision that I've been given to help birth, help bring to life, is to get us to the point where we have 75%, deliberately silence voices at all, decision making tables everywhere. And what's fascinating to me is sometimes people will hear that, and they'll go, well, I don't want to just be at the table.

And I'm like, you're missing the big picture. Because some people will also say, well, we just build our own table because we're not welcome at their table. Like, you're missing the big picture.

If we have 75% deliberately silenced voices at all decision making tables everywhere, that means they're integrated into government. That means they're integrated into business. That means they're integrated into philanthropy. That means they're integrated into everything.

That is where the structural change happens.

Mike Cornell: 00:32:50

And coming from the ground up, you can make your own table all day, every day, and we get beautiful, wonderful spaces from that. But when the system itself is broken, you're still off to the side. You're, in a way, you're fighting the Borg. Yes, exactly.

You're on an island somewhere.

And then that generational like which I was saying earlier about rewarding for being perfect, but when perfect itself is coming from a flawed place, a cracked place that has these silenced voices in it, then, okay, we have to change what quote unquote perfect is. Otherwise, that's just going to continue.

And we were looking at a world where we're kind of post no one dealing with that, no one trying to change that, and have everyone speak up, where we're still having discussions on marginalized communities, as if theyre being discussed, as if theyre still not part of the majority, that theyre still something that is lesser than cis, white, straight men overall.

And until we start to break down those barriers and start to address those biases and start to have those voices actually speak up, be the voice for the voiceless, then those cycles are going to continue. You know, we're in good of a climate crisis right now, and I.

It's not hard to see that the type of mentality that shouts down voices at the table are the part of the reason as to why we're. We're here.

Because then we don't get to hear everybody, and the people who have been banging that drum for decades and decades get to turn around and say, I told you so, but it's too late.

Michele Price: 00:34:36

By having a lack of understanding of interconnectedness, it's caused us to take actions where we weren't able to get the full impact of what those actions could have gotten us had we learned how to do it differently. And there's.

There's a lot of power in us all learning how to ask different questions, because what, for example, we can pick on politics for just a second, people have all been asking the same questions in politics. So now both sides have a default argument with one another, and there's no progress made.

But by learning how to see the nuances and ask different questions, then what happens is we not only expand our awareness, we expand their awareness. And now we're starting to see people actually come together that hadn't come together before.

Because now we're having enough conversations around what connects us instead of what just divides.

Chaya Mallavaram: 00:35:35

And it's our hearts that connect us. If we all just used our heart energy to actually understand the other and connect from there, it would be beautiful.

And that's where our connections are broken, because we're not operating. We're not all operating from that place. And even myself, it's a journey to get there, because we're all nothing, perfect.

Because the world said we had to behave a certain way, and certain things were more important when actually the system was broken. So we don't know. So we can be judged for our past, but at least we have a future in front of us.

And if we can all get to that place, that purity within us, because we all have it, men, women, we all have that, and we start connecting from there, would be a magical place.

Michele Price: 00:36:29

That's why the work that I do, I start helping people unravel their knots, because they're rewarded for a certain type of behavior that we know is not getting the results or the outcomes we want. But most people don't truly understand or know themselves.

And a lot of times they think that it's, well, I just need to learn this, and then I can go do that. No, you need to learn who you are, where your real strengths are. Where have you been punished for actually acting from your strengths?

How do we unravel that so that your tapestry, your threads are strong again? And then when you go out and do things, you're doing it from a place of power, real power.

And that's why I tend to use the analogy of operating systems, because we've gotten so tech evolved that people understand. And I'm touching it like you can see it, but people understand. You know, I have a computer that's a hardware rest of the body.

I have an operating system. That's what actually runs all the software.

And so often what happens is all the things that have happened in our life, all the software that's been downloaded into us, some of it has been good software, but some of it's been corrupt software.

But if you can't identify where the corrupt software is and learn how to defrag yourself, you're going to keep operating from defaults that aren't really your true operating system.

When people start experiencing that, I've literally watched clients physiology change in a conversation like this, we'll be on Zoom and we'll be doing some work, and all of a sudden it anchors and lands in their body. And then when that happens, then their gut starts operating. Well, their heart starts feeling what it needs to feel, and their mind goes, oh.

You literally can see people's physiology change as we unravel the knots and they start threading themselves back into being a strong tapestry. Again, beautiful.

Chaya Mallavaram: 00:38:42

You're just helping them remove the blocks so that it can flow, so energy can flow.

Michele Price: 00:38:48

I remind them, I'm not really removing anything for you. I'm helping you see, and I'm helping you learn the skills to do it for yourself.

Chaya Mallavaram: 00:38:58

And it's the self realization, which is what meditation does, which is when you realize that that way of thinking is what is blocking. So you yourself is the obstacle and not anybody else. That's when you start moving forward. And that's why I love meditation.

It just helps us go inwards. But not everybody has that.

And that's why we have people like you who help them, who help people take that internal journey, because that's where the magic is.

Mike Cornell: 00:39:30

Exactly. It's to use an old cliche, but you save one person, you save everybody. There is no such thing as too small a positive action.

You have to set up each individual domino before you can knock them all down by just doing one small thing. We're all working towards engrossing the world to a greater, more appropriate place.

A place where it came from, not where it's veered off course and correcting some of those inequalities, some of that inner toxicity. You help one person in your life. That's enough sometimes, because hopefully that person then goes on to help others.

Michele Price: 00:40:10

You express that about the dominoes because that's a great visual you could actually give people of. When you do your own work, you actually put yourself in place so that all the dominoes can play.

Mike Cornell: 00:40:22

Yes.

Michele Price: 00:40:23

How are you putting yourself in place? Yeah.

Chaya Mallavaram: 00:40:25

And that's why it's even Mike, what you said was with just one person. Right. That is so beautiful, because we don't have to. Leadership is not just this having a hundred people under you. That's not it. Right.

Chaya Mallavaram: 00:40:43

It's just that how are you using your healed energy to heal one other person? Right. And that's where we all need to do it's a domino effect.

And the world, again, would be so beautiful if we all did that, operated from our heart.

Mike Cornell: 00:41:02

There's more of us doing the work than there was previously. At least. So slowly, through generations, we're seeing some form of betterment. So it's thanks to people like Michelle.

So thank you for all the work that you do and how you're trying to change people's lives and make things just better for every different kind of soul that's floating out there. So I'm going to thank you for joining us, first of all.

But I also want to ask, where can everyone find you if they want to connect with you and see more of your work and what you do?

Michele Price: 00:41:35

The best places to connect with me are LinkedIn and my substat.

Because one of the things that they're going to find when they go and either listen to my podcast or read, whichever is their best learning style, is that I've got content there that meets so many different types of learning styles, and I communicate it in ways and I ask questions that help spark themselves as individuals.

So whether they start that journey through the free content or they become a paid subscriber or they do some of that initial work like we're doing in the five week decision making quest where I'm helping them to start unravel, what are their strengths? Where have their weaknesses shown up in their decision making?

m to get different results in: 2025

And so I'd ask people, be honest with yourself. Where are you now? Where can you take the next action, even if it's a free action?

In other words, reading the free material, where does that allow you to take the next step? Where does that allow you to take the next step? Stop thinking. You got to get all the way to home base. Not everybody hits a home run.

Life's not about hitting a home run every time. They're winning. So my son and I share baseball, love baseball. Tell you another story about that another time.

But the winningest teams in baseball focus on getting on base. How are you going to get on base?

Mike Cornell: 00:43:07

This is a very analogy filled episode. This is good.

And all the links to where you can find Michelle will, of course, be included in the show notes and be sure to give her podcast a listen. Sparklaunch, of course, can always be found@sparklaunchpodcast.com. and sparklaunch.org dot. We are also on LinkedIn. I'm all his ghost on Instagram.

Chia is at the Sparklaunch on Instagram. And we once again thank Michelle Price for joining us in this episode and.

Chaya Mallavaram: 00:43:39

Threading that beautiful healing energy that's inside.

Mike Cornell: 00:43:43

You and see you next time.