Michele Phillips: [00:00:00] When I talk to women sometimes about self love, they feel selfish.
Nancy Levin: Yeah. And I, and I’m here to say, yeah, it is selfish.
And get selfish because Love it. Disowning, selfish is what got you where you are now.
Nancy Levin: Welcome to the Nancy Levin Show. I’m Nancy Levin, master coach, bestselling author, and founder of Levin Life Coach Academy. I help ambitious midlifers reinvent themselves and turn a midlife crisis into the catalyst for creating their most fulfilling life. Yet whether you’re questioning a relationship career, or the overall direction of your life in the midst of change, you are in the right place.
Nancy Levin: Join me each week for insights on transforming tough transitions into the best years of your life. Let’s dive in.[00:01:00]
Nancy Levin: Welcome back to the Nancy Levin Show. I am delighted to be here with my guest today, Michelle Phillips. Michelle is a renowned celebrity makeup artist, beauty expert, self-confidence coach, bestselling author and podcast host, and her work focuses on empowering women to redefine beauty and embrace their authentic selves.
Nancy Levin: And. Michelle, it is such a joy to have you here on the show. I’m so excited.
Michele Phillips:Thank you, Nancy. I love you so much.
Nancy Levin: And I love you so much. And, uh, you know what I’ll share with everyone listening is that we’ve known each other for quite some time now, uh, since. Uh, uh, when? 20 2010, 11. Yeah. Yeah. 2010. Yeah, exactly.
Nancy Levin: So we’ve known [00:02:00] each other for this time, and I, back when I was still the event director at Hay House and you were an incoming new author and, uh. incoming new speaker with us, and we immediately bonded over a very, uh, shared experience that we both had in our relationships and, uh. We immediately just like saw eye to eye, got each other, felt the resonance.
Nancy Levin: And I know that for me, I had not at that time really talked openly about the narcissistic abuse in my marriage. I had not talked about, you know, my experience. And, uh, you were, you were really one of the very first people I met who I was like, oh, she, she gets it. This is real.
Michele Phillips: I didn’t know that. And you know, when you say that I was, I was at that place too, to where I had shared the story in my book and my book hadn’t come out yet when I met [00:03:00] you.
Michele Phillips: And I was really nervous about it.
Nancy Levin: Yep.
Michele Phillips: Because for so many years, so many people just thought I had the perfect life from the outside looking in. And on the inside I was struggling and I was in an abusive marriage as well. And, um. You know, back then we really didn’t talk about that kind of stuff because we didn’t want people to know that, you know, we were living like that.
Michele Phillips: Right. It was really. I felt like people were gonna judge me and not think of me, you know, as the person I am and or maybe not believe what I was saying. But there were all these thoughts went through my head, and yet that relationship experience is what broke me wide open. Same. Yeah. And it’s why I am doing the work I’m doing today because I realized I was so successful in my work and helping these celebrities [00:04:00] and all these people on television and movies look great.
Michele Phillips: And, but yet I was on the inside very insecure. I. Personally. Mm-hmm. Very secure. Like very confident at work, insecure personally. Yeah. And I thought to myself, wow, what I saw in these people who were getting on TV or in movies and, and is that they had this self-confidence and every aspect of who they were, but yet some people would sit in my chair and tell me what they were struggling with internally, but they were actively working on it.
Michele Phillips: You know, and, and so I was inspired to do that for myself and I just thought, okay, this is what I want for myself. And then I realized this is what I wanna teach. After seeing Wayne Dyer, like back in 2007 or something, speak, I thought. I wanna be the Wayne Dyer of Beauty.
This was my one. I wanna be [00:05:00] the Wayne Dyer of Beauty.
Nancy Levin: Well, I mean, because it’s such a profound experience to realize, you know, like we both have talked about, you know, the image that we were projecting out to the world was a very different, uh, was a very different image than we had of ourselves and what we were holding inside of ourselves.
And we were so invested in keeping the truth invisible.
Nancy Levin: Yeah. That we were projecting this outer image forward. And so we were really managing the way other people would see us.
Michele Phillips: Yeah. You know, I have never thought about it in that way that you just said that. And when you mentioned that it brought back that feeling of so much heaviness.
Nancy Levin: Mm-hmm.
Michele Phillips: Such this burden I was carrying that I’m free of now.
Michele Phillips: Yes. And it, it was by me sharing my story by [00:06:00] talking to you. Um, and then starting to share later, about nine months later when my book came out, I was on stage sharing my experience. And then I had women coming up to me going, that’s me too. Yep. And that’s me too. That’s me too. You know, it was just, and even if it wasn’t being in an abusive marriage, they were still somehow trying to create this perfect life.
Michele Phillips: Yep. And not living according to who they really were. Mm-hmm. And really. Also not even knowing who they were anymore. Yeah. And that was what happened to me. I lost myself. I didn’t even know who I was anymore. And I thought, wait a second. I want everything I have, but do I have everything I want? And that wasn’t materialistic.
Michele Phillips: It was, I don’t have that connection to myself. And then I read Louise, Hey, you know Louise’s book, You Can Heal Your Life. And right after I saw [00:07:00] Wayne Dyer speak, and I, that resonated with me. Mm-hmm. And I thought. It’s about loving myself.
Nancy Levin: Mm-hmm.
Michele Phillips: And I didn’t love myself enough to say, no, this is not acceptable.
Michele Phillips: That’s right. Whether it’s a bad relationship, whether it’s someone treating me diff, you know, in a bad way at work, whether it’s a family member speaking to me in a bad way, you know what I mean? It’s not just, it’s, it’s anything in life. Why are we allowing situations that aren’t good for us? And it’s because we, if we don’t love ourselves enough, then we don’t say no to it.
Nancy Levin: Yeah. We keep crossing our own boundaries. We keep tolerating the intolerable, accepting the unacceptable. And so that’s why this, this work of this self-inquiry and self-discovery and standing in our truth is so essential. It is.
Michele Phillips: We need support doing it. We do. Like, I love it. You have a coaching school now, and I mean, because [00:08:00] that’s the thing.
Michele Phillips: And I have a daughter who’s 29 and she’s, she got married and mm-hmm. You know, crazy in love with her husband and then boom, it was over. Um, he left and it, so the first thing I thought was okay. You know, I’m gonna help her. And I just, I was really kind of trying to hone in on the self-love aspect of everything, just because I feel like the first thing that happened to me was when my relationship was over that it was almost like, oh, I started looking for the next one.
Michele Phillips: Mm-hmm. You know? And then the next one was just that same person with a different body. I went straight to the same person, but I, because I wasn’t healing me and I wasn’t taking the time to, to love me and be okay with me by myself. And when you do that, you, you, um, attract who you are. [00:09:00] I know Dr. Wayne Dyer used to say that to you, attract who you are, not necessarily what you want.
Michele Phillips: And I was still feeling insecure, so people were showing up in my life too. Say, yep. I’m gonna show you how much you are not worthy. Um, and so, you know, I was really started working with my daughter on that. It’s something I’ve, I’ve instilled in my children throughout their lives, but when they become adults and they start going through their own experiences and they go through heartbreak or challenges or rejection, um, it’s still, you see that?
Michele Phillips: As young adults, that they’re struggling with that internal self-love, right? And so it’s been nine months since she got divorced and just last Friday I got this text and she said, mom, you’re right. And thank you so much for teaching what you teach, and thank you for doing what you did and how brave you were because now I get it and I’m gonna do that too.
Michele Phillips: Nancy, [00:10:00] I’m telling you I’m gonna cry. But I was like, you know, that’s, um, my kid is the whole, my whole world. Right? Course, course. But I thought if, if more of us could just help each other see that it’s okay not to be okay. And that the, the steps to take to self-love are not just wake up and think positive affirmations every day.
Michele Phillips: There’s a whole process to it. And. Share those steps and maybe one thing will shift in someone that’ll help their life, then that’s what it’s all worth. That’s what it’s all about. Because I feel like right now in this world, we need that more than ever.
Nancy Levin: Boy do we,
Michele Phillips: you know, when I, but I just, I share that story because I just, that self-love piece.
Michele Phillips: Yes. I think a lot of people think of self-love as, I mean, you were like. The closest to, to Louise. You know, it is just, it’s not [00:11:00] just, um, a self-centered thing. I think people think of it that way. When I talk to think people about women sometimes about self love, they feel selfish.
Nancy Levin: Yeah. And I, and I’m here to say, yeah, it is selfish.
Nancy Levin: And get selfish because, because, love it. Disowning, selfish is what got you where you are now. Right. And and in order to get where you wanna go, you need to actually give yourself permission to put yourself and your needs first.
Michele Phillips: Yes, exactly. Yeah. To so much to the point. I don’t know about you, but very busy working.
Michele Phillips: I. We are. Yeah. I said to my husband yesterday, okay, I’ve got out of alignment. I am not waking up and putting myself first with my exercise routine, my meditation, my healthy eating. ’cause I’ve been so busy, I’m stopping it. No longer am I, you know, I’m going to carve that time on my schedule. It will be for me and.
Michele Phillips: I say that and [00:12:00] because if I don’t, then I’m cuckoo, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s, it’s things like this that we really are not paying attention to, and that to me is what contributes to beauty. I mean, women are saying to me all the time, how can I look younger? How can I, um, you know, lose 10 pounds, uh, whatever their issue is, how can I get rid of these wrinkles?
Michele Phillips: What should I do with eye makeup? And I’m like, how much, uh, stress are you going through?
Nancy Levin: There you go.
Michele Phillips: How well are you sleeping? Are you exercising right? Are you taking care of yourself? What’s your wellness routine? What is your self-love routine? Because that is what’s going to be the pathway to looking better and feeling better.
Nancy Levin: Yeah, it is the inside out. Right, exactly.
Michele Phillips: Yeah. And when I wrote the book, the Beauty Blueprint back in 2010, which launched in [00:13:00] 2011. Yes. Back then, you know it was interesting how television stations, I’m going all over television promoting the book, and they’re like, can you just give us beauty tips? And I’m sharing my.
Michele Phillips: Inner beauty advice. Yep. And now people get it right. My book was kind of ahead of the time.
Nancy Levin: It was ahead of its time. Yeah. It was ahead of its time. Yep. And you know, I, I know that I shared this when we were, when we recently, um, you know, recorded for your podcast. Yep. Uh, I shared that I really remember you being on stage at the Javit Center.
Nancy Levin: And you coming out and just, and you were makeup free and you were very, like very simply plainly dressed, and you just stood on stage in silence for a few moments and you shared that, you know how quick a first impression is.
Michele Phillips: Yeah. And how people judge you. In the first [00:14:00] seven seconds. I still, I usually, I just got done with, um, uh, a beauty gig about 10 minutes ago.
Michele Phillips: Yeah, I know. So I’m a little bit overly made up. I normally would be a lot more dressed down, um, speaking with you today, because I don’t normally get this clammed up, but it’s true. I come out on stage and I, I’m seven seconds. I stand there and say nothing, and people start looking at me like, what’s going on?
Michele Phillips: And then I’m like, okay, my time’s up. I just stood here for seven seconds and during that seven seconds I made my first impression on you because studies show that people in the first seven seconds are staring you up and down and checking you out, and they’re judging you based on how we look. But most people are not taking into consideration who we are.
Nancy Levin: Right.
Michele Phillips: It’s more about what we look and we’ve become this superficial society to where we’re constantly comparing ourselves to others. Social [00:15:00] media has amplified it, my goodness.
Michele Phillips:And so the struggle of self-confidence is so real, which is why I became a life coach. And really my focus is on self-confidence.
Michele Phillips: Mm-hmm. Because it doesn’t matter how I make women look on the outside. Side, I can make anybody look amazing. It’s, it’s how you feel on the inside is what matters. And so, so many people are, I am still giving beauty advice, especially for women as they’re getting over 40 and 50 and up. Because our bodies are changing, our skin is changing.
Michele Phillips: Of course, that’s okay. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to look better, but it’s really about making sure that we’re taking good care of ourselves and that we are focusing on what’s right with us. And not what’s wrong with us and stop getting into that comparison trap of comparing ourselves to everybody else we see out there on social media or your neighbor or whomever.
Michele Phillips: Because what [00:16:00] you see on the outside, like we just talked about you and I mm-hmm. What we were going through. Yeah. Is not really what’s real. Yeah. So that’s, you know, my book is really the first eight chapters is who are you? What kind of life do you wanna create for yourself? How do you wanna overcome your fears, your obstacles?
Michele Phillips: And then how do you wanna create your life and an action plan for that? And then create a look in alignment with who you are instead of trying to look like whomever, right? So that’s beauty to me, is rocking who you are.
Nancy Levin: I love that you just said that because it was interesting as you were talking I was, I was about to ask you, how would you define beauty today?
Nancy Levin: Yeah, and I agree with you. That really is it. Beauty is just rocking who you are, the truth of who you are.
Michele Phillips: [00:17:00] Exactly. I got goosebumps just when you said that. If you think about it for years, our Cover Girl. Yep. The um, cover Girl, uh, spokesperson on all the magazines. Yep. For Cover Girl Cosmetics was Ellen De DeGeneres.
Michele Phillips: Why? Because she rocked who she was. She didn’t care about what anybody thought of her, and she was happy and positive and giving back, and she loved life, loved herself, and because she came from a background where she was completely, you know shunned from Hollywood. Yes, yes. And then she came back with a vengeance going, I don’t care what people think of me, I’m just gonna be me.
Michele Phillips: And look at how she became one of the biggest, you know, talk show hosts, icons in our country. And then she was covering, you know, on the cover of every magazine representing covergirl [00:18:00] Cosmetics. And that to me is beauty when women you know, they, they really come into who they are. But you know, myself and so many others I’ve worked with through the years, um, through our lives, we lose who we are because we wake up and, you know, we, we learn that we need to have the go get the.
Michele Phillips: the spouse, the kids, the house, the, you know, the picket fence, or you have to go and have a certain career, whatever it is. It’s just like, I call it the getting years, getting the career. Mm-hmm. Getting the relationship. Mm-hmm. And now I think it’s so much, um, more diverse in our culture as to when I was raised, whereas like my kids.
Michele Phillips: You know, being, um, very open-minded and not being as structured as we were told to be, that in our, you know, day and age, [00:19:00] which is why I’m coaching mainly women a little bit older. Over 40. Yeah. Yeah. Um, it was not okay to say, I don’t wanna have kids, or that I’m gay, or I don’t wanna go to college or…
Michele Phillips: Whatever, just to say, you know, I, I don’t wanna be this social norm. Yeah. And now it’s like, it’s being more and more embraced and especially from the younger generation, that I want women of all ages to feel like, Hey, I don’t care if I’m 70, I wanna go travel the world, sell my house, you know, whatever, move, um, become an artist.
Michele Phillips: Start my own business. Just be who you are. Follow your passions and your dreams. And it, it takes some work, it takes support.
Nancy Levin: Sure, it does. It takes work. It takes support, but it’s also remembering that. You [00:20:00] know, we need to dissolve these beliefs of, you know, I’m too old to make a change. Or, or, or my dreams have passed me by.
Nancy Levin: Yeah. And I do think that there is this really potent period of life that we’re, that we are in, that so many women are in that, you know, midlife place. And so many of us wait for a crisis to make a change. And the invitation now is let Midlife be the catalyst to opportunity instead of the crisis.
Michele Phillips: Right?
Michele Phillips: Because this is the best time of our lives, not, we’re not going into, you know, the old lady rocking chair. Mm-hmm. Like, no, no. And I mean, my mom’s 80 and she runs circles around me. But I also feel breaking that cycle of taking care of everyone else but ourselves.
Nancy Levin: Yeah. Yeah,
Michele Phillips: I see a lot of that too. You know, taking care of your [00:21:00] grandchildren, um, or your parents and your kids at the same time.
Michele Phillips: Um, that’s fine, but at the expense of ourselves. Yeah. That’s another thing. Yeah. And putting ourselves on the back burner.
Nancy Levin: Yeah. So I’m all, you know, I’m all for giving ourselves that permission to, to put our needs. On the table too, to take care of ourselves first. Yeah. Doesn’t mean we’re disregarding the other people.
Nancy Levin: It just means that we’re bringing ourselves into the equation.
Michele Phillips: Exactly. And do you feel that when you do that, as scary as it was in the beginning, and I shared this the other day with a friend, that I thought everyone’s gonna think I’m crazy when I started this path of just really listening to what I need.
Michele Phillips: Mm-hmm. And not necessarily taking care of everybody else first. Yeah. That my life started to improve so much. Mm-hmm. My health improved so much. I started taking better care of myself. I started looking [00:22:00] better, sleeping better, better relationships, everything. Completely shifted to where I was so afraid in the beginning of what everybody else thought.
Michele Phillips: And now those people come to me and are like, Hey, what did you do? How did you do it? Because they want it too. It’s just that it’s, it’s a very scary place to take that step sometimes.
Nancy Levin: Yeah. I mean, well, we’re going counter to culture. We’re going against what we have been conditioned to believe about ourselves and our role, and especially as women.
Nancy Levin: Yeah. I’m curious, how do you see, so you mentioned social media, obviously social media has such a significant impact in the way we see ourselves. Yeah. And the way we are, we get stuck in comparison, you know, and there’s the whole thing of don’t compare, you know, don’t compare someone else’s [00:23:00] outsides to your insides and all of that.
Nancy Levin: But I’m, I’m curious how you see. The conversation of beauty itself evolving now?
Michele Phillips: It’s like a really good question. Um, it is evolving, thankfully, um, in a really good way, I think in terms of the beauty industry because I still am working in the beauty industry. Yeah. I work with beauty brands a lot. Um.
Michele Phillips: Beauty brands are now really listening to women in terms of they understand that women are interested in women’s empowerment, they’re interested in clean beauty. Mm-hmm. They’re interested, they’re interested in body inclusivity. Mm-hmm. They’re interested in age inclusivity. Yes. I’m in my middle fifties.
Michele Phillips: I just received, um, a, I get all kinds of information all [00:24:00] the time from industry, you know, leaders of what’s going on. And brands are now really focused on women 50 and over.
Nancy Levin: Yeah.
Michele Phillips: Because they understand we are loyal and we have the money to spend. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. First of all, but also, you know, because for so many years it’s been, every ad has been a, a, a face of a 20-year-old.
Michele Phillips: Um, promoting anti-aging products, you know, is three different, it makes me crazy.
Nancy Levin: Crazy. It makes me crazy.
Michele Phillips: Yeah. And then these influencers. Get bombarded with products. I’m one of them. I get beauty products sent to me every day for free, hoping that I will talk about their brand, which I don’t. I’m not a pitch queen.
Michele Phillips: I only get behind brands. I absolutely a thousand percent believe in. And however, there are a lot of Instagrammers and YouTubers out there that are. Happy to get those things or paid and they’ll talk about 10 [00:25:00] products. Mm-hmm. And women buy everything they talk about. Yeah. And they’re using their faces as science experiments and that scares me to death because they’re not actually trained professionals.
Nancy Levin: Mm-hmm.
Michele Phillips: Like I’m an actual trained aesthetician and hairstylist and makeup artist and all that stuff. Like I see the advice given out and it really scares me. So I feel like the beauty industry in one way is going in a more positive direction, but then in another, uh, on the flip side of that, there’s a lot of irresponsibility out there from people sharing information.
Michele Phillips: Um, to get paid or to get seen or to get likes and followers that are, um, it’s, it’s very destructive for people because they’re gonna try things that are not good for them.
Nancy Levin: Yeah, and I really appreciate what you just said because there’s something in my mind that used to always link beauty [00:26:00] with youth.
Nancy Levin: Antiaging and I just turned 60. I am not fabulous. I thank you. And I’m not as do you, and there’s nothing about me that. Is attached to anti-aging. In fact, I’m aging. We are all aging, right? No matter how much shit you put on me or in Thank you, I’m still aging. Exactly. And, and you know, it’s interesting too, like I think back, so you know, I used to dye my hair and the pandemic hit and we weren’t going to salons, and I let all my gray come in.
Nancy Levin: It looks gorgeous and I actually love my gray hair. I love my gray hair. I wouldn’t dye my hair again if you paid me. I’m the person who goes to a photo shoot and says, do my makeup to look like I’m wearing no makeup. Right. You look like me, right to look like me because I don’t wanna, I don’t wanna look like a drag [00:27:00] queen in photos of me or on a video.
Nancy Levin: I wanna look like me. And yet there’s, there’s been such, there’s been such, uh, an emphasis on. You know, coming back to your definition of beauty a few minutes ago, but there’s been such an emphasis on no beauty. You know, beauty is something that you need to be, uh, trying to achieve or attain instead of beauty being,
Michele Phillips: Being Exactly. Being yourself, being healthy, being vibrant, being, you know, it’s, it’s so true. When you sit in a well lit, uh, studio or in a home with beautiful lighting and a camera and you do makeup and it looks perfect, that’s not real life. And in fact, I don’t do that kind of makeup on anybody professionally.
Michele Phillips: Right, right. When I’m professionally hired, I make people look. Uh, beautiful. [00:28:00] Just by enhancing their features. Yes, it should not be heavy makeup thick. I see these lashes and these huge lips and these big injections and things like that too. Nothing wrong with women that wanna do a little Botox or a little this or a little that fine.
Michele Phillips: But when you start distorting your face, I mean, people, if they choose to do that. It’s just going to, it, it, it’s going to ruin how they look and it gets worse and worse. Like look at Madonna, like that is too much injections. I would just, I do not think that enhancing what you have is a bad thing if you worked with somebody that helped you just a tiny, um, but it’s beauty should not be Botox injections, um, hair color, makeup, all that.
Michele Phillips: I mean, that’s just fun stuff that you can play with and that’s not what beauty is.
Nancy Levin: I have to ask, as long as we’re talking about this, did [00:29:00] you see the movie The Substance? No.
Michele Phillips: Is that the one with Demi Moore? Yes. Okay. I just heard about it. I have to watch it then about when her face gets older in the mirror.
Michele Phillips: Okay. Well,
Nancy Levin: it’s, it’s, it’s more than that, but it’s really, I mean, for you in your line, in your line of work, um, I think it’s, it’s. A must see. Okay. I, I will say that there are elements of it that are, you know, grotesque. Right. Um, but it’s sort of so over the top that it’s not scary. Okay. Well, but what is scary really is the commentary on, on youth, on beauty.
Nancy Levin: Mm-hmm. On age. What is, you know, what is beautiful, what is not beautiful, and again. This, this pointing to youth and then looking at the way in which we’re so quick to dismiss ourselves. As we get [00:30:00] older or we’re so quick to, uh, notice the ways in which we may feel that we are becoming invisible. Yes. And that it’s such an opportunity to actually double down on the visibility, you know, the power and the strength that comes in with perimenopause, menopause, post menopause.
Nancy Levin: Like there is a potency, there is a power. Mm-hmm. For women. To really harness it if we’re willing.
Michele Phillips: Absolutely. I feel at my age, I’m 58, I’m, I feel like I am the happiest I’ve ever been. Uh, because I’m allowing myself to be me and not worry. I mean, of course I wanna take care of myself and look good, but I’m not focused and obsessed over it.
Michele Phillips: Um, I think a lot of women are because they feel like that’s what they have to do to be seen and to be visible, [00:31:00] which is really. Um, heartbreaking and that’s why I started this, my new podcast. The Beauty Shift. Yeah. To shift our perspective of on beauty, because it’s okay to think about ingredients in skincare, whatever you wanna do, and, and I’ll share that information too, but it’s more important that we talk about things like you and I talk about and, and other friends of ours that we have, you know, that we’ve worked with through the years.
Michele Phillips: Because, um, when I’m seeing people like Brooke Shields, I’m seeing people like, um, Pamela Anderson and, uh, Valerie Burelli, the women in their forties and their fifties that are saying, I’m not gonna wear any makeup.
Nancy Levin: Yep.
Michele Phillips: I don’t care if I’m a little overweight. My body’s not perfect. My face isn’t perfect.
Michele Phillips: I’ve got wrinkles. I am beautiful and I’m gonna rock it as I am. And that’s what we really want to shift. You know, I wanna [00:32:00] shift our culture into that mindset as opposed to the opposite. Um, because there’s just way too much emphasis on Yeah. On all of that perfection. The perfection, deception. It’s not real.
Michele Phillips: There’s no such thing.
Nancy Levin: There’s no such thing.
Michele Phillips: No. And we’re like you said, we’re gonna age, so why make ourselves feel terrible about ourselves? Because we are,
Nancy Levin: You know, I know when I turned 60, my dad said, you don’t look, you don’t, you know, you don’t look 60. I said, well, this is me at 60. This is exactly me at 60.
Nancy Levin: You know, and I think, and I think so much of that is. The internal cultivation for me. Yeah. So it is, it is the self-care. It is the self-love. It is the boundaries. It is knowing my non-negotiables. It is knowing what I’m no longer gonna tolerate or accept. It is my clarity about my choices and my actions, all of that.
Nancy Levin: That’s happening inside of me is what [00:33:00] is also contributing to the external. Yeah. I feel really strongly about that.
Michele Phillips: I totally agree. I mean, I feel, first of all, you look amazing, your skin. Thank you. Your hair. I mean from like, if you’re gonna sit in my chair and we’re gonna do your makeup for a TV segment or something, right.
Michele Phillips: And that’s because internally you are taking care of yourself, which when we do that, when externally it shows up. I mean, our skin is the largest organ of our body. So whatever’s going on internally does show up externally. So you’ll see people with skin that doesn’t look good. Um, hair, everything, it, you’ll see an unhealthy person.
Michele Phillips: And you can’t cover that up. And that comes from how you feel about yourself and how you take care of yourself. Yeah. And, and how you choose exactly what you just said to be true to yourself and to live your life according to who you [00:34:00] are and, and not, and draw serious boundaries. Um, and so I just. I, it’s so important, and I feel as if, you know, women today, I mean, here we are, 60 as opposed to when we met, you know, we were both in our forties.
Michele Phillips: Yep. Um, my grandmother didn’t look like this at 60
Michele Phillips: because she was taking care of everybody else but herself. Right. Yeah. She wasn’t raised with this kind of mindset that, or even exposed to it. Yeah. Right.
Nancy Levin: And I do think that it comes back to, you know, you alluded to this earlier, but it does come back to the. You know, go back to basics. Go back to the fundamentals, right?
Nancy Levin: What, what am I feeding myself, right? How am I moving my body? Am I sleeping enough? You know, what am I consuming in terms of content news? Uh, you know, [00:35:00] all of those things. Everything that I am immersing myself in is going to have an impact.
Michele Phillips: Exactly internalizing it. I have a friend who always comes to me for advice and, and, but yet she doesn’t do anything right to change anything.
Michele Phillips: Right. She takes care of everybody else. She’s always mm-hmm. The good sweet person that helps everybody in the neighborhood, and she’s always, you know, she’s the, she’s the best person, but she’s like. Always struggling with her health. Her weight isn’t good. Her stress levels through the roof. Yep. And since I’ve known her for maybe the past five or six years, you can tell that she’s aging quickly.
Michele Phillips: And I’ve told her this to her face so she knows who I’m talking about. Mm-hmm. But it’s because she hasn’t taken the steps to say no. To others, right?
Nancy Levin: Yeah.
Michele Phillips: Boundaries to, to take care of herself. And so she is suffering and she keeps going to the doctor saying, I don’t understand why I have back problems.
Michele Phillips: [00:36:00] I have, you know, this issue, that issue. And as we know with Louise’s work, you know, whatever is going on internally, um, is gonna show up in your health. And, you know, and, and so it’s really. That’s why I feel like beauty and self-confidence is my mission, and it’s really been very challenging at times to get people on board with this because, uh, everyone has been so focused on the outer for so long.
Michele Phillips: Yeah.
Nancy Levin: Yeah.
Michele Phillips: That at least now we’re seeing some shifts more towards the inner ’cause before it was just kind of a cliche Oh yeah. Inner beauty, right? No, it’s not just like inner beauty. It’s called being healthy. Mind, body, spirit.
Nancy Levin: Yes. That right there, first and foremost. Yes. Yes. You gotta have your spirituality too, right?
Nancy Levin: Yes. Will you share [00:37:00] your own. Whether they’re rituals or practices or things that keep you on track with yourself, uh, the things that you do either on a daily basis or however you, however often you do them, the ways that you keep yourself, uh, aligned.
Michele Phillips: Sure. I would love to. In fact, one of my non-negotiables is, um, every morning when I wake up, I don’t get out of bed for 30 minutes.
Michele Phillips: I lay there and I. Thank God, the universe, whoever my higher power is, whoever, you know, um, for my health, for my husband, my children. Like I go down the list of everything. I’m grateful for that day. I learned a lot of that from Louise, that when we focus on gratitude mm-hmm. You know, whatever we focus on grows.
Michele Phillips: Mm-hmm. And so it’s really important to me to, to do that. And because. Otherwise you can just jump outta bed [00:38:00] and go down this rabbit hole of, you know, stress and work and whatever’s going on, or whatever drama pops up that day. My drama could be my children that are in their thirties calling, um, which I don’t give into because I’ve grounded myself that day in gratitude and I really feel like that helps me.
Michele Phillips: That’s my form of meditation. Um, I also really am very mindful of what I eat.
Nancy Levin: Mm-hmm.
Michele Phillips: I’m not perfect. I like a little wine. I like to go out to dinners. Um, but at home I try to eat very healthy, clean, um, foods. Try to at least have a couple cups of vegetables with every meal, including breakfast. I’ll just make like a little frittata with like a, um, veggies and that, and drink water.
Michele Phillips: And then I do my bar three class every day, which is, um. Which is well home almost every day when I’m not like out in, you know, TV segments or something. But, um, which is my Pilates yoga strength training and, um, ends in a meditation. [00:39:00] And then at night, I don’t do this every night, but if I’m starting to feel a little stressed mm-hmm.
Michele Phillips: I put in Louise Hayes, um, night meditation.
Nancy Levin: Me, me too.
Michele Phillips: Yep. Or I’ll listen to Wayne Dyer. Mm-hmm. Because those two people,
Nancy Levin: mm-hmm.
Michele Phillips: Really shaped and molded my life. They completely changed my life, and I do not know how it happened that I went from reading both of their books and attending their workshops.
Michele Phillips: To all of a sudden I decided that I wanted to write a book, you know, five years later. And I thought, oh, I’ll attend this thing called Speak, Write, Promote. Yep. Which was, Hay House was starting with you? Cheryl Richardson, Wayne, um, not Wayne, um, Louise was there and, um, Reid. Reid. Mm-hmm. Tracy. Mm-hmm. I showed up and.
Michele Phillips: On the third day, they picked somebody outta the audience to get up and share what you do and who you are. And I got picked and I [00:40:00] freaked out and I was standing there in front of Louise Hay, like talking about who I am and what I do. And I got a book deal and a radio show and my life changed. And I thought, how did that happen?
Michele Phillips: How, and now I realize, and I share this story with everyone, and there’s a longer version of it, because the first day I, I sat in that workshop. I sat down and Louise came and sat next to me. I sat in the front row the first two days, and then that night they said, okay, go home and write your little together.
Michele Phillips: You know, put together what you’re gonna say and share who you are. And so I went back to the hotel and I was like, I wrote my little speech and then I freaked out and I threw it away. And I thought, oh my God, what if I suck in front of Louise Hay? Like I’ll, I’ll, I will never do this. I’m never gonna do this.
Michele Phillips: So I threw it away and the third day I sat in the back of the room.
Nancy Levin: Mm-hmm.
Michele Phillips: And I still got picked.
Nancy Levin: Mm-hmm.
Michele Phillips: And so I freaked out when they [00:41:00] picked me because I thought, oh my God, I threw my speech away. What am I gonna say? And then I just spoke from my heart and that’s when I realized we all have a path and some, for some of us.
Michele Phillips: It’s not a big path of being in front of people or whatever. For, for anybody, it could be, you know, just maybe raising your kids or just being a, you know, a good neighbor, whatever it is. But for me, I felt like I’m here for a reason.
Nancy Levin: Mm-hmm.
Michele Phillips: And that reason, um, I don’t know what I’m supposed to do, but I’m just gonna be.
Michele Phillips: Let whatever happens be channeled through me and I’m gonna be the person that shares the message and just pray that I help people heal. Like they helped heal me, Louise, and and Wayne. And then meeting people like you and all the wonderful people we’ve met through the years who have helped shape and mold me as a person and and supported [00:42:00] me.
Michele Phillips: And so I’m grateful for you, by the way, ’cause you’ve been such a huge. Support system for me. Um, and I, I just feel like that’s, that’s what we all have to do is listen to our hearts. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And let people support you and help you.
Nancy Levin: Oh, yes, yes. That was a big one for me. We’re, we are not, we are not meant to do this alone.
Michele Phillips: No. So that’s, I guess I went way too far with the answer to the ritual thing. You did, not you. No, you didn’t. I love where you went, but I think it’s, the other thing is too, is to allow people to help you. Mm-hmm. To allow to ask for help. If you really wanna do something, reach out to people and let them know you wanna do it.
Michele Phillips: Ask how if they can help you, or if they know, you know how to help you do that. Because people wanna help. And I think as women. We tend to not do that.
Nancy Levin: We definitely do not ask for help in all. No. [00:43:00] Michelle, thank you so much for being here. I thank you. I really, it is a joy to be with you every time we’re, we’re together and, uh, the best.
Nancy Levin: So, the best place for people to find you and your new podcast,
Michele Phillips: I know, just go to michelle phillips.com and you can. I have, you know, free downloads, meditations, beauty things, inner outer beauty, and also a link. Basically, there’s a page there. You can go to my podcast and you are in my podcast in the next couple weeks.
Michele Phillips: I’m so excited. Awesome. And so thank you, Nancy. I adore you and again, very grateful for you.
Nancy Levin: Very grateful for you too. Thanks so much for being here and for everyone listening, I’ll be back with you again next week.
Nancy Levin: Thanks so much for joining me today. I invite you to head on over to nancy levin.com to check out my books, resources, and ways for us to work together to help you create your [00:44:00] most fulfilling life. If you’ve been impacted by this episode, please share it with someone who needs it. And please remember to subscribe for weekly episodes and leave a review.
Nancy Levin: Bye for now.