Self-Love Is the Secret to Business Success - Tony Robbin's Coach Denise Michelle Reveals How

Ever wondered how Tony Robbins teaches entrepreneurs to master self-love and use it to fuel their business success and personal growth?

In this episode of The Remote CEO Life Podcast, Self-Love coach Denise Michelle - a Tony Robbins-trained coach - shares the truth behind how deep inner work and self-love practices transformed her business, life, and mental health.

Denise has spent over two decades healing from trauma, addiction, and mental illness, which led her to help spiritual entrepreneurs unlock authenticity, resilience, and freedom through self-love and personal growth.

In this episode, we discuss:

- Denise’s 25-year healing journey through borderline personality disorder, addiction and trauma
- Why self-love is the real secret behind long-term entrepreneurship and business success
- Her experiences training under Tony Robbins and how that shaped her leadership
- The spiritual side of business: how your external results mirror your internal world
- Differentiating self-care vs true self-love
- How to create morning and evening routines that actually shift your mindset
- The link between mental health, personal growth, and growing a freedom-based business
- A practical roadmap to cultivating authenticity, transformation, and emotional strength in your business.

You can’t build a freedom-based business without building self-love, personal growth, and emotional resilience.

Denise proves that mastering your internal world is the key to authentic leadership and business success.

Connect with Denise:

- Website: bridgethelove.com
- Instagram

#SelfLove #Entrepreneurship #PersonalGrowth #TonyRobbins #HealingJourney #MentalHealth #Resilience #Authenticity

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction and Setting the Scene
• 1:48 Denise's Healing Journey and Diagnosis
• 4:49 The Birth of Entrepreneurship through Yoga
• 7:35 Transitioning from Yoga Studio to Self-Love Alchemist
• 11:15 The Role of Community and Mentorship
• 18:28 Training with Tony Robbins
• 20:47 Navigating Grief and Identity Reconstruction
• 26:04 The Spiritual Nature of Entrepreneurship
• 32:33 Practical Steps to Self-Love Mastery
• 36:37 Defining Freedom and Authenticity

Transcript

Sophie Biggerstaff (00:00)
If you've ever wondered how it's possible to achieve a really high level of self-love, make sure you watch this episode because self-love, self-care and self-healing are all vital to our mental and spiritual wealth. Today's guest, Denise Michelle, the self-love alchemist.

actually has trained under Tony Robbins and she spent 25 years overcoming mental illness, addiction and trauma, which led her on a journey to become an award winning transformational coach and hypnotherapist. Considering she was trained under Tony Robbins, she now helps spiritual entrepreneurs and healers master self-love so they can serve with heart and live in authentic freedom. Now, since becoming an entrepreneur, I've personally gone on my own very long and sometimes painful journey towards self-love and I can honestly say that journey has changed my life.

It's changed how I see the world, it has changed my relationships, how I show up as a leader. If I hadn't have gone on this own self love and development journey myself, I don't know if I would have had the confidence to pivot my business last year and launch my group coaching program, the Freedom Model Method, for example, or even the ability to show up as a leader, even on this podcast.

One element of embracing self-love in business is building the confidence and evidence to fully back yourself. And it has honestly taken me a while to get there myself. So I know how challenging this can be, which is why I wanted to focus a little bit more on how we can achieve the ultimate levels of self-love by sharing more knowledge.

about this on the Remote CO Life podcast, as I know it's something that so many of us entrepreneurs struggle with. So in this episode, Denise, my guest, is going to share how mastering self-love is the foundation for true mental, emotional, and spiritual wealth, and why it's essential for anyone seeking radical transformation and freedom in their life. Now, you are going to see so much passion from Denise in this episode. She really has been able to turn her life around by using some of these practices that we're going to talk about today. So I really hope you can take something from this and feel

confident in all of your abilities to put out whatever it is that you want into the world and create more freedom in your own life. So let's get into today's episode.

Sophie Biggerstaff (02:00)
Denise, welcome to the Remate CEO Life podcast. You are calling in from Bali. So how's it going over there?

Denise Michelle (02:06)
amazing minus the rainy, the dry season rainy season. It's actually raining so much right now. It's kind of wild, but you know, it is what it is. So we'll see what happens during actual rainy season. Hopefully it will be dry.

Sophie Biggerstaff (02:11)
⁓ we've got rain going on.

Yeah, because now should be the perfect weather. I used to live in Bali. So I know that now is like normally really great. So I'm really sad for you that it's raining. But I think it's like all over Asia, bit random weather at the moment.

Denise Michelle (02:31)
Yeah, yeah, that's what

I'm hearing. Australia is having some issues as well. So I think it's this side of the world. Or maybe it's global, because who knows, right?

Sophie Biggerstaff (02:39)
Yeah, I think so.

Probably a global, it's definitely raining in the UK, it always is. Everywhere. But that's okay, you're in still on like a beautiful paradise island. And I brought you on today to talk about the concept of self love, and specifically how this impacts you in entrepreneurship and business. And I know that you personally have gone on a huge personal journey to kind of get to where you are today. So,

Denise Michelle (02:46)
Fair enough.

Sophie Biggerstaff (03:04)
I would love for you to share a little bit more about that and your backstory if that's okay.

Denise Michelle (03:09)
Absolutely. So my story really started 25 years ago when I started my healing journey. And at that time, I didn't know it yet, but I had been struggling with something called borderline personality disorder. And it was a mental illness that I was born with. And I just never understood why I was so emotionally dysregulated.

and come to find out when I was in my 20s, I was finally diagnosed after going through a series of events that led me to, I guess, one of the biggest awakenings that a person could have. And once I got diagnosed with that, I was able to start the process to really start healing my...

my emotional body as well as creating an identity because I didn't really have one. And that's one of the biggest things with borderline. And with that, anybody who knows anything about borderline, you kind of live a bit of a self-destructive life. I was what you call a functioning borderline. So I held jobs. I got lots of accolades and recognitions.

I was able to go to school, I was able to do all the things on the surface, but behind closed doors, that's when people would really like see me. And it would be like, I would snap and I didn't understand what was happening and it was just like these emotional triggers that would happen would be so big that I had no recollection of how to even deal with it. And that created traumas, that created different sorts of addictions.

It wasn't a pleasant life and I didn't even see myself living till 30. So at the age of 28 is when I left my corporate job and I put myself into an outpatient treatment program in Los Angeles to save my life and I was in that program for nine months. And that's really when entrepreneurship started for me because since I was 20, I've been a yogi and I had this idea that I wanted

to become a yoga instructor, but I really believe in myself or really had the courage because I had this mental illness and I was like, who would want to learn from me? But I did know that yoga saved my life. eventually through the power of bhakti yoga, if anybody knows what that is, that's the yoga of devotion. And we're kind of like the hippie yogis who dance and sing. And that freed me.

and I became a teacher. And within 10 months, I opened a yoga studio with the intention that I wanted this to be therapy for people without them realizing that's what it was. And I had that studio in downtown Los Angeles for six years and served thousands of people. And that was the beginning of my entrepreneurial journey. And that was, I'm now 45 and now, you know, 15 years later, I'm still in the entrepreneurial world, I guess you can say.

Sophie Biggerstaff (05:58)
Am I?

Denise Michelle (06:05)
you

Sophie Biggerstaff (06:06)
Yeah,

definitely. And what age were you when you got diagnosed with borderline personality disorder?

Denise Michelle (06:11)
Yeah, so I was 26 when I was finally diagnosed, but I had started my healing process in my early 20s. But I didn't know. They were treating me for depression, anxiety, and sexual abuse as a child. But I knew there was something deeper. And yeah, was 26 when I made that discovery.

Sophie Biggerstaff (06:35)
Wow. And that's a really difficult age, isn't it? Because you've kind of lived like your whole early twenties trying to figure yourself out and twenties is already difficult enough as it is, let alone have this additional mental illness on top of all of that. Like it must've been a very confusing time and you're still trying to figure out like what's my place in the world? Where do I fit in? What am I doing? Like, so it's really amazing that you found yoga and you found such a passion and joy out of that and started your entrepreneurship journey based around that.

Denise Michelle (07:03)
Absolutely.

Sophie Biggerstaff (07:06)
or I've lost you.

Denise Michelle (07:07)
Yes, it looks like there is an internet issue. Give me one second. Let me see if this helps. All right. How is the internet? Are we good? OK, we're good. The gifts of living on this side of the world, everybody.

Sophie Biggerstaff (07:14)
Yeah, are you back? Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Denise Michelle (07:23)
Yeah, so yeah, that's it. Yeah, it's a difficult process because your 20s are hard as it is. And then you're making a self-discovery process. then suddenly you get slapped with a diagnosis that is like, my God, there's light to this. But I actually didn't recognize how long the journey would actually be. And that journey in a borderline, it took me 14 years to heal it.

The doctors say you can't heal it. You'll never recover from it. You'll always have it. And I beg to differ. It just takes a lot of work and you have to really effing want it. And I did.

Sophie Biggerstaff (08:01)
Well, I think that's

with most mental and even physical conditions. Obviously, there's a few that are absolutely probably going to have to need treatment for the rest of your life. But there are many, many conditions that doctors will tell you that you can't heal, but you absolutely can. And I've definitely gone through my own experiences with that, where I've been misdiagnosed in so many different ways. And then I've gone on my own natural healing path and I've made full recoveries.

90 % recoveries in many different circumstances. So I fully back you when you say that. I think that that's completely true. And obviously, you now are in a very different phase of life. You had the yoga studio in LA and now you live in Bali and you now describe yourself as a self-love alchemist. So can you explain a little bit more about like your journey since you started that yoga studio to where you are now?

Denise Michelle (08:33)
Yeah.

Yeah, so the yoga studio was a real gift in a lot of ways. A, it was, I would say, was one of the biggest parts of my healing process because now I had a responsibility to other people. And so even when I didn't want to show up, I did. And I found that that was actually very healing. And because I would, it would allow me to get out of my head and really connect to my heart and connect to my higher self.

That's what I really believe took me to that next level. However, because I was intent on, okay, I'm apparently living my dream life, I'm running the studio, yoga's everything in my life, it's my hobby, it's my work, it's the end all be all. I was working seven days a week for five years and you can imagine that you can't do that.

Sophie Biggerstaff (09:40)
is tough.

Denise Michelle (09:41)
Yeah, I burned out. And the only other avenue outlet that I had was surfing. And I had started surfing in my early 30s. And so I became pretty obsessed with surfing. And interestingly enough, in 2013, I wasn't listening to the whispers of the universe. I received a very big lesson in the form of a surfing accident.

And you might be able to see that scar right there. That's my spiritual awakening saying, hey, you're not on your path because I really wanted to sell the studio and go surf the world for a year as if that was my path. But this 29 stitches to the face ripped me open. And this is when I started getting into all the fun woo woo stuff, the stuff that insurance won't pay for. Let's put it that way, right?

And that's when I started making these really deep discoveries. And it was just like, whoa, where have I been and where are my people? And for a good year and a half, I didn't have a community until I found one. I literally stumbled into a community in Venice, California. And it was like, my God, there's other people like me.

And you you get caught up kind of in that whole world for a little while and I did. And then eventually it led me into recognizing, I kept the studio for a long time, but then I recognized this was no longer what I felt like I was meant to do. And I knew that I was meant to do more because I started having visions that I was supposed to be in service to a lot of people.

And I was like, no, no, no, no, I'm fine here. And I was hearing, you are not meant to be in this tiny little studio in downtown LA. You are meant to be global. And it terrified me to hear that because, you know, I'm like, who am I to be that for people, right? And it eventually led me to closing the studio. And as a solo yoga teacher for a while and body worker, it led me into the coaching world.

and I ended up in a seminar in 2018 that put me on the trajectory of what I'm doing now. And I studied to become a transformational coach. I was not the self-love alchemist yet. I didn't even know that that was really what I was teaching at that stage. But the way everything unfolded, the self-love alchemist was born.

probably another year and a half later after I studied hypnotherapy and I really started putting my modalities and my tools together. And this is why I call it an alchemy because I've learned so many modalities at this point that one way is not gonna work for everybody, right? So I give people different options. I give them things to try on. I've tried all of them on. Everything that I teach, I've tried on.

and I give people a way that this is what resonates with you. And in the work that I do now, it's really beautiful because I teach self-love mastery and it's really self-love, self-care, and self-healing. So if you're looking at it from a mind, body, spirit perspective, it's teaching you how to connect with your self-care, for example. Well, what is that? That's like,

your routines, your rituals, you're creating your foundation. And then you have your self-healing practices, which are the modalities. And then you have the self-love. And I always spell self with a capital S self because that's us connecting to our higher self. Little s self is our ego self. So you're moving out of that. And the self-love is who I believe we are.

born as. We are born as love and we're coming home. So you bring all that together and you start learning mastery, you really start to understand that maybe the first part of your journey is going to be about your ego and starting to befriend it and heal. And ultimately we are here to be in service of others.

Sophie Biggerstaff (13:49)
Yeah, I agree. There's so much of that that I resonate with. I love what you said there around like you finally finding the place where you fit in and your people and you went to Venice Beach and I can imagine I've been to Venice Beach and I understand why you say that. And I had a very similar moment actually. was common for us in the pandemic or if it was just before the pandemic, I'm not sure now, but there was a place in London. I was living in London and

I just saw this place, it was on Class Pass and it was like, go and try a Reiki yoga experience or something like that. And I was like, okay, like sounds cool. At that point I wasn't into yoga, didn't know what really what Reiki was, but I was like, okay, let's go and experience it. And it was in this place called, I think it was called House of Wisdom. It no longer exists, but I just remember walking in there and like going to this Reiki class and doing this yoga and being like,

just feel this sense of being at home. And I can almost like feel that feeling of like, oh, like I finally found my place, like where I'm meant to be. And I got quite addicted to going back to this place. I didn't really understand why. I didn't really understand that I would then go on this long healing journey and very similarly to you, try all of the modalities and train in a couple of them. I personally don't think my path is to use those modalities.

to help other people, think it's more around like me sharing my story, but I completely understand like and resonate with the story that you've had. I really, that feeling of like when you find your place and you find your people and the things that are helping you, is such a life changing moment. And you can then use that knowledge or choose to use that knowledge, because not everybody will, in order to move you into the right.

purposeful path and like you just said the universe had to like kick start you into that path like by unfortunately making you go through an accident and getting you to reflect on what it is that you actually wanted direction you wanted to go into and sometimes that's the way like the universe will force us to stop to reflect and make us change direction and I've had experiences of that myself also but

I think it's so powerful. Like when you finally find that path and go on it, you can literally conquer the world and you speak so confidently around like the self-love and all of the things that you've spoken to. So that's amazing. I really resonate with your story. And I think it's incredible that you've come from all of the experiences that you had in your childhood, in your early twenties, and then you've just been able to shift those. And like we said, before we started recording, like use that for good and take some negative experiences, but really...

try to make them into a positive thing for yourself, but also for other people as well. So that's a really beautiful thing that you've done with that.

Denise Michelle (16:40)
Thank you. Yeah, I think that that's when we start recognizing that we're here as lights. I call us leaders of love. Then you know what, like we're here to support the collective, right? And I didn't recognize it at first, but you know, like I found out very early on that I was not just like,

you know, transformational coach that I was actually here to serve other leaders. And that was a big awakening for me when my mentor told me, know, you're, you're, you know, I'm seeing a pattern here, you're a coach for coaches. And I was like, oh, was like, shit, you see that too, huh? And I, know, again, it's like a tall order and it's like, oh my God, like, I know I've been through a lot of stuff, but you're now you're telling me that I've got to help.

people through their stuff on that level too. But then you know what, what the gift is, is that you show up to it. Because the universe will never give you something that you can't handle. And whoever needs to hear that again, the universe will never give you something you can't handle. It shows up in your field for a reason, because this is where we build our, what I call the spiritual warrior in us.

We build our resilience and we build our courage and we build our strength and we become the light because the more that we continue to, we can't see the shadows without the light, right?

part of the process.

Sophie Biggerstaff (18:12)
I

fully agree. have to go and heal the shadows for you or accept the shadows before you can move into the light, before you can move into all of the things that are meant for you. And exactly, I agree with you. Like it won't send you things you can't handle. It might feel like that in the time, in that moment. But when you get back on it, but get through it and you reflect back on it, it's a really powerful thing to say, look what I've done. And that's almost part of the stuff that you do, which is building and

curating self-love and I want to move onto that in a second, but there is a big part of your journey that we haven't spoken about yet. And I'm sure people will be really interested in it. And that is that you are trained under Tony Robbins, who is one of the biggest coaches of all time. So can you tell us a little bit more about that experience and then we will go on to the self-love stuff after.

Denise Michelle (19:01)
Absolutely. So yes, I am a trainer with Tony Robbins and oftentimes people are like, what does that mean? So it means that I am an extension of Tony Robbins. I have been trained within his organization as kind of an extension of his work. And so when we, as many of you know, if you have been to a Tony Robbins event or you have, whether it's in person or virtual, there are people

that you'll see walking around in these blue jackets who have been hand selected by Tony's master trainers who have been working with him for nearly 40 years. And we understand his tools, we teach his tools, we train on his tools, and we support, like let's say we have a Zoom room. We're the pilot of that room and we're the pilot of that team.

And there's not that many of us. There's only about 270 of us on this planet who are ushering millions of people each year. So Tony's the guy on the stage and we're the support for Tony. And then we have our other team members, which are our senior leaders, our crew. And as you can imagine, the amount of moving parts that any of his events have and the...

training that it takes like even before every training we are not training but event we do we have massive training and meetings and you know it's a it's an amazing it's an amazing mission to be a part of and it's been a real gift and I'm very very grateful to be in this position

Sophie Biggerstaff (20:33)
No, I'm sure

like it's super cool. It's incredible to hear that because I hadn't, like I said to you before, hadn't, didn't quite understand what it meant to be Tony Robbins trainer, but now I completely get it. And it's not only beneficial for you, for yourself, it's also beneficial for the other things that you're working on within your own business. And of course, you're able to access and support such a vast scale of people within the Tony Robbins programs that you're supporting in. I think that's,

huge and it's obviously like a very pivotal moment for you like when you stepped into into that world and I'm sure that that helped you embrace like self-love even even more through through coming into that program because you have to back yourself right to to be able to step into that environment so talk me a little bit about that self-love journey that you had with for yourself.

Denise Michelle (21:20)
It wasn't easy. didn't even, I've heard of Tony for years. mean, everybody has, but I didn't go to my first event until 2021. And I just felt this calling and it was a virtual event and it was his UPW event. And that year in 12 months, I lost five family members, including my mother to COVID. So you can imagine that even though I am

versed in trauma and I know how to heal it, I was now slapped with this thing called grief. That was insane. I'd never experienced it like this before and it just kept slamming me. I coming into this community really showed me a new level of mastery because when I originally went to the event, I just thought, you know what, like I'm not here to buy a program. I'm happy to invest if it feels right, but I knew.

that this was going to be the avenue to recreate my identity. And I knew that it was time. And something interesting ended up happening through that journey is I was just going through his Master of University program. I wasn't even in his leadership program at that stage. And his leadership program, I just got a curiosity because of how he did his interventions and because I love to study. I'm such a nerd in that. I'm like, I wanna learn.

his method, right? I can bring it into my work and, you know, serve other people. But in that, I didn't recognize what was happening and that it was actually leading me into something even greater. Because something that I had developed and really taken on was that you can't hide in this community. This community will

will break you to your core. It will break you open. And you do. You have to show up. You can choose not to, but I chose to. And I used every event that I served, that I volunteered for. I wasn't getting paid for those events at that time. And I was sharpening my sword. And I wasn't doing it because I had this idea. I wanted to be a trainer. I didn't care about being a trainer. That was not my agenda. I just wanted to keep getting better at.

who I was, I wanted to keep breaking through my patterns, I wanted to keep accessing and creating my identity into the leader of love that I knew I was. And what was so fascinating about it was the more that I allowed myself to step deeper and deeper into this and show up at these events and just...

Just look at that, it made me a better coach, it made me a better teacher, it made me a better friend, made me a better sister, a better daughter, right? It made me into the person that's sitting here today fulfilled. And then when I became a trainer, when I received my promotion, I mean it was really funny because I'm in front of the entire community and it was a hybrid event.

you know, meaning that it was an in-person event where 17,000 people were there and then they had a whole team there. And then they had our virtual event and the virtual people and I was doing virtual and then I get my name called and I don't even know what to say. I just, I cried. I just ugly cried in front of my whole community and I couldn't breathe because it was like three and a half years and then some of emotion just rushed at me. And it was like,

my God, I've landed. Like they see it. And I take that with such gratitude and such heart. it's like every time, it doesn't matter if I'm doing something like this, like a podcast interview or serving a client or seeing somebody on the street, it doesn't matter. I am here to show up with love and presence and intention because if you think about it, 15 years ago, I wasn't gonna be here.

And here I am at this age, at this stage, living my dream life on a, in paradise on a tropical island. And I get to serve the masses in this way. It is just the biggest gift. So this to me, you talk about self-love mastery, here it is.

Sophie Biggerstaff (25:29)
Really,

I can feel your passion and it obviously comes from a very deep place, of course, because like you just said, potentially 15 years ago you might not have been here. So it's really coming out of this transformation that you've gone through and I think that that's a really beautiful thing, like I said, that you can now share these experiences with the masses, literally, when you are working with Tony Robbins. So that is incredible.

Denise Michelle (25:53)
Yeah.

Sophie Biggerstaff (25:54)
And I think sometimes when we talk about self-love, can be so misinterpreted, like people thinking, oh, I'm just going to run myself a bubble bath. Oh, I'm going to do a little bit of journaling. Let me take myself shopping. Don't get me wrong, of course, like these things are self-care, like looking after yourself, doing things for your greater good, things that going to make you happy, all of that for sure. There's an element of it that is self-care. But tell me...

Obviously we can hear it from the way that you've just kind of spoken about it, but in more of like a practical way, what does self love mean on a deep level and why is it so vital to master it? Like particularly if you are an entrepreneur or a business owner.

Denise Michelle (26:37)
Yeah, well because you know what, here's the thing, and this is something that I've learned through my mentors and even Tony says this is, know, entrepreneurship, business is a spiritual game. And if you, the way that you are with your finances, the way that you are in your relationships, it's all a reflection of you. So it's really fascinating when people are very easy to put the blame and say it's because of that, right? You're putting yourself into a victim state and that's not true.

No, these things show up for us as a reflection of what we're here to heal. And entrepreneurship is a massive healing process. I don't want to sugarcoat that. I don't want to say that entrepreneurship is, it's not for the weak, right? As you know, it's, you have to show up in a different way and you, I love that you're laughing.

Sophie Biggerstaff (27:24)
laughing because it's so true. like, yeah, like I hate to be

the bearer of bad news for anyone that doesn't realize this, but it's not pretty. It's kind of hard.

Denise Michelle (27:33)
It's kind of hard, but here's the gift

in it. You get to live life on your terms and you get to break free of this. The box, the programming, the stuff that maybe your society, your religion, your family, your community told you you had to be in order to, and how many of those people are truly happy? I don't see a lot.

I see a, and I don't wanna say people are sheep or robots or anything like that, but it's kind of, I also wanna say that the matrix, there's some truth in that. And when you allow yourself to get out of the box and you start to understand that because everything is a reflection of you and who you are here to become, this is the gift. So when you're...

working towards something, right? Some people think, I have this, I'm so excited for my entrepreneurial journey. I have this great idea and I'm gonna, you know, like I have my steps and all my goals in place. But when it's a dream and it's, you have this vision and it's literally your soul starting to come through this, you're gonna get met with a little bit of everything. So you might be going up here and.

yeah, this is great. And then all of a sudden you go here and here and here and here and wait a second, wait a second. In all in one day, you might feel like a mental person because you have gone through, well, know, quite a few emotions in one day, all because of your business. One day you're feeling like you're on top of it and you're crushing it. And the next day you feel like a total effing failure, right? And these are the things that are going to help create you.

because at the end of the day, it's not about really any of that. It's about what you are here to serve people, right? To serve the environment, to serve the community, whatever it is.

This is your soul speaking. And you have to learn how to get into alignment with him, her, it, however you see it, God, universe, spirit, source. You have to learn how to get into alignment with that energy. Because everything is energy, right? And part of this process is releasing the old, bringing the new, and learning that, you know what? I can be, do, have, create anything that I want. And it's almost like having this blank canvas.

that you have to learn your resilience, have to learn your courage, you're gonna learn your strength, you're gonna learn who you are. And it's not about having this idea of, you know, like watching these successful people and they just did it overnight. What seems like overnight success took them years and decades to master. So, you know, to say that I'm seven and a half years into my coaching business, has it been easy? Absolutely not. And...

Can I say that I'm the most fulfilled and that I'm more in love with it today than yesterday? Yes, I am.

Sophie Biggerstaff (30:39)
Yeah, no, I fully, fully, fully, fully agree on everything that you said. And a little bit painfully because it's, I definitely understand the need to go through like a full transformation, essentially, to fully embody the person that you want to be, the business that you want to run and get to the next level. Like I think...

You obviously go through levels in business. I always describe it a little bit like a Mario Kart game, life and business. We're constantly like, right, we're on the base level. Okay, it's kind of easy. Like we can kind of get to the end. We go to level one. gets a little bit harder level two. even more harder. Three, four, five. And we're starting to be like squirming at the.

the pain that we're having to go through, like to get onto these up levels. But then when you get to the top level, you win, right? Like, and the thing is, with self-development and entrepreneurship, there's no real top level, to be honest, like you're always going to evolve. But the easier, you're going to understand it better and better every level that you go up.

and you're going to have an increased level of knowledge. You've got all of those foundations that you've been building the whole way to you get into the top and then maybe you're getting 10 gold stars when you get to the top. you know? Like you're constantly growing, you're constantly evolving, you're constantly winning new things. And that is really powerful. And I think you can really, once you start seeing the growth, like from the transformation that you've gone through, like, yes, it's a bit painful whilst you're going through it. Yes, it's a bit messy. Yes, you're going to have ups and downs throughout that.

But once you can kind of that, embrace it, look back on it as lessons, and you mentioned a really key word there, resilience, and have the resilience to keep moving forward, actually it becomes easier and easier, and you are literally, you have gone through a full transformation, and that never really fully ends, but it does get more and more easy. And I think specifically,

If you, like you mentioned earlier, like around having a bit of a toolbox of things that are going to support you and help you through that, that's really something that you definitely need. feel like whilst you're going through all of that messy, the messy middle part until you get to like the other side of the transformation. So if we were putting this in like really practical steps.

What is like one really key thing, whether it's a mindset shift, a daily practice, something that has maybe changed your life or changes your client's lives, that's going to give someone the highest impact, particularly if they want to start stepping outside of that box and outside of the matrix that you spoke about.

Denise Michelle (33:05)
Well, it lies in your routine. So if you look at your morning and your evening routine, what does that really look like? And this to me is, this is the first thing I start any client with, is their morning and evening routine. And we break it down and how much time do you have? Do you have 20 minutes? If you only have 20 minutes, okay. Well, what's something that you can do for your mind, body, and spirit through that, right? The one thing that I really, really

gained from Tony Robbins was it's all about our state. It's about our physiology. It's about our focus, and it's about our language. if I'm sitting here like this, you can feel my energy drop, right? But something happens when I sit up, and you can feel that I'm more present, more grounded, right? Well, we have to do that for ourselves every day, and we have to create our routines and rituals around that.

So the first thing that I do in the morning is after waking up, I will drink water because I'm kick-starting my body. My body's been asleep all day. I move my lymphatic system. I do a little bit of mirror work. And then I go and meditate. And then after my meditation, I usually go into my self-care practices. I'll drink my celery juice. I do my.

If it's a day I'm seeing clients, I do a quick 15 minute workout because I'm intentionally setting up my energy and then I get myself ready. And so by the time I'm on camera, I am here. I am present. There is nothing else that I am looking outside of but here, but me and you. Right? And that's the thing is that it's how intentionally are you living your life? Really? Right? And so, you know, I often tell people that your tomorrow starts tonight.

How do you go to bed at night? What are your routines in going to bed? Are you scrolling until the very end? Because that affects your mental capacity. It's your rectangular activating system. It's your subconscious. And as our brains are starting to go to sleep, that's when it's most susceptible to learning and to listening. And so this is why I believe I always do brain training. So whether it's hypnosis, subliminals,

I'm a fun biohacker. like listening to Binaural Beats or whatever it is to work with my nervous system along with working with my mind, I'm doing it. It's a practice. But the thing is, it has to be consistent. And I'm not saying it has to be 100 % every day, but you have to do something every day, even if it's 10%.

Sophie Biggerstaff (35:46)
Fully agree, fully agree. It's something that I've definitely worked on over the past few years. My morning routine, I think I've pretty much nailed at this point. Very similar to yours, honestly. I go through quite a lot of those motions, particularly around meditation, journaling, brain dump, everything I need to get out. But my evening routine is something I'm still definitely working on. feel about I 100 % agree with what you said around how you end your day is how you start your day tomorrow.

it definitely, definitely is so important. And there's a Jay Shetty quote somewhere that's like, when you have that morning routine, you're putting on your armor for the day so that you can show up in the best possible way, as strong as possible to fight all the battles that you might need to fight that day, put out all the fires. and I, I also believe that that's like completely shifted the way that I look at business, the way that I, show up in my day to day life. Like it really does, like I said, give you that.

energy allowing you to be present in the the situations that are happening because you've already offloaded all of the things that you need to offload first thing. So really, really important. I would agree with that. Number one tips. good. Amazing. Well, thank you so much for sharing your story with us and all of the amazing snippets of wisdom that you have.

I always like to end on this one question because it's such an important topic for me. Like freedom is one of my biggest values. It's why I started my online business. And I think it's why many people start their, their online business journey. So could you let us know what freedom means to you?

Denise Michelle (37:09)
Yeah, it's living in alignment with your purpose. It's being unshackled by limiting beliefs or expectations, you know? And really learning how to embody your authentic self. And that's mentally, emotionally, spiritually. So you can live a fulfilled life. It's all for fulfillment, in my eyes.

Sophie Biggerstaff (37:29)
people.

100 % and I love the way that you use that authenticity, like how you can be authentic, show up authentically in your life, in your business, in your relationships, like in all of the things that you're doing. think we lose sight of that because we are conditioned in certain ways. We don't really know what's truly authentic and going back to what you said right at the beginning, you grew up with borderline personality disorder, in which case you didn't really know who you were. didn't know what your authenticity was and sometimes we have to go through those experiences, those journeys to kind of come back to it and then...

At the root core of it, there is always going to be something that you experience probably quite early on in your life that you tend to come back around to. And you'll realize that that authenticity or authentic self was always there. It was just waiting and willing to come out and for you to be able to live in that best version of yourself. So thank you so much for sharing that and for everything that you've shared today. If anybody wants to connect with you, how can they find you?

Denise Michelle (38:24)
They can find me on the socials, which I think are probably going to be in the show notes. And you can also go to my website, [bridgethelove.com](http://bridgethelove.com/). And you can learn about my offerings, my Bali retreat, any courses, and how to work with me. So there we go.

Sophie Biggerstaff (38:41)
Amazing. Thank you so much, Denise. It was great chatting to you and I fully resonate and agree with back up everything that you have said today. So thank you so much for coming on and sharing all of that.