Our guest this week is Michelle Niemeyer. After more than 30 years of law practice, Michelle found herself overweight, unhappy, unmotivated, divorced and dealing with a life threatening autoimmune diagnosis.
She went back to school and became a certified health coach to learn about holistic health and stress management and studied motivation, wellness, the science of happiness, neurolinguistic programming and positive psychology. It all led to “The Art of Bending Time,” a system to prevent burnout, increase productivity, and increase happiness.
Get free journal prompts to start your journey by texting the word CLARITY to 33777
See more about Michelle Niemeyer’s at https://www.michelleniemeyer.com
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About Dr. Liz
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Winner of numerous awards including Top 100 Moms in Business, Dr. Liz provides psychotherapy, hypnotherapy, and hypnosis to people wanting a fast, easy way to transform all around the world. She has a PhD in Clinical Psychology, is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor (LMHC) and has special certification in Hypnosis and Hypnotherapy. Specialty areas include Anxiety, Insomnia, and Deeper Emotional Healing.
A problem shared is a problem halved. In person and online hypnosis and CBT for healing and transformation.
Listened to in over 140 countries, Hypnotize Me is the podcast about hypnosis, transformation, and healing. Certified hypnotherapist and Licensed Mental Health Counselor, Dr. Liz Bonet, discusses hypnosis and interviews professionals doing transformational work.
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Transcript
0:00:00 – Dr. Liz
Hi everyone, Dr Liz here. My interview today is with Michelle Niemeyer and she has a really interesting life path. You’re going to hear about a life-threatening disease that led to some major changes in her life. You’re going to hear about burnout and how both of us made career changes after burnout, and you are going to hear about how to regain control of your time. But really it’s about regaining control of your happiness, about finding fulfillment, regardless of whether you choose to shift your career path. You may or may not. So I hope you enjoy the interview and that you’re healthy and safe. Peace,
Hi, Michelle. Welcome to the Hypnotize Me podcast. Thank you, Liz.
0:00:56 – Michelle Niemeyer
I appreciate it.
0:00:58 – Dr. Liz
Yeah, I was really excited to get your email that you work with burnout and you were. You’re an ex-lawyer, let’s say right, Although I’m not sure anyone is ever an ex-lawyer, but you had a previous career, let’s say, as a lawyer. Share with the listeners some of your story about how you begin to end up where you are now.
0:01:24 – Michelle Niemeyer
Okay, and I’ll keep that part short so I can give your audience the things that really matter. Okay, so I worked as a lawyer for 33 years and in that career I had a number of different kinds of practice environments. I was with a larger firm in the beginning and I traveled all over the country and then I moved to Miami and started working more in I don’t want to say local, local practice, but more local. Most of my clients were here in Florida. Cases were all over the state, but it was primarily in Florida. Ironically, my last case was actually in Massachusetts where I went to law school and it was a blast.
But I hit a point about 20 years into my career where I was very, very burned out. And for those who don’t really know what burnout is, the World Health Organization has now defined it in a way that I don’t agree with. By the way, they define it as being related to workplace stress, and you know as much as I think that’s probably true. Yes, people have a lot of stress from work and they’re very busy and they feel overwhelmed with responsibilities or too many things, or they’re. You know it’s, it’s not, it’s constant and it’s chronic and it doesn’t go away. Um, people also have whole lives and the person who is feeling burned out often is feeling burned out because it’s not just what’s going on at work. It’s also, potentially, what’s going on at home or what’s going on in their extended family or what’s going on in their other activities.
And I’ll give you an example. In my case, when I got burned out, I had my own law practice. I was able to control my workflow. I did a very good job of that, frankly. But I had gone through a divorce during the bad part of my marriage and when I was beginning my own practice, I started getting very involved in local community activities. So what started as a volunteer position, being on a committee dealing with something with the city, turned into me being on the Chamber of Commerce board, turned into me being appointed to a local village council and then elected twice, and those things that I was doing were literally like another full-time job.
0:04:00 – Dr. Liz
Yeah.
0:04:01 – Michelle Niemeyer
So you know, was my burnout from work? Quote work my office?
No, not really, I mean partly, but it also was from overextending into the community and overextending in different ways like that, a lot of different things, culminating in I ran for public office. I spent, you know, an enormous amount of time on that. I did not win and at the end of that I felt just depleted. I felt like I’d given everything to everyone, yeah, and when it mattered people had not stood behind me who had encouraged me to run. They were afraid of my adversary, who was very vindictive, kind of sounds familiar to today, but that was going on in a microcosm in Miami at the time. So what ended up happening was I kind of I got very withdrawn. I felt detached.
People who are burned out sort of start to resent what they do.
So you know, I was resentful, I was detached, I was not connected, I was kind of hiding from the world for a while and I realized that was happening and I did some of the things I knew to get. You know, I I started trying to make a point of seeing my friends, I started going on, you know, like running every morning, things like that. I thought I was doing better. And then I had this incident where I was back, kind of back in the flow as far as work went and all the rest, I had this incident where I went to sleep one night or tried to, and when I laid on my back, I had this incident where I went to sleep one night or tried to, and when I laid on my back I had this pain. That was where you would expect appendicitis to hurt. Okay, it was on my right side, and kind of like if you put your hand above your hip and like right where your hand would be in that area and if I stood up I felt okay, and if I laid down it hurt.
And then I’d stand up and it would feel okay and I’d lay down and it would hurt. And this went on until about two in the morning and I finally fell asleep and it happened again the next night. And when it happened again the next night, I’m on my computer, like basically on my phone, looking at Google, like I’m Google MD-ing my diagnosis of probably appendicitis and thinking I’m that person with a high pain threshold who could like end up with sepsis, right. So I I decided to go to the emergency room and at the emergency room they did blood testing and the blood testing had some bad like liver enzyme issues that are consistent with gallstones, okay. And so they did an ultrasound and they couldn’t find anything. Huh, and they sent me away with this weird non-diagnosis of we think it’s gallstones and sometimes people could have gallstones, but we can’t see them. And i’m’m like really, and I went home and I decided I can fix this. I’ll, just, as always, get in shape, eat better, exercise, right, yeah, right. And about a month into that process, I joined Beachbody.
And I had an assistant, who was a Beachbody coach, and I did and I. I joined her Beachbody team. I started as a coach to get the discount. And then I, I actually got involved in the coaching and they provide you with a lot of really good access to personal development and that kind of thing.
I learned a lot from it and it was a lot that I didn’t know before. I learned a lot about nutrition. I learned a lot about, you know, physical good health, yeah, and I had a UTI. And I go to the doctor and the doctor says you haven’t been here for a checkup in a while. Why don’t we pull some blood and, just do you know, run some regular blood panels?
0:08:12 – Dr. Liz
Yeah.
0:08:13 – Michelle Niemeyer
And he calls me like that Friday and he says I need to see you to talk to you about your blood test results.
0:08:20 – Dr. Liz
Oh no, that’s never good, right Like the doctor never calls you for international listeners in the US, the doctor never calls you.
0:08:28 – Michelle Niemeyer
Called me on my cell phone it wasn’t even like his staff called and said can we make an appointment? He personally called me on my cell phone and said you know, can you come in on Monday? And this was like on a Saturday, like, oh yeah right.
So I go in and he says well, you know, I saw these results. And then I went back into your record and I saw the results from when you were in the hospital and he said all those liver numbers that were off are now twice as bad as they were a year ago.
0:08:57 – Dr. Liz
Whoa.
0:08:58 – Michelle Niemeyer
Okay, and I don’t know what this means. I’m not a hepatologist or a gastroenterologist, but I think you need to see somebody, and he sent me to somebody. That turned into a diagnosis of a very rare autoimmune disease called primary biliary cholangitis. It’s a it’s a disease where the um, essentially your microscopic bile ducts, are attacked by your immune system. And when the bile ducts are messed up and the bile can’t move through, then the bile is highly caustic and it damages your liver.
0:09:34 – Dr. Liz
So in the end, if you don’t, and it would cause that gallbladder-like pain, exactly Like a gall.
0:09:41 – Michelle Niemeyer
And if there’s no treatment for this. The things I was seeing online at the time were like 10-year lifespan, whoa trans, like liver transplant or you die, kind of stuff, and I’m like what Right? I mean that’s scary. And so that threw me into this major action mode. I had done a lot of medical research as part of my legal work, so I was familiar with getting into the NIH database and this, and that I did a ton of research. I found a you know, found a hepatologist because I wasn’t sticking with a gastro for this who was here in Miami and who appeared to be the one who knew what he was talking about. He really wasn’t, he was the department head. He ended up firing me as a patient because I refused to get a biopsy and biopsies were still the standard of care in the States at that point but they were not in Europe and there was a type of scan they could do. That works just as well. So, you know, he got mad when I wouldn’t get a biopsy and told me I’d have to see his associate. And it turned out his associate was the person who’d written all the articles that looked like it was his, and she knew immediately. She’s like you don’t need a biopsy. I’m like I know I don’t need a biopsy, but he wanted to make me get one.
Um, so anyway, I also tandem to this because I knew that autoimmune diagnoses often involve, you know, the the line of we don’t know what causes this and there’s no cure for it, but you know. And then often steroids, and I was like I’m not doing that and I do want to know. You know, what can I do? That’s different, that might be able to change my body’s response so that it doesn’t continue to get worse. And I ended up going to a health coaching school to get a certification. I studied for I don’t know, like probably 10, 12 hours a week for a year almost, and implemented a lot of those things.
And at the end of you know, sometime after that, it took a long time for my blood test to go into the normal range. There’s a medication I tried to fix it with diet that does not work. There’s a medication that helps and thank God for me, I mean 60% of the people respond to it. So 40 don’t you know? And I do respond to it. So that was good.
I was able to, you know, get my blood test results into the normal range and at the same time, I was doing all these other things that you know who knows right, does it help? Does it not help? But there are tests that test the. It’s like if you have fibrosis or cirrhosis, the elasticity of your liver tissue is stiffer. So there are tests they can do. There’s an ultrasound called a fiber scan they can do, which basically measures that stiffness, and my fiber scan scores went down. It’s like, instead of going up, they’ve gone down significantly, like from the stage two to the stage zero.
And you know that’s all happened during this time that I’ve been looking at, you know, like I said, 10 year lifespan that was 10 years ago, by the way, and you know I’m doing great, and so I’m looking at this and from that perspective, like all these changes I made were really about my health. They were about literally being scared to death and going. You know, oh my God, I’ve got to change some things and I changed all kinds of different things and at the end of it, at some point, I was like I was realizing I feel better than I did in my 20s. I’m happier, I am more productive, I’m engaged again. Like I actually like being a lawyer again by the time I walked away from my law career. It wasn’t because I hated being a lawyer. It was because I had decided that I could do something bigger and better in the world, so to speak, if I could share what I had done and help other people and I realized that you know my sort of through line in my life.
the thing that’s kind of in my heart and my soul is in connecting with and coaching people and helping people to see in themselves that gift that they have that makes them shine and makes them feel good and makes them happy. And so you know I had done that in pieces of my every career I’ve ever had, and so I’m back to that, basically doing this. Anyway, that’s how I got to where I am now.
0:14:36 – Dr. Liz
Okay, great Long story. Yeah, sometimes it is a health crisis that spurs people to make significant and massive change in their life. Yeah, yeah, that changes all kinds of stuff. It really does. It’s not just one area. It’s like you don’t just change your health, like your mental state, your emotional, all of that goes with it.
0:15:00 – Michelle Niemeyer
It’s completely tied together.
0:15:03 – Dr. Liz
I truly believe that. Yeah, and the opposite too. I think I I faced burnout twice in my life, once after I had earned a PhD in clinical psychology and decided to leave the field. For me, what happens is it starts to lose meaning. I feel like I’m not making a difference in the world, I don’t matter, um, what I’m doing doesn’t matter, like anybody could do it. You know, like that’s the feeling that comes over me, and I didn’t recognize that it was burnout the first time. Actually, I did end up leaving the field of psychology and going into tech actually, and then returning to it like 10 years later and when I had to go and get licensed, because I never got licensed, I had to take some classes, because the master’s license was different from, like, the PhD level license and I had decided to do a master’s level license because of some various factors. But anyway, I took this one class on career counseling and had to write a paper about burnout and I was like oh my God, this is what happened to me.
Ding ding, ding. I didn’t even know it at the time.
0:16:17 – Michelle Niemeyer
I mean, I cannot tell you.
0:16:19 – Dr. Liz
My mother cried, literally started crying when I said I can’t, I can’t do this anymore. I, you know I can’t be in psychologist. I was in a licensed psychologist. It’s like I can’t. I was working as a therapist trying to earn hours and stuff. I was like I can’t do it. And she, she’s like what I mean all these years, 10 years right.
0:16:39 – Michelle Niemeyer
Well, and isn’t that horrible that the person because and I had the same experience the biggest, the biggest pushback I’ve gotten- about leaving law has come from my family. Yeah, and you know, here I am. I’m 60 years old and I’ve been, I was practicing for over 30 years and my parents are telling me but you spent so much time in school, I’m like when I was in my twenties, you know. I think, I’ve earned the right to decide that I want to make this change.
0:17:07 – Dr. Liz
Yeah, well, that first one for me was at like 28, 29. So I had I was only a year out of school. So I had I was only a year out of school and, yeah, and my boyfriend who’s later my, my husband also was like just flabbergasted, Like all you have to do is sit there and listen to people. And you can’t do that and I’m like, first of all, that’s not. All you have to do is a therapist for a second no, I can’t, I can’t do it. Yeah, yeah. So it is interesting.
family often gives a lot of pushback when that happens yeah, and, and you’ve got to know in your own heart what you need yes, yeah, I mean I think the stresses for sure play a factor for people, but I also see it as this internal experience that happens and I think that’s what you’re you’re saying. The World Health Organization is sort of missing in that definition.
0:17:59 – Michelle Niemeyer
Big time when they say it’s about work, because it’s not just about work and you know. So what I did was I looked at. Okay, how did I get to this? How did I get from point A to point B?
0:18:10 – Dr. Liz
Yeah.
0:18:11 – Michelle Niemeyer
And who was I when I was at point A and, like you, I didn’t identify that as burnout. It happened in like 2012, 13. Nobody was talking about burnout. Yeah, I had no idea. I remember, you know, I had this very close friend who would like I’d complain about my how much I hated being a lawyer, and he’d be like you need to be grateful. And I’m like what the hell for?
0:18:33 – Dr. Liz
Yeah, I just.
0:18:34 – Michelle Niemeyer
And I’m like what the hell for? Yeah, I just I wasn’t. I couldn’t see one thing to be grateful about. I felt trapped. Yes, I felt like I was beholden to this thing, that I was doing that I didn’t want to be doing, and how, like why would I feel grateful for that? It was like my prison, yeah. And you know, now I look back on it and I’m like I could kind of see it from his perspective and I’m like, wow. But the other piece of it is that I thought I had a time management problem Because I couldn’t focus, I wasn’t getting, I would be there at work all day and I’d be like I couldn’t get work done. I just like, and I was like I saw it as an organizational problem or as a, you know, more of a focus problem than as a problem with that. I was burned out.
0:19:27 – Dr. Liz
Yeah.
0:19:28 – Michelle Niemeyer
And so the first thing I did to try to fix things was buy a time management program.
0:19:37 – Dr. Liz
I mean, it’s a good strategy if you think that’s what your problem is.
0:19:40 – Michelle Niemeyer
I thought it was my problem. Right, I was highly distractible. I had, like you know, there were a lot of things where I was like, oh, if I do these things, I can make myself more efficient, productive, and that’s what I thought. The problem was not burnout. So I bought a time management program and you know, some of the stuff I learned in that program is now in the art of bending time.
General concepts from it are, but really what I learned was that what mattered most was having a really rock solid level of clarity about who I am and what lights me up, what makes me happy, and this is something that I start with people and we carry this through the whole time because it’s so important.
There’s probably things like I mentioned to you, I think, before we started recording, where there’s a through line, like there’s, there’s a through line for me. From every job I’ve ever had that I’ve chosen and in ways that I’ve engaged, there’s been a through line, and that through line has been sort of mentorship and interaction with other people, and you know that has been a constant, whether I was doing it as I was a tech headhunter after college, whether I was doing it as a headhunter, whether I was doing it mentoring younger lawyers and paralegals in my legal positions, whether I was doing it in the political stuff where I was connecting with people, whether they were residents or they were people who are part of the city government, trying to get them to do things that would benefit our community.
In all of those roles I had that connecting with people and kind of elevating through that connection.
0:21:28 – Dr. Liz
Yes.
0:21:29 – Michelle Niemeyer
And that was, that’s the through line for me. That’s the thing that lights me up, if I can get that even a little bit in my job, my, I could be. I could pick up garbage on the street and if I could have that connection with someone where I, you know, have eye contact with a homeless person, or I, whatever it is, I could be giving myself those little sparks that make me happy.
0:21:59 – Dr. Liz
Yes, okay, got it. So part of the task, let’s say when, when someone comes to you is finding like, what’s the commonality?
0:22:07 – Michelle Niemeyer
That’s the first priority is is figuring that out and I do a guided meditation and some journaling with them and that kind of thing and we come to. These are not big things, these are very internal, very. It could be that you love seeing the sparks of the water like the sparkles of the water as you’re walking, like I walk in a park on the waterfront here in Miami every morning, and just having that time to like be near the water and see the sunshine on the water and feel the air and just being outside like that lights me up and makes me feel good you know, so it’s like things like that moving your body.
Some people are highly kinesthetic, just having physical activity every day yeah and working that into your day so that you have it. Not you know you’re not sitting for 10 hours at a stretch right yeah, um, it’s different for everyone. Some people are more visually oriented. It might be about having a beautiful environment, and you might be able to make a difference for yourself just by cleaning out the clutter and putting some nice artwork where you can see it.
0:23:13 – Dr. Liz
Mm, hmm.
0:23:15 – Michelle Niemeyer
Yeah, and it’s for everybody’s different. So so we find those things, because when we can have those things easily accessible and we can proactively put them into our lives our whole lives, not our work life we fuel ourselves.
0:23:36 – Dr. Liz
Yes, absolutely. I agree with that, and I think in my younger years I didn’t realize a lot of that and how necessary it was. But as I um have begun to age, then it’s like, oh, yeah, I really need this time to write my gratefulness list and do a little bit of art, you know, and I really need the exercise piece. Yeah, it’s all these different elements, and it’s like, yeah, I have to take a um not have to, but I want to take a stroll every day. So I’m no longer like the super exerciser outside like I used to be, but it’s like I still need to stroll. It helps me just being out in the sunshine or even the rain, if it’s raining. Yeah, we have a lot of rain in Florida. I think up here in Miami and up here in Jacksonville we just went through a whole week of rain. I think you did too. But even in the summers in Florida We’ve had the rainiest rainy season I’ve.
0:24:39 – Michelle Niemeyer
I mean, I moved here in 97 and when I first moved here, every single summer it would rain every day. And it seems like I was just telling my mom this yesterday it seemed like in the last like, let’s say, 10 years we had really much drier summers. Oh, yeah. They. You know we didn’t have the rain shower every afternoon, which you’d normally expect.
0:25:01 – Dr. Liz
Right, you could count on it.
0:25:04 – Michelle Niemeyer
Yeah, it’s rained like crazy this year.
0:25:06 – Dr. Liz
Yes, that’s what, that’s what I’ve heard. I I moved to Fort Lauderdale in 95. So right before you, and then I just moved up to Jacksonville this year, in 2025. So, yeah, it’s like you used to count on it two o’clock 145, right before school would let out, and then they’d have to hold the kids.
You know, you’re like oh my God, I gotta get back to work. How long is this going to take? You know, like right, like right, and then it stopped. You get about an hour and a half and then it stopped. Right, yeah, that has shifted for sure. But back to um burnout. I had I did have a question about, like when do usually people reach out to you, like what happens? Um, do they recognize like I’m just not happy or I’m really struggling, like what is that tipping point where they usually you know, I think people realize sometimes they get really overwhelmed or they’re going through a change.
Okay.
0:26:07 – Michelle Niemeyer
You know, I mean it’s sadly. People can get into a groove or they’re just stuck for a really long time. Yeah, and.
0:26:15 – Dr. Liz
I mean, I see them as years they don’t just come out of that groove. Right and they don’t see that they need to leave that groove.
0:26:22 – Michelle Niemeyer
They just they’re content, but they’re not happy. They’re just treading water, right, yeah, and you can tread water for a really long time before you drown. You can, and tons of people are like that. But often what will happen is it’s because there’s some kind of a major stressor that happens, there’s a health issue, or maybe they’re worried they’ll lose their job, or they have lost their job or they’ve, they’re getting a divorce or they’re you know, their parent just died and they’re faced with is this all there is? You know, a lot of times it’s when somebody hits a. It’s some kind of a moment where they’re like wait a minute, like is this all there is? I can’t, I don’t want to live a life like this for the rest of my life. What do I do?
0:27:12 – Dr. Liz
Yeah.
0:27:13 – Michelle Niemeyer
Well, is this all there is?
0:27:15 – Dr. Liz
Is that a lack of meaning? Question Like are they looking for meaning in their life?
0:27:20 – Michelle Niemeyer
It can be, but it’s also, uh, it’s, it’s angst, it’s like existential angst. Yeah, it’s hard, and and the other thing is I. I work with businesses and help them through workshops and leadership training for people so that teams can work better together.
0:27:40 – Dr. Liz
Okay.
0:27:41 – Michelle Niemeyer
And so that they have better retention and better productivity among the team members. And you know, a lot of times people don’t fully recognize that they’re not connected or they’re not communicating well as a group. And when we help people find that thing, that that lights them up. Let’s say you’ve got a team of 10 people and they have team goals and when you figure out in your team what lights people up and you start and you know it as a team and you start proactively putting people in positions where they can get more of what lights them up in their day to day at work. Mm hmm, it can make the whole team function better.
0:28:26 – Dr. Liz
Oh yeah.
0:28:27 – Michelle Niemeyer
Which is super cool.
And you know, a lot of times then it’s like those people didn’t come there because they thought they had a problem. They came there because their boss wanted better productivity, Right, Right. But in the end, everybody benefits from it because they learn more about you know. Oh, wow, I had forgotten how much I love making art. I found it interesting. You said that because I’m the same way I was. I did. I was the kid who loved art. I spent hours and hours in my room painting and drawing and you know, doing art things, and. But I was also the straight A student who had to drop art when there wasn’t room for it in my schedule.
0:29:09 – Dr. Liz
Yeah.
0:29:11 – Michelle Niemeyer
And I never continued. And then as an adult I picked up you know little classes here and there. I’ve never gone back and taken a full length like major art class. I’ll do these little you know sip and paint, kind of events. And go to the ceramic studio and this and that. And you know, I look at my artwork and I see something finished and I go that doesn’t suck, yeah, and it’s like I’m really happy with my art.
0:29:35 – Dr. Liz
That doesn’t suck, it makes me feel good doing it you know, yes, I follow an artist and I I didn’t realize this until I did her little survey, but she was doing a survey. Um, because she runs online art classes. Willowine is her brand name. Tamara Laporte is her actual name, if someone wants to look her up. She runs a lot of art classes online, but anyway, she’s doing the survey how satisfied are you with your art?
And one was like never. Two was about 80%, you know. Three was like 50% of the time I’m happy with what happens. And then, when I took that survey, I realized like oh, there’s a progression here, like first you’re never happy with whatever you’re doing and then, as you start to gain skill, you really become more satisfied, I think, with what you’re doing In terms of the process and a lot of others. You know, I think there’s a process probably outside of that, but the process for me is actually really important. The making feels really good, even if I’m not exactly happy with the result at the end, but most of the time these days I am pretty happy.
0:30:43 – Michelle Niemeyer
Well, there’s a lot of value in getting in a flow state. Yes, absolutely, and art lets you do that, yes. Yeah, art lets you do that, yes, and making music lets you do that.
0:30:53 – Dr. Liz
Yes.
0:30:54 – Michelle Niemeyer
If you’re a runner, running gets lets you do that. There’s a lot of things you can do where you can get in a flow state, and if you can do that, it’s great, one of the things that I really recommend to people do. As far as you know the whole concept of bending time and I’ll tell you just in a nutshell bending time does not mean, obviously, that you can physically. You know, time isn’t a physical thing, it’s a construct we’ve come up with and it has this linear implication to it.
However, I like to look at time and go okay, you could have a ruler and say, from point A to point B is a week, right, but your experience of that time could be like putting a balloon around that ruler and it can stretch, it can get bigger and bigger.
0:31:43 – Dr. Liz
Yeah.
0:31:44 – Michelle Niemeyer
And you can do things to maximize the sort of the impact and the importance of what’s in that time, and that can be by doing things that light you up. It can be by working with other people so that you have a bigger impact through the synergies of a bunch of people doing something, as opposed to one person trying to do it themselves.
0:32:07 – Dr. Liz
Yeah.
0:32:07 – Michelle Niemeyer
And flow state is huge because you can get so much more done in a flow state. Yeah, so one of the things that I’m big, I work with people about getting rid of distractions and finding ways to have that flow state in their work so that they can be more productive, so getting rid of notifications, for instance, if you have a job where you work at a desk and you’re at your computer. You do not want your email pinging up in your face every time there’s an email that comes in or a text that comes in or whatever you know.
I suggest people schedule, like you know, once or twice a day. I don’t look at my email more than once or twice a day yes, right. I will not.
0:32:46 – Dr. Liz
It’s not going to going to happen yeah, do you remember the four hour work week, tim ferris, yes, okay. Well, when it first came out, I read it and um, and one of the major changes I made in in my business at the time I was running a prenatal yoga business, yoga fairy was like notifications back, auto responders back notificationsonders back notifications on my voicemail. I return calls during these hours, I return emails during these hours, because I also had little kids at home. But it was like this whole shift of it’s not just time management. It’s like okay, I need to be able to focus on other things that I want to do, and if I have a constant email or calls that I feel like I have to return immediately, you know, to convince yourself you do, and there are absolutely some businesses or careers where that is the case, but it was not for mine, you know, and it’s like oh, a shift of, okay, you can make some choices here. It’s really hard to convince people of that, though. Like how has your experience been.
0:33:55 – Michelle Niemeyer
I think it’s because they want to have a sense of importance. Okay, they want to feel like they’re so important in what they’re doing that they have to be on and there all the time. You know, I looked at it a little differently as a lawyer, for instance. I was an insurance coverage lawyer. I sued insurance companies or defended clients who were being sued by their insurance companies. That happens way more than people think, by the way, like more of my cases were defendants than there were plaintiffs, even though I was representing the policyholder. Insurance companies love to sue you to get the court to say there’s no coverage. So you know I did that and the fact is that’s about money. Yeah, unless you’re like literally in the emergency room dying and the insurance company saying we won’t pay for this treatment that will save your life which is very unlikely to happen.
You don’t need your lawyer to respond immediately. That’s true, right, and you know, I made sure that and this is something I had someone on a leadership podcast just say to me oh my God, I never thought of it that way. I was like, how do you not think of it that way? Um, your, your client or your customer is part of your team.
Yes, and this is something people don’t often think about and and you see, in law and I know in some kinds of other professions where people have this idea that you’re supposed to just drop everything the moment the client calls and immediately get back to them. And I have never I won’t say I’ve never done that. I’ve worked in environments where that was expected and when I had my own law practice, it was never expected. I controlled what was expected and I made it very clear to my clients listen, your, you know, your, your case is very important to me. I will absolutely get back to you and, but I want to be able to first of all get back to you with a well thought out response, not just have you like, call me at two in the morning freaking out about something.
0:36:08 – Dr. Liz
Yeah.
0:36:10 – Michelle Niemeyer
And so you know, email me or leave me a message and I will get back to you. But understand that if I’m focused on your work, I’m focused on your work and that gives you the chance to have better quality work, and if I’m focused on somebody else’s work, it’s going to be the same and I’m not going to respond to those things immediately. I’m going to do it outside of my focus time and nobody complained.
0:36:39 – Dr. Liz
Yeah, right, or you might get one person, but then you handle it with them.
0:36:44 – Michelle Niemeyer
The one person who did that, who didn’t accept that, that I fired them as a client and gave back their money there you go. You know, not everybody has that control. I had my own practice. I had the right to do that, but a lot of times if you have a good employer who will stand behind you, there are ways you can deal with those things.
0:37:04 – Dr. Liz
Well, when people come to see you, are they often looking to change careers?
0:37:19 – Michelle Niemeyer
Well, when people come to see you, are they often looking to change careers, Are they looking for a way to stay in their career? But through burnout, like in the burnout feels awful. Like, yeah, in the burnout this into a time management program. My hope is to catch them before they get as burned out as I got.
0:37:31 – Dr. Liz
Okay.
0:37:32 – Michelle Niemeyer
Okay, when I was in that place where I bought the time management program, I was not so deeply burned out that I wanted to leave law. I didn’t really know yet what the problem was, but I just thought I’m not as effective, I’m not as efficient, I’m not as productive. Something’s wrong. I need help with time management. So a lot of times if somebody responds to that, they’re not deeply burned out yet.
0:38:02 – Dr. Liz
Got it.
0:38:03 – Michelle Niemeyer
They’re often the one who’s like you know, they’ve got so many things going on in their life and they don’t know how to keep the balls in the air and they’re not sure what to do about it, and a lot of times for those people. That’s why that clarity thing is so important, because the first thing you want to be able to do is know what really matters. Yeah, how many people are doing you know all kinds of tasks that if you really, if you really look at it and you you’re, you know, insightful about this, is what matters to me at my core, to make me happy. This is what the values are. I have my children come first, or my you know I have to take care of my health, or I need to make a certain amount of money to be able to not be homeless, whatever. That is right. You have certain core values that you’re working toward, but 80% of the things we’re doing are just junk.
0:39:02 – Dr. Liz
Yeah.
0:39:03 – Michelle Niemeyer
And some of the things we’re doing could be resolved by, for instance, how many moms drive their kids to the school every day. And I mean it used to be when I was a kid, I was a swimmer.
I went to a public school system. I took the bus to school but I was a swimmer and I was on a swim team that had practices at the other high school in our county, which was pretty far. My mom was a housewife and she didn’t drive me every day. There was a carpool, oh yeah, right, so the moms took turns, right and and she only drove like once a week, yeah, I walk.
Now you see these kids in private school and you know, you see these kids today and it’s like mom is driving them every single day. That’s what I did, too, for my kids, and but you know, like you didn’t need to, there’s probably other kids in the neighborhood and and and there were other people that if you looked at it that way, you could have saved, like, let’s say, you know an hour a day for four of the five days.
0:40:03 – Dr. Liz
Yeah. I mean I shifted into particularly middle school and high school. Um, I enjoyed that time because we would talk and listen to the radio and listen to podcasts and have conversations.
0:40:17 – Michelle Niemeyer
Yeah, and that’s valuable too. So that’s another piece of it is that when you hit a certain point and even you know, maybe before that you know, do you have that time where you’re? It’s a valuable time for you. And that then becomes one of your. You know that’s a priority. Yeah, it was. So you have that moment and you have that for whatever reason, when people are sitting next to each other and looking forward and not looking at each other. Some kids just open up and talk about stuff other.
0:40:50 – Dr. Liz
Somehow kids just open up and talk about stuff and you know that’s valuable, yeah. But I had also had a friend who, um, she was moved from south florida to open targets in canada, so she was pretty high level corporate and her daughter, her teenage daughter ended up not going with her and she thought she would and she had told me, like the thing I miss the most is time in the car with her. That’s what I miss the most, and so it’s like I had that, you know, going into. She was ahead of me in terms of motherhood. I had that going into, like the high school years of, okay, yeah, this is important time.
Because, sometimes it’s just a very small comment or something like that that happens in our lives. That then drives a whole nother set of changes for us that are value driven really.
0:41:37 – Michelle Niemeyer
And and that when you think about it, that car time it’s a presence thing and that’s again the flow state, the being present. I’m huge on the be here now concept of you know, when you’re in the car with the kid, having some boundaries around that time, kind of like having the notifications off your computer.
0:42:05 – Dr. Liz
if you can have, you know, some kind of boundaries around that time that give you that you know your kid is with you yeah, so I’m guessing that’s an important part of your program is like how do you set those boundaries around your time so that you’re creating a better internal experience for yourself?
0:42:24 – Michelle Niemeyer
yeah, like yeah, and, and that’s going to be different for everybody because everybody’s and this is where it gets really individualized as working with people on and it goes to all kinds of things we go into health practices again more bending time. If you are fatigued, distracted, unable to sit and get the work done, you’re not going to be as effective. Yes, so physical health matters too. Oh, yeah, like just getting enough sleep eating I call it eating the rainbow. Eating a variety of healthy foods, drinking enough water, moving your body Health.
lecture done Simple, but it’s’s not like most people aren’t doing those things, so I go into more detail with people on that stuff and we actually do food journaling and you know, look at energy, look at how they’re, what are you doing in your day and how do you feel at different times of your day, because the other piece of it is, if you’re always a little bit fatigued at a certain time of day, don’t put the stuff that’s like the hardest into that time of the day oh yeah yeah, I was interviewed on a podcast at one point about like um, I’m trying to think, I think I was running two businesses at that point, so my private practice and then the yoga business.
0:43:50 – Dr. Liz
And the question came up of like what do you recommend to other other moms, other women that are, you know, running multiple businesses or trying to manage their time? And I said, like know your own energy patterns. So I know that my best energy is like in the morning, so I focus most of my effort there, versus like in the afternoon. For me, you know, it slows down some, I slow down, my thinking processes slow down. So it’s like when you know that, then you can form your life around it.
0:44:23 – Michelle Niemeyer
Let’s say like the hardest things first, and that might be the time that you look at your emails and you return some phone calls and that kind of thing which it, you know, for me, like the returning the phone calls and having that contact and talking to people, helps kind of bring my energy back, and I won’t get that if I’m, you know, if I’m focusing on reading and writing and, and you know, creative work. It’s a different kind of energy and if you can put that into the time of your day where it works, and then you also, of course, if you have a family, you’re working that into your family schedule in a way.
0:45:02 – Dr. Liz
You know.
0:45:03 – Michelle Niemeyer
I know a lot of moms who get up at five in the morning and do stuff early because that’s when they have a quiet house and they have an hour or two where they can get some stuff done before they’re. Yep, you know packing lunches and right, all that stuff exactly. So you know that that matters and it matters so much and people don’t really it’s how you schedule your day is huge.
0:45:27 – Dr. Liz
Oh, it is, it is. So it sounds like. I mean, I see lawyers as very analytical, but it’s like it sounds like you use all those analytical skills to help someone form the life that’s happier for them.
0:45:43 – Michelle Niemeyer
Yeah. In a sense in a sense I don’t think of myself as particularly analytical but I might be, I actually I laugh about the fact that I had a partner that he and I could not get along. We were absolutely oil and water and he could not deal with my thought process Because it was like, imagine, this is him, this is him. Point A’s over here and point B’s over here and everything had to be in the little line Okay.
And he just signed somebody a project and if they went over there somewhere they’d be like well, how come you looked at that? Because I just asked you to look at this and you know my way of looking at a case was literally like this. I was like I was looking for all this stuff, and then I’d find ways to tie it together.
0:46:28 – Dr. Liz
Yeah, and it made him crazy oh, how did you tell my brain works. To me that’s like analytical you’re going to take all the little different pieces and throw them together, but what would you call it create?
0:46:39 – Michelle Niemeyer
I don’t know it’s. It’s like this am I kinesthetic? Yes, I am.
Michelle’s like moving her hands for the listeners like so exactly, my hands are going around in circles all around me and yeah, and and so that really for me is is it’s something I have to take into account, yeah, in how I do my business right and in how I work, but, yes, I, I do. I have a really brilliant ability to capture those things that are like to find the patterns, and and that is something that I bring to the table when I work with people, because it’s not everybody has that skill.
Absolutely, and that has been a really like that to me is probably my superpower.
0:47:28 – Dr. Liz
Absolutely, and that has been a really like. That to me is probably my superpower.
0:47:46 – Michelle Niemeyer
Awesome.
0:47:46 – Dr. Liz
I love it. Yeah, so we’re coming to the end of777.
0:47:53 – Michelle Niemeyer
And I’ll also give you the link to the same place. It gets them into a community page in my website which enables them to download the guided meditation and journaling prompts to find your clarity. Okay, as well as a tool that we didn’t talk about, which is kind of my one of my upper level I call it the ninja tool which is called the sword analysis. Okay, and that’s something people can use to analyze their goals and then decide how much they really want it. Ah, interesting, and then, and then carry that forward into planning how to build a team and how to plan your growth to make the goal happen.
0:48:32 – Dr. Liz
I love it. Yeah, lots of people make goals but they don’t evaluate, like, how much do I actually want this?
0:48:37 – Michelle Niemeyer
Right, yeah, how consistent is it? And you’d be surprised how many people are carrying around that goal that when they were 12 years old, something looked cool and they thought that’s what they wanted to be or do. And now they’re 40. And they’re spending money on it and they’re, you know, spending time away from their family and whatever. And when they really look at it, they’re like I don’t even like this that much. Why did I think like, but it’s part of what they’ve built themselves to believe.
0:49:02 – Dr. Liz
Yes, their self concept shifts. Yeah, yeah, interesting. Okay, we’ll put both in the show notes and, um, even if your podcast player doesn’t show the show notes, because some of them don’t, then it’s always on my website so you can search it up there just. Thank you so much for being here and sharing your wisdom with us today. Well, thank you, liz. Yeah, all right, so let me stop the recording.
Transcribed by https://podium.page
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