Shape the Post-40 Life You Crave

Mindy Pelz, DC

Here’s where I want to start. Here’s what I want to start. Sheri, what is a Transformational doula?

Sheri Salata

Well, okay. I was trying to figure out when people asked me, what are you doing these days? It was like, Hmm, well, I’m a writer. I still produce a little bit. I’m coaching people I’m working on like, what is it? I’m like, Here’s what it is, because I will not be calling myself an expert. I produced every expert in the world, and I have too much respect for you experts. So, it’s like. More like a doula. Like I’m on the path, I’m doing the work, I’m on the path. I’m expanding. I am managing my life experience. I’m healing. I’m doing all the things. And who wants to come with me? That feels to me more like a transformation doula. Than just, and I mean I guess I could say guide, I was like, it’s doula, I’m there, I’m holding space.

Mindy Pelz, DC

I love that because so both my kids were born at home and I had a midwife and a doula and the doula was always that support person. Like, the midwife had to sort of see what was coming down the road, but the doula was the one that was like, they’re holding your hand, like lifting you up. I think it’s a perfect name for a transformation process because as I’m hoping you’re going to enlighten us on, transformation is not fun and you need some support in the process. 

Sheri Salata

That is so fun. Well, yes. I work every day to change that story for myself and when I do, I start to think of it as fun, as the most fun, because it starts with this decision that it’s never too late, but if not now, when? I say to myself, It’s never too late, Sheri. It’s I’m 63. It’s never too late. But how long do you think you have? I bring myself to attention by reminding myself that this life experience doesn’t go on forever. Yet, everything I want can be done in today. It really just begins with repatterning, healing, finding the modalities that work for you, learning to talk to yourself tenderly, learning how to be that manager of your life experience.

Mindy Pelz, DC

Here is where I go with that thought is How do you know what you want? Like I read something that you put somewhere that you created this dream life where you were the executive producer of the Oprah Winfrey Show, and yet there was something missing and there was another life to be created for you. I think so many. And the reason I highlight that and I want to know what the thought process was for you, but what I’ve noticed in my own life is I set a goal and then you hit the goal. Sometimes you get there and you’re like, I brought me to the goal. I brought me.

Sheri Salata

The same is here at the top of the mountain. That’s right. I didn’t think that was going to happen. Yeah, that’s for sure. That really comes when we think that outward changes are going to make us feel differently inside consistently. We think that things that externally happen are going to make us feel worthy and help us to fall in love with ourselves. Really, it’s not the top of the mountain experiences and I sure have had some career wise, but it’s really the daily stuff. It’s the little acts of faith and transformation that really do transform your life and help you fill that cup.

Mindy Pelz, DC

Do you think that we as a society are chasing the wrong measurement of happiness?

Sheri Salata

Somebody just gave me such a great. Somebody said recently to me, and I’d love to credit them, but I can’t remember. But I went, Oh, Mark, that. That really success is an internal discussion that it isn’t. It’s an internal spiritual discussion. It isn’t about comparison and it isn’t about how you’re shaping up in the external world. But I think that paradigm is shifting, but as it does, it’s kind of like this, what if I told you I have come to believe, after all the purpose driven work I’ve done, that the only reason you’re here, you’re number one purpose on the planet is to be happy.. I will say, for those of us in the middle of life, 40, 50, 60, 70 and older, that’s a little hard to take at first, because we weren’t trained to think that way. It was like your happiness. Who cares? That was. That was the message. Forget about your happiness. You get to serving everybody and keeping your mouth shut and being nice. 

Mindy Pelz, DC

You think that’s generational? Because I have a 23 year old daughter and when I hear what the 20 year olds are thinking, it’s carpe diem. Let’s just be happy now. I wonder if our generations were just taught, head down, work hard, you’ll get success. With success will come happiness. Then you wake up one day and realize, Gosh, that formula wasn’t so great.

Sheri Salata

That’s why this is such a moment in the culture, because we were raised by women who were not trained or healed. They had no access to any of these programs or information. They were raised by women who had even less training. Here we are with everything at our fingertips, Google, anything, and you can watch a video you can consider a new practice. You can learn to do something. You can get a new perspective. We have access to healing. We have access to support. We have access to a new way of thinking about how we connect mind, body, spirit in our lives. It’s more than just I mean, even 20 years ago, it was just yoga. Take a yoga class, you know what I’m saying? We’re like we are on such the leading edge right now. In that I say we are so fortunate. It is definitely a generational thing. And if you like the quantum, if you are dipping into the quantum pool of how this life experience really works well, one might say that when we heal, the healing goes up and down the line. We’re about really important work here. But if we could really begin to believe that our purpose is to be happy, then what does that look like? It’s little choices every day.

Mindy Pelz, DC

Here’s what I find, though, and I don’t know if you found this along your journey is that I’ve spent so much of my life chasing the things that I thought would make me happy, that I never really got to connect to the things that truly do make me happy. Like I never realized that I was chasing the wrong things. Recently I heard two statistics that have just blown my mind. One of which is the most popular time for women to commit suicide is from 45 to 55. The second statistic is that 75% of all divorces that happen after 45 are initiated by women. I want to know, when I look at those two statistics, I think to myself, well, hormones, of course, I have to go down that path. But the second thing I think is to your point, we gave up so much of our life for those of us around us that we wake up one day and we go, Oh, I’m not going to do that. Not going to do that anymore. Then we have to put a whole new life back together again, which is why I think the work you’re doing is critical. We need to bring some kind of formula for women who are going to have a transformation. How do we bring some kind of formula to them so that they can take that aha moment and move it in a positive direction?

Sheri Salata

You and I have had the experience of career devotion, this, this, this up the hill, push the boulders, do the thing. Then you’re on the top of the mountain, and then you’re like, really? Is this it? Other women experience that by raising the kids. It’s all about the kids. It’s like the kids leave the house and it’s like, now what’s my value? Here’s what I would say, there’s a time in the middle of life and it starts to feel like a dissatisfaction. Like a little bit of that, Oh, my God. This cannot be it. The difference is, the generations that came before us, we’re usually dead by 66. We’re looking at a big stretch of maybe 30 or 40 more years. We’re like, Oh, my God, I got to get it together. That’s the good news. The good news is we’re just going to have to take our place on the leading edge, Doctor Mindy, we’re going to just have to take our place as the paradigm shifters, knowing that if we’re willing to do that, we get to live it, too.

Mindy Pelz, DC

Here’s my thought on what you just said. It’s a really interesting dilemma that I think those of us that are and I’m going to say aging, I don’t know. But another way to say this. But those of us that are moving into our post-menopausal years, let’s just say that. One of the interesting things that I think that we have is we’re healing ourselves. But in that we have an opportunity to turn around and heal the younger generation. So and show by modeling what it looks like to take care of your own needs first and to live a life that is inner directed and is geared towards what makes you happy as opposed to the what if you and I were modeled, which is I’m just going to give away everything to everybody else and be the martyr.

Sheri Salata

Secretly, like my therapist says, oh, the buried, murderous rage, the resentment, the buried murderous rage. Yeah. Very, very different. That’s part of the fun of what we’re doing. But again we don’t have to be in service just to heal everything for the generations to come. But that will happen just as a side effect of us walking on the planet demonstrating what 60 can look like, and what 70 can look like, and what 80 could look like. In one of my workshops, I have a 96 year old woman named Phyllis in Boston who is doing her healing work. She’s doing her burns ceremonies. She’s putting her hands on her heart and doing her breath and oh, my God. I mean, it’s and I just go I go see, that is I didn’t have a Phyllis. I didn’t have a me. I didn’t have a you. Now we just become just by focusing on this, by saying yes, to the lives of our dreams and to fulfilling all the possibilities for our lives and kind of dialing it up, healed, excited, passionate way, we become the examples that we didn’t have.

Mindy Pelz, DC

Well said. How do you know you need a transformation?

Sheri Salata

Well, isn’t this funny? It was a few years ago, and I’m like, I just had an experience. I popped out of it and I go, Oh, my God, I’ve been in a rut. But you don’t know you’re in a rut because all you see are your rut walls. You’re just like, you’re just kind of going through the motions and stuff, but you don’t really know you’re a rut and you’ve been in a rut till you’re out of it. You go, Wow, there’s so many colors and so beautiful. Here’s what I think it is. I think as we get a just a little as true with ourselves as we can be at the very beginning, it’s a sense of dissatisfaction. It’s a sense of understanding that there’s more to this life experience than what we’ve been living. Maybe there’s even a sense that we’re not really tending to ourselves. We’re not really being the good stewards of ourselves and our life experience that we could be. Just some rumbles. Then slowly but surely, if we don’t beat ourselves up and if we just lull ourselves and coax ourselves with some tenderness, we can start to take a real look at that. In short order, just start to see that more is possible in little ways.

Mindy Pelz, DC

You’re looking at your life and you’re like, gosh my husband’s not quite like what I married. He’s changed. My kids don’t really need me the same way that they needed me before. I’ve been doing a career that I’ve been doing forever. I’m really good at it, but it’s not bringing me the same level of satisfaction. You can really look at all the different aspects of your life and say, nothing really has the cherry on top right now. It’s all a little blah that I need to spice it up and change something up. How do you? Where do you start? Because you can’t, maybe you don’t want to leave your husband. Maybe you’re not ready for a career change. I mean, maybe you do want to leave your husband. But there’s so many levels of dissatisfaction that we can let seep in on so many different levels of life. How do you know where to start?

Sheri Salata

Well, here’s what I end up finding, because now I can look back and see I wasn’t bringing my zingy self to those experiences. The best place to start with is with your self. That’s what you have control over. So maybe you would want to entertain and fasting lifestyle. Maybe you want to like really commit to as much daily meditation as you can do. If you can only do 5 minutes, do 5 minutes for the rest of your life, then start there and just starting to find, going to the buffet of possibility which is completely available. The possibilities for your life is a huge buffet. It’s all over every place. If you’re watching this, then you know already that there’s a buffet of possibilities. You just start trying things, you start gathering your recipes, you start getting a little wind beneath your wings and your step starts to quicken and you start to feel better. Then from that place of a deeper connection to yourself, saying, You know what? I have been the victim of my own choices, so I’m really not a victim and I am going to liberate myself from my trauma, from my own thinking, from my old patterns. I’m going to really stay focused on my own garden and pulling those weeds. And then I’ll sit back and say, after I bring some healing to myself. Then I can look at the job and the marriage and the friendships and everything else and say, Do these things match who I am now when you’ve done that little bit of work.

Mindy Pelz, DC

Oh, my God, that’s so powerful. What if the answer is no, they don’t match?

Sheri Salata

Well, here’s what my big revelation is. At this time in my life, not everything is meant to last forever. If we want to have those like really, we get to the end and we’re like, woohoo! That was greatT What’s next? If we want those kinds of lives, we’re going to have to understand the grace and the blessing of completion. I went to the University of Iowa and I just went back and did a panel for them. The big question was, oh, people love this kind of stuff. What was your biggest mistake? You know what I mean? Just what was the thing? How did you really screw up and I had to think for a second and I said, oh, no question. This has always been my biggest mistake. I stay too long.

Mindy Pelz, DC

You stay too long in everything.

Sheri Salata

Everything. I stay too long. Listen, I’m from the Midwest. I’m in the middle of life. I have the lunch pail. I will work until I get my gold watch. I will keep a relationship that needed to be departed from forever. I stay too long at everything because I was taught or modeled the beauty and the blessing of completion. It’s okay. You don’t have to haul along every single person you’ve ever met. You don’t have to stay at every job you’ve ever had to. You drop to the ground. There’s there’s completion. Here’s what the universe is doing. It there’s no energy or light around something, it’s time to move on. You say, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. Namaste job! Namaste old friends that I’m no longer a match to! You go your way I go mine.

Mindy Pelz, DC

Is it as simple as you’re in these environments. I love what you said about your zing like you’re in that these environments and you just leave the environment, whether it’s a friend, a job, maybe it’s a church, anywhere that you are and you’re not feeling lifted up by it. I call it a positive energy exchange. When you go into vibrations that feel so harmonious with where you’re at, when you leave, you’re like, boom! You could be exhausted going in and you come out and you’ve been supercharged. To me, that’s the right environment or the right person to be around. Is that a radar for us?

Sheri Salata

I think it is. This is a very new thing for me, like even in the last ten months, really thinking about it’s really go toward the light. Where’s the light shining? When did the cells in your body get excited? What feels good? What feels like? Where do you feel like it’s juicy? And then there’s the opposite feeling of that. And there’s nothing wrong with those places or those people in the big picture. It’s just you’re not a match anymore. That was the thing I wasn’t trained in. No one modeled that for me and I did not understand that the universe is directing you. Go here, now this, try this, meet this person, have this conversation. If you’ll do that dance, you’ll quiet your mind, do the practices, so you stay aligned with your soul. And then you can do the dance that is always feeling like that. And you’re just on fire with possibility. That’s what I think, and that’s what I’m working on for myself too.

Mindy Pelz, DC

I think that’s so brilliant and scares the sh*t out of me.

Sheri Salata

I know. What part of it? Look, I got my pencil in case you say something that knocks my brains out. Maybe dance will. What scares you about that? 

Mindy Pelz, DC

In the last year, when the pandemic hit, like I rearranged my priorities because I needed to because it was pandemic. I really wanted to help people with metabolic syndrome. In that, everything changed in my clinic to the point that I eventually closed my clinic last September. But because Hay House had bought all my books, they’d put me in another book contract. Everything in my online world had just totally exploded. All of these amazing things had happened to me. And here I was, still holding on, still clinging.

This clinic that I had poured my heart into for 45, for 25 years, I couldn’t let it go. And when I finally did, I cried Sheri for a week like Primal Cry for a week.

Sheri Salata

I know. Listen, Tears could come up in my eyes because that I understand. And one of the reasons is you weren’t trained for this. You weren’t trained for innovation and moving and dancing this way and going this way and seeing and understanding that endings can be blessings. You weren’t trained. You just keep you just keep going and dragging that concrete on your back until your knees buckle, that’s never like it. So. But why do I have all these burdens? Yes, I understand that. I understand that. But doesn’t this just make sense just from an we’re all energy, that’s all we are. This is the hard talk I gave myself. Let me give it to you, my friend. We’re doing this. Make a friend of change right now. Because it’s coming. You cannot stop. That’s like trying to stop the waters, to stop the ocean from flowing, waving in. You can’t stop it. It’s coming. Building on that resilience, which is what you teach us all every day, it’s like, okay, in my resilience, in my trust, because I’m doing the practices, I’m becoming a trustworthy steward of my own well-being. Now I can trust my connection to the universe, the spirit, the God of your heart, however you define it. I can trust that everything’s going to be okay. When I’m in Mastery, I can be excited about what I cannot see yet.

Mindy Pelz, DC

I was just going to say, this requires you live in a lot of the unknown.

Sheri Salata

Yes. But do you want to be a adventuring pioneer of the new paradigm, or do you want to be sad Sally? Sad Sally back there, because her life isn’t turning out the way she wanted it to. I was on that path. I was on that path.

Mindy Pelz, DC

Which is so interesting because you were the executive producer of The Oprah Winfrey Show. You think I want everything. When you decided to leave that show, where did people think you were crazy? Did you think you were crazy?

Sheri Salata

Well, the show came to an end, so I did not leave the show. The show, the beautiful ending, United Center o the show came to an end. It was it was a seminal moment for sure. The other part was running a cable network. Once that was getting sorted, because obviously that’s a big endeavor. It had been going on for a while and it needed some love. Once that had been sorted, the energy, the light was gone for me. But but kept going. So the level of my disconnect from my own happiness, from my path, from my road was, was fairly steep. It was fairly wide. Not that difficult. It was almost like go and put the oxygen mask on yourself. That was the beginning of all of these epiphanies, even though I had notebooks filled with the wisdom of the day, and those were my favorite shows. I took it to heart. It was in my bones. 

Mindy Pelz, DC

Where does where does grief fit into this? Do you think you have to sit and grieve the old to to move into the new?

Sheri Salata

I do. Not only just grieving the old that you lived. I think we have to grieve the lives that we didn’t create, all those things that we thought about, the life we thought we were going to live. I think we’ve got to give ourselves a chance to grieve that. It’s not even that we would want it now, but we thought we did and we didn’t do it and we didn’t take care of it and we didn’t make those choices and some of those things have passed us by. I think there’s some grieving to do about that. Listen, I’ve come to see that repressed grief transfers into pounds that repress that repressed grief is no joke. 

Mindy Pelz, DC

Yeah. I have a friend who just left her husband. After the initial shock of it all, she finally dropped weight. She had been trying to drop weight for years. It was like, finally, she’s two and she’s going through exactly what we’re talking about here. She’s learning her own path to happiness, and each step she takes that she’s getting happier. More weights coming off.

I really agree with that. Then would give us some advice on what do you do when you’re scared to death that you had just ended this thing. You knew it wasn’t bringing you a spark anymore. You grieved it, but the new thing hasn’t really fully emerged yet.

Sheri Salata

Oh, my gosh. But I started a bunch of new things that are no longer because those were some serious neural pathways. They’re about making things happen and you might say, but it wasn’t brain surgery. Well, it felt like it felt that important. It felt and the thing that I was valued for was controlling everything. Oh, so now it’s like, oh, no, no, no. Those patterns aren’t going to help me build this new, more integrated, joyful life. The first big step was to take that time and do a process that I called The Reckoning, which was, but it was my tender voice. I couldn’t come at it with my Sheri mean girl voice. That running that conversation. It had to be my baby dog voice, like, oh, my sweet little baby. I really had to be sweet.

Mindy Pelz, DC

You have different voices like that?

Sheri Salata

LOh, yes, for sure. We all do. How do you talk to a baby in the grocery store? Like you talk to yourself. Oh, you look ugly. Those don’t fit you. You never say that to a baby. You never talk to a puppy that way. I really like I’m like, you’re going to have to use a very different voice, a very different level of tenderness in order to coax this truth from yourself. Because you have hidden this truth. You have pretended like it wasn’t there. You have buried it all over. You have all kinds of steel walls over it, and you’re going to have to coax this truth out for yourself and go area by area and take a look at your life and say, This is what I’ve created. Here’s what it looks like. Here’s what the truth of it is. Once that’s done thoroughly, then it’s like, But what is it that you want? What is it you want? Here’s what I find, Dr. Mindy for women, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80 older. They often a large percentage of us have completely our dream muscles are so flip and flabby, we don’t even know how to dream. It’s like dream. Who’s got time for that? I’ve got all these hard tasks to do on my to do list and that yet that dreaming that is a, that’s metaphysical quantum work that’s the real work of creation is really starting to stir the pot and just get it going. How do you start building that muscle again? It starts with just getting a little piece of hope. and then practicing like everything we talk about, practicing 5 minutes a day. Set your little timer. Okay, I’m going to do some dreaming. Then maybe you’re not too good at it at the beginning, but then it’s like, okay, well, maybe I’ll take a trip on a trip and then you start Google up some information about, well, I don’t have the money for a trip. I can’t go on a trip. You can Google up. You can start the process going and start moving that life force through you. Once you get a hold of a little dream or two and you can see what you’ve created so far with tenderness and know that, gosh, there might be a chance that I could live my life at a much more joyful, much higher level of possibility. Maybe that’s still true for me. If you can just get to that, maybe that’s the beginning.

Mindy Pelz, DC

You know what? You just explained neuroscience to a T and as you were talking, I was like, so one thing that I’ve been really talking to my community about lately, my next book, I don’t know if I’m working on it, is what happens to the female brain after 40. One of the things that we find is that we get locked in our amygdala is that fight or flight part of our brain. Once you’re locked in the fight or flight part of your brain, you’ve turned off the prefrontal cortex. But the prefrontal cortex is helping you set goals, is helping you figure out the dream, is helping you create the steps to get to the dream. If you’re in your amygdala, you’re not going to find your dream in your amygdala. But how you get to the prefrontal cortex is by doing exactly what you just said. You have to make small, little movements towards change and towards what you want so that 20 minutes a day, what you’re doing is you’re saying, okay, amygdala, I just want you to calm down for a moment and I’m just going to let myself dream. Now you’ve flipped into the prefrontal cortex and it comes back online and it starts talking at you.

Sheri Salata

Listen, I didn’t know that yet, but I know it works. Yes, it really does work. And that’s the thing. Here’s always going to be the question, because I know it’s much easier to sit around and grouse about how, why, I can’t. How do I do it? Then if I could tell you a hundred times, you do one little thing. You sit there with your hands on your heart for 5 minutes a day, and that’s all you do for a week. What’s that going to do? It’s the beginning. It’s like fasting. 

Mindy Pelz, DC

It’s dream training.

Sheri Salata

Dream  training. That’s right. Exactly.

Mindy Pelz, DC

You’re going to train yourself. The words I keep saying to my my group is, we need to live a life that is built from the prefrontal cortex, not from the amygdala.

Sheri Salata

That’s better than just do it for a tag line. Exactly.

Mindy Pelz, DC

Exactly. Okay. But explain to me then, what do you do? Where does failure fit into this for you? You create the dream, you’ve made the change. you’ve closed the last chapter. Now you’re all excited and you get your first fail.

Sheri Salata

Okay, I’m not going to use the word failure because I’m not sure once you’re on this path, you can fail. But beware of your slippery character. That’s what I call the part of me that will come in and sabotage me.

I don’t have to experience the idea of failure or disappointment or whatever. My slippery character looks like this. Oh, I just got Dr. Mindy’s book. Okay, I’m going to fast for 146 hours,  every other week. Then I’m going to see if I can, I’m going to climb the Himalayas. What I would do is make everything so grandiose. It’s like that, false motivation. Yeah I’m doing it. No, you’re not doing anything. That’s not happening. And by Wednesday, you won’t be doing that. I have to keep an eye on my slippery character. In order to succeed, I have to make things really small.. Small and consistent.

Mindy Pelz, DC

The challenge we make is too big of a goal or we take on bite more than we can chew when we’re moving in the direction of our dream.

Sheri Salata

Yeah. Or we have a terrible day. We have a day where we are just like, screw this, I’m not doing any of these practices and I’m going to do all these old patterns. The question is, can you get back on track in two days instead of two years? Really understanding that transformation looks like this. It doesn’t look like, it’s not like a ticket to the stars. It’s like seven steps forward, four steps back, net gains, three step gain and just really learning how to celebrate those net gains. Yes, I wasn’t perfect, but I’m way further than I ever thought I was going to be. I’m just going to feel really good about that.

Mindy Pelz, DC

I love that. The second thing that I struggle with. Failure, I feel like I’ve really learned to embrace.

Sheri Salata

Tell me what you mean by that, because I’m like failure.

Mindy Pelz, DC

Oh, that’s interesting.

Sheri Salata

Yeah. Tell me what you mean by it.

Mindy Pelz, DC

I set out to do something and I am not getting close enough to to hit it. Okay, let’s use a really transparent, vulnerable. So let’s use Fast Like A Girl as an  example. I had a goal of what we want is to preorder and we hit it. We went into book launch week, we did amazing in book launch week came out of it with insane book orders. One of my big goals was New York Time.

Sheri Salata

I knew you were goint to tell this story..

Mindy Pelz, DC

It makes no sense why I didn’t hit it, because the other books on that list, did a third of what I did. There was something at play there. And honestly, I spent a week in grief and upset because I had done all the right things. Then I realized there’s something else here for me to understand that I need to let go of what the outcome was supposed to be, because the book’s doing amazing. What is it? That is a growth opportunity for me. That’s how I took what I perceived as failure and put it into a different context.

Sheri Salata

In the end, it’s really not a failure. But I knew you were going to say that. Listen, I didn’t make The New York Times bestseller list. Listen, I had all these people emailing for me and doing this, doing that and doing this. I’m just like, I don’t know that I want to be in that business. I don’t want the thought of that. I felt like, Oh, this first of all, there’s something that’s a little bit more.

Mindy Pelz, DC

Curated.

Sheri Salata

That yeah, something that doesn’t totally settle with me. I did not feel like that going through your launch as a reader, I did not feel like that because you’re so genuine and authentic. It doesn’t feel like a funnel. I have people that I have acquaintance with who made the list in the last year and more people than that who did not for the first time and have made it many times before. So, here’s what I’m going to say. I remember you saying that you had a goal to get a million people fasting. And I went, Oh, gosh, that’s really interesting. That really is what not to sell a million books so I can be in New York. I want to get a million people fasting and I thought about because I’ve tried fasting before and in my community. I’m like, what is it about Dr. Mindy? What special sauce does she have? Because I can connect to your intention and your enthusiasm. I believe that you care and that is going to get a million people fasting. But that doesn’t mean you don’t get to be human, I have lunches all the time and it’s like, geez, I wanted more people than that. I let myself feel it. I don’t eat it. I don’t hurt myself for it.

Mindy Pelz, DC

I’ve come you bring up such a good point because where I’ve come in my 53 years in life is to realize that where I get most of my happiness is in impacting other people and that every time, and this is where I actually went with the New York Times after I was like upset for a few days. I went, Oh my God, here I go again, like thinking about what is in it for me when that’s not why I wrote the book. I wrote the book How to Get to Transform Lives. Let me flip this. For me, I get the deepest sense of happiness when I find what lights me up. Then I turn around and share that with other people, and then I get to see them light up. 

Sheri Salata

That isn’t just selfless service. It’s so full of self because. People light up the more excited I get. Then I get excited about their excitement and your excitement. The next thing I know, I come back to my life and I’m like, I’ve got to declutter because I got to make space, you know what I mean? Whatever inspiration. But, here’s the one thing I would say. There is an old paradigm where The New York Times is the claimer of what’s a success when it comes to a book. Because you’re outselling people who made the list and Fast Like A Girl, they didn’t deem to give it that, is interesting. Something in that model is draining and publishing is going to break and it’s going to be very different, just like everything else in the world. There’s a new day coming. 

Mindy Pelz, DC

Well said. Here’s my next question, because I’m assessing that or thinking that in your new model of your new life, everything lights you up. How do you where the boundaries of work?

Sheri Salata

Oh yeah. Well nothing I do feels like work anymore though. Because I’ve never been more on purpose, more happy, more fulfilled in my entire life than I am right now. Is everything in every category exactly how I want it. No, still lots of dreaming, manifesting, thinking about things, shooting out messages to the universe. Still a lot of that. However, what I can see is I get to have the conversations for work that are the conversation. The only conversation I want to have anyway.

What we’re talking about. This is a friend conversation. It’s just a catch up call. This isn’t work. This is all I want to talk about. I don’t want to talk about anything else. I don’t want to talk about all the things I can’t do. I don’t want to talk about who’s doing what. I certainly do not want to talk about the Kardashians. God bless them all. I want to talk about what do you know? What have you found that I can use to infuse my own recipe for my life? What can I try? What do you know? Oh,, my gosh, it’s my favorite thing.

Mindy Pelz, DC

I can’t wait till you and I have dinner, because that’s exactly how I am. I’m like, if I go to a dinner party and they’re like, somebody talks about the weather or politics, I’m like, okay, I need a different seat.

Sheri Salata

Who wants to share their germs? Germ share, their breakthroughs.

Mindy Pelz, DC

I really want to talk about your breakthrough.

Sheri Salata

Here’s the one I have lately. I can tell what kind of crowd I’m in, depending on the reaction. I’m like, Tell me about some of your favorite healers. Then I’m like, yeah, okay, you. 

Mindy Pelz, DC

Then you’re. like, Oh, good. Let’s go back to that woman, let’s I’m going to say the 50 year old woman, her kids have gone off to college. She’s been in a marriage for a long time. She’s starting some new career. She’s trying to find her new path in life because I do feel like 50 is this kind of pivotal moment for a lot for women. Would a good measurement be let me just look around my day and keep asking myself, what lights me up? Could it be that simple?

Sheri Salata

I think it is that simple. I think the more you start to see what lights you up, more information comes. I call it like the universe starts dropping breadcrumbs. You just say something. You say, like, gosh, I’d really like to, next thing the phone rings that this is someone says, Did you know about it? I’m like, What? How did you know? Like there are mystical threads. These are magical lives we’re living. If we’ll let you let ourselves play in the magic, you can’t complain your way to the life of your dreams. You can’t. I would make that, I would give that practice up like this minute. The minute you hear this say, I’m done with that because no good comes of it. If you’re willing to play in the magic of life and that kind of is let me make a request. I feel like I could use some new inspiration, I’d like to meet some people who want to talk about different things. I would like exposure to maybe some things that would be interesting for me to bring into my life here at 50 and see what happens. Meanwhile, get your fasting lifestyle going, start your movement practice, put your hands on your heart and do a little 5 minutes of meditation or deep breathing and that. Let that be your beginning.

Mindy Pelz, DC

Oh, my God. That was. That was so wise. That was so good. All right, what it reminds me of? Did you ever see The Hunger Games?

Sheri Salata

Oh, yeah.

Mindy Pelz, DC

When Katniss and Peeta, like, would kiss, and then a package would come down out of it, because that’s what the audience wanted them to do. I feel like that’s what I saw, that I’m like, it’s the universe. That’s the universe. You make you do something. The universe says, okay, I’m going to reward you. I literally share you just had this this morning. I was like thinking of something I wanted to create my life. Then every call I got on was a sign of like, Yeah, let’s do this. I was like, Oh, my gosh. I just asked this question this morning, and four different opportunities showed up to answer it.

Sheri Salata

That’s what it can be like. That’s what it can be like. If we’re like we put on our little magical glasses, we tend to ourselves. We do our healing work, whatever that means. You’re 50 years old. You need to be in therapy, figure it out, do you need to go to some,, weekend trauma work? Maybe you do. I mean, I’m lit like a candle about this new information from amazing minds about how you don’t live in the Western world without coming out with some little T’s you got some little T’s. You have to deal with the little traumas. Most of us saying, well, if we weren’t beaten within an inch of our lives weren’t that bad. But something is still running the show. Make sure it’s you.

Mindy Pelz, DC

Let me go with this thought, then. Do you have strategies when you need to trust more? Here’s why I want to ask this is that I do feel like everything we’re talking about, I’ve spent a good portion of my life really learning to trust the universe, really making decisions from vibration, and yet even I get snagged and I have to ask myself sometimes, like, I need a better skill set to trust that everything is unfolding perfectly. Do you have hacks for that? Do you? I don’t know. If you come up against.

Sheri Salata

I do come up against that. I’ve been a student of the Law of Attraction, etc., for 18 years. Sometimes it’s like I’m hearing it for the first time. It’s the craziest thing. I’ve had I have more proof that we are in a multidimensional, inexplicable, mystical experience here, more proof of that and more lines up every day. Still I’m like, But is it really true sometimes? The best hack I have is to soothe myself out of the fear or the anxiety. Whatever’s come up, it’s like, oh, when you’re sailin high. Oh, yeah, we trust the universe. Yes. But when you’re signing, a contract for a piece of land or something, you’re like, I can’t trust anybody. I get screwed here and I feel anxious. Here are the two things that I do that seem to help. Number one, I make my stance always curiousity and not reactivity. I’m like, get curious. Why are you acting like this? Why are you getting so crazy? Why are you reacting this way? If I can watch myself through the lens of curiosity, I at least can disconnect from that unconsciousness of those lower emotions. I can watch myself. The second thing that I do more than ever before is I jump on soothing myself as soon as I can.

Mindy Pelz, DC

What does that look like?

Sheri Salata

It means tap pat in my leg. It’s going to be okay. I got your back. I’m here for you. It’s going to be okay. It always is. This too shall pass. Whatever. However, I can soothe. Take a couple deep breaths. Okay. We know that works. You’ve been through this a million times before. Come on, now. Just settle yourself down. Take some deep breaths and just remember like to keep a list, too, of my proof that this is a magical life experience. Just remember all these times that you never thought things would happen. Look at all these things. You do not walk alone and. Everything’s going to be okay.Soothing and soothing mostly and also curiosity really help me when I’m shaky. I’m not judging myself.

Mindy Pelz, DC

Yeah, you’re so good at that. I love the start of the inner voice of like, how do we. It’s almost like you need to get schizophrenic. You need to pull the voices apart and be like, Oh, wait, just because I’m saying it doesn’t mean that it’s meant in my best intention. I got to bring out the soothing, nurturing voice. I think that’s brilliant.

Sheri Salata

I was just watching a video the other day of this very learned actor saying he was in therapy because his harsh, critical voice was so strong, it was literally blowing out his circuits and the therapy. He said, nothing will help this is a pretty advanced guy. You cannot cure it. Nothing will have helped us. And the recipe, the medicine was any time you start to hear that you have to stop. You have to reframe it that now you’re talking to your best friend, who’s your best guy friend. Now you’re going to say to him the feedback in the voice in tone you would use. He said it took him about five or six months and it was over. That harsh voice was over. The harsh voice can be retired. You just have to pay attention to it. You got to catch yourself and go. That’s not the voice I use anymore..

Mindy Pelz, DC

You know where I go with that? For me as a young child, I wasn’t very disciplined. My dad used to always say to me, like, are you going to get up and do your homework and get up and do your chores. Like he would constantly ride me. I learned to start to kind of talk to myself a little harshly, like get your lazy, butt up, go and do what you need to do. Like so it was, it was done in a way of like, come on. But it wasn’t a cheerleader. It was like a judge. But now where I sit, I don’t really want to judge myself anymore.

Sheri Salata

Oh, I don’t. No, you don’t.

Mindy Pelz, DC

I think a lot of people have created that voice going back to how we started this conversation, where I think a lot of our generation definitely created that voice, which is like, Suck it up, do it. It came from some other adult in our life that installed that into us.

Sheri Salata

It came from training. Well, here’s what you are the perfect example. I’ve told you before you are human oxytocin. You have your patients come up, you have gas, you have people that come to you for help. How are you talking to them? Get your lazy butt out and go. No, you would never do that. You’d be like, you can and I’m here for you and you got this. I can imitate you. I know exactly what you’d be like. That question is, are we willing to retrain ourselves to be like how we’d be for somebody else? We would just that just that alone is huge.

Mindy Pelz, DC

That’ll be my huge takeaway. Last thing that I want to say, because this is something that I implemented in 2021 that changed my life. That was 20 minutes of gratitude. Every morning, I would put on my whatever song inspired me and I would set a timer and I would just think of all the things I was grateful for. When something came into my mind that was like, Oh, no, you got to do this or do this or do that. I was like, No, no, it’s my gratitude time, and I would just keep letting the gratitude thoughts flow. Where in your life do you see gratitude? Is it a constant practice you’re doing all day? How do you let that, like, become this beautiful vibration that is the fabric of everything you do in your day?

Sheri Salata

Well, it’s just that it’s the same way you do. There is one time a day I do five things. It’s usually at the end of the day, as part of my evening closing, closing the day down ceremony. I call it my appreciation practice. Then if I’m sitting around just in a day and I don’t want to overschedule myself with all my practices, but let’s say it’s just I’m in between things. I’m in between meetings, or I was going to do some writing and then I got a meeting. I’ve got about 15 minutes and I’m going to get some more water and walk around for a minute and then I’m going to sit down and three things come on that show. Three things I might look out side and look at the screen and find some appreciation and just try to drop those moments in because you’re so right. Dr. Mindy. That is that’s the magical fuel to everything.

Mindy Pelz, DC

Yes, you are amazing so much make right. Because and I don’t know if this happens to you when you hit something that you want to create in your life, it comes in and then dopamine is like, this is amazing. Now let’s go get more. I’ve learned is like, no, no, no, for that moment, because this is amazing and I don’t want this moment to go away because I need to just link the amazingness of it and then we can go chase the next thing.

Sheri Salata

Yeah, I think that’s exactly right. I think that’s really great advice. If there’s one thing that none of us do enough is celebrate. Celebrate the victories, celebrate the transformation, celebrate the expansion. It’s like I look at me now versus me a year ago versus me two years ago and four years ago. I’m a completely different version of myself. All those things I said I wanted are coming into fruition on my climb, my upper level, my transcendent path of transformation. I’ll be crazy not to toss the confetti over that. In 2016, what I’m like, what kind of life I’ve made here. I didn’t know that this was possible. I didn’t know what was possible.

Mindy Pelz, DC

Are you the happiest you’ve ever been?

Sheri Salata

Happiest I’ve ever been. Today is my happiest day ever. Tomorrow I will be able to say the same thing. 

Mindy Pelz, DC

Well, I can’t wait to do dinner with you. I’m so excited., How do people find you? Because I really I want to emphasize to those listening that your work is incredible and it’s so needed right now and it’s so easy to get into your brain. Like, when I read your book, I was like, oh my gosh, thank you. Like, I could devour it so quickly and I can pick it up? I have it actually on my table where I do my meditations in the morning and I can pick it up and read two or three pages and boom, my perception is totally changed. What I want to do you find you.

Sheri Salata

Know everything about sherisalata.com it’s S-H-E-R-I S-A-L-A-T-A. Everything’s there. I organized it all, so there it is.

Mindy Pelz, DC

Excellent. Well, thank you. We’re so happy that you did change careers and that we all get to benefit from it. I appreciate you, Sheri. Thank you.

Sheri Salata

Thanks. Dr. Mindy.