Make Happiness A Life-long Process with Melissa Lucas

 

“Keep discovering life and make that a lifelong process and you’re going to find a lot more happiness.”  – Melissa Lucas

 

Listen to the podcast here:

Highlights:

01:23 Interest In People
10:16 Live Up To Your Own Expectations
14:36 Expectation vs Goal
18:07 Everything Is Possible
27:30 Learn New Things Everyday
36:46 Be Yourself Always
39:22 Men Vs Women In Our Society
45:11 Finding Happiness

 

Be yourself always- that’s how to be happy. Join in as @myexpectation and Melissa Lucas guide us into being truly authentic to who we are. #expectations#epiphanies#happiness#potential#expectations#goals#learnnewthings Click To Tweet

 

 

Resources:

Books 

• Stepping Out Of Your Comfort Zone: The Essential Guide To True Happiness by Melissa Lucas

Quotes:

07:46 “Who we are behind closed doors is not always the same.” – Melissa Lucas

10:10  “None of us should really be normal, we should be unique individuals.”  – Melissa Lucas

17:06 “There’s no limit to who you are and what you can be.” – Art Costello

19:37 “When you start to believe in yourself and believe that things are possible…the universe will bring you resources and knowledge.” – Melissa Lucas

28:57 “Constantly find new ways to view life and to find deeper ways of understanding things.” – Melissa Lucas

33:30 “The more I learn and understand, the more I appreciate things.” – Melissa Lucas

47:06  “Our happiness and who we can become is never-ending. What we can find out and who we can become never stops.” – Melissa Lucas

47:35 “Keep discovering life and make that a lifelong process and you’re going to find a lot more happiness.”  – Melissa Lucas

 

Meet Melissa:

Melissa Lucas is a thought changer that is making waves in the self-help community as both a thought-provoking, inspiring speaker and author. She talks on the importance of deleting security and comfort to tap into true happiness beyond your comfort zone. Melissa is raw and real in challenging others to step outside their comfort zone and have a life journey that will lead you to a more happy and fulfilling life. Melissa is a business strategist, personal growth expert, motivational speaker, author, host, and producer of the Happiness Potential Podcast. Overcoming personal fear and going through some life-changing and traumatic moments of her own, she decided that she needed to find a way to help people meet their full potential both in their personal and professional life, as she did for herself. She states that we all have the ability to be happier and more fulfilled but we must make the affirmative choice to get there.

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Transcription:

Art Costello: Welcome to the Shower Epiphanies Podcast. Today, my guest is Melissa Lucas. Melissa and I have a lot in common. She’s a thought changer that’s making waves in the self help community as both a thought provoking, inspiring speaker and author. She speaks on the importance of deleting security and comfort to tap into your true happiness beyond your comfort zone. Melissa is a raw, real, and challenging kind of girl. She steps outside of her comfort zone and has a life journey that will lead into a more happy and fulfilling life. Professionally, Melissa is a business strategist, personal growth expert, motivational speaker, author, host, and producer of the Happiness Potential Podcast. She is a yoga, meditation instructor and runs a project called Happiness Potential. She believes we all deserve our best life possible, but we must have covered ourselves to get there. She states that we all have the ability to be happier and more fulfilled, but we must make the affirmative choice to get there.

Welcome to the show, Melissa. It is an honor and a pleasure to have you here. Can you tell us your story?

Melissa Lucas: Yes. Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate you wanting to sit down and have a conversation. My story is, well, I have never been normal, so I don’t think any of us are normal. My story starts when I was about 10, 11, 12 years old. When everyone’s at 10 or 11 are typically playing outside, playing sports, having fun with their friends. And for me, I was always wanting to read books, and I wanted to learn about people rather than wanting to play with my friends. I wanted to come home and watch Oprah. I wanted to come home from fourth grade and I wanted to watch Oprah, and I wanted to sit and learn about people. And I was always so interested in people bettering themselves, and why people made the decisions that they made. So I obsessively learned about people and how they behaved. I was always seeing this thing for whatever reason. I could see things from a different perspective than other people. I could always see how people were doing things that harm themselves, or how people were doing things to better themselves. I always had this knack for wanting to understand people and why they do the things that they do.

So fast forward into my life now, I’m now in my 30’s, I’m helping people tap into who they really are. So as a life coach and also as a business strategist, I’m helping people tap into who they are on a real level. And I’ve done that work on my own as well. I’ve spent years, and years, and years of my life trying to figure out who I was and what life meant to me. And I’ve used my lifelong research study of why people do things that they do, and how they become happy. And using my own life’s work of trying to find out my own true happiness and who I am. Why I make bad decisions and good decisions. Now I help other people do that. I write books about it, I speak about it, and here I am. So I’ve just been this person that’s just been obsessed with living my own good life and helping other people find that. And it’s just my true passion.

Art Costello: It’s interesting. Because what I’m interested in, and I think what really my audience likes to hear other than Oprah, did your parents ever encourage you along the way or you self encouraged?

Melissa Lucas: 1,000,000% self encouraged. I don’t want to talk bad about my parents, they’re great people, but they were just normal people. They’re baby boomers, and they were just normal people, middle class American people working hard. And they never really encouraged me to do anything besides to go to school, and study, and do my homework, typical parent things. But, no, I was completely self-motivated beyond anything that anyone could incur. I never had anyone encouraging me. Even to this day, I always just had this extreme, at least self-motivating voice in my head.

Art Costello: That’s really interesting because I believe that what drives us is that inner voice that we have inside of us, but most people don’t listen to it, they just fu-fu it off.

Melissa Lucas: I love that, I completely agree with that. That’s one of the things I talk about all the time, our inner voice and our intuition. Because we all have that inner voice that’s telling us, Hey, try this, or do this. But for me, I’ve just always been extremely intuitive from a very young age. Hence why I heard these messages and I had these, or maybe I heard certain things that I thought were interesting and I always followed them where a lot of people, I don’t think ever follow them, or maybe they start following them maybe later in life.

Art Costello: Well, I think it’s fear. When I was nine years old, I was abandoned and had to figure out life on my own. And I went to a mountain top and laid on my back, had a conversation with God and asked them what was going to become of me. And after making that trip many times, I heard a voice inside of me that just said, your job is just to do, just be a doer and be good, have integrity. I didn’t say integrity, but just be good and passionate, all those kinds of things. And I began to believe it after quite a while of going up and doing that, laying on my back on the hill. And it’s what’s driven me all my life, it’s what’s driven me. And I sense that in you, you listen to it. But most people just hear that and just go, and it scared me at nine years old. I’ll tell you, I almost jumped out of my skin when I first heard that voice because I thought, man, I’m on top of this hill and there’s not anyone around, who’s saying that? But I listened to it, I believed in it, and it served me well all my life.

Melissa Lucas: So I think what you’re saying is really important. That you heard it and you listened to it. I think for me, I always heard the voice that said, okay, you need to learn how to really understand people as much as possible because later on you’re going to help other people do this. I knew that from a very young age, I knew that I was given a set of eyes to see and understand certain things and people, I knew I needed to point out to people to help them. So as a kid, I was even doing that. I would tell my parents, no, you’re not supposed to do that. Or Hey, so and so said this, I don’t think that’s really what they mean, or I was always questioning things. And as a kid, when you start questioning things, a grownup will tell you to be quiet.

Art Costello: Oh, yes.

Melissa Lucas: Speak when spoken to. I always remember being told, speak when spoken to, and I’m like, no, that’s not right. And I was always questioning things, and even when I was going to school, I was questioning things. And I was always questioning things because I could see that there was a lot more behind people. Because who we are isn’t, we’re not showing everything when we say things, what we speak, who we are behind closed doors is not always the same. I knew that from a very young age, there’s a lot more going on in our heads and our lives than what we see. So for the longest time, I was doing that and I was being told to be quiet. Nope, that’s not right. I started hushing myself up for a long time because I needed to follow the rules.

“Who we are behind closed doors is not always the same.” - Melissa Lucas Click To Tweet

Art Costello: My problem was that I didn’t hush myself up. I could get myself into more and be in trouble. You talk about stirring the kettle, I stirred the kettle.

Melissa Lucas: And fast forward to my adult years, I’m being told I’m a thought leader, and I’m a visionary, and all these things and I’m like, well, I’m just telling you what I see. I’m not really trying to innovate people’s thoughts or anything, I’m just seeing things from a perspective that I feel is worthy of people hearing or understanding. And now, as I’m older, I understand that I can use those things to kind of really help people. Or when you’re younger, I think you get these, maybe a gift you could call it, or insights, and you’re not really quite sure how to hone in on that.

Art Costello: I write a lot about perspective and perception, because people confuse perception and perspective. Perception is what you see. Perspective is what you do, how you live. Perspective is the action. Perception is how you see it and process it.

Melissa Lucas: Right. Totally agree.

Art Costello: Okay. We’re in agreement on this then.

Melissa Lucas: That’s a good start. It’s a good start.

Art Costello: Well, I’m so basic in the way that I approach everything, and that’s why expectations are so important to me and how we process them. So with me, it’s very methodical and scientific in my approach to things. So I guess that’s my explanation from my oddness and not being normal.

Melissa Lucas: But what’s interesting, so I think what a lot of people do is they conform to be normal and try to have similar perceptions on life and insights on life, really, we should have our own individual experience. And none of us should really be normal, we should be unique individuals.

“None of us should really be normal, we should be unique individuals.” - Melissa Lucas Click To Tweet

Art Costello: Start with your expectations. It really does, because if you live to the expectations of others, then you’re not living to your true self. But when you identify and build your own expectations, your core expectations of who you are, and focus, and zoned in on them, then you become your authentic you, who you are. And I love it when people are their authentic selves. Most people can’t handle people being who they want to be, they want them to be who we want them to be, who they want them to be, and that’s BS.

Melissa Lucas: Exactly. I completely think that a big part of why people are not as happy as they could be is because they’re not able to live up to their own expectations, they’re living up to other people’s expectations, whether it be expectations of their parents, or society, or whatever. I think in some small way, everyone started out living up to other people’s expectations.

Art Costello: Well, I think they do, but they shouldn’t.

Melissa Lucas: So as a child, we’re expected to do certain things, and then when we go to college, and then into adulthood, we have these, I talk about this a lot when I speak in my writing and stuff about how we all have our level of living that we think we’re supposed to do certain things to fit in with our environment, or fit in with our family, or our community, or where we come from. Certain things we do and choose are based on expectations of our surroundings.

Art Costello: See, a nine never lived like that because I didn’t have anyone who placed any expectations on me, I had to figure out everything on my own. So I had to trust the inner me, and I had to be me, and I did not let other people, we all have to live to the expectations of society in the sense that we have legal limits that we have to do, legal things that we have to stay within the boundaries of. But I never ever let anyone else’s expectations drive me, it was always me. And that’s probably why I bucked a few heads here.

Melissa Lucas: To me, it sounds like you’re a really brave person. And a lot of people I talk to are not brave enough to live that life, because they just don’t want to go against what people want of them, or they don’t want to feel, not accepted.

Art Costello: I just think, when our self expectations are so solid, and we know exactly what we want and where we’re going, you don’t let anyone alter that expectation, that it does wonders for adding clarity to your life and direction.

Melissa Lucas: So as you would call an expectation, I like to call it purpose. Having a purpose, or having several purposes and meanings to why you’re doing certain things, then creates like a vision. So having purpose, or meaning, or you would call expectations, kind of almost saying I have a set of standards for how I live my life, or what life means to me, and creating a life according to that.

Art Costello: Yeah, it could be, could be. I think it goes deeper because a lot of us are taught to set goals and all that, but think about the difference between an expectation and a goal. I get to ask this question quite a bit, what’s the difference between an expectation and a goal? You want to try to answer it?

Melissa Lucas: That’s interesting. So to be honest, when I’m talking to people, I tell them goals are just boxes we check and then we move on to the next thing, so it’s not something that we can actually hold onto. A goal is something we’re working towards and we feel like once we get there, we’ll be happy, or once I get there, all successful. An expectation to me is saying, well, this is what I want out of something. This is the feeling I want, or this is the emotion I want, or this is the level of fulfillment I want. Expectation to me feels like it’s something much larger than a goal. To me, a goal feels much smaller.

Art Costello: You got it, you got it. Because goals are fluid, they move, they can change, and we’re actually conditioned to change goals all the time. I mean, it’s okay not to reach your goals as long as you keep trying for it. But when you start messing with your expectations, it’s a deeper core value inside of you, and it has a whole different effect on, I’ve done this here twice in the last week on podcasts. I want to read it to you because, Dr. Richard O’Connor, a psychologist, he has a quote that’s on my desk and I love it, “Procrastination is a way for us to be satisfied with second-rate results; we can always tell ourselves we’d have done a better job if only we had more time…If you’re good at rationalizing, you can keep yourself feeling rather satisfied this way, but it’s a cheap happy. You’re whittling your expectations of yourself down lower and lower.” It’s such a truth when we start messing with our expectations because there’s so in our core, if we start messing with those and trying to play with them, like we do goals, we start whittling away at our self-worth, our happiness, all of those things, it’s so tied into it.

Melissa Lucas: Well, I also think it’s saying that there’s limits to my being. So saying there’s only a certain limit to what I can be, who I actually am, it’s limiting who you are as a being, right?

Art Costello: There are no limits to who you are and what you can be.

“There’s no limit to who you are and what you can be.” - Art Costello Click To Tweet

Melissa Lucas: Exactly. So I think if you open that, then your potential is unlimited and the levels to who you are unlimited. And when you limit that, you’re limiting your happiness and your existence.

Art Costello: See how you liked this one. Because this is mine, solely mine. I firmly believe in the possibility of everything. It’s how I live my life. I believe that everything’s possible, and it’s possible when you believe. When you believe it is, it becomes possible.

Melissa Lucas: Totally. That’s how all the great things in my life have happened.

Art Costello: Exactly.

Melissa Lucas: When everybody was like, I don’t think so, that’s a horrible idea. I’m like, nope, I totally believe this is possible. And even though I don’t have the resources, or the background, or whatever, my intuition and my gut feeling is this is possible. Yeah, it’s all about your mindset.

Art Costello: It’s totally about your mindset. Can you tell me some of the great things that have happened in your life?

Melissa Lucas: Yeah. So for me, I am an entrepreneur. I have several business ventures. And for me, I didn’t come from a business oriented family. I had no friends or any resources that would allow me to have any ideas of how to start a business, how to become an entrepreneur. I was always told to go work for somebody and work for people, find a great job and you’ll have a secure life. But I always thought, no, no, no, I want to be a leader. I have all these ideas and there’s all these things I want to do, I’m just going to figure out how to start a business. So when I started getting close to 30, I started thinking like, I really need to start a business. For years, I kept thinking I needed to start a business. And everyone was telling me, no, you don’t have the background, you’re not smart enough. How are you going to do that? You don’t have the money. So one day I finally just said, you know what? I’m going to figure out how to start a business, and I’m going to talk to as many people that have started business as possible. I’m going to go learn, read books, get an MBA, do all these things so that I can learn how to run a business.

Now, here I am running a business, and I’m also a business strategist helping all these people be really, really successful in their own businesses. And it’s more or less about having the mindset, and the passion, and all those resources come along when you start to believe in yourself and believe that things are possible. I’m a strong believer in the universe will bring you resources and knowledge, and kind of pinpoint you and show you light up your path, so to speak. Once you believe in lighting up your path, a lot of things will come along to help you. Once I stopped listening to everybody else about being a business woman, being told there was no way I would be successful, even when I started my business, everyone around me said, Oh, you can’t do that full time, you’re going to fail. And I was like, there’s not an option here. Once you tell yourself that something’s an option and you strongly hold onto that, anything can happen. Same thing happened for me when I became an author, I had never been a writer in my entire life. The only thing I had ever written was a blog and maybe some social media posts, and I wrote a lot of papers in college, but I had never thought in my wildest dreams I could become a writer until I realized something hit me when I had started working with a lot of people. And helping people, I got this internal feeling and said, you need to write about what you know. And then I had kept being told like, Oh, you’re not going to be able to get a book deal. You can’t be a writer. The same thing. Sure enough, when I started to believe that, I had started opening up my emails and I’m getting publishing companies saying, Hey, you should write a book. I didn’t even have to put in a book proposal, people started saying, I hear what you’re saying and you should write a book. So as soon as I put that thought out there, those things started coming to me. And now I’m already on my second book and you know, I’m already thinking of a third book. And once you start believing those things, not only will the resources come to you, but all these ideas come to you too because you’re open. It’s all about opening that door.

“When you start to believe in yourself and believe that things are possible...the universe will bring you resources and knowledge.” - Melissa Lucas Click To Tweet

Art Costello: Well, I think we start to manifest them. Once we start being creative and start really focusing on it, we manifest it. But I’ll tell you my quick story about my greatest thing manifesting, or believing, whatever you want to call it, it involves a woman, a blonde. When I was young, I had been working in the entertainment industry, had been in San Diego and saw this blonde. I was with a friend of mine and I said: “You see that little blonde over there? I’m going to marry her.” And he looked at me and he said: “That gorgeous blonde wouldn’t give you the time of day.” And I said: “I’m going to go talk to her.” So I walked over to her and she held up her finger, she had a rock on it and she said, I’m engaged. I don’t want to talk to you, blah, blah, blah, blah. You talk about blowing a guy off. I mean, she just blew me out. I could’ve just walked away, but I turned around and said to her: “Someday you’re going to marry me.” And she said: “BS to you. I’m marrying someone else.” So over a course of time, I don’t want to say I stopped her, but I was infatuated with her. Through friends, I kept track of her. And little did I know she was keeping track of me. And I lived in Newport beach at that time and she was in San Diego. One day, I’m at my apartment, I’m getting ready to travel because I was in the entertainment business, and I was getting ready to go on a big trip and I hear a knock on my door. And a friend of mine was with me, one of the musicians that we managed and he said, I would have been in the shower and he comes, knocks on the door of the shower and he says: “Art, there’s this gorgeous blonde at the door.” This is a year and a half later. And I wrapped a towel around me, and of course, that’s when the towel would fit around me. But anyway, I went and answered the door, and here she is, she’s crying and I said: “What’s going on?” And she said: “I got my fiance cheating, and the first person I thought of was you. I drove up here to see if you would talk to me.” So I put everything on hold that day and night, and 38 years later, she died in my arms, ovarian cancer. We never ever parted from that day forward for 38 years.

Melissa Lucas: Wow.

Art Costello: So folks, when you believe, believe because anything’s possible.

Melissa Lucas: That’s beautiful. And that’s just really truly it. I think you have the expectations of good things coming to you. And believing in things even when they seem like they don’t make sense. Because a lot of times, the things that are meant for us don’t make sense.

Art Costello: I think that when you start being positive, positive begets positive and negative begets negative. You ever talk to one of those people that’s always negative and they just kind of really, do you think, how do you get through the day being so negative, and they just keep attracting that negative.

Melissa Lucas: Right. Ultimately, we create what we think and believe, for the most part, and if we don’t believe good things happen, even when they don’t make sense, well, of course they’re not going to happen then. If you want to know why? Talk to her, she wouldn’t ever show up at your door and who you were, right?

Art Costello: Yeah. I mean, I didn’t even know a year and a half later that she knew my name, but she did, you know?

Melissa Lucas: That’s amazing. And I think it’s really interesting because if we just show up in our lives and things show up for us, but if we don’t ever show up for things that we want, then they don’t happen.

Art Costello: And one of the things I was thinking when you were talking before was about opportunities. When opportunities present themselves people like you and I go after them and other people just stand and stare at them. And that’s the difference between us and them.

Melissa Lucas: Right. I totally believe that. And it’s interesting because I think a lot of times, I know this for a fact, when I was younger I passed up a lot of things because I maybe didn’t have the confidence or maybe the support system. And then later on in life I learned to have my own and support myself and be confident. So I started being able to say yes to things, even if I knew I wasn’t ready. Because a lot of times we’re not ready for the big things to happen or for things that are meant for us. And I think that’s it, it’s about being able to show up for yourself and being open. And I think a lot of people aren’t open or able to show up for themselves because of fear.

Art Costello: Yeah, no stops everything. Fear stops everything. And when you do that and you don’t show up or don’t put out the effort to figure it out because you don’t know, you know what I mean? Everyday I learn new things. Every single day I learn new things and I’ll never know everything. And that’s what makes life so fun for me. Because every person I meet, everything I do, I’m always learning something new and it’s tweaking my thought patterns, how I perceive things, and how I live my life.

Melissa Lucas: And what you said was interesting to me because what you said is everyday I’m learning new things, right?So I believe one of the ways we can continue to grow as a person and to be happy is by continuously learning. There’s an endless possibility of learning.

Art Costello: Absolutely.

Melissa Lucas: And my grandmother, she’s a great example of this. She’s 93 years old, and all she does is read and learn, and she’s constantly teaching me things and I’m like, how do you know more than I do? She doesn’t go on a computer, but all she does is read and she’s constantly learning, and she’s so smart even at 93 years old, and she’s so excited about life. And guess what I heard, this is what’s happening. That’s the way to be, right? To constantly find new ways to view life and to find deeper ways of understanding things. And it just brings so much excitement into life. Like, Oh, I didn’t even know this thing existed, or I didn’t even know this view existed. It makes life refreshing.

“Constantly find new ways to view life and to find deeper ways of understanding things.” - Melissa Lucas Click To Tweet

Art Costello: Well, your grandma is really inspiring to me because she’s living proof that when you put new ideas and thoughts in your head and continuously feed your brain, it keeps you young, it keeps you active. Have you ever seen these people who retire at 63, they go sit in front of the boob tube and then you read a few years later that they vegetated away because they didn’t keep their brain going active?

Melissa Lucas: Sadly, right. I think our culture now has a lot of people sitting behind their computer or their phone, and they’re just maybe like on autopilot.

Art Costello: Oh, boy, you just hit a nerve with me. People today are on autopilot. They get up in the morning, they get breakfast and go to work. They come home at five, they turn the TV on, they vegetate till the news comes on, and then they go back and vegetate some more until the 11 o’clock news comes on. And they think they’re being stimulated when they’re really not. They’re not using all of the faculties that they have.

Melissa Lucas: Right. So it’s like the Netflix culture. There’s nothing wrong with watching stuff here and there for enjoyment. But I think this is like Netflix culture where we’re binge watching, I just binge watched five episodes of this and it’s like, Oh, what’s going on in those, just let go five hours of your day to something we gravitate to. And same with our phones, a lot of younger people with their social media and I’m scrolling, I’m scrolling, I’m scrolling through this, and I’m looking at this, and I’m liking this. What’s going on inside your brain? We’re not stimulating our thoughts so that’s scary.

Art Costello: I always act like I’ve got to answer my pants. I mean, I’ve got to be moving. It’s hard for me to sit here even for an hour and just do this. I want to get up and move around, but I have a feeling you’re very much the same way because you’re very visual with your hands, and people can’t see this in the podcast. But I’m looking at you and I could see your hands moving, I could see your eyes and I can see you’re thinking. And I think that those are really, really great traits because they’re not great when you’re in school.

Melissa Lucas: No.

Art Costello: But people who are thinkers and doers got to have that motion, they got to have that behind them. That drives them.

Melissa Lucas: Yeah, you’ve hit it. And yes, I am. I always talk with my hands. Hence why I was kept being told for years to be a speaker. And I thought, Oh, my gosh, I’ve been a motivational speaker my whole life, I’m talking with my hands and I’m telling these big stories like, well, you know?

Art Costello: What I love about that is then you’d go to speaker school and they tell you, don’t be flailing your hands, and they tell you all these things not to do. I went one day to speaker school and said: “I can’t do this.” I mean, I’ve got to be neat. Don’t show emotion and all that, for me, not to show emotion? I’m a big crybaby. I mean, something hits my heart and the tears flow out of me. It was some river, whatever. When you were on Amazon or denial.

Melissa Lucas: And you hit it right on the nose, so I think what you said was exactly it. I’m one of those people that I live life with passion. I’m always interested in hearing more, and I want to learn more, and I need to know what else is out there. So for me, I’m always reading books on my nightstand. I have five different books right now. I’m reading one book and I learned, and then I’m picking up another book on something totally different. And I just want to keep learning and understanding more just living life. So I’m always listening to podcasts even when I’m cooking, I’m listening to a podcast or I’m listening to an audio book and I just want to keep hearing more thoughts and ideas, just want to understand people more. And like I mentioned, my grandmother, she’s doing the exact same thing. She’s constantly listening, hearing, and understanding more. And the more I learn and understand, the more I appreciate things too.

“The more I learn and understand, the more I appreciate things.” - Melissa Lucas Click To Tweet

Art Costello: The other part of it for me that I just had this epiphany, it just went through my mind. I bet you, it’s different for a woman to be inquisitive versus a man being inquisitive, and I can’t address how a woman would handle it. I mean, guys can approach people more readily. If a woman approaches a man or person starts asking a lot of questions, they’re called nosy, busybody, all of that. But if a man approaches people, women, or children, or whoever and starts asking, he just wants to know he’s inquisitive. Do you think I am onto something there?

Melissa Lucas: I think you hit the nose on the head, which is why for so long, I was being told to be quiet. So what I realized is what you’re saying that it’s okay for men to be more inquisitive or want to know things. But for women it’s kind of we gotta behave where we gotta conform, or we need to be quiet.

Art Costello: They gotta meet the expectations of the male run society.

Melissa Lucas: Right. So now I think things are starting to turn over a little bit with all this women’s empowerment stuff. But I think what you’re saying is still ringing true in a lot of areas, In organizations and society, or even in our family structure. So, thank God I have someone, I’m in a relationship who encourages me to speak up, and my family, they’re used to me by now and people hire me to help, ask these questions, especially men. Most of the people that I help, whether it be on life coaching, or in my business strategy, and my business coaching, I’m helping people ask deeper questions about themselves and about their work. And a lot of women aren’t willing to go there or were told not to go there. You know, or not, being supported and going there. Because we’re too empowered almost or it’s not looked at as appropriate where it should be appropriate to use your voice, or to use your thoughts.

Art Costello: Absolutely. Well, I mean, if you don’t, you’re really selling yourself short because you’re not living authentically to who you are. If you are the type of person who is inquisitive, and I agree, I think you should pursue your inquisitiveness till you stop being inquisitive and then find something else to be passionate about. But when people don’t do what is in their heart, and soul, and their true passion, they’re literally whittling away at their self worth, their self value. And I don’t think anybody, I don’t care if you’re a man, or a woman, or a child, every one of us that walks on this earth has something to contribute, has value, and has something to add to this society, no matter who it is. Anybody, everybody.

Melissa Lucas: So you mentioned Epiphanies, I think for me, my big epiphany was probably when I was like 27, 28, and I realized that maybe I had conformed too much. So I always knew that I was a much more empowered person or maybe I saw things a different way. I started being quiet because I asked for so long, it gets exhausting to be the person that everyone’s hushing in the room. And then something kicked me like, no, I just need to find the right room. So I heard the saying, it’s like, once you find the right room, your voice will be heard and people will value it. For the longest time I wasn’t being valued for myself. It started to make me a little sad, and depressed, or anxious. I couldn’t feel like I could be myself. So I had the epiphany like, Oh, I need to start being myself. And actually just being okay. If people don’t want to hear my voice, I need to keep searching until people want to hear what I have to say and find value in it. And I think a lot of people have that problem where they may try to be themselves, but they don’t feel like it’s okay.

Art Costello: I think it’s 95% of the population are not into who they really want to be. And that’s why what I do and what you do is so important when we guide people into being truly authentic to who they are.

Melissa Lucas: And I think that should be our life long goal, to continuously be ourselves and to follow that.

Art Costello: I agree. It’s getting to the point where I used to be of the thought that women were suppressed more than men. And then I really started realizing that as humans, both men and women are suppressed. And I think there’s many men out there who are living lives that they just absolutely hate, but women are coming to self actualization with it, beginning to realize and moving out of it, starting to become more. I mean, you see it across the board in our society, more and more women are becoming entrepreneurs. They’re becoming stronger, they’re becoming heads of households, and men are taking that backseat to that and they’re dying. Men are dying and they don’t know how to reach out. It’s a whole area for us as coaches that we need to start really trying to figure out how. I have a friend who’s a life coach and he has a business that is just absolutely geared to men, only men, no women. He cannot find clients at all. I mean, he suffers daily trying to find clients because men think they know it all. They’re too strong. I’m the dude, man, I’m blah blah blah blah. And they don’t tap into or don’t want to tap into any help that will get them to realize who they are. So this is my plea, the men out there, stop. It is okay for you to ask and seek help and become powerful.

Melissa Lucas: I love this where you’re going with this. I actually had a similar conversation on a podcast last week where I was saying something similar in the sense that a lot of men and women, but a lot of men are walking around very unhappy but they never speak a word about it. They have to be strong and they have to have this persona of like, I’m this strong man and I have everything under control, I’m the provider and I do all these things. We’re all humans, everyone’s a human. And like you said, women are starting to become empowered. I think in the professional world where I think men need to be empowered in their emotional world, and their inner world. So men are very driven by accomplishment and making things happen, being the caretaker and control. And I think the thing I see, and I actually work with a lot of men, I think for whatever reason, I draw a lot of male clients in majority of my clients, about 90% of my clients are men, and they’re older men. Men, 45 to like 65. Men that have had success and build a great family. And build a great life and they’re screaming on the inside, screaming because they don’t know who they actually are, or screaming because they haven’t found actual happiness, or they can’t find joy. And they’re just getting up and running through the motions, which a lot of people are.

Art Costello: Isn’t it funny because the people that I do it with, it’s probably 85% women, and the rest of it are men. The men, it’s like pulling teeth out of them were women, but I relate well to women.

Melissa Lucas: Interesting enough, I relate well to men because my thing with a lot of men has been to help them find their emotional world. To help them feel empowered, but also feel like they can be a human. And to say I’m not happy and I need to make changes, and I also help them find more meaning. So a lot of these people that I’m working with are just not able to really be themselves on a genuine level. They haven’t tapped into that, they haven’t been allowed to go there.

Art Costello: Have you done any studying on emotional intelligence?

Melissa Lucas: I taught emotional intelligence. I used to go speak at organizations and talk to CEO’s, and C-suite people, and a lot of business leaders about emotional intelligence.

Art Costello: It’s a skill that everybody should have because if you can’t identify your emotions, how are you ever going to be able to control them?

Melissa Lucas: So for a lot of men, they’re angry. A lot of men go towards anger, but there’s much deeper things underneath that anger. So I think it’s interesting. I love what you’re saying, and I think women are so much more willing to ask for help or they maybe are more open to saying things aren’t working. Where men, no offense to you men, but you’re a lot more stubborn when it comes to making changes or saying–

Art Costello: Oh, really?

Melissa Lucas: I know where I’m going, I know where I’m going, even though you damn lie, you don’t know where you’re going.

Art Costello: It’s like, where do you want to go to dinner? That’s a question or household all the time. Where do you want to go to dinner? I don’t know, I’m tired of eating, I don’t want to eat anymore. So we are getting near our time together ending and I want to give you the opportunity to tell us about your work and your book and all that. So you can take five or 10 minutes, however long it takes you. And after that, we’ll shut this thing down and you and I will do this again. You and I have a good connection that I think we’ll have fun.

“Keep discovering life and make that a lifelong process and you're going to find a lot more happiness.” - Melissa Lucas Click To Tweet

Melissa Lucas: I think we got a lot more to talk about. So definitely do agree with that. Right now, I have a book that you can find at Amazon, Barnes & Noble’s, it’s called Stepping Out of Your Comfort Zone: The Essential Guide to True Happiness. And really it’s just my life’s work that I’ve put out this book. I’ve worked with lots and lots of different people like me. And you were talking about, I’ve actually worked with anywhere from the age of 18 all the way up to people in their 70’s, trying to help them find happiness, meaning and purpose in their lives. And I’ve put that work that I’ve done with my clients, I’ve put that down in a book. So I wanted to find a way to help people find more meaning and happiness in their lives. And I’ve done that with so many of my clients that I wanted to be able to reach many more people. So I sat down and I wrote a book about things I’ve experienced in my own life, and things that my clients have experienced, and how we’ve all worked to push our own boundaries and transform it to a happier version of ourselves. So that’s my life’s work and my book with my clients. And I go out and speak, you can find me speaking at conferences and an organization’s trying to help people leave that comfort zone, or leave those goals, or those expectations behind, like you say, and find out that we have much more to our lives and what we see in front of us, our limits to our happiness and who we can become are limitless. And it’s just about opening up that doorway to our happiness and who we are is never ending. And same with our learning process and our growth process as a person, it’s a never ending unfolding process. So that’s what I want to encourage people today as they’re listening, that our happiness and who we can become, it’s never ending. I’m giving my grandmother as an example, until our last day on earth, what we can find out and who we can become never stops. So I want to encourage people to go on that journey. Life is a journey, take it, enjoy it, and keep finding out what’s there for you. And if you don’t pick up my book, find another way to do it. Find a way to keep discovering life, and make that a lifelong process and you’re going to find a lot more happiness when you do that.

“Our happiness and who we can become is never-ending. What we can find out and who we can become never stops.” - Melissa Lucas Click To Tweet

Art Costello: You could find her at edgeofyourcomfortzone.com.

Melissa Lucas: Yeah, edgeofyourcomfortzone.com, Instagram at Edge Of Your Comfort. Type Melissa Lucas, Edge Of Your Comfort Zone. You’ll find all kinds of stuff on me, lots of inspirational stuff.

Art Costello: Super duper. All these things that we talked about will be in the show notes, everybody. You can find out about Melissa in the show notes and all that. It has been truly a pleasure talking with you and I’m going to have you back on, we’re going to mash this thing out some more and solve the world’s problems and all those things.

So with that being said, everybody knows where they can get a hold of me. I’m going to encourage you to pursue Melissa’s work and get involved with it. For the women listening, kick your husbands in the pants or your boyfriends and get them to get involved, get their feelings out and start taking care of themselves. But we need to do that everybody.

So everybody out there in Shower Epiphanies Lands, you know where you can get a hold of me, expectationtherapy.com. And what that being said, Heather White, go ahead and take us out of here.

 

 

 

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