Resilience: Flow in the Present - Author Interview with Michelle Wincell O'Leary

Michelle Wincell O’Leary returns to discuss her book, Resilience: Flow in the Present — the first instalment in a planned 11-book series exploring different layers of personal and conscious change.

Michelle explains how travel, periods of solitude and her work with a book coach helped her turn decades of experience in mental health, healing and consciousness into a practical and reflective book.

In this episode:

• Why resilience became the starting point for the series
• Moving from survival mode towards greater awareness and choice
• What Michelle discovered about herself while writing
• Sharing difficult personal experiences without overwhelming the reader
• How words, stories and books can carry an intended impact
• Finding your own voice beneath inherited beliefs and influences
• Creative exercises, meditations and reflective tools within the book
• Using neutrality to reduce overwhelm and approach decisions differently
• Who the book was written to support
• Michelle’s contribution to She Found Her Superpower, a collaborative book about relationships, divorce and rebuilding

Michelle reads two selections from her book and shares the central message she hopes readers take from it.

About: Michelle Wincell O'Leary is a best-selling author and transformational energetic guide and facilitator who helps people reconnect with their energy and clarity in everyday life.  As a licensed therapist and innovator of healing environments, she brings warmth and depth to both personalize and create conscious conversations and services.  

Her best-selling debut, Resilience: Flow in the Present, shares a practical path to living with presence and intention. Her latest course, Your Energy, Your Way: Staying Steady, Even When Life Isn’t, invites participants into a grounded, real-world approach to conscious living—one step, one breath at a time.  She holds sacred space for others to remember who they are with each new step.

Links to book and to connect: Linktree, Betterhealth Platform

Transcript

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Introduction

Regina Sayer 0:01

Welcome back, everybody, to this special episode of Wisdom Without the Guru. I'm your host, Regina. So today I'm speaking with my returning guest from last week's episode, Michelle Wincell O'Leary. And today we're going to be talking about the book Michelle has authored called Flow in the Present, Level One Resilience, which is the first in a series to come. Now, Michelle has previously shared with us the challenges and pivot points in her journey to date and how her life became ultimately rooted in presence and consciousness. This book is a product of that path, and today we're going to discover more about it and the series to come, why Michelle wrote it, who it's intended for, and what are some key moments that occurred during the process of writing it. And then we're also going to have another intro to a collaboration book that Michelle just completed as we're recording this that will come out before this recording is actually released, but we're going to touch on that as well. So welcome back, Michelle. How are you? Oh, she's still on her boat.

Michelle Wincell O'Leary 1:04

I'm doing great. I'm excited to be back. And, you know, thank you so much for uh continuing to talk about my journey and this book because it's a real passion and heartfelt project of mine. And I just appreciate the opportunity very much.

Regina Sayer 1:19

Well, you're very welcome. And I'm sure that you are enjoying life as usual from your boat where you live. I've only ever heard of really people living on their boats in Europe in Amsterdam, you know, where you have all these sort of flat or in parts of France. I mean, what kind of boat is it that you're living on? Is it a sailboat or?

Michelle Wincell O'Leary 1:40

No, it's not. It's a powerboat. It's a cabin cruiser. So it has all the comforts of a small, floating, tiny home, plus an upper deck and an outer deck, and it travels and a swim deck. So, I mean, there's all kinds of places to be while I'm in a marina and while I'm on the river, uh, the Mississippi River, um, between Minnesota and Wisconsin in the northern part of the United States, right in the central part of the United States.

Regina Sayer 2:07

And even in the winter, you're on it?

Michelle Wincell O'Leary 2:09

No, no, I don't. No, in the winter, winters are different, and it depends which year it is. Some years it's more of a traveling year, like the year I wrote this book was a year I was traveling and had space by myself from one city to the next where friends and family were, um, but allowed me really a lot of alone time for writing in different environments, which is great. Other years I do have different events, different books coming out, um, like the other book we were just talking about. And I rent or find housing, you know, in different places and stay for the off-season. Every year's a little different right now, for it that way.

Regina Sayer 2:47

Sounds like a lot of fun. And you know, that's really interesting to write in different spots because when you think about in, you know, the Oscar Wilde times and the Shakespearean times or these types of authors, they would actually, or Hemingway, they would go and live in different places and write in these different places. So I would imagine this offers a different kind of stimuli to the process.

Michelle Wincell O'Leary 3:09

Absolutely. Yeah. I love places that are by the water. I enjoy being on the water, near the water, in the water. So I love visiting places that offer that. And then also I get to immerse in different landscape, different culture, um, meet different people, and it does spark inspiration for me in terms of writing. And it also shows me new things, new ways of interacting with people I've never met before, and also shows me kind of who I am and how that, how I am in all these different places with different people. What's the same about me? What shifts about me? What do I learn? How do I grow? It's just really an exciting way to be creative and in touch with yourself. You're like conscious and in the moment in touch with yourself.

Regina Sayer 3:57

Yeah, that's super interesting because you think about a lot of writers, they just kind of like go back to their apartment or their home and okay, I'm gonna do the so many hours a day, and I'm gonna do it, and I do it in the same place, and you don't have this kind of different type of energy that's around you all the time. Great. So let's see how it appeared in your book.

Michelle Wincell O'Leary 4:17

Excellent.

Why This Book and Series?

Regina Sayer 4:19

So you just told us that you were actually traveling when you wrote this book, but before that, why did you actually decide to write this book? And it's not just one book, it's a series. So why is it why did you decide to write the book and why is it a series?

Michelle Wincell O'Leary 4:35

Yeah, those are great questions. And, you know, when we talked last time, I think I talked about the trifecta that happened in my life that shifted everything in the summer of 2023. So I had the opportunity because I now do not have a career and job that I need to be present at every day. I'm no longer in a marital relationship, and actually I didn't have a place to live once it came to winter when I left my boat. So that was the first year where that happened, and I decided it was an excellent opportunity to travel. I knew a few things. One, I was engaged in the mastering alchemy coursework, which I've also talked about, and there was a conference. When those conferences happened, it's like hundreds of my best friends from all over the world come together in one place, everybody sort of speaking the same consciousness energy language, and we are able to connect with each other in person as opposed to all our online. So that's how the whole travel journey kicked off was the conference in San Diego, where I then stayed. I had just graduated from that coursework, went to the conference, and now I had months until the boat would go back in the water in April. So for those months, I traveled and stayed with different friends and family that were dear to me to spend time with them and to explore with myself how do I integrate my career in mental health, in healthcare and healing, with now my alchemy, energy, and consciousness studies in a way that kind of fits and flows together and describes the philosophy that I offer. And I wanted it to kind of be a grounding book that I could then bring into my business and show to people and say, this is what I do. This is why I do it, this is how I do it. So that's how it came to be. I met in my travels online, I met a woman named Deepeka Sandhu. She is now the CEO of Soul Sparks Press, where the new book that I've been a part of was written. In my conversation with her, she had a similar trifecta in her life years ago that she wrote a book about. So I was attracted to have a conversation with her, and we discovered we had a lot in common. She said, What can I do to help you? And I said, I really could use someone to help me with, I've never written a book like this before. I don't really know what I'm doing or who I'm writing for or how to do this. And she said, I know exactly who you should connect with. So she connected me with a book coach who goes by Dee, which is short for Devangani Mahapatra Chuan. I met Dee and we immediately hit it off. And I worked with Dee, who is a writer, a publisher, and a neurolinguistic professional. And what she did is she helped structure how I could convey my message from chapter to chapter to chapter. We met every week and she would kind of give me assignments and way to think about it and structure it. And during that week, I would write a chapter every single time and go, here's the next chapter. In 12 weeks, I had written 80,000 words, which is a lot for a new writer to just spew out. Now I didn't just spew it out. The process I used to write it was a conscious process of really engaging with sort of my higher mind and my inner wisdom, which is why I love the title of your podcast, Wisdom Without a Guru, being my own source of wisdom and all the experience I've had, and flow out each chapter to describe kind of the layer of energy in my process of transformation. Each chapter explored a different version of that. The first chapter in the book is resilience. And that's why my book is titled Resilience: Flow in the Present Series. Each chapter is a different energy level. Now, the last piece you asked about is why is it a series? The first chapter was provided to a group of early readers to give me some feedback on. And one of the things I noticed in that process is it was taking them a really long time to provide feedback. And I wondered, huh, like I wonder what's happening. And so I checked in, and what I heard back was there's so much in this book that I want to savor it. I want to go back to certain parts. I want to explore myself in the process of reading this chapter. I don't just want to rush through and read it. And so that's where the concept of maybe the chapters are full enough that it's actually a book instead of a chapter. And we decided let's go with each chapter, each level of energy as its own book in a series of books that is a complete energetic transformation set. And that's how Flow in the Present series came to be.

Creating an 11-Book Series

Regina Sayer 9:50

So the first book is Resilience. If I understand correctly.

Michelle Wincell O'Leary 9:55

Yes.

Regina Sayer 9:55

So what's the second book?

Michelle Wincell O'Leary 9:57

That's gonna be released early next year, and it's about awakenings. Okay. How many books will there be? There's 11 books in total. There's 11 layers of energy. You know, many books do this thing where they kind of have this climax and then they come to a conclusion. And in terms of transformation and energetics, for me, the way that I write and the way my books are laid out, it more is kind of a spiral, like, oh, there's that layer, and then there's that layer, and it just keeps going because that's what happens for us consciously as spiritual beings or conscious beings, is we just sort of layer up and level up and elevate and expand, and that's kind of how it works. So my book series kind of follows that pathway. So we start with resilience because that is where we're looking at how do we go from surviving survival mode to thriving? How do we go from being unconscious to being conscious of our unconscious? And then ultimately being able to move from, oh, I just noticed myself being unconscious to let me move myself back into conscious because I noticed what I was doing and I interrupted it and now I'm conscious again. And I can hold that conscious space more and more over time and make decisions from there and set energies from there and create the life that you want to lead from there, consciously making those choices. And once you're conscious of being conscious and can kind of maintain that, now you're kind of able to stay awake in the moments that are present in front of you. And that's where the second book leads.

Regina Sayer 11:49

And so you have pretty much interwoven the experiences of your own life with the mastering alchemy that you have studied. Because I think of resilience, and I'm thinking back to your story of you know, some of the things that you were subjected to, and you had to be resilient. And so I guess that was the starting point for you also.

Michelle Wincell O'Leary 12:11

Yes. It was. When I was using the help of Dee to kind of organize my thoughts, the idea was to start with the earliest energy that someone looking for transformation might be experiencing. Resilience on many levels across all kinds of people in all kinds of places who are just getting by day by day, moment by moment. And it's a struggle. It's a challenge. They're stuck, they don't know what to do. That's the kind of book that resilience gets you started in. Well, let's take a look at that. Let's become a little more conscious of what's not currently conscious and shift the experience. And that's what I needed to do all the time as a person. And that's why I started there.

Regina Sayer 13:06

And was it difficult to work it? Well, okay, you so you said you hit it off right away with this person, but this person had not taken the mastering alchemy course.

Michelle Wincell O'Leary 13:16

No.

Regina Sayer 13:16

So were you able to make it easily understood how you wanted to weave these things together, or did it take some sitting down and explaining pretty much your own spirituality to this person?

Michelle Wincell O'Leary 13:31

Yeah, that's a great question. One of the reasons that Dee and I hit it off right away is because we sort of felt a connection with each other. And Dee does have her own spiritual understandings and beliefs that are equally deep and important. And so we had a way of communicating with each other that felt comfortable, it felt open, it felt vulnerable. And this is kind of how I operate as a co-creator. I'm always learning about other people and also with other people. And together, we're both growing in the process. And I also am learning from other people. And that's what happened in our process. I learned a lot about her in the process, which in turn helped me understand how to put my words into an understandable format for people. And she learned a lot about how I practice that directly impacted her understanding of herself and her own life. And so that's for me, that's a perfect co-creative experience.

Regina Sayer 14:39

Now that's a perfect alchemy. And two things are put together and out comes a product, a book.

Michelle Wincell O'Leary 14:47

Yeah. Or 11.

Regina Sayer 14:50

Yep. So as you were writing this, were was there anything that, I mean, obviously, because you are including bits of your life into it, were there any things that you sort of had aha moments where you thought, oh, I didn't realize that before? And as you were going through this writing process, you started having further realizations that perhaps you had not had before. And were any of these hard to accept?

Michelle Wincell O'Leary 15:16

Yeah. What a great question. There's so many. Anyone,

What the Writing Process Revealed

Michelle Wincell O'Leary 15:20

I think, who's a writer, at some point is exploring something about themselves through their creativity. And as you kind of let go and let that creativity express itself, in my opinion, you are bound to discover things about yourself. And yes, one of the things I discovered, there's a couple I can share. One is more interesting, and one's a little more like, oh wow, okay, good to know. The uh the interesting one is I was kind of exploring my family lineage, and um, there's parts in the book about like how do we absorb the energies of other people that are around us. And one of the ways we notice it is in our own words or sounds or tones or how we feel, those kind of things. I had grown up and my mother has this just lovely laugh, like this contagious lovely laugh. And also there was a lot of anxiety in my household and things that, you know, we had talked about uh in our in the first podcast together. But I started recognizing these moments where I would laugh and I would go, I sound exactly like my mother. Like it doesn't even, it is her. Like that's my mom. Like literally in my space, her tone and energy in my space. It's not my laugh, it's hers. And I love her laugh, but I wanted my own, which sounds a little odd. But I was like, well, what do I sound like if I'm just using her joy as my joy? Like, what's mine sound like? So it was interesting to notice that, and then also to inquire inside myself and request and you know, intend to like, I'd like to uncover what I sound like. And that happened, and it was kind of interesting. I'd be like, oh my gosh, that's not her, like that one's me. And so that's one of the ways I began to learn when I'm here and when she's here in my space, is by how I sound, because I have a unique sound anyway. So that was kind of a fun little discovery, but it's a way in which I work with people and I say, they'll say something about themselves and I'll be like, well, who told you that? And they immediately know exactly who told, and I'm like, Art, do you sound like them when you say it? They're like, mm, exactly. I'm like, mm-hmm, because it's not you. That's someone else in your space. You're talking to you as though it's them talking to you. That is not you talking to you.

Regina Sayer 17:53

I hold both my hands up. I'm guilty, dead guilty. I was just saying something to my husband the other day about, oh my gosh, I sound, not only do I look like my mother, but I sound like her.

Michelle Wincell O'Leary 18:04

Yes, yes. And that is not to say anything bad about sounding or having those qualities, but it is to notice that they're in your space and you're still engaged with them in those ways. And when it isn't comfortable or you wish it was different, there are tools to find your own and to let that go. And that is a part of the book. That's one of the things I found. The other thing that I discovered, so I really kind of wrote it from a little more of a an energetic, conscious, technical kind of perspective to get started. There's a lot of different ways to people learn. So there's creativity, there's poetry, there's characters, there's personal stories, there's reflections, there's artwork, there's all kinds of things in this book. And also quite a bit of meditations. And I kind of got to the end as I'm rereading it, and I thought, there's something missing. And that's a harder one to figure out when you write like what's not there, and what wasn't there was my own story of resilience. And I thought to myself, it's probably the most important part, but it didn't come until the whole structure was there. And then I went, oh, I have to put my own resilience story in there. And that was, well, then what's my most resilient story? And that was redefining and describing and writing about my most resilient moments in ways that were impactful to other people without triggering and honoring that the purpose of writing it is to say, I've lived this, I know this, because look what I have had to go through. And I wrote about an experience with my first husband, which you and I didn't talk about. It was a really, really challenging experience because he had experienced multiple losses. His grandmother, his best friend, his mother, a miscarriage, and they all were in a short period of time, and it was a lot for him, and he didn't have internal capacity to process it effectively. He didn't seek help. He turned to using substances and pulled away and isolated and so on and so forth. So it's very difficult to figure out what was going on. Um, but I eventually discovered, because it took a long time, that he was using methamphetamine in my household, under my nose. And I'm gone. I'm working, I'm, you know what I mean? I'm not there all the time. But I did start to figure it out. Ultimately, I had to find a way to keep myself and my son safe and remove him from the home in a way that was effective and nobody got hurt. And that was my act of true resilience. And I'm not gonna spill the beans on how that was because it's in the book. But recalling that and strong and resilient and intentional and patient that I was to make it through that and achieve no one being hurt, that physically hurt. Emotionally, it's hurtful for all of us. But physically, we all made it through that, okay, and can recover on our own terms. So, did I discover that? Yep. That one came a little later and it was probably meant to. It came probably right as it was meant to, as I was ready to include it in the book.

Regina Sayer 21:44

Okay, I just

Sharing Difficult Experiences with Care

Regina Sayer 21:45

want to ask a question because you just said you didn't want to trigger anyone. Were you talking about triggering yourself as you're writing it or triggering the readers?

Michelle Wincell O'Leary 21:54

I'm talking about I intentionally wrote this book in a way that That it provides opportunities and clarity and energy and frequency and all kinds of things. But I was very mindful about how I shared my challenges so that I didn't intentionally put things in the book that could trigger someone that may not have the skills in the moment to know what to do with it. Because some of what I've been through, if other people were present, would be triggering. It was triggering, very triggering. So I tried to write it in a way that expressed that people could see that I was making choices that were important and here's why, and here's the impact, without just, you know, bah, just shouting it out, if that makes sense. Yes. I was thinking about the readers.

Regina Sayer 22:51

Yeah. And do you think that having a mental health background like you do helped you to do that? Because, you know, I'm just thinking about most people who probably want to sit down and write a book about their experiences. They don't really necessarily think how it's triggering. And I say this now because I actually just got I'm just about to post something because I actually got triggered during a podcast and I had no idea it was coming. I could just feel it in my body coming up. And it was just so unexpected. But and it was unintentional. So I can imagine that when you're reading a book and you know that the book is about certain things, you know, how it's written. And I think maybe a lot of writers who are writing these types of books are writing about their experiences, but they're not coming from this type of professional mental health, well, maybe a spiritual background, but maybe not in the mental health aspects to be able to know that something that they are writing could be so triggering for somebody who may not be able to handle what they're reading.

Michelle Wincell O'Leary 23:54

Yeah. And I'll say it this way. So there it is the mental health background. That is definitely a piece of it, decades worth of that. But also as an alchemist, I'm also aware of the way I impact people. I'm intentionally putting positive impacts into the world. So if I'm saying something that has a potential negative impact from an energy standpoint, I'm going to position that in a way that the positivity from it is what ripples, not the negativity from it. I can't completely control it because it's up to the reader. But the third thing I want to say, most writers I know read their own work with a different set of eyes through it. One of them is read it as though you're the reader, not the writer, the reader of your own book to discover how it comes across if you were reading it. It's not a simple thing to do, but you can choose which perspective to pick your book up with and learn about it. Are you in grammar and punctuation mode? Depends. I read it multiple different ways to understand how it might come across for multiple different people.

Regina Sayer 25:06

And in addition, you also had test readers as well to give you feedback. And yeah, so in that case. Okay, that's wow, that's all really interesting. You don't think about that when you're writing this type of book. And what I also find interesting is you keep using the word alchemy. And when I think of alchemy, it my inner vision just sees energies mingling, be it through words or images or smell, touch, texture, or whatever. So when you're talking about how you are thinking about writing and how you're intentionally setting the space about how you want to write, you're looking at all these different energies that are going to be impacted and also mingling at the same time as somebody's reading.

The Energy and Impact of Words

Michelle Wincell O'Leary 25:50

Yeah. It's I'm really very conscious and aware of sentences and paragraphs and particular words intentionally in how they carry energy. Words hold power. Don Miguel Ruiz, number one, be impeccable with your word. I was just thinking that. Get out of my head. Well, he's one of my all-time favorites, and I learned a lot focusing on my word in terms of choosing them carefully in my head and out of my mouth, and even the words that have the energies or power or impact. I'm aware of that and responsible for that. And so, and I intend a certain impact that is a positive ripple. So I'm always aware of that, unless I'm offline for some reason. But usually I'm pretty conscious and aware of all of those impacts.

Regina Sayer 26:53

Yeah. Yeah. When I read that book, I remember thinking I knew all those things. I just needed to be reminded of it. And when you talk about words, one of the things that happened to me when I had that huge energetic opening, very physical opening that I had happened in Singapore was there's a very big, wonderful bookstore there called um Kinokuniya, which is a Japanese bookstore. And every time I would go in there after I had this big awakening, I would feel ill and I could not stay in there for very long. And I actually thought it was because there were so many different stories coming at me from all sorts of different languages in one small space, and I couldn't take it. And of course, no doubt enhanced by the fact that it had a bunch of old crystals they probably never cleaned or cleared in the middle of the store. So yeah, I always really felt like, oh my gosh, I can't. And that went on for so many months because I just couldn't, and I really, really felt that it was the energy in the books that was being carried that I was picking up on. It was too much.

Michelle Wincell O'Leary 28:01

I firmly believe books carry energy. I firmly believe my book carries energy. Absolutely. And I intend for it to. That's the purpose.

Regina Sayer 28:10

Yeah, and that's interesting that people don't think that when they write a book that it's actually carrying energy. That's something for listeners to think about. If you're thinking about writing a book, your words carry energy. Your books carry energy. The image you choose carries energy, energy, everything.

Michelle Wincell O'Leary 28:25

Yes. Yeah, and you can see the image behind me, right? I know it has a little eye, but that's my book right behind me.

Regina Sayer 28:32

Yeah, why did you choose this image? It looks like a woman in red. Why did you choose this image?

Michelle Wincell O'Leary 28:38

Yeah, well, a few things. I wanted to show someone who has some confidence and walking down a path that is of her choosing even the colors that align in her world and in a forest, in nature, in trees with the sunlight coming through, an image of I'm going down this path and I can I got it. I can do this. I'm capable. Yeah, that's the image. The back of the book looks like this. She's sitting on a rock overlooking water. Yeah, yeah. Exactly. Because in order to get here, you need some of this time. That's the reflective time, right? To find that inner voice and then walk down your path.

Regina Sayer 29:27

Yeah, I'll tell you what came to mind when I saw that imagery was Little Red Riding Hood, because you always have this image. But she's going into the forest and she goes, she meets all these different types of things, but she comes out of it. She still comes out of it on the other side.

Michelle Wincell O'Leary 29:42

Yep. Yep.

Regina Sayer 29:43

That's what I kind of thought when I saw the image on the book. I thought, oh, okay. So it's somebody going into the wood, not knowing, and coming out the other side. That's anyway, that's how it played with my mental imagery.

Michelle Wincell O'Leary 29:55

No, yeah. I've heard that one before too. Absolutely.

Regina Sayer 29:58

Oh, okay. Okay, good. All right. So are you going to read us a passage from this book?

Michelle Wincell O'Leary 30:04

I would

Reading - Resilience, Inspiration and Inner Wisdom

Michelle Wincell O'Leary 30:05

love to. So what I wanted to read was something personal because I include reflections throughout the book. So this is reflections on inspiration. I know firsthand how important resilience is to my well being and my ability to care for others at home and on the job. Like you, I've been through a lot repeating uncomfortable experiences the hard way to understand their wisdom, engaging my resilience first to survive and later to thrive. I've been noticing inspiration to help me shift circumstances since I was a child. Children know things they can't communicate yet. Imagination leads the way. When they find the words, they often tell truths that adults are not ready to hear. I've heard inspiration urging me to grow, change, and express myself differently throughout my life. I've experienced many versions of me along the way. New strategies, tools, inspirations, and connections aligned at precisely the moment they were supposed to. They always came back around repeatedly until I understood their wisdom. Being conscious is a different perspective to live within, and wisdom is revealed in vast forms. I seek wisdom without expectation. I receive it without knowing what it means, where it comes from or why it is here. I intentionally allow my thoughts and memories to show me their wisdom and connections. I ask intentional questions to discover and form who I am and who I am becoming. I've explored my multidimensional experiences to know the possibilities and more that is out there. When I tell you that I am grateful to know my intuition, notice threads of inspiration, and creatively engage with my resilience, I'm telling you my truths, what I intend, and allow the release of what no longer aligns with who I am. My wisdom and resilience aligns and expands as I do in higher vibrations, energies, and consciousness. I choose my experiences consciously flowing as they involve in fascinating and exciting ways. It's through experience that I've mastered resilience, both big and small opportunities to peel back my layers and unraveling them that led me to know resilience.

Regina Sayer 33:01

And it's interesting what you're saying. It's almost like wisdom is ebbing and flowing all the time, and it's not always trying to manically understand whatever that wisdom, those thoughts, whatever consciousness comes to you, but to flow with it until it makes more sense. Did I get that right?

Michelle Wincell O'Leary 33:21

I think you did get that right because that is how our life is. It's everywhere. Until we go, aha. There's something interesting. I'm gonna sit with that now. Where does that go? Where does that lead? Part of it is being quiet enough and present enough and aware enough to notice our own wisdom and all the wisdom around us. Yeah. Infinitely flowing.

Regina Sayer 33:46

That passage sounded very grounded to me, and I say grounded because sometimes people who think about energy or working with spirituality, they think it's quite woo. And so I'd like you to actually talk about because I know on your website you do talk about third dimension and fifth dimension, and we won't get into that here because that's a whole nother podcast.

Michelle Wincell O'Leary 34:09

Happy to

A Grounded Approach to Consciousness, Not Woo

Michelle Wincell O'Leary 34:10

come back to the show.

Regina Sayer 34:10

I'm sure that there Yeah, that there are possibly elements of that that are going to be in these 11 books. So how could you explain to somebody who is thinking about reading this book who wants something grounded but not woo?

Michelle Wincell O'Leary 34:25

Well, here's what I would say, and it's, you know, people are attracted to particular books because there's something in there for them. I sometimes pick up books and I find the thing that grabbed my attention right away, and that's all I need. I don't even finish it because I've already got, like, oh, there was a reason I picked that book up because I just read this paragraph and it led me to the next thing, and amazing. I've read books where I go cover to cover because it keeps my attention and there's something for me in that book. And in that process, I might find excerpts that I go, uh, that kind of doesn't really fit with me. Like, I'm not I 90% of this really fits for me. 10%, not so much. I personally I just let it go. Books aren't meant to convince you to believe something you don't or don't want to. They're meant to give you a way to reflect about yourself. Mine is. Reflect about yourself and make your own choices about what you choose to believe and want to have build and create in your life. So if it feels good to you, go with it. If it doesn't, no problem. Let it go. That's what I would say.

Regina Sayer 35:42

And I would imagine that different chapters might appeal to some people more than other chapters. Yes. Or other books, excuse me, other books in the series. So book 11 might be more appealing to somebody than maybe the first book was for whatever reason.

Michelle Wincell O'Leary 35:57

Yeah, it's sort of like if we think of ourselves as very layered, the books are very layered. So I have friends that have been engaged in enemy energy work. In fact, Jim Self gave me a review for this book, and he's been in the field for 30 years. And his feedback was that this provided clarity in terms of walking that present moment path. So there might be people with a lot of experience that some of these messages still provide new clarity around. And that could happen in any chapter. So it's all individual, and you know, that's that's the beauty of life. Everything's individual. So you're drawn where you're drawn for reasons that make sense to you, and that's perfect. You get to be you, uniquely you, your energy, your way.

Regina Sayer 36:49

All right. So what type of audience do you think would appreciate this book the most?

Michelle Wincell O'Leary 36:55

You know, I really wrote it for individuals who might be experiencing feeling stuck or like there's so much disturbance and distraction in the world that lives are disrupted and kind of turned upside down and people don't know the next step to take. I wrote it for displaced individuals that maybe don't even have a place to call home anymore because life changes and then you really lose your inner home. I wrote it for people who don't hear their own inner voice anymore. They've lost it, and they're like, I want to get back to being me. I want to find me. So it lends itself to a lot of different readers, a lot of different ages from a lot of different places that want a discovery and a journey of how to step into their own awareness and create what they truly want and be able to sort of hear their own inner wisdom in the process. And as you know, because we've talked about it, the book has become a course. So for some that want a little more personalized process, then I also have the virtual global course that takes these concepts and breaks them down a little to support people individually, being able to kind of go, got it. Like I get something new and different, learning it in a small group process. So that's the purpose. And each book will have a course so that I'm able to have a small group. For some, they reach out and want to do one-to-one, and that's fine as well. And it's it's all for people looking for transformation, change, how to step into their own consciousness. And or if they're on that, like you mentioned, if they're like, what is this third-dimensional thing in this 5D, fifth-dimensional, like what is that? There's elements of that in this book as well, which is uh some of my favorite part because it's happening whether we're aware of it or engaged in it or not.

Regina Sayer 38:58

Okay. You said that you had tools in the book as well, so that for because the book is a narrative, but it's also taking introducing concepts as well.

Michelle Wincell O'Leary 39:07

Yes.

Neutrality, Decisions and Practical Tools

Regina Sayer 39:08

Then are you giving exercises and tools to the reader as well?

Michelle Wincell O'Leary 39:12

Yes. There are creative exercises throughout the book that allows a reader to choose their method of creativity. It engages imagination, it engages curiosity, it engages visualizing for people that are visual, it engages writing exercises where people are interested. It engages some of the energy alchemy exercises. So there's a variety of options, including meditations, that help a person discover their what works best for them to kind of check in with themselves and become conscious. And once they do, like what do you learn in there? And what do you do with it?

Regina Sayer 39:56

Do you happen to have another little segment to read for us that might give a sample effect?

Michelle Wincell O'Leary 40:01

Let's find one. We'll see where it opens. I'll try this one because it's really applicable right now. So this one is about decision making. What it calls the reader to do is imagine what neutral feels like. And so, even right now, while we're together, I'll just say like, if you were to feel neutral for a moment, like in your body, in your mind, what does neutral feel like? And what's so useful about it is that it's not right or wrong, it's not good or bad, it's just kind of right in the middle, not super heightened, not low, just right here. It's non-judgmental, it's not opinionated. So from neutral, things open up because you don't have all the emotional distraction, you don't have all the mental distraction, you are not judging things and forming opinions, you're just observing. Like, oh, well, that's what's happening over there right now. Generally, if it's over there, it's not about me, it's about other people doing whatever they're doing. From neutral and observing, I can then choose how I want to engage or not engage in what's happening. So the exercise is to flow in an energetic state that supports an intention. So you recall neutral to get started, and then what is the decision that you're wishing to explore using neutral to just observe the various ways you could make a decision about something. And you get comfortable in the flow state and consider the various elements to your decisions. Now, as you're considering them from a neutral place, you might have a moment of clarity where there's like a, oh my gosh, I never thought about that. That feels really good, that decision and how that might work. So you engage and ask another question and neutrally listen to and consider the outcome or the perspective or the impact of that decision. And recall capabilities that enable you to achieve the outcome that you seek from your intention. So it's just a little process to consider how to get neutral with your intentions and help you make a decision about whatever it is you might have to be, you might want to make a decision about. And that's just one of the exercises that's in there. There's a lot of them. But decision making right now for individuals can get really complicated. There's a lot to consider and other people and all that. And when we had this conversation about neutral, I could tell that it was sort of pulling me into my space. Neutral, hear me, not all the other things. From neutral, like, what could I do about this? And as I explore that, like, where does it feel like, yeah, that's a good idea? And where is it like, yeah, no, let those go. Anything not aligned, let it go. So I'm adding now here, just as a description of how that process works for people. And as someone who works with individuals a lot, I can't tell you how many times this week alone I've taught the skill of neutral to people whose anxiety is through the roof, their overwhelm is through the roof through the roof, they can't figure out where to even get started. They certainly can't hear their inner voice through all that noise and confusion. And helping them get to neutral, it was like they felt relief in that moment. And the decision might be you know what, I don't have to do anything. I can just feel relief for a little bit. And that feels good.

Regina Sayer 44:00

Yep, I can agree with that. Definitely. And because everybody decision making is such a every day, every minute, every moment, part of our life almost. Do we turn left? Do we turn right? It's ridiculous. When I go walk in the forest, I'm like, okay, do I take this path or do I take this path? And then I just let I finally end up just letting my body decide.

Michelle Wincell O'Leary 44:21

Yeah. And in some cases, that's such a lovely place to be, because you can't really make a wrong decision. And I'm suggesting that neutral is a place where, you know, you actually the decision can be just don't decide anything for a minute. Yeah. Just get in touch with yourself from neutral. Don't judge yourself. Don't beat yourself up. Don't second guess yourself. Like right now in this moment, everything's okay.

Regina Sayer 44:45

I would imagine that some of these ideas and tools and concept that you are putting into this book may be a bit hard for some people to swallow just because it's just not what they're used to. Like, like you just said, the type of clients that you've been working with and seeing that they live in a constant state of anxiety that they don't even know that there is that possibility to even be a different way.

Michelle Wincell O'Leary 45:09

Right. And what's interesting about it is in a 15-minute conversation of meeting somebody new and then having them practice this with me in a session and having them go, oh, I feel that. Like, yep. In the course of a 45-minute session, we'll return to that four or five times so that by the end of the session, they can recognize, A, how much better they feel when they do that, or in general, how much better they feel at the end of the session than the beginning of the session. And secondly, that we build a reference. We build a way for the practice of it is to practice it so that when you really need it, it's like, oh, neutral would feel much better than this right now. Whoop, take a breath. Okay, neutral. I'm not sure what to do from here, but this feels better. And I'm happy with that. Step one it's effective and quick to build the practice. But you're right, it's different. Not necessarily what you would think of, but it's like, oh, that's so helpful so quickly for people. One of the reasons I start there.

Regina Sayer 46:17

So what

Collaboration - Relationships, Divorce and Finding Strength

Regina Sayer 46:18

is this other book that you have co-authored? Is it in a similar vein?

Michelle Wincell O'Leary 46:22

Well, it is, and I'll help explain why. So it's with Soul Sparks Press, and it's called She Found Her Superpower. Seven Women, Seven Divorces, Seven Superpowers. So each of us write a different chapter in the book about our experience of divorce and how going through that process led us to find our superpower that made us stronger. It didn't break us down, we didn't collapse. We actually found ways to move forward that feel better than where we were. And in many cases, we were just able to recognize what no longer aligned and needed and was done or needed to be done or finished or completed. And then there's more. And then the story goes on. And for me, my chapter, as you can imagine, was about finding myself in an unconscious marriage and working toward consciousness in a way that impacted my marriage. And that's the story. That's my chapter, is about how becoming conscious impacted my marriage and what shifted and how, and a little bit of why.

Regina Sayer 47:45

And when is that book supposed to come out? You said December?

Michelle Wincell O'Leary 47:49

Yeah, December 2nd is the current target date. And it's in it was intended to support people, women or men, that have relationship challenges. It doesn't have to be just divorce and marriage, but in general, relationship challenges and how a person's experience of that shifts in whatever way it does and how to explore what that is. You don't have to fall apart, even though you might a little, you'll still come back together and move forward stronger. There's that opportunity. So we wrote it specific for that in mind.

Regina Sayer 48:25

Where

Where to Find the Books

Regina Sayer 48:26

can we get these two books? All right, so one has already been out for a little while, and you said the second book in the series will be coming out in the beginning of 2026. Let's note that this podcast is being recorded in 2025, but it will be released in 2026.

Michelle Wincell O'Leary 48:44

My current book, Resilience, is on Amazon, Kindle, Apple Books, and it's sold in most of the major bookstores that you can find. I'm certain that when the future books come out, my own and the collaborative book, same is going to be true about those. You can also go to my link tree, which is Michelle Wincell O'Leary, all my links, all my books, all my podcasts, all in one place, right there. You can go to my website and get to it from there. And I also um have links to it on my Instagram and Facebook accounts and LinkedIn accounts too.

Regina Sayer 49:19

Okay, great. So those will definitely all be in the show notes. So one last thing I want to ask you is what is the key takeaway that you want people to have after reading this book?

Michelle Wincell O'Leary 49:31

Yeah, there's a saying, there's a few different sayings that I use through the book quite a bit. And one is you got this. You're capable, and you can do it. All you have to do is believe in yourself, right? And put some skills in place for yourself that allow you to hear yourself. But ultimately, you got this and you can. Yes, you can.

Regina Sayer 49:55

Fantastic. I'm looking forward to seeing when the other book comes out because you said that you are going to be doing a lot of, I guess, readings as well and promotions for that book. Will you also be doing the same with each book that comes out in the series?

Michelle Wincell O'Leary 50:09

Absolutely.

Regina Sayer 50:10

So that's going right into your traveling time as well.

Michelle Wincell O'Leary 50:13

So Yeah, absolutely true. And I tend to on my Instagram, I will randomly do readings and just post them for my books. And I'll do live events where I do readings and just talk about all kinds of fun things right on Instagram Live as well.

Regina Sayer 50:30

Okay. And so is there anything final that you'd like to say before we close out?

Closing and Better Help Platform

Michelle Wincell O'Leary 50:35

Well, I thought of one other thing that I would say, in that a recent discovery that I had was that I would start to use my license again as a therapist and as a coach differently than I have been doing. And so uh I'm now available on betterhelp.com, Michelle Wincell O'Leary. And so I just wanted to a quick shout out for betterhelp.com because it's such a great platform. You literally can hop online and fill a few questions out about what you're looking for and be matched up with someone with a license and experience and expertise that aligns with what you're asking for. And it's so simple. You can, and there's also like journals and assessments and tools and worksheets, all and and groups and classes, like all right in this platform. I I found it absolutely fascinating. And I'm having a lovely experience uh on betterhelp.com. So A, you can find me there, and B, it's a great resource that's very simple that you can hop online. They also have resources for individuals that can't afford to pay. So I just want to shout out for them because it's uh it's it's really phenomenal.

Regina Sayer 51:50

Okay, and is that only targeted at the United States or is that international?

Michelle Wincell O'Leary 51:54

Yeah.

Regina Sayer 51:55

It's international. Okay. So they could actually point you to somebody who's in your country, in your area. Wow, that is good. Okay.

Michelle Wincell O'Leary 52:04

Yes.

Regina Sayer 52:04

That's nice to know. Well, I wish you very, very well on your travels and hope that you find more and more inspiration and continue writing as you have been. Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge and your feelings and thoughts, ideas, your wisdom to our listeners. I really appreciate that. Thank you.

Michelle Wincell O'Leary 52:27

Oh, thank you so much. It's been so lovely to sit with you. You are just such do such a great job offering what you offer, and it's so comfortable to speak with you. It's I feel you and your presence here, and therefore kind of your audience here. And so just thank you and thank everyone for listening. And I wish everyone absolutely the best. And you got this.

Regina Sayer 52:51

Okay, everybody. Thank you so much for listening to this special episode with Michelle Wincell O'Leary. And do, if you need or you know somebody who is in need, the link will definitely be in the show notes for you to reach out to this health platform where you can find somebody who is in your area if you do need help or somebody you know need help. But thank you all for listening. And wherever you are in this beautiful world, have a fabulous day. Bye, everybody.

Michelle Wincell O'Leary 53:18

Thank you. Bye.