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How do you stay afloat when your world is falling apart?

How do you look after yourself, your health, and your business when the rug has been pulled out from under you?

And what about those big, messy emotions that come during times of grief and uncertainty — how do we deal with them? And can they actually be a secret catalyst for transformation?

In this deeply personal and profoundly uplifting episode, I’m joined by the inimitable, remarkable Kris Carr — bestselling author, wellness advocate, media personality, and one of the OG health influencers, who turned devastating personal adversity (an incurable Stage IV cancer diagnosis) into a life of thriving and empowerment.

Press play now to learn: the pivotal moment in a parking lot that changed her life forever, her empowering framework for navigating grief, how to live a full life when you’ve experienced a great loss, her game-changing approach to “self-care in the storm”, how to manage your business during times of personal upheaval, the truth about living and thriving with chronic disease, and how to manage your social media presence when your life is falling apart behind the scenes.

This conversation is packed with heartfelt wisdom and practical strategies for thriving through adversity. So if you’re dealing with grief, facing personal upheaval, or simply looking for ways to build resilience and support yourself through emotional storms, then press play now… this incredible episode is for you.

About Kris Carr

Kris Carr is a multiple New York Times best-selling author, wellness activist and 20-year cancer thriver. She’s been called a “force of nature” by O Magazine and was named a “new role model” by The New York Times. Kris is also a member of Oprah’s SuperSoul 100, recognizing the most influential thought-leaders today. She is a Success Magazine BlogStar and one of the Greatist’s Top 100 Most Influential People in Health and Fitness. Kris is also the winner of The Books For a Better Life Award and a Shorty Award honoring the best brands in healthy living on social media.

In this episode we chat about:

• The pivotal moment in a parking lot that transformed her life (3:54)
• Her unique perspective on grief and how to navigate it (10:22)
• How to live a vibrant, colorful life while fully honoring your grief (14:40)
• The crucial steps to take immediately when life throws you a curveball (17:05)
• After you’ve addressed the initial challenges, where do you go next? (22:08)
• Her beautiful approach to “self care in the storm” (I found this SO incredibly helpful) (25:46)
• The five essential pillars of self-care that everyone should know (31:02)
• How to approach your business during times of personal crisis (38:03)
• Should you keep showing up on social media when you’re grieving? (42:04)
• What everyone gets wrong about living with a chronic illness (46:16)
• The surprising factors that trigger her flare-ups and how she manages them (51:15)

Episode resources:

• SheLaunch (join here)
• Mastering Your Mean Girl by Melissa Ambrosini (book)
• Open Wide by Melissa Ambrosini (book)
• Comparisonitis by Melissa Ambrosini (book)
• Time Magic by Melissa Ambrosini and Nick Broadhurst (book)
• Kris Carr (website)
• Kris Carr (courses)
• I’m Not a Mourning Person: Braving Loss, Grief, and the Big Messy Emotions That Happen When Life Falls Apart By Kris Carr (book)
• The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz (book)
• Slack (website)
• Click up (website)

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The following transcript has been automatically generated and not checked for accuracy.

Melissa: [00:00:00] In episode 577 with the incredible Kris Carr, we are talking about grief. We are talking about big messy emotions, self care in the storm. We’re talking about business during times of uncertainty, thriving with disease, and so much more. You’re going to love this episode. Let’s dive in. Welcome to the Melissa Ambrosini Show.

I’m your host, Melissa, best selling author of Mastering Your Mean Girl, Open Wide, Comparisonitis, and Time Magic. And I’m here to remind you that love is Is sexy, healthy is liberating and wealthy isn’t a dirty word each week. I’ll be getting up close and personal with thought leaders from around the globe, as well as your weekly dose of motivation so that you can create epic change in your own life and become the best version of yourself possible.

Are you ready? Beautiful. [00:01:00] Hey, beautiful. And welcome back to the show. I’m so excited about this episode because I have loved and followed Kris. For so long, probably since 2008 or nine, a very long time. And for those of you that have never heard of her, she is a multiple New York times, bestselling author, wellness advocate.

And 20 year cancer thriver. She has been called a force of nature by O magazine and was named a new role model by the New York times. She’s also a member of Oprah’s super soul 100, recognizing the most influential thought leaders today. Pretty amazing. She is a success magazine, blog star, and one of the greatest top 100 most influential people in health and fitness.

She’s also the winner of the Books for a Better Life Award and a Shorty Award honoring the best brands in healthy living on social media. Just amazing. Now [00:02:00] she lectures at hospitals, conferences, and corporations. She has appeared in Glamour, Prevention, Scientific American, Good Morning America, Today Show, CBS Evening News, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Success, Super Soul Sunday, OWN, and The Oprah Winfrey Show.

I mean, come on, guys. She is also the subject and director of the documentary Crazy Sexy Cancer. She’s also the foot soldier in the fight against disease, and she teaches people how to take back their health and live life like they mean it. Her work will change the way you live, love, and eat. Now you can find her at kriscarr.

com, where she publishes an award winning blog focusing on plant based nutrition, prevention, patient support, and personal empowerment. And for everything that we mention in today’s episode, you can check out in the show notes, and that’s over at melissaambrosini. com.

And now, without further ado, let’s bring on the incredible Kris Carr. [00:03:00] Kris

Carr, I am so excited to have you on the show. First, got your book, Crazy Sexy Diet, about a hundred years ago. I saw you speak in New York a hundred years ago, and I have loved following you for so long, and I’m so grateful and excited to have you here. But before we dive in, can you tell us what you had for breakfast this morning?

Kris: Oh, yes. It’s the same as I have every morning. It is a huge 24, 28, 32 ounce smoothie. That is my morning and it usually keeps me till noon because it’s filled with the good fats and protein and all the good stuff. 

Melissa: Mmm, delicious, delicious. Oh my gosh. Now your latest book is about what happens when. [00:04:00] Life falls apart.

Now a few short years ago, your life was falling apart. Can you tell us about that time in your life and dive deep into the pivotal moment in that parking lot that changed everything for you? 

Kris: Some of your readers may, or your listeners rather, may not know my backstory. And I, so many of us come to this wellness conversation because we’ve either had a warning sign or a wake up call.

For me, it was a huge wake up call. I was diagnosed with an incurable stage 4 cancer 21 years ago, so I’ve been living with stage 4 cancer for 21 years now. 

Melissa: What age were you when you had that diagnosis? 

Kris: I was 31 and now I’m 52, so I’ve had, it’s the longest relationship in my life. this incurable disease.

And so that was really the inspiration to learn how to take care of myself in a [00:05:00] different way. And so many of my books in my early career were for cancer patients and then for people who didn’t want to have a chronic illness. So they’re all about an anti inflammatory diet and lifestyle. And I often say at this point in my life, My career, the first half, I was really focused on what you’re eating and how to optimize that and care for yourself and really nourish yourself.

And this part of my career, this chapter of my career, I’m very inspired by and focused on addressing what’s eating you. And that really came from yet another moment where the life that I thought I was going to have radically changed. The rug was pulled out from under me again. And I’ll tell you about that experience, but I’ll share, and this, and anyone watching this or listening to this, [00:06:00] knows this whether you like it or not.

We can’t expect the rainbow but say hold the rain. I’m not interested in any of the rain. We live in this world where everything is curated and everything looks so beautifully manicured and we see everybody else’s lives and they look so much better than ours oftentimes. And when there’s difficult times or difficult experiences happening in our life, we often think what’s wrong with me?

Why me? How did this happen? And we blame ourselves and so on and so forth. And what I’ve realized as somebody who has been living with chronic illness for 21 years and I’ve had many ruptures as I call them throughout the course of my life, is that the good times are going to happen and the really difficult times are going to happen and that makes up a whole big life.

And so here I was, to your point, five, gosh, I don’t even know, it was 2016. And [00:07:00] I was dealing with a whole other diagnosis. It was my chosen father, so I am adopted. And my chosen father was diagnosed with this very aggressive stage 4 pancreatic cancer. And we were at the beginning of the pandemic. Right?

When things really started to ratchet up with his health, I was approaching my 20 year cancerversary of living with stage four cancer. The world that we knew it had changed. My business was changing and going through a difficult patch because I chose to really pull back, to be present for my life and my family.

And at the time I realized I hadn’t life proved my business, right? So if something happened in my life, it affected everything because I wasn’t doing, we weren’t You know, earning what we needed to earn. And so it’s this just monumental kick in the teeth again. And it was that moment, as you said, in the CVS parking lot where I realized [00:08:00] that all of the wellness practices that I know and teach and all of the knowledge that I’ve amassed over the years for myself and for other people who want to live well.

Regardless of what they’re struggling with, I had this very big hole in my education. It was all around grief and loss and the big messy emotions that happen when life falls apart. And so I’ll cut to the CVS parking lot real quick and then I’ll pass it back to you. Here my dad was and he was dying and we didn’t know how much time he had left.

And my mother had sent me to the drugstore to get more insure because that’s all he could tolerate. And I was in the aisle looking at all these different bottles. I knew what flavor he liked, what he didn’t like, and I thought to myself, how many should I buy? And I was so shocked at that thought, because what I was doing was calculating.

Will he be here for 6? Will he be here for 12? And it was the first time I really let all of [00:09:00] those emotions that I had been holding back come up. And of course it was like one of those moments where it’s really embarrassing, you want to run and hide, you don’t want all this stuff to come up when you’re in the middle of the CBS aisle.

And I remember just running through the store trying to get to my car as quickly as possible so nobody would see me. And I just had this huge tidal wave of emotion. And it’s that tidal wave that you’re afraid that if you let it happen, you’ll drown. And I let it happen. I didn’t drown. I actually felt a little better.

And that’s when I said, where else in my life have I been? holding back, allowing myself to feel because it’s through those feelings that we start to heal. And that started the journey of this book and this chapter of my personal work and also what I’ve been sharing with the world. 

Melissa: Mmm, goodness me, it’s so big, it’s so big.

I remember I started very similar to you, teaching a lot [00:10:00] about health and nutrition and it was in my own personal journey where I then realized it’s not just about what we eat, it’s the inner work and that’s when my journey inward began. The self love, the inner child healing, that’s when that all began for me back in 2011.

And it was such a pivotal moment for me, but I want to talk to you about grief because so often we don’t allow ourselves to feel these big things. We push them down, we suppress them. And, yeah, it’s actually really fitting that we’re talking about this today because I received some really awful news over the weekend of a friend of mine passing and I’ve just been riding the waves of grief and I understand all the different things that come with it and then the anger and then all of the things.

So I’d love to talk to you [00:11:00] about that. If you have a framework for grief, and how do you perceive it? 

Kris: I don’t have a framework because I get nervous about frameworks for the big stuff, because I think we’re all so individual, and I think about grief, I, you know, the old me would say, I don’t want to, I don’t want to go there, partly because of what we’re talking about.

If we think of it as that wave, and it’s oftentimes used as. All the water metaphors are used in the grief community, and we think that if we feel it, we will be devoured by it. And so what do we do? We do everything in our power to push it down, to push it away, to hold it back. And it’s through that holding back that we create more suffering, more pain, more discomfort, more exhaustion.

And at some point we can’t hold it back, we can’t hold back the weight of the world and if grief is the ocean, no matter how powerful, we are not more powerful than the ocean. So we have this [00:12:00] choice, right? We can lay it down and say, okay, I’m going to dive through that wave, I’m going to let that wave wash over me and the tide will recede, it will, or maybe I’ll be floating on top of it or I’ll be deep in it, but I’m going to come up for air again.

And I think that’s a much easier approach. It doesn’t. feel easy intellectually? Because I think more often than not, it’s the fear of the pain and not really the pain itself. Because my fear of pain is so much greater than on the other side of actually just allowing myself to cry or to grieve or to fall apart, whatever that looks like.

Right? That’s actually very soothing and relieving because emotions are energy and energy needs to go someplace. When energy is trapped, we become stagnant. When energy is trapped, that’s when we become sick. And so it has to go [00:13:00] someplace. Ezra’s very gentle but very powerful. It’s an invitation to really loving yourself at a deep level and saying, Every single one of my emotions deserve to be here.

I can’t amputate any emotion and expect to be whole, and wholeness is the point, because wholeness leads to contentment and happiness and joy and all the things that we do on our spiritual practice or our wellness practice or our manifesting practice, right? The destination we’re trying to arrive at is feeling good and enjoying our lives.

When we have these areas of our lives where we, we don’t allow ourselves to go, I don’t think we can ever really feel good and ever really enjoy our lives fully in a holistic, really comprehensive way. And so it’s that invitation to a deeper self and a deeper healing. For me, that is what allowing ourselves to express.

and feel grief and the [00:14:00] emotions that come with it because it is a complicated emotion. So other complicated emotions are going to come up too. You mentioned anger, it could be shame, it could be jealousy, it could be a whole lot of big stuff that feels uncomfortable. It’s like what the fight or flight response looks like, right?

And when we’re in fight or flight, we go into survival mode. Grief hits on that button of survival mode. That’s why we fight so hard to not feel it. And I think that there’s a lot of ways, which we’ll explore throughout the, this beautiful conversation, that we can start to ease into our relationship with grief.

Melissa: Yeah, let’s talk about that. So how can we still live? A bright, beautiful, colorful life whilst honoring that grief. 

Kris: Well, at first, I don’t know about you, but I know I speak for myself and I write about this in the book is I felt really guilty to feel joyful. Those [00:15:00] moments after my dad passed and I’ve had other losses where You know, here I find myself laughing again or enjoying an evening with a girlfriend or doing something fun or going away with my husband, really having a good time.

There’s that part where you’re like, Oh, this feels really good. And then there’s that other part that’s like, I feel so guilty. He can’t do this. Who am I to feel joy again? The whole world should be wearing black and being in mourning. This big thing happened. The person I love isn’t here. And then I realized that joy is part of the medicine.

Joy is essential to our ability to survive as human beings. We need joy. It is that feel good experience that boosts our entire sense of self, it boosts our immune system, it helps with our overall vitality and longevity. And it’s an essential nutrient. And when we’re going through a difficult time, [00:16:00] joy is the antidote.

And it’s not necessarily like you’re going to be the happiest time of your life. It can be happier. Oh my gosh. That’s not what I’m talking about. But it’s those little moments of joy, little breathers of joy that bring oxygen back into our lives and remind us that life is still worth living. And it doesn’t have to be that you’ve lost somebody.

You could be, you could have lost your job, right? You could have broken up with a friend or a friend ghosted or dumped you unexpectedly. It could be For me, early in my diagnosis, it was the loss of my former sense of self, you know, who I was one day and who I was the next day. We’re two radically different people and I had to mourn that experience.

We die a thousand deaths every single day. We can no longer have yesterday. That’s a death, right? And so learning about this, I think is part of how we survive it and not only survive it, but actually [00:17:00] grow. really blossom from these experiences. 

Melissa: Absolutely. So for someone who’s maybe spent a majority of their life running in the opposite direction of their big messy emotions, what is the first step?

Like what would you say or recommend for someone to do when something arises within them? Do you have any specific tools or techniques or what do you do? Is it about just like opening yourself up and welcoming it? Like what do you do? 

Kris: Yeah, there’s a bunch of things that we can do. First and foremost, let’s take it down to the absolute basics, and that is giving yourself permission.

You’re listening to this conversation, and you maybe are thinking about something in the back of your mind, and maybe something’s coming up for you, and you already feel anxious about it. Instead of shutting down and running to all the things that we run to, from food, to TV, to sex, to [00:18:00] alcohol, to drugs, like all the things.

That we run to, for me, it would be overworking. I, uh, when my life falls apart, I hustle. Because hustling makes me feel like I’m in control. In a very out of control world. And so, you think about the go to that you normally would use to numb out. It’s a good intention, but like, just gone wrong. Right? So instead, set that intention to say, I am going to be brave enough to start to dip my toe in.

I’m going to be brave enough to give myself permission to just start to feel when I, when that emotion comes up, I’m just going to take a deep breath and breathe into it. And if tears happen, it’s okay. I’m not going to try to fix myself. I’m not broken. just need to feel and feel the love that I have for me, right?

And so just again, setting that intention that I’m safe and I’m going to go into this, allowing myself to feel and [00:19:00] understanding that I’m not broken. I just need to allow this energy to flow. So we can start there because that’s a real big one because most of us are. You know, three steps down the field already thinking about all the other things that we can do to try to avoid what the heck is going on.

So setting that intention and then I’d say the next very basic, we’re going to take baby steps right now. So many of us have no idea what the emotions are that we might be experiencing, especially when there’s a disturbance in the force, right? Because when there’s a disturbance in the force and we go into fight or flight mode, we are usually out of our bodies.

Sometimes we’re out of our minds, too. We’re out of our bodies, having an out of body experience. And so I don’t know if this has ever happened to you, but it has to me where maybe my husband or my best friend, Murray, would say, what’s up, are you okay? And I might say something like, I don’t know, I’m just out of sorts, I’m out of sorts.[00:20:00] 

Has that ever happened to you? Yeah. Yeah. You just can’t put your finger on it. And it’s, so many of us have those moments, and I would say that if you grew up in a household where you weren’t taught how to self soothe, where you felt voiceless, where your emotions backburnered for somebody else’s, or maybe you grew up in a house where you felt like you had to walk on eggshells and you weren’t safe to share your emotions, then you probably never could articulate as a child what you were feeling.

You couldn’t necessarily articulate it and you certainly didn’t know how to, like, sort of, tend to your nervous system and bring yourself back to homeostasis. We are still those little kids as big grown ups. And if we struggle then, and we, let’s say we haven’t done a lot of big work, we’re probably going to still struggle.

Even when we’ve done the big work, we may still struggle because again, when you’re in that state, you’re [00:21:00] having an out of body experience. So then the imitation is to name what you’re feeling. Even if you get it wrong. And so I do this exercise that an old acting teacher taught me a hundred years ago.

And she calls it culling conditions. And so if this is your instrument, which I believe is our instrument, whether we’re actors or not, then our emotions are a part of the palette right there, the crayons. And so. we would start to prepare for scene work by getting in touch with all the different parts of ourselves.

And so we’d stand up and we just one word at a time, anger, hungry, bored, cranky, hot. and just start to call the conditions that I’m feeling inside. So that’s a good place for you to start setting the intention and then locating what it is that we’re feeling because if you articulate what you’re feeling, there’s no way that you [00:22:00] can then tend to it, which is going to be your next step.

So those are the first two I would say. 

Melissa: Yeah, I love that. And then once you’ve tended to it, what does that look like and where do we go from there? 

Kris: Well, there’s never going to be an over, right? Because all of these emotions are again, are parts of ourselves. And I remember when a girlfriend of mine, you know, was interviewing me for my book and she said, is there something I can do to prevent this?

She’s type A wellness expert, wonderful. Cause if I can get on the prevention train for grief. I’m all about that because I never want to feel that, right? Unfortunately, that’s just not the way it works. And so we often say that the other side of love is grief. We can’t have one without the other. And if we want a life filled with love, which I do, we’re going to have a life that also contains grief.

And the more we love, the more we’re going to grieve. I’m going to adopt another [00:23:00] dog. If I’m lucky, that dog will live 15, 16, Who knows how many years, but that if I’m lucky, I’ll live longer than my dog and I will have to go through that experience again. I would never give up those 16 years of joy because I’m so afraid of that loss, right?

And so I think the tending part comes in when we realize that our emotions are energy, but they’re also information. They have something to share with us. They have something to show us. They have something to teach us. And oftentimes they lead us to deeper parts of ourselves that need that care and that tenderness.

And so it could be that you are doing breath work, could be that for many of us, it also requires support. So it could be a therapist, because when we go to the heart of the darkness, we go to the most tender and difficult places [00:24:00] inside ourselves, it’s good to have companionship, right? It’s good to have a guide.

It’s good to have somebody that you can really work through these experiences with, that you feel safe around, that isn’t necessarily part of your family or your friend’s structure. When my dad was diagnosed, I’d been in and out of therapy for over 30 years. And when he was newly diagnosed, it had been a bit since I’d been to therapy, and I knew the first thing I had to do was network with my friends.

And find a new therapist and start that relationship because I knew it was going to get worse. And as it got worse, other parts of me that were traumatized, quite honestly, would be coming up for care. And I’m like, I can’t handle all of this, including trauma, without help. 

Melissa: That’s a big piece is support because that [00:25:00] story that you have to do it all on your own.

Or that it’s weak if you ask for help, we need to literally put that in the bin right now, because we need to support each other. That’s what we’re here for, to help each other, to support each other through these challenging times. So if you feel shame come up around asking for help or support, you got to look at that, look at that and come to the place within yourself where you feel okay receiving that.

Like look at the stories that you’re telling yourself around that. So these big, huge emotions are essentially catalysts for change. They’re huge, they’re massive catalysts for change. You talk about the self care in the storm, which I love in the book, and it is such an important message because when life is messy, self care is often the first thing that goes to the bottom [00:26:00] of our to do list or just gets deleted completely.

So, can you tell us how do we practice self care when we are stuck in that storm? 

Kris: Well, we can talk about all of the practices and I teach what I call the five pillars of wellness, which I’m sure we will touch on, but I would say that the very first thing you can do when you find yourself in the heart of the storm is to Lower your standards.

Lower your standards because so many of us don’t even show up to the starting line and we certainly don’t show up for ourselves because we put such high expectations on ourselves. If I can’t do it perfectly, why bother? I’m not going to do it like her, then it’s not going to be enough. Allow all the things that we do to just sabotage ourselves and get in our way.

And when we’re challenged, time, you going through a rough patch and oftentimes. [00:27:00] You’re being challenged to make a whole lot of decisions, right, and uncomfortable decisions and maybe even time sensitive decisions. And you want to be firing on all cylinders when life needs you, when you need you. You want to be firing on all cylinders.

And we can’t fire on all cylinders when we’re depleted, but we also are miraculous. Our bodies are miraculous. It has been my experience, and I’ve seen it time and time again in my own wellness community, so it’s not just a study of one, is that even a thimble sized amount of self care begins to fill the well.

Your body is resilient. It’s like a plant. It just leans towards the light. You give it a little water. Have you ever had a wilted plant? And you gave it water and maybe a half an hour later you walk out of the room and you come back in and it’s just like, Hey, I’m back. Thanks.

Our bodies are [00:28:00] like that too. And yet we think we have to do all of the things full out to start to feel even a little bit of momentum. And that’s not the case. And so with the Pillars, what I like to do, it’s really the basis of lifestyle medicine. It’s something that I put together a long time ago because I realized, hey, I’m in this for the long haul and I believe in turtle power, which is slow and steady wins the race.

And there’s always going to be a new diet. There’s always going to be a shiny object. There’s always going to be a new fad. Now there’s going to be influencers, right? When I first started this, we didn’t even have social media. When I say that, it’s like, okay, granny, there’s always going to be something new.

But what are the things that we can all agree on? What is the basis of lifestyle medicine and it is always going to come down to an anti inflammatory diet and lifestyle. So I’d like to look at the various pillars of very various aspects that we can tend to and that’s being mindful about what we’re eating, what we’re drinking, what we’re thinking [00:29:00] and how we’re resting and renewing.

And all of these pillars, they sit on a foundation of stress management because stress creates inflammation and inflammation is at the root of many of our chronic illnesses, right? So it’s a synergistic system. You don’t have to do it perfectly. And You don’t have to do it all at once. It’s like, okay, well, what pillar am I struggling the most with right now?

Let’s say the pillar that you’re struggling the most with is hydration. And oftentimes when we’re struggling with hydration, we don’t even realize we are. We have brain fog. We have joint pain. We have issues with our digestion. We have low energy. Maybe we crave a lot of sugar and we look everywhere else and we don’t realize, oh my gosh, I haven’t had one glass of water today.

Okay, how often is it that I am not drinking enough water? Jeez, more often than not. [00:30:00] Gosh, when I’m actually drinking fluids, I’m having coffee and at the end of the day, wine to wind down. It’s wind down Wednesday somewhere. Let me start to be mindful about that. I’m going to try to drink more water. Half your body weight in ounces, whatever, your metric system, eight glasses of water, whatever it is.

We’re just going to start by drinking one glass of water, right? I’m going to start there and then I’m going to move on to another pillar. And you’re going to start to feel better. And then you realize that you can weave this into your life. It doesn’t have to be so difficult because if it’s a difficult plan, it’s not a sustainable plan.

Maybe it’s something that you can do for a period of life. Maybe there’s times where you have to do something more challenging to really reset your system. But when we’re in this for the long haul, we have to make it work with our lives. And that’s what the pillars allow us to do is just stay connected and mindful about these different areas.

And to learn practices to keep [00:31:00] them firing. 

Melissa: Beautiful. Can you go over those five pillars again? Could you just go through those one more time? Just so if people want to write them down or really let them absorb, let’s go through each one. 

Kris: Absolutely. So we focus on being mindful. about what you’re eating, what you’re drinking, what you’re thinking, and how you’re resting and renewing.

And the keyword that I said was mindful. I didn’t say we focus on crushing the pillars. We focus on dominating the pillars. We focus on perfecting the pillars. I didn’t say any of those things. I’ve said mindful, and it’s mindful more often than not. So for me, more often than not, we, I’m a very basic practical girl.

If there’s seven days in a week, more often than not is four. Four days a week, I’m really like, hey, I’m feeling pretty good, I’m doing my thing. More often than not, I’m taking care of these pillars. Now I’m looking at [00:32:00] these every day, right, but they’ve been, they’ve become so habitual for me. So we talked about making sure you’re getting enough water, you’re staying hydrated.

look at sleep, right? We know that sleep is so essential. It’s really when our body does so much of our repairs, when our brain repairs. And so if your pillar of sleep is the place where you need to put more energy, then that’s the pillar that you’re going to focus on learning about sleep hygiene and ways that you can actually wind down and tuck yourself in like a toddler, even though you might be in your fifties, sixties, seventies, eighties, nineties, but going back to I don’t have children, but my friends who have children, when I was little, there was a sleep routine, right?

There was a time that I had to go to bed. My friends who are raising small children create these sleep routines, and it’s great for their kids. They thrive. They do so much better with these three, uh, sleep routine. And yet we, as adults, If we put [00:33:00] our kids or our inner kid to sleep the way we treat ourselves, then it would be helter skelter.

You know what I mean? It’s like total pandemonium where you’re eating sugar up until the time you go to bed, you’re on your device, you’re basically watching things that scare you until the moment you go to sleep and you’re expecting to actually wake up refreshed. Or have a full night’s sleep. And so, again, coming back to that pillar of, okay, what are some basic sleep hygiene things that I can do?

How can I tuck myself in at night and give myself some wind down time and read myself a bedtime story that’s beautiful and just really like, say I love you, thank you for another day, body, see you tomorrow. And give yourself that experience. So what we’re eating, I teach an anti inflammatory plant based diet.

You don’t have to be 100 percent plant based to have incredible benefits of eating more plants and eating more real food. [00:34:00] And so you ask me, what do you start your day with? What did you have today? And that’s a smoothie. So I like to teach people the concept of adding before you subtract, especially if you’re new to this.

Just because. Subtraction can lead to feeling deprived. Why can’t I have this? Why everybody else has, why do I have to do this? And if we start by just adding more goodness into our day, we’re naturally going to crowd out what doesn’t serve us. And the easiest way to do that is a smoothie, and you can do it with all the good thoughts and protein.

I have cucumber and kale and avocado and fruit and hemp seeds and all great stuff. I was in an interview the other day and the fellow who was interviewing me, he said, or have an apple. And I was like, great, let’s make it even simpler. And let’s balance our blood sugar, just throw a little bit of almond butter on that apple, right?

So you just make it as simple as possible. We’re going to add before we subtract. adding the plant based nutrients and [00:35:00] plant based goodness. Thinking we’re talking about right now. The thinking pillar is, am I tending to my emotions? Am I managing my stress and my well being? Do I know how to self soothe?

Can I learn how to come back home to myself when I’m out of sorts? Right? That’s the thinking pillar that we’re always going to be practicing our entire lives. All throughout the day, we’re going to be triggered, pulled in and out of self, in and out of center. And it’s not about being pulled out, it’s about how fast we come back.

Renewing is moving our bodies. So Before it’s night for me, morning for you, I finished my day at work and I knew that I would be having this wonderful conversation with you. And I knew I didn’t have a lot of time, but I took a 20 minute walk because that’s going to help me feel good. It’s going to recharge my brain.

I got my movement in, can help me be sharp for this time that we have. So that’s just a little bit of an overview of the pillars. And then also some gentle [00:36:00] ways. You can feed each other. 

Melissa: Mm. I love that I call these the low hanging fruits because they really are very basic, simple things that we can all do every single day.

That add up to big results. You know, it’s these little things we do that either add up to big results or big consequences. And they’re not complex. And it’s just about that cumulative, like every day taking care of yourself in these ways that you’ve mentioned. That is going to, over time, really impact your body, mind, and spiritual health.

And like we said before, these are the things that often get pushed to the very bottom, but these are the things that need to be at the very top of our priority list. Taking care of ourselves is the most important thing. And I love that you mentioned all it takes is a little [00:37:00] thimble of self care or self love Into your cup, just a little tiny bit.

Cause I think so many people think, well, if I can’t go to the gym for an hour, I may as well not bother. Like, this morning I went to a Pilates class. I have had a lot, I’ve been experiencing and processing a lot this weekend. And I was like, should I go? Yeah, I’m going to go because it’s my favorite class of the whole week.

Like I love this teacher. It’s epic. It’s so fun. But I didn’t have 100 percent of my energy, but I still showed up and I laid there for a bit of it. I just laid on the floor holding in tears because I was like, probably not good to just like, let this all out right here, right now while everyone’s. Doing burpees, but I allowed myself to have a moment after in the car, but I’m proud that I showed up I’m proud that I showed up even though I laid there for a bit of it I’m proud that I showed up and that’s all it takes is a little thimble to fill yourself up.

So I love that. I really hope this inspires [00:38:00] people to take that time for themselves every day. But I want to switch gears for a minute because you mentioned before that you didn’t like life proof your business. You didn’t like have this all set up so that. If you needed to take time for yourself, your business could keep running and thriving.

And a lot of people call it baby proofing their business or life proofing their business. So, were you able to focus on your business while you were in that state of grief? Or did you completely take your foot off the pedal? Like, how did you approach this? 

Kris: Well, I couldn’t take my foot off the pedal because there was a lot of paychecks.

Right. So I, it’s not just me. So there’s, we have a pretty substantial team and I realized that I had to make some big leadership changes and that I had to really streamline how we were doing what we were doing. Focus on the things that really move the needle and let go of the things that don’t even if [00:39:00] it’s painful Even if you feel like you’re disappointing people Even if it feels like I can’t do this.

It does all the things that come up came up for me But it was a very fruitful time. It was a really difficult time too because I was also, I had to let some people go. I had to restructure in ways that I didn’t have the experience to do. So it’s like every coach needs a coach. And I found a coach for me that would really help me through that time.

And it’s just reminded of how powerful it is for us to have mentors and all the different aspects of our lives, whether it’s our health and wellbeing, our businesses, our marriages, our relationships, whatnot. It’s just to have, as you said, that support and to not think you can do it by yourself because the truth is that we are pack animals.

We need each other. We need that outside perspective. We need. [00:40:00] To be counseled by people who have walked the walk and talk and have experience with the things that we’re going through. It’s amazing how that experience can fast track your growth, fast track solutions. fast track healing, but it goes really slow and you can feel very lonely and very isolated.

Like you’re beating your head against a steel wall when you’re in your own little bubble. And so I had to get out of my bubble and really humble myself. And in moments it was, it was a little embarrassing. Like, I can’t believe I have to have, I’m at this place. I should, it shouldn’t be here. I should be further along.

I shouldn’t, all the things come up and then you just humble yourself and say, I’m ready for a miracle. I need help. And it’s amazing when you say that, how help arrives in ways that you didn’t even understand were possible for you. How I was doing business before and how I’m doing business now [00:41:00] are very different.

And the me four or five years ago wouldn’t have had the vision that the me now, the, the, today me has because I was shown other possibilities that I didn’t know existed. And so if you take anything from this experience, Walk with people, lock arms with people that you trust, because they will pull you forward when you need it most, just like you pull them forward when they need it most.

Melissa: So beautiful, and I think we’ve all been there before, well, I’ll speak for myself, I’ve definitely been there before, where I’m like, I should be further along, what am I, in consciousness kindergarten here, like, I thought I was at least in year four, like, how am I here, how did this happen? I’ve definitely felt like that before, but it’s humbling.

Like you said, it is very humbling and get [00:42:00] support, get support. I just, I love that so much. Talk to me about showing up on social media. Now I want to talk about when things feel like they’re falling apart or they’re messy. Or you’re going through a really hard time. Like, how do you navigate showing up on social media?

Do you keep posting like all the bright and happy stuff? Do you share a hundred percent of what you’re going through? Do you stay offline altogether? I think this is something that can be really tricky for entrepreneurs to navigate. So I would love your take on this because I personally, I don’t often share what I’m going through in the real time.

I share after. Once I’ve come out the other side, because I know I’ll come out. I don’t know exactly when, but I know I’ll come out and I know there will be some wisdom. I just don’t know when that exactly will happen, but I’d love to hear your take on this. 

Kris: When I was newly diagnosed, I made a film called Crazy Sexy Cancer and that’s really how I Burst on scene and [00:43:00] that was a long time ago, but it the Discovery Channel bought it and then Oprah Winfrey Network and All of that was very raw and it was all very real time and it took four years to edit So I was not in the same place.

I was when the film aired on television But I captured all those moments and they were very integral to the film and to the feeling that the film evoked. And so it depends on the relationship you have with your community. So I have a very loving, open, caring corner of the interweb, which is a very special thing because they’re actually hard to create.

And I was wanting to bring people into my journey because It was shaping so much of my work. I remember when my publishers were like, it’s time for you to write another book. This is my seventh book, but it had been like five years or so between books, maybe even a little [00:44:00] bit longer. Which is like decades.

Melissa: In bookland. 

Kris: In bookland, it is. And they were like, it’s time for you to write another book. You gotta get, you gotta get back out there. And they wanted me to write something that was probably more mass marketable and something that’d be uplifting and easy to sell and all that. And I couldn’t write that book because I was, and I think this is actually mass marketable and I think it’s very uplifting and very important work.

But I couldn’t. I remember when the head of my publishing company said, grief? Oh, that’s a tough one. Nobody wants to buy that book, especially the people who need it. And so I was like, well, I’ve written about hard stuff. I always talk about the hard stuff. And so I’m just, it started with cancer. It then went to vegetables and now we’re talking about grief.

So, I guess, for whatever reason, I like the hard stuff. For some people, vegetables are really hard. So, to answer your question, I did bring people in along the way, in whatever way I felt comfortable. And I think for me [00:45:00] personally, it’s always about having a teaching point. So if I’m sharing a story, if I’m sharing something that’s going on in my life, I’m There is a lesson, there is a theme, there is something that you can apply to yourself.

It could be an observation that I had, it could be something that I screwed up and that I wish that I knew more about, but at the time I didn’t have the tools. And maybe that has been something that you’ve experienced, right? So I’m always looking for my stories to become the catalyst for teaching. So I talk about so many stories in the book and I use stories because I think stories connect us.

They make us feel that, oh wow, that exact thing didn’t happen to me, but I have my own experience of that. It’s easier to learn through stories. We don’t always remember what people, all the facts and figures, but we remember highlights and aspects of their stories. And how those stories touch our hearts.[00:46:00] 

And so I always look at my life as content and then I say, okay, what’s the theme, what’s the lesson, what, how can this thing be useful and if it can’t be useful, it’s not something that I share. 

Melissa: Mm. Beautiful. I love that. I want to talk to the diagnosis that you got when you were 31, you have been living with it for so long.

There are so many misconceptions about chronic illness. What is one myth that you would like to debunk based on your own experience? 

Kris: One myth that I’d like to debunk, oh jeez, one myth that I’d like to debunk. I would say that, okay, so for the longest time I would get on a stage or I would be doing a book tour or something like that and I would share my story of living with chronic stage four cancer.

And I would look the way I look, and at a book signing or [00:47:00] afterwards or some point along the way, somebody would raise their hand to ask a question and say, congratulations for beating cancer. And I would literally be like, did you not hear a word that I said? Are you listening? I ain’t listening. Wake up.

I think we assume that it’s going to look a certain way and be a certain way and people will function a certain way and that it’s like an otherness and it looks many different ways and many of us are living big full lives with chronic illness. doesn’t define us. It may inspire us and may reshape our lives in difficult ways and in very extraordinary ways.

But I think we label people and we oftentimes perpetuate stigmas that have needed to be broken because they hold people back. And so I used to call myself a cancer survivor and then about [00:48:00] 10 years into my journey and answering that question a million times for saying, that’s actually not true. I started to call myself a cancer thriver, somebody thriving, living with, walking each day with illness, because there are more people like me out there.

And so I think it’s important for people to see our stories, too. 

Melissa: 100%. Are you in physical pain 

Kris: at all? No, I don’t have, I actually am pretty much asymptomatic. So my very rare sarcoma can be aggressive, it can be slow growing, it can start slow and become aggressive. So in the beginning of my diagnosis, I got tracked.

every two months, three months, six months. I remember the first time it was a year. It felt so amazing. It’s like a big graduation. And then three years came and now I just had my 21 year scan. And now my doctor said, if you want to go five years, we can do that. So I’m going to go back in five [00:49:00] years. And so I don’t have physical symptoms.

They basically like just track me to if the cancer has woken up and become aggressive, but pretty much. Just hanging out, and if my symptoms change, right, if I start to have symptoms, then that would tell me I need to go and get scanned. But there aren’t, there aren’t really treatments for my disease yet, even though it’s been 21 years.

Because with rare diseases, oftentimes there isn’t the funding, there isn’t the research, there aren’t enough patients. for pharmaceutical companies to invest in cures for us, invest in the research for us. And I think that was one of the turning points that got me into wellness because my doctor said, we’re going to watch and wait and you watch and live.

And I didn’t know how to do that. And so I left the hospital and went to Whole Foods because I didn’t know where else to go. I was literally left Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston and drove to Holbrook and got my car and was going in through the [00:50:00] produce aisle crying because first of all I have stage four cancer that’s incurable, secondly, what the fuck is kale?

I’ve never seen anything like that. I don’t want to taste it. I got to cook it and eat it? Like, it was devastating because I came from the standard American diet of fast food, anything that was, you know, greasy, disgusting, and delicious was my cup of tea. And so it was this huge change for me. And slowly over time, I figured it out.

I figured out how to do what we do, which is like, cook these foods, make them taste delicious. You start to feel your energy come back, or maybe even you have it for the first time ever. And then it became something that I couldn’t live any other way. So no, I don’t have physical symptoms. For me, it’s about not just the watching and waiting, but it’s about going the distance.

So it’s the [00:51:00] mental game for me. It’s a mental marathon. 

Melissa: 100%. It’s just amazing. You are so inspiring. You are truly so inspiring. And all of your books are inspiring. And I want to link to everything in the show notes for everyone to go and check out. So you have no symptoms. Do you know what could trigger a flare up?

Like obviously it’s inflammation. Do you know, are there any specific things that really flare it up for you? Like late nights? I don’t know. What flares it up for you? 

Kris: Nothing flares up my illness because it’s pretty much stayed indolent, right? So what can flare up me not feeling well is absolutely all the things that are inflammatory from eating crappy food to not taking care of myself, not sleeping.

For me, I like to focus on my gut health, right? So if we know our immune system is basically in our gut. And so the [00:52:00] more we’re taking care of our gut, the more we’re taking care of our overall health, well being, longevity, vitality. And so I focus on the things that I can really participate in and move the needle on and have an impact on.

There was a time when I was newly Oh my gosh, I’ve done so many things from macrobiotics to raw food to you name it. I’ve been doing this, as I said, 21 years. And when I go in deep, I’m a like Semper Fi, do or die, let’s get this done. And I was so hellbent on curing myself and it was a passion. It was like the only thing I could think of, well, if you can’t take care of it, I’ll take care of it.

Right. I’ll figure this out. I remember around my 10 year cancerversary when everybody was so excited for me because I was given 10 years to live. The first doctor that I spoke to suggested a triple organ transplant. So that didn’t happen, thankfully. I was like, I don’t know much about illness or medicine, [00:53:00] but that sounds really dumb.

No. And the next one gave me 10 years to live. So here I am at my 10 year cancerversary and everybody is so happy for me. My unconscious, my family, but the only one who’s not happy is me. Because I hadn’t cured myself. And so I felt like a failure and by that time I had already been a New York Times bestseller.

So I felt like an imposter too, phony, like how could anybody want to listen to me? I had, I’m not perfect on paper. And I had to have one of those big come to Jesus talks with myself of, What if you live your whole life with chronic illness and it wasn’t good enough for you and you wasted it? And that’s when I decided that there’s a big difference between healing and curing.

And curing can, it takes place in the body and it may or may not happen and that’s okay. But healing is a spiritual practice and healing can happen at all times, in [00:54:00] all stages, through the moment of our death and beyond. And so I shifted to the healing journey and work very closely with my emotions and all of the fear and anxiety that can come up when I go to the places of what if.

Do you feel like it makes you really live? It does. It also, because I’m a human being, I go back to sleep, right? So we wake up and we go back to sleep. It’s like, I don’t know. I’m not the Dalai Lama. So it’s like, I am not in a perpetual state of awake and light, fully alive. But I know what fully alive living looked like and feels like.

And feels like, and I know how to touch it more often than not. And I know when I’m out of that alignment, how to gently nudge myself back in, but you’re going to go in and out. And that’s part of the process. 

Melissa: Yeah, absolutely. The Buddhists contemplate death every day and it allows them to fully live. And I know [00:55:00] for me very early on, like my late teens, early twenties, I.

Never spoke about it. I didn’t want to talk about death and then you lose someone and you’re faced with this and it does really make you look at everything and how you’re living your life. And after one of my friends just passing away on the weekend, I’m like, don’t sweat the small stuff. Like, why do I care if my husband leaves his towel on the floor?

Just leave, who cares? Like, it’s just not worth it. Like, it’s just not worth the stress, like, let it go, like, just, literally, all of these saying, don’t sweat the small stuff, like, just keeps coming to me, don’t sweat the small stuff, like, it really doesn’t matter, it really doesn’t matter. But even just saying that, like, I don’t even need to say it because like I’ve literally since that moment, I’ve just completely let go of those things, those seemingly little things that you just like [00:56:00] doesn’t like life is what matters.

The people you love holding my daughter, like having conversations and laughing with my friends and my husband and connecting with him. Like those are the things that matter. Yeah. Our relationships. That’s what matters. And so, yeah, I am often. Reflecting on our time here on earth. And it really does inspire me to live a more full life.

Kris: I think that’s it. That’s the ticket to how we navigate life. And I want to come back to the idea that we go back to sleep because when we’ve gone through a rupture, it’s that moment where life changes, you losing your friend and it reorganizes us. And so in that reorganization process, we do have these ahas and these awakenings.

It brings us back. to the heart of why we’re here and who we are and what matters to us. And as life goes on, we will forget again. And so we can [00:57:00] use those moments of deep sadness and change and rupture as these touchstones in our lives to say like, Gosh, I miss my friend and I really want to honor that loss.

By continuing on this path towards love, because everybody in your life at some point is going to die. You are going to lose them, or they will lose you. We can’t get out of this. It’s what ties us all together. It’s the one central through line, which is our mortality. And so just to be able to touch that, as you say.

I think can remind us of how we want to spend our time. You don’t have to touch it long, because it’s not the, I’m not a Buddhist, but I would say I touch it every day, and I have for 21 years now. I don’t spend a lot of time in that place, but I spend a little bit of time in that place, and it’s a like, it’s a recalibration.

Melissa: Yeah. [00:58:00] Yeah. Mm. Yeah. Beautiful. And it’s not morbid. It’s just life. Like you said, it touches us all and it makes me love more when I touch it. It makes me love more. It makes me live more. It makes me let go more. 

Kris: The towel on the floor and mine will be like the shoes. It’s like, why are the shoes on? Why are the muddy shoes on?

I don’t understand it. And then if, if I’m being my heart place, I’m like, shh, mind your own business. Like, what are you? What are you, the shoe police? Come out! Is it really, to your point, worth it? But we get ourselves so hooked up on the little things and totally lathered up and then the big things happen and it’s just like, it’s on like Donkey Kong and life is just too sweet to be bitter and to be caught up in the smallness of it all.

Melissa: Absolutely. Absolutely. Nice reminder. Beautiful reminder. Okay, now let’s pretend you had a magic [00:59:00] wand and you could put one book in the school curriculum of every high school around the world. What book would you choose? Now besides your books, because they’re incredible, and I think that they should all be in the curriculum, and I’ll link to all of them in the show notes.

What book would you choose for girls and boys that’s 16, 17 year old and it doesn’t have to be on health, it could be spirituality, it could be business, relationships, money. What’s the first book? 

Kris: Oh my gosh, I’ll just say the first one that came to mind because there’s a lot. I want the whole entire library to be what I get to curate.

I would say a book that has been so influential to me and something, there’s one chapter I really like to reread. I try to reread it yearly, which makes me remember I haven’t read it this year. So thank you for that. 

Melissa: Well, we’re still early on, babe. You got time. 

Kris: We are. Thank you. Yes, you’re absolutely, you made me feel better.

All the things. The Four [01:00:00] Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz. 

Melissa: Essential. There’s a few people, a few guests that have said that book. A few guests. And I’ve had Don Miguel Jr. on the podcast. So yes, if you have not read The Four Agreements, do it. Get your kids to read it. Write it on your bathroom mirror. Read them every day.

Make them become part of your lexicon in your family. 

Kris: It’s so true. I’d say the number one thing I think. That I have, I’ve gotten from that book and something I’ve seen myself grow through and with is not taking things personally. And not making assumptions. And how often we do, oh, this happened because she thinks this, oh, I bet you he or he’s mad because of this, I bet you this happened, whatever it is, and we make all these assumptions and we tell ourselves these stories and to just take life at face value, and it’s difficult if you’ve been raised in an anxious [01:01:00] environment, if you’ve raised walking on eggshells, like all that kind of stuff, part of our survival is to try to figure out where the landmines are.

It’s difficult. But if we go through like trying to figure out where the landmines are, you better believe we’re making a whole lot of assumptions and we’re telling a whole lot of stories that are probably not true. And we’re just leaping on these labels and these disbarriers to connection with people.

So that book really opened my eyes to that. 

Melissa: Yeah, I absolutely love it and totally agree. Like be impeccable with your word. Mmm. So good. Don’t make assumptions. I’m looking at myself. Don’t make assumptions. Because you’re right. We make this assumption which then turns into this story that we’ve created in our head that then we project onto whoever’s involved and then the relationship turns to shit because of this assumption that we made that [01:02:00] isn’t even true.

It’s just crazy. A hundred 

Kris: percent. 

Melissa: It’s crazy. And like, I’m constantly reminding myself of this, don’t take it personally, don’t take it personally, don’t take it personally. I am constantly reminding myself of this, this one in particular, because it’s so important. So important. Okay, my love, I would love to hear now how your day unfolds.

I love hearing about rituals, routines, what you do. Talk to us about from when you wake up to when you go to bed, all the little things you do. Meditate. times. Let’s do it. 

Kris: So my days are pretty simple. So my practices are very simple too. I would say that the most important thing that I can share is the first thing that I do every day and that is I start the day with thank you body.

I just take a moment to thank my body and say thank you for another day. It is not easy to be alive. I’m so [01:03:00] grateful to you. Thank you, body. And that puts me in this place of gratitude, no matter how I’m feeling under the weather, feeling blue, feeling depressed, whatever it is, it puts me in that place of gratitude.

And it might not be cancer, but I have other like things going on that actually, like many of us, it’s like these things pop up, right? And so you could get really down about what’s not working right. and not focus on all the things that are working right. So that’s my number one practice. And then I like to spend some time by myself.

And that could be through journaling, meditation, reading things that are uplifting and enriching and spiritual, 15, 20, maybe 30 minutes if I have it. And then it’s really about making my smoothie and, and getting the day going. I tend to move my body later in the day. I also try to get up as much as possible because a lot of the work that I do, and I’m sure you can relate, is you’re at your [01:04:00] desk, you’re writing, you’re creating content, you’re doing things, but you’re sitting.

And so just making that effort to get up. Even if you have to set an alarm to just make sure you get up and move and go to the mailbox and take deep breaths to do some sun salutations or we’re in Florida right now and I have this really adorable little pool right there, right outside the door. And so it could be like, I’m going to get in my meeting suit for a few minutes in between meetings and put my hair up and just like do a few laps and then get back in just to give myself that mental break, but also to move a little bit.

So again, it’s really about weaving all these practices into our lives. I like cooking, so I usually make our food. My husband makes the smoothie in the morning, that’s his thing, and I do lunch and dinner. And we try to keep it really simple. We work from home, we work together, and so it’s about like making sure that when work is over, it’s over, and that we actually have a more of a three dimensional life, and that we don’t bring our work into every aspect of our life, even if we love it.[01:05:00] 

And that’s like a good kind of snapshot of our day. 

Melissa: I love it. Thank you so much for sharing that. So you work with your husband. Let’s talk about this because I do too. I want to talk about this. How do you do it in the business? What are his roles? Are they very different to yours? Do some of them crossover?

And how do you make that work? 

Kris: Yeah. So some of them do crossover. So he’s our COO and he does all of our production. And so when we’re doing production, like. You can’t see the lights and all the stuff set up right now and he’s the person who came on camera before and so he sets it all up and if I’m shooting program videos or if I’m shooting a webinar or anything like that, he’s running all of that.

And then, but he also does operations. So that’s all like the HR and all the, all the palette flows in the background. It’s so easy to see like, Oh, this is what it looks like out front, but in the back there’s so many other things. There’s so many other people who help. [01:06:00] Us be who we are in the world and bring the work that we are doing into the world.

And so he’s like the chief wrangler of that. I would say that there was a time when we were both a little bit too stepping on each other and we were, our roles were not as clearly defined as they are now. Now, I was also part of the life proofing because if everybody’s doing everything, then everybody’s doing nothing.

And if one person steps out, it’s a much bigger loss. Right? Because they wear so many hats as opposed to being laser focused in the lane that they are best suited to be in and that the company needs the most. And so right now we have overlap places that we actually like to work with each other. and less of the places where we could murder each other if we’re not very thoughtful.

Melissa: I love it. I love it. 

Kris: Yeah. Cause see, nobody likes to be told what to do, and my husband definitely doesn’t like it when I’m the one telling him what to do. [01:07:00] That’s just not good for the relationship in any way, shape, or form. 

Melissa: No way. No way. So do you guys have some healthy boundaries that you kind of like, okay, works over now?

Like we’ve had to really set some healthy boundaries because it’s very easy to be in the kitchen while our daughter is running around her feet and him go, Oh, I just, we’re going to do this with that launch. And I’m like, no, now, like, it’s not now. Like. You gotta wait. And also, because then like, I can’t write it down, like then I’ll lose it in my mind, like, come to me, like, in the meeting and tell me these things.

So, do you guys have to set some healthy boundaries? 

Kris: Same exact 

Melissa: thing. 

Kris: Especially around the whole like, drive by, tell you an idea, and then split, and you’re just like, was that for me to take dictation? 

Melissa: Am I implementing it? Like, what am I doing with that? 

Kris: What am I doing with it? If you want this to happen, the proper channels to go to.

Melissa: Well, like, we have rules. Like, we use Slack and ClickUp. I’m not sure if you use, like, those things. [01:08:00] He’ll tell me things in my Slack, like, can you re record this and I’m like, put it in my ClickUp. Don’t put it in my Slack. If you want me to do something, like put it in my ClickUp. I’m like, that’s how we teach the whole team, but you’re not doing it.

That’s what we teach everybody. 

Kris: Oh, listen, we, I think we have very similar conversations in our two households on the other side of the world. from each other. 

Melissa: Oh, but it’s beautiful to work together. It really is. And it also takes healthy boundaries to make it really thrive. 

Kris: It does. It’s funny because in my morning practice this morning, I wrote everything that’s right with your life.

I was like, this is a list. I want to create this list. I want to start it today. And because when you, it’s easy to forget and it’s easy to be like, here’s what’s not working. It’s so easy to go to that place. And the truth is that we’re wired to be negative as part of our survival mechanism. It’s called negativity bias, right?

So I started that and I was like, Oh, [01:09:00] we can work anywhere we want in the world. No matter what’s going on, whether it’s great or shit, we can work anywhere we want in the world. So again, one for the everything that’s right with my life list. And if you start, if you make that list for yourself, anybody that’s listening, start a blank page, start a page in your journal and just start to write everything that’s right with my life.

All the small things, big things that really are, feel like are flowing for you. You’d be surprised how long that list gets. And when you’re going through a time when you’re down, you start to look at that list and feel the energy of that list. You can shift so quickly. 

Melissa: I love that. It’s beautiful. I do. I’m grateful for every morning and every night.

And I just do dot points and it doesn’t take me long. It probably takes me 20 seconds, but it really makes a difference to how I feel and my mental health. So if you don’t have a journaling [01:10:00] practice. Start. It’s very powerful. And to start with, yeah, all that’s great in my life or I’m grateful for, beautiful.

All right, my love, I’ve got three rapid fire questions for you now. Are you ready? I’m ready. I’m ready. 

Kris: I’m 

Melissa: ready. What is one thing we can do today for our health? 

Kris: One thing that you can do for your health is to decide that you’re worth it. Decide that you’re worth investing in and decide that it’s not too late for you.

No matter where you are, no matter how you’re starting, you’re worth it and it’s not too late. Never too late. 

Melissa: Absolutely. Beautiful. We’re all worth it. What is one thing we can do for more wealth in our life? 

Kris: For more wealth in your life, Take inventory of all the wealth that you already have. Sometimes it’s not about accumulating more, it’s about acknowledging what already exists.

Absolutely. Beautiful. 

Melissa: And last one. What’s one thing we can do for more love in our life? 

Kris: Ooh. [01:11:00] If you want more love in your life, put love at the center of everything you do. Lead with love. If you don’t know what to do or what to say or what the next move is, say, what would love do? What would love say?

How would love behave? Do that. 

Melissa: Beautiful. I love that. This has been so beautiful. I’ve absolutely loved this conversation. You are helping. You are serving so many people with your books, your programs, your talks, everything, your social media. So I want to know how I and the listeners can give back and serve you today.

Kris: Oh my goodness, that’s so sweet. Well, you can come and visit me at kriscarr. com and I’m at crazysexyKris on Instagram and my book is called I’m not a morning person. And it’s about braving loss, grief, and the big messy emotions that happen when life falls apart. And it is available everywhere books are sold.

Melissa: Congratulations. I’ll link to it in the show notes as well as all of your [01:12:00] magic. Thank you for being here. It’s been such a delight to have this conversation with you. Is there anything else you would like to share? 

Kris: Just that I’ve enjoyed every moment of this. I have really loved you from afar, and so it’s such a treat to get to finally meet you.

Melissa: Oh, thank you so much. I’ve loved and adored you from afar, especially when I first saw you at that event in New York, and one of the first things you did when you got on stage. You probably don’t even remember this babe. This is like, I don’t know, 2012 maybe. And I think you were like, I used to be an actress and I used to be an actress too and a performer.

And I think you were like doing some high kicks or you, yeah, you were like, I used to be an actress or a performer. And I was like, I really like her. 

Kris: Yeah. Oh my gosh. I love that. Thank you for that. Thank you for reminding me of that. That’s fantastic. 

Melissa: I’m sure it’s on film somewhere. Yeah. 

Kris: Oh, no doubt. I can probably dig [01:13:00] that out.

I know exactly who to call. 

Melissa: Well, thank you so much for being here. It’s just such a delight to have this conversation with you. And I’m so grateful. Thank you. Thank you, honey.

I hope you got so much out of this episode and I hope you are inspired. To live a bigger, more beautiful and meaningful life. And if you loved this conversation, please subscribe to the show and leave me a review on Apple podcast, because that means that we can inspire and educate even more people together.

And also means that all of my episodes will just pop up in your feed. So you never have to go searching for a new episode. Now, come and tell me on Instagram at Melissa Ambrosini, what you got from this episode. I love connecting with you and I love hearing from you. And before I go, I just wanted to say, thank you so much for being here, for wanting to be the best, the healthiest and the happiest version of yourself and [01:14:00] for showing up today for you.

You rock. Now, if there’s someone in your life that you can think of that would really benefit from this episode, please share it with them right now. You can take a screenshot, share it on your social media, email it to them, text it to them. Do whatever you’ve got to do to get this in their ears. And until next time, don’t forget that love is sexy, healthy is liberating, and wealthy isn’t a dirty word.

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Thank you so much for listening. I’m so honored that you’re here and would be SO grateful if you could leave me a review on Apple podcasts, that way we can inspire and educate even more people together.

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P.P.S. Please seek advice from a qualified holistic practitioner before starting any new health practice.