Finding Growth in Challenges and Adversity: Sheila Tully on Mental Wellness
Join us on an enlightening journey with our wise guest, Sheila Tully, a behavior change specialist who has mastered the art of changing lives for the better. Her mission is to awaken midlife women’s love for life again, and she shares her intriguing insights on why this century is all about embracing wisdom. Sheila has decades of experience as a corporate executive and currently hosts her own podcast, sharing guidance on how to understand the brain and its nature — for lasting change.
Men and women alike will benefit from the wisdom shared by Sheila in this special 19-minute episode. We venture into discussions that redefine personal growth. We explore the power of passion, the beauty of challenges, and how these elements can transform our lives. Sheila guides us through overcoming fears and anxieties that often stem from our limiting beliefs, and how to go beyond our comfort zones, embracing new experiences that lead us to significant life changes. Together, we explore the pathway toward becoming the individuals we aspire to be.
Brief Bio for Sheila Tully
Sheila Tully has worked with hundreds of smart, midlife women, helping them to change in ways that have them loving their lives again. Sheila spent 25 years as a corporate executive and was the CEO and co-founder of the tableware company Ella Style.
Following an early retirement, Sheila pivoted to a new career in the emotional health space, as a practitioner of the work that had helped her get unstuck. She now teaches a fresh approach to understanding the nature of the brain in a way that makes any change you want to make in your life not only possible but permanent.
Sheila comes to us today from her home in Nashville, TN.
Resources
Check out Sheila’s website – sheilatully.com
Contact Sheila via email to: sheila@sheilatully.com
Sheila’s podcast “Our Modern Emotional Lives” on Apple or Spotify
Gratitude for Our Show Sponsor: Wonder & Grow
This episode was made possible in part by support from Wonder & Grow.
Wonder & Grow guides you through natural spaces, interweaving mindfulness, movement and sensory awareness experiences. Your senses awaken, you’re more creative. You experience the healing properties of nature. Wonder & Grow is for all ages and backgrounds. They offer monthly events, workplace wellness and much more. Learn more here.
Credits
Editor + Technical Advisor Bob Hotchkiss
Brand + Strategy Advisor Andy Malinoski
PR + Partnerships Advisor Rachel Bell
Graphic Design Chloe Lineberg
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Episode Chapters
[0:03:05] – Wisdom and Mental Health for Women
Sheila Tully helps midlife women change and gain wisdom to love their lives, leveraging knowledge of the brain for permanent change.
[0:09:12] – Special Message from Wonder & Grow
[0:11:15] – Embracing Challenges for Personal Growth
We discuss the importance of following our passions and how it can help us grow and challenge ourselves. We explore how mastering our minds and looking at challenges as growth opportunities can help us stabilize happiness and joy. Sheila also discusses how feelings of inadequacy, fear, and anxiety come from our own thoughts and limiting beliefs.
[0:17:40] – Learn How to Connect with Sheila and Her Podcast
[0:18:04] – A Meaningful and Valuable Conversation
We explore passions, purpose, taking action, and reflection to become our best selves.
Show Notes supported in part by https://podium.page
Full Transcript of This Episode
0:00:00 – Announcer
Wisdom. It’s an incredibly valuable asset, someone say more precious than gold. It’s attractive, appealing, admirable. Conversely, a lack of wisdom is the basis of immaturity, blind spots and bad decisions. Wisdom, it can be gained over time, but it can’t be rushed. But wisdom can be shared. That’s precisely what we are here to do right now, today. We are here to hack wisdom, to distill it, to understand it and to process it. Why? To get better at life.
Welcome to The Main Thing. This is your new 9-minute podcast. I’m your host, Skip Lineberg, and I’ve set out to interview the wisest people I know. We’ll see what we can learn from each one when they’re faced with an incredibly difficult, soul-piercing question.
0:01:00 – Skip Lineberg
You may have noticed the theme this month if you’re a regular listener. We’re focusing on mental health. It’s a great topic on its own and of special significance during this month, focused on suicide awareness and prevention. As we study wisdom and the possibility of applying wisdom to help us get better at life, mental health is clearly a component of living well and living a better, more fulfilled life.
Thank you to our newest patron, Emily from North Carolina. Emily, thanks for helping to keep this pipeline of wisdom flowing. If you’d like to learn about supporting our work in a monetary manner, like Emily and our other patrons, you can learn all about it at Patreon dot com.
If you’re new to our wisdom podcast, I encourage you to head on over to the main thing podcast dot com, where you can discover what we’re all about and you can access all the resources we provide to help you get a little better at life.
Our special guest today is Sheila Tully. Sheila is a behavior change specialist and host of the podcast Our Modern Emotional Lives. She’s worked with hundreds of smart midlife women, helping them to change in ways that have them loving their lives again. Sheila spent 25 years as a corporate executive and was CEO and co-founder of the tableware company Ella Style. Following an early retirement, Sheila pivoted to a new career in the emotional health space as a practitioner of the work that had helped her get unstuck. She now teaches a fresh approach to understanding the nature of the brain in a way that makes any change you want to make in your life not only possible, but permanent. Sheila comes to us today from her home in Nashville, TN. So settle in and get ready. Over the next nine minutes, you will discover why Sheila Tully is one of the wisest people I know.
0:02:53 – Skip Lineberg
Sheila Tully, good morning, welcome to The Main Thing Podcast!
0:02:56 – Sheila Tully
Thank you so much, Skip. I’m so happy to be here.
0:02:59 – Skip
Yeah, thanks for making some time to share your wisdom with us today.
0:03:03 – Sheila Tully
Very, very happy to be on. Thanks so much.
0:03:05 – Skip
Sheila, you and I, we both have a passion for helping people, helping them get unstuck, helping them to grow to overcome. Talk to me about that. That’s your focus with your podcast and your coaching. What led you to make this focal point in your life work?
0:03:21 – Sheila Tully
I am now teaching this work that I learned to get myself unstuck and come full circle Skip. That’s really how I came to teach this work and it’s really in the emotional health space and it is I focus on midlife women and the reason that I do, that is that you know we’re living in the century of wisdom, we’re living in what some people call the Sophia century, when it’s that century when women finally step into their rightful role in co-equal partnership with men.
0:04:06 – Skip
Yes, right!
0:04:08 – Sheila Tully
It’s a Native American prophecy actually where the bird of humanity, realizes it has been flying with one wing while the other, you know, was limp and not fully extended, and that one wing has become overly muscular. Yeah, so when the other wing is finally able to strengthen and fully extend itself, the other wing relaxes and the burden of humanity can finally soar and not be going in circles.
0:04:47 – Skip
I like it. I’m all for that. I’m so ready for that. As the parent of a daughter and someone who works for an amazing woman business CMO, business leader, someone married to a fabulous woman I’m all for that.
0:05:05 – Sheila Tully
Yes, yes, it’s so needed. We are now swimming in so much knowledge. We have knowledge. Everything anyone has ever known is now on our phones. But what’s lacking is wisdom.
0:05:20 – Skip
Yeah, there’s a quote that’s I’m sure you’ve seen it it’s one of my favorites where we’re drowning in knowledge but we’re starving for wisdom.
0:05:32 – Sheila Tully
I’m surprised I haven’t seen that, but of course doesn’t it? That’s exactly right.
0:05:36 – Skip
We’re starved for wisdom, and just flooded with knowledge and information.
0:05:42 – Sheila Tully
Yeah, that’s it, and what I know, being one of these midlife women, is that we are so needed our children. We all love our children. They’re so smart, but they have a lot of knowledge.
0:05:59 – Skip
Yes.
0:06:00 – Sheila Tully
What’s needed is the wisdom. Wisdom comes from experience, and what I see is that there is an aspect of midlife women where we still need to go inside and find our own internal mass to not be, seeking validation and guidance outside of ourselves, but inside, and it’s the work to free ourselves. And that’s really what I do, yeah, help kind of liberate women from the inside out, and you do that kind of one mind at a time.
0:06:40 – Ski
Yeah, for you … I have to imagine that was so powerful, so freeing, so eye-opening that you had to share it with others. I’m so, so thrilled about what you’re doing, Sheila, and especially in September 2023, when we’re recording. My focus is on mental health. My prior guest, Shawn Lesser on Episode 97, talked about mental health and wellness for men. Here we are now having a wonderful complementary conversation about emotional health and well-being for women. It’s just perfect, the perfect complement to the trajectory that this show is on this month and, of course, it’s also suicide awareness and prevention month. This just all fits together so nicely, and I’m just so delighted to have access to you and what you bring.
0:07:37 – Sheila Tully
Well, same. Thank you so much for being a platform. We need all hands on deck.
0:07:43 – Skip
Yes, we do, yes, we do. No voice more important than the other. I want to thank our common friend, maureen Doyle for connecting us. Maureen was my guest on Episode 89, just a few short months ago. I wondered if you would just give us a little bit of a snapshot of your friendship with Maureen.
0:08:04 – Sheila Tully
She’s been a great addition to my friendship circle here in. Nashville. I’m just so happy that she’s here and she’s somebody that I admire, maureen a lot. I admire her. She has kind of this combination of modesty and confidence. You know, yes, she’s a very accomplished person. She has a financial background. She worked for the airlines.
0:08:34 – Skip
She’s been an intrepid world traveler.
0:08:36 – Sheila Tully
Yeah, exactly.
0:08:37 – Skip
Yeah, yeah, crazy combination of skills and life experience.
0:08:42 – Sheila Tully
Right, I love that there again somebody was kind of following what she loved and all that travel got her, you know, she became a Spanish speaker and she landed a job as a Spanish teacher and she raises two accomplished young women. But her focus is outside of her. You know she’s helping others. And she’s very, very good at it.
0:09:05 – Skip
Yes, she is. Thank you, Maureen.
0:09:08 – Sheila Tully
Yes, thank you, Maureen.
0:09:12 – Announcer
Hey, listeners, we have to learn to get better at caring for ourselves. I’m no exception, in fact. Last month I began a program of self-care, mindfulness and relaxation with Wonder & Grow. Wonder & Grow guides you through natural spaces, interweaving mindfulness, movement and sensory awareness experiences. Your senses awaken, you’re more creative. You experience the healing properties of nature. Wonder & Grow is for all ages and backgrounds. They offer monthly events, workplace wellness and much, much more. Wonder & Grow is a community of people who share a passion for nature and a desire to live a balanced, inspired, fulfilled life. Head over to wonder and grow dot org and find out how you can join the adventure. Mindful Nature Experience from Wonder & Grow. Start yours at wonderandgrow.org.
0:10:10 – Skip
Sheila Tully, what’s the main thing you’ve learned in your lifetime so far?
0:10:16 – Sheila Tully
Skip. The main thing I’ve learned in my lifetime so far is the world was not designed to make us happy. It was designed to challenge us, to grow closer and closer to a full expression of our true selves. The closer we are to our true selves, the more of a blessing we are on the planet.
0:10:49 – Skip
Oh my gosh. Wow, what a powerful statement! Your main thing, Sheila: the world was not designed to make us happy; the world was designed to challenge us, to help us grow. Would you tell us more about that? Take us inside of it as you do? I’d like to ask you to just click into when that clarified for you and when it became your main thing.
0:11:15 – Sheila Tully
I think, Skip that any of us. You know, if we’re struggling in our occupations, are struggling in our lives, in every in any way. We, we think, if I, if we just follow our passion, then we will be happy. But that’s not actually how it works it is important to follow your passion. Okay, and now I am following my passion and and I’m challenged by it all the time.
And that’s how I know I’m on the right track, because it’s my passion and I’m challenged. I’m very motivated to get over the obstacles, to face the fears and keep going, because it’s this wish and this desire and this passion of mine and it’s pulling me like a magnet to overcome these limitations that I have about myself and what I’m capable of, that only they. They belong to me and also I’m the only one who can drop them.
Yeah and that is the importance of the passion. Like we, it’s not about following your passion to be happy. You follow your passion, so that you are challenged, and don’t give up and keep growing.
Yes, and you keep growing, you keep shedding all of the things that are in the way, that exist in your own mind, about what it is that you think is possible for you. That is that’s the point. You, every living thing, every blade of grass, every animal, every single thing, is challenged to become itself, to To thrive, and we are no different. And nothing grows in comfort. We grow in the discomfort.
0:13:19 – Skip
That’s right. I think about, for example, physical training. You know, we, we strain our muscles and we, you know, actually break the muscle fibers down a bit because they grow back and rebuild and are stronger.
0:13:30 – Sheila Tully
That’s it. It’s the perfect metaphor, isn’t it?
0:13:33 – Skip
It is yeah, yeah. So the world is not designed to make us happy. Happiness comes from within, and you touched on Mastering our mind. You know, just taking care of that one mind. It’s ours. We need to learn, learn to master it. That that’s one of the keys. The second part is Is to look at challenges, adversity, struggles as growth opportunities. Yeah, yes. Awesome. Was there a particular moment or incident when this just lit up for you as wisdom?
0:14:06 – Sheila Tully
It was like a complete Aha moment where I realized, oh my gosh, I keep thinking that if I do this next job then I’ll be happy.
Yeah, I do this next thing, then I’ll be happy. And here I am. I am very crystal clear that this is the job I’m supposed to be doing. It’s not just an occupation, it’s my purpose and I am all kinds of things. I am sometimes happy, I’m sometimes elated, and I’m also sometimes afraid and frustrated and challenged and I went oh my gosh, the this is this, is it? Nothing’s going wrong. Life wasn’t designed to serve up happiness.
Happiness is just one emotion that comes and goes. Life is actually designed To challenge us and when you step up into the challenge, that’s really how you kind of stabilize happiness and joy. It’s it doesn’t stabilize and comfort. It stabilizes by going through the discomfort. That really is kind of the path.
0:15:20 – Skip
Sheila, I want to close with this question. If someone listening has not yet embraced your main thing, wisdom, they haven’t yet locked on to the idea that the world was not designed to make us happy, but that the world was designed to challenge us, to help us grow. What might they be feeling? What kind of challenges might they be bumping into?
0:15:40 – Sheila Tully
Any feelings you have that feel like inadequacy, that feel like fear, anxiety, okay, mm-hmm know that those are universal emotions and those feelings are not coming from outside of you, they’re not descending upon you. Those are coming from what you are thinking and that is just so good to know.
Because if you are creating those feelings with how you are thinking. That means that you can indeed create something else. So so often this we are challenged, and so often our challenge it feels like it’s external, but it’s actually our own thoughts and limiting beliefs about what’s possible for us. That’s, those thoughts are what’s creating the fear, and looking at that and deciding to change your mind and think what is?
maybe it is possible that I could go to the next rung, maybe it is possible that I could do this thing. That is the obstacle. The obstacle is actually what you are thinking that’s creating the fear, and there and befriending that and knowing that the way that you kind of talk to yourself, talk yourself through that, that is the path. It’s again, it’s an inside out job.
0:17:24 – Skip
Yeah, there it is, Sheila. If someone listening wants to connect with you, maybe they want to engage with you for coaching. First of all, you’re you accepting new clients? And, second of all, would you tell us the best way to get in touch with you?
0:17:40 – Sheila Tully
Sure, yes, indeed, I am accepting new clients, and the best way to find me is my website, which is SheilaTully dot com S-H-E-I-L-A-T-U-L-L-Y. You can also find my podcast, apple, spotify, all the Places and it’s called “Our Modern Emotional Lives.”
0:18:04 – Skip
Sheila, this has been such a rich and meaningful, valuable conversation. I can’t thank you enough. I could go on for another hour just talking about these important, powerful, life expanding topics that you bring to the conversation, but I think we’ll leave it here for now and gosh. Sheila, thank you so much.
0:18:30 – Sheila Tully
Skip, thank you so much for having me on and thank you so much for the work that you’re doing. It’s really important.
0:18:39 – Skip
Sheila, so long for now.
0:18:40 – Sheila Tully
Take care.
0:18:42 – Announcer
Wow, that goes by incredibly fast, doesn’t it? Time flies when you’re hacking wisdom. I hope you’re left wanting more Sync up with us again next time, on the Main Thing, for nine more minutes of wisdom.
Transcribed by https://podium.page
