Business Growth Architect Show: Founders of the Future

Ep #194: Melissa Monte: From Jail Cell to A Million Downloads: The Truth About Reinventing Yourself

• Beate Chelette • Episode 194

Share episode

Had an AHA or Insight? Share it:

We live in a world where we are compelled to showcase how great our lives are. Yet, on the inside many of us are fighting silent battles with shame, trauma, and are trying to hide the parts of ourselves that we don’t want others to see. 

Melissa Monte, host of the Mind Love podcast, knows that feeling all too well. Deeply entrenched into the wrong kind of relationship and a screaming eating disorder she ended up in jail with a felony conviction. She used her story as the foundation for her reinvention and inspires millions through her podcast and platform. 

In this episode of the Business Growth Architect Show: Founders of the Future, Melissa reveals how she turned her pain into purpose, and how facing our story matters more than hiding it. It is the key to our healing and begins the moment you stop pretending everything’s okay.

✨ Watch now to discover how your darkest moments hold the blueprint to your best life.

🔗 Learn more about Melissa at MindLove.com
 📲 Subscribe for more real, raw, and powerful stories about growth, purpose, and entrepreneurship.


Other Resources Mentioned:

 Podcast | LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook | X | YouTube

_____________________
We appreciate you, thank you for listening. Let us know in the comments what resonated in this episode, we want to hear from you.

Leave a comment, like, share with one person who needs to hear the message our guest shared.

Take our QUIZ and find out what your talent is worth in this market: What's Your Talent Worth (http://WhatsYourTalentWorth.com)

Follow us on Instagram:
Check us out on Tik Tok:
Work With Us

Melissa Monte @mindlovemelissa:

Until the day I found myself sitting in a jail cell, all I can think about is how to maintain my I was assaulted after blacking out at a party. I just became this walking shell with a bright smile. Our officers opened the trunk dozens of lock boxes stolen jewelry. But that was also the moment actually pointed me toward my purpose.

BEATE CHELETTE:

What if the thing that you're trying to hide, the thing that you're so ashamed of to come to light ends up being your greatest asset, and Melissa Monte, from Mind Love, is going to share that with us today. And my first question to you is, Melissa, what's the story that you are so ashamed of that you didn't want to share? I

Melissa Monte @mindlovemelissa:

found that a lot of my life I was losing who I was. I didn't understand the core of who I was at a certain time, and it was almost as if I was vanishing from my own life little by little, until the day I found myself sitting in a jail cell wearing torn scrubs and pre worn panties and obsessing over how to purge my jail food. And so it escalated so quickly. It was that sort of dichotomy of the moment of realizing I'm sitting here in a jail cell for felony charges for a crime I did not commit, and all I can think about is how to maintain my bulimia. And as I sat there, I remember just thinking like, where did I go wrong? I was an advanced placement student. I was on the Dean's list. I everyone thought I had everything going for me, but as I started to map back my story, I realized that I had spent years systematically disconnecting from my body, and it started when I was 15. I was assaulted after blacking out at a party, and there was a crowd of people actually cheering on my abuser while I was unconscious. And so after that, the only way I really knew how to survive it was to tell myself that I was fine. I had surface level understanding of self development. And one of the things that I had kept since age 12 was mind over matter. So I said, I just mind over matter this. I even laughed it off. I got really good at performing strength, but that was also the moment that I stopped trusting my body, and so I kind of just became this walking shell with a bright smile. But I think when you disconnect from yourself that early, you start to collect survival strategies. So I was binge drinking all the time, party drugs, bulimia. It was just anything to not feel, numbing the hunger, numbing the ache, just staying likable, but small. And years later, I met someone, and he was charming and generous, and he said all the right things, and it just felt like somebody was coming to sweep me out of my life and into theirs, which I was wildly open to at that moment and over time, though, his stories didn't add up, and I felt it, but I was ignoring it on purpose, because his dad died the weekend I met him. My dad died when I was 19, and I just became determined to love him in a way that I didn't feel loved and understood when I was going through that. And so I just sort of attributed everything to that, and wanted to make him feel okay. But over time, I found out he was an alcoholic, which was fine, because it was kind of mirroring what I was doing. But then I found out he was cheating on me over and over again. I found out he was addicted to meth, and then eventually, I tried to get away from him. I went to Hawaii to stay with a friend for a month, just because I couldn't feel myself at all, and so I went away, and I got myself together, and it felt like I had healed, but I when I got back, I didn't address any of the internal stuff. Still, I was still just ignoring the wounds. And a few weeks later, we were on our way to lunch, and because I just got roped back into all of his stories, and then I saw headlights behind us, and I thought we were being pulled over for running a stop sign or something, but then the police forcefully made us get out of the car, and I just will never forget the look on the officer's face when he opened the trunk and he found dozens of lock boxes, a Pair of bolt cutters and cases of stolen jewelry. I believed he had a jewelry business. He had a whole story about it. I even helped him sell it on eBay. At the time, I could weigh gold in my hand. I was so involved in it, and I had no idea all this stuff was stolen. Because first of all, how did you steal so much? Of the same kind of jewelry, which There ended up being a story for. But also, why are you selling stolen jewelry on eBay? It never crossed my mind that this would was an option. I went to jail. I had my rock bottom moment, and again, it was just like I was just remember, sort of floating through like, This can't be happening to me. And it was something about the obsession over the bulimia in jail that just like snapped me into place, and I said, things have to be different overnight. I thankfully didn't get a lot of jail time. I got out on my own recognizance. I did get a felony conviction because our cases were combined, and so because I was in Hawaii during his largest burglary ring spree, I could have proven my innocence if I had gone to court. But if I did, he had to go to court too, and it would have guaranteed he got 10 years in jail or more. And I was just so used to giving him everything that I gave him my freedom too. And so I took the felony and I moved to LA to try to get away from him. He still tormented me for about a year, breaking into my house, throwing a brick through my windshield, stalking whoever I looked like I was dating, but then he got arrested for another string of robberies, and at that moment, I realized I was finally free, and so I had to do something with it. And so I started to just take little steps to try to rebuild, but I was rebuilding with no idea what I was building or how to rebuild, and so destroying it was quite messy, but I learned a lot during that time, and I also realized that that moment that could have been the thing that many people would have interpreted As destroying their life actually pointed me toward my purpose, because it took away a lot of the options I think I might have just landed in comfortably with a good job and golden handcuffs, and it left one option for me in my mind, and that was entrepreneurship. And so I didn't have one foot in and one foot out, like most people, I just went all in, and when I finally found the thing I was meant for, which took years of really figuring out what my story was leading me to. It just took off, and I grew a podcast to a million downloads the first year. Ended up starting my business. From there, started to public speak, and I have to now credit that moment for who I am today.

BEATE CHELETTE:

So this is so fascinating to me. I mean, first of all, thank you so much for sharing the story so openly and vulnerable. I certainly relate to that. My ex husband was an alcoholic, and I didn't realize that until much, much, much, much later, they are so good at hiding this. And everybody will always say to you, like, how did you not know? You must have known somewhere. All you know is that there's something off, but you don't know what it is, and you're just trying to justify it, because they present it pretty logically. So powerful story for you to get out of it. So what I want to know now is, what was that turning point for you? So now here you are. You're sitting in the jail cell. You are trying to feed your eating disorder. What was the thought process that what kicked in? Was it survival? Was it wisdom? Can you can you explain what it was? Do you know

Melissa Monte @mindlovemelissa:

in that moment, it was actually more like despair, and I think it was something that I had to feel like, how broken Are you? And there wasn't like, this hopeful moment in that in that jail, like, okay, like, I'm gonna fix myself. I actually was just thinking about how I was gonna press the reset button, how, like, I didn't want anything to do with that person right there, and that was a hard thing to feel, but I had nothing to do but feel it. There was no distraction. And so I just remember sitting there feeling so much pain, and I hadn't let myself do that in years, because the moment I started to feel that I reached for something to numb it, and at this moment, I had nothing. And so I think it kick started part of my healing, because I was finally feeling these layers and layers that have built up through a sexual assault, through losing my dad, through just all of the things that I ignored in my life and didn't allow myself to process. And so that was the first part of it. And I wish there was this big aha moment, but all I really knew how to do was follow one seed of inspiration. I knew I wanted to move away, so I moved to LA. That's all I knew. And then I knew I wanted to feel good, so I did a yoga class, and I decided to sign up for the yoga membership. Had no idea how healing that would be for me, but it reconnected me to my body in a way that I hadn't been connected to it in years as well. And I also connected me with a few more friends that weren't just about the party life, and so I was getting these little seeds of inspiration, but I really do credit yoga so much as. Trivial as that might sound to some people, because I was developing a relationship with myself, and it was the sort of the seed that unraveled so many more steps following. But there were a lot of steps it took years and years for me to really feel whole. And there was a lot of years where I was in what I call the resistance. It's that in between of knowing what you should do and actually feeling like it's sustainable for you to do. And so I was going to the yoga class and reading a mindset book and then doing copious amounts of MDMA at night at a party, waking up hungover, but scraping myself together for another yoga class. And that went on for a really long time, but I think sometimes we don't see that the seeds are strong enough to grow even when we're stomping on them a little bit afterwards, like they're still there. And so eventually some of the decisions just didn't really feel in alignment with who I was becoming, and old patterns started to shed away.

BEATE CHELETTE:

I can so relate to this. As I'm going through this loss of my home in the Pacific Palisades and my entire life and losing everything, I find myself caught in between the spot of knowing that this pain is and the grief is so extraordinary and so intense that I probably, for the first time in my life, cannot run away from it. And when you were sharing your story, it's almost like I see the parallel to that. There is this moment it is too big to run away from it, you know, everything else. We patch it up, we put it in the box, we hit it. We were putting fresh, fresh paint on it. Everything looked good until the moment comes when you cannot keep it together anymore. In your work, where you help people to unleash, sort of this inner voice or the story that they've been trying to hide, and help them to see that it's the most, most powerful tool. What are some of these stories that people try to hide? You know, I want to give our audience maybe some examples to say, oh, yeah, that sounds like me.

Melissa Monte @mindlovemelissa:

Yeah. It can be really anything. I tend to find two different types of people that really benefit from story work. Some people have either a big story, and sometimes that's something traumatic that they're trying to hide, or at least just something really big, where they're just like, nobody can even relate to this, and then the other people are like, I don't even really have a story. I don't know what anything is leading me to, but everyone has a story, and a big story isn't too big, and a small story isn't too small. What happens is often for the small story people, we devalue what a lot of people find valuable, because it's just normal to us. This is just how things are. This is how I handle things. This is what I've been through. And so it becomes our normal, and it doesn't. We don't really see the wisdom that we've gained from it. But then the other people like, oh my gosh, this is a mess. Like, what have I gone through? I've worked with people who have dealt with sexual assault as children. I've worked with people that did something really bad, went through a phase of being deceptive in one way or another. Maybe they cheated on their spouse, maybe they stole things. Maybe they like just a period where you were like, I don't know if I was a good person then. And so what I help people connect to is the wisdom that they gained from that when you can stop telling your story from the wound or when you're still bleeding out, that's going to have a different effect story. It's still okay to share your story at those times, because especially women, we often process through speaking. So I'm not saying it's not good, but there's a difference between if you're thinking that you are helping people heal, but really you're trauma dumping. There's just kind of two different levels of that. So it's so important that we find that wisdom, we figure out what we gain from that, who we became from that, before we share if we're trying to help people heal. If you're trying to process it, then, yeah, share all you can find the trusted person that won't be judgmental, that'll ask you the right questions. Maybe that's a therapist. Maybe it's your best friend, but yeah, so story is powerful on all the ends of the spectrum. But again, if you're trying to make it your message, then you should understand what that message is, so that it become, it can become medicine.

BEATE CHELETTE:

What is the fear behind that? So if I were to admit that all these things actually happened, so you say that people may be concerned that they're trauma dumping, but on the other hand, they might be just concerned. And about not having the secret come out. And the reason I ask is that I remember my mother, what happened in the family. We were not allowed to share so to this day, when I talk about the trauma or the abuse, which I had completely eliminated out of my brain until I went on Ayahuasca journey, and then I had it like hit me with a ton of bricks, which is why I've avoided doing that kind of work for so long, because I didn't want to know. And then when I did do it, then everything I was afraid of became true and happened all at once, and then I'm left with dealing something that I've tried so hard to forget. What is it? How do I give myself permission to even go there and not be judgmental of the experience? Because it's bad form in the world. When you talk bad about your parents. They did the best they could. You just wait until your parent yourself, and then you see how hard it is. We don't give ourselves permission, or society doesn't give ourselves permission to own these stories, because we are taught that it's wrong to put this all out there. How do you deal with that.

Melissa Monte @mindlovemelissa:

I realized at an early age that people take things as you present to them most often, and so again, when you are connected to your story and the truth of your story that's conveyed through when you share it with somebody else, it is much more rare for them to come up with their own judgment when you aren't holding internal judgment about yourself, the judgment tends to come out more when they're reflecting that back to you. But what I would do, I'm going to use air quotes when I say wrong, because I don't really think anything's wrong. I've always kind of been an outspoken person. I always have been an over sharer, but I would share for the shock factor. So even for a few years after that felony, yeah, there were people I didn't tell, like, maybe particular job bosses, till I got close enough to them, then we'd have some drinks, and I'd be like, Oh yeah, I got a felony at 22 and you still hired me. And I just, like, kind of laugh it off. But I realized I did this more for armor. It was another way of keeping people away, and it was just it was just as much armor as not sharing anything. And so what I help people with now is how to find that resonance. But first, you do need to heal again. If you're not holding shame about it, it becomes a lot easier to share it without shame, and then you give other people permission to share their stories. I also realized that so many of the things I was afraid of happening never happened when I shared. Yes, I've come across judgmental people along the way, but usually it's not about the story I'm sharing. They were looking for something to confirm their biases about me as it was, and now they heard this, and it's something to latch on to. I don't have control over that. Their story is not mine, but it's all about processing it yourself, knowing how you feel about it. Because again, if you're not holding shame about it, even if somebody does react in a way that's judgmental. I'm not going to feel that shame because I already released it. That shame can be theirs. I get to choose what I pick up and put down.

BEATE CHELETTE:

That's powerful. I like this a lot, and I do believe in the healing of ourselves, we have to tell the stories, or let these stories come out, because the reason other people don't want you to tell the story sets on them. It's your story. It's your life. You can do literally whatever the heck you want with it, right? I want to shift this conversation a little bit over to some of the things you talk about as it comes to AI and storytelling. So the premise of what the work is that you do is that the story you try to hide the most has the most impact. How does now AI and AI storytelling and AI, in my personal opinion, is the most mediocre version of everything out there. So you put yourself in there, unless you know how to prompt it or rework the prompt, or rewrite it, it will give you the most mediocre feedback, because it's trained to look for all these different things. How does storytelling and AI connect in your world?

Melissa Monte @mindlovemelissa:

In my world, it amplifies authenticity. But again, it's starting from knowing yourself well again, there's two ways to use it. I actually have developed some tools that help people process it, that help people go through the questions it asks them questions and mirrors back to them what it hears. And that's one of the powerful things about AI, is that AI is a mirror, and so a lot of people are just writing things in and trying to get facts back. And my AI might say something different than yours, because it's mirroring back our belief system. It's it's showing us things about ourselves. So I've learned a lot about myself from Ai, but I also think that we always need to be aware of the downsides of things before we go all in, like if I just completely started replacing my thought process with just AI. I'm going to be parts of my brain are going to be disintegrating because they're not in use. You have to use it or lose it. I teach people how to use AI. I'm kind of an AI power user. I've taken many masterminds and programs on it. Just because I missed the wave of getting on Instagram right when it came out, I wasn't going to miss the wave of AI. Okay, this is the very beginning. You can get ahead now. It's not going away. There were plenty of people who were like, I'm not using the internet. Blah, blah, blah that. Where are they now? Are they still not using the internet? Actually, that's what AI is right now. So we can resist it all that we want, but you're going to be left behind. I would prefer with new technologies to again, understand it as well as possible, including its upsides, how, what? And knowing myself well enough to say, okay, what are my strong suits and what are my weaknesses? How can AI build up those weaknesses so I can have more energy and time to put out my message that I've already refined. Many people are using AI to just create their message, and then they sound like everybody else on the internet. Go for it, because you're already blending in. You know, you're not standing out. But when you have a voice, when you have a message, then suddenly it's like you have an assistant to do a lot of this work for you to just spread it a little bit further, to create a little bit faster. Give

BEATE CHELETTE:

us like an example of something where you found what this is like, one of my favorite things, or my favorite tools, or this is one trick.

Melissa Monte @mindlovemelissa:

Oh yeah. Well, I highly recommend that if you're really going to get into AI to get a pro account, because there's a lot more benefits you can you can program it with your voice. There's a little Preferences section, telling them who you are, things that you believe, what side of the political spectrum you're on, what things you don't believe about mainstream. You can just put in anything you want about yourself that might train the words that it says. You can put in your tone. And so what I like to do is I have a very long prompt. I think most often very short prompts give you mediocre answers, but when you can actually create understand how to prompt the technology, I reverse engineer things that I'm already proud of that I wrote. And so I took a speech that I wrote, for example, dumped it in there, had it reverse engineer tones, styles. There's about nine different points that can really pull out a voice in my tone prompt. And so then when I create something else using that prompt, it sounds very close to me. I also create projects for all the different areas of in my life, and then each of those can have their own instructions. So I, for example, got blood work done, but I'm not really a mainstream pharmaceutical person, and so I got my blood work done, put it in and then put in a bunch of documents that I have around traditional Chinese medicine, and had it read my blood work and give me tips on how to heal using traditional Chinese medicine. I have another one for my pregnancy. I have another one for the book I'm writing, and so each one kind of has its own custom instructions, but I even have used it for almost like therapy, but again, you have to program it with your worldview. And so the way that I view things is through universal laws. For example, like my view of God is God is this divine matrix, and this world is a holographic illusion set in place by all of the Divine laws. And so I have the Divine laws in there. And when I'm having an issue that I'm just like, why can't I get over this judgment? Or why is my mom bugging me so much? Whatever it is, I'll just like, voice it in there, but it has that one prompt to go through. So it's not giving me generic AI advice. It's actually showing, well, the law of reflection might be showing you that you're judging your mom too. I use AI for a lot of different things, but again, very wary of not wanting or wanting to keep parts of my brain in use. And so I'll a lot of times, I'll try to do things on my own first, and then I'll go to AI for some more inspiration, and kind of go back and forth with the two methods

BEATE CHELETTE:

that's amazing. What I'm taking away so far is that you the first step is to really look into your story and to acknowledge your life story, and then figure out which pieces of these are appropriate to tell or you're ready to tell. And what their point is and how they fit into the overall story. The second thing I'm taking away so far is that I can utilize tools like AI to amplify but then instead of just looking at it like a cheap assistant somewhere in some other part of the world, treated like a good, smart employee that gets benefits. It's almost like you're talking about like it has a higher value than most people talk about AI. You talk about it differently. You talk about it like you develop the relationship with the way you are, you're utilizing, you're utilizing is, did I hit that spot on? Do you want to make any adjustments to my takeaways?

Melissa Monte @mindlovemelissa:

Yeah, I do have a couple of clarifications, but you're spot on. One thing that I do like to say is, yes, often the thing that you're holding the closest to yourself, like maybe you're most ashamed of it, or it's this thing that you can't get out. It doesn't mean that we don't have to have any secrets, or we don't get to have any secrets. It's perfectly fine to choose which parts of your life you share and you don't share. I challenge people to get curious about that thing, because I believe it's not possible for you to hold in something, if you're really holding it because you're ashamed of it, you're carrying shame that's in your body. And a lot of new research is showing that holding on to shame and trauma is what creates disease, and so maybe you process your story and you never share it out loud to the world that's not necessary, but test it with one person, or get really curious about it with just yourself for a year. Like, really dig into it, figure out what it taught you. I have a seven step framework where I help people kind of go through where you started, like, what were your beliefs about this area of your life first? What was the first thing that kind of got you out of that mindset? Like, often, that's the trauma for people. What was the awakening after that? Did you learn anything? What was that resistance period that I talked about where you knew you should do something different and you couldn't, but then you finally made the choice, and then you embodied that, and then the goal, the wisdom that you extracted from it. So those are my seven steps to really see that story in a new way. And anyone that I've walked through this has had aha moments about what that time in their life was really how it was serving them in a way, even as dark as it may seem. But again, that doesn't mean you need to go out and be an influencer and share your darkest moment on Instagram, but get it out, feel it, process it, because otherwise, just like me, it might be manifesting in ways that you have even less control over. And then with AI, yes, I think you learn a lot when you work with AI, exactly how it works. It's not like the bearer of truth. It's actually wrong quite a bit, and sometimes in very weird ways, it'll get the facts wrong, or it'll just pull from whatever's on the first page of Google, which is manipulated by maybe an industry of some sort. And so when I'm actually trying to learn from it, I challenge it, I go back and forth. I'm like, What would people on the other side say about this? Okay, how would you push back on that? I wanted to go back and forth, and you can learn both sides a lot better than you're scouring Google. And so there's just ways to get depth out of it. But when, when you work with it, you start to understand its PowerPoints and its limitations. And there's really a lot of options with it, like now you can even create AI agents. And so every day, for example, I have one connected to Zapier, and I just, I can put in an inspiration, and it'll go through an AI and dump out on an airtable and give me my next five post topic ideas. And so it just can save you time on like the brainstorming, and then I can start to write, and then. And so there's just a lot of different ways that you can use it. If you play with it,

BEATE CHELETTE:

yeah, I agree. I use it a lot of research, especially pain point research, where I send it to scour what people are talking about right now. So it's very, very powerful. Well, if somebody's listening to this right now, what's the one question they should ask about their own story they're telling right now?

Melissa Monte @mindlovemelissa:

Get curious about well, it kind of depends on where they are with that. Is it something that they're holding in? Is it something that they're already proud of? But if there's something that they're still holding in, ask, Who did I become through this? What changed in me? And depending on how much intention you've brought to this so far, it can either show you how far you have to go, or show you how far you've already gone. For me, has. In that jail cell, I could look back and I'm like, What did I gain from this? The only reason that I'm a thriving entrepreneur now is because all the other doors were closed. What do I understand about people that I didn't understand before? Where did I gain empathy that I may not have had empathy before, whereas judgment dropped that I may not have judged before? And so that one question of who did I become through this leads to more questions. If you just stay open and flow with it, and if nothing comes to you right away, then that's a sign that you just kind of need to develop that language with yourself. I always tell people, you can go on a date with somebody every single day for a year, but if you're always meeting at the movie theater and leaving right when it ends, you're not going to know anything about them. It's like you're dating a stranger. And most of us act that way with ourselves, with our relationship with ourselves. We're like, well, I'm always with myself. Of course, I know me. Do you or do you know your programming? Do you sit in silence? Do you ask questions and allow your own wisdom to emerge before you reach for Google or AI? Get to know yourself, get to know how you think. Get to know what your blocks are, your upsides, your downsides, because then you have something to work with. And the more that you do this, the more you can sort of follow your own flow of wisdom. I

BEATE CHELETTE:

love that. Thank you so much. And for somebody who now wants to know more about you, where do we send them?

Melissa Monte @mindlovemelissa:

You can go to my website at mindlove.com, there's a little chat box to reach out to me. You can also find my podcast, mind love on any of your favorite podcast platforms, beautiful.

BEATE CHELETTE:

Well, thank you so much, Melissa, for being so open and sharing, sharing your powerful story, and I admire how you are taking something that you know could have defined who you were as taking something that defines who you are at the best possible way. So thank you for coming on the show.

Melissa Monte @mindlovemelissa:

Thank you for having me. And one last thing, just because you inspired me, is, I think that's the whole point, is realizing that you get to define yourself. Nothing has to define you, and that's what this whole process is about, is rewriting the parts that you feel like were written for you, because you do have the power to do that. Beautiful.

BEATE CHELETTE:

I love it. Well. Thank you so much, and that's it for us, for today. So if you feel inspired by this episode, please do share it with one other person that may need to hear what we talked about today. Check out Melissa and I see you again next week, and goodbye. That's it for this episode of the Business Growth Architect Show, Founders of the Future. If you're done playing small and ready to build the future on your terms, subscribe, share and help us reach more Trailblazers like you. And if you're serious about creating, growing and scaling a business that's aligned with who you are, schedule your uncover session at uncoverysession.com lead with vision. Move with purpose. Create your future.

Head Shot

Beate Chelette

Host
Head Shot

Melissa Monte

Guest

Podcasts we love

Check out these other fine podcasts recommended by us, not an algorithm.