S2 | E14 Michele Phillips

For this episode, I'm joined by Michele Phillips, who's spent decades helping corporate leaders reconnect with the parts of themselves they check at the door every morning. Michele traces her own path from a childhood "peacekeeper" instinct through a late-20s awakening sparked by books like Many Lives, Many Masters and the Seth material — handed to her, unexpectedly, by corporate mentors and clients. That expansion eventually led her to write Happiness Is a Habit, built on Martin Seligman's research into learned optimism, and later to a second book focused on nervous system regulation.

We get into what she calls the "natural high" — the idea that most of us reach for addictive quick fixes (scrolling, shopping, drinking) the moment we feel even slightly uncomfortable, instead of learning to soothe ourselves the way we'd soothe a crying baby. Michele walks me through her "ladder up" technique for shifting emotional states one rung at a time rather than expecting a leap from depression straight to joy, and we swap notes on flow states, Landmark Forum, and the language habits — banishing words like "try" and "but" — that shape how we experience our own lives.

The conversation moves into energy versus time management, why she thinks corporations in their current form are unsustainable, and how AI might actually be a mirror for our collective consciousness rather than just a threat to jobs. We also dig into gender roles in leadership — the narrow band of emotions men are permitted to show, the double bind powerful women face, and why Michele started hosting a monthly "goddess gathering" to help women reclaim emotional intelligence as a strength rather than a liability. It's a wide-ranging, warm conversation about alignment, agency, and what it actually takes to write your own outcome.