Beyond Burnout: Coming Home to Yourself with Nicole Lilly

In the latest episode of Inclusive Cyber, I had the honor of speaking with Nicole Lilly, founder of Deeply Devoted Lilly, somatic coach, and former corporate wellness strategist.

We didn’t talk tech.
We talked about what tech often ignores—how emotional wellbeing, nervous system regulation, and inner safety are critical to sustainable performance in high-pressure fields like cybersecurity.

Nicole opens up about:

* Growing up in a culture where worth was tied to appearance—and how she reclaimed her health on *her* terms
* Her corporate wellness career and the blind spots she noticed in how we treat mental health at work
* Why we don’t ask for help, and how self-leadership shifted her relationship with discipline
* What it means to "come home to yourself" and build a life rooted in compassion, curiosity, and clarity

🧠 This conversation reminded me that no productivity hack can replace the inner work required to truly show up—at work or at home.

One of Nicole’s reflections that stuck with me:

“There’s a difference between what you want to be and who you want to be.”

🎧 If you’re in cybersecurity—or any fast-paced field—this episode is for you. It’s not about slowing down. It’s about realigning with your values so you can lead without burning out.

\#MentalHealth #CybersecurityLeadership #SomaticCoaching #WomenInTech #InclusiveCyber #BurnoutRecovery #LatinaLeadership #HumanCenteredSecurity #EmotionalWellbeing #LeadershipDevelopment #podcasthighlights 

--------------------------
SHOW NOTES
Nicole Lilly - LinkedIn
Deeply Devoted Lilly - https://www.instagram.com/deeplydevotedlilly/

Books & Podcasts
----------------------------
1. What i know for Sure by Oprah Winfrey - https://www.amazon.com/What-Know-Sure-Oprah-Winfrey/dp/1250054052
2. We Can Do Hard Things - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/we-can-do-hard-things/id1564530722
3. Build with Leila Hormozi - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/build-with-leila-hormozi/id1663834553
4. Stay Grounded with Rai Jana - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/stay-grounded-with-raj-jana/id1318038490

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction
• 1:32 Nicole's Background - Wellness Space
• 4:12 Early Years Overall Influence
• 6:58 Early Struggles
• 9:51 Getting Help in the Corporate World
• 13:01 Why its so hard to ask for Help?
• 16:31 How Do you get more people talking about their Health?
• 19:19 How do we prioritize a Healthy Lifestyle?
• 26:47 What you want to be Vs Who you want to be
• 31:48 Metors along the Way
• 36:45 Why Leave Corporate American to Start Your Own Business?
• 42:18 Deeply Devoted Lily's Services
• 44:27 Book and Podcast Recomendations
• 47:42 Closing

Transcript

Introduction 
---

Danny: So Nicole, thank you for being on, uh, my podcast here. I know we've been talking about this for quite some time, but really excited to to have you here. So how are you doing today? 

Nicole: I'm so good. I'm so good. I'm, I am thrilled to be here. I love anytime I get to be in conversation with you, so I'm excited.

Danny: Yeah, definitely. And we're gonna talk a lot about. Probably mental health and health in general. So one thing that I'm trying to do with the podcast is not only focus on IT and cyber professionals, but outside of that career profession, a lot of people have coming, have been coming in from the music industry into cyber and tech health is a big part of, you know, any profession. But in my experience [00:01:00] there's a lot of burnout. In cybersecurity and would love to dive deep into that and get your perspective on how we can kind of regulate our, our thought processes and how to overcome, you know, burnout and try to just be one with ourselves and be healthy at the end of the day, I think is, uh, the, the end state, but. With that being said, I'd love to, you know, hear from you. If you can just give a quick background for the audience of who Nicole is. 


Nicole's Background - Wellness Space
---

Nicole: I love this conversation. You know how passionate I am about it. Professionally, my journey started in the wellness space. I was in corporate health and wellbeing. I managed health programs for over 10 years.

Worked mostly with organizations to support. Their employee engagement. Um, the focus was often the physical wellbeing, right? And I navigated the corporate world. [00:02:00] I was leading strategic wellness initiatives that helped employees live healthier, more balanced lives. But I think in the last several years, there's been a stronger focus on mental and emotional wellbeing.

But for me, over time I started to realize that true, like true wellbeing. Is so much deeper than just our physical health. I became really passionate about emotional and mental aspects, about helping people reconnect with ourselves, right? To regulate our nervous systems to lead with authenticity. When I talk about coming to this space and feeling a little bit nervous to speak.

Using tools and resources that I've given to myself like humming to regulate my nervous system. These are things that aren't taught in, in these corporate environments, and that's okay. But this really led me to transition [00:03:00] into, um, into founding Nicole Lilly coaching, which is, you know what I'm doing now, focusing on somatic coaching.

Soma means of the body. Okay. Our body holds so much wisdom. It is so, so wise. I facilitate breathwork. I focus on leadership development, but ultimately what I'm doing is I'm supporting individuals and groups and cultivating that inner resilience, bodied self-awareness, and what I like to call, like heart-centered leadership.

When we're understanding who we are and understanding how we wanna show up in the world, how do we learn to lead from that place, right? That heart-centered leadership. So that's, it's a little bit about me. I am obviously Latina. I came from South Florida, born and raised to a Colombian family. I had so many belief systems and internal narratives that really stopped me from [00:04:00] becoming the version of me that I wanted to be in the world.

And so my work has really helped me and supported me in coming home to myself, is really what I like to call it.


Early Years Overall Influence 
---

Danny: Let's go ahead and start from the beginning. You said you've been in the kind of mental, uh, healthcare space for the past 10 years, so what led you down that path? Um, was it, you know, school, was it a mentor? And another thing that I really love to talk about is mentorship. So we'll definitely get into that. So walk us through Nicole at an earlier age in college or maybe even before college, on saying, you know, this is what I wanna do, this is my passion. 

Nicole: Oof. I wish I could say it came from a place of passion. I grew up in an environment where I learned at a very early age, and I talk about this often, that my worth and my value came from the way that I looked, the external.[00:05:00] 

And I was a overweight young girl growing up. I, I turned to food for comfort from a very early age. And so there was always this internal struggle of wanting to look a certain way and turning to food for comfort. So imagine the war that that creates, right? Constantly trying to look a certain way. When I started college, I went on this weight loss journey.

I lost about 70 pounds and wow. I started working at the recreation center at my school, at my university, so I was going to school full-time and I was managing this 84,000 square foot wellness facility. I became really obsessed, somewhat in an unhealthy way about health and. Physical fitness and diet and all of these things because I was living this new lifestyle, but it ended up being what I went to school for.

So I went to school for, um, health science with an A minor in health service administration. And then I continued on to [00:06:00] pursue a master's degree in public health with the focus in health promotion and disease prevention because of this weight loss journey. And so when I graduated with my degree in public health.

The work that I was looking for was under the umbrella of wellbeing, health and fitness. Health and wellness. And I found a role as a wellbeing strategist with the corporate company that I spent 10 years at. And so it was very, very much an alignment with my passion, my purpose at the time. Like I mentioned a little earlier, you know, the focus was often supporting people in their lifestyle of physical fitness.

Supporting them in making good, healthier decisions with their diet. Obviously improving sleep at the time. Smoking cessation was also a really big, um, driver in that employee wellbeing space. So those were the things that we were, I was really, really focusing on at the time. 


Early Struggles
---

Danny: I think Nicole, you might [00:07:00] be the only person I know that actually, studied what, what they studied in college is actually what they did, as their initial career. So I definitely love that. You said that you struggled with that image. So where did that come from? Is it pop culture growing up? The Western beauty image that we get bombarded with from a day-to-day perspective, which. For me growing up it was in magazines and tv, but nowadays it's all social media and just more of it.

Nicole: I think for me, I grew up in a very large, incredible, beautiful Colombian family that was predominantly women and just generationally, I think that's what women have. Put on themselves for so long, every conversation was, oh, you look great.

Or, oh, you, you look like you put on some weight. Or, oh, what are you eating or what? I'm not eating. [00:08:00] I'm, I'm dieting right now, so I can't eat this. Every single thing that was in the world, in my world and my ecosystem with which I grew up in focused on how you looked. And so, yes, culturally, societally, familially, my parents were very health conscious.

I think also very vain, which is fine. No judgment, but certainly health conscious and a very active. We would go to the beach every weekend. My parents would be the ones, you know, playing the racket or whatever, I can't even remember what you call it, back and forth, the paddles and my dad would run on the beach as we were there.

And I, I don't know what happened. I just didn't get that. I didn't get that as a kid. And I do think that maybe, and this isn't to blame or to point fingers, but I think it was difficult for my mom to have a little overweight daughter. And so instead of teaching, because, [00:09:00] oh my goodness, and again, I'm not trying to blame her, but I think what happens is this, this fear of what will my daughter's life be like?

That there's a pocket of shame that exists in the way that we. Um, teach our children sometimes when it's coming from a place of shame and trigger, rather than teaching you, here are ways that we can be healthy. It's coming more from a place of don't eat that this is bad and that's good. There's like a good and a bad versus why we wanna nourish our bodies, why we wanna be healthy, why we make certain choices.

Learning about how, what we're putting on our place, not just demonizing certain things so it came from a lot of different places, but it absolutely came, um, from inside the four walls that I grew up in. And I don't say that from a place of distaste. We do the best that we can with what we have. Right. 


Getting Help in the Corporate World
---

Danny: And so now you're in the corporate world. Did you receive assistance, help mentorship to build your foundation [00:10:00] in mental health? 

Nicole: Oh boy. What? How do I answer that question? That's tricky. Did I receive assistantship? Yes. Yes. I'm sure that there were people and that there were opportunities, and certainly like a whole host of resources and information, and I think especially when I stepped into my professional career, my corporate world career.

One of the biggest challenges that I experienced was being afraid of divulging anytime. I didn't know what I was doing. And so that can be tricky, especially when you're stepping into a new environment, feeling like you have to be perfect, like you have all the answers, or at least that's how I felt when I stepped into the corporate world.

So there probably were people that would've wanted to help me in different [00:11:00] ways, to support me in different ways, to guide me in different ways. But I kind of always struggled to reach out for help, to ask for support. Um, and I always felt like I had to do it on my own. So I probably didn't learn as quickly as I could have or should have, and that's a lesson that I really learned.

But. I think that's one of the, one of the biggest things that I experienced. And so, you know, when I think about how do I communicate to this generation or kids that are leaving college and stepping into the real world, it's like it's okay to not have all of the answers. It's okay to ask questions. It's okay to not know what you're doing and to share that because people more often than not want to help you.

They want to support you. Now, having said that, I think one of my big internal stories that I've really navigated and worked through with intention is this feeling of being a burden. [00:12:00] And so I can remember that feeling too in that corporate space, like not wanting to bother somebody else to ask for help because they're just as busy as I am.

But again, hindsight is 2020, and what you realize is that people do wanna help, you know, people. Maybe not everybody does, but more often than not, people genuinely want to support you. They want to help you to thrive. At least I like to think so, but lots of resources within the corporate space. I know you know this, there's something called the intranet.

Which maybe it's called something different now, but it's basically internal, uh, websites that link all of the resources and all of the toolkits and guides and everything that more often than not you, you can access and leverage. So I spent a lot of time reading. Mm-hmm. And trying to learn on my own, quite [00:13:00] honestly.


Why its so hard to ask for Help?
---

Danny: I guess a question in regards to why we don't ask for help. I'm trying to think of myself. I wouldn't ask, right, because we did have, or we thought that we needed to know everything about whatever our chosen career field was. But where does that, what do you think that come from? Is that cultural?

For me personally, I was super shy. I didn't talk to anybody growing up. And now it's funny, one of my former managers, I did tell him that I'm an introvert. He was shocked. He's like, what? Yeah, I'm an introvert. You put me in a party or a get together with people that are dealing with, uh, it cyber. I could talk up a storm, but if it's not, I'm gonna be in the corner just drinking my lemon water and just not engaging because you are out of your depth or knowledge. And maybe there's this perception that we gotta know everything even outside of our profession. Back to my original [00:14:00] question, is it vulnerability? Is it culture? Why are we scared of, of asking for help? At the end of the day, 

Nicole: I think it's different for everybody. For me, I think that it was not believing in myself enough, which I think at the foundation of so many of us, I really do believe that that's the core of it.

That not enoughness, that that unworthiness. Lack of confidence. Maybe you grew up in an environment where asking questions got you in trouble. Maybe you grew up in an environment where curiosity was not received with positivity, and because this is the work that I do, it's like we're programmed within those first seven years of our lives to belong to whatever ecosystem that we are born into, you know?

And so, mm-hmm. More often than not, it's like the way that we [00:15:00] show up in the world as adults is programming from those first seven years of our lives. So if I was a little boy, you felt like you, you weren't allowed to speak up, or you didn't have the tools or the right, uh, witness to say it's okay to speak up.

It's okay to use your voice. And to be clear, there's nothing wrong. With being introverted, it's beautiful. Believe it or not. I believe myself to be introverted as well in many instances. Um, but sometimes I think it's because we haven't been given enough witness to, to evolve and to like blossom those parts of us that are a little bit more afraid to be seen.

Absolutely. It's a vulnerability thing too, you know, especially for, for men that are taught. Vulnerability is weakness. I think we're all taught that, but I think predominantly on the space for boys to not show your feelings to all of those things, which I think is very [00:16:00] dangerous, 

Danny: an important topic. I would love to maybe talk offline about that a little bit more.

But it's funny that you mentioned modeling. My mom talked to everybody. She would talk to all strange. So I saw that for my mom, but I'm just like, head down and I'm like, no, I'm not gonna do that. But so then how receptive were your colleagues within the corporate world to acknowledge and start looking at being more healthy?


How Do you get more people talking about their Health?
---

Nicole: It depends, uh, especially when I started in the corporate space, I supported a book of business of about 25 clients. So some were very receptive. Oftentimes you see success in a wellbeing employee wellness program when the support is coming from the top down, right?

When you have leaders that are talking about their wellbeing, that are talking about their mental health, that are talking about ways that they're [00:17:00] supporting, you know, a healthy lifestyle, and that sort of does tend to trickle down. People feel like maybe I can go for, you know, an afternoon walk. So receptivity.

Yes and no. You know, some clients were a little bit more receptive now, the last several years I was aligned to a different national account, so I would actually be embedded within the organization that I was supporting. And so oftentimes, like I would be the face of the wellbeing program, you would see me coming down the hallway and you would turn the corner 'cause you didn't wanna have that conversation about, what choices you're making.

Right. Um, but it just kind of depends. We have to meet people where they are. Right. The way that I show up now is very much meet you where you are understanding our lifestyle choices are so go so, so, so much deeper than just those surface level choices. Because I talk about this a lot, but our, our subconscious really drives our choices can maybe make.

[00:18:00] Different choices in my diet and physical activity for a couple of weeks. But once I start sabotaging myself, there's usually those underlying subconscious choices that are happening for us. But from a a corporate environment perspective, yeah, I think it's really nice to have messaging that's encouraging.

I think it's nice to have messaging that is positive incentive, communication versus like. Even though we're all different, so some people actually do make choices and decisions from that, like care, like that stick approach, hidden. We're all a little bit different. I, I tend to lean more towards the side of the carrot approach.

The incentive of like, how do you want to show up in the world? This is so much of what I do and what I teach, like. How do you wanna show up in the world? How do you create a vision for who you want to be in the world? And then the choices that we make are self-led. The choices [00:19:00] that we make are in alignment with that version of you that you're trying to become And the corporate space.

Yeah, some clients were more receptive than others, but all of them want to drive lower medical costs. I think that's, that's the reason that we were there. 


How do we prioritize a Healthy Lifestyle?
---

Danny: You also bring up a an interesting point, but it's gotta be top down, right? For, Hey, this should be a priority in this case, mental health and health in general, or taking time off for vacation within the IT cybersecurity space.

We struggle with that. And maybe it's just here in this country. Because other countries don't have this go, go, go mentality that if I'm not working 15 plus hours, then there's something wrong with me. And even looking at YouTube, they have, don't waste your evenings. Like, wow, okay. But you know, I won't. I [00:20:00] think these are right, but there's this perception that if you're not working these ridiculous hours, there's something wrong with you.

I. So how do we overcome that? It's great. The culture from the top, from the CEO Down is imbuing that and sending that messaging out to all their employees. But I'm thinking myself, I'm like, I wanna start working out, going to the gym, but that's gonna take about an hour, an hour and a half tops.

And I'm thinking, yeah, I'm already saying it's not gonna happen because. Work is front and center. There's always these perceived fires that we need to put out in IT and cyber, and at the end of the day, like maybe I could have worked out. Right. So I guess how do you overcome that? 

Nicole: I mean, honest answer. It can be so many different [00:21:00] things. I come back often to enoughness and worth. Because I think oftentimes when we're making choices out of alignment with who we say we want to be, there's oftentimes a part of us that doesn't believe that we deserve it. Or maybe you're taught that you know that. What is it? That servant leadership, which I think is a beautiful term, and the idea of it is beautiful, but the concept of putting everyone else before yourself.

It's so praised and it's so celebrated, and yet we're not filling our own cups. We're putting everything else before ourselves, and I simply don't, um, subscribe to that mindset, especially as a mom. That's really what we're taught to do is like put everything else before yourself. And so ultimately, I think it comes down to what I continue to return to is.[00:22:00] 

Who do you want to be in the world? How do you want to show up? And this is so much of my embodiment work, like really getting clear on who you wanna be, having a vision of who you want to be in the world, what they look like, what they talk, like, how they dress, what you know, who they're interacting with, what environments are making them expand, like getting really clear on that.

And then. Making choices from that place. It all comes back to that foundational why, like why are we making choices? It takes intention and it takes attention to our inner world to understand why we're making the choices that we make. So sometimes it can just simply be, I don't want to, okay, well I don't want to either, but I know who I want to be in the world.

It's cultivating that, uh, inner resilience. To stay with ourselves through discomfort. This is so much of [00:23:00] what I do right now. It's teaching and practicing. How do we stay with ourselves through the discomfort? And I'll also share a little story about, um, this relationship that I had with the term discipline for so long, I used to really resist the idea of discipline.

Discipline. Uh, it made me wanna contract, and I know that sounds silly. But the reality is, is that discipline in my mind was always, always tied to how my body looked when I thought discipline. It was only ever about the exercise and the food discipline around how I moved my body and what I put in my mouth.

And so there was a resistance whenever I heard someone talk about discipline, and I had a teacher who introduced the concept of self-leadership, which. Quite honestly, between you and I is not very different from discipline on the outside looking in, but what's different is that discipline sounds like [00:24:00] I have to, I have to eat this number of calories or else I'm gonna gain weight.

I have to mo exercise or else I'm not gonna fill in the blank. Right? Self-leadership sounds like I get to, I get to move my body because. I wanna feel good and I wanna feel energized, right? I get to eat nourishing foods because like for all of the reasons that we say we really want it, right? Like it's really understanding like your why.

So much of it is tied to me in what we believe we deserve, and getting really curious. It's a process of coming home to ourselves and understanding like why we make certain choices. It's a lot of fun, but it, it takes time and it takes curiosity. 

Danny: As you were saying that, I was just thinking of a story. So I'm training for, uh, Leadville, which is essentially raining up a mountains and coming back down, and one of [00:25:00] my buddies is, why are you doing that?

I'm like, shifting the narrative that I can, or I get to do this, and I just said simply because I'm breathing right now, there's gonna be a point in time where we're not gonna be breathing, we're not gonna be on this earth anymore. As we get closer, especially with me as I get closer that uh, hopefully it's still a couple of decades away, you wanna say, you know, regrets are always part of human nature, right?

Sure. Or just are, are psyche, but we will never regret, you know what? I should have had more meetings. I think I should have done more at work. It's more about I should have spend time with our loved ones, with our kids. With our family and taking care of our, our body. I wanted to kind of play devil's advocate and maybe not devil's advocate, but what if you're saying you gotta know what you want to be in this world?

What if that's the struggle for a lot of people? What if they don't know [00:26:00] what they wanna be? And, and, and the story that I'll frame that with is this marketer, uh, his name is Gary. DI think marketing guy. He would probably. Wouldn't agree to that term, but entrepreneur. I think for like his twenties and thirties, he was helping build his father's wine business, um, I think in New Jersey.

And he has a lot of positivity now, and he's super successful and he's saying, look, there's time, right? If you're 23 and you don't know what you're doing, you're 23, right? You'll get there. So for, for people that are struggling, I guess to, to identify what they want to be, how do you help them? 


What you want to be Vs Who you want to be
---

Nicole: There's a clear distinction for me between what you want to be and who you want to be. Two very different things. I'm not telling you to know [00:27:00] what you want to do in the world. Like, I want to be a pediatrician, or I want to work in marketing, or I want to work in. Cybersecurity. Mm-hmm. That's not what the, the direction is. That's not what the curiosity is around. And that's wonderful too, right?

Danny: Yeah. 

Nicole: It's about who you want to be in the world, what qualities, what characteristics, what traits do you want to embody. And so for me, I think I want to be a compassionate human. I. I want to be connected to myself and to others. I want to be in integrity with how I want to show up in the world. It's less about what you want to do and more about who you want to be, and this does take time.

This takes practice. I'm several decades in and I'm, I finally figured it out and we'll continue to figure it out because [00:28:00] the evolution is forever and ever and ever. Amen. We're constantly iterating and changing, and so I would say get curious. Like ask questions. Ask yourself questions. Challenge your challenge, the things that you say that you like.

Be curious about yourself, like that's the one thing that took. Takes most of us so long to really, we avoid ourselves forever and ever and ever. We're so good at disconnecting and distracting and numbing and disassociating because we're avoiding being with ourselves. And so what I would tell someone is get to know yourself.

Get to know yourself. How do you do that? A little journal. What is it that I like to do? Why do I like to do these things? What is it about the way that I dress or the way that I move, or the people that, I mean, it's, it requires [00:29:00] intention, but it's such a fun process to notice all of the parts of us that want to be seen and want to be known and want to be accepted and want to be loved and like, yeah.

For someone who's on the younger side, I actually feel like these generations coming up are, are more in tune and are more tapped into. This level of consciousness, I think it just requires the desire to know yourself. You know what I, I didn't know that what I was doing was getting to know myself, but when I started listening to podcasts and hearing other people's stories or reading books, especially like biographies, the autobiographies, I, I would sort of see myself in someone else's story, and then I started to learn more about myself.

And it does happen slowly over time. So I'm not inviting you to know what you wanna do, even though that's wonderful. It's really knowing who you are. Who are you? You're gonna be changing [00:30:00] every single day, but foundationally, like, who are you at your core? I don't think that changes and when we're born, who we are, what our gifts are like, I don't think that changes from when we're born 

Danny: it's interesting, I guess I had some journals growing up when I was in college and

utep. And then when I transferred to UT Texas and some of the writings there, I'm like, who is this person? Um, it just very obviously immature. It was my early twenties. But I definitely agree with you, Nicole, that we evolve, right? We evolve on what we want, who we are, what values we, we uphold our principles.

And then another, uh, friend of mine that I used to work with back in the day. He had been married, I think 30 or 40 years, and he had mentioned, and I think I was just married at the time. He says, throughout your lifetime, if you're still with the same partner, it's like being married to [00:31:00] seven different people, right?

Because we evolve. The other thing that you mention is curiosity. For me, I was, I'm always telling people to be curious about the world around you, but not. Internally, so that, that's kind of changing my mindset because I tended not to be curious about myself because maybe I think I know myself to a certain extent.

But, uh, you know, that's gonna be a challenge that I'm gonna, uh, I'm gonna take moving forward to really get to know myself a little bit more as, uh, as I progress moving forward there. So, along the way, Nicole, did you have any mentors that kinda supported your career development within your profession? And as a person? 


Metors along the Way
---

Nicole: When I was an undergrad, I never considered graduate school and never crossed my mind.

Maybe it was like a possibility thing or a financial [00:32:00] thing, whatever it was. But I have been fortunate to have a few people in my life who sort of took me under their wing and guided me. One, his name was Jim Wilkening. He was an old boss of mine when I was managing this 84,000 square foot facility. I was in college.

He was one of the first people who asked if I had ever considered going to grad school. But he didn't just suggest it. He helped coordinate visits to schools. He put me in touch with people and ultimately helped me secure a graduate assistantship that covered like 75% of my tuition. 

Danny: Wow. 

Nicole: It, it changed the trajectory of my life, you know, and I've thanked him before, but I don't think he fully understands like the depth of his impact.

Like it was significant. I know I've already shared that like historically. I've always felt like I had to have things figure out, like I had to do things on my own. And I, I didn't really lean on people for [00:33:00] support. So mentors have come through, people that have reached out to me, people that have maybe seen something in me that I didn't see in myself and have sort of nurtured that I had.

In my corporate world, I was, I had worked for my, this old boss, she was like a, the much bigger boss, like the VP in the office. I didn't work directly for her, but I worked near her for a couple of years and she, uh, reached out to me years later to see my interested in, in this new opportunity.

And it just kind of reminded me that. It's something that you know, but you don't fully know if you're not like executing on it. And the relationships that you build matter, not just for career advancement, but but for actual connection, like for mentorship, for seeing the value in someone that's [00:34:00] like so many steps ahead of you or even walking alongside of you.

It doesn't have to be someone who's so much further along. Not every mentor that I've had has had like an official title. But they've always shown up in moments where I probably wasn't thinking about that next step for myself, and I'm really grateful for it. I think about them often and I think about wanting to be that person for others and, and as I'm challenging myself in this moment thinking, I don't know if I'm doing it enough, like seeing the potential in other people. Before they even realize that it's there.

Danny: I love doing the same thing as well. Just giving 'em ideas, giving 'em just different perspectives. Yeah. And it's, again, hopefully they're receptive and curious to think, Ooh, I never thought about that. It reminded me when I was used to be a cashier back, uh, [00:35:00] in El Paso.

There was this bagger, this Latino, I forgot his name. Unfortunately, he used to always call me Batman. I don't know why. Maybe it was because my height, I didn't really like Batman, um, compared to Superman. But anyways, he was talking about, Hey, I wanna be a car mechanic, right? Go to trade school. I'm like, Hey, that's great.

He talked about drawing and I'm like, Hey, what about these are pretty good. Why don't you go to school and design your cars? And then now other people can fix the cars that you design. And I think literally something just clicked. He's like, wow, I never really thought about that. Batman. Um, again, just kind of laughing, uh, his moniker for me and just giving people that advice, that mentorship, and it doesn't have to be that, that official title, we're individuals that are fortunate enough to have mentors in their life or sponsors, whether it's [00:36:00] family.

Or people that they work with that definitely resonate with, uh, with everything that you said, Nicole. So let's transition outta the corporate world and now describe your mindset to say, you know what, I'm gonna go off on my own. And, which again is a very difficult thing to do. You hear a lot of success stories primarily, right?

That's what we kind of flock to. Hey, I'm thinking about leaving the corporate world. Making good money and now there's no safety in net and people do it, but a lot of people just don't succeed and some people do. So walk me through the mindset. What were you thinking to say? You know what, it's time. 


Why Leave Corporate American to Start Your Own Business?
---

Nicole: oh gosh. What a good question. Leaving the corporate space, it wasn't a hard decision. 

I think in hindsight. I don't think I know, in hindsight, [00:37:00] I had a very naive view of what was to come. You know, I was absolutely stepping into the unknown, but I was doing it from a place of knowing what I wanted to do. Like I, I felt alive in this feeling of like, this is my purpose, this is my passion, this is it.

And I, even though I never imagined myself being a business owner, an entrepreneur, that was never really the plan. Once I made up my mind, it felt like an easy decision and I did enjoy the work that I was doing prior to leaving to, to a certain extent, aspects of it, right? But I just, over time, I started to feel the pull.

Towards something deeper. It's hard to explain, but I just felt like in hindsight, the burnout was real. I didn't realize it at the time. The overwhelm was real. I didn't realize it [00:38:00] at the time. I thought that I was leaving to do this passion work, and what happened was I contracted deeply. I thought that it was gonna feel easy, and I thought that it sounds so naive as I say it out loud, I thought that I was like doing my passion and people are gonna want to work with me because I'm living my passion.

So sweet, so naive. She's so precious. It really became a season of deep, deep, deep, deep excavating encountered so many. Pockets of resistance. And so many parts of me that felt afraid to be seen in this new light as a quote unquote business owner, you know, as someone who, guess what, now if you're promoting a business, you gotta actually do that.

You have to promote it, and you gotta talk about it, and you gotta networking, you gotta meet with, [00:39:00] you gotta do all these things. And there was the part of me that was like, oh my goodness, this is, I didn't realize this is what I was getting myself into. And so it was the biggest gift of my life, a year of meeting that part of myself.

Hmm. We really getting to know her, really getting curious because this is also the work that I do. I get to know, we get to meet these parts and, and we do it, and I do it from a place of curiosity and compassion. And so while it felt slow like molasses to move through the resistance, it was really insightful and really eyeopening and really helped me to come home to myself to understand like what my underlying stories were, were.

I just don't think I can. I just don't think I can. That's the story that lived in my body, and when I got really [00:40:00] clear with that story. And knew who I wanted to be in the world and how I want to show up in the world and lead my place myself from a place of self-leadership, I can take that part of me and hold her by the hand and say, I got you.

We're good. We're gonna keep moving. Okay. Like you're a little bit afraid, but I'm in my wise adult body now and this is what we're gonna be doing to stay moving in the direction that we're trying to move. So slowly just uncovering the ways that I self-sabotage. I know it sounds very like woo woo and, and all as spacey and out here, but this is the work that I do is just coming home to ourselves.

All of the places that we wanna avoid ourselves, and breathing

and getting still and getting curious. Our bodies are so wise. So leaving the corporate space, it felt easy at the [00:41:00] time. It led me into a year of like deep, deep, deep shadow work and really uncovering so much, and there's still so much to uncover. But now I've finally gotten to a place of sturdiness and grounded and have really developed a foundation of like self-trust that no matter what comes, if tomorrow, I, I need to start.

Making a, a steady income doing something else, like I can do that while I continue to build. Right? It's like trusting this process of growing and I'm learning and I'm excavating and I'm curious and I'm having fun even through the discomfort. 'cause it's uncomfortable. It's uncomfortable, it ain't for the faint of heart, but I also have my back and it feels really good to know that.

Danny: I just love your energy, Nicole, and your passion and having that introspective look to say, Hey, yes, it's gonna [00:42:00] be scary, but ultimately things are gonna be looking up or, or great into, into the future. So in regards to your company, what are the services that you provide? Anybody listening is interested in reaching out to you? How do they do that? 


Deeply Devoted Lily's Services
---

Nicole: You can find me on, uh, on social online. I go by the name of Deeply Devoted Lily. I've got different links to different ways to work together. I do a lot of one-on-one coaching, and often the people that I work with are either feeling stuck in a certain area of their lives or you know, that that saying like, you're, you're sick and tired of being sick and tired.

Right, where you're just like, you know that there's something, you know that you wanna show up in a certain way or set a certain boundary or speak your voice or speak your truth, but there's something that stops you. That's often when you come to work with me because it's not just [00:43:00] about adding new habits to your day, or it's not just about like adding something to your list.

It's about getting to know your I do one-on-one coaching. I actually teach a weekly somatic movement class here in the Bay Area. I, do group facilitation. Right now I am doing an eight week embodiment course on a platform called Share well, it's a mental health platform and, um, a lot of embodiment work.

So I'm happy to share my links. I'm happy to share, um, ways to, to connect, and I would love to support anyone who's. Who this resonates for. It's like there's that thing that feels like it's missing and just not really sure what it is. Or maybe you're a parent. Oftentimes, a lot of my clients are moms because you know who, who puts everyone before themselves more than, no offense dad to [00:44:00] a mom.

Right? But, but also men. I find a lot of men that gravitate to this work. I. Because the disconnection is real, because it's the striving, the hustle like you deserve to be held too, and I don't think that's an environment that's really seen and felt out in the world very much. You kind of have to go looking for it.


Book and Podcast Recomendations 
---

Danny: Thank you for that. And I'll make sure to have all the links in the, in this show notes, uh, below. So. Nicole, I could talk to you practically all day, but I know we have to come to a close and be respectful of your time. Really enjoyed this conversation, but how I close all my episodes is, you know, I'm an avid reader.

And then just recently I did a pre-call with somebody. I don't read books that much, but I listen to podcasts. Can it suggest a podcast? I'm like, oh yeah. So what books have you recently read that have resonated with you or you're [00:45:00] currently reading, and to include podcasts you'd like to share with, everyone?

Nicole: One book that I always recommend, I read it over a decade ago for the first time, but I still come back to it. It's such a simple, easy, light read, and it's one of my favorite books by Oprah Winfrey called What I Know For Sure. And each chapter just focuses on a different topic like joy and awe and compassion.

And she shares little stories from her life, um, that cover those different topics. It's one of my favorite books. I think for me. I'll share this really quickly. I know that we're closing. You can hear to love yourself for a lifetime, but until you're really ready. To integrate that and to understand what that means, I just, it doesn't really happen.

And so that book for me, there was a chapter where she [00:46:00] shares about all of her experience in life and her trauma, especially as a young girl. And she said something along the lines of, everybody deserves the nurturing and the love and the care as a young child and as an adult. Whatever you didn't get as a young kid.

It's your responsibility to give to yourself and it, there was something about hearing that, that just lit something up in me. It was like an aha moment. No one's coming to save you except for yourself. That's one book. I listen to a lot of podcasts right now because I'm in this build season and on fire with creation.

I've been listening to a podcast by, uh, her name is Layla, her. She is a business builder. She is relentless. And the thing that I like about her, because I like to be in alignment with not [00:47:00] just people that are hustling and grinding and building, but I like the fact that she shares how she comes home to herself and she checks in with herself.

And those moments of discomfort and those moments of hard, she's gotten really good at closing the gap between getting out of alignment and back in alignment. Another podcast that I really enjoy. Glennon Doyle, we can do hard things. That's if you start at the very beginning, you'll have content for ages.

One more that's a little bit more grounding is Stay Grounded by Raj Jana. He talks a lot more about spirituality, about doing the inner work, about consciousness, and I just, I love it so much. So just a few. 


Closing
---

Danny: Thank you for that. And again, I'll make sure to, to include that in the show notes. But Nicole, thank you.

I am so happy that we finally had that opportunity to record this episode. It's a little bit more away from it and, and cyber, which is fine because, sorry, I. [00:48:00] No, no, no, no, no. You don't have to apologize at all. I think to be successful in any career, we need to take care of ourselves, and I think, yeah, that message definitely resonated here in this episode. But again, thank you for, for joining me here. 

Nicole Lilly Intial Edit: Thank you for having me. Always so, so much fun. I'll talk to you [00:49:00] [00:50:00] [00:51:00] [00:52:00] soon. 

​