Finding The Blessing in Every Lesson | Liz Watt | 216

What if the hardest parts of life were actually preparing the way for something greater?

In this inspiring conversation, Amanda sits down with Liz Watt to explore a remarkable journey of healing, resilience, and transformation. Growing up in a polygamist family, Liz shares how years of shame, rejection, and hiding her story shaped her identity and how changing her perspective ultimately changed her life.

From overcoming emotional and physical health challenges to discovering the power of choosing a new story, Liz reveals how life's greatest struggles can become its greatest blessings. This conversation is filled with heartfelt wisdom, practical mindset shifts, and powerful reminders that healing begins within, and every challenge has the potential to lead to purpose.

💡 In this episode, listeners will discover:

✨ How childhood experiences can shape identity and how to rewrite that story
 💛 Why healing emotional wounds is just as important as healing physical ones
 🧠 The mindset shift that transformed pain into purpose
 🌱 How choosing a new perspective can uncover hidden blessings in life's hardest moments
 💪 Why personal healing is the foundation for serving and inspiring others
 🌍 The story behind Be Healthy Utah and Liz's mission to empower healthier lives
 ❤️ How embracing vulnerability can unlock confidence, purpose, and lasting resilience

⏰ Timeline Summary:
[2:15] Liz reflects on growing up in a polygamist family and the moment she realized she was different.
[12:48] Hiding her past, navigating rejection, and beginning a journey toward emotional healing.
[24:36] Discovering how unresolved emotions were affecting physical health and learning to heal from within.
[38:11] The mindset shift that transformed painful experiences into life's greatest blessings.
 [51:29] Building Be Healthy Utah and creating a mission centered around holistic wellness and service.
[1:04:57] Why choosing a new perspective can change the direction of an entire life.

Transcript

Welcome And Guest Introduction

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the Manders Mindset Podcast. Here you'll find both monologue and interviews of entrepreneurs, coaches, healers, and a variety of other people. Where your host, Amanda Russo, will discuss her own mindset and perspective, and her guest mindset and perspective on the world around us. Manders and her guests will help explain to you how shifting your mindset will shift your life.

SPEAKER_01 0:30

Welcome to Manders Mindset, where we explore the power of shifting your mindset to shift your life. I'm your host, Amanda Rusev, and I am here today with Liz Watt. She is a dynamic leader, holistic wellness expert, and a CEO. And she is dedicated to empowering others to live their fullest potential. She's a multi-bestseller author, a public speaker, and a podcast host, and she uses her voice to inspire positive change, sharing her life's mission to uplift and serve others. Together with her husband of over 33 years, she coordinates Utah's largest natural health and wellness conference, helping her community embrace proactive natural health. She's also a mother of sick. And her motto is Live Today to Bless Others Tomorrow. And I am so excited to speak with her. Thanks for joining me, Liz. Well, thanks, Amanda, for having me on today. Absolutely.

Growing Up In A Polygamous Family

SPEAKER_01 1:37

So who would you say Liz is at the core if you strip all of that away?

SPEAKER_03 1:46

I am a person that loves to bless and serve others. That's where I find my joy is being able to help others along their path. Have you always felt that way? I do feel like that has been like a core aspect of who I am and how I've made different choices in my life. And when I stay true to that, I feel like that I am in the rhythm of what my life is and how I've created and what I want to create in it.

SPEAKER_01 2:22

I get that. That's amazing. Can you take me down memory lane a little bit? Tell me about your childhood, upbringing, family dynamic.

SPEAKER_03 2:33

The thing that I learned is that for so many years I tried to fight my past. I tried to hide it. I tried to not have it be a part of me. But soon you realize that you are you are your past. And the things that you go through is what makes you to be the person you are today. And so I guess I'll start out when I was in fourth grade. One of my friends asked if I wanted to go to the bathroom. And we go run into the bathroom and we're just sitting there chit-chatting away, you know, she's in her stall, I'm in my stall. And all of a sudden she goes, You want to hear something funny? And we're like just laughing. And she goes, I heard you come from a polygamous family. And I was like, And as I sat there, I didn't know what to say because everything was going through my head because I did come from a polygamous family, and I didn't know at the time. I mean, here I'm only in fourth grade, that I was that much different from people. And I also didn't know that people were laughing about me. And all of a sudden it was like when she says, I hear something funny about you, it's kind of like my world just kind of stopped and reality started to settle in that I was just different. I just said, Yeah, that is funny. But I didn't tell her. I didn't tell her the truth. I didn't say anything. And I just got out of that bathroom as quick as I could, called my mom, and just said, Can you come and pick me up? And, you know, on the way home, my mom's like, I had to come out all the way from work to come pick you up. And all of a sudden I was just like, Mom, do you know the people are laughing at us? You know, and that was kind of like the start of realizing that I was different from other people. And that I couldn't be like them. And, you know, I ended up living a life where it was like I we were the total we are different than anyone in the whole neighborhood. In Utah, it's very you unique because you know all of your neighbors. You're outside playing with all of your neighbors. The neighborhoods are very tight in Utah. And you know who's next door and you know their stories, and it's not just where it's like where you just wave to people, you know, it's it's very tight. And so we had to go through a lot of things where we didn't feel included. We had people that laughed at us, teased us. We had people that wouldn't let us complain at their house or let their kids play with us. And it was, you know, because the way that I grew up is that yeah, we were polygamous family, but we lived in amongst regular people. It wasn't like we grew up in a compound or anything like that. And so we were the the odd ones out in the neighborhood. And the way that I chose that I was going to cope with that is that I was going to hide from it. I wasn't gonna tell anybody. And so as I grew older and got, you know, all of a sudden I'm going to middle school, it's like the new people I meet, I'm not I'm not gonna let them know, you know. But what happens is people start talking, and people are excited to be able to say things to other people that they don't know about, and all of a sudden you see the fingers pointing and the, you know, talking behind your back and all that type of stuff. And then I get to high school, and you know, I ended up being a cheerleader and being involved in school and stuff like that. But it was you saw the looks on people's faces when all of a sudden they found out because before they were totally good friends with you, and then afterwards they didn't know how to treat you, you know. And so then when I went to college, it was like the best experience because when I moved away and went to college, nobody had to know who I was. Nobody did. I didn't have to bring that story with

Hiding The Truth And Living In Fear

SPEAKER_03 7:15

me at all. And I was like, I felt so free that I could just be who I wanted to be, and I never told people, I just didn't tell people my story, you know, and it was like I didn't have to do that because nobody from my childhood was at my college, you know. I lived in my own apartment and went to school, but you know, with other people, and so nobody had to know. And then I ended up meeting my husband. I didn't even tell my husband for three months after till after we were dating. Because you just don't know how they're gonna take it. Your whole life you've had rejection when it comes to it, and I didn't know how he'd take it. And so finally, after three months, I was like, okay, I need to tell you something, you know. And anyways, he was very good about it, his parents were very good about it, and we ended up getting married. We moved to California, but it was just us two living in California, and we got to California, I didn't tell anybody because I didn't have to. And things would come up every once in a while, and I would like just push it away, you know. And my husband said that, you know, it's like a huge giant in our relationship, but yet we can't talk about it. And it was kind of hard on him because for him to marry me was a lot. There was a lot of pushback. There, you know, my dad really, really struggled and getting and me getting married because he knew that if I married him, I wouldn't continue on that practice. And as parents, we raise our kids the way that we want them to live the rest of their lives. And so, you know, if you look at it from my perspective right now, I have six kids, I raise them a certain way, and I want them to continue on their life living that way, you know? And so you can see it that way, but it was a huge struggle. And so for him, by me not ever talking about it, he felt like that there was a part of him that he couldn't ever share. You know, nobody could know like the heartache, the things that he went through. But, you know, ultimately it came down to me and what I could handle at the time. And at that moment, that is not something that I wanted to disclose to people. And so while we lived in California, I didn't talk about it, you know. Moved back to Utah. And we've been married now for four years, and it was something that I didn't talk about. It wasn't something that we shared when we went to church. We didn't share it in the neighborhood, we didn't say with my friends. It was not a conversation that we talked about. And I started having kids, and then all of a sudden, my health was not doing well.

Marriage, Motherhood, And Getting Sick

SPEAKER_03 10:27

Here I was married to a chiropractor. We were doing holistic stuff, and our whole life was all about holistic, and I kept on getting sicker and sicker and sicker, you know, and we couldn't. I done the whole natural route, I went down the medical route, and I just was I kept on getting these, I would say, inflammation episodes that was happening to me. And so I all of a sudden I was just as like, I didn't know what to do anymore. And I heard this like voice, these the string of words that were just like coming to me and stuff. And it just said, you know, Liz, I need you to learn a trade to help and serve others, but you first have to heal yourself. And I sat there and I'm like, I have been trying to heal myself for how long? And and then as I was like, okay, well, obviously I'm asking the wrong question. I'm going to the wrong source instead of asking everybody else how to take care of myself. I need to start asking myself what I need to do. And so I started asking myself every day, like, what can I do today to help improve my health? And after four months, it was like my body did a reversal. And I was like, oh my gosh, this is what it's talking about. I learned a trade to help and serve other people. Now I can start teaching this. And I start teaching it. But then it was like those voices came to me again, and it was like, you're not done yet. You're not done. And so I started to listen again, trying to figure out what it is. And I just typed in Google one day that said, you know, natural, natural healing. And at that moment, I realized what it was trying to tell me, like what this voice is that I needed to go. I had had so much emotions bottled up inside of me that all I could do was come out. And it would came out in my health, it came out in my stress, it came out in my anxiety, it came out in all

Healing The Emotional Root Cause

SPEAKER_03 12:39

of this stuff. And I had been running and hiding for so many years from who I was that I never dealt with the emotional aspects of it. And so when I started then diving into the emotional aspect, it was a huge shift within me because I had to do a lot of healing. It's so easy to push things aside. But when you start to dive into that healing and to deal with the emotional, I think the emotional part is even harder than the physical part that we have to deal with because emotional we can hide, but physical we can't. And also, people will help us if they see physical things going on, but if emotional things a lot of people just don't understand, and so I had to go on a whole healing journey of coming to the acceptance of who I was. So that was kind of like the platform that I was able to go through, and it was the very base of the the next part of my life, and to be able to accept who I was.

SPEAKER_01 13:57

Wow, that makes a lot of sense. That must have been tough, Liz. Now, do you have siblings?

Family Background And Writing The Memoir

SPEAKER_03 14:05

Yeah, so there was 14 kids, there was four wives, 14 kids, and and we all, my dad believed that each woman needed their own home. So we lived in like in a neighborhood, but everyone had their own homes and stuff like that. So a little bit different than what you would probably see on a TV show or something like that. And my dad was very successful, and we had beautiful homes up on the east bench and in the Salt Lake Valley, and he owed his own business, and the wives worked at the business. He was an inventor, and he ended up selling their bedwetters for when kids wet the bed. He invented uh these alarms for when kids wet the bed, and he ended up selling them all around the world, and he ended up making a video analyzer, which then they ended up being all over in the White House, which then he was able to go and meet President Reagan. And I mean he had a crazy full life being a polygamist, and nobody knew that he was a polygamist. And so it was just kind of funny that he ended up being on 60 minutes because he needed a heart transplant that he wanted on the list at age 65. When you're when you turn 65, you get off the list. This is how it used to be. And so they did a pilot program that they would take defective hearts, fix them, and then they would transplant that. And that's just for people that were old older than 65. And he was on this pilot program, one of the first people to ever get it done. And he did that in LA. And so when he came back to Utah, Utah did like a huge story on him. And it was like, okay, which wife is going to be the poster child for the, you know, for 60 minutes and stuff like that, which ended up to be my mom because she had all the younger kids and things like that. So it just is an interesting story of us growing up, living this way, and learning to navigate. And so that's why I ended up writing a book about myself. I have a memoir called Becoming Me, A Polygamous Girl's Journey to New Beginnings. Because I just have a lot of different crazy stories that normal that a lot of people never experienced in their life, you know.

SPEAKER_01 16:37

I mean, I was asking about siblings because I was wondering if it helped you, like have someone who was experiencing a similar life that you also were.

SPEAKER_03 16:49

Yes, but it was just was like, you know, my my story's a little bit different in the fact that my dad only had kids with two of the wives, and my mom was the second wife, and so the other two wives that he married, they already had their kids, and so it wasn't like we had a whole bunch of kids and all of these relationships and stuff. And so the kids that were my age were just like my own siblings and were living within my own home, and so it was like we had kind of a normal relationship growing up that way. And yes, I was very close to the sister that was right up above from me. She was two years older than me, but only a year older in school. We did everything together and we had many talks about this too, because when you're young and you're trying to navigate this, it's you know, she hid it too. She didn't want to talk about it. And when we went to college, she still didn't want to talk about this, you know. And when she had this best friend, and her best friend lived above us at college, and she'd never even had told her about it, about how we grew up. And I had a really hard experience one time when my dad basically banished at that time my boyfriend, now my husband, right? And told him he was no longer allowed at our house, and he didn't want him dating his daughter anymore, and all of that stuff. And so I went to her and I just like broke down because she was like our best friend, kind of both of our best friends. And she hadn't she didn't know, she had no clue of how we grew up because we just kept it a secret, even with our best friends. If we could, if we could, we just kept it. And so we we always had each other, which was really good. And we had some of the same struggles. Of course, we all have our own stories and how we interpret things. And I think I had this thing within me though, that it was like, I didn't want to keep my whole life a secret. But it was like the only way that I'd learned how to keep how to do when you live that way, that's how you survive. You really do. You survive by telling lies because you don't know how the other people are going to act. And so, yes, we were very close, and we actually ended up having a double wedding, got married the same day, and everything like that. So, yeah, we were very close, and it was nice to be able to have someone that you could talk about. But now I am going through that whole healing journey knowing I needed to write a book, didn't want to write the book, because then all of a sudden you're going to be exposed to everyone. But yet doing the delicate balance of my parents' relationship, my siblings' relationship, my personal family's relationship, and also the church's relationship too. And like doing that delicate balance between everything was very difficult to write that book. It was, but through that whole process, I think I healed more than anything because I had to relive a lot of those experiences, the ones that I had hid away for so long. I was finally able, I forced to be able to having to learn how to get through that. I feel like I was true to myself, I was true to my family, I was able to heal in a lot of different ways, a lot of things that we grow up blaming our parents for so many different things. We blame God for so many different things in our lives, and really in the end, coming to the understanding that some of these hardest things we ever go through in our lives is actually the greatest blessings we will ever have. And what a beautiful transformation that I was able to experience because of that.

SPEAKER_01 21:54

That is really beautiful. How did you come to realize that about the blessings?

SPEAKER_03 22:00

I I talk about this in my memoir, and I had had six kids, and I we were at church one day, and this lady was up talking. She was a missionary, a sister, a lady that was a missionary, and she got up and she said that. You know, but at that

Seeing Tragedy Through A Blessing Lens

SPEAKER_03 22:22

time, you know, this sister missionary, she's probably about 21, 22, something like that. And she talked about how before she went on her mission, she was a model. Now, I have five boys and one girl. And then my four older boys, it's like they were not even thinking about what's being said over the pulpit at the time, right? And as soon as she said that she was a model, it's like all four of those boys looked up at her like, oh my gosh, she's a model, you know, just because they're boys. And they were so intent in listening to everything that she had to say from that moment on. And, you know, then the spirit just came to me and just said, I also blessed you with the childhood, so that others would listen to you and you can bless and serve my children. And I'm also not, I was like, what do you mean that you blessed me with this childhood? And as I sat there on the bench, I was in conflict going on in my head. Like, what do you mean? This there's no way that my life is blessing. There were so many different things that I had to go through. And it wasn't just that growing up that way. There were so many different ways, different things that had happened to me. And it's just like I was out of luck so many different times in my life, and everything just compounded, right? And so I was like, how is that a blessing? I can't figure out how that's a blessing. And so as I sat there, I just was like, okay, I'm gonna start looking through a lens of a blessing. Like, how what if it was a blessing? Maybe I let's just switch that lens for a second here. Let's just see how it could be a blessing. And as I started to look at it, okay, how could growing up this way be a blessing? Well, I'm different. And others will listen to me. People are interested in who I am, they want to know my story, they want to know how I grew up, they want to know the inner twines of everything, right? They want to know some of the lessons that I learned, some of the hard things I went through. Like they're interested in that. So, okay, that is a huge blessing. Also, it's a huge blessing that I don't have just one mom. I have other moms that are that looked after me growing up who loved me, who taught me, who when things were hard, I could go and escape to their house and they could love me just as much, you know. I also had a huge family, a lot of siblings. And so it's like, okay, yeah, those really are blessings. A lot of these things, a lot of people don't have in their life, and that's a huge blessing. So, you know, and then I started to look at growing up, you know, I talked about that there was a lot of people that teased me and wouldn't let me play at their house, and they wouldn't let their kids play with me. And at that moment, it was hard. I remember the feeling. So when I had kids of my own, it was like every kid is invited to the party, everyone's invited to my house. I don't care who you are. When you walk in here, you are going to feel loved. And that's a huge blessing because I felt like that because of the hurt that I was experiencing that I experienced growing up. And I didn't want any kid in the neighborhood to feel like that. So, you know what? That's a huge blessing for my kids. And me being able to teach my kids that no, we are friends with them, and they are gonna feel like that they are loved. You don't have to be best friends with them, but they are gonna feel like that they're loved. And that, you know what? No, we're gonna do this for your party because we can't afford to have 20 kids do that. We're gonna do this activity because 20 kids come to your party, you know what I mean? And so it's like I was able then to teach

The Prom Story And Reclaiming Worth

SPEAKER_03 26:53

my kids the importance of loving other people and loving people that are different. And because I got in there because of just my skills. It wasn't like voted in because it was my sophomore year, and I got in because of my skills. So there was no political thing that could happen. And I got in for just the person that I was, and I was so excited because it was like I gotta finally be one of the popular girls. I gotta be like everyone else out there. I get to be in front of the whole school, cheering in front of everyone, and I just felt like this was such an awesome experience that I get to have because I felt for so long that I was second class, you know? And I get into cheerleading two weeks into my sophomore year, the girl came down, landed on my knee, and completely tore out my knee. And it was one of the hardest things in my life because not only was I experiencing the pain, but here I thought that I was going to be this cool cheerleader girl. And all of a sudden, I am doing homeschooling because it was so bad. I was in the hospital for a whole week after it happened. I ended up getting staph infection, going back into the hospital for another week. And it just, there's so much that I had to endure at age 15. And when I came back to school after being in homeschooling, it was like I'm on crutches for six months because it was so bad. All of a sudden, I don't get to have a friend group because I'm on crutches and I can't walk the halls because I had to leave my classes 10 minutes early so I could make it to the next class before the other kids got in there. And by the time I got there, I was like so exhausted, tired, I couldn't even really pay attention at school. Like it was just a my you're you have this dream of how things are going to be, and all of a sudden it's totally different. And it is, it was one of the hardest things I ever experienced in my life, and I just felt like God just let me down. And you know, but at that moment, when all of a sudden I'm having my kids, my three oldest kids ended up tearing their ACLs in high school. And between the three of them, there was seven ACL surgeries because my third, my first child tore his three times, my second one tore his second two times, and my third child tore it once on each side. And you know, my first my first one, he was out serving a mission in Japan, tears his knee for the third time, and he had to come home from his mission. Now, the things that everything that I had experienced, because not only did that happen to me my sophomore year, I ended up reteering it my senior year, having to be off the the cheer team then. And it was just as like I understood, I understood what they were going through. I understood the heartache, the things that are out of your control, and that you know what, they'd need a hug. I could not be that type of mom unless I went through that. And so when my son walked off of the airplane after tearing his knee, I could just hold him in my arms and sympathize with him. You know, my second child, he had torn it in football when he was 14, and then he returned right before his senior year, and the coach was kicking him off the team and was like, No, you can't be on it. This is like two weeks before school is starting. We ended up finding a doctor that was in New Zealand that dealt with the all blacks team there who really specialized getting you know the kids back on, getting his players back on the field. We sent him to New Zealand and he got his knee. I I told the coach, I'm like, I promise you he's gonna be back. He was back able to cheer within six weeks, then and four months after he was doing nationals in Florida. And so, you know, I fought for that because I was there too. I was that cheerleader, too, who was getting kicked off and trying to fight for my spot and trying to get back on. And like I was there, like it happened to me, you know? And then it was like my third son, he had torn it in rugby one knee, and then he got back and he did amazing. And then all of a sudden, close to the end of the season, he ends up tearing his other knee. And as he sat down there at the on the football fields with his neck, his other knee torn, I could just feel that inside of me. And so, you know, this was one of the hardest things I ever went through. But afterwards, I'm like, this is the biggest blessing for my own children. Because I'm I'm able to be with them, I'm able to sympathize. I know what they went through because I did that too. And I just found like, oh my gosh, that's such a blessing. Oh my goodness, how did I miss that? That's such a big blessing. This is such a big blessing, you know? And at that moment, all I wanted to do was just drop to my knees and ask for forgiveness because I had blamed my parents, I had blamed my siblings, I had blamed God for so many things in my life. And maybe this was the greatest blessing that ever happened to me. Maybe all of these things helped me become the person that I was meant to be. And so we ended up going on like a girls' trip uh a couple weeks later with my mom and my sisters and stuff like that. And I go and I talk to my mom in her room, and I was just like, Mom, I need to ask

Building Be Healthy Utah From A Dream

SPEAKER_03 33:26

you for forgiveness. Like, why do you need to ask me for give for forgiveness? And so I just said, for so many years, I blamed you and dad for growing up this way. But I realized that I had to, in order for me to bless so many other people's lives, I had to be different. And thank you for providing an opportunity for now for me to have a platform that I can now bless so many other people. Because otherwise I wouldn't have had that. And so, anyways, it was a huge circle of coming to realize that you know, our lives are our greatest blessings, and some of these hard things that we go through, even though on the outside and when we're going through it, we could sit there and tell ourselves, there's no way that this is a blessing. But guess what? There is blessings amongst each of our tragedies. We just need to start looking at it through that lens.

SPEAKER_01 34:35

I completely agree, Liz. That's amazing that you were able to have that conversation with your mom. I bet that was very healing for you.

SPEAKER_03 34:45

Yes, it was yes, it was very healing. And by the end, we're both crying and stuff like that. Because we love our parents, and there's a lot of sacrifices they do to for us, and to sit there and blame them for, you know, because it was their choice to live that way. I had I felt like I was living the consequences of their choices, and why could they not live and be like everyone else on the street? Like, why couldn't they be? And so I would always sit there and say, like before, I would say, like, why me? And then I got to the point of what an honor. Why did you choose me? Why did you choose me to live this way? Such an honor, such an honor that you gave this to me, that now I I have now I have a great responsibility, you know. I have a great responsibility to be able to shine my light in so many other ways that I would not have been able to before. And you know, and that's where it comes down to, you know, I run Be Healthy Utah. It's the largest natural health conference, basically, in the West, and I am the face of it. And if I had not gone through all of this healing process, realizing that my life was a blessing, realizing that this is how I was supposed to grow up, then I would still be hiding right now. And I would not be able to influence. Now we have, we just had our one of our conferences in April, we had over 5,000 people come. I mean, that is changing people's lives. And if I had not gotten to the point where I was healed, I couldn't be in that influential spot of being able to bless so many people's lives. And so it really starts with us. And you know, we put our worth in so many into so many different people's and their perspective of us. But it's really about what's inside of us and changing that perspective because guess what? My circumstances did not change, but the way I thought about it did. And when I finally did change that, that was when I I was able to clay to create something that now thousands of people come to every year. Now I was able to finally write the book that I needed to write. Finally, I was able to have these interviews and be in front of these crowds and you know speak in front of these, you know, businesses and stuff like that. Because I first healed myself, because I first changed my perspective and who I am and what I'm supposed to do in this life. And now I feel like I can do anything I want to do. I can do anything. If there's something I want to do in my life, I have the ability to do it, and nobody can tell me no.

SPEAKER_01 38:11

I love that. You had mentioned you were dealing with dis-ease, and it was it was like from emotions. How did you heal that? What was the biggest thing that helped you push past that?

SPEAKER_03 38:23

Well, I started to then identify like what are these emotions that I was going through. And I started to do a lot of meditation. I started to do, you know, a med meditation, breath work, things like that to try to help, you know, calm down our nervous systems because our emotions get high. Our emotions are our greatest blessings in our lives because that's what

Many Sides To Us And Final Vibe

SPEAKER_03 38:49

helps us experience life. Like there's a difference between living life and experiencing life. And most of the time we just live life. But guess what? Life is about being experiencing it, and emotions is what helps us experience. And so emotions sometimes get a bad rap, but we're supposed to be happy, we're supposed to be sad, we're supposed to be angry, we're supposed to go through the whole, you know, betrayal and like all of these emotions, because that's what makes our lives come alive. That's when we're able to really experience life. But what happens is we get in this state to where we don't want to deal with it, we hide from it, we push it aside, we push it deep within us, but eventually it's like you know, the the jack in the box, right? We just push in and push, and all of a sudden it explodes. And if we learn to be able to, okay, let's talk, let's think. Like, you know, I experienced this, and how am I, you know, we have the ability to write a new story. Nobody knows what that story, it doesn't have to be a perfect story. It can we can have 10 different versions of something that happened. Well, what story are you going to believe? And so we go through these, you know, emotions and trying to like meditate on it, breathe through it out, realize that okay, I don't have to be held by that anymore. Okay, what is my new story going to be? And I created a companion journal that went along with my Becoming Me book, and it's called Becoming Me: A Sacred Journey of Uncovering Sacred Blessings. Because I believe that it is a sacred journey to go through to be able to work through these emotions. And when we get to the end, it's like, what's your new story going to be? And we get to choose that, and it doesn't even matter if it's right or it's wrong, or if somebody else believes it or not. Guess what? There are stories. They are our stories, and we get to choose that story that we want. And so I got to be able to tell a new story now. You know, I wonder if I should tell you this experience that I had that was one of the most hardest experiences that I ever went through of my worth. I was 15 years old, and at this point, I had it, I was right before I was 16. At this point, I had been through, you know, two knee operations. I had been homeschooled, I had been on crutches for six months. I had just been through the ringer of everything, right? I didn't get to have my my sophomore year like I wanted to. I actually went on a dance with somebody, and the guy was so upset that I asked him to the dance, he wouldn't even talk to me the night of the dance, you know, and so I just felt like I was like so low because here I was on crutches and I asked him, I want to be like a normal teenager, just did not work out. And so I just did it was like my sophomore year was the worst year. But it was the end of the year, and my sister ends up me taking me with her to uh we went to a party, and it was a senior party, and I was like, Oh, I finally get to be me. I'm not on crutches, I don't have my brace from my ankle to my hip, but I can just be like a normal teenager, and we get there, and the guy that's hosting it comes over, meets me. I'd never met him before. We end up talking that night, and then a few days later, there's a knock at my door, and my brothers are like, Liz, something's right at the door. And I come running upstairs. I open it up, and there's like a poster on the front step, and it says, I would, and there was uh like a little green plant, and it said, I would wet my plants unless you went to prom with me. And I was like, Oh my gosh, he asked me to prom. I was like so excited, you know. And we end up going to prom. He ends up showing at my house with a white limousine, and I just felt like I was Cinderella at the ball. It was a magical night. And afterwards, he ends up kissing me, and it was such a fun, beautiful night, and something I had not been able to experience. And we ended up dating and spending a lot of time with each other, and then the end of the year comes and he quit talking to me. And of course, I'm like, I don't know if he didn't know how I grew up, but now he found out, or like, you know, there's just a lot of things going on in your head at that moment. But summer comes, he ends up graduating, and I was at a party, and he sees me there. And so he makes his way over to me, and he's like, Do you want to go for a Drive. So we go for a drive and we stop at this, like in front of this pizza shop, just like down the hill. And we're sitting there talking and about just life. And all of a sudden he starts yelling at me to hide. Just like, hide, hide, you have to hide, you have to hide. I'm like, what? I couldn't figure out what was going on. And he just kept on telling me to hide. So I quickly jumped underneath the dashboard. And I didn't know if there was like a gunshot, if there was a flight, a fight or you know, earthquakes. Like I didn't know what was going on. And then I hear people outside talking, and I look over and I see that he's still sitting in his seat. But as the people walked by, he raised his hand and he just said hi to them. And at that moment I realized why I was underneath a seat. And it was why he asked me to hide, and it was because he was embarrassed to be seen with me. He didn't want these friends to know that he was with me. So he asked me to hide. Well, basically yelled at me to hide. And I picked myself. Things in your life where you just want to disappear. I wanted to just snap my fingers and disappear. But I pulled myself back up on the seat, he put the keys in the car, drove me home. I come into the front door and I was like, Mom, I'm home. I ran downstairs to my bedroom, pulled the covers up and just cried myself to sleep. And I just promised myself that I would never tell anybody about this story because how can you tell others that people are embarrassed to be around you? And so I kept it a secret. One of those moments that I didn't

Where To Find The Book And Closing

SPEAKER_03 46:14

tell anybody. And as I was going through this healing journey, there was that familiar voice that we all have that came to me and just said, Liz, that night underneath the dashboard, you actually have it all wrong. Underneath the dashboard that night, there wasn't just one girl, but there was actually two. There was one girl that was bruised and broken and humiliated. But then there was another girl that somehow found the strength to pull herself back up on that seat. And then the spirit just said, focus on girl number two. I realized at that moment that I could not take away what happened. And so many years I sat there and I thought about my worth underneath that dashboard, and that's where I belonged. And that anytime I did anything in my life, like I said, that stress and anxiety, anytime I thought, I just had this feeling that was inside of me that I needed to do more, to create more, to be more. Like, but every time I would start to think about that, it was like those anxiety feelings would start come taking me over and be like, no, you can't do that. People are gonna laugh at you. They're gonna tease you, they're gonna be talking about you. Do you really want to have your face out there? Do you really want that? And so I would retreat. And I wouldn't do, I wouldn't fulfill those things that I just knew that were just trying to just get out of me so hard. I just kept on pushing it. And what was happening is that anxiety was going up and down and up and down and up and down. I was creating this because of the emotions that I was having. And so when I started to focus on, you know, that girl number two, it was like I had the strength to pull myself back up on that seat. Like I did. I had that strength, and that's how our emotions are. I could sit there and think about that my worth was underneath that dashboard. Or I could look at the different perspective and realize that there was another girl there that pulled herself back up on the seat when the world beat her down, she found the strength to pull herself back up. And which girl do I want to be? Which one? Because and so I chose that I was going to focus on that girl that pulled herself back up on the seat. And this is how our emotions are is that we all are experiencing hard things in our lives. But what are we gonna do with it? Are we gonna wallow in our pain for the rest of our lives? Or are we gonna look at it in a different perspective and look at it in a way that'd be like, you know what? How can this be a blessing? How can I help use this now to bless other people? Because one of the biggest things that we can do is get over ourselves and start serving other people. But we cannot serve others until we start to heal ourselves. I believe that we all have a mission in our life. And we are all supposed to, you know, you have this mission with your podcast right now, right? You're able to touch so many people's lives right now. If you had in the background of you sitting there thinking, like, oh my gosh, I did this and I did this and I did this, and you know, people weren't nice to me here. Guess what? You wouldn't be able to bless as many people right now. You wouldn't be able to. But if you realize that you have this mission in your life, and we start then addressing these emotions that are keeping us down, and realize that we can either wallow in that paint or we can stand up, brush ourselves off, and take one step in front of the other. Because that circumstance will never go away. But how we interpret it is the biggest key there.

SPEAKER_01 50:51

I agree with everything you said there, Liz. How we interpret it is everything. I think even asking ourselves the question, like it seems like you did, how can this be a blessing to me? Even directly asking ourselves to put that into our awareness.

SPEAKER_03 51:10

Because you know what, you will find the blessing and you will find a different story too. But what happens is we often feel comfortable being in the cycle. But you know what? When we're uncomfortable, that's not when we're creating our life's mission. That's not when we're blessing and serving other people because we're too much in our own cycle. Let's break out of that. Let's choose to break out of it because it comes from a choice, it comes from the choice that we have, and we all have the power to choose in our lives. And you know what? Let's make it put a path that will better ourselves, better the world, better our relationships. Let's make that decision today that we are not going to stay in that cycle anymore, that we are going to create a new life for us, and a life that will be far better than we ever anticipated that we could ever live.

SPEAKER_01 52:16

Now I'm curious. You might have already answered this, but I'm gonna I'm gonna ask you directly. I'm sure you've had many, many of them. But what would you say has been the biggest aha moment you've had in your life?

SPEAKER_03 52:31

I would go back to kind of what we just said that I have that power to choose. You know, I live my model, live today to bless others tomorrow. Well, I get to choose that. I get to choose what that is. And so many times we feel like our choice is taken away, but it's not. Because it could just be a thought that we could change. And my biggest aha moment is when I realized that I have the power to look at life through a different lens. I chose to look at life through a different lens, and because of that, now my life has changed, and I have the ability now to affect thousands of people. When anybody walks through that door at Be Healthy Utah, their lives are changed. And if I was to sit there and tell my own story, keeping that own story that I did for so many years, then I would be able to bless so many other people. So, you know, it's about the power to realize that what you do today can actually bless other people tomorrow.

SPEAKER_01 53:48

I love that. The power to choose. And we have we do. We have so so so so many choices. Now, I I'm so curious if you can delve down a little bit, be healthy, you took. What do you guys do with that?

SPEAKER_03 54:03

I've talked about a few times that I had this dream because I just I feel like I'm I'm open to it. I'm open to dreams and visions and and you know the spirit is speaking to me. I trust it when it comes because I believe that it is a gift that we all have. I had this dream that I'm standing in front of thousands of people because we put on a natural health conference. For so many years, I lived in pain. I was constantly sick. And it wasn't until I started to address the root cause of these things where I started to, what should I do with my body today? What is my body asking that it needs today? This is the whole holistic approach to our natural health. And then dealing with the emotions, and then dealing with the mental aspect, and then dealing with what's our bigger, biggest per purpose here in life. All of this is a whole string of natural health. What if we could create a platform where people could come and learn? And they wouldn't have to live like I did for so many years in pain. But they could just come to one place and learn from speakers and educators and learn about herbs and supplements and food and emotional things and all of this stuff. Like, what if they could come and do that? So I talked my husband into it. He did not want to do it because we'd never put on a conference before in our life. He's like, we don't do that. I'm like, no, we have to do this. Like, we have to do this. And so we put on our very first conference in 2019. And the thing is, is that I we told ourselves from the very beginning we're gonna have 1,500 people come to that conference. And it was six weeks before, and we'd only sold 164 tickets. And anyways, it was the day of the conference, and only 400 people came, which a lot of people would say, like, oh, 400, that's great, but not when you've told your speakers, your vendors, everyone you've told the universe. I mean, you're you know, talk about the principles of the secret, right? You telling everyone you're having 1500 people come and only 400 people come. It's like you feel like you are, you felt like you're the biggest failure. And as I was sitting there just wanting to just cry and disappear, it was like that voice came to me again and just said, Don't mourn the 1100 that didn't come, but celebrate the 400 that did. And all of a sudden, as I look around, I start seeing all of the smiles on everyone's faces. They didn't care that 1100 people didn't come. They were excited to be there, these 400. Celebrate them. And all of a sudden, they're like coming up to me. Thank you so much. We love this. This is this is so great. And we really need this. And, you know, the vendors, the ones that put in their money, I mean, they're like, you have to keep on going. You just have to keep on doing this. I know you didn't get the numbers, you have to keep on going. And, you know, the speakers are like, you know, next year's gonna be great. So we decided to do the next year, but then that's when COVID hit. And we ended up having three of our conferences canceled. And my husband was just like, I'm done. We're gonna, we're not gonna do this anymore. We're we are just gonna cut our losses and just walk away because COVID was hard for everyone. And when you're putting on conferences where you actually have people there where you're gathering, those are we're a no-go, you know, they would not let you do that. And so we I just talked my husband into it again in 2020. We we ended up having 2,200 people come, and and now it's like we have over 5,000 people that come, and then we also do it in St. George too, southern Utah. And this last year we had 1,100 people come there, and hopefully this year and in November we're gonna have 2,000 people there, and so it's just growing. But we created a platform where we have speakers, we have like 40 speakers, and we do food demonstrations, we do interactive classes. So if people want to come and learn how to do yoga, breath work, meditation, qigong, like all of these different types of classes, they can come and do it. And they we had 187 vendors that were all on natural health, and you could learn what are these latest things and new inventions and all this type of stuff that's all about natural health. This kind of conference is not like any other conference out there because people come and they come to learn and they walk away being better than what they were before because they're healthier. And what happens when we're healthier? We're able to live life better, you know, we're able to experience life like what we talked about, right? And you're able to help other people, you're able to be more involved in things in life, and you're able to live a better, fulfilled life even as you age. And so it is such an awesome experience where people can come and learn. And so we do a podcast also called Be Healthy Naturally, and people we interview all of these different doctors and educators, all on natural health. And so if you can't come to the conference, you can listen to the podcast. Plus, we sell the recordings of all the speakers that come. We get it professionally recorded, and they're able to watch all of the presentations. So if you're not here in Utah, you can purchase that. It's only $37. It's way cheap to be able to get so much information coming your way, but it has grown from 400 people to now thousands of people being affected. So it's a beautiful thing of seeing I'm not standing in front of thousands yet. So I know that it still needs to grow. I know that. But we're creating that every single time we put it on. It's getting bigger and bigger, and I feel so blessed because of that.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:31

That's amazing, Liz. Wow, that's absolutely amazing. And you've kept with it. A lot of people might not have with just 400 at the first year you did that.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:43

Yeah, I know. I wanted to give up. I wanted to give up, right? And I was like, hey, you told me you want me to do this. You told me really, and like my husband's, I followed you because you said that you know what? And we expect things to just be instant in our life. We are in the instant gratification, and it's really about building yourselves in the process. And you know, the thing is, is that very first conference, if we would have had 5,000 people show up at it, we wouldn't have been able to run a conference like we do now. And we now we have our vendors and our speakers and just everyone, the the attendees that come, we get so many compliments about how well that conference is run. And it's because we built it up gradually and did the things that are important, and so you know what? We can't run faster than we can, we can go. And I just feel like I look at it that this was the path. This is the path I'm supposed to go. And someday, guess what? We're gonna be having thousands, you know, next year. Hopefully, we have 10,000 people walk through that door. Who knows, right? But we will be better because of the growth that we had to do along the way.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:07

I I love that that comment you made. We can't run back faster than we're able to. We can't, you know, like we have the skills that we have in the moment, and you gradually grow on them, you know. I'm sure you learned so much from that post-conference that you didn't know before you had any conference.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:26

And you know what? We also learned a lot during those three conferences that were canceled. I was sure that hey, I ended up learning how to put on uh my own virtual conference, like that put on a five-day virtual conference that I never had done in my life before, you know? But it's like even those three conferences that were canceled, we learned. We learned a lot. And also, people got educated about them wanting to be able to take care of their own health and the importance of it and why you need to learn about natural health. Because the people that learned about natural health and learned that you can't just follow what the the medical people are always saying that you have to be in control of your health. And this was the platform for them to come and learn it. We needed that time, we needed it. How did we grow from 400 to 2200? It's because of public education.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:33

Wow, Liz, that's amazing.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:35

Everything we have in our lives, like I said, is the biggest blessing we will ever experience if we choose to look at it that way.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:45

I completely agree. And I think even asking ourselves how is this a blessing can help us see it.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:54

Yeah, it's true. We just have to ask, and all of a sudden, change the lens, and the lens will start teaching you. Well, thank you so much, Liz. I really enjoyed the. Well, it was nice being able to talk to you and be able to share my stories. And, you know, my I believe like the reason why I wrote a memoir of my life is because my stories were not meant for me, but they were meant to bless other people. And I appreciate you creating a platform that I could come and share my experiences because even if it just helps the one, then that one will go on to bless so many other people's lives.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:39

That's so true. Well, thank you. Have you heard of a man named Jay Shetty? Yeah. I'm a I'm a big fan. He's got a podcast called On Purpose, and he ends his podcast with two segments, and I have incorporated them and end Mando's mindset with them as well. First segment is the many sides to us, and there's five questions, and they need to be answered in one word each.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:09

Okay, let's see if I could do this then.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:13

What is one word someone who was meeting you for the first time would use to describe you as light? What is one word someone who knows you extremely well would use to describe you as? Service?

SPEAKER_02 1:05:33

What is one word you'd use to describe yourself? Love.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:41

What is one word that if someone didn't like you or agree with your mindset would use to describe you as compassionate? What is one word you're trying to embody right now? Example. Second segment is the final vibe, and these can be answered in a sentence. What is the best advice you've heard, Wovisi?

SPEAKER_02 1:06:10

Listen to your inner voice. Why is that the best?

SPEAKER_03 1:06:17

Because that's our biggest compass in our lives. And that voice I believe is always talking to us. It's but are we gonna listen? So many times we don't trust it. But that voice is always speaking to us. And if we trust it, it's just going to speak to us more.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:39

I agree with that. What is the worst advice that you've heard or received? See. Everyone's the same. Why is that the worst?

SPEAKER_03 1:06:54

Because I think that we are all unique and we all have our gifts and we all have our talents and we're not the same. And that's one of the greatest things of this of having relationships with other people or something is that you know is getting to know somebody on more of an intimate level. And that so many times we just judge people by the surface, but we are all different. And you as a person to be able to connect with others is you have that you have that is your job, is to be able to get to know who they are, what their heart is, and what's important to them and what their life's aspirations are because we're all different.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:44

What is something that you used to value that you no longer value? Busyness.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:53

Because, you know, we put on a pedestal of being busy all the time. And one thing that I've adopted is what's the most important thing right now. And how often do we sit there and think our busyness gives us what our worth is? But really we show what's important by putting what is the most important thing at that moment. And I had I wanted to increase, I wanted to do more, but I was dying inside, you know? And I realized that in order for me to expand and be healthy Utah, I needed to get out of the way. I needed to quit being the bottleneck. I needed to quit being that busy person doing everything, and I needed then to open it up to have other people come in and help. And so I think the biggest thing that we that held me back was thinking that business was a badge of honor.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:02

I get that.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:04

If you could describe what you would want your legacy to be, as if someone was reading it, what would you want it to say?

SPEAKER_03 1:09:13

I think I would go back to what my big thing is, is that she lived today to bless others tomorrow. And that's I try to live by that every single day that the things I do today is going to bless other people tomorrow.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:30

If you could create one law in the world that everyone had to follow, what would it be? And I want to know why.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:40

Well, uh the biggest law I would say is um I think just being kind, you know, and giving grace to people. I think that's what it is, is just is like, you know what, I think everybody's living their best life. Everyone's living doing their best, like they just really are. And, you know, I still even get frustrated with some things, and I have to step back and be like, you know, they're doing their best. I'm not perfect when it comes to it. And you know, there's a lot of life lessons that we have, but really when it comes down to it, people really are just trying to do their best, and they are doing the best with the knowledge that they have, the circumstances that they are given. And we just need to give grace.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:29

I completely agree. Well, thank you so much, Liz. Well, thank you, Amanda. I really enjoyed this. I do like to give it back to the guest, no pressure, but any final words you want to share with the listeners.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:46

I would love for you to go pick up my memoir because I do believe that you will learn some of the greatest things in your life that will help you to live a better life. And I got through a lot of pain because uh the circumstances, but I was able then to really be able to teach myself and teach others the importance of what really life is. And so I do believe that we are here to bless and serve others. And I believe that my memoir is a great example of how we can live a better life with the circumstances that we are given, because we all have the same stories, we all have the same emotions, but we just have different stories. And so I want you to be able to find yourself on the pages of my memoir and realizing that you know what, and you connect, it's like I experienced, yeah, it was a different story, but I experienced that emotion, and I know what you're talking about. So I invite your guests to go and get my book and read it. And I would love to hear from you to hear what you know you have to say about it and stuff, but I know that your life will be better because of it. Where is the best place for them to you can either get it on my website or you can get it on Amazon? It's just is under the title Becoming Me A Pygamous Girls Journey to New Beginnings, or my name is Elizabeth Ann Watt, and you can find it underneath that too, or you can go to my website, elisabethnwatt.com.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:31

I will link that in the show notes as well. Are you active on social media if anybody wants to connect with you?

SPEAKER_03 1:12:38

Yeah, so on Instagram it's Liz WattSpeaks, and then on Facebook is just as Liz Watt.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:48

Okay, I will link that in the show notes as well. And thank you so much, Liz. I really appreciate you speaking with me and being so vulnerable with all of this.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:59

You're welcome. And if we can just change one person's life, that's all that matters, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:13:05

I completely agree. Thank you guys for tuning in to another episode of Meander's Mindset. In case no one told you today, I'm proud of you. I'm voting for you. And you got this. As always, if you enjoyed the show, I would really appreciate it if you would leave me a five-star rating, leave a review, and share with anyone you think would benefit from that. And don't forget, you are only one nine-step shift away from shifting your life. Thanks guys, until next time.