A Neurosurgeon's Journey Back to Belonging

In this powerful conversation, host Melissa Kaye sits down with Dr. Li-Mei Lin, a world-class neurosurgeon who spent decades at the pinnacle of medicine before stepping away from the operating room to explore a deeper question:

What does it truly mean to belong - to yourself?

Dr. Lin shares her remarkable journey from elite achievement and high-performance success to a life centered around self-leadership, inner authority, authenticity, and personal transformation.

Together they explore:

- Why external success doesn't always create inner fulfillment
- The difference between empathy and being empathic
- How high achievers often lose connection with themselves
- The neuroscience behind intuition and self-awareness
- Why many people stay loyal to identities and systems that no longer serve them
- The courage required to leave familiar paths and answer a new calling
- How to develop self-trust and inner authority
- The connection between belonging, purpose, and personal growth
- What self-mastery really means
- Practical ways to reconnect with your authentic self

Whether you're an entrepreneur, leader, healthcare professional, creative, or someone navigating a major life transition, this conversation offers profound insights into creating a life that feels aligned from the inside out.

Follow Dr. Li-Mei Lin
Website: https://www.truewhealthness.com/mawy
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drlimeilin/, https://www.instagram.com/true_whealthness/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drlimeilin/
Substack: https://morethanneurosurgeon.substack.com/

Learn More About Elev8 Villages:
Website: https://www.elev8villages.org/
Download your FREE Belonging Kit: https://www.elev8villages.org/FREEkit

Subscribe for more conversations about belonging, purpose, community, healing, and human connection.

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#innerauthority #belonging #podcast #trending #foryou

This podcast exists because we believe belonging is not a luxury. It’s a human need. Every story shared here helps us imagine a world where no one has to walk alone. 

If this conversation resonated with you, please follow, rate, or share the show with someone who might need it today. To learn more about the movement we’re building (or to get involved) visit Elev8Villages.org.

Thank you for joining us for this episode of The Belonging Podcast by Elev8 Villages - where belonging becomes a place we build together. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to the Belonging Podcast by Elevate Villages. I'm your host, Melissa Kay, and today I have in the studio with me Dr. Lee Mae Lin. She is a neurosurgeon who has been at the top of her field for decades. She has currently stepped back from the operating room and she's focused on her company called True Wealthness. It's all about the inner architecture of the human experience. Welcome to the podcast, Dr. Li Mei Lin. We're so happy you're here. Welcome.

SPEAKER_00 0:37

Thank you, Melissa. I'm so thrilled to be here and excited to see how our conversation goes.

SPEAKER_01 0:44

So, May, you and I were talking a while back. And while our lives have been different, we had some similar roads that we walked. One of those was both being highly successful early in our life. And now we're both sort of shifting into more heart-centered work. And how sometimes belonging to others can take precedence over belonging to ourself, and what a kind of slippery slope that can be. Let's start with talking about achievement. You've ex achieved an extraordinarily high level in systems that reward excellence and control. So my curiosity is: was there ever a moment when you realized that the version of yourself that everyone admired was not the same as the version that made you feel most alive?

SPEAKER_00 1:45

Um I'll say that the whole chapter of achievement of achievement is me, and it wasn't the fullest of me. So I'll say that it wasn't an immediate light bulb moment. It was more of a gradual inquiry and discovery process of noticing in my life how essentially almost every single relationship, whether it was family, friends, not so much friends, family, um professional, there was a lot of frustration and conflict and drama. And I just had a curiosity of what does peace feel like? Yeah. So that was what started my inquiry. And then through that process over the course of several years, realized oh, it's actually a critical piece. Discover that I would be described as empathic and highly sensitive. And so, in my experience of understanding what does it mean to be empathic and how that's different than empathy and compassion, and how that influenced my experience subconsciously in absorbing other people into what I thought was me. So I needed to do a lot of cleaning up process for myself to then realize what is really me, what is really self, because being empathic without being consciously aware of being empathic and developing that as a gift and a skill, there's a lot of blurring and merging of what is other and what is me.

SPEAKER_01 3:58

How do you how do you define being empathic?

SPEAKER_00 4:03

So being empathic, I'll say that my initial stage of being empathic was unconscious, unaware of having that as part of how I would experience life. And so being empathic, I describe it as having sensory capacities attuned to very subtle experiences, subtle senses that words have a hard time describing, or it would be like the wind. We can feel the wind if we're really attuned to the sense, that sensory experience at a micromillimeter, which I was capable of doing that in in the operating room, and I just translate it to we can feel other people or feel things and be able to feel that subtlety. And that is an underlying uh characteristic, I would say, of being empathic, being able to feel at a subtle level that words are incomplete to describe.

SPEAKER_01 5:20

Can you think of a time when you were having an interaction? Maybe it was a a patient or a family member where they said something, but you could read the bigger picture and it meant something. Like, can you give us an example of that?

SPEAKER_00 5:34

Yeah, yeah, I have many of them. And it's not just with patients. Uh, I have it day to day when I'm having conversations with people. And in my own inner experience, I can have a knowing of they're speaking at a superficial level. There is a deeper that they may not be consciously aware, or they may be consciously aware and not sharing it. So I I can be attuned.

SPEAKER_01 6:05

Sort of the story within the story, like what's the story we're actually telling ourselves to say something like that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:12

And what I what I see, you know, part of my training in medicine, we are trained for pattern recognition. That's part of how we diagnose. So being very skilled at pattern recognition, I can see how someone answers something or carries their body or um their posture, or just these, some people would say the soft skills. There are seeing what would be and understanding what are everything upstream, the upstream conditions that produce the behavior, the outcome, the posture, the disease, the pattern. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:58

Wow. There's so much there. Do you think every doctor has that? That's what made you extraordinary.

SPEAKER_00 7:08

I would say that is a fundamental skill that we're trained on is pattern recognition. And then as with any field and any profession, there is then degrees of skill level.

SPEAKER_01 7:23

So being empathetic beyond just learning pattern recognition, how does that being empathetic actually like expand that, but also maybe take a piece of you with it? Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00 7:42

So I'm gonna make a distinction between um empathic and empathetic. Uh, because from what I have studied for myself, being um having empathy, there's actually different branches of empathy then. There's cognitive empathy. So there's people can um have an interaction and it could seem like they have empathy, but in my experience, and I observed it and it's actually studied, that is on a cognitive level. They can read everything to know what empathy is and then learn the behaviors to express to speak empathetically, but there's not a feeling sense of empathy. So I would remember saying to some people, why can't you see it from my point of view or their point of view, or yeah, but they can speak as if there's empathetic.

SPEAKER_01 8:54

So choosing to give empathy, like I'm gonna show up and learn the skill, opposed from I am just part of my being of being empathetic.

SPEAKER_00 9:03

Being able to feel, yeah, and then being empathic and being highly sensitive. There are neuroscientific studies looking at the brain to see different areas of the brain that are more active in people who are have qualities of higher level sensitivity or empath um being empathic.

SPEAKER_01 9:33

Okay. So you can learn it, but having it naturally is like a deeper level of it.

SPEAKER_02 9:42

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 9:42

Okay, okay. Um, oh, that's fascinating. I want to keep talking about the brain and neuroscience forever, but let's bring this a little bit to belonging. You write beautifully about how people stay loyal to systems or identities long after they stop feeling true. Um, in your own life, what did you have to risk in order to become more honest with yourself?

SPEAKER_00 10:11

Yeah, you know, I was willing to risk everything, meaning all the friends and social connections, even birth family. Because I find for some of us, we're here to, if you heard the term cycle breakers, to break patterns of behavior of relating that are, I'd say just not of the most kind and accepting and understanding and loving. Um, so I would make the distinction between there's a lot spoken about love is the answer to everything. However, when love can be used, can be weaponized, you say, I'm doing this because I love you, but the actual behavior is not loving behavior. So then there's a lot of muddiness around the term, the word. I imagine you've practiced that way of we can't control what the other person does. So um, in my process of really learning what is healthy, kind, loving relational dynamics that is truly loving and not um manipulation, manipulative or weaponized, and practicing it myself and rewiring my own inner architecture for this is how feels aligned to me and not just feels aligned to me. Um absolutely endlessly curious to what is aligned to universal truth and just doing that and holding that um for myself, the having words aligned with actions and behavior and trusting and risking that those who are truly meant to be in my life will stay in my life, and those who are not, I surrender and let them go.

SPEAKER_01 12:19

How did you survive the loneliness of making that transition?

SPEAKER_00 12:26

Well, that's a deeper question, yeah. Um it it would go into more of I would say uh existential and philosophical answer, meaning that I have an embodied experience of there is more to life than the human relational element. So I connect with nature and I find having the empathic capabilities, tuning into the subtle senses, I can feel beyond the human realm. Um, take into the consciousness of there is life in nature, there is wisdom in nature, there is something beyond my human mind that I can connect to on a higher level, and that there is a lot of ways of human-to-human relating that um we're here to learn beyond. And so this belonging and safety when they're within each of us where we didn't have that absolute safety on a human-to-human level, it takes a lot of work to rewire that from our psyche and subconscious. And I think the only way to do it is if there truly is a healthy, I'd say clean, universal truth connection to the higher consciousness, and it's an embodied experience that I know is that is truth and it provides the safety and connection in the meantime as everything else gets cleaned up and sorted out. Does that make sense? I feel that was a very philosophical and existential question, and you answered it in a very uh understandable human way. Yeah. Yeah, and I take it to the next level because it's what each person has the capacity and the skill level for. What I experienced, there is a there can be more of the addictive part of belonging that I needed to clean up. So there was a withdrawal, so that I would rather sit in the loneliness to clean up within my entire nervous system, psyche, subconscious of what was not true and and and not healthy, and do that for myself, then revert to something that was not healthy. So that's just my process.

SPEAKER_01 15:29

Did you, I'm curious, did you know in the moment, like was that a choice that you were doing it? Or is that when you look back, you can go, oh, that's why I made those choices because subconsciously or consciously I was working through those things?

SPEAKER_00 15:42

No, I was just in the practice of knowing. Um, so here's an example. And it this example I share how it brings to light when I was mid-process, realizing that I was rewarded for self-sacrificing and doing for others, and underlying that had a belief that my worth was tied to being needed, being needed by others. So when I had that awareness, then I chose this is self-leadership. I'm very much a proponent of self-leadership and devoting to the discipline and the devotion and everything that's needed. So I wanted to clear that habit and clean up that belief and wiring. I was still in clinical practice at the time, which my schedule would be a whole week long, 24-7, seven days a week of on call. And um, yes, that schedule is very unhealthy. And I did it for essentially my entire time in clinical practice as I was in mid-process changing these thoughts and behaviors and belief and programming. Organically, there was starting to be weekends where I would not be called. I was on call, but I would not receive notifications on my phone. And I could observe within my body physiologically, it felt like something like withdrawal of like what is happening? Why is no one calling me? Like, is something wrong with the phone? And um, so self-coaching, guiding myself through that of no, this is what we want, this is what I want. We meaning me and the pattern that I'm letting go of, and letting that leave my whole neurophysiological system. And so I no longer I don't need to be needed. That's no longer part of my story, no longer part of my thoughts. I'm um completely, absolutely content here.

SPEAKER_01 18:13

I want to go back to you said self-leadership. How can we understand what you're meaning when you say self-leadership and how does that affect us as we move through our life?

SPEAKER_00 18:28

This I I take the lines of no excuses. And some people might take it off the wrong track, which I want to clarify no excuses is we truly have absolutely within our capabilities to follow our knowing, our desires, our calling, our our mission, what needs to be done in integrity. Uh, especially in our modern society now with AI. There's there is everything that you want to know, learn about exists. There's really no excuses.

SPEAKER_01 19:13

It's at your fingertips for sure.

SPEAKER_00 19:15

It really is. It really is. And you know, another lens to look at is taking the lens of full empowerment rather than being a victim to something or someone or a circumstance.

SPEAKER_01 19:31

So as someone who spent decades working with the physical brain, like literally with the brain at the highest level, do you think that the body eventually will tell the truth when the emotional or spiritual self has been like silenced or abandoned?

SPEAKER_00 19:54

Yes. So I do I take the lens that everyone does have their own trajectory and path, and um even with my own experience, that truly for me, neurosurgery was and is a soul calling. But just because it was then, part of soul calling is realizing when we need to evolve, shift, and pivot.

SPEAKER_01 20:30

So I find you gonna sit there for just a second. Let's say that again. So having a soul calling, not just about that calling, but knowing when to pivot, change, go into that a little bit more. It's so easy to stay in the wrong place for stay in the right place for too long because of comfort, because of certainty.

SPEAKER_00 20:59

Yes. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I've reflected and contemplated on my on my life journey many times already, for my own understanding, and this is what I have come to realize for myself of absolutely, I could feel back then when I was making a decision what to specialize in, I could feel it in my heart. I had to do this. I had to do it. I if I didn't do it, I would regret it. So absolutely a soul calling. But just because it's a soul calling doesn't mean then I have to do it for the rest of my life.

SPEAKER_01 21:46

But you can't have another soul calling.

SPEAKER_00 21:49

Yeah. And I actually believe we have met, it may not be for everybody. Everyone has their own path. I just know that for me, I've had many soul callings. I'm just here to continuously learn and evolve, learn and evolve, learn and evolve.

SPEAKER_01 22:07

Yeah, I identify with that a lot. And what I found is those that I would call a soul calling taught me the skills or made the connections or whatever that was that led me to the next thing. So, like, like right now in the season I'm at of starting Elevate Villages, I look back and like all the odd jobs I had, the businesses I started, the different things I did, the side gigs, like I'm like, those all gave me pieces of the skills that I need to move forward. But if I had not been brave enough to leave the one or to shift or to pivot or to try something new, it would have been a lot harder, a lot more difficult for me to grow into who I am now.

SPEAKER_00 22:49

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And the way I experience it truly is just cannot move towards that anymore. It's like there, there is no, you know, I say that it is my soul, my spirit, my consciousness that is animating this body. It is giving me the vitality and the life. So if my uh I there's just not for me of the ego wanting to do something else, it truly is, is not gonna move. So um, yeah, could I, were there different times when I could have pivoted out of the field earlier? Yes. Um, but I didn't because there was there was more that I felt I needed to learn, and I absolutely did. Everything, everything is built from everything before.

SPEAKER_01 23:54

Do you think that belonging comes into play? Like we could stay in our soul calling, one of our soul callings, like that, that pivot moment when you need to pivot to your next calling. But we feel so much like we belong because that was our soul calling. It felt so good and it's part of who we are. And so I feel like there's some belonging tied there that no, this is where I belong. And how do we then go, wow, maybe I don't belong here anymore and I belong somewhere else? And like the tension and the um friction that happens getting from this place of belonging to that place of belonging.

SPEAKER_00 24:35

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 24:35

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00 24:36

Yeah. So here's another existential answer to that question. I take the lens of we all have unique special gifts. And for some of us, that unique special gift went into hiding for whatever reason during the earlier stages. And uh for protection, safety, whatever it felt at the time, whatever the earlier stage was, it just did not feel safe to fully express whatever gifts it was that we had, I had. And so taking the lens that each person truly has their a unique puzzle piece to humanity, and that the only way that unique puzzle piece will come alive is if you are the absolute protector and steward of that unique puzzle piece. And so this is how I experience it for myself is knowing that, then that's my only task is to bring this unique gift, and the only way it can come out is if I belong to myself because I am the steward, only I can steward this gift, only I can create the conditions for this to come alive, and that is how I can truly serve humanity in a way that is servicing me and humanity.

SPEAKER_01 26:18

Wow, in this world full of like systems and repeatable and scalable, when we want everything to be the same and just repeated, it's so far away from how the actual human journey is where we have to learn ourselves, and you're here to do something that I can't do, and I'm here to do something that that you can't do, or can't do at the same level because of our gifts. I that's so beautiful. Wow. Um, you often write about self-mastery, discernment, and inner authority. And where does that balance out with also being human and being and that longing to be fully seen? You know, it's not just about I'm living my best life and nobody can tell me, like you can do that, but then there's that like loneliness gap. So belonging to ourselves, but the desire to also belong to someone or some place or some, you know, group. How do you how do you f stay fully safe, fully rooted, and also still really congruent with yourself?

SPEAKER_00 27:25

Yeah, I love that. Um so it's a yes and um I see it more as uh phases and so this is again the context from where I started off. This is just my understanding and making sense at this moment. Maybe it'll change a year later. So I talk about knowing our instrument and knowing how to play each of our own instruments. So for me, I see it as my mind, body, brain instrument. And how do I really know how to use my brain, body, mind because another person doesn't live in my brain body mind. So how can they truly know how to use this? That is how I take the lens of self-mastery of I really need to take ownership of knowing how my brain and body works that is unique to me, and then from then I can actually be able to belong, have belonging that is truly healthy, a yes and where I belong to myself and I can belong in a community. So that's where having a sense of self is important, not like consuming selfish, right? It's really more of having a sense of self. Who am I? And without knowing that, there is there can be um blurring of boundaries, and that actually is not healthy.

SPEAKER_01 29:22

Right, because certainly we're born into a family or a place, like we belong somewhere physically before we're at the age where we can do all of this inner work and know to belong to ourselves. So we start already like making these patterns in our life or making these choices, maybe abandoning ourselves to belong for safety's reasons until we're at the point where mature we're mature enough to sit down and learn to belong to ourselves. So it makes sense why this is such a complex subject. Because the kind of space and time we're here and and then we get here and all that growth that so we can continually, like you said earlier, bring our greatest gifts to this place.

SPEAKER_00 30:07

We can dive into more of then the institutional and systemic of how how are children being raised, and are there ways where they're already starting off to really have a solid sense of self and then developing that inner knowing and inner authority, having the confidence then to make decisions that are relevant for their age category and start to build that rather than having to do a, you know, later in life cleanup process. Yeah, I'm always thinking of what is the more efficient way? How about we just start it from the beginning rather than trying to clean up at the end?

SPEAKER_01 30:52

Sure, sure. So if someone, let's say one of our listeners realizes that they've spent most of their life performing for that acceptance or that belonging, really shaping themselves so they can stay loved and needed and approved, where does the journey back to belonging to self like begin?

SPEAKER_00 31:14

Like part of the challenge is it is a whole body neurophysiological process. So without that awareness and without developing the skills and the capacity for this kind of change, and I say it as a deprogramming and then installing what is your own truth. Right. So um, without having that lens, I see a lot of people want to do it, but they're not able to do it. And then they have an impression that, oh, it's just not possible. That's what I'm here to inspire in that it is a hundred percent possible. It's just a matter of knowing what are the the multitude of pieces involved needing it. So the first step is just knowing that, oh, this actually is like climbing an inner Mount Everest. So if someone wanted to climb Mount Everest, they wouldn't just jump right in and do it, right? It would require training, preparation, part of the training, right? On the physical level, mental level, and then finding the the sharpas who are well versed in that territory to guide them. And then not just that, but then you know, the sharpa is my understanding. I haven't climbed out ever, so there's a gap in this analogy, but there is a relationship with the mountain and the higher level of consciousness, and so it's leveraging the entire team and wanting in the attention and training and preparation and doing it in a conscious, honoring, masterful, strategic, a good way for the outcome. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_01 33:24

It does. It does. Does so with true wealthness, if somebody was to work with you to learn to start belonging to themselves again, are you working with all the different parts of them? And on a zoomed-out scale, what does that look like?

SPEAKER_00 33:40

Yeah. So I say that there's skills and capacities to develop first before we dive into the very vulnerable tender. So skills and capacities, it would be having skills of interoception. Interoception is really being attuned to the inner signals of the body. So then part of the skills to develop is becoming aware of what are the body signals. I did that with myself as part of the process. I was very trained in mind over body and so much, so focused in service of the patient, which is absolutely necessary. I could be, I can fully dive in, concentrate for 12 hour surgery and not be aware that my tummy is hungry. And but once it's done and I'm out, like clockwork, within 20 to 30 minutes, become aware of my body sensation. I'm like, oh my gosh, my body, my I am starving. So there is a process of when we're very um rewarded for that high performance and doing for others, that is part of the skill of needing to be aware of the body signals and then to dissect out and tease out um what is actually inner knowing versus what is fear, because the whole body signals is muddied and messy. So really doing that process of what is actually intuition, inner knowing versus what is conditioned fear chain wired in or guilt wired in, and what teasing that out, teasing that out and dissecting that out. And then installing what is actually true and authentic.

SPEAKER_01 35:42

So training something out and then fill refilling that container with the truth, the authenticity of our of who we are. If somebody's like, wow, I I want to work with Dr. Lynn, do you work virtually? I know you're out in Sedona, Arizona, right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:03

Virtually is to start, and then there's in-person immersions that are woven in. And so this process really resonates with clients who have had, as we talked about, this prior life experience of really successful high-level outward achievement. And then realizing that, oh, something is missing, and realizing that there's more to life, there's actually a better way, having tried many different ways and modalities and still not actually accessing that inner knowing and truly changing their life. They could be physicians, surgeons, high-level executives, entrepreneurs. So you can already imagine it's it's this driven outward achievement. And then at some point, you know, yes, the soul, the sole lesson was have that. Absolutely have that experience of what outward achievement is like. And then your next evolution is now turn inward and and really dive into the inner achievement. And then the next step that I work with is then legacy level. Soul legacy, I say is that it requires both. It requires having the depth of inner achievement and then leveraging all the skills that we learned for the outward achievement to then create for soul legacy for humanity.

SPEAKER_01 37:55

Mei, what a pleasure. Um, thank you for coming on the podcast today and sharing so much really rich information with us, your own experiences with creating belonging in yourself. And I think I think the audience has a lot to um to digest from today's today's podcast. So thank you so much for being here.

SPEAKER_00 38:17

Yeah. Thank you so much for having me and all the thoughtful, wonderful questions. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 38:26

We're so glad you were here with us today. If you have questions or comments, drop them below, and you can find all of Dr. Lynn's information in the show notes. This podcast has been made possible by Deanna Laughlin, our generous and lovely patron. We're so grateful for her. This has been the Belonging Podcast by Elevate Villages. Until next time, let's build together.