Women In Wellness: Julie Elledge of Mentor Agility On The Five Lifestyle Tweaks That Will Help Support People’s Journey Towards Better Wellbeing
An Interview With Candice Georgiadice
Invest in yourself — One of the best ways to manage risk is to invest in a coach. As experts in the change process, coaches know the adventure ahead and how to tap into your creativity. Working in partnership, you will seek out guiding resources and activities that prepare you in advance for the coming challenges.
As a part of my series about the women in wellness, I had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Julie Elledge.
Founder and CEO of Mentor Agility and creator of the Hero’s Journey® Change Model, Dr. Elledge is a highly experienced coach and renowned educator specializing in the use of storytelling in coaching. She is a licensed family therapist and professional coach in national practice with numerous credentials including the prestigious International Coaching Federation (ICF), the National Board Certification for Health and Wellness Coaching (NBC-HWC), and Board Certified Coach (BCC). Dr. Elledge is recognized as an expert in creativity and organizational dynamics and has created education and training programs for Apple Education, Twentieth Century Fox, NOAA, BP and INEEL. Using her gift for storytelling she has pioneered the areas of creativity, financial well-being, and nature in coaching.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Our readers would love to “get to know you” better. Can you share your “backstory” with us?
I learned a very important lesson about health through my meditation training. “Trust the diagnosis, not the prognosis.”
I became a Board Certified Health and Wellness Coach (NBC-HWC) because of an incident that changed my life. I did not ask my doctor enough questions when she recommended surgery. I later found out there were less invasive ways to treat my diagnosis and the outcome of the surgery would have taken a heavy toll on my quality of life. The trade off was not worth it.
Through that experience, I learned how important it is to advocate for myself with my own research and asking the right questions. As a consequence I vowed to myself that I would become a Board Certified Health and Wellness Coach (NBC-HWC). NBC-HWCs are not medical experts; however, we do guide clients through a transformational change with guiding resources and expertise that best fit their individual needs. What I love about my work is that I empower my clients to advocate for and trust themselves as problem solvers. By doing so, they improve the quality of their lives. That’s enormously rewarding.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career? What were the main lessons or takeaways from that story?
When I look back at my career, I recognize an interesting storytelling thread. Many of the therapy and coaching approaches I am trained in and practice help clients to express their story — narrative therapy/coaching, art therapy, guided imagery, and nature therapy. Clients often benefit from a combination of these methods to help them process their experiences. I took this expertise into education and coaching.
Creating transmedia storytelling curriculums distributed by Apple Education, we learned the art of matching the storytelling method to the communication platform. As the central operating system, the mind consumes story in different ways. For example, movies, books, and oral storytelling are completely different ways to tell a story but they all have the potential to evoke a “storytelling trance” or completely absorb our attention. The Marvel universe, for example, is told through comic books, feature films, and television series. Each of these platforms takes advantage of matching the storytelling platform with a different aspect of the story.
I apply these lessons learned to our coach training. We train coaches to tap into clients’ natural curiosity and creativity through a variety of storytelling methods such as oral storytelling, myth, cinema coaching, creative expression, and personal narrative depending on the setting and clients’ preferences. Just as transmedia storytelling takes advantage of the best practices based upon the media platform, our coaches apply storytelling to the coaching environment whether that is in-person individual or group meetings, online video platforms like zoom, Microsoft Teams, or Google Meet, or working outdoors in urban or natural environments.
Can you share a story about the biggest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
Before my coaching career, working for corporate headquarters for Caesars World, I thought I was living the American Dream! As a road warrior, I barely noticed the toll my lifestyle was taking on me. I managed my sleep deprivation with diet caffeinated drinks, sat in planes and cars all day, and ate fast food to save time. Even though my enthusiasm for my career never waned, my energy drained along with my sense of joy. I had not yet made the connection between the dulling impact of stress and neglecting a healthy lifestyle.
I left the job I loved to pursue a career as a therapist. Busy therapists sit all day unless they move with their clients. A sedentary job does nothing for health, stress, or creativity. The full impact of my physical symptoms related to stress and sitting would not show up until later in my life.
A healthy lifestyle improves physical, emotional, and cognitive performance. I learned that passion and purpose cannot replace the basic needs of the body and mind. The mind needs as much exercise and healthy nutrition as the body. Getting outside and moving with clients not only improves their ability to disrupt their stress and adopt a healthier lifestyle, I benefit as well.
Let’s jump to our main focus. When it comes to health and wellness, how is the work you are doing helping to make a bigger impact in the world?
Transformational change begins with a call to action that we often ignore. A worldwide pandemic, global economic shutdown, social unrest, and war are prompting our values to shuffle and reprioritize physical and mental health, financial well-being, and our relationship to ourselves, each other, and the planet. I firmly believe that coaches are going to lead us out of our current slew of crises. It is time to answer the call to action with a new story. A fresh story begins with an adventure — a Hero’s Journey!
I know the heart of transformational change rests in the hands of storytellers. Seeking out the best storytellers and coaches, we brought them together to form a dynamic training practice at Mentor Agility. Our students tell us that the subject matter, and the way that it is taught, is transforming the way they coach. That is enormously rewarding.
Can you share your top five “lifestyle tweaks” that you believe will help support people’s journey towards better wellbeing? Please give an example or story for each.
- Eat a plant for a snack
You are biologically wired to enjoy plants! A habit of snacking on plants is an easy way to satisfy your hunger and restore your energy. When you add more plants to your diet, your hunger is satiated.
Processed foods and sugar have a dulling effect on your taste buds. The more you eat, the less you can taste the vibrancy in natural food. To slide the balance towards plants, consume your snack mindfully paying attention to the vibrant flavors and textures inherent in nature’s bounty. Watch your tastebuds wake up to the pleasure inherent in natural foods. Finding pleasure in food sourced close to nature is your birthright.
2. Take a nature walk everyday
Sometimes we lose sight of the simple things. Getting outdoors and walking has well-documented benefits for your physical, mental, social well-being. A nature walk can happen anywhere, even in an urban environment. The key is how you use your attention. Focus on the birds, clouds, or the trees.
Walking is a low task activity that has the potential to suppress stress and the analytic part of your brain. In the absence of perceived threat and fact finding, the brain follows its curiosities. All manner of positive emotions can sneak in under these conditions such as gratitude, serenity, awe, joy, and hope. The positive emotions evoked, opens up the subconscious mind to work on your challenges and find more innovative solutions.
3. Feast on a daily dose of wonder
With unending access to news, social media and entertainment, becoming a passive consumer is easy. All these distractions cause our senses to dull and shut down, to protect ourselves from chronic stress, anxiety, and despair.
The secret weapon against stress, anxiety, and despair are neurologically wired inside of us. We’re naturally curious creatures searching out and digesting information like hungry carnivores. The meal we seek is a sense of wonder. Charles Dickens describes it this way, “All of us have wonders hidden in our breasts, only needing circumstances to evoke them.” Our most powerful stimulation is nature itself. We’re biologically attracted to feast on nature’s beauty.
To release your sense of wonder, take the time for a bit of mystery and the space for silence to process a single nature experience. In the process of perceiving beauty, a desire to know more awakens motivation inside of us that spills into other parts of our lives.
4. “Follow your bliss and doors will open where there were no doors before.”
A productive life is not the same thing as a meaningful life. A fast paced society lives and breathes on its citizens living a productive life; however, Joseph Campbell suggests that you can’t find your path if you are living out what others tell you to do. “We’re so engaged in doing things to achieve purposes of outer value that we forget the inner value, the rapture that is associated with being alive, is what it is all about.”
Dulling taste buds, emotions, and motivation are indicators stress is slowly and incrementally muting every aspect of your life.
Joseph Campbell suggests, “Life is not a problem to resolve but a mystery to be lived.” By shifting your internal energy into being present with yourself, you unlock your center of motivation living with intent, creativity, and meaning.
To follow your bliss, do something every day that is meaningful to you. Check your path. If the road is already paved then ask yourself if you are following the crowd or are you listening to your own inner value. The mystery you seek to unravel is the mystery of who you are. How do your actions line up with your inner values?
5. Creatively express yourself
Creativity is the quintessential quality that companies seek. They pay good money for a creative star and yet, we are all capable and genetically wired to be creative. Creativity is how you use your imagination to solve problems. Too often our creative impulse is stifled because we are stopped by the fact there is a problem.
The art of problem solving is to trust yourself. Believe in your experience, your voice, and your skill. Seek out your own everyday agency. Seek creative ways to describe your sorrows and desires, passing thoughts and encounters with beauty. Let your imagination soar and dream. You will find your art form in the crosshairs of your strengths, skill, and pleasure.
To creatively express yourself, use your skill as your voice into the world. If you’re a mountain climber, climb. If you’re a writer, write. If you are a strategist, strategize. When you use your ability in the service of others, you effect change in the world. Your internal energy shifts from threat management towards meaning and purpose.
If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of wellness to the most amount of people, what would that be?
I would empower a fresh perspective in the human story with language that unites mind-body-spirit-environment. While it is useful to describe and study them separately, the division does not adequately explain the power of their unity. This error in thinking causes energy waves of misjudgment. An unhealthy lifestyle not only breaks down just physical health, it suppresses creativity, motivation, and mental health. Too often we would rather take recreational or prescription drugs to feel better than take a walk, eat healthier, reduce our stress, or genuinely connect with others. I have experienced this error of judgment myself and learned hard won lessons. The human body, mind, and emotions are made to take a hit. Just as the human body heals an abrasion, our lifestyle heals and nurtures the human body-mind-spirit-enviornment, if given a chance.
A healthy lifestyle as a solution to personal and professional success would use the same energetic waves for positive change in our professional, emotional, and social wellness. The transformation begins in the heart with storytelling.
What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Started” and why?
- Challenge yourself — Expect problems to arise. Embrace the struggle as building your knowledge, skill, and confidence. Let your challenges evolve who you are.
- Invest in yourself — One of the best ways to manage risk is to invest in a coach. As experts in the change process, coaches know the adventure ahead and how to tap into your creativity. Working in partnership, you will seek out guiding resources and activities that prepare you in advance for the coming challenges.
- Believe in yourself — Too often we treat self-doubt as truth. Move your attention away from thoughts that you are not enough and into trusting in your ability to solve problems. Treat self-doubt as a stimulus to pause and engage in self-inquiry. This shift in mindset will propel yourself forward into positive action.
- Value yourself — Comparison is the death of your creativity. Resist the temptation to measure yourself against others. This will lead you back to self-doubt. No one will ever approach a solution just like you. Hold in esteem what you contribute to the world.
- Seek the mystery of knowing yourself — According to Joseph Campbell, the Hero’s Journey® combines two distant ideas: 1. the ancient spiritual quest and 2. the modern search for identity. In the pursuit to actualize your own potentiality, you bring into the world a new force of change. In having the courage to challenge yourself, you will learn about who you are. This is the heart of changing the world, challenge yourself and the world will respond.
Sustainability, veganism, mental health and environmental changes are big topics at the moment. Which one of these causes is dearest to you, and why?
Personally, I chose for myself to eat a primarily vegetarian diet; however, I understand that eating is a very personal choice. What nourishes one body may not be the same for another. As an NBC-HWC, I advocate for my clients’ agency to make informed healthy diet choices.
In terms of sustainability, mental health, and environmental changes, they are all dear to my heart because they lead to the same destination. The standard of the air we breathe, the food we eat, and the water we drink determines the quality and longevity of our lives. Sustainability and environmental changes are a question of self-preservation. The human story unfolds within the setting of the natural world. We let the environment deteriorate at our own peril. Our physical, emotional, cognitive, and spiritual well-being is but a mirror of the natural world.
Thank you for these excellent insights, and we greatly appreciate the time you spent. We wish you continued success.
Women In Wellness: Julie Elledge of Mentor Agility On The Five Lifestyle Tweaks That Will Help… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.