Hello, my loves. I thought I would do something a little bit different today, which is exciting. I put up a Q&A in my Instagram stories recently and asked people to submit questions for me to answer on the podcast…and it’s about time we got those answered.

If you’re into human design, I’m a generator, and I love responding. So I thought this would be a really fun thing for me to do.

If you’re not following me on Instagram yet, what are you doing with your life? It’s fun times over there. Come join me. Come play. That’s really where I’m showing the behind-the-scenes of my life.

But in the meantime…let’s focus on one of my favorite questions I received:

“What Are The Top Three Things You Learned Last Year?”

Not Everyone is Going to be Happy For You

So, part of the reason I’m focusing on this question first is that I felt a lot of emotion come up when I read it.

I’m going to be honest: 2023 felt challenging. More so on a personal level than a professional one. And there were many things I learned that were difficult to swallow.

I talked about this in a couple of masterclasses, including The Phoenix and Savage, but one of the biggest things I learned last year was that not everyone is going to come along for the ride forever.

I believe people come into your life for a reason, a season, or a lifetime. And I had people very, very close to me that I thought would be there forever, and it turns out that they were there for a season.

Honestly, out of all the things I learned in 2023, this one was incredibly heartbreaking.  It still is. And while I talked about this in my masterclasses, I was speaking from a very powerful place, but something I didn’t really speak to that much was the pain and grief that comes along with that. 

Not everyone’s going to be happy for you as you become a better person. Everyone wants to say, “Oh, I’m so happy you’ve started a business. That’s so exciting!”…Until you start making a lot of money. And then they get fucking triggered.

I experienced this a lot in the past year. It was astonishing just how much people weren’t happy about me finally getting the things that I had dreamed about for so long. Finally having the relationship of my dreams, being about to embark on an engagement, my business going well, moving into my dream home…all these things should have been celebrated by the people in my life, and instead, it didn’t happen that way.

So yeah. One of the things I learned: not everyone’s going to be happy for you when you finally have the things you desire. And that comes with a lot of heartbreak.

However, through that experience, I learned that I cannot control how people will perceive me, but I can control how I respond and what I choose to be available for. And I chose that I wouldn’t be available for people who didn’t support me.

Now, I’m not saying that everyone in my life needs to blindly support my every move.  It would be insanity to say, “You can only be friends with me if you fucking approve of every decision I ever make.”

That is definitely not one of the things I learned to apply to my friendships; actually, the friendships that I want to have are people who will say, “What the fuck are you doing?” if they think I’m making a choice that feels out of integrity or out of alignment.

But if I’m going to be totally transparent, it was really fucking hard to see people that I thought loved me unconditionally show exactly what their conditions were. And I’ve explored all the ways in which I contributed to that dynamic and I’ve taken responsibility for that as well, but regardless, it was hard.

Even so, it also highlighted just how many people—most of you, my friends, my family, my partner, my coaches, my mentors,  my clients—who do really love and support me. And isn’t that the beautiful duality of life?

I Have Incredible Discernment–And I Need to Trust It

Next up, one of the things I learned about myself last year is that I am extremely sensitive. I have a very sensitive heart, and that’s not something that I often share or talk about.

You may see me as someone who’s very direct and potent, and they don’t call me the trigger queen for nothing. There is truth to that. That is absolutely a huge part of my personality. But one of the things I learned last year is that I am also very sensitive, and I care very deeply about people, and  along with that sensitivity comes a certain kind of discernment.

I’ve started to recognize how energetically sensitive I am. For all of my life, I’ve been able to read people very, very easily. I’m very capable of reading energy—not in the sense of seeing auras and all that, but it’s a kind of knowing I get about the people I’m around.

People would often say to me that I could be quite cold or standoffish—I’ve even gotten the reflection that I have a “fuck off” wall around me.

That was said to me a few years ago, but the things I learned from that were as follows: one, there was truth to that in that I was deeply fearful of people, but two, I would actually gaslight myself after hearing that and go, “Oh, Michelle, you’re being such a cunt. You’re being such a bitch.  Stop thinking so negatively about people. You need to give people the most generous interpretation.”

I ended up taking that way too far. I would give people chance after chance after chance after chance after chance, when actually my intuition was like, “I don’t fucking trust this person.”

So in 2023, I feel like I actually found my discernment and realized that I don’t have to be friends with everyone. I don’t have to like everyone. And that doesn’t mean I hate them. That doesn’t mean I don’t like them. I’m just allowed to be indifferent to someone.

Compared to the other things I learned, that might sound harsh, but that’s what I need to do to protect my energy. I don’t have to connect with everyone, and that gets to be fine.

I learned to trust that part of myself that said, “Yeah. Something’s off with this person,” because every fucking time I didn’t listen to that,  something would go awry and I would be proved correct later.

I Need to Listen to My Own Truth First

Last on the list of things I learned in 2023 was to stop listening to people outside of myself. 

Just like the other things I learned, there has to be discernment with this. It’s not a thing where you should cover your ears and go, “La, la, la, la, I am not listening to the opinions of anybody else but myself,” but one of the things I learned was that I often overly listen to people to the point where I will stop listening to myself.

If I’m totally honest, this is something I’m still navigating for myself. My word for 2024 is execution, but I also feel that there’s another word that applies to this lesson. I haven’t really found the word yet, but it’s around giving myself space to hear my own voice and my own truth.

I remember a reflection that one of my mentors Felicity gave me, which was that one of my greatest strengths is how open-minded I am. I am so open to new beliefs, new perspectives, and new opinions. I can see other people’s perspectives very, very easily— that’s what makes me an incredible coach and mentor.

However, she also told me that one of my biggest weaknesses is that I can be very easily influenced in that. If I understand someone else’s perspective, it becomes easy to shift my own beliefs in that direction, even if it’s not actually what I believe to be true.

With that in mind, this year is really about me focusing on what I know to be true. And not be swayed so easily by the opinions of others. Someone might have an opinion, and that might actually be in alignment with my truth, but also…just because someone says something doesn’t mean I need to take it on as truth.

At the end of the day, my voice is the voice that matters the most in my world. Main character energy,  right? I don’t need to have other people’s voices be louder than my own.

Did I Answer YOUR Question? Check Out The Full Q&A Now!

So these are the things I learned in 2023. I loved that question, but it’s not the only question I received and answered this week—it’s just the one that fit all nice and pretty in a blog post. I answered a lot more of your questions on this week’s episode of Unf*ck Your Relationships (Episode 139) so don’t miss out—go see if your question made the cut!

(And if you didn’t get it in before I recorded, no worries—I’ll probably be doing more of these in the future!)

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