Latest / Your Utmost Life / The Real Reason You Always Put Yourself Last (And It's Not What You Think)
Transcript
- 0:00Misty Celli: You already know.
- 0:01Misty Celli: That's the thing I want to say right at the start because I think you need to hear it acknowledged before we go anywhere else.
- 0:08Misty Celli: You already know that you matter.
- 0:10Misty Celli: You've heard it, you've read it, you've seen it on every inspirational post, every podcast, every well-meaning piece of advice from every woman who has ever looked at you and said, you have to take care of yourself first.
- 0:24Misty Celli: You know.
- 0:25Misty Celli: And yet, here you are, still last on the list, still the one who waits until everyone else is fed, settled, handled, sorted, and then looks at what's left and finds, again, that there is nothing.
- 0:41Misty Celli: And you sit with that familiar hollow feeling and you think, why can't I just do this?
- 0:47Misty Celli: Why do I keep ending up here?
- 0:50Misty Celli: What is wrong with me?
- 0:52Misty Celli: Nothing is wrong with you.
- 0:54Misty Celli: However, something is running underneath the surface that you haven't been able to see clearly.
- 0:59Misty Celli: And today that changes.
- 1:01Misty Celli: Are you tired of feeling like you don't know who you are anymore?
- 1:05Misty Celli: Do you look in the mirror and catch yourself thinking, is this all there is?
- 1:09Misty Celli: Even though you know you were made for more, you're in the right place.
- 1:13Misty Celli: I'm Ms.
- 1:14Misty Celli: Ducelli and I help women step into their highest potential and design a life that feels true, rich, and deeply satisfying.
- 1:21Misty Celli: A life built by design, not by default.
- 1:24Misty Celli: On this podcast, you will learn the principles and strategic tools that create real lasting transformation in your health, your relationships, your confidence, your goals, and the deeper parts of you like purpose, growth, love, and parenting.
- 1:37Misty Celli: This is where you begin the process of becoming your utmost self and reclaiming a life that feels like yours again.
- 1:44Misty Celli: Welcome to your utmost life podcast.
- 1:47Misty Celli: I want to start by acknowledging something that I think has been quietly exhausting you.
- 1:53Misty Celli: You've been trying.
- 1:55Misty Celli: That matters, and I need you to hear it.
- 1:57Misty Celli: You have genuinely been trying.
- 2:00Misty Celli: You've made the resolution, set the intention, carved out the time, told yourself this week would be different.
- 2:07Misty Celli: And then life happened.
- 2:09Misty Celli: Someone needed something.
- 2:11Misty Celli: Guilt showed up before you even made a choice, and you found yourself again at the back of the line, wondering why you can't seem to hold the ground you keep trying to claim.
- 2:23Misty Celli: And the trying itself becomes its own kind of weight, doesn't it?
- 2:27Misty Celli: Because every time you end up back here, it doesn't feel like a practical failure.
- 2:33Misty Celli: It feels like evidence.
- 2:35Misty Celli: Evidence that maybe you're not as committed as you thought, that maybe you don't actually believe you're worth as much as you tell yourself you do.
- 2:44Misty Celli: That maybe the woman who seems to have figured this out have something that you don't.
- 2:49Misty Celli: I want you to put that story down for a moment.
- 2:52Misty Celli: Not forever, just for the length of this episode.
- 2:56Misty Celli: Because what I'm about to share with you is going to reframe everything you've been calling failure.
- 3:01Misty Celli: And I need you to be able to hear it without the weight of all that evidence pressing on your chest.
- 3:08Misty Celli: You're not failing because you're weak, or you're not failing because you don't want it enough.
- 3:13Misty Celli: You're failing because you've been trying to solve a root problem with a surface solution.
- 3:18Misty Celli: And that, however many times you've tried, was never going to work.
- 3:23Misty Celli: Here's what I think your inner world sounds like right now.
- 3:27Misty Celli: And tell me how close this is.
- 3:29Misty Celli: You get inspired, something shifts in you, a podcast episode, a conversation, a quiet moment where you feel her and you think, yes, this is the year, this is the moment I'm doing this, and you meet it completely.
- 3:45Misty Celli: In that moment, you are entirely 100% sincere.
- 3:50Misty Celli: And then Tuesday happens.
- 3:52Misty Celli: Your kids need something, your husband needs something, the house needs something, your job needs something, and the guilt fires automatically before you've made even a conscious choice.
- 4:05Misty Celli: And then suddenly the thing that you were going to do for yourself feels selfish.
- 4:10Misty Celli: It feels like the wrong priority.
- 4:12Misty Celli: It feels like it can wait.
- 4:14Misty Celli: And so it waits.
- 4:16Misty Celli: And it waits.
- 4:17Misty Celli: And the inspiration fades.
- 4:20Misty Celli: And a few weeks later, you're back at the beginning wondering what happened to the woman who was so sure this time it would be different.
- 4:28Misty Celli: And underneath all of that cycling, underneath the inspiration and the guilt and the waiting, there is a question you haven't fully let yourself ask.
- 4:37Misty Celli: Not because you're afraid of the answer, exactly, but because you're not sure you're ready for what the answer might require.
- 4:45Misty Celli: The question is this do I actually believe in the deepest part of me that I am worth this?
- 4:54Misty Celli: Not in theory, not because I've heard I should believe it, but for me, specifically, personally, truly, do I believe it?
- 5:04Misty Celli: That question, however uncomfortable it is, is the beginning of everything.
- 5:10Misty Celli: I want to tell you something I don't share lightly because it requires me to admit something that took me a long time to be able to say without shame.
- 5:19Misty Celli: I did the work once and I thought I was done.
- 5:22Misty Celli: After the lowest point in my life, after that red light moment and the realization that the moment I started asking the questions that changed everything, I transformed genuinely.
- 5:33Misty Celli: I reconnected with myself.
- 5:35Misty Celli: I grew into a woman I recognized.
- 5:37Misty Celli: I built something real.
- 5:39Misty Celli: My marriage deepened, my connection with my kids became something I hadn't known was possible.
- 5:44Misty Celli: I felt alive in a way that I had stopped believing I could.
- 5:49Misty Celli: And then a few years later, I found myself sitting at 2 a.m., scrolling for answers, wondering what the hell had gone wrong.
- 5:58Misty Celli: Not broken the way I had been before, but cracked, disconnected again, that hollow feeling creeping back in around the edges of a life that I had worked so hard to build.
- 6:10Misty Celli: And the voice that came with it was worse the second time.
- 6:14Misty Celli: Because this time it didn't just say you're lost.
- 6:18Misty Celli: It said you were lost, you found your way back, and somehow you lost it again.
- 6:23Misty Celli: What does that say about you?
- 6:26Misty Celli: Was it all just a fluke, a sugar rush, all that energy and aliveness, and then a crash back to empty?
- 6:33Misty Celli: I sat with that question for a long time.
- 6:36Misty Celli: However, what I eventually understood, and this is the thing I need you to hear, is that I hadn't relapsed, I had stumbled.
- 6:44Misty Celli: And the difference between those two things is everything.
- 6:48Misty Celli: Because the first time I did the work, I stopped too soon.
- 6:51Misty Celli: I got the part where I felt better and I put down the process before it was complete.
- 6:56Misty Celli: I had done the discovering and I had reconnected with myself, understood who I was, started to trust myself again.
- 7:04Misty Celli: However, I hadn't done the designing, I hadn't built the structure, the habits, the daily practice of a woman who sustains the connection.
- 7:12Misty Celli: I gathered all the ingredients, mixed them together, and the moment that it looked and tasted good, I stopped.
- 7:20Misty Celli: I didn't add everything the recipe required, and what I made was real and it was good, but it wasn't complete.
- 7:27Misty Celli: Therefore, when life got heavy and chaotic and loud again, and life always does, it didn't have the full foundation to stand on.
- 7:36Misty Celli: The second time I stumbled, however, I didn't fall, because even an incomplete foundation is better than none.
- 7:42Misty Celli: I caught myself, I paused, I looked at what I had built and what I had skipped, and I understood finally why the work is designed the way it is designed, and why you can't stop at feeling better, why the complete process is required.
- 7:59Misty Celli: And that stumble, as painful as it was, became the reason I can sit here today and tell you with absolute certainty, I know what the full path looks like, not because I read about it, because I walked it wrong first and then walked it right.
- 8:16Misty Celli: And the difference between those two journeys is the entire foundation of everything I teach.
- 8:22Misty Celli: However, here's what I want you to take from my story before we go any further.
- 8:26Misty Celli: The reason I stumbled the second time wasn't weakness.
- 8:30Misty Celli: It wasn't lack of commitment.
- 8:32Misty Celli: It was that I had solved the surface problem without addressing the root.
- 8:38Misty Celli: And that is exactly what is happening for you every time you try to put yourself first and then find yourself again at the back of the line.
- 8:48Misty Celli: You're not failing, you're solving the wrong problem.
- 8:52Misty Celli: So let's talk about the real reason because you deserve to finally see it clearly.
- 8:57Misty Celli: On the surface, the reason you keep putting yourself last looks like time.
- 9:03Misty Celli: Looks like there isn't enough of it, like everyone genuinely needs you, and the math just doesn't work out in your favor.
- 9:11Misty Celli: And that feels true.
- 9:12Misty Celli: It really does, doesn't it?
- 9:14Misty Celli: Because the evidence for it is everywhere in your daily life.
- 9:18Misty Celli: However, underneath the time problem is a belief problem.
- 9:22Misty Celli: And the belief is this.
- 9:25Misty Celli: I have heard that I matter.
- 9:28Misty Celli: I have been told I am worth prioritizing, but I don't fully believe it's true for me.
- 9:35Misty Celli: Not in general, for you, specifically personally, and that actual daily decisions of your actual daily life.
- 9:43Misty Celli: And here's why that matters so much.
- 9:46Misty Celli: Because a belief you hold intellectually but don't feel in your body will always lose to a belief you hold in your bones, in your deep soul.
- 9:57Misty Celli: Therefore, when the guilt fires automatically the moment you try to do something for yourself, that guilt isn't irrational.
- 10:06Misty Celli: It is the physical expression of a deeper belief that says your needs come after theirs.
- 10:12Misty Celli: And that belief was not chosen consciously, it was built slowly over time from everything you absorbed about a good woman, a good mother, a good wife, what they look like.
- 10:25Misty Celli: Furthermore, and this is the part I really need you to sit with, underneath even that belief is a fear, a fear so quiet and so constant that you might not even recognize it as a fear anymore.
- 10:39Misty Celli: You might just experience it as the way things are.
- 10:42Misty Celli: The fear is this.
- 10:44Misty Celli: If I stop being everything to everyone, if I stop doing and managing and holding it all together, they won't need me.
- 10:53Misty Celli: And if they don't need me, I might lose them.
- 10:57Misty Celli: I know how that sounds.
- 10:59Misty Celli: I know part of you wants to say, that's not true.
- 11:02Misty Celli: It's not what I think.
- 11:04Misty Celli: I don't believe my family's love is conditional.
- 11:07Misty Celli: And consciously, you don't.
- 11:09Misty Celli: However, the pattern tells a different story.
- 11:12Misty Celli: Because every time you override your own needs for theirs, something underneath is calculating.
- 11:20Misty Celli: This is how I keep them close.
- 11:22Misty Celli: This is how I stay necessary.
- 11:24Misty Celli: This is how I make sure the love doesn't go away.
- 11:28Misty Celli: And here's the thing about that fear that I need you to really hear because this is the part that changes everything.
- 11:35Misty Celli: And trying to keep them close through doing, you're teaching them something you never intended to teach.
- 11:42Misty Celli: Your daughter is watching you.
- 11:44Misty Celli: She is learning from your example what a woman looks like, what a wife looks like, what a mother looks like.
- 11:50Misty Celli: And she is seeing how much love is in it as a woman who does not stop, who does not rest, who does not have needs that matter, who shows love through sacrifice, then presence.
- 12:05Misty Celli: Your husband is not experiencing the fullness of who you are.
- 12:10Misty Celli: He is experiencing the manager, the caretaker, the woman who handles everything.
- 12:14Misty Celli: And somehow, however much he appreciates that, it is not the same as experiencing the woman underneath all the doing, the one with opinions and desires in a rhythm that is entirely her own, the woman he fell in love with.
- 12:31Misty Celli: Furthermore, and this is what I want you to hold your doing is not actually giving them what they need most.
- 12:37Misty Celli: Your kids need most is not a mother who manages everything.
- 12:42Misty Celli: They need a mother who trusts them, who has faith in their growing capability, who shows them through her own life what it looks like to know yourself, to value yourself, to live with intention.
- 12:54Misty Celli: What your husband needs most is not a wife who holds everything together.
- 12:57Misty Celli: He needs the woman he fell in love with, present, alive, all the way there.
- 13:03Misty Celli: Therefore, and putting yourself last in the name of love, you are without realizing it, withholding the very thing that love requires most.
- 13:14Misty Celli: Not because you're doing anything wrong, because you haven't yet seen it clearly.
- 13:20Misty Celli: Now I want to offer you something, not an argument, but a question.
- 13:24Misty Celli: Because the best shifts don't come from being convinced.
- 13:28Misty Celli: They come from seeing something you couldn't see before.
- 13:31Misty Celli: You've been operating as though your worth to your family is measured by what you do for them.
- 13:36Misty Celli: Therefore, doing less feels like less love.
- 13:40Misty Celli: It feels like withdrawing and dangerous.
- 13:43Misty Celli: However, I want you to consider this.
- 13:46Misty Celli: Think of the woman in your life you have loved most completely, a mother, a friend, a mentor, someone whose presence has mattered deeply to you.
- 13:59Misty Celli: And ask yourself, what was it that you loved about her?
- 14:03Misty Celli: What she did?
- 14:05Misty Celli: Or was it who she was?
- 14:08Misty Celli: Was it her managing and her sacrifice and her endless availability?
- 14:12Misty Celli: Or was it something else?
- 14:14Misty Celli: Was it the way she made you feel seen, the way she was fully present when she was with you?
- 14:20Misty Celli: The way that she seemed to know herself and therefore somehow helped you know yourself.
- 14:26Misty Celli: Because I'm guessing it wasn't the doing, it was the being.
- 14:32Misty Celli: And that is what your people need from you.
- 14:35Misty Celli: Not less love, but more of you, the real you, the woman underneath the doing, the one with the rhythm and the presence and the aliveness that only exists when you are connected to yourself.
- 14:49Misty Celli: Therefore, choosing yourself is not withdrawal, it's not selfishness, it's not loving them less.
- 14:56Misty Celli: It is building the capacity to love them better from fullness instead of debt, from presence instead of performance, from a woman who knows who she is and therefore has something real to give.
- 15:11Misty Celli: That is the real reason the work matters, not for you instead of them, for you so that them becomes something deeper than it has ever been.
- 15:23Misty Celli: I want you to imagine a specific moment, nothing dramatic, just an ordinary evening not far from now.
- 15:30Misty Celli: Your daughter comes to you with something, not a problem that needs solving, not a need that requires managing, just herself.
- 15:38Misty Celli: Something she's wanted to share with you.
- 15:40Misty Celli: And instead of half listening while you manage the 17 million other things on your mental list, you are simply there, fully.
- 15:49Misty Celli: Your phone is down and your mind is present and she feels the difference.
- 15:55Misty Celli: And something in her settles.
- 15:58Misty Celli: Because she's not competing for your attention.
- 16:01Misty Celli: She has you, the real you.
- 16:04Misty Celli: And she looks at you the way children look at you when they know they are truly seen.
- 16:10Misty Celli: And in that moment, the connection between you is not built on everything you've done for her.
- 16:17Misty Celli: It's built on who you are with her.
- 16:20Misty Celli: That is what she holds on to.
- 16:22Misty Celli: That is what she remembers.
- 16:23Misty Celli: That moment that you made her feel seen and you heard.
- 16:29Misty Celli: That is what becomes possible when you are no longer running unempted.
- 16:34Misty Celli: That is what your family gains when you stop putting yourself last.
- 16:38Misty Celli: Not a mother who does less, a mother who is full, present for everything she does.
- 16:46Misty Celli: And here's what I want you to understand about that vision.
- 16:49Misty Celli: It's not far away.
- 16:50Misty Celli: However, it does require something.
- 16:54Misty Celli: It requires you to stop solving the surface problem, the time, the schedules, the logistics, and start addressing the root, the belief, the fear, the pattern that has been running underneath everything.
- 17:07Misty Celli: That is exactly the work we do together.
- 17:09Misty Celli: And it starts with seeing it clearly, which if you've been with me today, you've already begun to do.
- 17:17Misty Celli: She's waiting.
- 17:18Misty Celli: And so is the version of your family that gets to experience the woman she becomes when you finally choose her.
- 17:25Misty Celli: Here's what I want you to take from today.
- 17:28Misty Celli: The reason you keep ending up last is not weakness.
- 17:31Misty Celli: It's not lack of love for yourself.
- 17:34Misty Celli: It is a pattern built from a belief that was never consciously chosen and a fear that has been quietly running your decisions without your full awareness.
- 17:42Misty Celli: And now that you can see it, really see it, something becomes possible that wasn't possible before.
- 17:49Misty Celli: However, seeing it is only the first step.
- 17:52Misty Celli: Because here's what I learned from my own stumble.
- 17:56Misty Celli: Understanding the pattern is not the same thing as having the structure to sustain the change.
- 18:02Misty Celli: And that is exactly what we dig into next time together.
- 18:06Misty Celli: Because the noise doesn't get quieter on its own.
- 18:09Misty Celli: You have to get still enough to hear yourself underneath it.
- 18:12Misty Celli: And there is actually a process for that.
- 18:15Misty Celli: A way to start coming back to yourself that doesn't require you to blow up your life or become someone your family doesn't recognize.
- 18:23Misty Celli: A way that builds something solid enough to stand on when life gets loud again.
- 18:28Misty Celli: That is what we're talking about.
- 18:30Misty Celli: And I don't want you to miss it.
- 18:32Misty Celli: Subscribe if you haven't already so it finds you automatically.
- 18:36Misty Celli: And before you go, carry this with you today.
- 18:39Misty Celli: The guilt that fires when I choose myself is not the truth about my priorities.
- 18:45Misty Celli: It is a pattern I inherited.
- 18:48Misty Celli: And I am allowed to examine it, understand it, and decide for myself what I actually believe.
- 18:56Misty Celli: When the guilt fires today, and it will, pause before you obey it.
- 19:00Misty Celli: Just pause.
- 19:02Misty Celli: Ask yourself, is this true or is this just familiar?
- 19:07Misty Celli: Because familiar and true are not the same thing.
- 19:10Misty Celli: And that pause, however small, is where the change actually begins.
- 19:16Misty Celli: You are more than everyone's everything.
- 19:20Misty Celli: You are someone.
- 19:22Misty Celli: I will see you next time.