Keep Moving Forward with YOUR Vision – Mishell Elliston

Hello, hello and welcome to the very first episode of the quest for inspiration podcast. I started this podcast purely because I found myself searching for inspiration around every corner and a very negative world. My goal with this podcast is simply to explore all types of institia people who have done amazing things in their life and community, as well as discovering little waste, add positivity into your life every single day. Now this is the first time for me on the other side of the microphone. As I am normally a sound engineer, so you will have to give me a little bit of a break, but we will start from here and hopefully grow this week. I will be talking to Michel Allison, who is the owner of Atlin, fit she specializes and working with seniors, who are past the physical therapy stage of recovery, as well as individuals with other physical challenges such as Perkinson and other ongoing fitness issues. Michelle truly believes in Yoga because it gave her back full balance, strength and coordination. After a childhood accident left her entire left side paralyzed, her doctors told her. She might never walk again, but with help she retained her mind and body to be even more successful than she ever imagined. Hopefully she will inspire you just like she inspired me. So my name is Michelle Elliston and I am a certified Yoga instructor. I have a door to door business where I go in and do post physical therapy work and I do personal training. I do life coaching, so I cater to people that can’t necessarily get out on their own, which right now with coved nineteen. That’s that’s pretty good. So I just I work with a lot of seniors people who have had strokes, paralysis or are handicapped and they can’t get to a gym cool. Well, THAT’S AWESOME! Yeah! Do you have a favorite story from doing that, like a really good memory, I have a couple clients that I work with that are in their s and when I first met them they walked with a cane and now, eight years later, seven eight years later, one of them is doing jump squats. So yeah wow he’s eighty one that impressive you do. He does lunges and jump spots, and I have them. Do some yoga poses these great these phenomenal. So I get my encouragement to keep moving forward, seeing them succeed, yeah, that’s awesome, yeah, my Grandpa is ninety eight years old and he the fact that he still goes on walks every day without a cane or a walker. Yeah. That’s great is mine, bowing I’m amazed by him every single day yeah. I don’t think at ninety seven year old swimming today for an hour, Oh yeah, she’s, awesome, she’s, just great yeah. That would be tough for me, I would be out of breath. I’d be like yeah, I’m done like not like lap swimming, but it’s moving in the pool for sure, okay yeah. So what else gives you motivation just like on like a daily basis for me personally to motivate me for exercise, because we all get lazy honestly, I will sign up for a race I have to, especially if I get lazy, I’ll sign up for a tenk or fifteen run, and then I’ll put it out. You know a couple months and then I’m like Oh my gosh, I’m committed yea. I have to do that. I have to start treating so I know that once I start training, then I get back into that lifestyle or you know I like to see this changes in my body and then I’ll be like okay. I remember now. Okay, I’m bad, it grew, so I will sign up for try a Triai or a half marathon, or you know whatever I can do depending on the time of year, to keep me motivated and seeing my clients stay motivated, and you know some of them were younger and some of them are older and just kind of seeing how they pick up themselves as well motivates me to keep going for them and then I’m like well. I hope that I’m like that when I’m their age, you know. I hope that that I can do all the stuff that they’re doing now in their s and S. I hope you know, and I tell them that all the time I’m like, I hope, I’m like you when I heard a o, that’s so you know, and I love what I do and I think that that speaks volumes. You’ve got to find something that you love to do like. You must love editing and because you wouldn’t do it and you wouldn’t be smiling, you know yeah getting fun doing it. I think the biggest thing we have to do is find that niche that we love, because I think if you love what you do, everything just kind of falls into place and it doesn’t seem like work, no like fun. It’s just like yeah, I’m living my life, I’m doing what I love to do, and it’s not so mundane and boring. Now I love that. Where else do you find inspiration? Where do you go to like Instar? Do you go to pinches just like daily people in your life? I would say music, you know imagine from John Lennon. I love that Song I mean music is inspiring to me. It gets me in a mood where I’m like energized and with my my business yeah’s important or if I’m training on a bike. Listening to you know, House, Techno, music. Something keeps me motivated and inspiring. My daughter keeps me inspired on how she looks at the world and how she’s navigating the world at fourteen. You know just kind of seeing the world and her eyes is inspirational and motivating for me to keep keep that hunger for her and you know, keep teaching her friends and family. You know movies, you know, documentaries of people that have been successful and what they’ve accomplished I get inspired by so many things. My Friends Kevin, I mean I just you know I get. I get it from a lot of things. You know just take what I can it could be. You know a photograph, you know of something and you’re just like. Oh, why didn’t ever thought of doing that? You know and then you’re, just like you kind of just either take another picture of that picture. Now, with your phone and technology, you can do that or like a color in a painting or you’re like Oh, my good pat my house that color, I really like how that offset. So you can find it anywhere if you’re open to looking for it. You can be inspired by anything in anyone if you’re open to change and growth. I think no yeah for sure. That’s why I’m doing this podcast yeah yeah. It’s awesome all right. Do you have any specific moment in your life? That’s kind of changed your life for like the better and kind of change. Hers Perspective. Yeah, that’s a really good question. Actually I do so. I was in San Francisco in the bay area and I was living there for about ten years, and I was in my s and I was in I was a project manager for a branding firm. So I was an advertising and I managed corporate identities and stuff, and so it was very computer job very creative, loved loved working for this company, and I learned something new every day and I worked with these huge teams from all over the world and it was. It was fascinating, but it was you know, at a computer and at a desk and and to me, that’s not who I am so I went. I would go to the gym, you know and I’d run on the treadmill back. Then it was like treadmill runner, you know, and then I was on the treadmill one day and I saw all these people come out of this room and I was like oh my gosh. They look incredible like how can these women have these arms that are so sculptured and beautiful, and I and every person coming out of there running on the treadmill and like what am I doing wrong like what is that class? So I got off the treadmill and I went when the class emptied and I went in to speak to the instructor and I’m like what is this class and he was very intimidating at first and and he’s like. Well, who are you you know, and so I introduced myself and he told me it was yoga and I was like Yoka and he’s like yeah and it was like okay, so you know tell me about it and he’s like no. You just show up tomorrow, I teach tomorrow and you come and put a Mat right here in the front of my class and I’m like I’ve. Never done that before. I need to tell you I have some. You know issues with my left side and I probably cannot do some of this stuff and he’s like I don’t care just come in and do it so I did and I couldn’t do I didn’t. I didn’t even understand what they were saying. It was in Sanscrit. You didn’t even understand what they were talking about and I was watching these people like do push ups and flip through and it was in a stronger yoga class and it’s my first experience and I’m like well so fast forward. I was taking that class and working with him one on one to get strong. He became my personal trainer s and he would take me outside and parks in San Francisco and train in the elements and it was brutal and he knew my issues. He knew my weaknesses. He got to know me very well and literally would tread me until I would cry, and that could be like a couple hours and then he’d say: Okay, you’re done it was like a physical and mental training and he’s my yoga master he’s the one that certified me as well. In my five hundred hours and he’s my my mentor and at that point I wasn’t sure that I was going to make that Egan to yoga. But it was when I moved back to Arizona to buy a house advertising in Arizona so differently, so different than San Francisco, that I made the switch to open up a yoga studio and literally changed my identity at thirty five years old from advertising and making really good money to folding towels. My first job was folding towels in a gym making like a minimum wage in Arizona, and I was like thirty five and I was like I just have to do this- to get to what I want to do, and I just kept saying the the branding and the and the project management and all of that corporate identity was a leg of information to create my own studio, and I just kept that vision and I just kept doing the grunt work and doing living on top Rom, and I you know doing it just to get to to now. I’ve been successful in my business for twenty years now, and so you know when you like, the biggest thing is like: If you have a vision, you may not get to it the way you think you should get to it, but keep going because you never know how you’re going to get to it. Like now, I’m like Gosh, I really had to fold those towels. I really had to fold those towels in a gym, because a lot of those people in that gym were the first people that came to me when I opened up my studio to get certified in Yoga might be because I’ve been working with me for so long, so you never know like how you’re going to get those positives, those feed backs and where you’re going to get them like. I would have never thought I would have picked up that from from a gym that I was making like six dollars and fifty cents an hour at you know what I mean I just it’s just keep keep moving forward with your vision. You never know how you’re going to get there, but you’re going to get there that that is awesome seriously. Thank you so much for doing this, I’m I’m so impressed by you. I’m glad I made this connection. Oh Yeah me too. Thank you for listening to this week’s episode of the quest for inspiration. It seriously means the world to me. The enemy press play in the first place make sure you subscribe on Apple podcast or any of your favorite podcast platforms to stay up to date for the next new episode.