JEN AKS 0:00
Welcome to the Wisdom from Within podcast, where human stories inspire authentic connection and impactful leadership. My name is Jen Aks, and I am so psyched you’re here. Let’s get started. I am really excited to share Lynnis Woods-Mullins with you today.
This woman is so authentic, so real, so rooted in her purpose, so alive in her messaging. She is a wellness expert. She is a student of life. She is serving hundreds of thousands of people around the world.
She’s incredible. She has multiple podcasts. I mean, the credentials go on and on. But truly, what I love about her is her authenticity, is her ability to just connect, to be real.
She’s a collector. She’s a collector of experts. And she brings wellness to you in a way that has never really been presented before because it’s varied and it’s real and it’s diverse. Everything she believes in.
Her values sit at the forefront. I love this woman and I’m so excited for you to know her. Please stay to the end. Share this podcast with people that you know because she’s someone to know and she’s someone to share with the people that you love.
Let’s get started. Thank you so much for being here, Linus. I am such a huge fan of your work, your focus to empower people to be their highest and best. And you do it so beautifully, and you’ve been doing it for so many years in so many ways.
And it’s truly an honor to have you here and speak about this topic, the wisdom from within, something that you are very familiar with. And I would love to begin by hearing about your relationship to that wisdom from within. For example, specifically, was there a time that you can remember when was your earliest memory of hearing that wisdom from within and listening to it? And what was the result of that?
DR. LYNNIS WOODS-MULLINS 2:23
Wow. I, you know, when I think of wisdom, I think of, you know, my older self, not my younger self. I don’t know if uh how wise I was as a child, you know. Um, I was pretty, but I looking back at that, I was probably pretty intuitive, but didn’t realize it at the time.
I knew I was a little different than other little kids in terms of the kinds of things that I focused on, the kinds of things that I wanted to do. But probably my earliest uh experience in true wisdom was when I was around 10 years old and I was in the grade. And um my my my dad uh and my mom went to school with Martin Luther King. My dad was um went to Morehouse, my mom went to Spelman, which is a sister school across the street.
And um they were friends through his whole life. And when he was killed, I remember my dad coming home early. I remember um my mom coming home early, and they’re both sitting in front of the television, probably watching Walter Cronkite or something and looking at it. And I’m understanding that Dr.
King has passed, but still don’t really have a good grasp of what that really means because I’ve never really had anybody close to me to pass before. And I do remember though, mom and dad looking at each other and saying, okay, we’re going home, because they’re from Atlanta. So they went home. We went to his funeral.
And mom and dad were in the church in Ebenezer, and I was with my cousin who was going to Spelman at the time as well, and uh, we were in the march, the funeral march, you know, to the to the and there was a lot of college students that were in there. But I remember being struck by the fact that I was holding hands, I was holding my cousin’s hand, and then I was holding the hand of um what I found out later was a rabbi, and next to him was a priest, and then next to my cousin was this other man that had his head wrapped in a term and I later I found out he was um he was Sikh, but I didn’t know it then at the time, you know. Right and um I remember thinking to myself, okay, this is something really special because out of all of this pain has come a gathering of a lot of different people who I would never have met otherwise.
I remember that. I remember it left a really um deep impression on me. And when I got back to school, the homework assignment was that we needed to write about some important moment in my life. And so I wrote an essay called I Was There.
And it was about my experience of actually having been there. And it was my intuitiveness and my wisdom that told me it was so special. I didn’t really know how famous Martin Luther King was. I mean, he was just someone that came to visit my parents, you know, usually about once or twice a year.
Uh we would visit them because we would already be in Atlanta visiting my grandparents. So I didn’t really know, but I intuitively knew something was special. I had never been to a funeral before. And until I went to a second funeral, I realized that that was really a big deal because there were so many people there in comparison to the other funeral I went to.
But that was my earliest uh key learning of um intuitiveness. I intuitively knew that this was something that I wanted to remember, something that was important that might make a difference in my life much later on. And it did much, much, much, much later on. Um, when I was in college, I was going to Spelman and uh Spelman and Morehouse, they do they interact with they they switch off with classrooms all the time, you know, we take classes from each other.
Yeah, and in one of my classes, my history class as a freshman, the person who was sitting in front of me was Marty King. Marty King, uh Martin Luther King’s um uh son, and I had seen him since his father had died, but somehow or other it came up that I was at the funeral, and he was he doesn’t remember, he was only 10 or 9 at the time, he doesn’t really remember, but I was able to share with him what it meant to me as a little girl of the seeds that were planted, about the importance of um recognizing and embracing people’s differences, and it really struck him as something important. He said, You know, thank you for telling me that because I often realize I often think about what good came out of that.
He says, I know that there’s some good that came out of my father’s past. He says, I know that, but I haven’t heard it from the voice of a child. I said, Well, at that point I was 18 years old, but here I am now almost 69, and I still can remember that feeling of wow, this must be special, and I think I need to remember this. And and it was, and for the rest of my life, for always I’ll remember that feeling of walking with these grown-ups and these these uh one, two, three, four men, and then my cousin and I, and they all looked different, but they still had that same look in their eye of almost like um sadness, but um uh what’s the word?
Sadness, but also fortitude. And there was a determination, like even though this was happening, and at the time they were singing We Shall Overcome, you know, as they go on and all that. It was just a very powerful memory. So that’s the very first time that intuition uh kicked in, that even though I didn’t understand it as a little girl, right?
That stick with me so I could have different interpretations and key learnings much later on in my life.
JEN AKS 7:30
Yeah. Oh my gosh, what a powerful moment, what a powerful moment. And for you to what I love so much about that story is that you felt it, it wasn’t this logical explanation, no one was saying specifically this is gonna define your life. This was a gut knowing that you had so young.
How does that translate and did it impact how you you started to trust yourself? Did it help you in developing a relationship with yourself of trust?
DR. LYNNIS WOODS-MULLINS 8:10
I don’t think right away, no. Uh-uh, no. I always had um um self-esteem issues, um, you know, uh for all kinds of different reasons. Yeah, so no, not right away.
It wasn’t until I became an adult and could use that as a frame of reference of not just um the frame of reference was how special my childhood was, how special my parents were. I thought everybody had parents like I had. I didn’t know any difference, but they were exceptional. And I didn’t really realize that until I went away to school, went to Spelman, and met other, you know, kids from different homes and things like that, you know, because Spelman’s in Atlanta and I’m from California.
And that’s when I began to have an inkling. But you know, when it really, really kicked in was when I was raising my own children, and I began to think, God, how did mom and dad do this? Because they gave us such an eclectic and outstanding childhood in terms of different experiences and all of that, and all the while instilling who we who we are, because we grew up in uh a city and in a neighborhood that didn’t have a lot of people that looked like me, and still and yet my parents had to instill the fact that even though we did, and this was back in the you know 60s right and uh the 70s, while we were still going through things, which I guess now we’re going through again, and that was the you know, people judge you just based upon the way that you looked, right?
And actually, and going through again, I don’t think ever really left. I just think it was covered for a long time, but it was um that upbringing uh that I realized um I would never be who I was, who I am, if it wasn’t for that awareness that they built into me. And even that, and it wasn’t until much later on that what you call the intuitiveness, really the intuitiveness really, really didn’t kick in in terms of my being able to recognize it as such um until I was in uh my 50s. I would get feelings about things, you know, but I really didn’t know much about how to build how to build upon that.
JEN AKS 10:13
Right.
DR. LYNNIS WOODS-MULLINS 10:13
I knew that I was had some wisdom, but didn’t recognize it as such. I was too much in the quagmire raising kids and corporate in my 30s and 40s, you know. There wasn’t a lot of time for introspection, or I didn’t take a lot of time for introspective. That didn’t come until my 50s.
JEN AKS 10:28
Do you think it would have been different had there been a focus in education around this intuitive intelligence, around this somatic intelligence, if people highlighted it and said, Hey, intuition is real, it is the guiding light, it is it is intelligence to follow and listen to. Do you think it would have made a difference?
DR. LYNNIS WOODS-MULLINS 10:49
Probably, but you know, back in the uh 70s, definitely in traditional public education, they were not leading with that at all. It was all, you know, facts and science and history and all of that, and then very limited scope of that in terms of you know telling all the story. They were telling bits and pieces of the story. Um, I think intuitively I was led to develop a relationship with God and all of that when I was in my teens because I knew there was something more.
I mean, I I grew up in church, but I didn’t really have that relationship with church. I don’t even remember my first real um developing relationship with God was when I was um six years old. I was in my mom’s in my uh grandmother’s church, and I was actually really, really listening to the sermon, and that planted something in me. I could still hear the pastor’s voice.
I was mesmerized, and I don’t know what he was talking about, Adam and Eve, I guess. But there was something else that was going on in the background that I again didn’t really understand, but that seed was planted, and I really do believe that in the course of our lifetime, seeds are planted and they bear fruit if we allow it to come forth. And all these different key learnings and experiences and uh other things that happened to me in the course of my life really started bearing fruit in my 50s.
JEN AKS 12:06
Right. Yeah, no, it makes so much sense. I I totally get that. And the more people I talk to, and even including myself, it’s like we don’t realize that it’s intelligence, we don’t realize that it’s wisdom to listen to until now.
My hope, though, is that by having these conversations, people will recognize it earlier. Uh, we’ll understand it, which we are, and we’ll share it with our children, and then that generation will will really acknowledge and start to use that intelligence as an asset. How have you done that for your children? Do you give them these lessons intentionally?
Are you focused on it?
DR. LYNNIS WOODS-MULLINS 12:44
It’s funny that you ask that because I always tell my girls all the time, I have four daughters, and their ages are 41, 38, 37, and 34. And I tell them all the time, if you could get whatever the concept is, I’m talking about you can get this right now in your 30s or in your 20s, depending on when I was talking to them, your life will be so much different and so much fuller. And I have to say that they all use their intuition. And I wouldn’t say that they’re necessarily wise beyond their years, but I do know that they’re way ahead of where I was in terms of uh looking at dealing in gray areas and looking behind, you know, beyond what they see and uh reading between the lines.
And I would like to think a lot of that has to do with just being around me and how I began living my life in my 50s because there was a major, major shift in my life in my 50s.
JEN AKS 13:42
Can you share us? Can you share a little bit?
DR. LYNNIS WOODS-MULLINS 13:44
Yeah. Yeah, I walked away from corporate America at 51. I had been in corporate America for um 25 years, and when I left, I was C-suite um in human resources with a very large managed care facility um corporation. And um, I had developed an anxiety disorder, which is a whole nother story.
I was told the anxiety disorder was because of stress and post-traumatic stress, but I found out many years later, based upon my studies and everything else, because of what I do now, that it wasn’t uh anecdotical anxiety, it was hormonally driven, and there’s such a thing as menopausal anxiety, but no one ever mentioned that, no one led with hormones or menopause or any of that. I just thought there was something wrong with me. So one of the things I did was I took a year off. I went um on sabbatical for a year.
And when it was And how old were you? I was uh 50, I was 50, 51, 51. So by the time I returned, it was time for me to go back, I decided I wasn’t going to back, I wasn’t going back. And this is when my intuition began kicking in.
In fact, I lived my life intuitively almost totally now. Um, and I decided to walk away from corporate America completely and to build something else. I didn’t know what it was, but I knew that you know God had something else more for me than what I was currently doing. I wasn’t, I didn’t feel like I was, you know, using all of my talents and all of my skills.
And even though I was very good at my job, my department was basically running itself. I was bored, my anxiety was very high. I always felt the imposter syndrome in corporate America. I always felt that any minute somebody was going to walk in and say, you know what, Linus, we made a mistake, you don’t deserve this promotion, or you don’t deserve this office, or you don’t deserve this money.
I always felt that way. And there were a lot of microaggressions along the way that you just swallow and try not to acknowledge. But you know, you look back at all that and you’re like, wow, how did I deal with all that? So it was an accumulation of things that made me decide that it was time for me to leave corporate America.
And um I had a dream that one day I would be speaking to thousands of women about something having to do with what is systemic to women. Now, I was a minor in college in nutrition, and I only used that for my own edification. I never taught nutrition, never took any more classes beyond college, and I was almost browbeaten into that minor because the professor was a new um, it was a new major or new minor at Spelman, and she didn’t have many, many students involved in it. And I was taking a dance class from her, and that’s how I ended up taking minoring in nutrition, you know.
But I found that I had an affinity for it, and my mom had these books by Adele Davis, who was really the first uh popular nutritionist, you know, you know, someone that would go on TV or the radio and talk about nutrition. So I always kind of had an affinity for it, uh, but had no idea that I would end up doing what I’m doing now. So I didn’t go back to work and I thought, okay, well, maybe I’m supposed to teach dance because that’s my other talent that I don’t use. Right.
So I will teach dance to women over 40, and the focus will be praise dance, but also I’ll open a studio, hire a ballet teacher, and all that. And I did that, but I quickly found out that these women needed so much more than just dance. So I how did you find out?
JEN AKS 17:08
How did that come to?
DR. LYNNIS WOODS-MULLINS 17:09
Well, just from talking to them before and after class, um, you know, uh, I had my first few students, I had my first 10 students, one was just getting over cancer, two were empty nesters, another one was dealing with hot flashes, and still yet another one was obese. I had another one that needed to have a hip replacement. I mean, there was this stuff going on, things that hadn’t happened to me personally, but it opened my eyes into why is this all happening in the in the I was like 51. Why is this all happening in the 40s and the 50s?
So then I began to start doing just more research about mind, body, spirit and a holistic approach to life. And next thing I knew, I was on this trajectory, this journey of talking to women about their overall wellness, and that was 18 years ago, and I’m still doing it. But it started with that dream that I would be talking to thousands, and it’s funny, I’ve talked to hundreds at one time, but I do talk to thousands in the course of a day because I went from not knowing anything about social media, websites, or none of that stuff. I knew none of that, and now I have over 180,000 people following me on the internet.
But back then it was just an idea, but intuitively I knew I was on the right track, even though I didn’t know what the heck I was doing.
JEN AKS 18:23
Oh my gosh. So that definitely lends itself to trust. It seems like there had to be some surrendering and trust involved in that to just believe that you are on the right track and kept going with that. How did you have that faith?
How did you have that trust?
DR. LYNNIS WOODS-MULLINS 18:41
I don’t know where it came from. You know, the surrendering really didn’t start coming until like about my mid-60s, totally surrendering. Um, the faith and the trust, um, it’s just something that is systemic in me. And I did it at a difficult time because my kids were all getting ready to go to college.
So it was and not that far from retirement. So it was like really a crazy thing. I would not advise anybody else to do it that way. But that’s the way that I did it because that’s how I was led.
And as a result, I have a lot of powerful lessons to share with women when it comes to that. Because the reality is that right around that time of life, you almost your body begins to recalibrate and take a look at things because of hormonal shifts and everything else. But so does your spirit and your mind too. You begin to want to peel back the layers and figure out okay, what do I want to do when I grow up?
What do I want to do with the second half of my life? You know, is this am I on the right track? You almost always start asking those questions. And there’s some people who ask the questions and do the work and find out and pursue that.
And there are other people who might feel the need to ask the questions, but they’re afraid to, and they don’t. And their lives don’t change as uh dramatically as some people do. But like there’s really like two classes of people, really. That’s how I look at it.
There’s we’re all wounded, we’ve all been through things, we’ve all require healing. And there’s some people who uh look at the fact that yes, they’ve been hurt and everything else, but you know, so what they’ll just push it back and they just don’t deal with it and keep moving. And there are others that yes, I’ve been hurt and I want to pull back the layer, I want to peel back the layers and heal so that I can move forward to the other things that I want to do. And I was the second group.
I knew that there were some things I needed to heal with. I mean, I probably have been my best client in all the things that I’ve done and the thousands of interviews I’ve done for podcasts and all those things. I know that I probably have been the one that has gotten the most out of it, out of anybody in terms of all these wonderful women, you know, speaking into my life and um all of the uh clients that I’ve had over the years, their situations that they’ve had were aha moments for certain situations that I was going through as I was researching on how to help them. So I really do feel that this was God’s way, putting me on this track is his way of healing my hurts and my pains.
JEN AKS 20:55
Yeah, yeah. Do you feel and has there actually been a time that you can recall where your body, you call it intuition, God’s spirit, you know, soul uh that was guiding you and you didn’t listen to it?
DR. LYNNIS WOODS-MULLINS 21:10
Oh yeah. Yeah. Um, I think probably the biggest thing was at 45 when I remarried. You know.
Um I uh my I my first husband um was uh sick. He was an alcoholic, and I had uh four little ones. They were all in you know various stages of schooling, you know, before college and all that. And I just didn’t I I I I just didn’t want to deal with having to take care of him too.
I just could only I could only see that. Now looking back at that, I might have dealt with it differently, but that’s where I was at 45.
JEN AKS 21:45
Right.
DR. LYNNIS WOODS-MULLINS 21:46
It was about me and the girls. Okay, so uh we got divorced, and um then I met someone not too long after that who I’d known all my life since I was four years old, and um decided you know, we would get married because I’ve still Wanted the girls to have a man in the home and all that kind of stuff because that’s how I grew up. I look back at that and I wasn’t really my intuition all the way up to the day I got married, everything was like, Don’t do this, don’t do this, don’t do this. I was like, No, this is what I need to have.
I was willful.
JEN AKS 22:12
And you’re a first husband. This oh, the second one, your intuition was like, Don’t do this, don’t do this.
DR. LYNNIS WOODS-MULLINS 22:20
Right. Okay. But I did it anyway because I felt like this is what was needed. And I was right, it was the wrong thing, not the wrong man necessarily, but the wrong timing.
Because um, getting married when you have teenagers, young teenagers in the home, and they’re all girls, you know, if I look back, I would have waited. I still would have married him, but I would have waited until they had left the home because that was just too much. You know, their dad was still around, of course, and then he was around wanting to be a dad to them, and it was just a hot mess. And on top of all of that, was when I decided I wanted to open my business.
So there was just a lot of change. And if I had it to do over again, I definitely would have waited, but I didn’t listen to that intuition. But the blessing in all of that is that I’ve learned so much, so many cautionary tales. So many women um consider, you know, remarrying if they’re not married already or if they are married around their 40s or 50s or whatever, because things seem to shift.
And the people who you thought were just so wonderful when you were in your 20s or maybe early 30s, ain’t so wonderful when you get to your 40s. I mean, you know, that’s just the way it goes. But you have to, when you have children, you really have to take into consideration uh what’s going on with them, and you really have to be honest with yourself, you know, what who are you doing this for? You know, because ultimately if if you’re doing it for yourself and you really are and it’s really going to help you have joy in your life, well, that’s great.
Because if you’re happy, then your children are happy. Okay.
JEN AKS 23:52
That’s right.
DR. LYNNIS WOODS-MULLINS 23:52
If you’re doing it for them and you’re thinking, I’ll just muddle through, that’s not that’s not going to be a good recipe for success.
JEN AKS 24:01
Well, yeah, I mean, it really is that societal pressure, right? When you say that you did that partly because that’s what society says, have a man in the house. You need I’ve got these four girls, right? And so we give our power away and we turn away by turning away from that voice that’s saying, No, no, no.
Would you, though? It sounds like, yes, if you could do it all over, you may have waited. And there was a lot of blessing in it. You you say now you’ve learned so much, and you’re sharing so many blessings.
Yeah.
DR. LYNNIS WOODS-MULLINS 24:33
You know, God gave me the right kind of man for the business that I’m in because he allowed me to do this and didn’t think I was crazy and didn’t leave me because he married this woman who was successful making over six figures and then went from you know that to zero uh for almost five years, but he still stayed and he supported me. And there’s no way I would be where I am now if it wasn’t for him. But it wasn’t without a cost, it wasn’t without a cost, it was definitely a cost.
JEN AKS 24:58
Yeah, I always feel like it whatever the detour is or the decision, I do feel like it’s for us, not it’s not happening to us, it’s happening for us, and that it is a detour in the right direction because that experience obviously gave you so much wisdom to do what you’re doing now.
DR. LYNNIS WOODS-MULLINS 25:16
Yes, it really did. I um I have lived a whole lifetime since I’ve been in my 50s in terms of all the different things that I’ve dealt with that I would not have encountered had I just, you know, maybe stayed married with their dad or not left corporate America. Um my children are so much richer as a result of the mistakes that I made, yeah. Just from learning from all of that, and and being honest enough to sit and talk with them about it, you know, um, after the fact.
Um, you know, I’m very close to my daughters. We talk every day, and I’ve got four of them, so that’s a lot of talking in the course of the day. And then I have my seven grandchildren who I talk to every day as well. But communication for us is key since the girls um now, with the exception of one, all three of them now live out of state.
I mean, they live away from California in different parts of the United States. So that communication is key. And um I truly do believe that um had I still been in corporate America, not working from home while they were in high school, the communication piece would have been different. But I was home right there.
So when they came home from school, I was able to sit down and talk with them because normally I wouldn’t be getting home until six or seven o’clock at night. Right. Now I’m getting home at three or four and I’m there. And when they leave for school, you know, I’m able to see them off and I’m there.
And I think that made a huge difference. Although at the time it didn’t seem, if I look back at it now, it’s one of the reasons why I’m so clued into their lives because I was there during some pivotal moments when normally I would have been traveling, I would have been in a meeting, you know, that kind of thing. So we all work together for a good outcome.
JEN AKS 26:55
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, this is this is essential in the communication or what I’m trying to communicate to the people that I’m serving, the people that are listening, is that this is all wisdom. It is all happening for us to guide us into the moments that we’re living now. Like it all lines up.
And so to not look back and say I should have, or this was a mistake, or I wish I didn’t, but it’s more like sending it a lot of love and gratitude because it is the reason why we are where we are in this moment, even though it can be difficult to look back at those times, you know, because we think, you know, that we should have done something different, but really the lessons within it when we choose to see it that way can be so helpful. How do you now take this awareness into the work that you’re doing in terms of your body leading or that intuitive intelligence leading you? You know, how much it sounds like you’re like, this is my guiding light. You said at this moment.
DR. LYNNIS WOODS-MULLINS 27:51
Yes, I am definitely operating in my gifting, there’s no doubt about that. Um I think that it gives me a better frame of reference, it gives me a better idea of all the different things that women are dealing with, and it’s been a journey in terms of how not so much how I do what I do, but the topics I choose to talk about. It has definitely been a journey. I started out with um, you know, praiseworks, which is the name of my company, and that was dance and praise dance and all that.
I traveled all over the United States performing and you know all that. Uh, then it went to Wellness Woman, which was a brand of having to do with wellness for women, and then it moved to something else that was definitely wellness more esoteric because I really felt like so much of the key to a woman’s wellness has to do with what’s going on with their mind and their spirit. So that’s when vibe came in, you know, the whole idea of women learning how to be more vibe is an acronym for vibrancy, intuition, beauty, and empowerment. Because I do believe those things are integral, but they’re also the things that women have a tendency to think they’re losing as they get older.
But it actually is just the opposite. Uh, it can become enhanced if you allow it to be. I mean, all you have to do is allow it and recognize that you have it and it’s enhanced. But society has a tendency to say that maybe not so much after 40, but after 50, you know, there’s not much left, you know, there’s uh in your journey towards beauty or your journey towards a vibrancy that you’re more on the downward end.
It’s time for you to think about getting that rocking chair with knitting needles and a cat at your feet and grandchildren playing with your orthopedic shoes and your hair net. And that has totally changed. But I think somewhere in the background in our mindset, that’s still kind of there a little bit. Yeah, it’s amazing how many women um I’ve talked to over the last, you know, uh 10 years of my 18 years in business are feeling unseen, uh, feeling not heard, feeling not valued.
And uh just the other day I was talking to a group of women about the fact that your validation uh of who you are does not lay outside of you, it’s within. And, you know, I had to learn how to do that because I kept looking for validation for my husband. Am I doing a good job, you know, with my business and things like that? He didn’t know.
I mean, you know, he wasn’t in the day in and day out. My successes and things like that might have been small successes to him, but they were huge successes to me. The fact that people who had never met me were giving me money over the internet, you know, 18 years ago, that was almost unheard of. Especially it was not a tangible product, you know, it was a service.
Uh, that was huge. And especially since I did not have any experience to speak of when I first got started, that just wasn’t recognized as such, still isn’t, still is kind of taken for granted. Oh, well, that’s just what you do. But no, I had to build that from zero.
But I came to realize that it wasn’t anything personal, it’s just that everybody has their own thing that they’re looking at and focusing on, and they don’t know what’s going on with you. They’re too busy trying to keep up with themselves. And so we have to stop being so out of directed for a validation and start being inner directed, and that’s where that intuition gets higher, that inner voice gets stronger. Um, and I believe that there’s a certain kind of um, if you want to call it selfishness, but I call it awareness that you need to have about the need to love yourself.
Um, that’s so crucial that you love yourself because no one’s going to really love you the way you need to be loved because you know what it is that you need. You know, and we need to admit that to ourselves, you know what your needs are, and you know what needs are being met. So the question is, how are you going to go about having those needs met? And sometimes some of those needs might lie in another person, but the only problem is that humans are unpredictable, you know, you never know where they’re coming from, what’s happening, but you do know yourself, you do know yourself.
I love this idea of go ahead. Sorry. Yeah, in lieu of the need of validation from others, I think is um a survival mechanism for me.
JEN AKS 32:05
Yes, absolutely, and hard to do for some people, right? Because we’re so outer directed. It is a societal norm to be outer directed. I love this outer directed, inner directed.
How would you what would your advice be to people that are like, okay, I’m tired of the noise, I’m tired of the influence outside of myself. I want to be more interdirected. What would you say to that?
DR. LYNNIS WOODS-MULLINS 32:32
The first step is to start recognizing those things about yourself that you love and leverage that, develop those things, you know. Uh, speak to yourself about those things. And the other thing is to uh watch your words in terms of what you say about yourself and to yourself. Your brain doesn’t know the difference between good information or bad information, it’s just information and it it watches how your body responds to it and then it decides whether to give more of something or less of something.
When you are saying bad things about yourself, it’s it’s stressful. And the body recognizes that, the brain recognizes that, and as a result, it sends you more cortisol, which causes other issues. So you’re really hurting yourself, not just mentally, but physically, when you start saying bad things about yourself. And there are times, unfortunately, where there may not be people in your life who are saying anything good about you, not be not, and not necessarily because they’re mad at you or anything else, but they’re too busy with their stuff.
They may not necessarily know when you need to hear it. So you have to start basically advocating for your own self-love. And it’s it’s and I know a lot of people overuse the self-love thing. I don’t haven’t come up with another term, but it’s it’s essential because it really is true.
You can’t truly learn to love someone else until you’ve truly learned to love yourself, and I think it’s a lifelong quest. I don’t think we ever get perfect, it’s a lifelong quest, but at least it should be somewhere on our bucket list. You know, it should we need to have the awareness that it is necessary for us to work on taking better care of ourselves.
JEN AKS 34:11
I I I love this, I love this so much because it’s very tangible, you know. It might feel awkward at first. Some people, you know, affirmations, I am love, I love myself, I love you, whatever it is. And you know, me with the power of gesture, adding the embodiment piece of that, calling in that energy.
There are tools and ways to do it, and it’s a bridge to cross, it’s really a bridge to cross, and it’s a habit to create because you’re so right when we can love ourselves, then our vibration changes, and then we attract what it is we’re meant to do, right? So I I love that. Go ahead.
DR. LYNNIS WOODS-MULLINS 34:48
Yes, yes, you’re absolutely right. You do attract it. What happens, I think, energetically is that as you begin to feel better about yourself, it’s amazing. There’s this light that starts to emanate from you, and I can only tell you from my personal experience, when I was in my uh 30s and 40s, um, I guess I got some attention.
I I never thought of myself as pretty. I wasn’t ugly, but I didn’t think of myself as pretty. I thought of myself as kind of plain, you know, kind of needed some work, but you know. And when I started um moving outside of corporate America and redefining myself, one of the first things I did, it’s interesting how sometimes they say the universe rises, conspires to help you.
One of the things that happened is I developed an allergic reaction to hair dye, and I could no longer dye my hair. I mean, I tried to emergency three times and could no longer tolerate hair dye.
JEN AKS 35:45
How old were you when this happened?
DR. LYNNIS WOODS-MULLINS 35:47
I was like about between uh 49 and 51. Took me two years, so finally my doctor was like, look, Lenice, you end up in if you end up in EED one more time, I cannot guarantee that you’ll survive it because now my esophagus is is swelling up, my face would swell up. I had, I mean, my scalp was oozing, all this stuff was going on, letting me know you just can’t do this anymore. So I had to uh stop perming my hair um and uh let my hair grow out naturally and my hair grow naturally.
Now, fast forward, I haven’t I was just thinking the other day, I’ve been wearing my hair or some form of my hair like this now for like 20 years. It seems just like yesterday, because for so many years I was just wearing it straight and regular, but um I believe that this happened for a reason because, first of all, it gives me a testimony about um listening to your body and living holistically and then you know allowing the universe or God or whatever you call it to work it out. I get much, much, much more attention now at 69 than I ever have before in my life. And it always leads with my hair, it always leads with my hair, but I also think the other piece of it is because I am operating in my gifting, because I know I do know how to feel joy every single day, no matter what’s going on.
Uh, that light radiates out. And even though I’m aging, I’ve got wrinkles, I’m definitely what 20 pounds heavier than I was back then when I was skinny many. I remember wanting to gain weight so badly until finally I got to that point. I’m like, oh that’s all great.
But you know, I’ve learned to accept myself as I am when you’re comfortable with yourself, and uh when you are at that point where you are operating in your gifting, you’re on the journey that you know you’re supposed to be on. There’s this light that emanates, and people are attracted to it. And I get men and women, it’s just so it’s so weird. It’s so weird.
I I was out on Mother’s Day with my sister and my um my daughter, and my daughter’s 38, and my sister is 55, and they both look significantly younger than what they are, and then here I am with my gray hair, right? I can’t tell you how many men walked up to me, and my sister and my um daughter were like, What’s going on? They’re the ones who are single, right? Right.
Oh god, that’s why it’s the light, it’s the light that people are attracted to when you’re comfortable with yourself, when you’re feeling you know, pretty good in your skin, regardless of all the crazy other stuff that’s going on. People are attracted to that.
JEN AKS 38:25
Yes, you know, you so embody this. It is so beautiful to be honestly to be in your presence and to hear you speak about this. That light comes out of you, it pours out of you. And I love that story about how you couldn’t dye your hair anymore.
The universe was absolutely saying enough. Let your light, your natural light, shine. And as a result, look at all you’ve done. I mean, you are really the example or a beautiful example of what it is to follow that intuition, to listen to the body, to allow it to lead.
It is, it is just your your business is beautiful, your impact is beautiful. And I love that um you said it a few times. I am living my gift or I am gifting.
DR. LYNNIS WOODS-MULLINS 39:16
What is it that you I’m operating with my gifting, yeah.
JEN AKS 39:19
Yeah, I mean, you can feel it from you, right? And that comes from time, it comes from awareness, and it comes from making a choice to really pay attention, right?
DR. LYNNIS WOODS-MULLINS 39:29
Yes, and it’s not an easy thing, right? But it is such a joyous thing. And I don’t do a lot of time reflecting back. I’m always thinking about what’s next.
But when I really stop and think from whence I came, I mean, people used to make my friends and family used to kind of make fun of me and joke around me that I would be sitting in my credenza with my computer, like a mad scientist, trying to learn how to build a website on Yahoo, you know, and finding out what Facebook was. And then I got this podcast, what is that? And all these different things. But I look at my body of work in the last 18 years, and it just blows my mind.
But the real caveat is that I wanted to before 70, because I’ll be 70 next year, and I wanted to put a period at the end of the sentence in terms of all the experience that I had gotten. And I thought, well, that would mean maybe going back to school. And said, No, I’m not. I already have my master’s, have my undergrad, I’m not going back to school.
I have all 32 certifications. Why do I need to go back to school? But something just said, you know what, Lennon’s, go ahead and pursue your PhD. Let’s get it.
So I did. And I finished it two weeks ago. Oh, yeah, I haven’t told many people. I challenged my dissertation, got that all done, and I am now Dr.
Lynnis Woods-Mullins. Wow! I still have a problem saying it out loud.
JEN AKS 40:50
I still kind of feel like oh god, it is powerful. Can you say it again?
DR. LYNNIS WOODS-MULLINS 40:55
Dr. Lynnis Woods-Mullins. One more time, Dr. Lynnis Woods-Mullins.
And I haven’t like this is one of my first public sayings of it. And I think part of the reason was that I kind of did it in secret um because it was a personal journey. Um, and it was really hard because I was still running my company, still doing collaborations, still being grandma. What it was really hard.
And if I failed, I didn’t want anybody to know that I didn’t make it through. And I’d already given myself permission to fail. I mean, you know, these things happen, but at least I tried. But I just I was just resolute.
And if my advisors were, you know, pushing me the whole time. Do it, do it, do it. And so now that it’s done, um I’m kind of like how I always am. Okay, what’s next?
You know, what am I gonna do now? Because I do have some other things I want to do.
JEN AKS 41:50
So of course you do. You’re always gonna be, excuse me, striving and growing and serving. This is a beautiful segue to how can people work with you, be a part of your world, a part of your brilliance. Ugh, share with us, please.
DR. LYNNIS WOODS-MULLINS 42:05
Well, I would really love it if they would check out my podcast, Vibe Living Podcast. We’re now in the top five percent of podcasts in the world, and I want to get to the top 1%, which is a lot of work. I know that. And I also would love them to go visit my website, uh, VibeWellnesswoman.com.
That’s a membership program, and it’s very affordable. And I have affiliated with a lot of different holistic practitioners and medical doctors to provide services for the members and also for people who visit the site. So just go in there and just take a look at the site. And if you choose to belong, then you get access to replays for all the workshops that we have.
There’s online courses that are there, and uh we have uh special blogs that are there, special podcasts that are there for them. Um, and I’ve been growing this now since uh last September is when I did it. And it’s really funny too, because another story of you know doing something and not having any expertise. I uh started building it on a membership platform, and I just didn’t really like the way it looked, something was missing.
So I just decided to build it myself. So, what you see is what I did myself. I built that website. Now I’m pretty proud of that because it’s very technical.
There were many times where I was getting ready to throw my PC out the window, but I did it and I’m still doing it. And this is how I know that you’re never too old to learn anything, you’re never too old to pursue that dream, that passion, that something that you’ve always wanted to do. Because I believe that if God placed that within you to want to do it, then you already have everything that you need to accomplish it. The only thing that’s standing in your way is you and the thing going on between your two years, but you absolutely can.
I look at women like you know, Louise Hay, uh, who, you know, five years old, she started. Yeah, familiar life. Yeah, she didn’t become a millionaire until well into her sixties. And I look at Jane Fonda, who’s in her 80s and still doing I look at uh a woman by the name of Susan Taylor, who was the editor of Essence Magazine way, way back, and she’s still out there doing it, and she’s 80 and she looks amazing.
If there was anyone that I would want to be like when I grow up, it’s Susan Taylor.
JEN AKS 44:08
Oh my gosh, she’s just amazing.
DR. LYNNIS WOODS-MULLINS 44:10
80 years old. It’s so interesting because you think, okay, who are the people you look up to? And many women, when they get to my age, you know, some of them might say, Well, you know, everybody’s gone, or they’re they’re all too old. But you know, I think that you know, the creator gives you that next bar if you allow it.
There’s always going to be a next bar. If I’m so blessed to be and to live to 90, there’s going to be a next bar. What am I going to do for 95? You know, uh, that’s how I’ve been living my life since my 50s.
And I’m looking forward to seeing seeing if that thousands of people I’m going to be talking to because that’s the next bar. I’ve I feel that everything that I’ve done is accumulating to something that he first told me in a dream, um, you know, almost 20 years ago.
JEN AKS 44:54
Oh, Linus, absolutely beautiful. It is an honor to know you. I am so excited to just watch and be a part of your journey and just witness this true, true becoming. It’s really just incredible.
DR. LYNNIS WOODS-MULLINS 45:10
Thank you so much for being here. Thank you. Thank you for inviting me. It’s been wonderful watching you bloom because we’ve worked together before, we’ve known each other for a while, and I know you had this dream, and you’ve been embodying the dream and doing it in different ways because everybody is, you know, needs a different kind of thing, but you’re still getting that word out about the need of embodying our our our lives through movement and gesture and the idea of going within and getting to know ourselves better.
So you’re doing a great service for so many. So thank you for allowing me to be part of that journey.
JEN AKS 45:42
Oh absolutely, absolutely. So much more to come. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Uh, I adore you, and thank you for all the listeners for being here and hearing this gorgeous, inspiring conversation.
I’ll see you next week on Wisdom from Within, where human stories awaken, leadership from within. See you next week. If something in this conversation spoke to you, don’t keep it to yourself. Send it to someone who might need that message too.
You can also send me a comment because I would love to know what it is that landed for you. But most importantly, take a moment to pause and listen to what it is that resonated because that’s where your real guidance system lives. The one you can trust, the one that you can rely on. See you next week.