we take it out with three deep breaths are you ready inhale  last one in hand exhale how do you feel i know i feel great i want to welcome melissa sorry day to the dr joyce thank you thank s for being here thank you for having me you are and inspiration oh gee oh my goodness all right i don't want to tell your story i want you to share your story your on thank you all i thank you so much for having me so i am probably like many people that watch your show i am a working mom i work for johnson and johnson and i've been with the company for now  seventeenth year of congratulation thank you and raising a family and doing what i do and everything was going along wonderfully until i hit forty when i found a lump and that led to a diagnosis of stage three breast cancer and you know had to sort of step out of living my life and figuring out how do ok i've got to tackle this disease what do i do how do i get through this and my bones and i once again went through the fight and came out on the other side i still once a month get kimo therapy keep my disease where it needs to be underneath my shoe  and and i am back to living and enjoying every single delicious minute of this life oh my goodness well so at forty that's when it started so when i was your lowest point and then what enabled you to push through i think for me the lowest point out of my whole history of cancer was the second diagnosis you know i had fought so hard to beat cancer and put it behind me and just sort of try to forget about it right and then it came back again and that was the lowest point because you think to yourself you do all these they did it you beat it if you did everything you were a good patient you're mindful of yourself how did this happen again and again for me was at a very late stage the way i got myself through it is the way i get through everything in my life i believe that you need to have what i refer to as these anchors in your life and for me the anchors these are the the things that stop you dead in your tracks in your life that make you say wait a minute let me pause let me step back for a minute now let me plug forward with the right mindset my anchors are my two kids my daughter brielle my son quinn and my husband lance and no matter how deep i might go the anchors are there pull me up and it's for march wow i also want to congratulate you congratulations for pushing through thank you congratulations for sharing your inspiring story with me the viewers and also everybody else that you've touched on your ted talk i viewed that ted talk so i know a little bit about oh my goodness i was like oh my goodness but the other thing i want to congratulate you  maneuver through your journey yeah well winning and being selected as the twenty six team working mother of the year for johnson and johnson is so incredibly humbling because to me there are so many working moms tha johnson johnson that i admire every day you know so it's the fact that it's me is wow right johnson and johnson j n j has helped me sort of live throughout my entire journey whether that was having kids the programs available for every employee it's just a matter of you know when you need it you find it and you take it so for me the flexible work schedules for example i have chemotherapy once a month so it's a no brainer that i can utilize a flexible work schedule and one day a month on me able to sit in the chemo chair and not have to feel like i have to power up my laptop and respond to emails or take conference calls but i can have quiet time i can relax and rest while i'm getting the treatment that i need without the guilt you know it's also we have wonderful programs in terms of moving your body and figuring out your energy we have a program that's out of what we call the human performance the program helps you understand in your life you have your energy that you get from your physical life your mental life your emotional your spiritual your financial life and through those three days that you're there at this program you figure out a way to harness the energy in the best place where you need it to work for you ok and those three days in itself i still practice the principles from those how long  to enroll in the program i got sick in twenty ten and i came back to work at the beginning of two thousand and twelve and that's when i went ok at the end of two thousand and twelve is when i got sick again so it was interesting because i was able to sort of utilize those principles to harness the energy of where i would need it most of the sense like ok wow the elements that you just touched on with the human performance institute  parallel to dr joye your prescription for total wellness total wellness yet that's what that's there is there's parallels there so with all of the wellness elements ok when i ask people they say oh i had what happened what's wellness to you they say ok physical and nutrition is all there's others as well but do you think that mental wellness leads the pack because how you think how you feel is going to impact on your actions which your actions will have a result may be a good result or it may not be a good result your thoughts i one hundred  percent believe that where you put your mind and where you put it to focus is everything it's everything you know for me i go back to you know my anchors you know puts my mental  it needs to be a fuel myself with happiness with positive energy positive people and because of the positivity i surround myself with then i feel positive to kind of get into the hurdles that might come up in my life it's infectious it isn't it it is it's infectious so continue on that path and can thin you this share about your mental healing process what else would you like to share about that yes so i think part of my mental healing process specifically with my disease when i was home on disability from j and j for me what was great was that i still felt extremely connected into my community at lady in my company i kept a really big sort of social calendar how did you do that so for me going through cancer i looked at it as in chunks so you have your chemotherapy your radiation or surgeries and every chunk it was you can't finish what you didn't start so as a family we would have a huge dry erase twelve month calendar and as a family we would cross off the different team of therapy days so you could see the beginning and see where you're heading towards just chemotherapy so goes chemotherapy radiation then surgery is a balance it depends on what the protocol is it was a surgery chemo radiation surgery so you had so for each piece you had a schedule only to schedule and on that schedule my kids could also see it was having lunch with so and so i'm having so and so and people physically coming out and spending time with me and keeping my brain at is in my world that i write with which was my work world of supporting the people that i work with the j and j that was such wonderful medicine for me because a kind of kept me in my groove of working toward something and i think that really helps with your positive and oh absolutely yeah absolutely so i know a little something about you that you shared with me earlier and a little bit refurnished melissa updates yes tell me more about that yes so i talked about those in the ted talk a yeah so the whole idea around the melissa update was it started as me having an outlet about what i was going through from a from a disease perspective and seeing that things were happening different to me than what i assumed happens with cancer and i started it with work with my colleagues at j and j and i spoke very real it was very much i'm saying what i see about something is taboo is cancer so you are authentic yes very very much and it started out really just a couple of people but when i came back to work after the first time i was out how long were you out the first time first time i was out it was eight months ok and i came back and it was it was crazy how many people were either already getting the melissa updates being it being forwarded from other colleagues how did you have it cascaded or distributed via e mail via e mail via e mail and coming back i had many e mails waiting in my inbox saying i want to be added to your melissa updates which was just so amazing for me to take pause to say you know without even realizing that you're impacting somebody that's the a prime example of not realizing the impact you have right on people that's right wow that is that is the nominal so what would you give to other women and or family members that are that are in the cancer space with the disease of cancer yeah you know the two pieces of advice that i would give one is all around you know it is it is human to feel an oh my god what's next right but i would urge you that when you're done that very healthy processing to then flip that on its side and save yourself who are my anchor what are my anchors and your anchors might not be kids or your husband or your dad out because the strength you'll find in those anchors is what's going to pull you up to get your brain where needs to be on the other side of things you know just talking about the working mother peace the flexibility piece right so some people might be faced with you know horrible news and they're in a situation that's not that flexible what do you do right you know a johnson and johnson i'm fortunate enough that j j didn't just start being flexible and having all these wonderful programs available to all employees we've been doing it since the very beginning nine hundred thirty year history yeah i mean it's been ongoing i would say you need to start thinking of yourself as your own sort of company so that's a joy inc dr joy thank you and you center yourself around that and you need to make sure that your company is profitable and thriving and has success stories and if your current situation doesn't allow for you to be profitable and successful in that i mean mine and that body all good then you you might get a step back and say i think i need to go to another place or another space wherever that is so i can have all of those opportunities afforded to be you know like civility so you have to sometimes get out of your own way you have to sometimes get out of your own way so which comes to your third point which you're probably going to say right is action plan absolutely definitely want to have an action plan and people do action plans in a variety of ways they drill right yeah they they live by a calendar some people do it you know virtually and in their heads whatever it is figure out the plan for your company yourself and follow the plan follow your own business plan well i will tell you we are always given never given more than we can bear and then when we're given that thing that adversity because i've gone through stuff too right everybody has you know if they're alive they've gone through early so we have the adversity up top yeah and we have two sticks coming from you can either go down one side which is despair this disappointment despair which could lead to depression that's right now really deep ball or you can break off because you still have a little bit you can have disappointment yet happen right you don't feel good and you're disappointed a little bit of despair but then there's another branch  there's another branch just says i'm not going to deal with this anymore and it's and you pivot your mind and you make a mental shift that's right and i'm not and it's good that you were able to make that mental programs that are just of the just right on your phone at your fingertips ok we started this program called healthy me this year ok and it's it's basically like a challenge for walking so you know everybody puts on their walking sensor their or what have you and this was a global program and it's easy is that it is guys hello exercise easiest the easiest and was awesome was you know you can at any time sort of see the update you know how many steps my team is doing versus somewhere in asia or in brazil and i know what it's a little competition a little on issue and that's why it almost seemed like every single employee got on board oh that's you know late and you know the added benefit of that is you know again if you look at all the different pieces that really give you personal health yes i was walking you know i wasn't doing that before so you know you're having fun you're walking right and it's an easy program to get on board with and what's another one the other programs are what we also have where you can for me personally we have online digital programs apps where you can manage all of your medications so for somebody like me getting sick i have a ton of different cation got to figure out what's what right and that was an easy program for me to just download and follow you know so a lot of digital latest state of the art things that are of it not just to me they're available for everybody see and i think jane j's all the other tagline of jane jesus caring for you caring for your family and caring for the world so what the apps that the that you are maybe making mention caring for the employees yes yep and then the employees writing this is a domino effect it is a domino effect the employees can care for themselves and care for their family that's right then that frees up you know less stress if frees up some extra extra energy or whatever to care for the world because then they can give out exactly because it's not about your story melissa sorry day your story is about you your positive significant impact to others that is what you've done that's what everybody has a story like that that's true everybody has a story so jane jay makes allows for people to care for themselves and care for their family and then care for someone else yeah yeah i love it and they make it easy to do make it easy to care for yourself with all the different programs now it would be good if we could see if we could see other companies do the same thing yeah i mean really see because whether you are small business your sole partner ok so small small business or you work for a corporation does it matter if it's five employees ten employees one hundred employees one hundred thirty thousand employees and your global the the wealth of the company is actually the health of the employee that's true because there's no i in team that's absolutely right that's so it would be really cool or if you know and j is a model yeah right it would be really cool if other companies looked at you guys as the model and you know yes so took a couple of sentences out of out of your book yeah have employees right that have less stress and are more energized to be more productive exactly less stressed can handle their competing priorities because they're going to be there but with less stress that's right and then they can be nicer people to other people that's right and you're willing to give more so but you know what is what is a problem though or what may be a challenge with some companies they feel as though it's going to cost too much i mean yes i and producer the doc to do a show or a but my business i'm a total wellness advocate but i also do employee wellness programs and program has a bunch of components and depending on it's all a cart they can pick whatever they need for for their company but you know it always comes to bear is the question of well how much is this going to cost well how much is it worth to you your company to have healthy employees that's the wealth of your company that's right and but that's always the question i understand that you know they might not want to spend the whole lot of money but your employees are what fuel your bottom ding absolutely and i think i think just the research that shows right there so much research out there about providing you know various healthy alternatives in your workplace you know even even changing up your menu if you have a cafeteria right simple simple just simple changes simple changes that really don't cost that much but they go a long long way yes they do i want to one last are many times we sort of look at our life and we're different people in different settings i tell people figure out that you wear your most comfortable and you feel good about that you write and wear that you all the time nothing nothing will ever be more higher rated in anyone's book than being your true authentic self it's infectious you actually give a gift to somebody else it's almost like you gave the baton over when you show up as authentic then they go and take that baton and nine times out of ten there is that somebody is now going to be authentic to somebody else right life just to shorts like a to worry about something else other than that it's my best advice oh my goodness