Behind the Work: Cheryl Meyer on the Cost of Success Without Self-Care

There is a version of success that can look convincing from the outside while quietly asking too much of the person living it.

Cheryl Meyer knows that version well.

She had built a successful seven-figure jewelry business when her body abruptly forced a different conversation. One morning, she woke in severe pain and could barely get out of bed. What followed became a years-long search for answers and, eventually, a fundamental reconsideration of the way she had been living.

Cheryl describes the realization plainly: she had been doing almost everything she could to make the business successful except taking care of herself.

Her response eventually took her somewhere she had not expected. She sold the business, returned to school at 67, and became a certified health coach. Now 77, she describes herself as living some of the best years of her life.

Her approach to wellbeing is deeply personal and draws together nutrition, lifestyle change, self-love, spirituality, intuition, and a strong belief in individual agency. Underneath those ideas is a question that reaches far beyond health: what is success worth if the way we pursue it leaves us unable to enjoy the life we have built? In this edition of Behind the Work, Cheryl reflects on the health crisis that changed her direction, the beliefs that carried her through reinvention, why she sees self-love as a foundation rather than an indulgence, and what success from the inside out means to her now.

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Was there a particular experience, transition, challenge, or turning point that shaped the direction of your work or perspective?

I was a successful solopreneur in the jewelry design business with a seven-figure business, and I faced a daunting wake-up call one morning.

I woke up and every muscle and joint in my body severely hurt. I couldn’t get out of bed because of excruciating pain. Over the days to come, it didn’t go away, and I could not function.

After five rounds of tests with my MD, I was misdiagnosed and brushed off.

I embarked on a journey to discover the root cause of what was happening to my body. Unveiling autoimmune disease, fibromyalgia, and then later Hashimoto’s, IBS, and Type II diabetes, I realized that I had been doing everything to make my business a success except to practice self-care.

My relentless work ethic and unhealthy lifestyle habits were the culprits. I literally had bankrupted my body while building a successful business.

I refused to live a life of pain and pills as my fate, so I did research, followed functional medical practitioners, overhauled my diet, started eating all the colors of the organic rainbow, started Tao Yoga, and systematically began to eliminate toxins in all my products and areas of my life.

It took five years before I started feeling good again. I found my own functional MD, and she took me the rest of the way back to feeling great.

I changed my other lifestyle habits too: my sleep, ensuring seven hours a night, daily movement, learning stress-releasing exercises, getting a filtering system on our water, and more.

Now 77, I feel better than I did in my 50s.

I sold my business, returned to school at 67 to become a certified health coach, and started talking to others everywhere I went.

I am now living the best years of my life.

I literally had bankrupted my body while building a successful business.

Cheryl Meyer

What belief, philosophy, or truth sits at the heart of the work you do?

My superpower is to find and create different avenues to health.

Nothing is impossible. Embrace the possible.

Impossible is for the unwilling. You truly can do anything you set your mind to.

Own your own health. Own your own life.

I do not believe in failure. Failing is temporarily how you discover what doesn’t work so that you can try again and win.

Self-love is the foundation for all your hopes and dreams.

Health is a journey. It is not a destination. You keep trying different solutions until you solve each puzzle piece on your journey back to wellness.

I feel great and want to inspire you to do the same.

Self-love is the foundation for all your hopes and dreams.

Cheryl Meyer

What does “living in alignment” mean to you personally?

My feet hit the ground every morning, and I am already happy.

Living in alignment is living in balance.

Leading with my heart, putting love, joy, compassion, and kindness into the world, and noticing glimmers all create a happy life.

Create our own magic and enjoy all the glimmers in our day. Sit with them and feel the glow.

Self-love commits us to healthy lifestyle habits.

The goal is to feel good in all aspects of our life.

What have you learned about identity through your own periods of change or reinvention?

We were born onto this plane to return to our authentic self.

Our goal is to hone our ability to put more love into the universe, to become our authentic self, to radiate joy, to be healthy, to be happy and joyful, to be love, and to achieve our wildest dreams.

We are co-creators with the universe.

We have way more power than we have ever been allowed to believe.

What does true reinvention look like beyond changing careers, roles, or circumstances?

Being unstoppable and knowing we can create our own life.

Nothing truly is impossible, but we must believe and implement.

Our thoughts create our reality.

And we must be willing to do the work to make everything we want possible.

Nothing truly is impossible, but we must believe and implement.

Cheryl Meyer

What does intuition mean to you beyond the way it is often discussed online?

Intuition is your ability to sense, know, and understand something without consciously working through all the steps of logic.

It’s often described as a “gut feeling,” an inner knowing, a quiet nudge, or a sense that something is right or wrong even before you can explain why.

When I tune in with my gut, my intuition, I have to get quiet and listen.

It’s a quiet inner voice that just “knows.” It’s a sense of certainty without questioning why. And I get a sense of peace that lets me know my intuition is on track.

Intuition says:

“Pay attention.”

“This isn’t for you.”

“This feels right.”

“Wait.”

Fear tends to create anxiety and contraction. Intuition often brings clarity, even when the message is challenging.

I practice breathing, gratitude, and HeartMath, so intuition often becomes easier to hear as my nervous system shifts from fight-or-flight into a calmer state.

How has spirituality, consciousness, or inner awareness influenced the way you live, work, or make decisions?

I love my HeartMath practice, where I quiet my brain, stop it from talking trash to me, and can ditch any fear it is feeding me to maintain the status quo.

I breathe until I am calm and firmly resting in my heart’s energy.

This is where my intuition is the strongest because being in this space allows me to tap in and listen to my inner voice. This is where I can go into love and then quietly check in with my gut to make decisions and to be my most creative.

By staying in the higher vibrations in my heart and then going into the world to touch others with love and joy, this energy has begun to influence all of my relationships and the way that I interact with others.

It has influenced the way that I see the world.

And if I confront darkness, I sit with it until I can alchemize it back to light and let the dark go.

I have learned to honor alone time so that I can “hear” myself.

What have you learned about the barriers that stop people from expressing themselves honestly and authentically?

If you don’t love yourself, you are afraid to be who you came to this plane to be.

We were born to return to ourselves, and that means finding our self-love and living it.

We are the only us that will ever exist. Everyone else is taken.

Spending alone time and getting comfortable with who that authentic self is, and then showing it to the world, is why we are here.

By living in self-love, our relationships begin to mirror our own love, and we attract like souls into our orbit.

What has your work taught you about the relationship between communication, identity, and self-worth?

Allowing our authentic selves out attracts our tribe.

And when we live in that space, everything flows.

Living in our truth, our ethics, our own self-love becomes non-negotiable.

And this is where we find our self-worth.

We get out of our own way to create what it is we want to achieve.

What do you think people are most disconnected from today, and what helps them begin finding their way back to it?

I think we are disconnected from our power to create our lives. And we don’t need to be.

We have the power within.

I believe that everything is frequency.

Our food is frequency.

Our breath is frequency.

Our thoughts are frequency.

Our emotions are frequency.

Our words are frequency.

I believe that being authentic, living in self-love, and then allowing that love to overflow into the world creates a powerful ripple effect.

I strive to be the change I want to see in our world by leading with kindness, compassion, gratitude, and love.

From that place, I create.

From that place, I heal.

From that place, I love.

One choice, one breath, one loving act at a time.

This has impacted everything in my life, including all my relationships.

I am currently living the best years of my life.

Getting sick and losing my health was a gift that brought me where I am today.

Everything has changed. Everything is better.

And I now not only feel good, but I am happy from the inside out.

Getting sick and losing my health was a gift that brought me where I am today.

Cheryl Meyer

What helps people move from self-protection into self-trust?

The key is to live in love.

It’s where I have learned to love myself and to find trust in being unstoppable.

My gut is where my intuition lives. When I get quiet and listen, I can hear my intuition speak my truths to me.

Trusting my intuition is where I plan my steps forward, living in my self-worth.

I believe in listening to my body.

I am amazed at just how smart my body is. It speaks the language of symptoms, and if I listen to it, it is very honest with me.

What is one lesson life or work has taught you that fundamentally changed the way you see yourself or the world?

I can do anything I set my mind to.

Nothing is impossible. In fact, impossible is only a choice.

Being unstoppable is also a choice.

Self-love is my foundation for success.

And showing myself that love through my daily habits allows me to be a co-creator with the universe of all my hopes and dreams.

I have the power to create my own reality.

The goal in this life is to return to self and to feel good in all we do.

What do you hope people feel, remember, or take away after experiencing your work?

I have learned over my 15-year journey back to wellness that there are some “truths” to what happened to me that I have only recently begun to concentrate on in my coaching to help others be successful in their wellness journey.

You must believe that change is possible, and you must block out the naysayers.

You must stay in your own truth, keep moving forward, and commit to the new version of you that you are creating each step of the way.

You must leave no rock untouched or unturned, and continue to search for your own puzzle pieces. As you find them, you must implement them.

They may or may not all work, but you never give up on the possibility. And if one of your solutions does not work, you continue to search for a better solution.

You must give yourself grace and emotional support as you go through the process.

I tell myself out loud that I love myself every morning.

You must decide to act, or nothing will change.

Determination to have becomes determination to act.

The action that you take gets you out of your comfort zone.

Take action.

Be unshakable.

And you move forward with a relaxed certainty that wellness is in the process of happening.

You must give yourself grace and emotional support as you go through the process.

Cheryl Meyer

What does success from the inside out mean to you personally?

My thoughts are energy, so spending time in my heart and my gut and quieting my ego are all part of my inside-out journey to wellness.

As within, so without.

Being happy and living in my joy is all part of my wellness journey.

I want to live a life to become part of the change I want to create in the world.