The AG45 Soul Aligned Strategy Podcast, hosted by Katherine Breuss, features Ann Marie Arvoy, a seasoned therapist and business owner of Mosaic Counseling. Together, they discuss the importance of aligning personal intuition with business strategy to achieve success and fulfillment. Ann Marie shares her journey from living in various states to establishing a successful mental health practice, emphasizing the need for self-care and boundary-setting. They also explore the concept of soul alignment, the challenges of balancing profitability with purpose, and the critical role of intuition in making business decisions. The conversation includes practical insights on mindfulness, ADHD diagnosis, and mental health education, aiming to empower business owners to build value-driven, purpose-aligned enterprises.

Contact Ann Marie - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ann-marie-arvoy-88aab226/

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Katherine Breuss: Welcome everyone to the AG45 Soul Aligned Strategy Podcast. I want to welcome Ann Marie Arvoy to our episode today. I'm really excited to have Ann Marie on and, like usual, I'm gonna let Ann Marie introduce herself because she's gonna do a much better job at it than I will. So Ann Marie, if you could just share with everyone about you, you as a human, and then also about your business, I'm gonna pass it to you.

Ann Marie Arvoy: Sure. So me as a human, I'm married and I have two boys, and that's a big part of my life. I grew up in New York. I lived in Colorado for a while, and now I'm in Wisconsin. And a lot of times people will say to me, "You're one of those New Yorkers." Yeah, New Yorker. Except I'm from upstate, so people are like, "What's that?" And I'm like, "Anything other than the city." People get excited when I say I'm from New York and then I'm like, "No, the upper part." "Oh, that's boring." So, yeah, I've lived in a couple different places. I don't know what else about myself. I've been into mindfulness since I was in my early twenties. I found that because of a period of depression I went through, and that led me to become a therapist.

Katherine Breuss: Nice. Okay. So tell us about your business.

Ann Marie Arvoy: Sure. So Mosaic Counseling is the business that I currently have. I have owned, let's see, four businesses in my life so far. Mosaic Counseling has been the most successful to date. And what we do is we provide mental health treatment for teens, adults, couples, families—all anxiety, depression, PTSD, grief, all of that kind of stuff. ADHD. So I have been a counselor for 25 years. I went to a school called Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado, which is kind of a unique school. It was inspired by this Buddhist monk who came from Tibet. And he created all of these Shambhala centers that are all over the country. He really was one of the main people that brought Buddhism to the United States, and he created this school, Naropa University. So I got my degree in 2000 and I liked going to that school because—in the soul alignment that we're talking about today—one of the things that has been helpful for me in all of my life is listening to my intuition. And when I went to a very just traditional undergraduate school in upstate New York, Cortland, New York, which was fine, it was great, but I craved something different. And when I started looking around, I was really drawn to these non-traditional schools. So I almost went to a place in California. I ended up going to Naropa in Colorado and it felt like my gut was telling me to do that. It was my intuition because I almost didn't make it. I was accepted into this place in California and I put in my deposit, I accepted it, I'm doing it. And the very last day that I was living in this apartment with a phone, because I was gonna be camping for the summer, I got the call from Naropa that I got accepted there. That's really where I wanted to go and so I ended up going there and it was a great experience because it wasn't just learning about how to help people, it was also a program that helped everyone transform themselves. So they said, the first day they said, "What we're gonna do is we're gonna break you down and build you back up." Which some people might think that's a cult, but not in this way. It was actually very helpful and healthy.

Katherine Breuss: You know, it's funny, I was just sitting there thinking, "Oh, right on. That's great." But you're right. I didn't think about cult, but I can see maybe, I don't know.

Ann Marie Arvoy: Yeah, it was—I mean, my parents were a little afraid it was a cult, but it was really helpful for me because I had grown up in this very traditional, mainstream, kind of protected life. And I didn't have a lot of worldly knowledge or exposure to a lot of different kinds of people. And I did there, or at least more so than what I had. And that was part of what has helped me integrate listening to my gut. That was a really good choice for me to go there. And also integrating mindfulness into the work that I do as a therapist and listening to myself because I think it's so easy for us to go about life or to be a therapist or whatever we're doing and not listen to that little voice that might say, "Go here, don't go there." And not that I always get it right. I'm still learning and growing at that, but it's one of the things that I think has helped me be successful at being a therapist. And I also think it's something that has helped me become to the point of success that I'm at right now as a business owner that I listen to that. And I also really try to learn from my mistakes. And mindfulness has helped me with that. I do my best not to judge myself or put myself down or beat myself up. Of course I do sometimes, but I also work really hard just to acknowledge what happened and, you know, we all do things, but the best thing you could do is learn from them.

Katherine Breuss: A hundred percent. Yes. I love it. So Ann Marie, it's funny though, you kept saying Colorado. I was kind of giggling. I was like, even your soul now didn't want you to go to California. You can't even say it.

Ann Marie Arvoy: I've never been there.

Katherine Breuss: So, okay, tell us about your business. So it's therapy. Yes, I know ADHD is something that's really big. That's a big focus.

Ann Marie Arvoy: Correct. We do some testing, we do some online testing, in-office testing to help people identify that diagnosis, which is helpful because it's one of those diagnoses that sometimes people will say it's overdiagnosed, but my opinion is that it's underdiagnosed because I've had so many people as adults come to me thinking that they have anxiety or depression. And a lot of times it turns out they actually have ADHD, and by treating the ADHD, it helps with those anxiety and depression symptoms.

Katherine Breuss: Interesting. So do you think it's underdiagnosed, just curious, with the adults versus the children or the youth, or do you think it's overdiagnosed potentially with the youth and underdiagnosed with the adults because it wasn't super big. I know when I was young, growing up, it wasn't really talked about.

Ann Marie Arvoy: Right. I don't think it's overdiagnosed with youth. I think that there's just a lot of people that have it and that we've gotten better at being able to identify the markers for it. So the different ways that the symptoms show up, but also this test that I'm able to do is an objective test. This didn't exist many years ago. So it's a test that people can take and it's pretty reliable to the results. So that has helped too. But in my experience, I think with people my generation, older and even a little younger, it wasn't something that was talked about and it was really only the more severe cases that were identified. But I know so many people, men and women who weren't diagnosed—for men, they were typically thought of as the bad kids. So then they went through a lot of painful experiences because they were marginalized or in trouble all the time, or getting yelled at or stuck in the corner. And then with women, they tend to—women tend to internalize the symptoms in a different way and it goes, it's much less common for—at least in the generations before we had better testing—for it to be figured out. And it's, yeah, it's just a different way it manifests.

Katherine Breuss: Mmhmm. Well, I know in terms of—I'm a big, huge advocate for therapy. I've been to therapy. I think, you know, I think it's one of these things that there, you know, some people have this stigma that there's something wrong with you if you go to therapy. No, not at all. It's, I think it's actually, it's about trying to align more with who you are and what you want and walking through some of those darknesses in our lives and having help so that you can get to the other side where there's light.

Ann Marie Arvoy: Right. Yeah, agreed.

Katherine Breuss: So hats off, I do, I really appreciate people in the therapy world because I know it's helped me. It's helped my family and I know it's helped other people, so it's, yeah, it's really good. Soul alignment. Okay, so here's the, I mean, this is the standard question that I seem to ask every guest. So soul, to be soul aligned. What does that mean to you and what is the impact that you've seen when you are versus when you're misaligned?

Ann Marie Arvoy: Yeah. It is a good question. I think soul aligned, what it means to me is feeling like I am—and this is, I don't know if this will make sense—but I feel like it's when I'm most efficiently on the path of really what I'm meant to do with my time on this planet. So I look back on my life and I feel like I was a lot of zigzag. Trying things out, figuring things out. And being soul aligned, I feel like it's, I'm more just on the path and things feel more like being in the flow. The world, I'm meeting the world and the world is meeting me and it's just moving and it's like green lights. I feel like it's green lights. When I'm not on the path, when I feel like I'm not soul aligned, I feel like it's a lot of stop signs and red lights. Like I go down a path and nope. And over here. Nope. And, you know, as I was saying before, still, I don't think that's totally off the path. It's an opportunity for learning, but it does help me realize like, okay, that's not where it's at. Over here? Nope. Gotta keep coming back to the main path. So that's what that means to me.

Katherine Breuss: I really love that metaphor or analogy. I always get—yeah, I don't even know how to spell anymore living in the different countries. And sometimes I'm saying a word, I'm like, I don't know. Is that even a word? I don't know. So, okay, back on track. What was I gonna ask you? Oh, so metaphor. Yeah. So you said that you went and you had zigzags throughout your life, and then you sometimes, obviously we all do, we come up to those red lights. Is there any particular time that you want to share in one of your businesses? Because I think you said four businesses. Or a time in your life that you were really, you were misaligned and the impact that had?

Ann Marie Arvoy: Yeah, I would say I could probably find the same experience in any of the businesses. Really, I'd say in Mosaic, I've had this experience and I owned a meditation studio and I had that experience. And I think this is common for people's services, but I found that when I was misaligned, I was much more focused on other people's experiences, making sure they were okay, they had what they needed, they were happy, that kind of thing. And what I discovered at different points along the way was how I would feel so depleted and so worn out and so not seen. Not that I need my clients to see me, but just kind of in the world. It's like I was becoming just the conduit of other people's happiness and wellbeing, and I was neglecting myself. And even though it's something in the therapy world and the meditation world and a lot of different places, we say, "Oh, self-care comes first." And it's, you know, I believe we're so much about the talk, but we don't—I don't know if people really know what it means. At least for, I'll speak for myself. I don't think I really knew what it meant. I thought that I was taking care of myself. Like, "Oh, I run and I read and I meditate and whatever. Go for coffee with friends." But what I was doing, I think largely, was I was leaking so much energy to other people and not holding better boundaries and really keeping those boundaries. And when I figured that out, I got to be so much better at, I think, being more helpful to people because then I actually had something more to give. I wasn't digging from the bottom of the barrel to hand something out that maybe was the last bit of energy I had. When I used to do that, I didn't feel like I was a great person. I mean, I was fine, but I don't think I was the best person. I don't think I was the best parent. I was tired, I was cranky, I was whatever. But once I figured out that it really is okay for me to hold boundaries, it's okay for me to say no, it's okay for somebody to be upset with me that I didn't wanna do something they wanted me to do and stick with that, it's okay. I had situations with clients who wanted me to just keep seeing them for free and there were clients I would—

Katherine Breuss: No, I know.

Ann Marie Arvoy: Yeah. Because I'm like, "Oh, I feel bad they don't have money." Or they're going through a divorce or they have this health issue and they need me. And once I realized I really, I wasn't helping them because it's not a good reflection of the world. That's not the way the world works. That people just, well, you know, the world's supposed to be kind of a give and take, you know, supposed to.

Katherine Breuss: Exactly. Two-way street.

Ann Marie Arvoy: And so for me it was learning that it was better for me and for the world, for my kids, for people around me if I held boundaries, I stuck to those boundaries even if people were disappointed in me. So I also had to learn to tolerate that, which I think growing up, I don't think I ever got that message. I didn't get that memo of, "This is how you deal with people being disappointed." No, the memo I got was, "Well, you figure it out and you don't disappoint them. You do what they tell you."

Katherine Breuss: And you know, it's interesting too because I also think that's very generational in terms of the baby boomer, our parents, that generation and then, you know, the Gen X, what we were taught as Gen Xers of what is appropriate versus isn't. And it was a little bit more prescriptive in terms of how you should show up as a woman or how you should be showing up as a man. And not to say that isn't going on even today, but I do think it's less for sure. But you know, I agree with you in terms of the service industry or the helping industry or therapy and all that, that you tend to find people in that field. And I do think many of them—I know I was there—really struggled with the boundary and giving too much and leaking out because I loved it when you were talking about how you'd feel drained at the end of the day and you felt like your energy was leaking. And that reminded me of the business that I ran in Singapore. Successful business, but I would come home and I would feel like I had the flu at the end of the day.

Ann Marie Arvoy: Mmhmm.

Katherine Breuss: I'd just feel achy and sick. And a mentor of mine said to me, he's like, "You are giving your energy away. And you are taking everyone else's energy on."

Ann Marie Arvoy: Yeah.

Katherine Breuss: I was like, "Yeah, stop that." You know? And now that doesn't happen, but it took me a while to figure that out.

Ann Marie Arvoy: Yeah. Yeah. And it's something I think that's hard to know how to—it's like riding a bike. You can talk about, "Well, you pedal and you hold it up and you try to go a certain speed to keep it going," but until you do it, it's hard to really know how to do that, you know?

Katherine Breuss: Yeah. Well, you know, one of the things that we say here at AG45, when it's about being soul aligned, it's, you know, that first step is really knowing who you are and not who you are with regards to the roles in your life, but who you are intrinsically. And so you had also mentioned intuition and going with your gut, which again, if you aren't quiet or trusting who you are enough, you're not gonna be able to hear it. You're not gonna be able to hear that intuition. So would you say, so when you would go up against the red lights, those times in your life, would you say that you were also ignoring your intuition at that time? Or whatever was trying to tell you and you were going the other way and it just kept red light because it's like, "Nope."

Ann Marie Arvoy: Yeah. Yes. I think that, you know, as I think back on those, on a number of moments, that it was the intuition saying, "Don't do it." But then my head would be like, "Oh. It'll be okay." I think of people that I hired and how something inside me was like, "Oh, it's not a good idea. Here's a red flag, here's a red flag." And I'm like, "Well, but they bring this to the team," you know. I'd let my head talk my intuition out of it. And then, you know what happened? My intuition was right. And so it became, yeah, one of those learning points. It's like, "Okay, we're not doing that anymore." You know? So yes.

Katherine Breuss: Now there are some people who say that they get to this, you know, some people say they're more wise when they're older. And they feel a little bit more aligned. Some, not all. Some people say that and they attribute that, or they think, you know, that it correlates with the fact that they're just older. You know, like, "Oh, you know, when you get older you may not care enough." Or with wisdom, you know, with age comes wisdom or whatever, whatnot. Do you think that a young—a young you if you knew what you knew today, or anybody who's young out there and listening—that they can get to this alignment, this soul alignment and wisdom, and listening to intuition before they hit 50?

Ann Marie Arvoy: Yeah, I do. I think that for me, along my path, I did have some resources. Going to Naropa was a great one for me, but I also didn't have a lot of coaching on how to—in conversation around this. So it took me a while. I had to just learn it because I wanted to learn it. I think I was meant to learn this. But I do think for younger people, with the right people around them, that yeah, of course they can. You know. Yes. I think my younger me, because I've always been curious and I've always wanted to grow and change and evolve and all those kind of cool things. I wanted that when I was younger, I just didn't have the coaching. I didn't have the help. If I had my older me, my current me to go back in time and help that one. Oh man, we'd be a power team.

Katherine Breuss: I know. Oh my god. I would say the same thing about me. You're speaking my language, sister. I love it. I absolutely love it. So, okay. Business. Yes. So I'm gonna go into that mode for a moment. So, you know, we talk about soul aligned strategy and that it starts with you and it's really connecting to who you are and aligning to who you are and what you want. And then it's connecting it and aligning it to business. That's all well and good. That is, for me, it's like you gotta like—everybody, even if you're not a business owner. This is so important. And that helps you to enjoy the journey, helps you listen to intuition like you said, and to hit more green lights than going up to all the red lights. And, you know, that's really annoying. I know. Have you ever been driving and it's like every light you hit, you're like, "Oh my God." It's usually when you're running late, it's like the universe is like, "Uh-uh. You need to be a little bit more punctual or better with your time management." Anyway, so I just digressed onto something else and now I lost my train of thought. Lost our train of thought. So soul aligned is, well, you know, very important. But then there's this other piece because I do see entrepreneurs and business owners, some of them are very soul aligned, very, you know, "Oh, I'm meant to do this and I'm very happy." But the results and the strategy side, the actual practicality of implementing and doing it and getting those results you want, there's a disconnect. So it's like I keep saying, it's like two sides of the coin. You gotta have the soul alignment and then you gotta have the strategy. So for you as a business owner, what is the—I'm sure there's a lot—but if there was one thing that really helped you to be more strategic in running the business, getting the results, what would that be?

Ann Marie Arvoy: Yeah. What comes to my mind is that I think for me, I needed to just simply accept the fact that we live on this planet, we need money to live and be comfortable enough and all of that. Because previously, I'd let, you know, I'd see people for free because they need help. And I'd had this meditation studio and that was a business where I think people were like, "Oh, is it donation?" I'm like, "No, I still have to pay rent." And they'd be like, "Oh, okay." You know, it's like I was so soul aligned, but I couldn't get money to pay for it. So I think that—yeah. Now I kind of lost my train of thought. But squirrel? No. It was really just accepting the fact that I need to make money and it's okay to make money. And I think I had to move out of this realm of thinking that I had, and even sometimes I find myself saying things that are in this realm that, "Oh, people with money, you know how they are," you know, like negative things about people that have money. So I've had to challenge some of that thinking and just let it be okay to have some money. I'm not a, you know, I'm not super wealthy person, but it's okay to have some money. It's okay to have wealth. It doesn't go against that soulful way of having a business. And in fact, because you know, if you don't, we live in this world. And I live in this country where we need money to pay for things. And without the business you really can't do the soul aligned stuff very well. I ended up selling my meditation business and thank god I did, I was able to. It just wasn't working. So the simple thing for me is just, yeah, I had to accept. I mean, this is the world we live in, and it's okay. It's okay to make money. It's okay to want to make money.

Katherine Breuss: And you know, and that's, I love that. I do hear people, and particularly in the service and the helping industry, having that stuck belief or frame of mind. And so part of me even hears that. Yes, you may have been soul aligned, but not truly fully soul aligned because it was, there was, it was that stop. You're hitting red light. Red light, red light. And so it's having to just shift the mindset, which is also very strategic by the way. Everyone out there, you know, it starts there with the mind. And so by a shift of just how you think about it can actually just, there just opens up how you operate, how you're showing up everything. I mean, it's so funny to me, Ann Marie, when I moved back to the US and the US compared to other countries, networking is, I mean, it's great. Like I'm not pooh-poohing it, but I mean, it is huge. People don't network like this. At least not in the countries I've been to. The way that people in America network, which is fantastic because it's great meeting people and it's great in terms of people helping each other out in that whole connect the dots. But one thing that drives me nuts, and I'm sorry for any of those listening, if you do this, I'm just gonna apologize, you know, in advance. Don't hate me. But I keep hearing people say to me, "Oh, you know what, are you here for?" "Whatever. I'm just here to meet people." "Oh, really?" "Yeah, no, I don't, you know, I don't need to sell or I don't need to do anything. It's just about meeting people and building relationships." And I just sit and kind of go, "Oh my God, can we please everybody? Let's stop bullshitting everybody. Everyone is out there." You're not out there just to—you're ultimately out there to build something. So I'm kind of going, "Why are we trying to dress this up in a bow?" Yes, you're building relationships and you're meeting people and that's awesome, but you also have something to sell. If you don't, why are you keep coming to these business events?

Ann Marie Arvoy: I don't know. That's like. Yeah. Right. There can be almost this collectively inherent guilt or shame around wanting to succeed. Yes. And having something that's really profitable and big and, yeah.

Katherine Breuss: And just going, "Hey, I'm here because I've got this business that I'd love to meet other people. I'd love to help you too, but I, oh, I'm, this whole thing. Oh. I'm just out here to help people. Oh, stop it."

Ann Marie Arvoy: Yeah.

Katherine Breuss: Right. I know. That's, it's not very honest. I don't feel like, I don't know, maybe some people it is, and I may get absolutely just hammered now for saying this.

Ann Marie Arvoy: Well, but I think it's just true. It's, you know, one of the laws of the universe, you know, it's like you give and take. It's like nobody, nobody does something for no reason, you know? And maybe the currency is you get to feel good, but that doesn't pay your electric bill eventually. No. So, yeah, I think we can give ourselves permission to be okay with wanting to succeed and wanting to be profitable and wanting to be wealthy, if that's how it is. And wealth, of course, can be measured in a lot of different ways. But that's okay. We can give ourselves permission for that.

Katherine Breuss: It is. I really, really like that. It's okay to give ourselves permission to be wealthy. Yeah. Yeah. I'm there. I'm with you on that one. So in terms of, what do you think is, when you think about your business and where you want it to go? What do you envision? I mean, do you have any kind of dreams?

Ann Marie Arvoy: I do. I think so. In the mental health world, I think that, I think our mental health system is pretty good. I also think there's a lot of gaps in our mental health system, and I see an arena for, and it already exists, but this is one of the things I wanna do, is to do more of educating people about mental health and about when, and kind of, you know, it would be like self-help, but there's so much, there's so much out there that's available to people and most people have either no idea or they don't know what to do with it. And so one of, you know, in addition to all of the sessions that we do and the services—individual or couples or groups or whatever—is having a platform that can reach a much broader audience to help people learn more about how to help themselves in their own mental health. Because as you were insinuating before, it's not just for a small little group of people that are mentally ill. That's not, I mean, mental health touches us all. It's like physical health and there's things that we need to do to help our health, our mental health. And it doesn't have to be, you know, super complicated. Even just knowing, the perspective shift, that's something that can be pretty simple. You know, if people know how to do that or if they know how to recognize negative thoughts or they know how to feel their intuition or they know how to sleep better, they know, you know, there's a lot of things that I think people could benefit from understanding and knowing that would enhance therapy, might accelerate therapy for people, might prevent a lot of people's need for more services down the road, if, you know, I, so.

Katherine Breuss: It's that preventative. I mean, it can be even that preventative health. So I really like that you brought that up because not all therapy is, you're sitting with a therapist and they're like, "Okay, let's go back to when you were one. What do you remember?"

Ann Marie Arvoy: So what happened with mom? Yeah, I know. So, no, it's—of course, but we don't always have to go, you know, dredge up everything from the past. I mean, sometimes we need to, if there's a trauma or there's, you know, some stuck thing, you know, that's where therapy is so helpful on that one-to-one because you can't just, yeah, you need help with, but there can't just ChatGPT, it's—

Katherine Breuss: Right. Yeah. Exactly. Gemini.

Ann Marie Arvoy: Yeah, but there's still, there's so much that could be. People can get, but we also live in a time where there's so much information. Yeah. That people so easily get overwhelmed. And that was part of my inspiration for the meditation studio—people are like, "I don't know where to start. I plug in meditation on YouTube and I get 50,000 possibilities. I don't even know where to start." But it'd be the same for mental health. There's a lot out there, but it's not all, you know, not all—

Katherine Breuss: It's not all good. Not all kosher.

Ann Marie Arvoy: It's not all good. The quality is all over the place. So yeah, so that's one of the things that I'm in the process of building up and that to me helps me feel more soul aligned. I get so excited about it because I love the idea of teaching things to people on a broader, in a broader way versus, you know, because these are things I teach people all the time one-on-one, and I find myself like, "Okay, for the 50th time this month I'm teaching you about blah, blah, blah." Whereas if I just had a course, you know—

Katherine Breuss: It would accelerate people.

Ann Marie Arvoy: Yeah.

Katherine Breuss: I love it. I love it. And, you know, you're right in the sense of, I mean, we are in the age of information overload, you know, and it is now, it's about not having access. It's about what do I access? What is, yeah, what's truth, what's not truth? What is, you know, who should I be listening to? Who should I not? So, yep. That's awesome. I love it. Well, Ann Marie, this has been so much fun. Thank you. And so thank you very much for joining us and sharing your thoughts on soul alignment and thoughts on business. Love to have you back.

Ann Marie Arvoy: Thank you. I love it. Yeah, thank you. It's been fun.