Embracing Authenticity and Freedom with Malitta Seamon - Highlight Reel

I'm Malita Seaman, and I am a lot of things, but mostly I am a wife, a mother, an entrepreneur,

a former CEO. I have a lot of titles that come behind that. Mostly what I'm doing today is leading inbound leadership, which is an organization to inspire individuals to live more authentically, but mostly lead authentically. I also just recently wrote a book, Mindset Freedom with My Husband, and it's being released on May 17th. We're very excited about that. But Mindset Freedom tells about our journey of having to go inside to live better.

The business we were in, something neither of us studied for, knew anything about, but it was a pathway for us to create a lifestyle that we wanted. And so I would say we pretended to love it. What we really loved was the money that it generated, the fact that it gave us security, but in terms of any other fulfillment, it just wasn't there. So after Brad left the business, I continued the business for about three or so years without him, and I'm kind of foreshadowing the book.

But he eventually returned to the business, and together we decided to abandon it. It was not what we wanted. And that was a very difficult decision because our life, our home, everything was built around it for over two decades. What we were able to do after that was to pivot more into what was more authentic for

us, what felt right for us. I came up and I was raised in a very traditional family. We were all expected to go through school, graduate from college, get a good job, get on our feet. And that's all I thought about, get married, have children. And so I went through the motions without ever asking myself, is this really what I want? Am I happy? Do I feel comfortable with what I'm doing?

And I continued that right through my marriage with Brad, right through building the business until our crises hit. And what I realized looking back was all of those microcontortions were developing, they were creating unhappiness and resentments within me. But I couldn't put my finger on it and I watched so many people talk about, I want to be happy.

And I was one that would always say, life just isn't happy, life just isn't designed to be happy when in fact we portray ourselves so many times and even coming close to being

able to achieve it because we're so busy marching down the path that we think we're supposed to go down. And really, when Brad left the business, there was a point when I said, why am I doing this? Why on earth am I continuing this business when I'm unhappy? It's creating havoc in my life. And then the box was, well, how do I get out of it? I've created this reputation, I have this title, I have expectations, how do I just turn around and walk away?

Our business model does not work unless individuals have really made the decision and the commitment that they want to make a shift because it's not the easiest thing to do. Once we start to come up from the iceberg sort of existence where we let the world see 10% of who we really are and submerge the rest because it doesn't fit or we're afraid or once we make that commitment to say, OK, I'm OK with opening the kimono, I'm OK with coming out of the water, we're vulnerable.

There are a lot of things about ourselves that we keep to ourselves or only to the people who are very close to us that we're not willing to let the rest of the world see. But I tell you that you can't really live until you're willing to allow that to happen.

I was at the height of pity and very low and alone and I was angry and I was crying out to God, the universe trying to make sense of everything that had happened to me or was happening to me and I remember saying, I really just want to be happy. I don't need a complicated life and I don't need all the things, the extra things that I have in life, I just want to be happy. That's what I've been broken down to, what I want to be happy and the words that I heard

about were proof. And it was an interesting moment and as I started to journal because I was a big journaler, I started to write down what was going on with me and the proof it became from pain to presence, from resistance to release, from obstacles to observation, from victimhood to valor, from ego imbalance to ego consciousness, from inner peace, I'm sorry, from insecurity to inner peace, and from tip of the iceberg to top the mountain and really created the chapters for the book.

And that is the process I had to go through to get to the level of contentment that I'm happy that I reached. And for all of your listeners, what I found is with the people that I work with and everyone I speak to, proof it is a methodology that can help you no matter where you are in life.

Because when we make the choice to really look at ourselves and to love ourselves and to go inside of ourselves to listen specifically to the voice that we typically push out, you know, the one that is telling us softly, not the not the loud chatter, the one that's panicky and worried, but the one that calm, the one that's loving, the one that nudges us when we're willing to go in and really listen and pay attention to that voice. That's where a lot of the answers are.

And so we first have to make the commitment to go inside and to block out the external and to give priority to what is being, what is going on and what is felt inside. Excavating allows us to come out more authentically and say, this is who I am. You know, I've gotten rid of all of this other stuff where I've taken a look at all of this other stuff and uncovered what had what caused me to betray myself or what caused me to not fully live as myself.

And now that I have gotten rid of that, I'm, I'm, I'm ready to live. I want to live now as myself, authentically as myself. And it's not a perfect science, but it certainly is better than trying to gloss over, go around, work around and pretend that something is not there.

I was on the phone with my oldest son, who has a two year old, soon to be three. And she's a handful. And so we were talking about her and he was expressing, you know, his concern. You know, my parenting, her rate and, you know, and I told him that the best thing that he can do for her is to really be present. And it, and it sounds, you know, that doesn't sound very concrete.

But what I'm saying to him and what I said to him is when she's speaking to you, stop and really listen and today it's really hard if you have our phones in our hands and they're just little ones, they don't understand. But when you stop and you look into their eyes and you really listen and you connect, you know, and it can only, it can take just 30 seconds, 60 seconds.

But it means the world to them, you know, and so I would encourage everyone, even for us as adults, adults to adults, you know, you know, partner to partner. If we can just stop and really listen and be present, you know, and just let the other person know you matter to me. I hear you, I see you, I understand. Okay, you really want this doll right now, you know, let me stop and understand why you want me to play pretend right now.

Let me pause for and, you know, it's making the decision that I am going to try and be as present as I can, as often as I can. This is not a perfect science again, but trying as much as we can to be present in this fast paced, crazy world we're here in right now that's grabbing our attention every minute it can get when the priority really is with the people that we share our most intimate moments with.

I convinced myself that the discomfort I was living in was not only something that I needed to do, but I had to do long after I did not have to do it. And unfortunately for me, I stayed there until my situation became a crisis. And I would encourage everyone listening to begin to make changes, small changes.

As you're listening to the inner voice, as you're listening to your intuition gut about things that feel right and the things that don't until the things that don't feel right, create a problem. Because eventually, you know, you run into a collision. There's the collision of what's inside and the collision of what's happening outside and if it's no more than being angry with your partner or being angry with your boss, discontent in your job, it just continues to grow.

And so what, you know, I encourage individuals to do is not to ignore it. You don't have to make a change overnight. But ignoring it can create a crisis that can create pain, that can create suffering. What you want to do is to avoid the suffering or avoid the turbulence or and avoid the tsunami that can come because you did not follow what was really inside. The thing that maybe even sometimes it's saying something that you're in comfortable setting. Everyone has a way of doing dishes, right?

We have our own system or whatever. So my husband will stack dishes on and he likes to do them in the morning. I'm a person. I like dishes done right away, but even if they're not done, I like to soak them because I want to make sure there's nothing that's going to stick to the dishes that maybe won't come off in the dishwasher. So we have this discussion yesterday because he continues to stack the dishes up and I just couldn't take it anymore. I'm like, why do you continue to do this?

Can you just at least soak the dishes and then get to them in the morning? But once upon a time, and that's a small example, once upon a time, I think I would not have said anything and it would just have continued to annoy me. And so not only would the dishes annoy me, but the other little thing that he does would annoy me on top of the dishes, which would annoy on top of the other thing. And guess what would happen? We'd have an unnecessary argument about something that was not even important.

If someone wants to work with you, what would they expect? There are three primary areas that we focus on. One, we're launching a series of retreats, offsite retreats in 2026. Those will be announced, but we're taking a handful of CEOs in an immersive kind of environment and taking them through some experiences that we are hoping will impact their ability to be more vulnerable, more authentic and more self-aware, because that that that's what's critical. So that's one area.

The other is that we do offer workshops for teams. So we go into organizations and we help teams learn how to communicate and be more authentic and collaborative and self-aware. And we do some one-on-one coaching. That, again, really comes down to working with individuals who want to go deep within to excavate, is what I'll say, excavate what's inside and really willing almost to face whether or not they are in the right seat. Brad and I laugh about this because we call it the school of life.

Quick, you know, we literally, I'm sure I've taken, you know, Harvard executive courses, I've done all of that. And, you know, but nothing compares to living through it. And we, you know, Brad and I have dedicated the last seven years of our lives to really honing in on what has been really important. What are the lessons we've really learned? And what we have to offer the world is to open ourselves up

and to be very transparent. A practice that I don't compromise on is every morning when I get up. I created a quiet room for myself. It's a room that used to be full of junk that I cleared. And it's my space to start my day because I have to center myself through meditation and calm to remind myself who I am, who I choose to be, what I choose to achieve in that one day. I can't think about the next 10 days.

I can't think about too much yesterday, but I can center myself for the present day because I know once I leave my quiet room, the world is waiting for me and I have to be rooted in myself and committed to myself and journal with myself about what that day means to me. Because every day is precious. I start counting my summers and it's like, you know what? I have a limited number of summers left, so every day matters to me, you know? And so I want to spend every day wisely.

And I just encourage every listener to do the same. And at the end of the day, you know, I find that I am much happier and much more content with how I spent my day. And I know the days I've missed a couple of days. And I tell you it's a catastrophe because I'm all over the place. Everyone has a piece of my mind. Everyone has a piece of my soul. But when I start my day centered with the knowing of who I choose to be, I am I'm destined for a good day or a better day.

Mindset freedom was written to encourage and support individuals in finding that place of peace. You know, life can be very challenging, very demanding, especially in these times, you know, have us kind of split and divided in so many ways. And what we really want, most of us, is really just a sense of peace and belonging. You know, it's we think often that that's going to come via wealth. That's going to come via certain levels of success, but it comes from the inside.

You know, the external can create happy moments, but happiness comes from the inside. That's where it's it's created. That's where it's interpreted. And so mindset freedom is really designed to help us tap into that well of happiness, that place that we can create from. And that's why it's called mindset freedom. When we release ourselves from these imaginary jails, imaginary mind jails that we put ourselves in that create boxes that have us living lives that we're not necessarily happy with.

So we're hoping that through the journey, taking our journey with us through the book, that others will be encouraged and supported in finding their own happiness and peace.