Mental Wealth Consulting, LLC

04/16/2026

My book is finally available in print:

Stories You Tell Yourself: Rethink Your History; Unlock Your Future

04/07/2026

Free Download.

How to Stay Present in Difficult Dialogues

02/13/2026

I have a free download for you. It is the content for the Week Two workbook that will soon be available for purchase. The workbook will help you learn some tools and skills for regulating your nervous system during times of tension, division, and stress from the polarizing conversations we all find ourselves trying to survive.

In honor of the beautiful journey of the Venerable Monks who walked from Fort Worth to DC, I help you learn how to quiet the mind by recognizing some of the cognitive distortions that create limiting beliefs for us in the internal constant narration we all must learn from and redirect.

"The Stories You Tell Yourself" is the workbook you can use alone, but I will soon open enrollment for two coaching sessions to help you reframe your stories and create new opportunities for you to connect more meaningfully with others where you live, work, and play.

This "Opt-In," simply captures your email, so that I can announce when the full book is published.

Please share with friends, neighbors, family, co-workers, faith people or siblings in other networks...

The road ahead each of us walk, does not have to be in isolation, fear, dread.

My hope is that the free offer here, will inspire you to consider your own value, worth, and purpose.

https://www.mentalwealth.consulting/pl/2148746382

Photo Credit: Boone O'Neil, February 11, 2026, Lincoln Memorial, DC, , , , , , ,

02/09/2026

Tomorrow, the Venerable Monks who began their Walk for Peace in Fort Worth, Texas arrive in Washington, DC.

When they passed through Georgia recently, their message stayed with me:
“Today is a day of peace. Write that down. Say to yourself, ‘No one can take away from me this day of peace, except me.’”

In a moment when so many of us feel stretched thin—by polarization, by constant noise, by the pressure to react or withdraw—that sentence feels like an invitation worth accepting.

For the past year, I’ve been developing a coaching experience called StoriesBuildBridges™—a one-on-one and small-group co-lab designed to help people regulate their nervous systems, examine the stories shaping their reactions, and practice steadier, more humane communication across difference.

The companion workbook for that experience is "Stories You Tell Yourself."

This week, in honor of the monks’ arrival in DC, I’m opening Week Two of the workbook as a free preview.

Week Two focuses on:
• noticing cognitive distortions and fear-based thinking patterns
• learning how internal narratives quietly fuel anxiety and conflict
• finding a more manageable reality—one grounded in choice, values, and steadiness

The workbook can be used on its own for reflection, or as preparation for the fuller StoriesBuildBridges™ coaching experience, which includes individual onboarding sessions and a small-group storytelling co-lab focused on listening, communication, and belonging.

If Week Two resonates, you’ll soon have the option to:
• purchase the full Stories You Tell Yourself workbook ($27), or
• step into the StoriesBuildBridges™ coaching experience when enrollment opens

For now, this is simply an invitation to pause—and to claim a day of peace.

If you’d like access to Week Two, comment PEACE or send me a message, and I’ll share the link.

No pressure. Just an opening.

(The photo was taken by me when the Venerable Monks walked through Decatur, GA on December 30, 2025.)

12/29/2025

As we leave behind a year that's been challenging, I have a product for alignment with YOUR values. This weekly journal gently guides you to pay attention differently, so that you stay grounded, focused, and maintain a more productive approach that is less contentious.

Please share with co-workers, family, friends, and your network.

Click this link for accessing a fillable pdf digital product.

https://stan.store/StoriesBuildBridges

This is a product for the StoriesBuildBridges™ platform with other products soon-to-be delivered.

09/14/2025

NOW OFFERING: Executive Circles for Urgent Times

Leadership can’t stay insulated anymore. The crises we face—political, economic, technological—demand a new kind of courage.

That’s why I’m inviting 5 to 8 executives into a confidential small group to explore real workplace challenges, share solutions, and push one another to function differently.

I’ve worked with leaders across industries—sports, media, hospitals, public health, universities, restaurants, and more. And I know this: the breakthroughs happen when leaders cross-pollinate ideas in a safe, trusted space.

This is your chance to practice setting a higher standard of leadership—courageously, collaboratively, and urgently.

_____________________

🧠 Other Core Offerings:
✅ 9-Session Storytelling-Based Cultural Transformation Program
✅ Executive Listening Labs & Leadership Alignment
✅ DEI-Rooted Psychological Safety Workshops
✅ Workplace Well-being, Burnout Prevention & Retention Strategy
✅ Custom Facilitation + Keynote Presentations

📌 Specialty:
Intersecting neuroscience, cultural insight, and narrative intelligence for meaningful transformation across diverse corporate sectors.

🔒 Bottom Line:
A trust-based culture is your strongest risk management tool and your greatest innovation driver.

08/08/2025

Here's more about the StoriesBuildBridges™ work culture program.

Begin around minute 1:24 to get to the presentation. Please share with your HR and C-Suite leadership team! Spend your budget this quarter on this unique important training/team-building program that will reduce anxiety and promote productive, integrity-based AUTHENTIC Intelligence and not just "artificial" intelligence.

Message me at StoriesMakeChange@gmail.com or melissadsexton@gmail.com so that we can schedule to talk about your work culture and how much of a return you will get upon investing in this implementation.

You need this... you just don't know it yet...

“Truth with dignity. Story with spine.”

08/08/2025

I want to re-share Episode 10 of Voices of Americans podcast. Mr. Mark Charles, from the Navajo Nation, provides engaging commentary about "We, the People," insights, history lessons, and reflections on the way forward.

Thanks to one of the 60 co-facilitators for Mental Wealth StoriesBuildBridges™ corporate work culture program, therapist and Indigenous Peoples Advocate, Samantha Jarvis, invited Mr. Mark Charles into dialogue with us.

Atty. Larry Wallace, co-host, has an upcoming engaging episode in the making for Episode 11. So, do go ahead and hit "Subscribe" as you will NOT want to miss this particularly important episode. For those who do not know (I didn't, myself) Mr. Mark Charles ran for President of the United States of America in 2020. Covid shut down what would have been an important first debate where he would have joined Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden.

Hear Mark now. What he has to say will stay with you...

Upcoming, Larry and I will have 4-6 different insightful commentary from key leadership on the topic of "Redistricting" and/or "gerrymandering" so that you can stay informed, engaged, and think for yourself about how your own voice now truly matters.

Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/episode/02KcUb9v9My4eRdklGh7TG?si=57eba8e636734368

Apple:
https://www.mentalwealth.consulting/.../episodes/2149064578

Youtube:
https://youtu.be/FkwJ1MAASPQ?si=xZn21F4g2OaUUSu9

Vimeo:
https://vimeo.com/1104658817

🎙️ Episode 10 invites us not to return to the past, but to return to the truth—to find common ground by telling the whole story. What happens to a nation…

06/21/2025

I am seeking help with introductions to HR Directors in corporate settings.

I realize it’s a terrorizing time to face denials of programs with certain words… and this definitely increases anxiety in work cultures.

That being said, I have a unique 9-session program to offer that is about team-building, overcoming fear, building trust, and realigning with values, missions, and collaborations. It’s about JOY in “playing beyond the fields of trauma,” … my dissertation work from 2008.

Empathy rewrites the brain, helplng people regulate and stay connected.

This is the unique contribution I am seeking to offer now: facilitation that helps people relate beyond fear and rage, towards repair.

Just as Artificial Intelligence amps up, what it means to be human is now about rediscovering BELONGING.

🙂 💃🏾 🏈 🏃‍♂️ 🎂 🙌 🪴 🤔 🎶

If you have someone in your circles within a workplace culture, include me in the connection and I will follow up!

********************************

The Mental Wealth StoriesBuildBridges® Platform is a 9-session storytelling experience that realigns culture through trust, history, and shared values.

Designed for corporate and non-profit teams, our workshops foster listening, psychological safety, and loyalty through personal, communal, and institutional stories.

We don’t just change conversations — we rebuild cultural infrastructures.

05/18/2025

When did you first notice “difference” and what feelings do you recall experiencing? Please share the story that comes to mind.

Clearly, I am no marketing guru. Everything I do is homemade. I created this content, for instance, a little over 3 years ago and it is the first time I have watched it again. My intention to post weekly got diverted because I was trying to build out a model for the 3 layers (personal, community, corporate) of storytelling practices that align with core values that shape us from where we live, work, and play. But, two times when I got to telling personal stories about playing … kids got slaughtered in schools by gun violence, so I didn’t post those videos and just stopped.

BUT, I now have picked the ball back up and am bringing together people who don’t know one another for a weekly podcast “Voices of Americans”… so, please subscribe to this channel and help me change the algorithms.

Ideally, soon and very soon, someone who reads this will bring me in for implementation of the storytelling sessions as a renewed way for training your corporate family to be more about collaborative engagement with more empathetic listening skills and better, positive growth mindsets with corporate partners and clients. What we do upstream always affects people living lives downstream… so, it’s up to us now to shape new leadership with ideals that are renewed commitments to values and missions.

Please allow me to speak with your company’s HR Director and/or with your CEO, CFO, or Directors.

The Mental Wealth Storytelling Platform ™ now has capacity to scale with up to 60 co-facilitators for small groups to learn and to listen in engaging ways, non-contentious, together.

This is me, below. Please give a listen so you know what I am about…

Introducing "More to the Story" which seeks to explore the stories that shape our lives. I will draw from many artists, mystics, and scholars; but, in partic...

05/17/2025

Episode 6, Voices of Americans, "Showing Up for Your Own Story," 5/14/25

This is "Voices_Episode6_FinalRaw_5_14_25" by Melissa Sexton on Vimeo, the home for high quality videos and the people who love them.

05/10/2025

Hello, America, how are you?

Here's Episode 5 for "Voices of Americans" podcast: "Defiance til Death, with Robert L. Arnold," taped May 8, 2025.

In this episode, Robert and I talk about many things, including how most people are not as far apart as we've been made to believe. If you have not heard Robert's spoken word poems, please look up "Defiance13" on TikTok and Substack. He only started posting content in November, and many people find that he names for us the emotions as we watch so much changing too rapidly to keep up.

Robert knows we cannot afford to bury our head in the sands. Too much is at stake now, especially for our children.