Shelly's Shares: When Patience, Persistence and Having Faith Pays....Literally!

A $109 fee should not be a big deal, but when it shows up with the word “delinquent” and you never even got the original notice, it hits a nerve. That is exactly what happened to Shelly after a trip to Omaha, and what followed was a week of callbacks, confusing online steps, and three different DMV answers that did not match. She is sharing the whole story because these small stressors are where our wellness mindset gets tested in real time.

As a health and wellness professional, Shelly believes that emotional wellness is not just what we do in the gym or what we put on our plate. It is also how we handle friction, uncertainty, and the feeling that we are wasting time. She walks through what it was like trying to use the virtual DMV office, why she almost paid the full amount, and how a weird payment-link detour may have saved her from making the wrong move. Then the email arrives that changes everything: the penalty is removed.

Shelly closes with the simple message she keeps coming back to: follow your gut, be persistent, be patient, and trust that the outcome will work out however it is meant to. If something is tugging at your heart, whether it is a wellness goal, a life admin mess, or a question you need answered, it is worth asking and worth trying again.

If you enjoy these solo Shelly’s Shares reflections, please subscribe, share this with a friend, and leave a rating and review so more people can find Words of Wellness. What is one situation in your life where you need to ask one more time?

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Thank you for listening to the Words of Wellness podcast with Shelly Jefferis. I am honored and so grateful to have you here and it would mean the world to me if you could take a minute to follow, leave a 5-star review and share  the podcast with anyone you love and anyone you feel could benefit from the message.

Thank you and God Bless! And remember to do something for yourself, for your wellness on this day! 
In Health, 

Shelly

Transcript

Follow Your Gut And Stay Patient

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Follow your gut. That's the other part of this. Follow your gut. Be persistent. Be patient. And know that the outcome is going to work out however it's meant to.

When Wellness Advice Feels Overwhelming

SPEAKER_00 0:14

Do you get confused by all of the information that bars us every day on ways to improve our overall health and our overall wellness? Do you often feel stuck, unmotivated, or struggle to reach your wellness goals? Do you have questions as to what exercises you should be doing? What foods you should or should not be eating? How to improve your overall emotional and mental well-being? Hello everyone. I am so excited to welcome you to Words of Wellness. My name is Shelly Jeffries, and I will be your host. My goal is to answer these questions and so much more. To share tips, education, and inspiration around all of the components of wellness through solo and guest episodes. With 35 plus years as a health and wellness professional, a retired college professor, a speaker, and a multi-passionate entrepreneur, I certainly have lots to share. However, my biggest goal and inspiration in doing this podcast is to share the wellness stories of others with you. To bring in guests who can share their journey so that we can all learn together while making an impact on the health, the wellness, and lives of all of you, our listeners. The ultimate hope is that you leave today with even just one nugget that can enhance the quality of your life and that you will, we all will, now and into the future, live our best quality of lives full of energy, happiness, and joy. Now let's dive into our message for today.

How Words Of Wellness Works

SPEAKER_00 1:46

Hello, my friends. Welcome back to Words of Wellness. This is our Shelly's Shares episode, and I hope everyone is doing amazing. For any of my new friends here, I want to welcome you and let you know that Mondays I put out an episode that's a solo episode, and I either share some tips or some education or just a personal experience that I want to share with all of you. And then Wednesday is usually a guest episode where I have someone who is either an expert in some area of wellness or they have a personal journey or story to share. And gosh, it's been an amazing journey. And I feel like I'm just getting started. And so I just want to give a shout out to all of my listeners and thank you all for being here.

Why This Personal Story Matters

SPEAKER_00 2:38

And today I am actually going to share a personal story that I recently experienced. And I am sharing because I just believe that it is a story that just shares the testimony to always give something a go. Like always attempt something. If you are if you are working towards something and you either are not happy with a result or or you're looking to change a result in some way, it's always worth giving it a go. And I want to share with you all something that happened with me personally recently. And I believe it's also a story of faith. Now, this is not a very like a really serious story, but here's what I want to share with you because it's it's a little bit convoluted what happened, but I have to, I have to just share this with all of you.

A Delinquent Notice In The Mail

SPEAKER_00 3:46

So when we came back from our recent trip to Omaha and we were in Omaha for baseball, um, some of you know my son plays for D1 baseball for Michigan, and it was the um the conference championship series. And so we were out there for a few days. And when we came home, I was opening up the mail and I had a my registration, my car registration. Okay. I opened up the the bill, and when I looked at the total, I thought, wow, that seems a lot more than it should be. And as I opened up the bill, at the top of it, it said delinquent, that it was late, and there had been a penalty fee of $109 added to my original registration. And I thought, well, this is crazy. And I look at the due date, and my registration was due like a month prior, and I realized I never received my initial registration. Now, lesson learned on my part to keep track of it. Those that's one of those things where I just when I get the bill, I pay it, right? I'm sure some of you are like that out there, and maybe there are some of you who maybe you keep track, you look at the sticker on your license plate and you realize, oh, my registration's due. That's not me. Um, but I will be better about this, of course, moving forward. But I looked at that and I went, this is crazy. And I was a kind of a little bit concerned also because I thought I did not get my initial bill in the

Virtual DMV Confusion And Mixed Answers

SPEAKER_00 5:35

mail. So I call on a Tuesday, I call the DMV. And for those of you who might not be familiar, and some of you are, if you are in Southern California, it's pretty challenging getting someone on the phone, but they do have a very good system now where they will call you back, right? They'll say, we're gonna call you back in one hour, or they'll give you a time. And they're they're very, very good about that. So that's what I did on a Tuesday. I called and I got a gentleman on the phone, and he explained to me how you can go into the virtual DMV office, and he goes and goes into the site and go into my DMV and then go into virtual DMV office. And he said, if you scroll down and find where you click on register your registration, renew your registration, and then he said there's a form. There's a form that you fill out and you submit it, and then you'll hear back from the DMV through email, and they will send you an email letting you know how much you owe. So it will show whether or not they took off the penalty fee or not. So I thought, okay, so I go in and I'm not kidding, I probably spent at least an hour trying to figure out what form to complete, completing the form, and then trying to figure out how to sign it online. There wasn't a way to sign it online and submit it. So I was thinking, okay, I'm gonna have to print it, print it up, and then go to the DMV, hand deliver it. All of these different things were going through my mind, but it took me so long to even figure out what form am I supposed to be completing. Now, mind you, this was a Tuesday, and it was the beginning of me really fighting some kind of a virus or some kind of bug. And I I finally said, I can't do this. I need to go to bed, like I was getting sick. And so that was a Tuesday. And Wednesday was not good. I was in bed a lot of the day. And so Thursday, I said, you know what? I'm gonna give this another go because I'm kind of confused what I'm supposed to submit. So I I get myself back on the phone, I call, I get the AI person on the phone telling me that I will get a call back within the hour. And sure enough, I do. And there's a nice gal on the line, and she kind of walks me through the steps of what to do and what to submit. And there wasn't actually a form that I had to complete, there was just a questionnaire on the virtual office, and there's a section at the end where you can request, you know, to waive the penalty fee. Like, why am I submitting this? And this, and then that was why. And so I filled that out, and that yes, there was a section to submit it online, and I submitted it. And then the next day, I think this was Friday, I think that was the next day, I received an email that said, you have we have received, you're started to complete the process of filling out your your registration. Uh, we still need your payment. And I was confused because I thought, okay, does this mean they're not going to waive the penalty fee? Because it it made no reference to that at all, which I'm like, that was my original reason I sent this form in, right? So I'm like, why is it not saying anything about it? So I tried to call again on Monday, I believe it was. And because I just was kind of confused. I just wanted to get clarity. Because if my grand total includes a penalty fee, so be it. I'm gonna pay it because obviously I need to have my registration. Because now all this time I'm thinking, oh my gosh, I've been driving and I don't have my updated registration. Hopefully, I will not get pulled over. Um, but I did print up that I had completed a form, I'd had like a case number. So I printed that up, put it in my car so that I would have it just in case. So I call back a third time, and same thing happens. The AI recording, you know, asks me what I'm calling about, and I say I want to talk to an agent. Okay, we'll have someone call you back, you know, within whatever time frame was like in a little over an hour. So now I have a third person that I'm speaking to, and she tells me, oh no, she goes, you have to actually go ahead and pay the full amount and then give it about 30 days to make sure payment has gone through. And then at that point, fill out the form where you request a refund. Now, mind you, on the very first day I started this process, I saw that form that said request a refund and I filled it out, but I thought this doesn't really make sense because I haven't paid anything. Well, this third gal on the phone says, Oh, yes, you have to pay it first because we have no way of like knowing what you've paid, and I even though I spelled it out in my form, but she made it sound like you have to pay first and then you can request a refund. I thought, okay, that's totally fine. Well, she says, I'm so sorry that you weren't given the accurate information. I said, Well, that's okay. You know, I actually had specifically asked that initially, and I said, Is it better that I pay? And then I ask for a refund, or is it better that I don't pay and see if the fee can be waived? And I had asked that of the second person. I said, No, go ahead and fill out the form and see if they can waive the penalty fee. I'm like, okay, well, this is the third person I've talked to. And each time I spoke to someone, I got different information. But I thought this girl sounds like she knows what she's talking about. And she says, No, I'm sorry you didn't get the right information. Complete the make your payment, and then in about a month, make sure your payment's gone through and then request a refund. I thought, okay, that's fine. At least I know some action that I need to take because I want to make this payment so I can get my registration all cleared.

The Payment Link That Would Not Work

SPEAKER_00 12:01

So I literally find the email that had come through, and I go to click on the payment link, and it wasn't letting me complete the payment. And I was and it was taking me to these different sites. This is weird, not a different site, but just different sections within the DMV website. So I thought this is weird. So how wild is this? Lo and behold, I go, well, let me let me search virtual DMV in my settings and my emails and see if I can find that original email. I find that original email, but now I have an additional email that has come through from the DMV that had just literally come through that afternoon showing me a different total that I owed, and it had the total minus the penalty fees. So after all of that craziness back and forth, phone calls and given all kinds of information, all my efforts paid off. And I was so excited. That was actually, I think it was Tuesday. Was it Monday or Tuesday? Doesn't matter. So we're talking almost a week of kind of going back and forth and going through this whole process. And honestly, I was just like very impatient for starters. And then I thought, okay, I mean, worst case, I have to pay this fee, and then I'll just know to kind of keep a lookout for future in case it my registration doesn't arrive. And then I just had faith it was gonna work out how it was meant to work out. And I thought, how crazy was it what that one day when I said, okay, when she told me to pay the full amount, then I went, okay. And when I went in to do it, it was taking me to a couple kind of odd links within the DMV site. And I'm like, this is weird. So somehow it was like preventing me. Thank goodness I didn't make a payment, right? Because then I looked again. I said, well, let me find that original email. And then there was the newer email that came through with the lower total, and they had taken the penalty fee of $109 off.

The Penalty Disappears At Last

SPEAKER_00 14:23

And I was so excited. I'm like, all that work was worth it. And honestly, in the whole scheme of things, $109 is not that much money, but it was the principle of the thing, right? It was the principle that I got charged this fee. And I thought it was like a really like I never received my initial bill, my initial registration. And so it was, it's, it's all kind of such a convoluted story, but it turned out so it great. Like I was just so excited. Like simple things get me happy, but I was like, okay, all that effort paid off and it was worth it. And so I felt like I just wanted to share that story with you all, to just share that it it pays to just be persistent and it pays to be patient and also to have just faith that it's gonna work out, how it's gonna work out, and to also be okay with it. Either way, it works out. Because I thought if they don't waive this fee or if I don't get it refunded, I mean, then I'll, you know, I'll know, I'll just be keep better track of this next year around when it comes time for my registration to be due. But it was wild, my friends. And I I just thought I would share the experience with all of you and just encourage you that you know, you just never know. And I'm always a person that will say it's always worth asking, no matter what someone might be wondering about or pursuing, it's always worth asking or pursuing a situation because you just never know, right? You never know, and if you don't ask, you don't pursue it, you'll definitely never know. So again, it just it paid off. And I just want to encourage you that if there's something that comes up like that for you, just give it a try. And again, I I mean, I had the luxury of time of being able to jump on the call with three different people, but I thought it was so crazy how I was given like three different bits of information, and they were all very kind and very helpful, and I was very appreciative of their help. But honestly, when it came to the third person, I was actually laughing because I thought this is so funny. I now you're telling me something entirely different from what the other two people told me, and then thinking that she was right, and it turned out she wasn't even right.

Ask Anyway And Trust The Outcome

SPEAKER_00 17:08

So, anyhow, I guess you know, follow your gut. That's the other part of this. Follow your gut, be persistent, be patient, and know that the outcome is going to work out however it's meant to. And that's what I wanted to share with all of you today. So take time for yourself and your wellness on this day. And in all areas of your life, if there's something that you're that's at then you know, tugging at your heart, or there's something you're pursuing, or you have a question, you really want to know something about something, some topic, whatever it is, always ask, always follow your heart, always pursue something that might be nudging at you to pursue. And again, it can be something so small as this experience I just had. But when you are persistent and patient, I know I keep saying that word, but I was patient when you when you combine that, it works out one way or another. And I just was so excited that it worked out in my favor. So I wanted to share my experience with everyone. So again, take time for yourself on this day, your wellness. And until next time, have a beautiful, blessed rest of your week. And we'll see you next time on Words and Wellness.

Closing Thanks And How To Reach Me

SPEAKER_00 18:43

Thank you so much for tuning into today's episode. I hope you gained value and enjoyed our time together as much as I did. And if you know someone who could benefit from today's episode, I would love and appreciate it if you could share with a friend or rate and review Words of Wellness so that more can hear this message. I love and appreciate you all. Thank you for listening. And if you have any questions or topics you would like me to share in future episodes, please don't hesitate to reach out to me through my contact information that is shared in the show notes below. Again, thank you for tuning in to Words of Wellness. My name is Shelley Jeffries, and I encourage you to do something for you, for your wellness on this day. Until next time, I hope you all have a healthy, happy, and blessed week.