Episode 94 – Danielle LaPorte – on Empowering yourself, Authenticity, & Success

welcome to the human experience podcast the only podcast designed to fuse your left and right brain hemispheres and feed it the most entertaining and mentally engaging topics on the planet as we approach our ascent please make sure your frontal temporal and occipital lobes are in their full upright position as you take your seat of consciousness relax your senses and allow us to take you on a journey we are the intimate strangers thank you for listening how do

I know I wanted to keep it real because the cost of faking it until you make it is is expensive and painful no I went downstairs to tell my kin like Oprah team just called I make it’s like well cool but you know what the toilets clogged downstairs real life is always happening you know that’s my definition of holistic right I want to serve and I want to prosper I want to talk about consciousness and I want to make cash what’s up guys Xavier katana here and

wow we have such an amazing interview with Danielle Laporte – Ellen hurry book white-hot truth clarity for keeping it real on your spiritual path from one seeker to another who does what we love this this is a fresh interview you know we get into some things that people have talked about but I love Danielle’s authentic miss and realness and Aramis this was super informative you will find it highly empowering thank you guys so much for listening

[Music]

the human experience is in session my guest today is mrs. Danielle Laporte Danielle it’s a pleasure welcome to hxp Thank You Danielle so you know I like to do this thing where I’m just radically honest with my guests we have a content director here that brings new guests onto the show and you know before her mentioning you to me I had no idea who you were so can you tell us briefly who you are what you do please well what I’m most well known for at

this place and time is a book I wrote called the desire map which is all about a more holistic approach to goal-setting what I call goals with soul before that I wrote a book called the firestarter sessions and I’m most interested in conversations around creativity and consciousness I’m a mother I live in Vancouver I have a pretty much women lead women run business yeah that’s that’s me that’s the nutshell version of me your biography gives you some

different labels yeah entrepreneur prominent writer speaker think-tank executive and you never went to college I mean so how do those labels fit into who you are well I’m I’m all those things I am a speaker I feel close to life when I’m on stage is part of me being of service I consider myself a seeker who writes yeah that’s all truth it’s all accurate you know I got a chance to read your book last night and I actually really enjoyed it I like your

writing style like the way that you formatted the book you know there’s something on the front the sort of the subtitle of your book which says clarity for keeping it real on your spiritual path from one seeker to another when did you find out that you are a seeker and when did you how did you decide you wanted to keep it real well I think I was born a seeker and that I didn’t fall asleep so I mean that the craving to know how life works to

feel closer to whatever the creative forces has always been there it was there and wanting to write when I was little it was there and feeling like I had some connection to whether it was like kids on the playground or angelic forces so born this way did not shut down have always been seeking will always seek how do I know I wanted to keep it real because the cost of faking it until you make it is expensive and painful when you’re off track where you

put yourself in situations where you decide you know to survive you’re gonna be inauthentic you know you learn that showing up as who you are is really the solution when did you start this process of showing people how to find themselves guide their lives where did that happen for you you know it it showed up in my first real job was working at the body shop in Toronto and you know as a global organization and I was pumping foot

cream and the stores and still having talks with people about you know what they were gonna do in their relationships and then when I got into a management position or a place of leadership you know the conversation expanded into bringing your whole self to the workplace and how you could really be you and you know those were the days when social responsibility was a fresh term so that was always there so it’s not so much a when it’s just how it

showed up and it’s always been showing up and now it’s a platform that I stand and I’m really I’m committed to being of service I want to make my money in a meaningful way if I can alleviate suffering in some way I’m gonna use my talents to do that you know that’s my definition of holistic right I want to serve and I want to prosper I want to talk about consciousness and I want to make cash you know I’m highly introverted but when

I’m out I’m out and I’m present so yeah it’s a it’s always been there okay I get that I can take that I feel like people have this misrepresentation of success they see the sort of end result of success they see they don’t see the hard work in the failures so have you at any point felt like okay I’ve made it this is the point you’re sitting down with Oprah maybe that was the moment where you just felt I’ve made it I’m starting to do what what I love

to do does it you know when the production team for Oprah calls you that’s pretty cool real life happens I mean one of the days that Oprah staff got in touch with me no I went downstairs until my can like Oprah team just called and my kids like well cool but you know what the toilets clogged downstairs real life is always happening there’s those times like the first times when I would get recognized on the street and people will come up to me I

get a lot of gratitude for like an idea that apparently changed somebody’s life so being recognized is definitely a moment like a big one was I was in O’Hare Airport and I was running to catch a plane I think I was in between gigs or something I was getting a juice and somebody in line said oh my god that’s like the Danielle Laporte voice you must bow like my voice is getting recognized so yeah those are fun moments and you never at least I don’t feel like

I’ve arrived like there’s always somewhere to be tomorrow there’s I want to keep going and keep growing so yeah there’s fun moments you tell your friends like God I feel like I made it and the next day it’s the next thing yeah do you think that’s an ego type process where you’re kind of always pushing for that the next thing as you said well I think you know that’s it’s a great question and it can be an ego type thing or it can be a really divinely

guided thing so I prefer to refer to it as this divine dissatisfaction I’m always gonna want to create I am a maker I’m always gonna want to make but today I’m gonna rest in the complete gratitude and the respect and like the total appreciation about what has showed up for me and what I’ve done to help but show up and sometimes yeah it can be it’s what the Buddhists call The Hungry Ghost you’re never satisfied it’s never enough you can’t

Press enough people you can get 99 fantastic comments on something and one negative comment and said negative comment that sticks with you you’re running all the time and you will continue to run endlessly and eventually bring yourself out and you get really clear on who you’re trying to impress and there can be a really positive or a really dark answer to that one of my core tenants is that you’re not actually chasing the goal you are chasing the

feeling you want to have when you reach that goal it’s best to get clear on the feelings you want to feel and what I call your core desired feelings and when you’re clear on that then you come up with your quarterly objectives then you come up with your bucket list and then you assess all the goals you have and you figure out if what you’re going after is really what you need to go after for like your whole success your soulful success because a lot of us are

just on achievement autopilot and just trying to fix a wound trying to get our dad to finally say he’s proud of us it’s approval to to bandage some some hurt that we have you can’t keep on that track you’re gonna fry out you’re gonna end up on Prozac it’s not sustainable in the examples that you’ve seen with people that come to you for advice where do you see that expectations can be problematic do you see that people sort of set themselves up for failure you

know it depends so to the first part of your question how can expectations be problematic well they can be really problematic and they can be incredibly useful you know my learning is that the trick with wanting something the trick with desire is to really want it with your whole heart to have as much belief as you possibly can muster in deserving it it’s not gonna come to you if you think you don’t deserve it and then you’re gonna try and meet the universe

halfway you’re gonna do your work you know really show up to make it happen but you gotta let it go and it’s really paradoxical like want what I want with all my heart but have no expectations and I’m not talking about having no expectations in life you know let people treat you like or you know lower your standards that’s not what it’s about but you have to leave lots of room for mystery and how things are gonna show up in your life this is part of the power

being really connected with how you want to feel because lots of things can come your way jobs and relationships you know it’s not exactly how we had it on our vision board it’s not exactly what we thought but they make us feel the way we want to feel and you know the fulfillment is there so expectations they’re messy and they’re tricky and they create a lot of suffering and when they’re used in the right like dose you know having expectations can really set

the tone for things that’s where expectations become more like standards you know you know I have high standards and that rates this rhythm it creates this quality to my life has there been a moment where you’re just like oh I’m kind of sick of the self-help thing like it is like narcissism and I’m just done doing it and just just done with it has how many times that happened to you well sorry about how many times degree the intensity so that’s why I wrote

white-hot truth you know was about feeling tired of trying to be better like constant self-improvement that’s where I had to ask the question like Who am I trying to impress you know my spirituality had become another thing I might to-do list it’s like therapy and juicing and yoga and you know the long list I wouldn’t say I hit the wall but I said I got weary enough to have some breakthrough thinking around trying to get better at being better it is the big

theme for me in my life right now you advise your readers to create something called a stop doing list what does a stop doing list and why is having a stop doing list such an important thing because we’re all doing things that we don’t need to be doing that are self sabotaging that are wasteful in terms of all kinds of resources that we’re doing for the wrong reasons and I think what you stopped doing in terms of what you’re going after is just

as important as all the new habits that everybody in the self-help space is telling you that you need you know you want good things to come into your life you got to clear the decks you want to be strategic and mindful you have to clear your mind you want to create new habits you have to stop doing the old habitual stuff once or twice a year like I really consciously and intentionally think of what I’m gonna stop doing it has this it kind of

naturally happens usually there’s this new phase of like there’s more requests and there’s more demands and there’s more travel and there’s more things that I want to do and there’s the next book and the next product and all that and I feel like I’m heading towards being maxed out take a breath what goes on a stop doing this now you know it’s like stop staying up too late stop doing particular kind of interviews stop taking a red-eye flight you stop

trying to get it right for everybody’s birthday it’s a cleansing it’s essential that I’m gonna steal that I’m gonna borrow that you can just have it you don’t even have to steal it you can have it okay thank you so you know we talked about this sort of climb to success and Oprah calling you where was the moment where you were just burn out or just bottom I one of those two and where you just felt like okay you know maybe maybe

I’ll turn around and you’ll do something else while the revelation around being fried from a lot of self-improvement happened sort of midway through my divorce so there’s lots going on there’s lots of life repair and things falling apart with that that was a really big aha for me I’m just like is everything I’m doing to be well and good really helping me to be well and good and the answer was no not not all of it all of this is

punishing and a lot of this is taking up the time I want to do things that really heal me and really make me feel like myself I want the space and time in my life to be with my friends not necessarily my therapist I want the space and time in my life to make what I make like creating being of service is fulfilling and it’s healing and it’s you know it’s so much the answer but yeah I need space to do that you know at the end of the

day this is all about you being your own guru right like referring to yourself not necessarily the coach not necessarily the guy on Instagram with the big Facebook following is telling you all the time to just feel the fear and do it anyway it’s like you feeling what you need to feel and then deciding if you’re gonna do it or not yeah yeah that makes so much more sense than just what you said before you know that is a great segue into

something that I really want to touch on because I think what connected with me the most from reading your book was some of the spiritual practices that people just kind of adhere to or kind of lived by and like there’s a chapter in your book called open gentle heart big bucking bents boundaries for spiritual people so how do we create boundaries that work they’re hard to create so I think if everybody just has that recognition that

it’s not necessarily easy for a lot of people it’s like it’s a new muscle that they have to exercise I mean women are especially good at not having boundaries it’s a whole new territory putting up your big fence so just knowing that sort of helps you do the work that needs to be done when you start to put up boundaries for yourself and I mean this can be everything from like you know the self-regulated boundaries where you know you’re not gonna check your

email after 9 o’clock at night or it’s the boundaries where you know you’re not gonna do that exercise in the group workshop you’re not gonna go home for the holidays or you’re not gonna see your ex anymore whatever those are sometimes we go overboard and it’s like we quit things and we we put up huge stopgaps in place when really we just need to just say you know I I don’t want to work 60 hours a week quitting right so sometimes we go overboard boundaries

are something that need to be declared most of the time they’re not just quietly held practices you know you have to tell the world how to treat you as Maya Angelou said so and that’s where the hard work really comes in where you say look this doesn’t work for me anymore or this is what works for me or this is how I want to do it this is how I want to be talked to the reason it’s difficult is because everybody wants to be loved most of us want connection and

then there’s a huge threat just like thought out of us or easier or you see if I have boundaries like ways that sadly boundaries respect is you know you taking care of yourself in that way and there’s a difference between boundaries and barriers so I think the best metaphor for this is that boundaries are like the big fence you mentioned you’ve made your declaration so people are you know give or take people are going to respect that you have some

peace of mind you can you can chill right whereas barriers are kind of like fake boundaries and we haven’t really made a declaration so we’re just kind of like we’re just guarded and we’re walking around thinking out like don’t with me and don’t ask me to work overtime and don’t talk to me like that but there hasn’t been like this healthy expression you end up exerting a lot of energy waiting to maybe be attacked maybe have someone cross your so-called boundaries

you know hmm but boundaries are much harder work I just want some more clarity on this because how does a person keep an open mind an open framework and have healthy boundaries at the same time so say more about what you mean about that what do you mean an open mind and healthy donors let’s say that there is a person that is experiencing this sort of looping event where they keep experiencing the same things over and over let’s say that

they’re in unhealthy relationship after unhealthy relationship and they’re just meeting all the wrong people and as much as they try to shift what they’re doing or shift how they’re thinking it just doesn’t work like where do you see it not working there I see what you’re saying okay so it’s about a pattern so first of all I mean in this question we have to figure out like what the pattern is so Lots there’s lots of different ways to go wrong you

keep attracting people who don’t respect your boundaries well in this case in the boundary conversation it’s mostly probably your problem because the world does treat you how you ask the world to treat you and people are gonna try and push you and disrespect you if you’re tracking that over and over again there’s something I think that you’re not being clear enough about you’re not declaring and it probably you know not to get super therapeutic about this

mm-hmm but it probably goes right back to your own self-worth on some level you still aren’t believing that you’re worth respect you’re worthy of your desires so yeah I think if you’re attracting Stampeders then it gets back to you not feeling really worthy oh I’d really enjoy that I don’t think I’ve heard someone explain it quite like that force I really appreciate the fresh perspective let’s talk about being the Guru let’s talk about how we own that

power and realize that we are our own gurus please explain how we do that well this is the point and it can take your whole lifetime I think I could take multiple lifetimes I mean this has been my own experience in order for me to get to my own self agency and my own power my own clarity I had to fall for a lot of and when you wake up and you realize you know that you’ve sold yourself short or you kind of got hoodwinked by a healer or a teacher or a

partner or a boss or whatever you know you felt when you wake up when you realize you fell for it if you’re on the path of wanting to be more awakened self actualize normally what happens after that is you really get down on yourself you’re just like how could I have done that I’m like such a new-age loser I must be weak I must be defective why how did I miss that but actually I think that’s where the first really important reframe

needs to happen which is instead of feeling like you’re a loser because you got off track you have to declare that that was an initiation that’s part of the passage of me waking up and realizing there’s a different kind of truth and it’s over here this is about learning to be discerning and you can’t learn to be discerning unless you buy a lot of lies along the way so it’s part of it and so you question like do I need us do I need a coach do I need a

therapist the answer sometimes is yes like maybe forever you know or at certain times in your life do I need all these tools all these things I’ve been relying on do I need my mastermind group join a my drumming circle and when you decide to do that and kind of cleanse and start looking to yourself some more then the next phase comes and you get a little freaked out and if you know the big decision comes should I sign this contract should I go should I say yes to

this person should I do this should I buy it should I sell you’re gonna want to refer and defer to somebody else and that’s where he’s like hold tight it’s like you don’t go get a fix like an objective sort of perspective is that what you mean no well just your perspective nobody else’s perspective you’re gonna it’s like it’s your call it’s your call there are people that I go to and say what would you do what would you do if you were me but the bottom line is it’s

me it’s me making the decision and I you know whether I’m right or wrong about it what I do the best thing or the worst thing I want to make it because it was my call it was my intuition not because I want to make somebody else feel right so even if it’s a fail I’m still building my muscle in discernment and clarity and intuition of power you know that’s what everybody’s talking about when they say the answer lies within so I have fewer sources let’s say I look to

for guidance mmm more me and so far so good I haven’t severely up you know like turns out I really can be the master of my own domain what so working out so far oh man I love that that’s so refreshing I find your radical honesty to be really really truly amazing you know everything that we’ve been talking about is so very empowered building boundaries and and learning how to sort of trust yourself has there been a moment where you’ve kind of wanted to

go in a certain direction and then your your intuition or something internally is just it’s like a wall and there’s no way forward from that have you in that situation before oh yeah many situations I have had major publishing deals that I have walked away from there’s been a number of contracts and various situations where you’re building visions of the future and I’ve just couldn’t sign it wasn’t working it wasn’t didn’t feel right in my body I

was really clear this is not how I want to feel I’m not moving ahead you know I’ve been offered TV shows like you know what it takes to do a TV show is not the lifestyle I want to have I’ve been in business with people who I thought would take my career to the next level and that if I parted ways with them could really be damaging for me but it wasn’t in integrity to stay and you know those walkaway moments those I’m not signing

or you’re fired or I’m you know I’m leaving those are defining those are defining moments everybody’s got intuition doesn’t mean it’s easy to follow sometimes it will take all of the courage you have you will disappoint people you will risk money you will leave money on the table the times I have done that and done the hard work to say no they brought me to the next level you know the right person has showed up a day later we made twice

as much money on the next deal or you know sometimes magical things didn’t happen but myself and my whole team relieved free happy lighter way more better

[Music]

what’s up folks Xavier katana here and you have been listening to Danielle reports to hear the rest of this interview get to the human xpcom slash remembers where you can hear the rest of Danielle’s strategies you can hear more of what she has to say it also helps us sustain what we’re doing we don’t have to get sponsors and it just keeps everything here going so if you believe what we’re doing you will hear something like this

you’re hoped your hope that you’re out of integrity you’re lying to yourself and to your market you need to be out about your approach to life and your world paradigm suffering does not mean necessarily that you’re doing anything wrong it’s part of life if you want to win you’re gonna lose on the way that is part of something that you’ll get access to when you become a member of the human experience so the human xpcom /members thank you

guys so much for listening you

[Music]

you