686: Dr. Nicole LePera (The Holistic Psychologist) - The Hidden Cost of Being Good at Everything, Self-Medicating at 13, Why Awareness Isn't Enough, Healing the Body Not Just the Mind, What a Real Boundary Actually Is, and How Vulnerability Makes Love Rea

Pre-Order new book, The Price of Becoming www. LearningLeader.com/Becoming https://www. LearningLeader.com/Becoming This is brought to you by Insight Global https://insightglobal.com/learningleader/. If you need to hire one person, hire a team of people, or transform your business through Talent or Technical Services, Insight Global's team of 30,000 people around the world has the hustle and grit to deliver My Guest: Dr. Nicole LePera is the creator of The Holistic Psychologist, a platform with over 12 million followers, and the author of three New York Times bestselling books, including her newest, Reparenting the Inner Child. Key Learnings: Nicole was good at everything, so struggling meant failure. Her family's message was clear: success in life meant financial security through academics or athletics. The implicit message: you're worthy when you're bringing home A's, when you're winning the softball game. She quickly learned to identify things she wasn't immediately good at and just not pursue them. She filtered life, staying on the path of comfort. Your childhood adaptations don't leave. Nicole calls it the inner child. It doesn't matter how old you are or how far beyond your childhood you think you've gotten. It impacts you in reactions, in identities, in your way of being. What was once your best attempt at safety, security, or connection still drives behavior today. Not all adaptations are problems. Many continue to benefit us. The question isn't whether the adaptation is good or bad. The question is: are you choosing it, or is it choosing you? Nicole's drive for achievement created opportunities. It led to massive impact. But she still has the overachiever who wants to blow past her limits and say yes when she's exhausted but means no. The Holistic Psychologist started in 2018, and Nicole had no idea it would explode. She was living in Philadelphia, operating within a private practice model. Within the first year, people from around the world were resonating, joining, and interested in working with her in this new way. But at the beginning, even learning how to speak on camera was such a big challenge. Her partner would say, "Say what you said to me earlier," and Nicole's mind would go blank. Just putting a camera in front of her was near debilitating. Boundaries are about knowing who and when to take feedback from. Sometimes the feedback from a loved one, while uncomfortable, is helpful to hear. Other times, it's a helpful boundary where you're not opening yourself up to the opinion of someone who has a different vantage point or is speaking from their own projection. That's allowed Nicole to create safety in herself, confidence in herself, which translates to flow. Several years in, Nicole's dad sat front row at her book event, crying with pride. In the beginning, her dad and mom would ask, "Why do you have to use us as the example? Why do you have to share about our family?" Nicole would explain: " This is the only experience I can speak from, and our family's experience is so common. To see her dad, who came from a family largely shut down emotionally, crying in understanding and pride, was overwhelming and validating for why she does this work. At 13, Nicole was getting straight A's but unraveling on the inside. She was socially shy, struggled to order food at restaurants, and had very few friends. Then she discovered alcohol and pot made her feel comfortable. That anxiety she lived with suddenly felt freer. She would stumble through the living room at night, her parents already in bed, then wake up at 6:00 AM the next day, pitch a softball tournament, win it, and seemingly be fine. Her parents had no idea. She was very good at suppressing her emotions and coping. By contrast, on the surface, it seemed like she was doing well. They were a family who didn't really talk about emotions, so they had no indication. The drive itself isn't the problem. It's the energy that inspires action. Nicole's dad worked into the night to support the family. Her mom would say, "why not 100?" when Nicole brought home a 96. That translated into drive and ambition. That's not a problem. For a lot of us, it's the energy that inspires action and translates into impact. It can become a problem when we have no limits to our working, where we exhaust ourselves and burn out, where we don't feel worthy in moments of inaction or rest. The marker of a healthy relationship with drive is flexibility. When you're forced to stop because you're sick, exhausted, emotionally overwhelmed, or someone else needs you, can you be flexible enough to do that without feeling terrible about yourself? The ability to choose to say, "Okay, contextually speaking, I need to pause," and still feel okay about yourself, that's the marker. Hold space for both: acknowledging harm and taking agency. Other people have contributed to our discomfort. Maybe parents didn't meet our needs. If we don't acknowledge that, we suppress. But we also can't stay stuck in anger and resentment. A true boundary isn't demanding that someone else be different. That's still giving away your agency. A true boundary is saying: you've hurt me, and I'm gonna take responsibility that I'm allowing it. I'm gonna show up differently now to limit the impact of what you're doing. Talking about trauma can keep it alive in your body. Trauma doesn't live in logic and understanding. It lives in your body. It lives in habits and reactions. Your mind is so powerful that you can think something and feel as if you're living it in that moment. If you're going week after week talking about all the things that are hurting you, you're continuing to keep that alive in your body. Holistic psychology bridges the gap between mind and body. Traditional psychology focused solely on the mind. The CBT model says if we think differently, we produce different feelings, then different actions. But Nicole was missing the body. Our nervous system, our earliest environments, neurobiologically created patterns wired into us. Science now shows we maintain the ability to change throughout our lives. Drop into your body. Where is your attention right now? Are you feeling your muscles, your heels impacting the earth, where you're sitting? Or are you so lost in thought you're disconnected? Jaw clenched? Fists clenched? Shoulders up to your ears? Holding your breath? Breathing short and quick from your chest? These are markers that your body is under stress right now. Once you have that information, make small shifts. Slow and deepen your breath. Elongate your exhale just a little longer than your inhale. If your movements are quick, slow them down. If you're holding tension, release it. Now you're regulating your body so you can show up differently. Meditation is just awareness. It's not sitting cross-legged trying to make your mind quiet. Life can be a meditative experience. Thoughts are helpful. They're where we create things, have insights. The goal isn't a blank, quiet mind. The goal is awareness. Nicole calls it her spaceship. Her protective habit for so long has been to dissociate, to disconnect. She pursued clinical psychology where she can live in her mind. When what she's feeling in her body is too uncomfortable, the quickest path out is to distract herself with someone else, with the next achievement. This work has made Nicole's relationships more real. More authentic. More grounded in vulnerability, messiness, emotion as opposed to curated versions of who she thinks she needs to be. What she's most familiar with is dealing with all her feelings alone. The Harvard study found one thing leads to a happy life: love. Ryan referenced the longitudinal Harvard study that has gone on for 90 years studying what leads to a happy life. At the end of the day, it's love. The ones who live the happiest, longest, most fruitful lives are surrounded by people they love and who love them. What a gift it is to be loved for all of yourself, not just the perfect parts. When you can show someone all of yourself, your messiness, the things you hid and kept secret, and still be loved. The overachiever gets to show more parts of herself, and people don't abandon her. They stay. That's the love most of us are striving for. We are all a bunch of messy humans trying to figure it out as we go. Nicole's champagne moment a year from now: presence and beingness. Whatever is happening or not happening in her life, she's celebrating the celebration of that moment. Being alive. Feeling the gratitude, the joy. Not focusing on what was produced to give her the opportunity to celebrate, but being present to the life around her. The taste of the champagne, the humans surrounding her in that moment. Reflection Questions Which childhood adaptations are still driving your behavior today? Are you choosing them, or are they choosing you? When was the last time you actually dropped into your body and checked: am I tense? Am I holding my breath? Am I stressed? Who in your life sees all of you, not just the polished version, and loves you anyway? More Learning #547: Dr. Michael Gervais https://learningleader.com/mikegervais547/ - Stop Worrying About What People Think of You #140: Dr. Carol Dweck https://learningleader.com/episode-140-carol-dweck/ - The Power of a Growth Mindset #229: Dr. Henry Cloud https://learningleader.com/episode-229-henry-cloud-good-cant-ignore/ - Be So Good They Can't Ignore You Podcast Chapters 00:00 Book Announcement 01:08 Show Intro and Guest Setup 02:36 Good at Everything: The Hidden Cost 06:47 When Therapy Stopped Working 09:32 How The Holistic Psychologist Started on Instagram 11:20 Purpose, Fame, and Setting Boundaries 15:06 How Her Family Reacted to the Spotlight 19:21 At 13: Straight A's and Self-Medicating 22:12 What Her Parents Missed 23:48 Drive vs. Worthiness: Where It Becomes a Problem 29:20 Why Flexibility Beats Rigidity 31:03 Agency vs. Blame in Therapy 31:57 When Therapy Becomes an Excuse 33:47 What a Real Boundary Actually Is 35:44 The "Bad Therapy" Debate 38:50 What Holistic Psychology Actually Means 41:35 Daily Body Practices, Not Retreats 44:06 How to Drop Into Your Body 46:38 Meditation Is Just Awareness 49:36 Why Vulnerability Makes Relationships Real 52:07 The Harvard Study: Love Is Everything 55:36 The Champagne Question: Being Present 57:33 EOPC

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Ryan Hawk?

  As I've told you before, I am super pumped about my next book, The Price of Becoming. It will be out in a few months. In the meantime, I have sent it to some leaders that I really admire. One of them is four-star General Stanley McChrystal. I asked him what he thought and he sent me back this email. Quote, "Having led in environments where preparation, discipline, and trust determine outcomes, I found The Price of Becoming deeply authentic. Ryan Hawke captures a truth familiar to those in uniform. Excellence is earned through consistent effort, accountability,

• 0:42Ryan Hawk?

  and the willingness to stay uncomfortable long after others stop." Man, so cool. I hope you will choose to preorder my book, The Price of Becoming. You can do it at learningleader.com and see all types of preorder bonuses. Or if you want, just go straight to Amazon and preorder The Price of Becoming. Thank you so much.

• 1:08Ryan Hawk?

  Welcome to the Learning Leader Show presented by Insight Global. I am your host, Ryan Hawke. Thank you so much for being here. Go to learningleader.com for show notes of this and all podcast episodes. Go to learningleader.com. Now, on to the night's featured leader. Dr. Nicole LePera is the creator of The Holistic Psychologist, a platform with over 12 million followers. And she's the author of three New York Times bestselling books, including her newest, Reparenting the Inner Child. During our conversation, we discussed why Nicole was self-medicating with alcohol

• 1:51Ryan Hawk?

  and drugs at age 13 while getting straight A's, excelling athletically, and hiding it so well from her parents. Then the moment she realized traditional therapy was not working and what she built instead. And why awareness alone will never create lasting change and what actually has to happen in the body first. And then she shares what a real boundary actually is and why most people confuse it with trying to control someone else. This is unlike any conversation I have ever had. Ladies and gentlemen, please enjoy my conversation with Dr. Nicole LePera.

• 2:36Ryan Hawk?

  I want to start thinking about you and maybe your younger days. You're this wildly energetic, kind of bouncing off the walls kid, right? And people said, kind of, you were just good at everything or you were good at things. So in a weird way, having to work hard or to give effort to something actually, or struggle for something meant failure. And so this blew my mind, reading about you and your story, because I was brought up, you got to work hard to earn your spot as the quarterback on the football team and to earn the respect of your teammates. Hard work and getting after it was just a core tenet in my family's life. It still is like in

• 3:19Ryan Hawk?

  our lives. But this is different. I feel like from your life, things came easy. But if they didn't, then it was like, something's wrong. Can you take me back to that time and what you've learned from that?

• 3:28Speaker 01

  Absolutely. And so as we all are in childhood, we're very connected, observant, and absorptive of the world around us. And I saw very clearly, very early on that, in a very traditional way, my family, you know, was of the mindset that success in life meant having financial security. And of course, the way to that was to excel academically and/or athletically, because oftentimes, right, those things lead to the good college, to the good career, etc. So seeing that very clearly and experiencing

• 4:00Speaker 01

  An absence of connection, quite largely in my home, of no fault or ill intention of my parents. I had two parents. My mother was in care of the home, always present, yet because of her own childhood trauma and stress that was happening both outside of the home in the city that we lived and inside the home with health-related issues, she wasn't really able to be present to me, except in those moments, right, where she was fostering the things that I was good at, which it was very clear that I was successful academically and athletically from a very early age, and seemingly, both came easy to me. It's not to say that I didn't spend, as I'm sure you did as well, a lot of time honing my skill, practicing, all of my outside hours. I was training and working, though

• 4:43Speaker 01

  I seemingly excelled peacefully. And so, yes, the message that I got was, in those moments, I'm worthy. When I'm bringing home the A's, when I'm winning the softball game, when people are celebrating how good I am at those things, again, with the goal being security in adulthood, I'm seen. I'm good enough. I'm worthy. And I got very adaptive, as we all do, at very quickly identifying the things that I wasn't immediately good at and not pursuing those. So, I did have this implicit learning, while it wasn't spoken to me, that there are gifts and talents that I have and some things that I'm not good at, and I just kind of filtered life, staying on the path of comfort, excelling the way that I knew how. But I think what's important for all of my work and the understanding

• 5:27Speaker 01

  that I want to give listeners is, all of that was a beautiful adaptation. Of course, the path I picked of achievement, excelling, perfectionism, so to speak, happened to be a path that was quite celebrated in society, and in many ways, did map on to opportunities that I was then offered. Though, we all have that part of us. I call it the inner child. It doesn't leave, no matter how old we are, how beyond our childhood, how much we don't want to look back, or maybe do, it impacts us. For many of us, it's in reactions, it's in identities, it's in our way of being, that at one time, was our best attempt at safety, security, or connection and worthiness in our earliest environments.

• 6:07Ryan Hawk?

  Okay.

• 6:09Ryan Hawk?

  You've accomplished a lot. You're making a really positive dent in the world. You're helping millions and millions of people every single day. It's wild to say that, but it's true. So the question to me is, is some of that upbringing though, and that, I don't know, perfectionism and wanting to achieve, it's produced a lot of good in the world, hasn't it? I mean, because of what you've accomplished and continue to accomplish every day, I'm thinking, well, I get it. This is tough, but so much good has come from it. So, so what do you think of that?

• 6:46Speaker 01

  Absolutely. And I think that that's an important takeaway that I want people to have is that a lot of these adaptations are of benefit. I mean, they benefited us in childhood and many of them continue to benefit us. But I think what is really important, and actually, if I'm honest, my journey began in a therapeutic office when I was a private clinician and I wasn't, in my opinion, making impact. I had clients who were very insightful, very wise, very even committed to relieving the suffering in whatever area brought them into my treatment room. And I felt, even though I had all these accolades, I had the letters after my name, I had the practice, I had the partner, I felt very empty and unfulfilled. And much like my clients, I felt stuck.

• 7:29Speaker 01

  I didn't have language for why I myself had a lot of the habits and patterns that weren't serving me. So sharing that because as I began to understand why we're stuck, of course, I speak a lot about our body and how these habits are wired into us. The only way is that we've learned how to gain safety and security in our nervous system and continue to repeat them, even when they create dysfunction. I had a lot of knowledge and if I'm honest, I was very hesitant to, as I was watching the social media world evolve and people were beginning to share more publicly, there was a part of me, the inner child, who only knew success in this very prescribed way

• 8:10Speaker 01

  that wasn't used to opening myself up for feedback, being seen in a public way. So it actually took the support of my partner who I'm Still with on this journey, who is like Nicole, you have so much to say, you're really beginning, as I worked holistically now with clients, transform my practice, transform my own life. She was like, you're finally creating the change that you want to make. You have something to say. I think you should maybe bring this message online and share it more publicly. And if I'm honest, I resisted that because I felt concerned. I didn't know how other therapists were going to think of me, what the public was going to think of me, sharing these kind of aspects of a new way of working. And so that resistance was there, though now, yes, I'm able

• 8:53Speaker 01

  to learn how to speak my truth of what I believe to be true, impactful ways to, you know, achieve in a new way. But I still have not only that concern around like how I will speak and what people will think of what I am saying, but I also have that overachiever who wants to blow past my limits, say yes when I'm exhausted and I mean no. So I think this is very kind of emblematic of the inner child that still lives within us. I was resistant to even sharing what I wanted, even though I did have the desire to help people. And now I'm helping people and I still have to watch those old patterns to help people at the cost of my own self.

• 9:32Ryan Hawk?

  What was the beginnings of the holistic psychologist on Instagram?

• 9:37Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 9:38Ryan Hawk?

  When was it the actual beginning of it? What was it like at the beginning? Could you ever imagined it would explode into what it has?

• 9:45Speaker 01

  Absolutely not. So at the beginning, I think it was around 2018, where I finally allowed her to convince me, okay, I'll start sharing a little bit of my ideas and my journey as a human on social media. I would have had no idea how great and resounding the resonance would be. Outside of even, I was living in Philadelphia at the time, operating within a private practice model. And I had no idea that, you know, within the first year, people would be resonating, joining from around the world, interested in hearing more and working with me in this new way. So, but throughout the beginning, I mean, even learning how to speak on camera, put up content was such a big challenge for me. I don't care how many times she would Say to me, I would say something over coffee.

• 10:30Speaker 01

  And she'd be like, wow, that's like really insightful. I think you should share that in a video later. Your followers want to see you. And I say, okay. 20 minutes, half hour later, she'd pick up the phone. She'd be like, okay, say what you said to me earlier. And it was if my mind went blank. I had no idea what to say anymore. Just putting a camera in front of me was near debilitating. So from the beginning, I've had to work through a lot of my own resistance to being seen, fear of criticism or being misunderstood. And I've been able to get more comfortable with speaking publicly, understanding that once you do share something, you do open yourself up for interpretation. And what keeps me going is the people from around the world who are gaining benefit

• 11:13Speaker 01

  or having a new awareness about why they're stuck. And we're gaining the tools to finally create new actions.

• 11:20Ryan Hawk?

  What about how it's going now? How do you feel about that?

• 11:24Speaker 01

  I mean, I, this has now become what I would describe as a purpose, a passion. You know, my why in life. There was a time again, back when I started, that I was so in survival mode, still coming out of childhood trauma and exhaustion and burnout and performing for worthiness. That I actually didn't think I had that. I would hear people, you know, leaders, people that were successful, talk about feeling purposeful and passionate and being driven by the inner kind of energy to produce. And I just didn't have that. But now it has become what motivates me every day. Though of course, you know, the more reach there is, the more opinions, interpretation, challenge, but also opportunity.

• 12:07Speaker 01

  I'm so grateful that I have endless opportunity now to write books, to do things in pursuit of sharing this passion. But I have to be aware that there's still a me with individual needs and an energy that runs out. And I need to be, make sure that I'm grounded and clear in my flow. So that when I go contribute, that I'm doing so from that inner place as opposed to because I was given the opportunity and I'm afraid to say no. Or because that's where I gained worthiness. So I always am kind of trying to bridge that I still have those habits. And yet I still want to make an impact. And so it's a daily conversation of how to be in that middle ground where I'm doing so

• 12:50Speaker 01

  because I want to give as opposed to gain something.

• 12:55Ryan Hawk?

  How have you gotten better at your job? How have you gotten better as a psychologist, a holistic psychologist, since you've started becoming a public figure? What specifically, if you're thinking like, I'm actually way better at this? Maybe speaking to camera seems like an obvious one. You're very good, great communicator. That's partially why millions of people follow you. But when you think about it, like, I've actually feel like I've gotten a lot better at this, this and this. What do you think?

• 13:21Speaker 01

  Speaking honestly, there was a time where I would always, right before I would go to answer a question, I would have the moment, much like a therapist, where I would kind of play, okay, how am I going to say this? How could this land? What could someone do or misinterpret from this? And right, even that short moment of pause takes me from flow, right? Would result in the beginning of me maybe watering down something or dancing around a point that I've wanted to make. And so how I've gotten better is I've learned that there is no perfect way to say things, that once you do release a piece of information, people are going to filter it through their own past experiences or simply not agree, not like what you're saying, not resonate.

• 14:01Speaker 01

  And so it took me doing it, which is kind of even back to where we start this conversation, learning how to be in the discomfort of criticism, not being liked, not being for everyone. That has allowed me to be in what I would call more of a flow state, where you ask a question and I don't have to have that minute of, well, wait a minute, how will this land? I can just say it. And that has allowed me freedom. What has allowed me to create that not only is practice, but boundaries, right? Knowing who and when to take feedback from, because I think that's a very important part of being a human, being a leader, right? Is hearing where our blind spots are. And we are very blinded to ourselves. So sometimes the feedback from a loved one who's close,

• 14:44Speaker 01

  while it might be uncomfortable, is helpful to hear. Other times, it's a helpful boundary, right? Where you are not opening yourself up to the opinion of someone else who maybe has a different vantage point or are speaking from their own projection. So that's allowed me to create a safety in myself, a confidence in myself, which has translated to that flow that I was describing.

• 15:06Ryan Hawk?

  How have other people in your life, friends, family, others responded? Or how do they treat you? Again, since you've gone from someone who was not necessarily known worldwide to now somebody who is very well-known, I mean, that's a big change. And you're saying, hey, I've grown, I've gotten better, but I'm still the same Nicole, or whatever. I don't know what you say. I don't want to put words in your mouth. But people treat you differently when you gain levels of fame. We've all kind of experienced this from different perspectives. Yours probably in a really big way. I'm just, I'm just curious, how have people treated you? Or how have you felt their treatment since you've gained this level of worldwide fame?

• 15:43Speaker 01

  So, speaking from my kind of family of origin, they've always been, thankfully, you know, people that have celebrated me, you know, in the ways that I've been able to excel. They're my biggest cheerleaders. My dad and my sister, who are still very much alive and a part of my family and close, I did lose my mom about five years ago now. When I went online, so they were similarly celebrating, to some extent, my success. I think in the beginning, there was a little bit of running a business, right? Being an entrepreneur. My life completely changed. I was not just running a therapy practice now, I'm running a 24/7 virtual membership. So, I had to have new boundaries, coming from a family who had had no boundaries, had an expectation. I come from an Italian family, that for Sunday supper, you were there.

• 16:26Speaker 01

  And there was like a expectation that I'd be more present than in the beginning I was able. So, that was the first kind of set of boundaries, which I do think to some extent was disappointing, was hurtful, right? They took it personally, though they very much supported what I was doing. But, I mean, I would be lying if I said there wasn't then the reality of what I was doing and sharing. And my business was built on sharing my life, right? So, then there was that piece of, especially with my dad in particular, my mom a little less so, because cognitively, she was already starting to decline during the end of her life. But there was a question and confusion, like, there was many conversations where my dad or my mom would come to me and be like, well, why do you have to use us as the example?

• 17:09Speaker 01

  Like, why do you have to share about our family? And so, I would explain to them, well, I did because, A, this is the only experience that I can speak from, because it's the only one I've lived, and B, our family and our experience is so common. Nothing to be shameful about it. I don't think you were ill-intented at all. I think you were two parents literally doing the best that they can. So there was those type of conversations that had happened in the beginning and now several years in, I mean, my family was just up in New York City when I had my book event just a couple of weeks ago. My dad sat front row, was crying, you know, with pride. So there's been a lot of evolution and acceptance of why I have to,

• 17:50Speaker 01

  to some extent, air my family's dirty laundry. And again, I think that has just been such a gift, but they've always been in support, but there's been a little, I think, lack of clarity of why certain things had to happen from my unavailability to the content in which I continue to share, but they now see and gain, and I've seen my family evolve so much, my relationships with them. I've watched my sister, I'm so proud of her, I was actually just texting her before I signed on. The cycle she's been able to break with her own son are just continuously a motivation outside, of course, of the community that offers endless motivation for me.

• 18:25Ryan Hawk?

  How did it make you feel to see your dad crying in the front row?

• 18:28Speaker 01

  I mean, it just, it is, my dad of my two parents, very interestingly, maybe counter to the traditional model. My dad was always the more emotional one than my mother. My mother, because she was so overwhelmed with her own childhood trauma that she was largely shut down to her emotions. So I remember the first time I started to see really emotion from my dad, probably my twenties into my thirties. And so for me, seeing him cry, though, in understanding and in pride, just it overwhelms me and to be able to have those more real, authentic emotional moments from with a family that has been largely shut down for the majority of our experience as

• 19:08Speaker 01

  a family. Again, it's just so validating and affirming for why I do this work that I feel closer to him, right? In those moments where I feel that authentic emotion coming from him or my sister or whoever.

• 19:21Ryan Hawk?

  You're right about when you were 13, straight A's, but unraveling on the inside. You started self-medicating. But maybe your parents didn't see it. They couldn't understand, or maybe they chose not to. I don't know. Can you go back to that moment? What was going on when you were 13? From the outside, it looks like Nicole's crushing it, but your parents didn't understand that inside you were not.

• 19:46Speaker 01

  Starting prior to 13, socially, I was very, what we would call shy. I had very few friends. Usually my friends were on the athletic team, so we related. You know, it started with like my soccer friends, my softball friends, and we would relate over playing sports together. Though I wasn't popular, I struggled even when we were out to eat at a restaurant. When I was in my early adolescence, a waiter would come over to me and ask me what I wanted to drink. And my mom would have to order for me. Like I very much was overwhelmed socially. And that translated to I had very few friends socially. I was very shy. I knew the answer in class. I would never raise my hand. And again, I only had a real handful of friends that I connected with through sports.

• 20:28Speaker 01

  I however, had a very good friend who happened to be three years older than me that lived in my neighborhood, who I connected with through sports. We would go outside and play wiffle ball together. And that then translated into a more social type relationship. And because she was three years older than me, she started understandably experimenting with alcohol, smoking pot. And then very quickly, I got introduced to that. And what I discovered was when I started drinking or smoking, I felt more comfortable. That anxiety that I lived with that translated into my shyness and inability to connect. I suddenly felt freer, more at ease, more able to relate, you know, around partying with my friends. So I did just that. And I happened to have a lot of freedom.

• 21:13Speaker 01

  I didn't have curfews that were early. I was always out late to the same time she was out allowed. When I would come home even, my parents were already in bed. So I would literally stumble through the living room on, I mean, it blows my mind to think about what I was putting into my body at that time from drinking and smoking to pills that I would buy off the street. And I lived in a city, so all of this was accessible and available and it helped me feel. More comfortable and I had the freedom to do that and I did it hidden and yet I would still wake up at six AM the next day, go pitch a softball tournament, win it and seemingly be fine. And so I speak a lot and I have a whole chapter in the book dedicated to what I believe

• 21:55Speaker 01

  addictions are, whether or not I would call myself addicted at that time, I know that I used it to cope, to cope with emptiness, disconnection, loneliness, nervous system dysregulation, again, because it made me feel more comfortable, more relatable and more connected to my peers.

• 22:12Ryan Hawk?

  What were your parents missing? Were they intentionally doing it? Were they just tired? Were they living in their own world? What was going on with them?

• 22:21Speaker 01

  When I was born, my mom was 42, my dad was 45, my sister was 15 years older than me and I do have a brother who I'm much less close to, but he was 18 years older than me and nearly out of the home, living his own life as an 18 year old would be. So I was largely unplanned. By that time, my mom was already struggling throughout my entire life. She had a lot of chronic illness, chronic pain. So she spent a lot of time laying, resting in bed, which is why she would be in bed early when I got home late. I really leaned into, it's a different generation. You don't understand. I heard a lot from my brother and my sister of how, right, they had more strict parents and that was the reality, right? I'm like, it's the 90s. This is what people do. Where are you going to call out, out where just out, right? And so they just kind of went along with

• 23:06Speaker 01

  it. And I think because it's not that they didn't care, they saw me succeeding, excelling. I was very secretive about what I was doing. I wasn't getting in trouble like my brother was when he was growing up. So by contrast, on the surface, it seemed like I was doing well. And again, we were a family who didn't really talk about our emotions. We weren't really connected to our emotions. So I don't think they had any indication and I was very good at suppressing my emotions and coping in this way, that I don't think they had any indication to know or to think. And if they did, maybe they didn't have the language to address what it was that they were noticing.

• 23:49Ryan Hawk?

  Maybe I'll use me because it's easiest because I think others who listen relate to my story a bit. Maybe that's why they're listening and, and let's see what happens here. Is that okay?

• 23:59Speaker 01

  Yes, please.

• 23:59Ryan Hawk?

  Okay, so my parents are still my heroes. I just saw them last week in Florida when I was on spring break and it was the best. Our home. Was, and I feel like it still is, even though we don't live together, a very high standards, very high expectation place. My parents both worked very hard, demanding a lot of discipline and a lot of expectations that you're going to work hard, study hard, do well in sports and be a good person, all those things. We didn't really do much outside of sports and school. You know, some vacations here and there, but I look back on it and I'm super grateful.

• 24:43Ryan Hawk?

  I still am and I, and they're still this way. I still think there's not judgment, but just this kind of, we expect you guys, I'm the middle, older brother, younger brother. We expect you guys to do good things and to have very high standards and to get after it and to work hard and to be kind and to put a positive dent in the world. That's our expectation. That wasn't ever said. That's just felt. I still feel that way to this day, you know, in my 40s. I don't see anything wrong with that. I, I feel like I'm super lucky and it's made me work really hard to try to keep making a positive dent in the world. And so I'm wondering as I go through your stuff, like, am I missing something?

• 25:26Ryan Hawk?

  Because I, I'm just truly grateful for all of that and I still feel that pressure to this day to achieve and to work and to do good. So am I missing something? Because right now, like I, I'm just full of gratitude that this pressure has helped turned not only me, but my brothers into doing good things in the world. What do you think when I say all that?

• 25:50Speaker 01

  What's coming to mind is the modeling that my father provided, which was very hard working. Before I was born, he would work well into the night, long hours to support the family financially. When I was born, thankfully, he had a much more of a contained job, though. Worked very hard at work during the day, came home. Caught me playing softball, trained with me, worked in the garden, was always doing something, again, with this both direct, right, to exceed and excel, you need to have the academics. My mom, when I would come home with a 96, she'd say, why not 100, right? And so that translated into drive, ambition. So I don't think that that's a problem. For a lot of us, it's the energy that inspires action that translates into impact.

• 26:34Speaker 01

  Where it can become a problem and did for me a bit was where we have no limits to our working, where we exhaust ourselves and burn out, where we don't feel worthy in moments of inaction or of rest. And that is what I've been working. And so I think the goal of all of this, and what we're both speaking to, is we're going to carry our childhood with us. Not all of it is going to be a quote unquote "problem" or something that we want to change, right? Even though this drive for me was born out of disconnection and did give me a sense of worthiness, it's still a drive that I want to harness to produce the impact that I'm having and that I hope I continue to have.

• 27:17Speaker 01

  What I'm working now on, though, is choosing, choice, right? Not feeling like I have to be doing something, producing something, being interpreted in a particular way to gain a sense of worthiness. I'm also working to not always have to be doing something all of the time. Like I said earlier, I have a lot of opportunities available to me, but instead of just saying yes because they're available, really dropping in, saying, do I have the energy to do this? Do I want to do this? Is this coming from that deeper point of inspiration as opposed to just because I struggle to say no, or because I won't feel good enough or worthy unless I'm producing something?

• 28:00Speaker 01

  So again, I think a lot of us carry, or we all carry, adaptation from childhood. It doesn't mean they're all bad. What we can begin to do, though, is harness the ability to choose as opposed to just feel driven, because that's the only way that we gain worthiness, connection, or whatever it is that that's allowing us to create.

• 28:19Ryan Hawk?

  I feel you big time on the part of if I'm not producing work and doing a lot, basically all the time, I feel like a slug. I don't feel like I'm making a positive contribution to the world. I don't feel good, but I don't know if that's hurt me like maybe it will, you know, but at this point, that desire to be consistent, that desire to be in the gym every morning, that desire to push myself physically and mentally. Again, I feel like it stems from my upbringing. I still feel it from my parents who are very much a part of my life. My brothers are too. My wife, same way, you know, very hard worker. I don't

• 29:02Ryan Hawk?

  feel much negative there. I feel there are others out there like this where it's led to a lot of good things and we haven't seen much or any of the downsides yet. I hope never, but I could be wrong. That's why I wanted to talk to you. I don't know. What do you think?

• 29:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, and perhaps it won't ever, right? But I think that there's something to be said and powerful in flexibility, right? In the moments where for whatever reason, physical, you've run out of energy, you get sick, you can't go to the gym and do what you want for one day for an extended period of time, or life happens, something interferes with our ability to produce. Those are always, I think, the markers of when we're in a healthy relationship. So when I'm forced to stop, just to apply to this conversation or shift out of my habit, whatever the habit is, right? This one is producing doing. When I'm forced to stop or when I need to choose to stop because I'm sick physically or emotionally

• 30:04Speaker 01

  or something else needs my attention in this time or this moment or this season, can I be flexible enough to do that without feeling terrible about myself, without having consequences, right? Where I'm now so uncomfortable that I'm driving myself into action even when I ought to be not pausing for whatever reason. And I think when we can become rigid, right? When it doesn't matter what's happening around Around us, we just have to do these things because that's the only way we feel good. Right. Then I think there's something to be said about the helpfulness of developing flexibility or that ability to choose to say, okay, contextually speaking now, for whatever reason, because I'm sick, because I'm exhausted, because I'm emotionally overwhelmed, because someone else needs me to do something else in this moment.

• 30:48Speaker 01

  Can I continue with my day or my week or my season and still feel okay without myself? Knowing that I can return to the habits that I know feel better. But can I tolerate the discomfort when I'm not acting in that habitual way?

• 31:02Ryan Hawk?

  Okay, I want to talk about agency and ownership. So there are people in my life, and I'm sure people in yours and everybody's lives where I want to be careful of how I say this. They start going to therapy because of whatever reason, doesn't matter. And the things you start hearing them say are kind of blaming other people in their life. A lot of times it's the parents. And to me, it feels like, I could be wrong here, it feels like losing some agency and ownership over their life and blaming somebody else for them making really, really

• 31:43Ryan Hawk?

  poor choices in some cases and continuing to make poor choices over an extended period of time. And then saying, well, it's because of my parents or it's because of these other people. And to me, I really struggle with that. I really struggle with those types of people who who do that. They make poor choices that harm others and then blame other people. They don't take ownership. They're losing their agency. I don't know if I said that right, but when I you hear that, what do you think?

• 32:12Speaker 01

  I think it's important to hold space for both.

• 32:16Ryan Hawk?

  Okay.

• 32:16Speaker 01

  Right. Perhaps the reality that other people have contributed, whether it's in childhood or now to our discomfort, our suffering, our habits, our hurt, our pain. Because that's part of the journey is to acknowledge ourself. The impact that others have on us, especially if it's early childhood, you know, our parents impacting us by not meeting our needs to the best of their ability or well intentioned even because they didn't have the tools. That's how I always understand that. But if we don't do that, then a lot of us just continue to suppress. The way we feel about what happened, the unmet needs and all of these habits we continue to repeat based on those unmet needs. So we are doing ourself a disservice, though

• 32:58Speaker 01

  we can be very savvy at doing it because it feels better. We don't have to feel the grief, the pain, the anger, which are very natural feelings that arise when we discover or live into the reality that, hey, despite the best of intentions, our family, our loved ones, or even our partners, right, aren't showing up in the way that we would like them or need them to. However, I think to develop maturity, right, we have to expand and be able, and also to not just then stay stuck, right, in that feeling and just doing ourself a disservice by like just being like, oh, they didn't, they didn't mean it. They hurt us and maybe stuck in the anger and the resentment. We have to make space for both, right? How we feel about what happened. So we're giving our feelings some space, but also, like

• 33:43Speaker 01

  you're wisely describing, step into then the path of agency. And I think sometimes we confuse even, I just want to kind of go perhaps on a little bit of a tangent around, sometimes we confuse what a boundary is. So we think that when we come to the awareness that someone's hurt us, they've caused our problems, that the best solution is to demand that they're different, to, you know, give them a consequence and ultimatum to be different. That, though, is still giving away our agency or our control, right? It's saying that I will only feel a certain way unless you show up the way I need you to. That's very limiting, right? What a boundary really is, is saying, right, you've hurt me, this has happened,

• 34:24Speaker 01

  I feel this way about it. You are maybe causing dysfunction or trauma or abuse in my life right now, and maybe I do see the role that your actions or inactions are contributing to how I feel. Yet in an empowered space and a true boundary is saying, and so I'm going to take responsibility that I'm allowing it. It's still happening. I'm going to show up differently now to limit the impact. Of what you're doing, right? So that that's how we then move forward, right? We say, yes, the world has caused me harm. My parents maybe didn't meet my need and I feel this kind of way. And maybe as a result now, I'm finding myself repeating some dysfunctional habits and patterns in my life, which I have found myself until recently doing that.

• 35:08Speaker 01

  But if I just blame you for abusing me, neglecting me, hurting me, then how am I moving forward to create safety and security? I'm not, right? So I have to look at the role I'm playing by maybe simply allowing it. And by saying, hey, I need a limit. I need to remove myself. And that's how I then take the control back, even if and when some of us will wake up and be like, wow, there's a lot of dysfunction. You're actually hurting me and that's not okay anymore, but it's actually not you. It's me for not putting a stop to it sooner, for not removing myself before I've gotten to this point.

• 35:44Ryan Hawk?

  What do you think of Abigail Schreier's stuff? Her book, I think it's called Bad Therapy. I haven't talked to her.

• 35:49Speaker 01

  I don't think I'm familiar with it. Hmm.

• 35:51Ryan Hawk?

  What I've gathered from basically seeing clips from podcasts she's been on is the act of going to therapy and kind of always voicing this trauma or traumatic events is actually causing more trauma. It's causing you to feel really bad. And so in a way, it's making you worse. I'm probably butchering that, but that is, that is the gist of some of it.

• 36:18Speaker 01

  I think that giving words to what happened, having a safe place where we feel comfortable enough to share our story, past, present, future, whatever it is, and have that in a safe relationship. I think a ton of research into what therapy is the best right to do to actually create change. It's actually not landed on a type of therapy at all. It's landed on the relationship, the safety, the space to give words to our story. Because for a lot of us, we've never had that. We haven't had safety. We didn't feel comfortable enough to share and the therapy and the talking aspect of it. Right? We're giving words, aliveness. We have someone hearing, receiving, hopefully not judging what it is that we're sharing. For a lot of us, that can be a healing component.

• 37:03Speaker 01

  Though, when we really understand where trauma lives, it doesn't live in logic and understanding. While that's a part of our journey, it lives in our body. It lives in the habits and reactions that we've been kind of speaking to throughout. And so for some of us, right? And there is now research on this, that by just talking about things that hurt us, anytime we think a thought, we inspire an emotion. The more you think upsetting thoughts, anxiety provoking thoughts, often, of course, they're driven by anxiety in our body, the more we're going to stay stuck in that emotion. It's why the mind is so powerful, that we can think something and then we feel as if we're living it in that moment. So of course, right? If we're going week after week,

• 37:47Speaker 01

  or however frequency it is, and we're talking about all the things that are hurting us, then we are continuing to keep that alive in our body. And if we're doing that, because for a lot of us, that's a piece of our journey, is having that space once a week, or however, if you can afford it and have the access to professionals to help in a supportive way, we might do that. But this is what kind of brought me into this holistic model. Then the question is, well, what's happening on all of those hours outside of here? Right? Do I have the tools to regulate, to create a new emotional response in real time? And so I think that's where therapy or any sort of coach or self-help enhancement journey becomes most impactful, is when we bridge that gap,

• 38:31Speaker 01

  when we understand that understanding insight, talking about things is part of it. So feeling differently, producing a new response, regulation where there was once dysregulation, that's where change actually happens. And those are the moments that we carry with us outside of those more contained therapeutic contexts.

• 38:51Ryan Hawk?

  You mentioned the holistic. Psychologist element right now. Very curious about that. This is a world that's foreign to me. I've never even dabbled in it. I've never had conversations with anybody. You're the first publicly, privately. So I feel way out of school. It was good to prepare for this, though, because I've learned quite a bit, but I still have miles and miles more. What's a holistic psychologist?

• 39:18Speaker 01

  It honors the gap between the mind and the body. For a very long time, psychology traditionally has focused solely on the mind, so much so that most traditional clinical psychology programs, one of which I went to, though mine was a little bit more expanded than the CBT model. Right? This idea that our brain is so powerful, which it is to some extent, that if we think differently, the model is built on we think different thoughts, we produce different feelings and then ultimately different actions. And again, while I learned that model, I also learned a relational model. I dabbled a bit in psychoanalysis, but again, all very mind-based modalities. I started my practice. I thought I was being very integrated by bridging all of these,

• 40:02Speaker 01

  by teaching a little bit of mindfulness here and there, because I really want to help people change. Yet I wasn't yet talking about the body because it was never taught to me in school. I was not, I did not have any awareness of this new research that was coming to the field about the nervous system and how much our body is playing a roles in even producing our thoughts. I met all of that from that very disempowered place, as I shared with you, where I was like, I'm not really helping people and I don't really feel great myself. What's going on here? And being a lifelong learner, as my dad always teases me to be, I went online, I was like, let me start to research and read and explore what I'm missing. And I was missing the body. So holistic psychology is kind of what I've adapted,

• 40:45Speaker 01

  is the model of, I think, the way we need to shift the field into, which doesn't just overemphasize the mind. It understands the body, our nervous system. Again, our earliest environments in hell that actually neurobiologically created patterns wired into us, all of which are changeable. Science now shows. That it blows my mind that there was a time in the field where we thought once our brain was developed, that that was it, that there was no changing. We now know that we maintain the ability to change or neuroplasticity throughout our lives. So that's what holistic psychology is means to me. It's bridging that gap, understanding the body's role, understanding, of course, the hardware

• 41:25Speaker 01

  that we're currently operating with, but giving us new options, new choices so that we can create new habits and quite literally transformation from the body up.

• 41:35Ryan Hawk?

  Okay, so I think of like going to Costa Rica with you and you're like my yoga instructor. Is this way out of school or is that potentially like how this would work where we're having conversations, but we're also stretching and doing, no, as am I also?

• 41:52Speaker 01

  It's so funny. I love that. While I do love Costa Rica and I would love to get my way back there. I actually, I speak more toward daily things that we could do. I am not admittedly someone who has an active kind of consistent practice of anything. I don't have the thing I do at the gym every day. I don't have the yoga practice that I rely on. My model is more our body is the holder of the wisdom. So it's a model that's based in awareness where I understand that I spent, and I still at times spend not much time in my body at all. I think my way. I analyze my way through life. I worry about what other people want and need instead of dropping in and saying, what do I need? The way I used to work when I did individual work, now I work in a community

• 42:34Speaker 01

  setting and in my membership South Healer Circle, the way we talk about change is through daily practices of dropping into our body, noticing how my muscles feel, how my breathing, how is my heart? All of these are markers of a body that is either relaxed or stressed. The more a body becomes stressed, the more our nervous system is likely to send us into those old habits, patterns, overreactions, underreactions, identities that we've relied on. And so I speak more of more general lifestyle habits, teaching people that to feel well and perform well, we need to observe what we're doing. What are our habits? Do we sleep well at night? Do we go to bed? Early enough that when we wake up, we're feeling rested. What are we putting in our body?

• 43:18Speaker 01

  We now have a lot of research into the benefit of nutrition. And also the stress that certain foods, chemicals, sugar produce in our body. And again, a body that is stressed and overwhelmed and can't come back into calm is a body that's likely to have racing thoughts, emotional issues, dysfunctional patterns or identities that don't serve us. So absolutely, you're not going to hear me talking about or even leading classes of that sort. I will most likely be sharing little tidbit back pocket pieces of practices that you can use in real time because that's where habits happen in real time. Something that we can maintain over time so that we can create new patterns.

• 44:00Ryan Hawk?

  So we don't have to go away and do some retreat. This is daily, practical, useful things. So you've said the phrase drop into my body a few times. What does it mean to drop into my body?

• 44:14Speaker 01

  So it begins with first just even exploring now if people are listening, right? Where is your attention? Do you even feel your physical self, whether you're on a walk, right? I mean, as simple as this sounds, are you feeling your muscles, feeling your heels, impact the earth or kind of where you're sitting? Are you feeling embodied? Or are you so lost in thought and ideas, distracted? That that could be the first choice you make without judging and being like, oh, I'm not connected to my body at all. What body? I'm just a bobblehead. Taking a moment to refocus your attention. Again, those three points are great anchors because they give us information as to how stressed our body is. If you drop in right now and you're like, oh, my God, I'm a ball of tension.

• 44:57Speaker 01

  My jaw is clenched and my fists are clenched and my shoulders are up to my ears. Chances are your body is in a state of stress right now. Similarly, if you notice, oh, I'm holding my breath or I'm breathing so short and quick from my chest. Those are markers that your body is under stress. That then impacts your heart rate, right? Feeling elevated, beating out of your chest. All of that is giving you information that your body is under stress right now. So once we have then that information, we can make small shifts in our physiology. We can begin to slow and deepen our breath, right? Elongating our exhale just a little longer than our inhale.

• 45:39Speaker 01

  Right? If our movements are really quick, we can slow them down. If we're holding tension, we could practice releasing it. And now what we're giving us access to is we're regulating our body so that we can begin to show up differently in those moments. But for a lot of us, the journey begins by just noticing, whoa, I don't spend much time in my body, right? I don't know how I feel. I don't know when I'm hungry. I don't know when I'm full. I don't know what my body wants to eat. These are great moments in time where you can drop in, which just simply means shift focus and ask your body. See how it feels. See what you're hungry for. See when you're full and complete it with eating, right?

• 46:19Speaker 01

  All of these are a big foundation then to having a better relationship with your body. Because again, your body is directing so many of those reactive choices that you're making that until you shift your body into that state of calmness, it's going to be really hard for you to maintain the choices that you're making.

• 46:38Ryan Hawk?

  It's like a form of meditation?

• 46:40Speaker 01

  Yes, I appreciate you bringing this up because I do think meditation is often, I think, a misunderstood concept where we think, right? Meditation is sitting in silence, cross legged, and the goal is to make our mind as quiet as possible. While that's a form, a more structured practice, I translate meditation to just simply be awareness, right? Life can be a meditative experience. And also, it's important to release the expectation that our mind is quiet. Thoughts are very helpful. They're where we create things. We have insight. We have ideas. It's impossible to imagine the goal is to completely have a blank, quiet mind. Usually if our mind is blank and quiet, we're probably in a state of shutdown, which I spend a lot of time in myself.

• 47:22Speaker 01

  So the goal is to develop awareness, which is kind of a living practice of meditation, where we can choose what thoughts we're holding on to because our mind is powerful. The more we're thinking of thought, the more we're continuing a feeling in our body. But we can also choose the moments where our thoughts aren't helpful, where our body is giving us more information than we could tend to that information.

• 47:46Ryan Hawk?

  How good are you at dropping into your body?

• 47:50Speaker 01

  I'm practicing still. I'm still a work in progress because my protective habit for so long has been to dissociate or to disconnect. I'm not surprising, right, that I pursued the field of clinical psychology where I can live in my mind. I can understand things from a distant vantage point. I still call it my spaceship that I go off onto. And I go to my spaceship, and this is because I've observed my patterns, when what I'm feeling in my body is too uncomfortable. I don't want to be in there, right? The quickest path out is to distract myself with someone else, with the next achievement. So for me, I'm still working on tending to my daily habits so that my body feels a safer place, but also knowing that it's a choice for me to

• 48:33Speaker 01

  have those moments where I'm reconnecting. I'm still, once I'm in my body, I'm still learning how to be present with uncomfortable feelings. I struggle often to give language to what I'm feeling, especially when I'm in the moment of a feeling. It sometimes takes me time to gain clarity on what is just agitated overwhelm in one moment. It might be a couple minutes, hours, even days. Like, oh, wow, I'm feeling hurt by what it is that happened. But I can't still yet do that in the moment because I'm still in a state of flooding where it's too much and I don't have the capacity to hold what I'm feeling and to, in real time, share it with someone else.

• 49:15Speaker 01

  So instead, I react and I then shamefully come back and say, hey, I'm sorry about that reaction. I was really stressed and this is what I really meant in that moment. But I'll admit, it happens after the fact. Once I'm calm, because, again, my practice is to just become overwhelmed, then either disconnect or react from a feeling that I don't yet have clarity on.

• 49:36Ryan Hawk?

  How does this work? And you being a lifelong learner, as your dad said? This is a selfish question because I really am striving to try to always be a better husband, better dad, a better friend. And I think this podcast has helped quite a bit, you know? And speaking with someone like you, I'm like, oh, this is a great opportunity for me. So how has it made you a better life partner? How has it made you a better in your most loving relationships, the people who are most important to you?

• 50:05Speaker 01

  It's helping me make them more real, right? More authentic, more grounded in vulnerability, messiness, emotion, as opposed to right? Kind of curated visions, who I think I need to be for you and just allowing someone to, while I'm still practicing doing so, see me as I am, share a feeling. It's giving me the opportunity to allow in support. I'm very intentionally wording it that way because again, I, what I'm most familiar with is dealing with all my feelings alone, right? Through alcohol, through drugs, and all the things we talked about perfection doing. I'm still learning to, in a vulnerable moment, go to someone who feels safe to me and say, hey, I'm, I'm struggling. This is what's going on. This is what I'm feeling, of course, once I have clarity and to just let myself be seen and connected with.

• 50:51Speaker 01

  So even going back to my family and the evolution, as we're all working to be more honest with ourselves and to share that with other people, themselves, in my romantic relationship with my partner, who's still with me on this journey, right? Allowing her to see what's really happening and not just this protect it, okay, version, who's just trudging on. And so it's allowed more intimacy and realness in, in my life. And I think that then translates to the work I do, where I'm then more comfortable with sharing, you know, vulnerably, honestly, with other people in a way that, the reason why I'm often sharing is to give you all of my theories of why and where things come from. Of course, I'm, I know me the most to share that, but I share it also because I think a lot of us

• 51:35Speaker 01

  have a fear that we're alone, that I shouldn't tell anyone this because they're going to think I'm crazy or nuts, or no one else is feeling or struggling with this in this way. And I think a lot of us are walking around, even perhaps with successful lives and families around us, yet we have that little part that doesn't want to share because we're afraid of judgment, because we believe we're the only ones dealing with this. So when I share and I'm able to then gift that to other people, just as my beautiful community is often sharing with me and helping me heal, we feel a little less alone in what we're struggling with.

• 52:08Ryan Hawk?

  Yeah, I mean, I think about that. Was it the Harvard study, the longitudinal one has gone for 90 years? I mean, when they're basically studying what leads to a happy life. And there's a lot of things that go into it, but at the end of the day, it's love, full stop, right? Loving relationships, it's other people, the ones who live the happiest, longest, most fruitful, enjoyable lives were the ones, are the ones who are surrounded by lovely people, right? That they love and that love them. It's such an oversimplification, but maybe that's the answer, though. I don't know, easier said than done. But to me, it's like, what am I optimizing for? Let's try to optimize for loving relationships where I love others and they love me

• 52:51Ryan Hawk?

  and we support each other and we're there for each other. Like, that seems to be a big key in all of this.

• 52:59Speaker 01

  I couldn't agree more. And I think, you know, to be clear, what we're hoping to be loved around is not just the perfect parts of ourself, right? What a gift it is when we can show someone all of ourself, our messiness, the things that we hid and kept secret and still be loved, right? So for me, that overachiever, as I show more parts of me and people don't abandon me, don't reject me, right? Don't reflect back my unworthiness, but they stay. I'm getting chills, right? How healing that is. And I think that's what love is, not just being loved when we're doing something for someone else or we're showing up as this perfect version where they're validating what they like, but when they stay regardless, that's, I think,

• 53:43Speaker 01

  the love that most of us are striving for and what I hope to contribute by continuing to love myself enough to share even the messy, not as curated parts with other people.

• 53:55Ryan Hawk?

  Nicole, 11 years, it's 680 some of these things. You know, one of the commonalities among every single person? We are all a bunch of messy humans trying to figure it out as we go.

• 54:10Speaker 01

  Yes. Isn't that wild? And so funny too, because starting a business, this was one of the funniest things is there was a time very early on and still where my team even practically right would come to myself and Lali, who's built the business right alongside me from the beginning and ask us, well, how do you do? And it's like, I don't know, I'm trying to figure it out too. We're figuring this out together. So whether it's in business or personal life, I do think we project onto other people this idea that they have the answers of what to do next, of how to solve this business problem, of how to be a perfect human. And I will tell you with the degrees behind me, I'm still figuring it out.

• 54:46Ryan Hawk?

  Yeah. Well, to me, it's one of the, it's one of the most inspiring things about this because I'm meeting my heroes. These people are watch online and read their books and all this stuff. And they're brilliant. Don't get me wrong, but they're also still messy humans trying to figure out as they go, like all of them, whether I meet them in person on Zoom like this. And to me, what that says is, hey, it's possible. It's possible for literally any of us to go build great loving relationships and to leave a positive debt in the world, to help other people, to make a difference and feel like fulfillment in that way. Because to me, when I see that something I've done has helped somebody else in whatever way, that's one of the greatest joys is just seeing

• 55:30Ryan Hawk?

  that something that you've, you've, maybe you worked hard at and it's, it's helped somebody else is so cool. Let's fast forward to one year from today. Okay. This is called the champagne question. Doesn't matter whatever you choose to drink. It could be sparkling cider. Okay. You're popping bottles with the people you love, just everywhere. You're spraying it all over the place. What are we celebrating? What are you celebrating?

• 55:57Speaker 01

  So a year from now, what I'm celebrating is

• 56:03Speaker 01

  Presence, you know, being this, whatever is happening or not happening in my life, as cliche as it sounds, I'm celebrating the celebration of that moment, right? Being alive, feeling the gratitude, the joy, the celebration of not focusing necessarily on what was even produced to give me the opportunity to decide to pop bottles or celebrate, however, but just being in life in that moment. I think that is, for me, what I continue to strive to, is to, yes, all of the stuff, the production, the things to celebrate are great. Of course, I too, like you, want you to continue to leave a positive debt in this world. But my greatest celebration is each and every moment that I can be present to the life

• 56:47Speaker 01

  around me, wherever I'm celebrating, the taste of the champagne, the humans that are surrounding me in that moment, even if it's not exactly the way I wanted it to taste or be, or the person isn't there, right? Even allowing the disappointment of a celebration that doesn't exactly meet our needs. The weather could be better and being with all of it, I think that is what I'm celebrating life.

• 57:07Ryan Hawk?

  Yes, I love it. Being like deeply, fully like in the moment. You can feel it when you're with others. I feel like this, when they have this sense that they are so kind of living in that moment. And again, that's inspiring to me to be more like that and to try to be in more of those moments myself with the people, like am I fully, fully present? That's awesome. The book is called Reparenting the Inner Child. Nicole, I so appreciate your work and willingness to put this stuff out there because you're certainly going to be judged and I'm sure you get people who come at you, but I admire

• 57:48Ryan Hawk?

  that you do this work and that you're trying to help people and that you're helping millions and millions literally every single day. It's so cool. It is so cool to see. So, thank you for being here. I would love to continue our dialogue as we both progress.

• 58:02Speaker 01

  Absolutely. Thank you, Ryan, for having me. I'm honored. Thank you all for listening. I'm truly so inspired by communities like this and I too will look forward to future evolution, collaboration, presence, and just the joy of life.

• 58:14Ryan Hawk?

  Let's do it. Let's do it. Thank you so much.

• 58:17Speaker 01

  Of course. Thank you.

• 58:22Ryan Hawk?

  It is the end of the Podcast Club. Thank you for being a member of the End of the Podcast Club. If you are, send me a note, [email protected]. Let me know what you learned from this great conversation with Dr. Nicole LePera, the holistic psychologist. A few takeaways from my notes, drop into your body. I gotta admit, when I first heard this, I thought, is this a little woo woo? But then the more I researched it and actually did it, it's real. Notice your breathing. Notice tension in your shoulders, your chest, that awareness, even if it's just for a few seconds. That's the beginning of the practice that Nicole described, dropping into your body. It's all about presence, which leads to her champagne

• 59:06Ryan Hawk?

  moment. Being present is the goal, not the next milestone, not the next book, or the next big achievement. Nicole said that she would celebrate a year from now, simply by being present and grateful for the moment itself. That is the whole thing. And then your who is everything. The people closest to you are literally influencing your nervous system, and you are influencing theirs. Who you spend time with is everything. The Harvard Study on Human Happiness, 90 years of looking at people, what did they find? A happy life is all about love, full stop. It's all about the relationships you build and loving others.

• 59:49Ryan Hawk?

  Once again, I want to say thank you so much for continuing to spread the message and telling a friend or two, hey, you should listen to this episode of the Learning Leader Show with Dr. Nicole LePera. I think she'll help you become a more effective leader because you continue to do that. And you also go to Spotify and Apple Podcasts and you subscribe to the show and you rate it, hopefully five stars, and you write a thoughtful review. By doing all of that, you are continually giving me the opportunity to do what I love on a daily basis. And for that, I will forever be grateful. Thank you so, so much. Talk to you soon. Can't wait.