369: Are You Being FAUXductive or Productive

It may not be a race that you're trying to win against someone else. It is the race of can you let all of your gifts be used? Can you help this planet? That's why you're here. Can you help yourself? It starts with helping yourself and then it trickles down into your family. Welcome to the Earn your happy podcast. I'm Lori Harder, founder of The Bliss Project, 3 Time Fitness World champion, fitness expert and cover model, turned self love junkie, lifestyle entrepreneur and author. Each week I'll bring you a guest or a thought that will help you bust through your fears, connect to your soul and get focused and clear so you can elevate your life, business and relationships. We don't wait until we're ready for someone to tell us we're good enough. We take what we want and we anoint ourselves. Get ready to earn, own, and unapologetically rock your happiness every single day. Are you with me? Here we go. Welcome back to the earn your happy podcast. And it's time for another quickie because there's always time to fit in inspiration. And I am going to celebrate a couple things with you today, and one of them being that my book literally has been out for one year. It's my book's one year birthday. I don't know how that happened. I feel like it was just yesterday that I was in the throes of writing a book and putting my message out. And I will tell you guys one of the hardest things I've ever done for real, because I wrote stuff in that book that I had not even shared with my parents ever. And I wrote a post recently about what that felt like to put that truth out into the world. And I hadn't really shared it with a lot of people that the week leading up to my book launch was probably the one of the worst weeks I've ever experienced in my entire life. I started to think I was just a terrible person, that I wrote everything that I wrote for the wrong reason and I was about to destroy my life and everybody else's. And I just really thought that I was completely in over my head and realized that this is what it feels like before you share your truth and before you have that really tough conversation that you need to have with someone or before you step into something that's new. And, um, I think just experiencing on it or experiencing it on such an intense level really threw me into the feelings that you guys are probably all experiencing with what it looks like to really decide to become her, decide to step into that Woman that you know that you are here to be. And something that Ed Mylett said on his podcast not too long ago that I absolutely love is he says that when he leaves this planet and when he passes away, that when he is up talking to God or whatever you believe that he believes that God's going to say, hey, here's the man that I. I want you to meet the man that I sent you to be on Earth. And there'll be like a double, like a doppelganger of yourself, of who God thought of you as. Like, who he thought, who he sent you to Earth to be, who all of the gifts that he gave this person, did you use them. And, and Ed says that he wants to try to match up as much as possible to that person that God believes that he could be. And I just thought that was the best visual because I'm always, always chasing down that woman that I know that God put on my soul to be like, I know who she is, I can see her, and I'm always chasing and trying to bring out a little bit more of her greatness. But that is so scary. And I know that you are side by side in this race with me. And I think it is important that we realize, you know, while it may not be a race that you're trying to win against someone else, it is the race of can you let all of your gifts be used? Can you help this planet? That's why you're here. Can you help yourself? It starts with helping yourself and then it trickles down into your family. So something. Yeah, I'm celebrating the book. I have like 47,000 thoughts today, which I can't wait to share, but celebrating the one year launch of that book, because that was a really, really big freaking deal for me. And the other one is that on my one year birthday of my book, my book came out in paperback. Now why is this a big deal? This is huge. Because a lot of books don't come out in paperback. Because if you don't sell your first run, which is how many books they print, for any of you who want to write a book, they don't ever. You, you don't ever get to get your books printed in paperback. So basically it means that your book did good enough to do a second run of printing. And that is like so freaking exciting to me. And it also means that the price of the book has really dropped if you want to get a paperback copy. So barrier of entry for a lot of people is going to be a lot easier. So that's really, really cool too. If you have not read the book yet and you're like, I'm hesitating because it's about tribe and I don't really think I need that. Or maybe I'm just like kind of turned off about that. I gotta be honest with you. It is about that. But most of the book is based on just life. It's life lessons, it's life agreements. If you own a business, if you are in relationships with any humans, I will tell you that the stuff that I teach in there on relationships is what has saved our business and helped me grow my business and helped me navigate every relationship in my life. And that's really what it's all about. Yes, it's about deepening connections and building your tribe, but it is about navigating relationships so that you can create whatever you want so you can be successful, so that you can move through life with way more ease and flow and grace without getting stuck on something someone said or something someone did. So if you haven't read it yet, it would mean the world to me if you took the leap of faith and grabbed a copy. And something that came to me today was this word. Because I know all of you have these projects and these dreams or just these parts of your personality that you are hiding. You know what it is if you don't. Let's think for three seconds on that part of you that when you're with your best friend, you're like, you fall in love with yourself. Like, that's what it's all about, right? Is when you're with those people who make you love who you are as well, because they're just so magical. And I want you to think of what that feeling is when you feel so yourself and you feel so safe and you feel so seen. Are you funny? Are you weird? Are you super smart? Do you get to apply your knowledge to that person? Do they really value your wisdom? What is that part of you that you wish you could show more of or you wish you could infuse into your business or you wish you could put out more online? What is that part of you? So as we're creating these projects and wanting to do more of these things in the world or show more of us, we tend to get really stuck in our old patterns, in our old way of being. Whether it's a story that we. We are telling ourselves or whether it's our old habits that just kind of keep us busy, that just keep us in the busy work. And as I was Thinking this how easy it is to just get in the inertia of life and the inertia of busy work, thinking that we're productive. I was like, that is so incredibly foductive. And I was like, foductive? That's such an awesome word for things that I do in my life. Like, is this productive or is this foductive? Meaning these are things that are masked as productivity that actually don't move the needle forward. It's one of those days where you just do busy work all day long and your head hits the pillow and you're like, I didn't actually move forward on the things that I wanted, yet I was busy all day. How does this get away from me? So something that I want you to do today is to write down a column that says faux ductive, and then one that says productive. And basically, foductive is, for me, anything that falls underneath other people's agenda. That would be spending my day checking emails and spending my day checking messages and spending my day commenting back on Instagram all day long when I know that I need to be doing something else. Even though these are important parts of your business. So something that I want to say, yes, they are important, but if there are things that you are skipping because of them, you may want to try to find somebody that you could even Pay, you know, $20 per hour to go on for one hour a day, or $10 per hour, whatever you could possibly find. Pay your niece, pay your nephew, pay your mom to just go on there and comment back. I'm not even kidding you. If you're like, I don't know. There is someone who would like to make $10 an hour in order to comment back. So you guys, literally, it's about really looking at your life and where you're spending your energy and is it moving you forward. So if you know that you need to move forward, you need to write that list out and tackle things one at a time. We can't just look at our productive list and be like, I'm fricking loser. All I do is foductive things. You literally need to be like, okay, what's one thing that I could do to take off my list here and move into the productive category. Now, let's just say you are starting a new business or you're starting to work in a network marketing company or whatever that looks like. There are some things that can be. That can feel, or you can trick yourself into thinking they're productive but are definitely productive. So Meaning there would be days where I'd be like, oh, you know what? Instead of like putting out posts in order to start a conversation with people, and instead of getting in my messages, this is when it is really important in your messages, right? When you're doing businesses like that. Instead of getting in my messages and making an appointment and closing someone just on an appointment, what I would do is I'd be like, oh, a new product came out. I need to read more about this. I need to do more research, I need to organize more. I need to set up my schedule so that I can just set up organization time and learning. No, like, that stuff is important, but at the same time, once you know enough to move forward, you literally will learn as you go. So if you can hear yourself being what, what you need to do is ask yourself, are you not moving forward on this other thing because you're afraid? And if the answer is yes, then you need to do the thing that you are afraid of. And every single day, I do something afraid. Every single day, I do something afraid. Listen to this again. Every single day, I do something afraid. I'm not afraid, you guys. If you think that you are waiting to not be afraid, you're fooling yourself. And you'll stay in the fuctive category. Like, get yourself out of there. Do something scary. And right now, if you're like, yeah, but Lori, I'm more afraid than you bullshit. Like, I'm just calling you out. I am one of the most anxious people that I know and I just keep moving forward and I shake and all of the things and sometimes I say weird stuff and sometimes I tell people I'm nervous and sometimes I get a panic attack and sometimes I tell people I'm having a panic attack. Like, can we just it normal that we all have anxiety and we all have nerves and I don't care what people think, I'm going to live my life. So get out of the fuductive care category if you are just stopping because you're feeling fear. And also there's this other part of me that's like, sometimes I stay in that faux ductive category. I'll stop saying the word if it's driving you crazy. Just kidding. I won't. Because I have to get through this podcast somehow. I really look at. You know, I have this thing in me and I think every. A lot of us do of like, fear of hard work. So sometimes I'll stay in that other in. In the faux category because I'm like, I'm really scared of the Hard work it's gonna take. For the productivity. For the. The productive category. I'm really scared of the phone calls that I have to make to be in the productive category. I'm really scared to get on the phone with that person to talk about what it looks like to build a business like this, because I have no idea. And I'm gonna sound so stupid. Like, be willing to sound stupid. I was just on a call yesterday with somebody who built a business as a model that I'm looking at, and I had to get on the phone and be like, hey, here's where I'm at. I literally, you know, and this was someone. I got set up on this call, this person who has this incredible business. And I'm at the very beginning of even talking about it. And I was like, hey, I. Thank you so much for your time. I literally know nothing about this. So can we just agree that. No. No question is stupid? Because I for sure know nothing. So I'm just gonna fire away. Does that work? And, you know, when I. When I start like that, it's like, instant freedom to not act like I know what I'm talking about. And something that Chris and I say or do is like, we got this from our friend Rob Murgatroy. Robin Kim Murgatroy. Stupid idea time or stupid conversation time or stupid question time. And it's like, just throw them all out there. Because you don't know what you don't know. And it's not. It's. I literally give more credit to the people who are willing to ask this stupid question than the people who sit there quiet and pretend they don't have one. Like, we're always so grateful for those people who stand up and actually ask the question. And you're like, oh, my God, I'm so glad she asked that. Cause I had that question, too. So write your columns and slowly take one off of the faux ductive category and start seeing. What is a needle moving activity? Really write down what's a needle moving activity? Even if it's tiny. So for me, it's making a phone call with people. And then after the phone call saying, what's the one action I can take from this? What's the one action I can take from this? What would be the first step, first logical step that I could take? If you don't know, ask somebody again. What's the first logical step you would take if you were me to move the needle forward? Please ask for help. Please ask for help. All right, so I did a podcast On Tuesday with my soul cycle instructor who also taught at the Bliss Project, who's also just an amazing, like freaking spiritual teacher. Her name is Gina Meers. She's just a freaking genius, you guys. And I was in her class today. So two days later, and she was talking about how being on the podcast had impacted her. And I asked her, you know, the normal earn your happy question at the end. If you had 30 seconds with someone in passing who was a total stranger and you asked them how to make yourself happy, what would you say? And she gave an answer. I don't remember the answer right now, but it was a beautiful answer. And she said that this question like stayed in her head. She was like, I don't remember what I said, but I slept on it. And the next day, morning I woke up and I wasn't quite awake yet. And it was like that time when your, you know, your soul talks to your thoughts talk to you and you can hear it. You're like conscious but partially unconscious. You know the best time when you actually like are hearing what your soul is saying. And she said the, the question was answered with another question. And the question that she heard during this time was she would say, are you willing to let go of what doesn't make you happy? Are you willing to let go of what doesn't make you happy?

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And I just thought this went so well with this podcast today because a lot of those things that we put in that other column, the faux ductive column, are things that are not making us happy. They're fake things making us feel productive. But we're actually spinning our wheels over and over and over, whether it's fake productivity or whether it is things that don't make us happy at all and we know it, right? Things that don't make us happy at all. And we know it. And we're just making excuses because it's easier to cling to the familiar unhappy than it is to move forward on the things that truly make us happy. And writing down what are, what are those things? Like, what actually does make you happy. And that's the conversation that she got into as well today. What actually does make you happy? And a lot of times it's the hard stuff. A lot of times it's the stuff that at first may not make us happy. And I was writing. I was writing a post yesterday, and as I was writing, because all my posts are basically just therapy for myself, I was talking about just productivity again, just things that. Things that actually, actually make us happy. And writing down, what exactly is that? And why does it not feel good in the beginning? So in the beginning of the things that make us happy, sometimes those things feel fricking awful. Or the things that free us at first come in the form of massive fear, panic, and feels like it's going to be the most torturous, most imprisoned thing of our life. And what we have to do is move through it. Because oftentimes the thing that's gonna make us feel the best is at first the thing that makes us feel the worst. And I know I talk about this on podcasts a lot, but it's just the truth. Like, should telling my truth really feel this terrible? Does doing the right thing, or is doing the right thing really supposed to feel this bad? And I think that's where I can often get stuck. Is doing the right thing thing really supposed to feel this bad? And Chris and I went for a walk yesterday, and I talked about this because we had a couple big choices to make and we wanted. Obviously, we're always trying to find and do the right thing, especially in business. And we just both felt sick to our stomach because we had some big things to do and say and things to take, you know, things to move past and hard conversations to have. And I said, why does doing the right thing always feel so awful at first? Why is it one of the hardest things in the world? And I just, you know, it's a real struggle for me to be confrontational sometimes. And sometimes it feels conflict, like you're approaching a conflict or you're in conflict. And it's when I'm in that feeling that I know I have freedom on the other side. And I'm getting more and more used to it. I just have to say, this is what it feels like to move through. This is what it feels like to move faster. Because if anything comes up in my life, I want to move through it fast. I want to approach it, I want to go head on, because I don't want to put it back in the bank where it sits there and it robs me of all of my energy, right? It's like opening up all those screens on the Internet. It's like, open another screen, open another screen. More conflict, more conflict. Another conversation that I'm not having. More truth. I'm not telling more people. I'm pleasing. I'm not letting those programs run anymore. I'm facing them head on. I'm looking at it and I'm clicking X. I'm getting out of it. No matter what it looks like, I'm going to do it in my most most truthful, authentic way, because I can't carry that shit around anymore. I'm just not going to. I can't live that life and neither can you. So, you guys, I'm sending you so much love today, and I hope that no matter where you're at, just even a little tiny piece of this is going to free you up. Because if anything else with this podcast, I want you to put down a little piece of baggage that you've been carrying. I want you to free yourself. I want you to tell the truth. I want you to get out of that relationship. I want you to do that scary thing. I want you to step into that thing. You can do it. You can do it. No matter what you've been told in your life, no matter what you're being told by yourself, you got to write that new story. You got to tell that new story. And I just, like, literally am so grateful for all of you. So I'm sending you so much love today and I love hearing what you took away from the episode. So if you want to share your takeaway with me, I would absolutely love to chat with you, to see you, respond back to you. And until next time, earn your happy. Bye, everyone. Thank you guys so much for spending this time with me on the earn your happy podcast. I am so glad that you stopped by. If you could take one second to share this episode with someone you think would love it, that would be absolutely amazing and we would be forever grateful. Also, please leave us a review if you feel so moved by going to itunes and leaving us an honest thought, an honest comment, Tell us what you think, tell us what you want to hear more of it would really help us out on our journey to helping thousands and thousands of people. Until then, don't forget to earn your happy. Thanks again, guys. Bye Bye, Sam.