560. Life-changing perspective shifts

It's about moving on and carrying a positive memory with me of them. Like, how did his life change me and impact me? And how am I going to carry a part of him that's positive with me and actually keep a piece of him into my personality? 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.

All right, we're back. And it has been a minute.

It has. And He Said, she said has been off the air for about a month. And I really think it's important for us to not only talk about why, but to also give people the opportunity to give themselves some grace if they need some space.

Yeah. So for those of you listening that don't know, we were gone for seven weeks. We just got back yesterday, and it was really a very unexpected reason that we were gone. So first we left because a lot of the rioting that was going on in LA was literally on our street, literally, you know, crushing Santa Monica and the block that we are on here. So we left because we didn't want to, you know, be subject to some of the stuff that came along with the rioting. But then when we were gone, what happened was we got a call and my dad, who I am super close to, passed away completely unexpectedly. You know, 72 years old, young, vibrant, just totally unexpectedly. And so we had to drop what we were doing and rush up to Wisconsin to be with my mom and to take care of all the plans and everything that went on. And those two things together turned into seven weeks away from home completely unexpectedly, where we had to, you know, interrupt our life and just figure things out. And it turned out to be a really a beautiful blessing of different perspective.

Yeah. Talk about the ups and downs and how something so painful can also bring beautiful things. But truly, one of the most amazing men has been taken from us way too soon. Definitely one of your best friends, someone who you were getting even closer to as the years were going by. Someone who you would spend four Months of every winter with bike riding, just about every day we would see them. And someone who's given us so much wisdom. What are some of the. Just, just real quick, what were some of the favorite lessons from your dad or just some of the things that he left with you or taught you?

I mean, first and foremost, it has to be how positive he was. He was positive when he woke up, he was positive when he went to sleep. The most positive, positive, all the time in between, and this is one of my greatest takeaways, is I am by default a very, very positive person. And a lot of that or most of that comes from my dad's example. And it makes everything in your life that much sweeter when you're positive. We see with a positive default instead of a negative default. It makes possibility show up that much more when you see everything with a positive default instead of a negative default. And I mean, the bottom line is people just want to be around someone who is optimistic and positive and has a can do attitude way more than they want to be around the negative Nancy, sorry if your name is Nancy, but the negative person who's always going to find what's wrong with the situation. And so I'm really grateful for that gift. What, what did he give you?

Oh, you know, I mean, there. It's a laundry list. We've sat around and talked about so many of the gifts and we haven't even covered half of them over the past month of, you know, his passing. But I can honestly say I've never heard him complain once. And he did everything for everyone and lived for. He lived for everyone. He couldn't wait to do something for us to make sure we were all having good, a good time. Whether that was when he had bought the boat a while back because he knew we all wanted to get on the water and go wakeboarding and go water skiing, or whether he was, you know, remodeling the home because he knew that we wanted a sun deck or somewhere we could sit outside, or whether he was building a dock or put. Installing a dock because he knew that he could create these special family moments or just when he would be out here in the winter just constantly asking what he could do, what could he fix live to serve. And. And his sentence was always, that's what we do. That's what we do.

Doesn't matter what you do for things like, oh my God, I can't believe you worked on this all day. Thank you so much. He just, that's what we do. And that's what he meant about family, he was so family centered that he made the family motto, that's what we do. And now we're all here for each other, and we really live by that. No matter what help the family needs, you know, whoever's strength that is, they jump right in. And it's just this. This attitude of that's what we do.

You know, And I think, honestly, just adopt. Adopting that, of that's what we do. Even through all of the RVing on the way home when we had so many different things go wrong, I literally just kept thinking like, this is what we do. Like, you just problem solve and you move through it. You don't get pissed, you don't get aggravated. You know, you just step up, you show up. And that's what. That's what we do means to me, as I took it from him, is no matter. Even with this podcast, even with working sometimes, even with, you know, having to show up in really challenging things, instead of being like, oh, this is hard, it's kind of like, that's what we do. It's your identity. You just show up. And also, it's just. It's a beautiful reminder that the resistance is typically the thing that's harder than actually doing the thing. And I think for him, that's what it always was. He just found joy in just pouring himself into the thing.

Yeah, for sure. So aside from the lessons from dad, because like you said, there's numerous lessons, what'd you Learn about your 7 weeks of instantly hitting the off switch on your life and all of a sudden finding the seven weeks where we didn't think we would ever be able to find that long, where we're not working, where we're not doing the daily do that we do all the time, we found some silver linings in it.

I think the biggest thing, if I'm going back to the beginning, is the realization that. That the stress in our life is a choice. I'm not saying you don't have problems. I'm not saying that it's not real and there isn't a lot going on in the world, but the choice to continue focusing on it is up to us. Because at any given moment, no matter how stressful your life is, as long as nobody's, you know, physically pulling you out of your house or, you know, beating you down or something like absolutely crazy, if you are just standing still or listening to this podcast and you have the ability to go out into the forest or Mother Nature or outside or sit on your front lawn or your porch or whatever that is, and let go of the thoughts that are holding you hostage. You don't have to be in a state of panic or frenzy at all times, and your nervous system doesn't have to be on fight mode at all times. And it's really the thoughts. And I know that this is what both of our podcasts are always about, is so much the thoughts that we're thinking. So that was huge to me to observe how my brain was going crazy at first. Like, what am I gonna do? I feel too sad to even say anything. I don't even know what to say. Is life gonna, like, is our job, you know, our business is gonna be okay? Are things gonna actually happen? Is my business stalled? What's going on? And it was like, the second that I started to learn, like, these thoughts that I'm feeling so stressed out by, I don't have to think them. I could go out on the boat and just be on the lake and realize that they didn't have to come with me. Like, you can go and do some of the things and enjoy these smaller things. And that's what it really made me realize is when someone is torn away from you who you were absolutely in love with and changed your life, that there's not a whole lot that feels like matters. For a certain period of time, you kind of start questioning everything. And one of the biggest things for me was I questioned my stress level or my ner, like, even having my nervous system just always be anxious. And I thought, what am I doing to myself? Like, what really matters? What am I making matter? That doesn't feel good right now? That actually may not matter at all. So that was the biggest. The biggest thing for me.

You know, what stood out for me having seven weeks away was when we got back, the house was in even better shape than when we left it. The businesses were in outstanding shape. Everything kept moving forward. Light pink, Your drink company kept moving forward without you and me doing the moving forward of the things mostly. And the biggest takeaway was if you really want to be able to step away from your businesses and your normal life, a lot of being able to do that is going to have to do with who you've set up around you in your life. And this is not new news. You've heard this before, but, boy, did we actually get to live this out. Our team that kept the wheels on the bus right down to my brother and Jackie, that picked up the slack when you and I needed slack to be picked up. Susie, our amazing housekeeper and House manager who stayed and lived at this house for seven weeks with her family. And we came back, we're like, oh, my God, she cleaned the grout. She did, like, things that, you know, she literally made the house better than.

When we left every day. She scrubbed the shower head.

It's. She's absolutely amazing. And so if you surround yourself with the right people, they will absolutely lift you up when you need an extended timeout. It doesn't have to mean that your business or your life is going to fall apart. It should actually mean that it stays together and keeps moving forward. And so I'm just so grateful that we did assemble the right people in our life that allowed us, without notice, to hit the off switch and not come back for seven weeks.

Yeah. I think my second one is that it doesn't have to be hard and things can actually be happening for you while you are away and recharging. That the step away and the leaving and the perspective shift that you get when you are stepping away and the space is actually not just a good thing. It is a requirement. And it is not going to feel good. You're going to feel addicted to the doing and to the moving things forward. But I want to share a perspective that I heard the other day. And it is that we are kind of in this space of unknowing, in this space of kind of having this void of uncertainty. And it's not that it's new because of what's going on. It's always been there, except we, you know, and in this. Within this space, in this void, is kind of like what God or the universe is going to already be doing because of the seeds that you've planted, the thoughts you're thinking, the people you're around, the energy that you're holding. So if that's all been positive, certain things are going to happen and come your way no matter how much you fill your schedule. So I just observed that all of the seeds that I had planted were still sprouting, despite me not having a completely packed schedule and actually living my life and giving it space. So what would happen is over this period of time where normally I would have been waiting for something or worried about this meeting or worrying something would fall through. I just kept saying, God, I'm throwing this in your hands. This is all in your hands right now. Because I have no control and I truly can't focus on certain things. So I'm leaving it up to you to. To just take care of this for right now. Because I know that I'VE done all the right things, but I'm just gonna put this in your hands and it was absolutely amazing to watch how I was able to go and be with family and live life and connect really deeply and be in nature and things still happened. Now would those things have happened back home? Totally still would have happened back home even if I was just as busy. But I was observing how it doesn't have to be hard. Maybe we don't have to constantly fill our schedules with everything so that we productive.

Yeah. Boy am I guilty of that.

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I mean, I here's my big realization that you don't have to be as busy as you allow yourself or set yourself up to be in order to continue to move the needle forward. And I mean, I came back like rethinking everything. And I think it's good to rethink everything every at least once a year for sure, not once every two years. Rethinking what I want to do and how often I want to do it and in what way I want to do it, where I want to live, how I want to spend my fun time and my free time, what things I want or what things I don't want. All of that got radically rethought and is being rethought as we speak right now. And it's good to get those perspective shifts to get those calls where you're like, wait, life is really short. How do I really want to spend this life? And where and with whom do I really want to spend this life? Because you can really be stuck in a good life. But what if there's a great version of that life? And I know we talk about that a lot. I'd say one more big takeaway was this. For anyone out there that needs to hear it, you can be simultaneously sad and happy at the same time, or you can simultaneously have a tragic event or two and still have a happy life. Or happy days, happy weeks, happy months at the same time. There was this really weird guilt I felt a few weeks into us being home where we were out wakeboarding every single night at sunset. And we were with our loved ones, having a blast. And we were laughing and telling stories. We were having fun. We ended up having, we all voted unanimously, the best summer of our life so far that was brought together by tragedy.

He gifted us that.

Right. And I had such guilt around. Wait a minute. I'm supposed to be sad or I'm supposed to be down or I'm supposed to be mourning or I'm supposed to be doing this or that, when really I was really just having a really great summer with sad moments. Right? Lots of sad moments each day. But overall, this is the best summer I can remember. And hey, we're only halfway through, so that's good. So I thought that was a really interesting lesson that you can simultaneously be down and out, yet still wildly happy. You can simultaneously have a tragic event or tragic events and still be wildly happy. You can simultaneously be sad for moments. But overall, expect a happy day, week and month out of yourself.

Yeah. And you know, grief is different for every single person. Just like stress is different for every single person. Grief is really interesting because it's just like sets of. Of waves in the ocean. It's like all of a sudden it'll just hit you and it will freaking take you down. Like some of us, it would be all different times for all of us, and someone would just burst out crying and the other person would maybe be having like an okay moment and we would all just try to support each other in that way. And I also just like everything. It's so interesting. And this is not to like, bypass grieving whatsoever, but, you know, when you are in a grieving period and you lose someone and your life has dramatically changed, it's never going to look the same. Your holidays that you adore and, you know, love and plan for and, you know, these special moments that we. We are an extremely close family. It's. It's different. It's different. And you mourn the loss not only of the person, but of all of those moments that you were looking forward to. A way of life, a way of being, a way of feeling of certainty in your life. And, you know, with grief, it's kind of like it's what you focus on. There are a lot of things that sometimes we would all go in these different spirals that were, you know, you need to go on them, but you also shouldn't necessarily stay on them for a super long period of time, otherwise you will never. It's hard to come back from them when you are focusing on maybe, you know, thinking of something really negative, thinking of the pain, thinking of their last moments, thinking of, you know, just the really tragic, horrible thoughts that aren't necessarily going to help you get into a place where you actually remember good memories, where you actually can move on with your life and keep them with you. So I think it's, you know, grief is strange because we're all doing it in a different way. And I know for me, it's not about, like, moving on and getting past them. It's about moving on and carrying a positive memory with me of them. Like, how did his life change me and impact me? And how am I gonna carry a part of him that's positive with me and actually keep a piece of him into my personality? Like, I'm actually adopting parts of him into who I am and my personality. And that's how you make people live on, is you become the part of them, and you keep that part of them alive through you.

Yeah. And I think that's really maybe to put a bow on this thing. Maybe that's the punchline. I think one of the goals of life is to collect people and collect moments and collect lessons, and then live and embody the best parts of those people, the best parts of those moments, the best parts of those lessons, so that you can then pass those on to somebody else who needs them. And that's really the giant, intertwined world that we're supposed to live in. Everybody collecting the best parts from each other and sharing them with the next person who's looking for those best parts to be influenced into their life. And if we all just do that, and I think everyone's gonna turn out pretty damn good.

Oh, my God, I love that. That's so beautiful. All right, you guys. Well, if you love this episode, what we would love is if you would just tag us and let us know what your takeaway was, because I really feel like we are going to be able to pass on parts of your dad, William Harder, to everybody who's been listening, and maybe you will take a piece of his personality into your life and send it out to other people. And I know that no matter what, anyone who got to meet or be around, your dad was changed forever. They called him a so much fun, brilliant, amazing, beautiful man. So, you guys, until next time, earn your happy and just follow Chris harder.

I love it. Thanks, guys. Bye. Bye.

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 and 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. And until then, don't forget to earn your happy. Thanks again guys. Bye bye.