562. Question your life often

You have to be in a good place. That's why so many people get their great ideas on runs, AKA me, or in the shower or in the bathroom. I mean, come on. It's important, guys. It's like, you know, you need to be making sure that you're doing things that make yourself feel better.

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 of 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 podcast. It's time for another quickie, because there's always time to fit in inspiration, and.

You'Re finding it right now.

Now, hopefully I can deliver on my end of offering inspiration. We shall see. All right, so I have spent a month and a half, I really just want to say two months, because I'm pretty sure we were gone for almost two months on the road and in Wisconsin and then across country on an RV trip to get back home. And some of you don't know what I was doing or why because you don't follow on social media or maybe you've missed some of the podcasts, but we've had some really big life changes over here. And when I say big, I mean massive. And just to update all of you, we got a call a month and a half ago that my husband's father, who is his best friend and is my second father, passed away suddenly. And this man was the most incredible man, my husband's best friend, and he was so healthy, it was such a shock. He went bike riding sometimes 15, 20 miles in a day, was working on his home, remodeling, was in the middle of remodeling and updating all of these different projects on his home that they had just moved into on the lake last year. And they come out and visit us for four months every single winter. And with COVID this last winter, we actually got to spend some seriously beautiful time together. So it was such a gift on all of the amazing evenings that we had spent together, and we saw each other just about every single day. For the three to four months that they were here. And we had no idea what that would mean to us now. So some of us think that we are in a really challenging time, and we are, but there's also gifts that are being offered that we would have not had that experience if it wasn't for something that was so challenging. We wouldn't have had these incredible memories of spending so much time together and becoming closer than we'd ever become and then saying our last goodbye. We had no idea that we were saying it. So that's another lesson right there. You never ever know. And I still remember it so clearly, the last goodbye. So with that said, that's where we were. We got the call that he had suddenly passed and we immediately flew home and we had to take the dogs with us. So we actually had the ability, because of, you know, everything that we talk about, and especially what my husband talks about with money and abundance and making sure that, you know that you are the person who has the ability to make money. We were. We were able to book a private flight home with the dogs to get home, or we wouldn't have been home that day. It would have probably taken us a while to get home since there were no flights with COVID and everything going on. So we probably wouldn't have been home for a week. And that was something that was just a huge aha moment of why I believe it's so important to be able to make money and do the thing that you want to do and shift your mindset around money. And so we went home and we spent a ton of time there, not only working on projects, because like I said, he was in the middle of all of these different home projects. They had purchased a hundred year old log cabin. And as you can imagine, with a 100-year-old log cabin, there is a lot of different things you can do or that you need to do. So we went home to kind of make sure that his mother was okay and that we could work on the house and take care of some different things so that she would be okay to stay there and live there on her own and take care of herself and make sure that she has the time to grieve. And we were all together as a family, and my family is there as well. It was a really, really beautiful and painful and challenging and amazing time all at once. And I don't even know where to begin with the lessons and the things that have come out of this. I actually haven't been able to podcast because while there was so much going on. It just. It's like winter and it's like when you. You know, there's so much going on underneath, but it's just bleak on top. Like it's just nothingness. And it feels cold and empty and hollow and avoid. And there was nothing there. There weren't even words. And a huge thing that I had to do for myself was to let go of the stress of worrying, are people waiting for this? Is this going to be something that, you know people are going to stop listening or. I'm not showing up for people. I always show up for people watching how the stories that I didn't even know that I had were popping up because of giving myself grace and space to not come on the podcast. And there were quite a few moments where I was going to force myself past that feeling of not having anything to say, of feeling terribly of the guilt, of having this feeling of needing to record be this mountain every single day. And I was like, you know what? I can't. I'm not gonna do this to myself. And if I know one thing about me, it's better if I just wait until I actually have something to say instead of forcing something out that's not going to add value and could come from a really not nice place. It just a dark place, right? Like a place where I haven't even given myself the chance to work through emotions. And I didn't want to share from that place because I didn't even want to. I wanted to give myself space to just be without having to show up for anyone and just see what was actually even happening. And there's so much happening for all of us right now. I know that that version for me was the loss of somebody, but I know that the grieving that so many of you are going through is, you know, some of you have lost people during this time. The loss of jobs, the loss of your identity, the loss of a life of what you once thought you were going to have, the. Of a future you once thought you were going to have. And I think it's really important that we all observe that while, yes, there has been a loss, nothing has ever actually been what we think. It's all been sort of this illusion of certainty that something is going to happen or we are going to have that person forever, when in all actuality, none of those things are real and permanent. So we have to constantly be living in a state of gratitude and also allowing in grace. I'm not saying to skip over when things are happening that are negative like we are in a pandemic. We are in some serious issues with how we are facing, you know, racism and equality and so many other things that are happening in the world. So there are some real issues going on. But also we have to be aware that we are able to maybe start focusing or making these worlds that aren't fully real or true, and we are choosing to live in them and stay in them and stay in this state of panic or stress. And we know that when we're in those states, no solutions come. We talk about this a lot on this podcast because in order to create a beautiful future or beautiful anything, like Tony Robbins says, in order to create a beautiful life, you have to be in a beautiful state first. So I don't know about you, but I've never gotten a really great idea when I'm in the middle of a fight or when I'm comparing myself or when I'm pissed off at someone, or when I'm scrolling Instagram judging other people. I've never been like, oh my God, ding, ding, ding.

I have this incredible life changing idea and this is what I should be.

Doing when I'm like, oh my God, I hate her. What is she doing? It's just not how it works. You have to be in a good place. That's why so many people get their great ideas on runs, AKA me, or in the shower or in the bathroom. I mean, come on, you're not feeling too bad when you are in a hot shower, on a run or going to the bathroom regularly. It's important, guys. It's like, you know, you need to be making sure that you're doing things that make yourself feel better.

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Oh, I have so many things and that I will be sharing, I think one episode by one episode. And I came on here really thinking I was going to share something about how things don't have to be as hard as we make them, and it turned into something completely different. But I will tell you that I noticed my biggest story was that I needed to be working all of the time and I needed to be busy in order for things with this company to be moving forward. And instead, what I learned is that there are certain things in life that if you're sowing seeds and meeting people and connecting and energetically staying in a good place around it and giving it up to God. If you truly pray and give it up to God, while also having taken, you know, major action steps and doing certain things that maybe it doesn't have to be as hard or as busy as you think it does. That was a huge aha moment for me. And I watched how things moved forward and important calls happened and my day wasn't very busy. You know, I got to spend a lot of time with family. I got to spend a lot of time living. And I haven't done that in a very, very long time, if not ever since I was a kid. I actually feel like I had like a summer and I can't remember ever taking that much time to be present and simultaneously, why things were incredibly painful and grief was overwhelming at times for everyone. And to be in such a heavy hearted house while also living so beautifully and connecting deeply with the people around you. Not only did I realize things don't have to be as hard or as busy as we make them, but I also realized that grief and bliss exist on the same highway. And it's just really, really interesting the emotions and guilt and shame feelings we can put in our life if we're number one not working as hard as we think we should, or number two feeling joy within a very sad time.

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So just things to question and things that I am sharing and I'm not even completely to the other side of any answer. So please don't expect any sort of intelligent sort of theory to come out of me for a very long time, if not ever. I mean, come on guys, it's me. There's probably not going to be something that's going to be, you know, so steadfast that it's going to last without me then contradicting myself once again. Because that's what being human is. And this show is all about full grace to full feel one way one day and feel a different way the next day because of something that's changed or something that's happened. So I guess if anything I say permission to acknowledge and be and observe and question everything that you're feeling and thinking. And if you haven't changed up your environment for a while, I'm telling you that what you think is real right now and the stories that you are in and the feelings you're feeling, they are not real. You know, no matter what, they're not permanent. Why don't I I don't want to not validate a feeling. So what I do want to say is it's not that it's not real, it's that there is an alternate life out there that's happening that you can also choose and an alternate feeling that's going on in this very moment that you can also choose. But because of the energy that you're in, the things you're reading, the people you're around, and you have not shaken up that energy, it is going to give you more of the same. So by me not having any control over my day every single, single day, being in an RV that had a million different breakdowns, oh, my God, that's a whole other story. And being under the roof with six people every single day in a small home and having no control over how other people are responding or acting, having no control over where I'm going to take my calls or record podcasts, having no good equipment, just not being able to make anything the way that I was would like it. That completely shifted me into a place where I tapped into a new level of just understanding and seeing how we create stress in our life that is not important. How we can create a spiral of. You know, there could have been a million different scenarios of our entire family fighting over and over again or creating drama or blame or creating a lot more grief or sadness than there needed to be. But we didn't choose that. There could have been a million moments where we did choose that, and we all stopped ourselves and we chose something better to create. What I will go down in history remembering as one of the most beautiful summers, despite how painful everything was, because it really is always a choice of what you are doing and thinking and choosing. So you have another option to be choosing right now, no matter where you are. And this is me preaching to me right now. I just record it. And I want to send you guys so much love. And I would love to hear maybe if this opened anything up for you, did you get any moments of questioning something in your life or thinking that a new possibility could open for you or a new shift or you could change something? I would love to hear about it. You guys know that I really want to see who I'm talking to, and the best way to do that is through your Instagram stories or tags or whatever that is. So I so appreciate you guys. And I will be unpacking all of this, not just my rv, but my emotions, for the next however long. So I'm sending you guys a ton of love, maybe more on the RV in our next episodes. But I can tell you that I'm kind of in love with being in a house on wheels, despite how crazy the problems can be. But those are adventures for another time. It's going to be great, y'. All. Okay? And I spent a lot of time in Texas so or in in the South. So I'm going to be also having a fake Texas accent because that was the entire trip I was either a Midwest accent or a Texas accent. Okay, now I'm just rambling. All right, sending you guys love. Until next time, earn your happy thank you guys so much.

Thank you 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. Until then, don't forget to earn your happy. Thanks again guys.

Bye bye.