732. Why Relationships Are a MUST for Your Dreams & Health

Because I want those long lasting relationships that really are meaningful that like those are my people for the rest of my life. And you find that the more you spread yourself then the less of those that you are able to have and maintain.

Welcome to the Earn your happy podcast. I'm Lori Harder, founder of Light Pink, best selling author, three time fitness world champion, and I'm a crazy, multi passionate entrepreneur. My journey has taken me everywhere from being a broke waitress, barista, retails associate and personal trainer with massive anxiety and no belief in myself to later becoming a multimillionaire in love with my life. In 2007, my husband and I lost everything. We found ourselves hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt at rock bottom. We had no ideas and I had no education to fall back on. This is when I found personal development and learned everything I could about business. Not by choice, but because I real was coming to save me. The conversations on this podcast are going to let you know that you're not.

Alone and that we all feel like we don't know what we're doing.

We're going to give you the tools to help you face your fears, take action, start your business, and grow those massive dreams that are keeping you up at night. It's time to create a life that you can't hide from and put so much on the line that your higher self is forced to come out. You're going to stop waiting for someone to approve of you and you're going to anoint yourself. Because I'm obsessed about building businesses that give women a platform, I want to feature you. So if you text the word podcast to 310-496-8363, you can get your questions answered on our Q and A segment along with a shout out. And if you rate, review and subscribe to this podcast, subscribe. We're choosing someone every month to get coached and featured on our show. It just might be you.

So let's get started. Hey everyone, welcome back to the show. It's time for another quickie because there's always a time to fit in inspiration. And I've been having so many different thoughts lately just about what makes a really good life. And I did a lot of research when I was coming out with my book A Tribe Called Bliss, which came out in 2017, which is so crazy, it's been so wild that it's been that long already. And I did a lot of research on what makes people happy. Right? Like what is this the book starts out talking about? Like what is this place called Bliss that we all kind of strive for this thing, this happiness thing that we talk so much about, this thing that this entire podcast is about. Are we supposed to be born happy? Are we supposed to just feel happy happy? Like, does it make us happy to go after our purpose? Does it. Like, what are the things that actually make us happy? And I dove really deep into the research of happiness and what are the things that make you happy? And should we even be striving for happiness? And I think the first thing that I want to say is that happiness isn't something that can just be. It's not something that is necessarily maintainable. Yes, you can choose happiness and you can feel happiness, but it actually. The more that you are able to just let feelings be visitors and understand that happiness is just another emotion that you're going to feel on the emotional spectrum, the more that you're not going to resist the other emotions. So happiness doesn't mean that that's the best emotion that you can be in a lot of times. There's neutrality, there's sadness, there's depression, there's anxiety. And these all actually can amplify the level in which you feel happiness. So remembering that happiness is not the actual achievement for the day, it's a good life. Like, it's actually just a full good life. And understanding that emotions are just visitors and that they're actually a good thing to feel, that a range of emotions is a good thing to feel. So I think sometimes when we just know that when we can stop striving for one emotion, we can stop resisting or wondering what's wrong. And I think that's a really big part of something that I learned, is that nothing is wrong if you're not always elated and you're not happy. It's like, it's just neutral, and that is just life. And I think when I understood that, it was like I stopped trying and wondering what was wrong, and I could just enjoy whatever emotion I was in. And I know that sounds weird, but it's like even enjoying, like, oh, wow, I'm not feeling happy. What does this have to offer me? And that made me feel a lot better to understand, like, what does this emotion have to offer me? What is this trying to show me? What is this lesson trying to say to me? Oh, I'm not enjoying this right now. Why is that? What is something I could do to maybe make this better or easier or more graceful? So I wanna just talk a little bit more about. I was researching again today. Cause I was just. I was curious on if any of the research had changed around what makes a person happy, what makes a good life. And there is a man who recorded a TED Talk. His name is Robert Waldinger. I believe that's how you say it. And you have to go watch his TED Talk if you haven't. It's been downloaded over 13 million times. I'm sure it's even more than that at this point. And his TED Talk is all about what makes a good lifelessons from the longest, longest listen to this longest study on happiness. And so I'm going to be quoting a lot of his work. So this is not my words, this is quoting a lot of his work. And he talks about how loneliness kills and he said it's as powerful as smoking or alcoholism. And talking about how people who find satisfaction in their relationships are going to, it's actually going to decrease the amount of pain that they feel. Physical pain, mental pain, depression, emotional pain. All of the things if they feel content within their relationships. And he talks about it's even sometimes not even if you, you know, in relationships where you even argue or maybe you don't get along the greatest, but you enjoy each other's company and you feel like you can rely on that person. Even those relationships are going to have better long term effects on your life and actually affect your, your health throughout our life. So it's going to have even a positive effect even if it's somebody who you tend to maybe bicker with a little bit, but you feel like you can rely on. He says good relationships don't just protect our bodies, they protect our brains. And those good relationships don't have to be smooth all of the time. So I thought that was so interesting because something that I want to bring up today is that it gets, it's really easy as we are going after our big dreams that I talk about all the time on this podcast, which I think is vitally important. But there's, there's also this other really, really important factor which is why I wrote my book, and that is people and relationships. And I wrote the book because I needed it. They say that we teach what we need the most, and that's definitely true in my case. You can probably go to my Instagram at any moment and understand what challenge I'm facing by what I'm writing about. Because that's how I teach and I learn through what I say and teach. So I definitely, you can pinpoint exactly where I'm at in life with what's pretty much on there. So are we making Our relationships a priority. Like we do our workouts because they have equal if not more health benefits on the relationship side than even a workout does, than even eating healthy they're talking about. This is probably the equivalent to it. So that is literally mind blowing to me. Especially the effects that it has on your brain that it shows for people into their 80s. So are you putting these things down every week like we do a workout? And this reminded me this morning because it's really easy for me to put my head down in this business because I am enjoying it and I do get to work with incredible people. But what about those relationships that I feel like I want to nurture for the rest of my life that I know that I'm going to have? Am I putting time into those? And you know, I don't have a lot of time for a lot of people, just to be completely honest. Like, I feel like, and you'll understand this, the more that you get into your purpose, the less time you have for just a bunch of people in your life. So you start to get more. You start to get more clear and more specific on who you want to invest in and who you want to spend time in. Because I want those long lasting relationships that really are meaningful, that like, those are my people for the rest of my life. And you find that the more you spread yourself then the less of those that you are able to have and maintain. So it's getting clear on those people and understanding sometimes in order to have these relationships that I'm talking about, you have to say no to a lot of people. And they're great people. And that's one of the hardest things that I've ever learned. I want to be friends with a lot of people. And the more that I get to do in this world, the more great people that I meet. But then the more I get spread thin and the more I feel empty and really depressed because I'm not dropping in deeply with any of them. Everyone, I just want to take a.

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So one of the hardest choices I've had to make with myself is to say what do you actually want? Do you want these long term relationships and who are those people you're going to invest in? I'm not saying I don't like go meet people and go out with them sometimes, but I can't put them on this roster of like who's in your front row for life, you know, who's going to be in that, that tight inner circle that you're going to be that ride or die with because you just don't have the emotional time, like the actual physical time to be able to do that. But so, so with saying all that, I think sometimes you have to get clear on who those people are and who mean a lot to you and how much time you want to spend. So you know, I some really close friends that I only see once or twice a year and to us that just works because when we drop in it's super meaningful. Maybe it's on a vacation we spend so much time together and that's just how that particular relationship works. And then I have a couple friends who I get to see a lot and it's only the couple. But man, those relationships have impacted my life so much because they're so reliable and they know everything about me and I share everything about them with myself and what's going on and, you know, the things that I would never share with other people. And that has been life changing to me. And I can tell that I have not only been able to perform better out in the world, but what they say about relationships a lot, this is not in this study, but the more that you are able to, like, have those people that you feel safe with that you can really root down with and share those things, the more risk you're actually willing to take on in the world. So we have to start looking at our relationships not as a nice to have, but as an actual resource, as an actual investment, as an actual necessity. If you think you're gonna go your big dreams and your goals and live a good life, you have to understand that you need to be investing in these things as much as you're investing in your business and your health. And I'm not saying 10 people. I'm literally saying one or two, you know, friends or maybe a couple family members that you're just really close with. And if you don't have this yet, one of the biggest reasons I wanted to come and record this podcast, if you're like, well, I don't have those things now, this is making me feel even worse. I didn't have them either until I started making it a priority. And, you know, I think one of the things that I had to understand about relationships as well, and I talk about this a lot in the book, is I had to let go of my expectations in order to even allow myself to get close to these people. I had to learn that there's no perfect relationship I'm talking about there's no perfect partner, there's no perfect spouse, There is no perfect best friend. We all have flaws, and no one person is going to be your everything. That's why it's important to have relationships, right? That's why it's important to have business relationships. Because maybe your partner's not going to be on your business team all the time. Like, maybe they're going to be the best person to support your business, but maybe not be the person you're gonna talk about. Those plans and integration and all of those things. And the way that I was able to get really close to people and have these very close people in my life is I had to let go of my checklist. I didn't even know I had it. And I'm being super vulnerable by telling you I had a best friend checklist. She had to like all the same things as me. She had to wanna do all the same things. She had to not be too needy. She had to be building something huge as well. You know, I had these checklists in my mind that. But it's like nobody's going to ever measure up to all of these things because number one, I wouldn't even want that. It'd be so boring. I can spend time with myself if I want those things. And now I understand that sometimes the most different people are sometimes the best match for me because I learn the most from them and get such a completely different insight. But I had to let go of my expectations of what I thought that I wanted in order to make room for what I really needed. And I started listening instead. And I started saying, what does this person have to offer me and how do I feel around this person and how can I become really interested, interested in what this person has to say? And don't get me wrong, there's definitely something about chemistry. There's definitely. If there's zero chemistry there, you may not want to keep on going back to something that just doesn't feel good. But if something feels good and you're interested and it feels pretty easy, you might want to keep some of your interest there and continue to go back. Because relationships build over time. It's not like what we see where it's just like, oh great, these people are best friends now. It's like we. When you think about the people that you became really good friends with over your life for how people become good friends, if you don't have one of those good friends yet. But I, I didn't really get really great friends until my 30s, you guys, if I'm being completely honest, with the.

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I just, I didn't know what a good friend was and I had a lot of people, kept a lot of people in my life that I was just afraid of losing or who I believed made me feel a certain way or look a certain way. And that wasn't. That wasn't a great thing to base friendships on. So I had to figure out what that was. So if you don't have that person yet, I just want to say you can develop these friendships, but they take time. It's not like how it used to be, or not even how it used to be, but it's not how it might appear to you that people just get these best friends. People become friends with people because they went through a four year college experience, right? Because it was a roommate that they just were through the hard times, the good times, the bad times, the crazy times, they were there for all the little things that, that most people don't know. And that's what makes a good friend. It's not necessarily that you just drop in and you're like, wow, that was the best night ever. Sometimes it's like that can create an expectation that you feel like you have to live up to, and that can be challenging, right? So just really releasing your expectations around all of it in order to make room for these beautiful people who are gonna help you take more risks in life, feel safer in life, feel like you're not losing everything if your dream doesn't happen. Like, we have to remember the importance of these friendships. They are protection. They are protection not only for our mental health, but our actual health and our brain. So I just wanna remind you to schedule that in. And if you don't have these friends yet, it takes work. And to schedule in the work, just like building a business, you have to schedule in finding these people. What does that look like for you? And this is not pushing my book, but I wrote a whole book on it. So if you're like, I don't even know where to start, I wrote the book on that because this was so important to me because I was so introverted and I struggled with this so hard and I didn't, I didn't feel safe and I didn't feel like I had a great place to land. And I felt like I was relying only on my husband, which was not helping in our relationship. It was putting a lot of pressure on him. And I was feeling like, you know, I was wanting him to be my everything. So of course he was disappointing me when he couldn't be, because that's not how this works. So now it's like, I can let him be him. I can let him thrive in what he thrives in, and I can appreciate him even more as a human being and appreciate all my friends more because I can let them be them and know they're not supposed to fill in every gap in my life or show up and be everything that I want on this checklist. They can just be great at being them. And I can so appreciate that in their zones of genius. Maybe one is a great friend who makes me take action. Maybe one is a great friend who makes me, you know, be more just, like, crazy in my life. Maybe one is a great friend who really, really just like, stimulates my intellectual side. Maybe one is a great friend who's just great for me in business. Maybe one is a great friend because I just like going and having wine and telling jokes with this person, you know, so just releasing, releasing and letting know that in order to create this beautiful thing we call relationships in our life, it's gonna take a lot of work, but it's worth it. It's so worth it because this is what makes a great life. So I just wanna send you guys so much love and say thank you so much for allowing me to have a space where I can talk to you, where I can learn, where I can grow, where I can connect with you. And I'm just so grateful for this podcast. So I'd love to hear your takeaway and where you're at with all of this and just tag me on Instagram. And of course, it always means the world when you go rate and review the show because it helps it get out there. So until next time, earn your happy. Bye, everyone. Sam.