784. Heal Your Past and Build Your Future with Lacey Johnson's Radical Life Renovation

You can always transform your pain or your trauma into your power source. And I have since. I absolutely have.

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 my myself to later becoming a multi millionaire 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 realized no one was coming to save me. The conversations on this podcast are going to let you know that you 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 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, we're choosing someone every month to get coached and featured on our show. It just might be you. So let's get started. Welcome back to the show. I would love for you to do me a huge favor if you have ever gotten any value from this podcast. If you right now would go to lightpink.com and just put your email in so that I can start talking to you there. Because we are going to have some of the most amazing newsletters with light pink guides and these are going to be super exclusive guides that are going to give you coupons to incredible female products, female owned businesses that you cannot get anywhere else. Also experiences that you're not going to want to miss out on. I'm telling you, I have 54 investors. We are all working behind the scenes to make this such an incredible experience and something that you really want to be a Part of it's so much more than a drink. And we are going to be opening doors left and right for for women. So go to lightpink.com right now and just type your email in. I'm gonna love seeing it pop up in there, you guys. I'm gonna see all the listeners. So today on the podcast I have someone who is so incredible. I absolutely love her. She is a wordsmith. Every time she speaks, it's just like honey literally oozing out of her mouth. You guys, for real, she's coming out with a book very soon that I'm gonna devour every single word. And it is my dear friend, Lacey Johnson. She's a doting wife and mom, belief enthusiast and multi passionate award winning journalist who sparks conversations that unlock hearts, energize minds and celebrate the human experience. Having worked with a fascinating range of famed entrepreneurs, spiritual thought leaders and top of mental health professionals including Deepak Chopra, Damon John, Gabby Bernstein and Dr. Caroline Leaf, her words can be read in a collective of top magazines and media sources, including you ready, oprah.com, cosmopolitan, Marie Claire, Popsugar, oh, the Oprah Magazine, Women's Day and more. Many of which have been syndicated by Apple News, MSN and Yahoo millions of times. I'm telling you, you guys, this woman is one of the best writers I've ever read. She has a deep intrigue for human beings, a fiery passion for smacking her readers in the face with comfort and truth. She calls upon her vaults of compelling experiences such as a family wide tragedy in early childhood, lifelong grief, domestic violence and young adulthood, infertility, a collective of personal and professional heartbreaks, and a near death experience. A year ago, writing and reporting boldly in an effort to unlock possibility and invite epiphany. While in the process of finishing a massive book project about transforming pain and setbacks into providence and power. She recently released a digital workbook as a prelude to it entitled the Radical Life Renovation, which is a guided program to anchor in joy, explode with confidence and redesign your future that's garnering rave reviews, grateful shares and cheerful praise from readers. So let's get into the podcast and if you are obsessed with her like I am, we did do one other podcast on here that was absolutely amazing. That goes into her entire backstory. But let's start out right now with where she presently is. Here we go. Lacey, I am so excited to have you back on the show. Life has really, really, really happened since we have last talked and since you were last at my house in Santa Monica. We have had some major life changes, and you especially have had some major life changes. And I just want to say I'm so happy to be reconnected to you. And you are just that person who I could listen to for hours. You're one of the best writers I've ever met. I'm so excited that you're coming out with a book and that you have some amazing things for everybody to offer today. But I would just love to hear first of all, her. And I just, like, did this crazy drop in for 10 minutes right before this covered a lot of ground. And Lacy, I'd love for you to just share with everyone, you know, if you want the full interview, I am going to link it because you really gave a lot of your incredible background and all of the things that you've been through in your life. So this is going to be an update of the last year of your life, of everything that you've been through. So can you kind of share where we left off? I said goodbye in Santa Monica. You had left them off.

Oh, my God. And then what? Yeah, that was. Well, that was December. We were right on the cusp of a global pandemic and we did not know it. We had no idea how much we were about to change, which. So I think. So I think it's been. And I don't want to offend anyone, but I think it's been rather remarkable. Just the beauty, the profound illumination that everyone has experienced. But as we talked about in the last interview, I'm certainly no stranger to trauma. I've experienced a lot of trauma in my life. When I was six years old, I had experienced a family wide tragedy. We had a business that burnt up and I lost my mom and my grandma and my two aunts. And then I experienced four years of infertility before I had my daughter. And just, you know, a lot of things. And last fall in September, I actually was run over in a parking lot by a car and was about an inch from death.

Oh, my gosh.

So just a little bit more of life giving me so much beauty on the other side of trauma. I feel like I practically have a PhD in trauma at this point.

I can only. I can only imagine. I know when you first shared your story on my podcast, I literally couldn't fathom the woman standing before me had this happen because you. Well, and it also made complete sense how you can speak so just beautifully into where people are at and also just sit with them with where they're at. You are such a brilliant Just comfort, like, complete comfort and being able to be super truthful with people and also seeing the, like, shifting perspective into how this can be, you know, their. Maybe their greatest power from that place. So I would love to. If we could just back up into, you know, when that happened. Where were you? You said you were with your daughter. Can you share with us, like, how it happened and then what happened, you know, when you woke up and realized that this even happened to you?

Yeah, absolutely. So it was last September, was the day that my daughter turned 18 months, was a gorgeous, gorgeous late summer, early fall Saturday. And it was about, I guess, seven months or so since COVID had sort of shoved us all into this place of isolation and weirdness. And I hadn't taken her anywhere really in so long. And it was just one of those days. It was just absolutely gorgeous. There's a soft breeze of a nearing fall, and I thought, you know, we're gonna go venture to the mall. And interestingly, I chose. It was kind of hilarious. I chose to take our jogger stroller, which is like a Flintstone size, like, massive stroller, because I thought, well, that'll sort of cocoon her. I mean, it'll look ridiculous in the mall, but it'll be. It's huge. And I don't have to worry so much. You know, I can limit exposure. So thank God I did that. I decided that on a whim. And we got out of the car. I put her baby doll and her juice cup and her snacks and strapped her in tightly and just pushing her through the parking lot to enter the mall. And all of a sudden, I felt this monstrous force shove me, like, from my back, shove me to the pavement and crush my shoulder, arm and hand. And then with the front tire, and then the back tire stopped about an inch from my skull, maybe an inch and a half. And interestingly, in that moment, and I. This is. I'm a writer, but I struggle to really describe what I really do. Chase the words to describe what this was like. And I fail every time. But in my head, I thought I said in my head, oh, my God. Oh, my God, I'm about to die. And something responded so with such authority, not audibly, there was no, like, audible voice, but something with just peaceful authority said, no, you're not. Not today. And the car just slammed to a stop.

Oh, my God.

And I was swallowed completely under the car from head to toe. I was under the car. It was a RAV4, Toyota RAV4. So it was slightly elevated, and so it didn't actually even go over my body. It was about. I mean, barely above my body, but it did crush. It went completely over my shoulder. I mean, very close to like my neck, you know, and all of that. And then whenever I sort of came to, I heard my daughter screams just fill the air. I had to slide on my stomach on the gravel, like on the. In the rocks completely to get out from under the car because I was completely swallowed by the car, not knowing what I was going to find. I had no idea. Well, I found her a few feet away, overturned, still strapped in tightly, perfectly intact, few superficial scratches on her face. And everyone was screaming. I mean, there was people. They thought they had just watched someone's mother be killed before their eyes. I mean, there were people weeping and freaking out. It was a 17 year old. I found this out later. A 17 year old unlicensed driver. She was driving her boyfriend's dad's car and was actually looking at her cell phone through the parking lot and hit us. And she actually did not get out of the car. She did not check to make sure we were okay. I found out later because she was scared because she wasn't licensed. But she showed no remorse. She just kind of had this like, oh, shit for herself, you know. But it was such a scene. And I share all of this because. Well, for one thing, and this is sort of leading me to all. You know, my digital workbook that I just released and then my book that I'm in process, it's almost an editing that's coming out early next year. But when death winks at you, like when you're that close to death, when it. When you sort of dance in its arms even for a second, you don't ever live the same way again. Like nothing looks the same way again. And that can go a myriad of ways, right? In the aftermath of all of that, I mean, I know I went to the hospital, I had to get a full body trauma scan. The doctors were looking at me like I was a ghost. They're like, how did you. How are you here? You know, you literally. They showed me that I was about an inch and a half from death. You know, it had gone. And so there are a lot of things. And then of course, in the aftermath, so many people saying all of these things like you're going to have PTSD again and it's going to be a long time before you're able to go in a parking lot again. And I had this epiphany about a weekend that nobody, no matter what you go through in life, whether you're run over by a car or you experience a crushing divorce or 10 years of infertility, or somebody betrays you or somebody violates you physically. We're all, every human on this earth is sort of a Rolodex, like a walking Rolodex of traumas. And we all have, you know, collect, you know, macro traumas, micro traumas, but whatever that is, you are not under any obligation to live out that trauma, bend into that trauma, fold into that trauma. And you're not under any obligation to. To lose your power. And you're not under any obligation to live out that trauma in any way that another person says that, that you should or that you will. And I remember having this moment of like, I'm, like people are saying all of that. I'm. And I know that they have good intentions. Everyone's saying, oh, you're not going to be able to do this again. And, oh, you're going to. Not going to be able to. You're going to have severe ptsd. And. And I literally went back three days later and drove my car home from the parking lot where it happened because I decided that was not. That might be their story and that might be what the narrative they want to live from, but it's not mine. It doesn't have to be mine. You know, and I think that can be applied to anything. There is always. You can always transform your pain or your trauma into your power source. And I have, since I absolutely have.

Oh, my gosh. Wow.

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Wow. So what, what was that even like when you decided? Like, clearly you had so you had experienced trauma before and had come back from it. You guys literally have to go click on this link to also hear her first podcast. It was one of my favorites. But what was that decision like when you decided, especially when people would say that to you, it must have hit you in a certain way of we either get to decide if we're adopting, accepting what people are saying, or if we're going to reject it and how we're going to overcome it. So did you that moment when people were saying that, was it a decision right there and then, how did you go about making the plan to go get your car and how you wanted to feel to kind of have those neurons connect in a different way than they potentially could.

Well, the mind, there's a lot. Let me just say this because I'm a mental health and relationship journalist. So my life's work is this, you know, healthy relationships, navigating setbacks, navigating, you know, personal development, optimizing the optimization of self, overcoming obstacles. This is what I do, and it's also what I've lived. So it works. It's a really lovely marriage. I'll say, really interesting marriage. But this is my, you know, this is my. This is my area of expertise. And the mind guides the brain. So there's a lot of talk. You know, our brains are very plastic, and there's a lot of talk about neuroplasticity. But the mind, it really does govern the brain. The mind is the director. And the brain. What's happening in the brain is sort of. I look at it like the cast, you know what I mean? And I have dominion. I have authority over my mind. And it's not about denying that you have PTSD or that you have had your heart broken or you've experienced humiliation or tremendous failure. You've lost everything. You know, it's not. It's never about that, but it's about linking arms with it and kind of looking at. Staring it in the face and saying, okay, you're a part of my story now. You might even be a part of my essence at this point. But what is the possibility in this. What beautiful thing can I make with this? And that's just been my whole life. I mean, when I was six, I watched the building, a building on fire, with my family inside of it. You know, knowing that my family was inside of it, not fully grasping, you know, the gravity of the situation, but. But knowing that it was a scene with screams were filling the air. You know, I've been in very traumatic situations. And then, of course, growing up without my mom and then not being, you know, not knowing if I would ever become a mother because I experienced four years, four and a half years, really, of infertility. So that was another area of trauma. You know, I was in a very abusive relationship when I was in my 20s. But what the reason, Let me tell you what, where the decision was. I having experienced trauma in my childhood that sort of led me into the arms of the. The abusive relationship. In my 20s, I had very. I had a lot of abandonment issues. And so I subconsciously. I didn't know it at the time, but I know it now. I subconsciously chose very possessive partners because that was sort of my negotiating. Well, they'll never leave me. You know what I mean? It was very sick and twisted, but that's what I did. So it fed a lot of further traumas. If you don't manage your trauma, it will lead to other ones is what I'm trying to say to you. And so that my life was sort of a mess about 11 years ago now, from the outside. And I actually talk about this in my. In my book, my books. From the outside, looking in. I mean, I had an education from a great university. I had finished my degree in journalism. I had friends, I had a good job. But inside, my internal house was a wreck. It was a personal hell. It didn't matter what else was going on inside of me or how I was being perceived. And I was in a very abusive relationship. And I knew that I had a lot of trauma. I had a lot of unmet trauma that I'd never had the courage to completely unpack and manage. And I remember just one day just saying, okay, I'm so tired of sucking at life, you know? I'm so tired. Yeah, I'm so tired of sucking, Sucking. Like, I'm here. Like, you know what I mean?

I'm here. So resonate.

Yes, right. Like, I'm here, like, okay, my mom doesn't have the luxury of being alive anymore, but I do.

I do.

For whatever reason, I'm here. What am I going to do with this? I'm so tired of sucking at life. Well, I just. I just finished my degree. I started just absorbing everything I could. I read a lot of Bruce Lipton's books, which I highly recommend. He's so phenomenal. You know, I read Napoleon Hill. I read. Absorbed everything I could. I studied, you know, everything from just the psychology of resilience. I began to study that a lot of neuroscience, epigenetics. I just began to just devour whatever I could to begin to unlock parts of me. And I'm telling you, within a year, a year's time, I was standing in a completely different life. And that is what will inspire my work forever. Because it was as though my life had been completely rewritten by a much more gracious and kind screenwriter. But I had the same brain, same genetic code, same history, same memories, same story. And my life was so completely different in every area because I, for the first time, had started to govern my mind. So that's why when this experience happened in September, I knew what to do. I have authority over this. How I don't get to choose. I don't. I can't erase the Event that happened. The event happened. But I get to choose my reaction. And it's the event plus your reaction that creates your life, not the event.

So good. So that was kind of the turning moment. And I know that so much of the work that you do, obviously you get to interview these incredible people and you get to gain their wisdom and the knowledge that transforms your life and having the tools that were so accessible for something that could potentially stop you from ever going out again, but having those accessible tools. And you always have such a teacher archetype. You want to turn around immediately and teach these and share these. So that's what you've done. So not only are you writing an incredible book, and you guys, when I tell you that she's an incredible writer, I mean, like, you will be placed into the scene and you'll just. It's like, it's so funny, right? When you got on, you used a word that I was like, oh, there's those, like, amazing, delicious words that you use that it just feels like, oh, it feels like you're like having the best meal ever when you, like, listen to read her book. It's so good. So with that said, you started doing something. And it's a 21 day radical life renovation sort of kit. Tell me all about this. Tell me what it is.

I will tell you. I will tell you because I'm so excited, because I've gotten such amazing feedback that it makes me want to cry. I mean, I was literally snot crying rocking my baby to sleep the other night. Literally snot. Because this girl wrote me and she was like, you don't even know. I feel like you just saved my sister's life. She's on week two and she was in the worst breakup. We've been so worried about her. So it's just. Okay, I've been there and. But so I'm writing a very in depth book. It's all about transforming the energy of pain and trauma and failure and setbacks into a power source. Your personal power source. Because I know from my work that everything that you've been through, like every awful thing that hisses at you in the night that haunts you and when you're taking a shower that keeps you from signing up for that seminar or going and meeting that person, like everything that hisses at you, it's actually your magic, it's actually your mojo. If you will give it permission to be that, you can absolutely transform all the things that hinder you and literally let it be your edge. Because when you go through difficult things. Whatever you've been through, you. It expands your awareness and you are able to then see things that other people walk right past. And that's fucking powerful, right? So I'm writing this really in depth book and then I sort of realized that I needed something. Well, I have a lot of people because I write for a lot of magazines and I'll have people, you know, when are you having a book coming out? And it's such a long process to have a book, right? Yes. And the book is so in depth that I thought, I feel like I need an appetizer. I feel like I need something to prime the palette of the reader before they go into this really in depth experience. And I felt like I needed to create something for the person who is just like, okay, like where I was like 10, 11 years ago. I am so tired of sucking life. I know that there's this champion inside of me that's like, let me out. Like, there is potential. I am, you know, the person who's watching all these other people succeed or even if it's just from their perception and they know that they have what they know that they have potential for their own magic making. Right. They have all these things. They're just pregnant with dreams and desires and they want to just put it out in the world, but they feel trapped. They feel stuck by self doubt, by imposter syndrome. And so what it is, it's a 21 day program and I walk you through and it's a lot of. I call upon a lot of the work that I've done with some really incredible mental health professionals and spiritual thought leaders. Gabby Bernstein, Deepak Chopra, Dr. Edith Eager, Dr. Carolyn Leaf, a lot of Daymond John, a lot of really successful entrepreneurs, spiritual thought leaders and mental health professionals and neuroscientists. And I, I call upon a lot of the. Just my vault of like my favorite things that they've ever said to me or shared with me along with my research over the years as a journalist who's really focused on mental health relationships and women's issues. And I just make it very colorful and lively and bring it to life with stories. So it is supported by research and data and science, but it's a lot of fun to read and, you know, it's. It's very soothing and fun and lively. And so week one is Purge. And it's sort of like going through your mental house and combing through all of the things that need to go, which is not the most fun part of the book by the way but completely necessary to get to let the magic in. And the second part is reimagine. So that's all about reimagining. Like, okay, this is where I am. Maybe this is not where I thought what my life would look like right now, but what I want, what can I reimagine? Like giving yourself permission to reimagine a different future. And then the week three is let the light and wonder in and I really take you through to create a happiness and success blueprint for your life.

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Oh my gosh. Yeah, so tell me more about that because I know that some people are probably like, okay, I need to know some more steps like what are maybe like what is maybe a tangible tool that right now even if they just did this one thing, that they would start to notice a difference in their life.

Well, one of the things that a lot of people are loving is there's an exercise in week one that's exiling the lies and, and you know, a lot of times we live our lives on, you know, we allow things to completely, like, keep us in chains, that we accept them as truth. And we don't even remember where that belief came from. It could have been some, like, punk ass dude in third grade with bread in his teeth, you know what I mean? And he said something to you. He said something to you, and you internalized it and you held onto it. And you're operating because we operate from our subconscious mind about 92 to 98% of the time. You know, we allowed it ourselves to be programmed by that and accepted it as true when it is. Once you really pull it out of your closet, of your mental closet, and you stare at the monster in its eyeballs, it might not even be a monster. It might be some little, like, smarty pants toddler, you know, and you could be like, this is ridiculous. So that is one of the steps, as I take you through, of different areas of your life, whether from your religious indoctrination and from your, you know, health and wellness. Things that you believe about your health, things that you believe about your intelligence, things you believe about your ability to be loved. And I really, really force you very lovingly, and I support you. And I want everyone to feel like I'm the little guardian angel on their shoulder, cheering them on every step of the way, because I really, really feel that way. But I support them in really being thorough in pulling all of those things, combing through the cobwebs of their mind, combing through and really exiling them, pulling them out, examining them and deciding what do I want to keep, what do I want to revise and what do I want to send to its deathbed, so to speak.

That is so good. It's crazy, because no matter how much work that you do, there's always more to be done. I was just thinking, I haven't done a really good inventory on where I'm at. And I will tell you, Lacy, with new things that we take on in our lives, it brings that all up. It just changes their little lie outfits, and then they show a different devil.

It's a different devil.

Different devil.

Yep.

Changes. Puts a little bow tie on and comes back.

Well, here's an example. I'll tell you very, very quickly. And I know that people heard the previous episode and this I don't want, you know, this is a sensitive topic, but I experienced years of infertility, and my blood work was great. I didn't know what. Nobody could figure out. My doctor's like, well, you look seem really fertile. Everything seems to be functioning very well. And Maybe something we're missing. I was doing all of the things, and I didn't realize that I had had a shadow thought every time I went to take a pregnancy test that there was this little. Little monster hissing in my psyche, like, it's not like you deserve it anyway. I had lost my mother at a young age. And when I was in my 20s, I was in an abusive relationship and I had terminated a pregnancy. And I'd had harbored, you know, guilt from that just simply because I. Some things that had been said to me by my abusive partner at the time, who said some very things about, you know, that had been my. My mother's grandchild and just very cruel things. And. And I had harbored this belief. I had internalized this belief that I didn't deserve it. And I didn't know that it was in my subconscious. You know, I programmed myself to believe that. And it wasn't until I had an experience on an acupuncture table one day that that sort of belief popped up and introduced itself. And I went, oh, my God. And listen to me. That was on June. That was June 7, I believe, 2018. And July 18, 2018, I was standing in my bathroom holding a positive pregnancy test. And I'm telling you, this is so foundational, is combing through your beliefs and exiling the lies and replacing it with. With an empowering truth that will feed your future and that will embolden you and that will make you unstoppable. Is. Is essential. And it's not fun. It's not fun to purge your mental domain, okay? But it is so. It is the beginning. And because I really believe that if I had never unlocked that, if I'd never, you know, forced that skeleton out of my closet, I don't know that I would even have my daughter now.

I love that. And it really. I think that we can look in so many areas of our life where, you know, maybe we once had a block and then we kind of have this breakthrough. There's a. There's a belief that changes. It always starts with like a different. Insert a different belief. And I think that we can't just look at the belief and be like, oh, that's, you know, the old belief, and be like, oh, that's there and I'm going to get rid of it. I don't know. I haven't figured this out for myself, that there's another way to get rid of it without inserting a new one that maybe doesn't feel true to you or real in the Beginning, but that you almost have to learn to embody or adopt or continue to choose. So how did you do that? Sounds like for this one, it happened pretty quickly. Did you just switch your brain and choose it again? And then you kept telling yourself that story. How did that work?

I think that something just unlocked. Well, it's very interesting. I was on an acupuncture table and I felt something sort of pop. And, you know, we store emotions and beliefs physically. That's another aspect of this. It's very important to acknowledge your body. If you're having pain or, like, areas that are stuck, it's actually your body's way of loving you. You know, it's. It's. It's communicating with you. It's letting you know, hey, something's off, or your body is brilliant. Your body is. It's very important to have a good relationship with your body. That's another podcast. But I think that something unlocked, and it's almost the belief sort of just popped up. And obviously this is my work area of expertise anyway, so I knew what was happening to me, and I was like, oh. And sort of. I posed this question to myself, and it was just, can you find a chapel of grace within yourself? Can you? Because, you know, we often try to surrender to a higher power, and I certainly do, and I believe in that. And we beg for forgiveness or we beg for grace, we beg for luck, we beg for divine guidance and all these things. But if you don't believe, if you don't give that to yourself, if you don't give grace to yourself, if you don't give permission to yourself, if you don't give validation to yourself, then your negative beliefs, they're going to act like gatekeepers that keep all of your blessings. It won't even let you on the lawn, on the front lawn. You know what I mean? Like, it's not even. It'll never ring your doorbell. So I knew what was happening. And I think once I realized that it was a belief and where it had come from, it instantly. I was instantly able to let it go and to say, you know what? No matter what, I, yes, I deserve it. I choose that. And not every belief is going to be that easy. It's very important that people know that, because I think sometimes when people are working through things and personal development and with their mental health or doing these types of exercises, if it doesn't click into the focus for them immediately, they think something's wrong with them. That's not true. It's your mind, your will Retraining those neural pathways in your brain. Those neural pathways are very stubborn and if they have, there's a few different ones sort of banding together, you know what I mean? You're going to have to be a little bit mightier with your will and your intention. And some of them have been with you for a very long time. So not everything is going to unlock right away. But you have the authority and the dominion to retrain those neural pathways, I promise you. I mean, and it often does feel like a lie at first when you try to replace it with an emboldening, you know, life giving truth. It can feel like, well, that's not true, that, that it's not going to want to. Those little monsters don't want to go out without a fight, right? But you, then you get right back and say, no, I am, I am in authority. I am, I have authority over my life, over my actions, over what I will believe, over where I will go, over my future. And it's reinforcing. I mean, it's the same with repetition. It's the same way we learned our ABCs as children.

I think I'm putting myself back in places where I've done this, which was like yesterday, this morning. But the thing that just keeps on, I think fooling us or me can be the damn feelings that are connected. Like feelings can feel so real. And you know, we say the new thing and it's like there's no feeling around that yet or there's, or there is and it's like a feeling of like rejection or I'm not sure on that one because we've never heard it or we've never said it to ourselves or we've never accepted it. So what is your thought around feelings? Especially when those feelings are trying to like they, they're really taking over and it's almost like you're feeling like you're being, you know, taken down or strangled by this feeling of, of either imposter syndrome or massive fear or anxiety. What is your plan to keep pushing through that?

I acknowledge that a lot of times what you're feeling are actually a cocktail of chemicals that are attached to those thoughts. So the thoughts that you've had over and over and over again, you have trained your body to release certain chemicals and oftentimes that's why your misery can be a big addictive or a negative thought can be addictive because you're getting this cocktail of chemicals. So but if, you know, if you, if once you know that, you know what I mean, once you know that you can see it for what it is and you can sort of like that you take its power away when you know, like, okay, this is just something that my very, my very efficient brain, my very brilliant body has learned to do over time. And it can relearn. I mean, we are so. Our brains are so astonishingly plastic. For good or bad, you can reinforce very negative things in your brain and you can reinforce powerful life giving things. So once you know that. So that's how I've learned to sort of take dominion over my feelings. That doesn't mean that they don't come. Of course they show up. And your feelings are wonderful. That's part one of the luxuries of being human. So it's not about fighting them or denying them. Never do that, because that is your truth so far. But guess what? At every moment of every day, you get to rewrite that script. You get to revise and renovate that truth over and over and over again.

Yeah, it's so crazy how we can be addicted to the things that are so negative. And you're like, why would I be addicted to. This reminds me of when I was 18 and I took on smoking because I worked at a restaurant and I realized everybody gets a break if you smoke. And I was like, did you really?

Oh, it's kind of hilarious. That's kind of hilarious.

I was like, wait, so these people take like three or four breaks during the day and they all hang out and they like become this little like gang of friends. And I was like, that's a great idea. So they're like choking on cigarettes. But then I became addicted to this thing that I didn't want to be addicted to. And I was like. Like, it just reminded me of everything you're saying. Like, it wasn't. It actually was like a bad thing. But I couldn't stop it until I associated. I had to start associating a picture of what I didn't want every time I did it. And it just, it took a while, but it was like, how crazy that we get addicted to these things we actually don't even want. And I was trapped in that cycle for like six months. So that's what it, it reminded me of hanging out at TGI Fridays in the back of the restaurant. So.

You're so resourceful, Lori. That's so funny. You're so resourceful. Look at you. Look at me.

How do I get a break?

That's how I will say, once you begin to take dominion over your mind and you begin to learn how it can be a blast and it can be so fun. It's so. You know, I remember one thing. Years ago, when I was trying to get out of that relationship, I sort of. I. You know, a lot of the exercises in my book and in the 21 day radical life Renovation are things that I actually worked through that. I mean, I really called upon things. And of course, I kind of put my own interpretation sort of like braided through all of my work over the past decade. So it's probably more advanced than maybe what I was working through, but I still work through it. I work at all the time, and I will always, because I am a human on this earth and life has a lot of. There's a lot of no good and bad nuances to it. But anyway, so I remember one of the things that really unlocked me was when I was trying to get out of this bad relationship, I was addicted to the relationship and it was horrible. Physically abusive, it was mentally emotionally abusive. It was just an apocalyptic type of relationship. And it was in affecting every area of my life. It was disturbingly bad for me. And one of the things that I did is I took a picture of myself from when I was six years old, the year that my mom died, saw that little girl and thought about what she'd been through and just how innocent she was and how I would never let anyone mistreat her. And I put it on my desk. I put it, actually put it in my purse for a while. And every time that I would go to, like, accept his phone call or accept the way that he talked to me or agreed to, you know, he begged to meet up with me. I would feel that tug to do it because I had. That was my habit. And I would get a high. I would get like a dopamine rush from the highs and lows of our relationship. But I forced in my mind, I really burned in my mind that he wasn't just doing this to me, he was doing it to her too. So things like that, you know, and I talk about that a lot in the. In the 21 day radical life renovation. Just sort of calling upon your arsenal of tools that you have inside of you to truly create a much more dazzling and powerful future for yourself.

It's so good. I mean, truly, that's the best way to frame it. That is what I do daily. And the more that I can put in there, that's why I'm always right. We're Seekers. Everyone listening to this podcast is seeking more tools. And the more that you fill that up, the more you can. Like you said, it's not that life is necessarily going to get easier, but you just have so much access to things that are going to help you move through it in a way that maybe you can have more grace with yourself or more joy or more perspective. And speaking of that, I know that you had said at the beginning of this, like, you have just had so many gifts that have come out of it. What would you say are some of the biggest gifts that have come out of this experience?

I mean, I feel like a damn badass. I crawled out from underneath the car, you know, do you think I'm scared to cold call an editor at the New York Times? No, bitch. I crawled out from under a car, you know, like, I'm not scared of you. Yes, I have been brave for a long time. And it's not confidence. Like, I'm not the most naturally confident person by any means. I'm full of flaws. I definitely don't think I'm the most talented. Like, I've worked with so many talented, brilliant people. But I am brave because I know so intimately the fragility of life. And I know that today could be the last day I press my lips against my child's forehead or pour myself a cup of coffee. So while I can do those things, I'm damn sure gonna do them. And I want through my work to extend an invitation for people to be excited about the luxury that is their life. You're not some tossed away idea whipping through the universe. Like, you are a miraculous megadeal. You really are. You know, seriously, I love that so much. And like, I think that one of the gifts is knowing so vividly. The power and perspective and awareness from the traumatic experience, from the things I mean. And I feel more unstoppable than ever since having sort of linked arms with death, so to speak. And I love my daughter even. I mean, I remember the week in the days and weeks after it happened, I would get up in the middle of the night and I would go into her nursery and I would just bury my face into her neck and just smell and feel her buttery neck. And it was just delicious and I appreciated it and just breathed her in in a way that I. I had always, but even more. And there's gifts in that. There's beauty and richness in that. You know, we're our lives, the beauty of our lives are not despite the difficult things we go through, but because of them.

So good. We're just like, keep talking. It's so good. It literally is just like, it's so good and just so grateful for you, like, beyond. I feel like you are. You're just such a gift to me and I know so many people that you meet and now so many people who get to listen to you. So how can we get your 21 day radical life renovation?

Okay, so it is on the Wonder report, which is my brand. It's up, sparkling, shimmering. Just go right on the page. You'll see it. You can't miss it. And I'm excited because I am going to have some cool opportunities for everyone who buys the 21 day radical life renovation. When my official company, my hardback book, my big project comes out, I will have some really cool things and giveaways and I can't go into it, but a really cool event for people who have bought the 21 day Radical Life renovation. I love that. So I'm super excited. Yes, I love that.

Okay, so it's the. And I'm serious when I tell people, like, I have read snippets of what you have written. I believe you had sent me some things that you were in your book.

I sent you a few.

I could not. I couldn't even take it.

You a sample. Yeah.

You guys, you know when you just, like, are on that, you're looking for that next amazing book. Like, this is that book that you're going to finish. I just already know it from what I've read. You're going to finish it and you're going to start it again. So it's so great that we can get a little piece of that.

We.

Get to do that we actually get to do and do the work that will prep us for the book. So you guys definitely go check that out now. You know, I don't mess around when I refer you to books because I am all about them. So, Lacy, thank you so much. I so appreciate you. And you guys, the biggest gift that you can give to our guest is to tag Lacey. Lacy, what's your Instagram handle?

Thelacy Johnson.

So tag the Lacey Johnson on Instagram and myself and let her know what your biggest takeaway was from this podcast so that we can actually see who we got to talk to and who we got to impact. So it's so much fun. You guys know I love to share your stories and see who we're talking to. So until next time, everyone earn your happy.

Bye.

Bye.

Bye. Bye, Sam.