798. How to Fill the Space Between You and Your Goals with Faith and Refinement
28 Oct 2021 · 22 min
Lori Harder talks about surviving long stretches of uncertainty while working toward your goals. She shares stories about moving delays and house-sale setbacks, then offers concrete steps: fill the gap with faith, use waiting time to refine what you want, lean on friends and therapy, and stay present instead of rushing ahead.
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This episode of Earn your Happy is brought to you by away. AWAY creates thoughtful travel products including their best selling suitcase with features that make traveling more seamless. To start your 100 day trial and shop the entire away lineup of travel essentials including their best selling suitcases, go to awaytravel.com Lori.
I just wanted to tell you that no matter where you are, you can make it great. No matter where you are, it's a beautiful season. It's not about where you're going, it's about where you are right now and how good you can make it and who's around you.
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 realized no one was coming to save me. The Convers 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 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, we're choosing someone every month to get coached and featured on our show. And it just might be you. So let's get started.
Hey everyone, welcome back to the podcast.
It's time for another quickie because there's.
Always time to fit in inspiration and today I want to talk to you about faith and I want to talk to you about when your dreams and.
Your visions and your goals are taking.
Too damn long to happen. So I know I'm talking to you because things just don't necessarily all happen in life, right? We do know those people. We know those myths, those magical unicorns who sometimes things seem to appear as though they are just happening for those people. But I implore you to dig a little bit deeper and find out the story of the setup, of how long it took them or how hard that they have been working in the background. And I'm talking about this today because the space that we are given is meant to be filled with something. A lot of times we feel this giant gap between where we are right now and where we want to go. And it can feel bleak. And sometimes we don't fill it with anything except hopelessness, except that space is serving an actual purpose. Yes, you can breathe a deep breath knowing that it's on purpose. And there's a couple things that I want to share with you to help you in this space that I often call Death Valley. And I promise that if you can stick with your dreams and your goals and your hopes and all of those things you know you are meant to do through Death Valley, that they will thrive. And a lot of times, I do believe that that is the place where you get so much clarity, because everything is stripped away from you. It's not easy to believe in your goals and dreams in Death Valley. Right. It is not easy to keep things alive without water. It's not easy to stay in hope when you see nothing but tumbleweeds around. So this is the space that you are given to refine what it is that you are doing. And I was listening to a podcast that my friend Lindsay Schwartz has gotten me hooked on. It's called Transformation Church. And yes, it's a church, and it's a podcast that they do out of it. And no matter what you believe, this literally has so many messages. This man is preaching just about life in general. And of course it relates to God or whatever you believe. I think that you can. Something that I always love to say is, eat the fruit, spit out the seeds. If it's not for you, take the parts that are. Because it is like blowing my mind right now. And so this thought is from something that I was listening to on a walk, one of the sermons on a walk about that gap in between or that space in between is meant to be filled with faith. And I thought, what a beautiful thought, because as this is, in my opinion, and from everything that I've learned refining who you are and refining that vision. I'm going to tell you a story about where I'm at right now. And Chris and I last year moved to Arizona. Now, if you would have asked me if I would have ever moved to Arizona, you can ask my dear friend who lives here, one of my best friends in the world, which is just crazy that I actually am even thinking of moving from here because I adore her so much and adore the people here so much. But sometimes a place just doesn't fill you or give you what you know that you need in your soul. So maybe I'm talking to you, maybe I'm not. Or maybe it's going to refer to not the place that you're living, but maybe it's going to refer to something else in your life that you know is maybe out of alignment for you. And I would always talk to her or come visit her because we were doing some events together. And I would say, why do you live here? Like a big asshole, right? I'd be like, why do you live here? It's so hot. Like, I'd come when it was 110 or 114 degrees out, and I was like, it literally feels like a hot blow dryer in my face. And my skin would dry out and I was like, I am not meant to be. Like, I need water. And I'd go home and be so grateful to be home. Except this last year, we were getting these soul hits of like, okay, you're supposed to move. And we were trying to figure out where we were moving. And we kept getting this Scottsdale, Arizona area, like, it kept pinging us. And long story short, we had a lot of different things happen. The place that we were living in, Santa Monica, started to just feel very, very different during a crazy time in history. And we were like, let's try something else on for size. Let's see. Our family wanted to all move. Where would be a good location for them? What's something that is possible for them? What does this look like? Chris's dad had passed away. We didn't know what we were gonna do or what a great place for his mom would be. That felt really good for her as well. And we're like, you know what? Let's just try it. Let's try it on for size. Let's see if it works. Everything in life is an experiment. That way you don't look at it as permanent. And we know there is no permanency in life anyway. So we thought, okay, if we can look at it this way, and it's an experiment, then we're willing to more willing to take that risk and try things and what's the worst that could happen, right? Let's look at the finances. Let's look at what selling the house would look like if this is something that's not for us. Long story short, we're finding that we want to live in multiple places. We're finding that we want to be a bit more transient, at least for two different places that we live. And I'm finding that my soul absolutely needs to be by watcher for part of the year. It's a really, really, really big deal for my mental health and how I feel. So with that said, we put the house up for sale a few months ago and we have had three offers that have all fallen through. So mind you, when you get an offer, you start to look for places to live, you start to plan your life somewhere else. You book the movers and then when it falls through, you're like, oh, wow, okay, we're back at square one. And you go back to the showings and you're doing all the things and you're trying to run a bunch of different businesses out of your house, except you have to be gone for them for multiple times per week and cleaning your house constantly. So it's, it's not that it's bad, it's just not convenient.
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Okay, let's get back to the episode.
So with that said, we are in our fourth offer right now. Say a prayer for us and in those spaces. So the whole reason that I told you that is because there was a lot of spaces. There is still giant gaps. There's still giant spaces where we're like, we don't know if this is meant to happen. And maybe we're starting to doubt ourselves.
Maybe we're supposed to stay here. Except we don't believe.
That's what our souls are telling us. And there's a lot of space in between that I've been filling with either faith or I've been noticing how much fear can come in. I don't know where I'm supposed to be. I don't know what I'm supposed to do. It doesn't feel like home. I don't feel like I fit anywhere right now. And it's given me a lot of space to think. It's given me a lot of space to contemplate. Do I fit? Do I not fit? Is this in my head? Am I making this a bad situation? And maybe it's supposed to be where I'm learning a lesson. God, maybe you put me here to learn a lesson. Except it's not the lesson I wanna learn. And I have come to so many different wild places, which you guys know, especially if you do personal development, you can almost personal development the crap out of yourself into a place that's even worse. And so this is where I have filled this space with the ultimate faith. And it's not like I stay in ultimate faith all the time. But I try to remember that you can't half faith. H, A, L, F. I had to check if I was spelling that right this morning. It's early if you want to have faith. H, A, V, E. You can't have faith, right? You have to have full Time, faith. So whenever I'm starting to feel like, oh, gosh, I don't know, maybe this is not right, I'm like, it can't be wrong. I can't go wrong in this journey. I can just refine and I can just have time and I can just learn lessons. And I'll tell you that if our first offer would have went through, we.
Would have made choices that wouldn't have.
Actually been what we wanted because it was all moving so fast that we were like, oh my God, now we have to do this. Guess we're just gonna do this next step. And I guess we should just buy here or do that. And what we found through all of it, all of this, is that it has allowed us to fill this space with faith because we've really learned that this is the place where God or universe, whatever you believe, starts talking to you. This is that place where you get to refine it. This is that place where you get to lean into the discomfort and start asking for clear signs, start asking for being content in the chaos. Start really getting that muscle of just like, well, uncertainty is, you know, there's always uncertainty. This is just a lot more uncertainty. So how can I start living right now? How can I understand that the party is in the waiting room and this is something I'm going to be talking a lot more about. In fact, I'm pretty sure I just had a book come through this last week about this exact fact about how we're always waiting to live and we're always waiting for that moment when we're knowing what's next and being certain and seeing the path. And we just keep living in these tiny moments of waiting from one thing to the next and getting our ticket in the waiting room and waiting and waiting and waiting for that next moment to really start living or when this happens. And as much as I talk about and as much as I think that I'm living in the present, I still have a lot of work to do. I still have a lot of work to do. And really checking in on where is this coming from?
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Then not overanalyzing our desires and our goals or the things that we want right now and really moving into a place where you are more content with uncertainty. Because life is very uncertain right now. And I think that moving forward, it probably will be forever. So how do we find out how to make a party in the waiting room? So, you guys, I'm so grateful for you. And say a prayer, cross your fingers. I don't know. We'll see how this unfolds. I'll keep you guys posted next week. But I just wanted to tell you that no matter where you are, you can make it great. No matter where you are, it's a beautiful season. It's not about where you're going. It's about where you are right now and how good you can make it and who's around you. How good can you make it right now? How good can you make it in the uncertainty? How good can you make it in this place where you're not yet the person that you think you were put here to be because actually you are? How good can you make this moment and this day? Because it might be the best. This might be the peak day. So how can you actually sit back and really, really enjoy it and it's okay to feel all the feels like you're not supposed to feel great all the time. I think that's one of the biggest disempowering beliefs. So how can you actually look at a really challenging feeling or season that you might be in and know that it's just refinement and let it be, like, surrender to it. Let it be okay. Talk to someone. I know that I just had a crazy week last week emotionally, and I was in resistance of it. I was like, oh, my God, why is this happening? Why am I feeling this way and trying to escape it and trying to run from it and feeling guilty about it, feeling shameful for feeling bad. And what I did is I called friends. I did what I tell everyone to do. After resisting it, I was like, I don't want to talk to anybody. I'm in total. Like, I was in total. You know, I tend to run away from the feelings. I don't want to feel them. I was in avoidance. That is my default response still to this day, no matter how much I work on it. And I was like, I don't want to talk to anybody. It was almost like I was enjoying the feeling, but I wasn't, and I wanted to escape it, and I didn't want to Talk about it. I was ashamed of it, and I was like, oh, just avoid it and maybe it'll go away. And it did not. So a few days in, I was like, wow, this is not going anywhere. It's actually getting worse. I need to talk to someone. So I SOS text a friend. And I was like, oh, my gosh, I have to tell you all the feelings that I'm feeling. And I'm actually feel really bad for saying that I feel all these things. And I just really, really shared a very long voice note about how I felt and how much fear I felt and how bad I felt for feeling the things that I was feeling. Was such a great life. And it really, really helped me to then start to understand some of the emotions that were behind it and underneath it. Because if we don't say them, if we don't voice them, if we don't talk about them, they're not going anywhere. So in order to really understand and move through this feeling between, you know, this Death Valley place that you might be as well, whether it's a long visit or just a brief visit that you need to process through it, and it's gonna take a lot more processing than you think. And it's gonna take a lot more space being held by people that you know than you think. And whether that is a friend, whether that's a therapist, an online therapist, whatever that is, you're human. So you probably need to voice it and talk about it. So, you guys, I'm so. I'm so grateful for you. I could talk all day to you. Obviously, that's why I have a podcast. That's why we're. I don't even know always this. 800 episodes in @ this point, clearly, I'm a verbal processor. If you are, maybe you should start a podcast. Hopefully that was a little ping to some people that, you know, just always love to see who I'm impacting and. And who maybe I'm talking to. So definitely tag me and let me know what your takeaway was so I can see the who is maybe sitting in the passenger seat with.
Me. Maybe you're in the driver's seat.
Maybe I'm in the back.
Seat. I don't.
Know. I don't even know where we are right now, but I just know that being in the car with you is so much better and just makes you feel like you're not alone. So, you guys, until next time, earn your happy. Bye, everyone.
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