243 Laura Coe: Emotional Obesity

We are very aware that with a certain amount of calories, we start to gain weight. We can see it, we can get on a scale, we can decide what we want to do with that information. We also are very aware of the foods we eat and the impact on our body. But when it comes to our thoughts, what about those things? Well, how does that impact your life? And so the question I started asking myself was, you know, are the thoughts in my head the way that I'm viewing the world, the perspective I have is that weighing me down? And we speak that way, right? We feel lighter, we feel freer, we feel heavy, we feel weighted down. What does that mean? So that was really the idea behind emotional obesity was to dig into this concept of how do we get our life to a place where we feel light and free and content, Right? That's what people want. They want that lightness. If you have fear, but you know you're where you need to be, that's the workout, right? That's the process of surrendering, letting go, creating space to allow your truth to unfold to the world and step through it on a day to day basis.

That's Laura Koh and this is episode 243 of Wellness Force Radio where we discover the physical and emotional intelligence to live life well. In this podcast, we're talking with my friend and podcaster, Laura Koh, an author, blogger, certified life coach whose mission is to help people shed the emotional weight that's holding them back in life. She was weighed down very early, which you're going to learn on this podcast. And all of us, let's face it, go through emotional struggles, but we don't have to become emotionally obese. We're learning about this topic of emotional obesity, why it's so challenging for some people to let go of these fattening emotions that literally and figuratively make them hold on to extra weight. This podcast where we talk about this book, emotional a philosophical guide to lighten your life, Emotional fitness and her guided exercises to help us grow through emotional strength building practices. Learn about the moment where Laura herself started her own emotional wellness journey after selling her healthcare company and began seeking for something more authentic, a deeper truth. We also talk about anger and shame, how they're there to serve us. They let us know that something is triggered so we can learn more about why it actually triggered us in the first place. And emotional weight loss, the corollary between the emotions that are unprocessed and undiscovered and why those actually keep weight on the body, how we can be more present with our body and in this emotional inventory. What I love most about this podcast with Laura Ko is that not only does she get down to the basement of truth as quickly as possible, but she also speaks a different narrative where men especially are allowed they have permission to feel their deepest emotions, which will make them more powerful, more present, and more productive in their work life and in their home life. You know, these behaviors that we have, they're not just us. It's a habit. If you're going through a behavior that isn't serving you, a habit that's weighing you down, just know that you do have the power. You can choose to stop being angry, you can choose to stop smoking. It's exactly the same decision. Once you've made that decision, as you'll learn from Laura today, there is a specific pathway to the fulfillment of that decision. But making the decision is the first piece. You can learn more about Laura@wellnessforce.com 243 and check out lauraco.com for more of her work around the Art of Authenticity. Now let's dig in and enter this emotional obesity and how we can let that weight go with the one and only Laura Koh. My guest today is an entrepreneur, author, podcast host, and coach. In a past life, she co founded a healthcare company that served over 350,000 patients per month nationally. But now she devotes her energy toward writing, coaching, and helping others implement spiritual teachings on how to live an authentic life. She's the author of Emotional Obesity, a book I've read three months ago and fell in love with. And she and she's also the host of a podcast called the Art of Authenticity. Her work has been featured in Forbes, Huffington Post, and many other online world class platforms. Welcome to Wellness Force. Laura Koh.

Hi. Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.

You know, we were talking before we recorded and we were talking about lifespans of men and women. Let's dig into that for this icebreaker here. Why do you think when it comes to emotions that men are traditionally more resistant than women?

Oh wow, we're jumping right in. Sure. So yeah, look, this is a little more speculative than it is based on the work that I do specifically, but I think that a lot of our emotional life is guided by the early years. Children are incredible at being emotionally honest. You do not have to ask a kid to tell the truth how they feel. They'll just pour it out. In fact, so much so right that it's tiring and difficult for all the Parents out there, but little boys absolutely get it way worse to suck it up, man up, stop, show only one or two emotional states. And so I think there's an idea that emotions are more feminine than they are masculine and that there's a weakness involved in showing emotions. Women struggle with it as well. There's shame in thinking that there's something wrong with you, that you have too many emotions or emotions are bad or a problem or right or wrong. But I think for men, it's a much stronger societal message.

I concur. I can remember being in high school sports, and I think the term was throw some dirt on it and get back out there. And only weaklings talk about their feelings. I mean, that was the narrative. And so, you know, coming from this construct of shame and actually not giving ourselves the permission to feel our feelings. Let's dig into this. Emotional obesity. How would you describe that term for people that don't know anything about emotional obesity? We know about obesity as far as lipid storage, but not emotions. How did you come up with this term, Laura?

You know, it came to me one time and just in kind of a joke with a friend who didn't want to deal with their, you know, emotional baggage, so to speak, right. And was really into fitness, right. And I was sort of ribbing at her a little, like, you're, like, emotionally obese. You're not dealing with your stuff, you know, and it just came out of nowhere. But the idea of it was that we are very aware that with a certain amount of calories, we start to gain weight, and the weight has certain health issues. Some people take them more seriously, or it has more health issues for us. But at least we're all aware of it. We can see it, we can get on a scale. We can decide what we want to do with that information. We also are very aware of the foods we eat and the impact on our body. But when it comes to our thoughts, right, the things that we think all day long, the only thing we do all day, our heartbeats and our mind is, you know, it's thinking all the time. What about those things? Well, how does that impact your life? Does it weigh you down? Do you start feeling heavy? And so the question I started asking myself was, you know, are the thoughts in my head, the way that I'm viewing the world, the perspective I have is that weighing me down? And we speak that way, right? We feel lighter, we feel freer, we feel heavy, we feel weighted down. What does that mean? So that was really the. The idea behind Emotional obesity was to dig into this concept of how do we want to, how do we get our life to a place where we feel light and free and content. Right. That's what people want. They want that lightness instead of that dread, heavy, weighted down feeling.

This is so fascinating to me because in your book you talk about emotional obesity being a barrier around our soul. I'd love for you to expound upon that because it almost feels like there's the thorns in Christianity around Jesus. It almost feels like emotional obesity could be the thorns that are actually around our soul.

Yeah, so the, you know, I'm a philosophy undergrad and graduate student, studied this stuff since I was 17, 18 years old. I'm 47 now, I'm a yoga teacher. And I dove back into, you know, this passion, the philosophy, and started to research and reread what does it mean to live an authentic life. What does it mean to live a life that's truly yours? Right. Designed by you, purpose based, fulfilling. And what the emotional obesity are these layers, right? These ideas of how we should live our life, the ways in which society, culture, family might tell us we should be or how we should act, or how we should think of ourselves or others in the world. So there's all these layers around our authentic self. When we come into the world, we're free. Every kid is able to really speak their mind. They're able to access their truth in a millisecond. You never have to ask a kid twice, did you like the food that you ate? Do you like that friend? They're brutally honest. And then we are educated out of that honesty. And not because the world is an evil place, but because we need to learn how to get along. We need to understand and navigate the world around us. But there's a point, a tipping point, where we become overly focused on the external world. People, their thoughts, their approvals, our own thoughts, the information around us. And we lose touch with that deep connection to that authentic self. So these barriers, you know, they're the thoughts, they're the knowledge you have about the world around you. You're focused on that instead of also focusing on that internal compass, that truth within you, that authentic self.

I know exactly what you're talking about with the true compass. I have a north star tattooed on the inside of my right arm. And I think it was really when I be to give myself, as you describe in your book, so eloquently, permission to feel our feelings. I think for so long in my life and so many people listening can relate to this Laura feeling, our feelings has been chastised. It's been something that needs to be locked up. We see these vibes online that say good vibes only, and it's just not the case. This is not the emotional fitness that we really need as a society. You talked about this when you said between tech overload, information overload, and this culture, especially in America, of hyper competitiveness, we're more lost and overwhelmed than ever. We're piling on emotional weight at a shocking rate. I'd love for you to talk about that. That is a fascinating sentence.

Yeah, thank you for that, by the way. And, yeah, it's just this idea that the feelings that we're having are somehow right or wrong or. You know, I coach people all the time, help them get back to that authentic place. And, you know, one of the things almost everybody goes through is, am I cracking up? Am I crazy? Is something wrong with me that I'm having feelings, right, That I, like, actually have feelings, that I'm angry, that I'm resentful, that I'm. It's how we're designed. We're also drawn to sugar. We're drawn to fats. We want to eat salt. I mean, we don't. If you put a piece of broccoli in front of anybody and a piece of cake, we'd prefer the cake. It doesn't mean there's something wrong with us. It's just how we're designed. But knowing how we're designed, we don't want to deny the feeling. I feel angry. But we want to actually investigate, accept that those are the feelings we're having. Think about how we want to navigate and go through those feelings. But stuffing them down, pushing them to the side, feeling shame about them, like you said, locking them up, right? It just. It just holds you down, it weighs you down because they never get free. You know, emotions are energy, right? When we're feeling angry, we have a chemical reaction in our body. The energy starts to move through our body. Our heart races, right? We feel tightness in our chest, our shoulders, somewhere in our body, your head. Everybody has it somewhere different. Their neck, the pit of their stomach. So we want to allow the feeling to come and then to go and then think about, what was that? What triggered within me that I had that reaction. And maybe grow, learn, or it's an opportunity to. I don't know if it's a friend. Maybe that's not somebody you want to be around. I don't know. But you can make a decision about the situation. But we certainly don't want to just stuff it down. It starts to weigh us down, and then we feel, yeah, that weight, that weight of life.

We're going to talk about emotional fitness, which is a really intuitive section of your book, where people can guide themselves through exercises essentially, to grow that part of themselves, that emotional strength. Before we get there, though, I want to contrast you, Laura, because you inspired me so much in the book where you had this moment where you just were crying, you were flying 30,000ft in the air, and that's where you made the decision to let go of, quote, the perfect life. You know, the money being a big influx, and you had everything on paper that looked great. You have done the work way before you were a coach, way before you wrote this book. You did the work, and it started in that plane ride. Can you take us to the moment?

Sure, sure. Yeah. So, you know, I was 24, and I had an opportunity to start a company. I was a philosophy student. I didn't want to become a professor. This was something cool. And I knew it wasn't a passion, but I was interested. I liked entrepreneurship, and I built a company, and I was very proud of the work I did. I helped a lot of people. But we sold the company, and I started thinking, there's gotta be something more authentic in my life. There's gotta be something else. Because this wasn't my passion. This wasn't what I felt I was really here to do. But I was very successful, right? So the success that we look for, the fact that I was earning a lot of money, that I had done something important with my life. All those external checkboxes were checked. I had the house, I had the chocolate Labrador, the kid, the family, everything was in the supposed right place. But I found myself on an airplane flying home from a client with my brother. And I was. I'm not a crier, but I was literally, like, driven to tears over this decision about whether I should leave my job and pursue something that felt more authentic. I had this nagging sensation that wouldn't go away, that despite all these successes, all of these ways in which my life had started to take on this, quote, perfect form, this image, there was something deeply, deeply, deeply missing for me. So on this flight with my brother, I had been agonizing about this question about, you know, purpose. Is there something more? Is there something else in my life? And I broke down in tears, and I made the choice to let go, to walk away from the company I had built and to really follow this intuition that there was Something else out there for me.

What was missing? Did you know when the tears came out? What exactly was missing? Or were you just kind of grieving from the fact that you were in the wrong place?

Oh, my God. I mean, no, I was a wreck. I started asking myself this question. What do I really want? Not how to be successful, Right. So success is a recipe. You go out in the world, you get an education, you do certain things, you get promotions, you have pay, and that is success. And there's a way to do it. And it doesn't mean you always get there, but there's a path. What I was looking for was that purpose, the fulfillment, Right. And that question, what do you really want? Right. If it's not just more money or more successes one after the next. And it drove me crazy. So on that plane, I decided to practice some of these spiritual ideas that I'd been reading for a long, long, but I hadn't really practiced. And I was like, okay, putting it out to the universe. I'm going to let go. I'm not going to white knuckle. I'm going to step back, surrender. All these words that ambitious people hate, right?

Yes.

I'm going to let this take form and make space for something different. And it was really a big turning point for me in my approach, but not necessarily. I had no clue what I was going to do.

You said in your book that you were feeling when the tears were coming down, that you couldn't do this forever. But also the contrast of who gives up a well paying job, this dichotomy. Laura, so many people struggle with this, where they know in their heart and their soul that they're destined for something different. What does emotional intelligence look like in a moment for somebody to take an inventory, you know, what's the beginning of that inventory for them to first kind of feel where they're at and then second, what's that first step? Maybe a step you took.

Yeah, yeah. So I started the podcast the Art of Authenticity with this question in mind. People who have a life that's both successful and purpose based, what does that look like? What was their story? How did they get there? And person after person after person had a very similar story to mine, which was that they had a certain amount of success, but there was this weird sensation that there must be something more. Right. There's like a nagging and itching. There's a question. And so if you're out there and that's your experience where you're looking around at your life and you Know it's an embarrassment of riches because nothing's wrong with your life. Right. You probably are paying your bills enough, your job is good enough, things aren't a problem. It's just not. There's no fulfillment. There's not that deeper purpose. And so if that's you, the first thing to do is to first acknowledge that it's probably true that you're looking for that change and that you're not cracking up, there's nothing wrong. And that while maybe you have a good paying job and you like what you do, to really give yourself some credit for listening to that deeper intuition and trusting yourself enough to know that you want to investigate what that can mean. And then the second step is, you know, it's really dependent. It's. Some people, they know really what they want to do. People come to me and they say, like, oh my God, it's, it's. I've wanted to always open a company. I've always. They know exactly what it is, but they have to face the fears and the imposter voices that keep them from pursuing those things. Maybe not feeling good enough. And that's what I help People, people sort of break through. Some people literally just don't know, like myself at all where to start. So if that's you, you know, it's a process to get there, but it's not, it's not that difficult. It's just really learning what your unique talents are, what your skills are, the things that you feel uplifted towards, and starting to pursue those things more and finding the things that feel like play and enjoyment to you again in life.

The fitness that you describe in your book is really compelling because I think so many people, or at least I out as a trainer 10 plus years ago, where fitness became my doorway to wellness. And I think most people, Laura, if we did any kind of inventory, they just want to live their life well, which is what we talk about on the show. What do you believe from your experience and even in your own life of emotional intelligence? How do you actually define that? And also maybe we can contrast how emotional intelligence is part of the concept of emotional obesity.

Yeah, so emotional, emotional intelligence is an idea that's come along recently. And I mean, the way that I think about it is some people have a little more perceptive ability to read emotional situations than others. And it's something that we can work on and develop, just like we can develop math skills. And so that's really the concept behind the emotional intelligence, I think of emotional obesity, emotional fitness, and all this stuff is really just a metaphor. It's a way to get better people to think about the question of the thoughts in their heads, the things that keep them from their authentic truth in a more tangible way. Just like you wouldn't go out and run a marathon if you haven't run around the block, right? So we want to ask these questions, what do I want to do with my whole life? But we haven't been able to say a singular truth about our day. Like, do I really want coffee or tea? Do I want to have tacos for dinner tonight? And I really do take my clients through this. Do you want tacos or a salad? And are you really answering that question? Are you doing what you feel you should be doing? So the metaphor is we know how to work out. We know that we wouldn't walk in a gym and pick up a 500 pound weight. We start with five pounds, right? So when we're trying to get to our truth, our authentic voice, we start with a five pound weight, try to tell the truth all day long, see what happens. It's so scary to even think about that, let alone what the truth is about my entire life and what I want to do, you know, with my whole career or this relationship, right? Those are, those. Those are the 500 pound dead weights.

Wow, Laura, you're bringing up something in me that I just shared with our community personally, where, you know, I'm the leader of Wellness Force, which is our community, and we're exploring so many things that I know you're passionate about, yet I wasn't living my life well. I've put on weight since I gained, since I started the podcast. I've, you know, and it's cracking my voice right now because it's very emotional. It's like I deeply care about our mission, yet I'm still figuring out how I live a life of purpose and also abundance and health, wealth and relationships. And so, you know, I'm humbly saying that on the podcast right now to connect with someone who's listening because, you guys, we don't have to, as Laura said, we don't have to climb Mount Kilimanjaro just because we all of a sudden decide that our emotional fitness and we want to be less emotionally obese. It's a process. It is the process. And part of the process that you describe in your book, Laura, is emotional. Workout number one, anger. I love this. You said anger is not right or wrong. It's an indicator that someone has triggered something within us that needs investigation. Let's talk about that.

Yeah. And just to back up to your comment for one second, you know, we're not here to be perfect, right? Our bodies, they age. You know, if you stay in perfect shape, it means that you're just able to go to the gym all the time and eat healthy all the time. And if you're living in an authentic place, it means that you're just being so mindful of everything you're doing in all moments. You know, sometimes we just have to let go a little bit. It's like, that's okay, right? Just to your point, right? Like, we're so hard on ourselves.

Yes.

Yeah. Anger, emotional fitness. So how do we get to our authentic self? Well, we have to start to tune inward. And when we go inward, we start to see some of the things that are getting in the way of finding that authentic space. And when I say that to everybody listening, what I mean is when you know for sure that you're telling the truth to yourself, you know, ask yourself the really easy questions. If there's something in your life that you're positive that you're doing that you love, if you have kids and you're so happy, if you're in a relationship and you know you've married the right person, if you have a hobby that you just love to do, and you know it, you just know it 100% at your core. That's what we mean by really accessing your authentic voice. And so things get in the way of that. Anger is a big one. So what I'm saying in the book with emotional fitness is when these things come up, right, you're driving in the parking lot and somebody cuts you off and takes your space or. Right, Somebody's at a dinner party and they say something that just rubs you the wrong way and you feel that anger. Anger is a funny thing. It's telling us that something just got triggered in us. Why did that make me angry? But the other 20 things that happened at the dinner party didn't, Right? Why does one guy get really pissed about the parking space, but somebody else is patient and doesn't care? So it's not 100% true that the situation is anger producing. It just was for me. And so if I'm feeling angry, something happened within me. Maybe I'm tired. Maybe I just need to go home totally overwhelmed and having a bad day. Maybe that person is triggering a wound within me that I can investigate and start to heal. Right. And so the question that we want to start to ask ourselves is, what's happening within us and get very curious about ourselves. And to get curious about yourself, you have to be able to accept that there's nothing right or wrong about these emotional states. They're just happening and they're interesting information. Going back to the metaphor, if you lift weights and your arm starts to get tired and the muscle spasms, we're not going to. Oh, my God. What's wrong? Nothing. Your arm is spasming because you.

This is what happens when you work out.

Yeah. This is normal. Right. So we're emotional beings. It's normal to get angry. It's normal to be resentful. But. Okay. Why. Why is your muscle spasming? Okay, I lifted too much. I need to take a break. Why am I feeling angry? Well, without judgment, without self criticism, without lashing out at somebody, ask yourself what's going on? Right. And try to be honest with yourself.

I love the metaphor, Laura. I love communicating in metaphor because we all can understand that it's this universal language. And I think about when we recover from an athletic standpoint, you know, looking at my training career, we actually do the work in the gym, but we grow when we're resting. And in emotional workout number five, you talk about shame. I think shame is really what stops people from resting. You know, when we feel shame, I know personally and people that I've coached as well, if we're feeling shame, we're in sympathetic branch of our nervous system 24 7. It has been said for hundreds of years that thoughts become things. And Socrates said, let thy medicine be thy food and thy food be thy medicine. This. This bridge between thinking, doing and eating can sometimes be so overwhelming. In our modern, industrialized, frenetic, busy world, we get to stack the odds of success in our favor. This is why Wellness Force partnered with Organifi and you can have the Organifi Wellness Force bundle with the red, green and gold juice morning, afternoon and night to guide you for less than three bucks a day. And the power is in the plants because these adaptogens will actually go into your cells and give them the micronutrients that they most need and that they most deserve. If you want to have energy throughout your day, I have been doing a triple dose, a red, a green and a gold at night with the lemon balm to give me that optimal micronutrient pathway every single day. You can do this too. Just go to Organifi.com WellnessForce and enter code WellnessForce. You get 20% off your entire bundle and anything else you want to drop into your shop. Shopping cart. Go there today. Organifi.com wellnessforce get the deep discount on the Wellness Force bundle. Red, green and gold. And 20% off your entire cart. Now let's get back for the deep dive on emotional obesity with Laura Ko. This shame aspect of the emotional workout. Can we talk about this for just a moment and first maybe dig into how shame blocks us from resting and recovering and rejuvenating and then actually second step of how we let it go.

Yeah. I've never thought of it that way, but I love it. And I think you're right. And shame is a tough one and unfortunately, most people struggle with it. So first of all, for everybody listening, shame really is this deeper sense that something about you is not good enough. Right. At a soul level. Right. I'm not just doing something wrong. I am wrong. Right. So the problem with shame is if you believe that you were made wrong, if there's something wrong inherently with you that drives this really deep, deep, deep, deep emotional state. And it is very hard to get out of because, right. If we think that at our core we're broken, that's a pretty heavy one. So that, to me is why, to your point, it's very hard to rest or get to the other side of it. It's goes to our deeper sense of self and our core. Yes. So to deal with shame is really just to step back, I think, and get out of your own head and out of your own narrative about it and ask yourself, really, right. Is any child made wrong? Right. What do we even mean by that? Right. So I have green eyes. Am I made wrong? I am. Five, three. Is that a problem? Somebody who's six, two, is that just a bad design? Should we throw them in the garbage? Right. Like, what do we mean by that? So if in fact there's such a thing as being made wrong, you know, I would just encourage anybody listening to think about that idea because that really makes no sense at all. What we do is we. We are sometimes acting out of alignment with our spiritual, deeper self. Right. With our higher self. And that's because we're human. We do that a lot. But it doesn't mean that we're made wrong. It just means that, you know, we might want to investigate how we're interacting with the world or what's going on with us.

Laura, thank you for this because I feel like what you said rings so loudly of truth. However, we also are an environment specifically in this hyper competitiveness where it is dog eat dog. And I know a lot of us want to see capitalism move towards more of an egalitarian form of capitalism. Capitalism. However, this society is not set up for us to truly explore our deepest truth. The truth is up to us. And I just have this feeling from you, and I'm curious about your thoughts for this. Do you feel like, to the degree that we're not telling the truth to ourselves and we're not speaking our truth out to the world, that's what actually creates disease?

Yeah. So, I mean, at the heart of all of this is this conversation about speaking your truth. Right. Again, kids do it. We were designed to do it. This is what we are designed to do. We lose touch with it. We are not educated to continue to speak our truth, to learn how. Right. But it's a muscle. The more you work it out, the stronger it gets. But I do think year after year, inability to speak our truth because we're so fearful of what will happen. Right. If you actually tell the truth, there is this weird sense that you may not survive that experience. Right. People will stop loving you. Right. You'll be seen for the imposter that you really are. There's so much irrational fear in speaking our truth. And in, you know, Marianne Williamson talks about how we might actually be fully in our light. Right. And it's not the inadequacies that we fear, but it's our true ability to stand up in our truth and our light that is so fearful. What if you are powerful? And so I think the fear of telling the truth splits in both directions. And. Yeah. Do I. I mean, you know, it's controversial, but I don't think all illness is because of it. But I do think not speaking your truth, holding back those emotions, they get stuck in your body. You live in a constant state of tension and stress. And, you know, wherever you're holding that discomfort, Right. Whether it be the pressure that you feel in your chest or your neck or your head, you know, is it migraines? Is it in your stomach? Right. You feel sick all the time. Sure. Does that impact your physical body? How could it not?

And the research shows us this, too. We look at Besser van der Kolk's work in the Body Keeps the Score, and also Bruce Lipton, where he says the issues are in the tissues, you know, so we understand this psychosomatic connection between our emotions, literally, figuratively, physically harboring us and pulling us down with chains, almost. Now, what's fascinating to me is that you have a section in your book called Maintaining Emotional Health, and you talk about emotional weight loss. I'd love for you to describe this because emotional weight loss from my vantage point has a direct impact on physical weight loss.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, emotional weight loss, right? Like you pay attention to what you put into your mouth, you pay attention to the calories you burn at the gym. What about paying attention to the thoughts in your head, right? Paying attention to what you're thinking about on a day to day basis, an hour to hour basis at the same level that you're thinking about how you treat your body. We wouldn't leave the house without showering, without brushing our teeth, without thinking about exercise or going for a walk or there's dozens and dozens and dozens of interactions with our physical self. But emotional health, what are we thinking? What are the thoughts that are in our way? We're so used to our thoughts, we're so used to the narratives that we're saying, we don't even hear it anymore, right? But how many people out there are thinking they're not good enough and fill in the blank, not pretty enough, not skilled enough, that their boss is going to find out that they're really, you know, not capable enough, that the person that you love thinks you're actually not lovable, that you're not worthy, that you're not deserving. Right. Fill in the blank. Looking for those approvals. My God, how many people do I talk to where, right. They want everybody to love them and if one person disagrees, they can't handle it. It's too much to take in. So what are those thoughts? And are you letting them just run all day long like a really bad song from an elevator that got stuck in your head? Or are you managing them? If you're not, then you wonder why at the end of the day you feel tired.

Holy shit. It can totally be the elevator song, by the way. I mean, we talked about this with Dr. John Sullivan. These negative feedback loops that just get. Get burned, literally burned into our psyche. And this emotional weight loss aspect, it's almost like. And I've read this in your book too, in some ways, when we let go of the fear and step into our unique truth, that's where emotional weight loss really starts to happen. It's in the letting go of the fear and stepping into the truth. Can you take us to a moment in your life that's pivotal, that you could share in this regard?

You know, honestly, like I could, but I think those big moments are the same as the little ones. It's really all the time we are faced with fears, we're faced with these Emotional states that overwhelm us. And do you come back to your truth? Do you practice that on an hour to hour basis again? You drive by a really yummy, smelly McDonald's, it smells good. Do you go through and get a hamburger or do you not? Right. There's all of these choices all the time. And so what are the fears that are in the way right now? Sure. I mean I just got out of a 17 year relationship and started dating and I'm 46, 7 years old. Is that a fearful situation? Of course. How is it going to impact my son? What does that mean for my life? Those loops start to play, but I'm always checking in with my truth. Is this what I want? Is this truly supportive of me in my life? And the answer is yes. How do I know? Because I've really practiced finding that true, yes, that North Star as you put it. Right. And I know the difference. And when that's the case, I continuously push through. If you have fear, but you know you're where you need to be, that's the workout, right? That's the process of surrendering, letting go, creating space to allow your truth to unfold into the world and step through it on a day to day basis.

One of the things I'm fascinated with is Dr. Ruscio, we had him on the show, he talked about the brain to gut connection. You know, 90% of serotonin is produced in the lining of our intestines. So I think about this quote, gut feeling. Lauren, I've read a few articles on this. What is your thoughts on when people have a gut feeling? Can that always be trusted or can sometimes our gut feeling be a representation of maybe gut dysbiosis or something wrong with our physicality? Do you think gut feelings are always true?

It's such a good question. I've thought about this one a lot and I think here's the challenge. If you've done the work and you know that what the true gut feeling is when it's your truth, then I think it's never wrong. But I think unfortunately the gut feeling, fear, anxiety, nervousness, excitement, they can start feeling similar. And so you have to really practice, like I said on those smaller situations to learn which one is the true guiding voice, the authentic self, that core self, that compass versus nervousness. Right. Fear feels really real sometimes. Right. Sometimes it feels like it's the same as my truth. But if you practice it with small easy things on a day to day basis, I do think that you can learn the difference. I don't think I've misstepped on this in years. And so to your question, do you think it's ever wrong? I don't. I don't think it's ever wrong. And I think those, the gut brain connection, the serotonin, the physicality of it all is all of the false self. Right. Those are all just our inability to really distinguish the authentic voice from these other feelings. But I do believe we always have access to our authentic self and it's always correct.

Well, and you've walked the walk on this. And I wanna bring this up because it touched me. In writing this book, you went through a threshold where you're like, hey, I'm a first time writer, I'm meeting with this fancy agent. I think you said you bought like a new power suit or something. You're sitting down at the table, you start having conversations with him and then you realize somewhere along the lines like, no, you're gonna pull the plug, you're not gonna do this. I mean, how scary was that for you to be a first time writer, to listen to your truth and to say no to something that most people would have said yes to in an instant.

Yeah. So I would not recommend the way I did things to anybody. I think I did it like the hardest way possible. Cause I was trying to figure it out on myself. But yeah, you know, instead of practicing with like low hanging fruit with the five pound weights of truths, I was throwing myself off the deep end and trying to swim back to shore. And I was, yeah, I went to New York and I went to the Peninsula Hotel in the corner booth where the man had his table and all that stuff, right. And while I'm sitting there, he is saying all the things you want to hear. Do you want to make a million dollars? Do you want to be a New York Times bestselling author? Right. Yes, Right, like, of course, right. These are the things you want to hear with your first book. And it looks good, right? We're in New York, we're at this fancy hotel. He has a roster of agents that are. It's a deep list, right. But everything in my core self was saying no. Everything. I didn't like his vibe, I didn't like the style. I didn't quite believe him. I didn't quite buy into the whole thing. I felt like we were on different pages in terms of he wanted this emotional obesity to be, you know, it's kind of catchy, very commercial, right. He wanted it to become like sellout commercial style thing. And for me this was about the philosophy and the stories behind it and the truths and helping people more. Right? And so I just, I, you know, I stood up and I walked out and I followed my instincts on it and I've never looked back. I never had one regret.

And I love that you said you climbed the mountain instead of lifting the five pound dumbbell, because most people would have totally just taken the money and run. What do you think that says about you? Like, is that a testament to your work? Like, are you proud of yourself in that moment? What was that actually like? To walk out?

Yeah, you know, so when I left my company, I had made this one promise to myself that I was going to listen to my authentic self. And I didn't know what that meant at the time, right. I didn't know how big of a promise I was making, but I just would check in and if that sense was off, right, it didn't feel right. I would listen to it and I kept doing that and kept doing that. And each time it really did work out, right? And so in the moment it felt terrible, like, what am I doing? And I would be wrestling with myself and I didn't have a coach and I was just like, you know, in agony, slightly over it. But then I get to the other side, I'd see the outcome, that I felt content and at peace. And the choices I was making, one by one were building a life that made sense for me. That agent might have been the right person for somebody else, right? There's nothing wrong with him. It just wasn't right for me. And so choice by choice, situation by situation, I felt the outcome, my life started to manifest my truth a lot more. Right? We want our authentic self, our sense of self, whatever, to be represented in the world by our choices. So we look around and say, yeah, this feels like my life. I feel one and the same with my life, right? And so that was what was happening. So that was really why I was able to continue what felt like a slightly torturesome process. Wow.

I mean, and now look at where it's positioned you to be in process of doing another book. And it's funny, when we look back, it all becomes clear, but sometimes in the moment it could feel like we're in the middle of a squall. And I just, I think about this in my own life and so many people listening. I wanna go back though, Laura, because one thing that you said, you said that sometimes fear might feel like my truth. And I think that's real for a lot of people because whether it is you know, our gut dysbiosis or just negative feedback loop have been laid down in our synapses. How do you help men and women get back in touch with their intuition? Because if their intuition's blunted, then maybe their fear will feel like the truth more often than not. When you work with men and women, how do you get them back in tune with that intuitive edge?

Yeah, I alluded to it slightly, but I really do do this with clients for the first, you know, depends on the person. Week, sometimes a couple months, depending how long they've been out of touch with their truth. Truly, day to day, hour by hour, ask yourself, do you want to read a book? How do you know if you want to read that book right now? Are you reading because you think you should read, because people are telling you that reading is a good thing, or do you actually want to read the book and that we slow down and we work on these small choices that have very little consequence? And learning when you're doing things that are aligned. Yes, I'm sure I want to read this book, and I'm happy I'm reading this book, and I know I'm happy. How do you know? Well, it feels a certain way in my body. And we practice doing as many as it takes. If the person finds that deeper sense of yes in their body, and then we up it one by one. Right. So it might start with. With tacos and books. Choices to Do I need to stand up and stretch? Do I feel bad I shouldn't stand up and stretch? Am I standing up and stretching because I read that I'm supposed to, but I don't want to. Right. How do we know why we're doing what we're doing? Getting out of our heads, getting back into our body, learning how to make those choices from that deeper yes within ourselves, and then moving on, thinking about the job, thinking about whether they want to move to a different city, whether the relationship they're in is the right one. Those become the next level after that. So if you're out there and you're really struggling with these ideas, try it. Try for a week. See what it is that's at the root of your decisions. And what I find is that everybody has a couple narratives that are guiding their choices. So one person, and they're standing up because they think they should, because they think other people will approve. If they stand up three times a day and it's what they read and so their approval is based, somebody else will do it because they feel unworthy. Right. So there are particular narratives for each person that drive their decisions. And once we locate, oh, this is your thing, right. You get hung up on that question of there's a right and there's a wrong way to do things. Or some people are in the victim narrative, right? They just. Everything is happening to them. Once we figure out what their narrative is, that keeps them from their truth, and then they practice their truth and slowing that narrative down, they can slowly find a way to do this on a more regular basis.

And I'm so happy you said that because I think we live in a culture where Gary Vaynerchuk and Tony Robbins and people are saying, just take action. Take massive action every day and try and go and push the gas pedal down, and people are literally dying and burning out. You guys take a breath here and get into the place where Laura's describing, which is our most authentic, intuitive self. And Laura, you've done such a beautiful job with this book. I just have a couple questions for you before we say goodbye. And one of them is around action. Because we've explored many nuances around feeling our feelings, giving ourselves permission for that, and also the emotional health, the emotional fitness. But the importance of action you write about is having this honest, authentic feeling or moment of self awareness is actually not enough. I mean, it's part of it. You write that action must be taken from that space, from that thought. I'd love for you to leave people with this.

Yeah, it's such an important one. I'm grateful you're bringing it up because there's the whole other side of the world of people who are in their passion and their bliss and their authentic self, and they know themselves. They don't do anything. Right. So it's not enough to locate this truth and to know your truth and to say, you know what you want, you have to take action. Nothing in the world happens without action. So, yes, Tony Robbins and all those people. Action, action. I don't agree. I think you do need to pace yourself. You do need to make sure that the actions you're taking are coming from this true, genuine. Yes. Within yourself, your deepest truth. But once you do locate it, you have to take action. Because we live in the world. We're not living in our own self. Right. That's like this narcissistic bubble. Then.

It feels like it.

Yeah, yeah. And then also we want to contribute our truth, our best self to the world. That's where we get the most satisfaction. So, yes, 100%, locate it, find it, and then do something with it. Bring it out to the world, bring that truth on a day to day basis. And maybe it's just bringing your truth into the world in that you know you're coming from a good place and being authentic with people and that helps people, when they're around you, feel more comfortable and at ease. And maybe you're bringing that authentic truth out in creating a podcast and bringing that out to the world. Right? It doesn't matter the size, it just matters that you're taking action.

Don't let the ego get in the way of that. Because let's be honest, whenever we start anything brand new, we're probably gonna not be that great at it. We have to give ourselves grace to know that in the beginning of any learning process, we're kind of gonna suck. That's why we're learning in the first place. Laura, last question here. And we're regards to the emotional aspect of having emotional fitness. Look at technology. I'd love for you to expound upon maybe a few healthy practices you have that you could share with us around technology not being such a detriment to our emotional health.

I don't think there's anything wrong with technology whatsoever. It's just our interaction with it. Right? So technology at one point, I joke, I mean, a pen was technology at some point, right? Paper was technology. There weren't books at some point. Right. Like there was only oral storytelling. So everything is an advancement and right now we have a lot of new things and so learning to interact with them in a way that doesn't become defeating to your life. So are you on Facebook because you're trying to get more likes, or are you really just sharing with your friends? If you're consumed with other people's lives and looking over the shoulder, looking over the fence and into their life, and a little bit as an interloper, then probably Facebook isn't the best thing. If you haven't stood up in six, seven, eight hours and you have back issues and your body is really tight, then think about ways to work a standing desk or taking more breaks, or setting up a schedule so that you can move your body throughout the day. So I hesitate to say exactly what my systems are because again, this goes back to the core of my work. I believe we're all really different. I get calls from people who say, you know, I'm trying to leave my gym shoes by my bed. So at 5am I get up and there's no barrier and I will put on my gym shoes and I'll go jogging and I say, well, do you, do you like getting up at 5am no, I'm not a morning person. Well, do you like to jog? Do you like to jog? I hate jogging. It's the one thing I hate doing so well. Why is. Well, I read that this was like how successful people start their day. And I'm like, well, I've been successful. I've never jogged at 5 in the morning. Right. So, I mean, I do have my system. I'm very organized in terms of priorities. I think it's really important to start my week with what I want to set out to do for the week and setting up realistic things so that I don't feel bad and behind all the time. I think that's really, really important. But then the way we interact with technology and all of these systems and what works for our life is really being honest with yourself. So it goes back to everything we've been speaking about during the this call.

Yes. And going back to the truth. The truth is always undefeated. I mean, over time, sometimes it takes a while, sometimes it might take years or maybe even decades. Maybe the truth doesn't come up until someone's actually left the planet. But eventually the truth will surface. And Laura, thank you for being so truthful with your work, with your book and everything that we've talked about today. It's been incredible. People can get this book@emotionalobesity.com My last question for you is wellness. It's to really define, you know, in your life as a mother, as a businesswoman, as a professional, all the different hats that you wear and also stemming to your yoga and philosophy training. How would you actually define wellness? What is your definition of wellness?

My definition of wellness is every day I wake up and that I honor my truth in that day. So some days you wake up and you're a little tired and I just, I work with that. I'm not going to feel bad about it. I'm not going to drink 10 more cups of coffee trying to get into a state of that I feel right I should be in. I am doing what I love to do on a regular basis, recognizing that while it's what I love to do, it's hard work and it's not always easy. And that I exercise, I do yoga, I meditate and surround myself with people who have my best interests. I think it's really important that the people around you are supportive of you living your fullest life and are not jealous or trying to dim you in any kind of way.

Way people can take a quiz It's a really introspective, intuitive learning quiz where they can figure out what's their actual emotional weight? How does their emotion stack up on the scale? Can you give people some direction how they can find that test?

Yeah. So if you go to my site, laurako.com, i've had thousands of people hop on the scale. I got frustrated because you can go to Bed, Bath and Beyond and weigh yourself, see if you've gained weight over the holidays. But how do you find out if you have gained emotional weight? So I used all the philosophy and created this tool. It's free and you get a little handout at the end for free as well. So it's@lauracode.com and you'll scroll down, you'll see a big button to hop on the scale.

Social media, where do you hang out? I mean, are you active online or where can people reach?

Yeah, I'm a Twitter account and Instagram and there's an art of authenticity Facebook page.

I have a love hate relationship with social media and we just want to know like, do you love it? Do you hate it? Are you ambivalent? Where are you at with social media?

To be totally honest, I'm not a big fan. So while I think sometimes it's nice to post things that are meaningful or fun and entertaining, I can't say I'm on it very often.

Well, thank you for your truth and that was real. I totally felt you on that. And I think if you checked in with most people, they don't like it. And we're all figuring out as a society how we can tune back in. And a lot of times that means turning screens off. So Laura, thank you for coming on the show. Just a great, great conversation with you. We're excited to get feedback and questions, you guys. We're going to be talking about Laura's work in our Facebook group, so go to wellnessforce.com group. Laura, thank you for coming on the show. Just pausing here for a breath and honoring the work you do in emotional obesity and getting people back to what's real. Thank you for coming on the show.

Thank you for having me. It's been so much fun chatting.

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