Danielle LaPorte | How To Be Loving

Srini: , Danielle, welcome back to the Unmistakable Creative.

Danielle Laporte: I'm so happy to be here because I know that you read the book.

Srini: I read everybody's books and of course I read yours. Yeah. You have a new book out called How to Be Loving, obviously, which we'll talk about.

But having been a guest before, that is not where we're gonna start. And the funny thing is, I was trying to think of all the various questions that I've asked you since you were literally the most frequently appeared, guest on the Untakeable Creative. This might be your sixth time on our show.

Oh. Yeah, I don't think anybody's had as many appearances as you have. So I was thinking back to this and I was like I know the answer to this question. I just don't know the rest of the answer to this question. And you told me this in the interview that we did at Creative Live, but we never really got that deep into it.

So I wanted to start by asking you what birth order were you? And what impact did that end up having on your life and the choices that you've made with it?

Danielle Laporte: I am number one. I will always be number one because I'm an only child. I remember,

Srini: that's why I

Danielle Laporte: asked the question. Yeah. Only child and shotgun wedding.

So my mom got pregnant in high school and dropped out of high school as a result. And I was I was. A toddler going to college with my mom so that she could get her BA in psychology.

Srini: So I found that I have two types of friends who are only children. And there are those that I think are selfish.

They don't realize they're selfish, but they're selfish in really small ways. Like they don't show up to anything on time. The world kind of centers around them when it comes to these kinds of small things. And then I have other friends who, for them their friends are like their siblings. So I wonder, being an only child, how did that affect your own social relationships as a.

Danielle Laporte: Oh, as a child, how did it affect my relationships? I can tell you how it affected one marriage that I was in, where I used to like just make snacks for myself and walk into the living room . And my then husband would say Didn't you make some peanut butter and toast for me? And I was like, Oh, I just

Okay. And I go back into the kitchen. How did it affect me as a child? I. was a, I will I was a leader as a kid. I don't know if that had anything to do with me being an only child. I think it just had to do with, I was like this natural communicator. I was making little books. I wanted to get up in class and I wanted to talk.

And I was also giving counseling at recess to people. It's You should go kiss her. Or you should, I think you don't look too good. You should go home. I

Srini: think, how old were you when this was all happening? Because I'm trying to imagine like this little Danielle Laport holding court under a tree at recess.

Danielle Laporte: Yeah. That's young. That's like great too. That's plus, wow. I was also deeply a deeply spiritual kid. Like I had, I converted my Barbie doll house into. Like a little religious monastery. There was, I had rosaries in there and I just, I wanted to grow up and marry Jesus. I was so fascinated and moved by the whole Catholic ritual, all of it.

How to be only a child affect that. I don't know. I've always felt on the outside, I always felt. , like this wasn't my home. Like my Lean Rhimes, who I'm blessed as a friend of mine, she just released a song this week called Spaceship. The album is called God's Work, and she talks about come and get me.

I don't think this is where I'm from. And I felt that. And I think being an only child contributed to that outsider feeling.

Srini: So you mentioned the marriage. What about in your social relationships? How has it affected those throughout your.

Danielle Laporte: I don't know. I don't know. I can just say like this because I think it's one data point, It's like there's so many other data points that inform how we show up in the world and relational dynamics. So it's like I'm an only child. I was raised. Catholic by very young parents. I have four planets in Virgo.

I have a Gemini son. I was raised in a Canadian identity. There's all of these, I think there's this foundational blueprint that we incarnate with that is going to be abiding. And then I think there's all of these cultural impressions and programming. Conditionings that were given.

And that is highly influential until we wake up and go, Wait, I don't have to be this in relationship. I don't have to be what my parents said I was, or what my nationalities said I am. And like a good example for this for me was, , the label of introvert. I could take any personality test and I would skew heavily, like I'd be on the high spectrum of introvert, which has actually has changed over the years, and I realized that label was holding me back.

I could, I was noticing that. , I'd wanna be social and I'd think, yeah, but I'm an introvert or maybe I shouldn't go to that party because introverts don't wanna go to parties. We complain all the time about . I don't wanna go. I wanna go. And then we get there and we just end up sitting in the corner talking to one person in depth all night.

And I could see how that was holding me back. I could also see how. Being an X, Y, Z or an I N F J or whatever the personality test was, it wasn't actually helping me live a more meaningful, purposeful life. It's like kind of my ego got off and Oh yeah, I am. So that way who doesn't want, we all love to talk about.

Oh, in, in some degree, or to be noticed or attended to, but I don't think it's helped me get closer to God or to make a deeper contribution to the collective. So I'm really letting go. A lot of the labels.

Srini: Speaking of labels, I think I, I remember writing in my first book Unrest Stateable that labels limit our capacity and when we can go over them, we can transcend the limitations of what we think is possible within the context of a label.

But I don't ever think I actually talked about how to let go of the label. How do you start to disconnect yourself from a label that you have identified with particularly something that you've identified so deeply with your entire life?

Danielle Laporte: As always a great question. You let go of the label by not focusing on the label. You can't let go of something that you've got your attention on.

It's like you just, the grip actually tightens. And this is especially true of ephemeral things like emotions and patterning in the psyche. And I, and I identity labels. So instead of focusing, Only child, Virgo. I nfj what my dad said about me, my job title, nationality, all these things.

You focus on your true identity, which is really actually what my new book, How to Be Loving is All About. It's about right identity, truthful correct identity, which is that you are so much more. Then all of those labels you are, you're more than your desires by the way. You're more than your feelings and your emotions.

You're definitely, I think most people can wrap their head around this one. You are definitely more than your history and your past. You are, to use Ramdas's phrase, you are a spiritual. Having a human experience. So your true nature is pure energy, consciousness, life force. Beyond all of this, and my experience, and this is also you know, baked into so much mystical teaching, is that when you just attend to that, when you put your focus on that, I then the other stuff starts to melt.

but you can't this is even basic manifestation, right? It's if you wanna lose the weight or get stronger, you don't focus on how fat or weak you are. You focus on optimizing your health and using thoughts, running thoughts through your system, around your strength and your vitality. The goal itself is radiant.

Srini: One thing I wanted to ask you about, we're talking that you alluded to conditioning and culture, and I just, you'd mentioned the fact that I'd spent the entire summer in another country. You're a Canadian and now I'm conducting this interview in the United States. And you just made me wonder, when you look at cultural conditioning in comparison to, America and Canada, what do you see as the differences in terms of the way people are culturally conditioned in the United States, and then how that affects their adult lives versus Canada?

Danielle Laporte: I've never been asked this before. I've actually, I do that to people. . Yes. This is good. I always love our conversations. I feel someone qualified to answer this question because I grew up on a border city, so I grew up Windsor, Ontario, and it was just a 10 minute ride across the Ambassador Bridge to Detroit, Michigan.

And when you grow up in that situation, for me at least I grew up feeling kind of half American and then I moved to the west coast of Canada and I was immediately struck by how Canadian. Everybody felt, I was like, Wow, you ingest Canadian media, you're listening to and watching the cbc, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and there's a little bit of a, more of a lt, a Canadian accent here.

This is what I've noticed the differences to be. And and let me preface this by saying the more we focus on these differences in a negative way, the more divided we become. So I've learned to just see these differences as these are just like unique personality attributes that don't apply to everybody, and we should really focus on how we are the same, but celebrating those traits.

Canadians are way more informed about Americans than Americans are about Canadians. .

Srini: Yeah. I think the rest of the world is way more informed about Americans than we are about anybody

Danielle Laporte: else. Yeah. And you know the times I was asked, who our president was and I had to say, actually we have a prime Minister.

And there does seem to be an American attitude that America. unquestionably, and this is the operative word here, unquestionably the best place in the world to live. . And everything is worth questioning. Everything is worth questioning. Canadians we are, there's truth in every stereotype.

Stereotypically we're very apologetic and have good, where there's good manners. There's a well natured way we have about us. That's proven. I've travel, I've been to a lot of countries and as a Canadian, like I would make sure when my kid and I traveled anywhere, backpacking, Rollie, whatever we had, we always made sure I either, we had a Canadian patch.

On our backpacks or we are very quick in any cafe to say, Oh, we're from Vancouver, , . And you could see there would be a shift. There would be a shift because we do tend to be a little more soft spoken less boisterous. But where this gets us, and I think, and I'm really interested in this layer, which is.

What I see happening, what I believe is happening on a global scale is that the collective shadow is coming out and all this polarization and this divisiveness and Canada who has been, really this kind of darling country in terms of its progressiveness. And it's socialism, et cetera. And there are many great things about living here.

Many. And I'm glad to be here for the moment. But our darkness is coming out and it's shocking to a lot of us here. . It's shocking to a lot of my friends. They cannot believe what's gone down in this country in the last couple years, and I'm really excited actually by that underbelly.

Being turned over to say, Oh, okay, what's really going on under here? It's when you get into the whole conversation around race relations in America, which is so obviously inflamed and in need of attention, every Canadian is there to say, Oh yeah, race and race in America.

What. And yet here we are with actual bodies of children from indigenous schools, reservation schools, really just prisons for children being exhumed and people waking up to the fact that our past has some brutal, shameful darkness in it. And it's time to really reckon with that. It's time for us to.

Use our to the good manners, I think need to go down on the list of our key characteristics, , and we really need to look at the darkness in this nation. You know

it,

Srini: it's funny that you say that about Canada because I think that. I also noticed that going back to Brazil, coincidentally it was, it's also an election year right now in Brazil, and their current president has basically been incredibly polarizing and to the point where one of the sandwich shop owners told us, he was like, It's a good thing you guys aren't gonna be here on September 7th.

I, which I believe was, if I remember correctly, Brazil Independence Day. Somebody may have to fact check that, but they're like 500,000 Bolsonaro supporters will be on Copa Cabana Beach. It's gonna, the guy was like, We're gonna close our store that day. The other thing I think that I found really fascinating my roommate Tim and I were talking about how media influences behavior there and just in general.

And when you look at advertising in the United States or you look at marketing in the United States, it's extremely hyped up, whereas, In Brazil, everything was so literal. Like for example, like water, right? Like you buy a bottle of water in the United States, it's basically hyped up to no end. And there it's this is water with gas.

This is water without gas. That's literally it. They're very literal about certain things, which is really interesting. It's rather than hype it up, don't get me wrong, they have plenty of their own version of that too. But that really struck me as how literal everything was in, in every place we went in South America.

Danielle Laporte: . . Yeah. Striking.

Srini: Yeah. Let's get into the book. First off, What prompted this book what was the impetus for writing a book? Cause you write a book every three or four years and even this the opening of this book struck me cuz you say, I'm my most recent year in review exercise.

I seriously considered walking away from my creative life, which I tend to reconsider every few years. I had this romantic notion of meditating all morning in my apartment, growing potatoes on my deck for neighbors, wearing white peasant blouse and never checking my Instagram again. And I'm. , That sounds like the impetus for all of your books.

Danielle Laporte: , . This is my first book in five years. I feel like I know the book I ended up with is not the book I set out to write this book by the way, Creative side note. Unmistakable creative side note. This book was really hard to write during the time that I wrote it. The world was really starting to fall apart.

I felt I'd never been so distracted. And it was intense. It began. The seed of this was the evolution of the desire. Which, is what I'm known for. It's three, I think moving on 400,000 people now. I've been through like the Desire Map book and process and when a publisher wants a sequel and I went to them and said, Yeah, I wanna do Desire Map 2.0 and let's get deeper into feelings and emotions.

But all based on. The truth that I had evolved, that desire had evolve for me. There was a different conversation I wanted to have around goal setting, which was it ain't what is cracked up to be. There's a more truly more holistic approach. And as I was creating and pulling everything together I went deeper into.

now what's, known in the book is having higher quality thoughts or loving thoughts and really what happens in the subconscious and the unconscious with feelings and emotions. And then I said, I think this is really more about living a heart centered life. This is about the results of being more reflective.

Which is self-acceptance, which is really where the revolution is. And so I'm gonna call this Heart Centered Plus, I have this heart centered membership and I have this leadership program with hundreds of coaches around the world. As this heart centered, it'd be good for

,

the brand. And and as these things happen, just one morning I was like, you know what?

This is about how to be loving. And I love the game of publishing. So I got really excited to find out that How to Be loving.com was available for $2 and 99 cents . And but it was just a very gentle awareness. And that awareness came also at a time where over the last couple years I've done some It's fair to say some radical simplification in my life and I was thinking to myself in terms of this content how simple can this be?

And we got down to how to be loving.

Srini: You open the book by saying, spirituality is really just the practice of open-mindedness, of intentionally not putting up blocks to life. When we open our minds and we keep finding this incredible heart energy, always pulsating for us, eternally patient, endlessly vibrant energy, always pulsating for us, e eternal.

And then you say enlightenment is when the mind fans out so wide that it dissolves into unbounded loving awareness. Can you expand on that and explain what you mean by that? Because I think. . In a lot of ways spirituality has been mixed up with Yeah. New age nonsense that basically, I think there's this sort of confe correlation and causation mix up of spirituality.

It's oh, spirituality means lighting, sced candles, and meditating in front of a shrine for hours on end every day. ,

Danielle Laporte: which again, minus the center candles. I think where we're going is, this is very meta, right? , I think where we're headed, enlightenment is really an enlightenment in spirituality.

It's How do I break this down? Let me continue this thought about enlightenment. I think where we're headed eventually in many lifetimes ahead, but perhaps in, eons, who knows impossible for the mind to conceive of is to move beyond feeling, to move beyond mind. And this is a state of beingness.

This is presence. This is. Most of us know in just fleeting micro experiences of you're not in your head, you're actually not cognitively cognitive of anything. You're just in a state of presence. You really tap your divine state, which is beyond times, it's beyond the constructs of thought. So I think that's the goal, not that you can have a goal to be enlightened.

, I don't think it comes that way. , but here we are in this dimension. We are thinking we have minds. As long as you have a mind, you're going to think that's the mind's job is to identify this, that, and the other. So that's what I mean when I say go beyond whatever. Lovely thing I wrote that you read there about going beyond.

thought going beyond the, beyond as the Buddhist would say. So how about we just start here since we're all human why don't we just choose higher quality thoughts that are based on love that help us more often be in a state of presence and being, and then Maybe someday we hit enlightenment and we just be, But I think once you hit enlightenment, you're out here.

You don't have to do this duality thing. Yeah.

Srini: One other thing you say is when we live more reflectively, we operate less reactively. And the funny thing is, I think. As a society in a constant state of operating reactively, just our day to day behavior. It's Oh, let me check who you know, commented on my latest Facebook post.

Let me check my email. Those are small versions of that. But then you know, when you take that and put it on a much grander scale, it has serious consequences. So one, how did we get here? But more importantly, how do we get from a place of operating reactively to living more reflectively?

Danielle Laporte: This goes back to the use of the mind, right?

So the mind is always dividing, This is wrong. This is right. I am safe, I am unsafe. I am me. You are other. , it's all super useful, but when we're not aware, I think when we're not heart centered, which is where the real intelligence is, where we really become astute in energy, when we're not aware, then we're gonna be reacting, Oh, this happened, so I should do this.

and the important word there is, I should do this, I should have a particular reaction to a particular situation. I think that we're trained we are, we're socially programmed on how to feel the most of what we feel. It's like something happens and we are conditioned that we should have a re an angry or happy, pleased, or displeased response to what happened.

and then this is what anger looks like. But if you really drill down you can look at all the disappointing things that happen and you can ask yourself, and this sounds so remedial, but some of the wisest things are, Why are you angry? Why should you be? who told you should be angry? Where'd you learn to be angry?

Did you see someone in this similar situation have an angry reaction? Did your parents, your family, your community, your teachers, it a movie teach you that? Oh, when someone disappoints you, you should be angry Because there are a range of other responses that are in contrast to those reactive response.

Those reactions and that range, playing that range of reactions is how we become whole. How we become more conscious let me stop, this has happened. Society, or just my unconscious, my emotions tell me I should be disappointed. I should express that disappointment in the form of some kind of cynicism.

Anger. I'm gonna verbally express my disdain, whatever. But you know what? You could also not be angry. You could be sad, you could be happy. You could be okay with it. You could be neutral. You could be spacious. You could be conscious. You could be loving, You could somehow, you could find some delight in the disappointing situation.

And that's where we really move into. Self agency and power that I will be a higher vibration. You could say that is what I'm saying. You can be a higher vibration no matter what is going on outside of you. And this is really the mastery that everybody who's interested in mastery is talking about, that. No matter what the statistics are or the odds.

Or the feelings or circumstances of imprisonment, oppression, loss, that you have the strength to abide in a higher frequency, which I think is the higher frequency, is love. And I think the whole journey that we're on is to just keep getting aligned. That intelligence of the heart, this happened.

Okay. I'm gonna choose this. Response choice, Dice choice. Yeah.

Srini: One thing you say. We can get trapped into the analysis. Mary, go round. We keep looking at our present through the lens of our past. We walk through the world through our relationships, asking houses a reflection of my past and of us to love.

And you say, but there's a shadow side of correlating our past with our present life. We keep digging up what we've played to rest. And when we do, we're reenergizing that old pattern. We're reinforcing the old form. The retelling of those painful stories can hold those back from healing. So the question for me was, I understand that, and simultaneously, we obviously want to learn from the mistakes that we've made in our past and the things that we've done wrong, so we can avoid repeating them.

So how do you do that while also letting it go or letting it, be

laid

Danielle Laporte: to rest? I'm so glad you asked. I've been waiting for somebody to notice this in the book. Thank you. Therapy is great. Coaching is great. You should. Assess and deeply analyze your past, your family of origin stuff, the impacts it's had on you, and how your behavior today is based on your past.

Please do that. The world will be a better place and you will sleep better. And then you gotta lay it to rest. You gotta move on the wound itself has a hard time conceiving of being heal. And then we keep in mind that what's the function of the mind to delineate, to separate, to distinguish.

So the mind, the ego, the shadow is not gonna want us to expand and heal. It's gonna want us to be bounded, right? Don't be boundless, Don't be healed and free. Let's have all these guard rails and all these reasons you shouldn't be over that. And my personal experiences I'm really grateful. I'm immensely grateful.

I think I owe a lot of my life, my happiness, my wellness to qualified, loving psychotherapists who help me. I've had many, so much therapy. I've been to so many workshops, and I could see it. There was this dangerous. Place after I got through some stuff, as therapy gets you through the stuff where it really is that land of potential naval gazing and you love the attention that so much that's really genuine, heal, genuinely healing about therapy, especially when most of us are going into.

about our family stuff is that you were getting ideally unconditional love. And that's, by the way, this is a side note on how to know you have a good therapist, . You really need to feel that they are on your team, that they are your champion, which means they will coach you hard sometimes, you'll get called on your stuff, but you'll also be held at your, your most fragile.

But then you gotta move on, brother, sister, Mr. Like we all know, like conceptually that this path is about not looking outside of ourselves for the answer . And so then the press pause on the therapy and before you make an appointment and that this applies for all his self-help stuff, before you make another appointment.

And let's just be clear. I said Go therapy's great. Have your sessions go for years if you need to. But just experiment with before you make the next appointment or you call an astrologer or a shaman or you do another iasa, any kind of trip, or you do the thing, just be still with it for a couple days and.

Ask your soul, ask you the whole of you for guidance and watch what happens. You. And it's a muscle. It's like you learn how to use that telephone and it will be easier and easier to hear yourself. And you will, you know what eye witness is, You'll need less therapy, you'll be less inclined and you're gonna save so much.

Srini: It's funny because I literally, you teed up the next question. And comment on the book. There's this line where you say, Seeking truth as an intellectual pursuit can often get in the way of the truth itself. We collect so many philosophies and rituals along the way that end up that we end up having to pass most of it so we can hear ourselves think clearly, which is hilarious considering you and I are talking about a book.

People are listening to a podcast to some degree seeking truth, and it just reminded me of this moment when I walked into the self-help section of the Boulder Bookstore. When I was living there, I walked upstairs and I just kept browsing. Why the fuck do I feel like I've read every single book here and there's nothing left here?

I'm like, All right. I think that's a sign. . . Where do, how do you get to this point where you finally say, Okay, I can Like why? I think we, you and I have talked before about why people constantly seek truth outside of themselves, so I'm more interested in how do you get to that point where you stop?

Danielle Laporte: I think first you have to define what wisdom is, and we all know people. who aren't learned, they're not educated, they haven't traveled. They don't even necessarily have a lot of diverse life experience. And they're incredibly wise. Incredibly wise. They give you the answer that soothes your nervous system.

They give you the answer where you go, Yeah, that's right. I gotta, I have the courage to do that. Yeah. And then I, there's some hallmarks of wisdom, which. , this is how you know, a wise decision from an unwise decision. A wise decision takes into consideration the benefit of everybody, everybody involved.

Even the enemy, the person you're voting against, somehow everybody's needs are going to get addressed. Doesn't mean there isn't balancing the scales of justice, but wisdom includes everybody. Unwise is just looking out for you and a few other factions, . So that's at what, Sorry, go back to the

Srini: nugget of the question.

I guess the nugget of the question is like, how do you get to that place where you stop seeking truth as a al pursuit outside of yourself? Yeah.

Danielle Laporte: You have to try it, you have to experiment with it. It's just like a diet. Really you're going on a, an information diet , and and this has been the best fasting I've ever done.

It's just like I haven't, this isn't saying much. I will say that much as well. It's like I haven't watch. The news. I haven't watched television for, I don't know, it's going on a decade now and it's not saying much because I do ingest a lot of media through Instagram. So I get, I see the headlines, but I don't actively, I'm just in the dentist office a couple weeks and it's so unfortunate that they have televisions now on the ceiling.

So you lean back in the chair and you're just being programmed by. This media crap. And I'm just like, wow, this is all doom and gloom. If you believe the news, humanity is awful and nothing good ever happens and you're gonna die soon. . It's just, it's so bad. Being more aware about what you're ingesting is how to build that.

Muscle of inner referencing. And I think obviously in addition to the news, it includes all the spiritual stuff. And my aha was, this was a couple summers ago, I came across as spiritual teacher that I just found it was a, it was like his teachings were electrifying and it was really one of these circumstances where, you know, the.

Fell off the shelf for me. I was in this little town. I walk in the bookstore, The guy says Every. Is under $5 today. The secondhand store. I walk to the back of the store, it's the first book I touch, I pull it out. The book price is a hundred dollars. I go is every book, cuz why? Anyways, all this to say this is this really rare find and it was very esoterica stuff and I was just eating it up and I noticed it was making me anxious.

now, I think is part of the energy that the materials transmitting. But it was a great beginning for me of going on a radical fast from spiritual input. And I got it down to, there were a couple books, I'm still very committed in a Course of Miracles. I still love all of my Shanti stuff, but I just that's.

I'm going to just stop for a while and just see what happens and who knows. I'll probably possibly go on another binge of all kinds of things, but it's been about it's been about two years now since I've sat down and read any. Spiritual text.

Srini: It. It's funny that you say that cuz my dad turned 70 recently and my brother-in-law just did this like brief video of him.

It's on Instagram, you can find it. And I remember asking him like, the guy literally looks like he's 50 years old, He stopped aging. There's a contrast picture between 60 and 70 and there's literally no difference. , like we're mistaken for brothers frequently. And my brother-in-law was like, you look great.

What's your secret? And he was like he was like, have a glass of wine every. He was like, Don't have Eres. And he was like, Assume what happens is for your own good. He was like, Don't mix work problems with home problems and your happy wife is a happy life. And I'm like, This guy just summed up a thousand self help books in 30 seconds.

It's all brilliant. It was so simple. It was just like, wow,

Danielle Laporte: okay. I like assume that everything happens. Did he say for a good reason? Yeah. For the best. For the

Srini: best, yes. That's his philosophy of life. He's Whatever happens is for your own good. And, but it was just funny as it was like, wow, I've done a thousand interviews, read a thousand books in the one source of wisdom here is literally my own dad , summed all of that up in less than 60 seconds.

, He got it. Yeah. No. This actually probably was my favorite part of the book because I, have been going on this endless rant about personal development and, questioning it. But you say the ego's favorite hiding places. You're ready. Personal development workshops, self helpers

,

and spiritual seekers really know how to strive and striving is classic egoing.

And then you say self helpers and spiritual seekers also uphold the values of humility, unity, and compassion. It's a lot of upholding. Then there are charity donations and peace rallies and petition. Spiritual circles are the perfect place for covert ego striving. And I was like, All right. That's my favorite part of the book.

I think part of it is partially because. My own sort of where I am at with all of this. But it make me want to probably take a different take than you might be thinking on this. And this is something that I have been really trying to get an understanding of is why in the world people ignore context in the role of prescriptive advice.

Because, when we read, for example, stories about people who are successful, it was like, follow your passion. You're in a graduation speech. Context is completely ignored in all of that. Like we don't account for cog, we don't account for context, and we don't account for cognitive biases. I always tell people, I'm like, If you literally tried to reverse engineer my path and think it would lead you to where I'm at, you'd be an idiot.

There were so many things that were just, serendipitous along the way. I'm like, I had an amazing mentor timing and I'm like, because literally I was like, if I were give you the forum like, All right, get fired from every job you've had. Go live with your parents until you're 38 and hope that an editor at Penguin finds your article on Medium.

I was like, That is not a good strategy, . But the thing is that in that story, people will overlook all the context to only see the highlights. ,

Danielle Laporte: I think also people overlook there's the. There's the human everyday struggle that gets filtered out of the blog post and the Instagram feed. But there's the, there's a whole other dimension to take into consideration, which is someone's karma and the lessons that their soul is dispensing for them.

It's just look at Hollywood, right? Success is not based on talent necessarily. I think it does have a lot to do with stamina, resilience, persistency, hard work, and that can be accessed from numerous places. You can get that from your shadow self or you can get that from your healed loving self.

But there's something more going on. It's like, When I decided to come to this plane, what's my growth edge? Maybe my growth edge is to learn to deal with loss and to still feel. Close to life, maybe my growth edge. Edge is to have material success and deal with all these issues around self-worth and generosity.

Like we just don't know. You have to leave so much room up to mystery about everybody's journey, why they get what they got, why they didn't get what they wanted. So I don't spend much time anymore looking at how people succeeded. I don't think it, I'm just gonna do what I'm gonna do. And of course I have lots of business conversations about would you do that?

Did you use that platform and what's the software and all of that kind of stuff. But my success is between me and my soul. And I mean that in a really 360 degree way. It's like I could have. failure in a material way or in an emotional relation relationship way. But I could be just becoming so deeply grounded into like purpose and meaningfulness and my strength and my capacity to love and what resilience really is, so I'm interested in that.

Srini: Let's talk about this idea of self acceptance. Cause you say self acceptance will be the undoing of you, the undoing of identities that are terribly false or too narrow. Even the spiritual ones or the socially applauded achieving ones. And that kind of, in a lot of ways, that takes us back to the whole idea of labels, right?

It's like, Oh, I'm validated now by my parents because I'm not just some guy screwing around the internet. I wrote a book so my parents can go and tell their friends, Oh, he's a published author. , which is a socially applauded achieving identity. . So how do you get rid of all those layers to get to this?

Because I think that's a false self acceptance of sorts in a lot of ways, cuz you feel like you're being self accepted, but reality is you are mixing up self acceptance with other people's acceptance.

Danielle Laporte: Yes. That's so good. Self acceptance. Radical self acceptance is you're good no matter what you do.

It's not based on any kind. Performance. Whether the performance is making stuff, being productive or valuable relationships or vitality. It's just like you were good. You are worthy no matter what. You don't even engage in the conversation about worthiness is of course I'm just here.

I'm here. I'm on the planet. Something greater than me is carrying me through this. I'm here for a reason. End of story, period. Good enough. How do we get there? This goes back to the top of our conversation. You focus on what's working. You get aspirational, about loving yourself. You focus on acceptance and by focusing on, that's where the hard work is.

The really, this is self-acceptance. What's known in our space is shadow work. Self acceptance is I did this thing that I'm ashamed of. I'm gonna be gentle with myself about that. I'm not even gonna push away the shame. This is unconditional love. Self acceptance is, yeah, I have this thing that really.

It's it really grates on people's nerves. They've told me how, I'm a bit I'm, I manipulate the conversation or I'm a bit greedy, or it's, this is costing me, I don't like this about myself. People tell me I should be ashamed about myself, about this. Actually, I am ashamed about this. Okay. I'm gonna love, I'm actually gonna be gentle with this.

Self acceptance, the way you get there is we start to, Get friendly with all the stuff that we've been pushing away. And it gets even more challenging when society, family circumstances being broken up with publicly shamed, canceled, dumped, whatever it is. Just feed that wound, that shameful thing happened.

I'm gonna be friendly with it. I'm gonna be gentle with it. And that's, that takes work cuz you're gonna have to do. Many times a day, countless times in your life, you're gonna have that winy. O can't believe I did that. You're gonna have that contraction of I don't think I can get beyond this.

And you are going to have a gentle tone when you talk to yourself and you are going to say things like, What do you wanna teach me? I'm here to listen and you're gonna be gentle. All day long, and that's the medicine, That's where the power is. It's not about overcoming anything. It's about integrating everyth.

Srini: Wow. So let's talk about other people, because this one really struck me and I had a funny story to share with you about this was I shared in the show before people are where they are, despite our desire for them to be further along, more evolved, more fun, closer to our level, less intimidating, more relatable, easier to access, or just more like us.

If you take the desire for someone to be different out of the equation, then you can meet them where they are, and that's how to be loving. Reminded me of the story I had with my mother. She gets very irritated with the way people load the dishwasher. And apparently this is a very common issue because the oatmeal did an entire cartoon about this.

Danielle Laporte: Yes. You wanna talk to your mother cuz we, she would probably do it the same way. Yep. Yeah.

Srini: So yeah, the oatmeal is if you don't load the, dishwasher like Jesus on Adderall, your dishwashing privileges will be revoked. I'm add so I tend not to basically do that and. Got irritated.

So I'm therapy sitting with the therapist and it's six months later he's like, All right, look, we've been talking about your mom a lot. He said, You can either continue to go to battle with your mom or expect her to change her, accept the fact that this is how she is. And I come back and my dad was like, How is therapy?

And I tell him this. He's Yeah, I could have saved you 50 bucks and told you that, so I guess the question then is like, why is it that we are always wanting people to be different than they are, particularly parents? I think I, I've noticed that with, we're always like, ah, like I wish you would do this and, be this way.

And no matter how much, like I finally come to the terms of the fact there are things about my mom that are not gonna change, and yet there are times when I will still go to battle with her because I can't take it. ,

Danielle Laporte: what part of you can't take it?

Srini: Sometimes I feel like she violates. . Like she doesn't have a, in her world, there are no boundaries.

Danielle Laporte: And so why do you want her to be different?

Srini: I guess for my own peace of mind, but the reality is probably I would get the peace of mind if I accepted the fact that she's not going to be. Yeah. Both

Danielle Laporte: are true, right? Yeah. So for our own peace of mind, we don't want anybody to rock the boat. We have the mind has a very particular vision of how we want things to be.

People should talk to me this way. The person I marry should look like this. The job should be this kind of filling, my fulfilling, my body should be like this. Like we have this construct. And then other humans, what do you know, come up and they're bumping against this construct of the mind. All these ideas about.

Perfect is, or harmony is, or mothering or loading the dishwasher or goodness. And it's just never going to be perfect. And the more spacious we get, and by spacious I mean you just breathe into your heart and you just be present with this is happening and I'm not gonna resist it. My mother is on my ass again about how to load the dishwash.

And right there you've taken the charge outta the moment and then whatever move you make next, you're making the move consciously. You're making the move from your presence, your awareness, the heart intelligence, which is maybe she got a point about how to love the dishwasher. Or you can just say, I love you mom.

This is the best I can do. How about you load the dishwasher? I'm gonna piece out, how about we just door dash, whatever it is. And my experience in relationships is the less I wish for someone to change the more they evolve, actually the less I wish needed to change. The more gentle I am with myself this is the best I am doing today.

And I will often say that to myself. This is one of the most powerful things you can say to yourself. Did my best. . And what happens when you do that is the wound itself that the ego nature just, it has nothing to grab onto today that in that moment it's if you move into criticism, then the ego's Ha.

That is, I needed that food, I needed that snack of criticism to grow. And then I'll just give you more to criticize. Don't feed the ego that way. Just I did my best today gentleness. And then the ego worry just slips off. And, this is how you regulate your nervous system, doing my best and it's really important, really with all, all declarations you make for your mind.

To watch the energy you have behind these statements so you can say, I'm doing my best, God damn it. And it's like this, pushback, rebellion, proving frustration like, I'm weak, this is the best I have, victim, whatever is a range of like negative places I could come from. Or it's in celebration wow, I'm doing my best in the face of whatever's going.

Srini: Danielle, quick side note, do you see a thing that says recording failed on your Riverside screen? I've been looking at my book notes for your thing and I just noticed that right now I'm hoping to God it was only like a minute or two.

Danielle Laporte: Let me put my glasses back on. Yes, I do. Ah,

Srini: ffa far. You gotta be kidding me.

Sorry.

Danielle Laporte: Something went wrong during recording. Please refresh the page.

Srini: Do that. I'm gonna, So let's do, just refresh it right now. I will see how much we can recover. I'm hoping to God it was only a small amount. All right.

Danielle Laporte: Okay. When I just hit refresh, I blanked out there for a minute, so I'm

Srini: back. You're back. So here's what we're gonna do. I'm gonna finish up with my last question. As always, I'm gonna go back and see how much of it we got and see if we can salvage the majority of it, which pisses me off because Riverside is usually pretty good at every now and then they have hiccups.

And I literally just noticed it only because I was looking at my book notes for your book and when I switched back to the screen I was like, ah. . So let's do this. Let's finish up with the final question. I'll see what we can salvage. Otherwise, as much as I hate to do this when we have to do another take, so Yeah.

You'll love technology,

Danielle Laporte: huh? Yeah. That's cool. All right. Mercury retrograde. Okay. Final question.

Srini: Yeah. And the other thing is what we might be able to do is actually just add, do the last half as opposed to full interview. Cause I'm sure we probably got a good amount of it All right. Cool. . Funny enough, this is the sixth or seventh time I'm asking you this question, so it's always interesting to see how somebody answers this question when they've been here multiple times.

What do you think it is that makes somebody or something unm, mistake? ,

Danielle Laporte: What do you mean by, I don't think I've ever countered this. What do you mean by unmistakable? What, So

Srini: the funny thing is that I had to define what I meant by unmistakable for writing a book because when I wrote the self-published version of Art of Being Unmistakable, the first thing my editor at Penguin said was, You realize you never once define what it means to be unmistakable.

And I was like, Yeah, I guess that's a point. But my definition is definition, something so distinct. That nobody else could have done it but you, it's immediately recognized as something that you've done. Something that you've created that you don't even have to put your name on it.

Danielle Laporte: . That's my definition. Yes. I think our joy makes us unmistakable. And I've just come across this concept recently called SW dma. So dharma is your path, and this is, I wouldn't quite say it's your destiny, but like this is the way you're gonna walk it, but sw d. Is the path that only you can walk and it's you bringing your innate talents and joys and gifts to life.

And to not do that is in violation of your contract you have with your soul. And I am, I have struggled in my life with my own, to, to use your. Wording my own unmistakably Hey I'm good at this and I wanna do this, and I have a longing and a desire for this, but is it spiritual enough?

Is it clear enough? Is it really what I'm meant to do? Is this on purpose? And now I'm, I have no doubt , that I have to, my, my joy lies in nourishing my joy and. that will be unmistakable, at least to me. And that is really all that matters at the end of the day.

Srini: Amazing. I can't thank you enough as always for taking the time to join us and share your wisdom and your stories and insights.

Issue. Where can people find out more about you your book new book and everything else that you're.

Danielle Laporte: How To Be Loving is out in the US and Canada, and it'll soon be out in the UK and get it wherever you like to support independent book sellers, hopefully, or anybody. And I'm at danielle laport.com.

I've got my Heart Centered Membership Program, which is really a spiritual support system. We have our Heart Centered Leadership program, which is for coaches, facilitators, teachers HR directors. We've got this beautiful cu. on having conversations around virtue and resilience, and I tend to hang out a lot on Instagram.

Srini: Amazing. And for everybody listening, we will wrap the show with that. All right. Fingers crossed that