February 25, 2025 • 43 mins
Louie Sharp, international speaker, best-selling author, and accelerated business growth consultant, has released the latest episode of “Leadership & Love.” This podcast will transform how you connect, motivate, and inspire in organizations, teams, families, and most importantly, yourself!
In this episode, Louie interviews Laurette DeJulian, a Board-Certified Health and Wellness Coach, Certified Life Coach, and spiritual guide. Laurette takes a holistic approach to coaching, recognizing the interconnectedness of mind, body, and spirit. By addressing all three dimensions simultaneously, individuals can achieve balance and harmony. The conversation explores themes of success, failure, and the subjective nature of achievement, concluding with Laurette's perspective on what truly matters at the end of life: experiences and relationships rather than material success.
🌟 Learn more about Laurette and book your free Exploration Call today! www.laurettedejulian.com
Louie’s Leadership & Love Nugs (podcast time stamps)
- Determine who you want to be and cultivate those qualities. (8:44)
- Seek a trusted advisor for self-exploration and understand personal values and strengths. (17:32)
- Focus on enjoying what you're doing rather than being attached to money. (18:12)
- Avoid structures that focus mainly on affirmation and success, instead develop trust and love for self. (32:00)
Note: During the episode, Louie mentions the book, Eleven Rings: The Soul of Success, by Phil Jackson and Hugh Delehanty. Interested in reading? Click here.
#LeadershipandLove #SelfLeadership #SpiritualMentor #Affirmation #Loveforself #Love #Personalgrowth #Thegiftedleader #Podcast
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
Welcome to the Leadership and Love Podcast.
We will cover leadership, mindset, personal development,
and sales and marketing.
You'll experience thought-provoking conversations with both
nationally and internationally recognized leaders.
Our goal is to inspire you and deliver actionable items
that you can implement that will help you accelerate your
(00:22):
growth.
Get ready to discover the magic and the power when you lead
with love.
Today, I have a very, very, very, very special guest,
a lifelong friend, a very dear friend, a mentor,
and a very wise person just overall.
(00:43):
So welcome to Laurette DeJulian.
And I'd like to preface a little bit of an introduction for
her.
I think she brings so much to the table for a number of
reasons.
One,
she was very successful for decades in the finance and banking
industry, really kind of corporate America, if you will.
And then she was also very successful helping her husband
(01:06):
run their company that they sold those big batteries that
go in like forklifts and those kinds of pieces of
equipment.
And then she became a spiritual teacher of sorts.
She's actually been my spiritual mentor for the last 15
years.
And my life is completely different because of it.
And also, if all that isn't enough,
(01:29):
she recently opened her own business as a specialty
breadmaker.
And so she specializes in making these wonderful breads
that people are lining up to get.
So thank you very much for joining me.
And truly, it's a pleasure.
And thank you for taking the time.
Oh,
I'm just really happy to be here and open to the conversation.
(01:50):
Cool yeah and it's we're gonna kind of let it go I've got a
couple starter questions to just kind of get the
conversation going. So when you were growing up who was
somebody that was a leader in either leadership or love
that you looked up to it and why?
Well, you know,
I thought about this question and I cannot think of a
(02:12):
particular person more than my family dynamic.
I was the daughter of two first-generation Americans.
And so my grandparents on both sides were immigrants.
And part of that storytelling of my family was to know how
(02:36):
they came over, where they left from.
And also being immigrants,
they didn't expect anybody to do anything for them.
So in that situation, consciously or unconsciously,
I saw people being creative.
You know,
in life we decide either to be a victim of our circumstances
(02:59):
or to say, okay, this is my circumstance,
what am I gonna do about it?
So as these immigrants came over to the United States,
you know,
they got busy creating the life that they wanted to live.
Not asking for special favors, not taking handouts.
And I saw this very stoic and creative way of being.
(03:26):
So when I was 13,
I was placed in a program at school that was kind of a
cutting edge.
Now I'm 64, so this was back in the 70s.
So there was a lot of progressive learning opportunities
that came about.
And this particular school that I went to was trying out a
(03:50):
college system for young people,
which meant at 13 years old, I was given a curriculum,
but I didn't have to go to class every day.
Just very similar to going to university.
You know, you go to class maybe one day or two days a week,
you're given your assignments, you listen to the lectures,
(04:13):
and then you organize your own time,
and it's up to you to start managing your own time to pass
the test and to turn in the paperwork.
So at 13 years old, I was very,
I was put into an environment where I had to rely on
myself.
Nobody was going to, you know,
(04:34):
where were you at second period or where were you at third
period?
There were days where I only had three classes a week,
and the rest of the time I had to schedule my own time and
my own study time.
I had to be on campus, but I had to,
and the workload was pretty heavy because it was kind of
college workload.
(04:55):
I think that had a lot to do with me being able to be
successful in university, but also in business,
because nobody was there to tell me what to do.
I had to have my own schedule, my own problem solving.
So I think those things really formulated me.
Plus my father was in the military,
(05:16):
and I was one of five children,
and so it was all about towing the line.
I had brothers, and as you know, Louis,
being in the military.
So when I got into banking, well,
I first started my career in the oil field in Texas,
which you didn't see a lot of women in the oil field in
(05:36):
Texas in the 70s.
I was in a engineering program,
which you didn't see a lot of women in engineering either.
And my first job, I sold down-hole drill collars.
There are these big steel things that go down to drill for
oil, and that was a tough, scrapple existence.
(05:58):
And because of my upbringing with these top immigrants,
coupled with my father being in the military,
there was no crying in baseball.
So I didn't really, well, when you're an immigrant,
you really have to know who you are,
because a lot of people are going to discriminate against
you, and you have to have a lot of hutzpah, as we say.
(06:24):
And I carried that throughout my career.
I didn't let people tell me who I was.
I just had this knowing of who I was.
And I think that was the biggest determinant to the things
that I went on to do in my life.
That's fascinating.
So you touched on something that I'm really,
really fond of, and that's the topic of self-leadership.
(06:49):
So what would your advice be to the listeners about how
they can lead themselves?
Because I think it's easy to lead others, right?
It's easy to tell other people what to do or how to do it,
but it's a real challenge to lead ourselves.
So what would you suggest,
or what would be your wisdom for our listeners on how to
lead yourself?
Especially since you had experienced at such a young,
(07:10):
tender age of leading yourself?
Yeah, so what you say is leadership, to be a leader,
you need to have followers.
You don't automatically get followers.
You might get direct reports because of the organization,
and they assign them to you,
but that doesn't mean they're going to follow you.
(07:31):
They're gonna actually, some of them might do,
they're very best to throw you off track.
You have to recruit followers,
and we recruit followers by being the person we want to be.
And so the first thing I would say is,
who do you want to be?
A lot of people don't know who they want to be or why they
(07:54):
want to be that person.
So once you determine who you want to be on who you would
like to work for and the qualities that you would like to
have, if you were watching a movie of yourself,
then you need to cultivate and become that person.
(08:15):
Don't talk about becoming that person,
but be that person that you feel good about.
A lot of the things that we do as leaders,
sometimes we don't feel good about the things that we do.
And most of the things that we do,
we do out of insecurity sometimes that we don't like.
So we really need to know who we are.
(08:37):
And that's really key to leadership.
That's really some profound wisdom.
I think you're absolutely right.
A lot of people don't ever take the time to figure out who
they want to be.
I'd like to ask you something that I think is going to be
very helpful.
What advice would you give to women who are,
(08:59):
and there's more and more women in the workplace and more
and more women in business.
You kind of came up, like you said,
in a time when it wasn't popular to be a woman,
especially in the fields that you were in.
It's fascinating because I didn't know you sold like those
big things that went into oil fields.
But what would your advice be to women who are in the
workplace leading?
(09:23):
Well, this might get me into some trouble,
but this is my opinion, right?
I didn't expect anyone to give me a break because I'm a
woman.
I expect to be the best person for the job.
And so in my past experience, you know,
I was put on teams of men that didn't necessarily want a
(09:45):
woman on their team, but they didn't know me yet.
I allowed them to get to know me.
And I always dedicated my time to being the best at what I
did.
It wasn't about being a man or a woman.
It was about being the best and most gifted.
I was always uping my game to be the very best at what I
(10:07):
did.
And I became the secret weapon.
I said, I am going to be your secret weapon.
And so I learned most about the clients.
I learned most about the buying decisions.
I learned what the client's pain points were.
I studied the industry.
(10:28):
I knew everything about the client that could possibly down
to, we dealt with some corporations,
but we also dealt with some closely held corporations.
And so there were family dynamics and there was history
behind.
I knew everything that could possibly be.
And I made myself the best at negotiating.
And I also made myself easy to work with.
(10:53):
Wow,
so did you come to either that naturally or did you kind of
morph into that over time?
I had an epiphany.
I watched a lot of people struggle when I got on.
I was a good student.
I've always been a student, so I study the situation.
(11:15):
Who's popular?
Who's doing well?
Why are they doing well?
There weren't a lot of women around in those days.
It's changed now.
But the women that I saw, I wasn't particularly proud of.
They did a lot of complaining.
They did a lot of arguing.
(11:35):
They talked a lot about fairness,
and I just made sure that I was such a valuable asset.
Nobody ever wanted to lose me,
nor did they want me to go to a competitor and compete
against me.
So I made myself the very best.
I didn't focus on being a woman.
(11:56):
That wasn't my problem.
It might be someone else's problem,
but I never allowed it to be a problem for me.
Yeah, you touched on something really important there.
And that's 100% responsibility, right?
Most of the world, men or women,
they want to blame their life situation,
that victimhood that you talked about,
(12:17):
on somebody in the world, right?
It's not working because of whatever they're doing.
And it's really refreshing to hear you say that you just
got busy being the best, right?
You weren't worried about being male or female.
You were just busy getting to be the best.
I'd like you to talk now, if you could,
about leadership and love.
(12:37):
And you made this great transition out of corporate America
into this place where now you teach people how to heal,
how to love.
You're a great service to people who are carrying some very
heavy trauma and past life traumas and experiences.
So can you talk a little bit about how you made that
transition and what gave you the courage to do that?
(13:02):
Well, so there's a couple of things I'd like to say about.
Through being a good leader,
I learned to be present for the people that worked for me,
really present.
And so when we own our own business or we're in a
corporation, there's always a business plan.
So I would invite my employees in every year and say,
(13:27):
this is my business plan.
Tell me where you fit in in my business plan.
Tell me your business plan and how it's going to sit inside
my business plan.
Tell me about your dreams and your aspirations and how we
can work together so I can have my business plan and your
(13:47):
business plan work together.
So that's the first setting of expectations.
And in that setting of expectations,
I did a lot of listening.
I was present to understand what that person valued,
what made that person tick.
And sometimes it worked, and sometimes it didn't work.
(14:07):
But when it didn't work,
I had a platform to sit down and say,
remember when we got together and you told me that this was
going to be your plan and how it fit in to my plan,
it's not working.
So how can we work together to find where your business
plan works?
(14:28):
And so it's always about the individual.
It was always about, don't you want to be happy in life?
Is this fitting for you?
And I helped a lot of people leave my industry and get into
better situations for them instead of ever getting into
this tenacious, me against you and you against me and less.
So that began the presence.
(14:49):
And so what I've realized is how I am at business is how I
am all the time.
You know,
you and I have had a long standing relationship and how I
am with you and how I hopefully come across in this
conversation is how we always talk together, right?
(15:10):
I only want one channel.
And to have one channel,
you really need to know what drives you.
And is it fear or is it love?
And so this presence is a very important part of how I live
in the world, if that makes sense.
(15:31):
Yeah, it makes perfect sense.
And I think that you're right.
I think, you know,
Phil Jackson wrote a book called 11 Rings.
And he was, so for those of you that don't know,
Laurette's out in the LA area and he coached the Chicago
Bulls and then he went out to the Lakers and he's got 11
rings and he wrote this book called 11 Rings and much to
your point about being present,
(15:51):
he tells in the book about how when he was in Chicago,
every year he would buy everybody on the team a book,
but it wasn't the same book.
He had been present with them enough and he was kind of
like the Zen master to begin with,
but he had been present with enough with them that he knew
which specific book to buy for each individual.
(16:13):
So he didn't buy one book and give it to the whole team.
He bought, you know, 20,
30 books and gave each person on the team,
not only the coaching staff, but the players,
a book that like fishing or poker or something that they
were specifically interested in.
So I think your point about presence very, very important.
(16:34):
And I think people, especially in the work environment,
see that as some sort of kind of corporate exchange,
if you will, right?
Where we've got to only talk about business and we can't
get involved or connected or know anything about the
person.
When you came to the realization that you had a bigger
calling and it's really fascinating to me having been in a
(16:59):
relationship with you for the last 15 years where you've
been a very powerful mentor in my life,
it's fascinating that I think you're absolutely right.
You've been on one channel, one track.
You've been being the same person.
What would your advice be to people who are looking to go
do something different than what they've done for decades
(17:21):
and how do they lead themselves to that and how do they
continue to maintain that love not only for themselves,
but for others in that transition?
I would say that they need to get themselves in an
environment to know what it is that they value.
They need to sit down with a business coach or a mentor or
(17:44):
somebody that's non-biased in their life that they can
trust,
a trusted advisor and they need to sit down and decide what
their strengths are, what their weaknesses are,
what they value, what their gifts are,
and how are they going to use their strengths,
(18:05):
their values,
and their gifts to create an environment where they're
really enjoying themselves.
So many people focus on money and focusing on money creates
an attachment to money.
When you have a lot of stuff,
you've got to get insurance for a lot of stuff because
you're afraid of losing the stuff and you're always worried
(18:25):
about losing the stuff or you're always worried like,
I can't leave this job,
I'm so unhappy because I make so much money.
So instead of being tied to the money,
you need to follow your personal guide and really enjoy
what you're doing.
And when you enjoy what you're doing, you know,
we've heard this all, it seems so trite.
(18:46):
You know, I'm a spiritual director, and I'm busy.
I'm a busy spiritual director,
and it's because I love what I'm doing and I'm passionate
about what I'm doing,
and I'm a lot more happy and balanced in my life.
You know,
when you're in a corporate at the game that I was playing,
you're on the top of the pole and guess who's at the bottom
(19:10):
of the pole, a bunch of people that want your job.
And so you worry about, you know,
maintaining being at the top of the pole and it takes a lot
of energy to be at the top of the pole.
And also, you know, you're responsible for a lot of things.
So it takes a lot of stress and after a while to maintain
(19:33):
being on the top of the pole,
your life gets out of balance.
Your relationships suffer, your health suffers,
your just overall happiness suffers.
And so you have to decide, you know,
is it worth getting sick over it,
is it worth putting my relationship or my relationship with
my children,
(19:54):
the time and the quality that I get to spend with them for
money, you know.
So, what gave you the courage to make the transition?
Well, now we're getting into some interesting area.
I have a very deep faith in a higher power.
(20:14):
And I spent a lot of time following the voice,
the voice of love.
And it's never steered me wrong.
Have I suffered?
Yes, I have had some suffering,
but I wouldn't have suffered as nearly as much without it.
I don't focus on success at all,
(20:35):
because I focus on having experiences that bring me into a
greater awareness of who I am as the creator,
not the victim.
And whatever you see that happens around me,
whether it looks successful...
I'm gonna tell a story.
There once was this Chinese farmer, and he had a horse.
(21:02):
And one day he used the horse,
this is back before you had tractors and stuff.
He had a horse that helped him turn the fields and plant
his seeds, and the horse ran away.
And everybody in the village gathered around him and said,
oh, this is really, really terrible.
We feel so sorry that your only source of income has now
(21:24):
run away.
What are you gonna do?
This is really bad.
And he looked at him and said, this could be good,
or this could be bad, who knows?
The next day, his horse returned with another horse.
So instead of having no horses, he now has two horses.
And the villagers all came around him and said, wow,
(21:46):
this is fantastic, what a stroke of luck.
You had no horse yesterday, and now you have two horses.
Boy, you are successful.
And he said, this could be good, or this could be bad.
Who knows?
So with the new horse,
it appeared that that new horse had never been broken.
(22:06):
So the farmer had a son,
and that son decided to ride the new horse.
And while he was riding the new horse,
the horse threw him off and he broke his leg.
And he was bedridden.
And the villagers gathered around him and said, oh,
what a bad stroke of luck.
Puff deal, this is very, very bad.
(22:27):
And the farmer said, this could be good,
or this could be bad, who knows?
The next day, the Chinese army came,
knocked on the farmer's door and said,
we're recruiting all able young men to serve in the
military.
We heard you have a son.
And he turned around and his son was in bed with a broken
(22:49):
leg and said, he can't come to serve.
I'm sorry.
And the villagers said, this is so great.
He gets to stay at home.
And he said, this could be good, or this could be bad.
Who knows?
So in any given day, we're only having experiences.
It might look successful at one point,
(23:11):
or it might look tragic at the, on the other point.
We're just going through experiences without judging them.
So, you know, I don't really focus on success,
and I don't really focus on failure.
I focus on knowing who I am and what I'm capable of and
what I can create in any given moment without judging
(23:34):
myself.
Certainly some situations are tougher than others.
But I think about those immigrants that came over to
America that couldn't even afford to come over as regular
travelers.
They had to come over with the cows in steerage.
And, you know,
how inventive and how they created something from nothing.
(23:57):
And I really think having the faith with a higher power and
being connected to that,
you always have that ability to let go of what is and
always create something now.
So is that what gave you the courage to make that
transition from corporate America into your work that you
do now?
Yeah, it's the faith.
(24:19):
The faith that, well, I talked about you earlier, you know,
what was what is it that I value?
What are my gifts?
I'm a great listener.
I like people.
I'm interested.
I'm generally interested in most people.
I find them fascinating.
And I asked,
(24:40):
how can these gifts and these interests and my values be
used in the world?
And that's how I made that transition.
I never looked back.
So let me ask then and what part did love play in that?
(25:02):
Um,
I have to say that I really loved myself and believed in
myself.
So you had self-love.
Yeah.
Yeah, so that's one of my favorite topics too,
self leadership and self love.
So what advice would you give to the listeners on how to
love themselves?
(25:23):
Well,
I would really encourage them to get into some self-expiration.
You and I, we met in a course run by Jack Canfield.
It was all about self-esteem and who you are in self
-exploration,
(25:43):
whether that's offered through your religious establishment
or whether you go off and look at a Joe Dispenza course,
a Jack Canfield course,
anything that prompts you to find out who you are,
(26:04):
what your skills are, and to really love yourself.
Yeah, I think that's a great point.
I think a lot of people,
I had a conversation with somebody recently,
a lot of people want the result,
but don't wanna do the work to get the result, right?
And self-love and self-leadership is something that you
(26:25):
really have to work on every day.
And you've taught me this over time, right?
Power of a spiritual practice is the fact that it happens
every day.
And so I think that the power to become a leader that loves
yourself is really a daily practice.
It's something that you have to do every day because to
your point, there's ups and downs.
(26:46):
And on those down days,
it's really easy to go back to the old victim version and
start kicking yourself, right?
Or blaming the rest of the world.
Which is a misplaced use of your creative energy.
Say that again, because that's a golden nugget.
Say that again, please.
It's a misplaced use of your creative energy.
(27:09):
Right.
So could you say more about that for the so the audience
understands.
Well, there's always a solution.
There's a spiritual solution to anything, you know,
that's happening.
Nothing happens.
There's never a period at the end of any situation.
(27:29):
Okay,
so think about situations in your life that have been really,
really devastating.
They were difficult and you hopefully found your way
through it.
And as you went into these dark times,
you learned things about yourself that maybe you didn't
know.
Man, I'm a really courageous person.
(27:50):
Man, I'm a really inventive person.
I never knew that I had the backbone or the understanding
to get through something like this.
And because of this situation, I have gone on to do X, Y,
and Z.
You know, everything hones us.
(28:11):
Everything makes us.
The universe and our experiences are making us the person
we want to be.
It's just how much resistance we have to it.
Yeah,
that's fascinating because I think you and I have had these
conversations over the years.
I think it's incredible because without the hardship and
(28:32):
the challenges, we truly wouldn't be who we are today.
And when we look back on every hardship or challenge,
there's a lesson that's available for us to learn from what
went on or how it transpired for us to grow into a better
person.
I think one of the things that that you've modeled for me
(28:53):
over the years is the courage to continue to press that and
push the boundary of where I'm comfortable and get out of
that.
Again,
you said something very powerful to be able to create in
the space of love and light for positive things instead of
going back to the same old self-talk that's negative
(29:13):
because even in there we're creating.
Yeah, so it all comes down to self love.
That's it.
You know, there's a lot of focus on the outer world.
And, you know, I need to be loving with Louie,
I need to be loving with my employees, of course you do.
But if you loved yourself, and respected yourself,
(29:34):
you wouldn't even have to be think about being loving with
other person, other people,
because you love yourself enough,
you feel full and abundant enough,
that love just flows freely to other people.
It's not an effort.
It all starts with the self.
How do you see yourself?
How do you feel about yourself?
(29:54):
How do you see yourself as part of creation,
as the created, as the creator?
You know, if you see yourself as the betrayed, the victim,
the push down, the not good enough,
how are you ever going to muster up any love to give to
anybody else?
And people say, I often hear this, I can love my family,
(30:20):
or I can love other people,
but I have difficulty loving myself.
And I will challenge that what you're really offering
people is true love, true unconditional love,
you are a people pleaser, possibly,
or you're manipulating people.
But if you have true unconditional love,
it should always flow from this out.
(30:42):
Because that is the source of all unconditional love.
So I would start with myself.
If I don't love myself,
or if I'm struggling with self esteem, I would look at why.
Start there.
What makes you think that you're defective?
(31:04):
What practices would you give for people to start with when
they get to that point to kind of turn the magnifying glass
on themselves and not the rest of the world?
What advice would you give them to start to learn how to
self-love and self-appreciate and stop judging themselves?
But there's, you know, we live in a great time now,
(31:26):
because there's a lot of focus on this self awareness and
self love.
And, you know, there's a lot of resources out there.
There's Eckhart Tolle talks a lot about presence and living
in the now and the south.
Deepak Chopra talks a lot about it.
(31:48):
There's a lot of stuff out there you can look at.
Some of it is religious based,
but not necessarily all of it.
But I would focus on those.
I would say,
stay away from structures that focus mainly on affirmation
and success and pushing.
(32:08):
I feel that, you know,
dynamics where you think about something and focus on
something and focus on something and you get it.
I don't think that is a loving dynamic for yourself.
I think that's an obsession dynamic for yourself.
And I think that promotes attachment.
(32:28):
And when we're attached to something that doesn't mean that
means that we're going to have difficulty when those things
change in our life.
I think that you should look at a system that works on the
development and trust and love for the self.
And from that, everything else will go smoothly.
(32:49):
Even if you become a prisoner of war and we've we've we've
had a lot of books and talks from people that have
experienced that.
And those that have survived that were people that went
through extreme hardship and their physical being in many
cases were threatened through torture or deprivation.
(33:11):
But they said somewhere within themselves,
you can take my body,
but you will never own my mind because my mind belongs to
me and I know who I am.
And so with that mindset,
that's how we begin to create the world.
That's how we begin to rely on ourselves.
(33:32):
Yes,
we have relationships with partners and friends and mentors.
But as those relationships change, which they will,
as life goes on, we always know who we are.
The definition of who we are never changes.
(33:55):
Yeah, that's very powerful and very profound wisdom,
and I think that that's one of those things that,
as a leader and somebody that wants to lead with love,
you have to be open to the realization that nothing ever
stays the same.
Right?
It's constantly in the flow.
(34:15):
Everything's constantly in the flow of changing.
And I've, through your help and wisdom,
I've come to understand the only thing that's constant is
love.
Everything else is going to change.
The love that's here for all of us is constant and the
truth that it never goes away,
but everything else is going to change.
Your employees, your body,
sales this week versus last week, everything's in a flux.
(34:39):
Right, you know, it may be good, it may be bad, who knows?
Just like the farmer, right?
So, you know,
Jimmy Carter just passed away the President of the United
States at one point when I was in high school.
And, you know, we could talk about him politically and say,
you could judge.
You could say, you know,
(34:59):
he wasn't a very good political leader.
He wasn't a really dynamic president and people have very
strong opinions about that.
And, you know, when he ran for president again,
he was defeated, just run over, okay?
And he was heartbroken.
(35:20):
He felt like he had failed the people of the United States,
and he struggled.
He and his wife both struggled when they went back to
Plains, Georgia.
But that kind of revelation.
And he said, you know,
maybe I wasn't ever meant to be continually the President
of the United States.
Maybe I became the President of the United States so I
could do something that I was meant to do.
(35:43):
And he sat down and he thought about his gifts and his
values and his interests.
And he created a humanitarian effort that only he could do
as an ex-president.
So the president,
being the President of the United States wasn't the goal.
The goal was to do the work that he was meant to do after
(36:04):
becoming the president.
So we never know what the goal is.
Yeah, that's fascinating,
especially when you connect that to your sense and your
definition of what success is, right?
Because in Jimmy Carter's mind, initially,
he thought that he had failed because he wasn't elected for
(36:27):
a second term, when in truth,
it would just open the door and showing him the path to
what he really was meant to be doing.
Right, and using his gifts, which he did phenomenally.
But also,
you have to understand that the definition of success,
it's very subjective.
It's very subjective.
If we were to go to Alaska and visit with the Inuit tribe
(36:49):
there and look at the tribesmen and say what success is,
you probably wouldn't meet our definition of success,
right?
Our general definition of success.
It would meet my definition of success because possibly the
guy would say,
having a very good relationship with my family,
(37:12):
having a good relationship with my community,
having enough so I can share with everyone around me.
That isn't what we have been trained.
We've been trained to get the grade, to get the money,
to get the status.
And none of that has to do with love.
(37:35):
Right.
And it also, it's very much that, you know,
the me generation mentality, right?
Me, me, me, me.
My job, my success, my money, my house, my car.
And I think that what I've come to understand is people
chase that golden ring to the point of so much suffering,
because there's no love in that.
(37:56):
Because where's the end?
Where's the end game?
Because,
and this is what we're seeing in corporate America,
it's one of the things that motivated me to do this was
corporate America.
But you know, corporate America is never happy.
If they make $10 billion this year, actually,
not even it's not by years anymore.
They, you know, the shareholders want to see it,
(38:16):
not even quarterly,
they want to see it at the end of 30 days,
they want to see more profit than the last 30 days.
Yeah,
but I take that responsibility back to myself because if we
have a 401k or if we have an IRA, we're invested in stocks,
OK, in mutual funds.
(38:37):
We're corporate shareholders,
and we're demanding the returns.
So to point out there and say, you know,
you corporate people, you're the bad guy,
I got to look at the other three fingers pointing at myself
saying, but I'm the stockholder, really?
I want the returns in my retirement account.
I want my 401k, I want my IRA,
(38:59):
I want my interest at the bank.
So it's really me, ultimately, driving the corporation.
Well, that's profound.
That's really, really profound.
And that's a,
and that's a great example of showing how everything's
connected to everything, right?
(39:20):
Is there anything else you'd like to add before we close?
I'm glad that we've had this conversation and hopefully we
haven't freaked anybody out out there.
No, I don't think so at all.
I think it was very powerful.
And I think you always have great wisdom.
I always enjoy our conversations.
And it's always enlightening because I love that you see
the world from a different point of view and the
(39:41):
connectedness of it and how we're supposed to be living our
lives.
And I'm truly grateful for that.
If people want to get in touch with you or reach out to
you, what's the best way to do that, Laurie?
I have a website and it's www.laurettedejulian.com,
and I do a mentorship and spiritual direction and I'm also
(40:05):
a death doula so I help people begin their journey of
transition.
And that has helped too because I see how successful people
end their lives and what what had they get to take with
them and what has been the most meaningful for them.
(40:31):
So so so now I can't let you go now
Thank you.
So what's what have you discovered?
What's the most meaningful thing they're taking with them
these successful people that end up dying?
The experiences. The experiences that have enriched their
life. The people that have loved them.
(40:55):
Unfortunately,
some of them have to take some guilt and shame and regret
with them.
And you know, it's difficult to die with regrets.
I think that's the hardest thing.
People think it's physical pain,
but I really think it's emotional pain of I wish I would
(41:15):
have done it differently.
And what it comes down to is those people never allowed
themselves to be the people they wanted to be in
situations.
Gotcha.
Yeah,
they were busy being successful and not who they really
should have been.
(41:36):
Or, they were busy being fearful.
I would say that fear motivates most people and makes them
do things out of character.
Gotcha.
Anything else you'd like to add now before we close?
No, but thank you.
Thank you for letting me be here.
Well, and thank you very much for taking the time.
(41:58):
I'm really humbled and honored.
And for your listeners,
I'm also gonna put her contact information in the notes in
the podcast.
So please go to her website and reach out.
She's truly a wealth of wisdom and information.
And I can tell you that from personal experience,
she can help you get through whatever emotional struggles,
(42:18):
baggage you may be carrying and get you to a place that's
better and easier and more fun, most importantly,
more loving than you could ever imagine.
I think you're just one of the most amazing people that's
ever crossed paths in my life.
And thank you again for taking the time, Laurie.
I really, really appreciate it.
Thank you for having me.
Thanks again for joining us and listening to this episode
(42:38):
of Leadership and Love.
I would like to challenge you to ask yourself,
what's one thing that you heard today that you can
implement immediately to improve your leadership and
accelerate your growth?
If you've gotten value out of this episode or learned
something that you can implement today,
we'd ask that you please share it with those that you care
(43:00):
about.
Our goal is to create more leaders who are leading with
love.
Welcome to the Leadership and Love Podcast.
We will cover leadership, mindset, personal development,
and sales and marketing.
You'll experience thought-provoking conversations with both
nationally and internationally recognized leaders.
Our goal is to inspire you and deliver actionable items
that you can implement that will help you accelerate your
(00:22):
growth.
Get ready to discover the magic and the power when you lead
with love.
Today, I have a very, very, very, very special guest,
a lifelong friend, a very dear friend, a mentor,
and a very wise person just overall.
(00:43):
So welcome to Laurette DeJulian.
And I'd like to preface a little bit of an introduction for
her.
I think she brings so much to the table for a number of
reasons.
One,
she was very successful for decades in the finance and banking
industry, really kind of corporate America, if you will.
And then she was also very successful helping her husband
(01:06):
run their company that they sold those big batteries that
go in like forklifts and those kinds of pieces of
equipment.
And then she became a spiritual teacher of sorts.
She's actually been my spiritual mentor for the last 15
years.
And my life is completely different because of it.
And also, if all that isn't enough,
(01:29):
she recently opened her own business as a specialty
breadmaker.
And so she specializes in making these wonderful breads
that people are lining up to get.
So thank you very much for joining me.
And truly, it's a pleasure.
And thank you for taking the time.
Oh,
I'm just really happy to be here and open to the conversation.
(01:50):
Cool yeah and it's we're gonna kind of let it go I've got a
couple starter questions to just kind of get the
conversation going. So when you were growing up who was
somebody that was a leader in either leadership or love
that you looked up to it and why?
Well, you know,
I thought about this question and I cannot think of a
(02:12):
particular person more than my family dynamic.
I was the daughter of two first-generation Americans.
And so my grandparents on both sides were immigrants.
And part of that storytelling of my family was to know how
(02:36):
they came over, where they left from.
And also being immigrants,
they didn't expect anybody to do anything for them.
So in that situation, consciously or unconsciously,
I saw people being creative.
You know,
in life we decide either to be a victim of our circumstances
(02:59):
or to say, okay, this is my circumstance,
what am I gonna do about it?
So as these immigrants came over to the United States,
you know,
they got busy creating the life that they wanted to live.
Not asking for special favors, not taking handouts.
And I saw this very stoic and creative way of being.
(03:26):
So when I was 13,
I was placed in a program at school that was kind of a
cutting edge.
Now I'm 64, so this was back in the 70s.
So there was a lot of progressive learning opportunities
that came about.
And this particular school that I went to was trying out a
(03:50):
college system for young people,
which meant at 13 years old, I was given a curriculum,
but I didn't have to go to class every day.
Just very similar to going to university.
You know, you go to class maybe one day or two days a week,
you're given your assignments, you listen to the lectures,
(04:13):
and then you organize your own time,
and it's up to you to start managing your own time to pass
the test and to turn in the paperwork.
So at 13 years old, I was very,
I was put into an environment where I had to rely on
myself.
Nobody was going to, you know,
(04:34):
where were you at second period or where were you at third
period?
There were days where I only had three classes a week,
and the rest of the time I had to schedule my own time and
my own study time.
I had to be on campus, but I had to,
and the workload was pretty heavy because it was kind of
college workload.
(04:55):
I think that had a lot to do with me being able to be
successful in university, but also in business,
because nobody was there to tell me what to do.
I had to have my own schedule, my own problem solving.
So I think those things really formulated me.
Plus my father was in the military,
(05:16):
and I was one of five children,
and so it was all about towing the line.
I had brothers, and as you know, Louis,
being in the military.
So when I got into banking, well,
I first started my career in the oil field in Texas,
which you didn't see a lot of women in the oil field in
(05:36):
Texas in the 70s.
I was in a engineering program,
which you didn't see a lot of women in engineering either.
And my first job, I sold down-hole drill collars.
There are these big steel things that go down to drill for
oil, and that was a tough, scrapple existence.
(05:58):
And because of my upbringing with these top immigrants,
coupled with my father being in the military,
there was no crying in baseball.
So I didn't really, well, when you're an immigrant,
you really have to know who you are,
because a lot of people are going to discriminate against
you, and you have to have a lot of hutzpah, as we say.
(06:24):
And I carried that throughout my career.
I didn't let people tell me who I was.
I just had this knowing of who I was.
And I think that was the biggest determinant to the things
that I went on to do in my life.
That's fascinating.
So you touched on something that I'm really,
really fond of, and that's the topic of self-leadership.
(06:49):
So what would your advice be to the listeners about how
they can lead themselves?
Because I think it's easy to lead others, right?
It's easy to tell other people what to do or how to do it,
but it's a real challenge to lead ourselves.
So what would you suggest,
or what would be your wisdom for our listeners on how to
lead yourself?
Especially since you had experienced at such a young,
(07:10):
tender age of leading yourself?
Yeah, so what you say is leadership, to be a leader,
you need to have followers.
You don't automatically get followers.
You might get direct reports because of the organization,
and they assign them to you,
but that doesn't mean they're going to follow you.
(07:31):
They're gonna actually, some of them might do,
they're very best to throw you off track.
You have to recruit followers,
and we recruit followers by being the person we want to be.
And so the first thing I would say is,
who do you want to be?
A lot of people don't know who they want to be or why they
(07:54):
want to be that person.
So once you determine who you want to be on who you would
like to work for and the qualities that you would like to
have, if you were watching a movie of yourself,
then you need to cultivate and become that person.
(08:15):
Don't talk about becoming that person,
but be that person that you feel good about.
A lot of the things that we do as leaders,
sometimes we don't feel good about the things that we do.
And most of the things that we do,
we do out of insecurity sometimes that we don't like.
So we really need to know who we are.
(08:37):
And that's really key to leadership.
That's really some profound wisdom.
I think you're absolutely right.
A lot of people don't ever take the time to figure out who
they want to be.
I'd like to ask you something that I think is going to be
very helpful.
What advice would you give to women who are,
(08:59):
and there's more and more women in the workplace and more
and more women in business.
You kind of came up, like you said,
in a time when it wasn't popular to be a woman,
especially in the fields that you were in.
It's fascinating because I didn't know you sold like those
big things that went into oil fields.
But what would your advice be to women who are in the
workplace leading?
(09:23):
Well, this might get me into some trouble,
but this is my opinion, right?
I didn't expect anyone to give me a break because I'm a
woman.
I expect to be the best person for the job.
And so in my past experience, you know,
I was put on teams of men that didn't necessarily want a
(09:45):
woman on their team, but they didn't know me yet.
I allowed them to get to know me.
And I always dedicated my time to being the best at what I
did.
It wasn't about being a man or a woman.
It was about being the best and most gifted.
I was always uping my game to be the very best at what I
(10:07):
did.
And I became the secret weapon.
I said, I am going to be your secret weapon.
And so I learned most about the clients.
I learned most about the buying decisions.
I learned what the client's pain points were.
I studied the industry.
(10:28):
I knew everything about the client that could possibly down
to, we dealt with some corporations,
but we also dealt with some closely held corporations.
And so there were family dynamics and there was history
behind.
I knew everything that could possibly be.
And I made myself the best at negotiating.
And I also made myself easy to work with.
(10:53):
Wow,
so did you come to either that naturally or did you kind of
morph into that over time?
I had an epiphany.
I watched a lot of people struggle when I got on.
I was a good student.
I've always been a student, so I study the situation.
(11:15):
Who's popular?
Who's doing well?
Why are they doing well?
There weren't a lot of women around in those days.
It's changed now.
But the women that I saw, I wasn't particularly proud of.
They did a lot of complaining.
They did a lot of arguing.
(11:35):
They talked a lot about fairness,
and I just made sure that I was such a valuable asset.
Nobody ever wanted to lose me,
nor did they want me to go to a competitor and compete
against me.
So I made myself the very best.
I didn't focus on being a woman.
(11:56):
That wasn't my problem.
It might be someone else's problem,
but I never allowed it to be a problem for me.
Yeah, you touched on something really important there.
And that's 100% responsibility, right?
Most of the world, men or women,
they want to blame their life situation,
that victimhood that you talked about,
(12:17):
on somebody in the world, right?
It's not working because of whatever they're doing.
And it's really refreshing to hear you say that you just
got busy being the best, right?
You weren't worried about being male or female.
You were just busy getting to be the best.
I'd like you to talk now, if you could,
about leadership and love.
(12:37):
And you made this great transition out of corporate America
into this place where now you teach people how to heal,
how to love.
You're a great service to people who are carrying some very
heavy trauma and past life traumas and experiences.
So can you talk a little bit about how you made that
transition and what gave you the courage to do that?
(13:02):
Well, so there's a couple of things I'd like to say about.
Through being a good leader,
I learned to be present for the people that worked for me,
really present.
And so when we own our own business or we're in a
corporation, there's always a business plan.
So I would invite my employees in every year and say,
(13:27):
this is my business plan.
Tell me where you fit in in my business plan.
Tell me your business plan and how it's going to sit inside
my business plan.
Tell me about your dreams and your aspirations and how we
can work together so I can have my business plan and your
(13:47):
business plan work together.
So that's the first setting of expectations.
And in that setting of expectations,
I did a lot of listening.
I was present to understand what that person valued,
what made that person tick.
And sometimes it worked, and sometimes it didn't work.
(14:07):
But when it didn't work,
I had a platform to sit down and say,
remember when we got together and you told me that this was
going to be your plan and how it fit in to my plan,
it's not working.
So how can we work together to find where your business
plan works?
(14:28):
And so it's always about the individual.
It was always about, don't you want to be happy in life?
Is this fitting for you?
And I helped a lot of people leave my industry and get into
better situations for them instead of ever getting into
this tenacious, me against you and you against me and less.
So that began the presence.
(14:49):
And so what I've realized is how I am at business is how I
am all the time.
You know,
you and I have had a long standing relationship and how I
am with you and how I hopefully come across in this
conversation is how we always talk together, right?
(15:10):
I only want one channel.
And to have one channel,
you really need to know what drives you.
And is it fear or is it love?
And so this presence is a very important part of how I live
in the world, if that makes sense.
(15:31):
Yeah, it makes perfect sense.
And I think that you're right.
I think, you know,
Phil Jackson wrote a book called 11 Rings.
And he was, so for those of you that don't know,
Laurette's out in the LA area and he coached the Chicago
Bulls and then he went out to the Lakers and he's got 11
rings and he wrote this book called 11 Rings and much to
your point about being present,
(15:51):
he tells in the book about how when he was in Chicago,
every year he would buy everybody on the team a book,
but it wasn't the same book.
He had been present with them enough and he was kind of
like the Zen master to begin with,
but he had been present with enough with them that he knew
which specific book to buy for each individual.
(16:13):
So he didn't buy one book and give it to the whole team.
He bought, you know, 20,
30 books and gave each person on the team,
not only the coaching staff, but the players,
a book that like fishing or poker or something that they
were specifically interested in.
So I think your point about presence very, very important.
(16:34):
And I think people, especially in the work environment,
see that as some sort of kind of corporate exchange,
if you will, right?
Where we've got to only talk about business and we can't
get involved or connected or know anything about the
person.
When you came to the realization that you had a bigger
calling and it's really fascinating to me having been in a
(16:59):
relationship with you for the last 15 years where you've
been a very powerful mentor in my life,
it's fascinating that I think you're absolutely right.
You've been on one channel, one track.
You've been being the same person.
What would your advice be to people who are looking to go
do something different than what they've done for decades
(17:21):
and how do they lead themselves to that and how do they
continue to maintain that love not only for themselves,
but for others in that transition?
I would say that they need to get themselves in an
environment to know what it is that they value.
They need to sit down with a business coach or a mentor or
(17:44):
somebody that's non-biased in their life that they can
trust,
a trusted advisor and they need to sit down and decide what
their strengths are, what their weaknesses are,
what they value, what their gifts are,
and how are they going to use their strengths,
(18:05):
their values,
and their gifts to create an environment where they're
really enjoying themselves.
So many people focus on money and focusing on money creates
an attachment to money.
When you have a lot of stuff,
you've got to get insurance for a lot of stuff because
you're afraid of losing the stuff and you're always worried
(18:25):
about losing the stuff or you're always worried like,
I can't leave this job,
I'm so unhappy because I make so much money.
So instead of being tied to the money,
you need to follow your personal guide and really enjoy
what you're doing.
And when you enjoy what you're doing, you know,
we've heard this all, it seems so trite.
(18:46):
You know, I'm a spiritual director, and I'm busy.
I'm a busy spiritual director,
and it's because I love what I'm doing and I'm passionate
about what I'm doing,
and I'm a lot more happy and balanced in my life.
You know,
when you're in a corporate at the game that I was playing,
you're on the top of the pole and guess who's at the bottom
(19:10):
of the pole, a bunch of people that want your job.
And so you worry about, you know,
maintaining being at the top of the pole and it takes a lot
of energy to be at the top of the pole.
And also, you know, you're responsible for a lot of things.
So it takes a lot of stress and after a while to maintain
(19:33):
being on the top of the pole,
your life gets out of balance.
Your relationships suffer, your health suffers,
your just overall happiness suffers.
And so you have to decide, you know,
is it worth getting sick over it,
is it worth putting my relationship or my relationship with
my children,
(19:54):
the time and the quality that I get to spend with them for
money, you know.
So, what gave you the courage to make the transition?
Well, now we're getting into some interesting area.
I have a very deep faith in a higher power.
(20:14):
And I spent a lot of time following the voice,
the voice of love.
And it's never steered me wrong.
Have I suffered?
Yes, I have had some suffering,
but I wouldn't have suffered as nearly as much without it.
I don't focus on success at all,
(20:35):
because I focus on having experiences that bring me into a
greater awareness of who I am as the creator,
not the victim.
And whatever you see that happens around me,
whether it looks successful...
I'm gonna tell a story.
There once was this Chinese farmer, and he had a horse.
(21:02):
And one day he used the horse,
this is back before you had tractors and stuff.
He had a horse that helped him turn the fields and plant
his seeds, and the horse ran away.
And everybody in the village gathered around him and said,
oh, this is really, really terrible.
We feel so sorry that your only source of income has now
(21:24):
run away.
What are you gonna do?
This is really bad.
And he looked at him and said, this could be good,
or this could be bad, who knows?
The next day, his horse returned with another horse.
So instead of having no horses, he now has two horses.
And the villagers all came around him and said, wow,
(21:46):
this is fantastic, what a stroke of luck.
You had no horse yesterday, and now you have two horses.
Boy, you are successful.
And he said, this could be good, or this could be bad.
Who knows?
So with the new horse,
it appeared that that new horse had never been broken.
(22:06):
So the farmer had a son,
and that son decided to ride the new horse.
And while he was riding the new horse,
the horse threw him off and he broke his leg.
And he was bedridden.
And the villagers gathered around him and said, oh,
what a bad stroke of luck.
Puff deal, this is very, very bad.
(22:27):
And the farmer said, this could be good,
or this could be bad, who knows?
The next day, the Chinese army came,
knocked on the farmer's door and said,
we're recruiting all able young men to serve in the
military.
We heard you have a son.
And he turned around and his son was in bed with a broken
(22:49):
leg and said, he can't come to serve.
I'm sorry.
And the villagers said, this is so great.
He gets to stay at home.
And he said, this could be good, or this could be bad.
Who knows?
So in any given day, we're only having experiences.
It might look successful at one point,
(23:11):
or it might look tragic at the, on the other point.
We're just going through experiences without judging them.
So, you know, I don't really focus on success,
and I don't really focus on failure.
I focus on knowing who I am and what I'm capable of and
what I can create in any given moment without judging
(23:34):
myself.
Certainly some situations are tougher than others.
But I think about those immigrants that came over to
America that couldn't even afford to come over as regular
travelers.
They had to come over with the cows in steerage.
And, you know,
how inventive and how they created something from nothing.
(23:57):
And I really think having the faith with a higher power and
being connected to that,
you always have that ability to let go of what is and
always create something now.
So is that what gave you the courage to make that
transition from corporate America into your work that you
do now?
Yeah, it's the faith.
(24:19):
The faith that, well, I talked about you earlier, you know,
what was what is it that I value?
What are my gifts?
I'm a great listener.
I like people.
I'm interested.
I'm generally interested in most people.
I find them fascinating.
And I asked,
(24:40):
how can these gifts and these interests and my values be
used in the world?
And that's how I made that transition.
I never looked back.
So let me ask then and what part did love play in that?
(25:02):
Um,
I have to say that I really loved myself and believed in
myself.
So you had self-love.
Yeah.
Yeah, so that's one of my favorite topics too,
self leadership and self love.
So what advice would you give to the listeners on how to
love themselves?
(25:23):
Well,
I would really encourage them to get into some self-expiration.
You and I, we met in a course run by Jack Canfield.
It was all about self-esteem and who you are in self
-exploration,
(25:43):
whether that's offered through your religious establishment
or whether you go off and look at a Joe Dispenza course,
a Jack Canfield course,
anything that prompts you to find out who you are,
(26:04):
what your skills are, and to really love yourself.
Yeah, I think that's a great point.
I think a lot of people,
I had a conversation with somebody recently,
a lot of people want the result,
but don't wanna do the work to get the result, right?
And self-love and self-leadership is something that you
(26:25):
really have to work on every day.
And you've taught me this over time, right?
Power of a spiritual practice is the fact that it happens
every day.
And so I think that the power to become a leader that loves
yourself is really a daily practice.
It's something that you have to do every day because to
your point, there's ups and downs.
(26:46):
And on those down days,
it's really easy to go back to the old victim version and
start kicking yourself, right?
Or blaming the rest of the world.
Which is a misplaced use of your creative energy.
Say that again, because that's a golden nugget.
Say that again, please.
It's a misplaced use of your creative energy.
(27:09):
Right.
So could you say more about that for the so the audience
understands.
Well, there's always a solution.
There's a spiritual solution to anything, you know,
that's happening.
Nothing happens.
There's never a period at the end of any situation.
(27:29):
Okay,
so think about situations in your life that have been really,
really devastating.
They were difficult and you hopefully found your way
through it.
And as you went into these dark times,
you learned things about yourself that maybe you didn't
know.
Man, I'm a really courageous person.
(27:50):
Man, I'm a really inventive person.
I never knew that I had the backbone or the understanding
to get through something like this.
And because of this situation, I have gone on to do X, Y,
and Z.
You know, everything hones us.
(28:11):
Everything makes us.
The universe and our experiences are making us the person
we want to be.
It's just how much resistance we have to it.
Yeah,
that's fascinating because I think you and I have had these
conversations over the years.
I think it's incredible because without the hardship and
(28:32):
the challenges, we truly wouldn't be who we are today.
And when we look back on every hardship or challenge,
there's a lesson that's available for us to learn from what
went on or how it transpired for us to grow into a better
person.
I think one of the things that that you've modeled for me
(28:53):
over the years is the courage to continue to press that and
push the boundary of where I'm comfortable and get out of
that.
Again,
you said something very powerful to be able to create in
the space of love and light for positive things instead of
going back to the same old self-talk that's negative
(29:13):
because even in there we're creating.
Yeah, so it all comes down to self love.
That's it.
You know, there's a lot of focus on the outer world.
And, you know, I need to be loving with Louie,
I need to be loving with my employees, of course you do.
But if you loved yourself, and respected yourself,
(29:34):
you wouldn't even have to be think about being loving with
other person, other people,
because you love yourself enough,
you feel full and abundant enough,
that love just flows freely to other people.
It's not an effort.
It all starts with the self.
How do you see yourself?
How do you feel about yourself?
(29:54):
How do you see yourself as part of creation,
as the created, as the creator?
You know, if you see yourself as the betrayed, the victim,
the push down, the not good enough,
how are you ever going to muster up any love to give to
anybody else?
And people say, I often hear this, I can love my family,
(30:20):
or I can love other people,
but I have difficulty loving myself.
And I will challenge that what you're really offering
people is true love, true unconditional love,
you are a people pleaser, possibly,
or you're manipulating people.
But if you have true unconditional love,
it should always flow from this out.
(30:42):
Because that is the source of all unconditional love.
So I would start with myself.
If I don't love myself,
or if I'm struggling with self esteem, I would look at why.
Start there.
What makes you think that you're defective?
(31:04):
What practices would you give for people to start with when
they get to that point to kind of turn the magnifying glass
on themselves and not the rest of the world?
What advice would you give them to start to learn how to
self-love and self-appreciate and stop judging themselves?
But there's, you know, we live in a great time now,
(31:26):
because there's a lot of focus on this self awareness and
self love.
And, you know, there's a lot of resources out there.
There's Eckhart Tolle talks a lot about presence and living
in the now and the south.
Deepak Chopra talks a lot about it.
(31:48):
There's a lot of stuff out there you can look at.
Some of it is religious based,
but not necessarily all of it.
But I would focus on those.
I would say,
stay away from structures that focus mainly on affirmation
and success and pushing.
(32:08):
I feel that, you know,
dynamics where you think about something and focus on
something and focus on something and you get it.
I don't think that is a loving dynamic for yourself.
I think that's an obsession dynamic for yourself.
And I think that promotes attachment.
(32:28):
And when we're attached to something that doesn't mean that
means that we're going to have difficulty when those things
change in our life.
I think that you should look at a system that works on the
development and trust and love for the self.
And from that, everything else will go smoothly.
(32:49):
Even if you become a prisoner of war and we've we've we've
had a lot of books and talks from people that have
experienced that.
And those that have survived that were people that went
through extreme hardship and their physical being in many
cases were threatened through torture or deprivation.
(33:11):
But they said somewhere within themselves,
you can take my body,
but you will never own my mind because my mind belongs to
me and I know who I am.
And so with that mindset,
that's how we begin to create the world.
That's how we begin to rely on ourselves.
(33:32):
Yes,
we have relationships with partners and friends and mentors.
But as those relationships change, which they will,
as life goes on, we always know who we are.
The definition of who we are never changes.
(33:55):
Yeah, that's very powerful and very profound wisdom,
and I think that that's one of those things that,
as a leader and somebody that wants to lead with love,
you have to be open to the realization that nothing ever
stays the same.
Right?
It's constantly in the flow.
(34:15):
Everything's constantly in the flow of changing.
And I've, through your help and wisdom,
I've come to understand the only thing that's constant is
love.
Everything else is going to change.
The love that's here for all of us is constant and the
truth that it never goes away,
but everything else is going to change.
Your employees, your body,
sales this week versus last week, everything's in a flux.
(34:39):
Right, you know, it may be good, it may be bad, who knows?
Just like the farmer, right?
So, you know,
Jimmy Carter just passed away the President of the United
States at one point when I was in high school.
And, you know, we could talk about him politically and say,
you could judge.
You could say, you know,
(34:59):
he wasn't a very good political leader.
He wasn't a really dynamic president and people have very
strong opinions about that.
And, you know, when he ran for president again,
he was defeated, just run over, okay?
And he was heartbroken.
(35:20):
He felt like he had failed the people of the United States,
and he struggled.
He and his wife both struggled when they went back to
Plains, Georgia.
But that kind of revelation.
And he said, you know,
maybe I wasn't ever meant to be continually the President
of the United States.
Maybe I became the President of the United States so I
could do something that I was meant to do.
(35:43):
And he sat down and he thought about his gifts and his
values and his interests.
And he created a humanitarian effort that only he could do
as an ex-president.
So the president,
being the President of the United States wasn't the goal.
The goal was to do the work that he was meant to do after
(36:04):
becoming the president.
So we never know what the goal is.
Yeah, that's fascinating,
especially when you connect that to your sense and your
definition of what success is, right?
Because in Jimmy Carter's mind, initially,
he thought that he had failed because he wasn't elected for
(36:27):
a second term, when in truth,
it would just open the door and showing him the path to
what he really was meant to be doing.
Right, and using his gifts, which he did phenomenally.
But also,
you have to understand that the definition of success,
it's very subjective.
It's very subjective.
If we were to go to Alaska and visit with the Inuit tribe
(36:49):
there and look at the tribesmen and say what success is,
you probably wouldn't meet our definition of success,
right?
Our general definition of success.
It would meet my definition of success because possibly the
guy would say,
having a very good relationship with my family,
(37:12):
having a good relationship with my community,
having enough so I can share with everyone around me.
That isn't what we have been trained.
We've been trained to get the grade, to get the money,
to get the status.
And none of that has to do with love.
(37:35):
Right.
And it also, it's very much that, you know,
the me generation mentality, right?
Me, me, me, me.
My job, my success, my money, my house, my car.
And I think that what I've come to understand is people
chase that golden ring to the point of so much suffering,
because there's no love in that.
(37:56):
Because where's the end?
Where's the end game?
Because,
and this is what we're seeing in corporate America,
it's one of the things that motivated me to do this was
corporate America.
But you know, corporate America is never happy.
If they make $10 billion this year, actually,
not even it's not by years anymore.
They, you know, the shareholders want to see it,
(38:16):
not even quarterly,
they want to see it at the end of 30 days,
they want to see more profit than the last 30 days.
Yeah,
but I take that responsibility back to myself because if we
have a 401k or if we have an IRA, we're invested in stocks,
OK, in mutual funds.
(38:37):
We're corporate shareholders,
and we're demanding the returns.
So to point out there and say, you know,
you corporate people, you're the bad guy,
I got to look at the other three fingers pointing at myself
saying, but I'm the stockholder, really?
I want the returns in my retirement account.
I want my 401k, I want my IRA,
(38:59):
I want my interest at the bank.
So it's really me, ultimately, driving the corporation.
Well, that's profound.
That's really, really profound.
And that's a,
and that's a great example of showing how everything's
connected to everything, right?
(39:20):
Is there anything else you'd like to add before we close?
I'm glad that we've had this conversation and hopefully we
haven't freaked anybody out out there.
No, I don't think so at all.
I think it was very powerful.
And I think you always have great wisdom.
I always enjoy our conversations.
And it's always enlightening because I love that you see
the world from a different point of view and the
(39:41):
connectedness of it and how we're supposed to be living our
lives.
And I'm truly grateful for that.
If people want to get in touch with you or reach out to
you, what's the best way to do that, Laurie?
I have a website and it's www.laurettedejulian.com,
and I do a mentorship and spiritual direction and I'm also
(40:05):
a death doula so I help people begin their journey of
transition.
And that has helped too because I see how successful people
end their lives and what what had they get to take with
them and what has been the most meaningful for them.
(40:31):
So so so now I can't let you go now
Thank you.
So what's what have you discovered?
What's the most meaningful thing they're taking with them
these successful people that end up dying?
The experiences. The experiences that have enriched their
life. The people that have loved them.
(40:55):
Unfortunately,
some of them have to take some guilt and shame and regret
with them.
And you know, it's difficult to die with regrets.
I think that's the hardest thing.
People think it's physical pain,
but I really think it's emotional pain of I wish I would
(41:15):
have done it differently.
And what it comes down to is those people never allowed
themselves to be the people they wanted to be in
situations.
Gotcha.
Yeah,
they were busy being successful and not who they really
should have been.
(41:36):
Or, they were busy being fearful.
I would say that fear motivates most people and makes them
do things out of character.
Gotcha.
Anything else you'd like to add now before we close?
No, but thank you.
Thank you for letting me be here.
Well, and thank you very much for taking the time.
(41:58):
I'm really humbled and honored.
And for your listeners,
I'm also gonna put her contact information in the notes in
the podcast.
So please go to her website and reach out.
She's truly a wealth of wisdom and information.
And I can tell you that from personal experience,
she can help you get through whatever emotional struggles,
(42:18):
baggage you may be carrying and get you to a place that's
better and easier and more fun, most importantly,
more loving than you could ever imagine.
I think you're just one of the most amazing people that's
ever crossed paths in my life.
And thank you again for taking the time, Laurie.
I really, really appreciate it.
Thank you for having me.
Thanks again for joining us and listening to this episode
(42:38):
of Leadership and Love.
I would like to challenge you to ask yourself,
what's one thing that you heard today that you can
implement immediately to improve your leadership and
accelerate your growth?
If you've gotten value out of this episode or learned
something that you can implement today,
we'd ask that you please share it with those that you care
(43:00):
about.
Our goal is to create more leaders who are leading with
love.
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