danielle laporte, i’m still crushing on you!

i’ve been crushing on danielle laporte for a bit now. i even sent her a fan letter a couple of months ago. you know, like a real fan letter. i just went back and read it again and yep, it’s as cheesy as it gets (i have no shame. i like cheesy. especially if it’s cheesy honesty and i love writing quick emails to people who have made an impact on my thinking/dreaming). she came into my orbit a few months ago when i stumbled on her site. i was intrigued and i go back every now and again for a morsel of power/truth. i like her energy. i like her approach.

i had the opportunity to hear her speak at the world domination summit (a summit about living a non-conformist life) here in portland last weekend. i knew it would be good, but i didn’t think i would be running out of room on my paper for all the notes and tidbits of wisdom i was jotting down. at one point, i felt like i was in church and hearing a really good sermon/lesson.

here are a few things i learned from her (that i’m still thinking about) that i wanted to share:

– we have to understand why we love what we love in order to keep going in the direction of what lights us up. i love this idea of really getting underneath the things we love and using the answers to “why do you love what you love” as our guiding forces in making the choices we make in life and in business. when i answer that question for myself (why do i love fresh flowers? why do i love making stuff? why do i love singing out loud in the car with the windows down?), the answer seems to always come down to this: it makes me feel joyful. so it makes sense that i should make life/biz decisions in that direction of joy whenever possible.

– you have to know the rules in order to break the rules. super powerful concept but oh so true. the idea is that we don’t have to conform. to a full time job. to a traditional marriage. to what we’ve been told our whole lives to do. to what the world expects of us. period. if we know the rules that have been laid upon us (overtly or otherwise), then we can choose to break them and live our most authentic, alive lives. but we have to know the rules, the nuances of them. this reminds me of something i wrote about in my book: we have to unlearn, unlearn, unlearn.

– it’s more efficient to simply embrace the path that we were born into. forget resisting. forget resenting. forget pretending that it never happened. instead, understand that you have very specific skills that came about due to the exact path/circumstance you were born into. embracing those skills makes you way more believable and efficient.

– i love this one and it’s a game changer for me. instead of writing a to-do list, make a list of how you want to feel. this is especially helpful to those of us who are task masters, wondering if we’ll ever “arrive.” we never really feel like we’ve arrived because the to-do list never ends – there’s always something more. but if we reframe it for ourselves by replacing our to-do lists with lists of how we want to feel, then there’s more satisfaction. and then we simply have to ask ourselves every single day this question: “what do you have to do every single day to generate those feelings on your list.” this list should be on top of your to-do/goal list so that your to-do/goal list is completely aligned with HOW YOU WANT TO FEEL. such a basic, but life changing concept for me! thank you, danielle!

– someone in the audience asked her advice on how to handle corporate america boardrooms, meetings, disengaged family members, etc when you are the only one that seems to embrace the idea of being real. her response was brilliant: the only thing you can do is simply radiate your aliveness, your beliefs, but to be very careful to convince anybody of anything. the minute you try to do that, you’ve already created division/opposition. just radiate. be who you are. period.

– someone else asked how to live with the fact that they hate their dayjob every single minute of every day. her response was to love the hell you are living in – celebrate the choice you are making to be there whether it’s that you need the money, the time to build your small biz on the side, etc. love the hell you’re in while also at the same time coming up with a plan to exit.

– she mentioned the idea of doing a stop-doing list. are there things in your life that you want to stop doing? i love this idea as an alternative to a to-do list.

toward the end, this woman stood up and said something really funny (but so true!). she said “in my 20s i was worried about what people thought of me. in my 40s i didn’t care what people thought of me. in my 50s i realized that they weren’t thinking of me all along!”

which means, that we should simply be who we are. we are the ones we need to impress. we are the ones we’ve been waiting for…..

thank you, danielle. i so loved your talk!
ps: all photos of danielle taken by the WDS photographer, Armosa Studios. more event photos here.