Erin: Hello, hello, welcome to the Lalo Pod. This is Erin. I am so excited that you are here with me today. It is just me. You guys are loving the episodes with the guests, which is just really, really fun. So far, I've gotten such good feedback about Monica and my cousin Jade, and I have a whole list of people wanting to come on the podcast and tell their stories. And if you could see this list and the amount of strength and the amount of lessons and so many different viewpoints, I'm just super, super excited. People from all walks of life, all topics. I'm going to continue to get those all scheduled. But of course, once in a while, I just want to sit and talk to you. So today's episode is going to be a few listener questions. that will spark some good conversation. so today I'm actually doing this podcast and jumping right into the Uber to head to the airport. I'm taking my son Troy to his very first Chicago Cubs game at Wrigley Field in Chicago. This boy has been a Cubs fan his whole life and I am so excited. There's not a lot of things I love more than giving my boys experiences. It's just our thing. remember when I moved to the small town, the one stoplight town, and we were only supposed to be there a couple years. And I remember telling my first husband that travel is just really, really important to me. If these boys are going to live in this little town, then we have to get them outside and we have to get them to see other cultures and other ways of life. And that was just really important to me. So we really are just travelers. The boys have been traveling since they were very young and they love it and they have seen so much already. But Troy and I are going today. It's exciting. We're taking my parents, which will be really fun. It's a quick trip, but one of the games we're going to watch in the stadium and then the second game the next day we're going to watch from some bar kind of bar hop around Wrigley town which will be fun. But Troy I want to tell you this crazy story that he has experienced this summer because it's definitely made me feel like time is precious and just this boy of mine every time I look at him think of him he had a really close really, I would call it a near death experience this summer, which was a freak accident. And we know freak accidents happen. We actually have one of his friends was just paralyzed from the neck down from a freak accident. I'm so grateful Troy's okay. So he lives in Provo, Utah, and he's going to school and he works at Best Buy and he is just an outdoorsman. While he was on his Mormon mission in Texas, I don't know how many times he would call and say how much he missed the mountains. And he just couldn't wait to get back to the mountains. He just loves to hunt. He loves to fish. He loves just to do dirt bikes. He loves to just explore and... that's just who he is. his apartment is right next to the Provo River, which is a really great fishing river. It was just a day after work and he wanted to just head out to the river and go fishing. He has been fishing his whole life and one of those things you don't even think twice about and he was by himself and he had just gotten some new reels and some stuff. He was just super pumped about and wanted to get out and start using it. So he goes out by himself and he's outstanding in the middle of the river and he's just casting and everything's fine and he hears a noise and all of a sudden a tree hits him. A tree that is right next to the river literally just fell over and hit him and broke his arm. And if this tree would have been just a few inches in a different direction. It could have absolutely hit him in his head. He could have passed out. He could have gotten trapped under the tree. the doctor told him if that tree would have hit your head, you would have. you wouldn't be with us right now. And to see this picture, it's wild because the whole the whole river is open. But you just see this one tree fallen over and that was where he was in the middle of the river standing and he had to go find his fishing. hold down the river. had just come out of his hands and gone. But he has been in a cast all summer. He had to drop out of summer school because he couldn't type. And it just really shook all of us up. I don't think I've ever had a near death experience like that. But we're just so grateful he's okay. And it has reminded our family, especially how precious life is, time is, and we're so glad that a broken arm was all we got out of that crazy freak accident. But I think little things like that just remind you relationships are the most important, time is the most important, health is the most important, and everything else. you just have to take it for what it is. So we are taking a couple days off work and we are going to go have a little fun this weekend. So I'm excited to show him. It's his very first time in first class, which he's only getting because I had a Delta companion ticket. I am one of those parents who will be in first class and put your kids at the back. I have no idea why that's not OK. I mean, I probably wouldn't do that with little kids, but my kids, they... I waved to them as they get on the plane from my first class seat and I'm like, okay, see you when we get there. But he's excited. So it's fun to give him a little taste of being spoiled and hopefully he loves it and he decides he wants to work really hard. So he is always in first class because that is definitely how I looked at it and I got there myself. So he's going to be a pilot though. So let's be honest, he's going to be in first class in the cockpit, right? I am gonna get into our very first question from a viewer. I think that I just want this to always be an interactive conversation. I want you to feel like I'm in this with you. I want you to feel like you can message me, you can ask something Chances are if it's on your mind, it's most likely on other people's minds. So I think we just need to share our questions, keep this conversation going, and we can all benefit from it. what's something you're still figuring out that people probably assume that you have figured out? And the first thought was absolutely work. I consider myself an entrepreneur. I have spent my career in sales and marketing and building sales teams and recruiting and training. And I'm passionate about meeting people, finding their talents, getting them set up for success and helping them grow and I've been doing that my whole career and kind of everything has gotten me to this point it's been a little crazy since last summer. I have been running this business fully by myself. I have just really had my head down. And a lot of times it just feels like survival mode, just doing exactly what is right in front of me and getting it marked off the list and just continuing to show up every day, handle what needs to be handled, work on growth, work on systems. And that's kind of where I've been for the last year. And people probably do look at me and think I have it figured out and yep, she owns her own business. She has had all of the success. and I know what I'm doing and I am the first to tell you that I learned as I go and I think any business owner probably feels the same way that you're just constantly solving problems and whatever the problem is you find the solution and to me that is figuring it out as I go and that is how this business has grown step by step. While I've been running this business by myself, I've had to really learn to trust myself. And that is something that even in my personal life, I have struggled with since my divorce. I think being raised Mormon, I didn't really trust myself on anything because I trusted the church so much. I trusted that they had it figured out. So I didn't need to worry about anything. They knew how I could get to heaven. They knew how I could have a happy life. And so I just followed their structure. of what I needed to do to get to heaven, truly. And part of that is being married to another Mormon who feels the same way that you can kind of grow together. So that's kind of where I was for so long and I didn't need to trust myself. I could go to everybody for answers in the church and have it figured out. I think That is extremely hard at first. It's actually a breakdown of your identity, your thought process. Everything is just shaken up when you decide that an organization that you've trusted your whole life is something that you can't trust anymore and that has to turn into trust for yourself. And I went through... a lot of growth during that time where I just had to get really in touch with my inner voice and learn one small decision at a time that I could trust myself. you know, I didn't always make great decisions and it's really hard to trust yourself after you have made a bad decision. And that's something that I definitely connect with because it's so easy to look back and think, why in the world did I do that? Because that was not smart. had a consequence. I, what was I thinking I can't be the only one that thinks that but well how I have learned to really trust myself after making decisions that didn't go right whether my personal life my business you know I've made plenty of business decisions where I thought I was trusting myself and it ended up not working and I thought okay that is just one way that doesn't work, let's try another way and see if that does work. Everything is just always a learning experience. And if you think about your personal life as well, if you do make a mistake in your personal life and you're beating yourself up over it and you are feeling like... you can't trust yourself because why should I trust myself? I already made a bad decision. How do I trust myself to make the right decision? I think we just have to give ourselves grace and understand that this is how we learn. We never learn when life is easy. We learn through the muck and the mess and the hard times. And that is just part of growth in life. the minute you realize that, when you do make a mistake and you tell yourself, I should have known better, why did I do that? look for the lesson and take the lesson and move forward and trust yourself that you can learn from your mistake. the next time you're presented with that situation, you're going to make a better decision. I don't think anyone has everything figured out. I definitely don't. But maybe the answer is just learning to really trust ourselves with the decisions ahead of us and give ourselves some grace to figure it out on our own. And if by chance it doesn't work, we take the lesson, we move forward. But I think learning from your mistakes is something that is the easiest solution for wanting to know how to trust yourself. Give yourself that grace that I'm gonna just learn as I go. I might make a mistake, but I'm gonna do my best to learn from it. And that's how this is gonna go. And just give yourself a lot of room to make those decisions by yourself and work through them in a way that can bring growth. Another question that I got this last week was, I want to start therapy, but I don't know where to start. How did you find yours? And that instantly took me back to Aaron and that one stoplight town and it was 2017 and I don't remember exactly the moment that I realized I needed help, but I know that when I decided I wanted to go to therapy, I felt like I was drowning and I was looking for a life preserver. And to me, an outside source who could give me advice, somebody I could trust, somebody who is wiser than I am, who has more tools than I have, could throw me that life preserver and help me out of the deep waters. I knew really quickly that I did not wanna have a therapist in the one stoplight town. There were therapists there and that's fine, but I knew I wanted to be in the city because I knew I would have different viewpoints from somebody that was outside of my town. I got onto Google and I searched for Salt Lake City Therapists. I literally went through tons of websites to the bio section and I just read about everybody and I looked at their pictures and I was looking for a connection. And I remember Heather's website and I remember her picture and I remember looking at her thinking. this is somebody that I can trust. Plus, I loved her website. She was downtown Salt Lake City. She was beautiful. And I just felt like, okay, this is who I want to reach out to. I sent her an email and I have dug through my emails and I cannot find it. I wonder if it's in my file with her. I'll have to ask her. But that very first email that I sent her, I've read a million times since then and it was just heartbreaking. It started with, don't know if you can help me, but this is what's going on. And I just basically had that vomit out of my mouth where I told her everything. I told her I'm in a small town. It's Mormon. It's a place where I feel like I'm being suffocated and I don't know what I need to do. to make a change and I'm scared. And I ended the email saying, I'm just not sure if you could help me at all, but please let me know. she responded and said, Erin, I can help you. when can you come in? And she moved a bunch of things around and I got in really quickly and I drove downtown Salt Lake City. I was going every other week for a while and then weekly once I was up here more often. I was going to her literally as much as I could afford. session by session, I felt like I could breathe. I felt like there were tangible steps in front of me. that I could work on to get myself to a more aligned place. I talked through a bunch of my church feelings and my church experiences. That was definitely something that I talked about a lot at the beginning, but I found out later that my therapist's story was very similar to mine and I've spent eight years with her and she's changed my life. Probably the first thing that she did for me that I learned was she told me that I was allowed to change my mind. And nobody had ever told me that. And it sounds like such a simple phrase, but she gave me permission to think new thoughts and to see life differently. And that changed my life. Another thing I learned very early on was how I could learn to respond to conflict instead of react. I was very reactive in my marriage because I honestly just didn't know better. I had a lot of emotions, feelings. You guys, I'm a Scorpio. I'm intense. And I was dealing with my divorce in a way that I was just reacting. Every little thing he would do during the separation just got me so wound up. And Heather really taught me that I could choose how I handled. the conflict and Heather was so good. She knew I couldn't afford to come as much as I needed and she would give me a lot of great book suggestions because books are free therapy. just got out one of the books that she suggested and it's called Loving What Is by Byron Katie and it has been an publication for a long, time and people really love her method. But basically she has four questions. So when you are in a spot with conflict, you work through these four questions and you're supposed to just write them out. And at the end of these questions, you're knowing how to respond to the situation. And you've kind of worked through it enough where you're not reacting because you've given it a little time. It's a great book and it's a great place to start because it will teach you how to overcome that monkey brain inside of you, that monkey mind where we can just literally let our minds take over and go crazy and we believe everything it's telling us and that's just not healthy because our mind is not always spewing truth to us. And when you recognize that and you can quiet that monkey mind, It will help you stay calm in a spot where you can respond calmly instead of react. And that is something you can learn. That phrase, you can't teach an old dog new tricks, you can. It takes work, but you can learn. You can change your relationships. You can change your life by learning new skills. I'm not going to go through the four questions because if this is something that is resonating with you, I want you to read the book and work through those four questions. They actually have workbooks. There is a workbook connected to this book. A workbook is so great. So it's basically when there is a self-help book that is popular, a lot of times the author will publish a workbook. And a workbook is basically the book in a journal format. And you just take a pen and you can read it like a book, but you can journal along with it workbooks could be like $12 on Amazon and it could equal thousands of dollars of therapy. So if you're looking for a therapist, go online, ask around, talk to people in your life and say, hey, do you have any buddy that you know of? But Google is your friend. I know people had great success with BetterHelp, which is an online therapy program that will match you with a therapist and everything is done online. You can text with your therapist, you do video calls with your therapist. I've always preferred to go to Heather in person versus virtually, but you sometimes life is busy or if you are wanting somebody outside of your town like that, a virtual therapist would be great in that scenario as well. I'm kind of in a spot with Heather right now and I'm just going to tell you guys, I wasn't going to talk about this, I started with her in 2017 and that's nine years. I am literally not the person I was nine years ago. I lived a complete different life. And while Heather has changed my life, I call her my angel, I feel like such a brand new person right now. And especially this last year, I feel like I have really shed an old version of myself and I feel... more myself than ever right now. I feel like I am a brand new version of me. the last few times I've gone to Heather, have felt this girl is my friend. I just feel like she's my friend that I'm getting advice from versus a therapist. client relationship. And I have put a lot of thought into this that I want to honor the time that I had with Heather, but I also want to move forward and get myself development from other arenas, other areas, other people. And I have been doing so much spiritual energy work that that's something I've really connected with lately. And I just felt like my time with Heather as a therapist was done. I have talked to her about that. And I basically thanked her for the time and I said, I hope we can be friends. I hope there's a point where we can go get a glass of wine and just chat. And ideally, I would love to get her on the podcast. I'm going to send her this episode and tell her to skip to the part where we talk about therapy, because her story is amazing and she's literally. this one of the smartest women that I've ever known and the way she can communicate her thoughts is so. amazing. And I would love to get her on the pod to talk about some really important topics. We have some guests who want to come on the podcast to share their stories. And they're stories that are going to be different for you to hear because they're from different walks of life, right? We've talked about this is a podcast that we don't need to agree with everybody, but we respect everybody and we want to hear people's stories that are different than ours. That is such a great opportunity to grow your mindset and to think new thoughts and to change your mind on things and really realize that the way people are living has nothing to do with you. I have several people who have grown up in the church, especially. gay who want to talk about their stories about coming out. have somebody who has gone through a sex change who has an incredible story that is bigger than just that. It's about family and acceptance and it's beautiful and I want the right platform to tell that story. But I also know there's a lot of people who those topics still make them a little uncomfortable. You know, I live in a very religious inspired community. I think this platform can be something where we can just learn. about people, can hear their stories and we can honor that in them. And we can realize that I can understand somebody in that situation better than before because I heard their story on Leelopod. That's what I want. And I feel like Heather is a part of this that she will be able to come on and talk about some of these topics in such a great way that can really bridge the gap. right now and allow you to think new thoughts. So I am going to send her this podcast. I'm going to invite her to meet me for a glass of wine or dinner and just talk because she's incredible. And while I do feel like our therapist client relationship has run its course, I don't want a life without Heather in it. So I hope that she will stay in my life as a friend. But at the end of the day, that's going to be her decision. And I will respect that no matter what. The last question I'm going to touch on just really, really quickly. I keep having people asking me if I'm dating, which is so cute because I know you love me and I know for so much of my life I have shared so much of my life. I think it stems from being... young 20 year old when Facebook was starting and I was working in the marketing world where I was using social media for work and it was just so new that I just kind of jumped into it without even thinking about it and just gradually shared my life. I mean if you look at my personal Instagram my boys entire lives are documented on there really up until last summer and since last summer I just have not really shared anything I have been laying low as you know, but I also feel like that Instagram page is kind of my old version of myself. So I'm wanting to use the Lalo pod Instagram as my personal business Instagram moving forward where that's where I'm going to be posting. That's where I'm going to be sharing and I'm going to be sharing differently. It's going to be more intentional there. I'm not gonna share every single thing. We come here and we chit chat and you guys are always gonna hear a lot about me. It's so funny. I was at my office and... at the coffee bar and this guy in my office, said, Erin, it's so crazy because I've been listening to the podcast and I feel like I know everything about you and you know nothing about me. And I just laughed and I said, my God, it's just funny. But it's true. You guys are always going to know a lot about me. You're going to learn the parts of me that I'm ready to share when I'm ready to share it. So the dating stuff, I really have been extremely intentional with that, as you know, and I definitely have somebody in my life that makes me smile and who cheers me on and somebody I'm excited about. And I think you'll meet him eventually. I will share more of that side of my life as things go, but just know Erin is happy. Everything has been really organic I've been really lucky to have good humans in my life I'm so grateful for the people this last year who have stepped up in my life to give me advice to be in my corner to sometimes just text me and say you got this. It has really, really, really made a huge difference this last year and you know who you are. You know who you are in my life and... It just feels good to be in a positive space, feeling in such alignment and feeling like I'm right on track in both work and my personal life and my boys. feel the exact same way. They are both thriving that I feel very grateful for this last year and where I am. And honestly, I think people. somebody who has not talked to me in a year who would sit down with me now would see a completely different version of myself and it's a version of myself that I love that I feel so connected with that I'm so excited to step into this next part of my life. really feel like life is a book and there's chapters there's sections. had a part one that was full of great chapters and full of great lessons and now I have started a part two with a new version of myself and this podcast has been a big part of that being able to share some the stories from part one and make peace with them and leave them there so that we can just go full steam ahead into what is ahead. I'm excited for what is going to happen with this podcast. I love you guys. If you could please go on to wherever you listen and rate the podcast. I am so grateful for that. Share it with anybody that you feel might connect with it as well. Things are growing right now and I just love having this outlet to connect with you and to share my truths. It has been so good for me and I just think this is the beginning of something really special. So love you all. Thank you for laying low with me. Continue to send in your questions for me and we will continue to answer them and we will have a guest on next week. It is somebody with a very... Vulnerable story it's our first male guest and he has never shared some of these things and honestly I know I'm gonna learn a lot about him as he shares this story I'm excited for him to be here. He's a very special guy with a special story and I am cheering him on and I think you will be too after you you meet him next week, so Thank you for laying low with me and I'll see you next time.