Ep #64: 5 Ways to Practice Self-Love with Female Empowerment Coach Lori Lander

You are listening to the Overthinkers Guide to Joy, episode 64. Today, I am going
to be interviewing my friend and colleague, Coach Lori Lander. Lori is a female
empowerment coach. And today, we're going to talk about five ways to practice self
-love. Let's dive in. This is a podcast for overthinkers, overdoers,
and overachievers who are tired of feeling overanxious and just want to feel better.
I'm your host certified life coach, Jackie de Crinis.
So I have a very special guest on the podcast today. Her name is Lori Lander, and
she is my dear friend and also a certified life coach. Lori is a woman who helps
women who feel disconnected, unfulfilled, and stuck in their lives. She helps people
create a new chapter filled with purposeful work, meaningful relationships,
and connections for a like -minded tribe. She specializes in female empowerment while
uplifting women to help them realize their full potential to thrive and live vibrant,
authentic lives. And as a mother of three girls, she has passionately dedicated her
adult life to female empowerment. She believes that now more than ever, It's vital
for women to uphold core values, embrace uniqueness, and stand in their integrity.
And that is why in 2009, she founded Girls in the Know, a 501 (c)(3) non -profit
which educates and empowers preteen girls alongside trusted adults by providing them
with tools to establish a strong sense of self as they mature into adulthood. And
with that, I want to welcome my dear friend, Lori. - Hello. - I'm so excited to be
here. - Me too. This is so fun. - It is.
- So Lori and I, we met many years ago in our coaching program, and in one of our
first coaching programs together, and became fast friends. And you are located in St.
Louis, and I am in Maui and yet we carve out the time almost every week to get
on the phone and share best practices and talk about our business and talk about
our families. And it's just been an amazing, long distance friendship over Zoom.
It's been wonderful. And I was so blessed for me and my family to come and visit
this summer, which was wonderful to see you all. I loved it so much fun. So Lori,
we are both life coaches. I'm more of a general life coach than you are. You
really have a beautiful niche with women's empowerment. And I know that you love to
focus on helping that, whether it's middle age or career woman,
really finding the joy in her life and really reinventing, even if she has a
career, stepping into her power to help increase her business or increase her joy or
find that work -life balance piece. And one of the biggest things you talk about in
your practice is self -compassion.
That's a huge theme. And I thought that for today's podcast, I would love to talk
both about self -compassion, but also in the five ways you talk about practicing self
-love. - Yes, yes. I'm so excited to talk about this. I talk about it with all my
clients. And it is, I think one of my favorite topics because I truly believe it
is so important. But I wanna start with, what is self -love essentially?
And although you can look it up and just read how it is defined, I think that
there's so many different meanings for it. I myself find self -love to be really
putting myself first and appreciating myself and my self -worth and my value.
And I think that that really is so incredibly important. It's something that I've
learned over the years. And since learning it now, I do try to teach that a lot,
try to talk about it a lot and share it with my clients and friends and family
because I believe so deeply that we have to take a pause and love ourselves first
before we can love anyone else in our lives. But putting on your own oxygen mask
first, as you've heard so many times before, but I think that it's true. And in
this regard, it is critical for us as we go through our life to give that love to
ourselves first and foremost before, again, we can give it out to anybody else and
share it with anybody. I also believe that it's the way we as women have been
raised. We have been raised to, you know, not to be, you know,
too boisterous about, you know, our accomplishments and to kind of lay low and to
help others and serve others. And there really was not much talk at all.
I didn't even know what self -love was as a child. I never even had heard that
term since I was in maybe my 20s, maybe even my early 30s, I don't know.
So also new to me, but I think especially as women, that's how we were raised. We
were raised to put everyone else before ourselves and our needs. And so that's why
it's just critical now that, you know, to focus on these components of self -love
and really shine more of a light on it, talk more about it. But so what have you
seen in terms of women who have always put everyone else first, their parents,
their siblings, their husband or partner, their children, their job?
What do you typically see? What are the common denominators of somebody who is not
practicing self -love? Such a great question. And I see that often with the clients
when they first come to me. A lot of it is anxiety, extreme anxiety. It's stress.
It's overwhelm. It's lack of confidence. It's just physically, not only emotionally
too, but just physically drained because, you know, as we know, we can't pour from
an empty cup. We've got to fill our own cups first. So those are really the bigger
signs of what I see when people first come to me is that They are essentially
drained. There is no more gas in their tank. They have given it all away, but yet
they haven't learned how to fill up the tank, fill up the cup with what they need.
And I imagine there is great discomfort when they first learn that their homework,
if you will, is to practice self -love. Like, it sounds good on paper. "Oh, great.
I get to practice self -love. Oh, great. I get to think about myself first. Oh,
great. I don't have to put everybody everybody else first. And then there's the
fantasy of that. And then there's the practicality of shifting that gear that is so
societally in our DNA and the habit of having not practiced self love and putting
everyone else first for decades. So tell me a little bit about that, like the shift
of, oh, really, I'm allowed to put myself first to the actual doing? What kind of
pushback do you see? What kind of discomfort do you see? Yeah. Well, first, it's
helping them define what that means for them, because again, very different meanings
for every single one of us. And again, for me, and I'll list some of the things
that are most important for me and how I believe define self -love. But I think
first it's them gaining clarity and what helps them feel good about themselves. They
do what have they done in their past that has helped them to feel better about
themselves and really to go, success leaves clues. And once they have a deeper
understanding of, "Oh gosh, when I did this, that really made me feel good. I
haven't done it in a long time, but that really made me feel good." So once they
start to kind of feel like they're connecting again to what they used to do and
that connection of, wow, when I did this, I felt better. That's that feeling that
they get. They start to get a better understanding of what self -love actually is.
And once they have that understanding, then that's where we start to make the
shifts. And very slowly, it takes time. Certainly doesn't happen overnight or in one
session, but for them to start to step into that and to take baby steps,
maybe even one step forward, which can be very small and just identifying what it
is that brings them joy. It's going to help them to feel better about themselves,
to pour into themselves. - I love that. Do you ever come across somebody who has
spent either due to circumstances being on their control in childhood or being in
toxic relationships their entire life or just having been a workhorse? Do you ever
find that somebody has no idea what brings them joy and never did?
Oh my gosh, this is such a great, great question. I'm so glad you bring this up.
It's so interesting. Early on in my practice, when I started doing this work and I
would start to ask, I remember one client, "What brings you joy?" And it was like
someone staring at me like a deer in headlights. I don't even know what brings me
joy. No idea. I'm so busy going and doing for my family, for my friends, for my
community, with work. I don't have time for joy. Are you kidding me? And that's
actually a piece of what I talk about. But yes, it is very common. And so it's
really important for them to really take a step back, to take a pause and to allow
themselves the time and the space, again, to go back in their lives to where they
had joy to figure out what fueled them, what brought them more energy,
what helped fill their cup versus what left them feeling drained or of what fills
them up. But practice, but first starting with an awareness and clarity that is
possible. Great. Great. So let's jump into it. Tell us a little bit about the five
ways to practice self -love or that you would recommend the five ways to practice
self -love. Worse, of course. Well, I think one of them that's super important that
we all have heard about many times is self -care and really ensuring, and that too,
is defining what self -care looks like for you. For me, I'll give you some examples,
but daily affirmations. For example, I wake up every morning and I say one or two,
just a couple of affirmations starting with I am. And it really helps me kind of
set my focus for the day. And then I'm able to step in and start live by that.
So daily affirmations, I recommend them. Other people call them invocations to form
of an affirmation, but it can be very, very powerful. Another form of self -care is
gratitude. And I know that we hear that we talk about it a ton. I know with
coaching. But the reason why it's talked about so much is because it works. It
works. It shifts our mind and our focus on what we're grateful for versus all of
the maybe the negatives that are going on in our lives. So I think it's really
important whether you do it first thing in the morning or at night before you go
to bed, but even if it's one thing a day, not only writing it down, but leaning
into the feelings about whatever it is that you're talking about, whatever you wrote
down that you're grateful for. Another piece of the size, you know, like a hundred
percent. And by the way, I'm like nodding my head like a crazy person. Obviously,
we're not on video, so we can't see. But a hundred percent, I agree with all three
of these fantastic reminders. And the exercise piece is so crucial. It is.
And I mean, I can go down, you know, my list, but meditation, you know, is another
important piece of it and getting enough water and sleep, eating healthy,
and celebrating your wins. I think that that's something really important that a lot
of people struggle with doing. I think is so critically important with self -care is
celebrating. And no matter how small the win, it doesn't mean you have to run a
marathon or, you know, it doesn't have to be huge. It can be something as small
as, I just meditated for one minute. Take a pause if you did that and you're not
used to doing it and celebrate yourself and say, "You did it. You did it. You put
your mind to it. You said you were going to do it and you did it." Because I
think that oftentimes we get so caught up in what we didn't accomplish, that that's
where we go. So we want to make her bifting our mindset over to the wins. Another
piece of self -care, which I think is important and I sometimes time block it in at
my schedule, is to simply do nothing. I mean, I will write it into my calendar
that I just want an hour to do nothing. If I end up kind of falling into
something else, great. But it's just having white space in my day, other piece. I
love that. You know, the celebrating the wins, going back on that, something I've
talked about in prior podcasts, there's a book, a New York Times bestseller book,
called Make Your Bed. It was written by a rear admiral in the Navy. And the power
of making your bed every morning, gives you that first win of the day.
And what he talks about is if you accomplish nothing else, in order to make your
bed, you have to get out of your bed, by the way. So at least you're awake,
you're out of your beds, you're actually three wins, and then you've made your bed.
And the idea is that you've accomplished something and you started a routine, which
again goes into, you know, the other books like Atomic Habits and Tiny Habits, - All
of which are kind of foundations for the type of work I do, which is just having
good daily habits so that you have a good mindset for the day. But making your bed
is a win. And even if you have a lousy, terrible day or an unproductive day or
you lose a client or you had a fender bender or something like that, you come home
at the end of the day, your bed is made, you're reminded again. - So good. - I
accomplished something today. Yes, so, so good. And then, of course, one
accomplishment usually attracts another accomplishment because you're like, "I did that
so I could probably do this." Yes, very much so. So I love that. I love the
celebrating the little wins. And I think, again, going back to women in society,
we so often were shamed a little bit for celebrating ourselves because bragging
Because bragging is not a good thing and you never want to talk about yourself too
much. But there's a difference, and I think you should speak to it, on what does
it mean to celebrate a win without being braggie? Right. Right. I mean,
I think that you've summed it up. But essentially, it's literally, celebrating doesn't
necessarily mean you need to get out of loudspeaker or you need to get on to
social and tell the world that, for example, you just made your bed, but it's
really turning it inward and just acknowledging what you have accomplished,
no matter how small, no matter how small. Which comes full circle back to this
topic, which is the self -love. So you're not making your bed so that somebody will
compliment you, that you make your bed. You're making your bed for your own
satisfaction. You're not looking out there. You're going inward for the accolades,
which is really important. So that's number one. The second piece is, which I think
it's so important to, is learning to say no. Really learn, say no. And I heard
this, oh gosh, probably about eight years ago from another coach that said, if it's
not a hell yes, then it's a no. And it Resonated with me and really kind of it
was a light bulb moment for me because it made me realize Wow, how many things do
I say yes to out of obligation or because I have committed in the past or simply
because I feel bad about Hurting someone else's feelings. Yeah, and this was a huge
shift for me really in my own life and I've been teaching this quite a bit to my
clients on practicing what I call a great strategy is practicing the power of the
pause. And rather than that knee jerk reaction, as you know,
most of us like to do is, sure, absolutely sounds great. Yes,
definitely count me in to be careful and be conscious that from now on,
you will say, let me get back with you. You know, and I know this may sound
simple, but for many, it's not so simple. And just by practicing that pause, and
even if it's five minutes, it gives you just a moment to give yourself an
opportunity to respond versus reacting. And, you know, go ahead.
No, no, no, I was just going to say it ties in so beautifully to scheduling your
white space.
Because I did an episode called the power of the pause, but the power of the pause
was all about like if you're tired, take a nap if you need to re -energize
yourself, meditate for five minutes, pause before reacting to something negative. So
this is a great reminder for people like me because the way my perfectionism or
recovering perfectionism manifests is not procrastination, which is a typical form of
perfectionism. Mine is the let me do it as fast as I can so that it's off my
plate, it's the other end of the spectrum, but it's the same disorder. And so, when
people text me, I text immediately back with a firm answer, and I don't even pause
to think, "Do I want to? Can I? Don't I?" I want to respond quickly, and I do
the same with emails, and I tend to do the same with phone calls, and mostly with
invitations. And so, this reminder that power of the pause is such a good one to
take a beat. Let me check my calendar. Let me get back to you. That sounds fun.
I'm not sure yet. - Exactly, exactly. - So good. - Even if you know you may wanna
do it, give yourself a little time because I think what's really eye -opening another
exercise you could do is to go and take a look at your calendar, even a week out
from here to a week from now. And circle all the things, the commitments that you
have on your calendar that are things that you don't necessarily want to do, but
you did it out of obligation or commitment. You're not jazzed up about it, but you
just feel like if you don't, you're a bad person. And it'd be interesting to see
how many circles you have on your calendar. And then moving forward, be more clear
about what you actually schedule in because it's important. Of course, we're going to
have things that we need to go to from time to time. But for the most part, I
can say I have gotten to the point in my life to where when I look at my
calendar now, almost everything on there is now a hell yes. And it takes some time
to get there. And it comes with a lot of boundaries, which I'm about to talk to.
That's number three. But just to be intentional with your commitments, moving forward.
So, so important. So good. So good. I know I'll jump right into number three,
which is setting healthy boundaries. I didn't know if you had any questions though
before I move on. No, no, no, no, please. Okay, great. And boundaries is such a,
it's just one of my favorite topics because it's one of the hardest things for
women, especially to navigate. Because again, when we're sort of conditioned to always
serve others or meet other people's needs or be the matriarch or the family or
whatever it is, we tend to not have any boundaries. And the fastest way to burn
out is no boundaries. So I can't wait to get into this one. - Yes,
it's so very true. Oh, burnout, yes, very, very common. And not just necessarily
boundaries with others, but I think also boundaries with yourself, just getting really
clear and living a more intentional life all the way around. But yes, if someone
has treated you in a certain way, of course, we don't have control over their
actions or how they respond, but we absolutely have control over how we choose to
respond, how we choose to show up, and the boundaries that we choose to set. So if
in fact it's removing ourselves from that situation to set a boundary or what I
call courageous, having a courageous conversation with that individual and saying to
them, you know, this really hurt me, you know, laying it down and saying, you know,
if this continues, I'm going to remove myself from this situation. And the key here
is, though, with setting boundaries is they're not one and done. You have to
continue the practice for some time before it will stick. So just kind of,
you of take caution and when you do set it and then somebody oversteps and then
you say, "Oh, they're not respecting my boundaries." It's just because they haven't
yet learned and it does take some time. So remembering to practice, be consistent,
to continue to remind them that, "This is hurting me. It's upsetting me." So that's
being boundaries with others. And then setting boundaries with
time on your own schedule, going back up, have I allowed self -love? You know, well,
if I haven't been taking care of myself and I need to set a hard boundary on what
I'm going to be saying yes to, going to number two of saying no to things. So it
goes both ways, but being really clear about really defining your limits in your
life. Love that. Love that.
So moving on to number four, my fourth one, I believe is really powerful is to do,
we talked about this a little bit, but to do one thing joyful every day. - Yeah.
- Whatever that means to you. And I do believe joy is a superpower I always have.
- Yeah. - And it's amazing how it can shift everything by just even simply taking a
moment to play with your dogs or I don't know, sitting down and doing a jigsaw
puzzle. I personally love puzzles. So that always brings good joy. But, you know,
defining what it is that brings you joy first and then making sure you calendar in,
make sure you actually write it down and make sure you do it daily. Well, I would
take it one step further, which is and relish the joy when you're doing it.
Because I think what often happens and people talk about this all the time, you
know, people love that first sip of coffee a day, right? Or tea or whatever your
thing is in the morning. And yet they love it. They look forward to it and they
don't relish it. They rush through it, right? Instead of when you make that first
cup of coffee or that first cup of tea or lemon water or whatever your drink of
the morning is, sitting in the moment and having the gratitude piece for it.
Yes. So like I'm so grateful to have this hot, wonderful,
delicious smelling liquid, or cold smoothie, or whatever your drink is, and just
taking a beat of gratitude in that I get to have this right now.
And that's a joy. This podcast, which is called The Overthinker's Guide to Joy, used
to be called Joy Hunting. The premise of it was, "What can you do every day in
your life "that might be kind of ordinary "where you can find joy and pay attention
to it? "Where can you hunt for joy?" And so this is a great reminder of that.
Thank you. - Really is. And I'll add to that too that there may be times where you
physically cannot do something joyful. It just physically is not in your day, for
some reason, if we can't carve out time. But there is always an opportunity to at
least think or write down other joyful moments because we'll still be able to then
feel those feelings as you talked about, savoring the moment. Those feelings will
come right back. So if you can't physically do it, hopefully you can every day. But
if you can't, to just simply sit in that, remembering the cup of coffee, you know,
and you will elicit those feelings. So very possible, good reminder. And then the
fifth piece is one of my most favorite topics is self -compassion. And I think
that's such an important form of self -love. Cannot stress it enough. And I really
believe that showing compassion towards yourself, although can be challenging at first.
I know at first it was for me, it felt a little funny, but so critically
important. And for those of you who aren't quite sure how to show self -self
-compassion. A great example is to imagine that a friend or a loved one is
suffering. And you go to them and you talk to them with just love and care and
love on them and give them whatever it is that they need in that moment. And then
you take whatever it is that you said to that person in a time that you're
struggling, you take everything that you said and you turn it inward and you Say it
to yourself is a great example of providing self compassion for oneself,
especially in a time of struggle. So that we're acknowledging our feelings, that
we're not stuffing them, that we're there for ourselves. So such an important part
of self love. And there is an amazing book that I recommend that I loved.
I learned a lot from. I know, Jackie, I had turned you on to it. Yeah, I was
just going to say you gave me one of the best books on self -compassion, but tell
everyone else. And it's written by the pioneer of self -compassion, Dr. Kristin Neff.
There is a lot in the book. So what I tell clients is to take from the book what
speaks to you and leave the rest in the book, because there's a lot. There's a lot
there. There are some golden nuggets that, for me, and I know for so many of my
clients, have been game -changers. So I strongly recommend it. The name of the book
by Dr. Kristin Neff is Self -Compassion, The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself.
And I highly recommend getting that book, whether it be audible or otherwise, but
really a great week. Great, great read. Yeah, you recommended that to me when we
first met years ago. I've read it twice, and it is quite dense. And yet,
like you said, there's just so many nuggets in it. And you really do have to just
take out the pieces that you love and kind of own them. And that was my first
introduction to that concept of self -compassion. And I loved it and I'm grateful to
you for that recommendation, that book recommendation. - Of course, of course, so
good. So these are my five ways to practice. Of course, there are many other ways.
So I think it's important for all of us just to take pause and figure out What
does self -love mean to you and figure out what are practices that you can put into
place daily that are going to help you pour into yourself to give you that love?
You know to really help you to appreciate yourself and to value yourself and all
your self worth and worthiness that you have well And let's talk about What is the
return on investment if you will of practicing self -love. - Such a great question,
such a beautiful question. So your ROI for practicing self -love,
there are actually a lot of benefits to it, but what I've found is mindfulness
really, really leaning into mindfulness. I think it definitely helps in relieving
stress and anxiety and overwhelm. I think those are really the three big ones that
I found that really helped quite a bit with myself and my clients and really
pouring into yourself, giving yourself what it is that you truly need so that you
don't feel that feeling that we've all have or we feel that feeling of depletion
fills you up so that you feel energetic and you feel like whatever's coming your
way, you're able to handle it. And I also feel like it really helps tremendously
with resilience. So there's a lot of factors, a lot of benefits to practicing self
-love that I think that we all can continue to learn from. I will say it, I will
stress it is a daily practice. I wish it were done. It is a daily practice all
across the board. For my listeners, they know in every single episode of this
podcast, everything I talk about is a daily practice on a little micro level.
It's never a big swing. It's always a tiny little baby step, and it's always a
daily practice. The thing that was coming to mind for me on one of the other
benefits or a return of investment of the practice of self love is when We develop
a healthy relationship with ourselves. That is one in which daily self -compassion is
exercised and one in which daily self -love elements like all the ones you gave are
exercised. We start to attract healthier relationships, prosperity,
and actually even physically good health into our lives because it starts with the
foundation we create for ourselves. And that's not why we do it. You don't practice
self -love so that you can then get external reward. I believe it's an ancillary
benefit. You can't possibly have true success. You might have money,
you might have relationships, you might have elements of success, but true,
true, true success starts with a foundation of self -love. - Very much so. Oh my
gosh, I mean, I couldn't agree with you more. Greater happiness, greater relationships
all across the board and just overall, really impacting your overall well -being,
I think is tied very closely with practicing self -love. - I agree. - Love it on
your self -heart, right? - Exactly. Lori, this has been so much fun.
As always, I love talking to you and I love hearing, you know, your philosophies
and your coaching techniques. I mean, I've heard them so many times and yet every
time I hear them, I hear them again for the first time and I'm reminded, "Oh yeah,
I got to practice that. I forgot that one." So thank you for sharing these. Thank
you for coming on the podcast today. I adore you and I think that so many people
will benefit from hearing this and it might be for their first time. It might be
for their thousandth time, and yet it's always a good reminder to hit the reset
button and go into this daily practice of self -love. So thank you for sharing this
with us today. So welcome. It was my pleasure, and I truly enjoyed being here.
Lori, tell us how people can get in touch with you if they want to start working
with you. Of course. So the best way is via email. You can also visit my website,
lorilandercouching .com. Perfect. And you work with one -on -one clients,
women of all ages, and anyone looking for more joy, more empowerment,
more peace, more success in their life. You got it. Thank you. Love it.
All right. We will talk soon, soon and I'll see you later.