LaurieTALKS

Nothing’s more shattering to a dancer than an afflicted body. Fortunately, your body is smart, and it knows how to communicate with you.

Just as you truly appreciate love after experiencing heartache, you truly appreciate dance after sitting on the sidelines due to an injury.

In this episode I present:

If Your Injured Body Could Write You a Letter . . .

Living the life you want isn’t the cause of happiness. It’s the result of it.

I concluded my talk by announcing to my audience—people I hadn’t met until that evening—that standing before them and having to use the word had just about ruined my day and my mood. I was seriously cynical.

At first, I couldn’t see it. But, over time, I began to pay attention to what my mind was doing, and finally, I realized that my sister was right. I didn’t have one good thought on any subject.

I use my life as a test to see if Tina and Barbra were telling the truth. My motivation, including my decision to leave my desk job and tap dance for a living, became the search for happiness.

The search so many pursue outside themselves is actually

Your qualities aren’t static. 

You can discover simple ways to make moments and days special and foster positive vibes in a negative situation.

You can, at will, change your thoughts to call upon your version of calm, cool and composed.

Yes. This stuff takes practice, which if you’re a dancer, you know very well how to do.

With practice, deliberate and conscious shifts in perception will happen, offering a peace that passes human understanding.

Cherish your faith in miracles. You’re the miracle. Stop looking.

Branding relates to who you are, what you do, and why you do what you do.

Whether you call yourself a personal brand is not as relevant as the fact that - in a way, your brand is like your reputation . . . it’s something you develop with or without your approval or permission.

It’s what people think about you when they hear your name or what they say about you when you’re not within earshot.

Thanks for listening.

@LaurieTALKS

In this episode, I share a story about a time in my life when I:

• Wallowed in an endless cycle of mental anguish, despair, and misery.

My friend, where are you now is not as important as where you want to go.

Listen now and allow your mindset to serve you for your highest good.

You may be temporarily broken, but that doesn’t mean you’re poor.

Thanks for reading and/or listening. I appreciate you. LaurieTALKS

I begin this episode by reading to you from my blog. It’s a story about how we sometimes use our perceived limitations as an excuse to continue to fail.

Listen for my mom’s use of the word opportunity.

I’m sharing this story to remind you that opportunity is everywhere and to always be on the lookout for it.

I’ve included the text of the story for your convenience.

When I was growing up, nobody in my family talked about any of us kids going to college. The only expectation was that we would all graduate from high school. This was considered the BIG accomplishment.

I graduated and settled into a regular, boring, hourly job and lifestyle, working at a department store. I was on the path to becoming quite happy with my “eight-to-five” way of life.

I felt like a real adult. I was making enough money to survive. This was all I needed and wanted.

I could buy my own clothes, keep my car on the road, and maintain an exciting social life.

Back then, this seemed to be enough. Yippie! No more school!

Or so I thought.

A year after my high school graduation, my mother suggested that I do something more constructive with my life.

For the very first time she told me, “GO TO COLLEGE!”

I’d graduated with poor grades, and I had absolutely no intention of going to college.

In fact, it had never occurred to me that I could go, given my academic performance.

I have eight sisters and brothers. I’m number six.

Up to that point in my life, of all my relatives—parents, grandparents, first cousins, and everybody else—only my older brother Kevin had gone to college.

To this day, I’m not really sure how I got accepted at a university. My mother, however, was instrumental in me being given this opportunity.

And even though I don’t know how I got in, I’ll never forget how I arrived on campus.

When it was time for me to leave home, my mother and I drove from Hempstead, Long Island, to upstate New York.

Seven hours into our drive, we ran over a rock large enough to puncture a hole in the gas tank. Since I hadn’t wanted to leave home, I perceived this as good news. I was actually relieved.

My mother, on the other hand, had a different idea.

We took public transportation back home, borrowed a car, and began our trip again. I complained the entire way.

Hours later, she deposited me at the campus then started to drive away.

I took off running after the car.

My mother pulled over and stopped long enough for me to repeat what I’d been more or less saying the entire trip: “Please don’t leave me here! I don’t want to go to this school or any other school!”

Her reply that day was one of the pivotal moments of my life.

She said, “Look. All I ask is that you stay one week. After that, you decide. But stay this week and feel the experience for and within yourself. If it’s not for you, then you can leave.

“At least you won’t go through life saying you didn’t have the opportunity to go to college.”

College was my wake-up call in two serious ways. One, it made me quickly comprehend why family members and teachers had referred to me for years as a first-class, cloud-niner, out-to-lunch daydreamer. Two, it exposed me to just how unexposed I was.

I spent an insane amount of time in a state of shock as to how academically and socially deficient I was.

I wanted to run away from the challenges I knew college would present.

Yet an education helped me see the world through fresh eyes, in a way that a nonacademic setting would never have revealed to me.

Thank goodness my mother stopped the car that day . . . otherwise, I might still be running.

“Running is the answer if you’re on the track team—not so much in life.” ~ LaurieTALKS

Thanks for reading and/or listening. I appreciate you. LaurieTALKS

Dear Big Dreamer, 

Here are alternative titles I considered for this episode.

• It’s Not Your Circumstances, It’s Your State of Mind

Stay awesome.

TALK soon,

LaurieTALKS

@k.sounds.audio

@moehayslett

Think for a second about what happens when you get into an argument. It’s rare that anything truly positive comes from it.

In fact, winning an argument is overrated. And wasting time on inconsequential nonsense is pointless.

On the other hand . . . argue with no one and everyone wins, right?

Listen now to discover ways to save your precious mental bandwidth, to direct more energy toward focusing on your big dream, and to maintain your peace of mind—all by avoiding arguments.

Easier said than done. I know.

Thanks for listening to @LaurieTALKS

TAP IN to Your Full Potential

@k.sounds.audio

I know I waste time. I waste my time. How? Pondering stupid stuff that doesn’t matter and certainly won’t matter years down the road or even tomorrow.

Listen now as I share 10 ways to avoid mental distractions that take you away from your big dream.

Thank you.

@k.sounds.audio

@LaurieTALKS

TAP IN to Your Full Potential.

In this episode, I TALK about why one of my mom’s lectures, when I was just eight, has stuck with me all these years, and how it contributed toward me getting my job with Tremaine Dance Conventions.

Mother’s main points:

1. Resist counting yourself out by announcing what you can’t do

Today, I get it. But when I was a kid, all this went over my head.

@k.sounds.audio

@LaurieTALKS

TAP IN to Your Full Potential

You probably have a few people in your life who are terrible at really listening to you. Terrible at considering anyone’s feelings but their own.

Terrible at accepting they were wrong or at fault—about anything. At the same time, these people are very good at telling lies—big or little.

Good at crossing boundaries you’ve set. Good at manipulating everyone’s attention so that it’s always on them.

They’re toxic people, right? They’d never tell you things like “If you were a stock in the stock market, I’d certainly buy you.” Instead, you’re likely to hear “Why are you so stupid? You never do anything right. You ain’t sh*t.”

Navigating around toxic people used to be a big challenge for me. But after years of practice, I’ve finally mastered managing them.

That practice began after a therapist offered me great advice about the “three kinds of people,” then gave me a solution for navigating around the toxic kind.  

In this episode I share tips on how to:

Listen now.

@LaurieTALKS

@k.sounds.audio