The root word for courage is cor, the Latin word for heart. In it’s earliest forms, courage meant to speak one’s mind by telling all of one’s heart. This week we’re going to talk about getting real, being real, what it’s going to require for you to be her now. I’m going to get real with you this week. Let’s get going.

Welcome to the Unlock Your Life podcast, a podcast for highly successful visionary women who want more out of life. If you feel that ache of unfulfillment in your soul, you’re in the right place sis. Join life mastery consultant Lori A. Harris as she teaches you how to stop living for others and finally put yourself first. Let’s dive into today’s show.

You know, the quality of our lives is controlled by the quality of questions that we’re asking. The main question that I love to ask myself is does it align with my core values? In order to have a life and live a life that aligns with your core values, one must actually have some core values.

I have spent my life desiring and seeking and hoping and wanting to live a life of service and to live a life that is led by love. There have been times in my life when that’s been very difficult because the way that I perceive the world seems to be sometimes out of alignment with the way the world actually works.

I once wrote a column for a local newspaper called The Missing Page. Because a lot of my life I felt like everyone was going around with the manual for life, and I was missing the critical pages needed in order to be successful, to be effective, or to simply be safe. So often I was just so, so confused because I wanted to lead with love.

I just want to love everybody. It’s just so much easier to me to lead with love. I’ve been reminded that not everyone thinks like that, not everyone thinks like I do. Not everyone has the background that I have.

As a kid, I was taught the golden rule. As I got older, I was led to believe that every spiritual tradition has some aspect of the golden rule. But I’ve since been told that that’s not true. Not everyone thinks like that. Not everyone thinks like me.

So I spent a good portion of my life working as a lawyer, being a trial lawyer. Still I wanted to lead with love. It was difficult. I had a very hard time. There’s that play Hamilton, and everyone knows the song I’m Not Going to Miss My Shot or something like that. That’s the most popular song and most people know that song.

When I watch the play, the one that resonated for me was the one about running out of time. Why are you acting like you’re running out of time? Why are you racing as if you’re running out of time? That song reminds me of the Henry David Thoreau quote, “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately. To front only the essential facts of life, and to see if I could learn to learn what it had to teach and not when I came to die discover that I had not lived.”

There’s been times in my life when I’ve managed lots of fear. Fear of not doing it right, fear of embarrassment. The main fear that I have managed for some time was that fear that I would get to the end of my life and not really discovered life at all. That I’d not really lived.

So I do this work because I really want to explore and discover all that life has to offer, all that life is here to teach me. Leading with love, I love working with clients and working as a trial lawyer to make it clear that my clients were not the things they were accused of.

That I would help the clients to understand that even if they did a bad thing, it didn’t mean that they were bad. That to manage that pendulum of guilt and shame and get to the other side so that we can do the work of restoring to wholeness and to get back to a place of fullness and the ability to move forward from bad circumstance.

So I loved doing that work. But the justice system was very much built on a system of shame. Shame is not a viable reformative instrument for change. In fact, it does more harm and delays healing. If in fact we’re working toward creating a community where we all feel safe and is vibrant and alive, we need to change and we need to work in a different way. I found that working in the legal system was harmful, not only for the people charged with crimes but for every participant that was exposed to.

So right now we’re going through an evolutionary process where we’re looking away from solely a mechanism for looking for blame and shame and guilt and looking for a more restorative method of bringing a community to wholeness. I’m happy that that movement is growing some traction, but I couldn’t stay.

I find that with the coaching and my coaching career, it allows me to operate from a place of empathy and connection. I can effectuate change in a greater way with having a bigger impact working with people who are working in various organizations or mechanisms in their individual work that has impact on many, many different people. I love being a part of a support system for these incredible visionary changemakers.

Not long ago, I celebrated my 60^th birthday. In all honesty, death is constantly on my mind. The reason why I think about death frequently is because my mother died at the age of 66. So there’s a part of me that thinks, “What are the things that you would love to do? What are the things that you would love to accomplish before you lay your head on the pillow for the very last time?”

Psychologist Abraham Maslow says that we all have a system of a hierarchy of needs. With that, these are the six or five basic things that all of us are looking for in order to have a rich fulfilling life. So we start off with the physiological needs air, water, shelter, sleep, clothing, reproduction. Those are the basics. We’ve got that covered. Then we move on up to safety. We want to know that our resource will take care of us properly. So we have our housing. We have personal security that sometimes is afforded to us through our employment and other resources.

Then we move up to our place within the community. We want to feel loved and connected. We want to feel as if our lives matter to someone other than just ourselves. We want to feel a part of. We want to be connected. Then we move on up, and we do those things that give us significance. That let us know that our life matters. Then finally we get to a place of self-actualization that we have lived a life that has meaning for us.

So where are you? When I ask you what are you doing to be the woman of your own dreams right now, who are you being? How are you being? How are you showing up? Have you taken the time to decide what is important to you? Are you a woman that wants to see the world? Are you a woman that wants to have a big impact in the world? Are you a woman that wants to really make sure that you just really enjoy your life every day? And what that looks like for you is having the time to take good care of yourself. To read and exercise and eat well.

What does being her now, the woman of your dream, what does that look like for you? When I ask you to ask yourself the important questions, my important question is does it align with my core values? Am I living a life that I can be proud of? That I can know that I am in service? Am I doing that? Can I be proud of that?

What is the question that you must answer for yourself? Check in with yourself. Ask the question of who do I need to be to be my own woman or my own dreams? This is a season of the year when oftentimes people are making wish lists. You are the only one that can fill your own wishes. You are the only one that can fulfil your own dreams. Forget about anybody else. Nobody else can figure it out for you. It is your job to look within and to figure out what would light you up.

So I invite you to be real. What would it take for you to get real with yourself for yourself? For the benefit of you. What would that look like for you? Because when you find yourself getting real, it’s raw. It’s rough. It’s beautiful. It might not be pretty for anyone else, but you will fall in love with the life that you will create for yourself.

So I’m going to leave you with this little, teeny tiny story section of The Velveteen Rabbit. He said, “You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily or have sharp edges or have to be kept carefully. Generally by the time you become real, most of your hair has fallen off and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and your very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all because once you are real, you can’t be ugly except to the people who do not understand.”

So I invite you to show up for yourself by yourself and be real. To get down and dirty, to discover that place within you that perhaps no one else will understand but will feel true to you. Write it down. Identify the gap between where you are now and where you want to be. that’s the exercise for this week.

The exercise this week is what would it take for you to be real? A real you. Show up for yourself by yourself only for yourself. Tell me. Write it down. Get it down on paper. Get it down.

Last week I asked you to ask yourself what did you need to stop doing in order to be the woman of your dreams? I’m going to ask you to return to that question. If you didn’t do the assignment last week, do it this week. Discover what it is that would really light you up. What are your core values? Are you living from those core values right now?

As you put your head on the pillow and you recognize that none of us have any guaranteed time. None of us know the end of the dash between our birth and our death date. None of us know. So with that in mind, are you really living? Are you living a life that lights you up that you can be proud of? Just for you, are you becoming the very best most fulfilled version of yourself? If not, take some time to sit, contemplate, and discover what that would look like for you.

This has been episode 23 of the Unlock Your Life podcast. If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, I would love it if you would go to Apple podcast rate and review this show. You can leave me a review. It doesn’t have to be a five star review, but I would love it. You can follow the show there as well. Share it with your friends.

If you want more information about the podcast or me, go to loriaharris.com/podcast. If you can’t remember Lori A. Harris, just go to gratitudetrain.com and all the information about me is there. You will find a link and a page for the podcast as well. This has been the Unlock Your Life podcast. It’s your life. Make it a great one.

Thanks for listening to this episode of the Unlock Your Life podcast. If you want more information on how you can transform your life and do it quickly, visit loriaharris.com. See it on the next episode of the Unlock Your Life podcast.