Ep. 51 Reinvent Yourself At Any Age with Lori McDowell

[00:00:03] I'm Michele Simms, and this is The Beauty in the Mess, a community where people who crave a shift in mindset, personal growth, and connection to like-minded people come together to start rewriting their stories. Through engaging, honest, and insightful conversations, the show will help you embrace the mess

[00:00:23] to recognize the meanings and the lessons it holds and discover its hidden treasures to help you start making a mindset shift. Let's listen, learn, and reclaim who we were meant to be. Hi friend, welcome to The Beauty in the Mess.

[00:00:37] For this episode I'm very happy to welcome Lori McDowell to the show. Lori is currently CEO of Reimagine You Strategies and a strategic partner with Schoolie Michele. Lori also serves as the chief commercial officer at Refinery Calculator Incorporated

[00:00:53] and she is the author of the Reinvention Mindset which is a highly anticipated book that should be released in late May or early June. Lori is passionate about helping individuals and businesses succeed and she believes having a Reinvention Mindset is key.

[00:01:10] Lori provides training, speaking, coaching, and consulting services to help individuals and businesses reach their full potential. Before stepping out as an entrepreneur, Lori worked in the energy industry for over 30 years. She received a bachelor's in chemical engineering from the University of Pennsylvania, a master's

[00:01:29] in environmental engineering from Caltech, and a PhD in chemical engineering from the University of Delaware. Hi, I'm Michele Sims, your host. I'm just a regular person who along with my family have had our share of messes that

[00:01:42] we too have had to overcome along the way I got curious as to how others get through their messes and even triumph over them. Maybe there's a better way, a faster way, maybe we can accelerate our journeys by learning from someone else. That started my pursuit.

[00:01:58] I think we can all learn from each other through the sharing of our experiences, lessons and knowledge. So join me for episode 51 of The Beauty and the Mess called Reinvent Yourself at Any Age with Lori McDowell.

[00:02:11] Lori and I talk about tackling the big changes in life, whether you were looking for them or if they just happened to you. Lori is also active in her community. She serves on numerous boards and when she isn't assisting clients, you will find

[00:02:25] her with her husband Frank, son Hunter, dog Roxy and her bearded dragon Jojo. Lori also loves sports, travel and outdoor activities. So without further ado, let's dive right into today's conversation. Hi Lori, welcome to The Beauty and the Mess. I'm so glad to have you with me today.

[00:02:45] Hi Michele, nice to meet you. Nice to meet you too. I know you're a very successful author and you started your own business and you have lots going on and I want to dive into some of that.

[00:02:57] But before we get into that, I was hoping that you would tell us a little bit about your backstory, like what led you to this place in life where you're at today? Sure. Yeah, I actually was working in corporate America for probably about almost 35 years.

[00:03:13] So I'm an engineer by degree. And I had been working, you know, in engineering and occasionally went from one job to another. And I was fairly successful, fairly happy. And a couple of years ago, I had a job that I had for about 10 years

[00:03:30] and I figured I would retire from it. I and my boss retired. And when my boss retired, he had been that we had been in the role for about 10 years, everything changed. And it just was not the job.

[00:03:45] It used to be the whole culture change, the environment changed. And it was I felt like I was working and I was still having success, but I just wasn't happy. I didn't want to go to work every day.

[00:03:57] But I had been doing it for 10 years and I was a couple of years away from retirement and I figured, well, I can keep going. I'll make this work may not be perfect, but I can get through it. So that was my plan. And yeah, I don't know.

[00:04:12] And then one day everything changed and I was I was fired and it surprised me. It was out of the blue. But at that point, I had to decide what to do with the rest of my life.

[00:04:23] I'm curious, like, did you contest being fired or did you just accept it? And, you know, I thought about it. I actually talked to an attorney because they when they fired me, they actually said they fired me for cause and they came up with some reasons,

[00:04:39] which they were pretty weak on the surface. Maybe you could say that. But when I talked for the attorney, they said, yes, you know, you there's a good chance, you know, you could fight them and they can give you some more severance and everything.

[00:04:51] But I just had a negative experience with them. And I realized I just didn't want to deal with anything to do with it anymore. I wanted to it was time to take charge of my life and just do something different.

[00:05:04] And I didn't want that negative energy that it would be to have, you know, attorneys involved or contesting it. I just wanted to be done. So I said, I'm going to look at what's look at the good that came out of it.

[00:05:15] Look at what I could learn and move on. That's awesome. So I know a lot of people worry like if they get fired, that's going to hamper them in some way moving forth. Have you had that experience at all?

[00:05:25] Or has it been a good experience in a way? Yeah, it's fine because I have been fired once before 20 years ago. And at the time I didn't tell anybody. I felt like I was fired. I would never get another job and people would think I was a failure.

[00:05:41] And this time I decided to just embrace it. And I actually started telling my story. And so many people were like, oh, wow, that happened to me. I had something similar. Oh, it still bothers me.

[00:05:52] And I realized that I could do so much more good by sharing what happened with people and helping them get over it. That talking about it was was a really good thing because I would say when I give a talk or talk to this about someone,

[00:06:08] probably half the audience says they've had a similar experience. So a lot of people get fired not in the exact same way, but they get fired or they lose a promotion and they do something that just makes them question their self worth, their value.

[00:06:21] And they get stuck or some people go into depression over it. So I thought by sharing the positive outcomes that it was really worth talking about. Oh, absolutely. So did you go down the same path?

[00:06:36] I mean, did you look for a similar job to what you were doing or did you decide to break ties completely and go a whole new direction? I did have a couple of interviews looking for a similar job. And I think it was the second or third interview

[00:06:51] as I was asking some questions. And at that point, I think I just said to my I got the answers and I realized if I get another job, there's no guarantee I'm not going to be in the same place where I'm making money for a company.

[00:07:07] I'm doing something they want and the company. I think the company I was talking to and told me that I'd just been bought by another company so they were shifting. And I realized if I work for another job in corporate America,

[00:07:19] I'm always going to be under someone else's control. I can have the greatest job in the world and somebody could change a job or some new company could be bought out and it could become the worst job.

[00:07:30] And I decided at that point that I'm going to do something completely different. And I always wanted to do something that helps people. So I said, I always wanted to write a book. I have the time now. Maybe I'll write a book and in writing the book.

[00:07:44] I realized I want to get this story out. I have a lot that I learned from writing the book. Maybe I'll become a speaker and a coach and share that. And that's kind of how it came. So I thought about getting another job and then decided

[00:07:57] I'm going to jump all hearted into entrepreneurship and run my own businesses and make a living that way. So I have to ask you, was there any fear at all or was it just I'm moving forward and this is great? No, there was a lot of fear.

[00:08:13] And I mean, there's still fear. Sometimes I still wake up at three in the morning thinking like, am I going to pay the bills? Am I going to succeed? Are people going to buy the book? There's there's still fear.

[00:08:25] I mean, there's always fear, but I had to believe in myself and believe that what I was doing was a good thing. I was helping people, I'm helping people be empowered. I'm making choices that are important to me in that it's going to

[00:08:43] be OK and it's going to be great. And one of the chapters in my book is about belief. And it's like, if I want people to read the book and believe in themselves, I need to believe in myself.

[00:08:53] If I want people to reinvent themselves, I need to do it. So I just jumped. I jumped off. I always say it's like I was looking at the cliff, looking down at the water and I jump. Well, I got pushed off, but now that I'm off,

[00:09:07] I'm staying down there in that beautiful blue water, helping people jump in. That's awesome way to look at it. A lot of times, at least in my life, like something horrible or you perceive it as horrible happens.

[00:09:20] But then when you get down the road and you look back, it was actually a blessing in disguise. And I kind of get that feeling from you that even though it felt awful at the time, I'm sure. But when you look back,

[00:09:33] it gave you that push that you needed to start doing the things that you want to do in life. Yes, that's exactly how it is. Yeah, at the time, I almost had a revelation when I was driving home

[00:09:46] because when I like in my story, when they fired me, which would make it so horrific is I think I drove from where I live in Houston to Austin, Texas, which is about a four hour drive. And we had a two day sales meeting.

[00:09:59] And when I went to check into the hotel, my room had been canceled. And that was kind of the first inkling I got something wrong. And then I went to meet with my boss and they fired me

[00:10:10] and told me it will pay you to the end of the day. And here I was four hours home and had to drive back home in rush hour traffic. So I was very angry. Yeah. Why would they even make you take that trip?

[00:10:21] I don't know. I was very angry. Like you couldn't have fired me this morning. Why did you make me drive here and then fire me? It was just devastating. It was embarrassing. It was kind of like they they brought me to this public forum

[00:10:33] where I saw my co-workers and then they fired me and made me go home. I still don't know why they did that and that part of it still hurts. But as I was driving home, you know, please, I knew I wasn't happy in the job.

[00:10:46] It wasn't a civilian as it used to be. I didn't love it, but I was still doing my best and I was still doing a good job. But as I was driving that four hours back home, at one point the thought popped into my head,

[00:10:59] at least I don't have to go to work tomorrow. And you know, at first when I said it, I was just like, wow, I don't have to go to work tomorrow. And it felt so good. It felt like so light. It felt freeing.

[00:11:12] And it was just like, I don't have to go to work tomorrow. I knew I should quit this job, but I didn't have the guts to do it. And now I don't have to go to work and I'm free to look at what's going to bring fulfillment,

[00:11:25] what's going to make me happy, what I can do that's more meaningful. So at that point, it was almost instantaneously like, OK, this is going to be OK, because I feel so much better now than I did a couple hours ago.

[00:11:40] Do you ever wonder like if you hadn't got fired where your life would be right now? And sometimes you think about like what I have eventually quit, would I have hung it out? Would I have waited out with that boss to see if he left?

[00:11:56] If he left, he's still there. So I probably I think I probably would have eventually quit. Maybe it might have taken me a while, but unless something had changed, I probably would have quit or moved into a different department or something because it was getting hot.

[00:12:13] I just really knew it wasn't right for me. And I think eventually I would have come to that conclusion on my own and that I have to do something different. Right. I'm also curious, because I hear you talking and saying

[00:12:26] that you coach people in similar situations and you're saying, come on over into the beautiful water. But for the people who haven't had the exact same experience as in that they were fired, what about the person that just wants to make a shift or a pivot in life?

[00:12:41] They're either going to retire and do something else or they just want to quit and do something else. Again, that fear has to be crippling in a way because you have something secure. May not be great, but it's secure.

[00:12:52] And then you're going to give that away to take a risk, I guess. Right. Yeah. No, it definitely the fear is definitely there. And the advice I give to people, I'm like, yeah,

[00:13:03] some people did have a trauma that I coach, but most of the people I deal with, they're not, they haven't been fired or they haven't had something horrible. And they just, they're just not truly happy.

[00:13:13] And I have a three part and the first part is really looking at yourself. I call it discovery, but where you have to dig deep into what are your beliefs? What are your goals? What are your why's? Why do you want to make what?

[00:13:29] Why do you want to do what you want to do? What really makes you happy? What's holding you back? What are your obligations if you're the breadwinner or you have kids? Or what do you really have to be responsible for? And in looking at that and finding yourself,

[00:13:46] you get a little bit of clarity on, you know, what do I really want to do? Why do I want to do it? What would really fulfill me? And then we get the second part we get into, which is more of the hows.

[00:13:57] I call it kind of the conquer. Then you start looking at what tools do you have to maybe get you from where you are to where you want to go? And those are things like facing your fears and looking at how you can overcome them,

[00:14:09] looking at why their fears, what they came from. Believing in yourself, getting support, not being able to do this on your own is one of the key things. Once I decided to start my own businesses, I reached out online and to local things.

[00:14:26] And I just met other people doing the same type of thing. And that support is so important, just not being able to do it on your own. People are so willing to help you if you ask them. And I think that was really important.

[00:14:38] And then the last part is breakthrough. And that's where you just really have to trust the process, trust that you have everything you need and your life is where you are exactly where you want meant to be at that point.

[00:14:50] You have everything you need to get where you want to go. And that's where it's a choice. And some people just choose, no, I don't want to do this. But once they make that choice, they're content, they're happier even if they didn't change because they realized

[00:15:05] they explored it and they made the choice. And for them, the choice was, OK, now that I see where I am and where I could go, I'm going to stay where I am, but at least it's my choice now. That's very true.

[00:15:15] I would think two of the biggest hurdles for someone making that voluntary jump would be just finances alone and maybe health insurance. Mm hmm. And are there ways to circumvent those two things? Yeah, from health insurance, I have to say,

[00:15:33] I was pleasantly surprised with the marketplace plan that I got. I have to say they were more. I had heard, you know, I'd always had my health insurance and I got a marketplace plan that was affordable. And I was surprised that it actually was.

[00:15:48] It was better than I expected. And I actually found that it was better than I expected. But yeah, you are going to have to have insurance somehow or plan for that. There are also other ways that I've learned people

[00:16:00] that have like almost a self insurance co-op type thing, too, where people help each other out. So there are ways to get around that. And the finances, that's definitely an issue. But one of the things I learned in doing this

[00:16:13] and working on my mindset and stuff is that when you're in a place where you're truly open to receiving and that you're worthy and that you're deserving, it becomes a lot easier to get money, get income to just it's easier.

[00:16:29] Things just want a lot of times we make it harder on ourselves with the stress and the, oh my God, I can't pay my bills and all that worry actually hurts us in being successful. And I'm not going to say everybody's going to make millions of dollars.

[00:16:45] I'm not making millions of dollars, but I'm managing to get by. And, you know, where at times it's tougher than others. But I believe it's going when you believe it's going to work. And when you're open to that, it just does. It's good things happen.

[00:17:02] So, I mean, you mentioned a key word that I would like to dive into a little bit and that's mindset. And how do you go from a place of fear to truly changing yourself to open to receive mindset? How do you do that?

[00:17:15] You know, the first part is recognition when you realize that your mindset truly is holding you back. And I have an exercise. I always start my my tie, I do it in most of my talks or in my classes

[00:17:28] where I have people close their eyes and first I have people look around the room and like a pick of color, look around the room at everything that's blue and they make a list of all the blue things. And then I have them close their eyes

[00:17:42] and list in their mind all the things that are green. And most of them can't think of many green things. They remember all the blue stuff, but they can't remember all the green things.

[00:17:53] And then I open your eyes and when they look around, there's a lot green there. And it really just shows how when your mindset, we look for what we find what we look for. We're looking for blue and we see blue everywhere.

[00:18:06] And we miss the green and the red and the yellow. So when we're looking for the trouble for the eye cants for the reasons not to do it, you're going to find so much of that. But if you just start looking for the yeses, the opportunities,

[00:18:23] the reasons to take a step, the reasons to try something new, you're going to find those as well. And that's a big step. Finding that, just having faith, whether it's whether you believe in God,

[00:18:36] whether you believe in the universe, a higher power or just yourself and other people we're all connected. The world really is a place full of opportunities and looking for them and believing you could step into them helps. I have coaches I work with too.

[00:18:53] So even though I am a coach, I work with other coaches. There's so much out there to learn and take an advantage of as much of that as possible. A lot of it you can do for free or at low cost, just from

[00:19:05] looking at things that are available. And that's really helped me change my mindset that you can live the life that you did, the life you desire, the life you dream. If it requires hard work and it might require some sacrifices.

[00:19:20] But if you look for it, you believe it and you want it. You we all have the capability to get there. And we just have to find that in ourselves. So you would have to, I'm guessing you have to work on that mindset regularly.

[00:19:33] Though, I mean, it doesn't just click and you're there and you stay there. Right now. I mean, the click might be the first step. Something happens and you're like, I can do this, but no, I do it. I do breath work almost every morning. I meditate every day.

[00:19:48] Oh, I have a program that helps you step out of the story and I do that on a weekly basis. So it's funny when I worked in corporate America and my company would pay for my training, I took advantage of so little of it.

[00:20:01] I didn't really admit you did what was required, but you never did more. Now that I'm on my own, I take advantage of so many opportunities to learn. And it's a constant process. It's always a journey and every day my mind gets a little bit stronger.

[00:20:17] I do exercises to strengthen my mind every day. Like a little two minutes snippets here and there. That's awesome. So I know you talk about the reinvention mindset. Can you explain that to us a little bit?

[00:20:29] Yeah, that's the title of my book, which will be out this spring. And I kind of coined it. In writing the book and trying to facilitate it, I was inspired to write the book

[00:20:41] when I went to do a charity, five K, and it was for a woman who I had never met before. And I learned I found out that she had she was a young woman at the time in her thirties and she had been diagnosed with MS.

[00:20:55] And she was at the point where she had, I think there's 30 symptoms of MS and she had like 28 of them and she was in a wheelchair and she was contemplating suicide and just really in a bad place.

[00:21:08] And she decided I think she had a dream one day or a vision was that said that you can overcome this. And she started looking at holistic healing, diet, meditation, alternate medicine, prayer, everything possible to see what how she could, you know, take care of these symptoms.

[00:21:30] And she was basically able to cure, took a while. It took a lot of work in a couple of years, but she was actually able to cure the symptoms and she started a nonprofit to help others who have gotten similar.

[00:21:43] And when I heard her talk at this race, I was just really inspired with how she had taken her life. And it made me start thinking about other people I knew that had done similar things where they had some horrible tragedy

[00:21:55] and they were able to overcome it and do something so much better. Whether it was a health tragedy, a death in the family, you know, a loss of a job or something. And I interviewed about five or six of these people

[00:22:07] and some of those interviews ended up in the book. And I realized that you have what people think of as a growth mindset, which is really where you're open to growing and improving, but that the reinvention mindset was even more than that.

[00:22:19] That it's basically the type of mindset where not only can I grow, but that at any point at any time, I can take charge of my life. I'm empowered and I can reinvent it that no one else can tell me what success means.

[00:22:35] No one else can say, this is what you have to do. I have to look at what it means to me and I have the power inside myself to reinvent myself. And that's kind of where I came up with the reinvention mindset.

[00:22:47] I know we all come up with some kind of identity that we have for ourselves. And a lot of us, it's in our job or what we do every day. And so how hard is it to do that reinvention and to break free from that previous identity?

[00:23:03] Because I mean, that if somebody says, who are you, you tend to say what you do for a living, right? Right. Yeah, no, it's definitely was hard. Like I said, I'm a chemical engineer and I had been doing that for 35 years.

[00:23:15] So I was a chemical engineer and it wasn't an easy change. I mean, even people when I first said I'm writing a book, they thought, oh, are you writing a book about energy or it's like, no, I'm writing a book about mindset

[00:23:27] and I'm writing a book about an inspirational thought leadership book. But I think what really got me there was looking back at my wise and looking back through my life. And I went back to my early childhood

[00:23:39] and remembered when I when I was six or seven years old, I didn't want to be an engineer. I wanted to change the world. I wanted to do something important. I wanted to maybe be famous. I had all these thoughts and I realized that.

[00:23:53] I was living in someone else's idea of success. So maybe when I got fired, it really was partly my fault because I wanted that. I wasn't really where I was. And once I came to that realization that what I was doing, even though I'm not saying I didn't,

[00:24:11] you know, I had jobs I love for years, but that maybe I wasn't really doing what I wanted to do ultimately, what was going to fulfill me. Then it became a lot easier to say, OK, I'm an author. I'm a coach. I'm a speaker. I'm talking about mindset.

[00:24:26] I mean, if you told me that meditation and working on my mind and that I could shift my energy and that I would have been like, that's like this Fufu stuff. Are you kidding? I'm an engineer. But then as I started studying and thinking about it,

[00:24:40] I realized that even in engineering, Einstein came up with this equation. Energy equals mc squared and the M is mass. So he was talking about the relationship between energy and mass, which is solid physical so that there is so much more

[00:24:56] that we have lived on the left side of our brain for so long, which is the brain where we work and we do a career and we work for a company and wear an accountant or an engineer or, you know, a barber, whatever your career path is.

[00:25:10] It's very left brain. But if you go back and study history or even if you talk to artists and songwriters, there's so much more in the right brain that we have basically ignored, but that does relate, you know, more spiritual things, more energy.

[00:25:26] And by tapping into that, it actually becomes a lot easier to think of yourself, not as that hard career you were, but think of yourself as a whole person. And that's how you kind of make the shift. That's neat. So I know I hear a lot of people

[00:25:43] talk about how kind of like the law of attraction that kind of the vibes you put out there is what you draw back to yourself. But when they're listening to you speak, I'm wondering how much of it is that or how much of it is

[00:25:56] like the blue and the green? You're if you're looking for the blue, you're going to see blue. If you're looking for green, you're going to, you know what I'm saying? And apart, it probably is a little bit of both.

[00:26:06] And it's funny, I was at a retreat this last week with someone who does a lot of energy work. And we were talking about this very conversation, like, do you see it because you're looking for it or do you see it because you're shifting?

[00:26:18] And it is the law of attraction that you're getting what you ask for. And and it's almost both. I mean, it's a little bit of both. You know, you're seeing it because you're looking for it, but you're looking for it because you expect it.

[00:26:29] And because you're looking for it, do you think it's drawn to you in a way? I do think it's drawn to you in a way. I mean, maybe not so much with the blue and green because I don't think we change. I meant like opportunity.

[00:26:42] But when you're looking for success or you're looking for I have a friend who like he just he helps other people shift. But it's funny because everything he gets goes on a plane and they bump them up to first class.

[00:26:53] He gets to hotel early and they let him check in early and it's like and people are always saying, well, you make that stuff happen. He's like, yes, I do. I make it happen because I expected. I like that.

[00:27:05] So what, you know, out of all the coaches out there, what makes you unique? Part of what makes me unique is that I have had 35 year career in industry. When this happened to me when I got fired from this job, I was a month away from turning 60.

[00:27:22] So people think, oh, I'm 35 years old. I'm setting my career. I can't do something different. And I'm here to tell you, I changed my career. I changed my life. I started two new businesses. I wrote a book all at 60 years old.

[00:27:35] So if I can do that, there's no limits other than what you said on yourself. And I think part of the fact that I was an engineer and I worked definitely on the left side of the brain. And then now I'm embracing this mindset,

[00:27:51] this law of attraction, this energy, all of this really. I mean, I think I have a unique perspective because I've seen both sides of it and I kind of meshed the two. So do you miss any of your previous work? I miss, what I missed really,

[00:28:09] I miss something like I worked in a business development role for a while. And I do miss some of the interaction with the customers because some of them are great people, but I still get involved in it a little bit.

[00:28:18] I'll consult every now and then on various projects and I can still, and I still occasionally will go to, I still go to the chemical engineering conferences every year, although now I work before I may have talked on something technical.

[00:28:30] Now I'll talk more in the leadership development sessions and such. So I still dabble in it a little bit. Is that your biggest message to people is just that no matter where you're at in life, you can change it, you can redirect, so to speak. It is.

[00:28:45] The biggest message is that you are in charge of your life and it's a choice and you can choose what you wanna do or where you wanna go and that it's all possible that the limits we place on us are ones we place on ourselves.

[00:29:01] So if we're placing them on ourselves, we could remove them just as easy. So if you love your life and you're super happy and you wanna stay there, that's great. But if you feel like there's something else you wanna do

[00:29:12] and it may not even be as big as changing a career or starting your own company. If you always wanted to sing karaoke, but you're afraid to get up there on the stage, that's possible. Like the only thing stopping you is you. Nobody cares how you sound.

[00:29:26] That you set these limits on yourself and if you believe you can do it, you just gotta get outside your comfort zone and do it. Yeah, and I was just thinking how remarkable it really is that you made the change that you did

[00:29:37] because you take a very scientific, logical engineer. Like you said, it's a whole different part of the brain that you're using, but most of those people that I know are very closed off from the personal development world. You know what I'm saying?

[00:29:55] So the fact that you not only pivoted, but you went completely. Completely, yeah. That's awesome. Yeah, it took a while. Like the first time I took a class when I first started, I was like, oh, somebody introduced me and it was a woman talking about the seven chakras.

[00:30:10] And I had to actually go in and at first I'm like, I don't know if I buy this. So I took my scientific brain and I started doing research and the research, there's actually a lot of scientific data that supports some of this.

[00:30:24] So that's what I kind of use the scientific engineering brain to look at the other side and realize that it's not all just magic and Fufu does it. There is a lot of science behind it. Right, and I think that's at least for me,

[00:30:42] that's very important is to find the scientific data because I don't want to waste my time on Fufu stuff. Right, yeah. There's a reason for it. It's proven it's... That you feel that way too, that you want to know that it works. Yes. And why it works.

[00:31:02] Now that's very important. And like even in science, a lot of times the science is not as clear as... A lot of times we discover stuff because we see it happening over and over again and then they figure out the scientific part behind it.

[00:31:16] Like when you're doing experiments, you do the experiment a couple hundred times and if 98 times it goes one way. And I found the same thing in just the people I've met and studying people and this whole law of attraction and the people being success,

[00:31:30] a lot of it is you believe it and you really... When you believe it, you really almost can create your own reality because you're so into it. And I always like to use decisions, like examples, like if you think of Bob Dylan,

[00:31:45] Bob Dylan is a very famous singer and a good songwriter. But if you want to hear Bob Dylan sing, he doesn't have a very good voice. He probably has an awful voice but he's become the star and he's amazing. And I think part of it is the belief

[00:32:02] that he was going to do this and this was going to be his life and he did it and people just accepted because that's how he positioned himself. And I see the same thing in sports where the player who's not the most talented sports player

[00:32:17] but ends up being the biggest star and being the most successful because of their belief in themselves and they just didn't give up and they worked at it and they had that little edge that they believed they could do it. So belief is a superpower

[00:32:32] because I really do think believing something can change the world. And if you look for it enough, you find enough evidence, almost scientific evidence that people who truly believe in something can do it and that people that don't believe in it no matter how talented they are

[00:32:50] or how prepared they are, if they don't believe it, they can't do it. It just doesn't happen. Yeah, and I've heard and I don't know who said it originally but I've heard belief is just thought, a thought that you repeat to yourself over and over again.

[00:33:04] So if you have that negative nagging little voice and that's what you repeat to yourself then it's no wonder that you feel like bad things happen to you all the time or nothing good happens put it that way. But if you start repeating the good things to yourself

[00:33:23] then supposedly, you know, that becomes... Yeah, you're gonna start seeing them. Yeah, so it's pretty interesting really. So what would be any takeaways that our listening audience could go home with and think? Yeah, I guess my biggest one takeaway I would say is,

[00:33:43] you know, do some self exploration and look at yourself and just really look at where you are and what your goals are and why you wanna get there. And by doing that, I think you get a lot of clarity. You know, if you're not happy where you are

[00:33:58] you really start to see why by looking at that and by the self exploration of looking at yourself looking at your goals, looking at why you wanna get there is really important. And then I would suggest believing in yourself looking at really once you decide

[00:34:14] you wanna do something just really deep down inside do everything you can to believe it's possible and that really does make a huge difference when you believe something's possible you become open to receiving it and good things will come to you but you have to believe in it.

[00:34:31] You really truly have to believe it's possible. One of my favorite quotes, I think it was Gandhi said it and I'm probably paraphrasing but it's something like, live like you were going to die tomorrow learn like you're going to live forever.

[00:34:47] And what that says to me first up I think the world is a wonderful place I think life is beautiful and there's so many great opportunities. So you wanna live like really experience life and take in what it has to offer but in order to truly do this

[00:35:01] you really need to learn and be open to exploring new things. So the internet is great cause there are so many things to learn. So if you're in a corporate America don't just do the training classes that they give you or at your job

[00:35:15] or try to do something every day that's gonna expand your mind a little bit whether it's reading a book or looking at a meditation site and trying a five minute meditation every morning just really start to explore because when you learn more you become more open to things

[00:35:34] and realizing that you do truly have a choice into what your life's gonna be but you didn't even know that those things were possible until you started learning. Very true. Yeah, so I know we touched a little bit on your book there the reinvention mindset

[00:35:51] but I didn't know if there's a little bit more you wanna tell us about that and I also wanted you to touch on your company that re-imagine new strategies if you would. Sure, yeah the reinvention mindset the book is not out yet

[00:36:03] it should be out I believe in May it's in the final editing stages but what it is is it's like part memoir part self help it's really a storytelling book where I tell stories of my life and also the lives of other people I've met

[00:36:20] and share how they've reinvented themselves and kind of go through a process of what are the people who have successfully reinvented themselves and done amazing things what do they all have in common? And I kind of look at all those things and take you through the book

[00:36:38] and it's a fun read it's not like a self it's not a step by step self help where you're gonna have to take notes and you're gonna have to it's something that's a fairly easy read I mean it's a quick read

[00:36:47] it's and it's got some of the stories are funny some of the stories might make you cry but I think it does have the key points of faith, belief, don't do it alone overcoming your fears and one of the biggest things in the book

[00:37:02] is that it is a journey that you're never done you know reinvention is a journey it's not like this today and tomorrow on that and I'm done and that kind of took me to the company and when I named the company re-imagine use strategies our tagline is really

[00:37:18] is are you finished? Because we're never really finished even though I'm 60 years old and I'm doing this I mean in 10 years I might decide to do something completely different and that's what's good about the reinvention mindset and reimagine that there's always an opportunity and it's not

[00:37:37] and it's not like you're going ADHD going from one thing to the other but that you always have the ability to learn something new try something new change your life and that reimagine you like I said whether it's something that small enough to make you comfortable

[00:37:53] to stay where you are or huge in life-saving like you're going to quit your job and start a new company we all have that capability within us and through my coaching programs I have everything from 15 minute talks to our long master classes to a full year program

[00:38:10] it's helping people have the confidence and the knowledge and the skills that they can change their life and reimagine it in any way they want to So with your coaching program they could essentially have you coach them right through this whole process right if they wanted to

[00:38:27] Yeah, I offer a couple different programs like I said I do talks that are 15 minutes half hour an hour long for groups and then I have short master classes I have a 12 week one hour a week program that people can get them through it

[00:38:43] but then for people who really want to be part of the whole process I have a year long coaching that has you know we meet twice a week in a group and then it has four different like intensive where we go over things

[00:38:55] like a breakthrough or facing your fears and we spend you know anywhere from four to 12 hours over a couple days on that so Wow, that's so much and most of it's virtual although I'm thinking about adding or possibly a retreat kind of

[00:39:09] where people can actually go and do that That's great. So I know you were just listing some of the different components of this reinvention process like you know belief and connection to other people is there one piece that you think is more important than the rest

[00:39:27] or does it kind of like a puzzle that it takes all of them? Yeah, the two things that I think are the most important are probably belief and fear and actually it's in one of the people I interviewed in the book she actually pointed out

[00:39:45] that belief and fear are like a coin and you know one side is the belief and the other side is the fear and the goal is to make you get yourself a two-headed coin basically but you know you need to face your fears

[00:40:01] and not just if you just if you have a fear and you just kind of push it off to the background and don't really look at it deeply that's going to keep popping up and limiting you and that's kind of going to stop the belief

[00:40:13] so I think believing in yourself and knowing that everything's possible and being willing to face those fears head on and look at them and see you know okay it's a fear it's causing me a fear what can I do to get over it? Why is it a fear?

[00:40:28] Really examining it and trying to get past that is really powerful. So those are two you know believing in yourself and facing your fears. That's great yeah and I think to add on to what you're saying I don't think all fear is bad. Right.

[00:40:46] I mean if you let it stop you then yes that's bad but like you said fear can tell you a lot about yourself and once you overcome those fears I think that helps build your confidence go on forth and you know just different ways

[00:41:01] that you can look at it I guess. Exactly yeah yeah and like some fears are you know I mean if you're afraid of heights it's not gonna chance you know it's if the fear is not stopping you from doing what you wanna do

[00:41:13] I mean if you're afraid of heights and you always want to be a helicopter pilot then you might have a problem. Then you need to get past that feature but if you're afraid of heights then you just don't wanna go on the top of this tall building

[00:41:25] it's not a devastating fear but it is good to understand you know did that fear come from something else? Why do you have that fear and are there other fears that are stopping you that are related? I'm terrified of driving on really high bridges and overpasses

[00:41:40] it just came up a couple years ago and now my heart rate starts racing and I start sweating when I have to do it but I've forced myself to do it because I just told myself you've never driven off a bridge bridges rarely ever collapse

[00:41:54] you're probably never gonna drive off a bridge so why are you what are you afraid of and I've found ways to keep my head on the car in front of me and I don't stay in the lane closest to the edge and I've gotten over it

[00:42:07] but it was weird because it just came out of the blue but it was a real fear I was gonna say did you have a bad experience but it sounds like you didn't have a specific No, I think someone put the idea in my head

[00:42:18] cause someone was giving me directions and they said to me like oh and I hate that bridge it makes me so nervous and I took the directions and I'm thinking like oh and when I got on that bridge all of a sudden I was like really nervous

[00:42:30] Yeah that's not good especially when you gotta get across it So as we kinda start to wrap up today is there anything that we haven't talked about that you would wanna make sure that our listeners hear or do you think we've covered most of it?

[00:42:45] You know I think we've covered most of it the one thing that I've learned and that I think is really important for people to know is that I think often when we feel like we have something in us that was awful like the getting fired we got fired

[00:43:01] and we're embarrassed about it and we think oh my god we're terrible because we got fired we must have been doing a bad job we're not deserving of that job and that just about everybody has something that they don't like about themselves or they're happy about it

[00:43:15] when I started talking about being fired so many people came up to me and said oh I was fired and I'm so happy you inspired me because I was so devastated or I had this thing but if you see someone

[00:43:28] and it feels like nothing bad happened to them their life is golden and they have all the amazing things you probably don't know them very well because it's really the people who have had the most negative things happen to them and have overcome them

[00:43:45] are the people that are the happiest and the most successful and they just learn from that experience so having something happen to you that hurt your self-esteem or that shadowed your life yeah clearly it's a negative thing but it can really lead to so much more

[00:44:03] because so many people who have had those things came up so much stronger and did amazing things that brought them so much better and it's not the people that are the luckiest that end up having the most success it's the people that have figured out to overcome

[00:44:17] that really have the most success so if something happens and you don't like it it's probably a blessing in disguise it can really lead to so much more and you have to try to look for that blessing right you have to spend time examining what happened

[00:44:31] and what were the good things that came out of that right but yeah definitely but if you explore it there's always the silver lining somewhere and you just got to look for those and then once you find it you've got to keep exploring down that path exactly

[00:44:49] so if people are listening today and they want to reach out to you and contact you or they just want to find you what's the best place yeah the website right now it's the reinventionmindset.com that'll take you to the book website and you can contact me

[00:45:04] you can also if you want to talk to me book a 15 minute call it's actually booklory.com okay and then you can reach out to me email my email is lmcdowell at reimagineyou.net and then phone my phone number you're feel free to call or text 281-740-2865

[00:45:31] I try to use booklorylori.com because that's easy to see and easy to remember or the reinventionmindset.com yeah and I'll put all of this information in the show notes too okay great but I want to thank you for coming today it was great talking to you and

[00:45:48] thank you Michelle I love the way that you were able to reinvent yourself but you're pretty inspiring yourself thank you so much well I think it was great talking to you too and excited about listen to podcast episodes I've listened to I've loved awesome

[00:46:05] well thank you so much alright thank you as we wrap up today's episode I hope Lori sharing her journey experience and wisdom has helped you in some way I think the main takeaway is to just start doing some self exploration see where you are in life

[00:46:21] compared to where you want to be and why do you want to be there start exploring those why's and according to Lori first and foremost you have to believe that it's possible and then you have to be willing to learn and explore new things I would also add

[00:46:37] never stop learning because you never know where that learning or those experiences, lessons and knowledge may take you down the road and remember Lori's new book The Reinvention Mindset will be released in late May or early June so I'd love to know what stood out to you

[00:46:54] as always I hope this episode helps at least one person and with that I hope you have a blessed week my friend Thank you for listening to The Beauty and the Mess If you enjoyed what you heard please share it with a friend and if you haven't already

[00:47:11] please subscribe, rate and review this podcast on your favorite pod player If you have any questions or comments any topic ideas you would like to hear about or you think you would be a great guest on the show you can reach me directly at thebeautyandthemess.com

[00:47:26] Thanks for listening