Erin: [00:00:00] Welcome to Hotter Than Ever, where we uncover the unconscious rules we've been following. We break those rules and we find a new path to being freer, happier, sexier, more honest, and more self expressed. I'm your host, Erin Keating. Today's guest is Lauren Zander. She is a pioneer in the life coaching industry.
And before you say, Oh, life coaching, meh, no, she is the real thing. And I can tell from this conversation that she makes her clients work hard and that she really helps people be accountable to their own goals and dreams. I could definitely use someone like Lauren in my life. We talked about lying and how our culture is built on it, how women especially are too [00:01:00] pleasy, always trying to please others and selling ourselves out in the process.
She taught me about the idea of behavioral epigenetics, about how our parents patterns live in our cells, and why we need to know our history and our family's history if we don't want to repeat it. It's big, fascinating, super relatable stuff that I think you'll enjoy. Here it is.
Lauren Zander is a coach extraordinaire as the CEO and founder of the handle group. She developed and has taught her corporate and life coaching technique, the handle method at MIT and Stanford's business school. And it has been used by celebrities and CEOs and entrepreneurs. for almost 20 years. Her corporate clients include marquee companies like Vogue and Live Nation.
Her celebrity clients will remain under lock and key. She is the author of Maybe It's You, Cut the Crap, Face Your Fears, Love Your Life, a no [00:02:00] nonsense practical manual that helps readers figure out not just what they want out of life, but how to actually get there. We all need this. I'm ready for this conversation. Welcome to Hotter Than Ever, Lauren.
Lauren: Thank you.
Erin: I'm so happy to have you here talking to us from Croatia. That's right. Across the world. Um, moving mountains to be on Hotter Than Ever. Um, I'd love to hear your story, what brought you to coaching and then we can get into the like how's and what's of everything.
Lauren: Sure. Well, once upon a time, so I'm 53. So this is a once upon a time and please know that no one was a coach when I was a coach. When I said I was a life coach people fucking laughed at me. I like, let me, you're a life coach, right? Like, oh, you're gonna tell me how to do life? And I was like Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Okay. Yes. Please. You want to sit down? Right. The joke about me was I was the Lucy Booth, right? Like pay your five cents and sit the fuck down. And we are going to have a talk about your fulfillment and life. Uh, but how it started was I was, I graduated from George Washington University. With a degree in environmental studies.
And my joke, which wasn't funny, but it was my joke, which was, Save the trees, kill the people.
Erin: Okay, so a little, a little misanthropic, pro environment, anti human.
Lauren: I was early. Come on. I was early. I was, I was, I was like a, a non leather wearing vegan, angry environmentalist. I really was. I was. And I was like anti my mother, um, who was a happy Park Avenue Prada wearing lady. And I was growing my hair out of my pits, you know, hating, Hating, hating capitalism.
Erin: I dressed in rags and went to private school. I totally get it.
Lauren: Oh, weren't we cute? We were not that cute. Um, come I've come a long way since then. But, um, so I was an environmentalist and then realized, um, how little I liked the work, right? Like I actually loved the cause, didn't like the work. And, uh, cause I had gotten my first job at the United Nations global environment facility. And I didn't quite understand at that time in my twenties that what you studied and the jobs weren't exactly the same thing, like what you can care about and what you did had nothing to do with each other.
And then I had this, um, actual, like come to Jesus moment in my life. Where I understood that the trees are not the prop, like it's the people who don't see the trees. And that I had studied the wrong thing. Really? I was like, oh shit. I was 24 and realized that I wanted to be in the changing people business.
And so that how, that's how it happened. So in, that was 94, I started in self help land and started navigating everything I didn't like about self help. Yeah.
Erin: Yeah. I love it. I love it. You, uh, when I first saw you were. Uh, videos. I thought this woman could have been a lawyer. She could have been like, you have a ball buster energy about you, um, which I say in the highest, uh, as the highest compliment, I'm scared as shit of that energy.
Like I do not want to be confronted. I do not want someone to like tough love me into anything, but I was like, maybe that's Maybe I need to talk to Lauren and see if she can deal with this.
Lauren: I really deeply love people and their dreams, right? Like I am, like the, my whole process that I developed was to get you to get to your answers, not for me to tell you anything.
And then I teach tools to help you break through, um, what's stopping you. And how you get stopped by your inner dialogue, basically, um, and your parents and everything that happened. And I study epigenetics, behavioral epigenetics, right? And how we think we're different than our parents, but we're really fucking not right and how that--
Erin: Lauren, let's drill down into behavioral epigenetics because I know what epigenetics is, right? Epigenetics is your genes actually changing through things that happen in the course of your life, correct? So behavioral epigenetics is that but for more of a psychological approach or a personality approach?
Lauren: You know, my, the joke that I tell is, um, you don't just have your dad's blue eyes. You have your dad's wandering blue eyes, right? You don't like everyone's come to accept that. Oh alcoholism runs in the family. I'm like, no, no, no guys Everything runs in the family Everything does there's a the story when I figured it out So, um, I was early in my career, I got hired by a woman who was wondering if she should get divorced. She was from Georgetown, really smart lady in the banking industry.
We helped her get a promotion, lose 30 pounds, stop smoking and drinking. And cheating on her husband. Okay, great. Right. We stopped all of those things to figure out what she wanted to do with her marriage. So makes sense. We ended the marriage. She had a beautiful divorce. I got her a promotion. The end of the story.
Really great year with her. I get a witchy feeling about two years later and I have a rule that if I start thinking about someone, I must call them. I call her. It's a really great rule. Anyone, if you have witchy feelings and thoughts about someone, like they pop into your head and then all of a sudden you can't get them out of your head.
That's them calling. Okay. There is a reason for that. It's intuition. It's woo woo. Whatever you'd like to call it. It's legit. And I listened to it. I have rules about it. So I remember texting her and going, Hey, you're popping into my head. How's everything going? She's like, Oh my God, you must be a witch. My boyfriend's moving in.
She has a seven year old daughter, her boyfriend's moving in, her boyfriend. I helped her get divorced. She has boyfriends moving in. Tell me about your boyfriend Right ready? Beautiful brilliant woman. She's I think at this point She's 39 years old. Boyfriend needs a green card and is 29 year old Spanish dancer.
Erin: This is so familiar from my own life from friends and family members. So do tell me more.
Lauren: Okay, so I'm like, are you kidding get to my couch You're scaring me. Like, you have a daughter. What are you doing? Here's what we didn't know. Her father was married four times. Only four. Mom, three. Father, brain surgeon. Boom. Okay, not a dumb guy. All right, anyway, um, second wife, Spanish green card.
Oh God. I freaked out. That was it. I was like, what? Go get me all the marriages. Go get me all the stories about your mom. Let's like, Oh my God, this is, this can't even make sense to me. And she, we freaked out. And then I found the science of behavioral epigenetics that explains that history is repeating in the genes, right?
So this is like you, this, there's a lot to all of this, but that you better know your history. You better know your parents story. You better know the family business traumas and dramas because they end up in your cells. And you're attracting them, repeating them in eerie, weird ways. And so I've been studying it ever since. So that's been about, you know, 15 years now. So I put that in the method.
Erin: That's incredible. I mean, I think we intuitively know that that's true, but to know that there is study and science behind it and we, we repeat our patterns. We can, we, we repeat our parents patterns. We contrast our parents patterns.
We're living. As a response to our parents patterns and patterns in a lot of ways, right? So I totally get that. I feel, I feel like I've been making a study of my parents and their lives and their decisions and their behaviors. And, and always sort of after the fact going, Oh, fuck.
Lauren: That's, that's, so my whole life's work is one of the big movements that I'm out to produce on earth is to get people to get utterly aware of the need for the intimacy in their relationship with their parents, their siblings, everyone's lives. Like if you know your story and you. Even, you know, you love your story, like you love yourself enough to, you know, you're having children, right?
Like you, the more you know about where you came from, the more you can, as you said, where you hear epigenetics is you can change your genetics. Right. Like you have power. So if you're not conscious to it, you have no power. It becomes a compulsive life in ways you didn't understand you're being, wow, move toward that kind of guy decisions, right?
Ooh, Hey, or even a reaction to your father's failed business. Makes you become an accountant, right? So like, so we're, it isn't this simple mimic. It's a reaction and it's deep, you know, deeply influencing the choices you could be making or should be making. And so with, I have three kids and so the way I've dealt with my Eppies, I call them Eppies.
So we'd make fun of them and have like the Eppies, right? Do you know your Eppies? Um, is, uh, I let my kids know everything. Right? Everything that happened to me so they can be smarter than me. So they can make the, they can be well informed, right? As long as they want to know it. And I get it through your parents personality traits and their marriage traits and understanding that history.
Erin: I think that's so important and it's, it's psychology, right? But it's also like. Coaching always feels to me like the practical application of some psychological principles towards goals. Um, I don't think you can strip out psychology from coaching.
Lauren: I, I have, because I've only been, I've been building my own brand and coaching myself and then building coaches that work for me. And then I've been franchising the method. So cause I am a method junkie, like take, do this process. I've been developing a process. So that it's something someone can teach and then understand, right? So I can leave that behind on Earth after I'm long dead. So that's, that's been my dream. Yeah, I love that.
And so that, so then I back it with science and I, I make it something that people can really deeply understand. And what I call what I teach is, you know, uncommon knowledge becoming common. Like once you get it, you can't really un get it.
Erin: Yeah. Okay. So one thing about your no nonsense approach that I have heard you talk about is helping people to stop lying to themselves so that they can live a life that's truer to their wants and to their values.
And I love talking about that because I was such a liar in my previous life when I was sort of having it all. And I was. This big career lady and I had a marriage and two kids and I bought us a house and I did all the things. I was fucking miserable inside of it. It looked amazing on the outside, but, and if you didn't know me, you would think something of me like, you know, I would be impressive to you.
And if you knew me, you'd be like, what are you doing? I'm really interested in lying because I always think of myself as this like scrupulously honest person, but the person I was bullshitting the most was me. Yeah. So talk to me about that.
Lauren: So I, my first joke is what do you think will happen first, world peace or the end of lying?
Erin: Oh, I mean, neither, but yeah, world peace maybe
Lauren: I'm going with world peace because humans believe lying is a virtue.
Erin: What?
Lauren: Humans believe like that you would you wouldn't say it but humans have lying as a virtue I can't tell you you hurt my feelings because then I'm gonna be mean to you I can't tell you you look like you gained 15 pounds not because I didn't think it but because if I say it I'm so mean right like I can't tell you that I Uh, don't want to have sex with you tonight because if I do versus, you know, pretending I fell asleep, you know, you'd get hurt.
So what happens is humans lie and then they wonder why they feel like imposters. Humans lie and they wonder why they don't know what they really think. Right? Humans. So I have seven different ways humans lie, but I'm writing my new book that I'm writing right now is, is. At least 29 added ways humans lie, like all I've been studying is the way humans lie, lie to themselves, lie to others, lie to keep the peace, lie to, um, really be pleasing.
Erin: Oh, yeah let's talk about pleasing. Cause I think women, oof, I mean, we work so hard to smooth all of the wrinkles out of life and to make things nice and to create flow. And we do that through self negation so much of the time. And, you know, I know that I work really hard to please other people and, and one of the things I've been trying to do in my life is please myself first and see what comes out of that. Um, it's much better, much better by the way. Um, but why are we so fucking pleasey? I love the word pleasey. Pleasey.
Lauren: It's my favorite. Yes. I like making up words. Yeah.
Erin: You're great at it.
Lauren: Um, so. If you make someone else happy, you get to feel good about yourself. Yeah. So, that's the kind of love that's outside in. If I get a clap, I must have been good. If I get a gold star, I must have been good. If my parents think I'm great, I must be good. So, the problem with, um, pleasy people is that it feels good. Yeah. And it's legit. Right? I did a good job. I hated you, but I did a good job. I like, so there's the, the value of providing value, right?
So did my kid care about getting an A or did I expect him to get an A, right? So the world teaches you from the get go that, um, doing good has nothing to do with feeling good. Per se, right? Like, you owe, right? You owe manners, you know, you owe, you owe. And there's this outside expectation of pleasing the world to fit in, to belong, to be good, right?
And it fucks you over completely from telling the truth and being true to yourself and getting in trouble and learning naturally from it. Not hurting yourself. I'm not talking about over drinking, right? I'm talking about everything else and all the ways we are trained to lie. We are trained to lie.
Erin: What happens when you decide to stop lying? I feel like there's one relationship in my life where I've been lying the whole time. I'm probably never going to stop lying. I'm probably never going to stop lying and because the stakes are too high. Um, I feel so worried about, uh, the disapproval of this person that I don't, I don't know. I don't know how to choose myself.
Lauren: Okay. Well, first of all, that sounds when something can hook you that hard, make you sad, and you would like throw your life down for it. The odds are it's the eppies like that's real lineage, right? Okay, so it's deep in the family line. Okay And then you have to decide what it's like what you're what what is it costing you and it was what is it gonna cost?
Your kids when it when it repeats in them The only way I ever cut shit out is I don't if I understand it's repeating in the line Am I really? really willing to Yeah. I think about that. Because what I've also know, what I've also noticed is it doesn't go better in the kids. It goes worse. So, if you're staying in that relationship or you're willing to sell out for that, um, are you really going to be okay with seeing it in slow mo and worse?
Like, as long as you're cool with that, you have to be willing to go. It's a good life. Like, that's the biggest consequence coming your way. You don't see relationships the way I see relationships. I don't think relationships overlap and, and need to agree with each other. What do you mean? I think relationships run parallel.
Erin: Relationships like, my experience of something versus someone else's experience of something?
Lauren: 100%. They don't ever. I'm sorry. If anyone thinks anyone's experiences really overlap. Like, intersect, like, but I agree, we agreed we were having the best time. Ha. Right? That's not what--
Erin: What do you mean by that? Because I mean, like, I think about my current love relationship, right? And like, yes, we, we agree we are having the best time. So how is that not an intersection?
Lauren: Because it's running parallel. My life. You will never understand. You will never understand. When he says the best time and you say the best time. When he says I love vanilla and you say I love vanilla. Do you really think it tastes the same in both your mouths? No. Are you betting your life on that? No.
Erin: Wait, let's keep talking about this because this is really interesting to me. I think one of the things I like about dating someone who is so different than me is it really helps me recognize that like the way he sees the world is so different than the way I see the world.
And the fact that we intersect in this tender place of this relationship feels like a miracle.
Lauren: When people fight, they want to make an agreement, like you should agree with me, I'm right. You did that, that was wrong. Rather than this is how it was for me, how was it for you? This is how it was for you. If you two, if two people respect each other, they may never agree that I, I did that to hurt you.
I didn't do that to hurt you. I just said it that way. It wasn't to hurt you. It was, oh, I can see how it hurt you. Right? I see what you're saying and how it hurt you. But I never said it to hurt you. If I want to say something to hurt you, I'll tell you when I'm saying something to hurt you.
Erin: Do you think that point of view liberates us somehow from an expectation of being understood?
Lauren: Forever, right? It actually tells you you may never be understood. Maybe you don't aspire to that. It's, it's be heard. And then have the person give it back how they heard you. Right? It's like, what did you hear me say? What was it? What? How was your real experience? What did you? What were you thinking? Right.
The people that it's the, it's running parallel and knowing each other rather than praying up at Jesus that it overlaps and we deeply understand that it's the same. Right, like, we, we both have a fight, we both have a discussion. You walk away with what you walk away with, I walk away with what I walk away with.
And the two really run parallel, not overlapping. And when I can appreciate you and I, we both could get off this podcast and go, that was great! And you were like, eh, maybe it's a little boring, right? And I don't, right? We're both right.
Erin: So talk to me about this notion of inner you and the power of self talk, um, because it's something I'm really interested in. And I think a lot of people suffer from that awful voice in their heads that is shit talking them all day. Um, and I would love for our listeners to get a handle on some of that and how they can have a conversation with that voice. And maybe get it, uh, to say nicer things.
Lauren: Hmm. Um. Um, so there's two, there's a lot of different ways I go at the voice. Like, so like, uh, you know, so I have been developing processes or tools so that a person once you learn, once you hear it, it's yours for life. Right? Like, so if I nail it just right and you hear me, you can then catch it yourself. So there's a couple nicknames I give to the voices in your head. Okay. Okay.
There, there's, there's three main voices in our head that are ruining our lives. Just slightly ruining our lives. One is the voice of the chicken. Like, so scared, like, I don't want to do it. I can't do it. If I do it, I'll fail. What if, what if, what if, what if, what if, maybe tomorrow, maybe tomorrow, Oh God, don't say that.
Don't do that. Oh, they'll think you're this. You'll think you're that. Like everything that's telling you you're going to fail, don't. Someone doesn't like you. Don't ask them out. Don't do this. Don't start your business. Don't ask for a raise. Every damn chicken. Chicken. Fear. We've been chickens our whole life.
Fear. But really a chicken's voice. Like, chicken logic. Right. Chicken logic and a chicken. And listen, if you ever saw a chicken, everyone wants to eat a chicken. Chickens should be chickens because they're going to get eaten if they go out. Okay. So when a voice is a chicken voice, it's definitely, sir, you're going to die.
And it's probably, you know, if it's betting, you know, if you believe in, in manifesting at all, a chicken voice is a man of fucker. Right. They, it believes in man of fucking yourself, right? It, it's going to ruin your life if you make this mistake. Okay, the voice of the chicken is death is coming to you.
Then there's this other voice which really drives me crazy in people even more so than the chicken. I can talk most chickens out of being chickens, but this voice is the voice of the brat in you. I'll do it tomorrow. I've never been good at diets. I can't do it. Like a true brat. Right? Like, I won't learn that.
I don't read. I can't do that. I've never been good at it. Blah. Like, I don't want to. I don't get out of bed. I don't want to. All forms of fuck, fucking you. I can't. Okay.
Erin: I can't is always such a place for me of lying to where it's like, well, I can't do this because blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's like avoidant. It's like, I don't want the responsibility of it.
Lauren: It's very young and bratty and, and very defensive.
Erin: I have twin 12 year olds. I have twin 12 year olds. Yeah, I'm real familiar with this voice.
Lauren: Yeah. I'm in love. I'm in love. Oh my God. You're so touchy. Yeah, that's true. Um, then the final voice that's going on is what I call the weather reporter. So, if you think about a weather reporter, um, they tell you all about the weather and they have no power.
So it's, it's, uh, I've never been good at it. Um, if, right, it's, it's blanket statements that there are no good men in L. A. Oh. There, I can't get a job in a different industry because--
Erin: Oh, this is so Fucking interesting, because I hear this all the time from so many people, especially around love, especially around relationships. Well, I just don't know how you meet a man in LA. I'm like, there's fucking 20 million people here. What are you talking about?
Lauren: Exactly. So once you have a weather report. Right? Think of it this way. Once you go, if you walk in Central Park in New York after midnight, you could get robbed. Are you ever going in Central Park after midnight? No.
Erin: No, but doesn't that protect you?
Lauren: Um, but a weather, it's like once you have this belief, once you have a weather report, I'm bad at dating. I'm bad at first dates. I always, like, I, I don't know how to stay consistent with exercise. I always fall off. It's where the people, so it isn't just an excuse where an excuse is a lie.
It's, it's a belief in yourself that you know yourself and you suck in certain ways that you can't change. So you have. terrible weather reports on yourself and you pontificate and you perpetuate deep theories about yourself and you don't realize they're from your parents and they don't, you don't realize.
And so how you can do a test on a weather report is if you get out of bed at 6 a. m. for 10 days in a row and exercise for an hour, I'll give you a 10 grand a day if you do it. And everybody's like, fuck yes, I can do it, right? Like, so what it proves is most things... My eyes light up. I'm like, money?
Erin: Yeah. No, no, no. I get money for that?
Lauren: Right. Like, all you have to do, right, if I say change the weather. from 60 degrees to 70 degrees, you'd be like, that's impossible. I can't change the weather. I go, okay, can you make sure you exercise and eat right today? I'll give you 10 grand. And we're all of a sudden you're, you find out you're a liar, right?
Like, of course you can, right? But what it shows is that humans suck unless we have real incentives and we'll lie to ourselves forever without them. And then we don't really ever get questioned. We really just accommodate the worst shit about ourselves in many ways. That's all your inner dialect guys.
And then my nicknames lately for it is you have a lower self. That's like, fuck you. I don't want to get out of bed. You have. Your highest lowest self, which is the top of the line like you better get out of bed, or you're gonna get in trouble But get a cookie along the way. It'll be okay. It'll feel better Right like you're so your lower self is really running amok, which is your chicken your brat and your weather reporter all Combined and then your higher self Really exists, but never gets It never gets any air time. Why is that? I mean, why are we so, um,
Erin: I mean, I, we've talked on this podcast about negativity bias and, um, how we need to cultivate a positivity bias, um, like, you know, why is it so hard to do the things we know will get us the results we want?
Lauren: Right? Um, We are, our thoughts are, I think it's over 80 percent negative are our thoughts. Like science has already taught, like, so it really, um, it's why we're blown away by an Olympian. Yeah. Or the basketball player, or the actor, or the CEO. Yeah. Because um, the person that's willing to do the work is the exceptional human. And most people aren't. And, um, I'm sorry, that's like, most people aren't willing to do the hard work.
That doesn't mean any hard work, right? It just means like the, the very hard work you wish you would do. Yeah. Right? Which is get organized, follow and meditate, whatever. Like there's many things that really would make you proud of yourself, but we're so much um, more into short term gratification than we are into long term gratification and everything that really is. Big to us is long term.
Erin: Bummer. Bummer. Bummer.
Lauren: Bummer. There is no pill. They try to make pills for that.
Erin: They're working on all kinds of pills. People are taking them out here in L. A. I don't think they work. I don't know. Um, I have a question for you. What is the difference between coaching and therapy?
Lauren: So coaching, I don't get, there is no option about whether you're going to do your homework. Everything I do turns into action items. And um, and I am serious. Like I will fire you if you don't do your promise. My joke is I teach the promised land. Right, where you keep promises to yourself. I, I, most of the world keeps promises to everybody else because they're pleasing and have no choice. Yeah, I'm not working on those.
I'm working on your ability to keep a promise to yourself, the ones where you actually wish you'd keep. And you have to break into your inner dialogue so you actually do them. And then many people don't know how to dream like, so, so as you, as we talk about all this negative bias in ourselves from our parents.
Right? Most of our parents don't look very happy. Did your parents look very happy? Occasionally. Like, it doesn't, it didn't even matter how much money my parents had, they, they didn't really. Right? Like, come on. That, like, all my dad was living for was scotch and screaming at the television. Sports. Like, that was his big day, like, in golf. That was it.
Erin: I saw, I saw my parents pursue their own happiness and their own agency real aggressively. Like, not always successfully. But they were always chasing in that baby boomer way, they were always chasing their own fulfillment. Um, and it's nice, yeah, I mean, you know, to various effect, right? Um, and with various self awareness. But, um, I think I do get some of that from them, which I'm, that may be a positive epigenetic, right?
Lauren: Well, no, but like, look at you go. So if you're willing to pursue your own success, like my, my father really was a successful lawyer. There you go. And so, which is why you're not one. And he really loved.
Erin: Also why I'm not one.
Lauren: Wait, wait, wait. Is your, your dad was a lawyer? Is. Well, yeah, was. Is. Is. Okay. My, my dad stopped lawyering. I mean, he's not lawyering, but he'll always be a lawyer. Okay, here, wait, wait, wait, I have my, you've, you've led me into another thing I call myself. So I call myself a spiritual accountant. I'm coming to do your books.
And then the next one is I call myself a spiritual lawyer. I'm going to put you in the right contracts you need. And then I'm also a spiritual dentist. I'm coming to do that root canal. Ow! Ow!
Erin: No one likes a root canal. No one likes a root canal. That is an amazing segue into the one question that I have asked every single person who's been on this podcast, which is, you Lauren, are there deals? In your life that you want to renegotiate.
Lauren: Hmm. Wow. You know, I recently got divorced, so I renegotiated all those. Like I think I did that. I think I'm in my new renegotiated life and, um, I, yeah, um, yeah, I think, um, I'm doing them. I'm actually, you know, I would say that I'm doing that in my career. Making sure I do just the parts I love, um, and building, and then my love life is now in that, and living in Croatia is part of that. So I think I'm on the other side of really doing some heavy negotiating.
Erin: Right, so you're living in the consequence of having renegotiated a lot of deal terms in your life. How's it going?
Lauren: Yeah, and you know, um, Oh, much better than when it started.
Erin: Ha ha ha!
Lauren: Fuck. Right. I was like the girl who didn't know a midlife crisis was coming. Oh God. No, no, no. I really had no idea it was coming. Until it, it passed and it all crumbled. My not so funny joke was it all turned into sand. It was like a bunch of, it was sand castles. I was keeping up sand. Right. And what's really left? You're kidding. Right. I had to face what was true and what wasn't true.
And I really didn't know because I'm such a manifester and so busy doing everything. I didn't know that the, the, the domino of a divorce would then set a whole. chain of, of facing reality with friendships and with business and with my own personal understanding of myself.
Erin: Isn't that a reckoning? It's such a fucking reckoning.
Lauren: Uh, yeah, it makes me a better coach. Um, makes me a better coach, but it, uh, fucked with my humanity and I had to do a lot of my own method on my inner dialogue. I really had to follow my method, which was, which was kind of awesome, right? I really had to rewrite my dreams in my 12 areas of life because I thought when you're in a marriage, you really think you know where it's going, right?
And so I had to reboot my whole life and re dream my whole life. And I had to be able to talk about it because I'm a coach. So I can't, you know,
Erin: Right, but does it make you a better coach having gone through that journey so recently and having all that renegotiation so fresh for you?
Lauren: People got to go, you know, as the, the kind of coaching I do is I'm transparent.
I tell people what I'm going through. Like I do not hide anything. There are no lies. So whatever I'm dealing with, you will, if it pertains to you, you will understand it and know. And so I, I lived transparently through the whole nightmare with those famous, with those, with those famous people, with those companies, with the, like with everything. And so it was, it was quite a ride for, for since 2020, let's be real, since 20, since COVID.
Erin: Yeah. COVID blew a lot of stuff up. I'm really, really grateful for your honesty, Lauren. I'm really grateful for you pushing in this conversation with me. We all have our sticky, yucky, uh, what Sherry Salata, my friend calls crunchy stuff.
Um, you know, we all have that stuff and that we know that if we resolve those things, those particular things that other things would be possible that haven't been possible yet. Um, I'm super grateful for you for coming on the show, for being so transparent and honest, for sharing your work and your ideas.
Have a beautiful day in Croatia.
Lauren: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. This was great. Thank you for getting me to say everything.
Erin: Thanks for listening to Hotter Than Ever. If I were a life coach, which I am most definitely not, I would coach you to please rate and review us. on Apple podcasts. The more five star ratings and positive reviews we get, the more people will be able to find the show.
Thank you so much in advance. I am grateful for your enthusiasm and for your support. Hotter Than Ever is produced by Erica Gerard and PodKit Productions. Our associate producer is Melody Carey. Music is by Chris Keating with vocals by Issa Fernandez.
Come back next week. We're on a roll and talking to the most incredible, intelligent, inspiring, insightful, complicated, rich, deep, sexy, lovely women.
Oh, I [00:41:00] just love them. I love my job. Is this my job? This might be my job. You guys. Oh my God. I have the best fucking job. And it's all because of you. Take care. I'll talk to you soon.