Turn It Up!

Creating a Positive Playlist for Your Mind

• Danielle Nicole La Rose • Episode 44

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Have you ever wondered how societal expectations shape our self-worth and body image? This episode marks the exciting transformation of our podcast from "Pretty Powerful Podcast" to "Turn It Up," where we crank up the volume on what truly matters. We dive deep into my personal journey of self-discovery, starting with a pivotal moment in a sociology class that forever changed my perspective on body image. Join me as we challenge the negative self-talk that has held us back and learn to embrace self-love with the same enthusiasm we have for our favorite tracks.

As we take this journey, I encourage you to turn up the volume on your passions and join our vibrant community, the "Turn Up Squad." By sharing our stories and supporting each other's growth, we can lift future generations of women to live boldly and authentically. Stay tuned for more episodes, where we’ll Turn Up the voices of women redefining what it means to be POWERFUL, share empowering playlist picks, thought-provoking lyrics, and inspiring insights from things happening in the world. Let's go!! 


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Danielle La Rose:

What's up? Turn it Up Squad, I am so freaking excited that you are here and we're doing this podcasting thing together. You may have noticed that this looks a lot different than it used to. This podcast used to be called the Pretty Powerful Podcast, and I am still all about living that pretty powerful life, right Like taking back control of our power and understanding that we weren't put on this earth to just be pretty. And so, with that, though, I kept thinking and I'm going to share here in a minute but why this is Turn it Up and kind of the real turning point the remix, if you will in my life, that really shifted everything for me and got me here today, where I'm so passionate about this message and the messages that I'm going to be able to bring to you here on this podcast, and so, with that, I want to let you know that today's playlist, what you can expect is we're going to be talking about understanding and accepting the fact that we cannot we cannot silence the outside world. We cannot control other people's thoughts and opinions and beliefs about us. We cannot control what they say or do towards us, but what we can do is we can turn up what's most important to us. We can turn up our confidence. We can turn up learning about how our bodies work and how the world works, so that way we can step more into our power. So with that, I welcome you to the Turn it Up podcast.

Danielle La Rose:

I consider for a long time, right of, should I even rebrand Like is this necessary? Do I want to? The messages are very similar, like my purpose in life has remained the same to empower girls and women to truly be able to look in the mirror and love who they see, and so nothing is changing about that. But as I kept thinking, I'm like I'm not as excited about talking about the pretty powerful podcast because it wasn't really clear the message to me, the types of guests that I would have. It's like I had wonderful guests and all their episodes are amazing. You should go back and listen to them and the guests are great and the guests are gonna continue to be great.

Danielle La Rose:

But for me, I just had a hard time clarifying what is the point of this podcast, right? Is it just a whole bunch of stuff about talking about power? Is it a whole bunch of stuff about talking about power? Is it a whole bunch of stuff about what is it. And so I decided to get real honest with myself, because I encourage all of my clients and everyone that I'm surrounded by like, hey, you got to make choices that are right for you, right Like what brings you joy. And as I kept thinking about that and as I was thinking about the podcast, I wasn't really as excited to tell people like, hey, listen to the Pretty Powerful podcast.

Danielle La Rose:

But now I am so excited because I feel like there's a clarity here. Right, this is our turn up squad. This is for the women who truly want to turn up all of the things that are important to them to figure out. How can we turn up the voices of powerhouse women? How can we turn up understanding how our bodies work and operate so we can lean into that? How can we turn up the volume on psychology and sociology to really understand, from a scientific standpoint of how we can live really great, powerful, confident lives as women so we can reach all of our goals Right? And so every time I kept talking about all these things, it always came back to turning it up, and it also came back to my own story of how I believe I stepped more into my confidence when, for most of my life, I had very little, and so for me, right, it was that turning point, it was the remix.

Danielle La Rose:

I want you, I want you, I just want, like, before we jump in, I want you to think about like your favorite song, right, like the song that comes on and you are just like, oh my God, this is my jam. Maybe you can even imagine yourself back in the day at the club. The song came on and you're like yes, and what do you instantly say? Or if you're in the car with a friend and you hear your song, the song that hypes you up, that gives you the energy you just want to have a dance party, you want to pop, lock and drop it, and what do you say? You always say turn it up, right, it's your favorite song.

Danielle La Rose:

Would we say, hear our favorite song and say, turn it down? No, obviously. But what do we do with the songs that we don't really actually enjoy? Right, that song where you're like, oh my gosh, if I hear this song one more time, it's like nails going down a chalkboard, like what is this? Who made this? Who sings this? Why did they even put this out? Ow, and yet millions of people love it, but I am sitting here praying for the day I never have to hear this song again.

Danielle La Rose:

You don't say turn it up, do you? No, you probably say turn it down and turn it off and please don't ever make me hear that song again. But what's going to happen? What's going to happen is you're going to hear that song again because it's going to come back on the radio. Your kid might play it. You're going to hear it on TV. It's going to be played again, and you're going to keep doing the same thing over and over and over again.

Danielle La Rose:

When you hear your favorite song, you're going to say turn it up. When you hear the song that makes you want to just cringe and run away, you're going to say turn it down. And that is the same thing. That goes for our lives, right? What goes for our mindset is we have these thoughts, right, we have thoughts in our heads and we have people that say things to us and act certain ways towards us, and we can't control that, right. But what we can control is what we do for ourselves, what the voices that we allow into our heads and what we choose to our heads and what we choose to turn up and what we choose to turn down.

Danielle La Rose:

I think it's really important that we understand that we're never going to be able to get rid of all of that right. There's never going to be a day where you never have a negative thought. There's probably never going to be a day where you don't hear someone else have something negative or opinionated to say that you might not agree with. There will never be that day, but what there will be is every single day you have the opportunity to turn down those voices a little bit and to turn up the ones that are actually important. That will change your life, that will help you step into that confidence, so that way you can be the powerful woman to reach all of your goals and that way we can raise confident girls to do the same thing. Because here's the thing yes, I want you to turn all of this up for yourself. I want you to live that great life.

Danielle La Rose:

But the main reason if I'm going to be 100 with you is that all of this is because I really hope that we can build the next generation of girls to never need a podcast like this, to where they already are growing up obsessed and in love with who they are. They know their values, they know their strengths, they step into their power. They love and appreciate their bodies for what they do. They don't feel like they have to change them to fit in and to be part of a society that tells us that a woman is supposed to look a certain way. I want that next generation to grow up that way and it starts with us, and it starts with us turning up this volume for ourselves, so that way we can be a great, positive example for the next generation of girls. So if I've convinced you, I hope that I've convinced you a little bit that that's the goal right and I don't need you to strive for the day where you're like, oh my God, I have no negative thoughts about my body, I have no negative thoughts about my career or my worth or my value. There's a chance that will ever happen. But we don't need to beat ourselves up over that. What we get to do, instead of saying, okay, if that's never, if that isn't necessarily going to go away completely, how can I make it quieter and how can I make the other stuff a lot louder? And I'm so glad you asked, because that's what we're going to do on this podcast, because every guest that I'm going to bring on, every episode that I'm going to bring to you, is with that mission in mind of what can we turn up? How can we learn more about our bodies and how they work? How do we learn more about our brains and how they work so we can become you know, use everything that we have to live better and to live happier and healthier, right? And how can we turn up that self-confidence? How can we turn up being a better role model for girls? How can we turn up the volume on girls and women that are doing really powerful things in the world? And that's what we're here for All, right, so let's talk about a different remix, right? Like I've shared about the rebranding and why, let's talk about the remix.

Danielle La Rose:

In my life, that was that aha moment. When this happened, I literally I feel like my jaw like hit the floor. I looked around this room and I saw women that were had a similar look on their face. We were all in our early 20s that had a similar look on their face. We were all in our early 20s and we just literally were like this cannot be real. Is this real? And if this is real, this explains my entire life. This explains why I've struggled my whole life. This explains why I feel the way that I do about my body and about myself. This explains so much. But then what that I do about my body and about myself? This explains so much. But then what do I do about it? And so, for me, that was this remix moment in my life is when I went all this completely new path of this being my purpose and my mission in my life. And at that moment right, I'm in my early 20s I was in grad school. I wasn't like I'm going to one day host a podcast about how to do this and how to love your body. I never had that in mind, I had no idea that this would actually play out this way, but I remember that being a monumental moment in my life. Right, and it has played out in this way and it's so. I'm just so grateful.

Danielle La Rose:

Okay, so here's what happened. What had happened was I was sitting in a sociology course that's what I have all of my degrees in, and you know. But before that, before I was even in college, I struggled my whole life with my body image. I can remember you've probably heard if you've listened to any of the podcast episodes. You've heard me tell the story a million times that since sixth grade, I really didn't wear shorts. I would go to Disney World with my family and I would be in jeans, jeans I don't know what those are, but maybe that's a new thing I'm going to create but I was wearing jeans in like 105 degree temperature because I was so self-conscious of my legs, because I had a lot of cellulite. That's just how my legs were.

Danielle La Rose:

And I remember being in sixth grade and there was this, you know, spirit week and I had it was twin day and my best friend is wonderful and she was like, oh my gosh, we're going to be twins and it's hot outside, so let's wear this outfit. And it included shorts. Now, mind you, she had the legs of my dreams. Mind you, she had the legs of my dreams. I was like, if I had her legs, my life would be perfect. I would be like a multi billionaire, like everything in my life would just be perfect If I just had her legs. Have you ever had that thought before? Like if I just had that, then that would make life so much easier.

Danielle La Rose:

And so that's what my thought was and, of course, I chose to wear the shorts then, but it was in that moment where I was like I should not wear shorts like this. She can wear shorts, I should not, because my legs are ugly. I should change everything about my body and no one should ever have to look at these legs. And so, from that day forward, I really chose not to wear shorts until I was probably about 24, 25, when I had a shift in my mindset that changed a lot for me. And this, this defining moment for me, is what has helped me, from about that age to now, with every single thing that I do. It's it comes from this place, it comes from these few questions that I want to share with you today and why it's so important to me that we turn it up and also turn it down. You know, the words and the thoughts in my brain since I was like in sixth grade were I'm not good enough, I'm not pretty enough, my legs are ugly, I'm gross, I should change everything, I'm not smart enough, I can't speak up Like every.

Danielle La Rose:

I had so much self-doubt and I was so self-conscious in my body, so I had this playlist in my brain that just kept going and going and going and going to where it came, to a point to where I finally used all my high school graduation money to have a procedure to get rid of all of the cellulite. And guess what? It didn't work. It was a scam, which there's a lot of things that are scams but the point is that I was willing to do whatever it took. I took diet pills. I would choose to only eat once a day, and I'll share more of those stories in the future. But that's the playlist that was going on in my head and the choices that I was making were because of that playlist that I heard on repeat.

Danielle La Rose:

And then it then came this moment where I was sitting in this course and we watched a documentary called Killing Us Softly. Even at that moment, the documentary looked and felt very old. So now I can't imagine and probably feel like it's like from the 1800s. Like you know, it just would feel like it's from so long ago. But it was an older documentary. But it didn't matter, because the documentary was about society, about women, about people of different races and just all of our differences and how they came out in marketing and how our bodies are used for marketing purposes. You know, it showed us how famous, very famous companies, right, our marketing, for one thing, for example, would be their marketing t-shirts, uh, but the woman doesn't even have a shirt on. Like make it make sense? Uh, you know, there would be, um, you know the the infamous burger King, uh, commercial, where it's a very seductive way of a celebrity eating a burger to where, you know it's just again sexualizing her. It is seeing, you know, women that were used like to look like scissors, and their body is just like all dysfunctional, like it, just all of these things to show how women are portrayed in marketing and media, and the size right of all of these types of products, from being toys for young girls to being, you know, coke and jewelry and all the things for adults. And so it was this moment.

Danielle La Rose:

For me, though, when it all ended, I was upset, but I also was relieved because, at the end of it, I started thinking to myself. I've struggled my whole life with loving who I am, and not just loving who I am, but really loving how I look and I thought that that was the most important thing, right? That's the message that we receive is that how we look is the most important thing. That's why people spend so much money on losing weight, on lip injections, on Botox on and I'm not judging any of those things you do you this? You know like you should make choices that are right for you, but that's the reason why we spend all this money, right? So look a certain way that is considered beautiful for our society.

Danielle La Rose:

And in this moment, right, like we end it, and I just it all rushes over me of, oh my gosh, I've spent the last what? 15 years, however many years hating my legs, hating my body, feeling like I need to be smaller. And then, when I watched this documentary that showed all these advertisements and showed all this stuff, I was like, oh my gosh, this is why, this is why I have struggled for most of my life. This is why I feel like my legs aren't good enough, because I didn't see anybody's legs that had cellulite on them, right? And I also saw advertisements that said here's the cream and the potion and the lotion to get rid of your cellulite, because it's ugly, you know. And so I just I was like, okay, I've done all of these things to try to look this certain way and the reason is right in front of me, and I never even realized it. I never realized that the reason why I struggled so much with my body image and my confidence was because of all of the stuff that was just flooding my brain from the time I was a little girl just flooding my brain from the time I was a little girl. And so in that moment I realized that my playlist in my head was all dictated by outside forces and I wasn't even aware of it.

Danielle La Rose:

So everything that I do and everything that I teach now, and everything that this podcast will be about, is going to be based on shifting our perspective, of figuring out why do we have these playlists in our head right now? Because so many of us have these thoughts and feelings and emotions and things in our brains that are happening that we don't even realize and we don't even know why. We don't even know where those thoughts came from and we don't even take a second to figure that out because we think something's just wrong with me. There are other. Almost everyone else loves their body and they appreciate themselves and they have confidence and they have success. It's just me, something's wrong with me, and that's not the case. The case is that we have to figure out where those thoughts come from the playlists that are in our head and how can we shift them in order to create new playlists, to actually step into our power and have the playlists in our head that we actually want to have.

Danielle La Rose:

So I want to share with you a quick power-up, a power-up tip, for what can you do with this? Right? Like I don't like listening to podcasts that just give me a story and I'm like okay, that was motivational, but like, okay, cool, what do I do now? Right? So a power-up tip of the day is I want you to think about. So think about the word power, and if you've been around for a while, you know I play on the word power forever, because I have a whole power methodology that helps you figure out how to do anything and achieve anything in your life that you desire by using this method, and the first letter is P, and so, right now, I want you to focus on that. The P stands for perspective.

Danielle La Rose:

When you come to a moment and you can catch yourself having some of those thoughts of I'm not good enough, my body is ugly, I need to change, like all of the thoughts that run through your head, I want you to take a second and I want you to ask yourself why do I think this way? Why do I think this way? You can do this with anything. I did this with my dating relationships, I did this with my education, I do this with my business. I do this with everything.

Danielle La Rose:

When I start having that thought in my mind, I say okay, why do I think this? And then, where do these thoughts come from? Do I actually feel this way? Right, like, are these thoughts coming from myself or am I feeling pressure from the outside world and those thoughts are actually coming from somewhere else? Because, let's be honest, if we're going to talk about my cellulite, I don't see my cellulite. It's on the back of my legs. Why would I care what it looks like? That's your problem, not mine, and if you don't like it, don't look at it. So I realized that the reason when I really asked myself these questions when it comes to everything, but specifically as my example today about bodies, you know, when I asked myself that question of is it?

Danielle La Rose:

Where does this thought come from and why do I think this I realized that it comes from somewhere outside of me. Because if I was just born by myself in a room and I never saw a quote unquote perfect body, and I never saw advertisements for how to get rid of your cellulite. I would have never cared about the cellulite, because I probably would have never even seen it, let's be honest. So the reason why I cared, though, is because everyone else is telling me that I should care about it, that I should change it, that it is bad and it is ugly. So when I take out that P and I focus on that perspective and I ask myself those questions, it helps me come back to reality for myself, and then you get to ask yourself do these thoughts align with my values, my purpose, my passion and my priorities? And if the answer is no, right, like my passion, purpose priorities is not. Like, my top priorities are not to have the perfect body, so if they're not my top priorities, then why am I going to be stressed about some cellulite on the back of my legs that I can't even see? So I want you to remember this as you go throughout your days, when you have those thoughts come up, I want you to remember the power method and, using that P, of understanding your perspective. Why do I think this? Where did these thoughts come from, and do they align with my values, my purpose, my passion and my priorities. And then, if you're able to, in that moment again, we're going to talk throughout this podcast of how can we shift that and what can we do about it. But that instant check of yourself will help you come back to reality of what's really important to you, instead of making choices and feeling feelings and having thoughts that are important to everybody else.

Danielle La Rose:

Okay, real quick, quick mom track. If you are a mom of a girl, I told you before my mission is to help young girls grow up more confident than we ever imagined possible. So if you want to raise a confident daughter making really good choices, hello, I'm sure you do. If I was a mom, I would you know. I remember being a young girl and a teen and I can only imagine the stress and the overwhelm that comes with being a girl mom and truly wanting her to feel confident in her body and make choices that are right for her. Her to feel confident in her body and make choices that are right for her. If you are feeling that way, number one, you can help her. Use that pee also right.

Danielle La Rose:

One of the most powerful things that we can do for young girls is to help them see like marketing and social media and different things, and realize where some of the thoughts they have might come from, and so, if you can help her you know when she has those thoughts, helping her ask those questions of why do you think that way and where did those thoughts come from? Sometimes they're going to come from the mean kid at recess, and sometimes they're going to come from hearing an adult say something about who knows right Losing weight, so it's important to give her these tools as well, which is also what we do in our Pretty Powerful Girl program. So, at the same time, though, what's important for you to remember as a mom of a girl, is that you get to turn up for yourself first and I know everyone tells you that and you don't want to hear it anymore but the most based on scientific research, the best thing that you can do, especially for body image for girls, is to first take care of you, to shift your playlist, to shift what you're replaying in your head right, and quieting those negative, turning up the positive and turning up the things that are actually going to help you live the life that you want, because then she's going to see you being that woman and she's going to do what you do, not what you say to do. Cool, all right. So that's what I got for you today.

Danielle La Rose:

Next episode, I will bring you some of my favorite playlist picks from my favorite books, my favorite lyrics and some songs. Here's what I need you to remember as you leave here, leave listening, you turn this off. I just want you to remind yourself that you have power and confidence inside of you and all you have to do is unleash it. But the first step to unleashing that powerful, competent version of yourself is by turning up everything that is important to you and turning down the volume on everything else. So, sister, if you are committed to turning up more and you are part of this turn up squad, which you are then I am asking you to go ahead and share this with a friend. Tell them they got to turn up too, and build this beautiful, wonderful, powerful community of women that are committed to turning up, so that way, we can help the girls in our lives turn up even more. All right, sister, that's a wrap. I'll see you on the next episode.