You Are Enough – Part 3: Healing, Identity & Purpose in Action

 The final part of the 3-part podcast series with Lawrence Harris — all episodes are now live.

In this powerful conclusion, we explore what happens after the healing begins, how to live with purpose, lead from a whole heart, and help others rise as we grow.

Lawrence Harris speaks with clarity and compassion about what it really takes to live from your healed identity. He shares daily practices, leadership insights, and how his own transformation fuels his mission to remind young people: You are enough.

In this episode:

• What real healing looks like in leadership and life
• Daily rhythms that help you stay grounded in your identity
• Why self-worth isn’t just personal,  it’s generational
• Lawrence’s 'why' behind his work and daily reels
• The connection between faith, discipline, and impact

If you’ve ever felt called to something more, but unsure how to move forward,  this episode is for you. It’s an invitation to live your story with intention, healing, and purpose.

💡 Missed the earlier parts? Listen to the full series:

• Part 1 – Becoming the Author of Your Own Story
• Part 2 – From Shame to Self-Worth
• Part 3 – You’re here

Need clarity in your own life story?
The 3-Month Purpose Pathway Coaching Program is for purpose-driven individuals ready to move from confusion to clarity, from burnout to alignment: https://lifeleadershipconnected.com/tjanster/

Book your free Discovery Call: https://calendly.com/daviddahlendcruz/30min

🎧 Subscribe to Life & Leadership Connected for honest, hope-filled conversations to help you grow from the inside out.

https://lifeleadershipconnected.com

Transcript

0:05

role has community, faith and daily rhythm played in your long-term healing? And you referred to the Bible before, so I don't know, but those three things, community, faith and daily rhythm, How have they helped you in your healing? They have been pivotal, like in so many ways, because when you feel alone in the sense of, okay, you have people around you, you're in a room full of people, but you feel like none of them truly care, at the very minimum, you have somebody who keeps an eye on you. Cause I've met a lot of people who hurt themselves. And what I tell them is whenever you feel the urge to do that, Go around people. Go around people just physically. Maybe it could be just standing outside on the corner and your neighbors are there and they see you and you see them. It might be going in the room with your family members because even if you feel alone, as long as have somebody physically present, they can make sure you don't hurt yourself in that way. But for me, I would say the main thing that community has played, is knowing that there's other people who can relate to me. There's other people who understand what I went through and people who encourage me and remind me that, 'Lawrence you're not crazy. You are not crazy.' Sometimes that's what people need to hear. As far as faith goes, I believe that a big reason as to why I felt so lost for so long was a lack of faith. Not even just in like a religious faith, but faith in yourself, faith that things get better, faith in humanity. I just had no faith for anything. But when you finally start to believe in something, when you believe in yourself, you believe in God, you believe in whatever your path in life is, you start to understand that faith is your ability to see and believe in the unseen. To know that you don't know how, you don't know when, you don't know where, but this is all for a reason. I don't know why. Nobody knows why. But there is a reason to this. And that... has gotten me through so many things. Like I said at the start, what my younger self needed to hear was, your pain has a purpose. We don't know the purpose yet. But at this point in my life, I've realized that the purpose was to prepare me for this. To prepare me to be able to speak to people who are hurting and let them know that I'm an example that it can get better. I'm an example that yes, you may be going through things at home. You may be having issue with your family, but it can get better. know, and sometimes it getting better is a painful process. I've had to get restraining orders on people. I haven't spoke to certain people in five years. I've had to move around. I had to do a lot of therapy and journaling and meditation and breath work and a whole lot of things. But throughout all of that pain, I realized that when you have faith and you believe, not just, I think, not I feel like things can get better. I think life can get better. No, when you believe and you have unrelenting faith that it can get better, it will. Wow, thank you. Thank you, Lawrence. I wonder what gives you meaning and purpose today? I mean, you've also touched on this before, but what is your deeper why behind the work you do? It began with me trying to help myself. Then it transitioned into me trying to help my siblings. And then it turned into me trying to help the world. Because every 43 seconds, somewhere in the world, somebody killed themselves. And that means that per year, it's about 740,000. In the US, it's about 49,000. And... Then if you single it down into teenagers and young adults, it becomes even worse. And then you start adding in other factors like cases where there were signs but nobody had the resources. Nobody knew what to look for. Nobody was aware because there things like, know, naturally there's a stereotype about teenagers. They get distant from their family members. Like they get distant from their mom and dad. That's a normal thing that teenagers do. But if you know about the other side to look for, like, are they suddenly wearing a lot of baggy clothing? Are they suddenly giving away things like that's been his favorite guitar for his entire life. And all of sudden, he gave it away. That's a sign that somebody's planning to kill themselves. All of sudden they're not hanging out with their friends. Maybe they could have gotten new friends. Maybe they just don't get along with that group of people anymore. But that can be another sign. And a big thing that fueled me to do this beyond just the messages I get from people and knowing the impact I have is knowing that somebody may never speak to me. They may never like my post or comment or anything, but they could hear something that makes them go, oh, wait, my son is doing that. I should check on him. And that saved their son's life. And I never know. Oh, my sister or my brother or my friend or my family member or my coworker or my dad or aunt or uncle, somebody I know, all of a sudden, they're doing this. All of a sudden, things are changing for them. I should check on that person. And I've gotten in methods like that too, where people have told me that they heard something I said and checked up on their family member and turns out that saved their family member's life. So it's not just about my own enjoyment in what I do. It's about the fact that the work I do is actually saving people. And those are just the ones I know about. Most people will never tell you something like that. Most people will never DM you about their son or their brother or their family member. So I only know the ones who have told me. But what I do know is that there people out there who need what I do. And it's a lot more common than you think. It's unfortunate, but you go into a... A uh typical classroom here is about 15 to 30 students. Just off of the statistics, one in four of them have attempted to kill themselves. Just off the statistics of it. Then you look into other things like rates of sexual assault among girls. About 80 % of them will experience that at some point in their life and not tell anybody. Then you look into other things like the fact that the among veterans, students who have parents who are veterans, so imagine your dad served in Vietnam or something like that. Among veterans, the suicide rate is incredibly high because there's not a lot of support for them and very few people want to talk about this sort of stuff. Very few people want to get into the details. We often hear people say things about, here's five signs, here's five tips, here's a 10 minute video. But for someone who is truly going through it, they don't need a 10 minute video. They don't need five tips to make it better. They need someone who can get into the details of it and let them know that this person got better. That means I can too. If they went through that and they got better and now they're up on stage and they're sharing this to people and they're... giving a positive impact to the world, that means I have a meaning too. And that's what fueled me. It's good, really good. Thank you, Lawrence. You often say that you can write a new story, or that we can write a new story, a person can write his new story. What does that mean in practical terms? And what is one belief that you rewrote that completely changed how you show up in the world, Lawrence? So what that really means is that it's your life. Things happen to you, but you're not forced to keep repeating that cycle. I've met a lot of people throughout my life who have been angry about something that happened 10, 20, 30 years ago. Some of them were violent, like they got falsely imprisoned. That's a very violent thing to be mad about. However, even then, you can still find a way to rewrite that story. Maybe you become an advocate for preventing false imprisonment. Maybe you start volunteering at a community center. Maybe you open up a church. There's a lot of different ways you can make your life back into your life. And every day you make choices. Every day you do something. And when you become intentional about what you do, and you become intentional about what you say and how you act, you are creating a new story. And you're making that story based on what you want it to be. Not based on what your family did to you, not based on what happened, not based on what someone said to you, but based on what you decided to make it. Because you cannot control what other people did. I could not control what my dad did. I could not control what anyone else said or did to me when I was younger. But what I can control is what I do about it. So, to make this practical for people, yes, someone did something to you. Someone said something to you. But you don't have to allow what other people did and other people said to define the rest of your life. And how this has looked for me is what I do now. I could have easily gone down the path, let me think this way, I could have easily gone down the path of, you know, just staying mad at my family forever and ever and becoming another like statistic. I could have easily done that. But I decided, 'okay Lawrence, this is your life. This is you. What happened happened, but what you do now is up to you.' And instead I turned that pain and that trauma and all that, those issues into a career of helping people no longer be defined by their issues. And the biggest belief I had to fix for myself was the belief that I could never be enough, that I could never be good enough, that I would never be smart enough or tall enough or whatever. And Realizing that from your very birth, you've always been enough. It's not about you becoming something new or becoming something different or better. What it's truly about is your inherent worth as a person. And once you realize, like I said earlier, that true self love is when you love yourself with or without the stuff, you tap into this feeling that you've always been enough, you always will be enough, and from that state of being, you can achieve just about anything. Wow, thank you. Thank you, Lawrence. Can you tell us how you personally combine leadership with being whole, a healthy human being? I'm thinking about life balance here. What have you learned about keeping a sustainable work life rhythm? What's still challenges you? That's an interesting question because earlier today I was actually thinking about how... From how most people view it, I don't really have work-life balance. My whole life is built around the work, but it doesn't feel like work to me because I love it so much. Like, even when I'm having fun and I'm out fishing and I'm not recording anything, I'm not posting, I'm not emailing people, even that is tied into the work because when I'm out there, I have experiences that I can reference in my YouTube videos and talk about this time when this little kid ran up to me and asked me to teach him how to fish.

Then other moments where I'll be back at my house laying in bed and I'm like: 14:47

'I want to go back to my office. I want to keep making videos. I just love it so much.' Then incorporating my habits and my daily rhythm. I come to my office every single day without fail unless I have to be at home watching my siblings. But this used to be a challenge for me because this is especially going to be relevant for entrepreneurs. At the start, your family is going to question you a lot. They're going to think you're out of your mind. What do you mean you're not going to go and get a job down at the restaurant like everybody else did? What do you mean you're not going to go to college or do this or do that? Nothing wrong with those, obviously. But when you want to go and do something so different, a big challenge is going to be standing by it. Because if you fail, they're right. But if you win, you're right. But at the start, there are going to be a lot of moments where you're not making money, people aren't buying your product, people aren't listening to your YouTube video. There's going to be a lot of time in the month. But you have to believe even when everything rational and logical would say give up. Because if you're only getting one view on your YouTube videos, rationally it would make sense to give up. If no one's buying your product, rationally it would make sense to give up. But you have to be a bit, I don't want to use the word delusional, but you... have to have faith, even when it makes sense for you to not believe. But I can't remember where exactly, but it's verse in there that says, "As you believe, it will be done onto you." So if you can believe in your vision and in your goals when nobody else does, eventually it'll all pay off. And now it has. I'm, you know, obviously the youngest person at this office building. People are often shocked by that. They're like, 'How in the world did you get this at 19?' I'm like, 'Well you know, at 15 I started and then at 17 I realized, okay, I should start, you know, upgrading things. At 18, I saved up money and I used my tax refunds to get an office and now I'm 19 and I have an office.' How'd I pull it off? Faith, belief, and kept showing up and putting it in the work. Hmm, yeah, that's good. That's really good. listening or watching is ready to stop hiding, stop pretending and start becoming, what would you say to them, Lawrence? What truth do they most need to hear today? It starts when you start. So. uh We're ready to take action. We're ready to stop hiding. We're ready to get out there. You're ready to start that business that you've been thinking about for years. You're ready to start going to the gym. You're ready to go and get married and get a girlfriend or wife, whatever. It starts when you start because if you don't take the action, it won't happen. So the first thing you need to do is you're going to be nervous, you're going to be afraid, it's your first day at the gym, it's your first time approaching that girl you think is cute, it's your first time starting a business, it's your first time doing anything. You have to power through the nervousness because those nerves are just excitement in disguise. And your brain is like a giant safety mechanism. From your brain perspective, it's safe to play it small because when you play small, you're not a big target. You're not a big target for judgment and criticism and people only trying to come after you for your money or all these things your brain is going to come up with. You have to power through it. And eventually you're going to take a step like'I went to the gym for the first time today. Nobody stared at me. So that means people aren't going to judge me as much.' You're still nervous, you're still afraid, but the next day you go and you're a little bit more confident and a little bit more confident and a little bit more confident. And eventually you go to the gym and even when people do look at you, you don't care because you're used to this. You're comfortable. In the same way, you start a business and you're like,'Man, how in the world do I file an LLC? This is so hard. This is so difficult. How do I get a custom email domain? How do I make a website? All these things are so challenging.' But eventually you'll get comfortable with it and it just becomes your normal thing. It just becomes normal to you. So the advice I would give that person who you're ready to stop playing it small, you want to go take big action, you want to achieve things. Start. You don't need to start at the finish line. You just need to start. Go to the gym for 10 minutes. Go read five pages of a book. Apply to college. Do whatever you need to do. Simply start wherever you are. Maybe you can't do those crazy workouts you see on Instagram. Do one push-up. Maybe you can't do one push-up. Jog for five minutes. Maybe you can't do that. Stand up and sit back down. Maybe you don't have legs. Roll yourself around and build up arm strength. Figure out what you can do, where you are, and just start. That's great. That's such a good advice, Lawrence. Wow. Where can people to stay connected with you, Lawrence, and hear more of your daily voice? Maybe get your books and your work. you. So, easiest ways to find me. All of my social media pages, YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok, "Lawrence C. Empowers" My website, if you would like to either view that or directly get in contact with me for podcast interviews or speaking engagements, Lawrence C. Well, it's lawrence@lawrencecharris.com That is my email address. My books, the most convenient way to get it is Amazon. So, to make it simple for you, if you type Lawrence C. Harris into Google, the entire first three pages will be all of that. It will be my social media pages, my website, my Amazon. But if you want to contact me for podcast bookings, speaking engagements, or anything that... is related to products, because eventually it's not done yet, but I will be making a community where for a monthly subscription there will be exclusive content, one-on-one call with me, group coaching sessions, it's going to be fantastic. And if you're interested in the pre-order for that, you can email me for it. Lawrence at laurenceeharris.com. That's That's so encouraging and inspiring. Do you have any final thought or some last word you want to share with our listeners and viewers? The last word I would give is... Believe in the dream even if the dream seems impossible because once you do it It'll become possible. Like if you can, if you can dream it and you can see it in your head and you can mentally picture yourself there, you can make it happen Because you're gonna have a lot of people judge you I sure did. When I was in high school, a lot of people judged me for my videos, my content, and my ideas. But now that it's all coming together, I run into some of them and they're in awe. It's like they had to kind of eat their words. So just remember, believe in yourself. As cliche as it sounds, if you can believe it and you can see it mentally, you can achieve it. Wow, this has been such an experience to have you on the podcast, Lawrence, and to hear you speaking and getting, yeah, learning from your wisdom, I would say. So... even in your age, I mean, wow. So it's really great. Thank you, Lawrence. Thank you. I really appreciate it. So, You viewers and listeners, something inside you stirred during this conversation, me and Lawrence had, felt seen or a little more whole, don't ignore that. Follow Lawrence, read his words, watch his reels, let his voice help you find your own. And if you're looking for a space where courage meets clarity, where faith meets purpose, and where your story can finally start making sense, then subscribe to Life Leadership Connected or listen to our next podcast. This isn't just a podcast, it's a movement and you belong here. So my name is David Dahlén D'Cruz and this is the Life Leadership Connected Podcast."We empower your journey." So until next time we meet, bye-bye.