Harnessing Courage: Laura Bratton on Grit, Gratitude & Growing Through Change

In this episode of The Self-Help Podcast, Deepali sits down with Laura Bratton — motivational speaker, author of Harnessing Courage, and a woman whose journey redefines what inner strength truly means.

Laura lost most of her sight as a young child, but what she gained along the way has shaped her entire life’s purpose. She brings a rare blend of candor, humility, and hard-earned wisdom as she shares what it really means to navigate profound change while staying anchored in hope, courage, and deep gratitude.

Together, Deepali and Laura explore how resilience is not just about “pushing through,” but about embracing vulnerability, honoring the emotional process, and choosing a mindset that moves you forward — even on days when you can’t see the next step clearly.

Throughout the conversation, Laura offers grounded, actionable tools for anyone navigating their own season of transition — whether it's health, identity, motherhood, career, or unexpected loss. Her insights on grit and gratitude are both deeply human and instantly applicable.

💡 What You’ll Learn in This Episode

• Why grit isn’t just toughness
• The real power of gratitude
• Navigating big life changes with intention
• How leaders, parents, teams, and families can use gratitude to deepen connection
•How to stay rooted when the familiar parts of your life fall away

🔗 Connect with Laura

Website, book, and resources from Laura Bratton: 

https://www.laurabratton.com/

Follow her work on leadership, resilience, and courageous living

https://www.linkedin.com/in/laura-bratton-speaking/

Deepali Nagrani- Podmatch Affiliate Link
🎙️✨ Let’s Tell Stories That Whisper “Me Too” — Together. Are you a speaker, storyteller, expert,

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Transcript

A Shock That Changes Everything

SPEAKER_02 0:00

So, have you ever had a moment in your life where the ground beneath you suddenly shifted so violently, so unexpectedly that you knew nothing would ever look the same again? And here's the edgy question. When life takes something from you that you never imagined losing, who do you become next? Today, in this episode, we are talking to someone who had the answer to that question long before most of us even knew what resilience meant. Hi everybody, I am Dipali. I am an immigrant, storyteller, speaker, mom, and your host of this show, The Self-Help Podcast with me. I moved from India to Victoria, Canada in 2022. Became a new mom in 2024, and I have always been deeply drawn to conversations that are human, that are honest, and filled with courage. This show was born from my lifelong love for speaking, writing, and just making sense of my inner world, and from my belief that our hardest chapters often shape our greatest stories. Here on the podcast, we explore what it means to heal, grow, and to rise, even when life completely surprises us or at times even shocks us. Welcome to the Self-Hulk Podcast with me. This is the space where we explore stories of resilience, transformation, and the mindset shifts that help us navigate life's most unexpected chapters. Every week I bring you real conversations with real people who have turned adversity into the greatest teacher. And today's guest is truly extraordinary. Today, I'm joined by someone whose journey doesn't just inspire you, it really expands. At the age of nine, Laura Bratton was diagnosed with a degenerative eye disease and faced the unimaginable truth that she would soon lose her sight. What followed next, and over the next decade, she walked through the trauma, grief, and just emotional transitions of a world she could no longer see. But she refused to let darkness define her. She became the author of Harnessing Courage, a speaker, and the founder of Ubi Global, an organization dedicated to empowering people to rise through adversity with a lot of heart and a lot of grit and a lot of gratitude. Laura's story is not about blindness. It's about vision. A vision for courage, a vision for gratitude, and a vision for what's possible when life changes without your permission. Laura, I'm so honored and so grateful that you're here today. Welcome to the show. Thank you. I'm excited to connect. Thank you for the opportunity. Perfect. Laura, I want to begin right at the heart of it. When you first began losing a significant amount of sight, what was I mean that must have been incredibly hard, but what was going through your mind? What was that moment like?

SPEAKER_00 3:05

So even though I was diagnosed at nine, I didn't start losing a significant amount of vision until the teenage years. So that's when the emotional difficulty started. And for me, my instant reaction was denial. And what I mean by that is I was saying, oh, in the next few years, I'll get all my vision back. Oh, this is not permanent. Oh, I'm not going blind. I'm just losing some of my vision. Even though I didn't truly believe that, that was my survival mechanism. Once the denial wore off, it was that deep, deep, deep depression and anxiety of grieving what I had lost and being so overwhelmed of the fear of the future.

SPEAKER_02 4:04

That must have been so so so hard, and I hope no one really ever is in that position to even go through that. Thank you so much for sharing that. Yeah, and I I want to say I can only imagine, but I can't imagine the emotional weight of that realization. And you said your initial reaction was denial, right? Like not believing that and yet the strength running through your story is palpable. So losing a sense a very important one, especially at such a young age, is really a form of grief that most people never even think about.

SPEAKER_00 4:42

Right, right.

SPEAKER_02 4:44

Yeah, I want to ask you, Laura, what did the grieving process look like for you at the beginning of your blindness?

Teen Grief, Depression, And Anxiety

SPEAKER_00 4:51

It looked like deep, deep, deep depression, and that manifested in just pure exhaustion. Just mental, physical exhaustion. I mean, I could sleep 12 hours a day, and it was like I had been asleep for 30 minutes. Just I was always exhausted. My body felt really, really, really extremely heavy and just like weighted down. And at the same time, the grief also looked like extreme anxiety. And for me, the way the anxiety manifested was that tightness in the chest that a lot of people describe as like an elephant sitting on my chest. Like you can't get that next breath. And it looked so it looked like the shortness of breath, but it also looked like just that constant nausea feeling. And for me, I can always distinguish the difference between I'm physically sick, getting ready to throw up nausea versus the anxious nausea. I can't really describe the difference, but I can just deeply feel it in my body. So the grief just looked like depression, anxiety, and just intense, intense sadness.

SPEAKER_02 6:15

Yeah, I mean, that must have been so hard, and especially like a teenager when you're just trying to make sense of everything. Right. I know, I know the first reaction can be, but why me?

SPEAKER_00 6:26

Right. For me, my reaction was, I do not have the strength for this.

SPEAKER_01 6:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:32

It wasn't instantly the anger, why me? It was the deep sadness of I don't have the strength to live. Like, I don't have the strength to do this. Because not only was I grieving my vision loss, I was grieving those normal teenage experiences, getting your driver's license, having your first job. You know, like so many of my friends, their first job was a waitress. And I was like, oh my gosh, I just want to be a waitress. Like, you know, just all those normal markers of a teenager, I wasn't able to do. So I was losing independence as my friends were gaining independence. So I was grieving that at the same time I was grieving my vision.

SPEAKER_02 7:17

My god. And for you, it would have felt like every familiar marker had been reset somehow.

SPEAKER_00 7:24

That's a perfect word. I haven't thought about that word, but that is absolutely perfect. That's exactly what it was like. It's like my life was being reset when everyone else around me was hitting the normal markers.

SPEAKER_02 7:36

Right. Yeah, and and that can in itself be a very taxing feeling. Like having gone through some hard chapters of my life, like nothing compares to your struggle, but I know how you feel in that moment. You feel alone, you feel isolated, you feel like your world is crashing down, and you know, you just contemplate whether or not you have it in you to just make it to the next day.

SPEAKER_00 7:59

Literally, very literally, yes.

SPEAKER_02 8:02

And like you just gotta remind yourself one foot in front of the next, one step at a time. Right. And yeah, Laura, I know, and having gone through my own fair share of shares of struggles and challenges, I do recognize the fact that the fact that we're talking about it is a part of privilege, but when you actually live in those moments, it is nerve-wracking, right? Like you don't There's no privilege, right? None, none. We don't want to be that beneficiary. Right. Okay, yeah. So thanks for uh thanks for sharing your deeply personal story, Laura. And I appreciate how honestly you speak about the emotional journey, and grief isn't linear, healing isn't linear, and your story gives so many of us, including me and a lot of people, just permission to feel what they're feeling, and that it is okay.

Healing Is Not Linear

SPEAKER_00 8:49

Yes, thank you. Thank you for saying that that healing is not linear. Because in my own experience, it's the beginning, I thought healing would be linear, right? Like, oh, I do prayer, oh I do energy work, oh I do all these healistic, holistic practices, so I'm gonna heal quickly and easily, right? So when healing wasn't linear, I thought something was wrong with me. I thought I was grieving in a wrong way. I thought that somehow I was weak or I wasn't doing the healing process correctly because it wasn't linear. So thank you, thank you, thank you for saying that. Because I want to make that point very, very clear for anyone going through the healing process, it a hundred percent is not linear, and that's normalcy. That's just part of being human. It doesn't mean you're less than, it doesn't mean you're not going through the healing process, it's not linear.

SPEAKER_02 9:50

Yeah. If if one thing is constant, it is this, it's not linear. And yeah, and when you're in that moment, in those, you know, phases of struggle, you'd be like, okay, but everything looks okay for today, tomorrow, and then suddenly maybe a thought or like some restriction or inability or you know, whatever that trigger is for you, or you know, for someone else going through that, and everything's again coming crashing down at you, and you're like, okay, but my god, I thought I was healed then, like, there's no looking back from here. But no, life teaches you in unexpected places and in unexpected ways. So, yeah, 100% everything but linear. Yeah, and Dora, you I know you talk a lot about uh grit and um gratitude. I mean, not the glamorous one motivational poster kind, but the real raw, messy daily grit, right? So while you were transitioning to a new way of being and new way of living, during those difficult moments, how did grit become a source of strength for you?

Redefining Grit: Feel And Move Forward

SPEAKER_00 10:51

So, first, I want to talk about what I originally thought grit was, to then that'll make more clearly what my understanding of grit is now. So originally when I was in high school, I thought grit meant getting over it, sweeping out of the rug, not feeling my feelings, somehow being strong, just not showing any sadness, anger, panic, any of those other emotions. What I realize grit is, is it's the power, and I learned this through Dogger Angela Duckworth's work, is the power of acknowledging our feelings, validating our feelings, and still choosing to move forward. So, a real-world practical example of what that looked like in my life in those high school years, the way that I began to learn grit was learning to take every day moment by moment. So, as I mentioned, when I was in that deep panic, I was so fearful of the future. How would this all work out? And that was my fear. That I was overwhelmed by that fear. And so my parents would remind me, Laura, all we have to do is focus on today. Getting up, eating breakfast, getting to school on time, that's accomplishment for the day. So they taught me the grit by teaching me to take life moment by moment, day by day, rather than being overwhelmed with a fear of the future. And the other major part of that grit I had to learn was yes, I'm feeling anxious, I feel that anxiety, and I still choose to move forward. So grit is not waiting until we feel all good and happy and joyful, and then moving forward. It's acknowledging that difficulty and moving forward even in the difficulty.

SPEAKER_02 12:45

That's such a profound thing that you said. And I was also laughing when you laughed when you said it's not moving when you feel like all fancy and nice, because if that's the case, then I think most of us would be waiting, or at least I'd be waiting for the rest of my life because there are no background music and there's no defining moment, right? You know, 100%. Yeah, yeah. I think you have to somehow feel the feeling and still show up and feel the fear and yet decide to do it. It is unfortunately the hard road, but it is what it is, right? Yes, yeah. Thanks, thanks for that, Laura. And uh, I love that. I love how you said what you used to think about grit and now how you perceive it, right? So it's not something steady, not loud, not dramatic, just quietly there, but very, very powerful. Right. Also, I know alongside grit, you choose gratitude. I chose gratitude too every single moment of my life, which is incredible because gratitude feels almost impossible when life is falling apart. So, how is gratitude a source of strength? And how did you find it, really?

Choosing Gratitude Without Minimizing Pain

SPEAKER_00 13:50

So, I want to talk about how I found it, and then that'll make sense. What is my strength? So I I promise I did not woke up one day and say, gosh, I'm being so grateful. Like, I recommend this blindness thing. This is great. Everyone in the world should try this, right? A mentor of mine at the end of high school said to me one day, Laura, I want you to start developing a mindset of gratitude. And I want you to begin by every day writing down three either people, situations from the day, perspectives that you're grateful for. And as she said that, my instant reaction in my head in my mind was that's not a good idea. Like, I have nothing to be grateful for. You're a bad mentor, right? And yeah, exactly. Like, I have nothing to be grateful for. You try losing your sight and let me know if you're grateful. But of course, I just said, okay, thank you. I'll work on that. And my plan was to give her a blank sheet of paper to show her here's what I had to be grateful for. Nothing, right? So only in my stubbornness did I try the gratitude, and the one day became three days, and the three days became a week, and a week became a month. And what I realized was she was teaching me to be grateful for the moments, the people, the situations that helped me navigate through life, not being grateful for everything, always walking around saying thank you and being happy and positive. She wasn't trying to use gratitude to minimize my other feelings. Rather, she was teaching me gratitude to be grateful for what I do have in life. So, a very, very practical example of what that looked like in my real world, just as I gave the examples of my parents teaching me to live moment by moment, she wasn't teaching me to wake up and say, gosh, I'm grateful for the blindness. She was teaching me to say, wake up and say, I'm grateful that in this blindness, I have parents that are teaching me to live moment by moment.

SPEAKER_02 16:14

Wow, that's such a shift there, right? It's a reframe.

SPEAKER_00 16:18

It's a reframe. It's a hundred percent reframe.

SPEAKER_02 16:21

Yeah, yeah. And it's also a very powerful reminder for me. It's like gratitude doesn't erase pain, but it can still sit beside it, and you know, sometimes it's just enough to keep us going. And a very dear friend of mine, I'm just reminded of this, so I just want to say it here. She once, like I was going through something and she was just normally casually speaking to me, and she said, Dibali, there are still a million things working right for you than not working right for you. And my God, Laura, I was I I kid you not, and no exaggeration, I was a different person. Come next morning. I was like, wow, that like she literally changed my thinking, right?

SPEAKER_00 17:00

That is a brilliant because again, that's a refrain. That is the perfect, perfect example of what I mean. Gratitude does. And so for my situation, yes, rather than me focused on, gosh, you know, I don't have the strength to just find this thing, to think about how much my body's doing right. Yeah, thank you, thank you, thank you for sharing that. That is a beautiful reframe.

SPEAKER_02 17:25

And I often remind myself, in fact, I have a note written on my fridge that there are a million things working for me that are not working for me. Because when life gets busy and life gets tough, then I'm like, oh, but you know, I just start to get mad and upset and cranky. So we all need those reminders, don't we?

SPEAKER_00 17:41

Always, and thank you for saying that because that's so true. We get laser focused on what's going wrong.

SPEAKER_02 17:47

Yeah, yeah, right, yeah, and just only focused on the negative, and you know, then the law of attraction works, and then one thing after the other, one thing after the other, and then it it takes some energy and will part to say no, I'm just gonna come out of that rut and look things differently. Yes, yeah, because when you look things differently, the things you look at change. Change. And your story is a great reminder of it. So wonderful. It's amazing that healing isn't just one moment, it's a collection of these teeny tiny ones, right? Some of the common examples and shared stories that we have, right? Like few reminders along the way doesn't hurt anybody.

SPEAKER_00 18:22

Right, right. And and I also want to point out, yes, you know, I've been doing this healing journey for years and years, yet you and I sharing these examples are so deeply healing. You know? I was just thinking that where you yeah, the healing never stops, right? Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 18:42

Even in this moment, while we're recording. Yes, yeah, right, yeah, yeah. And these are very like validating feelings, like not in a negative way, but like validating in the sense that okay, we all feel like that, and it's possible to see your way out of it, right? Right instead of being yeah, instead of being stuck. Okay, great. And was there a specific moment, Laura, or even a quiet shift when you started to move, or you know, I know you were talking about your mentor and how your parents made you learn to embrace this, but like how did that shift happen? When when was that one day where you thought, maybe I'm doing okay, versus what I was doing before?

The Guide Dog Moment And Self-Belief

SPEAKER_00 19:21

Great question. And the answer to that is both. There's one specific moment that I want to share, and then, but also it was a series of a million small moments that led up to this one moment. So I don't want to paint the picture that there's this one grand moment and ta da. You know, but it was also a bunch of small moments that led up to the moment. And that moment was I got my first guide dog in between high school and college, those few months in between high school and college. And so to receive the guide dog, I had to go to guide dog school. School in San Francisco for a month. And so you're there for a few days. And then on about the fourth day, you receive your guide dog. So it was a Wednesday afternoon. I was sitting on my bed. I was 3,000 miles away from home, all alone, 18 years old. And any minute, you know, my trainer was going to knock on the door and come in the room with this guide dog that would now be my eyes. I vividly remember sitting there on that bed waiting for the trainer to bring me the guide dog. And that was the moment where I just said, hey, self, life has been really, really hard. Obviously, I've had to adjust to life without sight. I wasn't expecting. No one predicted. No one knew what was going to happen. I've had incredible support. Now it's my choice to choose. My choice to choose to believe in myself, to believe that I'm enough, to begin the process of building that self-confidence. So that was a very pivotal moment that I could then accept that choice of healing for myself. But again, I want to make it very, very clear. That moment would not have happened unless the million small moments that led up to that one major moment.

SPEAKER_02 21:26

And yeah, and isn't like there could be a moment of enlightenment, but like all these small little big breakthroughs that in that moment we don't realize. But in hindsight, look back, you're like, oh my god, that was a game changer. So thankful, yeah, for your honesty. And it isn't just one moment, as you said, it's a collection of all these small ones. So, Laura, today, after everything that you've lived through, survived, and built, right? You have a successful, incredible speaking career. In fact, just before this, I was going through your website and I really loved it. Looking through some of your talks, uh, and I saw you were also on the TED very platform. I hope and pray to be on TED one day. And I'm just putting it out there because you know, maybe the universe can help it happen. Okay, why not? So, how do you see the world now, Laura?

SPEAKER_00 22:15

Now I see the world with my the mindset of resiliency. Because what life the reason I say that, what life has taught me is that it's is what's constant is the change. There's a lot of joy, there's a lot of laughter, and there's also a lot of pain and difficulty and loss and suffering, and we really aren't prepared for either moment, right? The depths of the joy or the depths of the pain. So, what life has taught me is developing that mindset of resiliency helps me to navigate through both the joy and the pain, the suffering.

SPEAKER_02 23:00

So, so it's about mindset, right? It's all about mindset, it's a hundred percent from my perspective and my life experience is one hundred percent all about perspective of firm mindset, and your mindset is a gift, it's not just all the listeners to me, but really too anyone who knows you or listens to you, or anyone really at this point navigating through their own storms, maybe some illness, heartbreak, job loss, migration, it could be anything, right? So, resilience and mindset are the main pillars of it.

Naming Non-Death Loss And Validating Pain

SPEAKER_00 23:37

Uh 1000%, yes. And I'm so glad you mentioned the the heartbreak, the job loss. So, a lot of the people, most of the people I work with actually they are experiencing what's called non-death loss. So we often think of grief as a death of a human, and then we can grieve. But I won't be able to understand when we lose a job, there's a deep sense of grief. When we have a heartbreak of any type of relationship, that's a deep sense of grief. So I don't want anyone listening to minimize their experience.

SPEAKER_02 24:19

Or reduce their pain, right? Like to reduce the pain, yeah, perhaps and and and yeah, and and that's why Laura, I think it's very important to be mindful of how sometimes we're offering sympathy or you know, empathy, if I may, to people around us who are going through any such uncertain period in their life, right? Because you don't want to say, okay, okay, let's brush it off and let's move on. You just lost a job, or you know, that guy was not right for you. You anyway, you were always fighting, move on. I mean, yeah, you know how this conversation. I mean, it is important if the if the guy was a joke and you move on, but you know what I'm trying to say, right? Okay, okay, so you had this cancer. Okay, maybe you didn't have the life-threatening cancer, so it's okay, just brush it off and move on. No, no, the pain is very validating, right? It is important that we allow people to be themselves and you know just unfold with their pain in whatever way, vulnerability, and experience that they want to. And it's all different, it's relative, it's like you know, I'm not trying to draw any line of comparison, but it is very, very important to sit and be with your pain. So you remember that old Mario Brothers, like it would haunt you and chase you, haunt you and chase you, and you do the following, which is to turn around. And and that is the same way with your fear, same way with your pain. Like, if you start running away from them, oh my god, with all honesty, they start running towards you. Yeah, that's a funny, yeah, yeah.

Turning Toward Anxiety And Acceptance

SPEAKER_00 25:48

And what I've found is that what you're saying that what it instantly makes me think of is for so long, that was my mental strategy. Run away from the pain. Same Laura saying, But once I realized to embrace the pain, it actually went away quicker. I'll never forget when a therapist told me, just turn towards your anxiety. And I looked at her like she had lost her mind. What are you talking about? You don't need to be a therapist anymore, right? Like I'm paying you for this advice because I thought, oh my gosh, it's gonna swallow me whole. I'm never gonna turn. So I went home, and again, out of my stubbornness, I turned towards the anxiety, and she was a hundred percent right. It slowly decreased when I acknowledged it was there, when I acknowledge it was real, when I acknowledge how it felt in my body.

SPEAKER_02 26:47

Yeah, instead of fighting it, right? So acknowledge it.

SPEAKER_00 26:50

Instead of fighting or resisting.

SPEAKER_02 26:52

Yeah, yeah. And I feel like, I mean, often tough for most people most times, but it is important to have a certain level of acceptance in what you're going through. Yes, and to, and I know it it is easier said than done. I mean, I have gone through, I think, uh, deep dark moments myself to even realize and say this and have this awareness. It is very important for you to sit with your pain and grief and then see the world in a different light. Yes, 100%, and that changes you. And if you start running away from it, okay, one one day sooner or later it will catch up to you. And you don't want to have that have that happen. That's the last thing, right?

SPEAKER_00 27:32

Because when it catches up to you, it's so much worse, it's so much bigger, right?

SPEAKER_02 27:37

Yeah, it's so so wonderful. Speaking of your book, Laura, I know your book is called Harnessing Courage, which is such a perfect title. So I have to ask you, how do you personally define being courageous? And like, how did when did you start writing the book? And how did the seed of the idea come to you?

Writing Harnessing Courage As A Resource

SPEAKER_00 27:56

So great question. I ask myself that every day, like, oh my gosh, how in the world did I write that? Because it was such a healing and painful experience. And what I mean by that is the seed of it came when so many people would say to me, You have to write your story. Your story is so unique, you have to write it down. And this circles back to everything we've been talking about. I resisted. No, I don't want to write a book, I'm not a writer. Resist, resist, resist. And finally, I embraced the idea. And in one week, I had three mentors like on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, all call me and say, When are you getting started? I'm holding you accountable. And so when three people did that three days in a row, I was like, Okay, I'll start, it's time. And I share that to say, when I started the writing process, it was so deeply healing. So again, that just goes to show I resisted for years and years and years because I thought the book process was just going to be too hard. Yet when I started to write it, it was deeply healing to write my story out. And the whole purpose of the book, the reason that I did write it all out was to tell my story in such a way that it could be a resource for other people. So I didn't tell it in a way of like, hey, this is an autobiography, read this about me and be impressed. I wrote it in a way to say, hey, this is my story. These are the resources of grit and gratitude I use. Now go use grit and go use gratitude as you experience your things. So if I had to sum up in one phrase, the book is a resource of empowerment.

SPEAKER_02 29:46

That's uh beautiful. And we can put the link and you know details about your website and books, everything down in the show notes below, and we can talk in detail about it. And that definition that you gave is so grounding and just so beautifully human, right? And yeah, cheers on you. So, what's your most heartfelt advice to someone listening right now? I know we talked about people navigating through the different non-death related grief, right? Through loss, change, migration, a diagnosis, heartbreak, or you know, a life transition that they never saw coming. So, what's your most heartfelt advice? Because it can be really, really tough to see the light when life gets dark. So, what's your advice here?

You Are Enough And Remember Your Strength

SPEAKER_00 30:29

My main advice is in the loss, in the transition, whether it was expected or not expected, in that anxiety, in all the emotions that you'll feel, trust that you're enough. And I say that because in my own experience, I didn't believe I was enough. I believe that the loss, the change, the severity of the grief made me less than. It made me not enough. So I just can't stress enough to believe that you're enough. And if you can't believe that you're enough right there, right now, right here in this moment, hear the two of us saying it to you that we believe and know just because of the beauty of your humanity, you are enough. Even despite the change, the loss, the difficulty.

SPEAKER_02 31:30

Wow, yeah. Knowing that you're enough, and we often forget that. I forget that too, right? Like if there's any difficult situation manifesting, or like I anticipate, I start losing and worrying and becoming fearful and anxious. And then I remind myself, sometimes, much to my dislike, that I have done it today, even though I I don't feel ready for what's coming up and next. So it's important to remind us of our own strengths.

SPEAKER_00 31:56

And I'm I'm thank you for saying that because what that merely made me think of, and the gift that you just gave was remember the strength you've already had.

SPEAKER_02 32:07

Yes, precisely it's within you. You like you don't have you just have to come home to your own self. You don't have to go looking for approvals and validation. Though in that moment we often do, right? We start right talking and discussing with our friends and partners and family, and that's perfect. I mean, there's nothing wrong in doing that, but also just trying to make sense within you to collect yourself because you sure know the answers lie within. Right, right.

SPEAKER_00 32:32

Because you've already been through hard, difficult situations before.

Breaking Into Speaking And Coaching

SPEAKER_02 32:36

Yeah, and so that's so uh powerful and also like heartfelt advice at the same time, Laura. And I know you've built a successful speaking and also the coaching career, I suppose, you know, right from the scratch and you're thriving in it. So, and this is really a question for me, not for my listening audience. I'm curious to see this is the path I want to go down the road. I'm passionate about it. So, how did you begin doing this? And like uh, what were the transition points like? And what would what would you advise to someone like me who's just starting out in this space?

SPEAKER_00 33:08

For the speaking and coaching? Yeah, yeah. So, my first biggest advice would be what's your passion? What's driving the desire to speak and coach? And here's the reason I say that. I know that that my passion, my drive to speak and coach is because I've received such incredible support, I wanted to go and to also be that support in the world. I wanted to be that support to other people. So that is my constant driver when things get difficult, right? When this speaking doesn't go as planned, when you have an engagement and then it gets pulled out from you when you're not expecting it. When things get difficult and hard, you constantly have that foundation to fall back on. I'm doing this because this is my passion, because this is my why, this is my life work. So to really be solid in the reason that you're going into the speaking and the coaching, that'll keep you grounded in all the ups and downs of the business.

SPEAKER_02 34:19

Yeah, and will help me sail through it. Yeah. So from what I sense, is you're trying to say why behind the what.

SPEAKER_00 34:26

So, like a thousand percent.

Where To Find Laura And Closing Wisdom

SPEAKER_02 34:28

Yeah, I think to myself, and like I'm starting to mentally process my buy. I mean, I do have my buy, that's why I'm passionate about it, and brings me brings me so much joy. But yeah, thanks for that honest and very relatable advice. So thank you. Thank you for saying that. And so, Laura, tell us about um where can people find you and work with you and what kind of uh coaching of services you provide, and what are the speaking engagements that you want to be on so that people can find you and reach out.

SPEAKER_00 34:59

So the best place is my website. So LauraBratton.com has all the information to get in touch with me, to connect, to learn about my speaking, to learn about the coaching, to purchase the book. Uh you can it's Amazon or anywhere books are sold, but specifically, if you buy it from the website, I can sign it and personally address it. Which I love, love, love doing. So, so absolutely you can check out everything on my website.

SPEAKER_02 35:27

Perfect, great, and I will be putting the link to Laura's um website, which is LauraBratton.com, in the show notes down below, so our listeners and readers can actually find you and connect with you. You I see you were also active on LinkedIn, so I'm gonna put the LinkedIn. Yeah, yeah, LinkedIn. Thank you there as well. Great, um, thank you. Thank you so much, Laura. That was a really powerful. I was the person who needed to hear you today, really. I mean, I know in my heart I needed to hear you today, and what a perfect timing. So thanks for sharing and thanks for doing all what you do with so much of heart and grit and gratitude, right? And I love your smile. I love the joy that you have while you were speaking. So it justifies everything that you write about yourself. Now, what is your parting, you know, closing note for our listeners today before we wrap this up?

SPEAKER_00 36:15

As you trust that you're enough, the part, the second part that I would love to give to other people is trust and lean on your support system. As we go through change, we need our support system, and that's healing, that's healthy. My perspective was I'm a weak, I can't do this on my own if I depend on support. And that was not accurate. That actually is a form of strength to lean on your support. So my parting words would be deeply lean on your support system because that's what they're there for. They want to support you, right? And it's not a weakness, it's a sign of strength and knowing and trusting that you're enough.

SPEAKER_02 37:05

Yeah. Oh my god, and that's so important, and I'm glad that you covered this because it feels so therapeutic to be surrounded by people that you loved, or even if you're not physically surrounded by them, maybe connecting with them over called FaceTime and video time. I know I live oceans across uh my parents, many, many thousand miles away. But every time I speak to them, I like I feel like nothing's wrong. Right, right. It makes complete and total sense. I'm just gonna go pick my son up from the daycare, and like I feel like there's a different degree of grounding that I feel when I give him a hug, and like he he would be playing in the classroom, Laura. And the moment he sees me, he'd be like, hi, he shouts like a hi, hi, and then he starts running. So, all of these moments remind me that life is so beautiful and so precious, and it's so important to lean on your support system. Like for some of us, it could be our kids, our friends, our parents, our mentors. I have a few mentors that still continue to be my support system. So it's important. And as you rightly said, we often consider asking for help as okay, maybe I'm weak. Why do I showcase my emotion? Why am I always coming like a crying biny baby? But no, it's it's your vulnerability that makes you strong. We don't think about it, but yeah.

SPEAKER_00 38:18

Yes, and what helped me make that mindset shift was when I finally realized when a friend, a family member comes to me and asks for support, I never, ever, ever had thought, oh, that's a weak person. Right? Like I instantly just support them however they need it. So once I realized that's exactly how they're viewing me, right? Like they're not saying, gosh, Laura's so weak, why shagging for support? They're saying, here's the support I can give her. So having that mindset shift was a game changer.

SPEAKER_02 38:54

Really, yeah. And thanks for seeing that. It kind of puts everything into a greater perspective of knowing your strength and who you are, and you can do strong things because you have done tough things that have made you strong, so you can do that now. But also really leaning into that love and connection and support and community. All of this will anchor you and help you move even farther. So thank you so much, Laura, for your time today. Your story is a beautiful reminder that even when the world goes dark, the human spirit still knows its way and it still knows how to reach for light.

SPEAKER_00 39:27

Thank you for your honesty platform and just creating this opportunity because these are conversations that are desperately needed. So thank you.

Share, Support, And Final Farewell

SPEAKER_02 39:36

Yeah, and and not a lot of us really talk about it. I mean, these are just like so heartfelt conversations. I really felt like it's a therapy for me. I mean, I'm walking out so fresh and so inspired to go back by son. But I'm genuinely so happy that I got to connect with you and I thoroughly, thoroughly enjoyed the conversation. Yeah. So Thanks for your honesty and your wisdom, and just for showing us that grit and gratitude are not just concepts, they can be your compass, they can become your lifelines. And to my listeners, if today's episode touched you, please share it with someone who needs a reminder of their own strength. In case you want to connect with Laura, I'll put all the details, her LinkedIn, and the website down below in the show notes. So please check it out. And yeah, thank you for listening today to the Self Help podcast with me, the Pali. Until next time, I'll see you. Bye bye.