S2 | E1: LauraAura — Stop Settling and Start Starting Over

On paper, everything looked perfect.
But deep down, it wasn’t.

In this episode, Laura Aura, keynote speaker and coach, shares what it was like to walk away from her 16-year career, trust her gut, set boundaries, and know her worth.

We also dive into that quiet inner voice, the fear of change, learning to say no, and finally putting yourself first.

Get to know more about LauraAura: https://lauraaura.com/

If you have loved today’s episode, please share this with a friend. ❤️

About Lara Portelli:

As a successful business owner, NLP Practitioner, Midlife Reset Mentor, acclaimed award-winning author, and seasoned professional, Lara understands the challenges of navigating careers, business, and personal growth. She now channels her expertise into mentoring women through midlife and into their bodacious second act, helping ambitious women step into their power and build success on their own terms.

Connect with Lara: https://www.laraportelli.com/

Transcript

Welcome And The Breaking Point

SPEAKER_01 0:24

Buckle up because this isn't your mother's midlife crisis. This is midlife unplugged. Hello and good morning, everybody, and welcome back to Midlife Unplugged the Fucker Is. I'm your host, Lara Portelli, and today we have the lovely Laura Aura, all the way from Pennsylvania in the United States of America. So, Laura, welcome. Welcome to the show. And I'm really happy and intrigued to unpack your life experience and some things that have been happening for you in life and got you to where you are today. And the first question, I guess, or I'd like to ask you is what's your fucking moment? What's got you to the point where you are today? And you we've talked about you've done several podcasts, and what got you to that point where where you are today, where you said that enough was enough in the life you were living at the time, that you weren't happy, and that uh where you are today?

SPEAKER_00 1:29

I think I've had a couple fucking moments, to be honest with you. But the one the one that comes to the front the fastest is when I decided to sell the business that I had built and ran for 16 years to leave the industry completely and start all over as a full-time public speaker and coach. So, long story short, I was my background is in graphic design. Um, I worked with small businesses for for many, many years, 20 years, and I loved that business. I thought I would do it until the day that I left this planet. Um, I loved it until I didn't, you know, I did everything that I wanted to, and then some um we had some great success, we had some great failures. But, you know, it just it was one of those things where I I lost the love for it. The zest went away, the excitement. I remember starting to wake up in the morning feeling dreadful about the work that I had to do. Um, clients were shifting around. I didn't want to add new clients, I stopped marketing my business, right? Like I was just noticing all these cues that something might be shifting. And and one of my biggest cues was I got asked to speak at a women's event, which normally I'm all in on, right? But they asked me to speak about branding. And I was like, I don't want to do that. I don't want to do that. And I turned it down, and that was like, okay, Laura, there's there's some introspective stuff going on here you really need to think about. Um, the biggest client that we had at the time, their contract was ending. I didn't want to replace them. And so it just it just kind of all came together in a moment where I was like, I have to make a decision here. Like, what am I gonna do? Am I gonna keep doing the thing that I know because I feel like that's what I should do? Or am I gonna let it all go? And am I gonna go after the thing that I really want to do, which is to speak and coach? I had already been speaking, I'd already been coaching, I already had the Gutsy podcast at that time, but I wasn't putting but like, I don't know, maybe 10 or 15% of my time and effort into it. And I was getting all boo-hoo-ey about why it wasn't working and why it wasn't taking off. And I was like, I'm in a fork in a road. What am I gonna do? And I had a I had a really good, ugly meltdown. I got very honest with myself. What do I actually want? I want to speak and coach. I decided to sell the agency that was in uh July of 2023. By that December, it was sold and I left the industry. So it happened very quickly, but I think when you're in alignment, I think that when you get very honest with yourself and then you take the action that backs it up, I think that things can happen very quickly. So that that's probably one of my recent fucking moments.

Trust Yourself And Slow Down

SPEAKER_01 4:12

I like that you must have known some because you've already had the podcast in play. So there must have been a little part of you that knew you want, as you were saying, you wanted to do the coaching uh and keynote speaking. However, you weren't giving it your you're giving it 10 or 15 percent. Um and that once you turned that you you listen to yourself and your instinct and your you know your your inner self, things started to turn around. And that's the next thing I'd like to talk to you about, Laura, or and ask you is the trust factor. You talk a lot about trust. And for myself, when I um when I was going through my, well, I'm still going through my midlife edit, as I call it, and pruning my garden and getting the weeds out. And uh, for a lot of women in our audience at home that uh will be listening to this episode, that's what it's about is listening to that innate wisdom that I could go on with this business that I've built for this amount of time, I could go on with this marriage that I gave my vows to, I could go on doing this, I could go on doing that, that we've talked about in you know, social expectation conditioning. But we find it a little bit hard, I find, as women, because we give, give, give, give so much. I know men do too, but to trust that wisdom in that and that innate voice. Would you agree with that?

SPEAKER_00 5:40

Oh, absolutely. I mean, so many women are are just they're conditioned to be everything for everyone else. And whether that's learned behavior, whether that's societal expectations, whether that's something that was modeled in your life, we're just taught to put ourselves on the back burner to make sure everything and everyone else is taken care of, to do things the right way, right? Follow this right path of life. And something really incredible happens around 50, where women just stop giving a fuck about that stuff. It's like I I've built my whole life around the expectations of others, and I'm gonna do it my way this time. I I'm no longer willing to settle. And a lot of that starts with listening to yourself. Like women don't even slow down long enough to hear themselves, to be able to trust it. Right? They're they're just they're they're going quickly, they're they're helping people, they're doing things, and I'm not saying helping people is bad, but it's like, at what point is it too much? Right? Where where do you fit into that equation? Is what I really want to ask you. And so we have to be willing to slow down long enough to even hear ourselves to be able to trust what that nudge or that feeling or that idea really is saying to you, because that trust is a is a cornerstone for the next breakthrough in your life. Right?

Money Mindset And Charging Your Worth

SPEAKER_01 7:02

I call it. Absolutely. Yeah, and for our listeners at home that you know maybe doing the ditches or have actually paused there for a second and went, hang on, this sounds me. Leave us something in in the box below in and tell us if this is you if hang on, I've got a little nudge like this, but I keep ignoring it. For me, it was I kept going on, well, this will do. This will do. And we hear it a lot, we hear it, it's starting to come into books and things, and you know, um around 50, things are changing for women. And the old model, I guess, where we're taught to shut up, put up. And the generation I was bought in was children and seen and not heard. The danger of that, of course, is when we we we don't speak, we we just end up not speaking at all and just get on and put up and shut up, and it's very dangerous. And if that's you, you know, for our listeners, let us know. Let us know if that's how you're feeling. The other thing, uh, Laura, is I like how you talk about when you found your uh you listened to your trust, you listen to your what you're going to do and move on and sell your business. And in your business, you talked about charging your worth. Because there's a lot of women in business that will look at a price of something and say, oh, that's outrageous. Um, I can't charge that. Uh, no one will pay that. All that self-talk we do to ourselves. Talk to us a little bit about that where you came to that idea that I'm charging what I'm worth. In in Australia, we say uh it might be everywhere in the world, but it's you know, I'm charging, um charging what it's worth and adding tax as well. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:50

You know, yeah. Yeah, that's saying it's such a it's such a unique journey. And you know, it also comes back to your relationship with money, what your upbringing and your belief system around money is. You know, for me, I had a lot, a lot, a lot of stuff to unpack and rewire around what kind of money I was allowed to have, or what money meant to me, or what it meant about me, right? So I grew up in a household where money is the root of all evil, and you know, money makes you feel like you're better than everybody else. And oh, it Lars up on a pedestal, and and she thinks she's this and she thinks she's that. And so I grew up with those beliefs that money was a bad thing, that if I had money, I was gonna be an asshole. Yeah, I mean, that's literally how I equated it. So charging my worth felt like such a distant concept of like who would I even be to charge money because that's gonna make me a bad person. Well, money doesn't make you a bad person, money amplifies who you already are. So we have to we have to start separating ourselves from the stories and the beliefs that we were brought up with and and rewrite what money is to me and what does it amplify in me? Like I am a giver, I want to pour back into my community, I want to help support more women, right? Like money amplifies the greatness in me. And when I'm just like like hiding behind it and undercharging, all I'm doing is wrecking my life. Like I've been through more financial challenges than I care to even count. And there was just this moment where I was like, I can't, I can't keep repeating this cycle. One, it's not my cycle, so I need to get out of it. But two, this is this choice, because that's what it is a choice to undercharge or not charge at all, is stopping me from fulfilling a purpose that I have, which is to help and guide and support more women. So I had to reframe and re-re look at the way that I looked at money, the way that I felt about money. I've had to repair my relationship with money, and now it's just a non-negotiable. Like money allows me to do the work that I was intended to do and help the people on this planet that I was intended to help. So I can't be undercharging. We don't have time for that anymore.

Boundaries Power Of No Practice

SPEAKER_01 11:13

I like that. And I I I can somewhat um concur with that growing up, you know, that uh don't be big headed about it, stay back in your lane. Uh, who do you think you are? Uh tall poppy syndrome, don't get above your station. Uh, you know, and it's a little bit um, you know, you know that you you can feel the calling, you know you need to help other people. And to do that, you need you need to have resources and to put back into your community, to put back into the world as a large. Uh, you know, to as you were saying, it's not about your relationship or my relationship with money, it's about what we've been told about money and repairing, and I like that. I like that it's repairing your relationship with money. I think that's fantastic. Because, yeah, if you have a crappy relationship with money, um how can you go on and charge your worth exactly? Laura, the other thing um I I want to talk to you about, and I love that you mention is the word no. No.

SPEAKER_00 12:27

And you're not I love I love a good no. It still makes me a little antsy sometimes, but it's antsy in my way. In antsy in the way, usually for me, it's paired with I don't want to rock the boat or upset somebody. Yeah, I don't want to let somebody down, I don't want to, you know, mess with somebody else's ideas or plans or whatever. But anytime I say yes when I know that I'm supposed to say no, again, that comes back to trusting yourself, which means slowing down long enough to listen to what that looks and feels like in your body. See, it's all connected here. Anytime I go against myself, I don't trust when I want to say no and I say yes instead. I always end up in a situation where I'm like, Yep, should have said no. I should have trusted that, right? Because something takes more time, it drains my energy, I'm I'm not in the right space or place. I, you know, like it's I just know that I needed to protect that time. And if I go against it, I know what's at stake. So I've gotten a lot better at saying no. I am not perfect at it, nor do I think anybody is. But the the the goal here is to get more comfortable holding your own boundaries, knowing when you need to say no, and then following through with that for yourself. That's so much what about midlife is really about, I think, is learning to come back to yourself, honoring yourself, your needs, your wants, your desires, your boundaries. It's like resetting the game and starting over, but from a fresh sleet.

SPEAKER_01 14:04

Yeah. I I agree with I think that it our true identity is within us. It's the we're born with it, so to speak. It's the uh what's the word I'm looking for? Uh the messages that we get sent on the road in life that no, that's not what girls do. That's not what you need to do. You know, and and to some degree, uh the education system, if only it taught us a little bit more about uh I know we all need to learn to read and write, and it's all very important, and I get all that. I was only thinking the other day though, a lot of what I learned in high school, you know, I think we could have It's gone.

SPEAKER_00 14:48

It's gone.

SPEAKER_01 14:49

Yeah, absolutely. And I think we could have done with learning some more life skills.

SPEAKER_00 14:55

Which is yeah, I mean, that's that's half the reason why uh the the coaching and the mentor industry exists because we were never taught those things. We weren't taught how to trust ourselves, we weren't taught how to listen, we weren't taught how to um make decisions, you know. We were taught how to read the pay, the the I can't even, I don't even remember what it's called, the the table of elements in science, you know what I mean? Like I okay, I know H2O is water, that's about the extent that it goes, you know, and you know, not discounting that there's some people that maybe science was their thing and that helped set them up for success, but why why not infuse life into school? Why not help people understand taxes or how to handle money better or how to have conversations, how to show up in relationships, how to how to trust yourself. You know, these are these are life skills that we're we're all on a journey and a path to figure figure out.

SPEAKER_01 15:58

Yes. And I like what you just said about the coaching and mentoring industry, that that's why it exists, because there are so many of us that don't, didn't trust ourselves. The other thing, Laura, we you talk about, and I I really like is teaching women to be bold, bold, and that um, you know, it's I I still catch myself at times too, like we were just talking about, just to rewind for a second, no. And when I say no, and then I tend to start to go, um no. No, but oh no, uh well, yeah. Yeah, no, I don't do that. It's no. Uh and then if I'm pushed a little bit, if I feel like giving a reason, I will. Uh but this bold, being bold, I've learned in my own experience, is I used to think it was arrogance, but it's not because I've struggled with that. Like, am I being arrogant? Like you were saying earlier, am I being an asshole here? Um, because the old Lara would have dropped everything she's doing, as you were saying before, said yes to my own detriment, ran someone around, whatever the the task was at the time, felt exhausted, taken three times longer than it needs to, because I was meant to be doing something else that I was doing when I got interrupted. And it's that boldness and not cheekiness, but I've learned myself, and tell me if you agree with this, and for our listeners um at home, it's about uh it's a little bit of practice, would you say?

SPEAKER_00 17:37

Oh, absolutely. I mean, when anytime you do anything new or that you're not used to, it takes practice. You're gonna flub it up a little bit, you know, it's it's gonna feel awkward. You might feel like you might say no and then go home and like hyperventilate a little bit because you're like, oh my gosh, what did I just do? You know what I mean? But it's it's not because it's wrong, it's because it's new, it's new to you. And the only way that the things that you know and do right now that are familiar that are like you can do with your eyes closed, the only reason that they're so comfortable and familiar is because at one point you were new at it and you stuck with it. And so the same, the same goes with trusting yourself, with saying no, with holding boundaries, with charging your worth, like any of these changes that you're making in this phase of your life, starting over in a relationship, it's not wrong because it's uncomfortable. It's uncomfortable because it's new. So if you give yourself that grace to say, okay, this feels a little bumpy, this feels a little awkward, this feels a little like, what am I doing? I mean, you're just simply at the beginning of a new journey. And if you stay on that journey, you're gonna get the results that you're looking for.

SPEAKER_01 18:48

And do you believe, Laura Aura, that uh there's more women today that we talk about, you know, when we we approach our 50 year mark that are listening? Like I can remember my grandmother was she just did what she thought was her due diligence until uh, you know, she was in her eighties and then eventually passed away. I don't recall her having any big epiphany or anything at 50. They just continued on with their their life as they knew. What do you think? I'm really curious that's what's changed. Like I'm a gen X woman. What do you think's changed? Do you think it's education? We've talked about education in the traditional sense at school, but do you think it's more education coming at us that we deserve more and more about coaching and learning as opposed to our grandmothers, so to speak?

SPEAKER_00 19:44

I think that the conversation has changed. I think that one we're actually talking about it. I mean, I'm a so I'm an elder millennial. Um, you're Gen X. You know, our parents and grandparents they weren't having these conversations, and if they were, nobody knew about it. You know, it was probably behind very closed doors with a very select few people. So the conversation has changed because the conversation is happening. And I think that that conversation is happening because people are being bold online. I mean, we have access to podcasts, to TV shows, to you know, social media accounts, to blogs, to substacks. I mean, we've got endless information. Sometimes it's a a bit much, but we have access to it. So we can have the conversation. And when one woman says, Hey, you know, talking about being bold, I think it's so incredibly bold when a woman is saying, Hey, I'm going through this, hey, I'm struggling with this, hey, I've been through this. It gives thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of other women access to information that otherwise they would have might maybe thought that they were losing their mind.

SPEAKER_01 20:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:58

Right? It it tells them, like, hey, I thought I was the only one. You're going through this too. Let's talk about it more. And so when we're having the conversation, we're taking the stigma away, we're taking the stereotype away, and we're coming up with solutions. Like, hey, we're all going through this together. Why don't we try this together? You know what I mean? So I think it's just become more normalized to talk and to find those solutions together instead of fighting it alone.

SPEAKER_01 21:27

I love that. And I think it's um a new age type of community. I know my grandmother, for instance, would be sitting around a kitchen table with her neighbors, maybe peeling potatoes and apples for, you know, dinner when the husband got home or whatever, my grandfather. And I can remember that. And that was their community, sitting around the table in their aprons. I can distinctly remember with the newspaper. That was their community. Yes, there wasn't any technology and what we've got today. And we've well although we've lost that kind of because women have gone out to work and different than what I'm not saying that women didn't work in those days, different kind of work. We now look for that community, as you were saying. I like how you've touched on that, that there's more information. Oh, I'm not the only one. Oh this, what I'm feeling internally, is really going against everything, or not against, but different to how I was brought up. And I'm really, really wanting to pursue this. And if I know for myself, I thought at one point, am I losing my mind? What's going on with me? What's what's this big change? I I'm not sure how I'm feeling about it. It's feeling a little bit different, viscerally, you know, like my body's changing, my mind's changing. But as you're saying, it's just that. Um, and I think as you were saying, about um there's a little bit too much information and things out there too. But I think what we're all craving a little bit more too is human, human connection and and it's out there, it's just different. And you say it's not wrong, it's not right, it's different. That's what I say to my mentoring clients. It's not wrong, it's not right, it's different. And we if we can just embrace different, embrace change, I think, you know, I think we can we've got the perfect whatever perfect is. But yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:20

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 23:22

All right. As we wind up today, Laura Aura, it's been a thank you. Thank you for your amazing insights into uh midlife for women. As we wrap up today, what's one non-negotiable for you now? We've talked about some non-negotiables that you've got, but one you wake up of a morning and you do your morning routine, and what's one non-negotiable for Laura or in in your life as an elder millennial that wouldn't have been say five years ago or 10 years ago?

SPEAKER_00 23:55

White space. Space where I don't have to be anything other than me. I'm not answering to anything, I'm not, I'm not on, I'm not activated, I'm not running, I'm not doing, I'm just simply being. And sometimes that's sitting on my couch drinking my cup of coffee by myself in the morning. Sometimes that's sitting on my porch when the sunshine is out and it's actually warm, um, and just looking around outside. You know, just having space in my day where I'm not having to be on and go and do, that has made such a huge difference for me and my stress and my anxiety and just like my overall well-being. It just allows me to have some breathroom and uh and I'm a lot better for it.

SPEAKER_01 24:40

I love that. White space. Everybody, can you hear that? White space. You don't have to go penciling it in your diary, you don't have to go, oh, I need white space today. As Laura Orra was just saying, sit on the porch and take a couple with you. Yeah. Pat your dog for 10 minutes. Just find something in your day that you don't have to be anything, you can just be. Wow. Love it, love it, love it. Thank you so much, Laura Aura. As we wrap up, another episode of Midlife Unplugged the Fucker Is. Thank you so much to Laura Aura again. Uh, and I can't wait to see you all on our next episode. Bye for now. That's a wrap of this episode of Midlife Unplugged the Fucker Is. It's today's conversation. It's something I can do. Subscribe, share it with your midlife crew, and keep the conversation going. I'm Laura Fortnite. See you next week with another four week.