Am I Enough?

Most of us have never said those words out loud. But we've lived with them. They’ve shown up in the chances we didn't take, the times we didn't speak up, and the version of ourselves we kept small just to feel safe.  

In this episode, Nicole Morris sits down with Coach, Trainer, and Author Loren Sanders to explore one of the quietest, most persistent narratives in the human experience: the belief that who you are, as you are, simply isn't enough.  

Together they trace where this belief comes from, how it seeps into our decisions, our relationships, and our sense of self — and what it looks like to interrupt it. Loren brings the perspective of someone who has not only studied this work but lived it, and her book Empathy is Not a Weakness: And Other Stories from the Edge is a testament to what becomes possible when we stop leading from lack.  

This is a conversation for anyone who has achieved something and still feels behind. Who has given everything and still questioned their worth.  

You are not alone in this. And you don't have to stay there. 

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📖 Ready to go deeper? Grab Nicole's book — It's Not Me, It's You — available now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, BAM, and everywhere books are sold.

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💌 Have a story to share or want to be a guest on a future season? Reach out at info@labelsbegone.com 

Transcript

SPEAKER_04 0:00

On this episode of the permission slip, I sit down with my coach, Lauren Sanders, and we talk through something that I continue to work through, and she's helped me along the way. The concept of whether or not I am enough. Listen in.

SPEAKER_03 0:18

Hello, hello, everybody. Welcome to the inaugural episode of The Permission Slip. I am your host, Nicole Lynn Morris. I am the founder of Labels Be Gone, the platform through which this entire um the podcast is going to be built. The booked, um, it's not me, it's you, take the labels off, which we'll talk about a little bit later, is built on. But the whole purpose of this platform, this show, this work that I'm doing is to really help people get comfortable seeing, finding, and seeing themselves being okay with what they find once they start pulling back the hood and really understanding themselves and really giving themselves permission to just be themselves. For my inaugural episode, every great coach has a coach. Some people out there refer to me as a coach. The people who know me, they call me coach. Every great coach has a coach. And I am so honored to have none other than my personal coach. Probably for what, the how long, Lauren? The last like one to two years almost? A little bit over a year, I think. She's joining us today because so here, here, here's what I did. Um, I'm gonna have Lauren give you all of her background, who she is, why you want to listen to her. You probably won't listen to her if you're listening to this, because I listen to her. But let me tell you where we got these topics from. I did some surveys alongside the work for the book, which um actually let me grab. I'm gonna grab the book now. Um, book is called It's Not Me, It's You. And so as I've been talking about the book on social media, I had asked some people some surveys and some questions. And so some of the questions I put out there, I asked was, what patterns are showing up in your life that you're ready to break? Where does this pattern impact you the most? And if you could give yourself permission to do one thing without guilt or fear, what would it be? And these were like just safe space responses that people submitted. And one thing the majority of the responses or a good majority of responses that I got back was that people were struggling with whether or not they are enough. And I definitely know it's one of the things that I conquer in my book and my little committee that used to meet in my head and kind of tell me what to do and what not to do. So I don't think there was anybody better to kick off this conversation and have it with me than the person who helped me work through some of my not enoughness. So, um, Lauren, I'll give it to you. Tell the people about yourself.

SPEAKER_02 2:49

Hi, I'm Lauren Sanders. I'm an ICF certified PCC coach. I like to work with leaders and individual contributors and also groups to help them work through some of the voices in their own head that tell them they're not enough. Or people who struggle with empathy and connecting with others, as well as people who struggle with people pleasing, other ways of chasing their tails.

SPEAKER_03 3:20

People pleasing is another big one for me. Like one of the labels on the book title is good girl. And good girl, I think like I don't want to disappoint people. I've always been the good girl, and that feeds right into people pleasing. Let's jump right in. Let's jump right into this conversation. Um, I think the first thing I want to talk about is like, where do people get the idea, right, that they're not enough? Like, where does that originate, like in your experience with them?

SPEAKER_02 3:56

When we're talking about the I'm not enough narrative or I'm too much narrative, it usually starts somewhere, probably in childhood, where the longing feels conditional. We learn that in order for me to be considered lovable or okay or safe or valued, depends on how useful I am to somebody else, or how impressive I am, or how quiet I am, or how perfect I am, or if I'm seen and not heard. But the story gets internalized somewhere along the way. And it it can happen at home, it can happen at school, it can happen in jobs, it's happening everywhere. But the story gets internalized so deeply that it becomes a part of someone's identity, and later they can't separate that story from who they really are. And when it shows up later in life, it looks a lot like over-preparing, people pleasing, second-guessing, sometimes emotional withdrawal, sometimes constantly scanning for what could go wrong when everything's going right. I'm just waiting for the next shoe to drop. And it becomes me trying to control everything in my life so that I'm in control of what I feel. And so this can't happen while internally I'm kind of falling apart.

SPEAKER_03 5:19

Why I feel attacked, Lauren. Not really attacking. No, I mean, but that that's literally like how I remember like one time, not one time, just kind of like over my series of like life, I was always the overachiever, right? I didn't like disappointing people. And so one of my first corporate jobs, right? I worked at a global firm. And I remember it's almost like I remember just always walking in and feeling like somebody was gonna find me out. Like I didn't belong. And so I would like say like crazy things, like trying to fit in with the people. Like I was stereotyping everybody. Like I remember thinking because I was around a group of like white men that I should try to figure out how to be into race cars and start talking about racing and stuff like that. Like it was so weird. But I literally realized that what I was doing to myself was I was seeing like this environment, this global premiere place, and thinking like, no way could this girl who had all this stuff happen to her in her life. And I wasn't, and the reality is I wasn't actually even thinking about the stuff that was happening to me. It was the messages that the stuff ingrained in me that I couldn't overcome. And it's like there's no way that I really belong in this space. Like somebody's gonna, some, some, something's gonna happen. Like, I don't belong here. And so I would be in like a series of like like overperforming in terms of the work output, but then sabotaging like the personal relationships. Like it was so hard for me to relate to people as human beings because I legitimately thought everybody was better than me in those environments. Actually, kind of almost every environment, actually now that I'm thinking about it. I literally thought everybody was like better than me, like everywhere that I went. And it was because I had internalized all this messaging from some of the things that happened, you know, from childhood and things reinforcing themselves. So all of that stuff that you just described, it's like spot is it's it's spot on, spot on with my story too.

SPEAKER_02 7:27

I think it's important, especially as as you talk about your book and your story. And I've I've done a lot of research on this as also a writer. And I'm currently working on something around imposter syndrome. But I think it's important for your audience to know that there's the depending on the research that you look at, about 82% of people suffer from this. So you're not alone. Welcome to the club. Uh, it's a big one. And it's important for you to recognize that it doesn't matter how much you achieve, because achievement can build credibility without building wholeness in you. And Nicole, I think you talk a lot about that in your book. If your sense of worth is tied to being exceptional, then every success is only temporary relief and it's not lasting change. You get all that applause, but that internal critic is still going in your head.

SPEAKER_03 8:19

And not only that, what I what happened to me was because the achievement was like, it was like the hit, right? It was like if, you know, if I was like a if I had an addiction, right? The achievement was the hit, but I was never able to stay in the, it was the dopamine, but I was never able to stay in the moment or to celebrate it or to sit still. I was always like, okay, now what's coming next? So not only was I not feeling like I was enough, but then I was also always chasing something. Like I wasn't satisfied either. I wasn't satisfied with what I had.

SPEAKER_02 9:01

I like to think about that as what it's costing you to do that to yourself. When you think about what it costs you, and we've talked about this a lot, right? It cost you rest, it costs you honesty, it costs you relationships, intimacy, it costs you creative risk. It's limited your ability to be a leader because when people lead from fear of exposure, they're not leading with clarity. And over time, it just turns into continuous performative behavior that is not sustainable and eventually you'll either burn out, collapse, or just blow up.

SPEAKER_03 9:48

Yep. So let's talk about this, right? Because the word performative, you and I, we know what it means to be performative, right? But I also feel like that's kind of like um almost like um a corporate word or something like that. What does performative mean to like an everyday person? Like, what if they don't even realize, like for me, for the longest, I didn't even realize I was being performative until I crashed, but I didn't even know to call it that. So, like, what does that mean to an everyday person for you to be like performing a version of because people are, you know, they're just they're doing what they do, right? They don't know. And so, like, what does it mean to for somebody to be like I'm performing a version of myself?

SPEAKER_02 10:33

I think it comes down to if you think of yourself in a play where you have to wear a costume and maybe even put on a mask, a lot of times people refer to performative as masking your true self. So showing up in a different way than you would show up authentically. And that is not sustainable for most people. And I think when you're especially a person of color in the environment that we live in today, a lot of times you probably feel the pressure. I have another client, we talk about this a lot as the tax on being not the same as everyone else. And sometimes we talk about it in terms of code switching. Yep. Where you have to change even the language or the way that you speak or the cadence of your voice so that you're gonna fit into a certain group of people, whether it be work or whether it be friends. And if you're somebody that I do a lot of coaching of students, even who are first generation American, and they talk about code switching from being a different person at school than they have to be at home, sometimes even to the extent of having to speak a different language at home at school, and then speaking a different way with their friends who might have their own slang or something else. It's never feeling like you can be authentically you because you're switching so much in each different group you're in that maybe you don't even know who you are anymore.

SPEAKER_03 12:10

I think that can be very, very true. And I'll tell you what else I learned about it. Like once I went through the process of taking all of my labels off, what I realized is that I put my labels on from a place of just being afraid of rejection and being afraid that I wasn't gonna be enough for somebody somewhere. And when I did the work to get comfortable in my own skin, they still code switch, but I don't code switch for the same reasons that I would code switch before. Before I would code switch because of fear, right? If I don't say this this way, if I don't have this tonality, if I don't have this inflection in my voice, if I don't put on this voice, then somebody's going to judge me. And then if they judge me, then I won't have access to something else that I want. Now, after having done the work of figuring out who I really want to be, I code switch with intention. And it is typically to impact the effectiveness of the message that I want to communicate. So it's like literally allowed me to change places, even within myself, within the own conversations that I was having in my head. Because a lot of times those conversations, they're in your head. It's like some things happen outside the world, right? But we have to be able to compartmentalize and get past that. But once I did that work, I show up now in places and I am mindful without internalizing the care for the judgment, if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_02 13:57

And I want your audience to hear you say again that you did the work. This was not something that you woke up one day and decided, I'm just not going to do this anymore. It actually took work and intention. And I think part of that is that for you and for everybody else, awareness is really the first interruption, but it's not the last. You have to get to a point where you start to notice what the trigger is. You start to recognize, hey, this, I'm telling myself this story. And then you chose, and you talk about this in your book a lot, you chose a response that wasn't dictated by your fear. And you started doing these small repeated acts of truth-telling to yourself that mattered more than just, you know, one moment you wake up in a dramatic breakthrough and everything changes. That's just not how this happens.

SPEAKER_00 14:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:47

So I think having people hear a little bit about how you actually did the work and took intention here to work through this is gonna matter.

SPEAKER_03 14:58

It does matter. And I'm gonna say, for people who are, if you're watching, and let me even because sometimes people, we don't even know that we have work to do, right? We are so used to forcing ourselves as square pegs into the round holes that everybody else needs us to be that like we don't even realize that this is what we're doing. I was watching something on CNN last night. CNN decided to interview, they showed an interview of trad wives. And I want to say trad wives, maybe in like Utah, who were maybe like in the Mormon church or something like that. But in any event, it was their ideals. They have been so conditioned around their faith that they did not even realize that they hadn't learned how to hear themselves anymore. And I think a lot of us people walk around not realizing that, like, we know it because it feels hard to do. But I'm gonna tell you that I had actually conditioned myself to just do the hard thing. Like some of us grew up or or adopted or whatever, this whole idea of like survival and that surviving is hard. And people talk a little bit, they talk a lot sometimes about the difference between surviving versus living versus thriving. But to live from that place is something very different. And when you are forcing yourself to fit into things that aren't really true to you, it is a very hard spiritual place to be internally. And I think I want to just call that out as kind of like the first clue for people. Like if you have to walk into a space, even your house, even if you have to walk, go into your house, because sometimes when you go home, you still have to wear a mask. If you are walking into your house, if you don't have peace anywhere that you go, that is your first indicator that you're probably not being authentic with yourself. And the whole purpose behind the book, the whole purpose behind the permission slip, the podcast, and these conversations, it's not to like encourage people to like change their mind or change their life, but it is to give you permission to say, hey, you know what? This feels like a little maybe harder than maybe it has to be. You may want to pull back those layers and decide that you still want to stay where you are because changing is harder than staying or whatever. But it is to encourage people to like make a conscious choice and give themselves permission to even evaluate it.

SPEAKER_02 17:43

I think empathy matters here too. So we talk about empathy as walking in other people's shoes, but we have to talk about empathy for ourselves as well and remember to keep our own shoes on when we're being empathetic. Yep. Yep. Empathy creates the conditions for honesty. And without empathy, people usually are defending or performing, sometimes even disappearing. But with empathy, they can examine what is actually happening without collapsing into something like shame. Empathy for yourself and for others helps make that truth when you recognize it so much more survivable. And it will improve your accuracy and help you understand the impact of something. It'll help you respond to other people without turning every difference into a threat.

SPEAKER_03 18:35

Yeah. Well, and so let's dig into that, right? Because I don't believe, I don't believe that we can give people something that we haven't first given to ourselves. I would agree. And so empathy for yourself. Talk a little bit. What what does that what does that look like, feel like? And then I'll talk a little bit about what it feels like for me.

SPEAKER_02 18:54

I like to think about it in terms of the way that we talk to ourselves. If we're talking about empathy for ourselves, we are sometimes the worst human being on earth to ourselves. We have that internal narrative that just tells us we're not enough, that we're gonna fail, that everybody sees something that we don't see, and we're waiting for that other shoe to drop. And when we're empathetic with ourselves, we're recognizing what we're doing, and we're saying, I always talk about a client of mine that um has named her internal voice Penelope. Learn to say, shut up, Penelope, or not today, Penelope, and some people do it with not today Satan. But telling yourself, even um using your own name to say, Tina Cole, you're not being very kind to yourself right now. Sometimes that is all it takes to change the trajectory that you're on, or the way that you're talking to yourself, or how you feel, because sometimes we use our inability to do that as something that we deserve. We deserve this pain. And this ambition is my anesthesia to the pain. I'm not feeling good inside. So self-empathy looks like in practice, telling yourself the truth without having contempt, noticing the alarm that's going off, slowing down the spiral, responding to something with curiosity instead of punishing yourself. It feels when you first start to do it like you're being self-indulgent. But I would have you think about that as not indulgence, but maybe self-responsibility without being cruel, because we are worse to ourselves than anybody else is.

SPEAKER_03 20:39

You know where I had to learn, and this may help people, where I first had to learn to be the most empathetic with myself was about my mistakes and what used to happen to me, right? Because if we're if we're going through life and we're not making mistakes, sometimes you don't have an opportunity to hear yourself giving yourself that bad messaging. But when you make a mistake or when something is wrong, it's really easy to pick on yourself. And that's when the messaging can replay. I remember like being in my 20s and 30s sometimes, still replaying messages that I heard when I was six about being fat. Um, or not even sometimes, it's not even like a message or words that somebody said, but it's a way that a person rejected you, like you were trying to be somebody's friend. And then that goes. So she calls it Penelope. I call it the committee of self doubt. And the committee of self doubt gets in my head and they have board meetings or they used to have board meetings. Um, now I am the chairman of the board. And so when it's coming, if it's a conversation. In my head, I can usually combat that because again, I, you know, did the work to catch myself with that self-awareness thing is key. But the easiest way for people who want to maybe try to figure out where this could be happening to them, pay attention to yourself when you make a mistake. Like if you make a mistake personally, like maybe you overspend, maybe you didn't put gas in the car, maybe you made a mistake at work, maybe you yelled at the kids, maybe you didn't clean up and you maybe you were too tired to like clean up and load the dishwasher with whatever it is, right? Because we all find these little things. If we have negative self-messaging going on, you had a post the other day about confirmation bias, right? Yeah. We look for confirmation bias, and even confirmation, we confirm the negative things. So for people who are like, start with like when you make a mistake, if you want to see how your committee's talking to you, if maybe you're not aware and you don't know where to start. See how you feel about yourself when you make a mistake. And that'll give you a good kind of path to like hearing whatever else is happening, even while you're living throughout your day. Because these conversations are happening all day, all day long.

SPEAKER_02 23:17

Really important, especially when you're somebody that tells yourself the story of not enough. That is just a story. That is not a life sentence. And the work is not to pretend that it never shows up because it's going to, but don't let it run your life. Don't let it run your relationship. Don't let it run your leadership.

SPEAKER_00 23:37

Yeah. And the other thing is not enough compared to what? Right. Like where where where do we get the standard from? Who said what enough was? Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 23:50

It's like, where do we get the standard from? It's almost like, like, I'm just gonna find a lot of it I know probably comes from like in this day and age anyway, comes from like TV and like social media and that kind of stuff. But like the thing that gave me the most peace in my recent life was finding satisfaction. And for me, what satisfaction looked like was if I if I died tomorrow, because I needed to get myself out of the chase, because I was always chasing something. I needed to find a way to get myself out of the chase. So I had to like sit back and think like, if I die tomorrow, would I be satisfied? When I'm trying to find the note, what would I be satisfied with? And so I took little notes like this. I just pulled this off my laptop and I wrote little notes to myself and put them in places where I could always see them to remind me, like what being satisfied meant to me. And so for me, at my age, at that time, the most important thing to me, so you base it on what's the most important thing to you, if you want to do a similar kind of exercise. The most important thing to me, honestly, was my children. And had I done enough to set them up so that when I'm not here, they could live a life that was the best that it could be. What did I do to position them? And so when I looked at the things that I had done to number one, overcome my own self, right? Because I couldn't position them without first overcoming myself. But then after I'm like, okay, I'm satisfied with myself. Like I can do this and do this and do this. And then the next thing was now I still, you know, am here. What have I done to position them? And then once I laid out what I had done to position them, then I could, that kind of gave me permission to stop chasing so much because I had done enough.

SPEAKER_02 26:04

I think it's really important for your readers and your listeners to understand that the feelings weren't something you defeated. You didn't become more impressive to defeat them, but you changed your relationship to that voice.

SPEAKER_00 26:18

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 26:19

And that gave you more room to grow and change and accomplish the things that you wanted to. You were able to name that feeling, you were able to reframe it, you were able to show it what changed. And then you were able to bring it back around and do something with it.

SPEAKER_00 26:37

And I got comfortable with missing the mark.

SPEAKER_02 26:40

That's how we learn.

SPEAKER_03 26:42

Yeah, I think, you know, like for a while, I was, I was like hellbent on whatever version I thought of perfection was available to me in that moment or what should have been available to me again. And like, what is perfect? The only place you're gonna get a perfect, right? A perfect score is gonna be in school. It might be in a board game or in a card game, something that's measurable. But in like everyday life, what is perfect? Like, what? There is no yeah, what is perfection? Like, and so I had to let go of even my relationship to the idea that I could get it all right because I can. And I think about like how I live my life going up to that, like the way that I parented, the way that I was in relationship with myself, relationship with the people around me, was all kind of based on this concept that I that I could get it right in. That goes back to whole people pleasing, being a good person. Right, trying to be enough, and like exactly what is right, like it's right for me. And so I think different communities, different nationalities, ethnicities, all those things kind of come into play in terms of what cultural influences you have about what's right. And then I just had to be like, okay, but I don't maybe I'm maybe I have rightness, but I don't have peace. And like, then I don't have peace, then I'm always chasing something. Always chasing something where I'm never catching it because rights are a moving target realistically. And then I'm mad at myself because I'm failing and I'm missing. Like it was a crazy cycle. Like, okay, wait a minute. And then, well, now then comes though, right? So after you do that and you start getting into the work, then you got you got you got you start like adjusting relationships with people and adjusting boundaries because now people are used to you showing up a certain way, and you're like, wait a minute, pause. That was working then.

SPEAKER_00 28:56

It's not working now. I think I just heard you say labels be gone. Labels be listen, labels be gone. I'm pretty good with that mute button, right? Did you see? I can edit this out.

SPEAKER_03 29:16

Yeah, no, yeah, labels be gone. And I think that's the whole purpose of the brand and the book. So let's talk about what does it mean? What does it look like for people? They hear this, what can they start doing right now to start dealing with their their not enough messaging? What can they do?

SPEAKER_02 29:41

I call it my rise tool. And it starts with recognizing that's the R. When your thinking has moved from problem solving to rumination. So you name what's happening and what's triggering it. Also, if you can tap into what you're feeling in your body at that time, it will also help you because you'll start to recognize the body usually happens first. Kicks in. So if you get used to those somatics of what's happening in your body, you'll be able to more quickly recognize it in the future. Then interpret the story you're telling yourself. So what did your brain tell you? And what really happened? What's fact and what's not? And that gap between catastrophe and reality is usually pretty wide. Then you shift to a more accurate and evidence-based view of yourself and what you're doing. Was this survival? Was this threatening? Was this a growth stretch or a challenge that just totally freaked me out? Um because reclaiming doesn't mean pretending that that feeling isn't there. The feeling's there. You just need to shift it to a more evidence-based view of yourself and what you're doing, and then experiment with little actions you can take to move forward and act the next time those feelings come up because confidence usually comes after action, not before it. This is true.

SPEAKER_03 31:10

Feeling the fear and doing and and learning how to trust yourself in those new actions. In those moments when you don't. Yeah. Well, and and going anyway. And then so, so I had this funny story, right? I remember one time when um this was after I left my first corpor, well, my first major corporate job, and I went out to be an entrepreneur for a few years. And in one month's time, three of my four income streams went away. And some other things were happening, just life was life and at that time. And I remember sitting on the edge of the bed thinking, and I'm actually having a conversation with God. And I'm like, Lord, if one more thing happens, I'm going to die.

SPEAKER_00 31:57

Like, are you trying to kill me? Because if one more thing happens, I'm gonna die. And the Lord said, No, you're not. Did he tell me? And I was like, Book of Job. Yeah. And I was like, what do you mean? I mean, I'm not really gonna die.

SPEAKER_03 32:14

It fit it felt though, right? Like what you were just talking about for people to, I was gonna dig into the like how it feels. It felt to me like the worst thing in the world. If one more thing happened, I thought that my heart was not going to be able to take it. Really, my spirit was just incredibly heavy. And I was praying, and I I remember sitting on the edge of the bed looking up, like, Wait, you mean I'm not I'm not gonna die?

SPEAKER_00 32:42

It's like, no.

SPEAKER_03 32:44

And from that moment on, it's like when I find myself in the midst of a lot of chaos that doesn't feel good or feels unfamiliar, I'm like, okay, well, I'm going to be here tomorrow. And so it's gonna work out somehow. And if I'm not here tomorrow, then I'm not worried about it anyway. So right? So I say that, I share that story to say in the midst of overwhelm, you just have to know, like when you're trying to trust yourself to make a new decision or to try something new, know that you're going to be okay, like you're gonna survive. But it often comes down to a choice of do I want to live the way that I have been living, or do I want to give myself permission to try something new over here and something new over here that's more satisfying to me. And for those people who are used to being in a painful survival mode, it's okay to feel good. I remember it like feeling good was foreign to me. Feeling positively or even just not feeling chaos was so unfamiliar to me that I would actually seek out chaos because I knew chaos. I did not know alone in that.

SPEAKER_02 34:15

That feels comfortable to a lot of people because it's what they're used to. Yeah. The silence and the lack of chaos is scary because you're alone with your thoughts and oh my gosh, who wants that? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 34:28

Until you realize that it wasn't you. Yeah. You're like, I know how to be this person in chaos.

SPEAKER_03 34:38

I don't know how to be this person not in chaos. I know how to react to trauma. I know how to make a decision out of defense. I don't know how to make a decision from a whole place. What does that look like? And will that voice still creep up and be like, danger, something's coming around the corner, and will I do something to sabotage it just so that I can go back to what's familiar?

SPEAKER_02 35:04

Well, and it's funny that you bring that up, and I think we've talked about this before, but I have talked about this with a lot of clients. One who talks about how she knows how to be a warrior. So when something feels heavy, she grabs her sword first. Yep. I think when we talked about it, we were talking about you knew the fighter, right?

SPEAKER_00 35:22

Yeah. Yeah, because that that part I knew how to do. Yeah. But fire fire's familiar.

SPEAKER_03 35:32

It wasn't safe, it was killing me. But it was familiar. I knew how to burn. I didn't know how to breathe.

SPEAKER_02 35:39

Safe to do in that moment, but now your labels are gone. How was that different for you? Oh my gosh, it's so different.

SPEAKER_03 35:46

It's so I I'm literally um I'm creating a new trust factor with myself every day. And every day I have to prove myself to myself from a place of wholeness. Because I've been doing the work for so long, the reflexiveness to pause is very easy for me to enact. It actually feels uncomfortable to be reactionary in a negative way. Um, I may still have the thought, like, you know, I call I call my alternate because I grew up on the south side of Chicago, we call her Nikki. Now, Nikki still has an initial say-so in some of the things that happen. Like it comes up, it doesn't come out. Um, and I give myself room to do that. But the moment, well, it doesn't happen. But if there were gonna be a place where Nikki would start influencing my behaviors or my plans, it would be so uncomfortable for it, would be at friction. Like it would literally be spiritual friction for me to try to operate from that negative, reactionary, defensive place. Probably like six and a half out of 10. I'm not even close to like eight or nine yet. But I used to be a two or one. You built that better filter. Yeah, I got the better filter, and I'm, you know, I I did the work. I took the labels off, other people's labels, and and the power came in me choosing. Okay, so it's two things. Number one, recognizing I didn't give all my labels to myself. Some of them just came to me because of life. And I can't get rid of all of them, but I can be conscious that they exist. And then the other one, the other part of that is choosing which ones I'm gonna keep of the ones that I can give back and what I'm gonna do, what I'm gonna do with them. And it's all, it's all on my terms.

SPEAKER_02 37:51

And I think the third part of that is helping other people do the same and empowering them because that helps you keep it in your mind. So if you're doing all of that and you're passing it on to others, and then they're doing all of that and passing it on to others, just think about how many more labels are going to be in the garbage.

SPEAKER_00 38:12

And hence the permission slip.

SPEAKER_03 38:17

The podcast, the place that we're gonna come for conversations, transparent conversations where people can hopefully identify themselves in these conversations, find a label that they don't want or that they want to examine and deal with it. You might keep it on, you might take it, rip it off, burn a piece, do, you know, because some of it, you, you know, you might want to, some people you might want to keep your label. And that's okay. It's a conscious decision at that point. Um, but walking around in unconsciousness is definitely not something that I want to do. And I don't think I think, I think in our time right now, especially like with everything that's going on in the world, I think a lot of people are craving authenticity.

SPEAKER_00 39:07

But it's hard to be, it's hard to be authentic when you don't even know yourself. Agreed.

SPEAKER_03 39:15

So Lauren, where can people find you? How can they connect? Thank you so much for coming on and giving us your time. Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_02 39:24

Probably the best way to connect with me is through LinkedIn. So I am Lauren Sanders on LinkedIn. Easy to find. It's a picture of me throwing confetti.

SPEAKER_03 39:33

Well, and that is that you you give spiritual confetti. And Lauren, tell us about your current book. And I'm really excited about the book that you're writing.

SPEAKER_02 39:42

My current book is Empathy is not a weakness and other stories from the edge. And actually, it's on it's gonna be on sale on Kindle for 99 cents here pretty soon. Maybe even by the time this podcast comes up for a couple weeks in April, as part of a promotion that I'm doing uh with Robbie Samuels group. And the book that I am working on right now is called Who Let Me In Here? Reclaiming Your Voice After Self-Doubt. And that's about imposter syndrome.

SPEAKER_03 40:11

Wow, that's awesome. Well, you guys, you heard it here, folks, and this is my coach, okay? This is the lady who helps me. And like, she's not the she's not a therapist. So it's the difference between a coach and a therapist. So I have both. But thank you again, Lauren. For those interested in learning more about what we're doing, you can find you can visit us at uh labelsbegone.com. You can find us on all major platforms at labels be gone. I am your host and founder of Labels Be Gone, Nicole Morris. Thank you so much. Until next time.

SPEAKER_04 40:46

On the next episode of the permissions flip.

SPEAKER_03 40:50

Because I remember it's like it's like the world is professional gaslighting. And it's, I'm telling you one thing, right? And I'm giving you this facade of one thing. Um, when really the reality is something completely different. And right now, the people who give