The Way of The Highly Sensitive Leader with Lola Pickett

A Personal Note From Orion

Sometimes empaths can feel out of place in a fast-paced world that’s all about work and money. Humans are stuck in a pattern of making a living that they forget how it is actually to live their lives. For the highly-sensitive soul, this can be very overwhelming, especially these days, with COVID-19 and protests happening. Feeling other people’s pain and problems can honestly feel like too much.

I am an empath, and I can attest to this. Sometimes it’s exhausting feeling everyone’s vibes and energy around you. It’s like you carry everyone’s weight on your shoulders. As a life coach, I know that’s not good for you. You need to prioritize your needs. You need to honor yourself, love yourself, most importantly, be kinder and more patient with yourself.

Before a plane takes off, it’s a protocol for flight attendants to present the emergency measures. One thing they say that’s stuck in my head is if the oxygen masks come down, you need to put on your mask first before assisting others. This message is more important than ever because everything around us is in chaos. Saving ourselves first can help us more effectively help others.

So to cope with all the stress and negativity inside and outside your home, I invited a shining light, Lola Picket. Lola trains emphatic leaders to be “full-spectrum” resilient, so they can confidently keep their hearts open, their bodies healthy, and BE the change they want to see in the world. If you’re an empath like Lola and me, tune in to this refreshingly eye-opening episode as we highlight the strengths of highly-sensitive people.

In this Episode

[01:09] – Orion introduces Lola Pickett, coach and podcast host of Empath to Power.
[03:29] – Lola shares the moment she had a wakeup call that gave her the courage to transform her life the way she always wanted.
[09:41] – What are the characteristics of an empath?
[14:54] – Orion shares how her fear of rejection stemmed from her budding acting career in New York when she was in her 20s.
[18:02] – Lola shares the two critical questions that can help empaths free themselves of negativity, but are very difficult to answer.
[24:53] – Orion shares how our physiology can affect our psychology and shares her own experience with it.
[30:07] – Lola shares her style of approach in dealing with a large crowd of people as an introvert and empath.
[36:31] – Lola explains why it is important as an empath to train your brain in making better choices.
[44:43] – Lola shares her experiences that led her to notice her various patterns and to see the subtext of a situation.
[51:31] – Follow Lola Pickett on her social media accounts and visit her website lolapickett.com to know more about the superpowers of an empath.

Jump to Links and Resources

About Today’s Show

Hey Lola, welcome to Stellar Life Podcast.

Hey! It’s so great to be here. Thank you so much.

I am so excited. This is a really important topic, especially for me personally, and I’m sure for so many people. And before we dive in, can you share a little bit about yourself, and how did this topic become your passion?

This topic of empathy, sensitivity, and resiliency is dear to my heart because I grew up with a story of I’m being too sensitive, and I take everything too personally. And at the same time, because I was so sensitive, I shut down emotionally. And so I was this overly sensitive ice princess of a child. It was hard for me to make friends, it was hard for me to find my groove, so I just went through with this hard edge around me. Like, I’m just going to have to be alone and do my thing, and I’m not going to let anybody into my heart. You can imagine the impact that has on someone as far as just friendships, relationships, dating, and all those things.

So, the first three decades of my life were basically spent building what I thought I should build for the life that I was supposed to want. Because I was so disconnected from not only everybody else, but also to myself because when our hearts are closed, we’re not intimate with who we really are. There’s no way to create a life that feels good to you because you don’t even know who that is inside. And so I had this big wake-up call with my only son, my first child, when he was born about 10 years ago. And I remember sitting there with him, I was working from home at this job that looked good on paper and was killing me. It was a nightmare because it was so misaligned ethically and just all together from who I really am inside. And I was starting to discover that I have this depression and anxiety, and the reason I’m losing my libido. I felt disconnected from my husband because I keep making choices that feel safe, or they feel like they make sense logically. And they’re soul-killing, and I don’t even know who I am anymore.

And so I looked at my son, that day I was working from home, I had taken a social media break, and somebody had posted this post. I still remember it almost word for word. It was a poem about how all parents are liars because they’re willing to tell their children, you can grow up and be whoever you want to be. And at the same time, they’re killing their own dreams, sacrificing themselves, and totally being the opposite of that message. And I looked down at this little 10-month-old child lying on the ground, sitting there while I’m at this job. I can’t pay attention to him in this strange relationship that no longer felt great, and I’m going to be that parent if I don’t change something. I’m going to be that person who lies to their kids and says, “You can do whatever you want with your life. Oh, but don’t look at me. Don’t look at what I did. You can do it though, trust me.” And that moment changed my life because shortly after that, I started to really have the courage, I got my first spiritual mentor, my first coach. I started to have those really hard conversations with myself about how I was shut down and disconnected. I started to unpack some of those stories from when I was really little. They were about how I was too sensitive and started opening my heart again.

And 10 years later, my son’s turning 10 this Saturday, my life looks totally different. It’s because I had the courage and the resilience to soften myself to myself, prioritizing my needs, which is like the first time in my life. And here I am, it’s not like a happily ever after because we have human experiences, and it’s a human world. But I feel like my life is my own, and my work is my own. I have this amazing marriage now, a second child, a brand new kitten, which is really exciting. But I just feel like I’m expressed and really grounded and able now to really facilitate a lot of transformation in the same types of ways for my community members. Because the things I’ve gone through are not just my own story, we all have repressed ourselves. We all have shut ourselves out of protection, or sacrificed ourselves to people-please and all that stuff. And I just saw how toxic it is to my own life. I am determined not to let people keep buying into those beliefs if I can help it.

We are put on this earth to help other people, and you'll never be able to help if you're constantly tuning in to everybody's thoughts and feelings but your own. Click To Tweet

So when did you put a label on it? When did you know “Oh, I am an empath”?

It actually wasn’t that long ago. I knew I was highly sensitive. It is more scientific for how our nervous system is wired and our sensory gating system. How sensitive we are to things like touch, smell, even colors, and then emotional vibrancy. And there’s a lot of studies and MRIs and all kinds of things that have been done on highly sensitive people that show that our nervous system actually works and functions differently at processing data than the vast majority of people. So I had figured that out, or pretty early on, like maybe in my late 20s, but I was like, “Well, whatever, there’s nothing I could do about that. So I’m just going to kind of ignore it, brush it under the rug till later.” We all know how that works. But it wasn’t actually until a couple of years ago that the empath layer got added on the top of it.

And it was through a conversation with my mom, we were just unpacking some of the dynamics between her and my dad, who had recently passed away. And we were just like, what came through both parents to me, from their emotional patterns and psychology and things like that. Because we’re nerds in my family and loved talking about that stuff. In light of that conversation, it was like this light bulb of, “Oh, my God. I am so intuitively connected to other people, I can find the right words to say. People are always saying that I’m psychic because I’m an empath. I’m literally feeling what they’re experiencing. And then, because I’m not aware of it, I’m just translating that to the things I’m saying, how I’m behaving. It was like a huge epiphany.” And then that layer was added to my work because that was an extremely empowering information. After all, those superpowers can be channeled for good or bad. So I wanted to learn how to direct this in a way that makes me honor myself, but also help others in a way that doesn’t bleed me dry and have no boundaries.

Yeah, I can relate to your story. My mom used to say I’m so over-sensitive a lot. I also took the StrengthsFinder test, and my first strength is empathy. I think my third one is something that sounds like empathy, as well.

Like empathy and compassion.

Yeah, something like that. I forgot. I forgot exactly what they were. And I’m really sorry for the loss of your dad.

Thank you. So you were told you’re highly sensitive, and how did that impact your kind of experience of things? Did you shut down, or did you stay open? Because I think that it kind of goes in one of two directions.

I didn’t shut up or shut down, or I never shut up. I didn’t shut down, or it didn’t make me happier, it just is. I didn’t think about it that much. I just know that sometimes with my clients, I have to put boundaries because I feel too much in it, it’s hard. I think I have this very calm front, but there’s so much going on under the surface.

It’s almost like a swan paddling on a lake, right? It’s like, “Oh, I’m so elegant on the top, and you can’t see that my legs are furiously swimming under the surface.” Right?

So tell me a little bit what an empath is. What are the characteristics of an empath?

Sure, I just briefly touched on a highly sensitive person. I want to weave that back in because what they’re finding is that all highly sensitive people, not all of them may be empaths. But empaths are always also highly sensitive. So, when you’re an empath, you have this physical sensitivity already happening at some level, or to some degree, it’s not always with every sense. Sometimes it’s just like a tactile thing where you get easily irritated by textures or textures of food, clothing, or you’re particularly drawn to certain colors. You hear things more sharply; smells will bother you more than it will somebody else. So most empaths will be like, “Oh, yeah, I do have some of that going on.” The empath layer is when you also have this hypersensitivity to other people’s emotions, energies, thought patterns, and auras. Everything about people and a lot of the things that we’re sensing as empaths with the people that we are around or connected to, even if we’re not physically with them, it’s subconscious on both of our parts.

So here we are, like subconsciously or unconsciously connecting with other people’s unconscious or subconscious. And so what happens is that we are going about our day essentially, emotionally and energetically, hyper-vigilant, always seeking the unconscious, unspoken subtext with all the people who were connected with physically or otherwise. And then we might not have done anything we might have, we might have been watching Netflix all day, right? But we have these unconscious feelers that are still going out, that we aren’t usually aware of. And so we’ll go to bed at night and go, “I am totally, utterly exhausted.” And there’s no real reason for this. Like, “I didn’t do anything that should make me this tired.” And we’ll go to sleep, and our bodies are still doing it because we’re habituated to it. So we don’t get quality rest. We don’t fully go into a parasympathetic state. We’re depleted, and then we get health problems. So, like this pattern is really fascinating to start to observe in people and of course, unpack for my own history that when we start to make it conscious, this fact that we’re an empath, that we’re hyper-vigilant emotionally, energetically, we can actually choose a different way we could make those patterns. Bring them to our awareness and start to practice channeling them with intention, saying no to them when it’s not appropriate, only using them when we’re getting paid for these gifts, all of those things. And all of a sudden, we have our energy back, we’re getting better sleep, we feel 100 times better. Oh my goodness, and it starts with that awareness.

So if you’re listening and going, “I’m exhausted all the time.” I mean, we’re all kind of emotionally drained right now. I think that given the pandemic, everybody’s getting a little taste of what it’s like to be an empath. We’re all getting a little preview of how that empathy scales are going up, which is probably a good thing. But if you’re hearing this and going, and also, “When I do a project, I have to get it perfectly right. I can already hear the voices of people who criticize me, so I subconsciously answer it before I even put it out in the world.” This means that I don’t really ever actually put it out in the world because I’m scared of getting rejected or judged, so then I get procrastination. And then I have all these ideas inside of me all these senses of purpose and the things that I want to do to change things for other people, to help people, because we are totally put here on this earth to do that. But I’m afraid, and so I won’t do it, and then I feel resentful, scared, and frustrated. Because I don’t have what it takes to do something with my life, I should base all the compliments I get from people about how amazing I am.

Empaths generally are highly sensitive people. They feel energies most people don’t. It can get quite exhausting.

Wow, this is powerful. Do you think that empaths are born this way? Or do you become an empath if you experienced trauma?

There’s definitely a trauma tie in, but there’s a couple of reasons for that. It’s not always that empaths are made, there are times when it gets amplified or accelerated because of a traumatic experience. But because it’s always overlaid on top of a hypersensitive nervous system, which can be something that we’re born with. The thing about having a sensitive nervous system is that it’s more easily traumatized by trauma. What might not be a traumatic experience for most people can actually create trauma patterns in the highly sensitive nervous system.

For example?

For example, you get rejected by a friend at school, and perhaps like the majority of people would be like, “Oh, okay, whatever, not my people, onward, no problem.” And we may have a subconscious internalization of that because our senses are so designed to connect, that we take that personally we internalize it and say, “I’m not love worthy.” Then our response to that is to over give, earn love, or shut down and put people away. I think many of us have swung back and forth between the two in our patterns of relationships. I certainly have myself.

You were talking about rejection, I have a very deep fear of rejection. I think, as you said, and I’m so wonderful, and I should’ve, could’ve, would’ve been somewhere completely different than where I am today. I know that when I was in my 20s, I took an acting class and went to the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York. And I was very serious about my acting career, and I just couldn’t do it because I just couldn’t handle the rejections, the auditions. Somebody told me, “You know what, because you’re Israeli and of your accent, the biggest role you might be able to play is maybe a terrorist.” And I believed them, I was young, and I was gullible. Ironically, the most iconic American superhero is played by Gal Gadot, and she is Israeli, Wonder Woman.

Total badass.

Right? And so I’m thinking to myself, wow, if I did not believe those people, those voices. At 26, they told me that I was really old.

I think it’s such ****.

Yeah, and I also was in a really bad relationship, and the guy completely crushed my confidence. So that plus the fear of rejection just shut that career path down. So if there’s somebody who’s listening right now, who is the younger me, what would you tell her?

I would tell her that the most important thing that she could ever do would be to start sitting cross-legged or kneeling in front of a mirror every night. Light a candle, put it down in front of you, fire-safe of course, and look into your eyes and say, “I love you, and I’m worthy of love.” Even if you don’t believe it, even if it feels ridiculous or embarrassing, create the space for yourself to feel that embarrassment, to feel that shame, to notice the voices that come up that say “This is stupid,” or “No, you’re not,” or “Look at you thinking you’re so special,” or “This is going to turn you into a narcissist,” and all those little lies that we tell ourselves to close our hearts from ourselves. These are the things that we need to courageously see, look at and lovingly let go of so that when we get voices like that, from the outside, we already have our inner truth turned on, grounded, and supported. We know we’re worthy, we know we’re lovable. It ‘s like, well, you can believe that if you want to, I can clearly see that it’s not beneficial for me to believe. And so I’m going to keep acting as though those things are not true because they don’t have to be true for you. It doesn’t have to be the truth that you’re never going to get the XYZ role, right? So that’s what I would say, it’s the simplest thing, and it’s probably the hardest. I mean, a lot of my clients, we start out with two really simple questions, and for empaths, they’re uncomfortably simple and hard to answer. And would you like to hear what they are?

Yeah. What are those questions, Lola?

So the first one is “What do I need right now?” A huge question. It sounds really simple, but when you start to ask yourself this and get into its practice, you’ll see things start to change. For example, there was this meme that was on Instagram last week, and I posted my version of that meme to my stories. It was this little dog, kind of snarling and looking like a chihuahua with these big eyes. It was like “empaths when they walk into a room and feel nasty energy and then have to figure out who it’s coming from.” And I was like, no, cross that out and be like “empaths: none of your business, what are you there to do?” Seriously, stop looking for the source of the things you’re feeling and return to yourself. Ask yourself what you need, what are you here to do? Because that’s going to lead you to a place of better being able to do the thing you want to do most, which is to help other people. You will not be able to help from a place of fullness and true abundant radiance of just the overflow of the love in your heart and the energy and financial resources. Whatever it is, if you’re constantly tuning into everybody else, because you think you don’t matter, or don’t know who you are, or understand what you need.

This question came about from a client session that I had one time where my client was like, “Well, I’m sure that my brother is feeling this because if I was in the situation, blah, blah, blah,” and I was like, “Okay, just pause because I want to ask you this. Are you in that situation right now? Are you living in the situation that your brother is in?” She’s like, “No.” “So, let’s talk about what you need right now.” And she’s like, “What? What are you talking about? But my brother…” “Okay, hold on, what’s this pattern doing for you, right? To just constantly be attending out, it makes you feel good, like at an ego level because it means that you’re doing good, that you’re helping someone, that you’re attending to them, that you’re kind of rescuing them. But you’re ignoring yourself, you don’t even know. And also, could it be that you don’t actually know for sure what his experience is. Could this be your imagination? Could this be your projection? Because you’re saying, this is what I would feel, right? But he’s not you, you’re you. And the only way you’re going to know how you would feel if you feel it yourself.” She was like, “Oh my God.” So that question, “What do you need right now?” became a critical part of my client work, especially with empaths. And there are 12 of these questions that really can shift the way that we live our lives. You don’t become a narcissist folk. This kind of internal attention isn’t going to make you suddenly into someone that’s selfish and greedy and only cares about yourself. Narcissists don’t care about themselves and are coming from a place of deep, deep projection. So loving and acceptance is not going to turn you into that. That’s not where that comes from. It’s the opposite.

Life is the occasion. Click To Tweet

Yes. I love what you said about mirror work. The first time I heard about it was from Louise Hay. I think she came up with that, and I did mirror work when I was broken, a shadow of myself shattered. And when I hit rock bottom, and like you said, it doesn’t happen in a day. First time I came and then I friended the mirror, and I said, “I love you,” my reflections started crying, I couldn’t believe it. I was so much self-loathing and self-hate. And then you do it over and over and over again. I think a week later I could just say it without crying and a week after that I could say it and kind of believe in it. And the week after that, I smiled because it became my truth because words are powerful, and our brain is designed to follow whatever you tell it to do like a puppy.

So, if you are saying to your brain, if you’re an empath, and you have all these painful emotions, and you say to your brain, “I am not good enough. I am not beautiful. I don’t deserve…” you take on other people’s words, other people’s pain and you turn it inward. And this is the story you tell to your brain every day over and over and over again. That reptilian brain, that ancient brain will hold on to that identity. And even when you have those moments of awakening, like “I’m actually pretty good. I’m actually kind of beautiful. I’m actually kind of okay,” because your reptilian brain hurt so many times over and over again and heard that lie it will hold on to that, you’ll do things to self-sabotage.

That’s right.

So maybe it’s time to tell yourself a better lie.

Exactly.

If you’re thinking that “I love you” is a lie. And right now you’re listening, and the words “I love you” doesn’t sound in integrity, then it’s okay. Just lie to yourself.

That’s right, we’re lying to ourselves anyway, right? So I love that I say that all the time. When you start to get into the deep kind of metaphysics of reality and the nature of creation and energetics and all of those things, you see that not everything is as solid as it seems to be, right? Everything is made of energy, everything is vibrating, and nothing is as it seems. So if everything is an illusion, you might as well pick a resonant illusion and base your life on something that you want to believe in. And even if you can’t yet, it’s like I want to believe in this, and I love the work of Amy Cuddy, who was this researcher and teacher at Harvard. She really said that you can help your body, train your brain to step into a new pattern of thinking and behaviors by acting as if by putting on the posture and adopting some of these behaviors that maybe don’t feel inauthentic to you but just like, I wouldn’t normally do that, like, raise my hand or sit in front of the classroom, participate, ask questions. Even if you pretend like you’re that person, almost like you’re method acting, you can very easily become that person, especially as an empath. Here we are so keyed into the subtext and subconscious and potential of everyone else around us. What if we turn that superpower around, tuned into our potential, and started to envision that and embody that in our behaviors very quickly, we can start to create a place where that becomes our reality.

Right. Tony Robbins says that if you want to change things, you want to change three things, it’s like a triangle. You change your focus, your words, and your language. You change your physiology because your physiology informs your mindset. And actually, this morning I told my client a story that I heard of Cesar Millan, he’s a famous dog trainer. And he had this dog who was super scared like the dog was always with the tail between its legs and always crying and always very skittish and afraid. And what he did is he tied a rope to the dog’s tail, and then the head went up. The dog’s physiology was like I’m a happy dog, and it affected its mindset. And we are mammals, and we do the same.

I remember when I lived in New York City, and it was the middle of winter, and it was dark, and I felt horrible, and life was not good. And I was walking down the streets of Manhattan, and I was angry or pissed off or something. And I decided to change my physiology by putting a smile, a fake smile on my face. So I was walking down the street like this, and guess what? People started smiling back, and so my smile became more genuine. And just the thought of them smiling back to my fake smile made me laugh, and I love it, and I changed my state. So definitely our physiology affects our psychology and beyond that. What are some other tools that you can give somebody who is hypersensitive or an empath? I mean you probably have a lot, just bring it on.

So many, one of them you’re seeing right here to kind of goes right along with what you’re talking about. And if you are not seeing the video, I have this white face paint on.

Which I love. It’s so pretty. If you want to see the white paint, just go on Orion’s Method YouTube channel, and you will see the interview, and you will see how beautiful this woman is. And you will see the paint on her face.

Yey, thank you. This was an intentional choice that I made about seven years ago to play more. And I was working from home again but in my own business and parenting my young son who had been diagnosed with autism in this new marriage, and just feeling like life is getting a little bit heavy again. Not like it’s feeling misaligned, but it’s just like I’m missing something. I’m missing fun on a daily basis, I don’t want to have to go on vacation to have fun, I want to be able to play around in my own life. I don’t want to have to go to a music festival to dress however I want. I want to just start exploring who is my wild side, not like the wild sexually messy side, that’s not a part of my life I was in. I want it to be like just wild pure expression, unfiltered. How can I do that in my life, the way that I had built my life? And so I decided to play around with things like how did I dress and what kind of makeup I did, because I wasn’t at least a really big makeup wearer at the time. And I thought, well, I’ll experiment with face paint. So I started to play around with face paint, and it was exactly what happened to you in New York Street in the rain. It was like, I would forget that I had put it on, and I would put it on in the morning, and it feels a little ridiculous, but it’s fun. And I’ll make a different pattern today, and I’ll just play around with it. I would forget it was on and I would go get groceries. And everybody who I interacted with was like, “Well, where are you going?” I’m like, “Home.” “Where did you come from?” I’m like, “Home.” And they were like, “Well, what’s going on? What are you doing? What’s the occasion?” I said, “Life’s the occasion.” Life’s the occasion, and just remembering that was actually the truth.

It is very quotable, Life is the occasion.

Don’t be too hard on yourself and remember to take things one step at a time.

Life is the occasion, that’s it. Because of the power, I could see I was having on everybody else around me and myself. It became this kind of intentional choice, and now more days than not, I wear face paint. And in fact, when I delivered my daughter, I delivered her very organically and naturally but in a hospital. And I went to the hospital, and I wore this tribal necklace and this lacy green bra, a green mini skirt and wild face paint. And I had my daughter, unmedicated in about an hour and a half. I’m wearing my clothes, I know what to do, I’m good, just let me do my thing. And everyone’s like, “What is happening?” I had this face paint on my first pictures with my fresh, squishy little baby daughter. And I just feel like it’s so indicative of the fact that we have access to this adventurous, playful side within us. And it doesn’t always look like how I would do it, but that’s inside of us.

As empaths a lot of times, we see others so that we don’t be seen, right? We use it as a way to kind of bypass our own visibility, and our own worthiness and tending to others really makes that very easy to do. This is also a way of claiming our visibility of taking up our own space and that taking up space helps the introvert. Not all, but most empaths are introverted, so this kind of style magic is what I wanted to call it, and it translates into the way I dress very often, not always. But it’s helped me when I’m meeting an extrovert also, because when I’m intimidated by a large crowd of people, it’s not because of the amount of people or the energies, it’s because I don’t want to have to be the one to go up and introduce myself. I don’t want to have to be the one to go break into a circle of conversations and be like, “Hi, I’m Lola. I’m an empath magician,” or whatever. And so by doing this kind of magnetic, playful self-expression, I will go to business conferences. Everybody will come to me, and only the people who are curious about what I’m doing and nonjudgmental, that are going to come over and say anything anyway. So it’s like this automatic boundary that’s created by me radiating my energy outward instead of shutting people away. It’s way more effective.

Yeah, I heard this from Neil Strauss. It’s called peacocking, and so you wear a crazy hat or maybe like some beautiful red shoes or something that have people come and approach you. So this is brilliant, and I love how you implemented it. You know what, how cool that can be if we’re all going to go to the supermarket wearing masks but like crazy makeup.

I love doing it.

Do you do that?

I do, and my husband has painted things on our masks, so they’re more interesting as well because for artsy people when we have our energy back, and people are like, “Oh my God, your eyelashes!” or this or that. They’re like, “Do you go to Burning Man?” I’m like, “Actually, no, I just went to the grocery store.” That’s all I need. That’s my excitement.

I love it. So you said we have to look inwards and say, “What do I need right now?” and then use that, you have to, but you don’t have to. But this is a really incredible tool which is to play more. I had this meditation, I was taking this breathing class, breathing meditation, and one of the messages that I got was, I really want playful socks. Because I was wearing those very boring black socks and it was like “meh,” and so right now I have a collection of really fun, funny socks. I love them.

I love it.

Like the little things.

Yes, it’s the little things, and some of my clients are shyer. And so they’re like I already have a job that they go to where they couldn’t do something like this. But I say, what you can do is, who do you want to be? Remember that you are at certain secret moments throughout the day, right? When you’re potentially tempted to just get resentful or abandon yourself and write it on your belly where nobody can see it. Use something similar to this, write it, and it’s like I am a warrior. I am a badass, I’m strong, I am centered, I am worthy.

I am the queen of the universe.

I am the queen of the universe. And you write it, and it’s got this deeply energetic impact. Because not only are you taking the time to scroll those words on your body, you’re saying from the outside in. This is why I want to be from the inside out, and nobody else needs to know, the most important person to know is you, the rest is just icing on the cake. So for those of you who are like, “Well, I’d love to do this, but I have to go be at my nine-to-five in my cubicle all day, and there’s no way that’s the company dress code.” When we get back to that place, we all have to go to the office again or have that kind of job. There are ways to get creative.

Yeah. Another idea is if you have to wear a formal suit or something that has more masculine, maybe you work in a masculine job, just wear sexy lingerie underneath. Nobody will know.

I love it. Yeah. And that’s kind of the tip of the iceberg because those are kind of behavioral choices. But what I find is that what we also need to begin to get awareness into and insight into is the way that our internal physiology is designed to keep us protected versus expressed. So how do we go into patterns of fear? How do we hold ourselves back? What happens? Do we go into a fight response or flight response? Do we freeze up? Do we go into codependency and fawning? And when we do, we start to really unpack? Those are our autonomic nervous system responses. Those are the things that we have habituated for decades, most of us, and they’re totally subconscious. They’re like breathing or a heartbeat, but unlike breathing or a heartbeat, these are behavioral expressions of brain chemistry. And so we can start to see how we can go and rewire them, change them, create what I call new friendships between our neurons. Because the brain, as you said, in the beginning, will go on the most efficient path. Like if we’ve programmed it to say, “I’m unworthy, I’m terrible, I’m no good,” that path is efficient in our brain, that groove is deep. It’s like a path in the snow that’s been cut through, and we’re going to go there instead of trying to walk on the surface and sink and get lost, right? We’re just going to make that choice, totally automatically.

If you don't feel physiologically and psychologically secure, you'll always feel less of what you're meant to be. Click To Tweet

We start to create new paths in the snow, so we start to create new friendships when we have this thought. We might notice, “Oh, I want to freeze up.” If we’re aware of it, we can pause, like okay, this is what’s going on. I’m noticing I want to go eat a tub of ice cream. Because somebody just needs to be on Facebook, or I want to do this or that. We can start to make better choices and create a stronger relationship between those neurons. The other snow path gets snowed in because we’re not walking on it anymore. And the new path gets carved. And that’s the way that we change the landscape like literally the shape of our brain, and it takes awareness. And so much of the work that I do with empaths and sensitives are getting nitty-gritty into the nervous system, like how we identify and unpack these choices we’re making all the time then we can start making better choices. And from there, those external things start to be a lot easier to attain to sustain. We stop sabotaging ourselves financially. Many things begin to happen because we’re able to make more empowered, more aware choices. What’s been happening dramatically for decades in our bodies, it’s incredible work.

Your brain is like a garden, and you want to plant the good seeds. You want to plant good thoughts, you want to pull out the weeds, and want to tend the soil and build the path of happiness and joy. Because if you’re going in the path of pain, worry, anger, this becomes your default because when you’ve entered this path, so many times, it becomes your default. Like a jungle, you can grow beautiful flowers on top of that path and open that path of beauty, happiness, self-love, and all that. It takes work that doesn’t happen in a day. Because if you were telling your mind for the last decade that you suck, and you’re not worthy, or you’re not good at something, that path is pretty resilient, it’s strong. And because you were the one who thought that thought, you were the one who can change that thought and you would want to change that path.

Yes, and I like to talk a lot about resilience. I love that you brought that word up because these patterns are resilient, and it’s proof already of how resilient we are as the creator of those patterns. And so we can actually overpower these things that have helped power over us and totally flip that dynamic because we’re already really good at being uncomfortable. We’re all ready, resilient, we have proof that these patterns still show their ugly heads all the time, and they’re part of us. So, therefore, we must be a lot more persistent and committed than we think we are. And we can start to tell ourselves those better stories, and our resiliency starts to come online. The resilience of those patterns starts to get taken away.

What advice would you give me as a coach who is an empath, which is my greatest strength? Like I said, super intuitive, almost telepathic, I can understand my clients very well, I can sense them, and I feel them. It’s like I feel them, I see their potential, and it’s very visceral, and it’s very connected. And yet, how can I keep my energy to myself when I’m like, even now with COVID-19, not only with my clients, but I also think I can do some work around my clients, but I would like to hear what you have to say. I attended this beautiful conference online from Genius Network. I’m a part of the Genius Network, and I spoke that day. And I felt this beautiful high and then I went to Ralph’s and everybody was so scared of each other. Like if I’m going to look at you in the eyes, I’m going to get COVID-19, so I’m not going to even look at you. People are freaking out, crazy energy.

Yes, these things happen, but it’s serious. We can still practice connection kindness, and you can smile even though you have a mask and be kind to each other. It doesn’t have to be this, being so scared of each other. We practice humanity first. So I came from experiencing this super high-level environment to extraordinary fear in a grocery store, and I went back. I was depleted like it sucked the energy out of me because I guess I allowed it. So how to deal with clients, how to deal with an external environment, and then maybe how to deal with social media?

Yeah, it’s a really good question. So the first one is with clients. And the number one thing that really changed the dynamic between myself and my clients, and that helps them as well is that we can’t want our clients’ potential to be actualized more than they do. If we want it more than they do, we’re constantly pushing them into territories that they’re not ready to explore, and so they will sabotage themselves. So when I noticed that I’m like leaning in a little bit more than 50% of the way, like they actually need to be leaning in at least 50% of the way, if not more, and I’m just holding that space for them to rise up, I’m giving them the tools. And one of the ways that we help to ensure that balance and dynamic correct, isn’t how we price our services.

So everybody has different pricing models, and everything can work. There’s no right way, you don’t have to be like a $50,000 a year coach to make this the truth for you. But what needs to happen is that your client needs to feel invested in the work enough that they are motivated to want that potential to actualize. If you don’t charge enough, you think you’re doing someone a favor because you’re out of kindness, making something more accessible to them. But what happens when we do that is we end up giving too much most of the time, and unless they’re truly in hardship or they’re still very motivated. It’s going to disempower them, and they’re not going to show up fully for the work. And then you’re going to be pushing them more to try and get the results that you promised. And it just becomes this really unhealthy dynamic. And so I always encourage my coaching clients, and I’m always looking at this myself. Is my pricing model empowering? Because it’s less about, “What is this getting me?” It doesn’t matter, my business is what gets the money, not me personally, right? It’s not about that, it’s how do I make sure this is going to be an empowering transformation just because they said yes to this. That’s going to be the key point that’s going to help create that balance and that dynamic. So you’re not codependent with your clients.

Do you change your price model now with COVID-19?

No, actually, I don’t. There’s a reason for that because if I do that, then I’m less able to do the other things I want to do for COVID-19, like source more PPE materials for hospitals and pay for those things and like make the flow of money, go that way I have less to give. So there are plenty of people who are resourced, it’s okay for me to work with them so that I can support those who are not. We don’t have to help everyone in the way that we help our clients. It’s really interesting to reconcile because we’re so heart-centered that we want to help everyone. We could help everyone, we think, but that burns us out, right? It burns us out.

Empaths can be magnets to people with problems or issues in life because they exude a welcoming aura.

I know, every time I give a free session, I feel depleted.

Yeah, you’re depleted. They’re not giving an equivalent exchange back to you, and so it depletes you.

Right. And also, as you said, they don’t take it as seriously. There is this cool quote about money, but it basically says that “When you pay, you pay attention.”

Exactly. And if you don’t pay attention to something, it won’t change. So we really want to create that opportunity for our clients and not get in our own way and say, “Oh, but you know, I would never pay this,” or “I don’t have the resources to pay this right now, how can I ask this of somebody else,” because it’s not about you, it’s about what this will do for that person to be in a space with you. For your energy so you can show up fully present, you can be in gratitude, you can be open, they’re open, so much more can happen in that space. So that’s why a lot of times, there’s definitely like shady people charging way too much for their coaching. But what I find to be true more often than that is that there are excellent coaches not charging enough.

Right. Good point.

And that’s very common. And that also goes back to our nervous system because if we don’t feel physiologically safe and psychologically safe, to be provided for to have more than enough, we will always be at just enough or less, no matter what we really have to create that internal safety and rewire those patterns.

How did you create that shift for yourself? What had to happen?

Breakdowns, the same cycle of debt repeatedly happening, where I would get out of it. And then a couple of years later would be right back into that exact same amount, random. Like how is that possible? I started to look at it, and I’m a pattern hunter. What I love to do is notice patterns and start to make connections, it’s one of my empaths gifts to see the subtext, right? And so I was like, there’s got to be something going on here because I noticed that I’ll reach a certain threshold in my income, and then it’ll back off. Then I’ll reach a certain threshold of savings, and then that’ll back off, and these things never really change. And so there’s some point that I’ve got internally that says, “anywhere outside of that experience is not safe,” and so there’s a lot of nervous system work that I did.

Like what?

Looking at my freeze patterns, my avoidance patterns with money. If you’re somebody who’s like, “I really want to be successful,” but every time you check your bank balance, you have a heart attack, and you put your phone down, and you don’t look at it. Or you don’t go to your mailbox, because you know you’re going to get a bill, but there could also be a check there. You’re creating this relationship with money that’s essentially a fight, flight, or freeze response. You have to be aware of that and then go, “Okay, well, what’s the remedy?” And for each of those fight, flight, freeze, or fawning responses, there’s a remedy for it. Not that we have to leave them aside, they’re our animal instincts, they are good, they’re our allies. But they can hurt us or they can help us, so you have to learn which one to go to when this is your habit. So I practiced that, and things really changed. It wasn’t until I supported my nervous system that my business could actually grow, that I could get out of debt that I could create something that I really believed in and commit to it fully. So there’s a lot to it.

Wonderful, and what about an empath that goes to the supermarket?

Yes. So when you go to the supermarket, and you’re super drained afterward.

Super drained after the supermarket.

Yes, exactly. Like I didn’t sign up for this, I wanted to get vegetables, not drained. So, before you go into a space where you know, it’s not going to be like the bubble of high vibe, awesomeness. It’s going to be just everything high, good, low, medium, good, bad, and ugly. When you center yourself before you go into that space, you can tell yourself, “I am here to be with mine. And I’m going to let go of everything that’s not.” All you have to do is say this to yourself because what that does is it puts an end to the unconscious hypervigilance, which is what is making us so tired. After all, it’s not your intention to put feelers out to where everybody’s hearts are at. Even though you can see it on their faces, it’s almost like mycelial spider webs of energy that are going out and being like, “How is everybody? What’s up?” because you care. But this is not your place. You’re just there to get your vegetables. So you need to just say that I’m not in agreement for taking on anything that’s not mine. I am here to get what I need to get done, and that’s all I’m here to do. And that is for the best and highest good of all beings, and so it is and gets your cart.

The empath layer is when you have this innate hypersensitivity to other people's emotions, their energies, their thought patterns. Click To Tweet

And sanitize it.

Yes, exactly.

I guess you do the same thing when you go to social media before you open Facebook, you just have the same affirmation of like, “I’m here to get what I need. I’m going to block what I don’t,” and so be it and don’t stay there too long.

I actually wrote a blog post about social media addiction and empaths because it’s a really common thing. After all, we’d love to be connected. Especially now, it’s like one of the only ways we can be connected to a lot of our community. And yet, there’s all the other stuff out there too, right? You can use things like physical boundaries, like the News Feed Eradicator for Facebook, a plugin for Chrome, where it completely turns off the newsfeed. All you do is get your groups or your notifications, and you can just navigate your own spaces, and that’s it. That can be helpful if you have a problem like, “Oh my god, somebody posting XYZ on my feed and like now, I can’t unsee that.” That can help but also like, “What am I here to do? What’s my intention with being on social media right now?” Intention is everything, tribal healers will tell you this from thousands of centuries onward, that our intention is what creates our life. And so if you go into Facebook with the intention of I’m going to write this post that I’ve been meaning to write. Before you do anything else, write the post, not after you’ve done everything else, and then get off; even time boundaries can be really helpful. Like, I used to have a timer on my browser where Facebook would only give me 15 minutes a day. So I had to go in and get everything I needed to get done and out, or else it would be shut down for the day. And if you try to get around it, you have to be honest with yourself like, “Well, why am I trying to work the system that I set up for myself and my own best, highest good.”

Right. How do you work with hypersensitive kids?

I get this question so much because my kids are totally highly sensitive, and my son’s an empath and on the spectrum. So as a parent, it’s awesome if you are also a highly sensitive person, but that’s not always the case. Sometimes we are born into families where we’re like the aliens or the rainbow sheep. They don’t get us.

Rainbow sheep, I like that, Rainbow unicorn.

Better than being a black sheep. Yep, rainbow unicorn, sheep, magical things. And our families don’t know how to get us. So if you’re listening, you’re probably more on the empathic spectrum than that kind of a person as a parent. But what really is important is validation. We need to hear our sensitive souls that we’re not crazy that it’s not too much that what you’re feeling is valid, that it’s real to you. And we also don’t want to be told how we’re feeling. Many of us have wounds from our own childhoods of “Oh, you’re not mad,” or “Oh, why are you so angry?” Being told how we’re feeling based on what is perceived from the outside looking in, instead of just asking. As parents, it’s really powerful if we just ask our children how they are and what they are feeling. When my daughter is upset, I don’t say, “Oh, what’s made you so sad?” I take her off my lap, and I say, “What are you feeling right now?” And she’ll tell me, and that way, I’m not assuming, I’m not projecting. I’m not wasting my empathic energy projecting and sensing. I’m just asking and working with what is versus what I perceive.

That’s beautiful. Wow, I wish we had more time.

I know, we can go for a long time.

Oh yeah, for sure. What are your three top tips for living in a stellar life? And where can people find you?

My three top tips for living a stellar life would be, (1) have great sex with someone you love and loves you deeply, as often as possible, (2) to play in your own ways and to playfully explore what that continues to mean for you throughout your life, and (3) to feel your feelings because they matter and they’re extremely important messengers. They’re not always true, but they’re always a pointer to something that we need to know.

Not everything is as it seems. If everything is an illusion, might as well pick a resonant resolution. Click To Tweet

Beautiful, and where can people find you?

You can find me at lolapickett.com, and I do love hanging out on social media, I have good boundaries around that. So you can find me everywhere basically at @thelolapickett, and I like to post all kinds of things and unpack empath myths and basically just call us all to not be perceived as shrinking violets. That we really are Gal Gadot, that we are wonder human, and just to remember that we can be rock stars in our lives; however, we define that if we have the resilience behind us to back us up.

Thank you, Lola, you’re amazing. This was so much fun. Thank you so much.

Thank you for having me.

Thank you, and thank you, listeners. Remember, have great sex with somebody you love as often as possible. Play in your own way, and feel your feelings fully and have a stellar life. This is Orion. Till next time.

Your Checklist of Actions to Take

{✓} Be a lot kinder and more patient with yourself. Empaths generally are highly sensitive people. They feel energies most people don’t. It can get quite exhausting. Don’t be too hard on yourself and remember to take things one step at a time.
{✓} Give yourself space now and then. Empaths can be magnets to people with problems or issues in life because they exude a welcoming aura. Sometimes this can feel too tight in the chest but it’s vital to set boundaries.
{✓} Focus on your breathing during adverse situations. Bear in mind, let go of things you cannot control, and that you’re only human. It is not your place to save the entire world right here, right now.
{✓} Go on a journey of self-discovery to more deeply assess yourself. Knowing yourself is like giving yourself the ammo to make better decisions to become a better version of you.
{✓} Bring awareness to your patterns and triggers. The more you know what irritates or disturbs you, the more you know how to handle or prevent it from ruining your day.
{✓} Understand that not all your thoughts are the truth. Sometimes things are never as they seem. This means that even your limiting beliefs are total lies you tell yourself.
{✓} Play more. Find something fun to do every day, no matter how tiny the gesture is—even getting dressed and just going to the grocery store or treating yourself to an ice cream counts.
{✓} Take advantage of the power of the pause. Whenever you feel like something stressful is going to happen, pause, collect your thoughts, breathe, and think about what you want to do for a second.
{✓} Validate other empaths. Sometimes empaths are labeled as too emotional. Let others know that’s okay. Vulnerability is a strength.
{✓} Check out Lola Pickett’s website for a good dose of light and happiness.

About Lola Pickett

Lola Pickett trains emphatic leaders to be “full-spectrum” resilient, so they can confidently keep their hearts open, their bodies healthy, and BE the change they want to see in the world.