Two Broke Chicks Podcast Episode #109: The formula to fulfilment and practising gratitude
Sal and Al catch up with fulfilment mentor Laura Grady to chat manifestation, practising gratitude and living your best life.
Do you ever wonder if you're living your best life? Maybe you've been wanting to shift your focus from what your life lacks and channel it into abundance instead? Or perhaps you have a dream but don't know how to make it a reality? Well, we might be able to help you with that.
In this week's episode Sal and Al chat with mentor and empowerment coach Laura Grady. They find out what it means to actually feel fulfilled, how to manifest your best life and the power of practising gratitude.
LISTEN TO EP#109
LINKS & RECEIPTS
- Follow Laura Grady on Instagram
- Listen to Laura Grady's podcast 'Superwomen Vibes'
- Listen to Laura Grady's podcast 'Manifestation Vibes'
- Hit up Laura Grady Coaching
CREDITS
- Hosts: Sally McMullen and Alex Hourigan
- Executive Producer: Pariya Taherzadeh
- Editor: Bamby Media
This podcast is powered by Finder and part of the Nova Podcast Network.
Thanks for listening!
-
Sally McMullen
Hey pals, I'm Sal.
Alex Hourigan
And I'm Al.
Sally McMullen
And we are the hosts of Two Broke Chicks, the show that dishes life lessons for the gals from the gals, because we know that your 20s can be bloody tough, but we're hoping that our show will help it make it that little bit easier.
Alex Hourigan
And this episode is literally all about manifesting your best life. So strap in chicks!
Sally McMullen
Al and I are going to be chatting with fulfilment coach, Laura Grady, to talk about the power of manifestation. Laura is a qualified empowerment mentor and fulfilment coach, she is trained in life coaching, hypnosis, and psychology. So we're very excited to pick her brain and get some tips on how to live your best life because we need help in that department. Before we get into the chat with Laura, what's your life lesson of the week Al?
Alex Hourigan
Okay, I love this life lesson: 'just' is a dirty word because all it does is either minimises what you're saying or minimises you and makes you ,I can't remember, it makes you sound like passive. That's it. For example, if I was saying to Sal, "Oh, are you just gonna work on Instagram today?", that might be like a really big job and there's heaps of work to do on that, but I minimise what she's working on and made it seem small by using the word just when I should be saying, "Are you working on Instagram today?".
Sally McMullen
I remember what you told me that. Tt changed my life and I've become so conscious of it because I think there are so many instances where we say it and it may also makes us sound hesitant about what we're saying and a little bit unsure of ourselves. So, for example, if you say "I just think that XYZ", or "I'm just feeling", remove the word 'just'. My life lesson of the week is get matching tattoos with your best friends. Preferably after you've had a couple of cocktails and you know, maybe a flirted with the bartender or 10.
Alex Hourigan
I don't know if we should be encouraging that.
Sally McMullen
I do. I think the premise is basically last night, Alex and one of our friends went out for drinks and dinner like a bit of a post lockdown celebration, because you know, we all haven't hung out in about four months. And for so long we've all been saying, "Oh, we're all twin flames", like, you know, "we're best friends, soulmates", like we need to get a tattoo of a flame. And we've been saying it for so long.
Alex Hourigan
We're such losers.
Sally McMullen
But we would always put it off.
Alex Hourigan
Yeah.
Sally McMullen
And yes, it's very cheesy.
Alex Hourigan
Yeah.
Sally McMullen
Also, it's just cute and fun.
Alex Hourigan
It's cute!
Sally McMullen
And I'm like who cares. So last night, while we were eating dinner, and you know, had had a few celebratory cocktails, we thought, what better time than now. So we did a quick Google search, found a tattoo parlour that was opened in Kings Cross at 10 o'clock on a Thursday night, and you best believe that we went there. And we also made friends with a great guy named Rocky, who graced us all with flame tattoos and I think, you know, we all woke up this morning, being like, "oh, yeah, we did that". But I'm glad that we did it. I don't regret it. I think it's gonna be such a funny story. And also, it's something that we've wanted to do for so long and we just ripped off the band aid. And I thank lockdown for that.
Alex Hourigan
Yeah.
Sally McMullen
I think we were just like seize the day.
Alex Hourigan
It's really cute as well. We'll put a picture of the tattoos we got on the Two Broke Chicks Instagram, but it's just funny. We were like in the Uber on the way there so hyped, like Taylor Swift was on the radio, and we were just like screaming. I was like "Helena, your Uber rating's gonna be really bad", and Sally's like, "This is your Uber", and I'm like, "Oh, shit". And here we are. I sent it to my parents. I haven't heard back yet. But this is now Sally and I's third matching tattoo together.
Sally McMullen
I'm really taking up real estate on your body. So yeah, long story short, get the tattoo.
Alex Hourigan
I think the funnest thing about it was that it was super spontaneous. Because you can get so wrapped up in "Oh, let's go research the tattoo artist and-"
Sally McMullen
Yeah.
Alex Hourigan
-"the parlour". Nah babe, go to Kings Cross, get there at 10pm, this guy, I don't know how long he's worked there. I don't know anything other than that. His name was Pete but people call him Rockie. And that's the vibe.
Sally McMullen
That's all you need to know. Yeah. And on that note, let's jump into our chat with Laura shall we?
Okay, so as I mentioned before, Laura is a qualified fulfilment mentor and empowerment coach whose life's mission is to help women manifest their dream life. Sign me the hell up. In her one-on-one coaching programmes and masterclasses, Laura helps the gals say see ya to imposter syndrome and hello to a fulfilled life, and not one that's just for the gram, like, actually a fulfilled life. So we're very excited to pick up some solid life lessons from her because she's just a ray of sunshine. Welcome to Two Broke Chicks, gal!
Laura Grady
Hello! Thank you for having me.
Sally McMullen
Thank you for coming on the show! We are so excited. We have many, many questions, because we're hoping that you can help us get our shit together. My first question is, you do a lot of one-on-one coaching and group seminars. What are some of the most common issues that you find that women in their 20s are facing, especially in 2021?
Laura Grady
The biggest thing right now that I'm seeing with women is they are lacking confidence. And they're believing that they're not good enough, and they're not worthy of what it is that they desire or where it is that they're going. So that's the biggest problem that I'm finding. It's like, we're working so much on building up women's confidence so that they feel really good about themselves. And they recognise that you know, how they feel, it's not just them. It's everyone. Everyone that I work with, these stories are playing out.
Alex Hourigan
What are some strategies that you give women to help with their confidence? What are people like, if there's a listener that's struggling with their confidence? What are some things that they should do?
Laura Grady
I always like to ask the question first off of like, what makes you feel confident? Because it's different. So what makes me feel confident might not necessarily make somebody else feel confident. So I always ask that question of like, what makes you feel confident? And that might be you know, when I get to have a boogie in my house, or it might be you know, when I am saying nice things to myself for when I'm, you know, practising gratitude or when I'm like setting my days up in a really powerful way. So, what do you think you'd like to try that might make you feel a little bit more confident. Because confidence is a muscle, and we've got to build it up like it's a muscle like anything, it's a gym, you've got to put time and effort and energy into building it up over time. But you will see the results if you stick at it, but most people go, I've done it for a week, why don't I feel any different?
Alex Hourigan
I think as well, some of us think or are taught a fulfilled life as a respected career, solid income, stable relationship, lots of friends, like the traditional boring stuff. But what does a fulfilled life actually mean and what does that look like?
Laura Grady
It is dependent on the person. Yeah, so I'm not here to say to somebody like this is exactly how you're going to feel fulfilled, if you have this career and if you have this partner, if you have XYZ. We need to figure out what one person really values in life because when you figure out what your values are, so your values might be you know, travel or exploration or fun, if you figure out what your values are, you can start to live to your values and from that point, create a bit more of a fulfilling life. So when you feel fulfilled, you feel really content, you feel happy day to day. And happy and contentment is not like "I feel like I'm on top of the world 24/7 and I'm living my best life and bla". That's not what it is, it's a lot more subtle. But if we are figuring out what our values are, it's a lot easier to figure out what that's going to look like for you specifically.
Sally McMullen
I love that response because I think that so many of us feel like we do have to live up to like Al said, these more traditional, and, I don't know, I guess milestones of what it means to have a fulfilled life, and especially as young women, I've been in a long term relationship for 13 years, and I have so many people being like, "But when are you going to get engaged?", "When are you going to have kids?", "When are you going to do this?". And, you know, you start to question those things that you do value. And I'm like, I feel like I am living my best life right now. But when those people are constantly asking that, you kind of question yourself and whether or not you are living your best life. And I think that's even more prevalent today, just with Instagram culture, and seeing what everybody else is doing and feeling like, you know, you have to have XYZ to be fulfilled.
Laura Grady
And it's just not true. You just have to live the life that you want and that makes you feel good. When you have the confidence though, you kind of go well, see ya later everyone else I'm gonna just gonna do my own thing.
Sally McMullen
Yeah, exactly. You can kind of recognise that that's a projection of what maybe they expect from their life, it's not really about you. I think it can be really overwhelming, though, to decide what you want to do with your life. And a lot of the work that you do is about you know, meeting your goals. So what are your tips for actually picking a goal or a path to follow if you don't know where you want to end up?
Laura Grady
So with career, I say that passion is purpose. So follow your passions. So if you're passionate about something, and it could just be like, you know, making making someone feel good. Follow that and there lies your purpose. That's my biggest suggestion around, yeah, finding the passions, but just as a general rule of thumb, it's like asking yourself, obviously what would challenge me to a degree, because humans love growth, and if we feel like we're growing, we feel like we're living we're excited, we're expanding. But if we feel like we're not growing, we feel like we're dying. It's a horrible feeling in the body. Yeah, so pick something that you do feel will help you grow something that is of interest as well and something that makes you go 'Yeah, that would be pretty bloody cool, why not?'.
Alex Hourigan
Being challenged, it's like, it's not necessarily a fun thing but when you achieve something, at the end of the day, like even just being able to check something off the list or completing a degree, whatever it is, or just a course, because I think as well, sometimes we look too big picture at things and get really overwhelmed at everything that we think we need to achieve, or everything we need to do. And then we just don't do it, we just put it off because it's like, oh, well, if I actually wanted to go and pursue a career in, I don't know, books, I'd have to go and study a degree for four years and I'm 25 and I can't do that. Like, it's just, it is so easy to get into a whirlwind of it. And it's just like 'No sis, pop off, go do it'.
Laura Grady
Absolutely. I say this all the time. Like I love my job, like I love the work that I do, where I get to work with hundreds of women every year, thousands over the last few years. But if I stopped liking it, I would quit. And I think we have to get comfortable with that idea. Like it's you get to change your mind. And you don't have to have all the steps laid out for you. And I'm always saying like, you know, especially manifesting or goal setting, or however you want to frame it it's going, okay, I want this or something better, but I'm open to something better, because sometimes we can't see the beauty in the power of what's coming, because we've got a really human perspective of like, this means this and you go from A to B to C and you know, can get a bit stagnant.
Alex Hourigan
Well, speaking of manifestation, you're a big advocate of manifestation. And it's becoming an increasingly popular topic and life strategy. So what's your process for bringing your sparkle manifestation sparkle to life?
Laura Grady
Yes, so manifesting is so fun. It's so much fun. You're essentially aligning yourself and your beliefs with the universe and that's what I believe in whatever you want to believe in, you go for it. If you want to believe in your mind, I don't care, it all works the same way to me, but aligning your beliefs and your goals, knowing that anything gets to be possible. So you kind of setting something out there of like, I don't know how this is gonna happen but I really want it to. So I follow three processes and three steps, asking for what you want, so that means writing it down, and writing it down as if it's already happened. So writing it down, like 'I would ideally like to', for example, 'be on this podcast', like not writing it down as if it's already happened. So writing it down, like, okay, it's this date in the future and I have been on, you know, this amazing podcast, and it feels really good to me, I'm feeling really inspired and excited about it, and you focus on the feeling. You ask for what you want. Second step, believe that it gets to be possible for you. So most people, they will manifest and they'll ask for something that they don't believe in. So like you have to do the work on your belief systems and the stories that you're telling yourself about what it is that you're asking for, so it does get to come in. So that's the second step is the belief. Having that belief behind it and working on that each day, and then receiving what you want. So getting out of your own way, because I'm a firm believer that everything that you already want is there, it's happened, it's done. It's about you being an open channel and receiving it. And so that means, you know, holding the vision, knowing that it's coming, believing that it's coming, having trust and faith, so choosing faith over fear all the time. And yeah, being open, being open for the ideas and little niggles that sometimes you know where you're just feeling really good, and you have this random idea, and it pays off. So you know, taking care of your energy day to day really helps.
Sally McMullen
You mentioned before that a lot of this is a daily practice and something that you need to do consistently. So, how do you pull yourself out of a negative mindset on those days when you just aren't in it?
Laura Grady
I mean, we're all going to have those days. So firstly, just normalising it, it's so okay, if you have a really shocking day and you're like, I feel like absolute dog poo. That's okay. The big thing that I like to say is that if you have a bad day, it doesn't mean that you're not manifesting or you're not achieving your goals or you've done something wrong, because the second that we start to play into that kind of dialogue, the bad day ends in a bad week, essentially, or can end in a bad month, because we keep shaming ourselves for how we're feeling. It's part of being a human means experiencing the full spectrum of human emotion. So the good, the bad, the ugly, and the great as well because we get to experience the great too. So my big thing for my clients is always asking them like, 'What's one thing that's going to make me feel five to 10% better today or tomorrow', and just starting off with little baby steps. So for some people, you know, if you're having a really bad day emotionally and you're like, you know what, I really need to cry and I think if I cry, it's just gonna be a big weight off the shoulders. Fantastic. Go cry. It might be you know, going to the gym or going for a long walk, you know, asking yourself what's a baby step that I can take today that's going to help me feel better tomorrow or later on today? So just little baby steps.
Alex Hourigan
I also I think as well surrounding yourself with people that respect your bad days has been really helpful for me because I have that, like, I will wake up some mornings and I'm just like a grumpy little grouch, poor Sally. She's like "Why don't you just log off and go to bed and watch a Disney movie?". And like we will have work to do and she's like, "Just go take a day", and having someone not be like, "Oh, well, like, I really need your help with this", or "No, we had plans, let's go to lunch, like just pull yourself out of it". And people that just like, I've started being so much better as well at just sending a message being like, "I know we had plans, but I just really don't feel like it. I'm just not in the headspace. can we reschedule?". And it's so surprising how many people are just like, "Yeah, and you know what that happens to me as well".
Laura Grady
We have to be comfortable with saying no to people and to different things in our lives because that means that when you're saying yes to somebody, you really mean it.
Alex Hourigan
For the people who want to make a change in their life, but don't know where to begin, kind of like what we were talking about before, when you're just kind of looking a bit too big picture. What's one step to get started on something that you want to do or something you want to change in your life?
Laura Grady
I think figuring out what you do want, you know, you can figure out what you do want just by looking at what you don't want, because it's the opposite. So if you don't want to feel sluggish each day, it's like well okay, I do I do want to feel really healthy. So how would that look? What does that mean for me? So, we can figure out what we do want from that place. But my big suggestion with all of this is recognising that sometimes this is hard to just navigate by yourself, you know? Join programmes or read books about this stuff, you know, you don't have to do it alone, or even have an accountability buddy, like a friend of yours who is into the same thing so that you're not doing it all by yourself. Because sometimes, you know, the process of doing it by yourself means that, you get stuck in your own head, and you go "Oh, I'm not doing it perfectly", which is the common story that comes up with a lot of my clients. So yeah, having a bit of help around it too. You can see coaches, you can see lots of different types of people who can help you on that path, pretty quickly.
Alex Hourigan
Go change your life, girl.
Sally McMullen
Before we wrap up the episode, we want to play a quick game of pick your poison, which is basically our own version of this or that. So, we'll give you a topic and then you can tell us which one you prefer. So first off, yoga or journaling?
Laura Grady
Yoga, which is weird for me, but yeah.
Alex Hourigan
Netflix or Stan?
Laura Grady
Netflix.
Sally McMullen
Long walks or a hit class?
Laura Grady
Um, definitely long walks!
Alex Hourigan
Same, girl. Rainy days or beach days?
Laura Grady
Beach days.
Sally McMullen
Fresh flowers or house plants?
Laura Grady
House plants.
Alex Hourigan
Britney or Christina?
Laura Grady
I think Britney. I just feel really bad for her with everything she's gone through.
Alex Hourigan
Leave Britney alone!
Sally McMullen
She is our sweet angel. We always say that I'm the Britney to Al's Christina. So we're repping both camps on Two Broke Chicks.
Laura Grady
I love it. They're so amazing.
Sally McMullen
They are they're both Queens. And last but not least sweet or savoury?
Laura Grady
Savoury all the way.
Sally McMullen
Ooh, no sweet tooth up in here.
Laura Grady
No, no sweet tooth, not a fan of sweet food. Well I am, but like I would prefer to have savoury.
Alex Hourigan
Yeah, I hate sweet food too. Sally and I got Uber Eats the other day and it was like Oporto's and she goes in the car like "Why are there two chocolate mousse in here?", and I was like "I'll take it!". Like, "maybe it's like a promotion thing".
Sally McMullen
It was her plan all along. Well thank you so much for joining us on Two Broke Chicks, Laura. It has been a absolute pleasure having you. Make sure to chuck Laura a follow @lauragradyy with two y's at the end on Instagram and check out her podcast 'Superwoman Vibes'. If you're interested in one-on-one coaching sessions and masterclasses, make sure to head to lauragradycoaching.com or check out our show notes for all of the links and details that you need to change your life!
Laura Grady
Thank you so much. Thank you for having me.
Sally McMullen
That's a wrap chicks. Thanks again to Laura Grady for joining us on the show. Check out the show notes below for the links to Laura's website and socials and head to finder.com.au/twobrokechicks for a copy of the transcript for all of our eps and similar links. If you haven't already, please pretty please follow us on Apple podcasts and Spotify and @twobrokechicks on Instagram. If you're really feeling the love, which we hope you are, feel free to leave us a review on Apple podcasts and a rating as well. As always thank you to our lovely producer Pariya Taherzadeh and our friends at Bamby Media for editing this episode and of course to you. Thanks for having us in your ear holes, we love to be here.
Alex Hourigan
Bye!
Sally McMullen
Bye gang. See you at the tattoo parlour.
Alex Hourigan
See ya there.
CHUCK US A FOLLOW
