Let Yourself Be Who You Really Can Become with Lauren Griewski

 

 

Listen to the podcast here:

 

Highlights:

00:57 A Heart For People
09:37 Openness leads to Opportunities
17:51 Goodwill Always Comes Back
23:56 Are You Addicted to Stress?
29:41 Your Im-Perfect Action
36:13 Don’t Give Up Your Power
42:05 We are Made From Love
51:41 Live Your Gifts

 

The best person you can become is you. The world may shape you but your resilience and love will thrive if you make it so. Join @myexpectation and @LaurenGriewski on this inspiring conversation on #self-development #identity #grief… Click To Tweet

Quotes:

“It’s about transformation; it’s about uncovering that deep, dead areas of our lives that are keeping us stuck, or that we’re too afraid to expose, because it’s so powerful.” –Lauren Griewski

“Fear kills. I mean, fear stops people in their tracks every single time.” –Art Costello

“Just because somebody does something some way doesn’t mean you have to do it that way, you can do it your way. Because sometimes your way is so authentic.” –Art Costello

“I think that when you live to the expectations of others, you’re never satisfied inside.” –Art Costello

“Companies will take whatever it is you’re going to give; they’re not going to create the boundary for you. We have to do that work; we have to continue to be committed to our own self-development.” –Lauren Griewski

“We don’t have to be with some of the things that are really hard heal.” –Lauren Griewski

“When you believe in the possibility of everything, everything becomes possible.” –Art Costello

“If you can control people’s expectations, you have control and power of them- they give up their power.” –Art Costello

“Emotional intelligence is sometimes the greatest layer of intelligence- that’s how we built our whole world.” –Lauren Griewski

“One of the biggest benefits of being able to identify your emotions is it gives you a control over, not only the words we speak, but the actions that we take.” –Art Costello

“The depth of love that we have for an individual that we longed to touch or feel or hear- that’s what grief is.” –Lauren Griewski

“It’s amazing when you let yourself be what you really can become… Live and identify the things that you want, and just let go a lot of the things you don’t.” –Art Costello

“If we’re willing to share our gifts, we’re also open to receiving abundantly.” –Lauren Griewski

 

Meet Lauren Griewski

Lauren Griewski has always had a heart for people. She is known as the go-to person and the leader. Lauren’s search for the purpose of life came with the realization that being “good enough” comes with self-care and being aligned with the inner self. And this is how she helps her clients. She uses her expertise in entrepreneurship, technology, media and advertising to bring her clients to where they want to go. She is the founder and CEO of Soul Expressed, LCC, a company dedicated to helping entrepreneurs get clear on what they really want in life in order to monetize, automate and leverage their business. Life is not about how we work to live. It’s about how we live a life that works.

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Transcription:

Art Costello: Welcome to the Shower Epiphanies Podcast. Today, I am honored and thrilled to have Lauren Griewski on the show. She has a really interesting background. She actually has been working for two of my favorite platforms, Instagram and Facebook, and I’m sure we’ll hear about all of that, but she cares about people and that’s what really draws me to her. And she’s got a good heart, and I think she’s here to help us all. So with that being said, Lauren, welcome to the show.

Lauren Griewski: Thank you so much. It’s such a treat to be here.

Art Costello: Well, I’m honored. So can you tell us your story, how it started for you?

Lauren Griewski: Yeah, I’ll take you back on just a brief journey and then we’ll probably jump more into it. But I always have a heart for people, and I was the girl in grade school who the whole, you know, classroom, or recess would be talking, or goofing off. And I was the one that everyone heard because my voice was usually the loudest and I was maybe stirring it all up, you know, that kind of thing. So I’m a social nut butterfly at heart, I always have. And I grew up in a home that wonderful parents, and a brother, and older brother about 18 months apart. And in my home there was a bit of an addiction. And so that also as a young child set me up to be a leader. And in a lot of ways I’m grateful for the journey that my parents came into this lifetime with because it’s taught me to be who I am on my path. And so, naturally I’d always been someone who had taken charge and can see clearly through any sort of fluff or chaos because I had to manage through it at a very young age in my home. And so, as I went through grade school I was always an athlete, always a social butterfly. I graduated from university, I grew up in Michigan and went to school there, and I set off for the big city, New York city. And for me there was nothing, nothing that could keep me from being in what I call the heartbeat of the world, every, you know, every vein and every industry touches New York city. And I wanted to be at the center of it, experience, contribute and learn. I actually, I didn’t have a job and I didn’t know anyone in New York. So I spend a summer at a sleep away camp in Middleton, New York, which is about an hour and a half from the city. And I would get one day off a week from being the soccer coach and the middle school camp counselor, which we know anything for neighbor listeners who have middle schoolers, or can remember back to those days, hormones are running crazy. So that was a fun group to work with that summer. And yeah, I would interview in New York city, I would take the train into Penn station, and I would take a change of clothes and change in the bathroom there, and head out with my resume and a heart that couldn’t wait to meet people and make an impact in the world. And so, I ended up scoring my first job at Nickelodeon, which is a part of the Viacom portfolio. And that was where I learned business development, and how to connect with people through humor and story, and how to think like an executive. And that was foundational for me as I continued to build my career into technology and edutainment, which is entertainment and education at the same time. And really with an ethical background in being in children’s media, I had to learn all of the aspects of meetings, advertising up front and that is not taken lightly. And so, I’m really grateful for that discernment in the work and the lens that I was able to bring to the work I did.

So fast forward, seven years or so in New York City, Facebook called, at the time it was just Facebook and wanted me to come out and run this technology part of their business, which at the time didn’t make a ton of sense to me because I didn’t come from technology, but it was a huge opportunity. And I saw the promise at the time that Facebook had, and if you remember, this is back a little bit before their IPO, in Wall Street they didn’t really believe in Facebook, neither did really anyone else. But I saw the promise that Facebook had, if we could get personalized marketing right and be able to continue to connect people at scale, I saw it as a Holy Grail of advertising and a lot of what it’s turned out to be today. So it was also a time in my life where I had just lost my big brother, my big brother passed away to a seizure. And so, I had this thought in my system while New York was my home and I had built a network there. You know, I just saw this lifetime is so precious and as opportunities come to us, it’s our job to step into them if they feel an alignment. So I stepped in and I made the move, and I spent the next three to four years building Facebook’s business to business technology platform. And so that was, you know, working with businesses in the technology sector. So these words may sound familiar. These companies, Salesforce or call SAP, HubSpot, Marketo, Infusionsoft, these are just to name a few. I’ve worked with hundreds of different technology platforms to build Facebook’s offerings, our go to market offerings, and then also they became their own use cases in marketing, their own businesses. So I got to learn all the facets inside of how we build technology and Facebook’s platform from Facebook now to Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, Oculus, you name it, all of Facebook’s portfolio. We grew and built that and I was at the forefront leading that. And about five years into my journey there, I started to wake up to this Colleen that was more in alignment with helping people and not just businesses. And so, I also was really clear that I had spent a lot of time working and numbing a lot of the areas of my life that needed to heal. And so, I started to look at where I had given all of my value to my accomplishments, that company I worked for, and really made at the center of that was my value. I’d given my value to everything outside of me that I was doing. And I didn’t consciously know this at the time, I just felt like, is this all? Is this all that we’re here for in this lifetime? It can’t be all that we’re here for.

And so, I set out to learn from other cultures, from the Eastern side of the world, and from, you know, Ayurvedic medicine, all the way through to yoga traditions and the history of many different, you know, whether you would call them religions or spiritual practices. But I really got to open up my spirituality and learn to connect with people in a whole new way. And so, fast forward a couple of years of learning that and understanding how that work with people across the board from the fact that you are valuable regardless of the work that you produce in the world. You innately come into this life as a valuable being along with everything else that we can teach, touch, and feel in those things that are even more metaphysical. But we are, love and we are value in our core. And so, I transitioned from Facebook and Instagram in January and I’ve now dedicated my time to supporting people, to developing businesses that are in alignment with who they are and helping people scale those businesses, leveraging technology, and automation, and media platforms. And what’s been really, really rewarding is for people who are in a similar situation to me who maybe felt like they had to have external validation to affirm their worth finding and experiencing that worth and every moment regardless of their success. And that success can be a part of that as well, but that doesn’t change who they are and the value that they bring in the world.

Art Costello: Awesome story, I mean, just really awesome in my head is spinning with questions. My first one is, and I don’t know that it’s so much a question as a statement, I want to see how you react to it. I think your journey to self-awareness started when you were younger and a little girl, and it starts with a mindset of openness. Open to the possibilities, I call it that, I say that I believe in the possibilities of everything because since I was nine years old, that’s for me, that’s how I’ve expanded my life and done the things. And if you follow that path, the journey will lead you to where you’re supposed to be, you know? I mean, I’ve been in businesses, made a lot of money, I’ve had no money, I lost my wife to cancer and those things and it wipes you out. But yet it builds a resilience in you to keep going. And I’m asked often with my age: “Why are you not retiring?” Because my mindset has been, since I was a little boy that I’m not gonna ever retire. You know, I’m gonna do what I do. And I see that in you and you just followed the path that has been set out for you. And I don’t call it predetermination, or predestination, or anything. You just followed the trail, the path, and you could have moved off to the left, right off of that path. But you always come back to that path when you are open to it.

Lauren Griewski: We do. And I think you’re right when you say that as a young soul, and this lifetime I was self aware and circumstances supported me in being self aware, I didn’t really have a choice. And so, the beautiful part about that is that I can relate back to that young girl really quickly at any moment, and always check in, how is she? What does she need right now? And that’s been some of my own spiritual work and conscious awareness that I continue to stay committed to because it allows me to connect to other people and their young child.

Art Costello: Yeah. In Expectations Therapy that I do, because I believe that the seed of expectation is just powerful in our lives because it wasn’t mine, that’s my truth. But I think that when you have this expectation in you and you look at it through identifying the things in your life and that’s what you’re doing, because the first step of my program is identifying, and I don’t mean surface of identification, I mean, digging way down deep inside you and really finding out who you are. And I think you do a lot of that kind of work, don’t you?

Lauren Griewski: Absolutely. And I do all of that work with the people that are my clients before we go into any of the business. The money comes, we’re not worried about that, that we can do and technology helps us do that. But it’s about transformation. It’s about uncovering the deep seated areas of our lives to keep us stuck, or that we’re too afraid to expose because it’s so powerful.

“It's about transformation; it's about uncovering that deep, dead areas of our lives that are keeping us stuck, or that we're too afraid to expose, because it's so powerful.” –Lauren Griewski Click To Tweet

Art Costello: Fear kills. I mean, fear stops people in their tracks every single time. You know, I used to say that I was fearless until somebody asked me this question. They said: “If I strung a wire across the grand Canyon, would you walk across it without a net?” And I said: “No, I’ve got fear. I got fear.” But you know, it’s when fear sets in, and some people are paralyzed by fear and they fear almost everything. They don’t step outside themselves ever because they’re afraid of what other people will think and all that, which has a lot to do with how they expect. But you know, we can go into that another time because I love your story, and what I loved about your story is you taking off to New York. You know, I think I’ve done like about 60 interviews with people right now, and the people who step outside of that fear and just go it alone seem to just have this really great mindset of not letting things bother them, you know, not being afraid of things and they just charge forward. And I think that that’s key into your development of becoming who you are is to step outside of yourself like that.

“Fear kills. I mean, fear stops people in their tracks every single time.” –Art Costello Click To Tweet

Lauren Griewski: Yeah. You know what’s interesting is that I couldn’t actually, I remember the day I was on my way to up one of my classes in the university and my best friend was one of my roommates at the time, and I said: “We need to stop at this FedEx store.” Or whatever it was that had a FedEx machine fax machine. And she’s like: “What are you doing?” And I was faxing them as application to work with the summer camp. It’s just like, what are, like, where is that thing? Like what you, I don’t know what for some reason I just, you know, feel like I have to do this. And low and behold, then I got that job and everyone, I mean I graduated straight a student class president, captain of the cheerleading squad, has on the sorority, everyone’s, like, what people walk into any job, and I just didn’t feel the thought of walking into any job that was just, like, it didn’t excite me. It almost was harder to stay in that mediocre for me. Like, in what I knew in my soul with mediocre then to say: “Yo, I won.” And then this is, I say this humbly, I got counselor of the year at the summer camp and I think a lot of it was, these were kids who went to camp together of their full lives. These are residential on summer camps that it’s, a whole part of their development. And then once your camper, your counselor, and I had never done that as a newbie. But I think a lot of it was that, I would take these middle school girls and they’d be freaking out about a guy and I’d say: “Let’s go on a run. Let’s go run today, three laps around the Lake and then let’s talk about it.” Because we got to move the energy. They got to feel accomplished. They got to set in themselves like I can do anything. And my worth is more than some guys that are joking with me cause we’re middle schoolers and have nothing better to do. Well you have a lot better to do. And so I think in me has just been this sense of adventure and journey and really listening into my options, which one feels right even though I can’t see it.

And I will tell you, fast forward 15 years into, you know, a career, I took a trip to India in December, and coming back again, I was in that airport in Doha and my brother speaks to me, and the colors of blue and gold because we’re huge Michigan fans. But I get off the airplane in Doha and there was a woman with a Michigan sweatshirt on, and I’m kind of, sloughing it off, you know? Oh, it’s like everywhere, right? So I go to get a coffee with my friend that I traveled with, and I had, for some reason I wanted two straws in my coffee, I don’t know what it was. I thought nothing of it. I pulled the second straw and that’s a blue straw and the one I have is yellow. And it was in this moment and I was in my mind, and I was really navigated through this, this idea of, like, do I go back, do I go back to Facebook when I get back? Like can I go back? And I couldn’t. And it was my brother saying, it’s time and you’re going to be just fine. And it was time, and I don’t know, I still don’t know. Right now I’m called to do this work and that’s what I’m doing, and I’ll continue doing this work until I get, they called to do the next thing. And it feels more fluid now, even like the changes aren’t, don’t feel as abrupts the wrong word, but you know, making a big shift from a company I worked for for seven years and had built, you know, quite a bit of Goodwill throughout that and within, you know, all of the different executives, I worked with someone on a number of different companies. It pains me was that, I’m not losing anything, I’m just stepping into what next.

“I think that when you live to the expectations of others, you’re never satisfied inside.” –Art Costello Click To Tweet

Art Costello: Yeah, I mean, and think about this, if you built all that Goodwill, it will come back to you if you need it, if you want to call it, and it can come back to you in many different fashions. It may not be a Facebook or Instagram, it may be, that somebody from, that you have created this Goodwill with go somewhere else and can really catapult you into something else. I find that a lot, you know, I mean when you put out good vibes, good vibes, comeback, you know, it’s just us. The other part that I’m really tuning in with you is that you listened to your gut, you listened to that inner soul, and that’s enough. That’s another thing that people do that they don’t listen to. And if the new media summit, you know, I talked to a lot of people who are new to the business of podcasting and new to just even learning, haven’t even got their podcast yet. And I just tell them, you got to follow your gut. And you know, just because somebody does something some way doesn’t mean you have to do it that way. You can do it your way because sometimes your way is so authentic and so real. You feel so comfortable with it. You know, a lot of the things I do, fuck what the normal podcasts there’s do. But you know, I just do it because I’m living for me, I don’t live for other people. And I think that when you live to the expectations of others, you never satisfy their side. And your true blessings that you want to bestow on the world don’t come out. Even when you work for big organizations like Facebook, and Instagram, or IBM, it doesn’t matter who you work for. When you start letting your inner self flow, your creativity blossoms, and you can bring new ideas to a company, they have to learn to be open to those new ideas because your employees are your backbone of your business always. And customers and employees are the two most important things in business.

“Just because somebody does something some way doesn't mean you have to do it that way, you can do it your way. Because sometimes your way is so authentic.” –Art Costello Click To Tweet

Lauren Griewski: Yeah, absolutely. I think the other thing that, whether it’s companies or organization in general, that we are now becoming a more conscious humanity. We are, which means people are healing, and what I found is that these companies a lot of times, and then my experience, and I believe we attract what we need as our lessons and as our teachers, but I had no boundaries. I worked from sunup to sun down, and in my sleep I do that too. And so that’s the expectation I started to set for people around me to expect for me to always be working because that’s how I showed up. And when I started to heal, when I started to mourn and grieve the loss of my brother in a really meaningful way that allowed me to also be with some of those feelings. And then I started to heal some things around, you know, my own self worth and my own values systems that I’ve kinda gotten not a whack over the years. When I started to do that work, I recognize, wow, I have no boundaries when it comes to my time, or how much work I sign up for, or you know, you name it. And so as I started to create those boundaries, everything didn’t even align in the same way anymore. And so the reason I bring this up is because companies will take whatever it is you’re going to get. They’re not going to create the boundary for you. We have to do that work. We have to continue to be committed to our own self development. We have to be willing to say, my health comes first, my sanity comes first, my family comes first, my joy in this lifetime and my connection to love comes first, and it’s really easy.

“Companies will take whatever it is you're going to give; they're not going to create the boundary for you. We have to do that work; we have to continue to be committed to our own self-development.” -Lauren Griewski Click To Tweet

Art Costello: That’s you living to your core expectations. When you set your core expectations of what you want out of it, that’s why it’s so important what I preach because when you set those core expectations and you live to them, it changes you. It really absolutely does. And it’s not about being selfish, it’s about self care. It’s about taking care of Lauren and Art, and being who we’re supposed to be. Because if you live outside of it, you’re not, you’re just not, you know.

Lauren Griewski: Well, I think it all comes back to being able to hear that internal compass, that internal voice because from a place of self care and not in fear, we’re not chaotically trying to survive, which is what happened. My case, I got lost in that, and my soul woke me up, and it said, this isn’t going to work anymore. Like, there are things that you need to be guided to and you need to be in self care around in order to heal.

Art Costello: What was great about you though is that you’re open to it. You listened to it, and so many people don’t. They don’t listen to it.

Lauren Griewski: I had an incredible mentor who said to me once: “Some people choose to have a death by a thousand paper cuts.” Which is, you know, it’s like every cut’s a little bit more and blah blah blah. And then over time you’re just like kinda caught up everywhere and you don’t even know which ones are more important, or really severe, and that’s just it. It’s like the slow kind of over time, and I’ve seen that there’s this layer of stress off. So that exists inside of, a lot of these high pressure environments. And it’s this idea that we become actually addicted to the stress so much that we become so addicted to this stress. We actually are not able, our body doesn’t know how to rest anymore. It’s like we’re constantly on the battlefield, the life or we’re constantly worrying that we’re going to get eaten by prey. And these are, you know, our animal brains, so the point about self care, we don’t have to live like that.

Art Costello: You’re the fourth technology lady, woman, person that I have met who has expressed this pressure burnout, kind of thing, that happens and have awakened to it from Google to Google executives. I mean, they express this same exact burnout and have left, and now they’re doing different roles. Now they’ve taken on other stresses that I went: “Whoa, okay you went from frying pan back into the fire.” But you know, it’s their choice. You know, I think you’ve taken a more soul searching, more spiritual path out of it.

Lauren Griewski: Well, I will say the stressors because it distracts us from, and I don’t know these women, so I’m not really into their story, but in the environment and the culture of these high, high pressure environments, it hurts because it keeps us distracted. So we don’t have to be with some of the things that are really hard to heal. And I will say my first three months, like out of the working world, I slept, I rested, I cried a lot, I still have an incredible therapist, I had coaches. I mean, I really was like, you know what, I’m going to be with these things that scare me the most because otherwise they are just like the roots, they’re my foundation. My foundation feels messy and I haven’t looked at it in so long because I’ve been busy, and the busy-ness, I didn’t have to look at it.

“We don't have to be with some of the things that are really hard heal.” –Lauren Griewski Click To Tweet

Art Costello: Yes it does. You know. Let me ask you this question. How did you grieve the loss of your brother? Did you dive into work?

Lauren Griewski: Yeah, absolutely. Totally.

Art Costello: Yeah. Cause when I lost my wife, I dove into alcohol, which I hadn’t done very much, but I bet I consume more beer than they sell it in the Green Bay Packers game in a week, yeah.

Lauren Griewski: And you know, I say we get to honor the things that we used as tools to numb because in some ways that had us be who we are today. Like in so many ways, no, I honor sort of the dark nights of the soul that sometimes come to us because they teach us, they give us contrast and perspective.

Art Costello: Yeah. And I agree with that told heartedly because out of the ashes, you know, I rose and really now finding more happiness and purpose than I’ve ever found in any owning, I’ve always owned my own companies, so I’m not really ever worked for anybody except one time in my life. And you know, I’ve found more joy and happiness in doing what I’m doing now, helping other people than I’ve ever found before. And I just love it, you know? I mean, because it’s just, it fulfills the soul so much that the money doesn’t matter. You know, it’s just about being this happy, loving, caring person, and I love people. I mean, meeting people and doing these things, you know, I get to meet 8, 10 people a week on Zoom, and we record these podcasts, and we do deep into their soul sometimes. And sometimes it’s hurtful form, sometimes it’s beautiful from, but we always, I always leave people feeling better about themselves, so that’s my gift.

Lauren Griewski: You know, I’m unearthing the jar, right? I tend to think sometimes that, like, all of our stories or the areas we go, we’d take the lid off the jar, but it doesn’t mean everything just comes out. It’s not all like the Jack in the Box, and be like, wow. I use a jar, I used to think of it as like a treasure chest at the end of my bed, and I’m like, wow, I’m just pulling out a toy I haven’t seen in years. I don’t even know what to do with it. And so much comes back that it’s in the end folded in the discussion.

Art Costello: Yeah. See, I call it the process. It’s all a process. You know, it’s the process of living. When you believe in the possibility of everything, everything becomes possible and there’s no limits. Your life is limitless when you go ahead, and if you release the stuff that’s just holding you back and stop worrying about what other people think of you, or what the things that you fear and you start just becoming a doer. What I speak at high schools, I always tell the kids, become doers. Stop talking about it, let’s do it and then go make, do do all over the earth. Yeah, they laugh. You know, they think it’s funny, but it’s true, you know?

“When you believe in the possibility of everything, everything becomes possible.” –Art Costello Click To Tweet

Lauren Griewski: You know other thing I’ll add to that Art is, I call it imperfect action. I can’t take action because it’s not, they won’t do because they’re too afraid. So I use the word imperfect action. When you break it apart, it actually says I’m perfect, and we are.

Art Costello: Yeah, as long as we’re living authentically, we are perfect. We are living as who we are supposed to be.

Lauren Griewski: Absolutely.

Art Costello: I know that you’ve studied all kinds of different cultures, and religions, and all that, and I don’t mean this in a religious sense of the word, but where does faith fit in your life?

Lauren Griewski: Yeah, great question. Great question and it’s a question I’m with often, actually. I grew up in the Christian Church and I took a trip to Europe and did 16 different countries, and you know, I was able to be exposed and this was back when I was 21, 22 years old. And I’m gratefully, I was exposed to religion and how it evolved over time. And I sort of saw the doctrine of the rules, more as a way to control society. And it opened me to, like, these are just rules that have been kind of created and passed down, and government, like, religion was really government. And then I started to study much more around Hinduism, and Buddhism, and you name it, like, tons and tons of different religions. And what I found was that we all have sort of this center God, this center higher power, and then some different symbols of the perfect man, or an enlightened man, or you know, Jesus, Buddha. And what’s interesting is, the way I see it now is what Jesus had available to him, we all also have available to us. So who am I to not live into what my soul, and my purpose, and my calling is in this lifetime? Okay. So I see, definitely there is a higher power, but I believe that when we leave this body, this container, we don’t die. Our soul changes. There’s other journeys that we’re on, other lifetimes that we exist in, but I believe in the eternity of our existence. And then I really believe that we’re all a lot, and really believe that we are all from the same source. And so in that, when I’m connected in, and when I see my fellow friends, I call everyone friends, whether I love them, or you know, so we’re all in our journey just trying to do our best. I really believe we’re all just doing the best we can with the gifts of the things we haven’t healed, with the things we are healing. And when I can see people and set my judgments aside, that’s how I experience God.

Art Costello: Yeah, I’ve very similar views on spirituality, you know, and thinking and hearing you talk, I’m thinking back when I was in college, one of the things that enlightened me to, because I grew up in a Catholic family, but I wouldn’t call it practicing, you know, I mean my parents, the way that church went for them is 8:00 o’clock Sunday morning, you drove the kids to church and you opened the car door and you said, we’ll pick you up at 11:30 after the church service, and have Sunday school, and all those things. And then we’d wait out in the corner for them to get back and pick us up. So you know, it just wasn’t very structured well. And when I was in college, one of the requirements for my world religion class was to go and experience what other religions did, how their services work. And we had to, had to go to five services. So I went to a Protestant service and all that. And then I went to a Buddhist service, and I went to our Hare Krishna kind of service. Yeah, and for me, I can’t tell you how almost frightened I was, and I would wish, you know, I had been in Vietnam and out of Vietnam and I thought of myself as this fearless, tough old Marine, you know, but when we started being told that I had to go and go to five different services, it through this kind of fear in me because as a Catholic you’re told it is the one and only religion if you go outside of it, you know, and I soon learned that the language may be different, the rituals may be different, but the God was one, it was one God and it opened up a lot of my world, you know, it did. And I true that fear, and it’s interesting that you said about religious fear, you know, that we have, because once you shed that, and you get out of that doctrine and that dogma, and start living it opens up a whole different world.

Lauren Griewski: Yeah, and I just, the judgment piece, how you mentioned, this is the one way and the only way, and that has judged people to be right or wrong based on their beliefs, or growing up thinking, Oh, that person’s like that. And we’re, you know, I should be worried about that person. Should I try to convert them? Should I? And you know, I think it comes from a good place. I think people’s intentions are pure. It’s just what they’ve been taught, similarly,

Art Costello: In my book, I write a whole chapter on how churches, government, advertising agencies all use expectations to control people because if you can control people’s expectations, you have control and power of them. They give up their power, once you submit to their expectations and not your own. I have a whole chapter on it and it’s interesting. I mean, salesmen for years have used the power of fear to control a sale. We don’t much anymore because the dynamics have changed because we’ve become aware. But car salesman, when you’d walk into a car lot, you want to buy a car, Oh my God, that car will not be here tomorrow, that is such a good buy and I’m not coming off my price. You know, and the fear of loss has controlled the early sales industry for a long time. And the advertising industry, they want you to fear this product, or this loss of it, so you will go out and buy it, which is such a crazy way to sell.

“If you can control people's expectations, you have control and power of them- they give up their power.” –Art Costello Click To Tweet

Lauren Griewski: Well, the other piece I’ll add to that is a shame, if that ensues without even a message in the word or the salesperson, but if you don’t look a certain way, or if you don’t have a certain material goods, it doesn’t give you as much power, or you know, and I think for women as particularly, I can relate to this, but images of women growing up, I’m thinking like, well, I don’t look like that. Am I still important? Am I still lovable? And how that ensues beyond just the words and the actual sales person. But you know, the media has a lot of power in our perceptions of our own cells. And are we okay?

Art Costello: I’ll tell you an arresting story. In 1968, my family is in upstate New York, and my sister worked for Kodak, had a great job at Kodak. She said: “I got you an interview with Kodak in their Salesforce.” I went and interviewed, and the lady that I interviewed when we finished, she said: “You’re a great person. I love you and all that, but you don’t fit our look.” Could you imagine if you said that today? What would happen? But she said: “You don’t have the look of our salespeople, I can’t hire you.” And I said: “You know what, ma’am, I can’t change how I look.” I just don’t, you know, I mean, I can’t help it that I’m a muscular stubby little guy, you know? I’m fucked for 10 but I’m, you know, she told me, she said, their sales people to be 6 foot, 6 foot 2″, 3″. And I said, I can’t do anything. I can’t go to the place around the corner and say, stretch me six inches, you know, I mean, it’s going to happen. But I learned from that experience, and went on to do things much greater and much bigger. And, you know, I could have let it really discouraged me from a lot, you know, and people don’t realize their words.

Lauren Griewski: it’s a great story. And you know, there’s lessons to be learned in it. Like, when it comes to what we look like and all that. But the bigger part of your story, I said, okay, I can’t change me and thanks. You know, that’s not changing, and there’s something else for me. If I’ve been watching the shows lately, and I have to get to Africa because I am fascinated by the animal kingdom. And what’s interesting to me, for a very long time, my initials are large. L-R-G ,you know, I’m a strong built woman, you know, 5’9″ and 160 pounds. And my whole life I thought I was too big, my whole life I thought, no, I need to lose 15 pounds in order to let, you know, I need to be this size depending upon what season it was. A lot of it was messages that I saw around me, around some, and I chosen that. And you know, recently I’ve been watching these shows, you know, it hit me one day, like an elephant is not trying to be a zebra, and a zebra is not trying to be an elephant. They offer who they are, and they exude such magnificent in their own species, and they all played their roles, they all played their part. And yeah, it’s really allowed me to root in like, okay, who am I today?

Art Costello: I think that that’s very common amongst women, I really do more than on men. And I think that, I mean, I was in the airport yesterday and I saw some, and in San Diego, I noticed people are either large or they’re extremely skinny, you know, and I was just thinking, you know, it’s just this look that they have, either you give into it and you starve yourself to death to get this body, or your work yourself working out, or running, or whatever you do to get to this place. I mean, I have friends in Austin that are just bicycle riders, and bicycle riders, if you ride a hundred miles every third day of the week and you do 300 miles a week, you are not going to have any body fat in 108 degree temperatures, you’re not going to have body fat on. Or they just give up, you know? And they just say, I’m going to eat everything I can and blah, blah blah and all that stuff. But yeah, I’ve done work with body–

Lauren Griewski: Dysmorphia?

Art Costello: Dysmorphia, yeah, that’s it. You know, and I just go, Oh, you know what, why would you go and have your lips done where you look like a duck? You know? And you know, I mean, anyway,

Lauren Griewski: Well, no, I think a lot of it in our whole conversation, a lot of the decisions that we make come down to wanting to be loved and to belong.

Art Costello: I love that about you. You know, in your bio, that was one of your first paragraphs in it, that we all come down what we want to be loved. And that is such a truth, I mean, it is a truth. The one thing that, when I was at Harvard speaking to the faculty at Harvard, one of the speeches I had done there with the words, “What every human being requires and desires is the need to be validated and it’s validated through love, acceptance, and caring.” I mean, it’s just, it’s a truth. It’s a universal truth for every one of us.

Lauren Griewski: It’s what we’re made from.

Art Costello: Oh, it is what we’re made from.

Lauren Griewski: You are made from love. I mean, the act of love making, or in that tower conceived.

Art Costello: Very interesting. I love that, that’s how we are conceived. When it’s the truth between a man and woman, when there’s the truth, that’s really powerful right there.

Lauren Griewski: Yeah, and I, the intention in procreation, I mean, what I guess that it is something that’s also pleasurable, and loving, and connected, and it’s what it’s intended for. Showing a lot of different ways, but–

Art Costello: You mean you’re going to blow it away for a lot of people that it’s not a recreational sport?

Lauren Griewski: It could be in some ways, it’s not, you know, that’s a whole nother podcast. Just back to what we said, our need to be nurtured, our need to be loved. And one thing I keep seeing myself as, and with the people I work with is you get to have needs.

Art Costello: I’ve got to say this, I think for a lot of men, sex is a recreational sport. Women are more attached to the emotional parts of it because I do so much work with emotional intelligence, you know, and we need to shift men out of that recreational sport thing and get into the real depth of what you and I have just been talking about. That is another whole podcast we could do.

Lauren Griewski: Yeah, it is. And you know, I’ve done a lot of work around my femininity and I’m not talking about, you know, look, I love the color painting, getting my hair done, and my nails done, and a fancy dress and all that. That’s one part of it. But the part I’m talking about is as a woman being able to receive, being able to feel, and a lot of women, especially in the working world, we become masculine in our being in order to survive inside of the corporate environment. And a lot of times men now as we see men, there’s an unhealthy masculine that exists where it’s not so much about holding space and being the warrior. It’s more about being the hero, being the defender. And if you look at our martial arts, and jiu-jitsu, you know, it’s not to fight, it’s to hold, it’s to be strong, it’s to be vigilant around what’s happening around you, not to fight and create chaos, and have an ego and prove that you’re the best. No, it’s absolutely not that. And I’ve done a lot of work around looking at, we all have masculine and feminine in us, and we both have the healthy and the unhealthy of each side. Some of my work in the world as being able to be open to receive and that’s our ability, and in nature, when you’re vulnerable, you get eaten.

Art Costello: Yeah. This is really, really interesting because one of the hardest things that I struggle with is receiving.

Lauren Griewski: You know, we talked about that a little bit before the podcast, the last time we spoke, yeah.

Art Costello: It’s extremely difficult for me, but I’m very in tune to my feminine side, my masculine side and all that. And I know it has been hard for me, you know, sometimes living in Texas, which is such a rough, tough, you know, you don’t cry, you don’t do this. And I cry at commercials, you show me a Budweiser commercial with the Clydesdale running down there with a little puppy and I’m [inaudible].

Lauren Griewski: And then this world needs to see that. And then this world need to be able to express their feelings, and their emotions, and to connect through it. And I think there’s a huge opportunity for men to connect through emotions.

Art Costello: Yeah. I mean, I’m all about the emotions. I mean, it’s who I am. I mean, I’m probably 99% emotion and the rest is maybe a little intelligence in there.

Lauren Griewski: Yeah, it’s emotional intelligence is sometimes the greatest layer of intelligence. I mean that’s how we built our whole world.

“Emotional intelligence is sometimes the greatest layer of intelligence- that's how we built our whole world.” –Lauren Griewski Click To Tweet

Art Costello: Well, I think that one of the biggest benefits of being able to identify your emotions is it gives you control over, not only the words we speak but the actions that we take. And for me, and I just finished a course at North Carolina on emotional intelligence with Dr. Frederick’s, and I’m telling you it can be, I believe that once you can identify your emotions, whether you’re a man or a woman, it set you out on a path of really living a pleasurable life because it only takes an instant in your mind to be able to identify what you’re feeling, which is huge in how you act.

“One of the biggest benefits of being able to identify your emotions is it gives you a control over, not only the words we speak, but the actions that we take.” –Art Costello Click To Tweet

Lauren Griewski: Huge, and let’s go back to the grief conversation. I think grief is one of the hardest emotions at first to feel because it’s overwhelming, it overtakes your higher system. And once I gave myself permission to grieve, once I allow myself the space to know, like, okay, here it is. Thank you. Here it is, and if it’s here I can feel it. I can move it, it will come and it will go like the waves, and then some ways it’s sweet. It’s so sweet to surrender to the grief to say thank you God, thank you universe for allowing me to feel this emotion.

“The depth of love that we have for an individual that we longed to touch or feel or hear- that's what grief is.” –Lauren Griewski Click To Tweet

Art Costello: Amen. Amen. Amen.

Lauren Griewski: Oh, well. It’s the depth of love that we have for an individual that we long to touch, or feel, or hear. And that’s what grief is.

Art Costello: Again, it’s a process, there’s a process to grieving. It’s important to follow that process, to let yourself follow it. And it’s different for everybody, and the time is different. It took me three years through, about three and a half years for me to really come out. I mean, honestly, I cannot remember the first six months from the time she passed, for six months I really don’t know much of anything. Honestly, I mean, I don’t know, I can’t tell you, my kids sometimes asked me a question and I’ll say, I don’t know. I just don’t remember. I can’t even tell you who was at our funeral. I don’t know, because it’s just blank, you know? Because I was so numb, and that’s so odd for me.

Lauren Griewski: Well, same thing, like if you’re in an accident, right? You’re gonna black out so that you don’t have to feel the intense pain. And in some ways emotionally, our brain does the same thing.

Art Costello: Yeah, right. You’re right.

Lauren Griewski: And that’s why, you know, I say we have to honor the things that we use to numb us because of the time we needed Novocain, we weren’t ready to be with what was there until we were, and so if we can allow ourselves the space, and that same as you, or that experience you this way. But so many times, you know, I’ll use food as an example. I was watching a video and I was just came back from Tulum in Mexico, I was watching a video about Spiritual Enlightened Weight Loss. Friend of mine recommended it, as I’m eating a peanut butter rolled up tortilla, this is feels great, like, I don’t know, whatever this is in my subconscious that’s having me eat a peanut butter rolled up tortilla, and it was like, you know, 11 o’clock at night. And how grateful I am for this to be able to not judge it, to laugh about it, to make fun of the fact that I’m like, I want to your weight loss video, you know, mine’s, we’ll get the brownie sundae. But yeah, I mean I think that the more that we can allow ourselves the space to be human, and to sometimes, you know, nurture the parts of us, ways that we have from the outside looking in as we look back, were there other traces.

Art Costello: It’s amazing when you let yourself be what you really can become, you know? And that’s what I’m wanting the audience to take away from this. It’s just live and identify the things that you want and just let go a lot of the things you don’t, we’re getting close to our hour and I wanted to give you the time to leave us with some parting thoughts and also what you’re doing. You know, how people can get ahold of you so you can take as long as you want to just fill this in on how they can get ahold of you, and what you got coming up, and whatever you want us to take away from this. And I’ll take this out of here.

“It's amazing when you let yourself be what you really can become… Live and identify the things that you want, and just let go a lot of the things you don't.” –Art Costello Click To Tweet

Lauren Griewski: Yeah. Well first thank you Art for the space that you carry and for the audience that you attract. And thinking that anyone who’s been listening to our conversation today, people found value and can connect to themselves through our story and our conversation. In terms of my work, I really feel like people who are called and led to the work with me now, and what I do is I support people in coming home to who they truly are and getting centered in what it is that they want to express in the world, to productize it in a way that shares their gifts, and supports them to monetize and scale their guests through technology and automation, all that stuff, but also through them really feeling the freedom to radiate their juicy goodness in the world. So I believe that the truth of abundance is having more than enough, and we’d come into this lifetime with divine gifts and this is where the receiving comes in. If we’re willing to share our gifts, we’re also open to receiving abundantly and provided for, but not only to continue to share and expand them in the world. So that’s the work that I do with people, and my website, and I think I share it with you for the show notes it’s lauren@soulexpressed.com, and if people are interested in talking more about their situation or their dreams, you can schedule a call with me on my website. So I welcome that and look forward to anyone that’s interested in talking more. And then coming next year, I’m hosting retreats where I’m, we’ll do much more of the work around aligning to our soulselves, and what I like to call going from soul vibing to soul thriving.

“If we're willing to share our gifts, we're also open to receiving abundantly.” –Lauren Griewski Click To Tweet

Art Costello: Oh nice. Yeah, that’s great. With that being said, Lauren, it’s been great. I just have again fallen in love with somebody that I communicate with on this podcast. You just nourish my soul and heart and all of that. With that, it’s been a pleasure. Everybody knows where they can get ahold of me. Expectation Therapy, I’m gonna encourage you to look into Lauren site. It’s a beautiful site and it’s very concise, and does what it’s supposed to do, and I know that she can really help a lot, a lot of people on the face of this earth. So again, thank you audience for listening and talk to you next week.

 

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