251: Plot Twist: How Life’s Hardest Lessons Helped Danielle LaPorte Redefine Healing and Love

In this episode of The Light Watkins Show, Light Watkins sits down with Danielle LaPorte, best-selling author and spiritual thought leader, for an inspiring conversation about overcoming challenges, healing, and leading with love. Danielle shares the story of how she was unexpectedly fired from her own company, leaving her with massive debt and no savings. Instead of giving up, she turned this hardship into an opportunity, creating her Fire Starter groups and launching a successful career helping entrepreneurs find their way.

Throughout the episode, Danielle dives into her personal experiences with business failures, book launches, and the pressures of achieving external success. She talks candidly about how these challenges shaped her path, leading her to create bestsellers like The Fire Starter Sessions and The Desire Map. Danielle also reflects on what it means to be spiritually mature, explaining how embracing both the light and shadow sides of ourselves is essential for true healing.

Listeners will learn valuable insights about finding purpose through adversity, thinking with love, and moving from tolerance to reverence in their lives. Danielle offers practical advice on navigating difficult situations, healing emotional wounds, and taking full responsibility for your reality. Whether you're an entrepreneur, creative, or someone looking for deeper self-awareness, this episode will leave you feeling inspired to expand your consciousness and lead a life that aligns with your true self.

Transcript

DL: “What motivational culture tells us to do is get over that stuff, move on. Of course you wanna move on. You wanna be free. You don't wanna be held back by that heartbreak anymore. You wanna expand. It's hard. I'm resisting. I really wanna be right. I might even want that person to suffer. I don't wanna do this.  I'm resisting forgiving. Just admit it. And then give it up to God, to Holy Spirit, to your guardian angel, whatever you see is there for you. And say, I need a little bit of help with this." 

[INTRODUCTION] 

Hey friend, welcome back to The Light Watkins Show. I’m Light Watkins, and I have conversations with ORDINARY folks, just like you and me, who’ve taken extraordinary leaps of faith in the direction of their path, their purpose, or what they’ve identified as their mission in life.

Today, we have a bite-sized “Plot Twist” episode. A plot twist is a shorter clip from a past episode, where the guest shares the story of the pivotal moment in their life trajectory where they found the gateway to their calling. And the idea behind sharing their plot twists is to inspire you to lean into those plot twists when they happen in your life, because they’re often detours that lead you exactly where you need to go.

Sometimes, that plot twist looks like getting fired from a job, losing a bunch of money. Or in the case of today’s guest, Danielle LaPorte, it was getting "Steve Jobbed"—fired from her own startup.

Danielle had co-founded a company and was riding high, but when the venture capitalists came in, she was pushed out. Left with $150,000 in debt, no income, and no assets besides a BlackBerry she legally couldn’t keep, Danielle could have spiraled. But instead, she found her plot twist: a chance to help female entrepreneurs launch their businesses.

That spark led to the creation of her Fire Starter Sessions, a six-month waiting list, and ultimately, a thriving career as a best-selling author, speaker, and thought leader in the wellness and self-help space.

Let’s listen in…
 
 

LW: You had a company that you co-founded and you end up getting fired from your own company that you co-founded. In any case, that led you to these Fire Starter groups, which I thought was a really interesting initiative. Can you talk a little bit about what that was and how it came about?

DL: I got Steve Jobbed from my own incorporation. Raised a bunch of money. The dudes who – the venture capitalists, as opposed to angel investors, which is an oxymoron, they said, “We're going to give you the money if you hire this person to run the thing.” I was like, “Sure, totally. I'll hire that person.” That all went south. I got constructively dismissed. The company declared insolvency shortly after I left, because it's just very karmic and not cool. The lawyer that I had hired to paper all of our shareholder certificate, the deal, my own lawyer called me to say, “You have to hand in your computer, your Blackberry, etc.“

I thought, I have $150,000 in debt, because I co-signed this loan. I had no income. I had no savings. I had personal debt on my credit cards. All I had was my Blackberry, which legally, I apparently wasn't even entitled to. I thought, I know what I can do. I can help women, specifically, entrepreneurs, specifically help start their businesses online. I called a friend and said, “I'm going to do this.” I think wasn’t called Fire Starter sessions. I hung out my shingle, and then I had 60 people on my mailing list. That was enough, Light, for one client. You know what I had after one client? I had a testimonial. Then on it went until six month waiting list, and I was high-priced. Worth it. I mean, 90 minutes with me, you got your ideas, you got a map. I never called myself a coach. I’m not a coach. I was a strategist.

That was based on, well, I'd never – I mean, I've never even gotten a university level into a coaching certification program. I just wanted, when I was in the thick of things with work, I just wanted someone I respected to tell me what they would do if they were in my situation. Don't coach me through this. I would take responsibility for coming up with my own choices. What would you do? That's the role I played with other people. If I were just starting this, and I looked and sounded and offered what you offered, this is what I’d do. Take what you want, leave the rest.

LW: When you went to those 16 cities on that tour where you were basically answering the call from anyone who was who was asking, who's funding that? Were you paying for that? Or would they pay?

DL: Yeah. What I would do is I would say, “Listen, Jane in Idaho, if you can get me 20 people in your living room, I will pay for my own flight. We'll charge a 150 bucks. You feed them, I'll pay for my own hotel room.” I was leaving those events with $1,700 in my pocket after hauling my tail out there for three days. It was crazy. At the end of it, I had a book called The Fire Starter Sessions. I knew a lot about business.

I was really, I don't know, I have a tricky – I'm not really into the word confidence. I think there's so much shadow to confidence. I had that lived experience. I had acumen. I knew I could help you get from A to Z if you had a laptop and an idea.

 LW: With that book, you talked about how the publisher basically forced you to promote in a certain way that didn't feel in alignment with who you were and you learned something lessons about that, about not putting yourself in those positions to try to achieve the bestseller list in the –

DL: Oh, yes. No, the relationship with the publisher was super cool. It's just, we all wanted to win the New York Times game, which I've just come out of. Just, my latest book, How to be Loving, we were gunning for it again. You make a decision at the beginning of those campaigns. It's like, am I going to run this relay race? Or am I going to be a sprinter? It's a very, very different way of moving and marketing. It's exhausting. The New York Times way of going about things is, even if you hit, you're going to be exhausted when you get there. Sometimes it's worth it. Sometimes it isn't. Depends who you talk to.

LW: That led you to the idea for the Desire Map. Talk about that connection.

DL: Oh, well, that connection was Desire Map started on a rainy New Year's Eve night. I had a baby. I wrote out all my goals, and they were really pedestrian goals. I want a new kitchen table. I want to get to Hawaii. I want to pay off the debt. I wanted a book deal. Not inspired. I just started to write some inspiring things. They all ended up being feelings. That question on a post-it note, how do I want to feel? A handful of other post-it notes of those feelings I desired at that time, became the center of my career for almost a decade. I built a lot off of that Post-it note.

LW: I listened to a few of your interviews. What a lot of interviewers commented about was that by the time you got around to writing The White Hot Truth that you were sounding much more authentic than, I guess, they had experienced you prior to that. I'm just curious, A, was that your experience? Because I think it's sometimes hard to tell. If I'm faking it until I make it in whatever regard, as a teacher, as a mentor to people, and blazing this path for other women like me, or other black people like me, or whatever your thing is, do you feel it? B, what do you attribute that to?

DL: I think what people sense is – I mean, I think everybody's being authentic every moment. This is just the best you can do. This is the most real I can be. This is my best version of fake, whatever it is. The evolution for me, I mean, I would hope that from book to book, I feel more accessible. I'm more palpably loving. The evolution for me has been from Desire Map to White Hot Truth was that edge was off. I was becoming less brazen. I was becoming more loving, more aware of my own divine nature.

My experience is more aware of the love that you are. Then I became less mouthy. I swore less. I didn't have as much of really, just that hungry ghost, you need to be seen. I'm still on that trajectory of just the revelation that I am beloved, that you are beloved. Then, what's to fight about when you can touch that space? You can't hold that vibration 24/7, but have those – the awareness is expanding into the belovedness. So I'm way less pushy.

LW: You said that How to Be Loving was five years in the making since your last book. Why now? Why this book now? Apparently, people ask you this question, but I think it's a good question to just get on the record. Who did you write for? Who was the avatar? Who's the avatar reader that you would imagined reading this book?

DL: Well, I always try and impress my deepest, most sophisticated raunchy friends. I feel like, if and they're all over busy Internet ballers. If I can get her to read something, if I can just get her to read it and go, “Wow, I'm going to look at my relationship differently, or I'm going to change my tone, my inner tone,” then that is success for me. I think. I mean, this is like an entrepreneurial short tangent, but I have two customer avatars. One is on the path and haggard and really committed. She's done the workshops. She has listened to the podcasts. She may or may not have had her meltdown yet, her breakdown, but she's in.

The other is really, really curious. The other customer of mine, reader of mine, listener is looking saying, “I want some of that. What's happening over there with these women who they're meditating and they’re making money and losing money and getting divorced and they’re radiant?”

LW: My first impressions from the book, from reading it were, it's a book that could be read linearly, but also can be opened up pretty much anywhere in the book. You will come across a chapter about something that's not necessarily tied to what you read in the previous chapters, but it all connects together like Legos. I really liked that about it. In fact, that's one of the ways that I've been formatting my books recently is choose your own adventure, open to any page, and you'll find something useful there.

Your book is, in my impression, it's like, I don't know, it's a good way to understand what it means to be a spiritually mature person. It's almost a handbook for becoming spiritually mature. The one thing that I was glad that you included near the end of the book were the practices, because I think a lot of books, they talk about The Power of Now, not to disparage love. I love Eckhart’s work, but they don’t talk about the power of how as much. You put a lot of emphasis on the how, because I think it's important to take it beyond the intellect, and into actual embodiment, integration and practice.

I want to just talk about some of the concepts that you wrote about, because a lot of them are, they seem counterintuitive on the surface, but actually, when you really think about it deeply, it's all pretty elegantly articulated. Love, what does it mean? What is your understanding of this word that I don't think we have enough words for? We try to jam everything into this one word to mean so many different things. How are you thinking about love when you talk about how to be loving?

DL: The ultimate inclusiveness, and that starts with oneself, and all the fragmented selves. You love your shadow and you love your light. I'm in love. I mean, reverence. I'm very interested in helping myself. I've been successful with this in some regards, and helping others move from ground zero tolerance to reverence. For me, that's the work. That tolerance being, I'm going to put up with it, but there's this agitation underneath the surface. Then we move into acceptance, which is an embracing, which is definitely moving up the spiral.

Active love, really finding the light in the density. You're in this space. Is it all of God? It has to be. It has to be all of God. If that's the case, then the shadow is more than just useful. It's more than just useful. There's a gifting, and all of the stuff that most of us spend most of our lives trying to push away. You have to look at it. You have to stop pushing it away to see the gift. I think that's how we become spiritually mature. That's how to be loving.

LW: You say spirituality is essentially, the practice of thinking with love. Can you just break that down for us? What does it mean to think with love?

DL: We have to want to. It's aspirational for all of us, I think. I believe that thoughts do create your reality, that the mind is this numinous, powerful, incredible tool to use for ill, or for good. You want to have a loving life, a compassionate life, a radiant life? You have to think loving, compassionate, radiant thoughts. How are you going to do that? Well, there's lots of technologies to do that. It really has to begin with the commitment, commitment. I want to embody love. Whatever your language around that is. I want to know God. I want to know truth with a capital T. You've got to want to know.

This is one thing I've really – I become aware of in the last year or so. The mystics that I gravitate towards the most are all gentle of nature. There's a real sweetness to them. They talk about this single-minded. Such an interesting phrase. Single-minded devotion. You've got to want to find out and then use all the practices, use the meditation and the eating consciously etc., to bolster your devotion.

LW: I love that. You talked about a lot of subjects. Letting go, forgiveness, healing, etc. I'm going to deviate a little bit right now, then we're going to go back to the content, but in your process of putting this book together, because a large part of writing is just organizing your thoughts. I don't know about you, but when I'm writing, I've written four books now, I don't really know how it's going to come together as I'm going through the process. In fact, I describe it as cutting the grass at Central Park with a push mower and no one can help you. You have to get it all done yourself.

Being a student of spiritual books, channel books, etc., would you say this book was channeled? Would you say that you had some divine help in how you organize the book? Was there any conscious awareness of, I'm going to put forgiveness after letting go, or I need to put healing first. Or how did you sequence these subjects?

DL: I am not a channeler. I’m not a medium. I have no interest in being a conduit for disembodied spirits, or entities. There's that. I don't need it to grow my brand. There's a place for that. There's a giftedness around that, that I honor and respect and I'm very, very cautious with. You can you can hear my —

LW: For the record. Yeah, we got it on the –

DL: For the record. Yeah. My job is to just keep aligning myself with certain frequencies. I want to align myself with love. I do all the practices to do that. I feel that I have free will. I feel like, we all have free will in this lifetime and every lifetime. I also feel like, I am being used. I am a pawn. I believe that I'm being used by something really lovely. I'm on team love, and team love – This is a thing, though. Pick your side. Pick the side that includes everybody. Team love includes the dark and the light.

How do I decide what goes where, and even some of these principles? I've been working with an energy healer for about seven years, the same person, who I feel very dedicated to, who if I were still Catholic, I would say this person is my spiritual director, my priest. My sava is committed to this relationship. A lot of my learning is informed by this particular woman who lives a very monastic life. We have this quiet agreement around practices. This is not just me. This is every mystic I’ve ever resonated with.

Then the me part is, divine love should be the first out of the list of seven virtues. You know what? I think, people don't want to hear so much about what's required for resilience. We're going to put that at the end. Then we're going to end on a high note of radiance, because everybody wants to shine. There's just some marketing intelligence that I bake in. Yeah.

LW: Beautiful. All right, so can we talk about healing a little bit? Because you equate life in and of itself as a healing process, and that we come here with a certain spiritual agenda to work through some of our old patterns. I love the example that you gave of being born into a family with an absent father, and then your sister steals your boyfriend, and then you get into a business partnership where the partner steals the limelight from you. You say that that is all about you. It's all happening for you, so that you can heal that aspect of yourself and learn how to love.

Can you talk a little bit more about that healing aspect of life and why is it so hard for us to accept that when we hear something like that and we're going through one of those experiences?

DL: Oh, why is it so hard to accept that we are creating a lot of that?

LW: Or that it's happening for us, instead of to us.

DL: Oh, yeah. Because it's painful. It's just hard. It just is. It's the challenge. It's running Iron Man. How can you believe in those moments of extreme endurance that this is actually a good thing for you? It boggles the mind. I think that's the point. It's meant to boggle your mind, so that you get to that state of beingness. You get to that heart space that is beyond the thought and it's beyond all the methodologies and all that. Is that an answer?

LW: Yeah. What I also would like to know is how do you know – well, A, is there a such thing as a finite, you reach a finite point of healing? Or if not, how do you know you are going in the right direction of this healing process?

DL: Yeah. I think, healing is about being more conscious, which is about being more loving, which is about correct identification. You get to know who you really are. Not fake self, not ego self, you get to – you start identifying as an energy being, as divinity, as love itself. You start identifying as being connected to each other, to something greater than yourself. You start leaving room for mystery. You start becoming aware that there's so much more going on underneath the surface of most people's actions and words.

As Ram Dass used the phrase so often, “I am loving awareness.” I love the double entendre of that, of like, I'm loving awareness, and I am loving awareness, itself. I think that's the journey to healing. Why is it hard? Because we're perpetuating a lie. We're indoctrinated into lie after lie. Every social system, from organized crime to organized religion, to the medical system, to education, to how even conventional relationships are setup, is telling us that we are anything but divine. That the power is outside of ourselves. That we're dividing everything into worthy and unworthy. It's the biggest lie of all to even ask that question. That's why it's hard. We're conditioned.

LW: Using that same scenario that you outlined in your book, just to workshop this a little bit further, what's a next step? Let's say, okay, recognize now that I'm in this pattern of abandonment, or absentee, dealing with absent whatever in my life, what do I do next? Do I have a conversation with my partner who's still in limelight? Do I leave the boyfriend, or just cut off the sister who stole my boyfriend? I know there's not a one size fits all, but I'm just curious if we can workshop this in any direction that would indicate what progress may look like on a real-world day-to-day basis.

DL: You take responsibility, and you clean up the mess on your side of the street. I'm 50% of the dynamic. Even if there's abuse involved, like I've chosen to be here. Yup, I did manifest it. This doesn't mean that you don't have deep, extensive compassion for how challenging things are, or the challenges of your family of origin, or your lot in life. The response to all of that is compassion. You're showing up in a particular way. Your thoughts are vastly, and you leave lots of room for mystery, vastly creating your reality.

All of your power, all of your power to get what you really want in life, what your heart wants is in that revelation. This is spiritual maturity. I am responsible for the tone of my life. I get to choose how I feel about whatever happens. I get to choose what I feel about whatever happens. I can't control the outcome. There's so many things I can't control. But I can control what I feel. I can control what I identify as. Am I identifying as the victim, or as the solution? Am I identifying as something?

Someone called me 20 years ago. Am I identifying with all the constraints of my religion? Or am I identifying as free, sovereign, connected, gifted, capable, beloved, energy, light itself? Big difference. When you're in the predicament, the boyfriend’s cheated, and you realized, I had something to do with this. Are you going to be your scared self, your angry self? Or are you going to identify as something that is much more vast and has so many tools to draw on to get through that situation?

We get asked in these predicaments. Should I stay? Should I go? Should I quit? How should I vote? Should I get the chemotherapy? Should I do alternative healing? All of those different paths don't matter, as much as your commitment to create conditions of healing for yourself. What's healing for you? Let's go back to the definition of healing. Healing is expansion. Healing is seeing things clearly. Healing is, you respond to life, you don't react. Healing is being conscious of why you say certain things. Okay, if you've got that going on, then maybe you stay in the relationship. Maybe you go. What's going to have you expand?

LW: Really, it's about awareness. It's about consciousness, bringing yourself into the present moment. Something you wrote in White Hot Truth that I think ties to this, as you said, that first step in forgiving is admitting that you don't want to forgive someone, which I thought was just amazing. It's so true, though. Because then, it has to start somewhere, right?

DL: Yeah. It's hard. I'm resisting. I really want to be right. I might even want that person to suffer. I don't want to do this. Then you soften. Why do you soften? Because all of that truth telling, all of that self-intimacy, that's an act of love. That act of love helps all of that chitter-chatter relax, and then you get to the next level. You go, “Oh, I'm resisting forgiving.” Just admit it. That's love. That's love. Love admits it. Then, gives it up to God, to Holy Spirit, to your guardian angel, whatever you see is there for you and say, “I need a little bit of help with this.” I think, the help comes in. I think your soul will help you think more loving thoughts, which will get you to a state of forgiveness.

[END]

That was Danielle LaPorte, sharing her remarkable plot twist. And if you want to hear more about how Danielle’s journey unfolded, you can go to episode 129 and start listening at the 46-minute mark. And while you're at it, don’t forget to follow Danielle on social media at @daniellelaporte.

If this conversation resonated with you, I also recommend checking out my interviews with Tara Stiles, episode 116, who started Strala Yoga, which became a global yoga brand. And also listen to my episode with Gabby Bernstein, episode 97, who is on a mission to help us chart a path to heal trauma, unlearn fear, and remember love..

And if you know someone who has had an incredible plot twist in their life, and they’re making the world a better place, please send me your guest suggestions at light@lightwatkins.com.

My other ask is that you take a few seconds to leave a rating or review for the show. You hear podcast hosts like me ask listeners like you for ratings, because that’s how guests determine if they’re going to come onto a podcast. So it makes a huge difference. All you do is look at your device, click on the show name, scroll past the first five episodes, and you'll see a place with five blank stars—just tap the star all the way on the right to leave a 5-star rating. And if you're feeling generous, write a one-line review, just letting a potential new listener know which episode they should consider starting with. That can go a long way as well.

Also, you can watch these Plot Twist episodes on my YouTube channel if you prefer to see what Danielle looks like as she’s sharing her plot twist. And don't forget to subscribe on YouTube as well.

Okay, I’ll see you on Wednesday with the next long-form conversation about an ordinary person doing extraordinary things to leave the world a better place. And until then, keep trusting your intuition, following your heart, and keep leaning into those Plot Twists in your life. And if no one’s told you lately—I believe in you.

Thank you, and have a fantastic weekend!.