Today I'm talking with Lola Pickett about empowering your inner empath! She's the author of Wild Messengers Alchemical Tarot, host of the Empath To Power Podcast, and founder of EMPATH*ology. Lola will be sharing her journey as she unapologetically stepped into her empathetic, highly sensitive, and truest self. To be the person she is today, Lola had to let go of the person she was, and after a name change, a new, lit-up relationship, and a successful business that has continued to evolve with her later, she hasn't looked back. What to Listen For:  Learning later in life that she was an empath and a highly sensitive person Believing what people told her before that about being too sensitive, needing a thicker skin, or that she had to toughen up if she was going to make it How this affected her life in early adulthood "I spent the first part of my adult life buttoned-up, shut down, numbed out, and trying to check off as many boxes as I could of what I was supposed to do in order to feel good, in order to feel happy. And, of course, we all know how that story goes. I know I'm not the only one who has done that. And by the time I was 30, I looked around me, and I felt like a stranger to myself. I didn't know whose life I was living." Her huge wake-up call to get to know herself again The thing that stopped her in her tracks and put her on a new path "Here I am trying not to run over my child with my office chair while I put together marketing spreadsheets for a company I don't even believe in getting paid way too little. My boss made me come back early from maternity leave. Like, what the actual fuck? This is not cool." Realizing her path at her current job was a no-go and taking the safest leap possible "Before I knew it, that first month I had made $10,000, which was like three times what I was making on my salary. And I was like, Oh my God; I can totally do this. So I quit my job. My manager said, that's nice; I'll see you in three months when you fail. And, of course, I never looked back. I'm still self-employed to this day."  Evolving her business as she grew as a person How her graphic design business naturally shifted into coaching and mentoring The moment she realized she was an empath "I realized that I have this legacy in my whole family, especially on the female side of being in the toxic side of that spectrum, where we're super self-denying. We're disconnected from ourselves. We're people-pleasing, perfectionistic, hard on ourselves, and very, very disconnected because we feel like it's not safe. So much was there. And it just opened like the biggest portal of my life and became what is now like a huge body of work around how we really support empaths in being resilient... because I needed that. Obviously, it's not something I learned from my family. So, how can we go forward in a different way?" Studying all things empath and HSP to gain a strong understanding and start applying it to her everyday life Lola's year of yes "I felt like I should wear a t-shirt that says, I say yes! Because for the first time in my life, I was saying yes to myself, and I was following these little seemingly illogical intuitive bread crumbs." Why this was such a great skill-building period in her life Realizing that no one was going to die if she asks for what she needs What made it possible for her to step into a place of uncertainty The circumstances that allowed her new relationship to flourish What kept her moving and growing towards what she really wanted "The pain of staying the same was too great. It was too depressing. It wasn't magical enough.