Announcer: The Positive World Radio Network is pleased to present One
Click Society with your host, Lori Taylor. One Click Society is a radio
show designed to help listeners find success in a world that is now soaring
ahead at the speed of broadband. Each week, Lori Taylor, one of the world's
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changing world with some of today's leading minds.
As Lori loves to tell her clients: "You bring the rain, we'll
make it pour!" Well, bring your umbrellas, because with a
passion for contribution and a belief in paying it forward, Lori
is eager to fall in love with her new listeners. Whether you're
a fellow marketer, entrepreneur, or lifelong learner curious to
hear where the future is headed right from the mouths of those
who are making it happen, One Click Society will inform,
inspire, and enthrall you each and every week.
Here's the host of One Click Society, Lori Taylor.
Lori: Hi, it's Lori Taylor and you're with me today at One Click Society.
We're seizing the minute with my good friend, Felicity Lerouge.
We're going to be talking with her about various topics, one of
them being her new book, "Changing the Channel." There are also
things that she's doing that are just as exciting with her Women
and Empowerment Series. She's gone on the road with this seminar
that she has been producing for people, and I'm really excited
to hear more about it. Felicity and I met through Tony Robbins'
Platinum Group.
She and I were both new to Tony Robbins. We've been to Fiji
together a few times. We've sat on beanbags together, in a daze
listening to sages from India teaching us all about
consciousness levels, and it was fabulous and we really bonded.
I'm excited to have her here today.
I want to go ahead and have Felicity introduce herself; give us
a brief overview on your book, why you wrote it, Felicity. Then,
perhaps, give us any things that you've been doing around it,
like building off of it and how you're expanding your approach
to life right now.
Felicity: Well, Lori, thanks so much for having me on the show today. I
just want to apologize. My voice is a little more husky than
normal. I've been taking spoonfuls of honey, so I hope we still
have a voice by the end of this show here.
My book, "Changing the Channel," came out of an experience that
I shared with you Lori, didn't we? In Fiji, at Tony Robbins'
resort, Namale, when Tony brought some spiritual teachers from
India to share an experience with us of raising consciousness,
an experience called "Oneness." I came from quite a traditional
background, and I was really, really weary about Indian gurus. I
was really, you know, was this for me?
I was very hesitant about going. But the fact that Tony has such
an amazing reputation and I really trust him and know that he's
not into anything that's at all naughty, let's say, a very
English word, naughty. I thought, no, I'll give it a chance, and
it was one of the most life changing experiences of my life. We
listened to this incredible teacher who was, at the time, only
29 years old, called Ananda Giri and wise, wise, wise beyond his
years. But far more than what they said, was the way that we saw
the teachers from the Oneness University in India interact with
each other.
When people talk about love and spirituality, sometimes it can
have that kind of cheesy feel about it. It can be a little bit
superficial, but not with these guys, they were absolutely love
in action. They way they treated each other, the way they
treated us, it was quite incredible.
It was a really life changing experience for me. I had had,
growing up I had quite a tough childhood. Very difficult
relationship with my mother, and was I'm adopted as well, so
that kind of, you know, there wasn't the genetic bond. We didn't
think . . . well, we'd drive each other crazy because it's the
same genes, etc. There was a big gap between us. There was a lot
of distance and very little understanding.
So, my self esteem was quite low, and I could be quite insular.
I think you might remember, Lori, when I was first there. The
first couple of days, I was like a wild cat. Wouldn't let
anybody get anywhere near me. If I could have got of the island,
I certainly would have done.
But going through this experience, when they talk about oneness,
they talk about not only seeing your connectedness with other
people, with the planet and everything on it. But your actual
oneness in yourself, your acceptance of yourself, the whole
spectrum from light to dark.
There are so many parts. We grow up in traditional society and
yes, we like the good parts. We like the respectful parts. We
like the achiever parts. We don't like the bitch. We don't like
the lazy person. We don't like the angry person. But what they
taught us was, in line with Carl Jung, the psychotherapist, the
psychiatrist of the early 20th century, what we resist persists.
The more you resist a part of your character, your personality,
the more it effectively charges. Then those elements that we
don't like can come out and actually take over the show. Whereas
if we acknowledge them in the right context, just allow them to
have their moment, then everything all settles into harmony as
we embrace every part of ourselves and every part of our
personalities.
That was such a huge revelation to me. It was so, so life
changing. But when I came back, I decided that I would like to
write a book about it. I didn't want to write a non-fictional
account, you know, documentary style. This is my experience,
this is what happened.
I decided to write as a modern day fable, a bit like Gulliver's
Travel for the 21st century, so that people could take as much
or as little from the story as they wanted to. They could pick
it up and read it on the beach and think, well, that was
interesting, or they could explore the messages and the
teachings on consciousness further and follow up and take their
spiritual journey further if they choose to do that.
Elizabeth Gilbert's book, "Eat, Pray, Love," had come out a
little bit earlier than our experience, and I was very, very
inspired by that and saw that there was such a hunger for people
to find spirituality that actually resonated with them, that
wasn't about judgment, that wasn't about exclusivity, but was
all about synergy, acceptance, collaboration, and embracing
rather than separating.
That's why I wrote the book. It was published in June 2009, and
is selling steadily, I'm very happy to say. Delighted that I've
had wonderful messages from people all over the world and, yeah,
we just keep on putting it out there and just trusting that it's
reaching the people it needs to reach and that it will go
stellar one day.
Lori: No, I love it. A lot of things that you said, I just was making notes
here as you were speaking. I wanted to kind of back up to
because one of the things that you spoke about, kind of threw in
there being adopted.
Felicity: Yes.
Lori: Yes, because as you know I'm also adopted.
Felicity: That's right, yes.
Lori: It's funny when, you know, there's a thing that they taught us if you
remember the four baskets . . .
Felicity: That's right, yeah.
Lori: . . . and for people listening, some of this unique, you know,
various spiritual beliefs. So, you know, just understand the
concept of what I'm saying, so you understand the point. But
they talk about when you're in the womb, as a baby, you're still
connected. You have your spirit. You're just not fully,
obviously, physically developed but you're at a high level of
consciousness, even higher than you and I are now. What was
interesting is we talk about maybe never . . . you haven't found
your biological mom. Is that right?
Felicity: Oh, yes, I have. I have a wonderful, wonderful relationship
with her. As much as I can in that she's in New Zealand and I'm
in London. But, no we have a beautiful relationship and I have a
half brother and sister. I'm very close to my half sister, and
it's such a blessing, I have two great families.
Lori: How long ago did you find your biological mom? I didn't remember
that.
Felicity: Oh, no, I found her . . . I started writing to her when my
adopted father died, when I was in my early 20s, I was 24. Her
best friend kept the letter from her. It was a private adoption.
I had to send the letter via quite a circuitous route. But it
was passed to her best friend. Her best friend was a bit
concerned about giving her the letter, and she held on to it for
18 months. But as soon as my mother received the letter, she
wrote back immediately.
We've always had a great understanding that she did the best
that she could at that time. She was only just 23. She'd come
over to the UK to do a specialized nursing qualification so that
she could go to Vietnam and help out on the relief planes that
were taking refugees out of Vietnam. She did what she felt was
best for both of us. I have the greatest respect for her for
that.
For the first, I would say, probably five or six years, we were
a little bit tentative with our relationship. We weren't in a
close enough proximity to be able to get to know each other very
well. But over the last few years, we've spent a fair amount of
time together. We're very, very close. As I said, I'm blessed to
have two great families.
Lori: I feel the same exact way, and it's interesting because I found my
biological mom after my mother, as you know, we have a lot of
similar life stories, my adopted mother passed away. What was
interesting when I was in, meeting with Ananda Giri, when we had
our private sessions with him. You know, you go in there and you
tell your story. You tell your, I was divorced, an alcoholic
husband, blah, blah. I felt like I could've told him anything
and he just blinks at your and smiles and nods because, you
know, he knows the bigger meaning of all of that.
Felicity: Sure.
Lori: It's just my story, right? So he's just listening, and then at the
end, I just kind of glossed through and I was adopted and I was
a one-night stand. My mom, you know, she was kind of, had to go
away to a women's shelter. It was a very hidden secret because
my grandparents were high profile in the religious community.
His eyes, I mean, I wish you could've seen him because you know
how he is. He's like, panicked. He's like calling his dasas
over. They're doing all their work on me because, apparently,
things like you were talking about like having low self-esteem
or the, you know, apparently, things like having shame can
actually be transferred in this belief system to the fetus
itself because they're connected to you.
Felicity: Yes.
Lori: So, my mother, while not having bad feelings about me necessarily had
bad feelings about how she was being made to feel about the
situation. So I've always had this sense of something I should
be ashamed of. I used to wonder, was I sexually abused as a
child, or whatever. Once Ananda Giri, once I believed,
personally, in this school of thought, it all made sense, but it
was so funny because I told him like a million horrible things
and I say one thing and five dasas are over there, working . . .
Felicity: Sure, yeah.
Lori: A good point, with self-esteem and self confidence, you know, I think
a lot of people misuse the term self-esteem and self-confidence.
One of the things I found with a lot of women, especially, is
they've actually worked very hard and they believe, you know, I
have good self-esteem. I'm very confident and they talk about
all their accomplishments. They are incredibly confident. My
question I always ask them, is I know you've achieved. I mean,
this is impressive. Do you feel like you deserve it? Almost all
of them look at me and, like, what do you mean? Do you feel like
you deserve it? They say, well, I work hard. So, I said, no, do
you feel you deserve it? When that light bulb comes on, the
difference with self-confidence is your ability you believe you
can do something, which we tend to gravitate more towards to
make ourselves feel better, you know. Externally [inaudible
0:12:51]
Felicity: Yes, absolutely.
Lori: Yeah, the point of self-esteem is do you believe you deserve it? Do
you believe you deserve the good things that you're achieving? A
lot of times when you get to that core source of loving yourself
or getting in your power to embrace who you really are, you
actually stop becoming so busy externally, trying to fill that
up with . . . self-confidence cannot build self-esteem at all.
But self-esteem can build self-confidence. Right? I mean
[inaudible 0:13:19].
Felicity: Yes, absolutely. And I think as well . . .
Lori: Go ahead.
Felicity: I'm sorry, I was going to say and with high achievers, it's
almost, yes, I'm ticking off the list of proving that I'm
worthy, proving that I'm worthwhile, proving that I deserve to
be loved because look I've done all of this. But for me, the
thing that I found so real going through the Oneness process was
I just started to feel so at ease with myself. So, at ease with
myself, I could relax. I'd always been a bit of a perfectionist
and I was always focused on what I haven't achieved. Not so much
what I didn't have, but I was always beating myself up for
falling slightly short of my ridiculous goals. After going
through Oneness, wow, to be able to just sit with myself and
think, yeah, I like every part. There are parts I like better
and parts of my personality that I prefer to stay in. But I
understand the purpose of all these different facets of my
character, of my personality. I found that as I accepted myself
more, I was able to accept people as they were.