Today our expert guest is Laura Gassner Otting, an instigator, motivator, and provocateur who has never met a revolution she didn’t like. She is lit up by The Big Idea and encourages people to think audaciously, motivating them to dream boldly and then act decisively; she has a knack for seeing the greatness in others and reflecting it back on them in ways that help them get unstuck.

Laura collaborates with entrepreneurs and investors to push past the doubt and indecision that consigns great ideas to limbo, delivering strategic thinking, well-honed wisdom, and catalytic perspective informed by decades of navigating change across the start-up, nonprofit, political, and philanthropic landscapes. Laura has empowered thousands of people through her speaking and writing, and she’s sure to empower thousands more with her new book, Limitless: How to Ignore Everybody, Carve Your Own Path, and Live Your Best Life.

Laura didn’t make it her life goal to be a motivational speaker or author, and she didn’t plan a career path to bring her to this exact moment – but looking back, she can see that what excited her, whether she was doing executive search or working in the White House, was finding out other people’s Why.

Her superpower, Laura says, is being able to look at somebody and see their greatness, even if they have never seen it or believed in it before. But the real superpower, I think, is her willingness and ability to breathe life into another person’s greatness, helping them capitalize on it and live a life of purpose.

The biggest obstacle to living a life of purpose, however, is what everyone else is saying. There’s this idea that living a life of purpose means sacrificing yourself; you have to be Mother Teresa feeding the lepers. But that’s not what purpose is – purpose is just the reason for which something is done!

“Purpose is not just service and service is not just sacrifice – so we can all have purpose in our work!” And the only purpose that matters is your purpose, so we have to stop worrying about everyone else saying our purpose is worthy, or what society says, which is why the first part of Laura’s book is “how to ignore everybody else.”

And it all starts when you stop trying to keep up with the Joneses; when you stop assigning value to what other people say is valuable.

Ready to learn the rest of the equation so that you can truly #BeLimitless? Then order your copy of Limitless and start listening to the episode on loop until it arrives! (Or maybe just listen to it once and then check out the awesome resources at http://limitlessassessment.com while you wait).

The Biggest Helping: Today’s Most Important Takeaway

We hear a lot of stories about the biggest regrets people have when they’re dying, and top of the list is almost always ‘I wish I could have lived the life I wanted instead of the life people expected of me.’

“And this book is meant to help people understand that the best way that you can serve the people around you and the causes that you love is to find your very best, most fundamental state of leadership: who you are when you’re at your very, very best... And if that sounds like ambition, to go and to strive and be the biggest version of yourself, I would say that doing that and showing up more in the lives of the people you love and the causes you hold dear helps them do better. It’s not just your ambition, it’s your responsibility.”

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Thank you for joining us on The Daily Helping with Dr. Shuster. Subscribe to the show on iTunes, Stitcher, or Google Play to download more food for the brain, knowledge from the experts, and tools to win at life.

Resources:

• Learn more at https://lauragassnerotting.com/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/heylgo
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/heylgo
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/heylgo/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lauragassnerotting/
• Read: Limitless: How to Ignore Everybody, Carve Your Own Path, and Live Your Best Life
• Read: Mission-Driven: Moving from Profit to Purpose

The Daily Helping is produced by Podcast Masters