Lori Harder is a self-love expert, network marketing maven, three-time world class fitness champion, entrepreneur, author and creator of The Bliss Project. She is also the host of the podcast Earn Your Happy with over 24 million downloads. Her book “A Tribe Called Bliss,” is a guide for finding yourself and your community by creating long-lasting friendships.
Harder believes that collaboration between women is foundational to success, hence she dedicates her life to helping them connect with one another. She is also the founder of Drink Lite Pink, a guiltless low-calorie wine and cocktail boutique created as a reflection of her goals and to empower the female community to keep fitness in mind at all times.
Growing up in a small town in Michigan, Harder encountered constant bullying by her schoolmates who targeted her overweight appearance. She ultimately triumphed from the trauma in her youth through the discovery of health & wellness. Fitness has become the major factor in her lifetime of transformational work to help women find their strength. An open book, this beautiful soul is dedicated to sharing how to overturn struggles and tips on how to live a blissful life.
EMBRACING THE UNKNOWN
LORI HARDER: There are a few books that have really changed my life like––”A Return to Love” by Marianne Williamson. This was one of the first self-development books that I had ever read with a different concept. Instead of beating myself down with negative feedback on my body, Williamson said to focus on healing past trauma. Gabby Bernstein’s books also changed my life.
In my book called “A Tribe Called Bliss,” I took all the tools from The Bliss Project and everything that changed my life and put it into this book. The book is based on the idea that we can’t do it alone. You have to simultaneously be creating your next group of friendships, mentors and future tribe while you are becoming the person that you want to be. Because in order to transcend, you’re not going to get there with the people who got you to where you are today, no matter how great they are. If you don’t get those new people around you during the transition, most likely, you’re going to end up going back to your comfort zone. Because there is a middle of the point in transition where it’s like Death Valley, you cannot see what is in front of you and you can’t see what’s behind you. You go off of the only thing that you know, and it’s the safety that you came from, even if that safety feels awful, painful and horrendous––you’re going to go back to it because you don’t know what’s in front of you. My book is about what you need to do in order to create lasting transformation in your life.
DRINK LITE PINK
Lori Harder: There were a couple of reasons that Drink Lite Pink got started. I wanted something light that would also taste good. I would go to restaurants and end up creating my own drink because I didn’t enjoy the taste of vodka. I also had many moments where I was leaving networking events in LA, in order to connect and meet people. And I started thinking, “How can we make a better drink and get better conversations to support connection building?” We put three questions on the back of every can that are going to help guide you into a better, deeper conversation, so you’re ready for your next networking event.
BLISS HABIT PROGRAM
Lori Harder: The Bliss Habit is an online course that was created a while back from an event I’ve had for nine years, called “the Bliss Project.” The event was created because I started doing personal development. It was an opportunity to look at past experiences and unpack what actually happened. I really believe that adulting is just learning to be a parent to yourself, and go back to that inner child in those moments, and be the parent that you wish you had. That doesn’t mean that you had negligent parents, it just means that your parents may not have been there for you at that moment like you needed. Whether it was because you hid it from them, or it could mean that you didn’t have that parent who really knew how to take you through that in a helpful or conscious way to give you the tools that you need, because they didn’t have them either. A lot of the things that we’re dealing with are because our parents never had the tools to cope with what they went through. Until we learn to heal ourselves and get those tools, this is just going to be something that is habitual throughout our families, and it’s just going to continue getting passed down.
A BLISSFUL STATE
Lori Harder: Some of the best advice that I received was from a mentor, Kim Perell. She told me “No matter what you’re feeling or thinking for your business, or whatever you’re working on, go bigger than that. Go all in. Whatever, you’re afraid of is not half as bad as what you will miss out on and lose if you don’t go even bigger.”
It’s about being here and exhausting this life and living a regret-free one. It’s always worth it, no matter how challenging the moments may be. It’s experiencing the full range of being a human, including all the ups and the downs, because truly there is no bliss without the range. You have to run headfirst into challenges and start embracing them. I know this seems counterintuitive, but you have to really look at them and realize that challenges are an opportunity to become your highest self. That’s how we create the opportunity to become our highest self–– to look at every single obstacle, challenge and failure as the staircase to get there.
