Welcome back to Inside personal growth. This is Greg Voisen, the host of inside personal growth. And Laura, everybody out there kind of knows who I am, but they don't know who you are. It's Laura Nespoli, and Laura is joining us from Rochester, New York today. Good day to you, Laura. How you doing?

I'm good. Thank you. Thanks so much for having me. Well, it's

good to have you on the show, and it's always good to learn about storytelling, and I think that it is the foundation that goes all the way back forever and ever, but I'll say where I remember is Native American Indians and being able to tell great stories and have it go from generation to generation. But we're going to explore the stories and strategies that inspire personal and professional growth and transformation. Laura basically is an extraordinary storyteller, storyteller, strategist, and she's the founder of meshin movement, that's M, E, S, H, I N movement.com, you can go there to learn more about that. With her background that seamlessly bends creativity and strategy. Laura is passionate about helping brands and individuals uncover their authentic narratives to create deep, deeper, more meaningful connections. Her expertise lies in aligning purpose with storytelling, empowering leaders and organizations to communicate their unique value and clarity and impact. She's got an innovative approach to this that's made her a trusted partner for those looking to drive transformation through the power of story. So I want everybody out there to kind of get ready. We're going to have a fascinating conversation about the art of storytelling and its role in shaping identity, and really how you can unlock the potential in both businesses and life, not just businesses, but business alive. Laura, welcome to Inside personal growth, and thanks for taking this time with our listeners today, and I think the best way to really kind of start this off is your your journey began here in 2018 when you're living with limiting beliefs. We've all lived with limiting beliefs. That's a part of life. I think the question is, is, how do we let go of those limiting beliefs? Can you share the pivotal moment that sparked this transformation, and kind of how it's moved your path forward, and how you've released those limiting beliefs?

Releasing probably is a better term for it.

You're still releasing,

yes, you know, we will always be, you know, I have this belief that this is, I talk about it being a journey beyond our limits, like an expansive journey. And so it's, if you think about concentric circles, we're always kind of growing to the next outer ring, and we're always expanding, and so we're always overcoming the next layer of limitation. But for me, it really started with realizing I was living with limited beliefs I didn't, you know, even understand, that I had a perception of myself that was really keeping me contained in place. And it it started with a friend just casually mentioning to me that I was an empath, which is a term I had never heard before, but it's a highly sensitive person and and upon looking it up, I understood so much of my life that I just had never really had the context for previously, someone who deeply feels the feelings of another person to the point where almost makes them sick. I mean, I grew up with a lifetime of autoimmune illness and diseases. I just this single realization. And I don't think it's just, you know, to think about the listeners out there, and how do you kind of like come upon this? I don't know, there just might be something that triggers an understanding or an awareness about yourself. And it gave me that pause to say, Oh my gosh. I mean, for me personally, it was Oh my gosh. I've been flexing to what other people needed me to be my whole life, and I've been trying to please everyone else so they felt good, and never really factored in my own feelings or emotions. And I think it was that kind of baseline, like, Oh my gosh. Like, this is there's so much more of myself I haven't discovered. And it opened a window so that just a few days later, when I had an idea, a purpose driven idea for meal experience with a narrative of connection woven through it, I think I was in a predisposition then to listen. You know, I think we all get inspiring moments. We have inspiring ideas. We're such creative creatures. You know, I'm sure, like throughout the day, like, what if, what if I could do this? I wonder if I could do this, or wouldn't it be a great idea? And oftentimes, we just kind of shut that down and go through the motions of our lives. And I think just because of this kind of, like, serendipitous connection between me realizing there was so much of myself I didn't understand, and then having this idea that was centered around more more purpose in the work I do. I think the combination of those two things sparked this transformation journey and starting to explore how to pursue more purpose in my work. What did that look like in getting to know myself more?

I think it started with the fact that somebody said, Hey, you're an empath. You said, I don't know what that is. And I want to direct our listeners to podcast 1095, the genius of empathy, practical skills to heal your sensitive self, your relationships in the world with Dr Judah Orloff. Judy Orloff is one of the world renowned experts in this area, if you're an empath. So she was on the show. It was podcast number 1095, please take a listen, because we take a very deep dive into that. So look, you found this out. You decided to change your life. And so how did the your background as a brand strategist? Because that's kind of where you're coming from, yeah, help change your vision for the mesh and movement, and really your storytelling approach. We've had many people on here who are storytelling coaches, right? They literally coach CEOs how to tell the right story. They coach all kinds of people how to tell stories. So how did this brand strategist thing end up into this in the mesh movement and storytelling movement.

Yeah. So really, I thought, I'm, you know, I was at a working at a creative agency at the time as as a brand strategist, and I went to work and told my colleague, who was a business partner on all the major accounts we worked on, and I said, I just need to let you know I'm going to, I'm going to leave work and start a nonprofit. And I told him about this meal experience idea, and he was like, it's a great idea, but it's a terrible idea to leave your job and do this like you are an incredible brand storyteller, and you bring clients around the table all the time. What if you start your own business, doing the work that you do, and pursue this meal experience, idea around narrative and connection on the side. And he actually decided to leave with me. So I started mesh and movement with a partner, originally, and just right at that point in my life, I think as soon as I realized I needed more purpose in my own life and in my work, when you put that out there in the world, things start coming to you. I just I connected with another leading strategist in the industry, and he was looking for some support on projects, and he was helping companies articulate their purpose stories. And it's another way of thinking about a brand story or brand strategy, but really focused on singular belief about the world you operate in, and therefore, what's your purpose? How do you intend to affect change in the world? So that kind of became the focus for mesh and storytelling work in the beginning, it was really like a parallel path to brand strategy work, but there's a lot of different frameworks and formats of of storytelling you can use for brand strategy. And so at the start, it was really focused on purpose storytelling, and that has continued to evolve over time in terms of the work I do with mesh. And ultimately, I realized that my own purpose, as I was doing this work, my own purpose is to unite people and inspire movement through shared meaning. And meaning is my medium, and story is the way that I do that. And I think the segue into our personal like the personal growth and the personal development side of it is, you know, stories have the power to connect an audience to an idea, and so at the heart of that, that's true in brand work or product marketing stories, which I also do in my work as a strategic storyteller, you're connecting two things together, and you're looking for empathy. You know, to connect an audience, you're you want to understand what's what's their driver, what's their motivation. You're giving context for the story, what's the meaning and intention behind it. And I realized, and I know that will probably go deeper in my own transformation journey at a certain point as I was parallel pathing this sort of focus and evolution in my brand strategy work, I was going through a really significant transformation journey in my personal life, and I realized, you know, as I was moving through that journey, that owning, acknowledging and then sharing my own story helped me get clarity on who I was, and helped me identify direction and where I wanted to go, and really gave me the strength to make change happen for myself,

But Well, you might want to tell like you got to tell the story, because you had some issues, obviously, with your family and in particular, your mother, yeah, and I remember this in the pre interview, and when you just started that, you started to get very emotional a second ago, and I could sense that there's obviously, as you know, Laura, there's still something very deep there for you, right? There's still something very deep there to overcome, because it's affected so many things in your life. So tell the listeners, if you were would, you know what that is? Because I think a lot of times what people will do, and I don't think it's in and maybe it is intentional, but I think it's pretty subconscious. They have these long stories with all these great experiences, either great and or painful, and they gloss over them when it comes time to tell them or to articulate them. For one, they don't believe that people really care to listen to the whole story, which in a lot of cases, that might be. But if you become a good storyteller, you can tell this story and have it have a significant meaning for them, right? Meaning, hey, I got something out of hearing Laura, so why don't you tell that story? Because if our listeners walk away today from this podcast having heard your story and and transform themselves around their belief of that story, you've made a significant impact.

Yeah, thank you. Yes, I will. So my story begins with little Laura, and I grew up as little Laura, believing my feelings didn't matter. So you know, I, I You're correct. My My mother is someone who really struggles to acknowledge challenges, and she really holds on to certain belief sets to help her excuse away difficulty. And it just so happened that in 2020 when the world was basically upside down, her inability to acknowledge challenge during that time pushed her into sort of extreme beliefs that were just so conspiracy theory beliefs that were so difficult to comprehend. Um, but I, and that was my, my particular experience. It was, it was kind of like we all create these stories about who we want the people in our lives to be, and my story for her was a fantasy that wasn't necessarily the reality, and pushed into these extreme circumstances, my the image I had, and who I so desperately wanted to believe that she was, just started crumbling down during this time, I was coaching for an incredible youth organization called Girls on the Run. And as a as a coach, I had to take pretty intensive training to identify abuse, emotional neglect, difficulty with the girls on the team. You know, their ages, nine to 11, and what kind of context they bring to the team. And so to help the coaches identify the context for those kids, they actually help you do that for yourself first. And they had this exercise that was like filling out a story of your child self. It was like Mad Libs, where you have a fill in the blank, and the blanks were things like, favorite, favorite sounds from your neighborhood. You know, what was your childhood nickname? Fond memories over holidays. What do you remember most about, you know, certain things. So I filled in the blanks, and I read the story of Little Laura, and it was like stepping outside myself and seeing my life experience through someone else's eyes. And this was happening in tandem with confronting my mom's, you know, kind of falling away into conspiracy theory and and I it just it,

well, your mom became a member of Q Anon, right? So she wasn't

a member. She was more she kind of fell into that belief set. And I think it was more demonstrative of a larger pattern in my life that my mom needed really strong beliefs in sort of extreme circumstances to justify away difficulties. So it was like an escapism sort of method for her, which just made me realize how much as a child, like any challenges I had were really hard for her to acknowledge, and that that's where that, like neglect the inability to see me and me growing up, feeling like I didn't matter and I shouldn't be seen. But it kind of came crumbling down, and it was really that realization and seeing my story from the outside, I mean, it brought me to an emotional breakdown, you know, like just realizing the patterns that existed in our relationship and how much of that emotional toll, emotional toll that had taken on me as as a young child and always was.

It was, it was really from what I remember you telling me quite traumatic for you, and I'm hoping it got has gotten better with your mother, hopefully it has. But you know you said and for our listeners, there has to be a courage to dig deep to transformation often requires vulnerability and courage, and this yours took courage too. What practices or tools helped you confront your own personal fears and to dig deeper into your true self. Now you just mentioned one, which was It was basically a great tool that you got from that nonprofit that had you outline your your story, and when you read it back, you really realized, and it was like, Whoa, I get it. What else might you give a listener out there today who's finding the same challenges and or fears and is afraid of being vulnerable but needs to have the courage to step up? What might you ask them to what might you tell them to do?

Yeah, there's just as soon as you start to share that story with yourself, I think that's a starting point. That acknowledgement gives you something to propel you, and if it helps for you to think of your your child self, I think as a starting point. But there's one book in particular, once I got to that emotional breakdown, and I was like, I just had, you know, fall into pieces at the same time, I all of a sudden, felt compelled to share my story. So I did. I conducted a fundraiser for Girls on the Run as an organization, and to raise money for my 40th birthday that year, and I shared my coming out story, because during this transformation, I also came out as bisexual, and so I shared my coming out story and my experience of holding myself back, keeping my like being contained all my life. And when I shared that story through a fundraising website, I had people reach out to me and ask me to come and speak at their companies of just share my story as an inspiring story. What I realized is that we're so we hold back. We we think that, you know, we shouldn't be sharing these things. We shouldn't be talking about these things. But the reality is, you share one little thing, and it ignites a vulnerability loop. When you share that with someone else, they share something of themselves with you, and it's almost cyclical. So I there is like sort of this flywheel mechanism when you're able to to get over that hurdle and just share a little bit of yourself in the right space and environment. I think it gives you more and more courage to go deeper, because you're getting the reinforcement of appreciation for that vulnerability, and that gives you the courage to be more vulnerable.

Well, it's the shadow side of yourself, right? And that shadow is always there, and it can actually create real challenges for people kind of always living in that shadow, right? So, you know, you basically inspired others through all of your storytelling, through what you've done, not not only in your personal business, but also through the mesh and movement. And the mesh and movement is about dinners, sharing dining experience, right? How did you, you know, basically take this mesh in movement that you were saying you had a partner and he's no longer there now, but literally, you're running it. And what has this mesh and movement done to help you heal?

Well, it's so mesh and movement is more than just the mesh and meals. I do those as also a fundraising mechanism and storytelling piece, but it's really a way for me to fulfill my purpose, uniting people, inspiring movement. So the meals is one, one way to bring people together around the table and and raise money with for nonprofits. Another piece is speaking engagements. I speak about the power of story to help us identify, strengthen ourselves. I share my story. I give people and teams tools to do to ignite that vulnerability loop. I talk about story for resilience, and then I also help individuals articulate their own purpose story. So I help professionals articulate their intention, their professional story.

It's now, can our listeners go and get crib sheets from you off of your website. Or can they just reach out to your email address if they want to, and say, hey, you know, you can reach out to Laura. We could put it in the blog entry for you. To give them some of these tools that you have is that absolutely, you're okay to work with Okay,

absolutely. If anyone's interested, please reach out laura@meshinmovement.com whether it's you know, some tips, and if you follow me on Instagram or on LinkedIn, I talk about story in all capacities, so I share as much as I can around story as a tool for connection and growth, and that connection can happen within yourself, but it can also happen within teams and groups.

Well, one of the things that you call is called threads of change, and your work emphasizes following threads to uncover, basically, the hidden aspects of ourself. What practical advice might you give to somebody who's listening right now or share with others to identify and follow their own threads of growth? Like I said, I think it personally, I see more people gloss over the story because they either feel like they don't want to tell it, or people aren't going to listen, or they don't believe that it's valuable enough, or whatever it might be, whatever they've tagged it, but there are gems inside of those threads that need to be extracted so that you can really determine what your purpose is in Life. And those gems are there always. So what might you tell them about the threads?

So how to find the threads? And I, the threads of me and you are those things that connect us and those that we follow into. You know our expansion the threads in your story. The best way to get at them, I think, is morning pages. So another tool I used in my own when I was recovering from my breakdown and building myself back up again, was Julia Cameron's book The Artist's Way. It was where I learned the practice of waking up and writing. And if it's mandatory, if you just wake up and you're like, I don't know what to write about. I swear every entry started with I'm not sure what to say, and you just put pen to paper, and you start writing, and then all of a sudden, things will come out. And I think just the exercise of giving yourself a space where you're not feeling judged, I think doing it first thing in the morning, stream of consciousness. Hopefully you're not judging yourself. It's just an outlet, and that's where you get the most natural, the most natural thoughts and feelings and beliefs coming through onto the page. And when, when you have that practice, then you just read those morning pages, and you start to identify patterns, and you start to see through lines. I think, when it comes to growth, you can't. You can't change something that you're not even aware of. Needs changing. You can't, you know. You can't solve a problem if you don't know what the problem is. And so so much of the growth journey is reflection, self reflection, in any way that, yeah, a mirror to look at yourself, and it's it's not easy if you don't have necessarily, like a if you're not regularly going to a therapist who's identifying those things for you, like the morning pages is a really lovely ritual for you to get your story out and for you to start To Know yourself. And

I and I think too, Laura, that you know, like what you've done is make connections. You know, I have an interview coming up here after you, with Dr Adam Dorsey about super psyched. You know, the connections that we fail to make meaning, the loneliness epidemic that's out there today is such a challenging situation, and people don't really realize it. You know, they're either shut in or they're not telling their story, or they're afraid, or whatever it might be. And just to have this human connection, which is what I love about your dinners, to actually sit down and be able to talk and to talk about it is important. And so what I would encourage people is, you know, take the time to make the connection, even if it's just in a small way. Connect, connect, to connect, because we are there's a huge deficit in most people's lives around connection. So the next thing I would say is, you spoke about the role of Wonder lust. You know, you describe wonder lust as basically an essential part of self discovery. There's a lot of people that aren't going to know what wonder lust is. So can you first define it, and then how can we cultivate curiosity to lead to some meaningful transformation.

Yeah, so no one, I imagine people haven't heard of it. I thought it was a term I just made up, but I have seen other people have come upon using it as well. For me, wonder lust was it's a curiosity so strong you can't help but keep trying to discover more within yourself, even though you're going to find things you really don't want to see or liked seeing. You know, a big part of the the growth journey is overcoming our limitations, our fears, our you know, the self imposed boundaries, and those aren't necessarily easy to identify. We try to put blockages up the Wanderlust is like you're just so driven to get to new aspects of yourself that you're okay with looking at everything that's there. I like, I equate it to wanderlust being a more tangible, physical journey. You know, people who love to travel or want to discover new places, wanderlust is kind of the same sort of intention and energy, but it's inwardly focused. And I think again, going back to what I mentioned before, you can't change things you don't understand, you know, and so to really expand beyond our boundaries and limitations, we have to know where those limits are and understand the barriers keeping us in place, or the behavior patterns we want to break or rewrite. You have to be willing to look at yourself with an open mind and admit that you don't have the answers and be curious enough to see what you don't necessarily want to see.

Well. And again, a lot of the reason we don't want to see it is because we don't really want to accept it, but we actually turn it into a it becomes part of us. But again, I'm going to say a lot of times it's the shadow, it's the side of Laura or Greg that we don't want to reveal to others, but we know that it's there. And in your case, it was maybe just being bisexual was one of those that you had to, as you said, come out. But my sense is that, you know, when you're an empathic those kind of feelings are so strong, right? And so for somebody, but for other people who are listening today, they're not as strong. They're like, hey, I can live this shadow of life and it doesn't matter, and I can go to my deathbed with the whole shadow, right? And I would say probably lots of people do, but you're giving people a chance through story, vulnerability, courage to actually come out and be able to do this. And I just want to encourage my listeners, because this is a great opportunity, whether you do it with Laura or by yourself, or you get some of her prompts or pages or things, it's an opportunity for you to look at a side of yourself that maybe you haven't been willing to actually face and and whether it's a relative, like in your case, your mother, or somebody else, a brother or a sister, that you're having conflicts with. This is a reason or way for you to take a look at it, and you also can look at the history that you think or that we don't think we know, help to cause these issues that that you've got, that you're hanging on to. So yeah, let's go sum this podcast up around mesh and movement. Again, you said it isn't just about the dinners, but the dinners are one thing. So looking forward for your vision, because this is like, Hey, this is Laura's vision. This is her story. How do you hope this continues to inspire connection and change the world. And if our listeners go to the mesh and movement or mission movement.com, what do you want them to learn, and what do you want them to take away from and how can you help them today?

Yeah, well, you know, I think what I've done with mesh, and it gave me space to combine a lot of things I love to do in strategy and story, work and social impact, and have them ladder up to a singular purpose. And I think I've planted the seeds for the work I hope to do through mesh and ongoing that. And that. And I hope, with time, the seeds will continue to grow into fully thriving ways in which I'm, you know, fulfilling my purpose more speaking work, more more with mesh and meals. Continue on with that, I would love to put together a cookbook, eventually, in a book or a guide for people to throw their own connecting meal experiences in their home, so that it's not just a fundraising thing I create, but give people the tools to connect better around the table with them, their own families and friends. I'm writing a book about my story so all of these ways just continue doing storytelling work for for myself, but for other people, I and again, going back to that idea like I think that we all are connected through our experiences. The details of my growth journey are very specific to my life, but the broader beats on this idea of what unites and connects us all is a lot stronger than we might think in today's disconnected age, so really just nurturing it and keep plugging away and bringing that purpose to life.

Yeah, well, while you're working on your book, and I want to let my listeners know that I storytelling is so important, and when you go to the mesh and movement, you're going to see her storytelling services, so strategic narratives, purpose, articulation, brand strategy, core, messaging, discovery, research, and she helps you to go through all of this. So it's one to one, story, clinic, office hours, which she's got there. Definitely go check it out, because she's there. And for those of you who aren't familiar with this storytelling inside business and our personal stories is a big deal. And many, many years ago, 20 plus years ago, I connected up with Karen Dietz, and Karen wrote the business storytelling for dummies. She also created a book around that, the dummies book series, and Lori Silverman, so there's also, I don't want to call it isn't an association for storytellers, but there is. It's a pretty big deal. And I would just encourage you, whether you're doing this for business or you're doing it for personal growth and development, it's great to be able to get your story on paper. It's great to then to be able to articulate it. It is what people want to hear. And if you're doing your as Laura could say, your one minute elevator pitch when somebody asks you what you're doing in business, it's good to have it in a story format, because that's the way people want to hear it, so that you encourage them to ask more questions. Anything else you want to sum up our podcast with here today?

Yeah. I mean, we've talked a lot about the personal storytelling side, but I you know, I do this storytelling work for professional stories in it to your point of a single page, here's what I believe to be true about the space I operate in, and therefore my purpose in the work that I do, and I do it in these three ways, what I do, how I do it, uniquely, and the impact I want to have. And I go through that exercise, I'm actually going through a story immersion with a client right now, and it is so revealing personally as well. Like the you know, what motivates and drives us professionally is so tied to who we are. So it's such rewarding work for me to get to tell people's professional stories and have them say I didn't even realize this about myself, and it's just a lot of clarity there. So

I just tell people that are listening, that have listened this far, so far, to the podcast, take the time. It's valuable insight. It's great discovery. It gives you an opportunity to clarify your message to the people that you're actually marketing something to, or you're working for, or whatever you're doing. Because people love to have the clarity and the story is very pungent, poignant way to actually accentuate what it is you do, however you tell it. So you are a master at this. Thank you for being on inside personal growth and sharing your story, both personal and the fact that people can go to Mesh and movement, they can learn more about how Laura can actually help you in your business, right? And I'd encourage you to reach out to her and for those tools as well, we'll put a link to her email address so she can send you some of those tools. Laura, thanks for being on inside personal growth and sharing your wisdom, your insight, and, most importantly, your personal story.

Thank you, Greg, it was a pleasure.

Namaste to you.