Cut Through the Noise, Clear the Static: How Awareness Guides You

Lora Lapiz defies logic through open-mindedness, curiosity, and possibility. Her unconventional methods and uncanny style, pinpoint core root issues and synergies with laser precision. Leaving doubt, control, hesitation, and apprehension behind, Lora explored, worked, and played in over 35 countries across 6 continents. She even climbed a 17,000 foot mountain tasting the richness and fullness of life.

 Her dynamic experience draws from academics, private industry, non-profit, public-private partnerships, high level government policy and entrepreneurship. Lora’s sage wisdom navigates the most unusual circumstances. From White House meetings to paddle boarding new water ways, she identifies a clear, certain, opulent path forward. Lora has a Bachelors in Neuroscience and Masters in Public Health from Johns Hopkins University.

 Lora guides highly sensitive people, visionaries, and pioneers to align their intuition, energy, and priorities into a new way of being while operating in a fast evolving world. Are you ready to accelerate your fun, freedom and fulfillment? Lora Lapiz is your Secret Weapon.

More at – https://loralapizmedia.com

 

The Interview Transcript

Hugh Ballou:
Welcome to this episode of The Nonprofit Exchange. This is Hugh Ballou again, founder and president of Center Vision Leadership Foundation. We work with leaders clarifying their vision and creating synergy with their teams and the cultures they serve. Got a special guest today, one I’ve known for a long time, but been disconnected for many years, with I think an important message for leaders. And it’s The title that we’re working with for now is Cut Through the Noise, Clear the Static. It’s about how awareness guides you. Lora, before we get into that great topic, tell us a little bit about yourself.

Lora Lapiz:
Well, Hugh, thank you so much for having me on today. And one of the most things that I can say is I’ve been very blessed to have lived a life that has been so rich that I’ve done almost twice the life in somebody almost half the time. So this is bridged from having a neuroscience being a neuroscientist to a public health expert, to weaving it all together and having worked in many different industries from academics to non-profit, to non-profit, for-profit, high-level government policy. So it’s been able to bridge both many things, which most importantly is how people have always receiving signals. The universe is always constantly sending us signals. But so many people tend to miss the message.

Hugh Ballou:
So you’ve had a really varied background and done a lot of different things. But there’s some central themes to what you bring to your work. So talk about what shaped you the most, and how do you interface with people these days?

Lora Lapiz:
So it’s very interesting. So with my diverse background, of which also includes being an outdoor adventure and world traveler, it’s about bringing this, what I call 360 degree optics. It brings such a different level of perspective. So depending on where you are, whether you’re a for-profit or nonprofit, It can all depend on if you’re introducing a product or service, what I call at the ground level, or if you’re coordinating across much bigger organizations, large nonprofits, you might be coordinating with multiple donors, multiple agencies, multiple people who are sitting on your board. And the thing is this, we always tend to have those blind spots that catch us. And when you actually have that ability to see the blind spots that are coming up in conversations, in interactions with people, to even seeing what’s not being said. So let’s just say calling out the elephant in the room. Have you ever like been in those situations where you just feel that heaviness, the weight in that room and you’re like, It’s just not going where we want to go, but nobody’s calling it out. And sometimes that’s all that we need to do is be that person who’s going to call out those blind spots and just say, what’s really going on? Who’s not being heard? what’s not being said and address the real issue in real time. I’ve seen companies who continue to push products that they’ve spent a hundred million plus dollars on, that they should never continue to develop with another penny, to having the most amazing product that they’re going with so many different streams that they don’t get any traction because they’re scattered all over the place. So we always need that one person who’s going to come in, and I call it just being that blindside advisor, who’s going to call out what I call the missing message in the room.

Hugh Ballou:
So when I talk about blind spots in a room, I get a lot of blank stares, like I don’t see any blind spots. So that’s the whole point. So how do we, and there’s several dynamics as I’m hearing you, several dynamics. There are the elephant in the room that nobody’s talking about, but as a leader, we have our own personal blind spots that actually add up some of these situations. And we’re not aware of the consequences of our own actions. So speak to that a minute, would you?

Lora Lapiz:
Thank you so much. You bring up such a perfect point here. This is where actually in the title is it’s all about awareness. It’s not just what’s going on with everybody else, but you even have enough awareness of what’s going on inside of you and whether it’s something you may be projecting, whether it’s something, maybe a argument with a spouse, or even just something that you’ve been avoiding and not dealing with and like slipping it underneath the rug and hoping nobody notices. It might even be that you were in the ER a week ago and you didn’t want anybody else to know. So if we don’t have awareness about ourselves, It’s hard to then also have the awareness among your team and your projects and the greater things that are going on.

Hugh Ballou:
If you’re just coming by and watching this on social media, my guest today is Lora Lapiz, and we’re talking about personal awareness. There’s many facets of this, so we’re trying to give you a sense for it in this short interview. So speak to the first part of our title, Lora. Cut through the noise, clear the static.

Lora Lapiz:
So I always love to say that the universe is always giving us signals. And it could be in the form of, hearing some words repeatedly. It could be seeing some animals. It could be a nudge by a kid who keeps wanting attention and who might eventually run away or something in a couple of weeks. If we don’t start to pay attention to the signals that are around us, We start to lose track of what’s going on, but here’s the thing. Because we can sense so much, it’s about learning how to discern in a cipher what’s really most important. Who are your loved ones? What signals are they sending to you? What signals are your team sending? Or even the signals, understand the signals that they’re not sending or not saying that are also playing into that. So here’s the thing. We always kind of, you know, it can be everything from having this bombardment, the news, society, expectations, whatever it be. But when we can really get into that true alignment of where we are, who we are, what we want, and be on mission, especially when you talk about the nonprofits that you work with and the leaders. Are we really on mission to do the work that we’re meant to do? Because everything else is that noise and that static.

Hugh Ballou:
There’s a lot of it today. In the writings and teachings of a psychiatrist, Murray Bowen, who created Family Systems Theory, he writes about anxiety, which I would say, this is one of the invisible things. If the leader is anxious, it’s contagious in the group. So how does that play out in this awareness, if we’re not aware of that, and other ways that we add to this confusion?

Lora Lapiz:
So I say it two ways. We tend to either come from our perceived past or a fearful future. And the anxiousness comes from the fearful future. We’re afraid we don’t know what’s gonna happen. We all wanna try and be in this control. We wanna control the outcomes and the circumstances and what all the people want. But what we really need to do is get present. And most people don’t actually know how to do that. If people right now just took the time to say, can you feel your big toes? Because if you can’t, that means you’re not fully present. Being present is to be able to feel everything in your body and know how it’s all doing. And when we can even just get back into the feeling your own breath, feeling your feet on the ground, we can just get truly present with where we are and focus on what’s in front of us. Not what happened an hour ago, not what’s happening in the future, but what’s happening right now. So for example, you and me right now, it’s you and me, and that’s it. Everything else, I’ve tuned out. So the difference is about learning how to tune in to you and having that awareness of where you are, the awareness of the person that’s in the room and what’s being said or what’s not being said and tuning everything else out.

Hugh Ballou:
So maybe this is relative, or maybe it’s a sidestep, but you have a chapter in a book, Dare to Dream, and it’s called Forge Your Courageous Path, Power, and the subtitle is Power in Stillness. So there’s another step to this. We might be aware of it, but there’s a courage to act on it.

Lora Lapiz:
Yes.

Hugh Ballou:
So we speak to the inner potential that we have and really haven’t tapped.

Lora Lapiz:
So you bring out a very beautiful piece, and I’m gonna give you a really short three-part framework here. I call it the three R’s. We have to release and let go of what no longer serves us. It’s then receiving and learning how to decipher those incoming messages. The third part is what you just mentioned. It’s called resolve. So it’s about once we let go, we clearly receive the divine knowledge that comes in, it’s then acting on it. So it’s about strengthening our resolve to then take the action. And when we do that, and you’re familiar with probably spiral dynamics, we start to spiral upwards. If we don’t resolve, we start to spiral downwards, and then we go back through the same issues, the same circumstances, everything that you’ve previously gone through, because we haven’t learned to apply it yet. And apply is a word that I really am using moving forward, and it’s about applying this new knowledge that you’ve received moving forward.

Hugh Ballou:
So if people, if you’re, if you’re watching this or listening and you didn’t get those three points, there is a transcript and you can find it at the non-profit exchange.org the non-profit exchange.org. You can find a full transcript, but that in mind, Lora, give us a summary of those three points again, are.

Lora Lapiz:
Release, receive. and resolve, and I call it the three R evolution. So it’s the three R revolution, evolution all tied together, because when we employ these three things all together, your whole life is gonna change.

Hugh Ballou:
We tend to poo-poo things that seem simple, and this is complex, but at the same time, it’s not complex. And the simple part is being aware of yourself and being in silence. So there’s important things can happen if we can be calm and be silent. So that gives us perspective. So how do we, if we’re able to do that in a disciplined, regular way, How can then we bring in members of our team? In our world, it’s board members, it’s staff, it’s key volunteers, might be some other stakeholders like key donors. How can then we bring in some of our top leaders into the conversation so that we can do this together?

Lora Lapiz:
So it’s always going back when we just go back to that simple framework. is that leaders tend to not want to change, or the board as a whole. And we always have to do that really true deep dive of what’s really working and what’s not. Because we hold on, it was our baby, it was our creation. The biggest thing you see with pioneering and innovators is that They won’t let go because they’ve been doing it for so long and recognizing we have new variables. I mean, you get it. AI is changing everything. How do we then take in these new variables and it change? We have to release what we’re doing so we can really pivot and move forward.

Hugh Ballou:
That’s an important step. So talk about some, some particular cases in anywhere without names, you know, some people that you’ve worked with, that there’s a lot of testimonies on your, I’m going to give a link for your page in a minute, but there’s testimonies about the magical differences you make people’s lives. But give us an example of how somebody has been able to become aware and transform into a different place.

Lora Lapiz:
One of the easiest things you can do is go for a walk outside. And believe it or not, gets you away from the technology. It gets you into a place that is created by source, created by God, and has all the variables you really need. So whether you’re having a group meeting, sitting outside in a park, or even just going for a walk with a couple of your key members, when you’re kind of moving and talking, things start to naturally just wanna come out, just the way we’re having this evolving conversation right now. You kind of, it lets your guard down and it allows you to just be comfortable and speak what needs to really happen. And when you actually speak the truth and allow it to come out and not suppress it, that’s when the real magic starts to happen. And that’s when the magic unfolding of what’s really possible comes forward.

Hugh Ballou:
So elaborate on some of the effective ways that we can observe, which probably includes listening and looking, right?

Lora Lapiz:
Absolutely. So deep listening, always make sure, do you understand what you’re listening for. Are you listening just so you can speak? Are you listening just so you can offer an opinion? Are you listening and truly understanding? And it becomes so different when you actually take a step back and just listen to everybody. Observe people’s demeanor, observe people’s attention. And I always love to use the metaphor of be the bird that is circling above the team. Come from that observer point of view. Not your own, not what else is going on in your life. This goes back to the awareness we talked about a few minutes ago. But if you just sat and observed what is going on with everybody, you’re gonna start to notice who’s fidgeting in their seat, who’s not paying attention at all, who’s not saying something that needs to be said, who is talking more than everyone else. Does everybody in the room feel seen and heard, and most of all, appreciated and acknowledged for what they’re bringing to the table? Because when everybody comes together and has their words heard, it becomes very different. So when we all start to come from a place of deep listening, which is also one of my superpowers, it comes and brings forward something very new and different to the team.

Hugh Ballou:
That is a, listening is a very underutilized leadership skill in my experience. And people seem to have more to say than they’re willing to listen. So continue with that thread and add the factor of being judgmental. How do we listen better if we’re not critical?

Lora Lapiz:
So the idea is to be critical of what’s being laid out not being judgmental and critical of the other person. We each bring our own set of unique circumstances, skills, knowledge, abilities, KSAs, right? And most importantly, we have very different widely experiences. I have a very dynamic experience and background. And the differences is when we come from this place of non-judgment, This gets back to what I said earlier. You’re being present. There’s no right or wrong. There’s no left or right, good or bad. You just listen and you receive what somebody says. And when you can just lay out the facts or opinions, I mean, that’s a whole nother topic, that it allows it to come out naturally. People get reserved and don’t speak because they feel judged or being critiqued. And when we can keep that environment open and hold that sacred container, that sacred space, that nothing’s wrong, that anything can be said, you’re gonna have wildly different discussion and probably come up with the most wild potential scenarios that if somebody says, well, what about we do X? That’s gonna trigger somebody else to go, oh, if we can do that, we could probably also do this. That might completely change the trajectory of your company or your nonprofit.

Hugh Ballou:
Yes. Be willing to listen. And, you know, you can consider a lot of ideas. Um, Edward de Bono writes books about thinking skills and he calls it nonlinear thinking. It’s a totally useless skill can give, lead you a different place that you would not have gone. So we tend to want to shut down opinions because we want to be in control. So that’s, that is so helpful. Now you have, um, your own landing page that gives people a lot of information about your LOR. Lora, L-A-P-I-Z-M-E-D-I-A.com. And I’m going to show it for the people that are watching the video. If you’re not watching the video, then you can actually go to the link you can find on the podcast platform. Um, and I’m going to show it and she’s going to describe it. So people listening really want to go there because you can’t see it. So Lora, we go to Loralepez.com. What will we find?

Lora Lapiz:
Well, you’re going to have an understanding of who I am at the depths that I bring a wide variety of knowledge and experience. I’m quite dynamic, not just in addition to the industries that I’ve worked with, but I’m also an outdoor adventurer. I’ve went from being an unathletic kid to climbing 17,000 foot mountains, to also being a world traveler. And when you can combine all of these different types of experiences, perspectives, and what I like to call 360 degree optics, you bring a wildly different understanding to any conversation. That’s why, coupled with deep listening, I can literally see how to piece together somebody’s visionary goals and how to take that vision, clearly set that strategy, see the gaps, see the synergies, which I love is part of your company name, and then piece it all together. Because when we can do that, it creates a whole different world. And I’ve been honored to be, I’ve spoken in front of Project Management Institute. That’s actually what that picture is from. And to smaller corporate engagements to also doing team building and leading leadership experiences while doing paddle boarding and hiking and rock climbing. So it’s about bringing people together in a variety of perspectives and Places to be able to really meet them where they are.

Hugh Ballou:
I feel permission to be who I am Because there’s a lot of there’s a lot of good stuff in there you’ve given us a Bunch of stuff to think about in this the short time frame So do you want to leave people with a closing thought or a challenge or an idea?

Lora Lapiz:
Sure, I’d love to actually leave them with a question What is? the message that has been circulating around you that you’ve been avoiding? Because as you said right at the beginning as part of one of your questions is about how do we act on it? And it’s part of the three R, it’s the resolve. So when the signals have been around you, what is the message that you’ve been missing? Because it’s most likely what you’re avoiding.

Hugh Ballou:
Wow. I’m so inspired, Lora. Thank you so much for being my guest today on the Nonprofit Exchange.

Lora Lapiz:
Thank you so much, Hugh. An honor to serve you and your audience and wishing this audience the abundance, the love that everyone deserves. And may, when you come to this point, when you have inner peace and clarity, that you truly walk that courageous path that you’re here to lead.

Hugh Ballou:
Duly noted. Thank you so much.

Lora Lapiz:
Thank you, Hugh.