From Chaos to Self-Worth at 20, with Lawrence Harris

In this inspiring interview, 20-year-old keynote speaker and author Lawrence C Harris shares his powerful journey through childhood chaos, the importance of self-worth, and practical tools like journaling to transform pain into empowerment. Discover how self-awareness and resilience can shape a fulfilling life.

Topics

• Childhood trauma and abuse
• The role of self-worth in personal growth
• How journaling helps unpack emotions and build self-awareness.
• Self-worth is rooted in who you are, not what you have.
• Social media often portrays a false image of success.
• Living authentically involves understanding what you truly want.
• Consistent self-reflection can lead to profound personal insights.
• "Most people on social media are lying."

Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Chaos and Childhood Violence
02:34 Navigating Personal Chaos
05:05 The Power of Journaling
08:26 Youth Empowerment and Self-Worth
11:33 Challenges Facing Today's Youth
14:22 The Importance of Self-Worth
17:24 Living Authentically: What do I really want?
20:16 The Journey of Self-Discovery

Keywords

self-worth, resilience, journaling, youth empowerment, mental health, personal development, overcoming trauma, self-awareness, motivation, young leaders

Guest Contact Details:
For more information about Lawrence C Harris, see his website https://www.lawrencecharris.com/. You can access the free journal prompts here: https://speakerhub.com/cta/sfQk95 

Thanks to Jacopo Lazzaretti for the intro/outro music:  https://jacopolazzaretti.bandcamp.com/album/secret-love

For all contact details (including our Associates) and useful self-worth resources, see www.SelfWorthAcademy.com

Transcript

John Niland (00:00)

Welcome to Self-Worth in Times of Chaos. My guest today is probably the youngest guest we've had in this podcast series. He's based in Philadelphia. He is a keynote speaker and author on the subject of self-worth, a topic that many listeners will recognize, which is why we connected. Welcome, Lawrence.

Lawrence C Harris (00:21)

Thank you, it's great to be here.

John Niland (00:23)

What age are you, Lawrence? Let's clear up that one first.

Lawrence C Harris (00:25)

I'm

twenty years old, so I'm by far the youngest.

John Niland (00:28)

He's

You are definitely the youngest by ⁓ by a mile that we've had so far. However, I'm sure that record will be beaten in the course of the next year. ⁓ fantastic to to have you here. Lawrence, as you know, we start with the chaos. what was the chaos that you lived through? I know you've written a book about it, so you're fluent on this. Yeah.

Lawrence C Harris (00:49)

Well, one of the most chaotic moments of my life goes back to I'm twelve years old and I'm sitting on this black couch. And it was actually October eighteenth. I remember that day because it's a very special day to me. And as I'm working on this school project on my phone, my mom's trying to call me. And I was over at my dad's house, which

For a reason that he never said, he always never wanted us to bring our phones into the house. And as my mom's calling and I'm declining the calls, his wife looks at me and starts saying how I must be texting my mom and she just goes on this whole tangent. One thing leads to another and my dad punches me in my eye. And at first I feel shocked because why? What's like did I do something? And

Was it a mistake? But then he does it again. And it's as if my head is ringing and I just had this moment where I went from this kid full of all these hopes and dreams to what's going on. Over the next few days I'm going in and out of hospitals. I'm having to file police reports and I have to

now protect my younger siblings, but I'm twelve years old and there's not really much I can do. And that was the start of the most chaotic three years of my life.

John Niland (02:34)

How bad did it get?

Lawrence C Harris (02:36)

I remember this feeling of constantly either feeling nothing whatsoever or everything all at once. In my book, I describe it as imagine you are tied to a treadmill made of sandpaper and you're constantly running, or you're taking a shower made of like ice cold water and then being thrown into the desert.

over and over. Or having a thousand paper cuts whilst being sat in a pool of lemonade and there's nothing you can do. That's the feeling of how it felt at its worst.

John Niland (03:23)

What did that do to your relationship with yourself?

Lawrence C Harris (03:27)

I felt like nothing because during that time period when I eventually got out of his house and no longer had to go see him and through all that court process, got restraining orders, and he's no longer my life, thankfully, I got disowned by him when I was thirteen in front of a church. And I had to essentially figure out how do I be man?

How do I be a good person? How do I feel worthy when the person who was supposed to teach me what that looked like was the person who hurt me the most? So it really set me to the absolute bottom.

John Niland (04:19)

Let's follow that story. ⁓ It sent you to the bottom, but obviously some insights came to you in the course of that bottom and following. How did you navigate that awful experience of being disowned publicly at a very young age?

Lawrence C Harris (04:31)

a lot of them did.

Well, thankfully my mom got me into therapy when I was young, so I didn't do it all on my own. Thankfully I had people who cared about me even when I would push them away. So one of the main ways I navigated it was through talking to my therapist about it and journaling. Since the age of fifteen, I have written in a journal every single day almost so that I can

unpack my own thoughts, unpack why do I feel what I feel and over the years I've been able to obviously turn the most painful thing of my life into something I not not that I'm grateful for it but that I see the lesson that I learned through that journey and was able to turn lemons into lemonade to make it cliche.

John Niland (05:42)

yeah. Well, when it's lived, it's never a cliche. let's talk about journaling a little bit. What what's the significance of journaling? Wha why does it help? Or how how does it help, if that's a better question.

Lawrence C Harris (05:52)

Well

It helps tremendously. I actually have a ebook where it's 111 journal prompts. I can send you the link if you don't mind me giving it away to the listener for free.

John Niland (06:05)

Hmm. Please

do. We'll put it in the show notes for sure.

Lawrence C Harris (06:09)

Thank you. The reason why journaling is so great is because nobody knows you as much as you know yourself. And when you ask yourself questions like, why do I feel upset today? You can write that out and you get your thoughts from in your head out onto paper because you start overthinking it and you make the problem so much worse in your head. But once you write it out, not only does it let you

express your emotions in a healthy way, but you get to know yourself more, you get to figure out why you respond certain ways and you're able to help yourself in a way that nobody else can because nobody else is inside your head.

John Niland (06:57)

It sounds like there's a tremendous development of self awareness happening through all of this. As you get this out onto paper, you really get to to see how you how you tick.

Lawrence C Harris (07:04)

It is.

Yeah, it's kind of like everyone has these little triggers that they're not aware of. But when you journal on why when I'll use an example from my own life. So when I used to date people, there would be this pattern that would happen where I would feel really good as long as they're talking to me consistently. Like I know within a certain time period I'll hear from them. But

when the communication became less consistent or I didn't hear from them for like a day or a couple hours longer than I thought, I would feel very nervous, I would feel afraid, I would feel scared. And I would journal about why does this keep happening? And I traced it back to it's because when I was 13, my dad disowned me. And in my relationship with people,

I was afraid of being abandoned. So the problem wasn't lack of communication. The problem was fear of abandonment. And once I figured that out and I was able to heal that part of me, now I don't deal with that fear of abandonment as much.

John Niland (08:26)

Great example. So let's go forward to the work you're doing today because it's super interesting. You have turned ⁓ what many people would have ⁓ regarded as a very limiting experience into something very different. You speak on the subject, you have written a book on the subject. ⁓ tell me a bit more about your work.

Lawrence C Harris (08:48)

So my technical term is a youth empowerment speaker. Most people they think, you're a motivational speaker. There's a very big difference. Motivation is just a feeling. It's kind of excites you. It's what you think of when you're like a football coach. That's motivation. It's really great. Empowerment is teaching you how to actually do something.

When you feel stressed, what do I do? When you feel upset, what do you do? That's giving you the toolkit. And what I help mainly teenagers and young adults to do is think different, feel different, and live different. Which means that I help them to uncover their beliefs. Like when you say, I am not smart, who taught you that? And why do you believe that?

John Niland (09:32)

Hmm.

Lawrence C Harris (09:44)

And then how do we change that belief so that we change what you think, how you feel about yourself, and the way that you live?

John Niland (09:52)

Right. Let's talk about the challenges that young adults and teenagers are facing today. ⁓ you're uniquely placed to tell us a bit about that. ⁓ what stands out in your experience?

Lawrence C Harris (10:02)

Yeah.

Well, the most obvious one that people see are things like comparison on social media. Prior to social media, obviously I wouldn't know this because I wasn't alive, but I can infer that prior to social media, unless you were like the president, nobody really knew what you were doing. Outside of your family and your small town, nobody really judged you because they didn't know you existed.

Whereas now on social media, people are getting like bullied by people who live hundreds of miles away. Even me, I occasionally get messages where people send me some very, very disrespectful things. So imagine if you were 14 years old, you're getting bullied at school, you feel insecure, you make a social media post, and people are saying really mean things about you in the comment section and

in your messages. Then we have like much bigger issues, such as I've spoken to organizations that help teenagers and young adults who have nonviolent gun charges to get their records dropped. Because a lot of them live in very dangerous environments and they're good kids. But when you deal with crime outside of their doorstep

It leads you to doing what you have to do to protect yourself and your family. So there's people who are growing up in severe poverty, people who are growing up in high crime areas, lack of education in the schools, underfunded budgets. There are many things that people are dealing with, and those are just the ones you see when you are someone who's

Looking from the outside, you don't know what goes on inside of their house. You don't know if they don't have water. You don't know if they don't have food in the refrigerator, or if their parents are abusive, or if there's addiction in the home. There's a lot of things that we could say, but there's a lot of things that we don't see because it happens in their home.

John Niland (12:29)

Right. And when you work with them, what do you do?

Lawrence C Harris (12:35)

So what I do is I firstly share what I've been through. Because when you mentioned that you were in Portugal, right? So I'm not sure how the school system over there is, but at least here in America, we'll have speakers come into the schools and they, you know, motivate people, give some advice and whatnot. But very rarely do they share what they've been through. So I tell people, firstly,

Here's what I've dealt with. Here's how I felt. Here's what I've been through. And here's how I got through it. That way they know that I'm not just some guy talking at them or talking to them. I'm talking with them. So that we immediately feel a connection there. Then I'll take some volunteers on who want to share something that may be a goal that they want to achieve.

Then they tell me what they want to achieve and I teach them, okay, well, what do you need to believe in order to achieve that? And then how do you believe in yourself? And then what actions can you do? And over the years I've had some incredible things that students have gone out and done. They've created big changes in their life, and that's just speaking to them. Then I have social media content, I have coaching that I offer people. I've

Do a lot of things.

John Niland (14:01)

So I see, which is why we connected in the first place. I'm fascinated that you also came to the central importance of self worth, which clearly is why we connected. What's the significance of self worth for you in your experience?

Lawrence C Harris (14:03)

Thank you.

Well, in my experience, it's because when I felt so worthless, the only thing I wanted was to just feel good about myself. I wasn't trying to go out and, you know, chase money. I didn't want a fancy car. All I wanted was to feel good about myself. That was it. And over the years I started to observe how not only myself but other people

They try to feel good about themselves by using outside things. So I'll feel happy when I have enough money. I'll feel good when I have a girlfriend or boyfriend. I'll feel good when I have straight A's. But you have to feel worthy about yourself, not because of what you have, but who you are. And again, journaling helped me to do that because.

you get to spend time with yourself, you get to know yourself, and you get to say, well, what am I proud of about me? And then from that base of self-worth, you start to believe that you matter. And then from believing that you matter, you believe, huh, I probably could achieve that goal. And then you start taking the actions and then you have the life that you want.

John Niland (15:44)

Wonderful. Fantastic. ⁓ if you had a message to pass on to listeners, and particularly younger listeners, or listeners who might have this episode forwarded to younger listeners, what would it be?

Lawrence C Harris (15:59)

Most people on social media are lying. That's what I'd say. Because on social media, everyone has the best life ever. Like everyone's driving supercars, living in mansions, making fifty thousand dollars a month at eighteen. Everyone's doing it. But I can assure you, they are they're lying. Not all of them, but the vast majority. You can rent a car for

I I did the math on this a while back. With $1,500, you could rent a supercar, rent a mansion, hire a videographer, take a ton of pictures, and now everyone on social media thinks you have $10 million. So trust me, social media is lying to you.

John Niland (16:52)

Indeed. Anything else?

Lawrence C Harris (16:55)

⁓ another thing I would say, especially to younger listeners, is

Ask yourself, What do I want? Like what kind of life do I actually want? Because social media and television and the music and all these things say that you have to have a certain car or a certain lifestyle or live in this kind of house, date this kind of person, dress this kind of way. But when you ask yourself, what do I actually want?

Now you're able to live a life that you enjoy. Because maybe you don't want a mansion. Maybe you want to go live in a cabin in the middle of the woods. Maybe you don't want that supercar. You might want to ride a bike. That's what you want. You want to ride a bike with a wheelbarrow on the back, and that's how you get around. Maybe you don't want to wear the luxury designer clothes. Maybe you like wearing suits and ties. I do.

Maybe you don't like going to fancy parties. Maybe you like fishing. I do. And the more you ask yourself, what do I actually want? The more that you're able to live a life that you're happy about because you're not trying to be somebody else.

John Niland (18:11)

This is of course the power of journaling again, isn't it? 'Cause we get to we get to unpack that, ⁓ while while journaling.

Lawrence C Harris (18:13)

Yes. Yeah, because

when you're journaling you start to realize that, wait, do I actually even care about that? Like, why ⁓ an example that happened recently is there's an apartment building that I really wanted. Like this thing is beautiful, it's a huge skyscraper, and it has all these crazy features. But over time I started to ask myself, like, why do I actually want that?

it looks cool. Okay, yeah, it looks cool, but do I really want to pay three thousand a month for that? I'm like, mmm, not really. What I really want is to grow my business and be able to help my family. So, the thing that actually mattered to me more isn't the big fancy beautiful building that would look good on social media. It's just

getting a cheap apartment that has what I need and is able to be well afforded. So yeah, it won't look cool to other people, but it'll be good for me. And when you start doing what actually matters to you, you stop having you stop feeling the need to impress people because you know I say this a lot, but you're the only person who goes in your casket.

John Niland (19:23)

Mm.

Lawrence C Harris (19:42)

So knowing that you have one life and knowing that you have to live with all the good and all the bad, it n forces you to start thinking, well, if I gotta live this life, I should probably figure out what I want to do with it instead of letting somebody else or letting what the world says determine how I live.

John Niland (20:09)

I'm fascinated how you have pulled all of that out of your own experience in such a short period of time. which is really incredible. ⁓ I remember somebody it's a great question, you know, what do you really want? ⁓ I remember somebody asking me that sometime in my thirties. I g I cannot recall exactly when. And he asked me repeatedly, you know, what do you really want? What do you why do you you know, like at least five times. ⁓ what do you want? And I got to the I got to the realization that I don't know.

Lawrence C Harris (20:16)

Mm.

Yeah. yeah.

Yeah.

John Niland (20:40)

Which was an awful ⁓ feeling. It's like I don't actually know what I want. You know, I I cannot locate that part of my brain that has the answer. Which is why ⁓ the practice you recommend, the practice of journaling and and and repeatedly interrogating ourselves on that ⁓ subject is such a great ⁓ such a great practice.

Lawrence C Harris (21:02)

Yeah, and it's you know, one of the things that people often say to me when I mention journaling is well, how long do I do it? When will I see benefits? You know, there's a lot of questions that people have. And I personally say just do ten minutes a day. Because if you do ten minutes every day for a year, you just spent three thousand six hundred and fifty minutes writing about yourself. You will have written

John Niland (21:16)

Mm.

Lawrence C Harris (21:30)

Multiple books about yourself, and in one year you will have a level of self-awareness that is going to shock you. You do that for two years. Now you're at over 7,000 minutes, and that's just 10 minutes a day, one time a day. If you did 20 minutes a day, like 10 minutes in the morning, 10 minutes in the afternoon.

John Niland (21:52)

Yeah. Yeah.

Lawrence C Harris (21:59)

At the end of that, you will know yourself in ways that shock you. You will uncover childhood traumas that you forgot. You will uncover things you're proud of. You will figure out what do I want to do with my life? And it's not that you're gonna have all the answers, it's not that you're gonna have everything figured out. I surely don't. But

At the bare minimum, you will have a direction that you want to go, and you figure out the path on the way.

John Niland (22:35)

Well, you are living proof of it, Lawrence. I'm so glad we connected across the Atlantic, across a another ocean of of time and age and everything. ⁓ I'm really glad we have connected. Thanks for a very inspiring conversation today.

Lawrence C Harris (22:49)

Thank you, I loved it.