Summary: This episode's guest is Danielle LaPorte. Danielle LaPorte is the outspoken author of The Desire Map, The Fire Starter Sessions, and co-creator of Your Big Beautiful Book Plan.<br> An inspirational speaker, former think tank executive and business strategist, she writes weekly at DanielleLaPorte.com, where over a million visitors have gone for her straight-up advice — a site that’s been deemed “the best place on-line for kick-ass spirituality,” and was named one of the “Top 100 Websites for Women” by Forbes. Danielle is a featured presenter at the 2014 Emerging Women Live Conference in New York City.<br> <br> "You have to want what you want with all your heart... but don't be attached to how it shows up."<br> In today’s episode of Grace & Fire, Danielle and I speak about:<br> <br> <br> Desire: how she defines it and the difference between desire and passion<br> Practices for identifying and cultivating “Soul Desires”<br> How to handle expectations when cultivating your desires<br> Having the courage not to compromise and the two qualities she identifies as most important for developing this courage<br> The power of feelings versus emotions and their connection to desire<br> Her deepest desire for emerging women everywhere<br> <br> Tune in and listen to Living from Desire with the truly amazing and inspiring: Danielle LaPorte.<br> <br> Subscribe to the Emerging Women podcast on iTunes.<br> <br> <br> Transcript<br> <br> Chantal Pierrat: Welcome, Danielle LaPorte!<br> <br> Danielle LaPorte: Thank you, Chantal. We’re finally here.<br> <br> CP: I know. Finally here. God, I’m so excited. I can barely contain myself. I don’t know if you know this, but before I started Emerging Women, I read The Fire Starter Sessions, and they had a huge impact on me, and boy, did that light a fire under my “boo-tay.” It was fantastic. I’m even more excited to talk to you now, because here’s my first question: Who are you? And where did you come from? I mean, that’s what I kept asking! I kept asking that as I was reading the book. I was like, “Who is this person?!” Can you give us a little bit of your background before we jump into all the other things we need to talk about?<br> <br> DL: Yes, OK. I’m not from Earth, so let’s start there.<br> <br> <br> <br> CP: [Laughs] I didn’t think so!<br> <br> DL: But I’ve shown up. [Laughs] An important nugget in my bio is that my mom and dad were really young when they had me. My mom got knocked up in high school. And having really young parents was just what I needed and an influence on me. So they were taking me to hippie parties and hockey games. They were growing up while I was growing up, and that made a difference, I think. I got toilet trained in the ladies room of my mother’s community college.<br> <br> Jump cut to [me] in my 20s, and I haven’t graduated from high school, but I talked my way into every job and I’m running a think tank in Washington, D.C. That was weird. Jump cut to more companies. I can’t believe I’m old enough to say this now, but then the Internet came. [Laughs] The World Wide Web happened and I was playing online and finding my voice and [had] a big failed business and a lot of anguish around that. Then [I] rose from the flames [with] The Fire Starter Sessions.<br> <br> CP: So not only did you not graduate from college—I didn’t realize this—but you didn’t graduate from high school?<br> <br> DL: No. My mother got pregnant in high school. But I did finish high school, yes.<br> <br> CP: Ultimately you did finish high school. OK. Give me something to hold on here, because I’m like, “How amazing are you to have accomplished so much and to be consulting executives and running a think tank without that educational background?” It’s quite remarkable.<br> <br> DL: Thanks. And I use that to my advantage. When you’re in Washington D.C.,
