In this deeply reflective solo episode, I invite you to pause, take stock, and prepare for takeoff. Using the metaphor of flight, I explore what it really means to move forward in life and leadership—by releasing old identities, outdated beliefs, and emotional “luggage” that no longer fits who you’re becoming.

This episode is especially for women in leadership who feel the pull toward more—more clarity, more alignment, more impact—but know they can’t get there carrying everything from the past. I share personal stories, mindset shifts, and honest encouragement to help you get clear on your true destination, reconnect with your deeper why, and choose the next right action with courage and intention.

If you’re standing at the edge of a new beginning and wondering what to leave behind, this episode is for you.

🔑 Key Takeaways:

I Can’t Take Old Luggage Into a New Season
I talk about the importance of naming the habits, beliefs, and stories we’ve outgrown. Growth requires discernment—what once protected or served us can quietly become the thing that holds us back.
Reflection → What belief or behavior am I ready to stop carrying into my next chapter?

Clarity Is What Creates Lift
Before any real takeoff, I need to know where I’m going. I share why getting honest about what I actually want—not what’s expected or convenient—is essential to moving forward with confidence.
Reflection → If fear wasn’t in the way, where would I choose to go next?

My “Why” Has to Be Bigger Than Me
I reflect on how a meaningful why—rooted in service, contribution, and impact—becomes the fuel that keeps me going when things get uncomfortable or uncertain.
Reflection → Who benefits when I fully step into this next level?

I Was Never Meant to Fly Alone
In this episode, I open up about the role of community, mentors, and trusted co-pilots in staying aligned and resilient. No one builds a meaningful life or legacy in isolation.
Reflection → Who are the people helping me stay grounded, brave, and honest?

The Next Right Action Is Enough
I remind myself—and you—that I don’t need the entire flight plan figured out. Momentum comes from taking the next aligned step, even when clarity feels incomplete.
Reflection → What’s one small but intentional action I can take this week?

🔎 Mentioned in the Episode:

• The “old luggage” metaphor for outdated identities and limitations
• Choosing intentional flight paths instead of reactive living
• The power of support, mentorship, and shared leadership journeys
• Personal stories of letting go and choosing alignment
  
  

✨ Reflection Prompts:

• What season of my life or leadership is coming to a close?
• What am I afraid to leave behind—and what is it costing me?
• What would change if I trusted myself to fly higher?
  
  

🧠 Who This Episode Is For:

• Women in leadership navigating transition or reinvention
• Entrepreneurs and executives craving clarity and alignment
• Anyone standing at the edge of a new beginning
• Those ready to release limitations and lead with intention

📩 Want to Go Deeper?

Follow Lori on LinkedIn to continue the conversation

• Book a Leadership Strategy Call with Lori: loripine.com

🎧 Subscribe to The Joy CEO Podcast

⭐️ Leave a review to help other heart-centered leaders find the show

📲 Share this episode with someone who’s navigating pressure and wants to do it with more grace

Transcript

Hey, I'm Lori Pine, the joy, CEO, and I am so glad that you are here with me today. Listen, if you've been around for the last couple of weeks, you know that we have been building something together. So thank you for sticking with me. For my first ever series, we've been talking about what it means to shed the old skin to wait on the runway, which can be so hard and so uncomfortable.

And now today we are gonna talk about what it actually means. To take off, to take flight. And if you're new here, welcome. I am so glad that you found your way to me. Whether you stumbled upon this on your own or somebody shared an episode with you, so glad that you have found your way. Either way, it means something that you were brought here.

Just when you needed it. This podcast is for women who are leading or want to be leading [00:01:00] in a way that feels joyful instead of exhausting. It's for corporate executives, for entrepreneurs. The hustlers, the doers, the go-getters, the movers and the shakers. The single moms, the overworked moms. The aunties and the godmothers who are all holding it together and wondering, is there another way to do this?

And it's for anyone who's in that in-between space right now, just wondering if they'll ever take flight. And you will. The answer is yes, and this episode is going to show you how. There are three things that I think you're gonna take away from this episode. One, what you need to leave on the ground before you can ever take flight.

Two, why Your why has to be bigger than you, bigger than money, and bigger than what [00:02:00] happens when it's not. And three, the story of how I made a big investment. Even when I had no business spending money that I didn't have and how it changed everything and why you cannot fly alone. So let's dive in. Okay.

First up, you're still on the runway. You have not taken flight yet, and you have a decision to make. What bags are going on the flight with you? And for my women in the Connect, I gave them this analogy that for Christmas, they had all gotten a gorgeous new set of luggage. So. At one point I coached one of the executives at away luggage.

So for any of you who are familiar with that brand, you know it's female founded, it's sustainable, and it was a fun brand to work on. So imagine for the holidays you received a brand new set [00:03:00] of away luggage, and you want to take your new luggage with you on this flight. But there's a part of you that is so comfortable bringing your Walmart suitcase that you purchased when you were 20 years old, the one with the broken wheel and the broken zipper.

But it has, you know, the right stickers and the right little tag, and all the memories of all the trips that you took, and you're so accustomed to taking that one suitcase, that one bag with you, that you keep dragging it with you wherever you go, even though you've upgraded. And so it technically still works.

It technically still functions. Here's what I wanna tell you about this metaphor. Whether it's a bag and it's a suitcase, whether it's a mindset, whether it's a [00:04:00] person in your life, you have upgraded, you have become a newer version of you, and perhaps this bag no longer fits on the flight you are about to take.

Sometimes that's hard. We don't wanna leave bags behind. We don't want to necessarily outgrow things. But guess what? You have and it is okay to leave it behind. You have definitely upgraded. You are flying in a new league. You've got the monogrammed away luggage. It has your initials on it. It's fancy and sustainable, and you cannot board the plane with both the beautiful new luggage and the ratty old luggage.

And so you really have a choice to make. Are [00:05:00] you willing to still drag around that which no longer serves you or are you going to let it go? And is the belief that you have to prove your worth by overworking, over hustling, over contributing? Or is it the need for a fancy title to feel legitimate? Is it the need for a certain amount of income?

Is it the need to continually say yes when you need to say no because you don't wanna disappoint anybody? Maybe it's a creative drag and it needs to stay on the ground because it is stopping you from blossoming because the fire horse energy is lean and we're heading into the fire horse energy starting February 17th.

It is focus and it is powerful. You can't carry both identities. You can't have both sets of luggage. You can't have these two [00:06:00] sets of beliefs or habits going into a year that's going to require you to be bold and visible and taking action. Both cannot exist. So you really needed to be clear about the inventory that we did in the first episode of this series, and then get clear about what's in the luggage and then what needs to stay back at the terminal because it cannot go on this flight.

Okay. Second, we are going to lock in our flight path. Here's the thing about flying, and a pilot knows this. That one degree variation will very much change your destination. It will completely change where you end up. One degree. If you're leaving LAX and heading to JFK will actually land you in Washington, DC.

Big difference between New York [00:07:00] City and Washington dc. Same for you. If you are vague. If you are, well, I kind of think I wanna do sort of, you are not gonna end up anywhere but where you've always been. But if you start to put some claim. And you start to say out loud to the universe, who can conspire in your favor with this fire horse energy?

I want to be a and fill in the blank. I want to be an author. I want to speak on a public platform. I want to leave my job and start a blank business. Fill in all the blanks of what you desire. Then before you know it, you are gonna be locked in to that flight plan, and that will be your flight plan as you start to harness [00:08:00] all of this fire horse energy, and that's the precision that you are going to go with so that you don't get distracted by one degree variation that could distract you from whether you go to New York City or whether you go to Washington DC.

So most of us try to go in 10 directions at once. If we're really honest. You know, we might say we wanna go to New York City, but we'd be really happy visiting Boston, Paris, Portugal, and the Caribbean all at the same time. And yet what happens is when we have all these multiple goals, all of these multiple projects, all with balls in the air.

We are quote unquote, technically working on, we wonder why we're not getting anywhere because we can't actually give our full focus to any one singular thing, and the fire horse energy cannot work like that at all. The fire horse energy actually wants you to be laser [00:09:00] focused, and it's going to ask. Of you.

So here's what I'm suggesting that you do, is that you actually pick one or two priorities for 2026, not 10, not five, one or two. And then you really, really get clear about what they are for you, and then what is the thing that you're going to build? What direction are you going to fly in? So when you board this plane.

You get into the cockpit, you are gonna put that into the flight plan so you know exactly where to go. Okay? When you try to do everything, you are going to get nowhere. You'll burn out before you even leave the ground, and you'll be right back where you started. You'll never, ever leave the same airport you started.

So let's protect the flight plan, like your life depends [00:10:00] on it. Get it locked and loaded. Make sure you have full clarity around it. And here we go. Now, second part. You need to know your why. Why are you even boarding this plane? Why do you even wanna take flight? And this part really matters when you know your why.

And let me be clear, your why needs to be bigger than you, and it needs to be bigger than making money. If it's not, it won't be sustainable. You'll, you'll peter out. Liftoff is hard. Liftoff takes at least a two mile runway, and then you've gotta get this big hunk of metal up into the air. So you need all that gravity, you need all that propulsion.

You need all of that engineering to work in your favor. And so what's gonna happen? Visibility is uncomfortable, doubt is going to show up. Imposter syndrome's gonna kick in. You're gonna [00:11:00] question yourself and God forbid somebody else question you and ask. So why are you doing this? You are gonna have to answer it, and you are gonna have to have enough fortitude within you to make sure that you can handle any criticism that might come your way.

And let me tell you, it might come your way. So your reason for doing this can't be. To hit some sort of revenue goal or to prove something to somebody else who may or may not even give two squats about it. Because if that is the reason you're going to quit, you might not quit today or tomorrow, but you will quit.

So you need a why that's going to pull you forward when you are ready to stop. So let me tell you mine, I am here to help one woman at a time. Just one. That's it. That's my singular [00:12:00] mission and that is my why. I know what it is like to be a single mother in the pressure cooker. I know what it is like to feel like I am living two separate lives, one where I show up, I'm polished.

I act like I have it all together, and the other we're on the inside. I am dying. I'm falling apart. I don't know how to keep it all together. I cry myself to sleep at night, and so in that dichotomy, I was drowning. I had an ex who didn't help. I felt like I was carrying the weight of the world, trying to keep everyone and everything afloat.

I felt over responsible and all at the same time. I was so full of fear that if anybody found out, if I lost my job, if, if, if I didn't know what I would do, [00:13:00] and I lived like that for years and I didn't know who to talk to, I didn't know who to tell the truth to, and I know. There are women who are still living like that today.

They are professional, they are smart, they are ambitious, and life got lifey, something happened and they don't know where to turn. And so when I think about that, and I think about anybody suffering in silence, anybody. Trying to do something and they don't know how to do it. When I know that there's another way to live and another way to thrive, and another way to build community so that we can really come together and protect one another and share with one another and build one another up.

That's my why. So. I need to keep going. When fear shows up [00:14:00] and when fear shows up and self-doubt shows up, and criticism shows up, like somebody says really the joy, CEO, that doesn't even sound legitimate. That doesn't even sound like a real business. And let me tell you that exact thing happened early on that I am able to get in touch with my truth and what is my truth and.

My truth was enough to say, why am I doing this? And it was that one woman who's out there somewhere who wants connection, but yet is isolated and doesn't know how to. So what's yours? What is your why? What's the thing bigger than you? And what's the mission that's going to keep pulling you forward when things get hard or when others wanna squash you down?

Because it's going to get hard and others might want to be critical, and your why is going [00:15:00] to be the only thing that might keep this plane in the air when we're mid-flight. Okay? Find your co-pilots because it's really hard to fly a plane long distance alone. And so here's what I really want you to hear.

You can't do this alone. You've probably done a lot of really amazing things in your life alone, but this I don't want you to do alone. If you can help them to be open to inviting others in is such a game changer. The women who actually take off, they invest in community, they invest in themselves. They surround themselves with people who are already doing the thing that they want to do.

I am actually heading to Nashville in a couple of weeks, and I am walking into a room of women who actually scare me. I'm nervous because they are a bunch of [00:16:00] really amazing badass women and. I am a little intimidated. I'm gonna learn so much from them. And so on the one hand I'm nervous, but on the other hand, I can't wait.

And I want you to experience that. So let me tell you a story about. When this happened to me after I left corporate, I had made this decision to be a stay at home mom, but I felt really untethered and lonely and isolated. I felt a little lost. I had no idea who I was without my corporate title, without my paycheck, without the brand to hide behind.

And I made a decision, you know, to hire this executive coach. That was working well and that was helping me, but still it was just me with her and she had a group coaching community that she offered, and I had never been part of anything like that. And I made a decision that felt so insane [00:17:00] at the time. I had just left my job, I had no income, and I invested over $20,000 a year to be part of her group coaching program.

I mean, it sounds insane. I didn't have any income. It was such a large amount of money. But let me tell you what happened. I met a group of women who became my co-pilots. They lifted me up. They. You know, they held space for me. They understood what I was going through, this kind of mourning of leaving my corporate role, but this real ambition for something new that was coming all the while I was in this in-between space while I was trying to do something incredibly significant with my son.

And so this coach and this group of women. Really walked me through [00:18:00] something pretty significantly. And so I stayed in that group for three years and I, I really like, I think about it and I think there had to been some sort of divine intervention or divine order in that, because. It really is insane to say it out loud that I quit my job and then I made this big investment.

But it really is something that became so significant in how things started to turn out because it was with that support, it was with that community. It was with those women that my mindset started to shift and I began to see what was possible because somebody else was demonstrating it for me. And so, yeah, so I just really would tell you the truth that like hard feelings are gonna come, imposter syndrome's gonna come up, and the doubt, the fear, the why me?

Who do I think I am? Am I too big for [00:19:00] my britches? All of that is going to be there. Whatever it is you're trying to do. Whether you're staying in your company and you, you wanna be a vp, an SVP, get to the C-suite, whether you wanna pivot, start your own thing, whether you think you're ready to retire, but you're not sure, whatever it is.

And you're gonna need people around you who can hold some space for you while you keep that moving and your why is definitely gonna be the thing that gets you started and a community will keep you going. So if you're trying to do this alone right now, if you're trying to take off without copilots, you're definitely making it harder than it needs to be.

If you think about any flight you've been on recently, Delta, United American Southwest. There's usually two people in that cockpit at the very least, because you need backup. Investing in community, finding the women who are already flying, who are already doing some of the things you wanna [00:20:00] do, pay for expertise, learn from them, let them pull you forward.

We're just not meant to do it alone. And when we do it alone, if you look back historically, when we do it alone, it's really hard. Okay, so what is your next right? Action. Here's a question I want you to sit with this week. When the fear shows up and it will, what is your next right action? It's not a perfect action.

It's not the action that's gonna fix everything. It's just the next right move that you need to take to keep things actually moving. For some of the women in my group community. It looks like sending the email that they've been sitting on for three weeks. It's, you know, showing up at a networking event where they don't know anybody and they feel a little bit intimidated.

You know, for me, I'm going to this event in Nashville and a couple of weeks, I don't know a soul. I met a couple of people on [00:21:00] Instagram again. Oh my gosh. They are such incredibly accomplished women and. I'm gonna walk into the room with them and I'm pretty new in my business comparatively, and I'm still gonna walk in and learn what I can learn.

And so the action isn't about being comfortable because God knows I'm not gonna be comfortable when I go, but it's about the move that's going to. Propel you forward instead of keeping you stuck. So I want you to know your next move. What is a move that you can make? And by all means, it doesn't need to be a $23,000 coaching program.

My connect group is $200 a month and the, the groups are now closed and I'll reopen it in the spring so you can get on the wait list if, if my group is something that you're interested in. But [00:22:00] the point is you want to get into community with people that are going to be like-minded for you, okay? The runway is gonna end, the fire is gonna start, the engines are gonna roar, and in just a couple of weeks, February 17th, we'll be here and we are gonna enter the year of the fire horse, whether you are ready or not.

The Zodiac Chinese calendar is ready. So this is your year to really stop hiding, to stop playing small. It is your year to fly, to take flight, to leave the Walmart bag behind to board this flight and to head in a direction that is going to get you exactly where. You have been intending to go and if you're willing to do all of that, I cannot wait to be along for the ride with you.[00:23:00]

I would love to hear what you're up to. Please send a note to my inbox laureate laurie pine.com. You know, just keep me posted on what it is that you hear, what it is that you are gonna just be so brave. What is your hell Yes, energy. With that. Thank you so much for listening in. Please give this a five star rating share with your best friend.

We never wanna leave our best friends behind, and I'm glad to be doing it with you. See you next week.