Episode 226: Want to Know My Author Story? Here's How I Was Guided to Write My Book

 
 
 

In today’s episode, Erin tells you about the three P’s (pivoting, people-pleasing, and pain) that she experienced as the pandemic began in 2020, and how the tools and strategies she developed in her healing cocoon led her to the message she received to write her first book.

 

Erin explains how you can look to every external source you want to, but that the real healing begins with you.

 

If you’re up for a story time and some healing inspiration – this is the episode for you.

 

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Erin Diehl is the founder and Chief “Yes, And” officer of improve it! and host of the improve it! Podcast. She’s a performer, facilitator and professional risk-taker who lives by the mantra, “get comfortable with the uncomfortable.” Through a series of unrelated dares, Erin has created improve it!, a unique professional development company that pushes others to laugh, learn and grow. Her work with clients such as United Airlines, PepsiCo, Groupon, Deloitte, Motorola, Walgreens, and The Obama Foundation earned her the 2014 Chicago RedEye Big Idea Award and has nominated her for the 2015-2019 Chicago Innovations Award. 

This graduate from Clemson University is a former experiential marketing and recruiting professional as well as a veteran improviser from the top improvisational training programs in Chicago, including The Second City, i.O. Theater, and The Annoyance Theatre. 

When she is not playing pretend or facilitating, she enjoys running and beach dates with her husband and son, and their eight-pound toy poodle, BIGG Diehl. 

You can follow the failed it! podcast on Instagram @learntoimproveit and facebook, and you can follow Erin personally on Instagram @keepinitrealdiehl here. You can also check out improve it! and how we can help your organization at www.learntoimproveit.com. We can’t wait to connect with you online! 

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Episode 226 Transcription

Erin Diehl (00:02.824)

Improve It Peeps, welcome to today's episode. I am so glad you are here. If you are new to this show, welcome. If you are an OG Improve It Peep, welcome back. I have to tell you, I'm already nervous for this episode. I am recording this before...

the book launches, but when you are listening to this, it will be the day after I see you, a leader's guide to energizing your team through radical empathy is in bookstores, it's on bookshelves, it's in Amazon carts. And today I wanted to give you my author story of how I got here.

how I landed in this place, how this book came to be.

And y 'all know I'm a little woo. And I gotta be honest with you, my stomach is a not for today's episode. I don't think I've had this many nerves before when recording, just because this is a really real thing for me. And I am sharing my journey with you and hopes that...

It can inspire you, it can inspire you to write a book, it could inspire you to share this episode with somebody you know, it can inspire you to think differently, to open yourself up to new opportunities, to listening to your own greatness, to listening to your own inner voice. And so today, I want to share that story with you. Now, if you have the book,

Erin Diehl (01:58.368)

The preface of the book does somewhat outline what I'm going to share with you today, but I'm going to give you a deeper dive because this is the real deal. Like I actually have like a heart palpitation right now and my stomach makes is a knots and I want to throw up because I've this story is wild. And I'm leaving some things to

Um

Anonymous, if you will, because I want to protect my family and I want to just share this with you because it is a very important thing that happened in my life. I would not be sitting here today without this. So I want to just take you back in time. If you are a long time listener of this show, you might remember the self healing series that I started here in twenty twenty two.

That was a month long series where I was sharing my own self -healing journey. I brought on so many healers. I brought on so many people that if you have any type of physical pain in your life, go back to those episodes that are called the self -healing series and they can genuinely help you. But I wanna talk pre self -healing series, so 2021 and 2020.

That was a period of my life that I like to call the three P's. And I do talk about this in the preface of the book, but let me outline them for you here. The first P was perpetual pivoting.

Erin Diehl (03:46.144)

2020 was one of the hardest, it wasn't one of, it was the hardest year of my entire life. Our business was a completely in -person business prior to 2020. We had to pivot after pivot after pivot in order to survive. It was a time of reaction.

There was no long -term thinking. It was what in this moment is gonna make us make payroll this week? What in this moment is going to keep us afloat till next week? Am I going to be able to provide a salary for this team that I've built and love so much? Am I gonna be able to provide them health insurance? Those were my thoughts literally keeping me up at night and it consumed me all day long.

On top of this, my second P was that I was people pleasing, which is a lifelong pattern that you've heard me talk about many times on this show. But I was also a brand new mom to a beautiful, miracle baby boy. And when I came back to work, I came back at four months, which is very hard. Anything less than four months, I can't imagine.

Going back, actually, no, no, no, no, no, no. I'm so sorry. I had three months. I took 12 weeks off work. Three weeks into that, I started checking email, okay? I was like, the first two weeks I'm not doing anything. As a business owner, you just wanna keep an eye on your business, but I came back to work in a state of hormones and frustration. I had had a pretty tumultuous,

fourth trimester, I had mastitis three times as a new mom. My son would not latch, so I was exclusively pumping. He would not breastfeed. I was just, you know, laying back, getting my ground back, getting my footing back into my facilitator role, my role as a CEO, my role as a leader when the world was pulled out from under us.

Erin Diehl (06:06.112)

with the pandemic. And when I say I was people pleasing at this time, I was obviously a new mom, so I was giving to this beautiful miracle. I was giving everything I could to my team and to my husband and to our family. I was giving to my friends and my coworkers and my peers who were small business owners, who were laying off people, who were shutting their doors.

I was literally staying up on Zoom after Zoom talking to long lost friends because they wanted to connect after years of not connecting and because Zoom was on the rage and everybody was stuck inside. I had no healing in my life. I just jumped right into this next hoop. And so what also happened during that time is my mom had a stroke and almost died.

So I was giving to her, I was giving to my father, I was trying to help him, and we were all trying to raise our son because I had no childcare at the time. I just think back on that time as an extreme people pleaser. It reared its ugliest head in the most ugly fashion, and I was physically and mentally depleted, but I didn't know that.

The third thing was perceived pain. I'm telling you this story in hopes that it inspires you to understand your own body and the mind -body connection. Because I had suppressed all of these emotions, anger from the pandemic.

Anger for the infertility battle that I had to go through to conceive our son. Anger because I felt somewhat alone when my husband went back to work and I was staying home for three months figuring out how to feed and raise this child by myself. Anger for the universe almost taking my mom.

Erin Diehl (08:21.916)

Anger for not having a plan that could have helped us in that moment at myself. There was so much underlying anger. But what I didn't realize that my body was screaming at me, the pain in my back and my shoulders was pain from unprocessed emotions. I didn't know that at that time.

but I knew I had to do something about it.

So I made figuring out what this pain was my second full -time job. I went to every chiropractor in Charleston, South Carolina. I got acupuncture. I got x -rays. I went to my general practitioner. I had them give me blood work to see if I had an autoimmune disorder. I literally went through every test you could go through and no one could tell me what this pain was until...

I hired a coach, an intuitive coach who led me to the book, When the Body Says No by Gabor Mate. I promise this has something to do with my author story, just hear me out, okay? When I read the book, Coming Home on a Red Eye Flight from a keynote that I bombed, by the way,

I sat in my seat on the airplane and I cried the most ugly Kim Kardashian tears you can imagine. Because what I found in that book was the answer to all of my problems, all three of my P's.

Erin Diehl (10:10.656)

I was pivoting so much because I didn't understand what was going on in my life. I was people pleasing because I didn't have a strong sense of self and I needed external validation instead of internal validation in order to survive. And I was in this pain because I had suppressed five years of anger and hurt and I had just disassociated with work.

and a dirty martini after work and a bad reality show to numb my mind instead of digging in and understanding what the root of this pain was.

So that became the Marie Kondo method for my brain. And if you don't know who Marie Kondo is, she's a lovely woman who goes into people's homes. She helps them declutter their lives. She helps them pick up things that no longer spark joy in their life, give it thanks and tell it goodbye and allow them to rebuild and rework the inner workings of their home in a more organized fashion.

Why I call this the Marie Kondo period was because every single thing in my life felt like its own drawer, but it was the most disorganized cluttered drawer you could ever imagine. You know, your most junkiest junk drawer in your kitchen where you keep all the keys, you keep the change, you keep those little chip clip things, all those things.

That is what these drawers felt like. And so I had to go into every one of the drawers in my brain, open them up, take out what no longer serves me and reorganize them in order to survive as a human being. So I took out the drawer for my IVF journey and I reorganized those thoughts. I took out the drawer for my miracle baby boy, but then the...

Erin Diehl (12:11.36)

hardship that came with the fourth trimester and reorganized that. I reorganized the drawer that I had for my own feelings about how hard it is being a woman and being a working mom and staying home and then going back to work and what that meant for me. And I had a little resentment towards my husband. He did absolutely nothing wrong. He is an amazing human, but I was frustrated that he could go back to work as normal. And my life was completely

in a disarray for the next year. I had to go in and reorganize the drawer from the pandemic and what that meant for our business because not only did the pandemic strip away what we did as a service offering, but I had allowed my business to be such a huge part of my identity that I had to understand who I was outside of Improve It. And this included...

So much time, I'm not saying this happened overnight. This was weeks, months of putting myself in what I call a healing cocoon, journaling, meditating, talking to my intuitive coach, hiring a therapist, going to craniosacral therapy, going to Reiki and healing some of my energy and my chakras, allowing myself to be healed.

and actually learning to love who I am.

And I know if you've listened to this show long enough, you know that I am where the woo -meets work.

Erin Diehl (13:53.056)

I am very spiritual and I hid that for a long time. I was discovering it so I didn't really know what to say, but now I'm saying it out loud and proud. I'm a spiritual being having a human experience. And I lead with that part of my soul now, my highest self.

Erin Diehl (14:20.16)

And in this journey, this healing journey, I would call it probably three months of intense journaling, meditating. I always meditate in the morning. So meditation has been a part of my life for a while.

but I connected with angels and spirit guides and.

I connected with my higher self.

Erin Diehl (14:49.952)

And this is the part where the book comes in. So I needed to give you that backstory for you to understand this part.

Erin Diehl (15:01.344)

in November of 2021.

I, or let me say that again, in November of 2022, I received a Facebook message, you know, like the little chat message from a loved one. It was a name that I knew, I had never met this person, and it was a family member who I knew was a part of the family, but again, never met. So I sent this person,

holiday cards I'd sent this person wedding invitations but had never met. And so I mentioned to one person in my family, you know, I just heard, and I'm gonna call this person Sally. I just heard from Sally. And a family member looks at me and says, that's not possible. Sally passed away two years ago.

and the message itself.

said, hey, are you there?

Erin Diehl (16:09.088)

And that person, Sally, didn't hear from me. So the next day, Sally asked, are you there? So I pull up the Facebook message and I show my family member the thread. And I said, well, that's interesting. When did Sally pass away? My family member says,

The date, which happened to be two years from that exact date that Sally reached out to me.

Erin Diehl (16:42.656)

So I just thought that was interesting and I got to look in at Sally's Facebook profile and I really wish I met Sally in life. Sally looked amazing. She loved everyone. She was a universal lover. Her heart was guided by spirit, was guided by love, was universal in language and it just reminded me so much of myself.

So that night I went in my meditation room. I said, I'm open to whatever needs to be here and received in this moment. And Sally pops in my meditation.

And she says, oh my goodness, it worked, it worked. Hold on.

Erin Diehl (17:40.672)

and she brings in this ray of light and she says, this person has been waiting to meet you.

Erin Diehl (17:56.416)

And I knew exactly in that moment who that person was. I never met this person. I'm going to call this person.

Erin Diehl (18:12.062)

Suzanne, Suzanne.

This is the hard part because this is, this story is where it gets really real for me. Suzanne was a family member who, again, I never met, but who took her own life.

Erin Diehl (18:37.192)

And...

she had guided me and asked.

for my assistance here on earth to be a messenger for her.

Erin Diehl (18:57.792)

When I was going through this period, the three Ps, I was at an all time low in my life.

There are moments that I just remember being on my knees, looking up at the sky and saying, I cannot physically take anymore.

There were some really dark moments in there.

Erin Diehl (19:30.816)

So Suzanne saw what I had done to myself, where I had taken on all of this responsibility for so many people and I had given nothing to myself. Sure, I get a manicure, but I didn't really give to my inner being. I didn't really understand that I had so much inside of my soul that needed to be unpacked.

And so Suzanne told me her story of why she left Earth.

Erin Diehl (20:08.768)

and asked me to help spread her message through this book. And she said to me, I want you to write this book. I want you to write this book now.

I will write through you, but we need to do it now.

Erin Diehl (20:34.464)

Now, if you're listening to this and you don't believe me, that's okay. I clearly...

have this experience and if it doesn't agree or align with you, I'm okay with that. But I am allowing this message to be told to you because I think it's so important.

The message that the book conveys is that you have to give to yourself. It's not selfish to give to yourself in order to give to others. And when you give to others, you're giving from this selfless place because you genuinely have things to give because you've given to yourself first. And when you get in that alignment and in that flow, everything you want in your life is possible.

And so what happened next was I got this book course from Gabby Bernstein, a spiritual mentor of mine, called Your Best Seller Masterclass. I started the course in January of 2023. I woke up every morning.

before my family, I would grab a coffee, I would light a candle in my office, I would write 1 ,500 words every day for five months.

Erin Diehl (22:09.184)

And when I tell you it was a beautiful experience, I am not exaggerating. I would take a deep breath.

I would call in Suzanne. I would call in anyone of the highest good to help me. I would open the word jock and my home row keys would get to work. And I wrote that book in five months.

Erin Diehl (22:42.08)

It was actually one of the most incredible, beautiful experiences of my life.

Erin Diehl (22:54.432)

I tell you this message because the message that I'm here to bring to the world, that we're here to bring to the world is love. Love for yourself, love for your team, for your organization, love for humanity. And when you can do that, everything in your life will change, the people, the relationships.

what you're doing, how you're doing it.

Love needs to be at work. Love needs to be in the boardroom. Love needs to be in the bedroom. It needs to be everywhere we go. We're all human beings. We're all souls having this human experience.

Erin Diehl (23:54.528)

That is the message of this book.

It has tangible ways to love yourself more. It has tangible ways to give to others more. It has tangible ways to create staying power with the people that you love.

Erin Diehl (24:12.832)

I wanted to share this message with you.

Erin Diehl (24:18.238)

in hopes that you can help me spread it.

Honestly, you can get the book on Kindle now for a very cheap price. You can get it on Audible. I want you to share this book. This is your homework. I want you to share this book with somebody who needs love in their life. That is it. And if you can't afford the book, I want you to write me at info at learntoimproveit .com.

And if you're anywhere in the US or Canada, I will ship you a copy immediately.

Erin Diehl (24:57.184)

That's how much I believe in the power of this message.

Suzanne came to me for a reason.

Erin Diehl (25:08.416)

and I feel so compelled to carry this message through.

Erin Diehl (25:15.328)

there's anything I learned in my own healing journey is that we can look to every external source that we know, family members, friends, mental health leaders, practitioners, and all of those people exist and are wonderful for a reason. But the real work begins with us. And when you start to connect with your highest self,

Erin Diehl (25:44.832)

you will understand things and see things that you could never imagine.

So I'm leaving you with this. This is a very different episode. I don't have tangible five -step takeaways for you in today's solo show. The only tangible takeaway is to spread love. But I wanted you to know this story because it is real. It's very real to me.

Erin Diehl (26:18.912)

And I hope that this message, this is my greatest hope with the book.

Erin Diehl (26:26.176)

that it allows people to connect with themselves in such a meaningful way that it changes the course of the way that they see themselves, therefore the course of their life.

It's a big ask, it's a big message.

And it brings sunshine to your day. It's written with love, it's written with laughter, it's written with playfulness, but it has a very serious tone.

underneath it all, the subconscious messages love.

Erin Diehl (27:03.104)

I hope you help me spread it.

I was so emotional coming into this episode, y 'all. I'm not even gonna exaggerate. I almost threw up. Like I literally almost threw up and I've never done that before in the history of this show. I'm so glad I shared this message with you. I'm so proud of you for taking this time to invest in yourself. I'm so proud of you for being here. So proud.

I love you and if nobody else tells you that today, know that I am sending you the biggest hug and the most love I could give. Let's spread this message. Keep failing, keep improving because this world needs that very special it that only you can bring. I'll see you next time and I see you.vvvv

 

 

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