Reshape Your Life With Actress/Author Ali Landry

On The Verywell Mind Podcast, Amy Morin, LCSW, interviews authors, experts, entrepreneurs, athletes, musicians, and other inspirational people about the strategies that help them think, feel, and do their best in life.

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Links and Resources

• Check out Ali’s website
• Learn more about Ali’s book: Reshape Your Life

Episode Transcript

Editor’s Note: Please be mindful that this transcript does not go through our standard editorial process and may contain inaccuracies and grammatical errors. Thank you. For press inquiries, please contact [email protected].

Welcome to the Verywell Mind podcast. I’m Amy Morin.

I’m also a psychotherapist and a bestselling author of 5 books on mental strength, including my newest book, 13 Things Mentally Strong People Don’t Do Workbook.

Every Monday I introduce you to a mentally strong person whose story and mental strength tips can inspire you to think, feel, and do your best in life.

And the fun part is, we record the show from a sailboat in the FL Keys.

Don’t forget to subscribe to the show on your favorite platform so you can get mental strength tips delivered to you every week.

Now let’s dive into today’s episode.

[EPISODE STARTS HERE]

Have you ever wanted to change your life but weren’t sure where to start?

Do you sometimes question how to realistically develop a healthier mindset?

Do you think you lack the time or energy you need to create positive change?

If you answered yes to any of those questions, you’ve come to the right place.

Today, I’m talking to actress and author Ali Landry about how to reshape your life.

Ali first came into the spotlight as Miss Louisiana Teen USA in 1990. She won the Miss USA title in 1996 and then starred in an iconic Super Bowl commercial advertising Doritos. She’s gone on to star in several movies and she’s written a book called Shape Your Life.

But Ali’s life hasn’t always been easy. She went through a very public marriage that was annulled after only two weeks. The breakup was featured in tabloids across the globe. She remarried years later and her father-in-law and brother-in-law were kidnapped and murdered.

Ali is speaking out about what the highs and lows of her life have taught her so far. She says when she started feeling tired all the time and had trouble sleeping, she didn’t excuse it as stress or aging. Instead, she decided to take back her life.

Some of the things she talks about today are the ways she developed a healthier mindset, the strategies that helped her work through pain and grief, and how she empowers herself to create positive changes.

Make sure to stick around until the end of the episode for the therapist’s take. It’s the part of the show where I’ll give you my take on Ali’s strategies and share how you can apply them to your own life.

So here’s Ali Landry on how to reshape your life.

Amy Morin: Ali Landry, welcome to The Verywell Mind podcast.

Ali Landry: Thank you so much. It's such a pleasure to be joining you. So excited to have this conversation.

Amy Morin: Me too. So your new book is called Reshape Your Life: Don't Settle Because You're Worth It. I love the title-

Ali Landry: Thank you.

Amy Morin: And on the show, we've talked a lot about people who say that you should reinvent yourself, or you should start over, things like that. But I've never heard anybody frame it quite this way about reshaping your life. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Ali Landry: For me, it was really just about giving. I always think of my girlfriends in Louisiana. I have a really great, strong, amazing group of girls in Southwest Louisiana, and I always start to speak to them, I always keep them in the back of my mind. And the idea of saying... I thought about it so much, what that title would be, what that title would be. It's like I want to give them permission. Reshape your life, it's never too late. That's the whole idea. It's never too late to create a life you love. I am going to be 50 in only a few months, and I talk to so many of my friends, and I'm still in it with three kids and my husband's busy, and I feel like I do look at a lot of my friends and I find myself in that moment. Like this is the way it is, giving in to just the flow of how it is, instead of really going deeper into what my true desires are and what I ultimately want in my life, and why am I not going after it? So that's what that was. Reshape your life, it's never too late to create a life you love. And the end part is you are worth it, because for me, it was so important for me to tell these women, because this book is really not about me honestly, it's just my stories as examples, for the reader to feel seen. And again, that permission, you are worth it. You really are. And if nobody else is going to tell you that, I want to tell you that.

Amy Morin: Yeah, that's a really important message. And I think sometimes we get passive about life and we get into these patterns, and we don't get out there and do those things that we want to do. We don't take the time to step back and say, "What do I really want out of life? And do I have the confidence to get out there and try to make it happen?"

Ali Landry: Absolutely. Life, [inaudible 00:02:25] life happen. And if you're not really a player, which is hard to do all the time just because it's always coming, then you could find yourself one year down the road, five years down the road and you're like, "Where did all the time go and what am I doing and what have I done and how do I even feel in this moment? Is this what I expected for myself? Did I want more for myself? Did I do the things I loved? Did I do the things that set my soul on fire?" And I think sharing our stories... I always say when you speak from the heart, you connect to the heart of another human being. I really strive very hard not to walk around with a mask or pretending everything is okay. I really try my best, to the dismay of my husband and my mother who's like, "Really? Do you have to say all those things?" But I really just try to walk around cracked open because I really desire that true connection. And I feel like if I am doing this, I draw that in for myself. That's how I have that. If I can open up to another human being, they are more likely to open up to me. And that's when I'm inspired. I did it recently with a girlfriend of mine who again is turning 50. She lost her husband and she took her life by the reins and she's like, "I'm going to do 50 things before I'm 50. I'm going to check off a list." And it was simple things. I loved it. Simple things like I have to connect a modem to my, I'm so not techy, to my... I don't know, what do you connect a modem to? That's the internet, right?

Amy Morin: Right.

Ali Landry: And I can't call anybody. I can't ask a friend to come over. I have to read the instructions and do it myself. Simple things like that. And I was so inspired by that story, so I think I'm going to adopt that for myself. But it's by sharing that you really have that true human connection. And nowadays, you and I, I love that we're talking over Zoom and that we're able to connect, but there's nothing like that face to face, feel each other's energy, that vibe, give each other a hug. We're on social media, we're on the internet. We're not connect. And then we had COVID. So people I feel like are little disconnected. So that's definitely something that I try to make an effort to do because it's where I feel the best. Otherwise, I can slip into a little bit of that depression or that funk, when I'm not connecting to human beings.

Amy Morin: I think it's so tempting sometimes for people to show the rosy version of their life. Like, oh no, things are good. And it's right, struggle to say, actually, I have problems too, and I struggle. And for somebody like you who's so successful in so many different ways, to then say