863. A Winding Path from Accountant to Wellness Clinician

Laurie Warren

“I realized that if I really wanted to help people with their physical problems, we also had to start talking about things like belief systems and how they talk to themselves and how they’re managing stress. Are they using their emotions as a tool or something that they get all wrapped up in? That really started to expand how I work with people.”

Laurie Warren, a Master of Science in Nutrition, is a change agent for empowered well-being in body, mind, and spirit. She works as a corporate consultant, wellness clinician, sought-after speaker and is author of the new book, “Wild World, Joyful Heart: Unlock Your Power to Create Health and Joy.” A regularly featured expert in the media, her approach to health, healing and joy is grounded in three foundational beliefs:
1. The body is a self-organizing organism that is hardwired for healing.
2. Our mind can be used as either a bridge or a barrier in our quest for well-being.
3. What matters most is who we are as we move through this world.

The Most Impactful Turning Point?

“My young boys had some health issues that really started leading me down the path of how the food we eat can actually affect your health. So fast forward to when I was around 41. I entered graduate school for clinical and integrative nutrition. Me, the person who did not want to go to college. My first case out of grad school quickly taught me that, as much as I love the human body, our mind, spirit, and our emotions also affect the state of our well-being. And that realization started to expand how I work with people.”

The Most Powerful Lessons and Experiences?

1. Try it (whatever “it” is.) You might like it. I actually did not want to go to college. I’ve always been a bit of a rebel. I decided that I just wasn’t going to go to college because that’s what was expected of me. My parents left it with me to just go to one semester, just try college. So I went to college and absolutely loved it for two reasons: 1) It’s the only time in life where you get to sort of make your own decisions, but you’re in a really safe environment surrounded by people your own age, which is really fun. 2) Now all of a sudden I could take classes that challenged me. I was in absolute heaven, because I am now a complete learning junkie to this day.

2. What I learned in that first job, that led partially to my second choice, was that I needed a lot of autonomy in my job. And the ability to be creative. I’m also not well suited for micro management or for do-what-you’ve-been-told-to-do kind of work. I do better in more of a creative atmosphere. You can see that there’s a little bit of a disparity: I want to work in finance, but I want to be creative.

3. Sometimes our best “teachers” are bad circumstances. I moved on to another technology company where I was absolutely miserable and it was a terrible cultural fit for me. Again, the signs were everywhere, even during the interview process, and I just didn’t catch it. It was a very coveted company to work for. They had amazing software and amazing returns and I was very excited to get a job there in a management position… but I became very unhappy and left there after nine months. Sometimes our best teachers are not good circumstances.

4. You could have a lot of power and gifts inside of you that you just are not recognizing. There was a boy in her senior high school class who was absolutely brilliant, extraordinarily handsome and had a very unfortunate family life. He was addicted to drugs and was going down a very unfortunate path. One day he fell asleep in calculus while sitting at the front of the room. “Mr. McFeeley launched into this thing about how gifted this boy was, how intelligent he was, and how he was getting basically ninety-fives in the class without doing anything, and about all the power that he had in him. It was such a lesson for me, that you could have a lot of power and gifts inside of you that you just weren’t recognizing. And that affected me. Literally, it still affects me to this day.”