We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Laura Carney. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Laura below.
Laura, we’re thrilled to have you on our platform and we think there is so much folks can learn from you and your story. Something that matters deeply to us is living a life and leading a career filled with purpose and so let’s start by chatting about how you found your purpose.
Something changed in me when I spent six years checking off my dad’s bucket list for him. Not only did I start writing my own bucket list, but I became a person who lives intentionally.
I’m an empath. So I tend to absorb the emotions in my environment. This is a skill and it helps me to help people. I’m often told I always know the right thing to say, to make someone feel better, or even to help someone put their thoughts into words. I’m not a mind reader….I’m just good at helping people express how they feel. I have always been like this. It’s because I connect with others on a deep level.
Doing my dad’s list helped me develop this further….in forcing myself to look at my dad, who had died 13 years earlier, through new eyes, through the hopeful eyes with which he saw the world at age 29, the year I entered it (he wrote his bucket list in 1978), suddenly my empath skills took a new direction—I added faith and optimism and determination to the mix. And this became a magic formula for not only helping my late father realize his dreams but also begin developing an approach to life through which I could realize my own, and later, help other people to realize theirs.
My purpose: I’m a dream-whisperer. I help people acquire the skills deep within them to see their truest selves and express that truest self to the world. As a journalist, I was trained in college and throughout my career to tell other people’s stories accurately, to get their point-of-view just right. But now I also help them learn what that point-of-view is. To develop one that is more authentic. In short, I help people to be the hero of their own lives. That is my purpose. And it only keeps growing.
Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?
I work as a magazine journalist and book author, mostly. I copyedit important work that will be read by millions of people. And I write essays and articles about important topics, sometimes subjecting myself like a guinea pig to whatever the topic is, such as when I spent six years finishing the long=lost bucket list of my late father, who was killed by a distracted driver. My book is called My Father’s List: How Living My Dad’s Dreams Set Me Free.
I believe we need to live what we write about, so I’m known to go all in.
Writing a book about my experiences with my dad’s list has led to multiple avenues of expressing the wisdom about life that it gave me. So now I also speak often—I’ve done 300 interviews on this topic—and teach classes on how to live out one’s dreams and find our most authentic selves.
I teach for Melissa Gilbert’s app, Modern Prairie, and my next big event will be in October 2025 in Greensboro, North Carolina, where my book, My Father’s List, was chosen as this year’s One City, One Book award winner. The entire city, of 300,000 people, will read my book at one time.
Go to my website, bylauracarney.com, for more information on the book and future speaking events.
Alright so to wrap up, who deserves credit for helping you overcome challenges or build some of the essential skills you’ve needed?
My husband has been the most helpful in helping me to overcome mistaken beliefs and limiting ideas I had about my potential. He’s also someone who helps facilitate the day in, day out of being me. He is the most consistent person I’ve ever met.
I’m a very passionate person—I have my “why” and the impulse to follow it down. But sometimes I overexpend my energy on things that later might not matter. He’s taught me a lot about not only how to prioritize what will matter, but also how to take better care of myself, the vehicle running all this…and to practice healthy moderation. He can take an idea and turn it into a business easily. He’s a maintainer. That’s the best word I can think of for it. Inspired people need maintainers if they want to build anything.
Contact Info:
- Website: bylauracarney.com
- Instagram: instagram.com/myfatherslist
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/myfatherslist
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lauracarney/
- Twitter: https://x.com/lac30
Image Credits
photographed by Adrian Bacolo (bacolosphotos.com) for the tuxedo shot. all other photos, courtesy Laura Carney
