The Missing Infrastructure for the Success You're Building With Lulu Essey
- Brainz Magazine
- Oct 20
- 10 min read
Tricia Brouk helps high-performing professionals transform into industry thought leaders through the power of authentic storytelling. With her experience as an award-winning director, producer, sought-after speaker, and mentor to countless thought-leaders, Tricia has put thousands of speakers onto big stages globally.
Being able to support speakers in using their voices for impact is a privilege and I had the pleasure of sitting down with Executive Creative Director and Speaker Lulu Essey to talk about why people are repelled by the idea of self-love.
Lulu transforms lives through her revolutionary approach, self-love as success infrastructure. Host of The Lulu Essey Podcast, she guides people worldwide from seeking to breakthrough using proven frameworks, proving sustainable transformation happens from the inside out.
Lulu, you are a very successful executive creative director, what brought you to teaching the concept of self-love as an infrastructure?
For thirty years, I achieved what looked like success, award-winning Executive Creative Director for global brands like adidas, Porsche, BMW, Cartier, and Google, with impressive titles including Regional Executive Creative Director and Show Director for Greater China, while battling severe bipolar disorder, profound self-hatred, and self-harm. I was achieving externally while crumbling internally.
The shift came gradually when I realized what needed to come first. Self-love isn't the reward you get for being successful, it's the foundation of your success. Without it, my accomplishments felt hollow and unsustainable.
Here's what many people find repellent about this truth, self-love requires looking inward instead of constantly seeking external validation through productivity and achievements. It's easier to dismiss it as unnecessary or having no value than to do the uncomfortable work of introspection and self-examination.
But self-love isn't selfish luxury, it's missing infrastructure. When I started building my success from self-love first, my attachment to external validation lessened. Achievements still mattered, but they became less critical to my well-being. I started feeling validation internally rather than constantly chasing the next accomplishment to feel worthy. That's what I teach now, how to create lives and businesses that actually feel good, not just look good from the outside that are sustainable, that meet you where you're at, and that give you the emotional resilience to soar when things are going brilliantly and to adapt when they're not going the way you want them to.
Why do you think transformation is so important and challenging to sustain?
Transformation matters because most people are living lives that look good on the outside but are actually exhausting to live. We're addicted to productivity, performing, and pushing, while something essential is missing.
Here's the sustainability challenge, we've been sold the idea that transformation can happen rapidly, instant breakthroughs, dramatic before-and-afters. What gets left out is the hard work, the daily practice, the days that aren't pretty at all. That's not a sexy message, so it gets edited out. Then people try, don't get rapid results, and think they've failed.
But transformation isn't an endpoint with a graduation ceremony. It's a daily practice. Some days you'll do it brilliantly, other days you'll suck badly, and neither means you're failing. That's just the process.
What I've discovered is that sustainable transformation happens through small, consistent actions that compound over time. Look, I'm about to suggest something that might make you cringe, taking three conscious breaths. I get it. We've all been told to "just breathe" so many times it's become meaningless. And there's already a cringe factor around self-love, so this might feel like one step too far. But here's what makes this different, I'm not talking about deep breaths when you're already stressed. I'm talking about three conscious breaths in the exact moment you catch that inner voice saying "that was stupid" or "you're such a failure." That split-second intervention before the spiral starts, that's what rewires your brain. Placing your hand on your heart when you're struggling and saying "I will not abandon you." Speaking to yourself the way you'd speak to someone you care about deeply. You're literally building new neural pathways through repetition.
The real challenge isn't the transformation itself, it's acknowledging the myth of rapid transformation that might work for some, but for most of us, real lasting change requires committing to the daily work on ourselves. That’s why self-love is a practice and not a concept.
You also talk about mental fitness, what does this mean to you? And why is it important?
I intentionally use "Mental Fitness" instead of "mental health" because fitness implies something you have to practice consistently. You don't go to the gym once and stay fit forever, and your mental wellbeing works the same way.
Mental Fitness is about expanding our capacity to feel, not shrinking ourselves or wrapping ourselves in cotton wool to avoid life's difficulties. It's about developing the emotional resilience to experience all of life, including the challenging times, and move through them with grace, self-love, and self-compassion. It's not about preventing hard times from happening. It's about being able to move through them when they do.
For me, this distinction is personal. Living with severe bipolar disorder, "Mental health" always felt binary, you're either healthy or you're not. But Mental Fitness acknowledges that we're all on a spectrum, constantly expanding our capacity through practice.
What makes it important is this, Mental Fitness gives you agency. You don't need perfect circumstances or to wait until everything is sorted out. You can start where you are, with what you have, and build from there, even in the midst of life's chaos and messiness. It meets you where you are.
You embrace the messy parts and the vulnerable parts of yourself and ask us to do the same on your podcast. Why is this important? And why are we all so scared to do it?
My podcast episodes are completely unedited, every fumble, mispronunciation, and imperfect moment stays in. This is intentional and purposeful. If I'm asking people to show up authentically and embrace their messy, beautiful humanity, then I need to be willing to do the same. And yes, it's scary every single time I show up this way. I still fear the judgment. I can't pretend I don't care what people think, we're wired for connection, and that vulnerability to others' opinions is part of being human. But the fear doesn't stop me anymore. It comes along for the ride, but it isn’t in the driver’s seat.We're scared of vulnerability because we've been conditioned to equate it with weakness. We live in a world where everything we consume is polished to perfection, carefully curated social media, edited interviews, highlight reels. We've forgotten what real humanity actually looks like and even more importantly what it feels like.
But here's a truth, vulnerability isn't weakness. It's where connection lives and thrives. When I share my struggles with bipolar disorder, my relapses, the days I can barely function, people don't lose trust in me. They seem to trust me more. Because they see someone who isn't just teaching from theory but living the work in real time.
The messy parts aren't something to hide or fix, they're proof you're human. And the world doesn't need our perfection. The world needs our humanity. When we have the courage to be vulnerable, we give others permission to do the same. That's how real transformation spreads, one honest, imperfect person at a time.
When you think about the world right now, how is it that you are championing self-love as the balm if you will?
We're drowning in epidemics of hate, war, violence, and mental health crises while our institutions collapse. People feel powerless in the face of global chaos. But we're rejecting the one solution that requires no funding, no policy changes, no external permission, learning to love ourselves first. We cannot hate, criticize, judge and blame ourselves and others out of these crises, we can only love ourselves through to the other side.
Brené Brown did this for vulnerability, she made it legitimate, showed us it wasn't weakness but courage. Vulnerability is now part of our lexicon in leadership, in personal and professional life. I'm working to do the same for self-love. To reframe it from repellent luxury for the privileged to essential infrastructure for the world we claim to want.
Here's the connection people miss, how you treat yourself becomes the blueprint for how you treat others. When you stop abandoning yourself, you stop abandoning others. When you shift from self-criticism to self-compassion, that energy ripples into every interaction, every decision, every relationship, every community, every institution. People think this has no real-world value, that it’s just cringe because it’s simply easier to hate and blame than to love and loving ourselves is hard. There is so much that needs to be unlearned but it is possible.
This isn't naive optimism. It's neuroscience, it's lived experience, and it's the most practical solution we have. Dr. Kristin Neff's research shows that self-compassion literally rewires our brains, strengthening our capacity for resilience and emotional regulation. A meta-analysis of 79 studies by Zessin and colleagues found that self-compassion is strongly linked to better relationships, higher emotional intelligence, and greater life satisfaction. When we love ourselves, we become more capable of loving others. Most of us are not in a position to control government policy or global events, but we have complete influence over one person, ourselves. Let's start there. It creates a powerful ripple and that ripple effect is how we create the world we actually want to live in.
AI is disrupting every industry and causing unprecedented uncertainty. How does self-love fit into this new landscape, or does it?
Self-love isn't just relevant in the age of AI, it's more critical than ever. And here's why, AI is exposing something we've been able to avoid until now.
When people tell me they don't have time for self-love because they're worried about job security, AI displacement, or becoming obsolete, I understand that fear completely. But here's what I've learned, when your internal foundation is shaky, everything becomes a threat. Every technological shift, every change, every uncertainty feels like it's coming for you personally.
But when you've built that foundation of self-love, when your internal reservoir is full, AI becomes what it actually is a tool, not a threat. You can approach it collaboratively rather than defensively. You can stay curious instead of paralyzed. You can adapt because your worth isn't tied to your job title or your current skillset.
The disruption AI is causing isn't just technological, it's existential. It's forcing us to ask, "Who am I beyond what I produce? What makes me valuable beyond my output?" These are self-love questions. And the people who've been avoiding them are finding themselves completely unprepared for this moment.
I'm not suggesting we ignore the very real challenges AI presents around policy, safety, and job displacement. But I am saying that building your internal foundation isn't a luxury you'll get to after you've dealt with AI. It's the thing that will allow you to navigate AI, and every other disruption coming our way, with resilience, creativity, and an open mind and heart.
We have the privilege of being in New York City in person right now and it’s October, as we do this interview. Fall in NYC is my favorite self-love time of the year. What about this time of year resonates with you?
I don't have the same cultural touchpoints with fall that many Americans do, no childhood memories of pumpkin patches or fall traditions. However, what I love about this season is how universal it is as a metaphor, regardless of where we experience it in our actual lives.
Fall is about letting go. Trees release their leaves without resistance, without apologizing, without clinging, without worrying that they will be lost forever and never replaced. They trust that what they're releasing needs to go, and that new growth will come in its own time. If you have ever watched a fall leaf fall from the tree to the ground, it’s so beautifully graceful. That's the kind of surrender we all need to practice in our own transformations. It’s the kind of surrender I attempt to practice.
There's also something beautiful about how fall embraces both endings and beginnings simultaneously. Nothing in nature maintains the same energy year-round, and neither should we. This season reminds us that rest isn't failure, that letting things fall away creates space for what is ready to emerge.
We all go through our own version of fall, those times when we need to shed what no longer serves us, when we need to trust the cycle even when it feels like loss, even when it's painful. That's the humanity that connects us, not pumpkin spice lattes.
On your journey of self-love and mental fitness, what’s the one thing you want us to know if we’re struggling?
You are not broken. You don't need fixing. It's taken me thirty years to truly understand this about myself, and I want to save you some of that time and in a very real way share the love.
Here's what I’d love for you to consider: loving yourself is hard, but it's not difficult. Hard means it requires daily practice, emotional courage, showing up even when you don't feel like it. Difficult means you need resources you might not have, money, access, expertise. Self-love is available to all of us, right now, with what we have. Do it with small steps. That’s enough.
And if you're in darkness right now, please, do not abandon yourself. I know what that darkness feels like. I've lived in it. But there is always a crack, even in the deepest darkness, where light will come through. It might be pitch dark for a while, but eventually, that crack appears. It's our cracks that make us beautiful, that expand us and our capacity to love and feel all of life.
What I offer are guidelines, not rules. Your way is the way. Following your own path is what will bring you the joy, the success, the love you're looking for.
Self-love is hard. And it is doable. And it is so worth it.
Tricia Brouk, Founder of The Big Talk Academy
Tricia Brouk helps high-performing professionals transform into industry thought leaders through the power of authentic storytelling. With her experience as an award-winning director, producer, sought after speaker, and mentor to countless thought-leaders, Tricia has put thousands of speakers onto big stages globally. She produced TEDxLincolnSquare in New York City and is the founder of The Big Talk Academy. Tricia’s book, The Influential Voice: Saying What You Mean for Lasting Legacy, was a 1 New Release on Amazon in December 2020. Big Stages, the documentary featuring her work with speakers premiered at the Chelsea Film Festival in October of 2023 and her most recent love is the new publishing house she founded, The Big Talk Press.
