The Turlock Chamber Foundation and EMC Health Foundation relaunched their Women’s Health, Mental Health and Spiritual Well-Being Lecture Series on Tuesday with a sold-out event featuring Dr. Lauren Hodges, renowned author, scientist and founder of Performance on Purpose, a human performance training firm.
“We started the lecture series before COVID …and it was a great opportunity to bring in fresh minds, to inspire people, to educate people, to empower people, like we’re doing today with my friend Lauren Hodges,” said Jeffrey Lewis, CEO and president of EMC Health Foundation.
Each of attendees at Tuesday’s lecture received a free copy of Hodges’ book, “Less Stress, More Calm,” which goes in depth into how to discover your unique stress personality and ways to make it your superpower. During the lecture, Hodges also provided practical strategies to reduce stress and cultivate inner calm — something that the author said women are in vast need of, especially in these times.
“…let’s talk about just women in particular. We face a disproportionate amount of demand in our life. These are systemic demands, but also … traditionally, we just tend to be in charge of everything. Add to that, if you are a minority person of color, or you identify as LGBTQ, you have even more systemic demand. So I promise I’m not trying to be Eeyore here and give a lot of bad news. I just want to kind of establish the reality these demands are not going anywhere,” said Hodges.
She went on to reveal three “skills” that, if worked on, will help women expand their capacity to meet all the demands they face on a daily basis.
“The single most important skill that you can put into play in your life is purpose. Am I shocking you that I say it’s a skill? But purpose is singularly the most important foundational skill upon which we build our entire lives, personally and professionally,” she said.
The second skill, according to Hodges, is mindset.
“We are by nature meaning makers. We are wired to tell the story we need to hear to make the world make sense. And a lot of times we have clients who are out of alignment with what matters most. In other words, they say this is the most important thing, but they’re in their day to day not reflecting it,” said Hodges.
The last skill is training.
“This is really where the rubber meets the road. It’s putting all these insights into action in the daily rituals, habits, decisions that you make, the systems that you put in place, the processes, the environment that you create around you, the accountability and support that you put in place,” she said.
Hodges was just the first in the lecture series’ reboot. The next event, which will be on Mental Health for the Modern Woman and feature Brighid Gannon of Lavender, an online psychiatry and therapy office, is scheduled for March 2026. For tickets, visit turlockchamber.com.
