LMS Talks About Worth, Work and the Audacity to Dream

by DC Library Staff

April 1, 2025

It starts with a question that cuts deeper than most: “What do I deserve?”

L. Michelle Smith doesn’t ask it lightly. In this layered and practical conversation, guided by WUSA9’s Allison Seymour, Smith invites viewers to reconsider how happiness, career growth and self-worth are connected. She makes it clear that happiness is a skill to build. As she puts it, “Happiness is something we have to work at. And the first step in that work is asking whether we believe we’re even entitled to it in the first place.”

For anyone facing a layoff, a stalled career or a sense of burnout, this conversation delivered a blueprint: understand your value, organize your life around what truly matters and build habits that support emotional resilience.

Seymour keeps the dialogue focused and grounded in real-life stakes. When she asks how women — especially women of color — can overcome social conditioning that tells them not to ask for too much, Smith answers with clarity: “Self-care is not selfish. If your cup is empty, you don’t have much to give.”

From there, the conversation builds. Smith shares her concept of “happiness triggers”: values that spark positive emotion. For her, it’s faith, family and freedom. When she’s overwhelmed, a single photo of her daughter can activate joy, pride and love — three powerful emotions that counteract the brain’s natural negativity bias. She explains that neuroscience shows “it takes three positive emotions to counteract one negative one.”

Seymour then asks what to do when someone feels stuck — either in grief, job loss or just uncertainty. Smith offers her “Name-Tame-Reframe” method: name the emotion, tame it by acknowledging it and reframe it with a more helpful perspective. Naming emotions, she says, builds emotional literacy and helps move through pain. “It may seem simple, but the act of putting language to a feeling can be transformative.”

Read the entire recap and view the conversation at DCLibrary.org.

Watch LMS on WUSA9’s Wake Up DC discussing mindset shifts in the midst of layoffs.