How Women Can Heal From Trauma With Kristin Sparks

In this episode, we are joined by Trauma and Shame Recovery Specialist Kristin Sparks as she shares how women can move on from the effects of shameful and traumatic experiences and lead successful lives. Kristin emphasizes that women who have experienced trauma can rise above their circumstances and create the life they have always dreamed of. Tune in to learn more about how Kristin helps empower women through her company WRAR Inc.

 

 

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How Women Can Heal From Trauma With Kristin Sparks

In this episode, we’re going to be focusing on shame from the perspective of your career. I invited Kristin Sparks to talk to us about shame. She is the Founder and CEO of WRAR Inc, a communications and connections company that empowers individuals and executives through corporate and personal growth guidance, and specialized retreats.

 

As a trainer in the Jack Canfield Methodology and a Trauma and Shame Recovery Specialist, she has made it her life’s work to empower women entrepreneurs, individuals, and executives through leadership values and personal growth workshops, seminars, and retreats featuring out-of-the-box self-discovery experiences. Kristin and I are going to talk a lot about why women have shame, specifically around asking for what they need and asking for that promotion. It’s very interesting how shame pops up in your life. With that, stay tuned for my conversation with Kristen Sparks.

 

 

Kristin, thank you so much for being on the show. I know we had a conversation, and you’re very familiar with shame. The one question that I want to start with is, how does shame stop women from advancing in their careers?

 

Rosie, thank you so much for having me. It’s such a pleasure to be here. That is such an important question. Shame can stop women in a corporate home anywhere in their life. It is one of those roadblocks that they come up against that is very difficult to get past. A lot of it has to do with hiding, not wanting people to know something about themselves that they’re feeling limited about, lacking about, and unworthy about.

 

What they have to do is take a moment, take a breath, and then find someone who’s safe that they can express what it is that they’re feeling shameful about and bring it into the light. It doesn’t mean that you need to go to your boss and tell them that you’ve been raped or go to someone who may not understand where you’re coming from. Find someone who’s safe, whether that’s a friend or a therapist. It could be your boss, but someone that you know is not going to judge you or someone who is going to hold your hand through the process.

 

Why do you think that women feel shame? It’s because of different scenarios and I think you and I talked about our stories. You and I had somewhat similar stories. I had a bad divorce and you had things happen in your life. I came out thinking about I needed to turn my life around. I have these two little kids from a terrible divorce and I started progressing in my career. From what I remember, you went the other way where you started feeling shame. Let’s talk a little bit about your story.

 

For me, I was very young when I got married. I had three children relatively quickly. By the time I was 25, I had two daughters and a son. I had an abusive husband who was what they now call a gaslighter. Back then, they didn’t have a definition. I knew that if he told me the sky was purple, by dawn, it was purple. There was no doubt about that. I truly believed that I didn’t have any worth or value. I didn’t have anything to give anybody.

 

There were many things within that that I fought, even when there was evidence to the contrary. Even when other things were happening that I could have gravitated to, I was afraid to because of the value that I carried within myself. Shame comes down to value. What do you value within you? For me, to be able to survive, I had to make this choice. Do I stay and be this parent that I don’t want to be, or do I leave and become the person that I know I need to be? That’s where my shame came in.

 

I’m a mom without my kids and women can look at you that way. You know that they’re judging what you’re doing because they don’t know the whole story. Sometimes when we are looking at someone else, when we are judging our insides by someone else’s outsides, that can be very difficult. For me, it caused a lot of shame and guilt. I carried that for quite a few years and that stopped me from being able to truly express myself, especially within the corporate world.

 

I was intimidated by every woman I came up against or even came in contact with, even to the point that if I had to work with another woman, I shut down completely. For me, that’s my backstory with shame, and that’s why I got into this work. That’s why it became important to me to help women get over the trauma, shame, and disease of our bodies and mind to recover and become transformed. When we keep it inside, when we allow it to dictate what we’re doing, how we’re doing it, who we’re able to associate with, who we’re able to go to for safety or mentorship or any of those things that we need to be able to progress in our career, we can’t.

When we keep trauma inside and allow it to dictate what we’re doing and who we’re able to associate with, we cannot progress in our career. – Kristin Sparks Click To Tweet

Everybody knows, when you have trauma, if you haven’t dealt with it, it’s always going to keep popping up. You feel that you’re healed but you have to make a conscious effort. I had a conversation with one of my guests, and she said, “Once your body, your psyche feels safe and if you haven’t dealt with it, that’s when you might have a chronic disease because your body now feels like, ‘She’s doing okay. Now it’s time to deal with this one big huge trauma.’”

 

That is true. It can come out as acne or as a multitude of different things. For me, it was esophageal cancer and it was a calling to use my voice. Whether it was getting up and speaking, doing podcasting, or guest, but it was to use my voice. It was to get out there and tell people the story so that you don’t have to go through this by yourself. There are other people out there.

 

I don’t hide the fact that I was in domestic abuse and violence. The situation with my divorce took me almost four years to get divorced and was a very painful time in my life. You do feel when you’re going through things like that, especially at work, it’s not like you’re advertising it or talking about it. As you said, sometimes, I felt shame because I was pretty much one of the only ones among my friends that has been divorced. The majority of my close friends are still married.

 

When I would think about it, it’s like, “Why me? Why did I have to be the one to get divorced?” You then feel that shame without even realizing that it’s shame. One of the reasons why I wanted to invite you on to the show is because a lot of times, women feel shame in other ways in the corporate world if they’re asking for money or a promotion. Why do you think that they feel that shame and there’s that lack of asking?

 

I think a lot of it comes down to what we were taught growing up. If we were in different scenarios and situations like mothers who stayed at home and did not go to work, that gave us one idea of what money was like. You had someone else that was bringing in the funds and then the mom is taking care of the household. It depends on how that’s handled. That leaves something culturally can be difficult. Women are supposed to be subservient to men in some cultures.

 

There are a lot of different aspects of that, and we have to learn to heal whatever that story is that we’re telling ourselves because no matter whether it’s cultural or you saw it growing up, it’s still a story that you’re telling yourself in your head. If we can change that story, then we can go in and face the fear and get past that, but we have to change the story first.

If we can change the story we tell ourselves in our heads, we can face the fear and get past it.– Kristin Sparks Click To Tweet

Changing that story takes time and intention whether you go seek a therapist or seek a career coach. It’s interesting because I do career coaching, and more often than not, the one thing that my clients need is encouragement. They need encouragement and they need to know that I believe in them so that they can believe in themselves. Some of that has to do with that shame component. Whatever situations or life experiences you went through in your life are showing up in your corporate life now and it’s preventing you from going to that next step. Your company is called WRAR. You deal with communications. What else do you do? What is your specialty as far as your company is concerned?

 

Our specialty is bringing in the factor of joy, love, and grace, and we do programs around that. We want women to be able to embody their bodies and vision, and then to be able to brag about what they have accomplished. By doing that brag exercise, I call it The Art of the Brag, you learn to embody accomplishments that you can move forward. It does help to erase the shame factor and the guilt factor. The trauma is there. We all have challenges that we go through.

 

We all have been through a multitude of things. It’s a matter of reframing the story so that you can envision and have the life that you want. You know just as I do in career coaching, we are working with women who want to move forward. They’re willing to do the work that needs to be done, or they wouldn’t come and talk to us in the first place.

 

There are many women out there that are still hiding. They’re still ashamed and that’s what these podcasts are great at doing. It’s getting to those women who are still out there that need to know they’re not alone. That WRAR is all about that. We’re getting to that deep-seated desire to speak their truth.

 

You talked about trauma a little bit. Do you work with people that have had traumatic situations?

 

I do. I love to work with women who have been through some of the same things you and I have been through as far as abusive relationships, narcissistic men, and others. There’s a multitude of different types of relationships. Trauma is dear to my heart because we all do have those challenges and we do have those stories. Traumas can come. With the hurricane we were talking about like what we had here in Florida, even though we didn’t get hit, going through, having to get everything together, and worrying about where it was going to go.

 

Because they turn at the last minute, for me, this was like a repeat of many years ago. My first experience in Florida and my first experience of a hurricane was Andrew which hit Miami years ago. I’m on the other coast now and there’s that, and that’s trauma. Trauma doesn’t have to be a big thing. It can be also a little thing. Trauma can happen when you have a near accident, and that can trigger something that happened before. There’s a multitude of layers that you work through with trauma. There’s a lot of inner children work that we do.

 

NWB 49 | Heal From Trauma
Heal From Trauma: There’s a multitude of layers that you work through with trauma.

 

We do women’s groups that will sit and speak about trauma and then change those stories because one of the things that I’ve learned through doing this is the more that you talk about the same trauma, the more you traumatize yourself over and again, and you traumatized those around you. If I gave you the details of every trauma that I have been through, you could feel what I’m talking about. That’s not what we need to do to get beyond the trauma. We work very carefully and very diligently to reshape that, so you can release it and move on.

 

That makes so much sense. Sometimes, when people go through traumatic experiences, they don’t want to talk about it. To me, that’s almost worse because you have this thing inside you that you haven’t dealt with, you haven’t talked to anybody. Sometimes it helps to talk to other people about your experiences because they can give you a different perspective. Listening to what happened is healing because you get it out there. You’re purging all these negative things that you’ve dealt with. It’s essential for people. Women are better at doing that than men, but men still need to be able to talk about what they feel and what they experience and stuff like that.

 

You hit on something important there. The main factor of that is purging. If you’re willing to do the purge, then we need to learn to release it. If you continue to purge, and then you go back into the trauma and then you purge again, you’re not releasing it and moving forward. Holding onto it, as you said, will come out in a multitude of different ways. Your body holds all of that trauma. It doesn’t want to hold that trauma so it finds ways to release it if you don’t purge it and let go.

 

The other key component to that is forgiveness. I always say forgiveness is for you, not for the other person because the other person did whatever they did. In order for you to heal and release from that trauma so that you can thrive and move on in your life and your career, that’s important too. Would you agree with that?

 

A hundred percent and the first person that you need to forgive is you.

 

NWB 49 | Heal From Trauma
Heal From Trauma: The first person that you need to forgive is you.

 

That’s so key. I want to go back to unpack the Art of the Brag a little bit more. I don’t know if there’s a client story or an example of how you were able to apply the teaching of the Art of Brag to somebody and how they transformed. Do you have a story like that?

 

I do. I have one that came through that I didn’t even realize that I had done, but we worked together about a year ago and she is a beautiful woman. She is in New Zealand. They were still in lockdown and we were working through some of her trauma. I don’t want to get into her story too much, but she did not believe that she had any accomplishments. I used Jack Canfield’s 100 accomplishments and we worked through those. We sat down and I said, “Let’s talk about all the things that you have done. You’ve been a mom and you have helped your husband with his career. You have graduated from high school. You graduated from kindergarten.”

 

We went through all of these different things that we never think about that are something we’ve truly accomplished. Sometimes we don’t even look at getting up in the morning as an accomplishment, and it is. Being able to put our feet on the ground and say, “Good morning to the world,” is an accomplishment that we have to celebrate. I’ve noticed that that seems to be easier in the sales world because it’s a competition. They put all the numbers and the analytics so people can see them, what their ratios are, and all of that. We don’t do that as women. We tend to discount what we’re doing. It’s like, “It’s something I do and I did that,” and we don’t look at all of the little things and all of the big things and say, “We did that.”

 

She came back to me and said, “Everything that we did has come full circle for me. When I said yes to you a year ago, I now have the courage and the ability to say yes to this new place that I’m going.” It’s amazing when you truly embody what you have accomplished. It’s like this flower suddenly opens up and the world is there, it’s great.

 

Now, when you teach the Art of the Brag, do you have any steps or what is the process when you’re teaching the art of bragging?

 

The first thing that we do is look at what you have achieved and we take that in small steps. You can do the 100 or a multitude of different things with that, but both basic are 5 things a day. If I look at five things that I’ve done that I’ve achieved before I go to bed, I say, “I was able to get this process done. I was able to get that done. I was able to look at my emails and clean out all my promotions for the last 9,000,” whatever it is that you are happy about achieving for the day.

 

At the end of the day, going to the mirror and looking at yourself, and say, “Kristin, I am proud of you, for what you’ve accomplished. You did 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. What a great day.” That, for 21 days, changes everything. You suddenly start to see yourself as an accomplishment instead of, “I did that because I had to.” That’s the basic of the Art of the Brag.

 

That seems pretty easy to recall five things that you accomplished. I journal and then I do the five things that I’m grateful for. Sometimes they’re big things. Sometimes it’s like, “I’m grateful for my coffee. I’m grateful for my dog cuddling on my lap.” Especially in the corporate world, women are not as good about delineating what they have accomplished, whereas men naturally say, “I’ve done this and this, and that’s why I deserve the raise and the promotion.”

 

Women are not nearly as good because maybe they have that guilt, shame or lack of ability to articulate their worth. If you were to work with someone in a situation where they’re not able to articulate their worth at work, besides the Art of the Brag, what are some of the other recommendations that you can give them to get through that barrier?

 

Number one, gratitude is huge and important. Number two is the forgiveness piece and forgiving yourself if you can use that same mirror-type exercise in forgiving yourself every day. I want everyone to understand that there is nothing that has happened in your life or that you have done that is worth being shamed for. If we bring shame into life, as Brené Brown says, “It can no longer live.” That is truly what I work for.

 

Looking at what we think we have done is awful, putting it on paper, putting it on note cards, whatever it is that you need to do, but bringing it out. You can even video yourself. You don’t have to share it but put it out there because you’ve got to speak it to release it. That’s the biggest piece of it. Gratitude, forgiveness, and speaking are the three things that I would say are the most important pieces of it.

 

NWB 49 | Heal From Trauma
Heal From Trauma: You have to speak it to release it.

 

In speaking, it is simple. As you said, you don’t have to speak it to anybody as long as you’re home by yourself and you speak whatever is in your heart and you release that shame and whatnot. At the same time, once you’re able to do that, that’s when you start working on identifying your accomplishments and what you’re good at. The biggest thing is what you want. What do you want in life and then in your corporate world too? What is it that you’re looking and seeking? Do you do anything like that with your clients? Now that you’ve released the shame and that you’re skilled, what are some next steps that you work with your clients on?

 

One of our programs is called LOVVVE. It’s letting our values so we work on values and our vision so we work on visioning. We have to know what our values are to be able to vision the life that we want and then we work on our victories. We embody that Art of the Brag to use our voice. It’s letting our values, victories, and our values, visions, and victories elevate our voice. Using our voice can be done in a multitude of different ways. We can use it through art, speaking, or going and asking for a raise. It’s being able to allow yourself, love yourself, and bring forth who you are and your value.

 

That’s key. You’re the CEO of WRAR. How did you come up with your name for your company?

 

It is an acronym for Women Real and Raw.

 

I like that a lot. How did you come up with that?

 

Honestly, it came to me when I was going through my recovery from esophageal cancer surgery. I kept this voice. You’ve got to use your voice. You’ve got to get out there and roar. How loud is your roar? For me, I didn’t want to use ROAR because a friend of mine uses that and that’s the name of her company. Suddenly, this woman real and raw came to me and I’m like, “This is perfect.” I wrote it and it means WRAR. If you say it, it’s roar, so there it is. That’s where and how it came to me.

 

I love it. I know you work with individuals, executives, and entrepreneurs. Is there any one type of workshop that you do that is a huge hit and success when it comes to having women discover their worth or being able to elevate themselves?

 

My LOVVVE program comes out in March 2023, and then later on, we’re going to be doing the I Do Me program, which is all about releasing that doubt around yourself so that you can truly embody who you are. Joy in the Quagmire is also another one of the programs that we do. It is more of a workshop style, and it is being able to find joy no matter what the situation is. There is joy in it, even if it’s the last moment of someone’s life here on Earth.

 

Have you heard of a book by Michael Singer called The Untethered Soul?

 

Yes.

 

I figured you would. The Untethered Soul is basically what you said. You accept whatever is, whether it’s a terrible job, an illness, a divorce or whatever. When you accept it, you’re not fighting the whole why. It brings peace to yourself. It is what it is comes up, it is what isn’t. You can be still happy and at peace with anything that happens. I love that book, The Untethered Soul, because it teaches you and shows you a different perspective of no matter what you’re going through.

 

First of all, I’m a big believer that things happen for a reason, and you are exactly where you’re supposed to be. You have to get through whatever it is that you’re going through. You can’t get past it, but you get through it. By getting through it is accepting and feeling your feelings because many people are afraid to feel their emotions.

 

Feelings are just feelings and they will wash over you like the waves in an ocean, and then they’re gone. You don’t have to live in them. You don’t have to say, “I’m feeling bad, so I’m going to feel bad forever.” It’s for that moment. Everything we do is just in the moment.

 

A lot of women feel fear, whether it’s a confrontation or a conversation with a loved one, a partner, spouse, whatever, or it’s that conversation that you want to go and ask your boss to be considered for promotion, raise, and whatever. I keep emphasizing the raise, but it’s the simplest example. You also have a retreat that’s called the Out-of-the-Box Self-Discovery Experience. What is that about?

 

It’s called the I DO Me Retreat. It isn’t an out-of-box self-discovery experience. It is a nine-day retreat. That is an amazing transformation from where you are to where you want to be going through a multitude of different experiences within that. They had to be postponed because of the hurricanes. It’s all at the same time, so they’re postponed until either ’23 or ’24.

 

We’re not sure yet. All of this other work is based on The LOVVVE program and the I Do Me program. We, as women, need to learn to support each other in whatever it is that we’re going through, whether we’re going to ask for a raise, having issues with talking to our spouses at home, our friends, kids or whatever.

 

If we can learn to support each other in all aspects instead of competing with each other, we would have this hugely different experience of life. Part of that problem or why I see that as a problem is because we have been taught that our worth is based on somebody else’s outsides. We need to start looking at where our worth is based on our insides.

 

You’re right, we have this fear of emotion. We have a fear of loss. We are always putting a value on something we don’t have versus appreciating what we do have. We have that fear that we’re not going to obtain it like asking for a raise. You’re right, it’s a very simple way of explaining this. If I have to go and ask for a promotion or a raise, I might not get that. If I don’t get that, then I’m not valuable.

 

Other people are going to see that I’m lacking. Other people might judge me for the fact that someone else beat me out of that, but it’s not that. Maybe it’s not the right time for me. Maybe it’s not where I need to be because I need to be right here. I still need to learn this lesson or I still need to do this. This other person who I should be celebrating forgetting the raise or the promotion is in that space where they need to be.

 

If we start looking at it like that, there’s going to be a whole lot less fear of asking for something that we want because then we can say, whoever we’re asking this from, boss or whatever, what do I need to be able to get the promotion? What do I need to be able to get the raise? Not what do I have to do? Who do I have to stomp on, but what do I need? If we can start to look at it that way, we can then start to release that fear.

 

I know that there are women that do climb the corporate ladder say to that executive level or that CEO level, and sometimes they turn into not-so-nice people. Why do you think that is?

 

That is fear as well. You might find out that I don’t know what I thought I know, what I thought I knew, what I needed to, or who knows? There are many different layers within that, but it is fear. It’s fear that someone is going to find out that we shouldn’t be where we are.

 

That comes down to their trying to protect whatever position they’re in and they’re afraid of being found out that they’re maybe an imposter and it comes out as very aggressive, condescending, and protective. The message that I want our audience to know is that it doesn’t have to be that way. I have an example. I was talking to one of my clients, and she was saying that her boss was talking to her and telling her what she needed to do on whatever transaction. She’s a computer programmer and she needed to do X, Y, and Z better. I said, “I get it. She’s newer to the company and I get that he’s making sure that she does her work,” but the way he’s doing it is condescending and awful.

 

I told her, “You don’t have to take that. You can tell him, ‘I don’t appreciate you speaking to me that way. I expect you to talk to me with respect,’” because he can tell you the same information in a respectful way. She was like, “Can I do that?” I said, “Yes, you can do that.” You should expect respect. She said, “Thank you for encouraging me. Without your words, I wouldn’t know that I could do that.”

 

We truly don’t give ourselves permission to say, “I don’t like that.” Women have a very difficult time expressing that small piece, “I don’t like that. I don’t deserve that. I don’t need you to speak with me that way.” I’d happily do whatever it is that I need to do, but speaking to me in that condescending manner is not going to work. If people would start with kindness always first, there would be a tremendous shift in the way that we communicate with each other. For people that I have worked with, both men and women, learning to be kind is not an easy task. It’s that competition piece. Everything is a competition. If I do not achieve greatness, then I have not achieved everything that I should have achieved and then I am that imposter.

 

It seems simple to start everything with kindness.

 

Honestly, life is simple and we complicate that.

 

Yes, I always say, “Life is easy.” It’s people that make it hard.

 

My name is Kristin Elizabeth Sparks, and now that you know that, that’s very important that you know. I’m an acronym freak. You haven’t noticed, but the initials are KES. I had them tattooed on my wrist. I looked down and I went, “Keep Everything Simple.” That’s what it is. That is life. Keep everything simple and start with kindness.

 

I agree. We’re getting towards the end of our conversation here, but I know that you and I had talked about when you have a goal that looks overwhelming, what can you do to work through that goal?

 

First, let’s break it down. What is the goal that you’re trying to achieve? If you’re trying to achieve the corner office, where are you right now? Let’s start there because we always got to start exactly where you are and then we’re going to take and make a plan to get you from where you are right now to that corner office. Is that education that you need? Is that a workshop that you need? Is it going to your boss and saying, “I want the promotion?” If it is, each one of those things, each question that has an answer can have a step within that. It depends on where you are. As a standard, let’s say you are in middle management and you want to become the vice president of the company.

 

There are certain steps that you’re going to have to take to get there. You need to have the education or the experience they require. How do you get those? Let’s take that, break that down, and take the steps that you need to get from there. Each and every aspect of a goal can be broken down and minimized. Again, it’s simple. It’s not this huge overwhelming thing that we look at every day and go, “There is no way I am ever going to make that.” We become our worst enemy. We get in our way and we tell ourselves we can’t do something.

 

If we say, “I need to accomplish A, B, and C, and by doing that, then I can move on. If I don’t get to do all A, B, and C, I’m not going to beat myself up. I’m going to take that one. I’m going to put it until tomorrow and we’ll take care of that next step.” By you build upon that, and you know this as well, by encouraging that person and that action, we will eventually get to that goal.

 

It goes back to keeping everything simple. It’s incredible how it always goes back there and it has to do with the trauma and the goals. Everything is a process and you as a human being have to be patient to go through all the steps because eventually if you want something, you’re going to get it. You have to go through the process and you have to go through, as you said, all of the steps would be missed steps.

 

We’re like onions. We get a layer off and there’s another layer, and then we get another layer off and there’s another layer. We finally get to the center and we look over at the counter and there’s a whole bag of it.

 

I hadn’t thought about that. I was like, “You’re right.” What comes to mind is, for example, I have two children. My son is 24. My daughter is 21 this 2023. As they were growing up, as they “conquered’ a phase of their lives, they would go into a different phase and then they have to start all over again. Their whole lives are like you were evolving with them. When you thought, I’m like, “I got this,” then something would change and start all over again.

 

That is true and that’s exactly what we do with our clients. We walk them through each and every stage that they need so that they’re not going through it alone. They do have someone that they can lean on, and then when they get to a certain point, there’s something else that they need to do. We work through that too. I love that you use that. Having kids is one of the most amazing things I have ever done in my life. I have three beautiful grown-up children. Some have children of their own. It is an amazing process to watch how they evolve and how we evolve with them.

 

Kristin, you’ve provided us with some fantastic information. Are there two tips that you could leave our audience with that they can use, whether it’s in their life or their corporate life?

 

Two tips are to say thank you when you get up in the morning before your feet hit the floor and say thank you when you lay down at night.

 

Those are two very simple tips, but at the same time, it brings that gratitude conversation in both the morning and the evening. That’s a perfect way to close our conversation, Kristin. Any final words to our audience?

 

I want you to know that we are here to hear you. Whatever it is that you’re going through, it’s okay.

 

Again, keep everything simple. Kristin, thank you so much for your time on the show. It was lovely. I appreciate you so much.

 

I appreciate you too, Rosie. Thank you.

 

 

That was quite an insightful conversation that we had with Kristin Sparks. We talked a lot about shame. For me, one of the biggest things is that shame is an emotion of something that you’re trying to hide, whatever happened in your life. At one point, my awful divorce. I didn’t want to talk about it because I was ashamed of being divorced. That’s an example. The thing is that you need to work through that shame so that you are to get past it.

 

You need to heal that trauma so that you can get past that shame and let that shame go. That’s going to be a big part of continuing to advance in your corporate career because if you feel a lot of shame and negative feelings, it’s going to be difficult to get through the next step in your career so that you can continue to advance. A couple of other things that we talked about are embodying your accomplishments instead of discounting what you have achieved. Kristin talked about the Art of the Brag. Writing down maybe 100 accomplishments, whether it’s being a parent, graduating from high school, or getting up in the morning, that kind of stuff.

 

It is important as well to feel your feelings because if you’re constantly trying to push your emotions down, then at some point, they’re going to bubble up and you’re going to overreact and something terrible is going to happen. It’s important for you to feel your feelings, whatever feelings you have about your job, your boss, and your accomplishments. Take some time to feel all those things so that they don’t take up space in your head and heart that they dissipate.

 

The last couple of things that I will leave you with is to try to attain value from within yourself and don’t look for value outside of yourself. I’ll give you an example that has worked for me. When I was younger and I had a problem, I would call my girlfriends or my sisters. Anybody that would listen, I would pose the problem to them and I would hear the solutions that they were providing me, and then I would make a decision. Now that I’m older and when I have a problem, I try to sit with it. I ask myself, “What do we feel about this? What are we thinking about this? What are some possible pitfalls? What are some solutions?”

 

I make it a point to come up with a decision by myself on whatever it is that I’m struggling with. That’s not to say that I don’t talk to my husband or my sisters, or anything like that, but I no longer depend on them to make thought-provoking decisions in my life. That’s a very simple example. Finally, the last thing is Kristin left us with two tips. Tip number one, she says, “Say thank you when you wake up in the morning before your feet touch the ground.” Tip number two, she says, “Say thank you when you get in bed and you’re ready to end your day.”

 

Again, this was a pretty insightful conversation for me. I had a lot of fun with Kristin Sparks. If you have any things that you’re struggling with and want to reach out to, please send me an email. You can contact me on my website, NoWomanLeftBehind.com. I’m also on LinkedIn, but I would love to have a conversation with you if you’re looking for any career advice. If you go to my website, I have a way for you to do a 30-minute complimentary consultation and we can chat about what’s going on in your life and your career.

 

I also have a corporate kickstart course where I talk about the focus strategy and the parts of focus strategy and starting to get your career off the ground. Finally, I do have a quiz that you can take and it’ll give you a little bit of an insight into where you are in your career. With that, remember to be brave, be bold, and take action.

 

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About Kristin Sparks

NWB 49 | Heal From TraumaKristin Sparks is the Founder & CEO of WRAR Inc, a communications and connections company that empowers individuals and executives through corporate and personal growth guidance and specialized retreats. As a trainer in the Jack Canfield Methodology and a Trauma and Shame Recovery Specialist, she has made it her life’s work to empower women entrepreneurs, individuals, and executives through leadership values and personal growth workshops, seminars, and retreats featuring “out-of-the-box” self-discovery experiences.