Episode 24 - How to Unlock Inner Strength and Peace

Welcome to the Women's Career Mastery Podcast, the show that's dedicated to empowering women to redefine success and break through barriers. I'm your host, Christine, and my co host, Laura, along with our amazing guests and experts. We are here to shatter the myths that has been hindering women's careers.

Women's career fulfillment for far too long. So if you're ready to master your career and take your life to the next level, join us in our journey together. The Women's Career Mastery podcast starts now.

Have you ever wondered what it means to tap into your inner strength and find peace within yourself? In this episode, our guest shares her journey of overcoming challenges and embracing vulnerability to build resilience and connections. She's a role model for setting boundaries out of self-love and practicing effective self-care.  And if you curious about fostering courage, empathy, and authenticity, our guest not only embodies these qualities, but also shares her wisdom through her courage circle.  Join us as our guest offers valuable insights and practical tips on boosting confidence, navigating conflict and nurturing self-compassion.  Get ready to discover how to live a courageous and authentic life.

All right, now I hand it over to Laura. Thank you, Christine. Hello, listeners. We're so glad you're here and listening in on this episode. Our guest today is Sandy Stream. Sandy's an author and an activist whose work is built on the belief that everyone deserves the right to vote. and is capable of finding peace and warrior like strength within themselves.

After teaching law for 20 years, raising her two children, and facing a life full of adversities and lessons learned, she's decided to turn her efforts towards facilitating workshops for young and experienced adults to encourage them to live in peace and power. She has a book, The Courage Circle, it’s about how-to live-in truth and dare mode.

And she is also the leader of weekly courage circles, part of a movement to enable organizations and people to build confidence in themselves, in their employees. And we're so excited to have Sandy here with us on the podcast. She's incredibly supportive. She's got a lot of information and tips to share with us.

So, I want to get started right away. And Sandy. We're so grateful to have you here. Please, if you would just start to share a little bit about yourself and why you agreed to join us on the podcast.

 Thanks, Laura. Thanks, Christine. I ran into Christine by chance, on the meetup world. And so that's how I ended up being very happy to meet both of you, which seem to be doing very nice work on your podcast.

So, for me, I, went through some difficult times during COVID internally and spent a ton of time with myself, for myself, studying myself, investing, I don't know, all the words of self, I suppose.

And, slowly, but surely, I guess it came together for me. All the little pieces came together that I was learning, and I put it together. The book, The Courage Circle, and then since publishing that I decided I'd like to discuss and share a lot of these things with people because, I didn't really learn this, during my life.

I was already 52 years old. I have plenty of university degrees, but they were things that I had not learned and are important to learn so that we can live feeling well and feel strong and feel kind and feel all the good things that life offers. And so, it's been about a year now that I facilitate, Courage Circles and every week we meet a bunch of adults and in the yoga studio and online, and we discuss a different topic every single week.

And we do so respectfully and kindly. So that's a big difference from maybe, other types of, environments.

Thank you. So, let's dive right into that courage thing. Tell us more, explain more about what that means and why you developed it in that sense, your circles and, and what it means to us individually.

Well, when I started the circles, I didn't really know how they would go about. I didn't know what they're going to end up being, but what they've definitely become is an environment, which I would say unusually healthy, which we don't really experience in our daily life in general.

We don't sit around 20 people in a healthy environment. Like, at least I haven't, maybe you guys do, but. It's not something that I experienced. Whether it's in families at work or anywhere else. So, what's really cool is the environment. It has men, women, this age, this religion, this, like, this profession, there's no rules about the type of person that comes in.

They're different every week. But I think there's two things that really contribute to the environment. One of the first things I do when we start the circle, after everybody introduces themselves, I start, yes, I'm a lawyer, I'm an accountant, I'm a this, I'm a that, everybody does their introductions. And then I invite everyone, like, can we just drop our titles? Just, just for this hour, can we, you know, let go of our professions?

Can we let go of our kids? Can we let go of our pets? Can we just let go of all of it and deal with each other as human beings. You can talk about it as from the heart, from your spirit, from your soul, from your humanity, whatever word, someone might feel good, your essence, any word somebody likes, but just for this, you know, just one hour, one hour and a half together, can we do that?

And I could tell you people can do that. Because we do that every single week. So, it's quite possible, for human beings to connect at that level. And this is where we actually, connect, not with our titles and with all the other weird things. So, I think that's one, really, really important part of the interactions that happen there.

So, we're all kind of the same. There's an evenness that's applying, and people feel that. I'm not saying it. They just feel it. It's not this one is better than that. Like there's no, ranking going on. And then I would say the second thing that's super important is I do a quick listening demo right at the beginning.

This is all in the first like 10 minutes, and then we do discussions, but the environment is, in the first 10 minutes. And the second thing is I do a quick demo of what is listening. And if you want, I can do one right now just to show you how simple and how powerful, this thing is, if you're up for that, Laura or Christine.

But before that, I want to know, why is it called courage circle, right?

That's one thing. Secondly, you said something like this, it become a healthy environment like in this circle, and you also mentioned in this hour where we meet together, let's drop our roles. So that's kind of bring the ideas of other environments are not that healthy, which I agree with you, right?

There's, a lot of environments, doesn't make us feel safe to be. In and to speak. And so, I want to think about the ideas how we bring this into the world or into not just in a circle, but in our workplace and our team in our meetings and our family.

So, can you describe other environments that are that are not healthy that we probably don't? Because that's the environment that we live 24 7.

Yeah.

And then, what's the relationship between dropping our roles and healthy environment?

Well, I mean, starting with, why is it called the Courage Circle?

So, the initial reason is during my moments of trying to figure out, what the hell am I going to do in this life? How am I living? And my tough moments for whatever reason, I ended up painting a circle on the lower part of my living room. Like literally, with paint, I painted a circle, and I would sit there.

That was like my space basically, where I meditate a lot. I spent a lot of time. So. The original courage circle, which in the book I talk about it almost like a progression, but the first circle you're creating is actually around yourself. It's not a courage circle. Okay, I'm going to get some friends to encourage each other.

No, there's a space you need to create to look internally at what's going on. And so that answers your question of why, but now the group is called the courage circle as well. But I think it doesn't take away from the fact that there's an individual. work that has to happen, whether you call it a career circle or not, but something that you need to be doing, in yourself and for yourself, even though this environment helps us to do that, we still have to do that.

It's ours. So, I think that's super important. In terms of other environments are not healthy, absolutely. I think most environments are not very healthy, but that's okay as far as I'm concerned. Like it's not for me to change the world or change all environments. The way I see it is that, when we do experience, literally physically experience, not just intellectual experience, but physically experience something that feels right.

You know, when you experience, for example, the listening demo, which I can do, you know, when we have time, what that feels like. what it feels like, not what we think about it feels like. Once we experience that, then we can really see the difference when we're in the world saying, that doesn't feel okay anymore, right?

If you've experienced what feels okay, then you start to realize, this I thought was all normal, but actually, I don't think it is. So maybe we'll start to learn to set boundaries or learn this or that. So, depending. What topics we discuss, I do believe everybody takes it out into their own world and uses it, I don't know how, in whatever way, it depends on the topic.

So, if it's on boundaries, maybe they will go out in the world and do something about that. If we're discussing and this week the topic is what do I need, we're all going to talk about what each person needs and see where that goes. And maybe they're going to go out in the world and try to get some of their needs met or so depends on the topic.

So, I do think there's a ripple effect that occurs, from being able to learn in a healthy space, like to be able to Open and share and listen in an open space like that is just, it's magical. Actually. It's a very, very big, powerful thing to be in a group. That is healthy, very, very powerful.

My experience, at least I'm saying very, very powerful.

 So, from what I'm hearing is the circle started with you, like going through a challenging time. During the pandemic in literally the only safe place you could find was in this like circle that you drew on the floor Right.

Yeah, I created my own space and you worked on your inner self and gaining confidence where you were And being courageous in that circle and then you started to expand it and grow it And now you have these courage circles and you're helping others to do it, too so I just want to I want to like recognize that important work that you did for yourself and also that you're doing for others and now I want to see what that's like because we know like listening today is super important given that we all have really short attention spans.

We're in the click mentality of things, right? The click cycles of everything. And so, getting a chance to really listen is like a treat. I mean, it's like a super treat. So, you're giving people one hour in your group, like how special is that? Um, but yeah, I just wanted to take a moment to do that because we were talking about a lot of things and I, I wanted to honor your experience.

Oh, thanks for that. Yeah, I appreciate it. And I think, for me, the way it worked, and I had someone do the illustration at the beginning of each chapter, but it was an amazing visual of, first create the circle was the first chapter. And I wrote a bunch of things about that.

And then the next was, okay, start to sit in your circle, spend some time there. I called it, finding yourself. Cause you probably start off a bit lost and the picture would be like, okay, I'm sitting and I'm like looking up like, who am I? Where am I? What am I? I don't know, you know, who am I?

It's very normal actually to feel that if you haven't been in unhealthy relations, if you haven't resolved your own internal things, if you haven't discovered yourself, I think that's a very natural experience that would happen. And then once we start to look inside and look at the truth, all the truth, whether it's pleasant or unpleasant, fun or not fun, comfortable or not comfortable, but just the truth, and it's at least for me, that third chapter, it was pretty chaotic.

So, it looks a little bit, wild, you're upset, you're this, you're resolving, so it's a bit of chaos in the circle, but we're still there. We're still in the circle. So now we kind of created it, but we are sitting in it, lost, and there's a little bit of, all kinds of things that have to be looked out and it's not simple and it's not.

easy and, it's not a straight line. And then maybe after some time, and it could be months, could be years, I don't know which person is different. Well, maybe there'll be a little bit of settling. into, that space because you've processed basically things. It's literally processing that we don't know how to do.

And we don't have support to do it and learn to do. And so, when you've learned to process your things. And face them then that we might settle a bit in that circle now, and then the next chapter and there's all the little pieces of that are actually to stand up from your circle. And I think I called that one time for courage or something like that and where you actually get up and then you walk out into the world.

And do your thing, whatever that is. And each person might have that different thing to do. I guess my thing is this right now. I don't know where it'll be later, but that's what I am to do. But I think it's really not helpful for people to focus on my purpose to help others and do things for others and do, and all that.

I think that's completely counterproductive. Thanks. At the beginning, because we're so trained to be focusing on others and helping others and getting our worth from being some helper to the world. Okay. I'm such a nice girl. I keep helping. I'm so nice. I keep helping. I help, I help, I help. And you're getting.

some kind of value from being a help all the time, which is not the real deal. The real deal is to feel good about yourself when you're doing nothing, when you do nothing for anybody, like you're just sitting there and doing nothing, not helping anybody. So that's where you kind of want to go. Like, how do I feel when I don't do anything for anyone?

Like, am I a bad person? That's the investigating. that could be interesting. And then if that's been resolved or whatever needs to be healed there, then we might end up helping others or participating in things for others. But that's from a different place completely, at least my experience, it's from a totally different desire.

 I would encourage people to be, the word is not correct, but selfish, when you're doing this, like, meaning can yes, get self-centered, focus on yourself, turn to you, without using the negativity of those words.

It's not selfish to do this work. It's the best thing you can do for the world.

What you're saying is very interesting. Because a lot of listeners and also topics that we cover, and we heard a lot in the workplace is burned out, feeling burned out. And I know what you're saying is very relevant because most people, we grew up or we have an idea that's, our values because our usefulness, especially at work, our performance, and that way we cannot really set boundaries.

It's difficult. And what you're saying. Sounds for other people, maybe selfish, like, no, I, you know, I don't want to do anything. I just want to sit here and do nothing. Can you, can you bring that more, um, I guess if you can take us to your own, that current circle when you sit down and you're trying to figure out yourself and what you do and how you serve.

But before that, you just say, I'm here, I don't want to do anything. What is the tipping point?

Well, I think the big tipping point, I don't know for others, I think when you learn to, feel for yourself, like when you're just suffering badly some deep way and you, you start to feel for yourself or care for yourself or want to help yourself or, have compassion for yourself, like you would, like, You know, you see a kid and you want to, like, pick them up or take care of them.

So, if you arrive at a little bit of that feeling towards yourself. Then you Want to help yourself and when you want to help yourself, then you start to act in a way that is good for you and slowly but surely, you know, putting pieces together, reading other people's things, my book, your book, that book, this talk, whatever it is, you might start to see a different truth and one of the things that we've learned a lot is that you, this point system that I talk about where we get points for doing things like you're a good person if.

Okay, you get a university degree, if you help a lot of people at work, if you do this with this, okay, I'm a good person. And then if I don't do that, well, then what? Does that mean I'm not, or I'm not that good now because I'm not able to do this, so we're kind of keep getting points, losing points.

And so, it's very hard for people to stop doing whatever they're used to doing for their work, for their whatever, because now I'm bad but is that really true? Do we need to even think of this point system whatsoever? I mean, I would throw that whole thing out altogether from zero, like just no points, let's start a different way, totally different direction.

And we'll start from, am I good inside? Like, am I just good? Not good enough, just good, like goodness. Or do I have a hard to, you know, that kind of question. And if you find. Oh, I'm, I'm made of some kind of good fabric, or I have a good heart, whatever word, everyone can feel it in a different way.

But if you realize I'm not, I'm not what anybody has said I am, or I'm not how someone's treating me, or I'm not how people expect or whatever, you kind of feel yourself in a deep way in your goodness, then there's nothing to do for that. That exists anyways. Like you could be doing nothing. It exists. You do something.

It exists. It's there. So, if you find that feeling inside yourself that's just there anyway, you're not driven by getting those points, but by anybody else, like, I don't need to do this so that Christine gives me a point and Laura gives me a point. I don't need to do it for that. If I do it, it's because I feel I should do it or I want to do it, but I don't need your points, right?

So, it's a very different drive. It's not trying to feed this feeling of like, I'm not bad. Which is drilled into us in a million ways, whether some religions do it, some parents do it, some colleagues do it,

so, it's beyond just someone telling you, what's wrong with you, which I've heard many people in this circle talk about, that parents have said, what's wrong with you, or this, you know, like direct, demeaning, critical stuff, but it's also constantly an undertone in our conversations between human beings.

This feeling of something's wrong with you, something's wrong with you, something's wrong with you. It's just all the time. So, it's a big thing to refute that and say, no, actually there isn't. There's absolutely nothing wrong with me. I'm just living. I'm struggling. I'm recovering. I'm doing my best.

I'm whatever, but I'm no, nothing wrong with me. It's a big rebellion.

 It's a core foundational feeling within yourself and from there you can do anything. One important thing I think is really helps you get out of the mode of every time somebody says something, it's not a reflection of your value.

So, this is, what I hear from you. I know you saying this is based also on your experience or on yourself exploration.

You sit there, you sit with your pain, you sit with your uncomfortable feelings. And I believe what you're saying is more like. You know, the way to go, the way to arrive is to go through is not go on top or avoiding but go through that pain. And when we go through that pain, there's another side of us for women, it's the motherly part, like, I will not let a child crying without, you know, supporting this.

Yeah. So, the key to that transformation is really to feel your pain, to really be with yourself so that you can come with that. I'm not going to allow this person suffered. I'm going to help her. And what I, what I found interesting from, from your tone, from the way you talk as well, it's just like, there's this softness and kindness and compassion, but also there's toughness at the same time, you know, like kindness.

But also setting the boundary.

Oh yeah, I'm really strict on those because I care about myself because I've been through hell, and I don't want to suffer. It's that simple. I don't want to suffer and I'm responsible for that, so.

And I just want to acknowledge that, and I hope listeners would listen that again.

I care about myself so much, and I'm not going to I do.

I feel for myself a lot.

And I'm not going to let that hurt me. And that coming from self-love. And so, self-love is not just loving, oh, nice, and, but it's being tough because we care. It's setting boundary because we care about ourselves, and because when we care, we can love more.

Thank you. Like the way Sandy did this.

Yeah, I mean, it's not against anyone, protecting myself or loving myself in the kindest way, right? So, what people call the masculine and feminine energy or Yin Yang, whatever. People use a lot of that. terms, but I think what really helps is to see like the front of the body, the heart is the soft or the feminine, but nothing to do with gender.

It's just words that have been used. And the back is our spine is our masculine, strong, supportive energy, right? So, it makes sense for me to be strong and supportive of myself and protective of myself and kind and loving. and helpful and compassionate to myself. So, both of them are there and constantly allowing, things to occur in my life that I could do something about would not be kind and would not be supportive and would not be caring.

So, I cannot wear that badge or that sticker and pretend I'm walking around as a nice person. And that's a big shift in our brain, because we think we're a nice person because we're serving everybody else. We're just not in there. We're not in the equation. It's, it's ridiculous.

It's a very empowering moment. And I know because I just kind of went through the shift myself but knowing yourself then setting the boundaries for yourself to continue, like, I can't claim I'm a kind person if I'm not kind to myself. Right. I can be kind to the world, but if I'm not kind to myself, I'm suffering underneath because I'm exhausted from helping the world.

It's not helping anybody. So, that’s a realization you come to, and then that's that thing that you stand on solid ground with for yourself, so that when you are feeling attacked, or judged, or harmed, or anything that goes against who you are, it's so much easier to set a boundary.

Yeah. And it becomes easier and easier. The first ones are very difficult. I mean, I find, setting boundaries has been just the hardest part. I mean, it's extremely difficult and it's not lightly difficult. It's extremely difficult to do. and is it very hard to do it? Well, the first ones are probably going to be pretty chaotic and freaking out a bit.

And that's okay. Maybe it is what it is. And with time, I think we learned to set them kindlier and lovingly. And still do them strictly, so you could be, clear about your boundaries and do it very kindly, but I think at the beginning it's very hard because, for me anyways, often the sign of a boundary being broken is that you're angry, right?

Women and men have a lot of difficulties acknowledging their anger and being comfortable with the fact they're angry. They think it's a bad thing because we've equated anger and aggression, which are two different things. They're not the same. We can feel angry and not be aggressive towards anybody.

But even feeling angry is something that people judge themselves for and don't allow themselves to feel. But it's often, not always, but often it's a sign that your boundary's been broken. So instead of like, I shouldn't feel angry, if we start to say, has my boundary been broken? That's a better question.

Like, I'm so upset. Which boundary was broken? What's going on here? So that's my go to now. Of course, after having dealt with some other things, because anger sometimes could be just controlling behavior. So, I had to also learn not to be angry. to do that, but if you've gotten rid of that aspect, the controlling behavior type anger and have just the boundaries anger, now I'm pretty comfortable if I get angry to go right away to, okay, what am I feeling?

I agree. Okay. Better go and figure out. So, try not to lash out at anyone. If it's happening, go somewhere else, remove myself, figure out why I'm angry. Hmm. Once I figure it out and it often is a boundary then to communicate that and that's how we take care of ourselves.

Now, this is the interesting part. I want to move to the next part because I think you are pretty good at it and you help others to, to do this.

 Laura, you want to speak about, coaching clients’ examples?

Sure. I would definitely want to take this into the work context because up until now I'm thinking about all my friends and my family and the stories, I hear from women that we coach, and women are in women's career mastery program.

I want to hear; how do I bring this to the work context? Because I hear all the time, the anger thing, I'm angry. I don't know how to talk to my boss about this or that on my project is not going well or so and so is not behaving like they're supposed to on the project team. I'm like, there's all these issues going on. What do I do? What do I do in that situation?

Yeah. I mean, that's a big question. Every situation is completely different but like for people who are not used to it, I think it's useful to Google, watch YouTube's on the difference between passive, assertive, and aggressive communication.

And assertive communication is the way we want to try to learn to communicate, to be assertive everyone has different definitions, but to just try to learn to see that there's something called like completely caving and doing nothing. There is speaking and, and different ways we could do it straight.

And then there's being aggressive. So, once we start to identify that, not only we might see that in ourselves, but we might also see other people doing it and set boundaries on aggressive behaviors. So that's, one thing we can do, and we can, even in the workplace, when someone is speaking like that, saying, I'm not comfortable with the way that you're talking with me right now, I'd rather talk when things are less heated, and leave, and go to your office. Close the door and let them deal with their explosion all by themselves and calm down like an adult, that's hard to do that, but that's you know, people have to learn to calm down or to regulate themselves. And so, you’re not doing it to control them when you don't set a boundary in order to control someone else.

That's completely a mis definition of what I hear a lot about boundaries. Like the boundaries is not to set a rule. You're not allowed to yell at me. I'm setting this boundary. You better stop. Hey, I told you I set a boundary. Don't yell at me. Hey. You're doing it again. I told you don't yell at me. I'm putting this rule.

Don't yell at me. No, that's not what a boundary is. A boundary is a definition of you. This is what's okay with me, and it could be different person to person, situation to situation. So, this is not okay with me. It might be okay for someone else. So what boundaries are is that they start to define you.

At first, they might look like these weird like stop signs, like Oh, don't do this. Oh, wait, no, I can't go to the dinner tonight. I'm too tired. They're messy, but eventually You start to know yourself and define yourself. So, a boundary is actually a definition of you.

It is not rules on other people. Has nothing to do with another person. Zero. Has nothing to do with them.

So, I have a, an example. Yeah. This is a real example from a long time ago. Yeah, sure. I wish I knew how to deal with this. So, we were in a very tough project. The client was difficult, and I knew the client was fearful.

 He just didn't feel safe. And he was upset sending like three or four email in the morning. Where, where is it? Where, you know, where's the result? And it was supposed to be my manager who's to manage with this person.

But because he was asking so many times, I knew he was angry. I thought, it would have been helpful if I wrote an email or at least, give him some information. Then after a while, I got a call from my manager, and she was pissed. And she says, all the swearing word on the phone.

I never had that before. And I knew it was not right. But I also felt guilty because. I didn't know what the situation was. I thought I was contacting this person because it would be helpful. But apparently it was not according to her. And I knew my, my go to conflict is to, it's avoidance. And I think most people do avoiding conflict. In that kind of situations, how would someone, express? And I think that's something a lot of us at work felt. Unsafe to speak up. What would you recommend?

Well, I would never recommend one person do anything. I mean, they need to follow themselves, so who cares what I think someone should do, really.

But I think what you're touching upon is the kind of things that would help you know what you should do, right? Because I don't know what anybody should do. They know what they need to do, but things they might want to look at, first of all, as you talked about the history of avoiding conflict. So that's not going to be solved on the spot with your manager.

That's going to be, something you take time to look at and your past and your feelings there and your pain there, and you're building the courage slowly there, on this, so it might take someone time to learn to deal with conflict it's a whole investigation to understand your own relationship with conflict and how you might have traumas there or freeze responses or a million things that could be happening, in that situation that are not to be judged, like no reason to judge yourself for it.

It's about understanding your life, what you went through and why. And so that investigating in yourself could be different for Every single person and then, you know, if eventually a lot of the past is healed, a lot of the courage starts to get built and maybe choices are made about what to do from now on and what boundaries, then every person is different.

One person might say like, ah, whatever she has steam. I don't care. And I'll just forget about it and tell her later in the email. I didn't appreciate that. That could be one person feels fine doing that. Another person might quit their job on the spot and say, I'm never dealing with this. This is like so harmful to my mental health, and I've been through hell.

Nothing wrong with that. Another person might actually speak on the spot and say, I'm going to my office. And another person might go to HR. Because we've been through different things. We have like a different situation, but I definitely don't. think that just allowing that behavior and doing nothing.

So, the kind thing might be to investigate or to learn or to figure out, but unless you feel perfectly good about it, if you feel fine about it, then fine. But if you don't feel fine about the situation, then go and resolve that un fine feeling because I guess at the end of the day, and for me anyways, my, my biggest driver, like what's my drive in life?

My drive in life is to feel okay. That's my drive, to feel in peace, to feel not tense inside to feel at ease, to feel in peace. So, if I felt at peace that the person was screaming at me, then I would say fine. But if I didn't, then I better go do my homework, figure out what I need to do to find my peace.

And if that is quit, then it's quit. If that is say something, it's said something. If that is go resolve my conflict so I can find ease in my body, then it's that. I don't know. Do you know what I mean?

Yeah, I, go ahead, Laura. No, I know what you mean, and I'm, I'm shifting to go a little bit ahead of her.

Christine asked the question, what do I do now with the situation? If I knew what you're saying, I should know about myself. The moment I'm faced with this, you know, tough situation of a client, wanting his deliverable and not getting it. And I know that I'm like you, Sandy, I want peace in the situation.

What do I have to come to the table with to drive the peace for me, for the situation. And maybe it was a different reaction. Maybe it wasn't sending the email. Maybe it was something else that I, I could have done. But if I came from that intent, like this is me. I bring peace.

You might approach it. In a very different way.

True, yeah, but there's one thing that comes to mind if I can share about that. When I talk about peace, it's not external peace, it's internal peace. Internal peace. And for me that's a huge difference. Yes. Because that's another thing that.

People focus a lot on, and I had to learn my lessons and I've done everything upside down. So, I'm not walking into this podcast, acting like I know everything. I've done everything opposite ways to learn that this is the better way for me anyway. But so, one thing I remember learning at some point is there was, an incident in a family setting, I set a boundary and people were upset.

It was a bit of chaos in the situation, and it looked like it's not peaceful, the whole thing, right, because I had set a boundary, and the dinner was ruined and the whole thing didn't look like peace and. I also was all upset after, and I was crying, and I called my friend. But the next morning, I really remember this.

And while I woke up, and I'm like, I feel better I did that. I feel at peace. So that's where I started realizing, okay, the whole thing doesn't look peaceful, but I feel at peace. And that's my goal. My goal is not to create peace between the client and the Christine . That's not my job. My job is to create my own peace and to be in peace in every single moment of the day.

I'm not able every moment of the day. There are days I find myself not, and that's, okay, how do I get back? How do I come back to feeling in peace? So, if you're not in peace, it means you need to do something to find your own peace.

Yeah. I'm going through a similar thing to Sandy, so I can relate. I want to start to wrap up so let's move into our lightning round questions, if that's okay.

Sure. It's just another way for our audience to get to know you a little bit more. Okay. And I think that's a good thing, so four questions, one-to-three-word answers, if you can, it's always hard for our guests to do it, but try. Okay., so first question, where do you go for inspiration?

 I walk outdoors.

I walk and move and just look around and then my energy comes.

More energy, definitely, from moving. What is one habit you adopted that has greatly improved your career? Courage.

It's a constant that I'm doing, it's hard, but it's a constant way to live, to live in.

What is one thing that keeps you moving forward each day?

 Being kind to myself, because it makes me, open to seeing, where I'm making mistakes and how I can do things differently. And if I weren't kind, then I'd be not able to see, like you become blind. But because I'm kind, then I can see like, oh, I don't think I was doing this the right way. I think I need to do things a different way and not be hard on myself and be able to turn.

So, kindness allows me to move. More flexibly in whatever direction feels more right for me. Yeah.

That's nice. That's really nicely said. And what is the most valuable piece of advice you ever received?

 I think I was in my twenties, and someone said it out of context, but it served me the most forever to get through a million ways.

They told me to listen to your body, that the body always knows. The body always knows.

I love that. Well, Sandy, thank you so much. I felt like I was drumming up the courage the whole time to do the episode with you. So, it was a really good exercise. Where can our listeners find you after all this?

 I have a website called the courage circle. com where I post whatever I'm up to and whatever things change, but also, I found the courage myself recently to start doing social media and Instagram. Thanks, Christine, for joining me there. It's so hard, but I knew it was the right path for me to, to start speaking out more on these things.

So, they can also find me on Instagram now.

Awesome.

Thank you for doing that work and we'll share all of the links to all of your places to find you in our show notes.

Thank you so much. And I almost forgot we're doing a podcast. I thought we're like chatting. I'm looking at you guys that were like smiling and talking.

Thank you so much for having me.

Thank you, Sandy, for being here and to speak about your missions. And I just want to remind listeners about start with us, start with self. Create a circle, courage circle, for yourself first so that you can bring more people in your circle but start with yourself.

And always remember that Peace is actually innate within all of us. We cannot really find it outside, that temporary, but to find it inside. Thank you, Sandy.

Beautifully said, Christine.

Thank you so much.

Thank you for joining us on this episode of Women's Career Mastery. To ensure you don't miss any future episodes, please subscribe to our podcast on your preferred podcast platform. If you found this episode enjoyable, please leave us a review or give us a thumbs up. Your support helps us reach a wider audience who could benefit from our content.

Also, if you want to learn more about us and our guests, please make sure to check out the show notes for this episode.  Thank you again for listening, and we look forward to connecting with you on the next episode of Women's Career Mastery.