There's so many words, flexibility, adaptability.

Like we could just go on and on, but those did not come from, this is where

we get into and for navigate because they didn't come from when you are on the

path navigating, it came from when you're actually off the path, that challenge,

you are off your path of where you wanted to be, man, you have learned some

things that actually serve you today,

Vanna.

How are you today?

I am fabulous.

West.

How are you?

You know what?

I'm dandy.

It has been a heck of a week and a really cool start for the school year.

As we do a lot of work with school districts from around the country.

So the past couple of months has been like main startup pedal to

the metal, all gas, no brakes.

So we're starting to finally get into the holiday season, which

is that downward slope for us where things start to level out.

It's a fun time of year for us.

How about you?

I'd say the same.

This is where we're like, okay, things are starting to level out a little bit.

And you're, you have the excitement of the year, which is so fun and awesome

and busy and crazy, but then you have a chance to go, okay, a little bit of

breathing room, and then we know that it picks back up, it's just a really

cool process to witness each year.

Yeah, absolutely.

And so we're going to get into, talking about, shine and the whole philosophy and

kind of strategy that you've put together.

But before we get into that, I know you travel the country and

you speak to groups all over the country and you do a lot of that.

Have you been doing a lot of traveling in the past several months

or I've been staying pretty local?

Cause I know you're in Florida, correct?

I am.

I am.

I'm in St. Pete, it's that Tampa Bay area, which is incredible.

But yeah I would say it traveling a lot, but I've also had to be home because

we've had the craziness of the hurricanes.

And so it's one that we know is coming and we do our best with it, we've

been hit with some doozies this time.

And so figuring out how to get through that.

And so one of them, I actually didn't make it home.

I got stuck in Atlanta and then the next one I did come home, but

then had to evacuate to Orlando or somewhere, we chose Orlando.

And so it's been an interesting ride for sure, but love, love living here.

Cause it's paradise.

It isn't when it isn't.

Yeah, no, I, yeah, you guys have definitely been just rattled by

storms in the past couple of months, really the past couple of years.

I feel like it's every year around the holidays, right before you get

into, the holiday season, there's some big storm that's on the news

and it's always, in that area.

So I'm glad to hear that you're doing okay though.

And that you made it through unscathed.

It sounds like.

But, Florida has always been a, I've loved Florida for, really my entire life.

I was born and raised in Atlanta.

And so when we, when I was a kid, Florida was, our vacation spot.

That's where we went to go get a little slice of paradise when we

wanted to get out of the city.

Is it mostly Disney?

I have to ask.

So I went to Disney world when I was younger probably six or seven.

And that was until a few years ago, the last time that I had been to Disney world.

Now I live in Southern California, so we've got Disneyland that's

close by, and I've got small kids, a six year old, a four year old.

So we are very, accustomed to taking the kids to Disneyland.

But I had a conference funny enough talking about Disney world.

About two years ago and I had forgotten because we've lived in Southern

California for almost 10 years now.

And then prior to that, we lived in Arizona.

And thinking back to my childhood, I blocked out, I think the summer heat.

And the humidity that you get in Florida.

And so I had a conference

and see folks that live there.

Don't help it out at all with me trying to plan my trips.

So I had this conference that was planned for the middle is right for

the 4th of July, and this was two years ago, so my kids would have

been like four and two at that time.

And so me and my, young, immature dad wisdom was like, Hey, look,

I've got to go to this conference.

I'm going to bring the family with me and we'll just make a whole trip out of it.

And I will take the kids to Disney world.

I didn't really think through the fact that it's going to be the middle of July.

And I'm going to have two really small kids with me in an outdoor

theme park for a three day period.

I, you would have thought my kids were going to explode.

I've never seen two kids more miserable.

Like we would get them off of that train to go into the parks and

they were just literally melting.

Like you could see the sweat beating and just rolling off their face

before we even got into the park.

So needless to say, I bought a lot of ice cream popsicles on that trip.

I can understand that.

And I have to say that it's, we hibernate in the summer.

So we crack up when tourists come to Disney in the summer because we're like,

seriously, how does time of the year.

And then we also know the tourists in the winter, because those are the people

who come down and they get in the water.

And we're like, wow, that water's freezing right now, but not to them.

It's always fascinating.

Yeah.

If they're coming from Southern California, that water is like bath water.

Cause the water out here is.

Talk about freezing.

If it gets over 75 degrees, it is boiling for people that are locals.

But yeah, 60 degrees is usually around, somewhere between 65 and

72 or three, it's about the hottest day it gets out here water wise.

So yeah we love to go to Florida and get in the water and talk about how

warm it is when we get back home.

I'm glad somebody feels it's warm.

I'll admit it.

We're wimps.

So I'd love for you to share a little bit more about yourself.

Obviously we, we've chatted about, where you're located at, but it talked to me a

little bit about your professional career.

I know you've had quite an extensive career in speaking and

you've written several things.

So share a little bit about, an overview of your shine framework and, some of the

accomplishments you've had professionally.

It's a journey that never anticipated, never thought I'd have.

I really didn't know what I wanted to go into when I went to college.

And so I went ahead and chose psychology because I do like psychology.

And I, my first semester, I got a GPA and I was on probation to be kicked out.

And I thought, okay, and that kind of reflected my grades in high school.

I did great in elementary because it was all about hands on learning

and just getting a chance to move in the way that I love to learn.

And so I was getting ready to be kicked out.

Said, okay, you're gonna kick me out, fine, I have one more semester.

I'm going to just take a look and see if I can take sign language.

And I sure enough could take sign language, but in order to do that, I

had to go into the college of education.

And so I became a teacher for the deaf.

And that led me into just teaching for 10 years and absolutely loved it.

I did not teach specifically in classrooms for, The hearing impaired or the deaf

because of, I had a dual certification and I ended up being in a regular ed

classroom teaching and I stayed there, but I taught sign language and I incorporate

sign language into a lot of what I taught because of the concepts are so grasped by

sign language, like a tree will literally look like a tree, it's really neat.

So that was where I ended up going into teaching.

I did it for 10 years.

I didn't really anticipate leaving that loved what I did and loved

students, particularly middle school.

But then I had a chance to leave and as I was getting ready to interview

to become an assistant principal because I was a single mom at the

time, how do I make more money?

So I went and got a second master's, here we are, fine, I'll go into

administration and I knew I would enjoy it, but I really loved the classroom.

But I had a chance to step out, like I said, and when I did.

I had been given the advice that I understand that you need to do

it now as a teacher, not as an administrator, because you'll come back.

If you choose, you will come back as a teacher, but you will not

come back as an administrator.

And that hit like hard to me and I thought I'm always one

that I want to try other things.

I want to see what else is out there.

I want to explore.

And I ended up becoming a sales person for a university.

And so I had the whole state of Florida.

And then they came after eight months and said, we want you to

become regional manager of the Southeast for business development.

And I turned it down because I thought it was not gonna be something that I wanted.

And so a month later, they came back and said, We have

been interviewing for a month.

We really want you.

And I said, Okay, I'll do it.

I just don't know that it's really where I want to be.

But let's go for it.

Cause maybe I'll learn something about me and actually love it.

And about three months into it, I realized I loved it when I was out with the reps

in the different states, but I didn't love it when I was back home and holding them

accountable for how many sales, calls you have, what's your plan for, networking.

And it was just a lot of the minutia.

I would say and so I realized this and I went and did a retreat with another

manager and I came home one day and two days later, I got a call from a

headhunter and the headhunter said, but I got your name from the school district

and we have a company who's looking for a consultant and I ended up working for

that company, but about a month and a half into it, I saw that all of marketing

was laid off and I went, Oh, I'm And so three months later, sure enough,

laid off to, and that led me to another company that I was cussed out, screamed

at, things were thrown across the room.

It was the most toxic culture I could ever, I couldn't even imagine it.

And so let alone experience it.

And I found out that I was the eighth person in 10 months in that position.

And that all the part timers had a bet on when I walked in, how long I've last.

And so after four months, I came home to my husband.

I said, I'm jumping.

And he's wait, what?

I'm jumping, I'm going to start my own company.

And he's okay, I totally support you, but you have to make this work.

And let me say fully aware of that.

I know that.

And I don't know what that means.

I just know that if they can run a company and treat people like that, then I can

run a company and treat people right.

Yeah, what's crazy West is when I look back on everything in my

life, like teaching is a part of me owning ignite your shine.

Now I teach, I train a keynote.

I look at the sales part.

That's part of owning a business.

The business development is, understanding a culture, what you want

for people, what you don't want for people, and even seeing processes that

were used to understand the bigger picture that is outside of teaching.

All of that is where I am today.

And so I ended up writing eight books unintentionally.

I was approached by a publisher and I turned them down at first.

And then they're like, LaVonna, you're already teaching this.

Like you're already doing it.

You just need to put it into a book format.

And so eight books of how does the brain learn strategies for teachers, lessons in

there so that they can easily apply it.

And fast forward of doing that for a while.

And I loved it.

I love the brain power learning aspect of it.

However, we weren't seeing exactly the change that we should have

seen, and I couldn't figure out why.

And then my daughter started having challenges in school, similar to mine.

And I reflected on other students that I had and I went, we have a

disconnect here and we don't put the brain into a state of learning

first, then the brain won't learn.

So I started teaching shine and I'll go over it through that

in a moment, what that actually represents, but it's shifted because.

I started having military, I had police officers, I had board of directors

coming up, superintendents, teachers themselves, and instead of my vision

of thinking this was for students, the words that they were saying is that, you

have no idea how badly I needed this.

And you should be speaking to military, you should be speaking, and

I just, my mind like got blown, like for a while, I couldn't comprehend

it because I was like, wait, what?

And then I went, holy cow, this is a human this isn't about kids.

And it, and in some ways, honestly, it's caused challenges for me because I do

believe it's for everybody because it is, if you were a human who wants to

grow and wants to learn how to shine, to be the best version of you and bring

that personally and professionally, but I know from a marketing perspective,

that's hard, to even say you speak to everybody, you speak to nobody.

And so it's been an interesting journey along the way with all of that.

But I will take you through that.

We are focusing really heavily on leadership because of leadership is

the trickle down a lot and leadership isn't where we need it to be.

It affects everybody within the organization.

And without even school nutrition.

The principal or the school nutrition coordinator director

is not where they need to be.

It affects everybody, which then affects everybody else.

And so my heart is also for women in leadership and how do

we get the confidence to rise with believing in yourself?

And so shine, I'll take you through is S.

And what that really is about, is what are your strengths, gifts, skills, talents?

What are you good at doing?

Because so much of the conversation is around what you're not good at doing.

And when we talk about our strengths, gifts, skills, and talents, those are

things we're born with, some things we develop, but when we look at the

research from Gallup, it says that a strength of yours will remain a strength.

But your weaknesses will never get to the level of those

strengths, but we're constantly working over here, which is fine.

We can improve, but strengths is the biggest.

So I lump all that together.

I think about what we, the mindset that we have and how we approach things.

It's also around self care.

So anything with self those at the big bucket, bring it to H is heart.

And it's really about passions.

Like what lights you up?

What gets you excited?

What do you love to do?

When do you feel that energy?

And when do you feel that drain?

And so I use H as heart because the P for passions would be ignite your

spine and that's not gonna work.

So I thought it's really about the heart.

Like, where does your heart lead you?

And everything else that comes with that.

And we put the two together.

So S and H need to go together.

We call that the shine spot.

Because if you have a strength and you're missing a passion, you burn out.

If you have a passion and you're missing a strength, that might be more like a hobby.

So my dream of singing, every night on the stage in Vegas with Mariah

Carey, it's not going to happen West because I have a passion for it.

I do not have a strength in singing.

So you won't want me, so it's aligning as much as we can, which is fulfillment

and happiness in that shine spot.

And we get to the letter I in shine as that is inspire.

So you have this beautiful package of S and H about you, but we all know

life's going to throw us curveballs.

Things are going to happen.

So how do you stay inspired?

And how do you inspire others?

Because we believe that you have responsibility to both

yourself and to others.

And an N in shine is navigate.

What are you doing with everything I've been talking about?

It's you putting it into action so that you have your story, your journey.

What are your goals?

What do you want this life to look like?

And we can't control it all.

But There are a lot of choices we can make with how we approach things and how we

choose to approach those and to live that.

And then E is exceptional because you are becoming the exceptional person

you were meant to be, not anybody else.

So the example I like to give on this one is so often we look at social media

and we start scrolling, and even though we know that is not the full picture,

the brain forgets, and we see compare.

And I don't know, Wes, I know you're seeing me right now, but this is the

sign for, in mirror, in sign language.

And so we, it's like you have a, looking at a compact mirror,

your hand is the compact mirror.

And when you move it and reflect it, but that's what we do about everybody else.

And we forget to look in our own soul.

And I don't mean that from raggedy, docious, arrogance

way, but from a competence lens.

Man, I love that shine framework that you just explained.

There's so much to unpack there.

And so I want to jump into a couple of things.

First off, I think you could pull off a backup singer or dancer for Mariah Carey.

I'm just saying she's been falling out.

She's been thawing out for the past 10 months and she's ready

to make her big holiday debut.

So she's going to need some folks like you in her background.

So I, keep that dream alive.

I support it.

When you are talking about, self care, I think self care is obviously it's

been a buzzword, over the course of the past several years, really putting

a focus on people's mental health and, we talk about it a lot in both schools

and also just, in, from a business perspective and industry side as well.

What are some tips and strategies that you recommend to people for self care?

Is it as simple as just.

Taking a breather and walking outside and getting some fresh air or do you

have some specific strategies that you recommend it can be, I think the biggest

thing is finding what works for you.

And I don't know that's always going to stay the same.

So a big shift for me, because I know I, it, my question isn't

whether people know about self care.

My question is, are you doing it?

And then are you doing it to the level that you actually

find some balance for you?

Cause there are times.

And when I say balance, I don't mean a true balance.

There are times where I. Can work all the time.

I do.

I love what I do and I can work and I can work and I work and at some

point I will go, okay, you know what?

I'm like, I need a few days off or I need some backup time.

And so I've learned to really listen to me as much as I can.

And the big game changers for me is that, yes, it can be breathing.

It can be being silent for a while.

But it's also recognizing when I'm really ready to do something when I'm not.

So an example I will give you is I go to Orange Theory, for

example, Orange Theory Fitness.

It's a workout center.

I love it.

I tell myself I need to go twice a week.

All the other days I want to walk and I love to walk because

my calm is actually nature.

My calm is water.

My calm is seeing animals out there.

And so luckily living in St. Pete, I often get to see, manatees stingray dolphins.

And so that brings so much joy to me, but like this morning I was

going to go to orange theory, but to be honest with you, I'm so sorry,

or I'm so sore from two days ago.

So I changed it to Friday.

And I decided to go out on my walk, and I get down to certain areas along

the water, but there is these little ponds, and there are ducks there.

And I used to raise ducks, and now I have lived here for a

year, and I haven't done this.

But I used to raise ducks because they would get be in the, like in the

stream and we had snapping turtles.

And when the babies were born, the snapping turtles would grab

them so sad, but grab their little feet, drown them and eat them.

And so we would save them.

Yeah.

And raise them and then release them once they got to where

they could survive on their own.

But they learn you like they would come and still you could sit down and they

would cuddle up on your lap and fall asleep because they had come to know

you growing up and they would follow you just like a mother, like in a line.

It's so cute.

So I looked at these ducks and I thought, you know what, I haven't

been feeding that part of me.

And so I bought organic duck food and I go down and I just started this last week.

That's how recent it is.

And they, I sit down, I feed them.

One of them in particular comes and eats straight out of my hand.

But it takes me back to that calm.

So I either stop at a certain point and I will.

Just have silence and meditate, or I will replace with the ducks.

But this is what I mean by listening to you.

If I don't feel like doing a fast walk, I don't go out and do a fast walk.

I just walk.

I just tell myself, get out, move.

You don't have to work out at a level today.

You do you to get out.

But what I often find is my pace picks up and picks up.

Next, I am full on getting the workout that I love.

And so I think about that in the second strategy that I'll share too.

Is the way that I schedule.

So for example, I put everything on my calendar that has to go on.

There are meetings that we can't avoid.

There are work hours that we have to be at.

There are events that we need to see.

So those go on the calendar, things that cannot move.

But the second thing I put on there is actually my self care and that

is my non negotiable to myself.

And so the way that it becomes a non negotiable, and this is

the actual game changer part.

Is that we all know things come up.

And so what I used to do is I would move it and then I would move it

and something else would come up.

So I would move it.

And eventually it got to the point where I was like, you know what?

Forget this.

I am, it's not going to happen.

So I would delete it, everything out in myself, carry it to the wayside.

Now, what I do is I'm allowed to move it, but only one time.

So I'm very intentional about where I move that too.

So if I know tomorrow I might have a meeting pop up, could I just go in the

morning or could I go later in the day?

But once I move it, I know that I'm not allowed to move it again.

And so even though I have on my calendar probably six, seven

days, really there's something on there for I get out and I move.

I know that for me, my non negotiables, I have to get three in, because I do travel

a lot, and it doesn't always work with the exhaustion and the travel schedule

to get more than three in, but I tell myself, you're required to get three,

but if you can get five, six, even seven, then you're totally winning the game.

It sounds like it's really all about prioritizing and making sure that

you have a structure with you've even implemented some different

rules around that prioritization where you're allowed to move it.

It's prioritized, but you're allowed to move it, but just

within certain parameters.

And I talk to people all the time and it seems like, everyone is wanting to improve

their either mental health, their self care habits and things of that nature.

But when you really dig down into what they're doing for quote unquote self

care, a lot of people are like, Oh I just sit down and I just, take to have

a little me time where I'll scroll social media or I'll do something that.

Isn't really self care in some ways.

It seems like people's definition of what qualifies as self care is really

almost destructive because, I don't think there's anyone out there that at this

point, maybe there are that feel that social media is a healthy use of our time.

It serves a purpose and it's great for certain things, but to go and build your

self esteem or to go and make yourself feel better about something or to have a

mental break where, you're really being grateful for the things that you have,

social media is not the place for that.

So it's really about, putting those things that are going for a walk,

having a mental break, go feed the ducks, which I can totally relate to.

We had a monastery when I was growing up right down the street from our house.

We used to go and feed the ducks all the time.

She got me, watch, you got to watch out for those geese.

Those geese are not as nice as those ducks are, but you are correct.

Yes, but the ducks are very therapeutic and it's really about, picking the

right thing for you, but that actually.

Improves your mental health as opposed to doing something

that's added detriment to you.

Yes, I agree wholeheartedly.

And you have to be honest and recognize those things for you.

What is that?

And I think it's different.

Like I said, the beginning is different for everybody.

The other thing I've added in more recently is I want in.

I want to learn different things.

So last week I took a how to ferment vegetables in a jar class.

Because I just want to do different things to me.

That is self care.

Yeah.

If I want to be around people, I do.

And if I don't, that's okay too.

And just giving permission.

So it's, I really do.

I think it's tapping back into which really goes back to S and H, but what are

your strengths, what are your passions and especially the H for heart and passions?

Yeah, because if you love to learn, then what can you do to

build in learning that self care?

Yeah.

It sounds like the S and the H are really the fuel behind the shine

philosophy, the shine framework.

And, ultimately that fuel is what allows you to have the tools in your tool belt

to really go into the end and shine to navigate through challenging times.

And, without that fuel, without those tools, you'll never be able to navigate

in an effective manner through those challenging times that inevitably

happened to all of us, regardless of the industry that we're in.

And, I'm curious about that, obviously you've had, quite a successful career,

you've written lots of books, I, success doesn't come without challenges.

Is there a, maybe a landmark challenge or something in your past that you

can think back to that was really a pivotal moment for you where you were

able to implement your philosophy here to navigate that challenge?

Yes, I would say a lot of my actual life.

When I look back, I've always been interested in, Understanding why, when

some, when people can go through trauma or can go through extremely tough challenges,

why do some choose paths that aren't helpful for you, whether it's like alcohol

or drugs or other unhealthy things that we know don't serve us and help us?

While others are like, I like you using the word fuel, it fuels you to

I, this is not how I want life to be.

And I've always been very intrigued by that dividing path.

And, I've thought, is it someone who is a model for me?

Is it strength that has been around me before?

Is it just something inside of me that was like, absolutely not.

I don't know, but.

There have been lots of challenges.

I would say one of the biggest, though, was watching my own daughter

go through the challenges that I did in the education system and having her.

She has a T. D. And so she had a five of four when she was in high school

that allowed her additional time.

And there was, unfortunately, a teacher who embarrassed her immensely.

It was the first time my daughter advocated for herself, and it was

the last time she advocated for herself and around that, and so

we really had to work on shine.

And that was when I had to reflect on myself and think back to how many times

have I really had to not beat myself up over things that I didn't have or didn't

do well, but instead what can I control?

What do I own?

And what are my choices?

I won't share the whole part now, but I don't know my biological father.

I never have known him and I never will because I finally got to see one

picture of him and it was his obituary.

I saw myself in that, but that is a core of when I was a little

girl of not believing in myself.

And then my grades.

Showed that I wasn't smart.

So I had adopted, basically he walked out because I wasn't good enough.

I now know that's not true because I know that I'm, I created that story.

I don't know the truth, and so I think about, and when I look at it

now, the way that I view this is that I have the choice on what I

believe about him and about myself.

And so the ultimate thing that I landed on, and I could come up with

a thousand stories around this, but what I ultimately landed on was that.

I have to assume basically positive intent, maybe him walking out was actually

the best decision of my life, but I didn't view it that way and it took me,

I am 52 years old, it took me well into my late forties to begin to have even an

inkling of there's more to this story and you've made an assumption as reflection

of yourself when you were, there is no proof that it's a reflection of me.

And so I think about so much, many challenges in my life that I now

have a very different perspective.

I don't know about you Wes, but I wish I could rewind the clock, go

back in time, maybe to thirties, but I want the wisdom I have now.

I want to take all of that goodness and understanding and

belief in myself and really have it back then to do some changes.

But I also, while I say that, I know that's actually what life is about.

Life is about this journey.

It is about making mistakes and realizations and wisdom.

And I don't know that we can ever say to dial we've arrived because

it's meant to be a journey in.

Yeah, no, absolutely.

And yeah, I think wisdom is, also another way of just saying, having the confidence

in yourself and having the confidence to be able to make a decision decisively.

And I feel a lot of young people coming into an industry, regardless of the

industry are very unsure of themselves and they don't have that confidence.

But over the course of time, you realize that.

Yeah.

The little things that we stress out about are really always the

biggest of deals and, we're stressing out about it for really no reason.

And just having the confidence to keep pushing forward and keep going

in the direction that, we feel is the right direction for us is something

that you just learned in time.

Speaking of confidence, you mentioned, the, when you first came into the

industry, you had, or you, one of the industries that you went into, you

worked for a company where, it was a kind of a toxic culture and, you talked

about, overcoming that challenge.

There's, probably people out there that are watching this episode that might feel

like they're in a challenging situation.

What is some advice that you have for people that are going through

either a setback or some type of a challenging situation, life's

thrown a curveball in a way.

What's some type of, motivation or inspiration that you would give to

people in those types of situations?

I would encourage to definitely have step back and really look at

different perspectives, because like I mentioned before, we all are going

to create a story and that story will do anything to protect us.

So my story that I created around all of my different situations and

challenges I've had in my life, I have created a story around them.

I don't know that the stories are actually true.

And so I think of even like my keynote, for example, if I see two

people on the phone, my head can immediately instantly go to that.

You're boring.

You're being boring.

And I know it's not, I know, not because of our surveys.

I know that there's raving reviews, right?

But immediately the self doubt will go to that because I've already

started to create the story around it.

And I think of that, that there was a time that I went to give a keynote

and I had a dress on that day and I wore a belt so that my headset could

be like my lapel up here on my, my face, but around my mouth, but then

have the battery pack on the belt.

And I was really nervous.

And I went to the bathroom and spare you some of those details.

But I went to flush the toilet and I realized in my nervousness,

I had actually undone the belt.

When you have a dress on, you don't need to undo the belt.

Just a little TMI for everybody listening.

So I have a decision to make on what do I do?

And in my head, I immediately went, that's exactly how your talk is gonna go.

People are not gonna like you.

They're going to think you're boring.

I don't know who ever thought you could do this.

Cause you sure as heck don't think you could do this.

You might as well quit right now.

And I like my mindset just went straight down myself, talk right down the toilet

too, and I had it realized that it's up to me because I can choose to believe that.

And so that's a funny, like side challenge.

But there's no difference than when we're actually in a challenge.

We have a choice on the story that we create, the actions we do from it,

what we decide to believe from that.

And only we can control that because other people could tell us all day long.

You're great.

You're awesome.

It's going to turn out.

Everything's going to be okay.

Oh, don't worry.

It's just a moment.

And we can share that as a technique and we do that.

It is a moment, right?

It doesn't mean it's all of life.

It's not a bad day or tough day.

It's.

A moment in time, but we are making those decisions.

So again, when I, that happened to me, I knew like I had to solve it.

Like I have a saying that what you tell your brain believes.

So I'll say it again.

What you tell your brain believes.

And so we choose to reinforce that message every time.

And whether it's a voice from the past of a family member, an educator another adult

in our life, ourselves, a kid, it doesn't matter where that voice comes from, but if

we choose to listen to it, it has power.

And so when we're in those challenges and there's moments of trying to figure

out, okay, and how do I choose from this?

It's taking a step back and basically saying what do I want for me?

I believe every challenge has a lesson and it's up to me to grasp that

lesson and then go forward with it.

If you think about any challenge that you have gained a strength,

gift, skill, superpower from it.

And the way that I'll prove that is if you think about a challenging

moment in your life, and if you need to pause this to think about that

pause, but if not, I want you to think okay, this is a challenge I've had.

And I bet I'm willing to bet you have gained a superpower or strength when we

whittle it all the way down to one or one word, or maybe it's a hyphenated word.

Like it could be resiliency, grit, faith, self love.

Empathy, compassion, there's so many words, flexibility, adaptability.

Like we could just go on and on, but those did not come from, this is

where we get into and for navigate because they didn't come from when

you were on the path navigating.

It came from when you're actually off the path, navigating that challenge.

You are off your path of where you wanted to be, but man, you have learned some

things that actually serve you today.

Yeah.

I feel like self, positive self talk is one of those overlooks.

I guess skills that, you really need to practice on a regular basis.

It's not something that you're necessarily just born with, good,

positive self talk is something that you really have to implement and practice.

And one of the things that I've done over the years is, just as simple as, to get

started because you might have people out there watching this saying how do I

even get started with positive self talk?

And I can't think of anything to, tell myself, or I feel silly doing it.

And, one of the things I did was just write down, I am, blank.

Just give yourself some prompts, you need to start off with

being grateful for things.

I'm grateful for blank.

I'm grateful for my family.

I'm grateful for, the fact that we have food that my kids ravage out of

my pantry on a regular basis, whatever it might be, but, ultimately, starting

off with writing down those little things so that you can have those

prompts to really bring yourself back on those challenging days where you

might feel really down and in the dumps, you can go and reference that little.

Three by eight card and read those either, words of gratitude or

those positive affirmations that you've put down for yourself.

Yes.

And I will add to that too, that I think those are two great strategies.

And then let's add another one.

And that one is because when I ask people to think about their strengths,

it's amazing to watch them go blank.

Like they but if I say what do you think you're not good at?

It's oh gosh, I'm not good at, and they start rattling it off.

And so that is always a sign to me that you're not thinking about what

you actually are good at doing and it's okay, because that's the value you bring.

That's what you contribute to your family, to yourself, to a team,

to a company or organization.

And so focusing more on that.

And so one of the techniques that I use in this is more of a

psychological technique, but you have to distance yourself from you.

So if you say, for example, what would a best friend say that I was

good at doing, or what would my mom say that I was good at doing, or

what would a stranger who just met me might say that I'm good at doing.

And now, because it's not so personal, because a lot of us are taught to be

humble and to not look at ourselves that way, which is why I want to stress

again, this isn't about being arrogant.

It is about being confident and saying, you know what I am good at this.

I'm not saying I'm perfect.

I'm not saying I'm the best, but I am good at this.

Like I, I can definitely support our team or support you in doing this because

I do have some strengths with this.

And so if that helps distance the self, that's just another strategy that I, a

lot of times that's when I see the light bulb go on and Oh, my best friend would

say this, or so and so would say that.

Yeah.

Now you say it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So and I think that the reality is that if we had a friend that talked to us the

way that we oftentimes talk to ourselves.

We would probably not be friends with that person anymore.

So we really need to reframe and change the way that we're talking to

ourselves, about ourselves to really, I boost us up through those tough times.

LaVonna I know we're getting short on time here.

So I want to give you an opportunity to share a little bit about how

people can get ahold of you.

If they are sitting out there watching this and they're like,

gosh, this is a message that we really want to bring to our folks.

How can they get ahold of you?

And, do you have a website or anything that you can direct people to?

Yes, absolutely.

Igniteyourshine.

com.

So again, igniteyourshine.

com.

You that's, you'd find that on all social media platforms, except X.

And you can do go to igniteyourshine.

com and that's where there's a contact form.

You can learn more about it.

And we'd just love to connect with you no matter what.

And just to hear your thoughts of what you thought about this podcast and

even just in general, if there's aha's or realizations you had, we want to

celebrate that with you and for you.

So also you find me at LaVonna Roth on all platforms, except X.

So it's LaVonna L A capital V O N a, and Roth is R O T H. And we'll put

all of that information in the show notes as well, so that people can

easily just click on it down below.

LaVonna, thanks so much for being on the show with us today and sharing a little

bit about your shine framework for anyone out there that wants to get ahold of

LaVonna please click on the link, reach out to her and find out more about how

she can come and inspire and lift up your folks at your school district as well.

LaVonna, I like to leave with one final question here, if you will, and this

is going to be a curve ball for you.

But I like to ask, if you had a billboard and you could put anything

that you wanted to on the billboard for the entire world to see every

single day that they come and leave.

Our cop go to and leave work.

What would your billboard say?

It's not anything uncommon, but it'd be, you are enough.

I love it.

So simple.

And Wes, thank you for having me this, oh my goodness, such a joy talking

to you and connecting with you.

So thank you for all that you do.

Cause you're bringing so much positivity out there too.

And we need it.

We need it.

Oh thank you very much.

We look forward to having you on the show again.

And for everyone out there, thanks so much.

We hope you have a wonderful and blessed week.