WEBVTT
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I mean it could be anywhere from underwear to lingerie to swimsuits to evening wear, but what is the thing you love to draw most?
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The most it's uh business wear for, you know, like tuxedo dresses and things like what I'm wearing now.
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It's combining some masculine uh masculinity, which is the ties that men wear to feminine clothing.
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So that's that's the key of what sets my designs apart from everything else out there is that I'm combining masculine and feminine and some things that we don't generally see on women, such as ties, I'm combining that fabric into the collars of most of the I love that.
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Yeah, so that women can and and and men can have the the this um enmeshment of who we are as humans, that one thing.
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Okay, you're strapped in for another edition of the For the Love of Creatives podcast.
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I am your connections and community guy host Dwight, joined by our connections and community host, Maddox.
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And today we are joined by the lovely Sabrina Lava.
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Welcome, Sabrina.
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Thank you very much.
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It's really an honor to be a part of this show.
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Well, we're so glad that you're here.
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Um, we ran into you at an event uh held by uh Fashion Group International, Dallas.
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And uh you got to tell us a little bit about your story, but um, why don't you share with our listeners uh just a little bit about who you are and and uh tell your your story in about a minute or so.
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Okay.
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All righty.
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So I have two sides to me, which is one thing that we talked about at the FGI event.
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One side is that I'm a mental health care psychiatric provider.
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So I see clients for a living who are struggling with mental health disorders of all kinds.
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And then the other side of me is a designer and a person who is heavily involved in the fashion industry.
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So now I can say that I there's a multifactorial way of me uh introducing myself into the world because I have two different sides, but somehow I mesh the two together because my mental health experience and what I do for a living meshes with the fashion world because it's about people, it's about people becoming themselves, which is one of the reasons that I am part of FGI and one of the reasons that we met, because we were people meeting each other.
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So in the grand scheme of things, those are my two sides.
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Love it.
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And I I love the way that you you fuse those together.
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I'd I'd like to to compliment you on the the lovely uh ensemble you're wearing.
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Is that one of your designs?
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Yes, it is.
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This is one of my very own designs.
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It's a silk tie material here, and then it's a business suit.
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So I this was one of my my first designs, and it's been very popular.
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It's lovely.
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Thank you.
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Thank you.
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I I I also love the way you talk about both of your professions because it sounds like there's passion for both of them.
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Yes, absolutely.
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We had a previous guest that was an actor and had a corporate job with uh Microsoft, and he talked about how he had decided that he was not going to have just limited to one passion, and that he loved both and intended to continue doing both.
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And that's kind of a new concept because most people are either or, and um if they're in one, they're trying to get into the other so they can let go of the first one.
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And so it's really kind of interesting and refreshing.
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Now you're the second person that talks about two passions and how much they mean, both of them mean to you.
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And I'm assuming you wouldn't give up either one to do the other.
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Is that correct?
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That is correct.
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So basically, my career, my professional career in healthcare started decades ago, and I have four US degrees from universities all the way up to my doctorate degree.
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So my associates, my bachelor's, two master's, and my doctorate degree from my professional side.
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So there was a time in my life, decades, where I was just doing one thing.
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I was just pursuing one career, and that career was my entire life.
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I was breathing mental health care, I was waking up to mental health care, I was going to sleep to mental health care, and that really was consuming my entire life.
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So around the time of the pandemic, I felt really overwhelmed with the work life and trying to balance the work life and having a life of my own.
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Because during the pandemic, it was a very heavy time, as we all remember.
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There was a lot of things going on in the world and in people's family lives.
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And it was a time of uncertainty.
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And being a mental health care provider at that time was a very, very heavy burden for me.
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And that's when I started to realize that this burden started to overtake my entire being, that I wasn't using the creative side of my brain that I had years and years ago, which was my passion for fashion, um, the love of everything that included the glamour, the glamour.
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I suppressed all of that just to focus on everyone else and everyone else's needs, but I realized how overwhelmed and how burdensome it became just to be a caregiver for everybody else in this field.
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So I started to explore more, a little bit more about myself, wanted to become myself, wanted to understand myself.
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And I was also in a decade of my life where I had the capability and the mental understanding that there was inner work that needed to be done.
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So I started my clothing brand.
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I started to work on that.
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And I realized the more that I started to work on my creative side, the less burden I felt from my work.
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So it made me a better provider when I was living out my passion or starting that up during the pandemic.
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And then that kind of led to my evolution to come out from my shell in the suburbs to Dallas and start to experience more of the fashion world and the people that were out there, where I achieved more and more inspiration and more and more support and love.
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And that's how I decided to just continue the both to get both of them together.
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Sabrina, what you have said has sparked a very specific question for me.
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Um, we were at a Halloween party recently, and of course, we talk a lot on the podcast and on our platform about becoming.
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It's a big part of the whole creative process, and you're you're talking about that.
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And so a woman at this party asked me a party, a question, and I I want to pass the question to you, and because I know what my answer was, I'd love to know what your answer is to this.
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We were I I have made the comment that you know, as human beings, we get to choose who we become in life, and we get to choose and determine, completely determine how we show up in life.
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And she said, I get that, yes, but how do you figure out who you want to become?
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And I'm gonna flip that question because I know how I answered, but how would you answer?
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You're in in the process of that.
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How would you answer?
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How do you figure out who you want to become?
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I think that um there are certain steps to take in order to figure that out, but in the grand scheme of things, I think it requires a lot of reflection.
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And that reflection is about the past as well.
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A lot of times we suppress the past and we just want to focus on the future to become someone or or try to become a better version of ourselves.
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But only through understanding and processing our past do we go on that journey to become the best version of ourselves.
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And the inner work that's required, it takes a lot of steps and it's it's a it's a process and it takes time to do the inner work.
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The inner work does require uh reflection and understanding and going through the troublesome times in order to get past them.
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Because if we only suppress, if we only just uh, you know, just close our ears and our eyes and say that never happened, that that's not a part of me, it just comes back.
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It comes back and we have to face it over and over and over again.
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It's through reflection and processing to go through it, do we get past it to become the better version of ourselves?
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So that process that you're talking about going through and becoming, looking and reflecting and all, I I'm I'm very aware of that and I completely agree.
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There is a certain portion of the population that is reluctant, reluctant to do that for those people that haven't taken that first step.
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They are in that reluctance, that resistance.
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What would you say to them that might inspire them to take those steps, that first step, and to launch into that self-awareness work and reflection?
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What are your words of wisdom based on because I can tell right now you're in this, you are doing this.
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This isn't some lip service that you read in a book.
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You speak in a manner that I can tell you're in this process.
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Yes, I am in the process.
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I would say the very first thing is the readiness factor.
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The person has to be ready.
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If they're not ready to do the inner work, if they don't feel that they can face the past and the challenges, then they're likely not going to be successful.
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So when a person has the mindset and they say that I am actually ready and I really want to do this, then the journey begins.
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And a lot of times that happens when a person, some people have an epiphany, they have that moment where there's some sort of something happens, something changes in life, and they sudden suddenly start to see things a little bit differently.
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It could be through experiences such as travel, it could be through meeting other people, it could be through through various types of some epiphanies, sometimes dreams, sometimes health problems.
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There becomes a time when a person is ready and they generally know when that time is.
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And that's when people sit down and they try to look at the resources that they have in order to do that inner work.
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If the readiness factor isn't there and a person says, Well, I just want to do this, um, but they may not be quite ready, they may go halfway and then just stop.
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They may do a little bit of work and then just stop because they aren't fully ready to uncover all the layers to become the best version of themselves.
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So I I guess what I'm hearing is if you start and stop and you get bogged down, that could just indicate that you weren't quite ready.
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It could.
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Sometimes the process is very overwhelming, too.
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We start the process and we may be journaling and writing things down, and suddenly it becomes an interference in our life because those are some of the things that we aren't quite ready to deal with emotionally.
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So sometimes people have to put that to the side, do the daily work, the work, the going to work, coming home.
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People may suppress that for a little while because it was just way too overwhelming.
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But then people who have that desire and need, they'll go back to it, they'll start it again, they'll pick up their journal again, and they'll start writing again.
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So that's why it's an evolution.
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It's a process.
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I like how well you articulate all this.
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I sense that is the product of multiple, multiple degrees.
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You this is part of your your studies as a mental health professional.
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Yes, um, a little bit, but most of it came through self-discovery because I was preaching to people, journal, do this, do that.
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And sometimes I would see results, but it was something that was separate from me.
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It's when I picked up the pen and the journal that that's when the changes started to happen.
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And that's when I truly started to believe in some of the things that I had learned.
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But in addition to palliative mental health care, there was another part of my career that helped me to realize quite a lot more about life in my life, and that was palliative care.
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That changed my entire life, and that's what led me to pursue the career in mental health.
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Because with palliative care, that was being there for somebody through the most challenging time in their life.
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That really started to make me reflect a little bit more about my own life.
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So the the clients that I see in mental health care, they make me better because when I see them doing the work and they get better and they come back and they say, I'm I started this journey.
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I'm starting to see changes in my life, I'm starting to feel brighter, I'm starting to do things that I have suppressed for so many so for so long, such as hobbies.
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That's when I realize, okay, there this process does work.
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And I think we all need to at some point get do this, do this work.
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You know, most of my life I've heard we teach what we most need to learn, and you have just validated that.
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Yes, absolutely.
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Yes.
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So, you know, this this world that we live in, I think the inner work that we do to authentically live and understand our purpose in life is the greatest work that we can do.
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It's holy ground, and there's no other work like it.
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I agree wholeheartedly.
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Wow, very well said.
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Yeah.
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It's really hard for me to uh as you as you share and reflect, uh, when you mentioned palliative care, I um was taken back to my pandemic experience.
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And uh in uh all of 2020, I I spent it in hospitals and in skilled nursing facilities.
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And it was a very long goodbye to someone that uh was um someone that meant a great deal to me.
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I uh wound up burying a partner in at the close of the pandemic, and uh I learned to we learned to appreciate the things that really mattered.
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Uh I I got to have a sense that there are a lot of things that people might tell us are important.
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But when you're facing the stakes that mean uh you have to you you know that you're going to say goodbye to someone that your sun rises and sets on, you start to evaluate what's really important.
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And that's the the kind of experience that that you're talking about.
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You you have to be ready before you're you're willing to to make those strides.
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Um and to to take it to a place that's not as as heavy that I I think has more of a universal uh experience for people.
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I I remember what it was like going through school and seeing uh older adults who are going back, contrasted with kids that were you know away from home for the first time.
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There's uh a different energy between those types of things.
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And you can see with the the kids that are finally away from their parents for the first time, they want to party, they want to go and have that experience, and some of them uh might might fizzle out, might they might get into trouble, they might get hurt.
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Whereas um somewhere along the arc, people that return really appreciate it a lot more, they value that experience a lot more.
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And I I think that's a a concrete, near universal kind of experience that anyone can relate to that is along those same lines.
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One when you're ready to hear it, you will.
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Yes, I think a common question is, well, how will I know when I'm ready?
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But you really articulated that in just saying, you'll know when you're ready.
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And and it may not be big fireworks and and a flashing neon sign in the sky that says, I'm ready, or you're ready.
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It could be something really subtle.
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I I've known a lot of people that the readiness looked like really bottoming out.
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I mean, hitting rock bottom where there was no other place to go but up.
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For me, it came as a complete surprise.
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You know, I I was 29 years old, and a a boyfriend's friend that I never met in real life, we would talk to him on phone.
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He was on the other side of the world, but we would talk to him on the phone.
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He said, Oh, I've just done this really cool thing and it's coming to your city.
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You should do it.
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Well, it was a personal growth workshop.
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And he just talked about how fun and how cool it was.
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And we were like, Okay, we're all in.
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We didn't do any research, we didn't, we just signed up and showed up without knowing what to expect.
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And it it didn't have as profound an effect on the boyfriend of the time.
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It cracked me wide open and made me realize that I had just experienced something that I wasn't really even sure what it was.
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I just knew I wanted more.
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And that was where my moment of I'm ready.
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And and it, yeah, I didn't even know what I was ready for.
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I just knew that I wanted more of what I just experienced.
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And I've spent my life reading books and doing seminars and trainings and coaches and therapists, and you name it.
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But it can look a lot of get being ready can look a lot of different ways.
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Yeah, absolutely.
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Yeah.
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And many times it is that rock bottom that you mentioned.
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That's generally what I see is the rock bottom to mean alcoholism or drug abuse or divorce or you know, losses.
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But um, but you're right in the sense that sometimes it's just this desire and need, this desire to want to be better, regardless of where a person is in their life.
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And what I tell people is that you're allowed to reinvent yourself many times in your lives.
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It doesn't have to be once.
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It's kind of like when you see electric poles on a street, each pole is connected with wires, one pole connects to another, and the energy continues to transfer.
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It's kind of like that, where one pole can stand as a version of you that you were.
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There's another version that connects, there's another version, and each version is your reinvention, and you're allowed to do that as many times as you want to.
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That's beautiful.
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That is beautiful.
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You know, I I think that probably the best kept secret in our world, and I don't know why it's a secret, but probably because when you say it, people don't necessarily believe.
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But I have come to believe that the key to everything we want in life, it doesn't matter what it is.
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The key to that will be found in our relationship with ourselves.
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Anything you want to be better, whether it's your own, your your external relationships with other people, your relationship with your job, your relationship with your family.
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It doesn't matter what it is.
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The only way you can get there is via your relationship with yourself.
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And it's it's not rocket science, but it's it's the final frontier.
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It's the the last place.
00:22:08.470 --> 00:22:09.910
I mean, we were laughing about it.
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We were at Creative Mornings this morning, and somebody said, I said, they were talking about, you know, the final frontier, the last thing.
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And I said, you know, Star Trek told us that space was the final frontier.
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I don't believe that.
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I believe in here is the final frontier.
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And we started laughing because one person said, you know, most people would go to the moon before they would go within.
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Yes, yes, because that void, if if there's a void inside, people sometimes try to fill it with other things, buying things, you know, um materialistic things, just fill, fill, fill, fill.
00:22:50.070 --> 00:22:55.509
So external validation on social media has become big.
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Wow.
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Yeah.
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I I tell people there's no one that can fill that void except yourself.
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And that's where you need to do that self-discovery and finding yourself, because that void will will remain empty until you fill it with you, yourself.
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And and it's a bottomless pit.
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And until you the only thing you're you're right, the only thing you can fill it with is you.
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Yeah, yeah.
00:23:21.269 --> 00:23:28.230
And what people see is the external is kind of like the iceberg on top of uh an ocean.
00:23:28.390 --> 00:23:34.550
People see the external, how you look, how you how you you know walk or whatever it is.
00:23:34.710 --> 00:23:38.070
But there's so much underneath the iceberg, underneath the water.
00:23:38.230 --> 00:23:39.430
And that's everything.
00:23:39.590 --> 00:23:46.470
Your your values, your belief systems, your your culture, whatever makes you you.
00:23:46.630 --> 00:23:48.470
It's underneath the surface.
00:23:48.790 --> 00:23:55.190
But in order to feel and understand yourself, you need to understand all aspects of yourself.
00:23:56.710 --> 00:24:04.070
And not a uh a lot of people don't like sitting with uh what it is to do that exploration.
00:24:05.430 --> 00:24:10.230
Well, it's it's a little it's a little scary, it's a little hard for some people.
00:24:11.029 --> 00:24:29.990
It is, it's a challenge, and many times people have to let go of things that they no longer uh that no longer serve them, such as there may be some generational curses that we talk about, or some old ways of thinking or superstitions that families believed in.
00:24:30.230 --> 00:24:35.990
A lot of times when people are uncovering and doing the inner work, they're letting go of things, and that's hard too.
00:24:36.150 --> 00:24:39.190
And a lot of times people have to let go of relationships.
00:24:39.590 --> 00:24:43.029
That's a challenge too, close-knit relationships.
00:24:43.670 --> 00:25:04.470
So that's Sabrina, let's steer back to because what you're sharing with us now is what I'm what I'm getting is that this was the journey to get you to that second passion, to get you back in touch with that part of yourself that loves fashion, loves glamour, loves design.
00:25:06.710 --> 00:25:11.750
What part of your life was that in when you really started to head back in that direction?
00:25:12.310 --> 00:25:18.390
Were you a teenager still, or were you a fully, I guess you were a fully a full adult because you'd been in the field for a while?
00:25:18.710 --> 00:25:29.830
Well, I would say the passion for fashion probably started when I was seven years old because I have photos of myself wearing lipstick and heels and carrying purses.
00:25:29.990 --> 00:25:34.870
I was always one of those little glamour girls, just by by nature.
00:25:35.029 --> 00:25:38.150
I I'm pretty sure I was I was born that way.
00:25:38.470 --> 00:25:40.310
So it had always been there.
00:25:40.470 --> 00:25:50.310
But what's so ironic is that throughout my journey in my educational uh and my career, there was, I couldn't suppress that side of me.
00:25:50.470 --> 00:26:05.110
So I was always showing up 100% fully glamorous at just general dinners and general activities where there was happy hour and I would be my fullest version of my glamour self.
00:26:05.269 --> 00:26:08.070
And at some time, at some times it didn't quite fit in.
00:26:08.230 --> 00:26:10.230
Well, most times I didn't fit in.
00:26:10.390 --> 00:26:17.830
People would say, you look like you're going to a gala or you're, you know, you look like you're you're going to a ball or something like that.
00:26:17.990 --> 00:26:22.150
But I it was very difficult for me to suppress that side of myself.
00:26:22.310 --> 00:26:34.870
And I tried, I tried, but no matter what I did, there was always this, this, this intensity of that world that I wanted to just live every single day of my life to this day.
00:26:35.190 --> 00:26:53.750
So I I continued to kind of have it on the background, but I lived it out through just looking at others, through looking at magazines and admiring models and just kind of visualizing those things and um, you know, purchasing things and doing interior design, but I just couldn't take it outside.
00:26:53.830 --> 00:26:56.790
I couldn't take it out because I just felt like I couldn't.
00:26:56.950 --> 00:27:01.029
I felt like I had this career, I have this title, there's a barrier.
00:27:01.110 --> 00:27:02.310
What will people think?
00:27:02.550 --> 00:27:05.190
And most of all, what will my family think?
00:27:06.310 --> 00:27:13.830
So, you know, and then so obviously I had to get past those things because everybody thought I was losing my mind.
00:27:15.590 --> 00:27:18.070
People would say you're fine where you are.