Episode 116: Are You Happy In Your Heart? – with Sarah Worlton

“Are you happy in your heart?”

My next guest, Sarah Worlton, first began hearing this question while volunteering during a humanitarian expedition in Guatemala. More than a decade later, Sarah has led numerous humanitarian expeditions to villages in Guatemala, Kenya, Mexico and Nepal. She also hosts the “Are You Happy In Your Heart?” podcast, which was inspired by what her volunteer work has taught her about life, purpose and happiness.

On this episode, Sarah shares how her humanitarian work and the challenges of 2020 have helped her grow as a person and led her to become a public speaker, podcaster and life coach.

To find out more about Sarah and her podcast, visit her official website www.sarahjworlton.com or her Instagram @sjworlton.

Special offer: Through the end of 2020, Sarah is offering free 30-minute life coaching sessions for Beyond 6 Seconds listeners! Email her at sarah.worlton at gmail.com for more information.

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The episode transcript and the text of Sarah’s poem “From Where I Sit” are below.

Today, on Beyond 6 Seconds.

Sarah: You know, so many times, we think all these doors are slamming in our face. Honestly, it sucks, but the beauty of it is let’s look through the window that’s open.

Carolyn: Welcome to Beyond 6 Seconds, the podcast that goes beyond the 6-second first impression to share the extraordinary stories and achievements of everyday people. I’m your host, Carolyn Kiel.

If you enjoy listening to the Beyond 6 Seconds podcast, you might also enjoy watching it on YouTube. I’ve posted the videos of my most recent interviews, including this one, on the Beyond 6 Seconds YouTube channel. Just go to YouTube and search for Beyond 6 Seconds. Also, while you’re there, don’t forget to click the red Subscribe button under the video and then click the little bell icon. That way, you’ll get notified when I post new videos. Thanks for your support, and now, please enjoy this episode.

I’m really excited to welcome my guest on the show today, Sarah Worlton. Sarah is the host of the Are You Happy in Your Heart? podcast which was inspired by her global humanitarian work with the organization CHOICE Humanitarian for more than a decade. Sarah’s led numerous expeditions to villages in Guatemala, Kenya, Mexico, and Nepal. She is a public speaker and life coach and Sarah takes great pride in being the favorite aunt to her 13 nieces and nephews. She finds solace in hiking the vast Utah mountains, loves cute puppies, and binging The West Wing. Sarah, welcome to the podcast.

Sarah: Hey. Thank you so much! I’m so happy to be here.

Carolyn: Yeah, I’m so excited to have you here on the podcast today. I’d love to learn more about the volunteer work that you’ve done with CHOICE Humanitarian. What inspired you to start volunteering there?

Sarah: You know, a long time ago, in 2009, I was living in Washington, DC, and I had a really fun life. I had a full calendar and just doing so many fun things. I went to the inauguration of Obama in ’08. I went to vacations to the Outer Banks and stayed in beach houses. I went to just all over the place, and these things were kind of really selfish. There was a lot of like intake and they were really fun but I was coming to this point in my life that I just needed something more. I was at a personal crossroads, and it was at this time that my good friend Tyler told me that he was putting together a humanitarian trip for later that summer, and I gotta tell you, I thought the idea sounded so dumb. I’m like you are gonna find a hundred single people our age just with time to spend and money to burn and you’re gonna go where? Guatemala? And do what? Dig dirt? No, thank you. Honestly, I was such a brat about it. And then, as the weeks went on, I really started to feel pangs of discontentment and I thought, well, hmm, there’s this Guatemala trip that Ty is putting together. Maybe I should look into it, so I made a pro and con list and it just felt so right. It was like, Sarah, this is a no-brainer. Call Tyler right now, send your money in, and get on a plane and so I called Tyler up and I was like, “Ty, so, is it too late to sign up?” and he’s like, “Hahaha, look who had a change of heart,” and I got on a plane and I landed in Guatemala City and it was the most life-changing week of my entire existence, and so it really was because of Ty. He’s a doctor and he wanted to put together this organization or this trip to do humanitarian work. Like, we’ve done all these trips that are so like give me, give me, give me, and now let’s change it to give, give, give, and it just completely changed my life and so ever since I was wheels up out of Guatemala, I’m like, wow, this is it. This is the life that I’ve chosen and I never looked back.

Carolyn: Wow. So that was your first trip and —

Sarah: Yeah.

Carolyn: — you said in your bio that you’ve been volunteering for this organization for 10 plus years —

Sarah: Yeah.

Carolyn: — have you gone once a year to different places or what’s that kinda look like over time?

Sarah: Yeah, so, I was a volunteer for one more year after that and then I became an expedition leader with CHOICE Humanitarian and so that really opened the door to go to the other countries that CHOICE works with, so to give a little background on who CHOICE Humanitarian is, CHOICE stands for the Center for Humanitarian Outreach and Intercultural Exchange, so they focus on sustainable development projects, so they’re not a hand-out organization, they’re more of a grassroots hand-up organization, and they really focus on trusting the poor, teaching them to become leaders and dreamers in their own villages to lift themselves out of extreme poverty through sustainable development so that means education, healthcare, programs that work with gender equality and microfinance, agriculture, or things like that that they’re really, really focused on, so as a leader, I’ve been able to take other people on these expeditions and kind of see their experiences through these villages and it kinda reminds me of the first time, it’s like, okay, now you get it. You get what the magic is all about, so, yeah, I’ve been able to go to Nepal, Kenya, Mexico, and Guatemala, so — I go about once a year but not this year. I was gonna go to Peru for my tenth trip but COVID kinda put the brakes on that one so next year maybe.

Carolyn: Yeah, yeah. Sounds like there’s a lot of different sustainability projects that go on as part of the volunteering. What kind of things have you done when you’ve been on your volunteering expeditions?

Sarah: Yeah. So, it’s a lot of construction work and that is like, I grew up like weeding and mowing lawns, not a whole of construction, but it’s a lot of hard manual labor, mixing cement with the gravel and the sand and the water and stirring it and shoveling it. It’s tying rebar. It’s building stoves. Another project we’ve done, in Mexico, we helped build chicken coops and water cisterns so it’s a lot of like work that makes me feel totally wimpy but the beauty of the expeditions is you don’t focus so much on the project, you focus on the people, and the people are who you are building and empowering them and showing that you care about their ownership and their projects, so really, you don’t have to be like totally buff and I’m like, oh, I can mix cement in my sleep. It’s like after three shovels, I’m like, oh, but it’s not like drudgery because the background, that’s what you’re looking at. So, those are some of the projects we’ve done. A lot of helping construction of schools. In Kenya, we planted a lot of trees and we helped build desks, and that was really fulfilling at the end of the week seeing the children in this little village in Kenya called Sakake, seeing them just dancing around these desks that they were gonna be sitting in in school instead of sitting on the dirt floor, so, in that sense, we got to see the project come to completion and carrying that with a little Kenyan kid and placing that in the schoolhouse, I’m like this is your desk, buddy, so that was cool.

Carolyn: Alright, cool. So, it sounds like a lot of it is infrastructure which is like really critically important and then tools and other things like that that, you know, then the people can themselves use for education and for better health and easier development if you help build that structure or that foundation.

Sarah: Yeah, and there’s a lot of classes, so CHOICE has partnered with this organization called Days for Girls, so Days for Girls is an organization that goes into — helps educate girls and women and men in third world countries about menstruation. A lot of times, there’s this mentality that if a girl has her period, that means she’s dirty and unclean and needs to be ostracized and stay home from school, but with education and just giving them tools and educate like this is what the female reproductive system looks like, let’s talk about periods, let’s talk about your calendar, let’s talk about sanitation and ways that you can still go to school when you are having your monthly cycle, so there’s a lot of education classes as well which I think are really, really cool to be a part of.

Carolyn: Yeah, absolutely.

Sarah: Yeah.

Carolyn: So, yeah, so, I mean, it sounds like, while the work itself is fulfilling and really critically important, that it’s really your experiences with the people that you meet and interact with that —

Sarah: Yeah.

Carolyn: — really stay with you, so, yeah, you mentioned earlier that it was really life changing for you. You know, what were maybe some of the experiences that you had that you felt contributed to it being so life changing?

Sarah: It’s being in a place where you’ve never experienced before. You’ve never experienced the smells, the air, the food, the people, the language, just so different, and the way that it struck me and it almost kind of — it took a while to process like, where am I? What’s happening? Well, to be quite honest, it’s taken me a decade to process the whole experience, to be honest, but really what it was is just feeling 100 percent out of my element and so completely happy and content at the same time. Girl, there were fleas on my bed. There were spiders in my sleeping bag. I went to — we were in this village and I asked where the bathroom was, that’s a question that you sometimes ask, and they pointed around the corner and so I walk around the corner and I see just this tin shed and I was like, okay, Sarah, this is why you’re here, just lean into the experience, and I opened this tin door and inside where the, you know, wooden like toilet seat was, were these three turkeys and I was like, “Get outta here! I gotta go!” and it’s just those moments that are so unique and the people that you share these experiences with because the people that I was there with, I knew a lot of them, but they had come from coast to coast. I didn’t know who Veronica Schindler was or Shelly Stevens or Scott Porter or — I didn’t know who these people were but here we were digging and it didn’t matter what his resume said, it didn’t matter what her bank account said or her “who knows you” or “who I can name drop,” it was you have a shovel and I have a shovel, you’re a human and I’m a human, that’s what matters, and these are the friendships that have lasted. So I think that’s what really stuck with me is it was just this synchronicity happening, just unfolding in front of me and it’s just stayed with me forever.

Carolyn: To have a different perspective on life. It really breaks you out of the mold and kind of what your usual day-to-day here at home —

Sarah: Oh, completely. Completely. And it really puts things in perspective, for sure. Yeah.

Carolyn: Yeah. So, your volunteering experience has really helped kind of inform the podcast that you do —

Sarah: Oh, yeah.

Carolyn: — and even the name of the podcast, Are You Happy in Your Heart?, I believe has ties from your experience. So yeah, would love to hear more about your podcast, where the name came from, and —

Sarah: Sure.

Carolyn: — kinda how that ties into your experience.

Sarah: The name — so, in Guatemala, the native language is Spanish but high up in the — about 10 hours outside of Guatemala City in the Polochic region, they speak Q’eqchi’ and it turns out how you say hello in Q’eqchi’ is Ma sa’ aach’ol. The translation of that is “are you happy in your heart,” and so that was the first thing that we learned and I was just so amazed by that, that how they say hello is not, “¡Hola! Cómo estás?” or, “Hey, what’s up, buddy?” it’s, “Are you happy in your heart?” And so the response, say, would be like yes or you would say Sa or Sa’ linch’ul which, yes, I’m happy in my heart. And so, about a year and a half ago, almost 2 years actually, I was asked to give a keynote presentation about my experiences in the villages and I thought I have 10 years of stories and pictures, how can I shrink it down to something interesting, and I had just been on my sixth expedition to Guatemala and that’s why I’ve been saying Ma sa’ aach’ol about a thousand times a day and so I thought, ah, are you happy in your heart, okay, you’re happy in your heart when what? And so, that was a really transformative experience to really like take 10 years of your life and narrow it down to the best of the best, and that really inspired to be the name of the podcast so it’s kind of like my love letter to Guatemala and it’s the question that keeps me curious. I love people’s stories and I just interviewed a guy who loves to give tours in cemeteries. He’s obsessed with quirky Utah history in cemeteries and I’m like — and so I had him on my show and so that just kind of is an example of so many different walks of life come together, can converge when you ask the question, “Are you happy in your heart and what does that mean to you and how has your experience help shaped that?” and so, yeah, the podcast is kind of my tribute, love letter to Guatemala where it all began.

Carolyn: Wow. And so, you know, it’s very focused on stories because it’s an interview-style podcast and you —

Sarah: Sure.

Carolyn: — interview people about their stories but also the types of things you ask for tie into that central theme of are you happy in your heart in terms of how do you find or define happiness and especially —

Sarah: Right.

Carolyn: — when things get really challenging.

Sarah: Oh, yeah, and it’s really interesting to hear how their experiences have helped shaped that, and at the end of my show, I always ask the same two questions: because of your experience, fill in the blank, happiness is and happiness is not. And it’s so fascinating that those answers are never the same. And just — I mean, the answers that I hear from that just really make you stop and think, whoa, what is really happiness to me and it’s interesting, you know, podcasting, as you know, just kinda takes on a life of its own and I have found that the people I interview, at the time, they say something that I refer to later of whatever I’m going through and whatever they said somehow, it applies to what I’m going through at that moment, whether if it was 6 months ago or yesterday. So it’s like these little nuggets of wisdom that I get from other people’s stories about their perspective and how they view happiness which is something we all want, something that we’re all in the pursuit of, and it usually just kind of turns a little lightbulb on so it’s been interesting.

Carolyn: Yeah. That’s interesting that it sounds like everybody defines happiness or finds it in a different way.

Sarah: Oh, for sure. It’s fascinating.

Carolyn: I guess no one understands why it’s sometimes so hard to define and so hard to find sometimes.

Sarah: Yeah, and it is and I gotta tell you, like this year, it’s been taking a beating.

Carolyn: Yeah.

Sarah: Let’s just be real. It’s been dang hard. And I had a friend, just the other day, I hadn’t heard from him in months, he’s my friend that lives in Los Angeles, he texts me out of the blue and he said, “Are you happy in your heart today, Sarah?” and, honestly, the answer at that exact moment was no. No. So, but then when I got to thinking, so what did you do, what were your steps to move forward? Well, I put my headphones on, I got to work, I listened to my favorite Pandora station, I cracked a Diet Coke, and you carry on. But when I think about what made me happy in my heart truly when you look back on it was someone cared about me and they reached out. I had an ice cold Diet Coke which means I have — you know, and Pandora and internet and windows and sunshine, which means we’re living our lives in abundance, so that kind of brought on a new definition and a new way of looking at it is are you looking at it in the day-to-day, the little things or are you looking at like the bigger, you know? And so, it just — the answer for me changes from day to day. It can, for sure.

Carolyn: And especially during this time when, you know, so much of our — so many of the things that we take for granted or have taken for granted, so many of us for years and years, are just, you know, on hold or gone or are completely changed.

Sarah: Completely, you know? Someone told me once early on when it was like maybe the beginning of April, I was on a phone call with my friend, I was like what am I gonna do? My job offer just got rescinded and I’m living at home and I’m 39, like, what am I gonna do, you know? And COVID and everything was in shutdown and she said, “It is fertile ground for you to build something new,” and at the time, I was like I have no idea what that means because I was so — I mean, I think a lot of people can relate, like it’s kind of altered our mental state a bit, for better or for worse, and, for me, it took a while to tighten my bootstraps again. You know, it took all summer and I realized that in that moment, I’m like, okay, I’m gonna become a life coach. Let’s do this. Because I’m having a hard time figuring my life out, I’m gonna help other people in the process. The internet is an endless web of information, let’s go, and so once I started really studying that and starting like taking practice clients and taking what I’m learning, that helped me lift me out of my COVID funk and so that’s been the fertile ground that I have kind of replanted. It’s been very unexpected.

Carolyn: Wow. I’d like to dive into that story a little bit, if you don’t mind, because —

Sarah: Please, yeah.

Carolyn: — I think that, you know, I think so many people have had their lives upended and, you know, I’ve even just talked recently to a couple people who have been laid off from their jobs or have, you know, lost work or just —

Sarah: Their dream job just never happens —

Carolyn: — can’t find the next thing. Exactly. So, it’s, you know —

Sarah: Yeah.

Carolyn: — and I feel like it’s important to share these experiences and see how people are —

Sarah: Sure.

Carolyn: — kinda getting through things. So, you know, you mentioned a little while ago that you had a job offer that was rescinded, but you moved for that offer, is that correct?

Sarah: Well, now let’s like rewind just a tad. So, I was living in Denver and about a year ago, maybe around Thanksgiving time, I started to feel like the Denver chapter was just kind of coming to an end. I was kinda feeling a pull. So when I got home from Thanksgiving, meaning I got back to Denver after the Thanksgiving holiday, it became very clear, you need to move home and you need to do it right now. I thought, okay, let’s just break this down here for a second. Do you have a job? No. Do you have like time on your lease? Six months left? Yes. Is it winter? Yes. Do you have a bunch of furniture? Yes. Is it Christmas in a couple of week and then New Year’s and you wanna move home when? January. Okay. But I couldn’t deny, God, the universe, you need to move home and you need to do it right now. So I started just moving forward. I sold everything I owned, except my couch and my dresser and my bed. And, little miracles, things just lined up one after another. It was crazy. And then I got on a plane, like I could just go on and on but there’s an episode that I did on my podcast called “A Rocky Mountain High…and Goodbye.” That is the only episode that I’ve done that I haven’t interviewed anybody, and it was kind of my tribute to this is kind of what happened, so I got here in January and life was great. I had like 6 weeks of just playing with family, going to the Sundance Film Festival, life was great. Okay, Sarah, let’s get a job here. So, around early March, I got a job offer and then mid-March, around St. Patty’s Day, we all know what happened. Job offer gets rescinded, and I can’t tell you how glad I am that I was in a safe landing place during lockdown. That I was home. That’s why I came home. So, to answer your question, I did not move for that job, I found that once I got here but I never got it.

Carolyn: And home you mean is Utah, that’s where you’re originally from.

Sarah: Yes. Lehi, Utah.

Carolyn: Yeah, so that’s — you feel like everything’s kind of moving along and the pieces are falling into place and then this like crazy thing happens with COVID and, you know, everything. Everything changes.

Sarah: Yeah.

Carolyn: So after that, you know, obviously, it takes a while to kinda recover from that shock and that change in direction, what happened after that? What did you wind up doing?

Sarah: So, it was a really hard summer. It was a lot of what the heck am I doing and it was a lot of job searching and a lot of rejections and a lot of — I had to do two rounds of quarantine ’cause I got exposed to COVID. Thankfully, I haven’t had it, but I live with someone who’s high risk and so I had to be quarantined for 14 straight days. I did two rounds of that and it was just a lot of job searching. And, honestly, it was a lot of rejections and it was just a big, giant, like really hard. I’m like what words do I use to describe, but, honestly, it was — I’m someone who loves to write and that’s kinda how I process things and I love writing poetry and, as cheesy as that sounds, that’s kind of my way of taking events that have happened in my life, putting it together in a really creative way, and this happened on a day that I was on the phone with, I’m sure people can relate, with the unemployment office, I was on hold for 3 hours and 41 minutes —

Carolyn: Oh, God.

Sarah: Yeah. And this isn’t to show my suffering CV but, I mean, this was — during that time, you know, I did productive things but that’s when Sarah hit rock bottom and that’s when I wrote this poem, I’ll have to share it with you, not right now but I can show you the text.

Carolyn: Oh, sure. I’ll put it in the show notes.

Sarah: Just needed to purge everything that had happened, like with the racial injustices, the fires, the earthquakes, you know, the virus killing people day in and day out, and the unemployment and the loss and the grief but also seeing the joy and the happiness and my niece made me a really cute flower crown for my birthday out of wildflowers, little things like that, so once I put that down on one paper and once I fully processed the last couple of months, I felt like I could move on and so right after that, I, you know, got a temp job and I’ve been doing that for a while and I’ve been starting studying life coaching and that’s helping me. That kinda turned the tide a little bit. Something that I wasn’t expecting but if you would have said, “Hey, you should be a life coach,” and if you told me that in March, I would have been like I am in no place to talk to anybody about moving forward ’cause I have no idea ’cause I am like planting a lot of flowers and going on little walks and doing yoga online, but it’s been a rollercoaster, to say the least, but also a lot of growth has happened, I’m sure, and I’ve been noticing some of it. It’s been really tough but a lot of good things have happened as well.

Carolyn: Yeah, definitely. And, you know, how did you discover life coaching as something that was something that you were interested in? Was it like did you find a particular coaching program that interested you or was it someone that you talked with or how did that come about?

Sarah: You know, gradually. I started to talk to people who have done it and I do a lot of like public speaking and I did a few events the beginning of this year and a lot of virtual right now with, you know, the Are You Happy in Your Heart, you know, it takes a virtual village, and, you know, just with talking with people, I would have people ask me, “Are you a life coach?” I’m like no. And so it kind of like started planting seeds and then once I just kind of hit rock bottom and I was starting, I’m like I have got to pull myself out of this and I just started searching online and I found some programs and some videos that really kind of like helped me and I really just have a way with people to begin with and podcasting honestly has been a good prep and it’s laid a really great groundwork because it’s all about listening and staying curious and asking questions, so I’ve had a year of podcast hosting to kinda help prep that and so — I’m not certified yet but I am taking practice clients and I do free 30-minute sessions and I use the material, the stuff that I’ve watched on YouTube and books that I read and people that I’ve talked to and it’s really been — it’s really been a cool journey so far.

Carolyn: And it sounds like from all the experiences that you’ve had with being a volunteer literally in the trenches, in these other areas and leading volunteers and leading expeditions and then I feel like all of that kinda comes together along with the podcasting and you said knowing how to interview someone —

Sarah: Yeah.

Carolyn: — and really provide a platform for them to be able to tell their story and share the important things that they’ve learned.

Sarah: For sure.

Carolyn: I think a lot of that all comes together, so, yeah, I can kinda see how that part of the story all comes together.

Sarah: Yeah. It has come together and I’m excited to see what this next year brings and I’m also excited that it’s October and after October comes November and then November, December, and then peace out 2020, but I’m excited to see what the rest, what the journey holds, right? And I think that’s my favorite part, is you don’t know. Isn’t that funny? Like if someone said, “Hey, I have this crystal ball and it works. Do you wanna see 2 years into the future?” Heck no!

Carolyn: I don’t think I wanna know honestly!

Sarah: No. I don’t wanna see ’til next Sunday! Like wait, why is there a cast on my leg? How come I don’t have any hair? You know what I mean? Like when you take one day at a time, it’s kind of like moving from Denver to Utah on a whim, literally, and in a zip and a flash. I had no clue how it would all work out, and I think that’s really when you see divine and purpose and stuff that you just can’t plan for roll into place when you’re like, ah, this is how it’s supposed to be, ’cause there’s no way, no way that I could have planned for this, right? And I think that’s when you see magic of the universe unfold and the hand of God and whatever you believe. I personally believe in the hand of God and universe and stuff so that really kinda makes it exciting.

Carolyn: That’s amazing and, yeah, it’s true, you don’t really know how it’s gonna work out but I’ve certainly found, I mean, and even in my own life, thinking back some of the opportunities that I really wanted that didn’t materialize. In some cases, I actually kinda got to see the trajectory of what happened with those and they wound up in places that wouldn’t have been right for me, so, you know, where I am now is, you know, where I feel like I need to be.

Sarah: Yeah, for sure.

Carolyn: Yeah. So, you’re getting your experience to become a life coach.

Sarah: Yeah.

Carolyn: What are your goals around the type of work you wanna do, whether it’s with life coaching or podcasting or anything else?

Sarah: You know, I love public speaking and I love doing it in a virtual space and I’d love more opportunities to do that. I have been able to do my virtual keynote in the past couple of months a couple of times and it’s been awesome and I think that I have a really unique approach to finding happiness and purpose wherever you are on your life path and that’s the whole point of why I put my website together and that first presentation that I gave really just spring boarded all of this. The podcast is almost 1 year old. Yay! So this is podcast birth month, and so my goal is by this time next year to have at least double the amount of listeners and downloads that I have now and really I just added it on Spotify just today, yay! And with the life coaching, you know, I would love to be connected with people — I haven’t really narrowed down the type of person. I find with podcasting, the people who need to find your show are gonna find it and the people that you, the shows that you’re gonna be on, they will find you, you know? I really believe in an organic approach. You know, a lot of people like e-mail me saying, “Hey, you have a podcast, you wanna hire me to get 10,000 followers?” I’m like no. Who are those people? I don’t know who they are. They’re just numbers. That doesn’t mean anything to me. The numbers, you know, are important but if you don’t know who they are, so with life coaching, I mean, I do it all over Zoom and it’s such a fun journey, you know, I would love to partner with other life coaches and therapists and holistic healers that do retreats and different things like that ’cause I have the expedition leader experience so I’d love to partner with people like that and, I mean, we’ll see. I mean, I have an office admin job that I do like 9 to 5 now, that’s fine, I’m like, I don’t know what — it’s like everywhere that I applied to said no, so I’m like okay, the universe is telling you something, Sarah. Maybe you need to focus on something else, right? You know, so many times, we think all these doors are slamming in our face. Honestly, it sucks, but the beauty of it is let’s look through the window that’s open, right? So, we’ll see, you know? If there’s anyone out there who needs a life coach, a free 30-minute session of help, I’m sure you’ll put my e-mail address at the bottom.

Carolyn: Absolutely. Yeah, and that’s wonderful.

Sarah: Yeah. I mean, it’s just — it’s so much fun and I’m learning so many amazing things.

Carolyn: Alright, very cool. Sarah’s free 30-minute sessions and —

Sarah: Well, free for now, through 2020. January 1, it’s a different story.

Carolyn: Gotcha. Yeah, so, speaking of that, how can people get in touch with you if they wanna learn more about your podcast, your life coaching, your public speaking?

Sarah: Yeah. Yeah, well, before I do that, if you are interested in the work that CHOICE Humanitarian does, obviously they’re not doing expeditions for 2020 but that’s not gonna be forever, just to find what the work that they do and what they have done and different things they’ve got their hands in, it’s choicehumanitarian.org. You can find my podcast which is called Are You Happy in Your Heart? It’s on iTunes. It’s now on Spotify. Stitcher, Google Play, and my website is sarahjworlton.com. And then that has my podcast and, you know, you can e-mail me directly on there. I’m also on Instagram @sjworlton and, yeah, I’d love to connect with anyone who feels called to.

Carolyn: Alright, yep, I’ll put those links in the show notes so that people can get those as well.

Sarah: Oh, thank you!

Carolyn: Yeah. So, yeah, thanks, again, Sarah, for being on my show and, you know —

Sarah: Oh, thank you.

Carolyn: Yeah. As we close out, is there anything else that you’d like our listeners to know or anything else that they can help or support you with?

Sarah: Oh, that’s so great. One thing I would say to your listeners is be kind to yourself. 2020 is tough for everyone. That there is sunshine breaking through the clouds if you look for it. I know it and sometimes it’s so hard but, you know, just be kind to yourself and I would say if there’s an organization that is out there that needs a motivational speaker, I’d love to be connected to you that way as well, if it calls to you, and, yeah, namaste.

Carolyn: Thank you so much. Really enjoyed talking with you —

Sarah: Thank you. It’s been so much fun.

Carolyn: Thanks for listening to Beyond 6 Seconds. Please help us spread the word about this podcast. Share it with a friend, give us a shout-out on your social media, or write a review on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast player. You can find all of our episodes on our website and sign up for our free newsletter at www.beyond6seconds.com. Until next time.

 

Sarah’s poem:

“From Where I Sit.”

A few months ago, I dropped a verse.
About a virus right beside us, a world-wide curse.

We’re all going through this a bit differently. It hasn’t been a bed of roses, I admit.
This is my perspective on things. How I see it- from where I sit.

We were shut down! In full-blown isolation. School is out now, yet this is sure no vacation.

The economy wasn’t booming, yet a lot of us were zooming. We were doing our own hair; cut and color. A DIY kind of grooming.

The weather sure was nice and it aided to our enjoyment. Yet, too many of us are still filing for unemployment.

Easter Morn we watched Andrea Bocelli sing his songs solo.
Empty rooms & melodic tunes- we joined in from Utah to the Duomo.

He sang “Amazing Grace” to an audience of none. This pandemic wasn’t suddenly over, my friends. It truly had just begun.

Thank Goodness for John Krasinski bringing us “Some Good News.” With stories and tweets from around the globe, of people beating out the blues.

The shelves are restocked, yes. A new hope- yeah, maybe just a glisten.
Now, we’re masked up and each register has its partition.

We hike, bike and shop showing now only our eyes. The innocent and the guilty now have an equal disguise.

The masks are to protect and to help stop the spread. Yet each new day more people are sick. More souls are reported dead.

One man had a hard time breathing yet no mask covered his face. He was down- cheek to pavement and was given no time to plead his case!

An outcry. A stand-off. He shouts, “Stop! I can’t breathe!”
A life ended short. It’s time to fight for what you believe.

Isolation was shattered! Get your signs and iron fists in the air. Now is the time to march. To show that we actually care.

This isn’t just a hashtag you post and then it falls into the void. #BlackLivesMatter is a movement and it got moving again with George Floyd.

I go to the mountains to reset and to heal my broken heart. To gain energy and perseverance. A resolve to restart.

The smell of bug spray and campfire brings me back to simpler times. Times of ease and laughter and very different rhymes.

From where I sit, I try and try every single day. I swing and I miss. I don’t know what to say.

From where I sit I see rejection and re-election. I see chaos and commotion. From where I sit all I want is to see is forward motion.

From where I sit, I see kindness. I see love and flower crowns. I see dancing bears that whisked away cares. I see smiles that once were frowns.

From where I sit I still have hope.
My one last possession.
From where I sit, this ain’t over. This year is one big, horrible, wonderful life lesson.

©️Sarah J. Worlton

#FromWhereISit