Until you find the Spark that keeps your inner fire burning you are at risk of being derailed by the challenges and obstacles you encounter along the way

Are you ready to show up unapologetically as the best version of yourself, taking bold decisive action towards your goals, dreams and aspirations? All you need is a Spark!

Everything you do, have done and will ever do started with some kind of catalyst, impetus, inspiration, a SPARK!

It only takes a Spark to ignite the fire of determination, wisdom and consistent action and it takes a spark to keep that fire burning.

Don’t allow the challenges of the moment to prevent you from standing firmly in your awesome and boldly showing up on purpose for greater impact and influence

Position yourself for success by taking more bold and determined action towards your hopes, dreams and aspirations.

They asked if they could bottle me and Pocket Sparks of Inspiration is my answer to that question.

I created Pocket Sparks of Inspiration to help you ignite your inner fire and build your Action Muscles. You have three strands to choose from

Pocket Sparks of Inspiration is in honour of my late mother Olga Pyke. Her love of God and her desire to serve others is a legacy that lives on in me. Even though she was only on this planet for 51 years 27 years later people still speak fondly of her the impact she had and how she made them feel.

She was a spark that ignited the fire in so many.

Here’s what you can expect with Pocket Sparks of Inspiration

• Weekly Sparks of Inspiration in video, audio or text format tailored to the strand of your choice
• Downloadable Spark Power Sheets that will take you through the key points with specific action steps  
• Telegram channel

2020 will be remembered for many reasons. For me, the term 2020 will always be associated with great vision, the precursor to success.

The Sparkle Bubble concept was birthed in 2020, inspired by the UK government (I find inspiration everywhere). In its effort to alleviate loneliness and isolation by people most affected by social restrictions, it created the social bubble.

2020 IS WHEN IT ALL BEGAN

In 2020 I decided to start a Mastermind but as it was aimed at women, I changed the name to ‘Sistermind’. The first Sistermind met every week for
18 months. We cheered each other on, comforted each other through challenging moments, held each other accountable and celebrated our successes. When the government created the Social Bubble I realised that this was exactly what I had created with my Mastermind and added a little Sparkle.

SPARKLE DOORS OPEN

The Sparkle Bubble exists to help ambitious women connect, grow, and celebrate success. It is a safe place to develop, grow and polish your Sparkle, and it now includes three sections: Sparkle Sistermind, Pocket Sparkle Inspiration and Sparkle Sistermind Jesus Edition.

I am bringing my A game to ensure that you leave refreshed, recharged and ready to move boldly towards your vision and your dreams. I believe that 2020 is still all about vision, so let’s create a vision for you finishing 2020 strong and let’s start to map the course to get you there.

It seems like these unsettling feelings of overwhelm just sit and wait for their chance to catch you off your guard or off balance. Then just like a thief in the night, when you are at your most vulnerable they pounce and overpower you.

Overwhelm has one mission and that’s simply to confuse and confound you, looking to shut you down and paralyse your ability to cope. You are immediately overrun with a profound sense of self-doubt and start questioning yourself and your abilities. And just when you need to believe in yourself the most, it feels as though your self-reliance has completely deserted you.

If you are one of the rare individuals that hasn’t experienced anything like this I salute you and humbly ask that you share your expertise with the rest of us who become unfortunate victims (yes I did use that word) from time to time. But for the rest of us there is no shame in passing through that ‘victim’ place, so instead of berating yourself for being in that position (again) stop!

Whilst you may be a product of your situation or circumstance it is important to remember you are not your situation or circumstance and the key to overcoming your feelings of overwhelm is simply to control your thoughts and your emotions. It’s simple, just don’t allow negative feelings of any sort to gain a foothold in your life.

Okay simple to say but much harder to do!
By choosing to deny those self-doubts and focus instead on finding the needed solutions, you’ll be surprised that the answers you need will come knocking at your door. It’s true you can overcome any feelings of overwhelm simply by controlling the way you feel. There is no question that feeling self assured and self-confident is a powerful weapon in the battle against the feeling of overwhelm.
But how do you control your feelings
Good question and one that can only be answered when you are in safe harbour and the feelings of overwhelm have passed or are at least abated for the moment.

The answer lies in your ‘Self-belief Cover’
Self-belief cover’ is a unique blend of first aid and personal insurance policy, which once in place will help to manage feelings of overwhelm and either prevent it from happening so often or shorten the time you dwell in the land of overwhelm.

Here are seven things you can do to form the basis of your ‘Self belief cover’. Make sure you add your individual stamp to make it truly personal.

1. Create your dream team. Identify people in your life that can act as a buffer for your feelings and help you to rebuild your self-esteem.
2. Choose a song(s) that help to lift your spirit and lighten the mood. Add to music that make you feel like dancing and do just that get to your feet and dance!
3. Get yourself a journal and use it to release what you are experiencing. Just write, don’t reread it is simply to be used as your dumping ground.
4. Create your Mountain Top Journal. Every time you experience a high, or learn a new lesson record it – write, draw, include a picture – it will be a useful distraction when those moments of overwhelm try to invade your mind.
5. Seek advice. Identify your favourite people either living or dead and write down what they would say to you to help you to move towards a positive frame of mind.
6. Use affirmations. Review or renew your affirmations and make sure that you have at least three that you repeat to yourself everyday
7. Watch DVDs(videos if you are still from the old school) Buy, borrow or record things that make you laugh and help you to escape from the challenges of the moment.

Assemble the components of your ‘Self belief Cover’ now and at the first sign of overwhelm knocking at your door, use the components and channel all of your energy on making good things happen remembering that your mind really is the most powerful tool at your disposal and it can cut effortlessly through those feelings of overwhelm

And if that was not enough we/they were constantly reminded that we/they were far from being ‘normal’.

The transition from childhood to adulthood does not make this process any easier, again we try hard to be part of the crowd, to fit in with our peers and not be, do or say any thing that would mean we stand out from the crowd and even if we decide standing out is acceptable either we are not confident enough to hold our own or those we hold near and dear keep reminding us not to rock the boat bringing us back to the ‘norm’.

But for those of us who choose to go confidently against the grain success beckons as we discover a little known fact that requires the authentic self to step up to the plate and make itself heard. We discover the power in acting/being natural. Why is this important and why does this have a significant impact? Simply put, the ‘norm’ requires you to respond or act according to ‘a standard, model, or pattern regarded as typical’ Essentially your behaviour is based less on who you are right now and more on who you used to be and how other people have responded to the same or similar situation or circumstance. On the other hand being natural frees you up to be more of who you were created to be and requires the authentic you to step up to the plate and respond ‘..easily or spontaneously’ basing your decisions on the current situation and not what might have been relevant for another person and for another moment in time.

How do you know the difference?

When a situation arises do you require evidence and information from times gone by? And do you look closely to how lists of people, who are nothing, like you and some of whom you have never met, for help and guidance to inform the decision at hand? If this is the case chances are you are acting normally and not naturally.

How can you be more authentic?

When that situation arises as it invariably will, stop, take a breath and quietly ask your inner you for advice and the course of action it would recommend. You will find that you will feel more comfortable with your decision and you would have reached that decision much quicker.

Choose today to be the day you stop being normal and you start being natural.

Stop for a moment and look at the canvas that is your life. Sure it might have had some worn edges, it may even have had some stains on it, it may even have been patched together in places but the interesting thing about your life’s canvas is that you can chose to look at as worn and disheveled or see it each day as a fresh new canvas just waiting for colour to be added.

It really is all about the way you think about it. I am sure if you stopped right now and believed that your life was a blank canvas with you as the master painter you would find new eyes to look at your life.

• Think of yourself as a master painter. Feel free to liken yourself to one of the world’s great painters or an undiscovered new talent.
• Start each day anew; remembering that each new day brings with it a brand new canvas, fresh with no mistakes.
• Visualise how you want your day (canvas) to be and choose the colours you want to create your day’s masterpiece with.
• As you go about your day open your eyes and observe the beauty of colour around you and think how you can use these colours on your canvas. Remember you are in the business of creating a masterpiece
• Splash the colours on your masterpiece to bring it to life.
• At the end of the day reflect on the beauty of the day’s canvas, observe the colours, the brush strokes and images that came together to bring the canvas to life. Now hang up the days canvas and allow its images to become part of your memories because you will get a new canvas to play with tomorrow

The only question that remains is how colourful is your canvas?

And that is how life continues to unfold we expect things to happen, see the world through the lens that best fit the situation and due to some form of universal law, the things we expect usually show up, but the question is who tells us what to expect and how do we know exactly what we are expecting?

Have you or do you know someone who has woken up and before you/they have even put one foot on the floor you/they have declared that you/they are expecting the next twelve hours to be a bad day and then as if by magic, in almost a 100% of cases, the person who made this profound declaration is usually proved right. Is it that you or others are gifted psychics or is it perhaps more likely that the day turned out just as expected and all that happened was that the universe went into overtime to present you/them with exactly what was expected.

Or maybe, a not so pleasant situation has happened and you call a friend, who has been watching from the sidelines, for support and in the process of the conversation your friend simply declares, “Well what did you expect?” Is the friend suggesting that you somehow brought this situation on yourself?

Yes they are and this is exactly what the ‘experts’ in the world-renowned The Secret movie share with us and to a great extent they are right, but maybe, just maybe it is a little too simplistic to use that illustration alone to explain away the daily occurrences in our lives.

Maybe it is more about the actions, or lack thereof, we take based on our expectations. Your attitude, posture, language, physiology, sense of dress etc. etc will change dramatically depending on whether you expect your day to be a fantastic one or whether you think it is going to simply be just another one of those days.

Expectation is essentially faith at work (and you don’t have to be a member of a religious organization to have faith) and along with its cousins Focus and Action it gives us the successful outcomes we desire.

But for some of us the waters of expectation have been muddied by the challenges and obstacles of the past as well as the opinions of people in the present and until and unless we find a way to navigate through this terrain we are destined to relive time and time again unhealthy and unhelpful expectations of ourselves and never truly get a chance to enjoy our ‘Great Expectations’ (Charles Dickens knew what he was talking about)

It is also useful to note that in the absence of a consciously declared expectation we have in fact declared to the universe we expect it to do it’s duty and give us nothing. And the dangerous thing about expecting nothing is that you are rarely if ever disappointed.

So how do you raise the level of your expectations?

Firstly it is important to note that absolutely everything that has ever been achieved happened because a powerful formula was created between the powerful agents of our expectation, the lens of our expectation and the corresponding action.

7 things you can do right now to raise your level of expectation

1. Choose to expect great things of yourself and write down at least five things you expect from your life today.
2. Now raise the level of your expectancy. Do not use the past as a yard stick to measure your expectations by do not allow past experiences to dull your dreams. By raising your expectancy allow your perspecive of your world and what is possible to be enlarged. Rewrite the five things you are expecting from your life.
3. Write yourself affirmations to support your high level of expectation and repeat it to yourself throughout each day.
4. Stand in front of the mirror and inform yourself that it is okay to have high expectations and that the past does not have a part to play in the decision making process.
5. Wake up each day and openly declare the day as great day before it really gets started, after all it is a new day fresh with no mistakes so why can’t it be a great day?
6. Be observant, as you go about your day look around you and begin to acknowledge and see the things around you. You will be amazed at what you see when you are really looking.
7. At the end of the day write a gratitude journal and give thanks for at least five things that you have experienced each day.

But of course we know this is not possible!

However, a Holiday Inn Express advert to promote their free wifi, suggests that maybe it is when we create an online brand and an offline brand with the only connection between the two being the name we use.

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Whilst the video suggests that it is okay to have two personas this is not so acceptable in business as it will only serve to confuse your customers.

Your target audience will be experiencing your brand through multiple channels so having a consistent look and feel when your potential customer sees you online and connects with you offline is crucial to building your customers trust in your company and encouraging them to spend more money with you. And unlike the people in the Holiday Inn Express advert your offline you and your online you need to work together.

You can do that by creating a consistent branding experience between the offline and online parts of your marketing campaigns. If you reassure your prospects that you’ll deliver the same quality experience every time, no matter the medium, they will come back again and again.

Some points to consider:

Decide who you want to be and then be that. Decide what brand you’re creating and then embody it in everything you do online and offline. Are you the version of you that friendly person they met online, or are you the person who it is difficult to do business with? Are you the company that offline said they’d go above and beyond to ensure customer satisfaction or are you the online retailer who they know won’t make a wrong order right?

Your brands look and feel need to match. Your website and online marketing needs to look similar to your offline branding. The best way to get people to remember your brand and become your customers is consistency, so make sure you use the same messages and tone of voice in all your marketing. Your main business slogan should appear on every piece of marketing material that you create, and messages from offline campaigns should appear on your website.

Your website address should be on everything. Sounds obvious but it is also the thing that  it is often the most overlooked. Your website address should appear on absolutely everything – there is no point having one if you aren’t telling people about it. Put it on your business cards, letterheads, invoices, brochures etc.

Synchronicity between your online and offline worlds. Make sure that you have relevant information, across the channels, that support your sales process. Blending what people hold in their hand, the message and story that engages them, with the visual and verbal brand both online and offline is the most powerful way to connect and build your brand presence.

Is it time to refresh your brand? Are you making the most of the communication tools you have in the real world (signs, buildings, brochures etc?) Could your brand identity use a face lift that will present a more up-to-date, progressive persona? Are your business cards attention-getting?

Successful marketing is all about consistency, so take these steps to get your online and offline marketing working together. These strategies will give you a stronger brand and more leads and sales from your marketing.