📢 Are you wasting your life?

Tired of all that dreamy fluff about living your best life? Well, hold onto your headphones because we're diving into some real talk!

Today, I'm joined by the fabulous Sandra Valks, who’s here to sprinkle some truth on the glittering misconceptions we often see about pursuing our passions. We're talking about how to harness your infinite power and create the life you truly deserve through service and sharing your unique gifts. Sandra brings her vibrant energy and incredible stories—from uplifting refugees in Uganda to inspiring folks in prisons—showcasing how connection and compassion can spark real change. Get ready for a fun ride filled with laughter, insights, and a whole lot of heart!

Sandra believes that life isn’t about how you start or how you end—it’s what you do with “the dash” in between. In this powerful episode, she shares hard-hitting truths about purpose, service, and making every moment count.

🚨 What you’ll learn in this episode:

✅ Why most people waste their lives—and how to stop NOW!

✅ The mindset shift that turns struggle into opportunity.

✅ What Sandra learned from working with prisoners, refugees, and leaders.

✅ Why judging others is just judging yourself.

✅ The simple question that will change how you live your life If you’ve ever felt stuck, lost, or afraid to take action, this conversation will light a fire inside you.

#TheDash #LiveWithPurpose #NoExcuses #YourUltimateLifePodcast

🌎 Website: www.sandravalks.ca

📌 Facebook & LinkedIn: Sandra Valks (The Compassionate Queen of Straight Talk)

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Welcome to the show.

Tired of the hype about living a dream?

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Hi there.

Welcome to this episode of your ultimate life, the only podcast dedicated to helping you create the ultimate life of purpose, prosperity, and joy that you can create by serving with your gifts, talents, and life experience.

Today I have a special guest, Sandra Volks.

Did I say that right, Sandra?

You did.

You did.

Very well done.

All right.

Excellent.

Well, I'd like to welcome you to the show.

Thank you.

It's great to be here.

I'm really excited because you run a wonderful conversation every time I listen to it.

Well, thank you.

And thank you for listening.

So, a question that if you've listened to some, you know, I start with often, not always, but.

And I don't want you to be shy or modest.

I want to know, and I want listeners to know, how does Sandra go about intentionally adding good to the world?

I hear you ask that question different times.

And I won't be shy because I am such a compassionate straight talker that.

That cuts through and gets into really quick conversation.

I connect very easily with people.

I don't know why, but anyhow, you.

Were showing compassion and love.

Anyway, keep going.

And she.

She had to have some books and so on, so I thought, I'll just send her some books.

And I thought, I think I could go there faster.

So I did.

I booked a flight and took four suitcases with me and lived in their home with them.

And they're refugees.

I really go anywhere I go and just shift mindsets.

You know, they kind of shake their head at this old gal and.

And say, you've got something that I would like to have, that freedom, that authenticity, that love of humanity.

So I think that's probably my biggest just, I love life, I love people, and I just have a passion and I let it flow.

I.

I just absolutely adore that.

So love life, love passion, let it flow.

And I didn't know that.

So you jumped on a plane, took four suitcases of books.

How long were you there?

Well, the pandemic got declared while I was there, So I was five weeks instead of the 28 days I was planning.

So you stayed five weeks.

I did.

Brought all the books over there.

And I imagine you probably ended up talking to the whole town or good portions of it in terms of helping them take control of their thoughts and mindset and life and love and that sort of thing.

I did.

They.

They just love it, you know, it's such a breath of fresh air when you're over there.

And I was with the masses, if you will.

They just kind of look at you and think, oh, there's another part of the world out there somewhere.

They didn't have a lot, but if they were willing to listen, they could figure out how to do something with the little that they had and how to come together.

So in some cases, Liz would invite the women to come to learn.

And she said, oh, we'll have to feed them.

I said, well, if we have to feed them, they don't want to come and learn.

So we did have bottles of water for them.

I wasn't going to just feed people.

So they would flock over and see what they could eat and not learn.

And so the number that actually wanted to learn was very limited.

But that one young woman that I stayed with, she has become such a leader.

She said, sandra, I was so angry.

I was so ugly all the time.

Because she was a refugee herself from Burundi, living in Uganda as a refugee, and just life wasn't fair.

She was angry.

And.

And then this one will do this and this one will do that.

And I said, you know what?

Just love them, bless them, and then let them go.

You don't have to have them in your life.

You don't have to fight with them.

And she started to adjust her thoughts, and then she was into laughing.

And she's still laughing even to today with all of the challenges she gets.

But they've started their own little catering business.

They cook the food.

Now her kids are making donuts and going around and selling donuts.

She teaches French.

So it's amazing.

And I've got a few stories like that.

That's just one of the stories.

But it's amazing to watch people explode, you know, when they open their mind and they can see something else happening.

I just absolutely adore that story.

And I'm going to give you the opportunity to tell some more.

And you know, it's so true.

Like, whatever's around us is what's around us, but how we experience it is our own choice.

And when we choose not to fight with reality, but to see what miracle can I create from what I got, we're able to do that and I say that and others say it and you're saying that over and over and over and over again and the truth is it's true.

Absolutely.

I mean, can you remember when you were free from what all this crap was that was in your head?

I know what I feel like today and I can remember very clearly.

But before that I was 52 at the time.

I had a disaster of a life.

Struggled with depression and self sabotage and addictions and all kinds of things.

And today I have absolutely nothing.

I do only what I want to do.

My business plan is love, create, serve.

That's it.

Three words.

I love it and it's just magic.

And so I get to meet delightful and glorious people like you that are just going all over the world to do cool stuff.

And so yeah, I know exactly what it's like to be completely free.

It is.

It's a mental state.

It's a mental state.

You know, so many people say well Sandra, how can you do that?

Or Sandra, why would you go there?

Oh Sandra, you're not going to be safe.

Somebody's looking after me.

I was in Haiti in the middle of the city with the gangs.

That was pretty remarkable.

One young lad there, he met me and I mean they're the gang so they know it's dangerous for us to be there.

But he came over and he says mom Ron, mom Ron.

So he never left my side when we were going across the ditches of sh.

I couldn't quite step across.

I had a cane with me and I couldn't quite.

He just scooped me up and carried me over and set me down on my feet again.

Another time I couldn't make it up and down some oh really high stone steps where we'd been and I'm just a haul in my sorry hand over hand up the handrail.

He looks around.

He ran his shoulder into my waist and took me like a sack of potatoes up the wind.

Oh bless you.

And I had such a blast.

I mean it was I.

When I travel I don't go for vacation.

I can do five star hotels for a couple days and then let me with the people and that is where the blasting happens.

You know, we got on the back of the truck and all they could laugh was the oh we got the whities in the putt putt and they were having such a hoot.

And to me those are my memories that I can have a laugh at any country I've been to.

And I've been to a lot, and I wouldn't trade anything for the travels I've had.

You know, one of the things that I say a lot to clients and on shows and everything else is if.

If we.

If we slow down and think and feel inside, we.

We understand and see that we're built to love and serve each other, and we get lost in the, you know, in the externalities and the assigned values and all the rest, the religion of money and all the rest of the stuff.

And the truth is, we are happiest when we are in love and service.

And your examples and stories are just telling, you know, emphasizing that.

So one of the things you told me earlier was about going to prison.

So I want you to tell me a little bit more about how you are going to prison.

When she first told me that ahead of the show, of course, I thought for just a second she meant going to prison.

And I thought, okay, this must be a Martha Stewart story or whatever, right?

But anyway, so talk about going to prison.

It's more of the same.

But I want people to hear the joy and the diversity of experiences that you've had in this service context.

Oh, well, when I was going to my.

I joined ToastMasters just over 30 years ago in my first club, one of the ladies there had a Toastmaster club going in at Warkworth Prison.

So she said, sandra, come with me.

And she was going every week.

I maybe went once a month.

And they were doing a demonstration toastmaster meeting for other groups within the prison.

So we were going to the lifers, the ones who would.

Most of the time, if you're a lifer, you kill somebody.

You can have a lifer for other reasons, but mostly you're in there for some murder.

So we were speaking into the lifers, and I spoke and I had trees, you know, and with that, when you're going to speak about trees, are you going to do the scientific, the environmental, or the emotional?

You know, you have to make your introduction work.

So I started out with rape and pillage, rape and pillage.

And their mouths were falling open.

And I was talking about the raping and the pillaging of our forest and our trees and.

And how beautiful the trees were.

And I finished off singing, I think that I shall never see a poem lovely as a tree.

So that kind of song.

And their mouths fell open and they said, oh, please sing it again.

I said, what?

Yeah, that was beautiful.

Please sing it again.

We don't.

We don't hear that often enough.

So I sang it Again.

And over coffee afterwards, I guess, before we went to coffee, they said, you do realize, do you, that you've got five accomplished musicians sitting in your audience?

They're in prison.

My mouth probably hit the floor.

Accomplished musicians, you know, it's not all druggists, druggies and low lives.

There's executives, realtors.

I mean, you get everything there, everything.

Five professional musicians in that one audience blew my mind.

I'm not allowed to ask them anything personally, but I do.

And then I say, I know I can't ask you, but if you know, just saying, can't tell you, that's fine.

So I said to the one after, when we were having coffee, I said, like, five accomplished musicians.

Like, what are you doing in here?

Why?

Well, suffice to say, we pay for our passions.

So who knows what they came home to at some point?

I don't know.

And I've had another young lad who was doing his icebreaker.

Beautiful.

And you just think of your own son, beautiful eyes and this hair, and just a beautiful young man, like, what are you doing here?

And he told his story of getting some drugs and alcohol and going into the convenience store.

And they took the gun.

They weren't going to use the gun, and they were just going to use it to scare the guy.

Well, the guy didn't scare too well.

Out came the gun.

And he ended up.

The two of them that went in to Robert, he shot his own best friend dead.

So here's this young man, I guess the storekeeper.

He survived it all.

But here's this young man in prison for shooting his best friend because they got drunk, hanging out, and it's just sad.

And when they're in there long enough, they certainly get dried out.

And Toastmasters is one of those.

And so it's alternatives to violence.

The other program I've gone into for years in prison, and the recidivism is cut down a whole lot.

So when people say, sandra, why would you go?

I said, well, you know, they're going to come out.

They're going to pay their time, they're going to come out, and I think they'll be safer and they'll have a.

A life that they can get integrated back into.

So I think it'll be safer.

So I.

It's just amazing.

And I say amazing because I, you know, the listeners.

As you listen to this, I want you to ask yourself a question.

Maybe you don't have a prison nearby.

Maybe you don't have a dramatic situation, but where in your life can you choose to Make a difference.

Because we're hearing a story here about people, about Sandra who's cutting recidivism and giving people hope and an opportunity to develop a skill and something that they can use.

And more than that, it's self confidence, because.

Because often, you know, there's this whole worthless thing.

And when you have a skill and you have some hope, you know, that's.

That's a big piece of returning, no matter what the difficulty's been, whether you ended up in the clink or not to.

To have a life and to get different.

Get something different than what you've been having.

So I just love that story and your.

Both your passion and your willingness to do that.

I have a question now.

So I want you to tell me how you got where you are.

Because nobody falls up that mountain to a place where you make a choice, consciously, an intentional choice.

How can I add good to the world?

And that's the phrase I use.

And people can use whatever they want.

But tell me how you got there.

It's a mixed bag, isn't it?

I was a little country girl, and I could sing.

All our family could sing.

So five years old, I'm going into the hospital and singing to Aunt Mabel.

And she kind of scared me because at that time, with cancer, you had all this purple cobalt burning, I think it was.

And so I'd stand way back by the door and sing my little song.

So I've been in service all my life through the singing.

And yet when I would go up and sing in the festival, in a competition, I love the stage.

But you're shaking inside.

You're so excited and scared all at the same time, and it's a beautiful thing.

So I've always been on stage, and here I am.

You ask me why would you come on?

Because I love being on stage.

I love bringing a message, and I love it.

To do it through singing or speaking, however I do it.

I believe I was always a little Pollyanna.

I don't know for the listeners, if they know Pollyanna, she was the little girl that could always find something good about it.

Oh, well, the food isn't here.

Oh, well, that means we have time to play.

You know, it didn't matter what happened.

You had time for something else.

That was good.

So I think that's part of my genes.

And my mother was always, always ingenious.

We didn't have a lot of money, but, boy, could she make balloons go around a party room, and could she make popcorn, and we could string that onto the tree.

When we'd get around the big old kitchen table, she'd maybe get a package of little cars and you could wind them rubbing them back and forth on the table and then across they'd go so we could have a lot of fun.

And then when we were finished, give them away to somebody else.

So I think a lot of it was born into me.

Although I also can't remember when my mom and dad didn't fight.

So I always grew up.

I don't mean fisticuffs, but there was always argument on the table.

I was the baby.

And I always felt this conflicted.

Somebody said, well, you can't have that.

That's not a real word.

Well, that's how I feel, you know, God loves.

God's going to get you.

Jesus loves you.

God's going to get you, you know.

And what's going to happen if mom and dad are fighting?

What if they had a divorce?

What would happen to me?

Oh, that was a terrible thing to think, you know, being so, you know, we can go around in so many circles.

And I remember even at age 12, I.

I would kind of walk with my head down, being a little shy.

And somebody said, you get your head up there.

So I read a chatelaine magazine or something.

So I practiced for a month holding my head up and walking.

So I think I just always took on one little thing at a time to change.

And another time it was, should, you know, oh, you should do this, you should do that.

The teacher should know.

I was a teacher.

You should know all the answers.

You should, should, should.

And you know, it's so frustrating.

You just feel like smaller and smaller and smaller because you don't have all the answers until it pushes you to the brink.

You kind of blow up there, exceed.

And then the light comes on, you say, oh, I don't need to know all the answers as a teacher.

I need to help them find their own answers.

So you can see, even all those decades ago, it was my natural.

I've always been curious and wanting to play and wanting to be part of that was a neediness that I also had to learn to overcome.

But I just love all these conflicting emotions that occurred throughout my life and throughout yours.

Obviously, we all did it as we were figuring ourselves out, right as we start getting them in order.

It's a beautiful game.

Where else could we have the rules of a game like life?

Well, you get to, you know, the fun thing we were talking earlier, you make your own.

You make of life what you want to.

And we say that stuff in the personal development world and those that are not think we're crazy.

But the truth is, you really do.

And it is such a blessing because we're going to have the experience in life that we want.

Now, I want to ask a follow up to that.

So you learned through those conflicting things, you know, and you said, gee, I heard something in a magazine.

Keep your head up.

And so you intentionally, and this is, to me important, you intentionally picked something to do to work on, to, quote, make yourself better.

It didn't happen by accident.

It didn't do itself.

You said, oh, I'm going to do that, because that's better.

And that was just you deciding it was better.

So you managed for yourself, okay, to handle the vicissitudes and the ups and downs that you had.

And so you got yourself organized.

I want to know what's in your heart that makes you so passionate about sharing those discoveries and helping others do that for themselves.

I mean, it's easy.

You got to figure it out.

So you're done.

Except that's not you.

So tell me more about that.

That is the biggest challenge.

You know, when, when I was being raised, we had the old loyalist empire loyalist, the old British work ethic.

You have to work hard to make a living, and you give freely of the talents that have been given to you.

Now, that's all BS as we know today.

That's all BS because I should be able to go out there as my should.

Should be able to go out in the world and have an abundant living doing what comes naturally for me.

So for 40 years in the financial world, going into commission sales is not my natural happy spot.

I did it anyhow, but it was against who I am.

So I was working hard because then I had to give away all my.

My love and my coaching and my singing and all the things that make me happy.

I had to give those away, but I had to go and work hard.

So that was the story.

The story was you had to give them away.

And you worked hard doing something that you found difficult.

And that plays into the whole drama of everybody hates their job, but they gotta go do something that's, quote, productive that they're supposed to do, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And the things that are fun, well, that's playing.

So you can't get paid for that.

And so.

And you did that and gave it all away.

And then what?

Do you know what happened then?

No, I'm waiting for you to tell me what happened then.

I became a workaholic because I was not Happy at home.

My relationship with my husband was not the happy one.

So I became workaholic.

And when you become workaholic and a super mom, I mean, everybody else got everything and I was the one that I left to the end.

So I, of course went into burnout and into depression until I reached down to clinical depression before I got finished with it.

So I crashed and burned and my hands were empty.

But out of that took three years of a nasty divorce.

But once, once it was finished, I was afraid to start crying because I thought, I'll never quit.

And it was true.

Once, once I was able to release, I think I cried for about three years, you know, not.

I went ahead and did my work and I did what I had to do.

But when I was by myself, I think it took about three years to cry it out.

It took three years to get the divorce and another three years to let it go.

But that's okay.

Here I am.

I've had a lot of years where I'm not crying.

You know, one of the things that's so important about that, and I love just reiterating a little, is, gee, it took you.

I worked my butt off.

I got a workaholic relationship was whatever, burned out, burned out, burned down.

And then, you know, life crashed and burned around me.

And so you had your three years of divorce and three years of grieving sadness and loss.

And then like the 12 year old who read something in a magazine, I'm going to pick myself up and I'm going to go see what else is possible.

So tell me about that, what else is possible.

Part.

The 12 step program was absolutely amazing.

I was seven years in the Al Anon program, which is for families and friends of people who drink and whose drinking affects you.

Those 12 steps and the toolbox that goes with it is absolutely phenomenal.

It's with me today, you know, I face something.

Oh, let go and let God.

You know, it doesn't matter how important is it, Whose stuff is it?

Halt.

Are you hungry, angry, lonely or tired?

I mean, I could just keep spewing all of these and that's been many, many years ago.

It's been decades ago.

But it is so important to me to really walk in other people's shoes or if I'm not walking in them, at least recognizing mine were just as, just as dirty.

I mean, going to prison would be an example.

Like people say, how can you do that?

When I knew I would kill?

I'm no different than they are.

And I know I would kill.

I know you would kill.

If anybody gets honest with themselves, we would kill.

So who are we to judge?

And how easily could we have been in prison, you know, with the drinking and driving or whatever?

Well, you know that guy, that poet, I can't remember what his name is, but he saw someone being carried off to the stocks, I think it was in England or something.

And he said, there but for the grace of.

Of God go I absolutely meaning I could just easily be me as that poor sucker, whatever it was.

And I don't even think he knew who it was or what was going on, but he was just reflecting on the fragility of our circumstance.

And what you're teaching us here is to end the judgment and just let things be as they are and create with what you have.

I'm paraphrasing, but that's what I'm hearing.

That's pretty much it.

When I go to prison and we get the new guys coming in, they used to have hoodies.

They're not allowed to have hoodies anymore, but they'd have their hoodie up over top or their ball cap on, and there they'd be hiding.

And we were just not.

We're not going to talk.

So we'd go around, introduce everybody, and then they'd say, well, just pass.

Okay, we'll come back to you.

In other words, you're not getting off the hook.

All you would have to say is your name.

And about three weeks later, the hoodies are back, the hats are off, and pick me, pick me.

So just the glory of being able to know that they can stand and speak.

Everybody's going to be quiet and listen.

They can claim their space and they get into telling stories.

This newest club I have is in a minimum prison, so they're preparing for integration back out to the community.

But they are having a blast and just doing so much.

And I know I kind of hang on to the prison stories because that's where I see the transformation so vividly.

Along with my families in Uganda, I was in the women's prison only one weekend, and it was rather uncomfortable because I thought if they have a lockdown, they don't know I don't belong here because they might keep me.

Were you wearing the same clothes or could that have saved you?

I don't know.

In prison, you're not just in the orange suits, you're in your own clothes, sort of.

And they have the.

The regular uniform garb, and men get blue T shirts and gray track pants or something.

That's kind of the what's handed out.

They can have their own clothes.

But when I was in the woman's prison, there was a young woman, we were doing alternatives to violence.

So she and I were partnered up as leaders.

And so I, I was asking her, like, how long have you been here?

You know, or she said, well, I was out and I came back, I said, why would you do that?

And she said, well, I thought freedom meant freedom.

So I got out and thought I could do anything I wanted to.

Didn't understand that freedom has a price, freedom has a responsibility.

So she came back, she says, I've learned that lesson.

I won't be doing that when I get out again, you know, because quite often recidivism is a, is a shorter term, but maybe six months or a year.

But can you imagine being out in freedom and then you're picked up very quickly and right back in here?

Finish your lessons, right?

So I want, I want to know, so it's clear to me, and should be clear to everybody listening, that you spend your effort, your energy, your love intentionally lifting and blessing those around you.

You've talked about Toastmasters, you've talked about Uganda.

Tell me a little, I want you to tell me a little bit more about that in a minute, but talk about Toastmasters and spending a lot of time in, in, in prisons doing a lot of different things and intentionally finding ways to lift and bless, let people see possibilities.

And so tell me a little bit about Uganda.

And then I want you to tell me what you do, what else you do for people that aren't in jail, like, what do you do for work and that sort of thing.

Tell me a Uganda story.

Ah, Uganda.

I love Uganda.

I'm hoping I've got one more trip in me to get back there.

But there's a young fellow called Ronald and he had, when I met him on Facebook as well, and he also didn't let me go, but that was after I had been in Uganda.

So I, I never did meet him person to person, but he said, There's 240 children here that are, or orphans, are hungry and they deserve an education.

They deserve to be fed.

So he had had a mentor earlier and they had a foundation called the Ron Lilly Foundation.

Ron is the young man in Uganda and, and Charles Lilly, I think, was the American who had partnered with them.

And they'd made this little foundation, always going on a shoestring and usually with nothing, you know, but that was his thing.

And I said, well, if you're asking for money, just go away.

Forget it.

Don't ask for money if you want to learn something, I'm the one.

So he picked up on that very quickly, and we've had a lot of very deep conversations going into life.

And.

Yeah, so he still has all those children.

Now he wants to come to Canada for a visit, work for a couple years if he can get more money raised up for his foundation and go home.

He helped another young lady who came to my Mind Shift Mondays group, and we were having conversations.

So this is you.

Love Lean.

She is Ugandan woman, and she had left Uganda, it being a British colony, is able to go to Britain and take her schooling there.

And when she came to the Mind Shift group, I was going around asking what they wanted to do, and she was being very quiet, very private.

And I said, but what is it that you want?

She kind of tested it and thought, I'm safe enough to open up here.

So she said, I want to have a foundation and help the young women, young girls that get pregnant and they're thrown off to the side, they're cast out.

You get pregnant, you and your child, off you go.

Like that's also backwards.

She said, I want to help them.

So she said, but I've been saving, and I think I have to have an awful lot of money to start up a foundation.

And I said, stop that.

Stop that.

You don't need a whole bunch of money.

You can start with a couple hundred dollars and you've got it.

And I said, I've got the young man in Uganda.

Ronald, who already has a foundation, can help you go through the paperwork.

We talked about that in November.

And by March that following, five months later, she and Ronald had gotten all the papers together for her to have her foundation.

And by August, they had a grand opening with 700 people attending.

Oh, wow.

Yeah.

Unbelievable.

So there's no money for her to hand out, but she will teach them and train them so she's got people there.

So now they've been coming together and learning how to make Vaseline, how to make dry soap, how to make liquid soap, how to make.

How to do braiding.

They've rented some sewing machines so they can learn their tailoring.

It just keeps multiplying.

And all on a shoestring.

What a.

What a bright beacon of light.

I have to tell you, I'm just honored to be.

To.

To be the recipient of this light and to hear the things you're doing.

What do you do?

And maybe you don't.

Maybe you're independently wealthy.

I don't know.

But what do you do for.

What do you do for?

To cover your dimes.

Cover my dimes?

Well, if you see those files back there, that's 40 years of financial planning.

Although in the last, probably the last 10, 15 years I've just been looking after my existing clients so that doesn't make a lot, but it gives me a flow.

And I own my own house here.

I didn't ever think I would.

And when my common law and I were splitting up, he said no, no, no, you belong here.

So I bought him out.

But not before he fixed up this room.

Where this is, is the garage changed over into an office and two one bedroom apartments.

So I live in 500 square feet.

I call it my nest.

You live in 500 square feet, you rent out two apartments and you've got a hub from which to spread your light around the world.

Yeah.

So it's quite amazing.

So I've got the rentals which helps with the house.

And I've just started with another project here because I'm a financial advisor and licensed and still up to snuff.

I'm now doing a financial hotline which means people call in.

It's almost like a little bit of a reverse call center.

So the companies have the employee assistance benefit program and these are 1-800 number so they have anything that's bothering them.

And these are big companies across Canada, huge.

So if anything's bothering you, we don't want it bother you.

Well, we want you working.

So if anything's bothering, call this 1-800number and get some help.

So that goes into some central place and if it's anything to do with money and financial it comes off to this company that I've just started up with.

And I got that started early in January and I'm doing a lot of calls.

So sometimes it's 10, 15 minutes, sometimes it's 40, 45 minutes.

The other day a young girl talked, sent me a notice back, an email back and said I just want to thank you.

It was such a blessing.

I think we were like an hour and 10 minutes which was a very long.

She said just to be able to listen to you and talk to you and share in the grief.

Her mother had passed a year and a half earlier and she was just scared about getting out and living on her own.

And yeah, so that was.

How many call centers do you call and get into intimate conversation only Yours me a beautiful testimonial back.

And so we've connected.

I said well, I'm easy to find, you know, because I do have My name on.

I send everyone an email when I'm finished, so I'm easy to find.

So there's a few of them that I've invited.

You know, go ahead and connect.

But she said the wisdom and just.

I had told her her mom was there with her.

Her mom had passed a year and a half earlier.

And I said, you know what?

Your mom is walking.

You've got your feet on the ground.

I can hear it.

And your mother's right beside you with her arm around your waist, and her feet are right there on the ground with you.

Your mother's not gone.

And.

And then I shared, you know, my own son passing eight years ago.

So she knew that I knew.

And I know in the coaching world, if you've been certified as a coach, you've got all these rules about how do you keep all these things separate.

Mine's just an open book.

I totally agree with you.

I couldn't agree more.

And I don't follow any of those rules.

I would flunk every one of those tests that they administer with the ICC Anyway.

Well, I want to know.

This is just delightful to hear about the work that you're doing and the light that you're being.

Like, your light is shining, and I can feel it and see, see it.

If people want to connect with you or find out more about you or.

And you know, not to call your 1-800- hotline because they got to work for whatever company's paying you to do that.

But where do they find out more?

Have you written some books?

Or what have you got that people can go consume and gobble up of your goodness?

I haven't written books like you have.

If you go to my Facebook page, you'll see that I have been published, which was much of the talk that I gave when you and I met.

What's holding you back?

But I have a webpage.

SandraVaulks ca.

That's how simple that one is.

And I'm very easy to find on Facebook and LinkedIn.

I'm the compassionate queen of straight talk.

And not too many at my age, with all this lovely pink that's having so much fun shining out.

I love the pink hair.

Sandra Vaux, V O L K S.

V A L K S V A.

You know, I said Volks when we started because I can't read that tiny print that far.

Sandra valks, v a l k s.com please go there and take advantage of this rich tapestry of and fireball of straight talk and compassion combined together.

Sandra, my dear woman, what Didn't I ask you that you would love to tell people by way of love, encouragement, anything that you want to give us.

I love the poem called the Dash.

The Dash.

And when you look at the headstone at the graveside and you've got the day you were born, and then there's a dash, and then there's the day you die, the coming in and the going out, you're on your own, ain't nobody there, so you might better take responsibility for yourself while we're here.

But it's not about the birthing and it's not about the dying.

It's what you do with that dash in the middle.

How do you live your life?

Another thing that I like to think is I grew up when we went to the funeral home, if somebody died in the community, you went to the funeral home, Whole family went.

We stayed two, three hours at the wake telling stories, laughing, telling jokes and crying.

And it didn't matter what it was.

We were there two, three hours with the family, and it was a community affair.

And so you have the eulogy.

When you get to the funeral, you have the eulogy and you hear about all the wonderful things people did, whether they lived it or not, Right?

Right.

Everyone, some kind of a rule, right?

The eulogy always got to be nice stuff, right?

So here's the.

Here's the homework.

Write your own eulogy, right?

Today, if you died last night and they were doing a service tomorrow, what would people be saying?

You'd have your family, your workers, your church, community, community, your whoever.

They'd all take a turn.

What would they be saying now?

What would you like them to be saying?

What do you want them to know about who you are in that final memorial service?

I love that.

Live into it.

Live into it and live into it.

That's the thing.

It's one thing to wish and hope that they would say this, that, and the other.

But the question is, after you've thought about that, and I love your invitation, what is what you're saying and doing in your own head, in your own life and in the service of others?

Does it match that?

Does it.

Does it bring people to want to say, feel those things?

I love that invitation.

So that's.

That's really the work I do, besides the financial, the communication, going down inside, because that's where our life is.

I like to do the seven levels of why, what's below that, what's below that, what's below that, what's below that.

So we get to that basic fear quite often.

It's a fear buried down in there.

We can pull that out by the roots and become free.

Become free.

I love that.

Sandra, delightful to chat with you today.

Thank you for being a guest here and sharing your heart, your soul, your light, your love and your wisdom with me and with our guests.

It's been wonderful.

Thank you so much.

You betcha.

I want to encourage all of you to just take some time and listen here, because this is a woman who has walked the walk, who's still walking the walk, prisons and foreign countries and giving books and serving and lifting and blessing others emotionally, spiritually, and helping them with finances by trade, but who has made it her passion and her heart to lift and bless those around her.

And that's what we're all called to do.

And my own experience and hers is that that's what will help you truly live your ultimate life.

You right now.

Your opportunity for massive growth is right in front of you.

Every episode gives you practical tips and practices that will change everything.

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Your heart in the sky and your feet on the ground.