Sylvia is a Turning Point Coach and author of the book entitled “Journey To Me: Trust The Wisdom Of Change.”

She helps female entrepreneurs go from a turning point to the acceptance of new habits that result in a breakthrough.

In this episode, Sylvia shared how she nearly died which shifted her lens toward the life she lives right now.

She talks about how the fear of not being good enough and the unconscious mind might prevent you from choosing the space of happiness.

As a coach and author, she faced challenges and miracles in her life that made her surrender to God.

That made Sylvia steps into building a stronger relationship with God. 

God will always direct you toward your light and keep you on the path that was meant for you all along.

Sylvia Worsham talks to Dr. Brad about her book which is a blueprint of what's taking you from the turning point and what characterizes the turning point through your soul identity.

Beyond that, Sylvia shared some stories of whom she has helped, and turning points in their life based on her book and coaching. 

Sylvia Worsham’s story is a spiritual, powerful, and transformational testament of one who has lived out of choosing the space of happiness and emerged to enjoyment, confidence, and content life. 

Episode 220 of The Beyond Adversity Podcast is a must-listen for any spiritual-minded looking for a story of a woman who overcomes a negative mindset and replaces it with new habits that lead to breakthroughs.

“The Beyond Adversity Podcast with Dr. Brad Miller is published weekly with the mission of helping people “Grow Through What They Go Through” as they navigate adversity and discover their promised life of peace, prosperity, and purpose. 

https://www.sylviaworsham.com/

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Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sylviaworsham

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/coachsylviaworsham/?hl=en

Hello good people. Welcome again to the Beyond adversity podcast.

With Dr. Brad velour here, we are trying to help you to grow through what you go

through helping you to navigate adverse life events and to come out to a better

place, a place we like to call, a place of peace, prosperity, and purpose.

And we love to do that by talking to people who have had some challenges in their

life that they have had to overcome some adversities they've had to overcome.

And they've had some turning points. And then they are able to teach us and lead

us and guide us as to what they have learned and what they can apply to our life.

And we have a turning point to coach with us today.

So there Worsham is an author and multi-lingual speaker, and the author of

Journey To Me: Trust The Wisdom Of Change. She has an incredible story to tell

about life transformation spiritually, physically, and emotionally at many levels.

And she's got some things to teach us here today beyond diversity.

So we welcome you, Sylvia, to be on diversity. Thanks for being with us.

Thank you so much, Brad. I appreciate it very, very much

looking forward to this interview.

Well, it'd be great. You are a turning point, coach, it says here in the information

that we've talked about a little before we got him on the podcast here.

That means you've had a turning point or two in your life, and some pretty

dramatic situations in your life. So let's just kind of start there.

Let's kind of start with, you know, kind of where you were in your life when you

had some of those dramas happened? And your situation and I don't want to spoil

the story. So unpack the story for us a little bit.

So the biggest turning point that I share in Journey to me, and shifted my lens

towards the life I live now is when I nearly died in 2012 I my life at that time I was a

single mom to a young son, four year old, I had been through divorce, a very

painful divorce. And luckily, I had started dating again. And so my boyfriend of four

months said, hey, I want your son to meet my family. So why don't we go to

Louisiana? He's from Louisiana. And why don't why don't we have your son meet

my family. And for a single mom, that was like a sure sign.

He was considering marriage. So it was a big deal. And a couple of days before we

before we left, I started feeling pain. I could not take a deep breath.

And I thought well how strange is this? And I thought, well, maybe it was my stress

because I had I worked 50 to 60 hour workweeks with a pharmaceutical company

at the time I was one of their top multiple award winning performers.

So I had big time quotas, sales quotas I had to achieve and I was always working.

A perfectionism achiever a very, very high achiever. And so I thought, Well, maybe

it's stress related, right? But either way, I kind of checked with my brother who's a

doctor and he said, It sounds like this is a common thing. And young people It

sounds like the inflammation of the lining of the lungs. So just take these medicines

you should be okay, but just realize it's gonna be really painful. I take a flight, which

is an A miraculous thing. I did not die after this flight. And luckily, we spend the

night at our hotel in the middle of the night. I have a pain that jolts me out of bed,

and it felt like 15 eyes were simultaneously being puncturing my lungs basically,

every time I took a breath and so it was really scary. And the next day I we happen

to walk in, I walked in unassisted to the hospital when I spoke to my brother and

they did a scan of the lungs and, and I have a specialist that walks into my ER room

and says, a woman in your condition should not be sitting up talking to me right

now. You have two large pulmonary embolisms and your left lung and for those

that don't know what a pulmonary embolism is, it's it's up.

It's a highly critical situation because it's blood that is clotting that has traveled

through your heart to get to your lung. And it's blocking like the main veins, right?

So it could, it could lead to people having heart attacks or strokes and essentially

dying. Well, I had two large ones. So they had gone through my heart

that I've dealt with. I've dealt with people who have had that before.

And I know well.

You've got you got people that have one and they die from one and I had multiple,

I didn't just have the two. Yeah. And the doctor said, You know what, we got to

check you out further because there's another problem and we don't know what it

is. So they do a second scan the next day and I've been admitted now in stable

condition. And then I get six doctors in my hospital room. And I'm thinking this is

not good. This is not good news.

No, no, something's up when six doctors show up and check. Yeah

neither one of them wants to look you straight in the eye. That's always a clear sign

Something's really wrong. And and they go on to tell me that, that they're racing

against time that I have a massive blood clot in the same main vein that supplies

blood to all my main organs. And it's putting pressure on my liver.

And if it does lock off the blood supply, I'm gonna go into liver failure and require a

transplant. So now, I'm in a highly critical situation. And in that moment, I

completely surrendered to God, by the set is now in your divine hands, they had

told my family, I had a 20% chance of surviving. And they were just not hopeful I

was gonna survive the night. So this is like Saturday before Easter Sunday.

And they start me on this therapy and it's not a therapy they're used to us doing.

So that's another miracle in itself. And the next day, I have a woman with the

Catholic Diocese that walks into my room and says, Do you want to pray with me?

And I said, Yes, I need a prayer I need I need more than what the medical

community is offering because they're not sure of what's going to happen.

And we start to pray with form of prayer circle. My boyfriend was in the room.

And in the middle of the Our Father, I, I feel this love that's so immense.

It felt like someone was cradling me and his loving arms. And I felt the peace.

I felt unknowing that I was okay. i This serenity that just filled the room and she left

the room and my boyfriend turned to me. And he said you felt them too, didn't

you? So he made himself known second miracle, right. And 20 minutes later, it was

confirmed that, that I had no more threat the doctors were they were baffled.

And the third and final miracle I received that weekend was the fact that I had no

long term complications. Because usually when you have these situations, you

those pulmonary embolisms leave holes in your lungs, and you will require a

transplant of a long way. And that's another critical situation. So like as if nothing

had ever happened to me. So there, there were three, three miracles.

And so I, I use that turning point. And, I started to question why I survived? Was I

living my best life? Was this my purpose? To stay at pharmaceuticals forever? Or

was I meant to do something else? And that's what started that quest. Entirely.

Well, that's, that's awesome, really well, and we'll get to some of the details in just a

second here. But that's a pretty awesome story. And on Easter. Nonetheless, that's

actually cool as well. And one of the reasons I wanted to chat with you today, Sylvia

is you and I have something in common I had an Easter experience, not unlike what

you had in 1999. Without going in all the gory details. I had a massive loss of blood

from my colon. And I was on Easter Sunday, and I'm a retired pastor.

And usually Easter was kind of a busy day for us pastors. And so I was out of it.

I couldn't be in church on Easter Sunday, and I was in the hospital.

And anyhow, I had a little my own little private Easter service.

So the courtyard of the hospital, and all alone on Easter sort of being in the middle

of hullabaloo of a big Easter service. And a sense of calm come about me in a sense

of healing. And any other long story short is that I'm supposed to have major

surgery the next day to take out my colon, and instead I went home because I was

they couldn't find the source so much of my bleeding I was having and I went home.

So I can resonate with your story, a little bit there and quite a bit. And then the part

I'm interested in as well is not only these miracle stories people have like you and I

have and others. What do you do next? And I think it's so important and vital.

We want to learn from you about this. And I would just ask you this about your

experience that you said you had a turning point and you call yourself a turning

point, coach. And I'm assuming that this was your moment of turning point.

But then what did you do then to change after that? What were some of the actions

that you took after that, that led you to do what you're doing?

Now, tell me about some actions that you took,

I started to take personal growth courses because I wanted to understand why I

picked the life I had picked before. I wanted to get to the root of why I was

operating from a fear space. Fear of failure fear of not being enough.

Why was that and and I started to I trade it off my multiple word winning career and

I transitioned into a different space. I became a stay at home parents because that

was the next step. In my journey. I got remarried and started to have my babies

and I wanted to be there for my children because i had i After the divorce, I had

realized that I had not spent enough time with my kids. So I wanted to go back to

the joyful space. And some of the actions I took was I started to really look at my life

and search for my purpose and I still Ready to look for my answers inside of myself.

Because what had happened my previous life was I was always searching for

happiness outside of me. And I found that even though I got to this beautiful space,

after I got divorced, I was their number one rep, and I'm standing there in front of

all my peers, I thought I would have happiness, and I didn't. And when I nearly died,

it kind of woke me up to, you know, when I'm stressed out, I'm not happy, I need to

start making some changes to move towards that space of happiness. So how do I

do that? And I started to turn inward. And the more I turned inward, the more I saw

my path before me. And let me explain what I mean by that. My relationship with

God strengthened after I surrendered and accepted, because those are two major

steps into building a stronger relationship with God. And God will always lead you

to your light, he will always lead you on the path of who and who you were meant

to be in the first place. And so the more I turned inward, the more the answers

came in one morning, one of the answers came to me of you need to call Bridget

and Bridget was my mentor, that of a class I took one of the many classes I took in

personal growth. And she was with the John Maxwell team. And so I called her and

and the prompting was basically call her and sign up. You're meant to be a coach, a

speaker and a trainer. And I called her and I started the certification process in

2017. And I and but the more I turned inward, the more the answers came, and

they came in the form of messengers people he would send to me. And the same

way I found you today I, I felt the prompting to get on clubhouse. And when I got on

clubhouse, one of the ladies referred me to pod match. And then that's how I found

you, I if I had not listened to that prompting, if I had not acted on it, because it's

always unique. There's always a timing factor. To these promptings.

There's a reason why they come up when they do now, what stops us is our fear,

our mind our subconscious mind, obsess.

I want to get to the fear piece in a second here in terms of what you did to navigate

your fear. But let's just be clear about you became a woman of action, you had your

turning point here. And you began to take some classes and you ended up in the

John Maxwell leadership training, which I'm familiar with. And you began to look

inward and you described a pathway a new guide suit me like a new path, it

seemed like the your corporate life, you were on the path where your affirmations

were kind of the next sales goal, or the next corporate affirmation or whatever it

was, in that regard. And that was unsatisfying, but you found your satisfaction in

your inner life, and particularly, and then you begin to look for these prompting

things, and including getting married and things of this nature, taking care of the

kids and focusing on parenting? Was it a fair assessment of some of the actions that

you took that led you in a different pathway from where you're at?

Yes, it was all the actions I took. But it was mostly because

I was listening to what she was saying to me.

Yeah. And go through this just for a second, the chair of the spiritual connection,

seems like that thread was going through all of this, right, from the very initial point

of your, you know, your crisis, your transformation, your Easter experience.

So this is talking about the importance for you of connecting with higher power

connecting with a spiritual life, much of where you're at before your Easter

experience, but particular afterwards, what kind of of relevance does that have to

you in terms of this total transformation that you had Tell me a little bit more

about that higher power that you had there?

Before, before the turning point, I had already started having a much deeper

relationship with Him. In fact, after the divorce was when, when that started to shift

for me, but it really got deeper once I surrendered to Him, totally trusted him to

take the reins of my life, which is a very different relationship than if you just

believe in Him, because anybody can believe in him. But do you trust them?

And that came after the near-death experience, because here I am in a

situation where I have zero control over what's going to happen next, I am facing

uncertainty at a very high level. And I've turned to him now and said, I trust that

you are going to lead me to the path of greater joy, that this this situation is

happening in my favor. And not to me, and that's a big difference.

Before I would look at life happening to me, and the focus was completely off and

And when I started to trust them, I started to see the opportunity, that change

provided to me, because there's a great deal of wisdom and change.

But it depends on where your mindset is, at the moment that you're going to

receive it in different ways. You can say, Well, I'm a survivor, or I receive three

miracles. And there's a difference in how you're saying that.

And, and he was the reason for that difference.

Yeah, I don't know if I answered your question, or there's more?

No, absolute no, no, no, I'm just, just kind of, well, I like to think about it terms of

how people, for people to transform, I believe you have to kind of have a physical

action that you take, you know, whatever it is, take the force, for instance, that you

have to take some action, get off your ground, whatever it is, some people just get

some, you know, they get healthier, they go running, or they have counseling, or

whatever would be getting married, sometimes just one of those, but take an

action. And then the other element of what I like to teach has to do with this, that

you have to have a connection to your inner life, that spiritually oriented death

through transformation. And that's what we're coming here because that's where

contentment comes from. And then where I want to go with you now for this is just,

that's my take on that as part of my teaching there, Sylvia, but, but we're gonna go

with you now is what do you do, then? How do you live out that life and I think it's

may go to your response to, you know, to fear that you mentioned there, your

journey to me that you talked about wisdom, you know, gaining wisdom and that

type of thing in your in your book. Let's start what I want to talk to you about is a

gift from you and some insight in what you how you live your life now. And what do

you teach people now about discipline? So about practices about habits, rituals,

anything you do now that's different from where you were before? And how that

can be transferable principles to other people?

Yes, yes. And, in fact, let me just give some background into this. Because what,

when you operate from a space of fear, that's where your fear based ego

is blocking you. Right? A lot of people stay stuck in their circumstances because it

can't see beyond, beyond their circumstances, because they're operating from

beliefs that limit their amazing capacity, would change provides change provides an

opportunity for you to connect to your soul identity, the person that you were

created to be you were born to be initially, we were born with immense, immense

genius and capacity. But when we started to encounter trauma and modeling in our

lives, and people telling us, we can't do it. Now we have the other identity coming

into play the fear based ego identity, and this whole identity. So how do you get out

of the fear based ego, you start to interrupt those fear based thoughts before they

become feelings, because once they become feelings, you start to react and you

have triggers that are tied to those feelings and patterns of behavior, that you've

created a habit around. So let me explain something like I had a limiting belief of

I'm not enough, right. So when I became a stay at home parents, it kind of reared its

ugly head with my second husband. Because when he went back to work, when we

had our baby girl, it went back to the time that my father was a doctor, and he

never had time for us as kids, in my mind, my emotional line associated, working

too many hours is not being enough for my dad. So when I when my husband went

back to work trying to make a living for his family now that is staying at home.

My belief of I'm not enough reared its ugly head. And what happened was that the

victim mode, a pattern of behavior, started to wreak havoc in our second marriage,

I became a victim in our relationship, and I blame them for our problems.

And at the root of it, is this horrible belief that has been formed for many years

before, like when I was a kid, that has no basis now. When you look at it

consciously, it doesn't make sense. But let's be

let's be specific. What did you do about it? Then you had this resurgence of these

old feelings from growing up and you had a prior marriage and ID I understand you

had children from your first marriage as well? Yes, I have. So you had a blended

family dynamic is what I'm getting all I get that there's complicated matters here

that come into play. And so you had this What did you do about it?

You had to do something to I started a dental issue that's come up.

So I started to interrupt the thoughts when the thoughts started to show up and

say he's to blame. I'm such a victim. Woe is me. One of the things I coach on now is I

say interrupted, alright, interrupt that thought and you do something physical with

your body, you know, it's interrupted to wake up your emotional mind, which is on

automatic, right? It's automatically operating for you based on however you're

feeding it, right, if you're feeding it negative behavior is going to, you know, is going

to give you negative outcomes if you will. So, an example of that is, before you even

start blaming anybody, it's just asking yourself, like, Where's this coming from? And

start asking yourself those questions and reflecting, and I started to reflect a great

deal. I did a lot of journaling because I'm a writer. So writing comes easily to me.

But for some people, writing is not easy. So some people do pray, and they start

asking God, why why do I react to this? Like, why does this trigger me? And a lot of

the answers are inside of us. Once we asked a question, it comes to us. And once

those answers came to me, then I would put some new habits in place. So instead

of picking a fight with my husband, right before he traveled, which was my habit, I

would go off and meditate and just kind of talk to myself. God, I talked to myself.

pattern interrupts

pattern interrupts are a big technique. And at the end of my weeks, what I would

solely focus on was all the positive things that had happened in our marriage.

And I would let go of anything that was blocking me.

And I started to do that immensely during those years and

write down any of these, these, these shifts, these gratitude type things that you

put into that your journal or anything like that.

I did that, in fact, I started one of the techniques is very successful for me.

And I know it is for some of my coaching clients, is I tell them, you know, those little

notepads that you have laying around, do little thank you, notes for your family.

Once a week, it fills your cup, because you feel good about thinking positive things,

the more you think positive things around your family and your relationships, the

more you start to feel and focus in on that, then you start seeing opportunities

versus focusing in on the negative, right. And in turn, it makes them feel good,

because I know that's something that my husband has really loved.

And it is strengthened our relationship. And in fact, at some point during these

years, he started to write little notes to me, and he's not a writer in the least.

But because he felt like, wow, this makes me feel so good. I wonder if this would

make her feel good. And it started the communication process back up again.

Contagious

Yeah, positivity is contagious. And one of the techniques I when you focus, I mean,

the law of focus is is such a powerful thing to think about. And I think most people

can relate to this, we know that what you focus on you find a gross, it seems real,

not only what you focus on, you become and for a long time, I was a really negative

person, I was a victim in my own relationships. And when I started to shift that

mindset over by implementing these techniques, on a daily basis, settle suddenly it

started to shift everything inside of me. And I became a different person.

that's good. become a different person is really what we're talking about here, this

transformation from a pathway that's stuck, not good, destructive, inward focus to

something that's outward focus, and helpful and progressive and in a way that is

dynamic with your husband and with your kids and with your career that you've

sought out now. And it seems like the career that you've sought out now is you

have these transformations you've had you want to share it with others. And that's

why you've written the book and you have some other things that you're at your

website, selfcare warson.com. And so what are people going to? What do you have

to offer people? Why did you write this book? What? What are people going to find

in this book that it's going to be helpful to them?

You're gonna find a blueprint of what's taking you from the turning point and what

characterizes the turning point all the way through your soul identity.

And there's five steps in that blueprint. And what I've done is I've done it from the

coaching and light and I say, like Christian perspective, because there are like two

or three themes running through this book. One of them is that any turning point

no matter what you go through a divorce, and I went through a whole slew of them,

is take that turning point and how do you shift your lens? You know, what do you

need to what is your mind doing? Those minds doing your subconscious, your

emotional mind, that's the one that's really in control. And what is your conscious

mind doing at the time and what's happening? inwardly, in your in your world who

is surrounding you, who's influencing you, it gives you that guidance. And as you go

through the blueprint, it kind of gives you coaching tips and tracks of what to look

for, and how to implement those goals settings, like what what do you need

to do. And a lot of times what I've shared in the book is three things I've shared is to

create a big, bold vision in all areas of your life, because your mind needs a GPS, it

needs direction, and the only direction that you're giving it right now is your

programming, whatever you've been programmed with, with your modeling,

and your trauma, and your significant emotional events are really what have have

shaped you throughout your life. And until you become aware of how your

emotional mind is fully in control and how to work with it, the book kind of shares

with you how to work with that mind, so that it works in your favor and not against

you. Right, and how you aligned to what your your true soul, divine souls purpose

and desires are, because we all have those pools, but we get, we get stopped by our

fear, our fear of failure are perfectionist patterns of behavior. So it gives you an

education of these patterns of behavior, how they can manifest in your life, and

how you can interrupt them, and implement new habits that lead to break through

and link to beautiful breaks.

Some great breakthroughs you've had in your life and you're sharing with others in

your, in your book journey to me trust the wisdom of change. And you call yourself

a you know, you are a turning points coach, and an author of this book.

So that means that you're out there to influence and be helpful to people.

And I am working on the assumption here, Silvia, that there's been people in your

life, whom you have helped who you have seen some changes, some turning points

in their life based on either your book or your teaching or your coaching.

So tell me about a person or a situation where you've seen, okay, there are some

changes going on here. And I've been some part of that I'm interested in kind of a

transformation story, you may not have been a part of

sure I had someone I had a couple that reached out to me just recently, who had

have been married for like 10 years. And they weren't, they weren't communicating

very well. And they have two young children. And they had two different parenting

styles. So it was causing some major friction. And in she was and still is a highly

successful coach herself in the health and wellness space, and he is a medical

device rep. So he's in a very stressful position and his job. And their children are

fairly young. And, and they came to me because they weren't communicating very

well. So when I started working with both of them separately, and then I did joint

sessions with both of them. And what I found was, we got to the roots of her

distress, she had a lot of overwhelm in her world. And when overwhelmed, showed

up, she went into complete and total control mode. And I call that the security

seeker mode. And it was causing this huge problem in their marriage because she

was undermining his parental role with the children. She was always in control.

And he would try to help with the children and she had a way of doing things.

And so it was causing a lot of problems. So what we started to implement was

brand new habits, how we identify the overwhelms kind of like a child who is about

to have a temper tantrum. And you know, we've been taught as parents feed them

a snack. What's the same thing with your mind? When a feeling shows up?

Right, a feeling shows up, you have certain triggers that go into automatic effect,

right? And to her security secret would would show up in manifest in the way of like

having everybody clean up the house. Everything had to be spotless. So it was like

this Ghazan thing, right? So it's like, okay, when overwhelmed shows up for her.

Let's implement a brand new habit. And in his in her case, once that new habit of

she would step out of the room, physically and meditate and just conduct a couple

of deep breaths. And then she'd come back and instead of ordering people around,

she's kind of like leaned into the change. Right. So that was a brand new habit, but

it was identifying what was what feelings were showing up to it and what was at the

root of it right. So that was for her. For him. He had a lack of self love. He was he

had a six seater pattern of behavior that was dominating his life. He had tried like

every program in the book, but he was the type of person that When, when ego

showed and rears its ugly head, he'd quit, he would quit on on the program he was

doing. So at the root of what was happening with him is his lack of self love, he just

did not feel enough. And when his wife would undermine his authority in front of

the children, it would, it would really cause up, it would actually reinforce that

limiting belief in Him. So what we started to work on for him was to kind of love

himself more by doing, giving himself time to exercise, and really reinforcing self

love in him. And what they found at the end of 45 days was that they were happier.

She was less stressed, her overwhelm was almost a non issue because she knew

how to she knew how, how it manifested in her life, and how she could interrupted

before it became overwhelmed. Because a lot of times what happens is, you start

thinking, and it just makes the feeling worse. And if you interrupt the thought.

unhealthy, this folks, give you folks some tools and some strategies and some

processes, which is what we're all about here at beyond adversity, how do you get a

handle this a lot of people get stuck in a bad marriage, or whatever it is, or it's

spiraling out of control? And how do you deal with it, and you're given us some

great insights here. And, and I think our listeners are gonna take a lot away from

our conversation here today, Sylvia. And so how can people find out more about

you, your website, your book, your coaching, how can people find out more about

you in case they want to reach out to you.

you know, what, the best way to find me is also on LinkedIn, because a LinkedIn I

have all the recommendations I've ever had of people that have worked with me.

So if you ever want to know what they think of me, and what I'm really good at that

that would be the best place to find me. And I'm, it's an open profile, so you can

connect with me, I'm a public figure under Sylvia Worsham. Some simple as that my

name. And the book is available online in every format imaginable, and in any

independent bookstore across the United States. And so just have to order the

book journey to me trust the wisdom of change. And if people want autographed

copies of the book, they can email me directly and I can leave that in the show

notes. I'm sure that's going to be available.

Well, we'll make a connection to your LinkedIn page and your website and all of

these connections. At our website, Dr. Brad miller.com and fascinating conversation

today with Sylvia Worsham. She is the author of Journey To Me: Trust The Wisdom

Of Change. And she's been our guest today on the beyond the adversity podcast with

Dr. Brad Miller. Thanks for being our guest today. Sylvia.