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Embracing Imperfection: Christine Clyne-Spraker's Journey to Authenticity and Self-Love · Is Your Way In Your Way?

0:25
Cassandra: Good day out there to all my listeners, and I'd like to welcome you to Is your Way In your Way podcast, and I'm your host, cassandra Crawley-Mayo and for all my new listeners out there, let me share with you what this podcast is all about.
0:39
Cassandra: It's about individuals who are stuck.
0:41
Cassandra: They're individuals who know that there's something else that they should be doing, like, for example, maybe they know it's time for them to be promoted, or they want to be an entrepreneur, they want to open up a salon, they want to be a coach, but it's just something that has you stuck, and that's why this is called Is your Way In your Way, because we're going to find out through all of these episodes, whether you have been in your way, and there's some of you that say, absolutely I'm in my way.
1:09
Cassandra: So I'm hopeful that today we're going to talk about topics related to personal business development and also will enable you to just have a little self-reflection.
1:21
Cassandra: And today our topic is perfection and rewriting the rules, and who better to talk about that is my special guest by the name of Christine Clyne Spraker, and let me bring her onto the stage.
1:38
Cassandra: Hi there, christine, hi Cassandra, how are you?
1:41
Cassandra: I am doing great and it's great to have you.
1:44
Cassandra: I'm so glad you're here and we're going to talk about how.
1:48
Cassandra: We're going to even talk about the topic perfection and rewriting the rules.
1:52
Cassandra: But just so everyone knows and some of my listeners that's been listening to me already knows I'm a perfectionist.
1:58
Cassandra: Everything has to be right, and that has definitely stunned me and it has stopped me in my tracks and that was one of the things that was in my way.
2:07
Cassandra: But what we're going to do now is I'm going to read a little bit of your bio before we delve into who Christine is all about and how she was able to get out of her own way.
2:18
Cassandra: Okay, so I am so thrilled to feature you, christine.
2:24
Cassandra: You are a visionary in health tech, devoted mother, a founder of CoFoundHer, an advisory firm helping entrepreneurs blend business success with personal fulfillment.
2:37
Cassandra: With over 20 years of experience, including as co-CEO of a company called Eon, christine will share her journey of leadership, personal growth and balancing ambition with authenticity.
2:51
Cassandra: Her book Unwinding Perfect dives deep into embracing imperfection while pursuing success.
2:58
Cassandra: Join us, guys, as she shares some insights from her as her being a leader who knows the power of aligning both your business and your true self.
3:09
Cassandra: So that's just a little bit about Christine.
3:12
Cassandra: So before we get started really get started, christine I'd like for you to share with my listeners what was life like before you working in the health tech CEO.
3:25
Cassandra: Tell us a little bit about your backstory.
3:33
Christine: Well, great question.
3:35
Christine: This seems like a lifetime ago.
3:39
Christine: It's hard to even remember who I was and what life was Before joining Eon, which I joined in 2015,.
3:46
Christine: Joining Eon, which I joined in 2015.
3:48
Christine: I had two small children.
3:50
Christine: I was happily married happily married, you know, yeah, and I was in healthcare and I had figured out a little bit of balance at the time.
4:06
Christine: I look back and there was a lot of balance.
4:07
Christine: I don't think I felt like there was balance at the time, but looking back I can see that I had a lot more balance.
4:12
Christine: I was more connected to my husband, to my friends, to my family.
4:41
Christine: I had this incessant need to control outcomes and the family, house and our time and everything we did, because I know now that that made me feel safe have this sense of fear or insecurity that if they don't understand what the outcome is going to be, they're not going to know how to react or how to respond.
4:56
Christine: And so this stemmed from my childhood.
4:58
Christine: I learned this beautifully from my mother, who I love dearly and is a wonderful woman, but she was the consummate.
5:06
Christine: Everything is perfect, everything is great.
5:09
Christine: Nothing ever bothers me.
5:11
Christine: I'm tough as nails.
5:12
Christine: I don't have any negative emotions, right, yeah and so.
5:19
Christine: So that's what I learned.
5:21
Christine: We didn't talk about her things and my family If.
5:23
Christine: If something bothered us, we just swept it under the rug.
5:27
Christine: It was better to do that than to make somebody else uncomfortable by saying, hey, those actions made me uncomfortable.
5:35
Christine: So I learned how to have relationships that really thrived in those settings.
5:41
Christine: I think Max wants to come join us.
5:44
Cassandra: I know Christine From our listeners out there.
5:46
Cassandra: Before we even started this podcast she was introduced to Max, my dog.
5:50
Cassandra: Max is whining because he wants to come in and be a part of the podcast.
5:54
Cassandra: That's how he acts and I am hopeful, he will calm down in a few minutes.
6:00
Christine: He's not bothering me at all, but I saw your face.
6:04
Cassandra: Oh gosh, there he is again.
6:06
Cassandra: Oh yeah, no.
6:07
Christine: I have, I have two, so I'm actually grateful that they're not howling.
6:12
Cassandra: I know.
6:12
Cassandra: I know so, christine, what you were saying about your mom.
6:17
Cassandra: You know, like you said, you're not supposed to, and it sounds like emotions weren't expressed, correct, right?
6:27
Christine: So emotions that were negative, if we were happy or, you know, joyful, everything was just always good.
6:36
Christine: We were we.
6:38
Christine: Even when things were bad, things were good.
6:41
Christine: We didn't talk about the bad things, and so I didn't have that skill set to know how to manage fear, anxiety, sadness, hurt feelings, broken heart, and so I just learned to compartmentalize them.
6:57
Christine: So, they just got pushed away and I just moved forward.
7:00
Christine: Everything's okay.
7:02
Christine: And so what I did then is I would control, because I could.
7:06
Christine: Then I could control what my feelings were going to be, so I would control situations If I got great grades.
7:09
Christine: I knew that I wouldn control what my feelings were going to be, so I would control situations.
7:10
Christine: If I got great grades, I knew that I wouldn't have a problem at home If I, you know, acted a certain way with a certain group of kids in high school, I knew that I would get along with them.
7:22
Christine: I just knew how to behave in every situation that matched that energy and those people.
7:30
Christine: So, there was never a conflict or it wasn't negative, because I didn't have the skillset, the tools to handle conflict, and so it was just easier to become this people pleaser, which is what my mom was.
7:41
Christine: It was easier to say I'll do whatever you want or I'll act whatever way, even if it hurts me or I feel you know gross inside, and so I didn't know that this was happening until many, many, many years later.
7:57
Christine: It was a friend.
8:00
Cassandra: Go ahead, please.
8:00
Cassandra: Yeah, I'm curious to talk about that childhood, because in my book I talk about your childhood, you know, and how it can definitely impact your adulthood.
8:12
Christine: How did?
8:12
Cassandra: that impact you as you got older and started working.
8:17
Christine: Yeah, so when I started working it was great.
8:21
Christine: It served me really well professionally because I was willing to sacrifice whatever it was to meet the needs of of my my customers.
8:33
Christine: So I worked in healthcare.
8:35
Christine: I worked with many, many, many amazing physicians and doctors and surgeons, but I also worked with some real jerks who were not kind you know, and they didn't know how to treat people and there were boundaries I could have put up that were still appropriate and still allowed me to be professional with them, but I didn't know how to do that, and so I just thought that I was supposed to allow certain behavior.
9:01
Christine: So here's an example I was.
9:08
Christine: This was when I, as a co-CEO, I was with a physician and we were with this physician CEO and we were getting ready to close this deal and we were a brand new company.
9:22
Christine: We were the startup, we had built healthcare.
9:24
Christine: It was amazing.
9:25
Christine: We were going to change lives, we were going to save lives, but we only had two or three clients at the time, and so it was really important that we closed this business, because every client, every new revenue really mattered.
9:37
Christine: And we go in this meeting's great, I think I'm crushing it.
9:40
Christine: The CEO's like, yes, okay, you know, send me the contract, we'll get it figured out.
9:44
Christine: And I come out and come to find out this particular physician had been taking pictures of me, unbeknownst to me, and sending them to a group of people, saying really inappropriate things about me, and I had no clue in my mind.
10:01
Christine: I was like, okay, it's all right, we'll fight through.
10:02
Christine: It Doesn't matter.
10:03
Christine: I just you know I won't work with you, know I won't be close to this guy anymore, or whatever.
10:08
Christine: Yeah, and I was willing to say, okay, we'll forgive this so we can get the company to come on board and be a client of ours and I give so much credit to my business partner for this and he said no, we cannot accept or allow this kind of behavior.
10:24
Christine: First of all, you're an executive in this company.
10:27
Christine: Nobody should be treating you this way.
10:28
Christine: But second of all, we're going to have female employees and we're not going to tolerate this with them.
10:33
Christine: And it took somebody else pointing that out and saying here are our boundaries, for me to realize, oh my gosh, I don't have to put up with things like this.
10:43
Christine: And so that's just an example.
10:46
Christine: Just an example, you know, in a way.
10:54
Christine: But I was just always more kind, more generous, more thoughtful to people than I probably needed to be, and I should have been able to say I don't like the way this person's treating me, and so I'm willing to lose their friendship, I'm willing to lose them as a boyfriend, I'm willing to not have them in my life because I'm going to create these boundaries.
11:12
Christine: And so that was a muscle that took me a long time to learn.
11:16
Christine: And so, going back to your original question, professionally it served me well.
11:20
Christine: I accelerated, I hit all my numbers, I was in sales, I was a great salesperson.
11:25
Christine: Salesperson, I was just highly effective as a highly effective employee.
11:37
Christine: I was always stacked and ranked as coachable.
11:38
Christine: Intelligent gets things done like promotable.
11:41
Christine: So I always got put into that category because I didn't cause a problem, I didn't push back, I wasn't a difficult one.
11:48
Christine: So it's, it's served me well and I I'm so grateful for my career, I'm so grateful for my time at Eon.
11:56
Christine: I wouldn't change any of it for anything.
12:01
Cassandra: Yeah, that's that's interesting because professionally, you did well, but personally, you probably had some challenges.
12:10
Cassandra: And I bring that up because my listeners, you know, we all have backgrounds.
12:16
Cassandra: You know we all see the lenses from our past and, as you indicated, that was something.
12:23
Cassandra: It sounds like it was a self-discovery journey for you.
12:26
Cassandra: You had to really work through that because, as life moves on, you got to say something everything can't just be okay.
12:34
Cassandra: You know and I say that because that's how I was, you know, the nice, you know everybody liked me, and respected me.
12:43
Cassandra: You know, take no mess and and all of that, and it was tearing me up on the inside, you know, and that was a behavior that was actually in my way, and there are ways that you can say that to people that no, this is not what I do, but it's a way you can do it, but I didn't know how to do that.
13:02
Cassandra: Perfect, you know, and and and want everything just right and all of that.
13:07
Cassandra: So, so I get that, but and then I, and then so you started that your job in 2015 and you were the co-CEO, so that means there were two CEOs, right, correct?
13:20
Cassandra: Okay, so you were up there.
13:22
Cassandra: I mean you were an executive.
13:23
Cassandra: I would say executive.
13:25
Cassandra: I would say it sounded like in something in 2022, something happened.
13:32
Cassandra: You made a bold decision to break free from the grip of perfectionism, so let's talk about the title perfection and rewriting the rules.
13:44
Cassandra: Explain to the listeners how you presented perfection Like it wasn't that you were perfect, but you presented yourself to be perfect.
13:55
Cassandra: How was that?
13:56
Christine: like, yeah, that was exhausting.
13:59
Christine: That's what that was like my whole life.
14:02
Christine: So part of growing up, not being able to express your true feelings and know that you're safe, no matter what you say, left me without like my own self-worth or knowing who I was.
14:17
Christine: If I was more confident in who I was, then I would have been able to project that person out and not care if people, liked it, accepted me or not, and so you, I became everything to everyone.
14:29
Christine: So that was exhausting.
14:30
Christine: And in 2022, you mentioned you know there was an event um, by 2022, my personal life, my marriage, had really disintegrated.
14:40
Christine: Um it had been disintegrating for, uh, you know, several years at that point and, um, I, you mentioned self-growth.
14:50
Christine: So I started the self-growth journey.
14:51
Christine: It coincided with when I started at Eon, so I found some amazing people that I began this journey of starting to reclaim who I was, rewriting the rules, starting to understand what was important to me and grow through.
15:04
Christine: It still took me seven, eight years to even get to this point where I could start making choices for me, but by 2022, I was ready to put some boundaries up with family, with my husband at the time, and I started exercising that muscle.
15:23
Christine: I started learning how to say this doesn't feel good to me, I don't like how you're treating me.
15:30
Christine: And there were some circumstances that happened, circumstances that happened in 2022 that really catalyzed my husband and I moving forward towards separation, and that was a really hard choice because I had gone back and forth in my head for years Do I, don't, I do, I don't, I do?
15:52
Christine: Is the right thing, wrong thing?
15:53
Christine: What will it mean for my children?
15:55
Christine: I need to stay together for my children.
15:57
Christine: This is what's good for my children.
16:00
Christine: What I learned is I was really lying to myself.
16:03
Christine: I was lying to my children.
16:05
Christine: I was lying to my now former husband.
16:07
Christine: I was lying to everybody because I didn't have the courage to say this mom's not happy, this isn't working for me, and so I got real clear on that.
16:17
Christine: In 2022 and COVID during the COVID years 2021, I really spent a lot of time self-discovery growth and by 2022, my now ex-husband and I made the choice, the decision that we were going to separate, ended up telling our children our children already knew you know, even though we didn't fight in front of our kids, even though we thought we were staying together for them, kids knew and it was almost like they were relieved when it happened.
16:50
Christine: They were sad.
16:51
Christine: Of course they were sad and it meant change and it was scary and all of those things, but they were almost relieved because they didn't have to wait for the shoe to drop any longer.
17:01
Christine: And I have to tell you, cassandra, when we made that choice it was like you talk about getting in your own way.
17:08
Christine: I mean just the energy shifted in the house.
17:14
Cassandra: It was like we could finally move forward with our lives.
17:17
Cassandra: Oh my gosh, that's wow.
17:18
Cassandra: That's a great story.
17:19
Cassandra: Now, as you know, you're not the only one that's been through that.
17:24
Cassandra: However, there are individuals that still can't get out.
17:28
Cassandra: You know what, and you said you got some help, like what were the resources?
17:55
Cassandra: And?
17:56
Cassandra: And, of course, it didn't take like you said.
17:58
Cassandra: You started in 2015.
18:00
Cassandra: Here it is 2022.
18:01
Cassandra: Look at the years that you've been dealing with that, right, so what was the deciding factor, like what happened that you like, okay, this is it, and, and how, and what were the resources to help you move forward?
18:15
Christine: Well, and I just want to say I mean, I am still on this growth journey Again.
18:19
Christine: Every day there's this new thing that I become aware of, and it's like the more I know, the more I learn, the less I know.
18:26
Christine: I realize there's so much more to know, which is so amazing.
18:29
Christine: So I started.
18:31
Christine: I grew up religious in a Christian family and I always I always felt very close to God and connected to God, but I didn't necessarily understand some of the the religious aspects of it.
18:47
Christine: I didn't understand how only Christians got saved and went to heaven, and I didn't understand some of the teachings.
18:53
Christine: And you know how my gay friends could not be accepted.
18:57
Christine: Just, you know, there were a lot of things I never felt that truly settled with me, and so I started becoming aware of spirituality and of God and how there can be a God, but it doesn't have to fit into this dogma of religion.
19:12
Christine: And so that was really the beginning, and I met this woman.
19:15
Christine: Her name is Tammy.
19:16
Christine: She's amazing.
19:17
Christine: I talk about her in my book and she really helped me start to see the spiritual side of things.
19:23
Christine: She helped me understand the power of tapping into ourselves and what that means to tap in.
19:29
Christine: You know mantras and ways to rethink about and reframe our internal system.
19:36
Christine: Energy she taught me about energy and frequencies and joy versus anger.
19:42
Christine: So that was the start.
19:44
Christine: And then, in 2020, I met another woman.
19:47
Christine: Her name is Davy, she's also in my book and she really made a massive impact on me.
19:54
Christine: She helped me identify self-wounds, these self-core wounds from my childhood that I then began to unwind and understand.
20:02
Christine: I read a lot of books.
20:04
Christine: I love reading.
20:05
Christine: I know a lot of people get a lot of information from YouTube.
20:09
Christine: I'm also a therapist.
20:11
Christine: You know, anybody who is willing to give you the real hard truth is going to bring value.
20:20
Christine: If you only seek people who are going to validate your feelings, then that's not going to serve you.
20:26
Christine: Yes, and so to answer your question in 2022, I had this To answer your question in 2022, I had this unexplainable knowing inside of me that it was time and I had pushed this.
20:40
Christine: Knowing Everybody has this.
20:41
Christine: Knowing Everybody has this inner impulse, Everybody has it.
20:47
Christine: It just is, if you decide to listen to it or not, and if it's your ego trying to trick you or if it's your soul really trying to move you forward.
20:53
Christine: And so I finally listened and it didn't make sense.
20:56
Christine: It wasn't rational.
20:57
Christine: It didn't make sense to move out of my house.
20:59
Christine: It didn't make sense to leave my husband.
21:01
Christine: Everything was perfect.
21:02
Christine: We have this perfect life, and then, four months later, I left the company and we hadn't talked about that yet.
21:09
Christine: So four months after moving out of my house, I made the decision to leave the company, and it was really my business partner, the two CEOs you mentioned, the two co-CEOs.
21:21
Christine: We came to the decision together.
21:23
Christine: We looked at different options for the business, but ultimately the business deserved a single CEO.
21:29
Christine: He was the founder, he's a physician.
21:31
Christine: It made sense for him to stay on and I was ready to do something else, but it was irrational.
21:37
Christine: It didn't make sense to leave my husband.
21:38
Christine: It didn't make sense to move out.
21:39
Christine: It didn't make sense to leave this company with all the security, and so that's how I knew and that's how I know now.
21:46
Christine: If it doesn't make sense, if it's so irrational, that's probably your soul pushing you, nudging you, trying to tell you it didn't make sense for me to write a book and air all of this and put all of this out there.
21:59
Christine: But you know what?
22:00
Christine: I just felt compelled to share it.
22:02
Christine: I wanted to help people.
22:03
Christine: I wanted to help other people step into the life they desire and they deserve.
22:08
Cassandra: Just like is your way, in your way it's very similar, yeah, and I love the title of your book, unwinding Perfect, and I appreciate you for your candor to kind of share with the listeners.
22:19
Cassandra: Like you know, you got to a point where you were nudged, you got the resources, you, in other words, it sounds like you just got sick and tired of feeling like you were feeling and it's like either I'm going to do this or I'm not, or it's kind of it sounds like with me I'm like, okay, if I'm going to keep living this life, it has to be another way.
22:41
Cassandra: You know it has to be another way.
22:44
Cassandra: So, like yourself, I definitely acquired a relationship with God to help me, in addition to other things that have happened in my life.
22:54
Cassandra: So I applaud you for sharing that because it lets my listeners know that it's a journey and it still is a journey.
23:02
Cassandra: It takes time.
23:04
Cassandra: We're in what I call microwave society.
23:07
Cassandra: We want stuff to happen right then, but we didn't get like we were right then.
23:11
Cassandra: It took a whole life.
23:13
Cassandra: You know what I mean.
23:14
Cassandra: So I'm totally, yeah, absolutely so.
23:20
Cassandra: You know I love your blog, you do blogs, and that was a blog called.
23:25
Cassandra: Was it reclaiming of me the reclamation?
23:30
Cassandra: How do you pronounce it?
23:31
Cassandra: Reclamation of me, uh-huh and I.
23:35
Cassandra: That was a great blog and it was like so.
23:38
Cassandra: So what did you find out was was holding you back from being your true self, like right now.
23:46
Cassandra: What was holding you back your childhood, how you grew up your mindset?
23:58
Christine: All of it.
23:58
Christine: So, yeah, so we're conditioned from this young age, based on the adults in our lives, society, and we're supposed to act a certain way, and so, and then I look at my sister, I look at my best friend, who figured out in their early teens what was really going on.
24:12
Christine: They figured out so early what it took me years and years and years to figure out.
24:16
Christine: So I applaud people who are in their younger selves, who recognize I'm not going to go with the flow, but I wasn't that person, so I just went with the flow, and so that was part of it.
24:28
Christine: And then it was just this fear of not being loved, this fear of not being liked, this fear of not fitting in.
24:36
Christine: I've always been.
24:37
Christine: I'm a little eccentric, I'm a little awkward, I'm a little weird.
24:43
Christine: I say the wrong things at the wrong time and I was so worried about being any of those things that it was just it was easier to put on this fake facade and now I just embrace all of those things about me.
24:58
Christine: Yes, I'm weird, yes, I'm awkward.
24:59
Christine: I mean, my daughter told me the other day my spirituality is weird.
25:03
Christine: Why?
25:05
Cassandra: Let's talk about it and I get it.
25:07
Christine: I get how there's different perspectives, but I'm okay with me now.
25:11
Christine: Like I love myself so much now that if nobody else wants to love me, then I'm going to be okay, you know.
25:19
Christine: And what I've found is then you start attracting these people who come into your life where, like I, appreciate your authenticity.
25:26
Cassandra: I appreciate you for you.
25:27
Cassandra: Yes, authenticity, I always say, transforms a person.
25:37
Cassandra: I always say, yeah, it's very transformative.
25:40
Cassandra: Um, yes, you talked about love and the reason I asked this question, because I remember when I was having my self-discovery journey I have it every day but it was a person that I was working with and she said you don't love yourself.
25:52
Cassandra: How do you?
25:55
Cassandra: I'm like, you know.
25:56
Cassandra: And I started thinking like really, I'm like.
25:58
Cassandra: So I asked one of my girlfriends, I said do you love yourself?
26:01
Cassandra: And she looked at me like what's wrong with you?
26:03
Cassandra: Did I love myself?
26:08
Cassandra: So I want to ask you how did you know you didn't love yourself?
26:13
Cassandra: And what happened when you fell in love with yourself?
26:18
Christine: Oh man, I love that question.
26:24
Christine: Well, I didn't know.
26:26
Christine: I didn't love myself.
26:27
Christine: You know, when I became aware of the self-talk, the critical talk that was always going on in my head, when I started witnessing what was going on in my head instead of just going through the motions of everything, I started realizing I was really mean to myself.
26:46
Christine: I would never talk to my kids that way.
26:49
Cassandra: I've never talked to my friends that way.
26:51
Christine: I'm really mean to myself and I was like I can't, I can't, I must not.
26:57
Christine: You know, like if I'm that critical of myself, I must not really truly, genuinely love myself.
27:04
Christine: And so there's something called shadow work, where you start to look at the shadows, the things that you push aside, the things you don't show anybody else because you're so embarrassed, you're so worried that it's going to scare them off, and so by starting to do the shadow work, where you start to embrace these things that I was so critical about or whatever, for so long it allowed me to actually accept them and begin to love them.
27:34
Christine: I used to be so fearful of public speaking.
27:36
Christine: My voice would start shaking, I get all breathy.
27:39
Christine: And I was, you know, leading a company and I would be meant I was supposed to be doing these pitches and all these things and I'd come across very nervous and I'd beat myself up.
27:49
Christine: And then all of a sudden I was like oh, I see you fluttering heart, I love you.
27:53
Christine: You know it sounds so corny, but just by embracing it and accepting it, the fear dissipates.
28:00
Christine: The things you all of a sudden don't like, you're like good, I don't really care.
28:04
Christine: And then the other thing I'll say too is I found that I would drink a lot.
28:16
Christine: You know I'd drink, I'd go out with friends and we, you know one cocktail turns into three or four or five, and then you're saying stuff that you really regret and stuff that you would never say yeah, and I didn't, I didn't like that.
28:28
Christine: So as I started caring less about the things, I was so worried about my need to drink to like numb who.
28:37
Christine: I was dissipated, then me saying really stupid things, really dissipated.
28:42
Christine: And now I like me so much better when I'm not, you know, under even you know, a cocktail or two or whatever.
28:49
Cassandra: So I'm just like, yeah, you know.
28:50
Christine: so that was a really big shift for me too, and it just mindful consumption of of my body and my soul, and and just nourishing all of it.
29:03
Cassandra: Wow, I love you know, I've just had a breakthrough.
29:05
Cassandra: I love that analogy about it's really.
29:09
Cassandra: It's not an analogy, it's really real.
29:11
Cassandra: When I said, well, how do you, how do you know you didn't love yourself, and you said, well, it's just the things I would say about myself, you know, it's kind of like, oh, I can't do that.
29:19
Cassandra: I'm so stupid.
29:20
Cassandra: Like, why do you talk like that?
29:22
Cassandra: Why do you look like?
29:23
Christine: that.
29:24
Cassandra: And, like you indicated, you wouldn't say that to your kids, somebody that you love, one of your dear friends.
29:30
Cassandra: So it's like we're our worst critic, we just beat ourselves up, and when we stop doing that, that's when, like I, have fallen in love with myself, and I love that.
29:41
Cassandra: I thank you for that and I'm going to start thinking that because, as I indicated, I'm still on my self-discovery journey, but whenever, because I have these fears as well and it always said false evidence of appearing real, you know, and one of the things you said that I was like you know, how does one replace fear with vulnerability?
30:01
Cassandra: And you just said that you were more being more vulnerable.
30:05
Cassandra: Right, help you tackle fear.
30:08
Cassandra: Is that?
30:08
Christine: because it's like, whatever you know, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna go on stage, I'm gonna present this and I'm just gonna be me yeah, you know, I think being vulnerable is just really allowing all aspects of yourself to shine through and not caring again how other people respond to it.
30:29
Christine: It's not my responsibility to make others feel good about the things I say or do.
30:34
Christine: It doesn't mean I'm going to be a jerk, but it doesn't mean I have to be worried how they respond to me.
30:40
Christine: And if they respond in a way that it doesn't make them or I don't make them feel good, then we're probably just not a good match anyway.
30:49
Christine: So I can't spend my time and energy worrying about how they're going to respond.
30:55
Christine: And so I think by being vulnerable, we're just allowing our true selves to shine through.
31:00
Christine: And then the fear thing fears are all false.
31:03
Christine: There are, I mean, fears are all false.
31:06
Christine: What I know and one of my dear friends, Bo, says this all the time I have survived, a hundred percent of everything I have been through.
31:15
Cassandra: That's good yeah.
31:17
Christine: Right, I have survived a hundred percent.
31:19
Christine: So the hardest things, the hardest things, I have survived.
31:23
Christine: And so it's like I mean, yeah, I just you're, I just know that I'm supported and I'm going to be okay and I'm just more intentional and more aware about what's going on internally, instead of compartmentalizing it and pushing it aside and trying to be something I'm not.
31:44
Cassandra: Right, and I love that quote.
31:46
Cassandra: I've survived everything I've been through and when you think about that, you become more grateful.
31:51
Cassandra: You know, like I'm so grateful that I woke up this morning.
31:56
Cassandra: You know I'm grateful that I'm in a good place today, you know.
32:02
Cassandra: So it enables you to appreciate.
32:04
Cassandra: You know you wouldn't know, you wouldn't know the good if you didn't go through the bad wouldn't know, you wouldn't know the good, if you didn't go through the bag.
32:15
Cassandra: Amen and and gratitude, gratitude love, joy are the highest frequency emotions.
32:18
Christine: That's right so, even if you're having the worst day and you can say like I'm grateful I woke up today, even though it was an awful day, I'm grateful I woke up today, that's right just by putting that little bit of positive energy out there, you can start to shift, yeah, yeah.
32:32
Cassandra: Now I want to talk about your boutique co-found her, so you left your job and you made the decision and I don't know if you did that in 2023, that's when you resigned, your milestone moment, the voice that nudged you, and then you said, okay, I'm going to open up a business.
32:52
Cassandra: Tell us a little bit about your business.
32:57
Christine: Yes, so I co-found her.
33:01
Christine: Yeah, so I I resigned from Eon and like a week later I was like co-founder.
33:09
Christine: I know what I'm going to do.
33:11
Christine: I want to help people.
33:13
Christine: I want to help people grow their businesses.
33:16
Christine: I want to help be a co-founder for them.
33:18
Christine: I loved building Eon.
33:20
Christine: I loved building that business.
33:21
Christine: I wasn't a founder, you know, I was employee number two, so it was like I was there from the beginning.
33:27
Christine: I loved it, Okay, and then it took me over a year to actually be ready to do anything with it.
33:34
Christine: I needed to just sit, I needed to be still, I needed to write the book, I needed to heal, I needed to do a lot of things.
33:40
Christine: And so I launched, co-found her as a boutique advisory firm about two months ago.
33:47
Christine: And the whole premise behind it is to, uh, when somebody is ready to scale and they're ready to get to that next level, I'm the missing link.
33:57
Christine: Co-founder is the missing link.
33:59
Christine: We can come in and we can help identify critical issues that need to be um, uh, you know, overcome, whether it's putting new processes in place, new growth strategies.
34:12
Christine: If there's a bad product market fit, anything that's going on that needs to be shifted, helping the founder, shift it and then watching and being there as an advisor through that transition and inflection point as they get to the next stage.
34:28
Christine: So I'm really excited.
34:32
Christine: It's been really fun being back in the entrepreneurial days.
34:35
Christine: It's been really fun just getting back into it because I mean, I did take a whole year off and I had not worked most of my life and so to just take that time, that sabbatical, was truly a blessing.
34:48
Christine: But it helped me get really clear on understanding.
34:51
Christine: Here's my true skillset, here's what I can bring.
34:55
Christine: Even now.
34:56
Christine: Is this authentic, Christine?
34:58
Christine: Like how much more powerful I am in this authenticity?
35:05
Christine: Um, and so I'm just it's.
35:06
Christine: It's been really great.
35:07
Christine: I I'm talking and working with people again, I'm strategizing.
35:10
Christine: Talking and working with people.
35:14
Christine: Again, I'm strategizing.
35:15
Christine: It's been really fun.
35:16
Christine: So co found her.
35:17
Christine: It's co dash found hercom and, um you know, just really intent on helping.
35:21
Christine: I really want to give back.
35:23
Christine: I've been so blessed and so fortunate to get to this point in my life that I really want to help others fulfill their dreams and get to that next level with their businesses.
35:34
Cassandra: That's great, that's great.
35:35
Cassandra: One more question, one this isn't a mantra of mine, this self-imposed barriers that's preventing them from living their best life on their terms, and one of the things I used to say.
36:08
Cassandra: I used to ask people from a scale of one to 10, 10 being the highest.
36:13
Cassandra: If I asked you today, where are you on that scale and living your best life?
36:17
Cassandra: So if I ask Christine back in 2019, you know, before the pandemic, it sounds like you were pretty low on the scale, you know, as far as living your best life on your terms.
36:32
Cassandra: So now that you call this metamorphosis this change, where would you say you rate now on that scale?
36:42
Christine: Oh, I mean, I am living my best life every day I wake up.
36:49
Christine: I am living my best life Every day I wake up.
36:54
Christine: I'm so grateful for all the things in my life Abundance of love, laughter, joy, health and wealth.
36:58
Christine: That's my mantra every day.
37:00
Christine: Thank you for the abundance of love, laughter, joy, health and wealth.
37:05
Christine: I'm living it.
37:05
Christine: I no longer live in the future.
37:07
Christine: I don't live in the past, I just live in the present.
37:10
Christine: I plan.
37:11
Christine: You can't build a business and have success if you're live in the future.
37:13
Christine: I don't live in the past, I just live in the present.
37:14
Christine: I plan.
37:14
Christine: You know you.
37:16
Christine: You can't build a business and have success not thinking about the future and planning.
37:18
Christine: But I don't live there anymore, I'm just.
37:19
Christine: I'm happy to be like you're.
37:21
Christine: You've made my day.
37:21
Christine: This has been the best moment of my day.
37:24
Christine: You know just being here with you and not worried about anything else, it's just been wonderful.
37:33
Christine: So I know it sounds really altruistic, but the closer I come to God, the closer I might get in touch with my spirituality.
37:40
Christine: I mean it's just the more I just know I'm held and I'm safe and I'm good, and so I don't.
37:49
Christine: I'm just here and I'm very, very blessed and very happy.
37:53
Cassandra: So good.
37:54
Cassandra: I'm so happy to hear that and I I love this topic perfection and rewriting the rules.
38:00
Cassandra: So you have rewrote those rules.
38:03
Cassandra: You are um, um.
38:05
Cassandra: You are a blessing, you've, and for my listeners to know where you've been and where you are now, that lets them know it's possible.
38:14
Christine: It's possible any last words or anything that you would like to share with my listeners as we close the only, the only reason why any of us are ever stuck is because of ourselves, and it takes courage to make those hard decisions, and the harder the decision, the harder it is to make, but the more free you become on the other end, because you're no longer tethered to whatever it is that's anchoring you and keeping you stuck.
38:46
Christine: So have, even even if you, even if you're an atheist, you don't believe in God.
38:52
Christine: You know it doesn't like.
38:54
Christine: It doesn't mean you have to believe in God to do it.
38:56
Christine: It just means you have to believe in yourself.
38:58
Christine: Right, you have to be willing to say I'm enough and to take that step forward.
39:03
Christine: Choose yourself.
39:04
Christine: When you choose yourself, you always, always, always, always, always come out ahead.
39:09
Cassandra: That's great, thank you.
39:11
Cassandra: Thank you.
39:11
Cassandra: How can my listeners get in touch with you?
39:15
Christine: Yes, absolutely so.
39:16
Christine: I am on Instagram and it is Christine C-H-R-I-S-T-I-N-E, underscore Clyne C-L-Y-N-E, underscore Spraker S R A K E R.
39:32
Christine: And then you can those are two ways, on LinkedIn at Christine Spraker, and Or co_ found her.
39:43
Christine: com.
39:46
Cassandra: Okay, great, okay, well, you know I enjoyed our conversation.
39:51
Cassandra: I want to thank you.
39:52
Cassandra: Yeah, I want to thank you.
39:54
Cassandra: And, as to my listeners, if this podcast has blessed you, please share it and also please subscribe to it.
40:03
Cassandra: And, as you know, every Wednesday I go live at one o'clock pm Eastern Standard Time.
40:10
Cassandra: So again, christine, thank you and thanks for blessing us to learn how to rewrite the rules.
40:17
Cassandra: God bless.
40:19
Christine: God bless you.
40:20
Christine: Thanks for having me Sure.