Sparkle: An Inspirational Handbook for Young Girls

By Kristal Barrett-Stuart and Kristin van Vloten

HOW DO YOU DEVELOP A TALENT INTO A SUPER-POWER?

HOW DO YOU START LOVING WHAT YOU SEE IN THE MIRROR?

HOW DO YOU DESIGN A LIFESTYLE THAT SETS YOU UP FOR SUCCESS?

If you are a girl struggling with self-doubt and insecurity, you are not alone. This book is packed with true stories, great ideas, and awesome strategies from women who once felt exactly like you do—and learned to do something about it.

Pick up this book if you want to:

Read raw, honest, and inspiring interviews with women like Jillian Harris, Tamara Taggart, Fiona Forbes, Erin Cebula, and Victoria Duffield about the struggles they faced when they were your age
Create habits that will bring you more happiness and success
Appreciate and care for the body you have
Develop your talents and enjoy sharing them with other people
Set amazing goals that you can achieve
Make your craziest dreams come true

Partial proceeds from the sale of this book will fund bursaries for young girls who need financial assistance to pursue their dreams.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kristal Barrett-Stuart
• Release date: Feb 27, 2015
• ISBN: 9780993960215

Kristal Barrett-Stuart

Kristal Barrett-Stuart is a singer-songwriter, entrepreneur, and founder of The Sparkle Project BC, which helps young girls to find their passion and ‘sparkle’. She teaches women and girls how to set goals, create mindsets of success, and achieve their dreams. She is living the life of her dreams with her beloved husband and sparkly daughter in Abbotsford, B.C.Kristin van Vloten is a writer and the founder of Salvo Communications. She loves to help female leaders, thinkers, and entrepreneurs to use their stories to achieve success. When she hikes up mountains, camps out in the wilderness, and explores new environments, she always brings Shadow, the bravest dog she has ever met.

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Erin Treolar

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Introduction

The Meaning of Sparkle

Do you know what makes a diamond sparkle?

When diamonds are first dug out of the earth, they are called ‘rough stones’. But an expert can take this stone and make the many angled cuts required to transform the stone into the kind of jewel we see twinkling inside a glass display case. Once it has been properly cut, light enters into the diamond and bounces off of its many different planes or ‘aspects’ before exiting the jewel as a brilliant sparkle. Diamonds take the ordinary light of the world around them and reflect it back as a captivating display of natural fireworks.

Like a diamond, you have many different sides or ‘aspects’ that can work together to create a brilliant, beautiful, sparkly effect. Like a diamond, your potential needs to be carefully cultivated, with only the best of intentions. Like a diamond, you can take whatever the world gives you and make something brilliant and beautiful out of it.

Just by being yourself.

We have created this book in order to inspire young girls and women to find their own personal ‘sparkle’. We think of sparkle as the captivating effect produced when self-confidence, self-love, and the pursuit of passion come together in the personality of a female. A girl or woman who loves and believes in herself is able to enjoy good relationships, a positive body image, and a healthy inner life. She is free to dream big, able to set awesome goals, and ready to make serious plans.

The Art of Self-Confidence

If you want to set yourself up for having the life of your dreams, master the art of self-confidence. If you learn to accept and love yourself, you will shine a light that people can almost see with their physical eyes. This light will attract people who will help you to do the things you want and need to do. It will also make your dreams and goals easier to figure out and plan for, because you will believe that you can achieve them. Self-confidence is like a very bright torch inside of you that makes the path ahead of you easier to see. It’s a super-power.

If you feel like it’s pretty hard to accept and love yourself, don’t worry. You are exactly like most girls around you—and plenty of grown-up women! It’s tough to feel good about yourself when you may be hearing a lot of negative messages. These messages come from so many places. Sometimes we hear them from our friends and family. Sometimes we feel them when we pick up a magazine and see that models and celebrities look pretty different from the way we look. Sometimes we hear a dark whisper from inside of our own minds, telling us that we should worry about not being pretty enough, smart enough, popular enough—whatever it is!

The good news is that accepting and loving yourself—in other words, mastering the art of self-confidence—is something you can learn to do over time. It’s something you can practice and get better at. It’s a habit that you can develop.

Developing Your Sparkle Skills

Do you have any bad habits? Do you bite your nails or leave your room dirty or forget to feed the cat? These are just activities or behaviours that you have done a million times and don’t really think about any more. Your brain and your body just kind of do them. Breaking a habit requires noticing that you do it and then choosing to replace that bad habit with a different or opposite activity. For example, if you forget to feed your pet cat, you can set an alarm that goes off once a day and fill up kitty’s bowl when you hear it. You have to actively replace your old behaviour with your new behaviour over and over before it will become the new habit. Pretty simple, right? Well, in practice, it’s pretty hard to build a new habit, but at least the concept is simple.

Self-confidence works exactly the same way. Think of it as a collection of good habits that take time to master. That is, self-confidence is a whole bunch of positive behaviours and thoughts that can replace your old, negative thoughts and behaviours. If you struggle to find that light of self-love and self-acceptance within yourself, we have good news for you. You can take action! There are many good habits you can start building that—when they all start working together—will result in a transformed, sparkly, self-loving, and self-confident you.

How This Book Works

We created this book to inspire you and give you some great strategies for developing your own ‘sparkle.’ It’s not a book you have to read from cover to cover. It’s designed so that you can open it up, flip through it, and find stories and tips that relate to your life.

The book is divided into four different sections, each of which has stories, advice, and strategies that relate to its theme:

1. The Magic Of Your Mind: How To Develop An Inner Life That Feeds Your Sparkle

2. Befriending Your Body: How To Sparkle From Every Inch Of Yourself

3. Social Success: How To Navigate Your Relationships For Maximum Sparkle

4. Believing, Dreaming and Achieving: How To Seize Your Sparkle and Follow It Into The Future

Remember that a diamond sparkles because of its many different ‘aspects.’ The light needs to bounce off of all of these different aspects before it will leave the diamond as a dazzling sparkle. You might be struggling with one ‘aspect’ of self-confidence, but you feel pretty good in other areas of your life. For example, maybe you’re a pro at dreaming big and setting goals, but you struggle to accept your body. Or perhaps you have a natural gift for observing and managing your thoughts, but you can’t seem to develop relationships with people who treat you well. We hope you find something in this book that addresses your struggle and gives you some great strategies for getting your sparkle on track.

Finally, this book features interviews and stories from women from all over British Columbia. Some of these women are quite well known. Others are famous in their families, circle of friends, and communities. But all of these women have taken the time to look back on their younger years and share their memories, lessons, and strategies for sparkling to the maximum. We bet there is at least one woman in this book whose story is just like yours. We hope her words comfort and inspire you.

Just remember: if she can do it, so can you.

With love, respect, and all the sparkle in the world,

Kristal and Kristin

One

The Magic Of Your Mind

How To Develop An Inner Life

That Feeds Your Sparkle

Do you believe that your thoughts are powerful? How powerful? Can they make your day or ruin it? Can they influence what kind of people you build relationships with? Can they shape how you see yourself?

Thoughts are like breaths: constant, automatic, and easy to ignore. When people learn to meditate, they often start by paying attention to the sensation of their breaths entering and exiting their bodies. It’s actually a challenge to start noticing and focusing on something that happens so automatically. It takes practice.

Learning to ‘think about your thoughts’ is a similar challenge. It sounds weird, doesn’t it? How do you think about your thoughts? Once again, it takes practice. But once you get the hang of it, you can start to harness the power of your thoughts to make your life better—more happy, successful, and peaceful. Your thoughts can fuel your sparkle rather than sabotage your self-confidence.

You might not realize it, but you do have a certain degree of control over the thoughts you think. Because just like everything else we are discussing in this book, thoughts are habits. We all have patterns in our thoughts, just like when you look at a piece of fabric and it is printed with stripes or polka dots. When you get in the habit of pausing to take a good look at your thoughts in particular situations, you start seeing the patterns. Once that happens, you can do some soul-searching and consider whether you like how those patterns are influencing your behaviour, relationships, and feelings. If you don’t, then it’s possible to use some of the strategies in this book to make a change. That’s when you can really start to harness the magic of your very powerful mind.

Kristal Barrett-Stuart

The Dreamer

My name is Kristal Barrett-Stuart and I am the founder of The Sparkle Project BC. I am also a country singer, a business owner, and a mom to a sweet little girl. In all things, I am a dreamer.

When I was growing up, I struggled so much with a lack of self-confidence and a poor self-image. I never thought I was pretty or skinny enough. I spent too much time wishing I looked like some of my friends. It was also hard growing up with a single mom who wasn't able to afford to send us to camps, take us on vacations, buy us designer clothes, or pay for dance lessons. Don’t get me wrong—my mom gave me so much love and support and we were always doing fun things. But as a young girl, there were many times I wished I could participate in some of the things the other kids did.

Earlier this year, I was watching my almost three-year-old daughter play in the backyard. She was so happy, joyful and full of sparkle. At that moment, I had an ‘aha!’ moment and I ran to find a pen. I started to write a song for her called ‘Sparkle.’ All I had was the chorus which goes like this: Don't lose the sparkle shining within your eyes, hold on tight cause this life is a crazy ride…oh yeah…Keep your head up, no matter what comes your way, cause tomorrow will bring you a brand new day, always remember you have a beautiful light inside…And you were born to shine!

For me, that song expresses the essence of the Sparkle Movement. I hope as you read this book, you are inspired to nurture and protect your sparkle, because I know you have it, and that it’s worth sharing with the world!

How did you feel about yourself when you were a young girl?

I didn’t know where I fit in. I had very negative body image because I was very large-chested and it affected my back. When I was sixteen, I had a breast reduction. I will never forget the day I was walking home for lunch and I walked past the in crowd and one of the guys yelled, You should have had an ass reduction! Everyone started laughing. I was scared. I never wanted to return to high school again after that.

What were the biggest dreams you had for your life when you were that age? Do you feel like any of those dreams have come true or have your dreams changed a lot?

I always dreamed of being a singer. When I was in high school, I took guitar, had vocal lessons and was involved in choir. I also started competing in singing competitions. I did end up pursuing my music after I graduated high school and I’m proud to say I released an album, was nominated for numerous BC Country Music Awards, filmed a music video and had radio air play across Canada.

How did the challenges you experienced as a young girl shape you into the person you are today?

I have so much gratitude. I appreciate that I had to work hard to get to where I am today. I was never handed anything; I had to work for it.

My struggles have also made me a woman of compassion. I want to help others and do good in this world because