For Every Flaw: The Journey to Accepting Yourself and Embracing Who You Are

By Kristal Frazier

We all have qualities we'd like to change about ourselves. But what if we embraced the flaws instead of wishing them away. In For Every Flaw, Kristal Frazier shares her journey to self-acceptance. Despite being bullied as a child, she transformed from a shy introvert to a keynote speaker with a successful ca

• Language: English
• Publisher: Palmetto Publishing
• Release date: Jun 24, 2022
• ISBN: 9781638375685

Kristal Frazier

Kristal Frazier is the founder of FundJoy, LLC, and creator of the Assertive Ask™ Fundraising System. Kristal provides proven fundraising strategies to help universities, start-ups, entrepreneurs, and nonprofits sustain and grow their programs and businesses. Throughout her career, she has raised over $200 million. She is an anti-bullying advocate and award-winning keynote speaker. Kristal has two sons and a granddaughter that keeps her busy. Her hobbies include: reading, traveling, and theatre. Kristal is a Florida girl at heart who loves beaches For more information about Kristal, visit kristalfrazier.com.

Book preview

Introduction

This book is inspired by my journey. I believe that there is a path that we need to take to get to our destiny and reach our goals. Flawed thoughts can lead to flawed behavior. If you repeat the behavior long enough, you won’t even consider it as small anymore. And that is where the real danger lies.

I always wondered why I was treated unfairly. I wondered why people counted me out, or never gave me a chance. Why did I have to endure years of bullying? Bullying to the point where I couldn’t wait to be an adult and leave childhood behind. I’m not telling you all of this because I want you to feel sorry for me; I am telling you this because of what flawed thoughts can lead to.

Being bullied as a child and young adult seemed like a never-ending journey—a journey that I wanted to desperately change. It certainly made for an interesting school life. But every teacher who counts you out, every professor who doesn’t believe in you, know that they were meant to be on your path. Those people will help you reach whatever goals or dreams you have. Beautiful things really do come out of adversity.

Have you ever had a boss count you out or a friend not consider your point of view or ideas? I certainly have, and I’ve had it happen more than once. But there were two people I met throughout my life who let me know people close to you can be kind. They let me know that people in authority can be great leaders and lead from a place of kindness and empathy. I had a boss who simply told me about all the gifts that I took for granted. She told me that I had a way with people naturally, that I found it easy to speak with people in any social class and in any situation. I had taken that for granted because it is something I always did, and I really didn’t think of it as a plus, or a gift that I had. I had another boss who told me my attention to detail will always benefit me in life. I never realized that was what I was doing, I just thought that I was a person who liked to be extremely thorough with everything. She helped me realize that asking questions, being inquisitive, didn’t make me ignorant or dumb, but it made me smart.

I worked for an insurance company that merged with another insurance company. And because I was one of the newer employees, I was of course in the room when they said, If you’re standing in this room, you are one of the people we are letting go. I was devastated. I didn’t know what I was going to do, especially with two little children at home. I had two supervisors at that job who encouraged me so deeply that I will never forget what one of them told me.

My supervisor was leaving the company, and before she left, she wrote everybody a nice little sentiment on a card. When I opened my card, it said, You are sassy and feisty; don’t ever change. I was probably handed that card more than twenty years ago, and I still have it because I knew what she was trying to tell me. Being assertive is a choice you make if you truly want to be heard.

As a person who was not born assertive but really taught herself how to be that over the years, I can tell you that life is a lot better as an assertive woman, versus saying yes to everyone and everything. I wrote this book to help people understand that your flaws are what make success possible. I want to help you assert yourself so you can take the steps to get what you want out of life. Are you ready? Let’s go!

In this book, you will find sections entitled choice, challenge, and change.

Let’s talk about each and create a definition so that we’re on the same page and understand the purpose of each. The first one is choice. If you look at the title of each section and chapter of this book, each chapter deals with a flaw. I want to encourage you to make the choice between examining your flaws and either changing the behavior or accepting that’s just the way it’s going to be. That is really the choice you’re making. So our definition of choice is understanding that we can improve our flaw before the challenge comes.

That leads us to our next section, which is the challenge. Whenever you embark on a journey to change your behavior to become a better person, I guarantee because of your choices, you will run into a challenge that will test if you are serious about the choices you’ve made. I want to show you how to overcome those challenges. Our definition of the challenge section is being consistent in the choice we