Crystal Olivarria raised over $70,000 from grants and scholarships to help pay for her own college education at two private colleges; The Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising in San Francisco and Holy Names University in Oakland, California. Crystal has helped others get into their top chosen college, generate money via grants and scholarships and get hands on experience in their related career field. Crystal provides a safe space to explore options in depth while providing guidance that result in children being able to reach their full potential more easily.
Contact Info
Website: www.CareerConversationalist.com
Social Media: @CrystalOlivarria or @CareerConversationalist
Most Influential Person
My dad. He always taught me to be creative and resourceful. To be resourceful, you have to be mindful of what resources you have and basically how scarce they are.
Effect on Emotions
Mindfulness has made me very aware. It's helped me understand people better because I've noticed my emotions go like this all the time based upon whether I ate, whether I didn't eat, whether I got enough sleep, whether I didn't.
Just being really mindful to myself about how I'm feeling, how things are affecting me makes me think about other people when I come in contact with them. Maybe they're having a really bad day and I don't know what they went through.
Thoughts on Breathing
Whenever I feel like I'm going to have a breakdown, I just remember to breathe. As a kid I used to cry a lot when things weren't going my way. People would say, take a deep breath. Before anything can get better you need to breathe. That's step one and even as an adult I remember that. No matter now things are going, the first step is to take a deep breath.
Suggested Resources
Book: The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands by Dr. Laura Schlessinger
App: Notepad on my phone
Bullying Story
I've been on both sides of it. I will definitely say I've been in school and I know what it's like to be harassed and tell and teacher and the teacher not believe you.
I've also realized that a lot of times, bullies are emotionally weak and they're struggling and the way they can raise their self-esteem is to pick on someone else.
I know when I was in high school, I used to watch this girl being bullied and a lot of it was verbal. They were constantly putting her down no matter what. She was quiet and lonely. So she thought, they want to be my friends and the conversation would start out nice and then would go into this downward spiral.
One day I asked her why she was letting these kids bully her. She didn't know what to say. She said, I don't know what to do.
So I stepped up and ended up being a bully back to these other girls, just to give them a taste of their own medicine. It didn't matter what they said. I just had this attitude of, I'm rubber, you're glue, whatever you say bounces off of me and sticks to you. It really surprised them because they weren't used to having someone hold them accountable for how mean they were. Fortunately, they never bullied the girl again.