Life and Work with Sharon Rose

Today we’d like to introduce you to Sharon Rose.

So, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
Every event in my life has been a purposeful experience in my journey. Everything had to happen exactly as it did for me to feel, behave, and make choices in the way that I did, leading me to a place of total self love, appreciation, and determination. My awareness of this journey started in 2013, in D. C. when I took my first yoga class. The experience in itself was extremely calming. It allowed me the space, for the first time in a long time, to stop thinking and just be. I didn’t have to worry about work, bills, socializing, or anything else in that 60 minutes. I was able to breathe. I knew then, laying in savasana for the first time, I wanted to teach yoga. I wanted other people to feel this good. I still remember looking at the teacher in such gratitude, a feeling as if I’d just become a new person. I was excited.

From that excitement grew turbulence. My main goal, ever since I was a child, was to make sure people were having a good time. It’s why I entered into the hospitality field. I was living in downtown D.C., working in a beautiful hotel blocks from the White House, managing restaurants as part of an incredible creative hospitality team. Exactly, what I studied for in college, exactly what I had wanted since I was a little girl. (I had a clear vision of working in hotels since the 3rd grade. ) I had been working already for a few years in the industry at this point and had become “successful” in societal terms. Good apartment, good friends, good pay. Yet, I was spiraling downhill mentally and emotionally. I was not fulfilled and was seeking something deeper. I found that in yoga.

As I developed my yoga practice over the next two years my awareness of self grew and the illusion of what it meant to be happy and successful faded. My soul was kicking and screaming for something but I didn’t know what it was. I fell into depression and I couldn’t see a clear way out. I decided to leave my management job and pick up serving just to pay the bills. I didn’t have to worry so much that way. For three months, I tried to logistically and strategically make my way back to happy but none of the old vices worked. I needed a complete life change. So I unintentionally prayed, out of desperation and fear. I prayed and cried for something new.

Prayers were answered.

An opportunity for Arizona opened. I took it and I never looked back. I didn’t have a job or a place to live lined up. I leaned completely into the fact that when I did a pro and cons list of where I could go, every list looked exactly the same. So what difference did it really make?

I arrived in Arizona in January of 2015 with my sister, my cat, and anything I could fit into my Hyundai Elantra. I left the snow for the sunshine. It’s the only place I’ve ever lived that felt like home. I found a place to live on Craigslist’s on the drive out which worked out perfectly. I took a month to settle in, hang with my new friends, and just be in this new place. When I decided to look for work, I returned to hospitality, this time in catering. I told myself it would be different because I would have a consistent routine and less chaos around work. At the same time, I started studying for my MBA. Within six months, both of these choices had left me feeling empty. I quit my job, dropped my MBA program and started looking for the thing had brought me so much peace. Yoga. I enrolled in Yoga Teacher Training September of 2015 at the Southwest Institute of Healing Arts. I had no idea the transformation and healing I was in for. Over eight months, I dove deep into my heart and soul to see what it was causing me so much pain. What parts of myself I had been hiding and suppressing. Which parts of myself I needed to forgive and which I needed celebrate. Yoga is so much more than just the physical movement. It is a journey to discovering ones truth.

My yoga led to my enrollment into the Life Coaching program. This up-leveled my life completely. From discovering my true self in yoga, I now needed to take responsibility for it and decide what it was I was going to do with it. What is Divine knowledge of self without forward action? Coaching showed my action. Coaching taught me skills in how to relate, how to support, and how to hear others. It also gave me the stage to express my greatest gift, holding space. This has been my mission and purpose ever since. To hold safe and sacred space for others to do their deep inner work. It is what I seek to do everyday and what keeps me moving forward, serving others on their journey.

Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Most of the struggles I have encountered on my path we’re self inflicted. Poor financial management, over committing, saying yes to things that I knew would not serve me and no to things I would have enjoyed, being a people pleaser. If we stop and take a moment to recognize the true root cause of our suffering, we will begin to recognize a disconnection of our action from our desire and intention. In hindsight, my money “problems”, my relationship “problems”, work “problems” were all of my own making due to my lack of awareness of self, indecision, or fear of dissaponting others.

My advice for other women, any where on your journey, is to recognize that you and only you have control of your life. Take the time to write or speak out the vision of your life, no matter how big or small. Pay close attention to how you feel, that’s your intuition, and what action you take following that feeling as you move through your days. Will this action take you closer or further from your vision? Build trust and resiliency in yourself. You know what’s best for you. Move towards what is aligned with who you want to be. Identify where you need to set boundaries within yourself, your relationships, your work, and set them, then follow through. Stop tolerating. I promise, it will be challenging and uncomfortable. Some days witll be more challenging then others. You are working to reconfigure years of old thought patterns and behaviors. Keep going. The results which you can’t see yet, and neither can I are built on faith and trust. Lean into that faith and trust to keep you moving. When you can’t lean any more, ask for help from those you know will support you. There are people out there waiting for you to step into your power.

Please tell us about The Soul Stylist .
By trade and skill, I am a entrepreneur, teacher, and Life Coach – by heart and soul, I am an epic space holder, thought provoker, and unconditional lover of all creatures of earth. I create and offer experiences to my clients that are unique, customized, and emotionally, spiritually, & mentally probing. I open containers of space for my clients to enter into judgement free, full of compassion, and focused on moving themselves forward in life. There may be yoga, crystals, oracle cards, meditation, dancing, coloring, crying, laughing, and much more.

What I am most proud of is my brand/life/business is the evolution of expression. I have always stayed very true and authentic to who I am in my practice. It’s important to recognize that life is always changing for me as the coach and for my client. No two days or sessions are ever the same. If I stayed only focused on who I was when I started my practice, just stepping up into my power, and holding space for only women, I would never have opened the door of opportunity for teaching at SWIHA and expanding my practice to support all beings.

I am so honored and grateful for how my practice manifested, holding Divine Sacred space for women to tap into their spiritual Goddess energy and become strong in who they are. It’s just what I needed. Now, years later, fully tapped into my Goddess energy, men too often seek out my services, wanting to come back to themselves, removed from the societal labels that have been placed on them, just like women.

My practice, myself, and my clients have evolved further to the point of wanting more than to just be in our power. We have made the decision to become fully expressed. We want to not only recognize who we are but we want to share it. Not for validation or respect from others but because it makes us feel great to do so. If others like it and tag along, that’s a bonus. Authentic self expression comes from the overflow of love that we have within and to continually make more space within, we must serve without. What that service looks like is authentic to each person. It could be music, art, yoga, caregiving, coaching, being a stay at home moms, being a CEO… there are endless possibilities. The key is to figure out what’s yours.

Do you think there are structural or other barriers impeding the emergence of more female leaders?
From being in the corporate world and now private education and entrepreneurship, I have learned for myself that our biggest barrier to leadership is ourselves, our own fears, and our idea that we need to fit into the leadership being modeled currently. Yes, there are wage gaps, yes, there is an imbalance in male to female leadership in most sects of business, and yes, we as females have a way to go to catch up to create the number of females in leadership positions throughout the world.

I feel that we hold ourselves back from balancing all of this, by staying paralyzed in the argument. This may be an unpopular opinion and that’s okay. I work for an incredible school owned and operated by an inspirational woman. To get what she wanted to start the school, she had to do the self inner work, trust, and ask for what she needed in the outer world. She did it and 25 years later, she’s still at the helm leading us.

If we want to break into leadership in a big way, we as women must love and trust ourselves enough to take bold action in our own personal growth. We must love and trust other women and men, building each other up, creating a community of strong, compassionate leaders. We must ask for what we want and be okay with being told no. We must be willing to walk away from the things that no longer serve us, in all areas of our life. We must we willing to dedicate and devote our love and energy to those that build and support our vision, without bringing others down. We must step into the power of being a woman and use our intuitional strengths of nurturance and care to create a new type of leadership. We are at a time in humanity where we don’t just need new leadership, we need a new kind of leadership. It’s time for us to witness the fear, honor it, thank it for the lessons, gather the courage, and boldly step up.

Pricing:

• Three 90-minute sessions – $333

Contact Info:

• Website: The-soulstylist.com
• Email: sharon@the-soulstylist.com
• Instagram: @the_Soulstylist
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/soulstylist/

Image Credit:
Marissa Neel

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