The Four Words I Use in the Face of EVERY Challenge!

Hello everybody. Whether you're new to my channel or one of my existing amazing followers, Sandy Boucher here again, still overcoming Covid, still trying to babysit my voice. So please excuse me if this week's videos are a little bit shorter. Just trying to really honor this healing journey. Yesterday I did a video talking about how to implement empower yourself, especially if you're marginalized or racialized. How we have that has to be something we consciously do for ourselves. Finding I I shared with you my top three empowerment songs that really get me going and I shared a rule with you. Well, I want to continue that today. Four words. I'm not even sure I'm going to guess. I read them in a book somewhere or heard it in a video. But honestly, these are four words that I now unconsciously say in my head every single time I'm presented with some challenge. Whether an event cancels or rebooks or I come down with COVID or whatever it is, these four words keep me from becoming disillusioned and remind me I got this. So what are those four words? Well, let's talk about it. Foreign. Addition across hi everybody, my name is Sandy Boucher. I'm Red Thunderbolt, woman of the Loon clan, a proud member of Seine River First Nation in Treaty 3 Territory in Northern Ontario. And no, normally I don't sound anything like this. I just recently while I'm still getting over Covid feeling a hundred percent better but my my voice box still needs a little tlc. So this week I'm talking a little softer, trying to keep the passion out of my voice so I don't strain it like I did a couple days ago and just trying to offer you some videos that are powerful even if they're a little bit shorter so I can honor this healing journey. I promised you in the opening that I was going to share with you four words that I use and this is total honesty. Everything on my channel is. Everything about my career is. I'm known for my authenticity. When I write a blog post, it's because a teaching, a revelation. An aha moment just happened in my life and I'm sharing it with my followers because I believe it can help them. When I do a video, it's because I recognize the back to back teaching. I recognize that as an indigenous woman in Canada I can see issues. I can see that sentence on the poster of a non indigenous entity and they don't realize how we're interpreting it. I understand that it doesn't take intent to hurt people that you could have the best of intentions and still have a horrible result. That is literally the basis of my career. I'm trying to empower Indigenous people and trying to help non Indigenous Canadians, trying to prevent them from becoming their own worst enemy. Helping them to understand how things look from our view so that we can finally bring this feather together and Canada can heal and fly to heights it has never seen before. Now these four words. If you are marginalized, it is so essential that you become self aware, that you become self determined. So what I mean by self awareness, learning what works for you and what doesn't. I tend to start working at between 5 and 6am I finished working on a workday between 3 and 5pm at that works for me. My staff do not have set office hours because they have lives. And I know that when they get here and they always get here as soon as they can, they do amazing work when they do. Why would I fight that? So that works for me. It doesn't matter if it doesn't work for someone else, it works for me. It works for my staff and keeps us happy and positive and productive and effective. Starting to push my voice back down. The passion. Sandy, take a sip of coffee. I should probably be taking a sip of water, not coffee, but. So that's self awareness. Self determination is who do you want to become, where do you want to land? I don't care what Canada tells you you're going to achieve or what your family tells you or what your community tells you. A lot of first nations are so up to their necks in internalized oppression that they don't believe it's ever going to change. Do not let them convince you of that. I was, I'm a 10 year domestic abuse survivor. I was, I was raised in a home that didn't have running water. I have sold furniture to feed my children. None of that is my reality today. Even though there were times I didn't think it could change, when I remembered it could, that I could change it, things changed. So now often we hear about self determination not as it implies to an individual, but as it applies to a First nation, a community. And they want self determination. They want to be released from the restraints of the federal government to decide their own future. The rule, in my humble opinion, I've said it for many years. I've had people hire me, want me to teach a community how to have a healthy work environment or a healthy community. And my response is always, you need healthy people to have a healthy community. You need healthy people to have a healthy work environment. Indigenous people. We're not there yet. Some of us are. The majority are not. I think we're starting to see the switch. But still we need to support each other as we do our healing in the same way. If you want to be a self determined nation, you need self determined people making up that nation. You need to know, what do you do on a happy day? What do you do on a rough day? How do you motivate you towards your own self determination, self. This is not about someone else saving you. This is not. Your future is not dependent on the actions of another Covid. Not even Covid. Well, yes, COVID lockdown. The pandemic was not able to take out my business. Why? I determined it wasn't going to. I was determined to pivot and survive. And now my business is even stronger. It's a choice. It is absolutely a choice. So what are the four words that I repeat every time a challenge rears its ugly head? Whether it's personal, professional, small or big. And like I said, it's automatic now. I don't even think about it. The four words, I trained for this, meaning I am almost 60 years old in less than a month, I'm 15 years in business. There is. And I have been knocked down so many times, I no longer question my ability to get back up. That's the benefit of age. But every single time it's like, have I done this? Yeah, I've trained for this. I've trained for this. I have the processes, I have the systems, I train for this. I have survived worse. I trained for this. I have earned the joy and comfort of the stage and the place I am in my life. I have definitely handled worse in my 20s, in my 60s, and I'm so looking forward to what life's going to be like in my 80s, if I am blessed enough to live that long. I 100% believe you got this. Whatever this is, whatever Your goal is, whether ° buy a house, buy a car, whatever, you got this. Why you trained for this. Is it going to be easy? No. My dad promised me it was never going to be easy. But if and only if you work hard enough to get it, you can get it. There are going to be people that trying to stop you. There are going to be people that don't support you. There's even going to be people that tell you you can't prove them wrong doing anyways. You got this. Why? Because you trained for this. So did I. One more video for the week and then I'm gonna go back to resting my voice because I have an event in London coming up that I'm super duper looking forward to. Until tomorrow. I love you. Take care. Bye. Bye.