Hi everyone. And welcome back to Success to Significance Life After Breaking through Glass Ceilings. I’m your host, Jen duplexes. And today my guest is Stephanie James and Stephanie and I have actually had about an hour and a half of conversation. I think we, we said, gosh, we should have recorded that conversation because that would have been our podcast.

Stephanie is a transformational life coach and a psychotherapist, a dynamic public speaker. She’s a published author. She is a filmmaker and, she has a message it’s so powerful to help others, and spark their own internal. Right. Uh, best, I guess the only to spark your own internal spark, which sounds redundant and that’s my fault, um, to lead their best lives to the next level.

She is, has an unrelenting commitment to helping others actualize their vision and dreams and create tangible and lasting results, which is one of the first things I’m going to be asking you about is like, how do you do that? She’s uh, her worldwide weekly radio show and podcasts, thus bark with Stephanie.

James is, uh, Is a show created to bring you the very best in the field of psychological science and spirituality and take your life to the next level. She has one book published right now, and she’s going to talk about her next one, but her, uh, the book that she has published now is called thus bark, igniting the best life.

So, boy, I had a hard time getting through that. I don’t know what happened there, Stephanie, but welcome to the show. So, sorry.

Thank you. It’s wonderful to be here with you. Yeah.

Yeah, it is. We’re both, well, I know you’re a transplant to Colorado and I’m a trans transplant out of Colorado, but that’s sort of the synergy that we have.

You’re sitting in the town that I went to college in, so that’s exciting. And Fort Collins. Um, so I wanted, you know, I really just want to start with, um, you know, what I, of course, you know, I love all the sparks stuff because my company’s called. Bark and I have a program called ignite. And, um, so you and I have a lot in common there, but I really want to dive in deep and find out a little bit about you first.

And then I want to talk about how you actually transform people in this area, [00:03:00] because this is a problem right now. And especially now, don’t you feel like everybody’s sort of doll and we need a spark. So tell us a little bit about you and how you got into.

Sure. Yeah. So, I mean, I’ve had 30 years in the personal development and, and growth field, um, which is so hard to believe when I think of it now.

And, and my career took many different turns as far as working in schools, working in adolescent, adolescent, psych hospitals, um, directing a cognitive behavioral therapy program for seriously, mentally ill. I mean, it’s, you know, I’ve just done. The gamut. And the last 16 years I’ve been in private practice as a psychotherapist and transformation coach.

And, you know, Jen, the thing that I feel like I’m saying to a lot of people lately is like life begins at 50. At least that’s when sparks really ignited in my life. I had lots of different challenges. So we can talk about that later as a kiddo and how. [00:04:00] Message. You know, I think I’ve really lived about how we can grow and befriend ourselves, how we can truly have a loving relationship with ourselves, but I’d have to say, you know, it was almost five years ago when I was sitting in my office and I was sitting there thinking about how do I get back into radio?

Cause I’ve been a guest on a radio show and a couple of them. And all of a sudden, there’s this knock on the door and this gentleman walks in and he says, Hey, have you ever thought about doing your own radio show? And I belt came out of the seat. I was so excited. And, um, it ended up, so he ended up being my first producer.

He worked here at the local radio station and that’s how the spark was. Stephanie James came to be, and it was from that moment, things just began to happen. And I always say a part of that journey was really. Um, right before all of that, I had a huge moment of surrender, which, uh, had been dealing [00:05:00] with my daughter’s addiction for 10 years.

And it was literally one of those moments where I was brought to my knees where I’d put her in treatment for three months. I had taken her three and four year old son. To take care of during that time. And there was a night, you know, and I’m doing my full private practice and everything else going on.

And I would come home at night and I would just be exhausted. And there was this true moment where I had my head against the nightstand and they were in these two twin beds. I’m rubbing their backs, trying to get them calmed down because they just came out of chaos and they were struggling. And so really getting them calmed down and okay.

I went to my bedroom and I was just so mad Joel, at that moment, I was, you know, I was like mad at God and mad at life and, you know, I didn’t want this to be happening. And then something just came over me and it was just like, you can’t do this. You know, this is not for you to feel. This is not for you to control.

And it was truly this moment of [00:06:00] just surrendering. I get the guilt, goosebumps still, you know, to the divine. And once I did that, I fell asleep and woke up the next morning. I think I had the best sleep I’d had in years. And it was very shortly after that, that the, that knock happened, that fateful knock happened on the door.

And that opened up this huge world to me of just meeting people that had been my personal, you know, I in psychology and spirituality and science, you know, my gurus and people I looked up to. And then from that became the events and filmmaking and. It’s just been an amazing journey.

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