Life and Work with Rebecca Stark Thornberry

Today we’d like to introduce you to Rebecca Stark Thornberry.

Rebecca, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
When I divorced in 2011, overnight I went from stay-at-home mom to my four children, to a working single mom. I hadn’t had a full-time job in over 15 years and began my journey back into the career world at $10/hour assisting developmentally disabled senior citizens. With little financial help from their father, we survived on the kindness of my family, government welfare, and stubborn hope that we’d be better for it in the end.

In 2013, I landed a corporate sales job in advertising and became one of the top earners in my territory. I was making decent money and felt incredibly grateful for how far we’d come. However, in 2016 my health began to deteriorate as the chronic stress caught up with me. I had been in total survival mode for the past few years and I began to feel as if my candle was burning out.

I have always felt that my life had a bigger purpose. I tried to find meaning in my sales job- telling myself I was helping the small business owners of the world by selling them advertising. But I needed a bottle of wine each night to be able to convince myself I was happy. I could no longer escape the gnawing feeling that I was missing the mark. I wasn’t doing what I was created to do. I wasn’t living a life I loved. I was entering my 40’s and already felt like I was on the downward slope of life. Is this what aging is like? Is this all there is?

I couldn’t accept that this was it for me. That stubborn hope has served me well and I began to breathe into that small, remaining flicker of the belief that my life could indeed be so much more.

I stumbled upon Life Coaching as a career opportunity. It felt like the perfect fit. I was a self-growth junkie, loved cheerleading others, and felt a deep sense of purpose in being an instrument of change in helping people overcome obstacles and live better, more fulfilling lives. Pursuing certification as a Coach opened up a whole world of possibility to me. I realized that everything I had been through over the years has served me and forged in me deep empathy, fearless tenacity, and a genuine love for others. I began to see that the only thing holding me back from a magical life is me. My inner creative was awakened. There is nothing we can’t create once we are clear about what we desire. I have experienced massive transformation in my own life through coaching and I wholeheartedly believe it can change the world, one heart at a time.

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?
This road has been anything but smooth! When you start moving towards your passion and purpose, all hell breaks loose. I knew the road to your soul’s purpose was challenging, but what I didn’t realize was how it would expose every fear, uncover every weakness, cause me to question everything I’d ever believed in, and literally bring me to my knees. The biggest struggle is the fear of the unknown and recognizing how little I trusted myself.

Once I began to work on my relationship with myself and value my own intuition, things became much easier. But I wouldn’t trade the struggles for the world. It’s the most exciting journey and the alternative is remaining half alive in a life that was not fulfilling and getting to the end having to answer the painful question, “what if…?”.

I’ve learned to see the journey is not linear, and success is very different than what I thought it was. So many times I wanted to cash it in and go back to safety, but I had created a strong support system and I continued to invest in my own coaching, so I kept moving forward. I learned how to ask for help. I learned how to reframe my thoughts about things. I learned to enjoy failure and became less attached to the ‘how’.

My best advice is to connect with a community of women who are where you want to be and invest in coaching. I struggled for years trying to be a lone wolf. Once I began asking for the help I needed and equally offering help and support, the game changed and I started to see some significant progress.

Also, be honest with yourself about what you truly think and feel. So often we are afraid to say how terrified we are, or how inadequate we feel. We put on this bravado or drown ourselves in ‘positive thinking’, so those destructive thoughts stay hidden and are allowed to secretly run the show. Bringing them into the light allows you to detach and transform them. Allowing yourself to be with and process the negative feelings is the only way to be free from them. All the strategies, self-help books, or online courses in the world will not help you if you are living with subconscious sabotaging beliefs.

And don’t forget to have fun! If you’re not having fun, what’s the point?

Please tell us about Rebecca Stark Coaching.
I am an Emotional Acceptance Coach and I help my clients release negative emotions that are keeping them from being able to create the results they desire. Most of us were not taught how to effectively process ‘bad’ feelings. Instead, we numb, buffer, avoid, or feign positivity. We will do anything to not ‘feel’ something negative. As a result, those energetic charges remain stuck in our bodies and keep us stuck in limiting beliefs and disconnected from our hearts.

Have you ever wondered why certain things trigger you but seem to have no effect on someone else? Have you ever found yourself sabotaging your own success or paralyzed by insecurity? Let’s say when you were in grade school you spoke and some of your classmates laughed at you. You instantly felt ashamed, angry, humiliated. But you didn’t know what to do with all of that pain so you went home after school, flipped on Nickolodeon and dove into a jar of Nutella. Fast forward 20 years and you’re in a meeting with your colleagues. You have a brilliant idea you want to share, but you go to open your mouth and freeze. You feel your heart race, your face gets red, your throat closes, your eyes start to tear up. You have no idea why your body is reacting like this. You are intelligent, you have innovative ideas. What are you so afraid of?

Emotional Acceptance is a process of processing and releasing those original feelings remaining in your body that are looped with the subconscious belief such as, ‘if I speak, I will be humiliated’. Once the emotional charge is released, you can easily let go of the subconscious belief and choose consciously, rather than being run by your emotions.

It’s really quite a simple process, but it can be difficult work. We are wired to avoid the uncomfortable feeling of negative emotions. I create a safe space and guide you through a very gentle process of letting it go. My clients experience incredible emotional freedom and begin to live more intuitively, have access to greater creativity, and are able to be more present in their relationships, careers, and lives. They are able to break addictive patterns of buffering with food or alcohol because there is no longer anything to escape from. Once we release the negative charges, we begin to step into our true power. We are also more open to experience the positive emotions of love, joy, peace, and freedom.

I love the work that I do. I am able to provide a safe, compassionate space for people to let go of what entraps them. I bring my intuition to every session and am able to see my client’s inner genius and help them discover what is keeping them stuck. I truly believe I am helping liberate people to be fully alive. The more passionate, fearless, creative, energetic and heart-centered we are, the more powerful our impact on the world will be. It truly is the pathway to heal humankind and our planet.

What advice would you give to someone at the start of her career?
Invest in yourself! You are your best asset. Take immaculate care of your heart, mind, and body. Trust your intuition and believe that what you have to offer is of incredible value to the world. And nurture your creativity, it’s more important than you could ever know.

Contact Info:

• Website: rebeccastarkcoaching.com
• Phone: 720-412-6148
• Email: rebeccastarkcoaching@gmail.com
• Instagram: rebeccastarkcoaching
• Facebook: facebook.com/coachrebeccastark
• Other: beccastark_art

Image Credit:
Jude Thornberry

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