JOL Shari | Full Self

Joy is the truth and alignment of being your full self. Being able to show up fully to yourself and everybody around you. To break down those walls of guilt, shame, fear, and unsafety so that you can find beauty in your life. That is how Shari Alyse defines joy and she lives by that every single day.

Join The Ambassador of JOY, Barry Shore as he talks to “America’s Joy Magnet”, Shari Alyse about finding your voice to make the world a better place. Shari is a TEDx and Inspirational Speaker, Best Selling Author, and TV Personality. Discover how she built a community of over 150k+ followers and how she reached over 10 million people.

Shari’s deep commitment to others is motivated by her own journey through childhood sexual abuse. At the tender age of seven, Shari had to use her voice on a witness stand to testify against the man who had abused her. Listen to her story as it is her mission to bring hope to those who are struggling.

Together Barry and Shari work to spread joy throughout the world. This is a must SHARE episode.

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How To Show Up As Your Full Self With Joy With Shari Alyse

You know you tuned in consciously and conscientiously because, on this show, we discuss the three fundamentals of life. When you use these three fundamentals, the result is you will be happier, healthier and wealthier. I want to let you know that you are being joined by approximately 348,613 people around the world. By the time we bring on our amazing guest, Shari, who is going to rip you with goodness and joy, there will be over 355,000 or maybe even 360,000 people. Thank you because we have an audience of 330,000 people every week, and you are asking your friends and family to come and join.

These fundamentals are, number one, life. Your life has a purpose. When you lead a purpose-driven life, you can go MAD. In this case, MAD is a great acronym. It stands for Make A Difference. If you lead a purpose-driven life, you make a difference in the world. The third fundamental is to uncover and unlock the power and the secrets of every day. A simple example is this show is being carried both video and audio on the internet worldwide. If you ask anybody, “What does WWW stand for?” Invariably, they will tell you it is something with the internet, and factually speaking, they are correct, but in our world, the world of the positive, purposeful, powerful and pleasant, WWW stands for What a Wonderful World.

Whenever you hear the opening bars of that song from Louis Armstrong, who was able to go worldwide and touch not just tens of millions but hundreds of billions of people around the planet with that song, what do you do? You cannot help but smile. Smile is one of the greatest words you can ever internalize, utilize, and leverage in life because SMILE is an acronym that stands for Seeing Miracles in Life Everyday.

Before COVID, I was speaking to a group of 5,200 people in the audience. I was telling the story about Barry Shore and talking about smiles and seeing miracles in life every day. People were raising their hands and saying, “I have been in for hours. Have you seen any miracles?” I asked him, “Are you here? Can you hear? Can you stand still? I cannot do that. Can you walk? I can barely do that. Do you have water, food, a place to sleep, family, and friends? Every single one of those is a miracle. What is the proof? The simplest proof is a million people did not get out of bed because they died.” By definition, if you are tuning in, you did not. Therefore, you have an obligation to live life exuberantly. That is why we use the three fundamentals. Life has a purpose, go make a difference, and unlock the power and secrets of the word.

Imagine the following. I am standing up in the morning at Hale and Hearty, I flip on the building in a single bout, and that night, I am in the hospital completely paralyzed. It was not because of an automobile accident or a spinal injury. It was a rare disease that took over my body, which I had never heard of the day before, and rendered me what is called a quadriplegic. Nothing on my body moved. I was completely paralyzed from my head down to my toes. I was in the hospital for 144 days. I was in a hospital bed in my own home for two years and I could not throw over myself. I was in a wheelchair for four years. I had braces on both my legs, hips and ankles. That was progress.

Thank God I am vertical ambulatory with the help of a 7-foot walking wand made for me by a Zen master. I am on a tripod, not a bipod. I still cannot walk up a curb by myself. I cannot walk up the stairs by myself. I have help 12 hours a day for 7 days a week, but you hear my voice. It is all because of one word, and that word is SMILE, Seeing Miracles of Life Everyday.

I’ve got to tell you a quick story. My eight-year-old niece comes over to me. She says, “Can we spell smile as SMIEL?” I thought about it. It sounds the same. I asked her, “Why not, but how come?” She says because then, it would stand for Seeing Miracles in Everyday Life. What was she doing? She was creating the kind of world she wanted to live in. CREATE is a wonderful acronym. It stands for Causing Rethinking, Enabling All To Excel. You are responsible for your own thoughts. We call it the Neuro-Linguistic Program, NLP.

Let’s learn the six most important words you are going to internalize, utilize, and leverage in your life because these six words make all the difference for you. These six words are choice, not chance, and will determine your destiny. How you respond in any given situation will make a difference in your life. I want to do the following. I am going to warn you, our audience, and our wonderful guest, Shari, that I do use a lot of four-letter words, so I am going to use them throughout the show. I even use the four-letter FU word. I do it because of the shock value and it is fun.

JOL Shari | Full Self

Full Self: Joy is intentional living. It’s making the choices every single day to fully show up for life. Show up even on the days that you’re not feeling so great. Extend grace to yourself.

The four-letter words that we use because we live in a world of positive, purposeful, powerful, and pleasant are life, love, hope, dose, grow, gift, pray, play and swim. The four-letter FU word is FUNN. Some people are raising their hands and are like, “Fun is only spelled with three letters.” In our world of positive, purposeful, powerful and pleasant, fun is spelled as FUNN. After the show, when you see your family and friends, and you have a twinkle in your eye and a smile on your face, point your finger and tell everybody, “FU, everybody,” but remember to add right away, NN. They will say, “Where did you get that?” Say, “I tuned in to Barry Shore’s show. He wants to teach the world to be FUNN.”

Before we bring on Shari, I want to urge everybody to do the following. I want you to use, for your benefit, the two most powerful words in the English language three times a day consciously and conscientiously. You do this for the rest of your life and you will make your life, the life of your family, your friends, and all living beings better. These two words are ‘Thank you.’ THANK stands for To Harmonize And Network Kindness. The Dalai Lama has a quote and saying. I read in his writings, “Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible.”

Imagine going back to the coffee shop with no mask. You order your fancy latte. You sit down and the server brings it to you. You say, “Thank you.” You go to the coffee shop, order your fancy latte, and a few minutes go by, and nobody brings it to you. You go to the counter and they say, “I am sorry. We forgot. We will bring it to you.” You sit down, a few more minutes go by, and somebody brings it to you. You still say, “Thank you.” You are walking out of the coffee shop and it is raining outside. Somebody holds the door open for you. You say, “Thank you.” You are walking out of the coffee shop and it is raining outside. Somebody slams the door on you. You say, “Thank you.”

You are in traffic and late for an appointment and somebody cuts you off. You say, “Thank you.” You get up in the middle of the night. You stub your toe and it hurts. You say, “Thank you.” KIND is a fabulous word that stands for Keep Inspiring Noble Deeds. I cannot think of anybody that I want to share with you that inspires noble deeds other than the wonderful, amazing, and bountiful Shari Alyse.

Shari is America’s Joy Magnet, but that is not just for America. It is for the world because she reaches out across time, space, and develops people. We are going to speak about some amazing, interesting insights that she is going to bring for us. I want to share with everybody the following. Information is readily available in many places. You can go on YouTube or ask people. That is information. Transformation only happens when you utilize that which is going to be presented to you by this remarkable, dynamic, bountiful, beautiful, and magnificent being. We are going to enable you to transform your life.

Shari is an author and a podcaster. She is on the radio and television. She has a TEDx Talk about that and a second one. She is an overachiever. The key for you here is that she understands what it means to work with joy in oneself because she has been through stuff. We will talk about the stuff later, but let’s jump in. Shari, first of all, thank you for being here. You talk a lot about redefining joy. Let’s redefine it. How do you understand this amazing word, JOY? I use it all the time. It stands for Journey Of You. How do you redefine joy?

First, thank you for having me. I am excited. I feel joy being around you. I am glad that we have very similar missions. When you say Journey Of You, our meaning of joy is the same. My book is a journey back to ourselves and finding joy within. My personal definition of joy is more than. When people often think of joy, they think of sunflowers, fields of yellow, and children playing in a playground, which are all amazing, beautiful moments of joy, but I discovered the joy and then the people that I worked with that the more we worked together, they also found it. That is through the truth and the alignment of being your full self with all the highs and the lows. It is allowing ourselves the gift and the freedom to be ourselves. That is where I have found my joy and have helped others.

Let’s look at this as you are redefining joy in the sense of self. We have worked with acronyms. We love words. Remember, it is one of the three fundamentals. We have used an acronym for SELF which stands for recognizing that you are a Soul Experiencing Life Fully, but the fullness of life, what others call ups and downs, we are not going to use those terms for the moment. We are going to talk about the ups called unlimited potential. The other things that happen when you are not utilizing your full, unlimited potential that is what other people would call downs. We are working with joy because you understand that you are a joy magnet. Let’s talk about attracting joy into one’s life.

Joy is the truth and alignment of being your full self. Click To Tweet

Joy is intentional living. It is making the choices every single day to show up for life fully and to show up for myself fully, even on the days that I am not feeling so great. Showing up for myself means extending grace, kindness, love, and compassion to myself on those days that are not the ups. The more that we do that, that is how we attract joy into our lives.

This is wonderful. You are saying to everybody listening, “Hello,” it takes effort. It takes work. By the way, that is the good news, right?

Yes. We are miracles. We are alive, working, and functioning. It takes work and energy to be unhappy and miserable. I always remember being a young girl thinking, “If I have these two doors to walk in through, the one that is more negative or the one that feels better, they both take energy, so I am going to walk through the one that feels better.”

How did you figure that one out? Let’s do that. Let’s go back to a time when you were very young, maybe 6 or 7 years old, and stuff happened in your life. We have hundreds of thousands of people tuning in. Thank God. I always urge people to share this with five people at least, so we have over 1.5 million people that will be touched by this. Tell us a little bit about you as a young girl, your upbringing, the things that happened to you, and how you needed to resolve that on a witness stand?

It is a big story, so I will try to keep it concise. At seven years old, I found myself on a witness stand, speaking out against a man who had sexually abused me. My mom left my sister and me in the hands of friends’ parents for a day out at the beach, and those friends’ parents left me in the care of a stranger. Like a lot of survivors, I was told after the event that if I were to tell anybody, my family would be killed and that I would be hurt, but there was something that, until this day, I tell people all the time I have no idea what that thing was that told me to tell but I knew that I had to.

While I was trying to tell my sister along the drive home, she was too busy with her friends, and she said, “Talk to me when we get home.” When I got home, my mom sensed that there was something that was off about me. I was talking to my sister and my mom was eavesdropping. She heard me say it and suddenly called the police. We did the whole thing and had to go and identify the person. We went to court to prosecute him. Imagine at seven years old, even talking about anything like that in front of a room full of strangers. The event itself was traumatic, but then being on the witness stand to this day was more traumatic for me.

There was having to defend me as to why I did not do more at this age to stop the person, but what I learned on that stand was two things. Number one, my voice or me speaking out saved lives because they had found out that he did this to other girls. He had been prosecuted. I also found out that sharing my truth also hurts people. I felt guilt and shame about putting this person in prison. I felt guilt and shame about my parents, who now had to deal with it. It was 1981, so no one was talking about sexual abuse. The #MeToo movement had not started. No one knew what to say to me.

My mom being a mom and wanting to protect me thought by teaching me lessons about not being so naive and going off with strangers and being protective, but as a young child, I internalized that as it was my fault. My dad, me being his little girl, did not know what to say at all so he did not say anything, and I internalized that as he was ashamed of me. It is a lot.

JOL Shari | Full Self

Full Self: If you find yourself in toxic relationships with yourself and others, find your voice. Find the voice inside that knows that there’s more to life than what you’re living. That joy is out there and you need to find it.

Let’s talk about you now as an adult recognizing the two positive things that came out about your voice. I share this because for everybody reading, remember, this show is not about Barry Shore as nice as he is, or about Shari as wonderful as she is. It is about you becoming the best you. Unfortunately, in this environment, we have such a worldwide audience that people know of other people who have been abused either sexually or physically. It is not uncommon.

There are families who internalize in different ways. You thought your father was ashamed. That was your projection, but he did not feel that way. You found your two voices. One is the power of your voice. Your voice was so strong that you could be a champion of injustice even though you were not thinking like that and put away somebody who was wicked. That is a very powerful thing. Tell us how you were able to utilize your voice later as you grew up to continue your positive, purposeful, powerful, pleasant essence.

I remember it sticking with me. When my mom and my dad and people said to me that I was so strong, I was this hero, and I had saved people, I remember thinking at that young age that I did not feel that. I did not feel strong and courageous. I felt scared, but those messages stayed with me. Everything I did in life in terms of speaking out against injustices and using my voice to talk about things that were not right in the world or to speak about things that would make the world better, whether it was kindness, how can we help each other, or show up for each other. I had the confidence from being on that witness stand and seeing the power in what I did, even though I did not get it at the time to know that I can affect change in others by using my voice. I started speaking for a living and being able to use that in that way.

This is fantastic. I want to emphasize what I believe Shari is saying to us. Even in the most traumatic and dramatic circumstances, something positive will arise. People were telling her how strong she was. Those positive affirmations may not have been there if you were “a regular 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, or 15-year-old girl in puberty,” but because you were love-bombed by positive messages of strength, somehow they came into you.

You did not go around and think, “I am now Supergirl or Superwoman,” but it did help later because you were able to recognize that you could use your voice to fight injustice. You were strong enough to be beneficial to others and fight against the bad people. Let’s move into another aspect of joy, which you talked about the self. Let’s talk about that idea of self-connection and having joy blossom into the world.

I feel it all when you say that. I had this moment. When I was seven years old and on that witness stand, there was a disconnection there, which happens to a lot of people who have experienced trauma, where I did not want to deal with a lot of pain that was felt that day. My form of escape for decades was through food. I was using food to push down the emotions, the sadness, and the fear that I lived every day that I did not know that I was living because I did not allow myself to live it.

I spent years disconnected from now I know myself. I kept finding myself in these unhealthy relationships, not only with men but also with myself and my body. I was mistreating myself, but there was this voice inside that always knew that there was more and this could not be what I was sentenced to live. I was like, “Why do I get to see all these people that are having these amazing lives? What did I do that I cannot have that?” The thing was, I did not know how to get there, but I knew it existed. Knowing that it existed out there meant that I had a direction and somewhere to go, and it was about figuring out how.

For me, what that looked like was a lot of repeated mistakes. I say mistakes, but I learned from all of them. Having these relationships and going to my friends and saying, “Why does this keep happening to me?” I used to dig myself the dark cloud, which is funny to see the transformation now, but I always thought that anything that could go wrong would go wrong.

Use your voice to speak out against injustices and things that aren't right in the world. Click To Tweet

We will unpack something. Anything that could go wrong will go wrong, we call that in life paranoia. Paranoia strikes deep. It is very “common” for people who are not ever striving forward. You were in that place of disconnect, and therefore by definition, anything that could go wrong will go wrong, but because you thought that it happened. It went wrong.

I was going down that negative door. That was all I saw. I did not see that other door yet. We were back after a night out at the bar and I was complaining about this one, that one, and why. My friend looked at me and said, “What kind of woman do you see yourself as?” I started listing off that she is confident and she is self-respectful. If he had said this a week before, I might not have heard it the same way, but that particular day was the day I was meant to hear it.

He looked at me and said, “Be her.” It was so simple, and then I thought, “I am an actress. I could be this woman.” What that did for me is when that phone call or text message came in from that person who was unhealthy in my life, I thought to myself, “What would that self-respecting woman do right now? What she would do was not return his call and delete his number from her phone.”

I began to do that with little steps, and before I knew it, I started to feel better inside little by little. When something toxic or unhealthy would come into my world or into my inner universe, it would feel poison to me. It would feel off. I was like, “I do not like that.” It was not familiar anymore. That is how I started weeding people and unhealthy stuff out of my life and the more and more I became connected to myself.

When you did that, you began meeting more positive, purposeful, and pleasant people. The paranoia was not gone, but it was diminished, so if anything could go right, it would go right.

I believed it. I was living it. I saw that it existed. Before, I only lived in the limitations of the four walls I had built for myself, which were guilt, shame, fear and unsafety. That was the world in which I lived. I did not have anything else to look out of. I did not know there was a window in that room that I could open up and escape out of.

At this very moment, there are tens of thousands of people, mostly women, around the world applauding, standing up, and cheering because what you have done with your hands and creating the box, the four walls, is what people do unless they have your formula. That is what people do. You lived it.

We box ourselves in, and it is not our fault. It is what we know. It is the limited lens through which we look through. For me, I had to have faith. I had to believe that there was something more for me out there. It was risky and scary, but it was riskier and scarier to stay in that place where I thought everything was a dark cloud. That was not living to me. That was not life. I had to make a choice, and the choice I made was that I was going to believe that there was better for me and I was going to find it.

JOL Shari | Full Self

Full Self: To shift your perspective is to be willing to believe one thought differently. Know that maybe your thoughts about yourself and about the world are wrong.

Choice, not chance, determines your destiny. We are going to start the next session with this quote to finish the session from Anaïs Nin, who is also one of my favorite authors. As you pointed out with your four walls, the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom. Right after this brief message from our sponsors, we are coming right back. There is more of Shari. She is going to cause a shift in your life.

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Good day, beautiful, bountiful, beloved, mortal beings and good-looking people. Remember, you are good-looking because you are always looking for and finding the good. We have good and abundance in our cup and run it over with good and a two-legged being named Shari Alyse. She is amazing. She is discussing with us about being connected to yourself and experiencing the blossoming of joy and breaking down those four walls and smashing them so you can attract into your life the goodness and beauty that exists there.

She is a DOSE of HOPE. We translate that as Doing Ongoing Service Everyday, Helping Others Progress Everyday. That is what Shari is. She is followed by hundreds of thousands of people and has touched over ten million people around the world. We left our intrepid hero as she is leading us up along the path. She is talking about the perspective shifts that happen. Let’s talk about perspective shifts. Wonderful Shari, give us some insights, please.

Ask yourself, what kind of woman do you see yourself as? Find that out and be her. Click To Tweet

Perspective shifts are about the continuation of our conversation. It is that willingness to believe one thought differently. I was in those four walls. I did not know anything outside of them, but I had to believe that there had to be something different if I wanted to leave where I was. I had to take this leap of faith. I had to say, “Maybe my thoughts about myself and the world are wrong.”

The first time that I heard the quote, “Would you rather be right or happy?” I remember thinking it was a trick question. That is where a lot of us get stuck. We hold onto our rightness or badges of honor and hold it under lock and key. We do not question where we get our beliefs from or where they have stemmed from. They often stem from our childhood, from the people in our lives, and the things that we have been taught all come from their own beliefs, which then come from their ancestors’ beliefs.

For me, it was looking at this issue of worthiness. Was I not valuable? Was I unworthy in the world because of my perspective that somebody could use me the way they did? Could they not value me as a human being that they could do it? I had to start looking at that from a common-sense level. Why would I be born into this world to not be valuable while I could see the value in everybody else? It was the willingness to have that one thought and believe differently.

That shift made the difference. It was based on faith. FAITH is a great acronym that stands for Finding Answers In The Hidden. It was hidden from you. When you said, “I am going to find the answers,” you found the answers in the hidden and you were willing to believe. That willingness to believe, in my opinion, is what made the perspective shift possible for you. Is that correct?

Yes. Whatever that willingness is immediately opens us up to having it. It immediately opens and begins the attraction to it. For me, it was the willingness, but also, I know I had to stop blaming life, the world, God, or whatever else I was blaming and take accountability and responsibility not for what happened to me but for how I chose to show up in the world and respond to all of those things. It was not about belittling and bashing myself. It was about learning compassion and understanding why I made those choices, but still knowing that they were choices and I could make different ones.

Knowing that you can choose how to respond in any given situation and that will determine your destiny is a universal truth. The truth was outside of you, but once you internalized it, you became you. You blossomed.

I removed all of the barriers that I had built around myself, all of the walls of all of the disbelief, the lies, and the perspectives that I had that were not true. When I removed all of them, what was left was the truth. It was me, my connection, and who I was.

You gave me a beautiful picture of something. I do not know if they call it fish, but we call them crustaceans. The first word in crustaceans is crust. You had a crust around you that looked as if it was three-inch thick metal walls, but in reality, it was not. It was so easy to push aside once you made the decision. Is that correct? The walls broke down.

JOL Shari | Full Self

Full Self: Theater can do two things for you. It can be used as an escape. A way to be somebody else. And, it’s also a way to entertain and spread joy. It’s the power to shift someone’s emotions.

Yeah. It was that willingness to believe that it could be different and then choosing to do so to think differently.

What she did was wonderful. You went to a great school called Syracuse. For those who are not in the United States, it is Syracuse University in New York State. You majored in theater. I am about to pause it that theater was another process for you of unfolding self. Is that fair to say?

Yes. Without a doubt. Theater did two things for me as a kid. Number one, it was an escape for me. I did not have to connect with myself. I could be somebody else. Number two, my parents went through a bitter divorce. My mom was really unhappy, so there was a lot of sadness in our house. What I noticed was that when I entertained her or did something funny, I watched the sadness from her eyes disappear.

For me, I saw the power of being able to shift somebody’s emotions and I wanted to do more of that. I wanted to spread joy. Entertaining allowed me to do that. The process of that is that the more and more I grew, healed, and found more of myself, I realized that I no longer wanted to be an actor because I enjoyed being me more so than I did playing a character.

This is so fabulous. We have a worldwide audience. Eighty percent of the people are under 35. It is very important that you are empowering people. I know it is an overused term, but you are empowering people to understand that it is great to help others move the way from the shift because they may be in a place where the F is still not there. They may be in the other place. For you to include the F and recognize, “I want to be me,” and to do that, that is the greatest empowerment possible. It is refreshing. What you are doing is wonderful. It is so enlightening and enlivening.

SHARI now stands for Spreading Happiness And Rewarding Insights. That is who you are. You are America’s Joy Magnet. This is fantastic and wonderful. We are so happy that you are doing this. Let’s go and explore a bit more about what it is that animates you for the past couple of years because you have been doing television appearances, TEDx, and written a book. You are touching millions of people. What animates you? What is the mission that drives Shari?

What drives me is giving people hope. For me, HOPE stands for Holding Onto Possibility Every day. The reason why that is for me and why I am so lit up by that is because when I was twelve years old, Oprah Winfrey came out and spoke about her sexual abuse. I remember having felt so alone that I saw this person who had been through it, was successful and made this whole thing out of her life.

What she did for me was give me the possibility, and I held onto that. What lights me up is helping people know that whatever circumstances they are in or whatever their past may be, it does not get to define the amount of joy that they get to feel because every single day, we get to make choices and I get to be intentional about joyful living. That is all I want to do.

Stop blaming everything and start taking accountability for how you choose to show up in the world. Click To Tweet

I want to share truths with people that every day does not feel amazing, but I choose to make moments amazing. That is all I can do. I am trying to spread that in whatever way I can. I had COVID in December of 2021. My health went downhill and I had some longer-term effects. It has been challenging for me, but it makes me show up even more for myself with more love, compassion, and kindness. I want to keep spreading that in whatever way I can.

That is the best way to heal. It is to maintain and then grow that. I am going to ask you a very personal question, and I hope the answer is yes. Did you send Oprah Winfrey at least an email or a handwritten letter and tell her how much it helped you when you were twelve years old?

I did not. I have commented on threads and she does not see it. I have said it in interviews and in the media. I have made references to her, but directly, no.

I am going to ask you in front of hundreds of thousands of people to commit to sending Oprah Winfrey a handwritten letter that says how much you appreciate what she did. Would you do that?

Absolutely. She changed my life. What made me want to be a television talk show host is because of the work that she has done for me.

Do that but in a handwritten letter. Electronic communication is a boon to society. There is no question. Before it all, people keep handwritten notes.

You mentioned that in your book a few times where you talk about writing things out and not typing them and the importance of that. I love that you mentioned the handwritten.

It is so tactile that when you pick up something called a pen or a pencil and you put that onto paper and read what you wrote, your spirit is infusing the words. It touches another human being. It is what we call touch to the quick. That is a term from the theater. It means you have gone right into the inner being.

JOL Shari | Full Self

Full Self: You’re not supposed to leave your inner self, you’re supposed to love your inner self. Reconnect with your inner child. Stop running and connect back to her. Once you do that, your true journey will begin.

While we are doing this, I am going to encourage everybody that is reading to consider and either commit to yourself or somebody you are with to write a letter. It does not have to be sixteen pages. It could be 100 words. Write a letter to someone that made a difference in your life. If you can mail it, that is even better, but even if you cannot, write the letter. It makes a difference.

I know it made a difference to me. It also makes a difference for the people that I work with when I do training. It makes a difference for you. Remember, you want to be a mad person. MAD stands for Make A Difference. Talk about Shari making a difference in the world. She is the embodiment of madness. I am so happy that you are here. I love it. We are going to use your dose of hope. It is fantastic. Unfortunately, time goes by so fast. The hour is almost up. I want to go a little deeper if you would be so kind. What was it in the TEDx Talk that was the defining moment for you, if there was one?

It was a moment in Italy. I had gone off to Italy for a few months after a broken heart. I did the whole eat, pray, and love thing. I sold everything I owned, quit my job, and took off there to spend time with myself. During that time, I learned a lot about myself, but it was one of the last days that I was standing in my favorite church in Florence and taking at the moment. I was getting ready to come back to the States. I had my eyes closed and I heard very clearly a voice that said, “You were not supposed to leave her. You were supposed to love her.”

Do you know how they say when you die or are close to death, your life flashes before you? I had flashes of every moment in my life, from that witness stand to all of the times my inner child tried to show up and reconnect back to myself to that moment in time in that church. I realized then that I was not supposed to be running from her as I had been doing all my life. I was supposed to connect back to her, and that moment was when my true journey to joy began.

I am so glad I asked you. That was powerful and really deep.

I write about it in detail in my book. She had shown up for me in person in Sedona years before on a mountain top on one of the borders of Texas. It sounds crazy to the average person but as real as I always say, “I am standing here and sitting here with you, and so is she.” I was not ready to face her then. I told her I loved her and I needed to leave her. I was using food to keep her safe, so I was in this protective barrier. I had that conversation with her, which made sense that years later in Italy, it was you were not supposed to leave her that day on the witness stand or that day on that vortex.

She is amazing. Another leap forward in Shari’s life is that she is about to do a second TEDx, which is not just unusual. It is highly unusual. She is doing it for several reasons and she shared with me before, which is that it is a full circle because she began discovering her best self at Syracuse on stage. Now, she is going to Syracuse on stage to give a TEDx Talk. It is something remarkable. It is going onto the Cape Canaveral and you are the rocket kid. You are the one who is making remarkable strides forward. We applaud you. It is wonderful. I am going to ask you three quick questions. Are you ready?

Yeah, let’s do it.

Hope stands for holding onto possibility every day. Click To Tweet

Number one, will you come back again?

Yes.

Thank you. Number two, what is your most fervent desire?

My greatest desire is to be at complete peace with myself to not need to have to do anything in order to feel fully aligned and fully at peace with myself because there are still those parts of me that are still looking to be healed in moments, and then the other is for others to awaken to their magnificence, their beauty, and their joy just as they are.

She does it so wonderfully, elegantly and eloquently as well. Number three, may I give you a hug in front of 362,800 people around the world?

I would be honored.

Let me tell you what hug stands for. HUG stands for Harmonizing Unlimited Giving. You have been tuning in to the show with our amazing, wondrous, blossoming, bountiful, and magnificent person Shari Alyse. She has been sharing with us those transformational moments in your life. They happen in her life and in your life as well when you open up yourself and allow the shift to happen.

In this show, we talk about the three fundamentals of life, and these fundamentals are going to enable you to be happier, healthier, and wealthier. The fundamentals are, number one, life. Your life has a purpose. You lead a purpose-driven life like Shari. You can go mad. You make a difference in the world. Number three is to unlock the power and the secrets of everyday words and terms such as SMILE, Seeing Miracles In Life Everyday, or as my eight-year-old niece says, Seeing Miracles In Everyday Life. Create the world you want to live in.

Shari taught us that choice, not chance, determines your destiny. Learn to use four-letter words in the positive, purposeful, powerful, and pleasant sense of words, which are love, life, hope, gift, play, pray, and swim. Also, tell the world to FUNN. After the show, when you see your family and friends, tell them that. When they say, “Where did you get that?” Say, “Barry Shore. He wants to teach the world to FUNN.” Use the two most powerful words in the English language three times a day from now and for the rest of your life because they help you, your family, your friends, and all living beings. These two words are thank you.

Everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about. Therefore, be KIND, Keep Inspiring Noble Deeds, as Sheri does. Kind also says connect in nature daily. It is a wonderful experience to breathe and feel the bounty and the beauty of nature all around you. We are going to leave you both with a blessing. Remember, the show is not about Shari or Barry. It is all about you becoming the best you possible. The blessing from us is to go forth, live exuberantly. Spread the seeds of joy, happiness, peace and love. Go MAD. Go Make A Difference.

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About Shari Alyse

JOL Shari | Full SelfKnown as “America’s Joy Magnet”, Shari Alyse is a TEDx and Inspirational Speaker, Best Selling Author, and TV Personality. Shari has built a community of over 150k+ followers and has reached over 10 million people.

Shari’s deep commitment to others is motivated by her own journey through childhood sexual abuse and other childhood traumas. At seven-years-old, Shari found herself having to use her voice on a witness stand to testify against the man who had abused her.

Shari’s mission is to use her voice to give hope to those who are struggling and spread joy to every corner of the world.