The Positive Change with Tara Storts- #WCW

"Positive Mind, Positive Vibes, Positive Life"! What a great motto to live by and I can assure you that my next #wcw badass guest from Minnesota, Tara Storts, lives and breathes this!

When I first met Tara in Croatia, her positive energy radiated! I knew we'd become great friends. I had the pleasure of traveling the world with Tara as she was a part of my Remote Year group. Tara has a natural passion for educating and helping others to be better versions of themselves. She inspired me in many ways that I'm very grateful for and you'll soon learn that her instinctual passions translate into her new business venture.

Given Tara's love for overall health and wellness, sports, helping others, and contagious positive energy, it was a no brainer that she'd progress into a physical education/health teaching career. She is Rock Star who also worked with people with disabilities and wrote a curriculum for a new movement called Unified Wellness for Special Olympics.

This amazing woman is an innovative entrepreneur, with a lot of ideas, that is always thinking, "how can I create positive change today"? Without hesitation, during Remote Year she naturally volunteered to become our Positive Impact Advocate in which she organized volunteer opportunities for our group to participate in, volunteered countless hours, and shared various ideas for better change with various organizations around the world.

Oh, and she also wrote social media content for a functional health company regarding preventative health practices. She created so much positive globally and wanted to keep the momentum going! Just like other entrepreneurs, she had some really cool ideas for companies she could start but things weren't quite working out.

Then, one day, something just clicked and that's when Sweet Water Revival was in the works! Sweet Water Revival is a team of educational and facilitation consultants who help systems change. They also facilitate action and strategic planning, consensus workshops and have focused conversations with organizations and companies. This awesome company has been official since October 2019!

I'm so excited to share what this amazing company offers and it is semi-remote! So whether you're in Minnesota, Florida, Cali, of halfway around the world, Sweet Water Revival can create positive change in your life!

I invite you to get inspired, learn more about Tara, her love for travel, and her company below⬇⬇ ! You can contact Tara here with any questions and inquiries- she'd love to hear from you!

1. What and or who inspired you to quit your previous job and follow your dream of travel? "Ever since I was a little girl in geography class, I dreamed of traveling the world.

I never could really grasp the idea of what it meant to travel as it was nearly impossible with my upbringing and living in a small farm town in Minnesota. The more people I met throughout the years and the more stories and videos I saw on the internet, I knew it was still my dream. It never went away. 3 years ago, I saw an advertisement for Remote Year on Instagram and I knew in my soul I had to make this happen even though I had NO CLUE how I was going to make it possible. I created an action plan for myself, saved up money, took the necessary steps to take a leave of absence from teaching and took the biggest risk and leap in my life. I signed up for Remote Year without knowing it was going to work out, but I had to take the step". (Pic featured- Sahara Desert- achieved a travel dream).

2. How has travel changed your life? "This is a loaded question as EVERYTHING changed in my life because of travel. Travel has a way of opening you up and seeing that you can do anything that you want to do. Connecting with people, cultures, and constant learning and growth will always be important to me. Travel brought me a community of like-minded individuals who turned into my chosen family. Travel has given me the voice and the courage to take more risks and take challenges with grace as I know I have people all over the world that have my back. Travel is everything and it has given me a jumpstart to the rest of my life".

3. What item (s) can you not live without while traveling? "This is hard for me to answer because I am not the most fashionable person, but I would say a light, cute jacket. It could be used as warmth, but also a way to dress cute. Also, some comfortable tennis shoes. I walked thousands of miles traveling and you need to have some comfortable shoes".

4. How Did You Know When You Had The Right Idea for Your Current Company/Collaboration? Tell us briefly about your company. What can we look forward to? "When I was in Kuala Lumpur, I kept thinking of my friend Samantha back home. We were on the board of directors together for the state of MN for Health and Physical Education teachers. We hadn’t spoken in a long time, but I asked if we could connect. We did and we talked about if we could have any job we wanted, what would it be. Both of our ideas and visions paralleled each other and decided to start a business.

We are a team of educational and facilitation consultants who help systems change. We are both former teachers who want to be a part of positive, healthy change in schools and organizations. We are passionate about going into schools and helping administration and teachers restructure their lesson plans to combat trauma and stress within their days and lessons. We are bringing mind/body science into schools by allowing teachers a platform to have a voice, but also help create healthy children in all contents throughout a school day. We not only help restructure, we provide ways to implement these trauma-responsive activities while their goals are still teaching the state and national standards. We want all people to thrive and live life the way they were supposed to live so we won’t stop until schools change to see children and teachers as whole people instead of robots that the education system has turned into.

We also facilitate action and strategic planning, consensus workshops and have focused conversations with organizations and companies. We facilitate them to create mission statements, refocus goals or help restructure companies and leadership. We help companies come to a consensus around problems or issues while allowing every stakeholder to have a voice.

I love what we do"!

5. Briefly, explain your previous job role/career history. "Pre-Remote Year, I taught high school physical education, health and worked with people with disabilities. I was and am very passionate about helping students learn about themselves as a whole person (mind/body/spirit) and creating opportunities for students to love themselves first and/or alongside of learning content.

I created and taught classes based off of my personal experience of everything that I wanted to know as a teenager. It all comes back to emotions and if we can help students have skills and manage emotions, they will make better decisions and be more resilient citizens of our world. They will also see hope instead of destruction. I also wrote a curriculum for a new movement called Unified Wellness for Special Olympics. The curriculum brings together students with and without disabilities in a health classroom where respect, inclusion and celebrating differences are the base of every lesson.

During RY, I found a functional health company that needed help writing social media content for preventative health practices. I had never written social media content before, but I enjoyed that I was able to read articles about our mind, body, spirit and share inspiration and proactive health tips to people".

6. How would you describe your lifestyle now? "My life has slowed down a little from Remote Year life, but I am active with our new business, my family, friends, volunteering, being in nature (hiking), and Special Olympics".

7. If you could have coffee with anyone (famous or not) who would it be and why? "This is really tough as I would love to have tea (I don’t drink coffee) with many people, but the first person that came to my mind was my best friend from HS, Emily. She passed away when we were 21 from a car accident. I want to hear her laugh and give her the biggest hug. I miss her so much"!

8. What advice would you give someone looking to quit their job and/or explore new opportunities and follow their dreams? "This sounds cliche, but believe in yourself and take risks. As adults, we have responsibilities and duties and it is hard to follow your dreams. We forget about ourselves and give everything we have to others and forget about who were are and what we want. I came up with an exercise to start my day every morning and it is simple and easy for me to be consistent. I ask myself 2 questions every morning:

What am I grateful for? Taking time to be grateful for areas and things in my life has changed my life. It was hard at first, but now it is easy to see all the goodness and focus on that instead of the struggles that I encounter. It keeps me grounded, positive and full of hope. We all have struggles in life and I know how we react to situations and people change everything.

What risk am I going to take? This can be as simple as following my intuition, saying hello to a stranger, writing that email to a potential client, or calling up an old friend I haven’t talked to in years. There will be so many people that stand in your way to get to follow your dreams. I know I want to live in faith and not fear and this question helps me with keeping myself outside of comfort zone so I can continue to move forward, grow and live in faith".

❤Thank you so much Tara for bringing positivity into this world, for being my #wcw guest , and, great friend!

🌎You'll be sure to catch Tara on a new adventure soon! Check out her Insta here

📝Get involved and contact Tara here

#entrepreneur #change #positivevibes