How to Create the Sparkle Effect
One of America’s most beloved former Miss USA’s, Kristen Dalton Wolfe, was kind enough to take some time out of her busy schedule to chat with me! If you listen to Kristen for just five minutes, you walk away knowing you just got wiser. Her list of accomplishments never ceases to amaze me, as she is currently living in Los Angeles with her husband and two kids, all while running her own mentoring business and women’s discipleship. Oh, and she’s working on getting her master’s degree in counseling — like what???
I think it’s safe to say Kristen can teach us all a thing or two about time management. However, her journey to this point in life took a lot of hard work and the belief in a dream. From a young age, Kristen knew that pageantry was what she wanted to do one day. It was genetically programmed inside her that this was her platform to achieve her true calling — helping women.
“The reason I competed was because I wanted to help women and because I wanted to be a role model… I just remember sitting there as a little girl watching the pageant every year and I would get so sucked in. I was like these women are not even in the world.”
Fast forward to 2009 when Kristen was crowned Miss USA. Unfortunately, her winning experience wasn’t everything she hoped it would be. She quickly found herself in an unwinnable game of self-comparison and trying to convince those who didn’t like her to change their mind. As Kristen would say, this made her a “slave to people” — which only leads to self-doubt, anxiety, and depression.
“When you’re a slave to people, it’s basically a form of idolatry. It’s a fear of people, instead of a fear of God… It will make you lose yourself. It will make you dim your sparkle.”
I know that fear is a big player in life. I see it control me and my own decisions. It can be a hard enemy to defeat, and even harder at finding ways to overcome the anxiety and sadness it causes. I love when I asked Kristen about this she brought it all back to God, and how our hearts must be centered in Him.
“The key I have found for myself to nix this stuff is to delight myself in Him [God]. It takes time. It takes serious effort to lean in and press in, and be like ‘Hey God, what’s up? I can’t live like this. Please show me, and make Your Word come to life for me.”
As a Christian myself, I know that listening to God and turning into Him isn’t always the easiest or the first choice we make. But it always gives the best results — and ultimately, peace. In Kristen’s women’s discipleship (She Gathers), she works to help women find the encounters with God they are seeking. Kristen is quick to remind that God loves us all equally, and it’s not that He is speaking to one of us and not the other, but instead, we just need to change our mindset on how He communicates.
“If you want to grow in your relationship with God, it’s not going to happen by you wishing. Just like any relationship, or just like any dream. It doesn’t happen with you saying, ‘I wish the Lord would speak to me….’ I feel like He loves to reveal Himself in new ways, to be like hey I’m not in this box.”
Back to what I mentioned earlier, about Kristen being a great time manager. How does she juggle all these relationships and internal work? For her, it’s two things: setting expectations and knowing how much time you can give. She likes to call it her holy hustle — and I LOVE THAT.
“We’ve got to prioritize. We can’t take care of everyone who wants us to take care of them. There’s a lot of people who want us to do a lot of things, and we have to figure out who is our top priority… You and God need to be first, and then your household.”
We all want to have good relationships and live to our fullest potential. From our relationship with our significant other, to our careers, and everything in between — we are all racing to be fulfilled and happy. Kristen drives home that this isn’t accomplished until we know ourselves and can value ourselves the way God does. It’s a journey that isn’t accomplished overnight.
“What does God say? He says you are more precious than rare jewels. God can have all the promises, and say all the things, but they mean anything unless you do something with them — unless you start to claim them for yourself. So find out what they are, and then ask Him. Alright God, how to I actually start to believe this?”
Be Unstoppable!
– Tori
