We recently connected with Sarah Elhourch and have shared our conversation below.
Sarah, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. It’s always helpful to hear about times when someone’s had to take a risk – how did they think through the decision, why did they take the risk, and what ended up happening. We’d love to hear about a risk you’ve taken.
I think it’s important to note before getting into it that every choice we make is an educated guess. We make choices based on a number of factors, and often times a big factor is how secure, safe, or stable this choice is. I believe that is the one factor that could use a little flexibility and here’s why.
The best investment I ever made was in 2021. I was living on my own for the very first time with my brother. We took the leap and got an apartment that truthfully we couldn’t really afford. My brother had introduced me prior to this move to the world of personal development. I was listening to motivation, subconscious reprogramming, audiobooks with new ways of thinking and quite frankly we were obsessed (and still are)! My favorite motivational speaker, Les Brown, happened to be doing a program called Power Voice. It was about teaching strong speaking skills, how to communicate to audiences, and to me that meant how to become great like him. I want to preface this by saying I was by no means an outgoing person at the time. I was very timid, embarrassed to put myself out there, and was working full-time as a hairstylist so it’s safe to say I had no ambition of becoming a speaker or really doing anything with the experience that would come with doing the program, I mean come on. This was Les Brown we’re talking about. The program was expensive in comparison to what I could afford given I had just moved and wasn’t really in a position financially to do so. However, my brother convinced me that it was a great opportunity and there were limited spots so I bit the bullet and did it despite my concern about the money,
Once I started the course I realized why this was the best decision I had ever made. While yes, I learned so much from the program, something even more valuable than the information was the transformation. I was enlightened to a new possibility for my life for the very first time. I had never considered myself as anything other than who I was. There was a new self-image I had the opportunity to adopt, and that was something I can’t put a price on.
Shortly after, I was invited to Atlanta to give a short speech, and teaching principles of personal development became my newfound purpose. I started working on some products, I launched my podcast called The Rise Up Club which has been so much fun and I’ve learned so much not only from my guests but about myself in the process, and generally the idea of being apart of someone’s journey to becoming more and having more was something I learned I couldn’t live without doing.
Sometimes we face choices from a place of too much bias in favor of our fears or concern. It can be a slippery slope, but adopting a mindset that making an investment whether that be of your time, your energy, or your money, will never actually be a loss. You can earn more money, sleep to earn back your energy, and to be honest, there is no such thing as a waste of time, only lessons on what can be considered valuable or a misuse of it.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
Well now that you’ve heard a little bit about how I got so involved in personal development, a lot has unraveled. I do think that I’ve always had a teaching nature, in fact for most of my high school career I thought I wanted to be an art teacher for high school students. But I think I really just wanted an avenue to be a positive force during the more confusing and developmental times of a person’s life. I quickly learned however that being a teenager is not the only confusing and pivotal phases of the human experience. Since my trip to Atlanta to give my first speech years ago, I’ve been on the hunt for ways to reach more people to share what I’ve learned about how to truly improve your self image, develop a success-conscious way of thinking, set goals and become the kind of person who reaches them, and more importantly provide some guidance on how to design a life that you just can’t wait to wake up to everyday.
I have worked on quite a few projects over the years but none that I felt met their fullest potential enough to keep active! My brother and I are actually working on a product that we plan to launch before the New Year that we’re very eager about but the project I am truly the proudest of has to be my podcast, The Rise Up Club. My mission always has been to find a way to bring a new positive way of thinking and an intentional way of doing things to the table regardless of where you might be in your journey. Maybe you’re a student or an entrepreneur or a parent. Maybe you need guidance on how to navigate your personal relationships, or how to use the law of attraction to get what you want out of life, or how to build confidence in the simplest and most unheard-of ways. What I’m trying to say is I know it’s hard to have something for everyone, but no matter who you are, I have aimed to make the podcast versatile but always with a common theme: changing the way you think and what you do in order to improve. And fundamentally that’s all personal development is. We can break it down into smaller categories like motivational, business-focused, spiritual, the sciences, philosophy, etc. but at the end of the day growth is growth and one piece of advice can have many different translations, and my goal is to always share advice that’s a blend of all of those smaller categories because one is not more important than the other.
But I must say, I find that the ultimate problem that most of us have is we share a programming that tells us all success stories look the same, that only the lucky people get to live their dreams and somewhere along the way most of us settled for a reality without consideration to the idea that maybe we can do more, have more, be someone we are proud of. And while a small percentage of people chose to do something about their lack of satisfaction, there is a lot of fear around changing ourselves and our careers and how we spend our time. That is in large part due to fear of judgement from others, but there’s a number of reasons we never “go for it” to put it more generally. My dream is to be the catalyst in someone’s story to finding out just how great they really are and how much they can really have while uncovering and replacing all of the limiting beliefs we’ve inherited from exterior forces with a new belief system that serves a better purpose.
What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?
I’m going to kind of use the word creative interchangeably with creator because I feel like I am more of a “content creator” than I am an artist. But there is just something so rewarding about the feedback. And I don’t mean like a pat on the back of people handing out compliments in my comment section of Instagram or TikTok, but the comments that say things like “I’ve been anxious all week, I really needed to hear this” or “Saving this to listen again later.” Sometimes to see how many people save a video I post, even if it’s two people, that means the world to me. I would rather get zero likes on a post and have 5 people save it than to have tons of likes and no saves. The reward is in knowing my words were impactful enough to save it and want to hear it again. Better yet, to know that someone heard me fully, that tells me I have created impact. Full transparency here, it was hard to find confidence in my content and be inspired to post and show up on social media and even with my podcast when I wasn’t seeing a lot of return or interaction but recently it stopped being about the numbers and about the person. Social media feels almost unreal sometimes. There are so many analytics, so many usernames, so many creators, sometimes we forget on the other side of the username is a human who maybe needs us as creators to not care about what can make us go viral, but to care about our influence a little more. I’ve found a lot more fulfillment in how I spend my time on social media and found peace in how much time I invest in creating podcast episodes for such a small audience by looking at the person and not at the number. A comment or a save is the reward, even if it’s not a lot.
And for those of you reading this who are artists or are putting yourself out there in any way, find comfort in the same notion that if your work doesn’t yet have flocks of interested prospects, one true admirer is worthy enough for you to keep at it.
Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?
It’s so hard to choose just one! I think the hardest lesson to unlearn that is really the fundamental of all limitations is that we’re led to believe fear is something that protects us. And to some degree I agree, but we have to talk about what we are being protected from. It kind of comes back down to the whole risk conversation we had earlier about making an investment. When we allow our fear to win, is it because we’re in life threatening danger? Or are we just in danger of being embarrassed, or failing, or being told no, or putting our egos at risk of being damaged?
It’s safe to say I’ve always been a rule follower, which means I did as I was told because my fear of consequence was always greater than my desire to do the thing that was against the rules. And again, sometimes this kept me safe but as I got older, this limited my opportunity more than it protected me. I was someone who was too afraid of ordering my own food out at a restaurant because what if I embarrass myself? I was too afraid of approaching a stranger to tell them they look lovely today, because what if they think I’m weird? And you can see how that could become a problem in areas of my life like making decisions for my future, getting out of my comfort zone and putting myself out there to be judged in any way. And so while yes, my Power Voice investment was a big pivotal point for me in overcoming the small and irrational fear, I started seeking out things that are scary. I figured if I could do something scary that had nothing to do with who I am nor give anyone an opportunity to take a jab at me personally, posting a video of myself speaking or starting a business or getting up in front of an audience couldn’t even compare.
This is not me saying you have to turn into a daredevil to overcome fear of judgement, and I had always been a bit of an adrenaline junkie (which is hilariously ironic considering my fear of just talking to another human at the time) so anytime I feel myself being limited by fear of judgement or failure, I seek out an activity that’s even scarier. For example, a few years ago it was around the time of my birthday and I was going through a small crisis about how I can earn more money in a way that was fulfilling and was nervous to launch a product line I had been working on, and unconsciously one day I said “I think I want to go skydiving for my birthday” and so I did. At the time I didn’t realize why I had that urge, but it was my subconscious mind telling me to do something so scary that anything else feels like a little tiny obstacle of fear. Shortly after, I launched my online store called “Everything Success Flow” which was a clothing and accessory line of positive affirmations and messages. I’ve had some visions for the store since and decided to put it on pause until I could invest more time into its development. Recently I had been dealing with some fear around launching a brand with my brother and this year I have put myself in a place of needing to make a lot of decisions. That being said, I needed a place to get over my worry and decided I wanted to get Scuba certified because not only is it super fun and has brought on some awesome experiences, but if I can do that, I can get through a product launch and make hard choices without fear of the unknown.
I know, it sounds like a silly logic and I’m not saying you need to jump out of an airplane or go bungee jumping to get over your fear, but it has really enforced to me the fact that on the other side of your fear is the person you want to be and the life you want to live. So the next time you catch yourself sabotaging yourself from getting closer to the having of your desires, remember that there’s always something scarier. And if you can remove your ego and sense of self from doing something scary, when you put your sense of self back into the equation it won’t feel as daunting because you’ve already done something your mind has convinced you to be afraid of and yet you’re still here.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sarah_elhourch/
- Other: https://open.spotify.com/show/4NXH3WtFGKLxiNOT8gfqOb?si=092636a07f4048ff
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-rise-up-club/id1705051078
