Sara Westbrook

UPower Concerts are motivational concerts that provide tools to take on life in a powerful way! During my UPower Concerts, I use singing and speaking to inspire and to motivate people. I know that people face many challenges like depression, bullying, low self-esteem and relationship issues. I have discovered that people best relate to music, that is why I use singing and speaking to inspire and motivate. This is my way of letting people know that they have the ability to make powerful choices that will create a positive impact in their life no matter what the circumstances are. My UPower Concerts, and workshops are customized for elementary schools (grades 4-8), high schools, universities/colleges, corporations and conferences.

In my concerts I choose to be authentic, real and honest with my audience when I am sharing my life stories and tools I have learned along the way. I believe this creates an atomsphere where healing, learning and FUN can occur! 🙂

Good Question. I believe that my supportive friends and family would describe me as thoughtful, compassionate, caring, funny, wise and a great cook! 🙂 My sense of humour comes from my dad. He was the funniest guy I know. We would make up skits and laugh and laugh. He taught me to look at the funnier side of life. Thanks Dad!!!Through the challenging times in my life I really have to give credit to my mum. As a young person, facing the challenges of divorce and low self esteem, I really could have become angry and bitter. However lucky for me my mum recognized what was happening and sent me to motivational courses and support groups. At first I ‘whined’ about going but she was smart. She said, ‘I must have forgot to tell you. There is NO CHOICE’. Best thing that ever happened because I learned it wasn’t the circumstances that defined me, it was my choices from those circumstances. So I decided to ‘take life one good choice at a time’ :o)

Each one of those challenges were difficult to push through but not impossible. I realized that supressing my pain & upset was only causing me more pain. I decided that I had to embrace my true feelings. By allowing myself to truly feel I could then release the pain & move forward. I couldn’t always change the circumstances but I could change the choices I made. Here are some exercises that helped and continue to help me to me to push through:

Journaling – allow yourself to release feelings and thoughts by writing them down. Don’t hold back when you’re writing. Be honest with yourself. This will help to release the ‘clutter’ in your mind, to let go of the pain and to help organize your thoughts. I also like to write down what I learned from the circumstance – what I learned about me, about others or about the world.
Feel your emotions but choose not to live there forever. It is interesting that when upsetting or devastating events happen in our lives, the world doesn’t stop turning because of them. Your world may seem like it has been put on hold, but life around you keeps moving onward. This can be good because it can help motivate us to put one foot in front of the other and ‘push through’. Pretending something painful never happened and ignoring the emotions associated with it, is not healthy. Feel your emotions. Write them down. It helps to do it everyday, and when you choose to step outside and take on the day, leave the painful event behind. Only carry forward the lessons that you have learned.
Changing your focus – we can all focus on what is wrong – what is wrong with our friends, our bodies, our family, our situations. Focusing on that just creates pain, desperation and frustration. Choose your thoughts wisely. Choose powerful, uplifting thoughts. Write them down. Read them and keep re-reading them. Choose to focus on being grateful for the simple things in your life, for example, eyes to see with, a child’s smile, your pet, a favorite food. You can create joy. Keep your focus on how you want your life to be. It can be hard at first, but it will get easier. Just take it moment by moment choice by choice. Everyone has their own ways of moving through Life’s challenges. These are some of the tools that help me.
‘There’s been many times in my life Where I have doubted myself But I will achieve great things Because I refuse to give up.’ – lyrics from my song ‘Push Through’

We need to be retaught empathy. Somewhere along the way most of us have become numb to feeling emapthy towards others. We forget that each of us experiences pain, rejection, humiliation and sadness and it hurts.When any of us sees this pain happening to another person including ourselves we need to take a stand and say “no more”!

Believes we all have the UPower to create an extraordinary life through the choices we choose to make regardless of the circumstance. We really need to stop blaming our circumstances and understand that it is our choices that define us not our circumstances.