Meet Crystal Evans

Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Crystal Evans . We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Hi Crystal, appreciate you sitting with us today to share your wisdom with our readers. So, let’s start with resilience – where do you get your resilience from?

I think I developed my resilience when I was a teenager in a tumultuous family home. I realized that I needed to survive this situation and pass my exams if I am going to make it out to become the future self I envisioned. I couldn’t fail my exams I had no one to fall back on. What other alternatives do I have? I can either push through these dark phases and come out at eighteen or I can get stuck here and then I would be eighteen and stuck. I persevere because I attached myself to the end game, end goal and not to this one moment. I preserve that idea that things will change and get better and I have to work to ensure that in the end, it aligns with my desired outcome. I also tell myself that regardless of what may come, I will not deviate from my goal. Come what may, even if I take detours, I will eventually end up at the same place. It involves a lot of self talk, meditation and long hours of mental processing to be resilient.

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?

I write stories.
I started writing because where I am from, most people do not process at the level that I do. My friends and family found my rantings at best boring and worst annoying. They lack the cognitive functions that facilitated complex thinking and I couldn’t relate to my social circle . I had or have all these ideas in my head with no where to go.
I didn’t want to go crazy with my ideations, ideologies, observations, ethnomethodologies and idiographic of my Jamaican society.
So I decided to put it on paper.
I wrote about what I thought. I synthesized and applied what I comprehended from my readings to my society and situations.
And then I published these notions on my blogs.
And I realized that other people were receptive to these ideologies.
As I gradually found my tribe, I met a Francesca Tisot, Canadian and she asked me if I would like to write a book. I told her yes.
She flew to Jamaica and helped me to start my writing career and register as a publisher.
We lost touch but years later she found me on Facebook and reached out and said that she was proud that I had done exactly what I said I was going to do and it has been one of the most fulfilling moments of my life.
Meeting her was one; her taking a chance on a total stranger and then seeing it come to fruition is transcending. I am happy to have made her very very proud.

My page is growing. I have 40,000 followers on my book page and 60,000 followers on my blog page.
I am grateful to be able to empower and uplift women through writing, to channel some of my mistakes and trauma into purpose. That’s my overarching purpose for being a writer and life coach.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

1. Overthinking: I am an overthinker it’s a blessing and curse. Curse in the sense that I never take anything on the surface. Blessing in that i can figure things out, I can create solutions, I can form new fundamental truths and I eventually know exactly what to do.
I think overthinkers are alchemists.
It’s like a battery, positive and negative ions.
Just got to know how to charge.

2. Ability to move on: I think we will save ourselves a lot to regrets and pain if we know when to move on from a job, friendships, relationships , hobby, interest.
We should basically know when to move on .
3. Reading. If you love to read, then you have an advantage. Today, in this fast pace world where everything is on social media on a video. No one is reading. All the hidden gems are in a book. I think reading is like food for the brain. Meditation is rest and writing is exercise.

I was able to contrive ideas into business because I read a lot and learnt from the greatest minds.
Greatest minds have all their ideas in books.

All the wisdom you’ve shared today is sincerely appreciated. Before we go, can you tell us about the main challenge you are currently facing?

Parenting. I never knew children were this demanding. I love my children but, perhaps it’s because my parents were not as involved and accessible so I find my children’s clingy nature intrusive.
And having children also made me realize how much I was on my own as a child. I was getting myself ready for school when I was like 8 years old.
I was a fairly independent child.

Another thing for me is I spent years resenting my mother because she left when I was a small child.
Then I had children and realize that my mother and I are more in common than I think.
My mother is not good with noise, nor is she good at serving other people.
I am an introvert who likes silence so that I can think and meditate and children do not allow me to have quality self time so that I can concoct ideas.
So I realized that my mother was using the only tools she had.
She left us to find her own peace.
Yes I still think it’s selfish. Yes I still think she should have stayed.
No, I would never do that to my children because I don’t want my children to experience that dysfunction.
Yet through mother, I learnt grace and I also learnt self sacrifice .
I learnt to stand up to my own responsibilities and there are things even if I don’t like it, I have to see it to the end.
To break it now would create a bigger ripple effect.
I don’t want to be coward and I don’t want to be seen as weak.

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Crystal Evans

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