“Leaders choose to believe in themselves; leaders choose to outsmart the bullies; leaders choose to set healthy boundaries; leaders choose to forgive and move forward,” these were the four tools motivational speaker, Jessie Funk told a gym full of high school students last week as part of Mineral County’s Red Ribbon Week.

Students from all three high schools attended the assembly to hear Funk speak. An award winning singer and author, she talked about making choices through a series of demonstrations and songs including Gracie Schram’s “Fight Song.”

Funk said she walked away from a record contract at the age of 15 because of the toxic people who surrounded her, “they sucked the life out of me,” she said.

Instead, after a bad relationship with a toxic boyfriend, Funk set out on a career which has resulted in five albums and six books including “The Lost Art of Lady Hood: 12 Essentials to be Confident and Classy in a Crazy World”. Most of her work centers on reaching young women with a message of confidence and being positive.

“Don’t allow others to hold you back and learn to forgive yourself,” she said while talking about a young girl she had met in Kenya who overcame insurmountable challenges in her life, yet chose to remain optimistic about her life.

Funk said that people need to exercise their confidence just like any other activity, “with exercise you build your confidence just like an athlete trains for a game.”

During one demonstration she brought up a student and gave him a cup of chocolate milk. She then sprayed Windex into his cup and asked him if he would still drink it. It demonstrated that “good” people are the “breathers” who have a light around them. “Bad” people are the toxic Windex who try to take that light from us. They are unsafe, like drinking Windex, and can be bullies, mean and grumpy, “don’t allow someone to poison you,” she said.

Stephanie Quick with the Mineral County Health Department helped to bring Funk to the school as part of Red Ribbon Week. Funk lives in Utah with her two teenage children and husband. She’s been teaching and mentoring students for over ten years and has a leadership certification from Notre Dame University and a degree in Psychology. She is also the executive director of the non-profit Ivy Girl Academy.

She does several presentations a month and usually flies home afterwards to be with her family, “it’s a perfect job for a stay-at-home mom,” she said as she gathered her belonging and headed toward the Missoula airport.