Mayim Bialik's Breakdown - Jewel: Turn Your Life Around One Thought at a Time

Episode Date: November 8, 2022

Jewel (multi-platinum recording artist, mental health advocate) discusses her lifelong focus on breaking the cycle of "emotional inheritance," the dangers of overidentifying with our thoughts, and how she used awareness and presence to change her life, one thought at a time. She opens up about growing up with an abusive parent who struggled with substance abuse, leaving home at age 15, suffering from panic attacks, and her transition from homelessness to being signed by a recording label. She explains her lifelong intense spiritual relationship with nature, her history of and conceptual motivations for stealing, and how she found safety in isolation. Jewel breaks down the importance of getting in touch with your inner observer, practical ways to distance ourselves from our painful and unproductive thoughts, and her discoveries during her transition to becoming a parent. Mayim and Jonathan consider the relationship between knowledge & awareness and spiritual awakenings. Jewel's Inspiring Children Foundation: https://www.inspiringchildren.org/jewel-never-broken BialikBreakdown.com YouTube.com/mayimbialik Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

So when record labels came, it actually really frightened me because even though I was homeless, I knew I was figuring things out for myself in a way that was leading to greater happiness. And so I had this moment on the beach where I made myself a promise that I would sign the record contract if I promised that it was my number two career. Music would be my number two career. My number one career would be learning how to be happy. It's my ambiolyics breakdown. She's going to break it down for you.

because you know she knows a thing or two. Hi, I'm Miami. I'm Biolic and welcome to my breakdown. This is the place where we break down, the things that make you break down. We have a really, really, I mean, I say this a lot, but we have a very special guest today. I have dubbed this person the most authentic human I think I have ever spoken to. And I'm not just saying that as like a catchphrase of like, she's so authentic. We're talking to Jewel today. That's right, people.

Jewel. But first, my jewel, Jonathan Cohen. Oh, hi, my. Hi, Jonathan. You're also an authentic person, but sometimes you lie. No, I feel like this is a challenge. I'm going to spend the rest of my time here in this podcast studio and on Earth competing with Jewel to be the most authentic person. If we were to do rapid fire with Jonathan and I would say, who were you most competitive with? What would you say? Well, now it's Jewel.

You need to listen to this episode to understand what is going on here because you may know Jewel as the woman who has sold over 30 million albums worldwide. She's earned 26 nominations. She's won a ton of awards. I think she's won four Grammys. Is that right? And this is this is a person who is highly lauded. Change the face of music. She, I mean, her music, she reminds us that she came out at a time when the message was grunge.

The message was it was dark and it was loud and it was cacophonous and it was speaking to an aspect of musical culture and our culture that was very, very important and needed. But then then Jule arrived. She does have also an album out now. Her first in seven years, it's called Freewheeling Woman. She's going to be touring this summer with train. And this is a woman who grew up on an Alaskan home. who left home at 15 to live on her own and found herself homeless at 18. She used music as part of kind of what got her through, but what happened was she was

discovered and catapulted into an incredible life of fame and things that so many of us don't have access to, the way she had access to it, but also her story is one that, most people, I think, will both not be able to relate and also what she brings from how she got from there to to hear is something that is so, so relatable and beautiful. And I really do want to thank my friend Cheyenne Jackson, who I work with on Call Me Cat, who really is my partner at work. And this is a person that he said, you have to talk to her. And I'm like, yeah, yeah, we're never going to get her. And I'm so grateful that she's agreed to. talk to us and wants to share with us the work that she does and the work that she's done to get

here. Jonathan, what else do you want to say? I mean, as as amazing as her music career is it's not even the most interesting thing about her. It's her journey towards happiness. She talks about that music was her second career, trying to figure out how to be happy was her first and the way she goes about it is truly unbelievable. It's funny because it's almost like the word happiness takes on a different meaning when she says it. Because when I think of happiness, you, you know, I think of like, I just want to be happy. And like, here are the things I need to be happy. She's not talking about that.

She's talking about climbing out of the depths of despair that we can fall into having an awareness. She talked so much about like awareness acceptance and then moving into action of like seeing where we are, where we might be headed. And also she had a very strong awareness at a very young age of her potential to be another statistic of someone who ended up dead, addicted or on. the stripper pole, as she said. And her path to happiness,

it's more of like the ultimate kind of transformation that we all go through in life. But boy, has she stepped into an authentic way of living from a very young age. It is such an honor to welcome Jewel to the breakdown. Break it down. Jewel, welcome to our breakdown. I think we can both say we're very humbled and odd

that you are actually speaking to us. we are both fans of yours and as you let us learn more about you and your story, it added so many layers, you know, I think for so many people, not only to understanding your music and kind of you as an artist, but what you've sort of done, you know, with your life is incredible and you've really turned it into something that's tremendously inspiring. And one of the sort of themes that Jonathan and I see in your life is all these kind of different transitions. You have this kind of transition from a child. childhood to, you know, essentially being an adult very quickly in many ways, being kind of more on your own and sort of forging this autonomous path, which also was very complicated. So that was kind of the first transition that I wanted to talk about. And I know you've spoken about it a lot. But in terms of sort of looking back, can you speak a little bit to sort of, you know, how you see the structure of that first transition, you know, sort of setting you off into the life that that you ended up having? Yeah, I think transitions is a interesting.

way of looking at it. I moved out when I was 15. My mom had left when I was eight. My dad, I was raised Mormon. When the divorce happened, he started drinking and smoking and became abusive at that age. And so I knew I was in a lot of pain. And I knew that because I sang in bars from a really young age with my dad, I saw a lot of people in pain. And I was able, because I wasn't, I was so young. I wasn't drinking. I wasn't dating, obviously. I was able to see that nobody outruns pain. I'm a really visual person. So when I was singing in the bars, it looked like a, there was some kind of seed of pain and nobody made pearls. Everybody piled more pain on top of it. Drinking or relationships or things to distract them from the pain. And I think I've remembered at that

time reading about the buffalo. The buffalo is the only animal to go directly into the storm because the quickest way was through. And so I remember making a vow to myself around nine or 10 that I would never drink, I would never do drugs. And I would try to move into the pain instead of pile more pain on. I didn't know what that meant. I didn't really know how to do it. But by the time I got to be 15, I felt like, you know, I can live in a cabin with a guy who isn't very nice to me or I could just go live in a cabin by myself. And so I chose that, but was very sober about the fact that statistically, the odds of me turning out were very slim. I didn't do it really optimistically.

I do it knowing that statistically kids like me into repeating the cycle. And if there was any hope of me not repeating the cycle, I had to have some kind of plan. And so as I studied it and really thought about it, I sort of, the way I started to understand it was I could see that I had a physical inheritance, you know, like a genetic inheritance that might predispose me to diabetes. but I also had this emotional inheritance and it would predispose me to abuse and addiction, basically, because I was able to look back through generations and see that is the outcome.

And so I really puzzled over where do I go to learn a new emotional language. And there was nowhere that I'd ever heard of going. You know, you could go to college to learn Spanish, but there was nowhere to learn a new way of relating to myself, to pain, to conflict, to other. people, such a complex language, right? Our emotional language is robust. It's a million data points of trust and suspicion and so many things that form you and form your personality, that that was obviously pretty daunting. And so again, as I sort of puzzled over this of like, how do I have any hope that I could become successful, meaning happy as a human? What I started to kind of focus on was this idea of nature versus nurture. And if my

My nurture was bad, right? The emotional language that I inherited, my emotional environment. If it was really bad, would I ever get to know my nature. And could you sort of lift the skin of nurture to get to know nature? And for some reason, that just excited me a lot. That idea excited me a lot. It made me super curious. It made me really energetic.

I loved the concept of it. And so I sort of set off feeling like, okay, I have to figure out how to study what is my nature. what is my nurture. Will I ever get to know my personality because I've had so much trauma? And so I set off on a very messy mission to try and figure that out. My NBialx Breakdown is supported by Superpower.

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You have siblings also, correct? Yeah. Are you in the middle? Yeah. And you're the only girl? Is that right? Yeah. So when you left, obviously, just math, one was older, one was younger.

So you did go out on your own. Yeah. You know, I think that I've actually never talked to my brothers about it, but we all kind of splintered off. My older brother went to live with somebody in Wyoming quite young, so he wasn't around. Got it. My little brother stuck around. I left, obviously. You know, the way you kind of speak about it now, you're very eloquent and also, you know, there's like a real poetry to kind of the way you speak, which, you know, I think also comes from, it sounds like, you know, you come from a very artistic and kind of musical consciousness. But did you have that kind of presence of mind? Like I'm trying to picture like what 15 year old Jewel was like. I mean, were these things that you were actively like literally processing or is it kind of when you look back, you see that you were on a path to sort of,

try to not, let's say, repeat those patterns, or were you just like a very kind of, I don't want to say composed, but I just mean sort of intellectually. Was it something you knew then? I was really conscious of it because I was very scared. You know, it was very frightening to move out. You know, I was looking at paying $400 a month rent. I was looking at working multiple jobs, trying to keep myself in school. And I was scared. And for me, the best way to handle my fear was to try and understand what's making me afraid and then trying to create a plan. And plans made me feel better. Plans made me feel like there was something actionable and architecture to cling to because the type of terror that I was feeling was so overwhelming.

And I was reading a lot of philosophy. Like I was just lucky that in Anchorage, I was exposed to a teacher who was an incredible philosophy teacher. And so I had been reading a ton of literature and was able by that time to start thinking. And, you know, I'd heard concepts like nature versus nurture. And those things were so interesting to me that it excited. me. It made me think maybe the ladder out of my misery, because I was miserable, maybe that ladder out is through curiosity and through learning. And so I clung to that. I don't know. There's something mystical that like, and I'm not like a super out. Well, I guess I am kind of an out there

person. But I don't usually, I'm a very out there person. Okay. But I don't, I don't, I don't usually. Yeah, but I'm also, I'm also a scientist and like, you know, I'm not drawn to saying like, That sounds so mystically amazing. But I am curious if you had at that time any sort of like spiritual awareness of like there's something better for me or I'm getting support from the universe or were you really just like I am on my own and I happen to have a certain amount of wisdom and I'm going to go with it. I didn't necessarily connect to the notion of God in Mormonism. We left that religion when I was about eight, so I hadn't been overly educated probably in it. My mother was very mystical. She always had a really intense spirituality.

For myself, I had a really intense relationship with nature from a very young age that was, I would call it a parent that raised me. I really think nature saved my life on multiple occasions. I think had I not had the beauty of the nature that I was raised in, and I had my childhood in an urban environment. I really don't know that I would have made it. And I can say that about my dad and his generation, eight children. There's a lot of abuse, a lot of horrific, of every kind you can imagine. None of those kids are addicts.

None of them have killed themselves. I think that's statistically improbable. I really do think it's that relationship each of them had with the land. Nature taught me almost everything I know. It was by being very observant and very quiet and watching. nature that that gave me a lot of my most profound insights and an experience of love. I was, you know, desperate for love, love sick. And I remember laying in a meadow. And I think I had just learned in fifth grade science, you know, if you put purple dye in water and you put a daisy

in it, it'll turn the daisy purple. So I don't know why I was sitting there thinking laying on this meadow, very sad. I was crying. And I for some reason imagined purple coming into my body. And it was, yeah i don't know what made me do it and then i exhaled and then the sky turned purple and then the trees turned purple and then the birds turned purple in the ocean and then everything turned purple and for some reason i have this very ecstatic experience of the interconnectedness of all things and in a real experience of love as odd as that sounds i wept because i really felt loved impossibly so. But my body had an experience of that this was an entire universe of connection and the possibility. And I think by that time too, maybe I had started getting interested in physics.

And I think that had a really profound effect on my, I don't know, sense of possibility. And that two, those two things together sort of constantly inspired me. To me, what you described, like that's a divine experience, you know, with like a capital D. And I don't really care what we call it because it doesn't really matter. That's just sort of like human language around it. There's also a lot you talk about hands and not only in your music, but also in some of kind of the ways you describe kind of what you tried to do with your hands, right? And you know, you've spoken about this sort of where your kind of ism went was with theft and, you know, shoplifting in general, you know, and especially. if you grew up when I did in like Jane's addiction and like been caught stealing. And, you know,

there's like a whole, you know, kind of universe to the way we think about that. But it also is a, it's a very specific loop that gets activated when you feel a need or an urge, you know, or a desire to kind of take that way. And I wonder if you can speak about it both kind of conceptually, but also kind of practically and how that played into kind of your understanding of your hands. I mean, literally. Yeah. You know, I said, on this sort of lofty mission at 15 is happiness a learnable skill. Is it a teachable skill? It's the side effect of things, right? Happiness is a side effect. It's not like it's France where you can just go there and never leave again. It's the side effect of choices. Choices are

the side effect of motivations and motivations are rarely examined. And so I kind of understood that chain of emotional or mental events. But life was so overwhelmed. I know I was starting to have panic attacks. I started to have bad kidneys. It was messy. You know, it's easy. I'm 48 now. It's easy to look back. Everything's so tidy, you know, it wasn't tidy, you know, living it. It was really messy and overwhelming and scary and a lot of things until finally I ended up homeless, which for me was another, you know, massive transition. Stealing for me was a really loving act. It's how I soothed my anxiety. It made me feel like I was in control.

It was, yeah, oddly, one of the most loving things I knew how to do for myself. Like, I remember a Christmas I spent alone. A teacher let me stay. I was at a private school. I got a scholarship. It was incredible. But I didn't have money to make it home during spring breaks. And some teachers would let, you know, not tell the staff, but let me stay in their homes because I had nowhere to go.

They would be away. So I'd be alone in like a staff house by myself for Christmas. And I would steal myself Christmas presents. And then I would wrap them and I'd put them under a tree. And then I would open them. So I think it's easy to sort of see, you know, what that is and was for me. When I became homeless, obviously it hit a new gear. And it wasn't until I was stealing a dress in a dressing room.

And I saw my reflection in the mirror. And I saw what I looked like. It was unavoidable. I was a homeless kid stealing. And I would end up in jail or dead if I didn't turn my life around. The moment of disappointment, you know, it was only three years later. I moved out at 15. I was 18 by this point.

And I was a statistic. This whole lofty goal of like, I'm not going to become a statistic. It didn't work. I mean, I avoided the stripper pole. That was cool. I wasn't a drug addict. But still, you know, I was a statistic. And I remembered this quote that had been attributed to Buddha that said,

happiness does not depend on who you are or what you have. It depends on what you think. And so I wanted to see if I could turn my life around one thought at a time. And was that really true? You know, I had the strange privilege of being stripped of every single thing but my thoughts. I had ended up homeless because I wouldn't have sex with the boss. Started living in my car. Then my car got stolen.

And it was just this really crazy, vicious poverty cycle. I never thought I'd find myself in. I was always a very hard worker. You start looking homeless. People stop, you know, they go, sure, and they take your job application. And they're like, they're throwing it in the garbage as you walk out. I was getting sick all the time. I couldn't hold down a job that I got.

So I had this epiphany. I had this moment of, you know, regret or whatever in this dressing room. So I wanted to see if I could turn my life around one thought at a time and kind of double down or go back to that original goal that I had. But I didn't know the word disassociation at the time, but I was, I was so disassociative. I couldn't witness my thoughts in real time. And so I decided that, you know, your hands might be the servant. of your thoughts. So if you want to know what you're thinking,

watch what your hands are doing because it's your thoughts slowed down into actions. And so my huge life plan was to write down everything my hands did for two weeks and then see if I could see a pattern. Writing, it always really helped me. It was sort of my little way of being an emotional scientist and seeing how I was doing. So I took notes on everything my hands did.

I literally was writing down like, I washed my hands. I did not wash my hands. I shook a hand. I did not shake a hand. I had no idea what I was doing. At the end of two weeks, I sat down to see if I could notice any patterns. And there were some, you know, not that interesting things. I quit lose.

I lost faith in my ability to do things, you know, kind of interesting. But the super interesting thing was I realized all at once that I had not had a panic attack in two weeks. That was a super interesting thing. It was like a random side effect, you know, of like glaucoma medication makes your eyelashes, bro. It was like, what in the hell? caused me to not have panic attacks for two weeks. You didn't have time. You were constantly writing things down, it sounds like.

It was actually presence. I stumbled on, you know, mindfulness wasn't even a term at the time, but I basically stumbled on presence. And it was the catalyst for a year of discovery that has still reaped tremendous awards, rewards. I was able to get back in touch with I call the observer. You know, Descartes says, I think, therefore I am. I would adjust that ever so humbly to say, I perceive what I think, therefore I am, because we're not our thoughts. And if we over-identify with our thoughts, we're susceptible to the ups and downs of a very whimsical and often painful cycle.

And so I realized, you know, if I could observe I was sad, I was something other than sad. I was the observer of it. And if I could observe, I was happy. I was something other than happy. I was the observer of it. If I could observe my stealing, I was something other than stealing. I was the observer of it.

And I knew instantly that was a very powerful thing. And I knew that my writing put me in a position as an observer. I could definitely look back at my writing through a young age. And whenever I sat back and observed and grew curious, I saw patterns. I noticed things I didn't know I noticed. I call it your greater sense of intelligence. I was able to tap into things or understand patterns

that don't make sense to know. Michael Singer, who we recently spoke to, who wrote Untethered Soul, you know, he calls it really taking your place in like the seat of the self. Like you are sitting, you are really owning who you actually are, which is, as you said,

not your thoughts, not definitely not your feelings, but even not your thoughts. And really, I mean, it is. It's being aware of awareness. It suddenly dawned on me, that thought of nature versus nurture, if I wanted to lift the psychological skin of nurture, you can do that through observation, through curiosity,

and develop a relationship with the observer. I kind of saw like a cocoon. Imagine like a butterfly chrysalis. And we constantly are in a relationship with the wrapping, you know, thinking that's who we are, when really we're the thing inside of it. It's like, you know, an orange thinking it's its peel and not having any contemplation about what's inside of it.

And so I realized that a lot of my obsession, hypervigilance, worry, fear, et cetera, was all just sort of me obsessing over a personality that I had begun to wrap myself in, but it wasn't actually who I was and that I needed to spend a lot more time getting familiar with and exploring who I was inside of that. And that was really interesting to me. And so sort of using that distance, I guess, you know, I realize like you can have a thought and then create a gap as you observe it. But it won't change your life. You know, I realize meditation wouldn't change my life.

You have to have action because we live in a world of action. And so I became very interested in finding practices to get my life to change. It's sort of like my body was a car. my brain is not the driver, but it will go on autopilot. It will act on a neurological autopilot. And I will repeat all the stuff I don't want to repeat because I'm on the sort of neurological autopilot. So the cool thing to me about realizing, you know, my brain isn't the driver, the observer is the driver, was it now put me in a position to actually change my life. You know, getting present is like taking your car off of autopilot and becoming in neutral. The problem is,

neutral won't change your life. You have to put it in a gear and that's going to take new tools. It's going to take new actions. It's going to mean acting in a different way today than you did yesterday. And then seeing what the result of that is. Did you like that result? If you didn't, how would you adjust that? Now can you act in a different way that day than you did the day before? And what is the result? Like I said, to me, it was like, we'll be an emotional scientist of using a lot of observation and curiosity to begin to try and create quantifiable change in things like panic attacks in my nervous system states and things like stealing and stealing actually is one of the first things that I began to work on through observation I realized like it looked like a triangle to me there was this before

a during and and after and I only woke up after most of the time I kind of woke up after I stole and it took a lot of cultivating being present to even notice while I was I was stealing, but I couldn't stop. But I started to notice, like, kind of like in the act of stealing, oh, I'm stealing, but I didn't, I didn't had no ability to intervene. Then I started with a lot of time to notice the urge to steal, but I still couldn't intervene. But I was figuring out at least how to get present enough to notice, oh, this is the urge. And holy shit, I still can't figure out how to intervene. The very, very last thing after at least six months of work was figuring out how to intervene. And I realized I needed to insert a new tool. And so I inserted writing. So I started to

notice the urge and then I would willfully just force myself to write instead of steal. And I was a prolific thief. So I became a prolific writer. The interesting thing to me was writing was not rewarding to me, which is weird. Like you'd think I like writing. Like it should feel rewarding. It was not as fun as stealing. Stealing was very exciting. And it was really then that I understood it as a medicator as a distraction from my own anxiety because the intensity distracted me from my anxiety. My writing brought me toward me anxiety. And this wasn't as fun. It's then that I noticed like one of my favorite realizations was that our body only has two

basic states of being, dilated and contracted. I realized I could reduce every single thought, feeling, or action as to leading to my system being open, relaxed, I'll call that dilated, or tight, anxious, and I'm going to call that contracted. And that was so interesting to me because writing relaxed me and I did not find that biochemically rewarding. And I was dicted to contracted states. All this stuff I did all day long was getting my system constantly stimulating these contracted anxious states. So for a month I began to write down. I had a header of dilation and a header of contraction. And every time I noticed I was relaxed and that

takes a lot, right? I had to cultivate a lot of presence. But every time I noticed my body was relaxed, I'd write down, what was I thinking, feeling, or doing? Every time I was tight and anxious, I would write down, what was I thinking, feeling, or doing? And after about a month, I had a roadmap to my nervous systems. I didn't know that at the time. But I knew I had a roadmap to these two states. The things that helped me relax and open were walking in nature, writing, reading, learning, exercise, sleep, thoughts like, I'll figure it out. You know, the ones that contracted me were very predictable, not sleeping, isolating, being cruel to myself, very specific thoughts that I had on loop. And then I realized you can't be in two states at once. It's impossible. And so I started to learn

how to hack my way out of a contracted state by participating on something off of my dilated list. And it was so fun and so exciting because I was seeing. real changes in my life. I was having real effects on my on my levels of happiness and my my I don't know my whole outlook. Even though I was homeless, I started to become so excited and alive. And that's the year I ended up getting discovered by the end of that year. Like as a complete outsider, you know, and as someone who's been in therapy, you know, since before I was born is really what it feels like. You know, what what you did is like, well, I mean, you were your own parent. I mean, you reparented yourself. You were your own therapist. You were both your own like psychoanalyst and also your

own cognitive behavioral therapy specialist. Like I mean the things that you're describing. Like, you know, these are things that that are, you know, like that's the methodology. The pattern of addiction is something you, you absolutely have broken. The way that you describe, you know, stealing. I mean, you describe it like the way people describe that drink, you know, like that fix. And I mean, just in the way that you spoke, like you basically described the 12 step program, not because you're a 12 step person necessarily, but because the people who kind of designed the 12 step program based it on some really, really basic knowledge that you went through essentially on

your own, right? You had this like, you had a cathartic experience of powerlessness, a connection to nature, right? And you started inventorying your life, seeing the things that you wanted to change and then actually doing, they call them, top line behaviors. Like, what are the things that won't make me do the things that make me the person that I don't want to be? And what you described, your dilation and contraction list, like, that's a 10th step inventory that some people do every single night. Where was I the person I want to be? Where was I the person that I wasn't? And what can, I mean, like, it's just fascinating to me. That leads, you know, to this like next transition. So on top of all that, you have this talent, you know, that obviously, you know, it flourished with all of your life experiences.

Like that's, you know, we're all a conglomeration of all the things that we come from. So let's add to everything you just described what happened next in your life, which was that, you know, you became appreciated, loved. valued, worshipped. Your talent was an expression of every pain you ever went through, every joy, like everything. But what we see is this like shiny, beautiful, you know, like angelic voice human who then becomes the person that we just want to hear more from. What? What?

Like how do you even wrap your head around sort of that transition? There was two transitions. You know, one was from homelessness to getting signed. You know, I never thought I would get signed. I didn't think, I don't know, people like me would, I don't know, I just didn't dare dream that big, I guess. So by the time there were these bidding wars over me, it was pretty shocking. I went to a library and got a book about how the music business works. It was called Everything You Need to Know About the Music Business.

And I'd read it and learned about just how the contracts work and mechanicals and royalties. I was offered a million-dollar signing bonus as a homeless kid. And I turned it down because I had realized that that was alone. And my whole life was centered around trying to make myself less anxious and more authentic. I'd realized when I started singing in that coffee shop that I was really lonely and that I deserved it because it was intentional, whether I realized it consciously or not. Safety was in, yeah, in hiding. safety was in separateness.

And my coping mechanism of, I call it brilliant resilience. You know, one of my natural traits is independence. I really believe I was just born with it. It's one of the reasons I felt comfortable moving out at 15. It's why I was able to hang by myself and not with the other homeless kids at 18. But it also became a negative coping mechanism. It isolated me. And connection just downright terrified me.

And so I decided to take a, risk when I started singing in the coffee shop while I was homeless of just being honest, not hiding, of just ripping open all the scabs and letting people see just the ugly, awful truth of what I was. It wasn't a cute thing that was happening inside myself. I had a lot of bad habits. And I was rewarded for it in the sense that like I poured my heart out for a four hour show to five surfers and we all cried. And they didn't shun me after and they hugged me. And I was like, oh my God, it was being seen for who I was and accepted. it was like haw the best feeling it was like armor being taken off of you in such a lateness and so

that experience in the coffee shop was so rewarding because i started to find the courage to be really authentic so when record labels came it actually really frightened me because even though i was homeless i knew i was figuring things out for myself in a way that was leading to greater happiness and god forbid you make a kid like me with my emotional background famous i just didn't think it was, again, something that statistically works out well. And so again, I felt like I had to have a plan. And so I had this moment on the beach where I made myself a promise that I would sign the record contract if I promised that it was my number two career. Music would be my number two career. My number one career would be learning how to be happy. I wanted to die looking back feeling like

my life was my best work of art. I did not want my music to be my best work of art. I demanded from life that I learn how to be happy. And so I sort of had to make like a, again, a sort of metric system. How will I know if it's working? How will I know if it's not working? And so once I kind of had that promise I guess made, I decided to sign my record deal, turn down the money so that I could protect my art. You know, as a musician, I decided my number one goal would be the artist. I would choose art over fame. And so I kept making decisions every day based on, is this good for art? Not necessarily what would make me rich or famous. And that's good, right? You need little North Stars to navigate and create a hierarchical decision-making process. My album failed for two years. It was a good thing I

turned that money down because I would have been dropped from the label for sure. I knew I was going to make folk music at the height of grunge, the odds of that working out. I knew we're very slim. And it really looked like it was going to fail until a few things clicked. And a couple years after that album came out, I started selling a ridiculous amount of albums on that same album that failed for so long. I started selling a million albums every month for over a year. What happened? What was that transition? It was a couple of things. Bob Dylan took me on the road and just encouraged me to keep going because I was giving up on that album. Oh, Bob. Just given hope to everyone. To the folk singers. Neil, then Neil Young took me out and really just

encouraged me and put some of that fighting spirit back in me. He's such a fighter. And then, I don't know, I had developed a grassroots. You know, I was doing a thousand shows a year. I was doing three, four, five, six shows a day and just started develop this grassroots thing right at the time of the internet where they could start connecting through the internet. And, you know, you can only be in pain so long until you kill yourself or say, now what? And Grunge was saying, I feel pain.

And I was just at that point where I was saying, now what? I don't want to kill myself. Now what? And so I just hit at a moment where I believe psychologically an entire generation of people were going, holy fuck, I feel so bad, but I can't keep feeling this bad. How do I feel better? And my music happened to be about that. And I think it just hit.

I'm going to kind of set aside, you know, out of no disrespect to like that entire section of your life and career, which is, you know, so artistically gratifying, you know, obviously for millions and millions of people. earned you nominations and a world, like a whole other world in existence. We're just going to like put it over there. Because I do want to sort of have you talk a little bit about the transition to the impact that you now have on people with the work that you do. And also the transition to being a parent yourself. For those of us kind of, you know, mothering without a map was a book that many of us read. My kids are 13 and 16.

So, you know, there was the beginning of a lot of conversation of like, what's it like to do it different? You know, what's it like to, yeah, to do it different because we're different. You know, we can do it different than our parents did. You know, you come from such a specific household and childhood and childhood and structure that I'm very curious, you know, kind of about what you've discovered in that transition. There was a couple of things that happened in between, you know, in 2003, I realized that all my money was gone. I realized that my mom wasn't necessarily who I thought she was. I realized that there was a tremendous amount of spiritual abuse. And recovering from that was a hell of a thing.

That was one of my biggest obstacles or hurdles I had to overcome. It was actually a reassessing of everything I'd been told and thought was true and figure out what was actually true. The heartbreak and the psychological damage of it was so overwhelming that even though I needed the money, I canceled my tour because I knew I was going to have a breakdown if I didn't figure out how to. It's like having your brain broke. It was awful. And so I was, again, I don't know why mirrors are such a big part of my, my moments, but I was looking in the mirror washing my hands in a bathroom and remembered this

allegory. It was called the Allegory of the Golden Statue. I might have read it like in a Joseph Campbell book. Basically, a village had a valuable solid gold statue. A warring village was coming, so they covered the statue in mud. The war came and went. People were clearing up after the aftermath of the war and forgot about the statue, maybe for generations, until a great storm came. and a little boy noticed gold at the foot of the statue, and they realized this was actually something valuable. And I don't know why, but that moment I suddenly realized, I had been approaching my healing from this vantage point of I'm broken

and I need to fix myself. That's a terrible psychological stance because you actually think your nature's broken. Something's wrong with your nature. You're broken. That's not how we're supposed to do life? That's what I've been doing. Is that why nothing's working? For some reason, that moment I understood that a soul isn't a teacup.

Like, whatever this is, my observer can't be broken. It can only be buried. And what my life had done was bury me under so many layers of heartbreak and trauma and betrayal and pain that I, again, forgot my own value. And so what if I started approaching my healing as something wasn't wrong with me, something was right with me. And when I learned to make anxiety my ally, it's like I get chill bumps thinking about it.

When I realized the way for me to get rid of brainwashing, did you say chill bumps? Can you write a song called chill bumps and dedicate it to me? I will. It will be over shortly. But yeah, when I realized like, I don't have anxiety because something's wrong with me. I have anxiety because my body is trying to communicate

that I just participated in something that does not agree with me. I had had a lot of, I mean, I dare say brainwashing, right? So I had to figure out what were my thoughts and what were thoughts that I had learned to think were mine. And in a weird way, that's all anxiety and trauma is, right? We learned to have thoughts that make us sick. We start to engage in activities that make us sick and our anxiety is our body's way, like a car alarm of saying somebody's trying to break in or you're, you know,

if you eat bad fish and you throw up, your body's way of saying, don't eat bad fish again. Anxiety was like my best friend. And when I learned to make it my best friend so that when I had it, I went, wait, what was I just thinking? And I would write it down. And I would go, am I willing to stop engaging in that thought? And what thought would I replace it with? I had my own map. I had my own map to my own healing, to my own authenticity, because my anxiety let me know

when I was participating in something inauthentic. And as long as I was willing to back it up with action, if that relationship was making me anxious, was I willing to have a better relationship or go somewhere else? That's where the rubber meets the road. But that transition was like a shocking one that was wildly transformational. Obviously, my divorce.

And then mothering, you know, mothering, I was very willful about becoming a mother. It was hard for me to become pregnant. I was like very willful. It might be one of the most willful things I've ever done in my life. I really wanted to be a mom. And I think the beautiful thing, you know, is our children inspire us to just be the best versions of ourselves.

They inspire us to heal in ways that you might find a reserve of strength. You never knew you have really a vulnerable thing. You know, I think for anybody that was raised poorly that didn't have any good examples, it's a frightening thing. And learning to find your own naturalness and your own authenticity. to let go of your perfectionism. You know, I could go on and on and on about that. I think the thing that has continually gave me courage to even go forward, right?

Because our kids deserve the best of us and we're imperfect. That's a really vulnerable proposition, you know, to know you're just, you're going to be flawed as a parent, you know, and so what do they really need? You know, they need you engaged showing up and loving them. And if I tell my son, it's okay to get things wrong. you try again, that means I actually have to extend that to myself. That's vulnerable because I don't want to mess up as a parent, you know, but at least it models what I'm actually saying is my constant willingness to go, I could do that better.

I'm going to try that better. And so it's been an incredible, yeah, journey. What's he like? Is he musical? Is he is, does he seem resilient like you were? Is he independent? Like I wonder, you know, what do you see of yourself in him? I see a lot of myself in him.

He seems to be very into language and words. I don't know if he'll be a writer, but the way he talks is sort of the way a writer talks. Like when he's reading a book, he'll be, look at how they did this and want to understand how the writer thought of that, whatever, metaphor or something. Very sensitive, a huge heart, he's wildly, emotionally intelligent.

Like, he sees things accurately. Like, it's hard to believe you see them that accurately when you're that age, but just as a parent, I'm like, he's getting a solid read on that. You know, it's a solid read. Yeah, yeah, I'd just say a sensitive, very creative, big-hearted kid. Can you talk a little bit about Jewel Neverbroken.com? There's so much to your story that I feel like you don't have to do anything else ever again.

Like you had such an amazing journey just even before anyone ever got to know who you were, you know, or before any of us got to pretend that we think we know who you are. Like your journey alone, just like to survive is so phenomenal and just like, that's amazing. And then the fact that you're part of our lives as like an artist that like we get to enjoy what you create. Like that's also amazing. You could have stopped there and just like gone and done whatever you want. But you choose to engage and really like confront this head on. So can you tell us a little bit about some of that work?

Yes. The thing that was so daunting when I moved out at 15 was realizing like, yeah, if happiness wasn't taught in my home, was it too late? You know, what happens to kids like me? No money, no resources, not a family network. Was I just, was that it? Like, was there no chance? And that's really a sad thing about our mental health in this country is, you know, misery is an equal. It doesn't care if you're a CEO, what color you are if you're rich or poor. You know, if you have misery running in your family and your emotional language, it's an equal opportunist. If you want to learn how not to be miserable, the key word is learn. That's education. Education costs money. And suddenly happiness can be elite.

And I find that wildly unacceptable. I have a physical reaction to just saying those words. And I wanted to see if what I learned, what I had sort of discovered during, everything over the years. These little things that I did as actual practices, could they help other people without therapy? I'm not against therapy. I think therapy's great.

I just don't think everybody has the money for it. And I also don't think everybody has the results they want. And they don't think that, oh, maybe it's my therapist is the wrong fit. They typically think, oh, my God, I'm truly broken. The expert can't fix me. Or therapy doesn't work. My favorite three words that people love to say when they haven't had a positive experience

or haven't met the right person or have the right vocabulary for it. Or they need to do work in between the therapy sessions and they don't know how to carry it over. Absolutely. I think that's one of the most important things. So we started the Inspiring Children Foundation almost 20 years ago. We work with kids who have suicidal ideation, usually multiple attempts might have failed out of other programs. Kids with eating disorders, self-harming anxiety disorders. and we help them.

And we don't have therapists. Again, not that I'm against therapy. I just was very interested in creating a way of relating to yourself that gave you the power, right? That you could engage in the same way I was, you know, had learned to do to take charge of your happiness and to be really accountable to it. And it was behaviorally oriented because I personally think that's where the magic sauce is. And so we've had incredible success rates. We've never lost a kid in 20 years, knock on every kind of. kind of wood that there is. We have incredible unprecedented results. And some of those things are what I

share on the Jewel Never Broken website. Just sort of helping people make a habit out of happiness is what I say. So again, it's pretty behavioral. It's using presence to be self-observant and then having a practice that you follow up on to start to work on that. And this is just kind of a silly but practical question. Where, like, where is the, where is the organization centered? Like, where is, like, where are you getting the humans? We get the humans in Las Vegas. We're based out of Las Vegas. Huh. Yeah. Wow. And now we're looking at, like, my next goal is to start scaling through curriculum, like formalizing the curriculum and being able to give that curriculum to other foundations. A lot of therapists actually use the curriculum, um, because it is so behaviorally based. Um,

And people want results. You know, I think that the modern mindfulness movement has a real chance of stalling out. If we don't help people realize meditation won't change your life, it'll just make you present. You have to have skills to start changing your life. And if, you know, the mental health community, if psychologists, if therapists, if schools, if businesses don't start offering behavioral components, we're just, we're going to stall out. We won't get the change. There's a, you know, kind of a funny prayer that I once heard of like someone, it's framed in terms of God, but it could really be anything. Like, I've done really well today. You know, I haven't criticized anyone. I haven't, you know, inserted myself where I shouldn't. I haven't minded anyone's business but my own. But I'm about to get out of bed and I'm really going to need some help. I'm like, that's what it reminds me of. It's like, you know, and the way I describe it, just, you know, being raised.

the Jewish tradition is like, you know, if you go up to the mountain and have a mystical experience, that's phenomenal for one person. But what really happens is like, what do you live like when you come down off that mountain and what do you bring, you know, to your, not only to yourself, but like to your community and potentially the larger world. Jewel, it's really been such an honor to speak to you on so many levels. You're just, we feel, we feel very lucky that you agreed to to speak to us and so openly. And, you know, what we do here is really try and educate people about all the different ways to improve your mental wellness, however you define it. And you're just so, so inspiring your journey and the way you, the way you're able to articulate it. So thank you so

much. Thank you. It was an honor to be here. And as you know, I mean, you're, you're, you're doing this as an active service. You know, it's when you know what it's like to struggle, I think you become so much more deeply empathetic. And you realize what an honor it is. You know, like I get teary just talking about it. It's an honor to be of service. It's an honor to participate in life and to participate. And so, yeah, thanks for the opportunity.

And if anybody listening is struggling, I would just really encourage you to find that fighting spirit. refuse to die without figuring out how to be happy. It's absolutely within your ability to figure this out. There's a lot of great resources. When I look back at my life, you know, I thought, I don't know, maybe my music might be my talent or the thing that might save me would be my hypervigilance

or my curiosity. The thing that actually was my greatest asset was willingness. And I'm willing to keep going. I'm willing to try. And if that's the only mantra you can cling to, it's a mighty one. just continue to be willing and things have to change because the entire universe culminates in change. So we're not the only things that live outside of that. We just keep going.

Thank you so much. Thank you. Bye. I think that might be the most authentic human being I've ever interacted with. Not that you've created some metric for authenticity that you're somehow putting stars and little graphs towards. No, but like I just feel like even just hearing about her entry into the industry, which I kind of purposely chose not to speak about because like it's, it's its own, you know, it's its own amazingness. But just the notion that she had that like presence of mind of like, I want to be a human first.

To give up the million dollar signing bonus and to have the presence of mind to do that. She literally was her own healer, her own therapist, her own meditation teacher, CBT counselor. It's like, oh, Joseph Campbell, you know. just like she was her own philosophy instructor. I mean, that's a woman who's read a lot and understands a lot of things. Clearly. I mean, when she talks about dilated

and non-dilated states or contracted states, I didn't even mention the cervix. I didn't even mention birth or the cervix. And I get a gold star for that. To not tell your birth story is your greatest challenge. You know, in philosophy, in mysticism,

the mystics break it down. to there is only fear and love. There are only two states. And people are like, oh, that's overly simplified. She breaks it down to contracted and dilated. Well, what is dilated is love. You feel expansive. Contracted is fear. You contract. You are scared. You need to run. You need to make a move. You need to hide. It's, I mean, the wisdom that she shares is, like, this is very universal wisdom that she just kind of not without immense work, but she happened on. Like, we spoke to her in sequence of having just talked to Byron, Katie, and Michael Singer.

And what she talked about is the observation of the self fits so beautifully. Like, there's a progression in the learning that we're doing and the guests that are coming in. I mean, I also feel like, like, we're part of some, like, some cosmic thing is, feels like it's happened. just in this ridiculous studio. And I'm not saying like it's all about us. Like there's a much bigger world.

But just like Scott and I, you know, have gotten to sit here and you, Jonathan, and also Valerie and if Jeff is on sometimes too. Like we've gotten to witness people with unbelievable insight. Also who we're not trained to have that. We've spoken now to three people in a very short period of time who by all accounts shouldn't be the people they are, meaning that it's not like, you know, when you hear about people who were like, you know, raised in a family with like an intellectual history or like everybody's a professor or, you know, you're part of a rabbinic dynasty or, you know, like, this is just

happens to people. I'm just saying that like these are three people from such different backgrounds that we've gotten to speak to who have had some sort of presence of mind at some point in their life to be able to listen and take in. And I think what all three of those people would say is that those messages are there all the time for everyone. This is, I mean, of course, like the first thing I thought when we spoke to Byron Katie is like, are you the Buddha? And then when I spoke to Michael Singer, it's like, what's so special about you? How do I do it? And then when we speak to Jewel, it's like, she was gifted with pixie dust from the heavens, you know? But what it is is that these are three people who by all accounts would just say like, nope, just open my eyes, open my ears, open my heart. And that means

that it is available. One of my sort of, you know, favorite quips that I've heard when people are, you know, skeptical about, oh, did God really speak to people? Why does the Torah say that? And blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And of course, it's a great place to be skeptical. But what I heard one of my rabbis say was, what if God is talking all the time and we just don't know how to listen anymore? I mean, I can tell you a million things that interfere with me just listening to my children that has changed, let's say, since the advent of cell phones. I used to listen to them totally differently. I had a completely different experience of being human before the phone, you know, like took over my life, right?

So that's one way that I've stopped being able to, right? But on a larger scale, like, nature can teach not just jewel that. We all can have that experience and people like, I live in the place where there's not nature. There's always a sky. I'm sorry. There's always a sky. And I grew up in a city where you barely saw stars. That's how much smog and light pollution there was, right? But it was when on scholarship, I was taken out of the city and taken into nature, you know, as part of the Jewish camp that I went to. Yeah, I had never been around. I had never been around two things. Rich kids and nature. So I had this. this like dual experience of like feeling so separate and then also like being able to look up and be like, nope.

It's just we're all one, I promise, right? So that's what I think is so incredible. It's like, yes, a lot of pressure made the diamond that is jewel. Jewel. But I think she'd be the first one to say like it's true. It's there for everybody. Let's talk about some of the similarities in the awakening experience and the awakening knowledge that we've heard recently. I think there's an integration in all of them.

I think there's an opening of consciousness. There's a change or an awareness that a change of state is possible and that a new state is possible. And I still think there's an integration of behavior. BK talks about going and trying to interact with her children and hearing her children in a new way. Michael Singer talks about the surrender experience and how he like learned to say yes and learn to follow it. And as massively changed as each one of them was, there's still an integration to me. And it's not that like, oh, now I'm just a totally different person and I live that way. There still seems to be learning.

I mean, Jules' experience. there's just, I don't know, it's just broken down into chapters in a different way in the telling. And there's new obstacles that come up in each of the chapters because, you know, the homelessness to the, to how the decision she needed to make around her career to, you know, finding out about her mom, like all of those require, it's just more filmic in the telling. I think also what's interesting, you know, and I really feel like I wish we could go back with Byron Katie and, you know, ask more things. And maybe we will get the opportunity to at some point. But, you know, her life had kind of come to a point where the way Byron Katie describes her life

was that she was like at a point where like it felt like everything was broken. You know, it sounded like she wasn't really, she wasn't, she was not functioning, you know, kind of like in society. Like she was, she was removed. I mean, she removed herself like from her home and her family. And like those obligations to recover, you know, to be in a place of recovery. So when I think about, you know, kind of like that Byron Katie moment, it was like, sorry, it's so hard not to think this way. You know, she called out from the narrows, right? She called out from a narrow, constricted place. Like that was kind of like her experience and received, you know, or, you know, was open to this kind of revelation. And Michael Singer was at the point where he was just like, ho-hum, going about my life, right?

He was not in a place of perceived desperation or addiction. You know, he was just in a place of like, literally, it's like, Kotong, like, I sound dumb right now in my own head, right? And then you take Jewel who didn't even have the space to be able to say, can someone help me? She had been helping herself. I mean, not only since she left home at 15, but like this was, she was raised, you know, in, she was raised taking care of herself to the best of her ability,

probably from, you know, the time she was very little. And so she was kind of living in this perpetual, like, you could have imagined her laying on the floor of a halfway house, right? But instead, she purposely was separating herself from the things that she knew would take her to that place and to certain death or insanity, right? And she started her own, like, repair. So these are three very very. different example. Like to me, I was like, we just keep speaking to people who have these

awakenings. But when you kind of break it down like that, it's like, totally different. Right. The awakening can happen when you are on the floor. It can happen when you're literally sitting on a couch and just like annoyed with your own voice. Or it can happen over your whole life. Like those are your, you know, like it's, you know, the universe picks your adventure, you know? Like it's, it's like a, this is the meme I'm picturing. Like, which awakening are you? Are you that I just got to. so tired of hearing my voice that I had to change? Were you the person who ended up in addiction and desperation close to death who found a way to turn it around? Or are you the person who is just on this journey and you keep uncovering one moment at a time, right? The level of awareness that

she has or she had to say that like there was just an observer of her situation. It felt like there was a third person perspective of Jules as a 15-year-old to know that she may have been a statistic. It's a huge level of self-awareness. And when I say self-awareness is not necessarily in the weeds of the behavior, but like, again, standing back, looking at this from a different vantage point to help guide her. I think for all of us listening, you know, especially those of us who remember, you know, when Jule came into, you know, the music scene, For me, I was in college. I really, I feel like it is, it is upon us to, to listen again.

Listen to that, listen to that album. Listen to what she created and think about where she had just come from, like literally five minutes before. It feels to me that the country is, has a, in a similar state or has similar attributes to when her music first broke. She described it as, you know, it was the height of grunge and everyone was like, I'm in pain, and she was the now what because you can only be in pain so long

before you need to make a decision are you going to change or are you not going to exist anymore and it feels as though like we're in this constant turmoil we're in this chaos, we're in this conflict with one another and there is a now what moment

it's interesting that she's releasing another record I haven't had a chance to listen to it yet but if she's the voice of now what that's an interesting place to be? Well, what I was kind of thinking, you know, if you think about the repeating patterns of the universe, and if you think about a fractal, which, you know, fractals are beautiful and they're trippy, but what they actually are is the same thing, repeating over and over and over and over and over in kind of different dimensions. And, you know, the experience that she describes, it is. It's

very parallel to a lot of the experience that many of us are feeling, our anxiety, our sense of panic and dread, especially, you know, since this global pandemic. You know, we're having a collective, a collective anxiety and also, you know, not to get to political, you know, a collective thievery also. Like we are a culture of consuming and of, I don't want to say big business because I think that it can be overused and misunderstood, but, especially given a lot of the politics surrounding, for example, mass shootings in this country, we see how much money matters with decision making, right? And that's its own form of, you know, what we're grabbing at, you know? And I think about her experience and what she described

as being able to start reining that in, to start being accountable, you know. And I think that's what a lot of us are hoping for, you know, when we think about our kind of collective experience as a country, right? I would like some accounting. I would like a jewel to be president. That's really what I like. We'll work on that. Also, the fractal is, it repeats in our politics, it repeats in our social dynamics, and then it repeats in our thoughts and emotions and behavior. And when she said she's the emotional scientist, what she's going to find are those repetitive patterns. and trying to change it and understand that. That's, I think, one of the things that is so similar

amongst all the people we've spoken to and in every piece of literature that you and I have read about self-help and change and expanding awareness is that we are on these loops that are repetitive. And the expression of the loop might change. The expression of what I'm unhappy with about myself or what I'm complaining about might change.

But if you bring it back to there's diet, violated and there's contracted. There is only fear and love. You can put each one of those thoughts into one of those buckets. She would say, I'm okay. I'm going to figure this out even if I don't have the answer, which goes in the dilated state. It goes in the love state. There is some form of hope in that statement. I'm broken. This isn't working. I can't figure it out. That is a contracted state. That is a fear state. There's a limit there. That's a limit there. That's. that I'm unable to do something. And even if you just hold the energy of those two types of phrases, just do it yourself as an exercise. If you're listening to this, you know, turn this off after. Sit in each one of those and repeat three or four times one of those sentences. And then pause and see how you feel.

Do a little body scan. How does your heart feel? How does your stomach feel? Do you feel more tense in your shoulders versus, I don't know right now, but I'm going to figure it out. Even when I say that right now, my shoulders drop, the top of my torso opens up a little bit. And my head feels a little bit lighter. And I'm like, oh, wait, if I'm going to figure it out, I'm like waiting for a good idea to pop up.

Like when I get a good idea and I go like this and I put my finger up and I'm like excited. That level of excitement carries a biochemical response. I'm hopeful. It can be as simple as what are the thoughts on loop in our brain. I also really wanted to flag both for myself and for everyone listening that Joel was not saying meditation doesn't work. She wasn't saying it can't fix your life. What she was saying is that simply sitting, even in the best meditation situation,

that's not the work. The work is what happens when you open your eyes. All right. For more information also about all of the incredible work that Jewel does, we recommend you go to, you can go to one of two places, and they probably both link to each other. You can go to Jewel, never broken, all one word.com. And she has a really beautiful statement, actually, that's on the landing page, I believe it's called. And that tells you a little bit more about what she does. And also inspiring children, I think.org or dot net, inspire.

Desiring children is her organization, and she's done incredible work with Steve Wozniak and just so many other people partnering with her. For this work that she does, really, really such a pleasure to get to speak to her today. From our breakdown to the one we hope you never have. We'll see you next time. It's my and Beallix Breakdown. She's going to break it down for you. She's got a neuroscience PhD or two. One fiction.

And now she's going to break.