THE ED MYLETT SHOW - Jewel: How To Build A Life Without Regret (And Find The Courage To Do It)

Episode Date: December 12, 2023

Unlock the secrets of resilience with Jewel: Learn how to turn life's toughest challenges into your greatest achievements in this transformative episode!Prepare to embark on an extraordinary journey this week, as we welcome the incredible Jewel Kilcher, known globally as JEWEL. Beyond her mesmerizing voice and iconic songs, Jewel's life story is a masterclass in resilience, transformation, and the power of the human spirit.In this episode, you're not just going to hear about her rise to fame; you're going to uncover life-changing insights and strategies that Jewel herself used to navigate through her toughest challenges.From her early days in Alaska's harsh wilderness with no running water and no heat, to the glittering stages of global stardom, Jewel's journey is more than inspiring—it's a roadmap for anyone seeking to overcome obstacles and achieve their dreams.With over 30 million albums sold and a treasure trove of life experiences, Jewel offers wisdom that transcends the boundaries of music.In our deep dive, we'll explore:How to build and maintain boundaries that safeguard your personal journey.Discovering the true essence of happiness and how to pursue it.Practical tools for taking charge of your life and destiny.Jewel's unique approach to mental wellness, involving expansion and contraction of the mind.The transformative role of mindfulness in achieving inner peace.Strategies for combating negative thoughts and emotions with antidote actions.Understanding and overcoming the universal challenge of misery.The journey from dysfunction to healing, despite its complexitiesNavigating fame and making tough decisions for personal well-being.Join us for an episode that's more than just an interview—it's a pathway to healing, self-discovery, and empowerment, all through the lens of one of music's most profound voices.

This is the Edmila Show. Alright, welcome back to the show everybody. So fired up about today. Producer calls me about six months ago and goes, hey, Joule wants to come on your show. And I'm like, yes, immediately, yes. But I had no idea what we were going to talk about. It was just, it was Joule. We got a legend to come on my show. I'm like, absolutely, yes, but I had no idea what we're gonna talk about. It was just it was jewel We got a legend to come on my show. I'm like absolutely yes and

Then I started to prepare for the podcast and they're like, oh, she's a mental health advocate I'm like, oh, that's nice a celebrity who's a mental health advocate. There's a few of those And then I started to dig into her work and then I went whoa and then I fell in love with her work And I've been in this loop for off often on for about six months learning from her Because she's not just a mental health advocate. She's a strategist and she's somebody who has lived through this in a way that makes her authentic In the tools that she teaches and her experience in her life. Obviously you all know her multi-grammy nominated artist my favorite voice of all time and Grammy-nominated artist, my favorite voice of all time. And somebody whose music I've listened to for about 20 years.

But we're not going to talk that much about music today. We're going to talk about making your life better. So, Joel, welcome to the show. Thank you for being here. Thanks. I really appreciate it. So good to have you. So, I read about your upbringing. It reminds me a little bit of mine,

but yours was more traumatic. So, I had an alcoholic dad. You had two very interesting parents not really raise you. It was the way that I kind of read about it. Right? So you have your mom kind of, you thought left because of a divorce, but it turns out your mom just really didn't want to be around and really raise you. That had to be traumatic to figure out. And as I take it, your dad was a pretty, pretty rough dude, pretty abrasive, maybe even abusive dude who loved alcohol like my dad did. So just set the stage for us about

why you needed help, you know, with all of the issues that you ended up developing. And what were your upbringing was like, because I don't think everybody knows that story in my audience. That was a funny way of saying that. Yeah, raised by two interesting people that didn't really raise me. Um, yeah, you know, I'm 49 now. So I'm probably gonna talk from my perspective looking back versus what I thought my life was as it was happening. I don't know if one is more useful than the other. But basically my mom left when I was a,

my dad took over raising us. My dad started drinking, became physically abusive. I ended up moving out at 15 because I thought I could live in a cabin by myself, or I could live in a cabin with a guy that is nice to me. So why not just go live in a cabin by myself? I knew that statistically kids like me end up repeating the cycle. So I knew it was dangerous. I knew moving out wouldn't necessarily meant my movie wouldn't well. And so I had to have a plan, a strategy of why I felt like moving out would lead to a better outcome

than me staying with an abusive single parent. So I had been learning in school about genetic, you know, predispositions that I could have a predisposition to diabetes or heart disease genetically. And I realized that there was an emotional inheritance and that fascinated me. Nobody had talked to me about it. It was just, I'm dyslexic and I see pictures in my brain and I see patterns in a weird way. And so I just remember thinking about this emotional inheritance. And as I looked at it, I was like, wait, this is a language.

I was taught a language. I was taught an emotional language. And this language doesn't work for me. I don't like this language. But there's no school to go to to learn another language. So my job, my proposition I made myself was I'll move out if I can teach myself a new emotional language, a new emotional way of relating to the world. And I didn't know how to do it, but at least I knew what my job was.

And that felt like it was worthwhile to move out and kind of embark on that journey. So, just a few weeks ago, it's interesting, I told you before we came on, like how our work intersect. So, I just did a podcast, a solo episode, a few weeks ago on Nature versus Nurture. And I said, I think one of the things you should do if you're a good parent is actually nurture the child's nature. Now, let's find out what their activities are and nurture those

strengths that they have. But you and I were raised in ways that I don't know that we knew our nature. And I've heard you talk about this that at some point you wanted to learn to nurture whatever you thought your nature was and that at the same time you said this thing about you really can't be in two states at once. I've never even heard this before. So I wanna combine two things. This work you talk about where you're like dilated

or contracted, I've never even heard that before. So explain that. And then like this idea of discovering your nature. Yeah, I'll probably start with nature versus nurture. I was an avid reader when I was young and had kind of come across the concept nature versus nurture. And when I moved out, it suddenly made me really quite frightened. Because of a bunny, I had a bunny named Caramel on the ranch I was raised on and this rabbit was raised with chickens. It was the safest place for it.

It was in the hen house very protected from predators in Alaska. And so since a tiny, tiny little baby bunny, it was raised with chickenshouse very protected from predators in Alaska. And so since a tiny tiny little baby bunny it was raised with chickens and it pecked at its food and it waddled it didn't really hop like a bunny and it would actually lay on the nests for the hands and it would hatch eggs which is adorable until you move out at 15 and you go what if I'm a bunny that thinks it's a chicken? what if I'm a bunny that thinks it's a chicken? Well, I ever know my nature. If my nurture was so I shouldn't cuss.

I will take out the efforts. I'll be better. But it really scared me. I didn't know the word trauma, but what I was basically wandering was did my trauma deter or inhibit my ability to know my nature. And so what I knew were just the words nature and nurture. And so the next thing that really got me down the road on the concept was I was peeling an orange one day. And I was absent mindfully peeling the orange and it suddenly just hit me in a flash of, wait a minute. And orange's peel is its response to its environment to protect its fruit.

Right? The peel is the response to its environment that protects its fruit. Now, that seems really obvious. But what if my psyche, what if my personality was a response to protect myself from my environment? And it had nothing to do with what was the fruit? Who was I in here? I spent all of my time relating to my psyche, to my nurture. You know, all of the assumptions I made about myself based on neglect, abuse, and unsafe environment, all the strategies and coping mechanisms I developed to keep myself as a boundary

as a barrier between me, what's in me and my environment, I spent all of my time on this outward exterior when what actually really mattered was what the heck was the orange? What was I inside of here? And I was willing to suppose that my nature, and that's why I wrote the book, my book's called Never Broken. It's so good. You can't break this nature. Thank you. Yeah, you can't break what's in here. I just had to develop a relationship with it. I had to stop investing in my relationship with my suspicion, my paranoia, my insecurity, all of these things that just had to do with how I was protecting myself from my environment.

And I had to develop strategies of getting to know my nature. And that was exciting. And then I could develop strategies of how to do that writing was one way, being quiet was another way, and then ultimately other strategies. We're going to talk about this dilated contracted thing here in a second, but I have to say something when I was reading that work, it's like something I probably never set out

loud. I have this show where I'm supposed to help people change their lives and it's become this big thing. But I think I still avoid that. Like I'm 52. I'm 52. I'm glad you said it was exciting to get to know yourself because I almost feel like,

I think I've still spent like a majority of my life. Makes me emotional to say, but like avoiding me. Like I still, lots of coping mechanisms, whether they're work, success, I don't know, whatever it might be, like spending time alone with myself and really getting to know me is something I think many people listening to this may relate to my side of it, but I think I probably still avoid it to some extent. I'm really good at pretending I know me very well. I'm really good at relating with other people. I'm really good at

helping other people heal. But when I was preparing for this interview, it really made me look at myself. I'm being very sincere when I tell you that your work has profoundly impacted me. And do you relate to that a little bit? Like, I know you said it was exciting to do, but I still avoid. I think I still avoid that to some extent. Do you find yourself slipping back into that pattern? Are you so far down the road that that never happens to you anymore? First of all, I'm just beaming with pride for you. My heart is bursting with pride for what you're saying. It's so easy to be an expert. Yeah. so easy to be an expert. Yeah. And it starts to, or it can be, the same way fame can be,

a prism that isn't authentic. Because if we're doing our job, we're always on the edge of not knowing. We're always on the edge of knowing better. I can definitely relate, you know, I think for me, at the time I'm talking about when I was 15, it was exciting because it was a job. You know, I had something to do. And when you move out at that young of a age and you have no strategy and you're up against paying rent and really scary

dangerous things, knowing at least your goal is like, it's like, woo, you're a soldier with a ward of fight. It was exciting because of that. It was a job to do. I relate to what you're saying later in my life, because when I started to realize I was learning spiritual practices and self-help practices as an elegant form of control to help me avoid healing and to control life from making anything bad ever happen again.

I had to realize a whole new level of f**kery that I was up to. Okay, I can't stop cussing. It was a whole new level of manipulation that I was trying to manipulate my environment that myself growth practices were a me just trying to control life and say if I practice perfectly, if I'm perfectly spiritual, if I'm perfectly healed, no more bad things will happen to me. Well, that's just silly. Bad things happen. We don't get to choose how life changes.

We just get to choose how it changes us. Wanna make anything about it? You know, I have to tell you, I think we have the same sort of pattern when I was young, because when you come out of your situation was I think significantly more traumatic than mine. I said that earlier, but I had to do a lot of work

to become like a baseline functioning person. So I didn't do a lot of work initially. And then I built all these skills that could produce external results, just like you did. Like you became this prolific artist. And so you get into that stage of your life, we're okay, I've healed myself to some extent where now I'm functional and in my case,

I produce companies and wealth and blah, blah, blah, right? Whatever that stuff is, external. And you did as well. You produced this great art, this amazing music. You built this notoriety. And somehow that insulated me from ever spending a lot of time, at least in my case, with myself again.

In other words, I built an environment around me, circumstances around me that allowed distraction, almost of success or other people or events and things I had to go do. And I never really got around to spending any time with myself again. And I wondered, why am I not enjoying this more? In other words, I'm very functional. I know how to succeed, but I don't really know how to be happy. I don't spend lots of times in the emotion of bliss. I don't spend lots of, so I'm making other people happy. I'm having success, but I'm not fulfilled. I don't have that mechanism. And I think even now, this why I'm kind of going there with you on it, I still

and this why I'm kind of going there with you on it. I still don't think I've produced the amount of blist and happiness in my life that I'm worthy of, that I should have more. Do you relate to that at all? I mean, even like right now, the 49 year old you who's become this expert, and we're gonna talk about a lot of the tools and your site and these other things in a minute.

But do you relate to that at all? I do relate. I feel, you know, I relate to what you're saying of, you know, God forbid we're capable people, you know, you can build a world around you that helps give you an even greater illusion of control and not having to feel vulnerable. And so if I can extrapolate some of what you're saying, you created a world that helped you not have to feel vulnerable. A hundred percent. That's really uncomfortable for you. Where my life fair is a little bit as I was a writer.

And so my life kept taking me into my body. My number one goal when I was 18 was to be a happy whole human, not a human full of holes That was literally my life plan I'm sure your business plan looked a lot better Mine sounds silly. No, but that was my life plan my number two job was to be a musician and Under that I wanted to be an artist more than famous and So I had that was my hierarchical decision making that I made my life decisions by.

Did you copy that? Did you do it? Yeah, I'm really happy. And that's different than being perfect. And that's different than not having heartache. And it's different than like I'm working on things about myself every day. You know, life has never ceased to be humbling in what I have to learn and how I have to grow and develop as a human, but I have very, very high satisfaction levels and I've fought for those. I've fought for them with every ounce of my being. I made my happiness, my number one mission in my life above money, above success, above career goals. When I quit making excuses for why I couldn't be happy, and when I started getting more curious about what does happiness even mean, because the tricky thing about happiness is it's a side effect.

You can't get happy. You just can't. You can't get happy. I mean, just tell someone who's sad. You can't just get happy when you're sad. It's a side effect. It's not like saying I discovered France and I'm never leaving the continent.

Happiness is a side effect of choices. And often we don't know what's prompting our choices. We don't get to that level of understanding our subconscious motivations that are driving our choices. And why are we being driven to choices that lead to the side effect of dissatisfaction, you know, and fulfilling relationships, and fulfilling friendships, things that don't nourish us, things that deplete us. I had to really come to terms with, it was me doing this to myself. I kept choosing abusive people. I kept choosing people that took from me. I kept choosing to give more than I should give. It was me behind the wheel of my body. What was I doing? What was driving me to these results that led to unhappiness?

And could I choose differently? And that's really where the rubber meets the road. And that's where I, you know, developing a lot of those tools and strategies for myself started helping me make better choices. About one of those situations, I'm going to ask you a hard thing. So, you know, you talk about choosing people in your life that hurt you or did harm you or took from you. But in your case, and in some people's cases, the people that took from them,

that harmed them, they didn't choose. They were their family, right? And so it's documented that in your case, over some time, like a lot of money. And there's someone listening to this or watching this right now that says, yes, but, you know, my spouse did this to me or my friend did this to me or I was raised a particular way. And so it felt like it wasn't all just my choosing, but that some things happened to me.

Are you saying, if you take responsibility for everything that happens in your life, including something like what happened to you or with someone maybe thinking was something happened to them, they need to own that and take responsibility. That's number one of the number two, what are some of those tools that you would suggest as somebody who's feeling those those feelings. Yeah, you know, I you don't get to choose your parents. Yeah, you know, I, you don't get to choose your parents. Those are really tough positions to be in, you know, there's many women that are in a marriage that can't afford to leave or men. Those are tough spots, you know, so I'm not saying those spots don't exist and it isn't, this has nothing to do with fault. It's just that in the, the game of healing and the, in the job of healing, nobody cares about fault. It doesn't, you know, it just doesn't count. It's either you learn to heal or you don't.

You learn to make a healthier, more nourishing choice now that you know better. And you only know better when you know. Once you know what are you going to do, will you accept the responsibility of it? The great thing about accepting responsibility, I'm not responsible for everything, where I'm not responsible for everything other people do to me. I don't have any control over that. I can only take responsibility for me.

And so healing from something like my mom, that was a tremendous thing to have to heal from. It was at the hands of a parent, grooming from a really young age. It was a lot to unwind, a lot to heal from. But for me, learning for me to know the difference between a reason and an excuse. I had a lot of reasons why I couldn't be happy. But when I stopped accepting excuses for why I couldn't be now, my life changed.

And so when I stop making excuses, my life gets healthier. And again, that's not because I don't have compassion for the reasons. But it doesn't matter. It starts to be binary. You're going to move forward and heal or you're going to keep making bad choices and retraumatize yourself. And it gets real simple. And so it does come down. I think healing is a gritty, gritty job. It's you looking in the mirror and going, what do I got? No one's coming for me. I'm coming for me. What do I got? What am I willing to do? What am I willing to do different today than I did yesterday? Well, I take notes on it. Well, I see if it worked. If it doesn't, well, I try something new tomorrow. That's gritty. It's a real gritty thing. Wow. Yeah, I think responsibility doesn't mean it's all your fault. It's your responsibility is your respond.

And to make a different choice going forward, you though, your point being you that you control this. Man, it's so true. So it really doesn't even matter whose fault it was. The fact of the matter is, you've got to choose a different path. You've got to respond differently than you have in the past. So I'm going to go back to this dilated contracted thing. So I'm like, what is that all about?

Because I, I'm really big believer that, you know, you know, my work has a lot to do with the state that you find yourself in. That if you can change your state, you can change the results, right? It's a lot of the work that I talk about. And, but I not really heard it. You, you say it in such a way, I should be familiar with these two states. But I've not even heard the terminology before. So educate us a little bit on this idea that you've noticed this

and that I think you believe you can't be in two states at once. I believe that anyway. You state that you're in. So I've teased this earlier, but I really want to get into it. Because I think it's so, at least it impacted me really profoundly. So, talk a little bit about dilated and contracting what you've noticed about yourself in those states. Yeah, I think if it's okay with you, I'll take you to kind of when I learned it. Please. I was 18, I was homeless, I wouldn't have sex with a boss, he wouldn't give me my paycheck and I couldn't pay my rent. Started living in my car, my car got stolen, I ended up homeless. I was having panic attacks.

I was a Gora Fobick, which is a fear of leaving your home, which when you don't have a home is very exasperated. And I was shoplifting a lot. I was in a dressing room. I was trying to steal the dress. I was shoving it down my pants and I saw my reflection in the mirror. And remember this little thing? I moved out at 15 saying, I don't want to be a statistic. Here I was three short years later and it doesn't get to be more of a statistic.

I was a homeless kid shoplifting. And the image in the mirror was undeniable. It hit me like a ton of bricks, like holy smokes, I didn't do it. It did not succeed, I failed. I'd remembered this quote that happiness doesn't depend on who you are, what you have. It depends on what you think. It might have been a stoic, like a cynica quote or something. So, all right, maybe I could change my life one thought at a time. Left the dressing room, did steal the dress, mind you.

But it was like maybe I can figure how to change my life one thought at a time. I didn't know the word disassociative, but I was so disassociative that I couldn't witness my thoughts in real time. That a real problem. My whole life plan was to change my life one thought at a time, and I couldn't tell what I was thinking in real time. Big stumbling block. So I thought I'll reverse engineer your hands or the servants of your thought. Maybe if I can watch what my hands are doing, it'll tell me what I'm thinking. So I'm going to write down everything I do for two weeks. That was my next life plan. Again, pretty ridiculous. For two weeks, all

I do is write down every single thing my hands do. I opened the card door, whatever, I wouldn't shake someone's hand. I washed my hands. 802 washed hands, like silly, silly stuff. At the end of two weeks, I sat down to look at like my data, trying to figure out what I was thinking, and it dawned on me. I hadn't had a panic attack in two weeks.

Okay. That was so weird. It was like a really strange side effect, and it made me very curious. Why didn't I have a panic attack in two weeks. That was so weird. It was like a really strange side effect, and it made me very curious. Why didn't I have a panic attack while I was trying to figure out what I was thinking, what I stumbled on was being present. I stumbled on mindfulness,

even though that word wasn't around then. I stumbled on an exercise following my hands around, forced me to be so present all day long that I couldn't worry about a future that wasn't happening yet and freak myself out into a panic attack. So that was the first thing I just kind of have to say is like a precursor is like as I talk about dilation and contraction it's gonna take to take, it's going to be through the lens of mindfulness. It's going to take you developing the muscle of awareness.

So the next thing I needed to work on was my shoplifting. That was the number one thing that was going to land me in jail. It was going to change my life forever. Like I had to get a grip on this thing first. So I thought, well, instead of stealing all right, I'll replace, I'll swap it out. I like writing, so this should be so easy. It was not easy. I hated writing when I wanted to steal.

And again, why? That's so weird. If I loved writing, I'd written my whole life. Why did I hate writing then? Yeah. Okay. So I shut my eyes because I had begin to write, cultivate awareness. I shut my eyes and I thought about shoplifting. And you can watch me do it right now.

Elene, forward, I get excited. I can feel my eyes like pin, almost like a drug of response in my body. I can feel my blood, my vascular system, my blood pressure rises, I get very excited, my mind gets very sharp. Feels pretty good, like I get excited in its intense. Think about writing. Shut my eyes, I think about writing my body immediately leans back. My voice drops. I get slower. My mind softens. My whole countenance changes. That was so interesting to me. Yeah. Wow. So I wrote down relaxed and excited. And that was like my first

way of trying to relate to these two physiological states. And so every time I was relaxed, I kept a journal of three things, thinking, feeling, doing. Every time I was excited, I wrote down thinking, feeling, doing. Then, as I began to refine these words, I changed it to dilated, relaxed, open, dilated, contracted, excited, anxious, worried. It has quite a few states. worried, it has quite a few states. So I had these two lists under dilated thinking I had I'll figure it out, I'll learn. Feeling I had feelings of generosity, feelings of gratitude, feelings of being honored, feelings of connection. Under actions, I had being in nature, rest, being around safe people, physical activity. On my contracted list, I had thoughts like,

I don't know what I'm doing, I'll never know what I'm doing, I'm ugly, I'm worthless. Under actions, I had isolating, not sleeping, not exercising, not going out. Under feelings I had unworthiness, envy, all kinds of things. So now what I basically had was a map to these two states of being. Now, I know that that's actually maps to my parasympathetic and my sympathetic nervous system. And my triggers that get me in and out of these two states. And when it dawned on me one day that you can't be

in two states at once, your body, you pick one. It's physiological, it's neurological. And also it doesn't matter if it's neurological. And also it doesn't matter if it's a thought that triggers your contracted state or if it's a feeling or if it's an action. It doesn't matter. It starts a cascade and it's neurochemical and you get this intense response in your body. Same with the other, it's neurochemical. Your blood pressure, you know, comes down, your vascular system dilates, et cetera.

The first time I got this to work for me in a really profound way was when I felt a panic attack coming on, which again took a lot of six months of practice to notice the signs prior to a panic attack. I noticed it early enough that I could intervene. I looked at my list on my dilated. I saw that one of the emotions that worked for me was gratitude. And I was able to substitute. I was able to force myself to do something on my dilated

list that elicited a physiological response in my body that caused me not to have a panic attack. And that was exciting, because I really knew I was onto something that was gonna change my life forever. You guys, this is an all-timer. Did you think you're gonna hear someone's in nominee for a bunch of Grammys? We're going this deep on something,

like this is an all-frick in-timer. I, first off, you said how silly it was I do this. I think it's incredible that an 18-year-old young woman with really no upbringing has the vision, the intuition to even begin to stop and study like her hands for two weeks. That's mind blowing to me. I don't like that silly or ridiculous at all. I think it's freaking incredible.

That somehow you had the insight to do this, right? Or later to then make a list of the two different states and the three things that go with it. I think that's mind blowing. So would you and you built these two maps? Couple of things to unpack there. Number one, a lot of it, a lot of this is neurology, everybody. You're in a neurological state. And if you're aware that that's the case and you build a map to ship that state, you

can own the state that you want to be in. That's the deep work that when she's, you know, you know, you know, people mental health have a lot of things to do in. That's the deep work that when she's, you know, you know, people mental health have a little to you. Work. What work? She's part of that deep work. Would you recommend to somebody then that perhaps they do something similar where they get fully present for a couple of weeks and take note of what causes them to enter. I'll just call an unresourcible state and a resourceful state

or dilated and contracted. Should, is that a practice that you recommend to somebody? Yeah, I teach this skill to teenagers. I have a foundation we've been doing this for 22 years. It's one of the skills they teach them. I teach it to CEOs, I teach it to housewives. This will benefit anybody because you are the expert on you. And this is something I really want to emphasize, you know, for me, I never had access to therapy when I was young. And then when things went down with

my mom, I had money for therapy, but I had had somebody mess with my mind. And so I didn't want to have a therapist. It was scary to me. And so all the tools that I've developed had to work for me inside my own body. And it made me very interested in helping other people that don't have access to therapy. Or if they have therapy really maximizing the results, they're gonna get out of it. Because if anybody's listening and you have therapy and it's not giving you the results you want, it's not the right therapist.

Don't be afraid to fire your therapist. You're not broken. It's just like taking your card with a mechanic and they may not know how to work on a BMW. That's cool. You're a Toyota. No problem. Go find a different mechanic. But these types of tools really help make you, it takes advantage of the fact that you

are the you expert. And if you're willing to observe yourself and you're willing to study yourself, you're going to have the key to your parasympathetic nervous system and your sympathetic nervous system, you're going to know the triggers that get you more than anyone else. Now, with, again, the rubber meets the road is once you know, like, a thought that used to unend me was, I don't know what I'm doing. I didn't know what I was doing. It was true. But if I focused on it, it would just send me into a tailspin. So once I knew that about myself, could I abstain? Could I abstain from that

thought? Well, you don't live in a vacuum, right? You have to replace it. I don't live in a vacuum, right? You have to replace it. I don't like affirmative thinking. It just never worked for me. Because it felt like lying. Same here. So an affirmative thought. So if I'm like, I don't know what I'm doing

and I know that's my negative thought. My affirmative thought might be, I know what I'm doing. I tried it. I looked in the mirror. I looked myself full on the eyes. I said, I know what I'm doing and my body went, you're lying. That's right, you're neurology. Because my physical logical state. It didn't change exactly.

Yes. So it was blown. Correct. So I had to find what I call an antidote thought. I had to find the medicine. What was the medicine that would get me into a dilated state that took some experimenting. The sentence I ended up finding that worked was I won't quit till I learn. I'm just going to stick some experimenting. The sentence I ended up finding that worked was I won't quit till I learn. To this day, it makes me tear up. It is so true about me. So then it came down to practice.

When I started working myself up, I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know what I'm doing. Building the awareness to say I notice I'm doing it. I'm not going to consume that. I'm going to consume this. I won't stop till I learn. And literally it's

sometimes just clinging to saying the sentence over and over so that your body can relax or choose anything else on your dilated list. It could be a thought of feeling or an action. Get your body into in a different state. Now you're not going to have a knee jerk response, right? A neurological knee jerk response that is your nurture, you're going to be able to have a thoughtful, formed response that's in alignment with your nature. That's pretty cool. Okay, that's a, that's a, that's a Instagram clip right there, which you just said, it's so good. That's rewind the last five minutes. I want to unpack a couple things there because our work overlaps so much, but I just want to validate.

By the way, some of you may be listening to go, look, I don't have all this trauma. You know, why is this, how's this relate to me? The pattern and the tools that Jule just presented just there right there could be the trigger for you to become a very resourceful, successful peak state as opposed to an unresourcible, lazy, unproductive state. It may not be sad or happy or anxiety or fear versus power. It may be just success. The athletes use these states to perform music artists do it to walk on stage. So a couple of things just to unpack there. Number one, you aren't your thoughts.

When you become an observer of your thoughts, oftentimes just the awareness of a thought helps it lose a lot of its power over you. Just that alone. Just having an awareness. Use both of those terms, just an awareness. And then you don't have to believe everything you think. And so she said something profound there. I do that too. I asked myself two things. One is this thought true. Number one, that eliminates half of them. But in your case, she said it actually is true. I didn't know what I needed to know. And then two, I asked myself, does this thought serve me? Does this thought serve me?

And if it doesn't serve me, it's putting me in an unresourced state. For me, this is just my pattern. And we're a little bit different on this. Everything for me sort of starts with my body. I've got to move my body differently. My body overrides my thinking in my case, most of the time, I'm a physical person.

And for me, if I can move my body, if I move my body body, if move, differently, I have typically shifted my state, but I love what you said, I'll often go, because it's creeping up on me, you know, you know, you know, when you started the pattern of it and I'll just go, oh, I'm doing it again, aren't I? Here I go. Here I go. And then I started doing something called thought stacking where I'll just repeat a thought over and over and over and make it bigger and bigger and bigger

and bigger to where it eats me up. So just the awareness over it helps me. Well, I want to do everyone right now. I want to step back just for a second because I want to give you a tool for some of your word is a little bit dramatic for you, especially through the holidays. And so it's the not alone challenge that you have. Is that correct that there's been like 1.8 billion eyeballs on this challenge that you created? Is that accurate? And then please tell everybody what this resource is because I, you aren't alone if you're in a really dark space right now or it's the holidays all times of year this affects people. But I think probably more this time of year than any time of year people feel more and more alone. So I want to give you the floor on the, what a huge impact

you've made with this. And if we didn't have this shared on the podcast, we're missing a few extra million people who would hear about it. So tell us about that real quick. We'll step out of the tools and give them a resource here. Yeah, thanks. Yeah, last year was our first year doing it. I have a youth foundation. It's called inspiring children. We help kids with suicidal ideation, anxiety, disorders, self-harming. The kids run the foundation because nothing builds confidence like learning you're capable. And so the kids came up with this idea for the social media challenge. The kids run it. Last year they got 1.6 billion eyeballs on it. I obviously help and pitch in and train or create anybody that I can.

So we're doing it this time for the second year. The idea is it's a social media challenge, hashtag not alone challenge. People do videos talking about white mental health matters. People donate heroic auction items. People can go on there and bid on them. Or there's really simple stuff that is expensive, like a hoodie t-shirt or a, you know, a wristband. All the money goes toward mental health foundations, making sure that we're putting tools into the hands of people that need them. There's lists of resources that are free, and usually specific to to just different backgrounds because people just need different resources depending on what they're going through. And that's at notalonechallenge.org.

Oh good. What's uh what's inner world? What is that? inner world is uh so you know as I mentioned it it now access to therapy when I was 15. Yeah. It really bothers me that misery is an equal opportunist. You know, it doesn't care if you're a successful entrepreneur making millions. It doesn't care if I'm a homeless kid.

Misery is an equal opportunist. It's not real picky. It'll, it'll, it'll, it'll, it'll, it'll thrive in any system of dysfunction. Now, if you want to learn not to be miserable, if you believe you can learn and do better, that takes an education, education costs money, right? Therapy in as high as form should be reeducating us about how to emotionally relate to the world. It should be giving us practicable tools.

So really bothered me that now happiness was an elite proposition. If you have money to afford it, what about kids like me that moved out of 15 and have money to afford it? Or what if I'm not getting the results in therapy that I want? How can I figure out how to create scalable, consistent tools? Again, at scale, because when I did the numbers, currently we're 500,000 therapists short in America. And we think that if everybody were to seek help that wanted it, it would be 5 million therapists short. That's a bottleneck. I don't know how to solve. It's not my area of expertise to solve it. What I got really excited about was how can I alleviate that bottleneck in a nontraditional and very disruptive way while making sure that we're delivering results. That's what inner world

is. It's a virtual reality, mental health intervention platform. It has two phases. One is social, so it's a safe, curated social environment. 24 hours a day, seven days a week where there's a trained guide live, seven days a week, 24 hours a day. The other side is education, taught in groups of 30. So let's say your cat dies at 3 a.m. You can come into inner world, there's a trained guide in a social environment and you say my cat died. I'm freaking out. That was my best friend. It was my only connection to the world. The guide might say, have you ever seen, okay, there's a beginning, a middle and an end. This is where I'm at. The guide might say tomorrow we have a class just on grief at one o'clock. Would you like to attend? And so the next day you can log on, you'll be anonymous virtually in a group of 30 people with a trained guide where you'll be taught a DBT or CBT skill.

These skills have been studied for 20 and 30 years. They're known to work. They're used by psychologists and therapists. We just take them out of a psychological one-on-one setting and we teach them in group settings. And then we track outcomes. So we are a clinical research platform. We were able to just publish two papers

showing where's effective as traditional therapy and we're just getting started. Congratulations. I love when I meet somebody who's life's preparation and they're meeting their purpose simultaneously. I just feel like when I'm talking to you that I'm meeting somebody who's doing exactly what they're supposed to be doing at this time

in their life and they're so good at it. That's what I'm built for. You are built for it. You are built for it. I'm built to do it and it does feel good. You know, I have this saying it's not mind But that we're most qualified in life to help the person or people that we used to be And I think it's the universes in my case God's great gift to us the trauma or tribulations in our life or preparing us to help somebody

Who's just like us and I when I'm listening to him thinking there are just millions of people that are like you and like me that are in lights, harm their worthiness or their ability to feel great about themselves. And if you're going through something like that right now, just know that as you learn and you grow on the other side of that, you're going to be immensely qualified to help people that are going through their version of it and that there's a purpose to your pain. There is. There's a purpose to your pain.

I want to ask you about. So. Yeah, I always tell people like healing is hard. It's such hard work. But being dysfunctional is exhausting. And there's no light at the end of that tunnel. Like, I know what my dysfunctionality is going to lead to. But if I heal, there's actually a new option available to me. So at least the hard work is worth the effort. At least it might lead to a different outcome. That's so good. You want to get something for your pain.

You want to get something for it. That's so good. One of the things that fascinated me about you, before I knew any of this version of you, right? But I remember when I was, we were both younger, you and I, I'm older than you, but not by a lot. And I was watching you become successful and become well known. And your gift to me was so profound. Like there are

status, but there's a lot of people now that try to sound like jewel. But when Jew came out, there was nobody that sounded like Jewel. It was the first time I had ever heard somebody with that sound, that cadence, that resonance. When you heard Jewel saying, you knew instantly, you know instantly when it's Jewel. And I remember watching you thinking, this is going to be the most famous singer in the world. And at some point, this is a really hard question. A lot of achievers on my show. And I'm evaluating this for me at my age too There's like these ladders we climb in life, right the ladder and When you're really down low on the ladder like you and I were

The the next rung is worth it In almost every way But there becomes a point nobody talks about this there becomes a point where you have to evaluate what the cost is For the next wrong. What are the external, externer's costs that come with climbing the next wrong? That makes sense, right? And no one talks about this, but at some point, you have to evaluate what you're giving up to climb the success ladder and other areas of your life. It's just true.

And in our culture, you're supposed to just keep climbing. And if you listen to a podcast like mine, entrepreneurship, self-help, personal development, you just flip and keep climbing. You just keep doing it. And at some point, there's a trade-off for that climb. And I remember watching this young woman, and I remember literally thinking this about you,

because we're about the same age thinking. She's like consciously chosen that not all of this climb is worth it. She could have probably climbed higher in notoriety climbed higher in more Grammys made 23 more albums toward all the time. So at some point you made a choice it seems to me correct me if I'm wrong. you made a choice, it seems to me, correct me if I'm wrong, that although you wanted this career, that there were other things you wanted more than awards, downloads, and albums sold that appeared to be more important to you and that you couldn't have all of that at one time.

Is that true? And if it is true, did you consciously choose that? And what advice would you give to somebody who's like, man, I keep climbing the next run, but I feel exactly like I did three rungs supposedly lower. I don't believe in this lower hire, but you know what I mean when I say that. What would you say to that? I'm really curious about you on that. I'm actually never had anybody ask me, but I have been very intentional about it. And I actually really appreciate the question because it's what I have spent the most, if I have any genius, I've spent whatever that is on this. And it wasn't my career. That thing I wrote in my book of like, I want be a happy whole human, not a human full of holes.

Number two was to be a musician. That meant what does a happy whole human mean? I was trying to think in terms of a whole ecosystem. I'm a whole ecosystem. I'm not one thing. If I was to draw myself maybe it looked like a tree, I have to have, if I have one limb, it's going to uproot me and I'm going to fall over, I'll be lopsided. So for me to have happiness, I think it was a side effect, of harmony, of multiple things thriving. So go back to that tree analogy. I need many branches and I need many roots

to be successful. And that success wasn't my career. I remember writing, how did I say it? If I get to my deathbed and the best art I created was music. I'll have been an asshole. I want my life to be my best work of art. And that meant I had to direct my creativity and my intelligence and my heart toward trying to live artfully in multiple areas that I had to learn how to identify as mattering. And my career mattered. I'm very ambitious. You know, I'm ambitious and I'm capable and I want to know what I'm capable of. And I had a point to prove and I was the dark

horse and all of that. And I enjoyed it all and really did, but not at any cost because of that higher, archaical thing. I want to be a happy whole human. And I saw so many celebrities that were very, very miserable. They were drug addicts. So many celebrities, we have a very high death rate, very high addiction rate.

And then as I looked in the CEO world, a lot of unhappiness. So a lot of high achievers that are wildly unhappy. Well, that's not good. We don't get to call that success. And actually, even where I see culture, if I can zoom out another level, we're the most technologically advanced. We've ever been in our species and we're killing ourselves at an unprecedented rate. We're missing something that this can't be called success. And so if I'm thinking of my life as an ecosystem, what do I want to grow? I needed my humanity to grow, right?

I needed my emotional capacity to grow. I needed to heal. I wanted to have relationships. Touring non-stop around the world does not lend itself to heal. I wanted to have relationships. Touring nonstop around the world does not lend itself to relationships at all. And so I had to create strategies and that means you pay prices. And I think that's the thing people don't talk about. We like to think we don't pay prices of having it all. We do. You know, the height of my fame, I was so famous that I had to have 24 hour bodyguards.

My life was being threatened every day. I had stalkers. I couldn't grocery shop. I hated it. Hated the level of fame I got. And I had to give myself permission to say, I don't like it. How will this work for me? I had to give myself permission to say, I don't like it. How will this work for me?

I had to be less famous for me to be able to handle my own life. And that meant I had to pay a price. And what was interesting is in the public eye, it was looked at as so shameful to not sell out the big venue the next year, I mean ridicule. I had to live through so much public humiliation

and people saying I was washed up and didn't have it. And only you know in your own heart that it was an act of power. I was making my life work for me. I owed myself my life working for me. I did not owe all these other people another sellout stadium so that my life could work for them so that it could have the optics of working. The optics of it working while you're miserable isn't working, it doesn't count, right? So for me, it was constantly having to give myself a lot of permission and it took so much courage to constantly say the whole world thinks I'm a sell out because I'm going to make a pop album. But I know I'm a sell out if I don't do it. So what am I going to do? Am I going to do what they say is selling out or am I going to do what I know

is authentic? I'm going to choose me and you're going to have to pay a price, right? I paid a price. I didn't pop album called O304. Oh my God, you would have thought I murdered a human. It was hysterical. Nobody wanted a 90s credible singer-songwriter to make a pop album. Nobody had ever done it. It wasn't done.

I mean, I got called into one of the most powerful music executives offices and he was told, nobody wants this generation's Joni Mitchell to wear a miniskirt you knock at the f off. Whoa, I didn't even know this man, but that's the kind of heat that I was taking. But I knew if I didn't follow my heart and do the music I wanted, that was a sellout, but I was the only one that knew it at the time. And so for me, it's constantly saying, uh, at 40, got a divorce, became a single mom, didn't want to just tours my soul source of income, had to come up with a whole new

career plan. You have to reinvent yourself over and over so that I can meet the needs of that limb I want to grow. And I wanted to be a mom. I know I'd never forgive myself on my deathbed. I call it my deathbed decisions. Laying on my deathbed up, I looked back and I had let my son down. I can't even talk about it. It hurts my body so bad. I could see it on your face right now.

If I didn't sell three more million albums, I don't care. Yeah, yeah. Not on my deathbed. I don't care. So knowing I 40 years old, I want to do right by my son, that means you have to get very strategic, just like growing a business, you have to make a plan. What is being successful look like? And then how

can I set up success for that? One was learning how to make money in other ways, so that I could be available in President's mom. One was learning to heal from different types of trauma so that I could show up and be President's mom. Now, I paid a price. I didn't make an album for seven years. You don't go back to the same level you were at. Right.

You don't. You pay a price. And that's the thing that you know, like it's, you know that going in and you're willing to pay that price. It was my honor to pay that price. And I can't sell out the size venues. I was prior to that. And when I read articles of like, oh, whatever, whatever might be shaming about that, I

have to laugh. Because I was, that was my price. It was my honor to pay that price. I know what I bought with it. I'm a good mom, and I wasn't taught to parent. I'm a good mom. I can look myself in the mirror and say that. That's everything to me. That's what I paid with that price. So I think like, if we can be very strategic and just as strategic as you are about building businesses and you would never start a company without capital, resources, time and talent. Same thing if you want to grow a limb on your life. How are you going to make it succeed? I can't say I'm going to go be a great mom while I'm also trying to go still be the most famous person in the world. Doesn't work like that.

I'm sitting here so grateful for this conversation. One is best time in my life to have this conversation with you, but same time I just I sometimes I'm doing the show and I'm like okay we're changing lives right now and there's so much of what you just said that I just want to acknowledge and I'll ask you one more question. I got to tell you something like this idea that you don't re-audit your life from time to time and say, is this still my current dream? Is this still my current dream? And then negotiating the price is okay. It's okay to say that that you know, this is going to cost me something and it's worth it to me, but you have to be honest

with yourself about what it's going to cost you. And it's okay to say at some point, I just think a lot of people think I think our culture now is like just climb your career and then get around everything else. Especially in the industry that I'm in, it's like just keep climbing. You get around your friendships, you'll get around your spirituality, you get around to your family, you get around to your emotions, you get around to that. Except you don't because you have this fear and I have it. I'm going to be honest. I'm going to lose momentum. I'm going to lose momentum.

If I don't keep speaking, if I don't keep touring speaking, if I don't keep building companies, if I keep doing my show, if I don't do my TV show, if I don't do this, I'm going to lose momentum. And what you're saying is, yeah, you will. And that's okay as long as you know that's the price if the other things are more important to you. So it's important to audit. Is my dream still my dream?

What is important to me now? And by the way, everybody, please don't think you're just going to get around to it because what Jules said here, she and I both know people that have produced tons of external fame, influence, and wealth. I'm just telling you, never got around to the other stuff and the vast majority of them, the her and I know, don't have bliss, don't have internal peace. That's not a criticism of them, bless their heart.

They just went for the stuff of life. They went for the stuff, they went for the awards, they went for the money, and that's okay, if that is your... And they thought it would work. By the way, they went for the awards, they went for the money. And that's okay if that is your plan. And they thought it would work. You know, by the way, nobody does that because they think it'll make them miserable. They do it because they think it'll make them happy. That's right.

And nothing's worse than achieving this level and going, oh my God, I'm not happy. I must be doing it wrong. I better do it harder. And they double down and they do it harder and they become more successful and then they go, oh my god, I'm still not happy. I must be doing it wrong. I better do it harder. And then, you know, look, a lot of our ego gets tied up into it. Our self-worth, you know,

a lot of our performative behavior is really just a compensation because we feel unworthy and unlovable. And if we stop performing for worth, and if we stop performing for love, who the hell are we? Those are very, very scary things to face. Oh my goodness. You're reading my mind. The fun thing that I want to drive home. The moment on my loss to my music career, I gained in a whole new, I invented a job for myself. I became an entrepreneur in a space that didn't really even exist. You do pay prices, but there's unexpected dividends. If you invest in the stock market of your humanity, of what you know in your heart is right,

it pays dividends. It's like God's way, the universe's way, it's magic. It pays dividends in magic and I've never seen it fail. Like when I wouldn't have sex with the boss and I ended up homeless, right? I paid a short-term price, it sucked. A big price, that was a bad price to pay. But I invested in my humanity. I did have to get it discovered at the end of that year. That's just magic

compounding math. That's that's compounding magic. I don't know what you call it. But I've never not invested in my humanity and not had it pay off in dividends that were exciting and unexpected. That's kind of more fun and more dangerous than climbing the ladder where you know the results are leading to yielding happiness quotas, you know, how much more, and that's another thing about happiness is I call it blowing by happiness.

Very few of us examine what actually makes us happy. It's usually really simple. It's connections, it's connections to your family and your loved ones. It's usually something simple like fishing or these things that we go by because we think we need so much more extraordinary wealth and it ends up making us less happy. So you really do have to do this different type of math. Oh my god. And I want to spend a whole other hour talking with you about like getting to know yourself. If you'll have be back, I really want to like delve into that because it's a, it's a,

it's a really important area of when we become perfectionists, when we become addicted to being performative. Yeah. And how do you get off the cycle when all of society has pated you on the head and rewarded you for being performative. But it's not from a deep sense of worth. How do you get off that train is a very tricky thing psychologically? You read in my mind a couple things.

One, I want to have you back on open invite. And not the people we have come on twice, I'll have you on next week. I want to take a breather and I want to have that other conversation. And by the way, it may not be just society padding, you know, if you're being performative, it may be your parents, it may be your family.

And a lot of us conflate love with significance, love with recognition. Because the only time we felt any love as children is when we did something significant, we brought home a report. When we performed for a home run and we get that. So I would love to have you back on. Yeah.

And I'd love to weave that back into, if you'll help me remember, and let's do this next week to be fun. But performative perfectionist behavior and how that relates to the dilated and contracted states because they really link into one another of helping somebody get off that train. Yeah. Yeah. We're doing this again. We'll get our schedules together and we're going to do it again. I have to tell you all something.

It's one of the more profound conversations I've had on the show. And I opened up sort of telling you that when I started to dive into Jules' work, I sort of knew that was going to be the case. But we even go deeper than even I hope. I want to ask you one last question just because if I don't, my audience will be straight away with me because you're thinness. And so it doesn't need to be a long answer because we're will be straight away with me because you're thinness. And so it doesn't need to be a long answer because we're both, you know, I know you're pressed

on time, but I am going to have you back. But what would you just say in general to somebody who says, you know, all the things you guys talked about today are helpful to me, but I don't feel worth it. For whatever reason, I met a point in my life where I don't feel worthy of this happiness that I don't deserve it because I believe that's the number one barometer in our life is to be consistent with our identity. And I think that that is the epidemic we're living in. I think it contributes to the mental health crisis. I think it contributes to the even the physical crisis, the physical illnesses that we have, the inflammation in our body, the high suicidal

ideation rates. All a lot of this is connected to people, just they don't feel worthy of it. And so I know it's a long answer, we can do a whole podcast on it, but if I had to ask your brilliant brain there with all of your experience, someone just said, I just don't feel worthy. You would say begin here or here's a tip, here's a key, here's a thought, what would that be? I guess I would say are you willing to invest in getting to know your worth?

You only think you're not worthy because you don't know yourself. If you could see yourself, you'd think you were worthy. It wasn't reflected to most of us, right? My childhood did not reflect my worth to me. My takeaway from my childhood was, I must be worthless if my own parents are neglecting me. That's just the natural takeaway. You have to be, that has to be your takeaway as a child. And if you don't ever re-examine that, then we lose out. And so, are you willing to fall in love with yourself?

If I'm gonna date, I have to put time in, I have to put money in, right? I'm gonna expect to go on dates, I'm gonna expect to spend some money on the dates, I'm going to expect to spend some time going on these dates so that I can learn to fall in love with this person. Why don't we do that with ourselves? So I guess the only thing I'd ask is, are you willing to invest in a relationship with yourself? You don't fall in love overnight. You fall in love with yourself over time. And your ability to love yourself has been obscured from yourself your whole life.

But it doesn't mean it has to be. It just means you didn't take the time, weren't taught how to take the time, haven't made it a priority, a combination of all of those. And would you like to start? This is so good. Is it inner.world? Is that right? a combination of all of those. And would you like to start? This is so good. Is it inner.world? Is that right? It's inner.world.

Yeah, you guys, I would go check out inner.world. That's a really good place to begin. And I think just follow Jules work. I'd go to Instagram, social media, and start following her. And, and stay tuned, because she's coming back on. We're gonna have another one of these. I think we should be doing this regularly.

Like once or twice a year, just have you on it. We'll just chop it up. See where you're at then and compare notes on our growth. I like it. I enjoyed a lot. Really did. I really enjoyed it today. Everybody, I asked just one favor.

We were the fastest growing show on planet Earth because you share it when it impacts you. And I have a feeling this one is reverberating around the planet right now. So I just asked you to share this beautiful conversation the two of us had today. And I'm ask you a favor, Ed. Yeah, 100% while I'm here. Yes, I don't, I'm just moved to do this. I'm actually going to ask your audience for a favor.

Let's do it. I have been working on a book for a three yearyear on concepts like what we've talked about today. I'm having the hardest time getting it simple enough and I'm very curious what people really feel like would help them. Because over too much of my life, I've gathered so much information that I'm not actually sure what's the most useful. So I love being asked questions because it just corners me into being able to have something really specific to say. So, A, what's been really impactful and should that go on a book and then just be any questions. And then I'll figure out how I can get together on that material with you and then maybe we'll do another show around it. I love it. Okay guys, do that. Reply in the comments here, social media, you can DM each one of us those comments and those

thoughts as well. And I'm so grateful for today, like I'm blown away. I'm so glad we did this. I'd like to do it in person. I'll do one more through Zoom, like we're doing now, but I'd love to do one of these in person. When I'm back out in LA, we'll do that together. If you can get out there, I'd love that. I'll come to Utah. We these in person. When I'm back out in LA, we'll do that together. If you can get out there, I'd love that, or I'll come to Utah.

We'll figure it out. Sounds good. Thank you, guys. God bless you, everybody. Share the episode. Take care. This is The End My Let's Show. you