Speaker 1: Today's podcast is a guest that is a perfect example
Speaker 1: of how a single person can continue to delight and
Speaker 1: inspire and inspire awe after decades of being in the business.
Speaker 1: Not only that, she has become an expert on how
Speaker 1: we can all adapt to change in emotionally healthy ways.
Speaker 1: From her days as a struggling musician who was forced
Speaker 1: to live on the streets for a time, to a
Speaker 1: pop sensation, to a respected developer of self help strategies
Speaker 1: for folks coping with anxiety and depression, and an advocate
Speaker 1: for the most vulnerable in our society. This woman never
Speaker 1: stops growing in surprising directions, reaching for the unattainable, and
Speaker 1: embracing change like no other. Her hands may be small,
Speaker 1: but her knowledge base her intellect is galactic and size,
Speaker 1: as is her talent, her heart, her compassion, and her
Speaker 1: authentic desire for peace, love and understanding. I want to
Speaker 1: talk to you more about that, but we need to
Speaker 1: pause here for a quick message from our sponsor. It's
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Speaker 1: get more done? So please welcome my friend, incredible musician
Speaker 1: and amazing woman, Jewel. Well, Hi, Hi, sweetheart, how are you?
Speaker 1: I haven't talked to you on ages? How are you
Speaker 1: more than ages? I know? But the girl's gotta talk,
Speaker 1: you know. But a girl's gotta talk, and you and
Speaker 1: I have got to talk. So let me tell everybody
Speaker 1: today our podcast guest is somebody who has been writing
Speaker 1: and recording beautiful music for almost as long well no,
Speaker 1: not really. I was going to say almost as long
Speaker 1: as I've been playing music, but that's not true. You
Speaker 1: still got a few decades to go to catch up
Speaker 1: with me, girlfriend. Uh, and you're working on a new project.
Speaker 1: I got to hear the single off of it. Uh,
Speaker 1: no more tears. Welcome to our podcast today, the Sparkly
Speaker 1: Jim who is known as Jewel. So since I last
Speaker 1: talked to you, um, you've written more music, you're working
Speaker 1: on a new CD project, and you're writing a new book.
Speaker 1: I am and momming it up and momming it up.
Speaker 1: How many kids? Yeah? I have one boy, he's eight
Speaker 1: years old. Oh come on, can I give you one
Speaker 1: or two more? Would you like to borrow them for
Speaker 1: the weekend? Oh my gosh, I don't know if I
Speaker 1: could handle it. Bring them on over, let's try it.
Speaker 1: My husband and I just adopted number twenty last month,
Speaker 1: so you can handle it. Oh my gosh, trying to
Speaker 1: keep track of of birthdays is not not an easy task. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it must just be like a constant between that. I
Speaker 1: really can't imagine it is a constant. But your son
Speaker 1: is eight and is he the kind of kid that
Speaker 1: when you're a mom to him, you're a mom to
Speaker 1: twelve because all of his friends are there? Or is
Speaker 1: he more quiet and introspective and not really the flophouse
Speaker 1: for the gang to get together every week. I definitely
Speaker 1: would love of my house to be the giant flop house. Um,
Speaker 1: he's definitely more of a kind of one on one person.
Speaker 1: Although he just formed a band. He's the drummer in
Speaker 1: a band, so I'm anticipating his bandmates come over. I
Speaker 1: created a rehearsal space in my garage because I want
Speaker 1: all the kids at my house he's the drummer. Does
Speaker 1: he take does he take after mom? Does he have
Speaker 1: any of your amazing vocal skills? Yet he has a
Speaker 1: really beautiful voice. The ton of it just murders me.
Speaker 1: And it's probably because I'm his mom, but it just
Speaker 1: slays me. Um. And he's going to sing a song.
Speaker 1: I think he's singing a Tom Petty song in the band.
Speaker 1: So I don't know if it'll be a thing, but
Speaker 1: it's nice just to see him exploring and bonding the
Speaker 1: kids this way. He's eight. We don't care if it's
Speaker 1: a thing today. It's a thing. That's all that matters,
Speaker 1: because when they're six or eight, or ten or fifteen
Speaker 1: or eighteen, my job, your job is to help them
Speaker 1: to explore all those areas they think they might be
Speaker 1: interested in. Yeah, it's so fun. It's like watching him
Speaker 1: play dress up and seeing what they like and what
Speaker 1: fits them and trying something else. It's wonderful discovering seeing
Speaker 1: them a human, discover who they are is an incredible
Speaker 1: process exactly and why I would never, ever, ever if
Speaker 1: you paid me a bazillion dollars and said you can
Speaker 1: be a time traveler and go back to be a teenager.
Speaker 1: I would never want to go through that again because
Speaker 1: it's so exhausting trying on those different aspects of you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but what's so sweet is your kids luckily have a
Speaker 1: really safe environment where it's fun, you know, where it's allowed.
Speaker 1: It's so important I think that the world we live
Speaker 1: in today, Although there are a lot of things that
Speaker 1: terrify me, one of the things that I love the
Speaker 1: most about it is the fact that I think I
Speaker 1: know with my kids, they have much more permission to
Speaker 1: be who they are and much less societal pressure to
Speaker 1: fit into someone else's norm or to feel wrong about
Speaker 1: about being true to who they are. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: they have a lot more role models of people willing
Speaker 1: to be loud and proud of who they are as
Speaker 1: it changes, and that we get to keep rewriting who
Speaker 1: we are. It's so important because we have to life
Speaker 1: asks us to change constantly. I'm not who I am
Speaker 1: at forty five. You know who I am at forty
Speaker 1: five isn't who I was out even ten years ago.
Speaker 1: It's a constantly evolving artwork, and it's great that people
Speaker 1: are feeling more and more permission to actively engage in
Speaker 1: the process of that self creation. I think one of
Speaker 1: the saddest things in the world is when I watch
Speaker 1: people that I love resist change or refuse to acknowledge change,
Speaker 1: or shut their eyes and plug their ears and go
Speaker 1: la la la la la, I'm not changing. I'm not
Speaker 1: doing this. I don't you move something in my life? Agreed.
Speaker 1: When we get rigid, we are really in conflict with
Speaker 1: the very nature of what being a life is. And
Speaker 1: that's hard and stressful. I went to an eye doctor
Speaker 1: several years ago. I had had perfect vision. Oh, my
Speaker 1: life beyond perfect vision. Like I could see the spot
Speaker 1: in the eye of the owl that was in the tree,
Speaker 1: you know, hundreds of yards away. And then I couldn't
Speaker 1: see the spot in the eye of the owl. And
Speaker 1: then I couldn't see the eye of the owl, and
Speaker 1: then I couldn't see the owl. And I went to
Speaker 1: the eye doctor and he asked me my age, and
Speaker 1: I told him, and he says, yep, he said, this
Speaker 1: is what happens when your body changes. Your lens becomes rigid.
Speaker 1: M that's a metaphor. And he said, as you get older,
Speaker 1: it becomes less pliable, like the lid of a mayonnaise
Speaker 1: jar or margarine container, and he said, the older you get,
Speaker 1: the more rigid that gets, until it's like a china plate. Mhmm.
Speaker 1: I thought, you know, that kind of applies to the
Speaker 1: way we look at life sometimes. Very true. It's a
Speaker 1: great metaphor. I want to talk to you more about that,
Speaker 1: but we need to pause here for a quick assage. Jewel.
Speaker 1: Hold on, Okay, let's start where we just left off.
Speaker 1: Tell me, Jewel, what has changed in your life since
Speaker 1: we last talked, and how you're embracing it and what
Speaker 1: the journey is showing you today. Like if I were
Speaker 1: on a horseback ride with you right now, what would
Speaker 1: I be seeing from Jewel's life. It's interesting the book
Speaker 1: I'm writing is actually about change and the nature of change.
Speaker 1: A lot of this grow and we become different, but
Speaker 1: we can't say we've actually changed. And for me, in
Speaker 1: my life, I noticed it seemed like there was a
Speaker 1: ton of change. So I went from, you know, living
Speaker 1: in a saddle barn on an Alaskan homestead with an
Speaker 1: outhouse to being on the cover of Time magazine. That's
Speaker 1: a lot of change. Uh. I got the scenery to change,
Speaker 1: but I realized the road I was on was the same.
Speaker 1: So when you look out the window of my life
Speaker 1: as it were, I would go from green pastoral meadows
Speaker 1: to arctic darkness to gilded, fancy places. But the experience
Speaker 1: I was having was repetitive. UM. I was dealing with
Speaker 1: a lot of intensity and betrayal and herd and grief
Speaker 1: and trauma. And I couldn't get out of that cycle.
Speaker 1: So I had changed, but I hadn't changed at all.
Speaker 1: And I wanted to understand what is the nature of change?
Speaker 1: What don't we understand about change? Uh? And so I
Speaker 1: started investigating and studying all kinds of different cultures, um,
Speaker 1: all kinds of different philosophies, from youngion to ancient aboriginal cultures,
Speaker 1: and really starting to find and create metrics around change,
Speaker 1: and then creating series of exercises that help us fundamentally
Speaker 1: change those patterns. UM. The books about how we form
Speaker 1: reality through a series of misunderstandings that we inherit as
Speaker 1: we grow up. You know, as much as we inherit
Speaker 1: our genetic material, we also inherit belief systems and emotional systems,
Speaker 1: and that wires our brain, and that informs and prompts
Speaker 1: us to make decisions based on those assumptions and so
Speaker 1: it's about how can we examine those, pull them apart,
Speaker 1: and reattach them to create meaningful change in our life.
Speaker 1: So a good topic because it's what I'm really interested in. Wow, Okay,
Speaker 1: break that down in English for for for for those
Speaker 1: of us that don't have the vocabulary that you do. You're, You're,
Speaker 1: You've got quite a vocabulary, and and simplify it. The
Speaker 1: books just about change and how we create ourselves and
Speaker 1: if we don't like certain aspects of how we behave,
Speaker 1: how can we become something else? And really simple, doable
Speaker 1: steps of how to do that. It's through neural wiring
Speaker 1: and neural plasticity. So our brain is always listening to us,
Speaker 1: our body is always listening to us. Every time we
Speaker 1: have an emotion, biochemicals flutter system and it prompts us
Speaker 1: to take an action. So it's just basically looking at
Speaker 1: how we bomb those things together and how we might
Speaker 1: reattach them. So if I feel shane easily, let's say
Speaker 1: shame was a feeling in my household, and every time
Speaker 1: I felt shame, it was a horrible feeling that felt intolerable,
Speaker 1: and so I would attach shame to let's say anger, anger,
Speaker 1: feels stronger and less vulnerable, and so now I feeling
Speaker 1: really isolated. I haven't really changed my experience of shame.
Speaker 1: I just sort of have a different, more tolerable version
Speaker 1: of it in this isolation. And now isolation feels uncomfortable,
Speaker 1: and I might attach it to I don't know, something
Speaker 1: really intense, an intense experience to distract me from it.
Speaker 1: And so we keep making all these emotional connections that
Speaker 1: don't really let us change. They're just different forms of
Speaker 1: the same kind of yucky feeling. And so in the book,
Speaker 1: it's learning how to take a feeling like shame, for instance,
Speaker 1: and saying, all right, instead of attaching it to anger
Speaker 1: and feeling isolated, I'm going to sit with this feeling
Speaker 1: and connect it to something entirely different, like compassion or connection,
Speaker 1: and that actually allows your feeling of shame to really transform.
Speaker 1: And when that happens, you're gonna make a very different
Speaker 1: decision in your life, and that will create a very
Speaker 1: different reality in your life and allow you to really change.
Speaker 1: I had a counselor one time that said, for the
Speaker 1: next six months, I don't want you to do X,
Speaker 1: Y and Z, and I looked at him I'm like,
Speaker 1: you gotta be kidding me, like, like, you might as
Speaker 1: well tell me to stop breathing. I have to do X,
Speaker 1: Y and Z. Actually it was only X, not even
Speaker 1: Y and Z. Forget why and Z. I can't even
Speaker 1: live without X. And he's like, no, if you want
Speaker 1: me to continue to work with you, Delena, you've got
Speaker 1: to make a commitment that, to the best of your ability,
Speaker 1: you will not participate in in these decisions for six months,
Speaker 1: because I would like you to heal and be able
Speaker 1: to move forward with your life. And I said no,
Speaker 1: no, no no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: just terrified. And he's like, okay, tell tell me what
Speaker 1: what is terrifying? And I'm like, that will hurt And
Speaker 1: he said exactly. You got us sit with the pain
Speaker 1: and process it instead of keep running from it behind
Speaker 1: these behaviors that you're getting accolades for. Wow. Mm hmmm. Yeah.
Speaker 1: We experience emotional pain in the same part of our
Speaker 1: brain that we experience physical pain, so our brain really
Speaker 1: can't tell the difference between a broken leg and a
Speaker 1: broken heart, and that's why it's really psychologically terrifying for us.
Speaker 1: But the more we learn that we can sit in
Speaker 1: an intense feeling without distracting ourselves from it with other behaviors,
Speaker 1: we can start to experience what the actual intent of
Speaker 1: that is, and usually it's one in connection. Most of
Speaker 1: our coping mechanisms or unhealthy emotional patterns, we think they're
Speaker 1: keeping us safe, but ultimately they become painful because they
Speaker 1: keep us from connecting. When somebody says to you, you
Speaker 1: need to abstain from that behavior, it's hard to exist
Speaker 1: in a vacuum, and so need a new behavior to
Speaker 1: replace the old one. And that's how you actually build
Speaker 1: new neural wiring. And so it's saying, if I'm going
Speaker 1: to abstain from this behavior, I'm going to replace it
Speaker 1: with this behavior, and I'm going to build a new
Speaker 1: neural pathway. This has been such a fascinating conversation Jewel,
Speaker 1: that I'm going to break it up into two parts
Speaker 1: so that our listeners don't miss out on a single thought.
Speaker 1: I've known for a very long time that you are
Speaker 1: a whole lot more than just a pretty face that
Speaker 1: could play guitar, but whoa girlfriend. You're changing the world
Speaker 1: and I love that all of you listening, Please please
Speaker 1: please check out Jewels important new film project Lost in
Speaker 1: America about homeless youth at www dot Lost in America
Speaker 1: film dot com. Her new single, No More Tears is
Speaker 1: the title track to the film. Join us on the
Speaker 1: next episode as we continue this brilliant conversation about her
Speaker 1: yet to be released not even titled yet new book
Speaker 1: and more Unlove Someone with the Lila