Life, Health & The Universe - A Journey From Midlife Crisis to Midlife Awakening

Reconnecting with Your N8 Self: A Guide for Midlife Awakening with Jules Kuroda

• Nadine Shaw - Personal Fitness Coach, Gene Keys Guide, Astrologer • Season 14 • Episode 9

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Are you a woman in midlife who feels like something deeper is calling you—beyond mindset shifts, wellness routines, and personal development hacks? Do you sense there’s a more authentic version of yourself waiting to be rediscovered?

In this powerful episode, executive coach and author Jules Kuroda joins us to explore The N8 Self—the often-overlooked spiritual dimension that lives beyond the mind, body, and emotions. For midlife women on a path of self-discovery, spiritual growth, and personal transformation, this conversation offers both a grounding framework and an invitation to evolve.

Jules shares the eight core characteristics of the innate self—like connection, creativity, and contribution—and how they can guide us toward a life of deeper purpose and meaning. We also explore how to consciously choose our values (rather than inherit them), how environment affects our ability to connect, and why social media can rob us of real intimacy if we’re not careful.

Whether you’re feeling stuck in a role that no longer fits, craving deeper connection, or simply wondering who you are now, this episode is for you. Jules offers honest reflections on her own awakening and invites us to bring our full, paradoxical selves—including our innate spiritual wisdom—into every space we inhabit.

✨ Perfect for women navigating midlife transitions, burnout, or the quiet whisper that there’s more to life than what you’ve been told.

You can find Jules' full profile in our Guest Directory https://lifehealththeuniverse.podcastpage.io/person/jules-kuroda

Speaker 1:

Welcome to Life, Health and the Universe, Bringing you stories that connect us, preventative and holistic health practices to empower us and esoteric wisdom to enlighten us. We invite you to visit our website, where you can access the podcast, watch on YouTube and find all of our guests in the guest directory. Visit lifehealththeuniversepodcastpageio. Now let's get stuck into this week's episode. Today, I'm joined by Jules Kurada, executive and personal coach and author of the Innate Self. Jules has a passion for helping people get past the ideas they have of themselves to unlock more fulfillment. She loves complexity and strives for simplicity, and believes the world is more interesting with our paradoxes explored. Her aim is to bring more joy and understanding into the world. Her book, the Innate Self, is for those who are seeking more meaning and purpose in life or for those who are looking to understand themselves more fully. Jules, thank you so much for joining me. I'm really looking forward to this conversation.

Speaker 2:

Nadine, it's absolute pleasure on my side and thank you for having me. No worries.

Speaker 1:

For those not watching but listening, I encourage you to go check out the video of this, because Jules is sitting in front of some palm trees at a beach and it looks fabulous.

Speaker 2:

Well, thank you. I love it All the inner peace.

Speaker 2:

Let's um kick off by just hearing a little bit about you and, um yeah, how you got where you are today yeah, so I um, you know I'm the type of person I talk in my book a little bit about my values and one of my values is adventure. And so one of the things if I look at sort of the tapestry of my life is there's two kind of things that have steered my direction. One is meaning or purpose, and the other is adventure, like how can we get there in the funnest way possible? Adventure how can we get there in the funnest way possible? And so I think, if I think through my career has been chapters.

Speaker 2:

I've spent time in nonprofits. I've really loved that work very heart-centered work and also wanted to be able to actually help systems more. So that took me back to school and I got more into kind of the psychological space and understanding organizational systems and design, and so I've worked in corporate spaces. I've done academia for a while because I really care about education, and all of those are just little pieces that have kind of helped inform my view on life and my view on humanity, and I think that is a lot of.

Speaker 2:

What kind of made me want to write this book is, I see a lot. You know, right now we're living in a very interesting kind of cultural time and I think post-pandemic people talked a lot about anxiety and depression and loneliness, and one of the things I think is that we are not allowing our whole selves into spaces, and so how can we have conversations about that more esoteric, deep part of yourself that longs for meaning and joy and wants to be creative, and how can we create framework for that, to talk about it? Just like we would talk about limiting beliefs or just like we would talk about emotions that are trapped in our body. And so that's what led me to write the Innate Self.

Speaker 1:

Cool. Oh, you give us a lot to talk about. You've given us a lot to talk about. I'm really curious about, like, if we talk about you working in the executive space and leadership space, how has that informed your work and some of the topics you include in your book? Has that been a big contributing factor to your work, to your book?

Speaker 2:

Yeah to your work, to your book, yeah, so you know my long answer to your question would be, I think, the thing about being in the corporate space and doing more of the executive coaching. It was sort of the last mile for me on the psychological journey of understanding what people care about, because I'd worked with people all across different cultures, with different linguistic backgrounds, different belief systems, and I'd see all these themes of just like what it is to be human, worked with people all across different cultures, with different linguistic backgrounds, different belief systems, and I'd see all these themes of just like what it is to be human. Like we all love to laugh, we all like to have moments where we can experience connection over things like sunsets. There are these things that we have that are just human and one of the reasons I didn't think I wanted to get into more corporate spaces is because I thought that that's where you had to kind of leave that part of yourself behind, the part that's deep and that's meaningful and wants to ask those questions. It's all about profit and that has not been my experience of humans.

Speaker 2:

I think that's the experience I've had of systems but not people, and I think that's a really important thing to honor and recognize and it was one of the reasons I decided to write the book is no, people are people everywhere, and we want to talk about these things and we don't know how to, especially in those more buttoned up spaces where we have to be more logical and don't you know?

Speaker 2:

I don't know how to expose this part of me, or I don't know how to have a conversation with you as my manager about, like I don't feel like I get to contribute what I have to contribute, and so how could we create more of a framework to really make it very tangible around why there's these aspects of ourself that care about the meaning that we have in our days?

Speaker 2:

There's micro meaning and there's macro meaning, and all of it matters to us and people want to talk about that everywhere. So I think the work that I've done with leadership has really been confirming that. You know, if you want to talk about how you lead people, you got to understand what people care about and you got to understand where they want to gravitate to, and I think the new generation has so much of this like just more you know, on the front of their sleeve of like I want meaningful work. I want to know that I'm contributing to something greater than myself. I want to understand my impact and but we all have that like who doesn't want to be do meaningful work right. So how can we, how can we talk about that more in in jobs?

Speaker 1:

Have you always felt that for yourself personally, that that um sense of having meaningful work? Because I feel, like for the the audience here, like we're kind of at pivotal points in our lives middle, you know that midlife where that really kind of pops up. You know you've done all the things, you've ticked all the boxes, you've uh, you know you've got the career and had the kids been married, you know, do all done all the things, and then you kind of get to this point and you go, oh, what is this all about? Did you have that, or have you all? Did you have that like pivotal moment in your midlife like you don't even look, like you're there yet, so maybe not um I I definitely for it um, it's a big age range which, I'm kind of, starts really early actually and goes for a long time.

Speaker 1:

It does, it does um, no, it's a.

Speaker 2:

It's an interesting question. Um, okay, I want to break it down into a couple pieces. I think from so I have always cared a lot about on think, so I have always cared a lot about on a personal level, I've always cared a lot about you know how am I spending my time and am I contributing and how am I contributing? And that's always been with me since I think I was itty bitty. I mean I did like leadership in high school and you know all that stuff, student council and all of that in high school and all that stuff, student council and all of that. But I think that, speaking more generally, I think sometimes because we kind of grow up through productive society thinking which is like how are you using your time and what value are you adding, and we don't know how to break apart value from money and those are different things and so, like, the value that you have to offer in life, those are the talents and the skills and the space and your presence and your energy and your thoughts. And it's hard to quantify, like we do quantify that with money, but let's not confuse it, for whether or not we're successful professionally with do I feel like I'm giving what I have to give, and I think the more for me going back to a personal lens, like when I started out in academia it was I cared a lot about helping people learn, like that's just where I was in my life, like how do I help people learn? I was very interested.

Speaker 2:

I lived in Japan for a year and I was very interested in what it felt like to be the minority. I grew up in a majority culture and so I just knew I had no sense of what it is to be other and I wanted to have that experience and so I went over internationally and then I had a real heart for working for people who felt othered. When I went back home to America it was a part of what I wanted to do and that's a heart thing and a mind thing because I had the formal training on education and how to do it. But I had the heart piece of I want people to feel understood and I know a little bit of what it feels like to be misunderstood or misclassified and so how can we break down some of those assumptions? And I did that for some time and then I realized like this is great, but I don't feel like I'm getting to use all of my skills, all of my talents and right. So then it unfolds.

Speaker 2:

I think as we grow through our lives, we have to allow ourselves to continue to become. We are beings in the making always, and so what fit us in the past, it may not be the right thing for us in the moment, but knowing the things that you have to offer and where you want to contribute and what value you feel like you have, let's not get be too limited in that Like think about the value you can have in the moment that you're in. So even if it's a meaningless job to you in this moment doesn't mean that you can't have really incredible impact in one-on-one interactions with people by slowing down and having meaningful conversations, and so it's kind of a reframe, I think, on how we show up and where we put the emphasis as we think about our trajectory and where we're at and how we're ticking those boxes.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, okay, the word values has popped up a lot. One of the things I love about your book and I'm only halfway through that it's I'm quite practical as well. I love esoteric, like absolutely love, but I also love practicality, like how can we bring these things into our everyday lives? And you've talked about values a lot and you even mentioned it in your introduction of yourself. One of your values is adventure. So can you talk mentioned it in your introduction of yourself, one of your values is adventure. So can you talk a little bit about that, because that's obviously something that you've incorporated into the book and that's really important to you and that you've identified as being really important to people. And I know you've touched on it a few times. But can you kind of go a little bit deeper into that and like, how do we figure it out? Can you kind of go a little bit deeper into that?

Speaker 2:

And like how do we figure it out? Oh, juicy topic. Okay, so I think about values as being a part of how we sort of define the inner compass that navigates us through situations. It's not going to tell us where to go, but it will help us define how we want to get there and how we handle things and bumps along the way. And I think we all have values.

Speaker 2:

Some of us choose our values, some of us inherit values. Some of us have never cognitively thought about it. They just show up when something's violated. Some people's values are around like justice and fairness. So and you'll see it when it's like well, that just doesn't seem right, or like what you're saying just feels wrong, like, okay, that may be like an invisible value around justice or equality. Some people's values are really around like kindness or caring, or, and it shows up in how we interact with people or how we expect other people to interact with us.

Speaker 2:

And I'll never forget I was actually. I was quite young, I was in high school and I had a mentor and she asked me you know, what are your values? And I said all the things. I thought that sounded good. I was like I care about integrity and honesty and she said you know, what I noticed about that is that humor is not in the mix at all. She said one of my values is humor and it was a light bulb moment for me at a very early age I was probably 16 at the time that the things that I choose to put emphasis on in terms of what I value will direct the lens I carry in my life.

Speaker 2:

And I think that's why it's so important to me personally is if I don't choose these things and I just take what's been given to me like and we all grow up in cultural contexts and you know, belief systems or not, belief systems and all of those things have little like fingerprints on us and if we don't choose the things that we want to guide us through how we live, we can get very lost in the shuffle. Through how we live. We can get very lost in the shuffle. So I think of values as these anchors of like what is it that I care about? How do I want to show up in my life? How do I want to make decisions when things are hard? Who do I want to grow into in the midst of those painful moments or those challenges? And values are their decision-making frameworks, almost in terms of how we do it, so I think that's why they're so important.

Speaker 1:

Yes, yeah, that makes complete sense. How do you determine what your values are and how do you help someone else? Is that kind of like one of the top things? It's like all right, what are your values? Is that like one of the first things that you need to cover off on?

Speaker 2:

well, I mean, I think you know when I'm doing like leadership sessions, we always start with values. So, um, and you'll know your values by like what matters most to you. So think, think about a situation in a work context. It like. Think about you're in a hard situation and you have to make a decision where it's all gray, like in one way you're going to be hurting the company and another way you're going to be hurting a team member, or another way you're going to be hurting a customer. How do you make that decision? What are the things that matter to you? So put a lens on it.

Speaker 2:

This is the practical piece, right, put a lens on what bubbles up for you. And it's a definite like reflection exercise and there are some different frameworks that you can use to kind of help you. Mine for those things, but you can also choose like outside in Like I want to have the value of adventure. I was having a conversation the other day with a friend of mine who's reading the book and she said oh my gosh, I didn't realize that adventure was one of your values and it totally makes sense to me. And she said I wish that adventure was one of my values and I'm like well, it can be.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, but if it's difficult for you, you may have a value that's juxtaposed against it, like security or safety, and so that's also a way in to understanding your values is to flash up the things that you think are terrible or amazing and what's your emotional reaction to that, and then like what's underneath that. But I do think values are key to defining the kind of. The first pillar of your innate self, as I talk about in the book, is your character, and character and values are so deeply embedded with each other that to really know who you want to be and to refine and define who you want to be in life, continuing to wrestle with your values, I think is a really practical way of assessing if you're on track with yourself and with the sense of ideal self that you may have.

Speaker 1:

It's quite challenging actually, isn't it? Or it could be quite challenging because there is that, as you said, the layers of culture, the layers of family conditioning or expectations, and so trying to determine what's important for you and you in relation to others, yeah, that's kind of could be quite a tangle.

Speaker 2:

No, and I think to the. You know there's like the to what you're saying. I think this is also why I say we are beings in the making. There are things that will constantly be revealed to us, and I had this happen not too long ago. I was in a situation where I needed to drive a lot of conflict and I was having a very hard time doing it. It was like the role I was being asked to play as a facilitator.

Speaker 2:

I was like what is this? Why am I having such a hard time going directly at the problem? And I realized that in this certain circumstance, that I have an invisible value I didn't realize I had, which was harmony. I didn't realize, and so I unpacked that and I'm like well, I grew up in a big family and I was the oldest, but I'm part of a blended family, and so part of what I feel like I needed to do and navigate was how do I bring these pieces together?

Speaker 2:

And it's not a conscious value, it's a value that's in my being. It's like something that was cultivated in my upbringing, and now that I see it, I can choose to engage in that, or I can say like okay, this is a moment I don't want to. Actually, I need to go against the grain on this kind of inherent value for the sake of another value, which is clarity or whatever. But our values have to work together. That's why they're powerful too, because sometimes you can use one to help you rein in something else about yourself that you may not love, and so it helps to have something tangible to say okay, I'm going to work on being more adventurous. I'm naturally, I have a value around safety and security, and that's made me maybe a little cautious or a little scared in my life. I want to have this value of adventure and so I have to say I'm going to put my adventure in front of my need for security. And that's how we grow, bit by bit.

Speaker 1:

So that's kind of where those paradoxes fit in right. It's really embracing all of those parts like whether they be favorable or less favorable and like I guess less favorable is probably not the the right word, because you've identified that it's something that feels uncomfortable, but it's still a part of who you are. So it's embracing those contradictions, those paradoxes about ourselves.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, I think that's, you know, speaking aboutes. I think one of the things that's very interesting to me is, I think we love simplicity, we like to make things black and white and it's just like our. It's the way our brains kind of naturally work. But we also have, like, built it into our societal expectations of how we fit, and so we fall into boxes around ideology and race and all these things, and we've been pushing the boundaries on a lot of that, I would say, over the last 10 years.

Speaker 2:

And what I love about looking at that as a construct is we're all complex and if we give ourselves permission to be complex, we can hold two opposing ideas at the same time, and oh my gosh, is that not so much what we need in the world right now? Like we can be both. You know we can be two things at once. That feel conflicting, and both can be true. And I think that, like, the more we embrace that in ourselves, the more we can embrace that in others embrace that in ourselves, the more we can embrace that in others.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, that's spot on. That's going to take me in a slightly different direction, just off the cuff, like, because obviously we want to get into talking about your book and some of the stuff that's in there. But in your book you do mention social media. Yeah, you've obviously got a bit of a gripe with it and I'd love to hear a bit more about that because I kind of like when I was reading it I was like, yeah, I fucking know that I that it's bad, like it's hang on my internet.

Speaker 1:

Are you still getting my internet? Yes, yeah, cool, cool, I thought it dropped out there. Um, yeah, I know it's bad and I and I feel the discomfort with with how it makes me feel sometimes, but it just just sucks me back in. Um, I know, yeah, so I'd love to hear what you, yeah, have to say about that this is such a like this, like this is such a topic.

Speaker 2:

I, you know, I would say I'm antisocial, in the sense that I am like antisocial media. Okay, and and I myself, nadine, as I launched the book, my publisher, my publicist, everybody was like you've got to get a social media, you've got to get on social. And I'm like, oh, I don't want to do it. So I understand the struggle. I understand the struggle with needing, like it's, a real tool that we use to connect with people and that keeps us connected in ways we otherwise wouldn't be able to, and there's real value in that For the world. There has been a lot of value that comes from that. But I think it's like anything else. It's a tool If it becomes the way that we connect with each other, if it becomes the way that we see our lives. If we spend hours and hours sucked into a virtual reality that is not real, what happens to us, what happens to our sense of self? How are we spending our time and our energy? How are we building the mental model of how our lives compare to other people's lives? It's robbing us of some precious time and it robs us of energy. Know, I made a joke in the book about it should come with a narcissist warning, because social media it just makes you feel less than a lot of times. And so there's the need to do more and more to be better. And I don't think it's coincidental that, like all of the, so many people are changing how they look after having spent so much time online. And I just think we have to be really careful about it or we'll start to flip-flop what's real and what's not real, and I mean deep fakes are a thing. You can spend time online digesting so much fakery and if that becomes your sense of reality, like then that's just scary.

Speaker 2:

And I think to me, on the connection side, one of the things I think that is hurting us on our connection, our connectivity naturally, is we spend so much time on our devices only connecting virtually that we almost forgotten how to connect in real life devices only connecting virtually, that we almost forgotten how to connect in real life. And you can see it when you go to public spaces like airports, and I was in a lounge the other day and I'm looking around the lounge and every single person was on a device. I mean from two-year-olds to 85-year-olds. No one is talking, and so there's that that is creating a social cost to that for us, and I do think it destroys a little bit of the fabric of our society.

Speaker 2:

Because we spend so much time and algorithms are algorithms for a reason Like, you get sucked in because they're designed to suck you in and they suck us into our pockets of ideology, and those pockets of ideology also, you know, work on some of our reptilian nature, and so I think we we get more, um, cynical, we feel more fear. We, you know it's called doom scrolling for a reason. So I think we just have to really make sure um that we we see it like a drug, because I think it really is like a drug on our brains.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it's a tricky one, isn't it? Because it is such a big part of our world culture. But, like so many things that us humans have invented, we kind of realize in hindsight but that wasn't such a good idea, like so many, things.

Speaker 2:

I know I'm like I would think about it kind of like sugar, like sugar. You know, sugar can be nice in little doses, um, but if you start to have it for a long time it jacks with your internal system as your main meal, right yeah? Right and you, and like you, become diabetic. You have these issues, these actual metabolic issues that happen from, from overindulging, and I think it's, I think there's an analogy there that we can pull from.

Speaker 1:

Yes, definitely. Yeah, I'm, I'm on my way out. Um, do you think, as you also mentioned, loneliness as a situation we create? Do you think that that, and and the social media epidemic epidemic, yeah is part of that? Um, and what are some of the tools that we can use to overcome loneliness?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I think that there is no coincidence to the fact that, if you line the pieces up of, we had the pandemic, so we all went online and then we've had these spikes of like across the world loneliness, isolation, depression, anxiety I think you can draw a very real correlation and the time went somewhere, it went to online things and I think you know the work that Jonathan Haidt has done on understanding social media.

Speaker 2:

If you haven't seen it he's got a really great book called the Anxious Generation, which is like sort of the scientific. Now we can do longitudinal studies of kids who were born in the 80s without these devices versus kids today and what's happening with them and we're creating anxiety. And he makes it broader than social media. It's about technology, but I think there's some very important lessons to learn from that. And coming back to your question, though, around loneliness and like what are some tools we can do? I think the thing about and I think the the hard part about technology and social media is big piece of this is it's so attractive, it's so, it's so enjoyable, it's like and it's designed to to like hit that dopamine you know in your brain, and so when you go off of it, you don't naturally just think, oh well, now I'm just going to go connect with another person. You're like what do I do with my itchy self? I don't know what to do with myself. I'm like now I've got this like hole and put us in a situation like I was talking about at the airport, where it's busy and everybody's rushing and it's not necessarily a natural place for us to slow down and connect. It's very easy for us to just fill that time with the phone.

Speaker 2:

But what I think we have to realize is that those little things become habits that take over the daily rhythms of our life. And so then where do we create the space to talk to strangers, to meet people, to engage? And it's like anything else If you get out of practice it gets really uncomfortable, it gets really weird to do it. So I think that's a part of what has been like a perpetual thing in spending less time together and spending less time connecting is it gets hard. It feels harder to do it when you start to try, because you feel a little awkward, because we're people and we feel awkward when we don't know what to say and I don't know what the small talk.

Speaker 2:

So what do we do? We just go to the thing that makes us feel comfortable again. And so I think you know there are little things I would say that we can do that have to be intentional. Like when you go to the grocery store, don't just be in such a rush to get through the line. Take a moment to connect with the cashier who's spending their life hours in that job. Have a conversation. It can be a three-minute conversation, but the little bits of meaning in our interactions make us feel like so much better and like how you can make someone's day by doing something very small, and I think we just have to remember that and practice it, and I think just little things go a long way.

Speaker 2:

You know, smiling at someone can make a difference. So I don't think we should underestimate that and we can. You know, there's big connection, there's little connection. We're talking about little moments of connection but that build towards more meaningful opportunities for it. Opportunities for it, yeah. Do you live in a city or or a smaller, smaller place, town?

Speaker 1:

I.

Speaker 1:

I am a nomad so I live all over the place, okay, and so sometimes I am in large cities and sometimes I am very small towns or nature we moved from sydney, uh, to the mid north coast, new South Wales, which is about six hours north of Sydney, to have a change of pace of life and we're in a small country town now and one of the things that we were really surprised about when we first moved here was that connection. Right in the city it's like face down, everyone's in a rush and then here we're, like people just say hello to you in the street. It's such a different, um yeah, it's just such a different way of living and when you go back to the city after you've had that experience, it just feels really, really, have you had any similar experiences?

Speaker 2:

Absolutely, and I think you know what. What you're saying, which I think is something that we, as we, we need to reflect on, especially if we're struggling with some some of these things like loneliness or isolation, is what is the environment that you're in? Because our environment does? Our environment can help support us or it can help, it can help break us down, and that is something we control, and I think we forget we control it. Now, not everybody has the choice to just pick up and move, and I don't mean to say that we, that everyone does. But what I would say is like there are little things we can control.

Speaker 2:

And so I was having a conversation the other day with someone who was like I'm living in a city, I'm feeling all this anxiety. I was like when's the last time you went for a walk at the park? And they were like, oh gosh, it's probably been six months. And I'm like, yeah, that's something you should probably put into your environment. And when, like there is something about spaciousness that creates spaciousness. So I don't think it's coincidental that you're in a smaller coastal town. There's probably literally more space to people and we probably create more space for each other. And so just noticing those things. And but I would say I am a proponent of like.

Speaker 2:

If your environment, if you have the ability to, and and the privilege of changing your environment and you're in an environment that is not serving you, don't be afraid to do it. And I think sometimes we get so stuck in the patterns or we're so stuck to the certainty of like. Well, but I know what this is, or I know this experience, or I've been living on this block for 15 years, you know, um, but this is a part of, I think, being in the making is like, continue to look at the things like we're creators in our life. Are the things that you have around you creating the kind of life that you want and helping you be the kind of person that you want. And if they aren't, don't be afraid to challenge it, don't be afraid to change it up a little bit, you know, try something different. Little bit, you know, try something different.

Speaker 2:

And for me, I think one of the biggest things. I mean we made a huge shift during the pandemic. We were living in LA and we were those people that got an RV and did like national parks during that time and there weren't so many people out. But what was incredible, though, moving from city which was in like hardcore lockdown, everybody was super, super isolated to you know. Now we're like RVing through Arizona and people are at the campsite having a party, you know. So your environment totally changes what we see as being okay and not okay, and it can help us break down some of those barriers that we've learned to put up. And I think it's refreshing when you step into a different current of energy like you're talking about, like feeling how other people might live.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it definitely makes you realize the importance of those things, the connection and the lack of you know so much access to so many things. I think you can feel it when you go back into a city like, well, that you can feel the how anonymous you feel, but also like how you could easily get sucked back in, just like you do with social media, sucked back into you know, big flashy lights and shopping and and all of those things that really aren't very relevant to to meaning in our lives.

Speaker 2:

It's so true and it's so and it's so easy, I think, to get swept up in it. But one of the things, nadine, I think that perpetuates that. I talked a little bit of the things Nadine. I think that perpetuates that. I talked a little bit about productive society thinking and I think that that's a very Western kind of like how productive are you being with your time and I? But I also think like we get very about us in those environments because we're you have to fight traffic, you have to fight for your space.

Speaker 2:

There's like more competition, naturally, in that kind of a dynamic, whether it's intentional or non-intentional, it's just kind of in the energy, and so it becomes very much about me Like, okay, well, I have, you know, I have an hour to get across town and I've got to get the subway and so you're pushing your way through things or whatever it is. So we just lose some of the consideration we might have for another human, because we feel like that trigger of, well, I have to take care of myself, and I think that's just some of the environmental like that's how it, that's how it operates. Um, it's very efficient but it's not always, uh, too super relevant for meaning.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, definitely, I'm just looking through my notes. I'm I'm aware that we're kind of talking about the book without talking about the book at the moment. Right, um, so let's talk about the book now. You talk about um, mind, body and heart, but the thing that we don't talk about very much, um, as you've asserted, is the human spirit, and this um is the innate self. I right um, which is what the the title of the book.

Speaker 2:

So can you talk to us a little bit about the difference between that, like, the human spirit you've obviously touched on it and all of the things that you've been saying, but, um, yeah, just how you differentiate between those things yeah, well, I think it's an important question because I think we it all works together, as we are holistic beings and we are, and these pieces are like your emotions, are not disconnected from your body, but lens and a social construct. Perspective is we talk about ourselves as though we are those three parts your, your thoughts, that you have, and that shows up in the language that we have, that's the, and then we have our emotions and that shows up in our feelings and then we are our bodies and that shows up like in action. But but we haven't brought into the personal development space, because our spiritual piece of ourselves, which I call it the innate self, because it's innate in everybody, everybody has this piece of you that is, and it has some characteristics so we can recognize it, but it just stands for the higher nature You're a capital N right, higher nature and it has eight characteristics. It's also a nice little double entendre, but I think, like we, you can see it. It's very intuitive when you start to talk about it.

Speaker 2:

It's like things, like character, character lives outside of your mind and your emotions and your thoughts. It is something you are in being. It is who you show up to be in your life. It's the values you have, with the integrity that you want. It's like who's your character when you go through tough times? And then contribution like how do you want to contribute your skills and your gifts? And that's a really important characteristic of our innate being. And so connection Connection's a key one that we have been talking a lot about, and I spent probably the most time in the book talking about that one because I think it's so relevant for the moment we're in.

Speaker 2:

But the thing I would say is that this piece, to me, is a piece of a missing puzzle in the personal development space around. You know, you will not fully understand yourself if you just think about the feelings that you have and unpacking you know what makes you feel that way, with the thoughts you have, with where it sits in your body and sort of somatic work. And we have frameworks for that, but we haven't had. And then, so what does it mean in your life? And and that's the innate self piece, and it um, and it does have eight characteristics. To try to make it more tangible into, like, how do I understand this, uh, and to give some some framework for it.

Speaker 1:

So that's the, that's the premise of the book, cool um, you've mentioned, um, and it's in the title the eight characteristics. Can you take us through what they are and maybe pick out one or two of your favorites? Like we've obviously mentioned, character?

Speaker 2:

Yep.

Speaker 1:

Is values one.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yep, character is the first one, and we talked about a little bit contribution and connection. Yeah, the one I'll talk about that we haven't talked about it at all yet is creativity, and and I'd love to talk about creativity because it's a fun one, I think you know. I think creativity is one of those things that's so interesting, though, and I'll tell this in terms of a story of like I was doing a workshop and we were. The point of the workshop was basically to help people understand where they were in terms of their like career trajectory, like where are you at and are you happy with where you're at, etc. So we asked them to do an exercise on or I asked them to do an exercise on dreaming. And you know, I have these like 55 year old guys who are like fairly successful in their life.

Speaker 2:

And after the workshops over, I had one guy come up to me and he was like I really hated that part about dreaming. It just felt so childish, like I don't know what you wanted us to do there, and I was like, well, what were your dreams? So I'm looking at what he wrote down. He was like I want to lose 10 pounds. I was like, dude, that is not a dream, that is a goal, and those are different things.

Speaker 2:

And so, like I was like, oh wow, we're so out of touch with our, like, imagination and our creativity, and so what I part of the reason I love this one is because, if it feel, if you are the type of person that says I'm not creative, this sections for you, because we have limited a lot of us have limited the definition of creativity in our minds to be like the definition of what it means to be an artist, and an artist is just one type of a creative, but there are multiple different muscles of creativity and one is a functional creative, and functional creatives are people like engineers, who are like designing the world to work, still very creative in nature.

Speaker 2:

You know, you're literally designing how we operate in this life, and that's incredibly creative. And then we have, like cognitive creatives, and these are the people who are idea people. They come up with theories and hypotheses, and so you fall somewhere in the spectrum of creativity. You just may not know how to recognize it. And so I love that one because I think it's the one that kind of reconnects us to the spark, the joy, and, you know, that childlike wonder piece that we maybe have forgotten, but we had somewhere along the journey, and so how can we, you know, touch, get back in touch with that piece of us?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, right, and yes, it's interesting that you said with that particular person that they said it felt so childish and you're like that's the point. I think that's a good like just to, yeah, use our imaginations and allow ourselves to play and I think probably even from a physical perspective, like you, can get into your creative flow by being more playful.

Speaker 2:

Right, and we don't embrace creativity because we automatically bring all of our mental models to it. We're like I have to be perfect at this and I don't know what the value of this is. We get so in our heads when it comes to creativity and we judge it and we feel perfectionist about it. And if we go back to what you just said, which is like how do you embrace it as an exercise of playfulness? What could it open up for you? And you know, I just dare you to do something creative and see if you don't feel better afterwards. It's just like it just releases some endorphins and it's where we can feel that flow state, where you just kind of lose sense of time and, um, if we allow ourselves to do it without, without judgment and assessment and all those other things we we tend to bring to the table as adults, what do you do?

Speaker 1:

what's your personal go-to for creativity writing?

Speaker 2:

yeah, um, well, so writing is actually I, um, no, it's not my playful one. And I'm like, so serious, how is this? Oh, it's, it's, uh, it's work, but, um, it's work I enjoy, but for me it's painting. I, I love to paint. Um, I love to paint, but I it was funny I just I brought in an artist to an uh, to a leadership offsite I just had recently. It was such a great opportunity and he, uh, was telling me I was, we were doing a painting exercise where we were all painting a piece of a puzzle that they all fitted together. It was a part of our values exercise. And he said, why did you grab the littlest, tiniest brush? And I was like, well, I always paint with the little tiniest brush. And he goes, and I can tell you right now, you're afraid of making mistakes.

Speaker 2:

And I was like you know he said you always go for the biggest brush. The biggest brush is it's easiest to later come in and make refinements, but start big. And it was like it felt like a life truism, like a little bit of wisdom in how to think through what it is to engage with this part Go for it. Dream Like, go for the thing, and you know what's the saying, like shoot for for the moon and you land at the stars, or vice versa, that. But it's. It's a little bit of that of like, if we allow ourselves to pick up the big brush, what might we be able to create in the making? Um, and don't overly perfection it, you know. So, yeah, anyway, that's why, I like that.

Speaker 1:

I like that. The idea of like go big picture and then figuring out the details. Yeah, I might not sit very well with some people, especially my husband gets analysis paralysis. I'm like let's just do it yeah that's interesting.

Speaker 1:

Okay, let me have a look. So, oh, let me, let's talk a little bit about contribution, because I I think that when we say contribution, we think it needs to be big, and for women, especially if they're you know, parenting, you know homemaking, that can feel almost irrelevant. So how does how does that become more relevant to people, to everyone?

Speaker 2:

yeah, yeah, oh so, um, I just shout out to the moms because I'm a mom and um, and I'm a, I'm a working mom and I have realized how beautiful of a thing it is for women who want to stay home and full time do that, because it is nothing but pure contribution. I mean, you were just pouring yourself into that little person and bless you for doing it. But I think you know you. You raise a great question around the size of the thing, the size of impact, the size of scale. So two characteristics that are part of our higher nature or innate self are contribution and generosity, and I think we sometimes conflate those two things. And let me tell you my definition difference between contribution is really about you. It's what are the things you have to offer, what are your skills, what are your thoughts? How do you want to pour into the lives of others? And that can be in little, tiny ways, that can be in big ways, but I think we should not discount the importance of the little ways, because it is also felt as generosity. So the other piece of our innate nature is generosity, and generosity is actually about you. It's I'm giving of myself in order to pour into you, and when we think of generosity, sometimes people associate it just financially. But I would say it's much broader than that. Like, generosity of spirit is a generosity of actions, of time, of kindness, and so these things in little moments sometimes could get linked up of, you know, I am contributing or I want to contribute in this way, and so I'm going to do these little things and what that feels like to the person receiving it is moments of generosity, and I think there's something really powerful about recognizing you can contribute. Let's go back to the lady at the grocery store. It's like by you, let's say that you pause for a moment and have a conversation with her about something that you learned today which we would never do, that I mean, we rarely ever take that time to have a kind of moment like that, but you may actually contribute some perspective to her in her life or contribute some hope, and that's so meaningful. And so I think, like, as you think about contribution, it's really what do you have to give? Is it your kindness, is it your skills, is it your thoughts? And don't discount it just because you think it's not like a big meta. You know impact that you want to do. These little bits build on themselves. And yeah, and I think that's important.

Speaker 2:

One of the other innate characteristics of ourselves is meaning, and I talk about micro meaning versus macro meaning. And micro meaning is that we are meaning makers. So let's start there. We make meaning out of everything, like the smile on your face. I make meaning out of it. The fact that you don't smile back at me, I make meaning out of that. I send you a text, you don't immediately respond. I'm making meaning out of that. We make meaning out of everything. And we interpret, you know, we interpret situations. And that's micro meaning, those little moments of like.

Speaker 2:

How do I read the subtext of this conversation, or the tone? Micro meaning, macro meaning is what is the meaning of life? What is the meaning of my life? How am I living, you know? Am I happy with who I am? Or you know all of the big, big questions? And the same can be true for contribution. You can have little bits of contribution, you can have big, big, but it all matters, um, and it's all meaningful. And so don't, um, give yourself that permission, you know to to have just little bits of contribution. And it it these to me that these are the moments that we that lighten up our life, that make us feel brighter and happier and more connected, even if they're small, yeah, great your book.

Speaker 1:

we're getting to the book. This is all in the book. It's all in the book. It's all in the book. People, what made you decide to put all of this into a book? Was it your contribution?

Speaker 2:

yeah, good question. Um, so okay to I'll talk about me. But before I talk about me, I want to talk about what I felt. And in terms of others, um, you know I mentioned before I'd worked in academia, non-profits, I'd worked across people, you know, from 50 different countries, and I think the thing I felt, or I was really seeing as I was working in the coaching space is we do not have a framework to talk about this important part of ourselves and we've got to get it out of like a belief system conversation Not that those aren't beautiful conversations to have, but it's a barrier of entry for some people. Like, some people don't engage with their spiritual part because they don't know what their belief system is, and that's not the way in. Like, don't start by expecting you to know all of the beliefs that you have to engage with the being that you are. Like, start with the being piece and that's the personal development piece and then it can grow into something else. But I just felt, like you know, I just felt like there was really something missing there that I felt very compelled to try to create a way forward on.

Speaker 2:

On a personal level, yeah, I am at a point in my life. You talked about earlier midlife. I am in midlife, thank you, and and I'm like you know, am I? Am I contributing what I have to give? And am I doing it in such a way that I think adventure is one of my core values? And so I do these exercises with myself where I'm like fast forward to 80 and I'm saying, you know, and I'm like standing on a stage, what am I most proud of? How have I spent my life? Like? What am I telling younger people to do? So I have these kind of like check-in moments, and one of my big bucket list items has been to write a book, and that's more petty. It was like something I've always wanted to do. I was an English nerd in college and but I had never found the thing I wanted to say, so much that I would memorialize it forever, because your name's attached to this thing forever and I didn't want to just write some book, I wanted to write something I really cared about, and so it. So for me, this was a big.

Speaker 2:

I had a milestone year this year personally, and everything came together where it was like this is the time on a personal just like aside, I was when I was writing the book. I was about 75% done with it and I hit like this I don't know what to go. I don't know where to go from here. I don't know how to, I don't know if I'm in editing phase. Where to go from here. I don't know how to, I don't know if I'm in editing phase, and I started to get woken up at 4am like like just a wake up call, where it was the get up and finish the book and it was happening to me, nadine, every day.

Speaker 2:

So I'll call that a calling, but but it literally was like an alarm clock, so I'll give it that language. But it's a part of why I did it. It was like personal milestone meets something I felt like was needed in the world with something I felt like I needed to give, and I've had a very privileged life in a lot of ways, and so how am I using that access and that you know, some of the goodness in my own life to try to give back?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, amazing. Who's it? For Anyone, everyone.

Speaker 2:

I got asked this the other day.

Speaker 1:

But when you were writing it, did you have someone in mind, or were you? You know, I think when we do our whatever work, we do we think of it, we create things with us in mind. Right? What would I like?

Speaker 2:

yeah, yeah. So my, my elevator pitch is I I wrote it for people who are seeking, like the people who are looking for it is who I wrote it for. And then, practically speaking, I had two like people in my mind One who I think has one of my friends has grown up at and has intuitively a lot of these things very front and center but doesn't have any framework. And so when we sit, when we start to talk about, like what you care about or how are you giving back, we will get stuck in these cyclical conversations of like I don't know, I don't know how to think about it, I don't know. And so it was like the lack of the framework thing. And then I have another friend who was a deeply religious person and has gone through a lot of hard things in life and now is not sure where they sit in their sort of it's kind of lost faith in life.

Speaker 2:

I'll call it and needs the boost you know the energy, the spiritual, the reminder and um, without necessarily all of the ideology again, like I think there's such a place for that. I just don't think it has to be the entry point and I think sometimes we have to rethink, not think it's an ontological thing. We need to re-sit with that piece and there needs to be some discovery. So I also wrote it with him in mind, of like just be reminded, you know, of the, of the light that is within you, of the goodness, and that's how I think about it. You know, it's just the light that we all have.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah. If someone or when someone is reading the book, how would you recommend they approach it? Like read the whole thing, then read it again and journal or put things into practice, because it can be very easy to acknowledge these parts of us or read a book and understand from a logical sense of view that you know that makes sense. But how do we start to integrate those things from your book into our lives?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so I would say so. I wrote it in micro chapters and that was kind of a grand experiment, but I think we handle having little snippets to think about at a time better than you know. Let me unpack my whole self right now really quickly in this chapter, and with that I tried to pepper in some thoughtful questions so that it would create some natural reflection and I would say, like, definitely grab a journal. And one of the things I will one of these days finish is a workbook that I'm building out to help guide through the book. It's on my to do list, but you'll be getting those 4am calls soon.

Speaker 2:

So I think that, yes, if the ideal way is take a, take a bit of a time, and I think the the places that you feel most challenged or you're like, oh, I've not thought about the slowdown in those spaces, and the places where you're like, yep, I got this, you can just fly right through those microchapters you know you may not need it as much and I did write.

Speaker 2:

I did a couple of quizzes in the book to help, almost like a tool of diagnostic tool of like where should I spend some time? And so at the back of the book you can actually take a quiz on which of my innate characteristics might mean more love. Is it my sense of contribution, my sense of creativity? And that can also help be a guide on, oh, I maybe should spend more time thinking about. This. Character is a really rich one. I think we can spend more like headspace time there, whereas generosity may be more emotional space. So I think it's it's also about like, where are you in your journey, yeah and um, and what resonates with you most or challenges you most. And then, what do you? Where do you feel the most energy and drawn to and spend the time there?

Speaker 1:

yeah, cool, great tips. Where can we get your book? We're going to put all of the links in the guest directory. So we'll have your profile in the guest directory with all of your links there.

Speaker 2:

But for people who are, for seekers, who want to seek out your book, yes, so you can find me on Amazon that's the best place to find me globally and the book is just called the innate self. It's in eight, like the number in the letter. I also have a website innate selfcom and. I am on Instagram. I don't promise to post a lot. I don't check it though, but innate coach, you can find me, you can find me there, okay, cool. Yeah.

Speaker 1:

Great, brilliant. Jules, thank you so much for joining us. It's been a really insightful conversation. I wish you all the best of luck with getting this book out there. And yeah, thank you for your inspiration.

Speaker 2:

Thank you so much, Nadine. I really appreciate this conversation and your inspiration. I really appreciate this conversation and, um, yeah, and and thank you for having me.

Speaker 1:

You're welcome. Before you go, can I ask you a small favor? If you've enjoyed this show or any of the other episodes that you've listened to, then I'd really appreciate it If you took a couple of moments to hit subscribe. This is a great way to increase our listeners and get the word out there about all of the wonderful guests that we've had on the podcast. If you'd like to further support the show, you can buy me a coffee by going to buymeacoffeecom. Forward. Slash, life, health, the universe. You can find that link in the show notes. Thanks for listening.