Welcome back to Inside personal growth for another perfect edition about a new book called The N8 self. Very clever Jules. And Jules is joining us from Florida. Is that right?

Yes, today I am in Florida. Okay,

today. Are you other places all over the place, but you know, Carmen San

Diego wouldn't, wouldn't be Carmen San Diego if you knew where in the world she was. So, you know, that's right,

that's right. Well, for my listeners, I'm going to let them know a little bit about you. And the website they're going to want to go to is the innate self.com the innate self.com that website actually launches. It will have already launched by the time this podcast releases, but that's where you're going to want to go again. This is the book, you can get this on Amazon, and I'm going to tell our listeners just a tad bit about you. She says, I'm a corporate hippie. And wonder if I were a cartoon, I'd be Carmen San Diego, and that would be your alter ego. My life's passion is helping people get past the ideas they have of themselves and to unlock more fulfillment and meaning in their lives. Our minds are wonderful and dangerous tools, depending on how we wield them. I love complexity and strive for simplicity and believe the world is more interesting with our paradoxes explored, and that's what we're going to explore today. Jules says My aim is to bring more joy and understanding into the world, and I'm hoping that the innate self will bring more of both of these to all of the listeners. There you go. Well, we're in for a whirlwind interview today, and one where I said, when we were doing our intentions that we wanted to help the listeners that are currently out there listening today have more meaning. And that brings me to the first question, because in your book, you describe yourself as this corporate hippie and a meaning seeker. How did these seemingly contradictory identities shape your perspective on both spirituality and lead to the development of the innate self? Because you've been kind of a corporate coach person who's done this for people. And I think that I recently had a woman on here who used to be a nun that got kicked out of the church, believe it or not, because she was gay. And the reason I say this is because she recently wrote a book called Stop seeking and start finding. And I thought the interesting thing is, is we spend a lot of time in this whole intellectual kind of arena, and that's our seeking self. You know, we're seeking more and more and more, but really the meaning comes from us finding. And I guess the question for you is, the question I have is, how did you get on this journey to want to do this and write this book?

Yeah, that's a loaded question. Um, and I love it. So I'll start with saying, like, I wasn't always in the corporate space. I have been a corporate coach for over 10 years. And you know, one of the things was kind of interesting in my own journey, I didn't really want to be in corporate America, because I felt like it was a soulless place, just about capitalism, and so I wasn't really drawn to that. I was drawn to nonprofits. So I did work in academia. I did work in nonprofits. And through my own life experiences, I got tired of being the person who wasn't actually thinking about how we change systems. I was just on the receiving end of the challenges of systems, and so I just felt like that was kind of a band aid approach. So that kind of left me searching for what became the coaching space. So I got into the corporate workplace, and it was so surprising to me Greg, because what I had felt like was this cold and kind of stoic place where people just wore suits and came every day to think about revenue. What I found in my coaching practice was in almost all of these conversations, people were coming down to these questions of meaning and purpose and joy and contribution. And I thought, gosh, we don't have a really good way to talk about this in these kind of secular spaces where we have all these frameworks to kind of help us understand our thinking. We talk about limiting beliefs. We have all of this in the coaching space. We have good frameworks to understand kind of emotional intelligence and what's going on there, how to read people, how to assess and perceive. And we train on that. And then more recently, we've had stuff on the somatic part. You know, how we hold tension in our bodies, and the Body Keeps the Score, if you're familiar with that. But what we haven't had is a framework to talk about this more esoteric piece of ourselves, that no matter what situation I was in, people were seeking a conversation about meaning and purpose and joy, and who doesn't want those things, things in their daily life, you know? So that's how I came to write well,

including you, including me, including you. Because, you know, 100% frequently when people write books and myself included, they're they're also writing about their life experiences and the things that have happened to them. So when you say you were seeking more meaning you wrote this book because, and I'm going to state here, you are experiencing not just a mental health crisis, but a spiritual crisis. And that's an interesting one, because the whole spiritual side is it's, you know, I used to, years ago, go to spirituality in work, work conferences, right? And I've noticed they've disappeared. And I My sense is, is that we hit an error, you know, if you look at history, you say, Oh well, we've got a bunch of Gen Zers in the workplaces, and we have a bunch of millennials in the workplaces. And, you know, you've got all these generations in the workplaces, but they've all been speak, seeking the ability to express their spirituality in the workplace all along. Yet we've lived as if this is an industrial revolution still right? Even people say, Oh well, it's the computer age. It's the technology age. Now it's the AI age. You can say whatever it is there, but inside these organizations, it still seems a bit command and control ish, yeah. Okay, yeah, so what happened to you and what gave you the courage to break out of it and do something different, because you said that it, it this mental health and spiritual crisis was the key observations that led you to the conclusion and the why do you believe traditional approaches to well being often miss addressing this deeper need? And that is your question to answer for the listeners, yeah,

no, it's such a good question. So you've said several things that I'd like to unpack. Because one is, you know, the Gen Z ers are seeking kind of a spiritual outlet at work. And I think here's the dirty secret is, I think we all are we just need to destigma, stigmatize what it means to be spiritual. And I think this is one of the things, again, like thinking about spirituality from a personal development lens, my hope is that we can add language to the space to help actually create a framework to engage with it that is outside of the belief system. And it's so interesting. I've worked with a lot of engineers. I've worked mostly in tech companies, and highly analytical people often don't think about themselves as being spiritual, and what they'll say is, because I don't know what my beliefs are and and the thing we have to recognize is like we are a spiritual being, and our thoughts and beliefs come out of engaging with that spiritual being. They don't come before it. And so our barrier to entry of like understanding and unpacking our spiritual self, our innate self, is a little bit blocked by our obsession with our thinking and our mind. And so we can talk more about that later, but I just wanted to say that because I to say that, because I think it's like, I have yet to meet a person, no matter what position they they held, even CEOs who don't want meaning and purpose and joy in their day. And so, like, that's a human thing, that's an innate human desire. And so to your second part of the question around like, what gave me the courage, I would say, maybe more than courage. I just had the opportunity. I think it was such an incredible thing I get. I mentioned that I started in nonprofits, and I've had the pleasure of getting to work with so many people across so many different cultures, and that has allowed me to see the connective thread of humanity, like we all have these kind of same characteristics. And so when I got into the corporate space, practicing coaching, and people were seeking these things, I already knew some of the things to look for, some of the conversations to open up. And there's yet to be a time where I've sat with someone and they're they're indicating they want to talk about their meaning, and I'll ask them a question about meaning like, hey, well, I'm hearing that you would like more purpose in what you're doing. Are you feeling like you're contributing at the level you want? Everybody engages in a question like that. Don't shy away and say, Oh, you're getting too it just doesn't happen. So I think, I think it was so much opportunity I had in the positions, and because of the role that's really enabled me to have these deeper conversations. And I'm a deep conversation kind of gal, that's what I live for, and long for. So I don't think I could change my stripes, even if I've tried. You know, it's just one of the I know

for a fact that for years, you know, this thing we're speaking of, which is spirituality in the workplace and spiritual the expression of our spirituality. We're not speaking about religion here, because, in my humble opinion, religion has done more to divide people than bring people together. Spirituality brings people together. So you call it, you know, in other words, for you, it's just this innate self. It's this, it's the soul with inside of ourselves that longs to express itself. So the concept of innate self, you say, it introduces eight characteristics of higher nature, because I think this is really important that people like get your plan, because this is Jules speak, right? There's all kinds of math there. You want to read Buddhism, you want to read Taoism, you want to read all these various things. But when you look at all the characteristics, they have similarities, usually okay, because you really can't go any deeper than the truth. The truth is the truth. So could you explain why you two you chose these eight qualities, and was there a ninth characteristic that almost made the

cut? Great question. So I would say that my the framework for me is both empirical and having studied, I've studied world religions. I've been deeply embedded in Christianity for a long time. And I think the the interesting thing, and you mentioned it, is there's a lot of overlap in in those kind of religious frameworks, but abstracting out of that and empirically, kind of like I said, I've worked with people for 10 years in this space, there are different things that always come up. And I think, like, if you take a look at how we think about like, our higher nature, one of the first things that comes out as character. And this was a really hard chapter to write, if I'm being really honest, because it's not something we focus on much culturally, like the concept of character, I don't find that we talk about a lot. We talk about aspects of it. We'll talk about integrity, or we'll talk about honesty, or we'll talk about, you know, certain pieces. But like, what does it mean to have a strong character. I feel like it's like very kind of antiquated language to even unpack that. But it's a very common no matter what kind of ideology you're looking at. It's a very common bedrock of what it means to have, like to tap into that, that higher nature piece. So the they kind of build on each other. And so part of it's through research, part of it's empirically, but, but character is that first characteristic, and it goes into then contribution. I think contribution is one of those things that who doesn't want to be able to use their skills and gifts to give to the world and and whatever way that shows up can be different, but we all long to contribute, and I think that if we don't recognize that, that's one way that we cut off connection, and connection is kind of one of those, is the third pillar of our higher nature. So a lot of this kind of intuitive, but what I don't think is intuitive is that we haven't had, from a personal development perspective, a framework to understand this aspect of self and to know like, Hey, what's wrong here? I've something, something's feeling off. I'm not feeling enough joy. How do I understand what might be inhibiting my joy? And to have, like, a way to think through that. And so the way I've laid it out is there are different, these, almost like muscles that we have around our innate self that help build that more fulfilling sense of purpose and meaning in life.

Well, each soul on this planet as they're incarnate today, goes through life, experiences some painful, some joyful. We weren't actually brought into this world by our parents with this, oh, well, that's going to be utopia. So the reality is, is that you know from the virtue of from a Buddhist say, Hey, you're going to have pain, but suffering is the choice. That's the choice you make through the mental models that you've actually created for yourself. And I think the reality is is no matter what pain it is, whether it's relationship pain or it's money pain or it's job pain, or whatever it is, it's how you really frame it. And I think most importantly is how we actually program the super conscious, the subconscious and the conscious mind and the reality. As we move through these phases, we recognize that that subconscious is a part of our mind which is really guiding and directing us, but most people don't even know it exists. So it is a really important thing. Now you share a story about rom it's a Bhutanese refugee who taught you about this connection despite language barriers. How did this experience transform kind of your understanding about human connection beyond words, because, hey, that's a great story, and I think the listener like to know it,

yeah, for sure. Before I get into the story, you said something that I think is really important just around, like, the way that we engage in the mind is it can open us up or it can close us down. And the thing I think, like, as I worked with people like the mind, that our everyday mind is meant to protect us, and because it serves to protect us, it often will close off opportunities for connection because we're scared or it feels vulnerable, or we don't want to be embarrassed, or whatever it is. And so to start the story of ROM like, I think one of my big learnings was just around the way the mind can try to separate you from these moments of connection because it doesn't know what to anticipate. So I'll get into the story. So Ram was a Bhutanese refugee that came into my classroom. I was teaching English at the time to the pre literate refugee community, meaning they hadn't learned in their own language, how to read or write. And it was such an incredible experience because he shows up in my classroom like full Bhutanese garb. I mean, he looks like a shepherd, you know, straight off the hillside and bright orange and yellow, and you couldn't help but like, notice him and his family for the energy that they brought into the room. I mean, they were just like beacons of joy and peace. And so as I got to know them, I got to know them through spending time with them, not conversing with them. We didn't share language. We shared laughter. We had a lot of moments together where I was trying to get something into their head and they couldn't understand it. And so we would just bust out laughing. And at the end of about eight weeks, it was time for Diwali, and their family invited me over. One of their sons spoken, suppose, spokes in English, and he invited me over to their house. And this was, like, talking about the mind, like, this was one of those, like, intimate moments. I'm nervous. I don't know what we're gonna do, like, I'm not gonna be able to lean on conversation to get me through the evening. So I almost said no, but I talked to their caseworker, and she was going to go. So I was like, Okay, I got a buddy. So we I show up at their house and they have like, this beautiful banquet, like a food prepared, and we're talking people of humble means. I mean, they didn't have hardly any furniture in their house. They're sitting on the floor. They're in their beautiful saris, and they've like, made all this different curry and rice and and non and we just shared the most peaceful kind of non, non talkative, but like, pleasant meal. And at the end of it, Ram starts speaking to me in full Hindi, and he asks me to come into into their bedroom, which was really kind of freaking me out for a minute. But the whole family piled in, and they sat on the floor, and they had me sit on the bed, and they started to just like almost pray over me, is how I would describe it, yeah, and and then they performed the tica ceremony, where they put the Tika on my head. And it was just this beautiful moment. And coming back to this question of, how did it change me? It was like one of those realizations that I almost missed out on this incredible experience because I didn't know what to anticipate, and that that fear, blocker, mindset, protective mode that we go into saying, I don't know this might get a little uncomfortable, and so we just don't enter into connection. But connection exists, regardless of language. And I think it's such a well

i without pardon me for interrupting, but you have to kind of let go of what you think to actually experience what is the true reality, which, in that case, was these individuals, which had a very deep spiritual energy they wanted to share with you. And it's kind of a vibratory level. There's a vibratory attunement between people who have this and have the ability to actually share it right through a high level of compassion, right? And compassion doesn't have to be with words. It can be through what they did, which was sharing that energy, so that you then picked up on the vibration and it shifted your whole life. So that happens a lot you now, you say throughout the book, you describe our thoughts. This is here we go. Is internal, internal roommates. Could you elaborate on these different voices? Because you had the voices right there with the Bhutanese guy that said, Oh no, he's gonna take me in the bedroom. There's no way I'm doing that one. And share strategies for strengthening what you call the encourager while quieting the critic, the doubter and the blamer. So there was your critic, oh no, I don't know if I want to go over there. And then you ended up walking out of their home, probably feeling like you were walking on a cloud.

Yeah, absolutely. So you've, you've laid them all out like the four that I have experienced time and time again with people, is that we have this internal roommate, the critic. And the critic is there to basically make help us not make mistakes. So there, you know you could do better than that, or they're always kind of down on us, trying to help us learn. I think about this internal, internal roommates always have a positive motive, even though it actually doesn't come out that way, and I think this is important for curbing that, like, if we can understand what's driving it, we can start to separate ourselves from the voices in our head. So we have the critic, and the critic is there to say, Don't make that mistake. And then we have the doubter, and the doubter is the one that sounds friendly. It's pretty dangerous, because it's like, oh, I don't know if you're ready. It just kind of inserts that fear of the unknown. I'm not sure if this is the thing we should do, but the doubter really keeps us from trying new things and from learning, and can also really block us from connection. And then the third is the blamer, and the blamer is the one that's like, can't take accountability. Like, that's not my fault. That's your fault. We get into that mode as a protection mechanism very, very easily. So these are the negative voices. But then we do, to your point, have the positive voice of the encourager, and this is the one this is sometimes really quiet in the back of our minds that says you can do it like Go for it, try it. I think you're ready. And we have to, we have to feed that voice, we have to honor that voice, and we have to reward that voice. And a lot of times that means kind of shutting down the other ones. And the best way to shut them down is to recognize where they're coming from. And so like in my coaching work, let's say I'm working with somebody who has a high level of internal criticism, and you can always tell a really high level internal critic because they can't handle any external critic. They're like, threshold for criticism is at an all time high internally, so they cannot handle feedback. And one of the things that we'll kind of do is we're unpacking that is like, well, what is your internal critic trying to protect you from? Or what is it trying to, like, save you from? And a lot of times it's a past experience we don't want to repeat. And then once we recognize that, we can kind of say, like, Okay, thank you. I know you're here to protect me, but now I need to tune into the encourager that can help me get get out of that kind of pattern that we find ourselves in.

Yeah, the the way that you've kind of laid this out around you know, you say the encourager, and I think it's important to hear the encourager's voice more than you hear the critic and the doubter and the blamer, uh, especially when you want to experience the richness of life, you want to experience that spiritual side of life. You want to let go and let be and understand that you're held in safety mode, right? In other words, hey, this is safe. I can do this. And you wrote about how the pain can be a pathway to gratitude, and gratitude is something a lot of people talk about. The question is, is that I wonder how many have embedded it? You talk about this being innate in your own life, what painful experience ultimately led to what you referred to as unexpected gratitude, and then how did it shape your approach to handling difficulties? Yeah,

it's a great question. Think about what story I want to share. I think I think you've said something important around I think we talk about gratitude as like an attitude, like, just put it on, feel better. And I find that to be a very challenging way of thinking about gratitude, because it sits at a superficial level. It doesn't, to your point, get really embedded. I think if you take you know, I talk about in the book, that there was this moment where it was a really painful experience. I was sitting at this coaching retreat. I was not leading. I was a participant, and the facilitator asked everyone to share their biggest regret in life. And it was 30 people around this room talking about, like, terrible tragedy that they've gone through. And it was an interesting thing though, like, while it was very painful to actually sit there and stew, what ended up happening for me was I started to have perspective like, wow, okay, the person to my left, like their brother committed suicide, and they feel responsible. Oh, I don't have anything that heavy that I'm carrying. Wow. I feel really grateful for that. So it was almost a foil to help me understand my own but what was interesting is there was a girl there that I was close to who really struggled through the activity, and she was really crying afterwards, and we were talking through that, and what she said is she she just had all this guilt. And I was like, let's if we were to separate from the guilt like and you think about her, her situation was she was estranged from her brother. She hadn't spoken to him in years and and so she was feeling all this guilt for carrying that. And I was like, what's the guilt trying to tell you? And she had this like aha moment. She was like, I think I really want to reconcile, but I haven't let myself because of pride and and she took this kind of deep exhale, and what you could see on her face was gratitude, but she felt grateful to have that insight, having unpacked that pain. And that's not to say like pain. Look at it through a rosy colored lens. It's not to say that at all. It's just to say that we think about things sometimes very binary good experiences versus bad experiences and life is complex. Like the hard things in our lives are often the things that we grow the most from, that we look back and see, wow, that was a really like, important moment in my life. It changed something. And so to see pain as a way to have perspective that then leads to gratitude. It can just be kind of a way to shift our energy and our mentality when we're in those hard moments. It's like, fast forward, and how would you see this five years from now? It can just help us to have that, that person, that long range perspective. Yeah,

you're giving people a new perspective. And gratitude does that, right? It shifts your perspective drastically, if you're truly in gratitude, I think those pains that you were discussing from the people in the room, the perspective that people can take about pain is, am I going to grow through this? Am I going to learn from this? And in her case, the only person being hurt in the illustration you made was, if you carry all that anger around about your brother, there's only one person really being hurt, and that's you. And so the longer we carry those things around, and if we ask, you know, whatever happened made it occur. Whatever occurred to make that happen, so that we would carry that anger or resentment, you really need to ask yourself, is whatever happened true? Is it really true? Right? You know, and and that is an interesting way to really get a new perspective, because I think all of us are trying to shift our perspective about something so that we can look at it in a different way and learn from it, right? So that we stay on the learning line. Are we on the learning line? Right? So that brings me to this question. You describe courage as braveness plus doing something for the sake of others? Yeah, okay, yeah, how is the definition different from how our society views courage and what inspired this perspective for you? Yeah,

great question. So I think we talk about courage and bravery as synonymous. And so I started by saying, like, I think about them a bit differently. I think about brave. Bravery is like facing a fear. So you talk about, you know, bungee jumping or climbing a mountain, like, when you're afraid of it, that's a brave thing to do. But courage is is a little deeper than that. It takes bravery. Bravery is like a muscle towards courage. But courage has an element of sacrifice in it. And it can be like big sacrifice, it can be little sacrifice, but it's just putting something out there for the sake of someone else. And I think the to answer your question around like, how did I come to that definition? Again, you know, my my life experiences watching people. I've worked with a lot of people who have been very disenfranchised in life. I've worked in, like, orphanages in Liberia. I've worked with people all over the world who come from very little means. And the things that you I have seen people do that are really courageous, because they were willing to take a shot that might personally impact them in a negative way, to make life better for those around them, for those that they love. And it's a there's a richness to courage. I was having a conversation with somebody the other day, and she reminded me that they the root of the word courage is Curt, which comes from Latin, which means of the heart. And I thought that was a really beautiful articulation of the sentiment that does come behind courage that's a little deeper than just doing something, you know, that we're scared of and facing that fear. Yeah.

Well, that's a good distinction between the two and and I think, you know, when you're looking at somebody being courageous and being brave, as you do, I think they are linked, right? You said one is the energy to get to the other. Yeah, one of them is more of the spiritual side, yes. So, and I would say that's that's really the courage, right? Yes. So you've worked in nonprofits, and you've been around the world helping people, and you have to have a big heart to do that work. And so let's talk about generosity. You make an important distinction between giving with expectation versus giving freely. What are some in your estimation warning signs that someone might be giving with unhealthy expectations? We see it happen quite a bit, absolutely.

I think I'll start with by, like, looking at it internally first, which is, I think if you are giving, and you ask yourself, What am I going to get out of this? Like, that's the first warning sign that there's an expectation attached to to what you're giving and having some expectations is fine. I think it's just recognizing that's not of the nature. We will feel differently about giving something without any expectation than we will feel about giving something with expectation. And there's lots of things that we do that are quid pro quo, but I wouldn't call that generous. That is transactional in nature, and that can be healthy, and that can help us build things, but it isn't. It doesn't fulfill the same kind of aspect of our higher nature. And so as we think about giving freely and giving without expectation, it's Can you give this and turn around and walk away and never, ever know what happened? Like you never know, did that make a positive impact? Did the person appreciate it? Like, can you walk away from it? And that's how you know you're in that, that space. And I think it's really hard, Greg, because we live in this, like, constantly tethered social media world too, where you're waiting a lot of times you're waiting for kind of recognition, or, well, how did that hit you? And that's because we look for validation, and there's a place for that. But that's not the same as recognizing when you're we're acting out of generosity. The other important distinction I'll make is I think we think about generosity purely in terms of financial things. We don't think about generosity of spirit. And the way I would describe generosity of spirit is, can you give words of praise to someone? Can you be generous in grace towards someone? Can you tell them like that you appreciate them without needing to hear something in return? And just that kind of interaction that comes from a deeper place within us is also a form of generosity that I think we can we could culturally really use some of that right now.

No doubt, we live in what appears to be a divided world in many places, and it's divided over beliefs about something versus Coming together in union to solve these problems and issues. Now you write that that comfort is a seductress. Yeah, in a world that optimizes for comfort, how can people consciously embrace discomfort as a growth opportunity. I'll state here that, you know, making the uncomfortable comfortable okay is really I've had many authors on here. Have written books just on the title is pretty close to that, right? Because they're all saying that for the growth, we need to have this level of discomfort, because we're learning from that discomfort. I agree that comfort, not discomfort, is a seductress, because it's cozy, it's warm, it feels good. It's where you want to be right, and the discomfort is doing something that is out of your comfort zone. So how would you tell people to expand this comfort zone in a way? And you're not saying there wouldn't be some pain in the process or something. But how would you do that?

Yeah, it's a great question. This one is like one of those, like, tactical, practical things. So I think, like, I got a great lesson on comfort and understanding all of the things I do to make myself comfortable when my husband and I moved into an RV, and we were, like, in the bumper pull kind, not the fancy schmancy kind that you drive, and we didn't have hot water in the RV. And so, like, just the simple thing of removing hot water from my life. Oh, I was, I was uncomfortable. And as we were, as we were, like, traveling, we were staying in all these parks, like, there would be times where we didn't have electricity, and it was like, these really simple, taken for granted, things that all of a sudden, like, shock you on Oh, I rely on this thing to be to make my life run, and it makes me so comfortable. What happens if I remove it? And if you remove technology? Oh my gosh, people get glitchy. They're like, I don't know what to do with my hands. I don't know what to do with my time. I don't and so I think like to practice it. It's take away one of the comforts, whether it's go on a digital detox for a few hours, just notice what comes up. Go on a white on a walk. I'm going on a hike with a good friend of mine in a couple of weeks, and we're doing a like, two day trek in the woods where you sleep outside. And I've never done that, and we're doing it because we had this conversation around comfort. And I was like, Yeah, I've been a little too comfortable. Maybe she was like, Oh, I have been too so we're like, Let's challenge ourselves. Let's go out there. And I don't know how uncomfortable that's going to be, but I guarantee it's going to be pretty uncomfortable. We're not going to have bathrooms in

the woods. You'll make it through it. It's, you know, the good thing about what you're doing is you've committed to do something to shift your perspective. Yeah, okay, so, you know, I've spent many nights at nights in the wilderness with a roll of toilet paper in my backpack and digging a hole, and doing all the kind of things you have to do, which you're going to experience as well. And the reality is, is that it is, you know, you look at people who who basically climb Everest, I am, a friend of mine's up there now, and he's actually going to ski Everest, right? And, and you use, if you really understood the backlight, it's like, well, where do these people go to the bathroom? And it's freezing, but cold, and you're gonna like, like, you look at the simplest things, the little inconveniences, they're actually big inconveniences, right? Because you have big groups of people that have to do that, right? And you're going up a 26,000 elevation, all right? So the reality is, is that all these things that make us think about changing our perspective and shifting them are really good for us. And you said in the innate self diagnosis tool, which is in the back of the book, questions a questionnaire at the end of the book, the reader identifies what aspects of their higher nature needs attention. What patterns have you observed when people first take this assessment? Because I, for my listeners, it doesn't matter what page it on, it's on. Just go to the back of the book, and you'll see the assessment, and it gives a ranking and scores. And you can put your score in there, and you can diagnostic yourself, yeah,

right, totally. Um, you know, it's interesting. I think that. I think it's dynamic. So it's not like an assessment where you'll always have the same thing that comes up. It's, I think, a diagnostic that will show you, like if you've been focusing heavy on one aspect, maybe you you you haven't been thinking about another one. One thing that I've noticed, and as I have distributed it, is there's two areas that tend to come in a little lower for people, and one is on creativity. I think we think we think about creativity, and I have another tool in the book just to help us understand creativity a little bit better, because I think people think about creativity as being artistic, and creativity is so much bigger than just one type of of a muscle use, and so helping us expand our definition of creativity opens up some of that stuff that You said at the beginning around fun, like, where's our playful energy? Where do we actually get to practice trying new things? And it's when we allow ourselves to be creative, and we have to remove kind of all of that judgment from that space in order to really practice it. So that is one area that I see that comes in fairly low, especially depending on the person's kind of professional acumen, like the higher on the success March, maybe the lower on the feeling like they could be creative side, then I would say, I think characters is an interesting one. I think people, I just don't think culturally, we think about it enough on what what makes up your character? How do you do you know what you stand for? Do you know what you don't stand for before you hit those moments where you have to make an ethical decision? And so really choosing your values and thinking about that, I think it's a really rich area for people to think through. And then I find a lot of people conflate contribution and generosity, which are similar, but they're different. Like contribution is, what are the skills and gifts I have to give? And it's very focused on me. Actually, it's like I have an impact I want to make, and am I able to make that impact? Whereas generosity is kind of the opposite of that. It's I want to be able to give to you and not care about the the outcome. So it's opposite sides of that coin. And so I find that that comes out in some of sometimes in the and not always how people think about it, you know,

well, again, I think that what you've written here is a book for all the people to be able to do this assessment at the back of the book and really see where they land. Because, you know, a lot of times those tools are important. A lot of the listeners you may already know where you are. You know, there isn't a need for an assessment, per se, because you're picking up a book like this to really find out more about your soul self, your innate self, and to get one author's percent perspective Jules. And there are many perspectives out there, so I encourage people to pick this book up. Can go to Amazon and get it, and you can go to the innate self, and that's in eight, meaning the letter in and eight self.com there. You can learn more about Jules in the book and everything else. So you know, your book concludes with an invitation for connection through websites and events. What's your vision for creating a community around what you've written about here? And how do you hope the innate self framework evolves as more people engage with it. Yeah,

great question. Like, you know, I talk about in the end, like, doing this book is part of my dream, my own personal like, search for fulfillment and purpose in life. And so the more I can have people talking about this, the more that I have lived out that dream. Whether or not it's with me, doesn't actually matter. But I want to create forums for places, for people to come together, to create connection. One of the things like, I've been through several coaching programs, and all that is, is just a giant ball of connection, and like, unpacking the human experience together. And it's I want that kind of experience broader for people who doesn't matter what your professional goals are, this is about living. And how do we live and connect over really important, meaningful, deep things that we don't know how to socially talk about. And the second piece of that is, I really do hope you know Brene. Brene Brown is so inspiring, because what she did in the emotional space, in the corporations is she allowed the word vulnerability and shame to become like regular conversation, and if there's any way I can crack the veneer in organizations to have people talk about their own seeking in spaces that can sometimes feel uninviting, to have those conversations that have done my job. But that's what I that's what I'm hoping is that this opens up a conversation in the personal development space. Not there's lots of conversations in the spiritual space, but I want to meet people where they're at and a lot of people don't think about themselves as spiritual because, again, it's kind of stuck in that analytical ideology space. So if I can help create a framework and language to allow people to engage. That would be my, my greatest hope.

Well, for my listeners, they'll want to go to the innate self.com there. You can learn more. You can go to Amazon to get the book. What I'd like to say is in opening up these communities for people to share, and as you said, to be vulnerable. And I know some people often have a challenge being vulnerable, especially men. I don't think women as much. But what I'd say is, when you look at this, whether it's a book or it's a blog or it's a website you go to, or it's somebody that you do. I was often told, and I remember this Jules from years ago, so if you're going to write anything, or you're going to speak anything, speak as if the person next to you, you're going to find this funny, is sitting with you in a movie theater, and you're having popcorn together, and you're literally hearing what that person has to say. And I think the person doing the listening has the most important role, because that's how you get people to open up and be vulnerable to the hurts inside, whether it was childhood hurts or its current hurts, or whatever it might be to actually say I'm hurting and I need help, besides carrying all that baggage with them all the way to their grave, right? So, you know, think about this. And I'm going to say this to my listeners, is this book, even though you're not sitting with Jules, you can go to our website and contact her and talk to her about having her coach you. She's the person you want to sit next to having a bag of popcorn and be vulnerable with. So it's been a pleasure having you on inside personal growth. Thanks for taking the time to speak with our listeners and hopefully some people that come to your website and speak with you about the things that they have pains about today. Thank

you so much, Greg, it's been a pleasure, and I feel like we've totally just shared a popcorn bowl. So thanks for having me on and I really appreciate connecting with you. Okay,

it's been a pleasure. Namaste to you. Thank you.