Welcome and thanks for listening to Truth Wisdom Freedom Conversations.
Each week I'm joined by various conscious leaders as we discover more pathways in becoming heart-centered human beings.
This is your host,
Author,
And spiritual coach,
Johnson Chong.
Hello everybody!
Welcome to Truth Wisdom Freedom Conversations.
Thank you so much for tuning in.
I took a little break last week,
But we are back this week.
Thank you guys who are tuning in live and also for those of you who are watching in the replay because I know it's probably in the wee hours in the morning in the States.
And of course I'm here in Sydney,
Australia and I have here Jess Clare who is in Brisbane.
She's actually the founder of the number one social media school for entrepreneurs.
And I met her through some mutual people up in Queensland when the pandemic started.
We kept in touch in social media so it's pretty cool to reconnect in this way.
I'm excited because today our topic is owning your drama and trauma transparently and turning it into abundance.
And what I really like about Jess is that she is this bridge between the spiritual and then the non-spiritual.
The folks that kind of traverse the spaces in between.
She's also pretty awesome because her life purpose is to create one million entrepreneurs in humanity-led business.
So I really vibe with that.
And she's also the founder of Here On Purpose,
A not-for-profit social enterprise that explores living life authentically in the communities with higher levels of anxiety,
Depression,
And suicide.
A lot of great stuff there.
Welcome Jess.
Thank you for that introduction.
You made me sound great.
You are great.
I have done those things.
That's pretty cool.
So welcome,
Welcome.
Thanks so much for joining me.
Thank you.
So tell us a little bit about your journey.
You've done a lot of work here.
You used to be in the corporate financial sector and then now you are an entrepreneur.
What happened there?
How did you move from point A to where you are now?
Oh,
That's a very,
Very good question.
What had me move?
So I was in corporate for 18 years.
Whilst I was there,
I went from working in insurance to insurance fraud.
It was interesting.
I got fascinated with how the organization was almost tailoring itself to focus on particular groups in fraud.
But overlooking what I call this kind of like mums and dads fraud.
I could see that there was like racism going on within the organization unintentionally.
It was like we'll focus on certain people of low socioeconomic fraud.
It was very obvious fraud.
But we will overlook the fact that people just add on an extra $20,
000,
You know,
Golden ring when they have a burglary.
That's okay.
Because that's mums and dads kind of fraud.
And so I did this research program and I taught myself how to build databases and technology to demonstrate the racism.
And it didn't really go well.
It was not.
It didn't go well.
It didn't take it well.
It was really eye opening for me.
There was sort of this systemic thing going on.
So I got very interested in research.
I started studying sociology and then moved into data,
Data science.
And was someone who created systems and algorithms to understand more of what was going on with people.
And so I got then pulled into corporate and did that and then went into strategy.
All of it was in this pursuit of how can I make more of a difference?
How can I really get to a place where we really impact people and demonstrate this stuff?
Unfortunately,
It didn't matter how much research I did,
Didn't matter what programs I was making.
I eventually was in a very great position where I was writing the strategies for a big financial services company.
But even then,
When I pointed out that we had eight million customers and that we are a financial service company that could completely shift the trajectory of finances in Australia.
Because of what we know,
If we shifted to this sort of humanity purpose led way of working,
It was like,
No,
We just need to sell products.
Can you just do your job?
It was like,
I can't understand why we wouldn't do this.
That was really disheartening,
But at the same time gave me sort of the impetus to move into where I moved into,
Which was I started doing work in transformational programs and started learning myself about my own stuff.
Let's talk about your own stuff.
That's really interesting,
Too,
Because I think as leaders or business owners,
Whether entrepreneurs or small businesses,
It's really important to look at our blind spots.
And we're both members of the we were just talking before about the LGBTQIAA plus all the letters and the alphabet.
We're both members of that.
And identity definitely is a key player when it comes to being a leader.
Right.
And so how did you break through the limitations of identity to come to where you are today?
Because I think most leaders feel trapped by identity,
The expectations of what's expected of them.
It's really interesting.
It's like there was this moment where everything seemed to be against me.
Oh,
My gosh,
I really want to get into making a real difference in the world.
But I'm a lesbian,
I'm a woman.
And when I looked around,
I kind of was in this group where people reinforced how hard it was to be gay and how hard it was to be a woman.
I don't discount that there are definitely people say things and do things based on someone's sexuality and gender.
However,
This moment when I started doing my own work,
I got to look and go,
Hang on,
I'm the one who's not expressing myself.
I'm the one who's not saying what I really want to say to my mom and my dad and my friends.
So what would happen if I just do that?
And I started doing it and I had conversations.
My family's really religious.
They're Mormons and they're like full on ones.
They're not like just we're Mormons sometimes.
No,
No,
They're really into it.
My whole family.
I was the one keeping myself away from them because I thought they were judging me,
Which inadvertently was me judging them.
And when I said to them,
I'm actually terrified that you'll disown me as a sister daughter if I tell you that I want to be with women.
They were like,
We don't agree with it,
But we're not going to do that.
And then at some point I was like,
I don't need them to agree.
They don't have to.
That's OK.
I have a very parallel experience,
Not Mormon,
But very conservative Chinese Buddhists.
And I also realize at a certain point,
Like what you said,
I was inadvertently judging them.
I also thought I was going to be disowned,
But it was not that it was something else.
Of course,
They still want me to get married to a nice Chinese girl.
They don't agree with my sexual orientation.
And that's it's now comical.
All right.
Yeah,
That's not happening.
But but but it definitely it makes you empathize more.
You really build your empathy.
And I think as a business owner,
As a leader,
You need to be able to exist in a space where people don't see eye to eye with you.
And to identify with,
You know,
As we're talking about,
Drama and trauma.
Right.
Some people can hold sexual identity as a badge of honor,
A badge of trauma.
And that's theirs.
It's mine.
It's really refreshing to see that point of view.
Like,
Oh,
Hey,
Yeah,
I was inadvertently judging them as well.
You know,
It's actually not easy.
I'm just going to say this.
This is not to discount that there are things that genuinely happen to the LGBTIQ plus community.
What I could see is it's actually not that easy being a Mormon either.
They really believe in what they're doing and it's really important to them.
And they're saying,
Believe in God,
Going to church on Sundays,
Doing particular practices and things.
Well,
It's not easy being that way in life because everyone is judging them just as much because of their religion.
And so actually started to develop a compassion for that.
Them saying,
I don't believe in me being gay.
I don't really believe in their religion.
So I kind of get it.
I don't need them to.
It's OK.
And they don't need me to.
But we can still have a really powerful and loving and connected relationship,
Which we do.
Amazing.
Yeah.
When was that realization?
How did that understanding of yourself translate into abundance in your business and what it is that you do?
Because there has to be some sort of cross connection between the personal development and then the financial abundance in our passions.
Right.
So in one of my first courses that I did,
I was a bully.
Right.
I have to really own that.
I was a corporate bully.
I was like,
I'm going to get what I want and I'm going to make people do things.
And I got rewarded for it.
But I felt empty and I didn't have relationships I wanted.
And then I blame it was because I was gay and I was female and all of this.
Actually,
I was just being an absolute asshole.
I had this woman.
I always talk about her.
That was loving,
Really compassionate,
But super bold.
So she gave me this safety to say anything,
But would also at the same time always call things out.
So I felt safe as she was doing it,
Too.
And I'd never experienced someone like that.
And I like to think,
You know,
People that are involved in personal development and spirituality and making a difference to people actually are that space where they're loving,
But they call things out.
She did that to me and said,
Are you going to complain for the rest of your life or are you going to do something about it?
And no one had ever said that to me and no one had ever listened to me like her either.
And it was in that moment that I was like,
Wow,
I really do just complain about everything.
And in that course,
Everything shifted.
I saw how all I knew to do was to be dominating to people,
Controlling and really just be a jerk to get what I wanted.
But I also saw that the back flip of that was that I wasn't actually getting what I wanted.
I was having friendships that weren't great.
I was stuck in my job.
And when I got to release that and I went to every single person that I had impacted and said,
This is what I've been doing.
And I'm not committed to being that.
And I want to create connection with people now.
And I started to actually get connected to people and I started to see that everyone was sort of the same.
There's no one not experiencing some form of discrimination.
I'm even going to say it.
Even white males are discriminated against because of their privilege.
I know that sounds weird,
But it's like if you're a white male,
Women,
There are groups of people that will just dislike you because you happen to be a white male.
And that's not to say that there's not privileges of being a white male.
Of course,
They're legitimate privileges.
That doesn't mean they don't experience what I experience either.
They experience discrimination just as much.
I definitely can see that.
That's a bold thing to say.
So thank you for saying that.
So what are some of the top traumas and dramas that you see people moaning and complaining about when they are on this journey?
You kind of mentioned your own personal experience with that.
What do you see in the clients that you work with when they're trying to start transitioning from,
Let's say,
This corporate job and they're moving into their own business and there's all this negative self-talk?
What kind of themes do you see?
The biggest theme is I can't really be myself.
Like it's a nice idea,
But we can't really be ourselves.
And it's a good problem to have because if you're moving from I can't get what I want in life,
I can't do this,
I can't do that.
When you become an entrepreneur or you actually start creating a humanity led business or a self-expressed business,
It's not like you have less problems.
You actually get bigger ones,
But they're just more meaningful.
The problems are more meaningful when you solve them.
The biggest problem is I can't really be myself.
I find that fascinating that we've created a world where people think it's weird to actually legitimately authentically be ourselves.
It's an integrity piece,
Isn't it?
Oftentimes when I hear people say,
Oh,
I'm confused,
I don't know what to do.
It really is that.
It's that they're torn between the this is what my heart wants,
But I have to put food on the table.
So what is the smooth,
Graceful path to integrate the two?
Because we can't forget about the rent and the logistics.
Right.
But then also at the same time,
We want to feel safe enough to express ourselves and to make what we love into something that is fruitful and abundant.
That's a very good question.
The words you said then were what is the graceful and smooth way?
The answer to that is that it doesn't exist.
There is no graceful or smooth way.
And that's probably more what I teach people to allow themselves to experience a mess while they're creating something meaningful,
Because that's what we're avoiding.
Someone said this to me yesterday.
There's a template for life.
Now we have a template for it.
And neuroscience,
They call it a brain pattern.
We have a brain pattern for life.
The brain pattern is you get a job,
You make money.
If you lose your job,
You go get another job.
If you're going to be an entrepreneur,
Then you've got to be sure that you've got all your ducks lined up so you can jump into it.
And if that idea doesn't work,
Then you just go back and get a job.
Right.
That's not what creating humanity led business looks like,
Because there's no template for go out there and actually make a difference to people and make money.
Only do things that bring you joy.
That's it.
You're not allowed to do anything else.
If it doesn't bring you joy,
You have to stop doing it.
There's no template for that.
And I think that is such a hard thing for people to grasp because I have a lot of friends in the States who are in this mold.
And a lot of them are in fear and I talk to them sometimes and it's strange to be around,
Right?
This mold that you've talked about,
This thing that we do that I don't know how long I've been doing it,
But I've never really had a stable nine to five that kind of job.
I've always worked for myself in a way and created things for myself.
And if that's not what I want to do right now,
I don't want to do it.
But that causes panic and fear in normal people.
They go,
Whoa,
No,
I'm not being productive.
What are some things that you would,
Let's say,
Suggest to people who are in that scarcity mindset like,
Oh,
Time's running out.
Right.
Which was really just an illusion because it's never going to run out.
I mean,
We'll die.
But the pressure for us completing something at a certain point in time is really just the societal parental,
Whatever it is,
Conditions that are forcing us to do something a certain way by certain timeline.
It's not really even our own goal and expectation.
It's someone else's.
I like storytelling.
So I think there's a story because people can relate to these at least fit some sort of template of brain pattern.
So our social media school,
We have a 10 year curriculum because there's no such thing as do a 12 week program and you become a millionaire forever.
It doesn't exist.
And anyone who tells you that is lying.
And there is no just add water to solution to building something meaningful.
It doesn't exist.
So we tell the stories of everyone that you know that has built something meaningful like Gandhi.
There might be other people out there.
I mean,
I use Osho,
But in some circles,
He's not a great example.
I love Osho.
I love Osho too.
But in terms of,
You know,
Some of the things he did,
Maybe a bit questionable,
But that's actually a part of the journey where you lose everything.
It's like people avoid this.
People go,
Well,
Aren't you afraid if you end up and you have no,
Because I've got two kids,
Right?
Are you afraid if you end up with nothing?
And I'm like,
No,
Because if I end up with nothing,
What's more important to me is that I show my kids the kind of human you can be when you've got nothing.
If I've got nothing and I'm living out of my car,
I get to show my kids,
Which is possibly one of the most valuable lessons on earth,
How to be adventurous,
How to be playful.
Now,
I'm not saying I won't experience all the things human beings do.
I will.
I'll probably be terrified.
I'll probably be,
Oh,
My God,
I can't believe I've done this.
I'll probably feel like a failure.
I'll probably cry a lot in the corner.
But I'll also not hide that.
This is normal.
This is what happens to human beings when we go through this stuff.
But what I really want to embed in people is this is a part of the process of being human and creating something that matters.
You firstly need to kill off your identity of anything you thought you were in the past.
And you are now like I'm doing.
I'm creating humanity led business,
Which no one is doing.
And I work with people in domestic violence,
Ending human trafficking,
Men's work,
Care,
Aged care,
All sorts of things that where people are doing these amazing things.
And yet they're making money out of things that usually we're not known to make money in.
Right.
So I'm going to teach them how to do that.
We have to fail at it a lot to work it out.
Just like the guy that invented the light bulb.
He's escaped me.
I use him all the time.
Thomas Edison.
That's him.
Yeah.
Thomas Edison.
He did not sit there going,
Oh,
When I finally have made all the money I need to in my job,
I'll go and invent the light bulb.
We would be in the dark still,
If that was the case.
He didn't.
He sat there and he kept going and going.
And he had no food on the table for some time.
But he lived life in the adventure of it's worth figuring this out.
It's a problem worth solving.
If people want to stay in jobs,
I don't try and convince people not to be in them.
I'm interested in the creative thinkers and the visionaries who are like,
I'm going to go and solve a problem worth solving because in the process it's going to be satisfying.
It's going to be so adventurous and it's going to be so joyful even through the failure of it.
I love that.
It's the falling flat on your face that is that really juices you up.
It gets you excited because if there's not the risk of losing everything,
Then what is it all for?
This really comes down to the vulnerability aspect as well.
The four types of vulnerabilities that have been found in great humans around the world are physical.
So people that like scale Mount Everest,
Right?
It's like they're putting their bodies,
Their lives at risk.
There's economic vulnerability.
So you see this in millionaires and billionaires who have lost millions to gain millions because they learned a lot through that journey.
Social vulnerability and then emotional vulnerability.
These vulnerabilities that we have to almost be willing to show.
It's embarrassing.
And I think,
You know,
I went to theater school,
I studied to be an actor.
We were taught if you want to do this,
You have to risk exposing everything,
Being embarrassed and looking like a fool.
And that's just part of the game.
And I think everyone should go to theater school or do some sort of theater training because it really teaches you to embrace your inner clown.
That is what I feel like everyone needs so that they can feel okay to fail.
I think you're probably in the same boat that I don't agree with a lot of these people who are like success,
Success,
Success,
Because that's not sustainable.
You look at nature,
There's nothing in nature that is just continually expanding.
I mean,
Everything has a season.
It's all going winter eventually.
Exactly.
Even energetically,
Vibrationally,
If you look at the science of numerology and the frequency,
The earth is never on a high frequency the whole time.
Our numbers,
There's a reason it goes one to nine and then it recycles back.
You know,
It's like we're actually going through cycles all the time vibrationally in our own frequency.
Everything,
The plants,
Everything that exists.
What we've somehow learned in our conditioning is to go,
And this is what I'm out to dismantle and completely not abolish because I'm not about not that there's anything to fix.
I'm about it kind of disappearing because it's no longer required in our conditioning is this idea that we can create situations for ourselves so we can avoid life.
And when I say life,
I mean the whole transformation process of being a caterpillar turning into a butterfly.
We've created ourselves a cocoon,
And we never get out of it.
That's the part that I'm about dismantling is that experience that we think we cannot deal with the mess in the middle,
Which is that part where the caterpillar actually turns into a hot mess before it becomes a butterfly.
Somehow our society has created an idea that avoiding the mess is where the good life is.
When actually it's unsatisfying,
It's unfulfilling.
When we look at the rates of suicide and anxiety and depression it's highly related to being bored and being comfortable is actually far more of an impact on our mental health than anything.
As well as all of the rhetoric around actually having problems in our life or having big stuff happen to us like losing jobs and losing relationships is somehow there's something wrong with that.
These are good things.
That is actually energetic impact in your life in front of you.
It's a cycle of death and renewal.
It's that cycle.
And the indigenous people because I come from a shamanic energy perspective as well in the healing work that I do and in indigenous cultures,
All the rites of passage are centered around death,
Even because it's a death of your own identity or your old identity when you were with your previous family and here you are giving birth to something new.
It's a new relationship.
So giving someone away and then now here's their new life.
And when you do that you have to let go of something else,
And even you know puberty,
Or going from a middle aged woman to then the archetype of the old crone going through menopause,
All these rites of passage are designed to make you aware that some of these things are actually occurring.
And so,
You know,
We're trying.
So now let's move forward into what's next.
And I think because we don't have any of these types of rights,
We have marriage,
That's all you have to look forward to.
And then everyone gets divorced.
It's gotten that even there are many rites of passage.
When you transition passions and careers,
Some of us are meant to do the same thing for the rest of our life.
Some of us aren't,
We play and dabble and we create and explore and that's like what you said it's messy.
It's not like you have to design a curriculum that would actually serve humanity.
It would not involve learning lots of things,
Money,
Status,
Power,
Ability to win an argument,
As any form of barometer to success.
That's where I think we're really off the curriculum would include things like success measures of how quickly you are able to distinguish for yourself where you were responsible for something,
How much you were able to feel and allow the feeling of sadness,
Hurt,
Regret,
Shame,
Guilt,
The moment that it was there,
And then move it through your body until you can energetically,
You know,
Release it.
These kind of barometers,
Your ability to connect with someone else,
Instead of judge them,
Get curious,
Instead of form opinions.
These are the kind of barometers I would say as to what I would say would be success in living.
I definitely agree with that.
I had an experience this morning,
I call it rebounding.
It's how resilient we are and it's the speed and efficacy in which we do that.
And of course in the beginning,
It's hard because when you feel like you want to gouge your eyes out,
You want to do it for a very long period of time and you're like,
Ah,
And you get stuck in it and it's this whirlpool and it feels like a really dark place.
But then after a while it becomes quicker and quicker.
You know,
I'm in the midst of this project and it's way beyond me and I was sitting in the park and I was just overwhelmed with all this sadness because I knew that part of my old self,
The part that was in that safe,
Comfortable box had to go.
And that was sad to me because that existed for so long and I had to give it a release.
So I was playing my songs,
Sitting in the park and feeling that.
We need to give ourselves the space,
The stillness and the possibility to express even these seemingly negative emotions.
Why are you feeling sad?
I'm feeling sad just because I'm feeling sad.
That was a big transition for me.
So I did a lot of transformational leadership work and it was very mind and language orientated in the beginning and it was phenomenal in terms of my learning.
But what really grounded it for me was when I started doing work in shamanic work,
Somatic body work and energy,
Actually allowing myself to connect both my language and my energy and my mind and my body.
That was really when I started to see things shift.
I'm talking,
I take hours and hours off during the week because I get more done.
It's a real shift in thinking.
I guess I can be a little bit spiritual here,
Can't I?
Can I be spiritual?
You are already very spiritual.
I know.
Your essence is.
Go for it.
I'm always aware of the audience though,
But I guess I even said to a client today,
Right?
She's creating some amazing stuff.
She's like,
Oh,
I've got all these actions to take.
I've got to do this,
This,
This,
This,
This.
And I said to her,
I don't want you to take any actions.
I want you to take three hours off,
Turn off your phone,
Do nothing,
Go out and talk to the trees and the sky.
Put your feet in the grass and I want you to tell them what you need from them until you realise that you're not doing this alone.
And they're far more equipped.
They're completely connected to infinite intelligence and far bigger than you are to make this shit happen.
And she was like,
Oh,
Okay.
When I think,
You know,
Take a risk,
You're not really taking a risk.
When you quit your job and you're sitting there going,
How the heck am I going to get this to work?
What you've actually just done is sourced so much energy to come through your body.
We call that fear.
We've actually just asked the universe to fully create something for us that we've never done before.
You can feel the energy when you make those decisions.
It's intense.
That's actually one of the best things that happens.
It's like you've just been given all the energy to create.
Right.
And for sure is it's an energy.
That's what it is.
What you do with it is what you do with it.
You can waste it or you can use it.
Yes.
Jet fuel.
You get that energy in your body where you've just taken a huge leap and you're freaking out.
Oh my God.
What have I done?
What have I done?
Actually,
If you reframe,
That's all the energy that you need to go recreate something.
It's just been given to you and delivered to you by the universe.
So I have a practice where I go outside and I like stand in that energy and I'm like,
OK,
Trees,
Sky,
Everyone,
Can you stop making me feel like this?
And can you just take it and make it happen for me?
Because it's intense.
But it's that surrender to I'll work it out.
And I always do.
And people always do.
If you really reflect on your past,
You've always worked it out.
That's how we're designed.
We weren't designed to just keel over and hit our head on the ground.
Exactly.
We pick up one foot and we step and that's just what we do.
Yeah.
What I could have said,
You know,
I get really concerned because I come from a corporate background and I do have a lot of professional clients.
What I could have just said is completely made up.
Maybe the sky,
The trees and all of this,
Maybe none of it's real.
But the thing is,
It powers me and it gives me this consciousness that's so powerful that I go on to create amazing things.
And I think that's far more important than worrying about whether what I'm doing is real or not.
That's awesome.
I mean,
That's a wonderful perspective to have.
And I think that everyone can shift and learn from that,
That there are things that are worth taking care of.
And then there are things that will just sort themselves out.
We don't need to pay so much attention to it because we're so addicted to the how that we forget the why.
If we just stay grounded in the purpose and the long vision,
You call it humanity led business.
Right.
Yeah.
We stay connected to that,
Which is greater than ourselves.
Then we know that we're not alone.
And then the little minutia,
The details of how it gets done,
You'll figure it out.
You get a virtual assistant or something.
I don't know.
I don't know what someone needs,
But it'll get sorted out.
It won't be the way you thought.
That's just your ego going,
Oh,
No,
It has to be done this way.
Well,
That's a whole other thing,
You know,
That you have to work on.
But it just highlights where the blind spots are and what needs to be worked on.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
This is I can talk on and on about heart centered leadership and self-expression and everything that you're doing with helping people express themselves in more authentic and transparent ways.
And I love how real and honest you are in sharing about what some others might perceive as embarrassing or,
Oh,
I don't want to share that.
But you're just like,
OK,
I'm just going to hear it goes.
This is me.
And that's great.
I don't want to put that on.
Because we need more of that and more transparency,
Please.
In every dimension of life.
Any other words of wisdom that you would like to impart before we end?
No,
Just thank you.
Thank you for having me on,
Giving me the opportunity to share,
Because I do.
I do love talking about this stuff,
And I don't always get an opportunity to.
So thank you.
Thank you so much.
You watching who want to learn more about how Jess applies this in a business sense in social media and how she helps entrepreneurs build their businesses through social media,
Please visit her website.
It's also linked in the comments,
So do check that out and thank you so much for spending your time with me and for sharing.
Yeah,
My pleasure.
Thank you.
Bye-bye.
