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EP 02: Becoming the artist of your life and choosing to see the “messy middle” as your creative goldmine w/ Jade Chung
37 Plays2 months ago
In this soul-stirring episode, Jade Chung guides us on a journey back to our creative essence as sacred artists of our own lives. She shares how she found her way from feeling creatively stifled in a corporate career to reclaiming her identity as a visionary life artist. Jade invites us to awaken to the wildly creative force pulsing within. She reminds us that we are divine creators, birthing our reality from the raw materials of our emotions, senses, and life experiences. Rather than suppressing our messy humanness into rigid boxes, Jade beckons us to embrace every part of ourselves as fertile soil for conscious manifestation.
With compassionate wisdom, she offers soul-nourishing practices like mindfulness, intuitive movement, and spontaneous art-making to unhook from the confines of our analytical minds. As we open to the infinite flow of our creative life force, we can birth our most authentic self-expression into this world.
Jade's teachings awaken the remembrance that our lives are living masterpieces, constantly being sculpted and painted by our thoughts, feelings, and actions. In her capable hands, we are lovingly guided to embody the role of life artist, crafting our most beautiful, pleasure-filled, meaningful existence as an offering to the universe.
See you inside!!!
Don't forget your action items to make the most of today's episode!
- Consider making time for daily mindfulness practices like deep breathing, checking in with feelings, and non-verbal creative expression like scribbling to help get out of the thinking mind.
- Follow Jade on Instagram (@itsjadechung) and visit her website (www.jadechunghealing.com) for information on her one-on-one and group offerings.
Connect with Dana HERE and Jade HERE and let them know what you loved most about this episode and what resonated deeply.
Transcript
00:00:02
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the Modern Day Healer podcast. I'm your host, Dana Hayes, and I am so excited to share with you the stories, the trials, the tribulations, and most importantly, the triumphs of my own as well as many other successful modern day healers. We've gone all in to pursue our passion, to make an impact in the world by helping humans heal from the past and find true empowerment in their lives today. So what exactly is a modern day healer, you might ask? A modern day healer is you.
00:00:37
Speaker
She is me and anyone else who feels a calling to help others heal, grow, and share their light. You could be a wife, a mother, a teacher, a writer, a speaker, a podcast host. You might be a workshop producer, a course creator. You're most likely an entrepreneur and can't shake the desire to make your calling your career because you know how much impact you could make if you went all in and had the opportunity to share your story with the world. That is a modern day healer. I'm a podcast host, a co-author of an amazing book about the journey of sobriety, a wife, a mom of two young children, and the creator of the spiritual lifestyle brand, Living in Power. I am Dana and I am a modern day healer. I am so glad you're here. Let's get started.
00:01:39
Speaker
Welcome, welcome, welcome Jade Chung to the show. I am so excited to have you here. Jade is a mentor. She's a coach. She's a therapist. She's all the things just like so many of us modern day healers are, um but she has this focus on life artistry, which I think is so interesting and I can't wait to get into that. But I i know that you love to teach from a An angle of like the semantics and then we've got we've got the self expression and the art and the creativity and all of the really beautiful things that quite honestly I ah coming from the the very like type a I'm very right. brain
00:02:19
Speaker
I lack, so I'm really looking forward to this episode personally, because I feel like I'm going to be able to take away a ton of information from it so Jade if you wouldn't mind, could you please start us off by sharing your story how you got here, like you're on this podcast because you are a successful modern day healer and the listeners out there want to know what got you here, right? Like what was the initiation? Like how did this happen for you? And then take us into that life artistry. How did that become a thing? Why is that the path? Please take it away. Oh my gosh. First of all, thank you so much for having me. It's such an honor and I'm so excited. And yeah, that was such a beautiful intro. You got all the keywords. It's creativity, it's somatic, it's art, it's like life artistry, like I say. So yeah, my story was, I mean, I guess it starts with, I've always really been interested in art. Like that was always my thing growing up. I was always the art kid. So I was very like, very much the left-brain kid in school. I guess kind of opposite from you, but to be honest, we all have beautiful left and right brains. And they're all, they're both activated. It's just that we focus on one. um But I was always really, really like into art, um really into drawing, really into painting. I was really like a artsy kid.
00:03:29
Speaker
um But long story short, I think growing up, I also just, I grew up in Hong Kong. My world was very like corporate, even as a kid, it was very like cookie cutter. And it always just felt like the black sheep. And I always kind of felt like I had to just like fit into the boxes. So that's really where, you know, some of my own living beliefs and some of my own things around like, really like owning the creative in me and like owning my power, owning what I actually wanted to share and do in the world. So like, I would say fast forward, fast forward to, um I mean, out of college, I was an art history major, so like very much into art. I ended up working in a corporate job in art sales, selling like million dollar paintings in like these massive like corporate million dollar companies.
00:04:14
Speaker
for like a good few years. and it was this very this I found this really interesting dichotomy that I was in where I was you know working in the art world. I was doing everything that I thought from a very young age that would be the right path to go into. but I felt like the work that I was doing was really soulless. And it felt like I was almost like, I loved art and I love what art can mean for people and for humanity. And it's something that ties children and adults together. It's something that ties like really our hearts together. um But I felt like while I was selling this art, it was really stripping away. It was just stripping away the soul from it. Like I felt like I was no longer really at all in my passion, in my truth. And I felt very disembodied. And so um during COVID,
00:04:55
Speaker
the company that I was working for kind of went under. And so that was an opportunity for me. I was like, okay, well, fresh start. What the heck do I do? I was like, I knew that the path that I was going down was like, this isn't going to make me happy in the long term. It was, you know, I had friends around me who were like, you look like a shell of a person at the time. I also had so many coping mechanisms. I was, I was, I was like living out of my trauma. I was, I was drinking a lot. I was partying a lot. I was just very disembodied. And so, um, during that time, beginning of COVID, I started really diving into self-development and I started meditating a lot. I just started doing all the practices. And that's when I literally had the download one day, um, in meditation, the word art therapy just dropped in. It was like, you need to become an art therapist. And I was like, what the is that? I've never heard that term before. Okay.
00:05:39
Speaker
So I just Googled it and I was like, oh, okay, this totally makes sense. This is what actually in many ways I've been wanting to do for a long time. I just never had the words for it. like to bring so Like to bring art into this world from a place of service and like actually using art as a way to like connect with your heart. And like, how do you self express? That's always been like, yeah, like my segueing a little bit. My life's greatest work also personally on my own level has been really learning how to express myself as a woman. And I think it comes out of where I was saying, you know, when I was growing up, it was very much cookie cutter. And I always felt like there was more inside of me, but I just couldn't let it out. And I felt like I was just like closing and closing and closing. So it just felt like the right call. I started just going deeper into it. I got my own art therapist and I decided to apply to become an art therapist. And then I did the degree. It was my second master's degree. And I came out of it. I'm really excited to be in a new chapter.
00:06:35
Speaker
But then even as I was building the business and I was like, okay, I want to go into private practice. I want to like really like create my own schedule, have more freedom in my life, like no longer being corporate and no longer even, even be quote unquote chained, not a totally chained, but attached, let's say attached to like a private clinic or working for someone else. I was like, I don't want freedom. So, you know, I started building my own business as an art therapist, but it still felt like something was really missing. And, um, That's when I leaned into really learning more about trauma, learning more about somatic, learning more about the nervous system, how it all ties together um as a part of like the foundation of our healing and a foundation of like how we actually become embodied people and stop being so disconnected from our soul and from like our mind, from our bodies as well. And it's interesting because when i while I'm speaking right now, like it becomes like whenever I tell my story, it becomes really obvious to me that
00:07:28
Speaker
You know, I started my path in art. That was always such a big thing for me. And now I've come back to it, but there was a period of time when I started my business and I was, you know, an art therapist and I was a newbie and I was like really trying to put myself out there, but like feeling like I was somehow a little bit lost. There was a period of time where I kind of like diverged into a path that wasn't fully mine again. because And I was like seeking for something. I was like, I want to make money for my business. I want to like, you know, I want to like figure out what is that really, what's really at the core of it all. And I found myself really driven like full on into another whole like branch of like, yeah, like becoming a somatic practitioner and doing all of that work, which is so beautiful. But then, fast forward, about end of last year, I burnt out. I burnt out and I was just, I think I was knowledge warding a lot.
00:08:18
Speaker
and just trying like just trying really hard to to build the business right and to make it work. And I had to really take a step back and actually look at the big picture. And this is where the life artistry comes in, where I had this revelation. Once I took some rest and I took some integration, and I was like, okay, like like what is going on with me here? like Where where am i am I not actually in alignment? you know I came into this work wanting to bring passion into my life and into how I get to serve and where has it where has it kind of come off track a little bit and what I realized was that it was all meant to come together. um So now the work that I do and it's been just this beautiful expansion since I would say like the beginning of this year it's been bringing together it's been bringing together these modalities of course of working with the body and working with
00:09:07
Speaker
you know, our memory, trauma, pain, joy, emotion, all of the stuff that lives been within us, within our hearts, within ourselves, and how that actually gets to be. the inspiration and how that actually gets to be like the raw source of how we consciously create in our lives as spiritual divine beings, as like literally beings of creation ourselves. Like we were created from our mother's womb and we are creators and it's in ourselves. Like Dana, you're a mom, like you're a creator, you create from the womb, like we're all creators. And this is like, this was like the big realization that I came into. I was like, we're all artists. We are literally all artists, men, women, but I think like, you know, speaking from a woman's point of view, like especially as women, I'm like, we're creators. Like we have so much creativity, life force. And it's something that's,
00:09:47
Speaker
it's like you know I know we talked about left brain and right brain and we can get really like sometimes there's definitely like science behind that but I think there's definitely also we can get really boxed into that and so really creativity is just life force energy it's the energy that comes from our sacral it's the energy that comes from our body and Now, you know, my mission really is to bring women into this realization that when you can consciously create from all of the art, all of the emotion, all of the raw stuff that lives within you, right? Like you can call it good, bad, but there's no such thing as good or bad. It's just like everything that's made up you and your bones and your blood, like all of that is
00:10:23
Speaker
your art and you get to you get to translate that into your reality, right? So your life, your day-to-day life, the way that you, like what you do, the work that you do, the actions that you take, who you be, this is all art that you're creating every day from this place of you, from this place of like radical honesty and authenticity and ah in in in yourself and in what makes up you, right? So that's what I really believe. you know, being the life artist, which is what I really call women into identifying with and and inviting them into really feeling in themselves. Like we have so much agency within us and we have so much creativity within us. And it's like, how can we harness that to make our lives more beautiful? um And yeah, that's, I would say that's the mission.
00:11:08
Speaker
That is ah amazing. And the first thing that comes to mind after hearing all of that is like, I remember being in that same place where things were coming together, but they weren't together yet, right? Like they were not integrated. I had to take a full two years off from business to allow myself to heal and to really focus 100% on basically dismantling this identity that I had created for so long for 29 years. um and so that I could come back completely zoomed out, allowing my higher self to take over and to really like genuinely give it the authority it needed in order to create this life through me that I didn't even really know was possible. And so what I want to ask you is for the person who's sitting here listening and isn't through that messy middle yet, right? Like there is this period where I have found that many of my clients are so eager
00:12:03
Speaker
to push through and to skip over a lot of times, right? They want to skip over that because they're looking for perfection in a lot of ways. So what would you say to that woman that's listening to this? That's like, yeah, but I hear what you're saying, but I kind of want to be perfect. Yeah. Oh my gosh. I love this because I was very much, yeah, once there. but I would say that like truly truly messiness is a part of the process and it's like there is I mean we all know this logically but it's like there is no such thing as perfection like perfection is entirely constructed by your mind by your conditioning by your ego by like comparison itis and it's like
00:12:40
Speaker
It's like, you are not meant to be perfect. You are meant to be a crazy wild woman. You're meant to be like the artist inside of you. You're meant to have many facets to you. And it's like, we're always just growing, right? We're always just learning. And that's the thing was like, it goes back to what I was saying about all of the stuff that lives with the inside of us. It's always just gaining. We're always just growing and gaining and we're accumulating and we're even the messiness, like the, like, I don't know where I'm going. I'm feeling quite misaligned. Like I feel like I'm at a block. I feel like. you know I have too many things on my plate. I feel like I'm unclear on my vision, all of that. like When we actually breathe into it and we like locate where that sits in the body and we actually like work with that energy, it's really just energy that's getting stuck. We embrace it as opposed to like pushing against it with this like vision and like this goal of out.
00:13:27
Speaker
when I want to get here, I want to get here, but like, you know, that channel is being siphoned. And so it's like, how do you, how do you move through a block? It's you literally move through it. So the way that I i really, really work with clients is like, we use the body to move through it. And we also really like learn to embrace, really embrace like the fun of it all. The imperfect imperfect messiness, the color is like, That's where the art, like literally making art, I think comes in as such a beautiful modality and vessel for us to explore this. Cause then it's like, you know, like how a kid makes art and your finger, you see your kid finger painting and they're just like smearing it all over their faces. And they're just like, ooh, like red, I like red there. Ooh, like purple, like, well, what does that make?
00:14:11
Speaker
like They're connecting the dots right subconsciously. What's happening is they're they're they're i mean they're they're playing with their imagination. They're playing with their senses. That's opening up their channel. And also they're creat they're they're creating new neural pathways in their brain, literally. And so like we aren't doing that often as adults consciously. like We learn. right We like to listen to podcasts and we're like, we um you know join programs and we're like learning knowledge and it's like sure of course that's beautiful and important and we keep doing that but we're not in this explorative place and so we're always just like we gotta go we gotta go in one direction like forward forward but it's like there's all this stuff that's inside and like all around like literally all around it's like 360 and it's like it's not just forward right in order to move forward sometimes we have to like lean backwards a little bit we have to go left we have to go right and like see what's there and then move through that and then it'll always it'll all always bring us back to
00:14:58
Speaker
ah forward momentum because it's always all going forward, time is going forward, but like we have to be in that explorative place and allow for that, give ourselves permission for that to that. And I think that's also where so many of us get stuck as women, we just don't give ourselves permission because we're so used to being like, right like like like couldn you know, it's just like, we're so used to being told like this is how you have to do things. And so we think that that's It's just so subconsciously programmed into our bodies, into our minds. Like we have to do things a certain way. What people tell us we have to do, we're going to do what I see other coaches doing on Instagram. I want to do that too. And that's, that's exactly what I was doing for like a year. And it sure I learned a lot from it. And that's where I realized that you can learn a lot from that as opposed to like shoving that away. You learn from it. But like, it was really a moment where I was like, wow, I've become really one track minded. And it's like, okay, like what else is there?
00:15:48
Speaker
permission. Okay. This is so good because I too have taken that, you know, one lane road with strategy specifically, you know, the people that are listening to this, I'm sure can relate because it's so easy to have that shiny object syndrome for a really long time. And there's two things that I want to mention here. And one is that it's okay, right? Like you're you're saying everything fits. So it's letting go of the timeline. It's allowing yourself to see that even if you are kind of one ah one track minded right the second with a specific strategy or a way of going about something, it's not necessarily wrong because it's going to probably end up serving you in the future, but it's also the allowance, ah letting yourself um know that
00:16:33
Speaker
It's trusting, right? It's trusting that at some point all of it will come together because it will. It's inevitable, but it takes persistence and it takes trust and it takes faith. So what do you have to say to that? A hundred percent. A hundred percent. And I think it's, it's, you know, it's also, it's the faith and it's the trust and it's also the What's coming forward is it's also really leaning into and yeah, trusting the belief that you can never fail. You know, there's no such thing as, I mean, I don't believe, I know we use failure and it's it's a good thing to reclaim the word failure, but I really don't believe that we are, we can ever really fail.
00:17:09
Speaker
It's like, of course, sometimes we make quote unquote mistakes we perhaps make decisions and we choose things that we wish, I wish I hadn't done that. um Because for whatever reason, right. But it's like, all of that gets to serve us. And it's like being in, let's say, a one-track minded direction and feeling like you're in resistance or feeling like it's not working. Or maybe you feel like it's working for you. It's like, where are you afraid that you're going to fall? Like, you know, I think that's what really comes up for me when I think about when I was really one-track minded, a lot of it was like survival. A lot of it was just like the subconscious thing of like, if I don't keep going, then I'm going to fall. If I don't keep going, then like,
00:17:51
Speaker
then like what's going to catch me underneath, right? If I stop, if I pause, if I look around, if I decide to like open up my perspective and be like maybe actually that would be more fun for me. It's also that programming that we have around fun. Like fun can't be part of our business and like fun fun isn't gonna make us money or like fun just isn't productive. Whether or not your fun directly correlates to making you money or directly correlates to like to you signing a client like your fun is going to add to your
00:18:22
Speaker
sense of self and sense of grounding. And it's going to also, it comes back to what you were saying as well with faith as well. We feel fear, like we're gonna feel fear, right? We're, of course, all of us also could benefit from the work of, yeah, doing the nervous system work to come out of that survival response a little bit, right? So that we can then look around. But like you said, like the most important thing is, is to trust in yourself, it comes back to self-belief, it comes back to like, you come into this work to be a coach or to be a healer, to heal others, right? But in the process, it's like, it's also a healing journey for yourself. Like I always say like, the entrepreneurship journey and building a business, it's such a spiritual journey. And it's like, there's so much there for you to play with and so much there for you to learn from and like grow from. And it's like, you are always your own safety net.
00:19:09
Speaker
And we just, it's like, it's just, for me, I had to just believe that. I had to just calibrate to that belief. I had to enforce that belief, reinstall it every day. Just, it's okay. Like, it's okay. I can soften. It's okay. Like, I can look around. It's okay. I can play. It's okay. No one's going to die. Yeah. And I think that's spot on because it's really the fear that things are going to fall apart and that finances aren't going to find a way. And I think that's probably, you know, the number one objection I hear to going all in or to having any fun at all, which is a paradox because the less fun you're having, the less likely this is going to be sustainable whatsoever because it is a passion project. And when you take the passion out of a passion project, it's, it's doomed.
00:19:50
Speaker
yeah And that's the life force, right? it's like It's like we come into this work because it is, we know ah part like a part of us, not even a part of us, all of us knows that it's it's something our soul is meant to do, right? We wouldn't be doing this kind of work. We wouldn't be we wouldn't be choosing this path, this less trodden, unconventional path if there wasn't like a deep purpose and a deep fire and a deep craving for it. And so it's like, how can we come back to that? How how can we come back to that fire? It's like you have to stoke the fire. You have to, beat the fire you know and that fire is also your creativity that fire is also just simply like it's it's coming back to your body it's like how do we come back to your fire it's like how do you come back to like your senses like literally you're like a sensory channels how can we start to actually even have to do that right it's like it's like take a fucking deep breath like
00:20:40
Speaker
Oh, and just like land back into ourselves. And it's like, what is the why? As to like what, you know, even the one track mindedness and like the strategy and the want that comes from that place of the fire, right? It's just often it's fire that's getting stuck as opposed to fire. That's like, like, it's like a bonfire, right? Or it's like, ah you know, it's it's ah it's a flame that goes all around and like, people can see it and you can see and everyone can feel it. And it's, you know, under the night sky. Instead, it's like a fire that's funneling through like a straw. What would you say to the person that is feeling like, okay, I feel like there's been a spark and then I get momentum and then it goes out because they get too into their head again, right? And then it becomes less fun, less playful, less creative, right? It's coming from the the finite mind instead of the infinite mind.
00:21:26
Speaker
and the creativity is lost so the spark is lost again and then it takes all of this um energy to muster up that spark once again and it goes back out but of course before i let you respond to that i want to say you know as i'm saying this it's like there's a paradox again it's like this is all for the betterment of your healing journey and what you're going to be able to share with the world experientially not just from a place of self knowledge. So it's like also letting it be that way. So good. So true. So true. It's just going back to the thing that like everything that we do, everything that we experienced is a part of what we're meant to share. but And it just gives us that like embodied knowledge, right, as opposed to the
00:22:04
Speaker
the trainings we listen to and we're like, yeah, we get it in the mind. Um, what you were saying, I love what you're saying about like the infinite mind as opposed to the finite mind. And I was thinking like immediately my thought was that the infinite mind is the soul. The infinite mind is our spirit and the infinite mind lives within the body. And so the finite mind is our ego. The finite mind is, is our conscious mind as well as our subconscious, but underneath all of that layers under that it's like the infinite is you. The infinite is like your capacity and In terms of, you know, you've heard this before and you feel like you're trying and you're trying to stoke the fire again. When you start a fire and it's at the embers, right? It's like, it's it's just the small embers. What you actually are meant to do, my partner taught me this, is to blow in a very specific way, very gently from the side. You're not meant to
00:22:55
Speaker
like full force like blow with all your lungs onto the fire but you're supposed to go from the side and caress it caresses so that the wood or the logs or the papers or twigs or whatever ah actually can absorb the oxygen essentially so that it slowly actually grows the fire actually grows and so what that makes me think of is you just got to drop the trying. Of course we continue to be disciplined with our work and maybe a better word than discipline is devotion. Like we continue to have devotion and have love and we commit to our work. It's like it's a relationship and it's like we serve our clients, we serve the business, the business is a separate entity that we also have a relationship with. But when we're trying it's like that anxious attachment. It's like when we're trying really hard and we're just like blowing on it we're like give me attention, give me attention, make it work. Like
00:23:40
Speaker
It makes, of course it exhausts you. Like, of course it's going to be exhausting. Nevermind like how it returns to you energetically, but it's like, it's exhausting for you. So it's, and you're not meant to feel exhausted in this life. Like that's not why you're here in this body. And so what I would say to this, my tip for this is like, really, like whenever you notice yourself in your mind, going into this, like kind of like this forceful trying energy of like blowing air onto the fire, it's like, how can I come back to the root of it all? How can I come back to the body? How can I but come back to my heart? My favorite way is to actually come back to our senses, just literally start playing with our senses very intentionally. So it's like, you know, our visual sense, our auditory senses, our smelling, our tasting, our movement, our balance, our internal sense of self and our internal sense of sensation. When we can mindfully engage very intentionally,
00:24:29
Speaker
with our senses and open them and come away from the mind the practice of really allowing yourself to like luxuriate and soften into the ways that you're actually receiving information as opposed to putting it out all the time that's where you can actually almost like come back to the fire that's how you know little bursts of wind of oxygen gets to come back into you you know as like this as a whole being does that land? I'm like trying to see like does that analogy land? Okay yes it's perfect and I totally understand everything you're saying because I know for me when this was back in 2014 between 2013 and 14 I was pushing and pushing and forcing and gathering so much self-knowledge and I was trying ah with all my might right I wasn't an open vessel whatsoever I was closing myself off to what I would call the sunlight of the spirit, which you are calling creativity, right? Or the same vice versa. um And so when you're forcing, you're pushing, you're pulling, you're trying, you're getting upset because you don't have enough time in the day. You're letting yourself get frustrated with the fact that things are quote unquote not working. You're watching money dwindle. You're focused on the negative and also pushing, forcing, pulling. All of this together for me anyway, um really created of course an energy blockage, but it completely
00:25:48
Speaker
ah pinched me off um from being able to experience any creativity whatsoever. So even having all the self-knowledge or having all of this exciting information, which by the way was not wisdom at the time, it was just information because I was so i was so cut off from my soul. um There was no way for all of this information to come together in the way that it was always meant to, and then to be produced by me in a unique way which is, you know, my light, my, my energetic signature on the world and what I exude through my brand living in power in this podcast and all of the things. So until somebody is willing to step back sometimes, you know, for some people this goes really fast, right? But for some people it takes time and it takes a long time for others and that's okay as well. And like I said, I genuinely had to drop everything for years knowing full well every single day that I would come back to it. And that was my whole intention was to drop it so that I could come back in a completely different way. And that is exactly what happened, but I had to give myself that time, that space, that freedom. I had to be willing to give myself exactly what it was that I was seeking, right? And if you are not willing to do that, if you're not willing to trust in the process to have faith in your, your true self, then I think it could take you lifetimes to get where you could get. If you were willing to let your higher self take over and trust in that part of yourself, instead of the, the, like we're talking about the finite mind. and see where that takes you instead, but that takes full trust. It really does. Yeah. And what I'm also hearing from that is like within the full trust, it's like also just full 100%. When you make a decision, like when we make the decision to zoom out and to take some integration time, two years, one month, five months, it's like,
00:27:35
Speaker
do that properly when i say properly i don't mean like right or wrong but i mean like do that fully do that with your heart it's a decision that you made for yourself you knew that that was going to be good for your highest that was going to be for your highest good and that's going to be the thing that's you know deepen your soul is going to propel you forward trust in that and like go full into it 100%. I feel like we're so scared. A lot of people are like, we're also scared to do things 100% because we are scared of like, what if I put all my eggs in one basket? Or like, what if, you know, this fails? Like, it's easier to kind of have like, you know, 80% here and then 20% here just in case that's my plan B. But that's also siphoning your life force, right? When you are a clear channel towards one, not even one thing, we're going back to the one directional thing, but it's like, when you're a clear channel with, yeah, like devoted to,
00:28:22
Speaker
what's in front of you, devoted to the decision that you make, devoted to your commitments. To source, to source energy. Yeah, that's really it. Yeah. It's like that is, it's not even been devoted to one thing, it's devoted to yourself. Actually that's bringing it back. Yeah. And that's the difference between like being devoted to, or being like feeling like you're obligated or feeling like you're like, I have to go, I have to do it this way. Well, that, you know, like you come back to you and you come like 100% back to you and you'll know. And the path will come the next chapter. And it'll go and it'll go like it'll go wonky and wavy, and it'll take you on another journey. And you're supposed to learn from those chapters. You're supposed to learn from the tips, topsy-turvy, the crazy ebbs and the flows. That's a part of it. And I think it's just trusting that, surrendering to that, and like having fun along the journey as well. it's just like And if fun is kind of like an annoying word for you, it's like finding pleasure, then. Finding pleasure, some form of pleasure, some form of like lightness. and like
00:29:19
Speaker
Like it gives back to you in some way, truly in your soul along the process. Cause otherwise we're just doing the same thing that we may have done 10 years ago. You know, if you came from a corporate background like me and you left it for a reason, it's like, well, you know, it's like you you get off of a treadmill to get onto another treadmill. Right. Well, it's the expectations. It comes right back to that. It's like you're going into whatever you're doing with expectations of what the outcome is going to be. But when we can let go of those outcomes and we just do for the enjoyment of it. Like, for example, um have you ever read the artist's way? Yeah. Yeah. I'm actually in the middle of it.
00:29:54
Speaker
oh my god it's so good but um and anybody listening I highly recommend it's a spiritual path to like your creativity but um and the other way around um but basically the idea a lot of her writing is about ah you know doing something just for the hell of it like for me for example and I know so many people can relate to this I refused for, but I don't even know, five, six years um to read anything other than nonfiction because it really just doesn't interest me anymore. And I'm like always trying to learn, but why am I always trying to learn? Because I'm always trying to produce. I always have an outcome in mind. And so when I read, I still always have an outcome in mind by accident.
00:30:30
Speaker
And so what I was challenged to do by actually um my copywriting coach was to go read a fiction book just for the hell of it and to have no reason for it. And I will tell you, there was some massive resistance to doing that. But when I did, it was like a meditative practice because I had to keep catching my thought, which was this is a waste of time and bringing myself back to the page, back to the words and just read the damn thing. This is so wild because I have had the, like a very, very similar experience where I realized I had, I just, I had the realization about, actually it was like four months ago, it's quite recent, where I was like, Jesus, I haven't read a single fiction book, a book that hasn't been about self-development in about six years. I was like, what? And I was speaking to my, you know, my friend from college about it. She was like, I've gotten really into fantasy. And so she was like telling me her favorite, you know, Sarah mass, great books, A Court of Thorns and Roses. You probably, maybe you've seen it before.
00:31:24
Speaker
um or the listeners maybe you maybe you've started on this journey but I was like okay let me give this a try and so I was like okay like let's start reading fantasy let's start like you know I talk about creativity all the time I talk about the imagination so I actually I mean this is like an integrity after you know like let's see what's here for me so that I start reading and I'm finding that the language is really hard for my brain to even absorb. Like I'm just reading and and reading those sentences and I can't follow them because my brain is just so used to outcome produced like X, Y, Z kind of language. And so it took it took me like a good week to actually like,
00:32:00
Speaker
calibrate to okay like you said like a meditation where it was like mindfully like coming back to the page coming back to reading okay okay oh there's a story here and then you get into it and then you get into the world and you're like oh and then i found that from reading fantasy um and i've been yeah i've been having fun with this it doesn't have to be fantasy but like fantasy is just like an ultra heightened version of fiction um I've found that it's actually really ignited a certain way that I like communicate in my content. um It's ignited more like better store, not better, but like, you know, just more flowery and like more fun storytelling. It's given me more ideas. It's um ignited a little more like sensuality in my life as well and it's
00:32:37
Speaker
It's great. It's like, we just got to give ourselves permission and we have to remember that we get to do these things. Well, that's the point, right? That's exactly the point. So, okay. It always comes back to a freaking paradox, which makes this whole situation kind of confusing, but it's not when you're looking at it in hindsight, right? So, coming at something from a pure, ah yeah from a place of pure joy. And again, here's another thing I've heard so many people say is like I just want to have more joy for the journey, right, and because then they shame themselves for not enjoying the process, and that can become a whole thing, and I won't go there but, um you know, it's coming.
00:33:10
Speaker
into different sequences in your life, like just reading a book that is not nonfiction anymore without outcomes or expectations, but then what can happen, and this is what you have to let go of, right? You need to let go of this in the moment, but what can happen and oftentimes does is that something so much more beautiful and and magical is on the other side of allowing yourself to open up to the limitless um outcomes that could be produced if you shut your mind off ah from the limited Perspective that you have that you're bringing in to that situation from your past experience of life and if you think about it You have this little tiny experience. There are billions of people in this world. That means there are literally billions of um Perspectives because there are billions of experiences and that's what a perspective ultimately is so when you go into doing anything in your day um and you have Expectations around it. It is coming from your very very very very finite, small, little, limited experience of life. It's coming from your perspective of what you think should be the outcome and that's what you're expecting to happen. And so what you're doing is you are literally limiting completely. You're limiting yourself from what actually could be on the other side of that um thing that you're doing because you're not allowing yourself to stay open to the limitless possibilities that the universe has in store. And that's the saddest part for me is like looking back on all the time that I spent limiting myself because I had all these expectations and outcomes tied to every little thing that I did. And then cue the fear, right? Then the fear comes in because the outcomes are not happening the way that I thought they would. Then cue the control because now I'm trying to control the environment around myself because I'm afraid, because I'm afraid I'm not going to get what I want. That's another fear, right? And so it just produces this whole very blocking
00:34:56
Speaker
outcome and then you don't get to you miss out you miss out on what could be but the whole idea here with creativity in in my experience and I think this is what exactly what we're talking about is like always going into this process, this business, which is a creative process without huge expectations, knowing that if you stop pushing, if you stop pulling, if you stop putting all of these parameters around what you're doing and just start to play with it more and trust in that, trust in your own ability to play and to keep yourself open and clear as a vessel and prioritize your connection with your higher self, you're going to allow yourself to become a vessel for that higher part of yourself. to flow through and that is true creativity like that is creativity unbridled like nothing else it is pure and and it comes from beyond the mind and that's all there is to it and you can't get there if you keep thinking so you've got to do something to stop that to to put an end to that cycle of constantly thinking constantly doing and constantly having these um attachments to the outcomes and to the to the end result
00:36:06
Speaker
That was so good. ah Exactly. Exactly. And it's like, how do we get out of the thinking? Guys, we drop into the body. How do we do that? Tell us, give us a good practice. Yes. Give us a good practice for that. Okay. Honestly, give you two. The first one I know that we've all heard of, but we all need to be doing more. We all need to be doing more, including me, including you. Like everyone is hand on our heart, three deep fucking breaths.
00:36:38
Speaker
feeling your breath, feeling your heartbeat, dropping the thought, dropping the feeling of resistance, even giving yourself like, even in your mind, if you have to say, I'm giving myself permission to be in these three breaths, these three minutes, let's say, to just come back down knowing that when I'm dysregulated, when I'm over activated, when I'm in my mind, I'm not actually gonna be clear. So let's give ourselves this permission to like, oh, and like you ask your heart like, What is it I actually need right now? Like, what is it I'm actually looking for? Like, what is the fear here? You know, and it's like, whatever that fear that comes out is. And like, if you want to, if you know how to work with your inner child and you find that there's a tender part of you, this younger part of you that just has this need, like maybe this, like that control or that graspiness that you're talking about, it's like, give that to her.
00:37:24
Speaker
like words of encouragement, a hug, like, and it some adult wisdom, give that to her. And it's like sometimes we act and we overthink and we ruminate from this place of like, we block ourselves from this place of literally just like, oh we block ourselves from this place of like unconscious wounding. And when we can just get conscious of like what's real and true in our hearts, we give ourselves that, that immediately shifts, that immediately shifts the energy, that immediately just, opens up your nervous system as well, somatically. And bringing it to art, like one more tip that I'll give you is like, a lot of us have a lot of resistance around um around making art as an adult, okay? But I really actually highly and invite and encourage everyone to to scribble. What wants to come out and what what we hold in our minds and in our bodies isn't just
00:38:16
Speaker
I truly believe isn't just in linear verbal language. It isn't always just in a logical, like English language, like the way that we can linearly think. Not everything is logical, right? Of course there's logic. Of course we have the cognitive that's super powerful, but just, just scribble. I just like make shapes. I use a pen, like literally a random ballpoint pen. And I almost, it's like, I'm like channeling the energy from my heart or channeling my energy from that morning, just out into this piece of paper and like nonsensical lines. in nonsensical shapes. And it's just this really beautiful practice of letting energy and expression flow in a nonverbal way as well. And sometimes I'll also do movement, right? Either or together, just like setting up your day with like getting into your body before everything else. Before you get into the mind, set up the foundation for your day for, you know, the work that you do with your clients, for the content creation with the body first, with like being in like being in your senses, first and foremost.
00:39:07
Speaker
And then that already brings your nervous system into balance, the homeostasis, where you're not just reacting from the previous days, things and to do some things that you didn't complete. And it just allows you to have this like fresh reset. So that's what you say when it comes to, um, really getting in touch with your senses in the morning and doing these daily practices is, does this look like maybe just becoming more intentional about smelling your coffee as you drink it? Does it, what does it look like? Yeah. So I think, yeah. So mindful, mindfully paying attention, like you were saying, like drinking your coffee, like really savoring it, really tasting it really like.
00:39:46
Speaker
Being with slowing down with your senses and just like like would you when you take a shower, right? Really also playing around with like warm and cool showers, right? Just being in like playing around with a range of your senses so that you just feel more alive in your skin, like going out for a walk or like sitting outside in your balcony or in your garden and just like, even just for one minute, like noticing the sun on your skin and like feeling the warmth and like hearing the birds and like Even just that, like it sounds so simple, but we're probably not actually doing it enough. And and that it it it brings you to also this connection to yourself. It brings you to a connection of like what's present, like setting up that container in yourself, connection to your body before, okay, do we spend our days, yes, channeling from the heart, but also sometimes channeling from the mind.
00:40:29
Speaker
I love that. I love that. And I love the idea of just, you know, using another word for vessel. It's container. Like we are containers of creativity. I love this. This was such a good conversation, Jay. Thank you so much for all of your wisdom for all of the vulnerability and for ah just being authentic, right? Showing up with the good, the bad, the ugly, and then also having the experience now to share. And that's the point, right? And that's how we get to this part where we've actually made it our career. We're making money. We have clients like, We have this beautiful business and it feels so good, but it could never be without, like you said, being in integrity with the healer part of ourselves, without being in integrity with the creative part of ourselves because it is soul. And until you get to that place, it's extremely difficult to feel like the true embodiment of the healer, of the person who goes out there and serves the world, makes an impact. It's it's damn near impossible in my opinion and in my experience. So thank you, thank you, thank you. and um
00:41:22
Speaker
Can you please tell the listeners where they can find you and if you have any offers on the table that they should know about? Yeah, my gosh, thanks for having me. It's such an honor again. And yeah, such a beautiful conversation. I feel like we got to the core of it. um So how to find me, you can find me on Instagram at, it's jchung. You can also find me at my website, jchunghealing.com. I offer a whole range of like one-on-one and group containers. um depending on the level of work that you want to do, how deep you want to go, and what I want to group. I would say that um at this time, I'm really, really focused in a season of like art and of expression and of like like women's sensuality taking up space. That's really like the flavor of my work right now, and it changes, right? It like it actually changes and opens sometimes. um So if you were feeling really called to you know this work of like, okay, how do I deepen into my vision and my creativity?
00:42:15
Speaker
and my body and my senses and like my art, the art that is my life and the art that is within me and literally making art yourself with paints and with art materials, then this is a beautiful time to just Connect, would love to talk to you. But yeah, in terms of offers, one-on-one groups, the groups are always kind of changing a little bit. So just come in, whenever you listen to this episode, come in to my Instagram and like that's where all the updates are. Perfect. Okay, well, thank you so much again, Jade, for all of your wisdom and all of the insights on creativity and really taking the messy middle out of the equation.
00:42:54
Speaker
for our business lives and transmuting it instead into our life's artistry, into our life's work, into the creation that we are birthing into the world instead. um If you're looking for more information on Jae Chung, I will be linking all of her info into the show notes so you can find it there and I will see you guys in the next episode. Have a great day.