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EP. 120 Jamila Reddy on the art of living, the south and family
9 Plays1 year ago
Jamila is such a warm soul. In 2017 Jamila created a lifestyle design coaching methodology to help people find intentional, aligned, and strategic ways to transform their lives into what they want them to be.
Jamila is also the host of a podcast called Deliberate and Doing it Afraid, where stories, reflections, and revelations are shared. On Its Personal Jamila talks about the art of living, growing up in the south, design, and motherhood.
Website: https://jamilareddy.me/meet-jamila#about-bottomInstagram:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/JamilaReddy
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jamilareddy/?hl=en
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Transcript
Introduction to 'It's Personal'
00:00:01
Speaker
Hey, what's up, everyone? Welcome to It's Personal, a podcast about creators and their stories.
00:00:25
Speaker
I got you.
Jamila's Journey into Joy and Wellness
00:00:26
Speaker
All right. Uh, welcome back everyone to another episode of this personal, a very special guest, someone I've been following for a very long time now. Um, can you introduce yourself? My name is Jamila and I always like to start by saying, you know, there are some things I do in the world to make money, but those to me are not necessarily the central identifiers of who I am.
00:00:50
Speaker
So in this moment today, I am a person who is so profoundly honored and grateful to be alive and committed to making the most of this gift of being alive as possible.
00:01:06
Speaker
So what that means for me is I'm, I'm a person who's committed to joy, to enjoyment. I'm a person who's committed to pleasure and to wellness and to honestly having, I don't know if we can curse on this podcast, I'll just say a really good time.
00:01:21
Speaker
Like a really- You can curse? You can curse? What do you mean? A really good time. A motherfucking good time. Like I am committed. I am a person who's absolutely wholeheartedly committed to having an amazing time on the planet while I'm alive.
00:01:37
Speaker
And beyond that, I'm a transformational coach. I'm a meditation and breath work guide and facilitator, and I'm a writer. And so I teach classes online. I post. I do my little posties on Instagram. But it's because part of my commitment to living well is helping others do the same.
00:01:59
Speaker
in their own way and so everything I offer is centered around how to create a beautiful life and how to have an absolutely magnificent time. I mean I want to I want to stop right there like dude like this is why I enjoy you so much honestly this is why I enjoy you so much like you are so real about like who you are as a person
00:02:19
Speaker
Um, you know, I don't love the phrase, but like you truly practice what you preach. Like you talk about these things, you truly, wholly, wholeheartedly do the things that you not necessarily ask others to do, but like talk to others. Amazing work idea. And you talk a lot about this, like online, you can't, you basically just said what it is, but can you share more about how that has like transformed? And I know handful of your online, but yeah, what is that idea of the art of living for you?
Artistic Roots and 'The Art of Living'
00:02:49
Speaker
What does that mean?
00:02:49
Speaker
to you. The art of living. So I have a pretty varied background in art and creative practice. So my dad, both of my parents actually are artists. I recently learned a month ago
00:03:05
Speaker
that my parents met and my dad owned an art shop and my mom went into the art shop looking for materials. I was like, what? I had no idea that my mom had any kind of creative practice. Obviously she married an artist. So, you know, there had to be some resonance there. So I come from artists. I come from artists. So art has always been a normal and deeply embedded part of my life. It's always been around. I grew up in a house full of paintings.
00:03:32
Speaker
going to poetry readings, going to music festivals, being in galleries. So my dad was also a musician, so art was always around me. And then I started in theater when I was in middle school and was in
00:03:48
Speaker
did acting all throughout high school and started directing plays when I was in college. And I loved directing plays. I loved that I could take a piece of paper with words on it and bring it to life. And I realized at a certain point, I sort of became a little disillusioned with theater because like many other institutions in the United States, it's very
00:04:12
Speaker
white centric and male centric and you really have to like a soul and I was sort of like this isn't really aligned with my values of ease and enjoyment so I'm out. But what I took from the theater is that what we can do is take a vision on a piece of paper and bring it to life. That's a skill that I had is that I could take something that I had written down or that someone had written down
00:04:37
Speaker
And I could activate it so that it could be experienced in the three-dimensional world. And so the art of living is using your life, seeing your life as a creative work, seeing your human experience as your sort of blank
00:04:54
Speaker
You know, you could think of it as a blank page or a canvas at each of us inherently is a creator. And what we create is our life, our life as the capacity to be a masterpiece. We can really make our lives into these beautiful works of art.
00:05:10
Speaker
And I love the language of, of the art of living because I think sometimes, you know, people could, it's like personal development. I just wrote down personal development on one of the topics that I could speak on. And it's like, yeah, sure. Like that's, it's yes. But that's kind of the dry version of.
00:05:29
Speaker
The fact that we actually have an opportunity to design every day, not even like our lives. Like, yes, we can be the designer of our lives, but we actually curate and design micro moments. We can design how we're going to eat breakfast.
00:05:46
Speaker
We can design how we're going to, you know, sit at our desk. We can design every element of our lived experiences according to what brings us the most joy and pleasure. And so the art of living is about designing an experience that is rooted in you having your needs met and your desires
Imagination and Childhood Reflections
00:06:05
Speaker
fulfilled. I love that so much. You know what it makes me think so much. I listen.
00:06:08
Speaker
And he talks a lot about just like the idea of like revision, not necessarily we are constantly revising our work in regards to what we do, we put on the paper, but we're also constantly revising like ourselves.
00:06:24
Speaker
And how that is just something that we should be consistently doing all the time. That sounds like the work that you talk about so much within the art of living. It's just like, you know, you're constantly evolving as people. What are we doing to maintain that? Because it's a long journey. We want it to be a long journey as well. But I love that. I love how you explain that. How did it start? Like, what is it? What was, who is Jamila, like the, the six and seven year old back in the day? Like, what did that look like for you?
00:06:54
Speaker
Oh my gosh. I, at six and seven, I loved imagination play. I love, which it's so funny to think about your childhood self because we've really always been ourselves. You know, like we really, you think about your little self and you're like, there are some things that have changed, but like at the core. Not a lot.
00:07:16
Speaker
Not a lot. So I loved playing like house like I love to, you know, it was theater, I loved to imagine that I was, you know, a pirate or, you know, a vagabond, you know, we had this huge, there's like a little play, like a slide and swings and
00:07:35
Speaker
We used to climb up there and pretend that we were, you know, finding treasure, my sister and I. So little me loved to imagine, loved to, um, different realities. Um, and I loved to write. I was writing poetry. I was writing, I was a Shel Silverstein babe and I just loved writing little rhymes and I would decorate my room and my bunk bed, um, with poems that I had written and little sketches that I had done. I was very,
00:08:04
Speaker
I've always been very sensitive, highly, highly, highly sensitive person, and that was very true about me as well when I was young, I was, you know, cry easily but not, not sad tears necessarily but like, I'm greatly moved.
00:08:20
Speaker
You know, like I would just be greatly moved by life and it just like brings me to tears. It's just so funny because I'm still that way. So yeah, lots of imagination, lots of like awe and wonder and just general, easily moved.
00:08:35
Speaker
I like, I like that. I like that. And you're, I thought I, you're from the South.
School Experiences and Cultural Identity
00:08:40
Speaker
Yes. North Carolina. Yes. North Carolina. And how was schooling in regards to navigating different types of spaces growing up for you in regards to like the classroom, whether it was sports. I did a lot of, I found myself in lots of activities where I was one of one, one of few or the only black person.
00:09:05
Speaker
So I did swim team, I did swimming, I did children's choir, I did ballet and modern dance. And in school, I was maybe not in my six and seven year old days, but
00:09:20
Speaker
middle school was in the advanced, quote unquote, advanced placement classes, you know, I like to learn, I like to study, I was reading by like three. And so we were one of those kids. Yeah, I was one of those kids for sure. For sure. And school
00:09:40
Speaker
I think I think school was pretty easy for me for the most part not math math has always been challenging but for the most part I enjoyed school and it was pretty useful for me in terms of the actual learning um the social dynamics I found to be the most challenging part of my of my education
00:09:58
Speaker
mostly because I felt like, as we say in the South, the fly in the buttermilk. That was a very formative experience of feeling, just feeling different, feeling othered, and really what feeling othered created in me
00:10:14
Speaker
was the sense of hyper visibility. I felt like no matter what I did, because I was different, it was going to be noticeable. And so I, I put this pressure on myself to either do everything really well. Like if you're, if you're going to be, you know, I'm going to be on stage against my will. I either want to be the star or I want to be in the back. I want to be as far back of the stage as possible.
00:10:40
Speaker
So I kind of had this like, you know, deeply ingrained pattern of like perfectionism doing the most over performing or sort of shrinking into the background. Now that was something that I had to kind of have make conscious decisions about in my adulthood. Like, oh, you don't always need to be on your A game or sort of find the middle ground or, or choose.
00:11:03
Speaker
Yeah, I love that. I think my other question is like, how much has your background, culture, heritage, influence the lifestyle that you live now? You can answer that, obviously, however you wish. But I know that it's a little bit, it's not a heavy question, but it can be complicated and all the stuff. How has my background, culture, influenced how I live? In many ways, I would say coming from being raised by an artist,
00:11:32
Speaker
definitely influenced my appreciation and value of beauty. I will say that that is a huge part of how I live now, is that to me, beauty is sometimes I think seen as frivolous or it's not a serious aspiration, but I find there's so much, I mean, nature is beautiful.
00:11:58
Speaker
It's, there's so beauty is such an important part of fulfillment for me. And so having, you know, being raised by parents who appreciated oriented me towards beautiful things and wanting to live in a beautiful way. So design, like home design, my home is really intentional. Like there's little alters everywhere, things that are aesthetically pleasing and it, and
00:12:25
Speaker
What that does for me is that it creates a sort of baseline of, baseline of like, okayness. I think that having a surrounding myself with beautiful things is kind of a spiritual practice that becomes like embedded in everything I do. So it's like, I'm doing my dishes. I'm surrounded by beautiful things.
00:12:44
Speaker
So that, so that is major, my, my, the influence of beauty. And then I think, you know, being my mother's side of the family is Puerto Rican. So my mom's mom is Puerto Rican, born and raised in Puerto Rico. My dad was born in Savannah, Georgia, one of nine siblings.
00:13:01
Speaker
So there's this, the value of family and like the tribe is really, really deeply embedded in me. That I think having those kinds of like, having parents who grew up in pretty insular communities with their, with their nuclear family and their, their tribe, influenced my own value on community and chosen family. So my friends, there's a group of my friends that who are my family.
00:13:29
Speaker
I'm like, they are for all intents and purposes, my siblings, like I've chosen them and we are doing life together. Like there's a couple of people that I'm like barring like an extreme act of nonsense or violence. There is nothing you could do that would make me not be in community with you anymore.
00:13:48
Speaker
And so that is something that I think really came from my background is that family is super important. Community is really important. Um, and the, and making memories and building connections and quality time, like that's kind of like the richness of life that for sure came from the way I grew up.
00:14:06
Speaker
love that quality time, you know, mundane, just, you know, sitting around, talking, not talking, just being around being in same space as someone that you love, you know, like the love is it's just like, I think about this so much as a like being abroad for so long, you know, I get that in go home in the summer, but I
00:14:28
Speaker
I tell my wife and I tell other people all the time, I don't feel that feeling anywhere else. It's just like when I get off, it happens as soon as I get off the plane. My wife is from Toronto, so I get off that plane in Toronto. I'm like, wow. I already feel it. I'm already anticipating that love. I'm from Nova Scotia, so I get off the plane there and it's the exact same thing. And it's like, no, you know that feeling when you have it.
00:14:58
Speaker
It is precious and it's all the things. So I love hearing that from you because I do feel genuinely the same way. Another question that I forgot what I was going to ask you. You talk about interior design and I see some of the stuff that you do online. What has kind of gotten you into the idea of interior design and
Creating Peace and Beauty Amidst Challenges
00:15:17
Speaker
So my mom actually started a Feng Shui company with her cousin when I was late middle school, early high school. What is it? Your parents are fire, like what are they? Fire, fire. My parents are amazing, amazing. I really got, I really, really did a great job in choosing my parents.
00:15:37
Speaker
So that was sort of the first seed planted. My mom was like really into Feng Shui and, you know, she had a little fountain by the front door and sort of explained, you know, what kind of, we didn't really, me and my sister, we didn't really know what was going on, but like there was like cute things happening and you know, so that was the first kind of seed planted.
00:15:57
Speaker
But what really did it was my father asked away from cancer in 2019. And I got a call literally 30 days before he died. I didn't know it would be 30 days, but I got a call saying, Hey, your dad has a few weeks left to live. You need to come home. So I got on a plane. I was living in New York city at the time. My dad was in North Carolina. I flew home. My dad was in the hospital. He went on hospice care and I was with him for the last 30 days of his life.
00:16:25
Speaker
And I, when he came home and even when he was in the hospital, I felt so called to create an environment around him that was going to be the most beautiful, peaceful and life giving space. I thought either the man's going to live or the man's going to die.
00:16:42
Speaker
And if he lives, he needs to be in an environment that supports life. And if he dies, he needs to be in an environment that is peaceful, that is gorgeous, that is easy to be in. Like I wanted to build a temple. I thought of, if you only have 30 days to live, how do you want your room to look?
00:17:01
Speaker
fill the space with plants. And I put art right in front of him where he could see it. And I made sure, I mean, I cleaned the floors. I was on my hands and knees anointing the floor with oils and getting cobwebs out of the corners and putting salt lamps and soft lights and opening the window. And I was like, you know, this is, and people would come in and they would be like, wow.
00:17:24
Speaker
You've really done something incredible here. His bed, I wanted to have like a, I had a beautiful red blanket, like I wanted it to feel vibrant, grounding, peaceful, and full of life. And as I was creating this experience for him, this should not be reserved for the last 30 days of our lives.
00:17:43
Speaker
But like, this is, this is the baseline. This is, this is, it did something. I mean, it was a, it was, I was like, wow, what we're doing here. And it's kind of like, I thought of it like a birthing room. Those of you who listening, who may have children, it's very important, the environment, the physical room in which a baby comes into the world. I mean, it really matters. Soft lighting, it actually encourages your parasympathetic nervous system. It encourages
00:18:11
Speaker
calm and there are certain environmental factors. Like it's the difference. Think about how you feel in, you know, at a Buddhist temple or a Zen garden versus the DMV or you know what I mean? It's like, okay, we don't, it's rocket science, but our environment impacts the way we feel.
00:18:30
Speaker
And so creating that experience for my dad, building an altar around his body, I realized like that is a practice that I want to have in my day to day. I want my physical environment to feel like an altar to life, to feel like a temple of where when I come in, it just immediately invites a sense of grounding and inner peace and connection to the divine.
00:18:53
Speaker
in relation to the earth. But that's something that we can do, I mean, with ease. It's really simple. It's so profound. There are simple, simple things, like just having a plant in view can do wonders, can do wonders. So that experience really catalyzed me being intentional about designing my own home in a way that was life-giving and encouraged inner peace. Wow. Thank you for sharing that.
00:19:21
Speaker
be very vulnerable I appreciate you hearing that and I think it's so true like I'm I'm I wouldn't call myself a big plant person but I love plants and I got that from my wife constantly wanting plants or constantly wanting to make fresh and taken care of etc but you're right like though even the littlest things can truly change your whole mindset everything your entire day can be shifted
00:19:46
Speaker
based on your space, the way you wake up, the way you, like the, what you smell, what you see, like all those things truly can change how your day is. I truly believe that as well. So when I hear you that you've done that for your father and so many, like it's just so, it really touches me. It really does because I agree with you. Like
00:20:07
Speaker
being able to do that for him. I know that he was able to shade that and know like, wow, I am going out the way that I should, like in harmony, in peace, in comfort. And it's, and dignity, it's like, you know, it's a dignified way, like that really came forward too. It's like harmony and comfort, but also like, like regal, you know? I'm like, oh, like you got to go out like the, like the badass you are, like,
00:20:35
Speaker
You know what I mean? It's like they give people flowers while they're here. It was like, no, your home is like, those are your flowers. That's how you like show yourself. Like you can really create a sense of like importance in your home. I'm like, no, I want, when I come in my home.
00:20:51
Speaker
I want to feel like this is a place where important people reside. Like this is a place for people, high value individuals. And so treating my home as a space that is like the holder for, yeah, I'm like an important person. Like I love that. I love that it creates a sort of dignified like, yeah. Yeah. And I love that you were able to make, like that connection doesn't happen easy.
00:21:16
Speaker
you to be able to go from you know doing this work with your dad to be like you know what I deserve this as well and I'm not sure what that transition looked like for you but to get there at work is not easy I mean it may I don't know but it doesn't sound easy at least so I appreciate I'm happy that you got there because again I'm following along with your journey and you're talking to me about it I see it online so
00:21:40
Speaker
I'm happy you got there, but I know there had to be a lot of just like acting and thinking and all the work that goes into like understanding who you are as a person to get to that point because I see it. I see it through your voice and how much you truly believe in like your space and space kind of carries so and how it really influences. I appreciate that. I really do. I have one more question for you. How has this like lifestyle of yours influence
00:22:10
Speaker
um your daughter and what does that look like for you? Like I know I don't know that I don't know the exact age you mentioned it but I think you mentioned it but like how how five five five so how has your work now influenced like what she's doing what she's seeing? So that is a great beautiful question and I want to just contextualize that my co-parents my and she's my niece biologically she's my niece my yes my life has been a
Focus on Joy Through Grief and Family
00:22:41
Speaker
Hello, and I'm like, okay, the reason why this is a little context, the reason why I am a person who is committed to joy and ease and pleasure is because I am a person who has journeyed with grief and heartache and death and loss. And so I understand that joy.
00:22:57
Speaker
and peace. They are both preventative strategies. They're preventative medicine. They help prepare me for the inevitable difficulties that life is going to give us, but they also help me like recover from. So, so my sister passed away six months before my dad died. It was a, it was a shit show. It was a hot, glorious mess. It was a hot mess.
00:23:21
Speaker
Sister passed away from an overdose in August of 2018, leaving her three children behind. And then six months later, my dad died from cancer. So I'm like, what? Like, why do that? I had to have so many conversations with the guy, whoever. I'm like, who is in charge here? I need to speak to the manager. Because why is it happening? And what the fuck? It was a lot. It was a lot. Last year, I started co-parenting my niece.
00:23:49
Speaker
It was my sister's youngest. She stays with me half the week. She stays with my mom and her big brother and sister on half the week. And so I never really wanted children. I didn't want to have, I was one of those people that was pretty content with, you know, I get, I get my joy from many places. I love to like travel. I love to be alone. I, I get it.
00:24:14
Speaker
And I think there's a lot of programming that tells people that they have to have children. And so I was kind of in resistance to that programming and was like, you know what, I'm leaning towards no, I'm not sure about it. You know, I have time to decide, but most of my adult life I've been kind of team no kids.
00:24:34
Speaker
At first, the little one I'm in, she started sleeping over like once a week. Then it was two days a week. Then it was three days a week. And now I like take her to school and she has a room in my house and she is fully integrated into my life as my child, which is so funny.
00:24:53
Speaker
It's not funny, ha, but like in the ways of like some, you know, I talk a lot about sometimes your little plan, like we have this idea of like, this is my plan. This is what I'm going to do, my five year plan. And, and God or the universe is just like, ha ha, like, okay. Sorry, sorry.
00:25:12
Speaker
Sorry, like, okay, you thought, so I will say that, you know, she, her presence has actually influenced my life. I'm like, the question is how has my work influenced her life? But she, I'm like, there is no greater spiritual teacher. They really got something else going on.
00:25:32
Speaker
they just got here so they're still like connected to their like pure essence. My children are next level teachers like they are wild with what they know and what they reflect but I will say some of the ways that I know that my work has kind of spilled out. I like to talk about the ripple effect like all of the healing we do all of the growth we do
00:25:55
Speaker
There's like a drop in the water and it ripples like indefinitely. And so the people who are closest to us, they kind of get the first few ripples. And so she is absolutely like, you know, she likes her space to be neat and clean and tidy. When she wasn't here for her three days, I like put some stuff in her room. I got like some deliveries and I put them in her room and she came home and she said, never do that again.
00:26:20
Speaker
I said, oh, okay. Excuse me. She tells me all the time, my body, my choice. I'll say, Carmen, please don't. Please, you know, that doesn't look, you know, my mom told her the other day, she put on a little outfit and my mom was like, that doesn't go together. That doesn't look, you know, that doesn't match. And she said, it's my body, my choice. She said what she said, honey. Okay. She said, I'm a little tacky tail.
00:26:46
Speaker
My body, my choice. So she is like a little mirror. She's a little reflection. My values, really. I mean, the things that I care most deeply about, sovereignty, freedom, creative expression. She loves to dance. She loves to draw.
00:27:03
Speaker
She's so kind. She's so, so kind and loving and thoughtful and compassionate that I'm like, Oh, she's really the best. She's a reflection of the best parts of me, which is such a trip to see like, Oh, when you parent, you really are shaping a person's personality. Like you're absolutely creating a character that this person could then change in their adulthood. But it's like, it's a little Sims character. I'm like,
00:27:33
Speaker
Then she straight up is a reflection. I'm like, Oh, she is so much like me. And so that is absolutely wild. But I, but I love that she, you know, she gets to, I lead a free meditation, which you Gary and your listeners, I would love for you to join. If you ever, well, it'll be.
00:27:49
Speaker
It'll be nighttime for you, but it's every Saturday at 11 a.m Eastern. We do a free, I do a free guided breath work and meditation. And sometimes she's here with me. And so she'll see me, you know, sometimes she'll sit on my lap while I'm leading people in meditation. And I'm like, how would it like.
00:28:06
Speaker
When I think about my parents and what I grew up around, I'm like, oh, this is a five-year-old who's going to grow up around a house surrounded by plants, meditating, chanting. All the things. All the things. I think about that. She has the privilege of a person who is living intentionally and healing on purpose. That's her baseline. That's her normal. That's normal for her. She's fortunate. I'm fortunate to have her.
00:28:34
Speaker
What a great answer. I mean, I'm looking at the time and I know what I promised you. I appreciate you so much. Jamila, where can people find you?
Connecting with Jamila's Work and Community
00:28:49
Speaker
People can find me at my website, jamilaready.me. That's J-A-M-I-L-A-R-E-D-D-Y.me. And on Instagram, at jamilaready.me.
00:29:01
Speaker
Yeah, I have classes can take a free meditation and breathwork on Saturdays. You can sign up on my website or the link in my bio on Instagram. Um, but I, I like the, I like the social media to be like the handshake. I'm like, really the, the real juicy stuff happens in these conversations. So thank you. And in the like.
00:29:20
Speaker
workshops in the session. So come find me. I appreciate you so much. This was meanest lay, but I was so excited to talk to you. You know, like I said, selfishly, I get to talk to people that I genuinely am interested in.