Transcript
Speaker: Welcome to Bigger Talks with Eric Bigger, a podcast dedicated to delving into unexpected conversations with a diverse range of guests.
Speaker: I'm your host, Eric Bigger, and I'm joining you each week to create an authentic space of dialogue about the subcultures of American life.
Speaker: Through engaging discussions with writers, actors, experts, and influencers, we will explore the strength of diversity and the transformational power of vulnerability.
Speaker: So let's dive in and discover the unexpected together on Bigger Talks.
Speaker: Bigger Talks, Bigger Talks.
Speaker: Back again, another episode.
Speaker: I want to welcome a special guest, Julian Godfrey.
Speaker: He's an author, media entertainment accountant, and mental health advocate.
Speaker: He has a book out called Fighting for Peace.
Speaker: So we've all been to that today.
Speaker: Julian, welcome to the Bigger Talks podcast.
Speaker: How are you?
Speaker: How are you feeling?
Speaker: What's going on?
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: I'm feeling great.
Speaker: I'm excited to be here.
Speaker: It's a great day, so I'm looking forward to it.
Speaker: You know, I want to preface just a little bit.
Speaker: People don't know, I saw Joe Ennis Warren at running.
Speaker: And I was thinking, yeah, asking spirit, like, man, I want to get a guest on this week.
Speaker: Who should it be?
Speaker: Who would it be?
Speaker: A lot of people, a few people canceled and they couldn't, it was available.
Speaker: I said, it's okay.
Speaker: And then I saw him at Runyon this morning and we connected, we talked.
Speaker: And I want to give you your flowers because when I first met you in 2017, I was fresh off the Bachelorette.
Speaker: And I think he was working at a local church in LA in a ministry department.
Speaker: And you were just a genuine person.
Speaker: That's one thing I will say, you're a genuine soul.
Speaker: You always had good energy.
Speaker: You always show love.
Speaker: And here we are.
Speaker: Life comes back around and
Speaker: We're here and he donated and gave a book to me probably like maybe a year and a half ago about fighting for peace and mental health.
Speaker: I'm in a mental health space as well.
Speaker: But before we get into like, can you give the people like, who is Julia?
Speaker: Like, who is JG?
Speaker: I'm gonna call you JG.
Speaker: Like, who is Julia?
Speaker: Where are you from?
Speaker: And like, how did you become who you are today?
Speaker: Yeah, I'm originally from Dallas.
Speaker: I'm out to Dallas.
Speaker: I've been in LA for 13 years now.
Speaker: So this is home.
Speaker: Likewise, me too.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Wow, this is home.
Speaker: So I moved here in 2011.
Speaker: I've been working in the media entertainment space since I've been here.
Speaker: I worked in post-production.
Speaker: I've done YouTube influencers.
Speaker: Right now, I'm working with an advertising agency and a sports agency.
Speaker: So I'm really enjoying that.
Speaker: It's a lot of fun.
Speaker: I'm a mental health advocate.
Speaker: I used to lead a youth ministry in L.A.
Speaker: for about four years.
Speaker: And that's how we met back in 2017.
Speaker: That was a good period.
Speaker: And I have a new book out.
Speaker: It's called Finding for Peace.
Speaker: It came out in 2022.
Speaker: It's a story of my mental health awareness journey.
Speaker: It's a story of me navigating through life with severe mental health challenges and the importance of my faith in God.
Speaker: Being in therapy for years and how both of those things working together allowed me to move forward.
Speaker: Also, staying in community, letting go of bad habits, setting boundaries, learning to say no, and all those things working together.
Speaker: So I'm excited to share it.
Speaker: Yeah, I love that.
Speaker: You know, right before we got on, my spirit was like, just open his book to a page and
Speaker: And that's where you guys will start.
Speaker: So I opened the book, page 60.
Speaker: You talked about therapy just now.
Speaker: And it's a quote that resonated that stood out to me.
Speaker: It says, I think Bishop Noel Jones said it.
Speaker: God works in two ways, prevention and intervention.
Speaker: If God does not prevent something from happening in your life, he will always intervene in the midst of it in order to bring you out of those situations.
Speaker: Can you unpack that?
Speaker: What does that mean to you?
Speaker: You wrote this, but what does that mean to you?
Speaker: It means exactly what it says.
Speaker: God works in two ways, prevention and intervention.
Speaker: There are some things that God has prevented us from happening in our lives, and we just thank God for that.
Speaker: And there are some things that we've experienced because sometimes life lives, the vibes are not vibing.
Speaker: Sometimes it's our own decisions.
Speaker: Sometimes it's just predicaments.
Speaker: We are around situations.
Speaker: But wherever you are, God will always intervene in the midst of.
Speaker: And that's what my story really is about.
Speaker: It's a story that God kind of reached in and just grabbed me out at the right time.
Speaker: Because there's so many people, and we'll talk about it, that have dealt with anxiety and depression and all the different mental health issues that I was dealing with.
Speaker: And so many people that have struggled with them for years and they don't know how to get out of it.
Speaker: They don't see a way of escape.
Speaker: There's no hope for them and nothing wrong with medication and all these different things.
Speaker: But for me, that wasn't my story.
Speaker: And it was a story of God's intervention really coming and statching me out and being able to share.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And it's so beautiful because I always tell people we can't live in a divided mind, right?
Speaker: You can't look at one place both times, right?
Speaker: So I think what happens is the ego mind likes to take over.
Speaker: And the God mind is suppressed because the God mind might not have enough logic for you to do it.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Or it might not be comfortable.
Speaker: But can you speak on your experiences in therapy and how that has helped you give more wholeness within with higher power, with God, with your spirit, for you to be an alignment of your soul's assignment to be who you are today, to continue to push this fighting for peace message for the world?
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: And I'll preface it by saying I've always been like a super private person.
Speaker: Like that's just how I am by nature.
Speaker: But when I had experienced everything I experienced, I knew I had to share it with somebody.
Speaker: I knew I had to tell somebody.
Speaker: And that's what therapy allowed me to do.
Speaker: And I write about it in my book.
Speaker: It's similar to...
Speaker: How we have a car, we put air in our tires.
Speaker: We wash our car every Saturday.
Speaker: We gas up the car.
Speaker: Gas is now $7.
Speaker: We do what we can, right?
Speaker: We have to get our oil changed every 10,000 miles.
Speaker: And then we have our trunk in the back of our car that we stuck things in the trunk and we close it.
Speaker: And then we repeat the cycle and then we open the trunk and we stuck things and we close it.
Speaker: Never unpack all the junk, all the baggage that has just been stacking itself on top of each other in our trunk.
Speaker: One day the trunk is going to explode because there's no room for that because no one sees the trunk.
Speaker: And that's what therapy taught me, how to unpack the junk in my trunk, how to unpack all the baggage and the 30 plus years of experiences in life that I never talked to anybody about.
Speaker: And so my story starts out as a story of grieving because I lost my father.
Speaker: Back in 2018 and one of my closest friends within a two-week period.
Speaker: And it sent me on this downward spiral.
Speaker: But in therapy, I realized two plus years of therapy during that season, I talked about those two losses for maybe 15 minutes total.
Speaker: What we talked about more than anything was all the other issues and all the other experiences that I never shared with anybody.
Speaker: So I was unpacking my life.
Speaker: I was unpacking my baggage.
Speaker: I was unpacking my drama.
Speaker: And so to answer your question, that's why therapy is so important.
Speaker: Some people think that they don't need therapy.
Speaker: They think that they're too good for it.
Speaker: Or I grew up in Texas where it was kind of shunned upon.
Speaker: Or in the Black community back in those days, you know, nobody went to therapy.
Speaker: But therapy was life-changing and it changed my life and it set me on this path.
Speaker: And it kick-started this healing journey.
Speaker: So shout out to therapy, but I'm a huge advocate for therapy.
Speaker: Yeah, and I think sometimes in life we have these anchors that are usually not positive, but they can be positive when we step outside of them, like loss, devastation, losing the love on your dad and a close friend.
Speaker: What did that do to your spirit and your mind at that moment that you feel like there's no more reason to live, that you didn't know what to do, or you stuck, or you just distraught?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: What was that emotion like and that experience like when you lost your dad in a close friend?
Speaker: What was that like for you to say pivoted, I got to figure this out?
Speaker: To answer that, honestly, there was no emotion because I was known.
Speaker: I couldn't feel anything.
Speaker: There's nothing worse than knowing that you have so much going on in your life and everybody coming to you to console you and everyone checking on you, but you have no feeling.
Speaker: You will be similar to someone who lost nerve damage.
Speaker: You know that you have fingers, you know you have toes, but you don't feel it.
Speaker: And that's where I was.
Speaker: And that's when I knew I needed help because I couldn't feel anything, which is worse than feeling very bad and very down.
Speaker: And of course, I had some very rough days, but I wanted to be able to feel again.
Speaker: I wanted to be able to have these conversations.
Speaker: I wanted to be able to vibe out new life again.
Speaker: I was so crushed.
Speaker: I was so hurt.
Speaker: I was in so much pain.
Speaker: So the grieving process was very difficult, but it did open my eyes that I needed help.
Speaker: And it caused me to be open and vulnerable enough to seek the help that I got.
Speaker: Yeah, that's amazing.
Speaker: Were you close with your dad?
Speaker: I was.
Speaker: I'm much closer to my mom.
Speaker: My parents were married for 44 years.
Speaker: 44?
Speaker: 44, brother.
Speaker: Put out through Texas, way down in South Texas.
Speaker: But I was very close with my dad, of course.
Speaker: But distance, you know, distance distorts.
Speaker: So living in Los Angeles and my family being in Texas, only seeing them a few times a year, you know, we had lost a little bit of communication and contact for sure, but we were close.
Speaker: Yeah, and I think, you know, mental health is different for everybody.
Speaker: Growing up in Baltimore, thug it out, tough it out.
Speaker: You better be a man.
Speaker: You better not cry.
Speaker: And you don't know about releasing pain, releasing feelings.
Speaker: But we do release pain because there's so much violence in the inner city.
Speaker: You know, I was born.
Speaker: For you, what was your environment like growing up?
Speaker: Did you grow up in a more safe, stable environment where you didn't have to worry or think about things outside of yourself?
Speaker: Or was it more kind of like neutral and there were some things but not as bad?
Speaker: Like what was your environment like growing up?
Speaker: Because you seem to have like the capabilities and the capacity to understand what you went through.
Speaker: I think some people, like you said, when they numb themselves, they don't even know what they're doing because they're so deep in it.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: And that's a very good point.
Speaker: For me, I can say that I grew up in the suburbs all my life.
Speaker: My parents were first generation college students.
Speaker: So like they're from Port Arthur, Texas, a very small city in Texas that's known for poverty.
Speaker: It's known for a lot of people who are high school dropouts and that type of thing.
Speaker: But they were able to make it out of that environment.
Speaker: And they went to college and they did a great job of raising me and my sister and setting us up for success.
Speaker: But at the same time, while we lived in the suburbs and while we, you know, didn't have to really want for much because of the way my parents were raised, they were raised to be survivors.
Speaker: They were raised to be strong.
Speaker: They came up in the 70s and 80s where you have to be tough and you have to be resilient.
Speaker: So you don't talk about your emotions.
Speaker: You don't talk about how you feel.
Speaker: What do you mean you don't feel good?
Speaker: You better go to work.
Speaker: You better go to school.
Speaker: So like those types of things were not openly discussed in our household.
Speaker: And I think that was just not their fault, but I think it was just a circumstance of the era that we grew up in.
Speaker: So going to therapy and expressing yourself and, how they say, sitting on a strength couch and all that, that wasn't anything that I ever thought was possible or anything that I ever aspired to do.
Speaker: It just happened.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And what you led to therapy or someone kind of told you you should reach out, like how did it all manifest in your life?
Speaker: Because some people don't even have the resources of a person to even give them acknowledgement that the therapy is possible and available.
Speaker: We just talking to our friends or our close family members.
Speaker: And we keep it moving.
Speaker: We go to work, we go to school, and we deal with it.
Speaker: But we don't unpack it in such a professional way where we can get it out.
Speaker: Who led you to therapy?
Speaker: You know, honestly, it was just a natural course of years.
Speaker: It wasn't someone... I didn't have any friends that were in therapy.
Speaker: I didn't have any family members that were in therapy.
Speaker: This was pre-pandemic.
Speaker: So, of course, therapy is hot right now.
Speaker: But seven years ago, six years ago, it wasn't as popular, even though it's not that long ago.
Speaker: So, it was more so me knowing that I needed help.
Speaker: And I write about that in my book in the chapter Seeking Health, chapter four.
Speaker: I know I needed to seek help because I didn't have anywhere else to turn.
Speaker: And I wanted to live.
Speaker: I wasn't suicidal.
Speaker: I didn't want to take my life, but I was in so much pain.
Speaker: I didn't see a path forward with the current circumstances the way they were.
Speaker: And I knew I needed some intervention, like you said.
Speaker: And what would you say to someone right now who know they need help, but they're afraid to get help because of judgment, because of fear, and they don't know what to do?
Speaker: Like, what would you say if you were like in their ear or just talking to them?
Speaker: What would you say to them to get where they need to be, to make them feel safe that that's okay?
Speaker: Yeah, I would just say take your right hand and put it on your left chest.
Speaker: If you feel something moving, that's a heart that's beating.
Speaker: That means that you still have life.
Speaker: You still have purpose.
Speaker: You still have a destiny.
Speaker: There's still more life for you to live.
Speaker: You can inhale and exhale and you can feel something.
Speaker: And if you can feel that, that means that your life is powerful, that it's impactful, that you deserve to live, that you deserve to be in a safe environment, that you deserve to survive.
Speaker: You may not know where to turn.
Speaker: You may not know what direction to go to.
Speaker: But there's hope and there's help for you.
Speaker: So if you know that you want to live and that you want to keep going, there's resources, there's outlets, but you have to be open-minded.
Speaker: You have to be vulnerable.
Speaker: You have to be willing to take risks.
Speaker: You have to get out of your comfort zone, all those things, if you really want to seek help.
Speaker: Because a lot of people want to be better, but they don't want to do the work.
Speaker: Because seeking help is just the first start.
Speaker: It's doing the actual work.
Speaker: You know, I run into clients and people sometimes that they don't want help.
Speaker: They want attention.
Speaker: Facts.
Speaker: Sometimes people use therapy or pain or devastation or, you know, even in a environment.
Speaker: I didn't have this.
Speaker: We didn't have that.
Speaker: We'll use that as a pillar to feed off of to get attention.
Speaker: which doesn't really benefit us because we just want someone to know that we're here and that they love us.
Speaker: For you growing up, were your parents really loving and were you taught how to love yourself?
Speaker: Because I feel like at least the black community, we don't know how to love ourselves.
Speaker: We just know how to do, get, and be what we think we see on TV or what we saw in the neighborhood or maybe what our dad or mom raised us to be.
Speaker: And I feel like we don't have the tools to
Speaker: given from our experiences, how to love ourselves firsthand, that is actually understand, at least not in my environment, I didn't express it.
Speaker: What was it like for you, bro?
Speaker: I grew up in a very loving family.
Speaker: My father, of course, didn't come to me every day and say, Julian, I love you.
Speaker: But a lot of times it's not verbally expressing that you love someone.
Speaker: It's just knowing that you go home and that you're going to have some food there waiting on you.
Speaker: Or that you're going to have a ride to school in the morning.
Speaker: It's knowing that you're going to have some breakfast ready for you before you get up and go to school.
Speaker: That's how you show love.
Speaker: And you don't realize it when you're young because you're always complaining, oh, my dad didn't do this.
Speaker: My mom didn't do that.
Speaker: But the fact that they're providing for you, the fact that they're there, the fact that they're showing up, that they're supporting you, that they're coming to every basketball game, that they're celebrating you when you make straight A's or whatever the case may be, that's an expression of love.
Speaker: My mom is a bit more expressive.
Speaker: So she would verbally say, I love you, but do the same things as well.
Speaker: But someone saying it doesn't mean, or not saying it doesn't mean they don't love you.
Speaker: It's just knowing that you have that supportive infrastructure there and that you have that safe space.
Speaker: And no family's perfect.
Speaker: Every family has its challenges, but just knowing that you have a home to go to, that's love right there.
Speaker: And that's the best definition I've ever heard in life about love.
Speaker: Never looked at it like that.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: You look at it from that perspective, because when you think of love, you think of emotions, but you don't think about what's already happening.
Speaker: You don't think about, oh, you got food in the refrigerator.
Speaker: You get a ride to school.
Speaker: Mom is there.
Speaker: Dad is there.
Speaker: You get to see them.
Speaker: You have clothes on.
Speaker: You have sneakers.
Speaker: And they're doing the best they can with what they have.
Speaker: But a lot of times we look at it like what you did say, what we didn't get from our paradigm and our intention and our desires.
Speaker: And it's so interesting because now I'm thinking, well, we're not getting loves because we're being ungrateful.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: Get what I'm saying?
Speaker: Because if we're a person, there's always love, right?
Speaker: There's always, oh, school.
Speaker: Oh, I have clothes.
Speaker: Oh, I get a ride to school or I have a job.
Speaker: All these little things that we find something that we don't have in corner that is not being loved.
Speaker: And it's not good and it's not healthy because we don't know better.
Speaker: But more importantly, I think, because that's why I was asking the question, because you had love, you're able to look at it from a different lens where you're not looking at it from someone who probably had the same things you had because they didn't get that little bit of that.
Speaker: They feel like they didn't get love.
Speaker: So.
Speaker: Yeah, like it's easy to say, oh, you didn't come to my basketball game.
Speaker: You didn't show up to support me for this or for that.
Speaker: Well, I was working two jobs.
Speaker: I was supporting you while I was at work.
Speaker: I was cheering you on at the call center.
Speaker: I was doing it while I was working that third security job.
Speaker: And you don't realize it when you're young.
Speaker: But the sacrifices that our parents had to make to be there for us and to support us, especially if they were not very vocal or very emotional or very open with expressing their innermost thoughts.
Speaker: A lot of times it was just them being there for us.
Speaker: That was their way of letting us know that they love us.
Speaker: And that's love.
Speaker: I mean, you actually helped me heal according to me just now because I was that guy.
Speaker: You didn't come out in dreams.
Speaker: You would tell me something, didn't do it.
Speaker: But what about all the other stuff?
Speaker: she or he did.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And then I would tell people in relationships, I said, when people break apart, they always focus on the worst things that happen.
Speaker: What about all the good things that happen?
Speaker: You still had a good time.
Speaker: It just didn't pan out in the way you wanted.
Speaker: It's okay.
Speaker: That person did the best they could.
Speaker: It's just interesting.
Speaker: And that's why it's so important to get different perspectives and feedback because perspective opens up your mind to kind of see things from a different lens.
Speaker: So you can actually actualize what it is you think you want in a different way, right?
Speaker: So I thank you for saying it.
Speaker: Let's get into religion and spirituality.
Speaker: Like how has that impacted your life?
Speaker: Growing up and as you've gotten older, and how has that taken you to a next level of who you are today?
Speaker: Yeah, my faith in God is a very important factor and cornerstone in my life.
Speaker: My mom is Catholic, so I grew up going to Catholic mass every Sunday.
Speaker: That was our upbringing.
Speaker: And my mom taught us the importance of always being in church, always honoring and serving God, and always putting God first.
Speaker: And so I really believe that that infrastructure has followed me throughout my adult, my life.
Speaker: And so as I got older and as I started to connect with God personally and build my own relationship with him, and I started to see that he, you know, he had more for me than what I was experiencing currently.
Speaker: And I really started to tap into that.
Speaker: It really shaped my life.
Speaker: It shaped a lot of my decisions that I made.
Speaker: It determined a lot of the things that I did and didn't do.
Speaker: I just wanted to make sure that I was pleasing God and that I was doing the best that I could.
Speaker: And it's important because as we get older and as things change, as life changes, I feel like we all got to have some type of spiritual currency, I would say.
Speaker: Some type of God force in our life, a higher power, the creator, whatever one believes in.
Speaker: If we just think we're creating everything from just ourselves and the world wouldn't be what it is, right?
Speaker: I wouldn't be able to run it to you today.
Speaker: I was just thinking the same thing.
Speaker: If you think that that just happened by circumstances.
Speaker: I prayed.
Speaker: I prayed.
Speaker: I told you that in running.
Speaker: I prayed this morning for the Spirit of God to open up a portal of love just to have a great time going to running, right?
Speaker: That was just my intention.
Speaker: And then boom, I saw you.
Speaker: I was like...
Speaker: podcast this Friday.
Speaker: If he's available, boom.
Speaker: Then I was telling him, he wasn't.
Speaker: It's okay.
Speaker: Here we are.
Speaker: All that is God's energy.
Speaker: It's purposeful.
Speaker: It's alignment.
Speaker: What's the chances of you coming down and I'm going in and we meet, we talk for five minutes and boom, here we are today.
Speaker: That's why I think, thank God for your mom having that back
Speaker: ground in Catholic church and the infrastructure and the consistency always been in the church.
Speaker: Even if you're not believing in it, she's saying it.
Speaker: And they always say faith comes from hearing, right?
Speaker: Real showings.
Speaker: The more you hear it, eventually you have to believe.
Speaker: It's like a song.
Speaker: You start saying the lyrics that don't even know
Speaker: what they're saying, I think, you know, it's such a beautiful way for people to know that God is everywhere.
Speaker: God is everything.
Speaker: And it's God in you, God around you, God for you.
Speaker: You just got to find out what God are you serving, right?
Speaker: And I think, you know, the way the system is set up, in my eyes, social media, mass media, it's to put fear in us, to take us away from God.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Because the make us only believe in what we can see, the 3D, but all the powers in the unseen, you know?
Speaker: And so, because when you speak, I feel like you're a prophet.
Speaker: I feel like you're a therapist.
Speaker: And I feel like you're someone who, it makes sense why you're in youth ministries, who gets it without trying to get it.
Speaker: If that makes sense.
Speaker: And when you started writing your book, fighting for peace, you
Speaker: What was the peace you wanted to fight for?
Speaker: Give us your context, because I don't like to say, this is what peace means to me.
Speaker: I want to know what does peace mean for you and what peace are you and what are you fighting for?
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: So fighting for peace is really like a play on words, because when I started going to therapy and when I started really kickstarting that healing journey, I realized that I had to make a lot of decisions that I really wanted to change.
Speaker: And so I had to let go of a lot of unhealthy habits.
Speaker: I had to be open minded to new opportunities.
Speaker: I had to be open to new experiences.
Speaker: I had to be open to new connections and new friendships and to get myself out of my comfort zone.
Speaker: Michelle Obama said something that's so powerful.
Speaker: She said that growth comes with difference.
Speaker: Most comes when you put yourself in situations and circumstances with people who don't look like you, with people who don't think the same, who don't behave the same, who don't operate the same.
Speaker: And it may be uncomfortable at first, but you'll realize that the more you surround yourself with different types of people, they'll show you a side of the world that you didn't even know existed.
Speaker: And you will realize that you've grown and that you expanded and you've enlarged your mind.
Speaker: And you've seen other things that are possible because you didn't surround yourself with sameness.
Speaker: And that was what I had to do to grow.
Speaker: I had to do something different because I didn't want to see the same thing I had been experiencing for that period of time.
Speaker: So fighting for peace is really playing on words because I started boxing.
Speaker: I grew up playing basketball all my life.
Speaker: I took up boxing and boxing, in addition to therapy, in addition to my community, in addition to my relationship with God and all these things working together, saved my life.
Speaker: And so that's what I was really fighting for.
Speaker: It was fighting for a new life, mighty opportunity, fighting for my mental clarity, fighting to feel again, because I told you I was numb for so long.
Speaker: Fighting to have that feeling again and to feel like myself.
Speaker: I was really fighting to be myself.
Speaker: And in the course of fighting to get like myself, my eyes were open to this whole world of possibility that I didn't know existed because I just wanted to be normal.
Speaker: All I wanted to do was be normal again because I was in so much pain.
Speaker: But in my search, in my fight for normalcy, I realized that there was a world out there that I hadn't experienced.
Speaker: I think he just opened up, cracked the life code.
Speaker: He opened up a problem of the church.
Speaker: Think about it.
Speaker: People who experience depression and anxiety the most are in spurs.
Speaker: It's all because they're fighting to be themselves.
Speaker: Because I feel like if we're not ourselves,
Speaker: We get into a different space because it's not ourselves.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And you want to get back to center.
Speaker: But sometimes we're so afraid to get to center because of judgment.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Me knowing people who experience, you know, with this suicide ideation.
Speaker: I know people who I was in contact with where I'm like, they didn't want nobody to know.
Speaker: And I'm like, what am I supposed to do?
Speaker: Right?
Speaker: And I'm just like, well, why?
Speaker: And it's all because of judgment and fear of what it's going to look like and how you're going to be a burden to someone else.
Speaker: But all you're doing is fighting to be yourself.
Speaker: And your natural self is going through an experience that's uncomfortable because most people don't talk about it.
Speaker: So you don't want to talk about it because you think it's going to look at you.
Speaker: It's all about judgment.
Speaker: And I think if people can get back to knowing the intention behind it, that you're just fighting to be yourself.
Speaker: That's it.
Speaker: I feel like there's so many layers of depression and anxiety.
Speaker: Like you spoke on medication.
Speaker: I don't know if you spoke on like chemical imbalances, but we just get to the root of like, who are we in this moment?
Speaker: What are you feeling in your body?
Speaker: What is your mind saying to you?
Speaker: Where do you think it's coming from?
Speaker: What would you like in this moment to happen?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And I think sometimes it's so easy to gravitate to the other side.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Is thought we shouldn't manifest.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And that's why I think the God consciousness of the God mind and spirit is needed in life.
Speaker: Because what I believe is that you're fighting with so many different entities out here.
Speaker: Sometimes your thoughts are not your thoughts.
Speaker: They could be your spouse thoughts.
Speaker: It could be your co-workers thoughts, your friend.
Speaker: And you might be so empathic that you're picking up on their frequency.
Speaker: Now you speaking and thinking like them and you don't even know.
Speaker: And now you're in a depressed state.
Speaker: So what do you think is the root cause of depression and anxiety from your experiences?
Speaker: And what do you think is the quickest way for people to not only fight for themselves, but to get out of that space?
Speaker: These are great questions.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: You're a basketball player as well.
Speaker: When you miss a three-pointer, the crowd, they don't really say too much because, you know, it's a three, you may shoot 40%.
Speaker: If you miss a half-court buzzer beater, they'll say, ooh, because at least you went for it.
Speaker: If you miss a layup and you're 6'8",
Speaker: They're going to start saying all kinds of crazy stuff.
Speaker: Yo, dunk the ball because you're too close to miss it.
Speaker: You're too close to not make that.
Speaker: And so to go on to something you just said, sometimes we have to be careful how close we get to certain people.
Speaker: Get close to somebody like Eric, who is an influencer, who's a mental health advocate and who's in the wellness and well-being space, who's killing it and who's doing a great thing.
Speaker: If you get too close to somebody like you, you're going to find yourself doing a lot of the things you're doing.
Speaker: You'll get some help.
Speaker: You'll have some influence.
Speaker: You're impoverished.
Speaker: You'll be a leader.
Speaker: But if you surround yourself with people who are lazy, who don't want anything out of life, bad habits, people who are just talking about people all day, if you get too close to that, you're going to start getting that in you as well.
Speaker: Because what's on you is going to eventually get on me, whether it's positive or negative.
Speaker: That's why you got to be careful who you get close to.
Speaker: And that's why I'm very intentional on being close to the right people.
Speaker: Alignment is important.
Speaker: It's important how close you get.
Speaker: And when you get close to the right people, you're too close not to catch on to success if somebody next to you is doing something powerful.
Speaker: So to go back on what you just said,
Speaker: Where do these thoughts come from?
Speaker: It comes from the content we consume, potentially.
Speaker: It could come from the nutrition, the food that we eat, the things we put in our bodies.
Speaker: It could come from a lack of physical movement, not being inactive.
Speaker: What I've really determined and why you see me hiking is because physical activity stimulates the brain.
Speaker: It stimulates the body, but it opens your mind.
Speaker: It opens your heart.
Speaker: Moving your body has so many other positive impacting things in your life outside of just physical fitness.
Speaker: Sorry, what was the question?
Speaker: I got off on a tangent.
Speaker: Good.
Speaker: That was great.
Speaker: So basically, I was just saying like, I mean, you said most of it, like to move your body, fool your eating, the things you listen to, be aware, be careful when you get close to.
Speaker: I would say like maybe you answered that too.
Speaker: How did you get out of that state of depression and anxiety?
Speaker: But I think you just hit it on the nose.
Speaker: The big word is osmosis.
Speaker: Your environment, that's where did you grow up at and how did you grow up?
Speaker: Was mom and dad in the house?
Speaker: Did you get love?
Speaker: Because our experiences were different.
Speaker: Does it make that we can't have the same experience?
Speaker: We might have looked at them different, right?
Speaker: And now, because I like to unpack the people I'm interviewing so the audience can get a real perspective of where the paradigm you're speaking from.
Speaker: But I think most times people look at life from a lens of what the world is saying.
Speaker: Like the world has been pushing a narrative and been pushing the word depression and mental health.
Speaker: And what I don't really like a lot about what's going on is that there's people out there saying they are depressed when they're really not.
Speaker: Because there's people who are really suffering from depression, like really suffering.
Speaker: And it's a big difference.
Speaker: Like, yeah, you can have a down day.
Speaker: You can be sad.
Speaker: Yeah, you might be depressed, but there's people who will have medication.
Speaker: Like, you know, I have a client.
Speaker: She told me when she's 12, she was on Xanax.
Speaker: Like, they put on depression.
Speaker: So she was 12.
Speaker: She's 41 right now.
Speaker: What am I supposed to tell her when she... You get what I'm saying?
Speaker: So...
Speaker: She's not a bad person, but what is she supposed to do?
Speaker: She's getting medication at the age of 12 and now she's a grown woman.
Speaker: She's an adult.
Speaker: So I'm learning that everybody experiences different.
Speaker: With some people, it is chemical.
Speaker: It could be hereditary, but I do believe in the power of God and the power of spirit.
Speaker: That we can get rid of a lot of things if we just really believe and manifest the word in our soul each and every day and get around good people.
Speaker: I just think the word depression and anxiety has been so loosely misused in a way where the more you say something, the more you become it, right?
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: And we have to be careful of this labeling.
Speaker: Labels are for packages, not for people.
Speaker: If we start just identifying based on whatever label is popular at the moment, we're going to start to wear that label.
Speaker: Over the course of time, if we weren't depressed, if we were just having a bad day because my favorite coffee shop ran out of oatmeal, now I'm depressed.
Speaker: They don't have any vanilla syrup today.
Speaker: But I keep saying that, eventually that's going to start to really manifest itself in my life.
Speaker: Now, I can say, again, I don't put labels on anything, but I was depressed.
Speaker: I have full-blown anxiety.
Speaker: But, and I had a lot of other things that I talk about.
Speaker: OCD.
Speaker: Really?
Speaker: Eating disorder, which was very challenging.
Speaker: Coptic bobbia, et cetera.
Speaker: Man, let's talk about that.
Speaker: Let's get into the details there because I have a close family member.
Speaker: He doesn't like airplanes.
Speaker: He's afraid of getting elevators.
Speaker: Highly successful, driven person, which you will never know.
Speaker: Wanted to get in big crowds, super anxious.
Speaker: Let's talk about that for you.
Speaker: What was that like?
Speaker: Where do you think it came from?
Speaker: Where you think it was just part of who you are and you're just embracing it now more?
Speaker: Where did it come from?
Speaker: Where did it stem from, from your point of view?
Speaker: I will say I don't struggle with any of those or I'm not saying that arrogantly at all, but because of the work that I had to do.
Speaker: And again, going back to what you said earlier, the intervention of God.
Speaker: And I can't not talk about that enough for my story.
Speaker: And this is my story.
Speaker: But I have to say that if it hadn't been for God's hand on my life, I don't know where I would have ended up.
Speaker: But yes, for a period, I was really struggling with claustrophobia to the point where I would take a routine flight from L.A.
Speaker: to Dallas three or four times a year and be totally fine.
Speaker: But there was a flight that I took where I had the worst panic attack ever, which is, you know, much stronger than an anxiety attack.
Speaker: And I thought my life was over.
Speaker: I just knew that was the last two and a half hours of my life because I was in such close proximity with other people on a plane, a routine flight.
Speaker: But that's what happens when anxiety and all these different mental health issues are combining themselves, working together.
Speaker: It's like somebody who has a cold.
Speaker: You got the flu.
Speaker: You have this, you got that.
Speaker: You got laryngitis.
Speaker: You have all these different things, right, that are working together at one time.
Speaker: And it has you in a chokehold.
Speaker: And that was my story.
Speaker: So yes, the claustrophobia was very difficult for me to deal with.
Speaker: But when I started going to therapy, and it wasn't an instantaneous experience whatsoever, when I started doing the work, and when I kickstarted my healing journey, I kept showing up.
Speaker: It wasn't perfect, but I kept showing up.
Speaker: Over the course of time, it started to get a little bit better.
Speaker: I started to get a little bit comfortable being six feet from someone.
Speaker: This was pre-COVID, so there was no six feet of distance, but I started to get a little bit more comfortable.
Speaker: And now I'm totally fine.
Speaker: I could be in tight spaces, open spaces, regardless, but I was really struggling with that.
Speaker: But it just took time.
Speaker: I don't think I'll be saying that time heals all wounds because it's not all the way true, but time and work and intentionality is
Speaker: and discipline and, you know, being structured and having that mentality that I don't care what happens, I'm going to go after this.
Speaker: I'm going to be able to survive in an elevator and not die.
Speaker: I'm going to be on an airplane and sit on a road with two other people and make it to my destination.
Speaker: It sounds small, but those little things kickstart your life.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And what is some of the work or tools you were using in the process to get to where you are today that you could share with the audience and the people listening who watch this?
Speaker: What is some tool that's tangible, that's practical, that they probably can use?
Speaker: I don't know if like breathwork or whatever works for you.
Speaker: I would love to hear that.
Speaker: Yeah, there's so many things out there.
Speaker: I don't do any of these things, but there's like a lot of people doing sound baths.
Speaker: You're doing Reiki.
Speaker: There's a lot of mindfulness work.
Speaker: There's wellness retreats and all these different things, which they have their place and they're very beneficial to certain communities for sure.
Speaker: But for me, I would say it was really being healthy, like putting the right stuff in my body, like making sure I was consuming good, organic, all natural food.
Speaker: I'm a creature of habit.
Speaker: So having a routine.
Speaker: So it don't matter what day of the week it is, if you go to Runyon, you're going to see me there at 7 a.m.
Speaker: I'm a routine person.
Speaker: So having structure in my life made a huge difference for me.
Speaker: Yeah, having routine helped me to break out of that claustrophobia and anxiety because I had the discipline in my life.
Speaker: Going to the gym every day at a certain time, even though it sounds crazy, I don't care what's going on, I'll be at the gym at 7 p.m.
Speaker: every night because that's part of my routine and my regimen.
Speaker: I'm not saying I'm not open-minded, but that's what really helped and worked for me.
Speaker: Having new interests, developing new hobbies.
Speaker: I never been like a real big coffee person, but I started drinking iced coffee every day.
Speaker: Just going to the coffee shop, that became my theme, like my getaway, my escape.
Speaker: I couldn't go to Tulum and Puerto Vallarta and Cancun every Tuesday.
Speaker: So I had to go to Colvaciti and Santa Monica and Beverly Hills to do certain things like that.
Speaker: So having those times of daily detaching,
Speaker: can really be a good tool for you as well.
Speaker: And again, the biggest thing is having these conversations.
Speaker: Once you start to feel a little bit better, you start to get a little bit more comfortable opening up and talking to your friends about how you feel.
Speaker: That opens up the door to so much more.
Speaker: Yeah, and I tell people, you know, what we reveal, we heal.
Speaker: And you never know where anyone's going to.
Speaker: I didn't know.
Speaker: I had a buddy.
Speaker: I've known him for 15-plus years.
Speaker: And last year, he's been struggling with seasonal depression for at least 10 years.
Speaker: I'm like, what?
Speaker: But see, that's the benefit of living in California and Los Angeles.
Speaker: We don't have real seasons, right?
Speaker: It doesn't get as cold and snowing.
Speaker: We get rain here and there, but it's not enough to be like, I'm not going outside.
Speaker: I don't even want to go to jail.
Speaker: Oh, it's below 20, whatever, right?
Speaker: And I think the best thing you said was fool you, right?
Speaker: Because fool has energy.
Speaker: Fool owes a vibration, which you consume, you become.
Speaker: And structure, I think you're really a lens of structure and a routine gives you life, right?
Speaker: It traits life.
Speaker: I think the biggest thing I've learned in the whole mental health space is when you have something to look forward to.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Have something to look forward to.
Speaker: It's hard to be depressed.
Speaker: Even if you're a depressed person, but you got work, going to work helped you, right?
Speaker: Even if you're suppressing your emotions and you're working, it's helping you because if you sit still and you sit by yourself, you might get a panic attack, right?
Speaker: And I always would tell people, I said, Tony Robbins said it the best.
Speaker: If you're feeling depressed, the best thing you can do is be in service.
Speaker: Depression is the ego.
Speaker: It's the I. I can't do this.
Speaker: I'm not good enough.
Speaker: I can't pay the whatever.
Speaker: I, I, I, I. When you're in service, you take the attention off yourself and you put it on someone else.
Speaker: Therefore, you can't be in a depressed state.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Because when you're in a depressed state, it's all about I, the ego.
Speaker: And so I always tell people, you know, no expectation, but appreciation, but give service to someone outside of yourself, make you feel a little bit better.
Speaker: It's not easy, but it's giving you something to look forward to.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So many people are very self-conscious.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I shouldn't have wore this gray t-shirt.
Speaker: I should have wore a man.
Speaker: Maybe I should have wore long sleeves or maybe I should have wore a jacket.
Speaker: I wonder if they're looking at me.
Speaker: Can they hear me?
Speaker: Do I look okay?
Speaker: Is the lighting okay?
Speaker: Is there a shadow on my right eye?
Speaker: Nothing going on on the left side of my beard.
Speaker: So many people social encounters where you're consumed with yourself.
Speaker: But like you said, if you can ever learn to loosen and lay aside the self-consciousness and learn to get involved in service, or if you're into spirituality, like you said, learn to be more God conscious.
Speaker: God, what do you want from me?
Speaker: God, how can I help somebody?
Speaker: How can I run the canyon and meet the right person at the right time on the right day of the week and let it open up a door for me?
Speaker: How can I get on this podcast and inspire someone who's struggling and it hasn't even told their spouse or their partner or their best friend?
Speaker: That's what it means to be more God conscious.
Speaker: And the more God conscious you are, the more self-aware you are.
Speaker: Not self-conscious, but self-aware.
Speaker: You're aware of who you are.
Speaker: You're aware of where you are.
Speaker: You become more socially aware as well about the people in your space and your surroundings.
Speaker: You become more sensitive to the needs and the desires of others.
Speaker: And it's a game-changing and life-changing thing, losing the self-consciousness and raising your God consciousness.
Speaker: And losing a self-consciousness and raising your God consciousness.
Speaker: That's a quote with Oprah say, Twitterable moment.
Speaker: They got threads now.
Speaker: Go to threads.
Speaker: You ain't got JG.
Speaker: He said it.
Speaker: It's just incredible how you express the truth from what you've been through to make people feel comfortable and safe to hear it, to actually receive it.
Speaker: Because a lot of times I believe people don't know how to receive the message with clicks.
Speaker: Where they're like, got it.
Speaker: I get it.
Speaker: You know what?
Speaker: I can't change my diet.
Speaker: You know what?
Speaker: I can't create a routine.
Speaker: You know what?
Speaker: Maybe I'm going to go to the gym every day, but at least I'm going to try three days a week.
Speaker: You know what?
Speaker: I've been getting my friends to tell me to come to church.
Speaker: I'm going to give it a try.
Speaker: Right?
Speaker: Because we all have options.
Speaker: What's the story they always say?
Speaker: middle of the ocean and you're about to drown and you know, you're on a raft and a boat keep coming and you're like, God, you want to see me?
Speaker: How you got to wear?
Speaker: You know, it's like, you just never pay attention to the signs that are in your mind.
Speaker: Yeah, because you're so blind by the wrong mind.
Speaker: It's just beautiful how you show up fighting for peace.
Speaker: Now, is there any projects or anything you got going on that the people should know about?
Speaker: Where can we find you and follow you?
Speaker: Like, tell us more.
Speaker: We're going to get into the orbit of you and everything you do.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: So yeah, you can follow me on Instagram at Julian K. Godfrey for sure.
Speaker: And right now I've really been focusing on my physical health, being more active and also the wellness and wellbeing component of my life.
Speaker: I will always be a mental health advocate, but, and I told you this morning, you told me this experience is the best teacher and we were experiencing life.
Speaker: I've realized that
Speaker: physical movement and physical activity can open up the door for so many other components and capacities in your life.
Speaker: So I'm really focusing on my health, my wellness and well-being, and really sharing those messages.
Speaker: I'm really continuing to support Fighting for Peace, my book.
Speaker: I have a couple of things coming out soon.
Speaker: I am an author, so I do have another book coming out.
Speaker: It won't be out this year, but it'll be out soon, hopefully.
Speaker: So I'm really excited about that.
Speaker: And it's really just a follow up to Fighting for Peace.
Speaker: Fighting for Peace is a periodical that starts in 2018 and it continues through 2021.
Speaker: And it looks back at portions of my, similar to The Last Dance did with the Michael Jordan documentary, how it looked back to earlier parts of his career.
Speaker: It looked back to my childhood.
Speaker: And so my second book is kind of that continuation.
Speaker: And it's like the next part of my journey.
Speaker: But before I release it, I just continue to have these conversations and really getting out within the community and sharing the message of mental health awareness, the importance of good nutrition, the importance of taking care of ourselves, the importance of self-care.
Speaker: Self-care is not selfish.
Speaker: All those things working together, how we can live the life that we're destined to have.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well said.
Speaker: Self-care is not selfish.
Speaker: Y'all hear that, people?
Speaker: Follow us on Instagram at Julian Goffrey.
Speaker: Get the book, Fighting for Peace.
Speaker: I'll put everything in the show notes.
Speaker: And can you just leave us with some inspiration before we get off?
Speaker: Some inspiration that just comes to your soul in the moment.
Speaker: I would love that from you.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: I want to say this, one healthy decision away.
Speaker: I know life can be very difficult and the pressures of life.
Speaker: We start the year off in January on a high.
Speaker: Everybody has that adrenaline.
Speaker: We got the vision board going.
Speaker: We got our goals that we want to accomplish.
Speaker: I'm going to lose that last 15 pounds.
Speaker: I'm going to cut this alcohol out for January.
Speaker: I'm going to be more social.
Speaker: I'm going to spend more time with my family.
Speaker: I'm going to show up with my friends.
Speaker: I'm going to get that promotion on my job.
Speaker: And I'm going to go back to school if I got to go back to school.
Speaker: All these different things, right?
Speaker: But life starts to happen.
Speaker: And life does not care about our goals.
Speaker: Life does not care about our plans.
Speaker: That risk is going to be due to first of every month.
Speaker: Trust me.
Speaker: There's always going to be things going on.
Speaker: But we have to have that relentlessness on the inside of us.
Speaker: And sometimes it's tough to determine that inner fighter.
Speaker: But you just have to take things one day at a time, one moment at a time.
Speaker: And so I say you're one healthy decision away from your next healthy decision.
Speaker: And making a healthy choice, if it's just eating some fresh fruit this morning or having a smoothie in the afternoon or going for that 30-minute wellness walk, it'll lead and open up the door to the next thing.
Speaker: If it's just being open and vulnerable and having that conversation,
Speaker: Checking in with your friend and saying, hey, how are you doing?
Speaker: Are you good?
Speaker: Like, bro, are you really good?
Speaker: Like, just having those open and vulnerable conversations, that's a healthy decision.
Speaker: You're one healthy boundary away.
Speaker: Learning to say no.
Speaker: Learning to, I ain't down with that.
Speaker: I know I've engaged in that and consumed that for the last five years, but I'm good, bro.
Speaker: Like your one healthy boundary away, your one open-minded decision away from a new connection, from a new opportunity that you didn't even think was possible by getting out of your comfort zone.
Speaker: And so that's what I really want to encourage everyone out there is I know it's March.
Speaker: There's a lot going on and we can't stop life from lifing, but we just have to be relentless.
Speaker: We have to be intentional.
Speaker: We have to make a decision to just show up to the best of our ability every day and be gracious to ourselves.
Speaker: Give ourselves some grace.
Speaker: We're not perfect.
Speaker: We'll never get it together all the way perfectly.
Speaker: But just be patient with ourselves and extend that same grace and gratitude to everybody around us.
Speaker: And we can make the world a better place.
Speaker: One else is the way.
Speaker: I love it.
Speaker: I always tell people grace and pace.
Speaker: Life is not a race.
Speaker: Julian Godfrey, people, he is amazing.
Speaker: Like he said, show up, want to help you precision the way, be relentless, be intentional, do the best you can when you can, and just give yourself grace.
Speaker: And the pace of life will catch up to you when you need to.
Speaker: And this is another Bigger Talks.
Speaker: podcast episode of conversation.
Speaker: Shout out to Simplified Impact, the marketing gurus who markets all my content.
Speaker: Don't forget to get you some merch.
Speaker: It's Miracle Season merch.
Speaker: Get your hoodie.
Speaker: Get your shirt.
Speaker: It's MiracleSeason.co and share, subscribe, like, and follow Julia.
Speaker: It's been amazing.
Speaker: Peace, love, and
Speaker: Thank you for tuning in to another episode of Bigger Talks with Eric Bigger.
Speaker: If you enjoyed today's conversation and found it insightful, please consider sharing this episode with a friend, a co-worker, or someone who can benefit from these insightful discussions.
Speaker: Your support helps us reach more listeners as we continue to foster meaningful dialogues about the diverse subcultures of American life.
Speaker: I'm Eric Bigger reminding you that every conversation has the power to broaden perspectives and foster connection.
Speaker: Until next time, keep embracing the unexpected on Bigger Talks.
