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Katie: Hello and welcome to “The Wellness Mama Podcast.” I’m Katie from wellnessmama.com and wellnesse.com. That is wellness with an e at the end. That’s my personal care line. And I’m here today with Jules Schroeder and we talk about living an unconventional life and intuitive living. Jules is a fascinating person. She’s ranked by “Inc Magazine” as number one of the top 27 female entrepreneurs changing the world and is one of the top 40 millennials to follow. She’s also a musician and visionary on a mission to inspire people to create a life by their own design, which is what we talk about today. She’s the creator of Unconventional Life, as well as a Forbes column. And a top-ranked podcast by the same name for entrepreneurs that features the stories of people living in this new paradigm. And she reaches millions of people through her work.
In this episode, we go on a lot of topics we talk about how she was on “American Idol” when she was 16. How a near-death experience shapes the course of her life. How she broke the belief that in order to have more, you have to do more, and broke the habit of working 14 plus hours a day. Her thoughts on shifts in higher education, thoughts on creating in the physical world versus non-linear reality creation, and living an intuitive life through your own unique blueprint. Very fascinating, wide-ranging conversation, I know you will enjoy it. So let’s join Jules. Jules, welcome. Thanks so much for being here.
Jules: Katie, thank you. So good to be here. Hi, everyone.
Katie: And we have so many fun things to talk about today. But before we jump in, I have a note in my show notes that you did American Idol when you were 16 and I have to hear this story.
Jules: Yeah. I was such a fan. I grew up in Connecticut on the East Coast. And the auditions were in Boston. And this was, I mean, you know…I’m 32, 33 now so many years ago, and I just remember going into the stadium, and it took us literally, like, hours and hours and hours to get there. And my mom accompanied me. She didn’t expect me to get through the first round. And, you know, they line me up in a line, and they put their hand up. And when they’re hands up, you start, when the hand comes down, you’re done. And lo and behold, I got through that first round and they gave me my little golden slip.
And so, we were out in Boston, and it was so cool. And then that led to going through several more rounds. And I got down to around 200 people and had my 15 seconds of fame in high school. I went to this, like, Catholic all-girls high school, and people were like, “I saw you on the TV.” And at the time, I actually…I used to smoke cigarettes, believe it or not. And so, I got to a later round, and I was so nervous when I, like, chain-smoked this whole pack of cigarettes. It’s just so different than the life I live now. And they’re like, “When you stop smoking, please come back.” I don’t think being a 16-year-old smoking cigarettes was good for business at that point. But it was such a good, good trip. And I learned so much about reality TV at that point. But yeah, definitely a fun fact that gave me my 15 seconds of fame as a junior in high school.
Katie: I bet that was a whole different world. And now you have…you’re well known for doing many other things that I’m really excited to chat with you about. The first is I have a note about your near-death experience. And I would love to hear about this because I think this is a thing that most people hopefully don’t get to experience, or at least very often, and I bet it gave you some amazing context.
Jules: Absolutely. Well, that American Idol story led me to starting multiple six and seven-figure businesses and had business partners embezzle and, you know, it was…in 2015, after a slew of just crazy life events. And I was out on the water wakeboarding one day, and the crazy thing was three weeks before I’ve always had these premonition dreams. I had one of these dreams and this woman came to me in my dream and she was standing in front of a mirror and she had a tray table with three candles in it. And she said that “When the three candles blow out, each candle representing a week that you are going to die.” I woke up that morning and I was like, “God, this is a really weird dream.” But I could feel it in my bones and that there was this intuitive knowing. And literally exactly three weeks to the day, I was out on the water wakeboarding with the guys, and I used to be a former competitive snowboarder, and, you know, I was out to see who could get the most air and I spent all morning trying to launch, and lo and behold, I launched and I came down and I smacked and face-planted. And I did a quick check in that moment. Everything was attached. And about an hour later, I got off the boat, I started to lose feeling in my arms and my legs. I looked at my friend and I was, like, something is not right.
My next memory I remember coming out of the MRI in the hospital being approached by this white figure six Black Shadow Council member and having this conversation that was “Jules, you have more work to do in the world. Do you want to do it?” And at the time, they thought my neck was broken. They thought I might have been paralyzed. And I just remember saying, “Yes, as long as I don’t come back as a vegetable.” And that next time when I was zapped back into my body, I felt this energy forge my neck back together and shoot down my spine. And the moment that I woke up, it was like everything shifted. It was very much the end of life being driven by me and the start of life coming through me. And it was a wild encounter that there’s so much more to say on it. But I remember my sister was in the hospital room and she left because she felt this presence coming in. And yeah, looked at the calendar that day and it was exactly three weeks, so.
Katie: Wow. That’s one of those stories that gives you goosebumps, for sure. And it sounds like that then kind of led to shifting the course of a lot of things in your life beyond that. And you mentioned at that point, you were already in the midst of businesses and you had a lot going on. What changed for you after that? How did that start expressing different in your life?
Jules: Yeah. So, you know, about a year before, you know, I had this publishing company. We had this business partner embezzle and had you know, 20-some different employees. And so, I was very much in this belief that in order to have more, you had to do more, you had to be more. And so, in the midst of that I went from, you know, working maybe 6 to 8 hours a day to 12 hours a day to 14 to 18 hours a day with the solid of I just do and do and do. And lo and behold, that obviously was not true. And so, it was like a year before I’d started this subtle death almost capped with this like full-on death. And I remember right after that experience, I get a call three weeks later from this woman who is working at the United Nations and she was like, “Hey, do you wanna come to be a global ambassador for education?” And we had met at a TEDx talk, you know, months before. And I was like in this neck brace. I’m like, “It’s not really the best time.” But I just hear this voice and it’s like, “Tell her you’ve got this initiative called CreateU to reimagine higher education.”
And at that moment, I thought I had completely lost my mind. I was, like, “CreateU? You want me to tell a UN lady that I have an initiative when I have nothing other than a voice in my head?” And I said it and she was like, “Can you be at the UN in three weeks.” And so three weeks later, figured out how to put a website, a team, all those things together. I’m on my way to the UN, Forbes Under 30 reaches out, and then, you know, a few months after that, they asked if I wanted to start writing for them. And I actually told them…I was like, “I’d love to write but I also have this vision for a podcast to tell stories of people doing life differently.” And they’re like, “Great. Make it the first official podcast of Forbes 30 Under 30.” And that launched on to “Unconventional Life.” And it was the domino from there. I got into doing live events all over the world and built this huge new brand.
But it was the first time that I found a home for all of me. I had this belief that I had to compartmentalize elements of my self-expression. I’m a musician. I teach yoga. I love, you know, travel. I love geeking out in business strategy, yet I believe that I had to hold all these things separate and there was that first time that I was, like, “The unconventional life. Okay, I can get behind this. There’s space for me.” And ironically, when I brought everything together, I had more success and fulfillment than I had ever had previously. And so, I very much became about listening rather than what do I want to have to happen? What wants to happen? And can I be the space for that to occur?
Katie: I think that’s such an important shift. And that’s really cool that it happened for you at such a young age through a profound experience. I think a lot of people maybe do a lot of work for a long time to get pieces of that to fall into place. So then, let’s talk about your podcast a little bit because I’m now a new listener and really enjoying it. Talk more about how you use that as a platform to really, like, share this message that you’ve found.
Jules: Yeah. So my dad worked Wall Street in New York City. I grew up the oldest of five girls. It was very much a traditional way of believing and doing when his oldest daughter wanted to not go into the corporate world and become an entrepreneur, especially back when I was graduating. There were no examples of this. You know, it was one of 12 career paths and it was, like, how do you play the game? And I was just so stubborn. And he was like, “Well if you don’t make it, we’re not going to support you.” We always have those people in our life who don’t see your vision yet, right? You got to stay committed to it.
And so, I really wanted to have a space to give permission. And I always like to say ‘per my mission’, that no matter how I’m doing it, or you or someone else is doing it, we can look at all these different stories and find our piece of it that says, “Yep, I can too. I can be the space too.” And that’s the idea that started the podcast. And you know, we’ve reached millions of people in over 75 different countries and people who have said, “Cool, I figured out how to make money in the world. But now what? Why do I still go to bed at night with this nagging feeling that there’s more? How do I also have an epic relationship with my partner? How do I have a lifestyle? How do I get to do all the different things? How do I excel and I didn’t see many models of people really doing this holistic perspective of success.”
And so that’s the basis of the show, and I find them a magnet for people in transition. So if you’re in transition, and you’re listening to this episode, we’re in good company. And I find that one of the things that I’ve become the space for is really that bridge to clarity, to allowing people to activate parts of themselves that are nagging but they haven’t put voice to, or these internal knowings but their external reality doesn’t match it yet, to really have that congruency. And so, the podcast, maybe gets to become a space for that. I mean, we’ve had everyone from Marianne Williamson to director of the movie “Pretty Woman,” to professional athletes, to musicians to just actually everyday people who have incredible stories, you know, in the Middle East or doing different stuff in other parts of the world. So it’s been a really incredible ride. And I noticed for myself, I’ve had more permission as I’ve gotten to do it. And I think we’re, I don’t know, six years in the making. Time goes the longer you do something.
Katie: I love that permission for my mission. That’s a really cool resonance of that. And on the business side, I also can very much understand your process with that. I came from also very academic family of PhDs, and I left college on purpose. And that was a very shocking decision for my family. They had no context for entrepreneurship. And, to their credit, without understanding it, they were at least not against it. They just didn’t know that it was going to be a great idea. And it was a path I got to forge on my own. And it’s beautiful to see in today’s world how people are getting to forge those paths and how things, to your name, very much there’s an unconventional life and an unconventional lifetime.
You also mentioned the higher education, shifting higher education initiative. And I would love to hear a little bit more about that, or just maybe your thoughts and your process around that. Because that’s something that’s also very top of mind for me with having six kids and how much the world is shifting right now.
Jules: Absolutely. Well, you know, podcasts like this, conversations like this, the fact that this gets to be the norm where you can open up your iTunes app or Spotify or wherever you listen to things and just instantly be plugged into different worlds is so profound. And for me, you know, it’s the shift that I feel like so much of us we’ve been taught to create very much in the physical world where it’s, like, we look at the textbook, we take the test and we get the job, we get the better job, and it’s so linear. And one thing that I’ve found and how I’ve had success is that when I look at the moments where I’ve had the most success, or I’ve interviewed my guests that have had the most success, it’s always been about nonlinear reality creation. There’s been moments where there’s been profound alignment. So there has been a way to understand how alignment feels, intuition, instinct, or wherever you talk about it, and then to instantly translate that into action, and create from that place.
And I always like to think about it. It’s almost like creating from the field rather than creating from form. So you’re creating, you know, from that place of alignment rather than just creating from that place of, like, what’s right in front of you. And I find when you do that and you shift that, it becomes less about the hours doing something and more about the process and the experience of doing it.
And I feel like we’re in a place right now, especially after COVID and things like that, that the type of leadership and the type of learning that we do has to be embodied. It has to be experiential. If I look at…you know, I don’t want to go get relationship advice from someone who, you know, is out there preaching, who’s never been in a relationship, or who’s been in like six different marriages and is, like, you know, that’s…I want to find that embodied example. And I think that’s the beauty about higher education now with so many different ways of unschooling or learning in the world, or even having things like this, is we get to really have shortcuts to, like, “Okay, this person’s walked my path, and they’re doing it now. How are they doing it?” And the path to doing it, it’s so unique for all of us.
And I find it becomes less about how do I copy their formula, that that’s a great template, but how do I understand how my unique blueprint works such that when I understand how my unique blueprint works, every single time I can take that blueprint and apply it into a different way. And, like, as a, you know, musician, I was like, “I want to be a professional musician. Okay, what do I know about my blueprint that’s been successful in business creation? Okay. I’m really good at networking. If I stay like this…” And so I figure out how I learn, I figure out the conditions I need to learn, and then from that place, I replicate it in different industries.
And that’s what allows me to be fluent in all these tools I think for any of us. Like, it’s not like I’m, you know, special. I’ve just spent a lot of time wanting to know how I work so when I set the conditions to thrive, then I can step into anything. And that’s what I think this shift about learning and even reimagining higher education is that… Like, I’m such a visual kinesthetic learner. Like, when I’m having someone, like, talk to me, like, auditory and other ways, like, I don’t get it. I’m like, “I got to touch it. I got to be in the media.” And so, I find traditional learning, you know, we get pushed into one format. And so, this becomes about self-discovery for you and how do you put yourself in the conditions that thrive? And I think osmosis, being in the medium, being around community, having community like this that you offer in this podcast, it gives us that space to do it. And that’s where I think, moving forward, we’re gonna see more and more of, which is why we have all these incredible young kids. Like, I mentioned this girl, she was the youngest designer to be on New York Fashion Week at the age of 11. Like, there’s all these incredible, you know, children, and even adults, you know, out there doing it, by having their own map.
Katie: Yeah, I love that. And I’ve talked about a similar concept just within the health realm, and that people ask me, like, “Oh, what did you do that helped the Hashimotos? What did you do that helped the weight loss?” And I’ve said the same thing. I’m like, “I could tell you the things I did, but at best, it’s gonna be something you can pull ideas from that we’re each so individual, you have to find the framework that’s going to work for you, and that’s through experimentation.” So I’d love to hear about your process of this, like that idea that it’s not following a template but finding your kind of unique method and this and how do you develop that? How does a person find their unique blueprint?
Jules: Yeah. That’s great. You know, I find that, you know, in today’s world, we have so much noise. And coming back to what I was saying earlier, there was always this process of having to do more in order to get the results. So very much creating in the field. I want to have a successful business, then I should spend at least five hours a day in client outreach and I should have a minimum of 15 sales calls, and then that will create the conversion and that will give me the thing, or insert whatever the game is that you’re playing into that formula.
And what I noticed is that without having the space, I actually believe that when we go to create from a subconscious level, it gives us the space to then access on the conscious realm. And when we’re congruent with it, that’s how we create those quantum leaps. And case in point, when I was going through this embezzlement, you know, I had been working 15,16 hours a day trying to start four different other companies to pay for all the mess of things. And I finally hit a point with the breaking health journey. I had six concussions, fractured vertebrae. I’ve actually dealt with Epstein-Barr, like so many different things that I was like, “My body I’m in brain fog at least eight hours a day. There’s no way…” Like, I thought I was, like, making progress, but your baseline is so lowered that you lose touch of what progress is.
And so, I created this game that I called the Hell Yes or No game, and I said for myself for 60 days, instead of doing more, what if I was actually going to be no to everything? Like, could I actually even hear my full yes, meaning there was so much should yeses, you know of, like, “Oh, you know, my partner needs something. Oh, the business needs something. Oh, this me something,” and I lost contact of where I would give my energy. And those true 10 out of 10 yeses, those full-body yeses where someone’s like, “You want to come on, you know, a getaway this weekend?” And you’re like, “Oh my goodness, yes.” Like, I lost contact to that. And so the first thing I did was I audited all the areas of my life, spirituality, career, relationships, family, and I put all the things that I do on a daily basis, you know, whether it was answering emails, making lunches, like, whatever those things might be. And I gave them a list on a 1 to 10 of just aliveness, and I didn’t overthink it. So, everyone, you can go ahead and do this, you can go ahead and put the list down under 1 to 10. And 10 is like maximum yes, maximum aliveness, one is like, “I really should quit that thing right now.”
And when I looked at that audit, I found that there were only two things on my list at that point in time that were actually an 11, CrossFit and music. The amount of time that I spent doing those two things was probably 5% of my overall time. Most of my time was actually in the fives and sixes. So the average of my life, my life force was, like, at a five. And here I was, like, wanting to do all these things to better myself, but I had to look at my relationship to my energy with relationship to my time and what I was giving my yes too. And so, that awareness was the first step because I think when you have awareness and action, that equals transformation. And sometimes those micropatterned interrupts, whether it’s something you hear in the podcast, we have to create them or we will never find new awareness, you know. That awareness then allowed me to be looking at the action. And then from the action, I could take a different choice. And the funny thing is what I noticed is when I started saying no to things and I gave myself this experiment for a week, I noticed that every time I said no to something that was, like, six or seven, like an opportunity that, like, “Oh, but if I lose that opportunity, maybe I won’t get one again.”
I started training my environment that I wasn’t available for sixes and sevens. And ironically, even though I had to be patient with a no, a 9 or a 10 would start to appear. It’s kind of like a relationship, if you notice, like, you’ve had like a good partner, but you really want to call him the one or whatever that might be, and you’ve been doing the same type of habitual patterns, you have to start training your environment that you’re available for something different.
And so, as an experiment, you can do the list, or you can just look at your life for the next week and just track. When you get those invitations, how does it feel in your body? Do you feel aliveness? Do you feel contraction? Can you give it a number or not give it a number? And just notice what your relationship is to how you feel after it. Because I find usually when you say yes to the sixes and sevens, they’re kind of like sixes and seven outcomes. And then when you say yes to those 10-out-of-10s, like, the secret menu becomes available. There’s, like, what you think is possible, and then there’s, like, what you know could be possible, and there’s that you don’t know that you don’t know that becomes possible. And so, I find so much opens up in that space and your relationship to your no along with your relationship to your yes is such an easy way to start training your environment for what you’re available for. And from that place, I find it creates foundation for even more learning and building to occur.
Katie: I love that you mentioned the word should also because that’s something I’ve said for a long time, is anytime you hear that word internally of, “I should,” that it’s a great time to pause and reflect and go back, because it’s likely there’s some kind of conditioning there that’s not actually necessary in your best good or the best good of the people you care most about. And we all have those patterns that come from past life. And I know this might be a tougher question to answer, but for a lot of the moms listening, I know a lot of the things on our calendars and our weekly schedules relate to our kids, who do, in fact, need our energy and our attention. Any specific guidance for people who are the caretakers of young children and still going through this process?
Jules: Well, women are extraordinary. God, we have balanced so many things on our plate that most people don’t see, and the only time they see it is when something’s not working, but they don’t see all the hours that go into it. And what I would say is that carve out those times, right? There’s the things you can control and the things you can’t control, yet you always get to control how you relate to it and you always get to control what energy you get from it. And if you notice that there’s just a task that you don’t really love, whether that’s like driving the kids to work every day, or whatever it might be…to work every day, driving the kids to school every day, or whatever it might be, you then get to shift and maybe that is something you renegotiate. If there’s a task that you do that really gives you a three all the time, maybe there’s a conversation that can happen with your partner, or if you don’t have a partner, maybe there’s a great opportunity. “God, this thing gives me a three and drains so much of my energy. Is there a way that I can get some support?” And maybe my kids’, you know, mom lives nearby or in their neighborhood or that might be the thing, but I always find if you get really clear on something that really drains, there’s always a solution.
And it’s not about taking everything. You don’t have to go to your whole life and hash it if you don’t have that availability, but just look at those one or two needle movers. And, you know, case in point, having a clean space with my partner is so important to me. We realized we would always get in these arguments where he’s up later than I am and I come home and there’s dishes in the morning and I start my workday and it just really wrecks my vibe when I wake up. And he found that five minutes of him putting cups into the synchro dishwasher and wiping down the countertops before he goes to bed, I feel completely transformed and my morning goes from, like, a variable, “Is it going to be a 3 or a 10?” To like a reliable, “I feel excited to start my day.” And so, that one action, five minutes got super clear on, hey, that’s all it needs to be as a needle mover. And so, I’d start to look at noticing what are those things specifically that really zap, and you can slowly start to bring up your baseline. And from that baseline, I find more options and opportunities become available when things seem ordinarily quite fixed.
Katie: And as a piggyback to that question, I think for the moms listening as well, I always try to bring it back to the parenting angle a little bit. And that like as we go through these shifts, also how do we help our children go through these shifts earlier and not get to the point that we are before they figure some of these things out. And so, I’d love to hear if you have any guidance for how do we help give our children these tools from a young age? And I think in today’s world, kids are even the victim of a lot of societal shoulds and expectations and the constant going and going and going.
Jules: Absolutely. You know, and I even like…you know, we talked about being a woman as well, but I mean women, men, whoever is listening, but it is. It’s like so many hats that you are required to wear and do it mostly in silence. And before we had communities and podcasts like this, like, I would always feel like the lone wolf that, like, no one got me, and especially if I was thinking differently or wasn’t, like, happy with the status quo, even though I should be happy because I have all my needs met because I have this great thing. And that, like, even ability to say, “Hey, it’s okay for me to desire more.” And desire I think is such a beautiful thing and it sparks imagination and also creativity. And I find the more that I allow that, which is also connected to lifeforce and money. And it’s all one channel that when you open and you activate that channel, all the gold flow. And I like to think about…it’s like you’ve got a hose hooked up to the sky and it moves through us. And oftentimes we have these little kinks, that, you know, we feel, like, you know, those are luxuries, right? “Ugh, I’ll get to myself later. Ugh, I’ll get to it later.”
Yet the how we be and how we live in that congruent I think is the biggest thing for children that we get to model. And as someone who is so hypersensitive, and I didn’t understand this about myself, you know, until much later. Like, I’m such an introvert-extrovert that, you know, give me the condition and I’ll show up. But, you know, that’s a lot of impacts, and especially after my near-death experience. Plus having moments where I was on the red carpet, and I was seeing entities and then I was feeling people’s period cramps, and I was like, “What is going on in my life? Have I really lost my mind?”
And I just needed to know that sensitivity is okay, and that there’s conditions for how I get to be with my sensitivity. And I think with children, getting to show them, A, different ways that they get to, you know, be with each other is so important. And then the other thing I find is, like, the gap. I find oftentimes it’s, like, we should have adult conversations and then kid conversations, and I think that’s true. But I find what I love about the girl that I mentor is that, you know, she’s included in everything that she gets to be around. There’s no, like, she grows up and then life is a certain way. There’s a lot of inclusion along the way. And I think there’s a time and a place for that. But being able to bridge that gap I think is so important as well.
Katie: I agree. I think the modeling is a huge part of it. And also, I’ve said for years as well, like kids are so beyond capable of understanding so much. And when we give them that respect of educating and having those conversations with them, it’s amazing, whether that be in just the household realm of them helping out around the house, or whether it be kids starting businesses, which mine are doing as well. They’re so infinitely capable of those things if we just don’t get in their way.
Jules: Yeah, absolutely. And even with the sensitivities to step two, you know, it’s like taking care of yourself first. And actually, like, there’s times I don’t want to go meditate twice a day, nor do I have the time to or whatever it might be, but I know that those 15 minutes, or that 10 minutes, or even that 5 minutes ripples so much that no matter what I give or say or do, if I get right with my energy first, it will always transmit, you know, more seconds, so.
Katie: And let’s talk a little bit more about intuitive living. I know you’ve written a book about this, which I have, but I haven’t gotten all the way through yet. So, I’d love to hear you kind of explain, A, what led to this book, and also maybe walk us through some of the processes.
Jules: Yeah, absolutely. So this book we actually just did. It was a collaboration with Dr. John Demartini and several other amazing authors. And we, you know, released it in February. We hit bestseller in 5 different categories in 27 countries, which is, like, wild to see how stuff like that moves. And, you know, the process behind it was really for women. It’s this conversation that we’ve been having in so many ways about beginning to activate, you know, the feminine way and allowing women to have more trust, more clarity, more ease and breaking through the fear of taking up space, the fear of living life from a different way, the fear of even, like, almost, “Am I going to be too selfish or am I going to miss something?” And so a lot of the premise of that book, you know, one of the things that I wrote about is what I call intuitive action, and which is really this nature of, you know, listening and living from this deep place, being in action around it, and then creating your world from that place.
And I find a lot of times, you know, intuition is this thing where, you know, it feels, like, you know, this mysterious thing that happens occasionally. I can’t really trust it. Whenever I do get an insight, it’s, like, unruly and it sends me in a direction that’s not convenient. And so, we have all of these different beliefs about how we relate to it, yet I think, inherently, that’s where our power… When I look at times that I’ve had most success in my business, it’s because I have taken inspired action. When I look at times with relationships, it’s because I said something that I was so bold and so terrified to speak. And so I always like to say, if you’re in that intersection between feeling, like, you know, totally scared or, like, completely excited, I like to say I’m either batshit crazy or totally onto something, that that nervous excited sweet spot is usually a great indicator to lean in. And I find that setting up the structure for confirmation, so giving yourself a little bit of space for deep listening, whether that’s even driving, you know, putting on your favorite song, if you’ve got just a few minutes in the morning or if you have the luxury of, I mean, honestly, meditation. If you don’t have the time to meditate for 10 minutes, I always like to say you need to restructure some priorities. And that 10 minutes could even be, like, in the bathroom, closing the door with the little kids or whatever it looks like, you know, for you. It doesn’t have to be perfect.
But through that deep listening, you then get to create a space for confirmation, like, what we were talking about earlier, you get to train your environment to be able to hear, “Hey, I heard you and I’m going to listen, and this is what happened as a result.” And that, you know, can be something like, “Hey, I really feel like I need to go to Starbucks right now. I don’t know why. That seems absolutely crazy. That makes no sense in my day.” And then you go there, and you end up having this conversation. And this happened to a friend of mine who’s, you know, a top-charting musician. He got the hit to go to Starbucks. He ended up talking to this guy who was paraplegic. And they wrote the song together called Running Man, and it came out and it, like, hit hundreds of millions of streams just because he followed that nudge.
And so, if you can give yourself the play to experiment a little bit about when do we have these nudges and can I give some confirmation without judgment? Can I just increase my action quota? Because there’s things that we want in life and we feel disconnected, like there’s a gap. But when you put yourself in the medium of just being in action with those nudges, a lot of stuff tends to show up in a lot quicker capacity. And I always like to say when we have a goal, oftentimes we think about it, like, a step 10, “Like, I want to start a podcast,” If you’ve never done a podcast or anything like that, it feels so daunting that you probably are paralyzed in that step for a long time. Or, “I want to write a book.” If you’ve never done that, like, that was me for, like, six, seven, however many years that when you start to say, “Okay. cool, what’s the very first thing I can do? I don’t know. I can get into conversation with people who write, or I can call up a friend and just share what my idea is of a book and that could dictate the next step.
And case in point, I got approached by this woman who’s working with Dr. John Demartini. And, you know, she was like, “I love what you’re doing in the world. I’d love to follow you along with this. Do you want to contribute a chapter? And can you have it done in two weeks?” And I was like, “That is a bold timeline.” But that bold timeline is the structure that I need to get what I feel out. And that’s the last piece that I would say is just create the structure. You know, coming back to the conditions to thrive, what’s the structure of fulfillment you need?
And I wanted to be a writer many years ago for a long time. And if I hadn’t had that template with Forbes that required me every single day to submit, you know, an article almost four times a week, I would have never progressed as a writer. I was a horrible speller., definitely dyslexic. There was no reason I should have my words, right? Like, there was all this fear. And I had validation that supported why I should not be on forbes.com, yet someone believed in me. And, you know, it took me 9 hours to write 500 words, and then eventually 5 hours, and then slowly, it got to be much more efficient. But if I didn’t have that structure that was big enough for me to keep going or something that I could show up for, I would have never gotten past that. And so, a lot of the book is about feeling what’s inside of you, learning how to confirm it, and creating structures that allow those types of things to move with ease and doing it in organic way. And it’s just a different way of orienting from how we’ve been told more linearly how to start creating more intuitively and frankly, with more ease.
Katie: Yeah. And I think you’re right, that that kind of stepping back process in evaluating and just having that awareness is an important key step. At least in my own life, I’ve seen it’s hard to have a touchpoint with your intuition when you’re in that overwhelm. Like, those seem to work very much against each other. And there have been points in my life where I had to take a step way back and take everything off the table for a little while and then reevaluate, because I think that overwhelm and that fear, to your point, kind of gets in the way of being able to actually do that deep listening at all.
Jules: Yeah. A 100%. And I find it’s like…for me, it’s the difference of, well, how do I have a good life, to how do I have an extraordinary life? How do I have a life that I’m so wildly turned on by? How do I look at where I put these ceilings or upper limits about… “Well, my relationship is always going to be good, but it’s never going to be epic,” or like, “Oh, this health thing is going to be this, but it’s never going to be that.” And how do I just start to slowly increase, you know, what I’ve told myself is possible to full-blown stepping into what is possible? And I find the more wildly turned on the life is that you live in, and you define that for yourself. My version is gonna be completely different than yours or anyone else’s. That becomes magnetic and radiant. And from that place, you know, instead of having to change everyone else’s behavior, you become the space for it and everything else starts to calibrate from that place.
And it’s like, I don’t know if you’ve ever, like, done your hair, and you’ve gotten all dressed up and you feel like a million bucks and you walk down the street and you watch people’s response to you from a new energy. It’s like, “Watch out world.” And then there’s times where you’re, like, rolled out of bed and you’re tired and groggy and pissed off, and you’re like, “Oh, like, I don’t even want to look at anyone.” And then it’s, like, everyone’s bumping into you. And so you can notice slow shifts in how you’re being that allow, you know, big ripples to happen, and you get to set the parameters, but you matter. And there’s only one of you. And we’re each here for this reason. And we often think, and I got that for my near-death experience, that my reason isn’t as important as something else that I have to give my time or my energy to. But the truth is, is that the more activated you get to be in whatever way that you are, the whole point of what we’re doing here is to be able to be that space for ourselves, to be that space for others such that, you know, this whole human experience makes sense in some way.
Katie: And I’m also glad you brought up the idea. I think women especially run into this of kind of breaking through fear points, and also that idea of taking up too much space. This seems very, very pervasive for women especially. It doesn’t seem, on average, to be a thing men run into as much. They seem much more competent in their ability to take up space. Anything specific to women on how to kind of work through that point?
Jules: Yeah, well, ladies, we are power. And it’s like no reason why, you know, the Dalai Lama has said that it’s like the western women will take over the world. And there’s complete reason why we have been squished to not take up space, because we are so powerful, and in a lot of a patriarchal society, and things are evolving. But in that framework, we have literally inherited. It’s in our DNA. It is like in our structure, you know, with money, with this, with that. And that becomes awareness of, like, looking at what’s been inherited but also saying, “God, they’re afraid of me fully unleashed in the world.”
And I find that understanding your own power and connecting it, and even having a simple practice, like a feel-good ritual of noticing, “Okay, when I do this, I get in the frequency.” And there’s like the Hertz law of energy. And if you look at the top of that, everything has a frequency. Joy and gratitude is at the very top, and actually, shame is at the very bottom. So when we’re in the vibration of shame, like actually the frequency on the scale of shame in terms of what attracts there, versus the attraction of joy and gratitude, it’s like night and day.
And so, I like to say to myself, if there is a way that I can get into a feel-good practice, and for me, sometimes that’s putting on a song in the morning and like just lip-syncing in front of the mirror. And even if I don’t feel like doing it most of the time, it’s just doing it brings me a little bit of a smile, or even like a little bit of a gratitude practice of just like putting my hand on my heart. And sometimes I’ll force myself to literally, like, smile, and, like, feel my cheeks smile, even if I’m really frustrated. But just to allow that frequency of gratitude to occur. I find it’s just micro things that I get to deposit into my feel-good, that slowly I build that muscle.
And when I was dealing with autoimmune, you know, last year, I mean, I had points where I was so sick and I didn’t even know it where I couldn’t even get to the kitchen. Like, the fact that we’re even having this conversation to me is a miracle at this point. Like, if you had asked me literally a year ago, I mean, I was in such chronic pain, I was having neurological twitches, that starts to like MS, so many different things. My mental health fully plummeted from this virus attacking my central nervous system.
And I got to a point where I felt so profoundly complete. I was, like, I have done a podcast. I was, like, there’s definitely enough music, I’ve done enough events, I’ve helped enough people. And there was no light, no practice, no thing, nothing that I did, could allow me to keep going. It was, like, someone had taken my light switch and the kill switch was on. And, you know, you have had your own journey in many different ways. And I’m sure some of you listening to this, you’re drawn to this conversation, you’ve also had that place. And it was almost like I had to relearn to walk. I had to relearn to be. And what I didn’t realize is that I was being asked to run my energy and be who I am in a completely different way. And in order for me to live, parts of me had to die, and I had to be able to make space for this. And it’s the beautiful, like, chrysalis into the butterfly and I think just about taking up space and the fear to kind of meet yourself where you’re at. And I couldn’t in those moments, like, put myself, because as much as I wanted the positive I feel good, the reality was is, like, I was in pain.
The irony was the moment that I allowed it to be okay, the moment that I gave space for it, the moment I put awareness that, like, I could just meet myself there, the moment that very next micro-step happened, and that very next micro-step happened. And it’s kind of like sometimes you go to the gym if you haven’t worked out in around the first 5, 10 minutes in the first week of, “This is so stupid. Why am I here?” You’re judgmental. You’re looking at everyone around you. But at some point, by staying in the medium, you look up, and you’re like, “Wow, this is awesome.” Or like, “Whoa, look at my progress,” or, “Damn.” And I just remember looking back, you know, many months into this, and after that, and I just had points and I was like, “Whoa, my energy, I can sustain it. I could do a podcast again. This is cool. I can go to the kitchen and go to the grocery store.” And so, I find just that commitment to staying in the medium in those feel-good ways, you get less attached to the expectation of how to be on the other side. But it more becomes about the experience of being and meeting yourself where you’re at every day in that. And that opens up a whole new world that I find is actually sustainable.
Katie: I think that’s so important. I also have gone through the autoimmune disease journey. And I remember, and my heart goes out to the women who are still in that fatigue and how it really does take over your body. I think there’s something beautiful to that, allowing it to be okay and how much of life seems to be about letting go and not… I think often our discomfort comes from our expectations or our shoulds or our wanting to force something to be a way. And there’s so much freedom in the letting go, even when it’s just emotions, and we’re talking about our inner experience. I found slowly…I’ve been a slow learner on this lesson, but that not judging the emotion, but just accepting it as part of the human condition and what your experience is right now, and doing that same thing, hopefully, helping my kids to be able to, instead of saying, “Oh, I feel sad. That’s bad.” Or even worse, I hear them say “I am sad,” and getting to go, “Well, let’s step back, because you are not sad. You are you. You’re experiencing sadness and that isn’t necessarily a bad thing.” And, like, “What does that feel like? And where do you feel like in your body? And can you be okay with it? Can you take a deep breath?”
And even more so, I love that you talk about the power of women, because for years and years on this podcast, I’ve said that moms are a force of nature and that when moms change, the world changes. Absolutely. And like, we not only just have so much financial power in the world for purchasing decisions, but even more so, we have that touchpoint in relationship and with the future generation. And so, I love that your work also helps people so much on this journey.
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You also mentioned gratitude. And I love this. I think it’s one of those things that I discounted for a long time until I experienced it, because you hear about gratitude and how important it is. And I wholeheartedly believe the best health advice even I could give anyone is to go outside right after you wake up, get outside in the light, because that does so much for your biology, and write down things you’re grateful for. And it does not sound like it would be a big profound thing, but truly I have seen over and over when people adopt that habit, their whole mindset shifts, and then their whole life shifts.
Jules: Yeah. Absolutely. And I find allowing the frequency or the space of gratitude, you know, to feel and it’s even something I do, you know…every morning as I like to say, you’re either creating from your vision of the future or you’re creating from a memory of the past. And so, oftentimes we are at the effect of what’s happened, leaving our present moment reality at the predictable future of what will continue to happen. And you have to create those micro pattern interrupts in yourself. And gratitude is such an instant way. And I always like to say, if I can visualize and feel the future vision for myself, not just seeing necessarily, but as an experience, like how it feels, like and this is something I would do when I was, like, so many of those mornings, and the sunlight was such a big thing for me as well, that I would feel myself with energy, I would feel myself with aliveness and I would let it literally take up my whole being and I would see if I could feel it more and more and more.
And the more I allowed myself to feel that and anchor to that with vision, that’s when I found that it really anchored, you know, into the presence and that frequency of gratitude…you’re not familiar with it, the Hertz Energy Scale, or like energy of consciousness is so much power in checking that out. And I find that it’s like the way to…it’s the hack of life, and, like, all it takes is a few minutes and you just get to allow yourself to connect to the doing, but most importantly, connect to the being of that space. And from that heart when you have heart and brain coherence and those two are at that frequency of gratitude, watch out world. This is the collective uprising of women in wealth in all areas. And when we are in coherence with our heart and our brain, we are unstoppable.
Katie: I also love that you talk about that…channeling your creative superpower, because I think women have a unique ability, as women in general, to be that creative force. I think all humans do of course, but I think women have a really unique ability to do that in a special way. So any other guidelines or things you offer…I’ll recommend the book of course because you can go into a lot more in there than we can cover in a podcast. But any other suggestions on channeling that creative superpower?
Jules: Yeah. So I’m actually about to do a whole summit in May about this. And we should definitely consider having you on as a guest as well because it was a way of shifting how to create. Now, I remember after my near-death experience if I was going to go public speak or something like that, I would spend so much time on my slides and my PowerPoint and there was process and blah, blah, blah. And one time I was at a castle town in Italy. We were doing an “Unconventional Life.” We always do these events in exotic locations, like bucket lists in Madagascar, Safaris in South Africa this summer, or a castle town in Italy. And something I felt so nauseous, I had this full-on headache. And I was, like, “This is so inconvenient. I’m supposed to give my big keynote, the whole event, blah, blah, blah.” I was, like, that builds up, and I was like…I literally couldn’t see anything. And so, I had to in that moment redirect, and I just decided to pull everyone out of seats. See, we’re actually in this like Colosseum, like, Roman theater. It was, like, wild the way we were doing it. And I pulled everyone on the stage and we all sat in a circle. And I was like, “This is so weird,” but I was feeling guided to do it.
And I just spoke. And it was, like, I didn’t even know what I was saying. And I had my eyes closed for most of the time because people were also having their eyes closed. And I looked and people were just streaming tears and emotion in connection to it. And it was, like, something took over me that wasn’t fully me but it was me and I just allowed the words to come through rather than for me to drive the words. And it was the first moment that I started to shift. Well, what is it like if I become less attached to the content or the thing that I’m doing and more concerned about the vehicle that I am? Meaning can I be a translator for what wants to happen through me rather than a steward of me controlling the thing that wants to happen? And that started to shift everything, because it became less about the words that I say, or less about how perfect or how rehearsed or any of the things, but I started recognizing that it’s transmission. It’s me just being in that space.
And when you think about music and art, you feel something. It’s raw. It just happens through. And all of my music albums that I write, I literally sit down at the piano, I put the voice recorder full-on, transmissions. They’re just channeled songs. And it was a new way of approaching life that I recognized that if all I have to do is set the conditions for this vessel, if I keep my vessel clean with alcohol, I take care of my body, I get to sleep, I put myself in inspiring conversations like this, then no matter what happens, I’ll trust that that is exactly what’s supposed to happen.
And from that place, my energy, my infinity of creation becomes like quadruple, because I’d less about me having to control it, and I was a full-on control freak, recovering control freak. It becomes more about the allowance of that. And I didn’t even realize that was an option in how to create in life that could be so much more energized, and all those different things. And so, I would say we are all channels. It’s not like some superpower I got because I had a near-death experience. We are literally all channels. We have vision, we have intention, we have energy, we have the life force enough. And oftentimes, there’s those kinks in the hose, and sometimes it feels like it’s barely trickling and there’s nothing out, and sometimes it feels like a fire hydrant and you’re like, “This is too much. I can’t control it. I gotta shut it down.” So how do you just create that steady stream and apply it in all these different areas of your life? And I find whenever you do that, there’s like the secret menu emerges again and again again.
And that place, that’s where so much magic, that’s the flow, you know, gets experienced. We talk about flow in yoga and meditation or sports and things like that. But there’s actually you generating that. And I find it’s a way that I’ve shifted to living my life. And if I knew as a kid that I could just learn to do that and be that so much more permission, I would have felt so less awkward and so much like I didn’t fit in, it would have made a lot more sense to me that there’s other ways I can create. And so, I also get really excited for more people stepping into that, because I think some of the best work is work that is emergent and coming through rather than…because it meets the moment newly with that aliveness and that presence.
Katie: Yeah. And I think we can all think of examples of things like those works that truly seem to resonate and make ripples in the world that come from that place. And it’s not that they’re a template or they’re a perfect system or they’re tactics. They’re that message that connects on a deep level with those parts of people that then can ripple more and change the world more. I know there’s so much more we could go into today and so much more to your work than we can cover in just an hour podcast, but a few questions I’d love to ask before we wrap up. The first being if there is a book or a number of books that have had a profound impact on your life? And if so what they are and why?
Jules: Yeah. I love that. “The War of Art” was a book that had a really big impact on my life. It talks a lot about resistance and the creative process. I used to think creativity was just for art. And then I realized that my whole life is creativity, and how creative I get with my partnerships or taxes or mundane things had beneficial exponential. So, if you have some resistance in creativity or you want to breakthrough in that, “The War of Art,” I think is such a beautiful book.
The other book “Ask” by Ryan Levesque was also another big book. This book’s premise is really about if you don’t know or you’re wanting to create something, how to get in relationship to asking. So it’s almost like how to take imperfect action by the process of just being in relationship with other through conversation. I love that book.
And lastly, I would say the book “The Alchemist,” which is just an oldie but goodie five hour-read. I remember the first time I read the whole thing on a sailboat and definitely realized I should not have spent five hours on a sailboat reading that thing when I was 10. I was so seasick, but it’s such a simple practice that if this type of conversation that we’ve had today, you know, you want to connect to it further, it’s another way, in like a fictional sense, to be able to be with the character of seeing the signs and how to create life from those places.
Katie: I loved that book as well. And I think you made a really important point about creativity not just being in relation to art. I think some people already have those processes in relation to music or art and it’s easy to feel it than in other aspects of life. And I think it’s a beautiful thing to learn in all aspects of life, even if it’s not… But I do also think those things are great ways to nurture creativity. That’s one of the things I’ve found in my own life is that making space for those creative moments really helps my mindset and my mood and everything else in other aspects of life as well. And now it’s a thing we do as a family. I’ll sit down and start drawing or painting and my kids will join me and it’s a beautiful bonding time as well. Any other parting advice for the audience today could be related to anything we’ve talked about or something entirely different.
Jules: I would say that if you’re having this conversation and you’re hearing this episode, know that your voice matters. And it’s so easy sometimes to hear things and consume things and be, like, “That was nice for her,” or, “Wow, I feel something from that.” But this is a co-created conversation. If you’re listening to this conversation, you’re a part of this conversation, you’re not separate from this conversation. And I find when we start living life like we are included in the conversation, or included in what’s happening, we’re not separate from it, we start being in the medium in the current of life and things that we desire and want and believe for ourselves become possible because we include ourselves. No one’s going to include you for you. No one’s going to take something that you hear and move it for you. And just that awareness of, “I matter. I’m a part of this conversation because I’m hearing this conversation, and if this conversation wasn’t for me that I wouldn’t be drawn to this conversation.” You start acknowledging your participation in the game.
And so often, we are always unconsciously participating in this gets to be the moment in your life that you turn up the dial, all the things that you give your energy and all the things that you’re participating in. And you get to really claim, “I matter in this. And when I bring my full force, watch out. When I bring my full attention to my full presence, watch out.” And you get to see yourself shift by allowing your world to shift. And so, I would just say notice that if you’re here, it’s because you deserve it. And that you get to keep creating your life from that place. And that it’s something that I keep doing as I keep allowing myself to be in the active role of the creator rather than that passive role. And when I do that, it’s always more fun.
Katie: That’s beautiful. I love that. Where can people find you online and keep learning from you and keep hearing and seeing your work?
Jules: Yeah. So, I have a podcast, “The Unconventional Life” podcast that we talked about, and it’s got 300-Plus episodes. So if you search “Unconventional Life” on iTunes or Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts, we’re all over the place. So you can check out “Unconventional Life.” You can also check out Jules Schroeder on Spotify. That’s J-U-L-E-S S-C-H-R-O-E-D-E-R. And I’ve got all my music and stuff that’s on there, julesschroeder.com. We also do events. We’ve got one coming up at a private island in Fiji at the end of the year for a group of about 150. We’re going to take over a ship in Antarctica next year. So we’re always doing fun locations all over the world. So if being in movement is interesting to you, check out those places as well. And we always do free online summits, meditations, all the stuff is on the website. Just put Jules Schroeder or @julesschroederlife on Instagram and you can follow me there.
Katie: Awesome. Jules, thank you so much for your time today. This was such a fun conversation and, hopefully, resonated with a lot of the people that are sharing their time with us today.
Jules: Thank you so much, Katie, and for being the space for conversations like this to exist. I know oftentimes, as a podcast host, we don’t always see on the listener side what it takes to generate consistently in your life. And thank you for being a guest to that. And thanks so much, everyone. It was so great to be with you all.
Katie: Thank you. And thanks to all of you as always for listening and sharing your most valuable resources, your time, your energy, and your attention with us today. We’re both so grateful that you did and I hope that you will join me again on the next episode of the “Wellness Mama” podcast.
If you’re enjoying these interviews, would you please take two minutes to leave a rating or review on iTunes for me? Doing this helps more people to find the podcast, which means even more moms and families could benefit from the information. I really appreciate your time, and thanks as always for listening.
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