Your Life Matters Soul Connection Podcast Episode 10

In this episode, host Junie Swadron talks to fellow author, Jason Freeman. Whenever Jason Freeman speaks to an audience, be it an intimate mastermind in North County San Diego, or an assembly of 1,500 high school students in Austin, Minnesota, he is absolutely 100% committed to bringing his speech impediment with him. Audiences see him up on stage, against all odds, living his dream, which helps them see their dreams as closer and more attainable. Jason has a unique walk, and a love for country music.

Transcript

Hello everyone,

Welcome to Your Life Matters Soul Connection Podcast with your host,

None other than Moi,

Junie Squadron.

And today I am absolutely delighted to welcome Jason Freeman.

Jason,

Welcome,

Welcome to this podcast and to this time together.

I'm so excited to get to meet you.

Thanks so much for having me,

Junie.

Oh,

You're so welcome.

So what I'm going to do right now,

Jason,

Is I'm going to let people know a little bit about you through the bio that you sent so that I can just present an introduction in that way.

And so,

So I just want everyone to know that whenever Jason Freeman speaks to an audience,

Be it an intimate mastermind in North County,

San Diego,

Or an assembly of 1500 high school students in Austin and soda,

He is absolutely 100% committed to bringing his speech impediments with him.

So now we already know his sense of humor and his truth.

Audience I can hardly wait for this interview to just share you and your humor and your heart with the world.

Anyway,

Audiences see Jason on stage against all odds,

Living his dream,

Which helps them see their dreams as closer and more attainable.

Jason has a unique walk,

A love for country music,

A sweet tooth,

A master of fine arts in poetry,

A TED talk,

The TEDx talk and a book he authored called Awkwardly Awesome,

Embracing my imperfect best.

His goal is to speak with millions of people in his lifetime.

He hopes to inspire them to see the best in themselves,

To take their next steps forward and to persevere towards their dreams,

Not only for themselves,

But for the health and happiness of generations to come.

Yes.

Wow.

That's so beautiful.

Thank you,

Jason,

For having the courage.

May I say to come out of the pain that you had experienced most of your life,

Which you are earlier parts of your life and for many years into adulthood and to turn that around.

And I want you to do to please tell us about that.

And I'd like to start a little bit about how this began for you and how you began to turn it around.

So please let us know about that.

So we all get the opportunity to have challenges in life,

Which come in many different varieties,

An infinite number of varieties.

And I just wanted to get going early on.

I wanted to get to my challenges early.

So I literally came out and said,

Hey,

I'm ready to be born.

I'm ready to be born about two weeks early.

And luckily my parents have bags that were heading us to the emergency room in time.

But in the process,

My umbilical cord got kinked like a garden hose and I lost some oxygen.

But not too much because if I had lost too much,

We wouldn't be having this conversation.

We wouldn't have gotten a chance to exist.

Right,

And inspire the world through the drive inside of you to go beyond the speech impediment or whatever you felt was this disability and find a better way,

Not just for you,

But for others as well.

And that just takes tremendous courage.

It takes so much courage.

Most people,

Not many people,

I think,

Have such a hard time because we all have our,

Like you said,

I love that we are given opportunities with our challenges,

Right?

And they are.

They're opportunities.

And what are opportunities?

They're not challenges.

They're opportunities.

Opportunities go the next step.

So I love the way in which you even put your poet,

Without even poetry,

The way in which you speak and use your words already.

I see.

No,

No,

But truly it's an opportunity to turn something around.

And you talk about your imperfect best.

So it sounds like a hopeless contradiction.

So how,

Having an imperfect best,

How can that be a part of healthy and being successful?

It sounds like forever tug of war again,

Right?

Imperfect best,

Imperfect best.

But,

So first I like to talk about the best part of the tours.

And to me,

The best connotes not only the best we are today,

But the best we envision for our lives and for the lives of the people around us and for future generations.

And that's all well and good.

And if life was absolutely perfect,

That best might be relatively easy to achieve.

I mean,

If we just could do everything we wanted to do so easily,

That best would be mundane.

Yeah,

Commonplace.

But the imperfect comes up in terms of circumstances,

Like global circumstances sometimes like 2020.

Individual circumstances like a speech impairment,

Maybe an overactive mind,

Being really anxious.

There's all kinds of challenges to our best.

And we can either do two things with these challenges.

And I've done both in my life.

Like back when I was suffering the most as a junior high student,

I hated my challenges.

I didn't want the speech impediment.

I didn't want the overactive mind.

I didn't want the anxiety.

I wanted them to go away right now so I could live fully.

Yes.

And I wish I could tell that junior high student I was a seventh grader who was so distraught.

He attempted to take his own life.

And he didn't need to go to war with his challenges,

That he could use the bad things he hated about himself and about life to learn from,

To grow from.

He could judge them as unique and use them to propel him forward.

Well,

You know what you're doing now,

Jason?

You are giving a gift that every person who's looking at themselves right now and the challenges that they're facing has an opportunity to look at their younger self,

No matter how old they are,

The teenagers,

The whoever that are suffering right now,

Or maybe are at the brink of just total despair,

If they could just bring into themselves that compassion that can come.

And that's what you're doing.

That's what you're going to tell us more about how that happened.

But yes,

To be able to look back and just or to know that there's hope we can change these things.

And to just honor that part of us,

You know,

And honor the parts that are hurting.

I've certainly been there.

And I know that place too.

And it takes a tremendous amount of courage and strength and oh my god,

It's worth every second of whatever that takes to turn it around,

Because life becomes a joy.

And you have brought so much joy.

So yes,

The struggle that I can just imagine that that that young you that just wanted it all to go away,

Wanted it to go away and we're in such deep,

Deep,

Deep distress,

That you didn't even want to be on the planet any longer.

What helps you to turn it around?

Well,

Help me to turn it around.

So many things.

First of all,

One thing that does drive kids that I was didn't know is the value of patience,

The value of living and learning and things eventually will change for better,

The better.

So the first thing is patience,

Which I understand I've been there.

When someone's in a really tough spot,

The last thing they want to hear is,

Oh,

Be patient and it all will get better,

The last thing.

But the value of patience is it gives you time to try new things.

Like,

For example,

It will be about 20 some years before that seventh grade I was found out about yoga.

And when I found yoga,

It was suggested to me and I finally did it.

But when I found it,

I was so relieved because finally,

Finally,

I mean,

For most of my life,

My mind overruled everything else.

And when my mind had a negative thought,

I would just take my body for a ride and say,

Hey,

We're going down this road,

Whether you like it or not,

Whether it stresses you out or not.

But with yoga,

I learned to breathe deliberately and move deliberately and to be with those thoughts instead of reacting to them.

And these sound like simple lessons and in some senses they are.

But when I didn't know them and didn't act on my days based on them,

My mind would just take me,

Like I said,

On rides and I would be wanting to go towards my best,

Which was say it was west of where I was.

But then my mind was talking to me and pretty soon we'd be going east and then north and then zigzags and before long I would be miserable again because.

.

.

You had no control.

Yeah,

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah,

Yeah.

But the yoga helped you to learn a way in which you could have some control.

You could do the breath or learn ways in which you could slow that process down for yourself.

Is that what I'm understanding?

Yeah.

It would slow the process down enough to know that I could have a disruptive thought but then I could look at it and say,

Hey,

Do I want to follow you all day long or don't I?

And then if I don't want to,

I could step back and.

.

.

Yay,

You had choice.

What?

You had choice.

Yeah.

Oh,

Thank goodness.

Choice.

It's so incapacitating to feel that we don't have choice sometimes.

That's I think what keeps the spinning mind going,

Like what's the point?

It's always going to be like this.

We need to know that's where the hopelessness I think comes in when you don't think you have a choice if there's anything going to be better.

You made it better.

You made it better.

One of the things that you did and you said it was patience and the patience gave you some spaciousness enough to see what else can come in and the yoga came as a part of that which was part of that beginning I suspect.

What other things eventually.

.

.

In that part of the beginning,

I didn't find yoga until it was suggested to me when I was about 31 or 32.

So talk about patience,

That was 20 years in where things got progressively better but there was still something not quite right in my life 20 years later.

Right,

Right.

I think there's.

.

.

Yeah,

I mean that's the beauty of life.

The longer we're alive,

The more we see things that can come in and enhance our lives to make it even better.

And it could be totally unrelated.

It could be just sitting and watching a robin hopping across the grass and it's like all of a sudden we were just feeling kind of glum and dreary and wow,

Just looking at the innocence and being captured by that moment.

We just don't know what's going to suddenly and that could just,

You know,

We were talking beforehand.

I got up this morning and painted a shell,

You know.

There was a little girl here yesterday and she was painting a rock and shells that we just kind of have around and left the stuff up and I just got so inspired instead of going to the coffee cup,

The coffee percolator,

Putting on the coffee,

I opened up the paint and I just started painting a shell.

Well you know what was so beautiful and this is so true and honest is that I knew that I didn't have the whole day to do this,

That I was coming on with you,

But that inspired me to go even further because I knew that you're so easy to be with.

I just,

Even you know,

I haven't known you,

I only spoke with you one other time,

But that exudes from you,

Your realness and your easiness and I don't know,

I can do my imperfect best and then I would be okay with you and that's the beautiful message that you give.

Take whatever it is and bring it forward and allow it to be and allow it to be part of who we are.

Tell us more about how that developed and how that's become what you do in the world.

So imperfect best,

Like breathing consciously is,

I mean it sounds easy on paper to take all the imperfections in life and use it to propel us towards the best,

But then the mind wants to get in the center of improper best sometimes and start the tug of war again.

When I was thinking about this this morning,

It's not like the mind is the enemy or something that should be totally domesticated or whatever.

I mean our minds give us the ability to have this magical human experience.

I mean with all our minds,

I mean we be some other type of creature.

So our minds are brilliant,

But to come again in a,

I mean and this can happen every time we are making an effort,

The mind wants it to be perfect,

Going better than it's going.

We can take from the mind what's useful to make whatever we're doing good,

But then say to the rest of it,

I hear you,

But I'm going to do this thing because it's my best effort right now.

And as imperfections come up,

I'll learn from the imperfections.

The imperfections won't negate my effort.

They won't disable me or get more powerful from the imperfections.

And as a constant thing because the mind will start talking to us about painting a shell just right,

Or painting a beautiful painting like the one behind you just right,

Or being on a podcast interview just right.

So as always,

Take what you can from the mind's wisdom,

But then also be able to choose the direction you want to go in to finish the effort instead of getting paralyzed by,

I can never do this right and be prolonging,

Just give a painting the shell or painting the painting or being on the podcast or whatever.

Does that make sense?

It does make sense.

It makes sense to me that it's a way of befriending the mind.

The mind is,

You know,

Is a tool.

We need it.

Like you said,

We'd be some other creature if we didn't have one.

We'd be an amoeba,

Amoeba,

What's the word,

Or something that would just be inert perhaps.

And,

But it is,

I think it's about befriending those parts of us that are in the way sometimes with our,

Of what maybe that we,

That we,

And it's not about,

You know,

Saying,

Oh,

I've got to get rid of this,

This awful thing that is going on or whatever,

And it just creates more tension.

It's somehow,

And you can tell us how you did it,

To train that part of us,

That mind that just wants to go east when we want to go west or whatever,

Or wants to go in another direction and get us to.

And so I think it is about just saying it's okay,

It's okay,

I got this.

And you're safe.

I think that part just really wants to keep us safe,

Even though it doesn't feel that way.

It's out of control for us,

But it doesn't know another way,

You know,

Call it ego,

Call it whatever we want.

But it is,

I think,

A way of just making peace with those other parts and being able to then have,

Like you said earlier,

Have control,

Have choice to be able to guide it in a direction that's going to serve us as opposed to be totally at the victim or at the mercy of whichever way the wind is blowing,

The mind is wanting to go.

Was there a particular time,

Jason,

Where you had this like amazing aha,

Like where that you went from this kid that wanted to not even be on the planet,

This teenager that was just so upset with life because of you had this imperfection that you looked around and other people didn't have it and other kids and all of what you went through to where you are today?

There's probably lots of ahas that have come along the way.

Can you recall any that right very soon that where you were saying this has got to stop or this has got to end or there's got to be a better way,

That just something clicked in and it just kind of ah and brought you to the next step that was just so real for you that gave you the hope that you didn't have to live in that way forever?

I would say so the situation that got me to my first yoga class.

So it was a morning that should have been one of the happiest of my life.

I had just graduated with my MFA in poetry.

Wow,

Congratulations.

However,

I'm hearing a however.

Yeah,

Yeah.

However,

However,

I was back in my hometown working the same job that I had for a decade.

Which was a great,

Great job and I have family and friends and not as great accomplishment,

But I still just didn't feel right within myself.

I was miserably stressed out.

Accomplishing the degree had slowed down my mind.

I was going a million miles an hour.

And I was pacing around my apartment.

And I remember that a few months before my aunt and uncle,

I have been visiting them in Montana and they had said,

Hey,

Just out of the blue one day,

Hey,

Jason,

We think you should try yoga.

And at the time,

You know when someone gives you a suggestion,

You think it's a good idea,

But you have no intention of doing it.

Anyway,

Yeah,

Yoga,

Yeah,

That's a good idea.

But in the back of my mind,

I'm like,

I have cerebral palsy.

What?

I don't do yoga.

But on this day,

A few months later,

I was so miserable,

I'm like,

What the heck?

So I went down to the local YMCA and I bought a $35 membership.

I didn't even do yoga that first day.

But that tiny step beyond my habitual going around and around in my mind,

That tiny step of buying that yoga,

Buying that Y membership with the intention of doing yoga fundamentally altered the trajectory of my life.

I love that.

I love that because often that is all it is.

It's the hardest first step.

But taking just that step,

Taking some action,

Just some action changes everything,

Changes everything.

And of course,

If I had taken that tiny step and then gone back to a yoga class,

It wouldn't have done much.

But taking that tiny step and then following it up changed everything.

Everything,

Absolutely.

Yeah,

Well,

That's it.

And that's what can happen when you take that step.

So that was the beginning.

That was some years ago.

How did you go from recognizing once you got into yoga and it started to slow down your mind and you started to realize there's another way and physiologically you were starting to feel different and everything else.

What gave you or who or what or what was the inspiration that went from that to getting out there and being public with what's going on for you and telling the truth and going in and talking about that challenge that had haunted you all of your life that made you really sad and angry and depressed or frustrated?

Yeah,

All those words.

Good words.

Well,

Yeah,

I can only imagine.

And there's so many people today as we,

It's going on right now for people with whatever challenge it is.

What was it that got you to say,

Wait a minute,

I need to turn this into this opportunity.

I have an opportunity here to embrace all of this instead of making it a curse.

I'm going to make it a gift.

What did you do or what was that to lead you to do what you've been doing now for?

Can you tell us how long with 10x talks and going around and talking to children everywhere and these huge massive assemblies and all of these different audiences and inspiring people worldwide?

How did it get from what we've just described to this?

So before yoga,

I would have dreams of what I wanted to do with my life.

But I just kept having the dream and going,

Oh,

Would that be nice?

But then I would take the first step and then go,

Oh,

That's going to be too tough.

And I would quit the dream.

For example,

For so many years,

I wanted to drink,

Quit drinking Coca Cola.

I was drinking three a day and I would be like,

I'm going to crap it.

But then I had the idea of going west,

But then my whatever always coming back,

Going east drinking the other Coca Cola.

But with yoga,

I realized I have more of a choice in my thoughts.

So then I'm like,

What do I really want to do with my life and one of the things that emerged is I wanted to be a speaker.

It seemed like an uncanny dream,

Especially at the time with the speech impairment,

But I really wanted to do it.

So I kept stepping in that direction again and again.

And then my mind would go like,

No,

No,

No one will understand you are not making enough money or you don't have enough business sense or whatever.

But then I was able to observe those thoughts and then keep going in the direction I wanted to go.

I guess yoga gave me space to pursue what I really wanted to do with my life.

Through the tools of yoga,

I created the space within myself to pursue what I wanted to do.

That's beautiful.

And when you had the dreams earlier than this,

To be a speaker,

Did you have ideas in your mind of what you wanted to speak about?

Was it always about motivational speaking?

Before yoga,

I felt I had a barrage of ideas all the time.

I would write things down on paper and type things out,

But then I would put them in the box and forget about them because I didn't have the capacity to follow up on what I really wanted to do.

Right,

Right.

And then I went back to a job that was good and I could handle it,

But it was not what I had the potential of doing.

I understand.

Oh boy,

That mind,

It can be so self-deceiting sometimes.

Yeah.

Oh gosh,

I know.

My favorite thing in the world,

Well,

I've got many,

To tell you the truth,

But one of them has been writing.

And so I learned that was something that I could do fairly naturally many,

Many years ago as a child because I had a diary and I would write in it and it gave me a voice,

Which I wasn't able to express out loud,

But I was able to write.

And so writing eventually became what I could do.

And I remember getting this job as a freelance writer when I was like 20.

And I know,

Right?

It was,

Yeah,

And with Montreal,

With the Canadian Jewish News when I lived there.

And my dad,

Coming from his perspective,

It was just part time and it was like,

You know,

But honey,

When are you going to get a real job?

And he was looking at,

You know,

Security and all of that stuff.

So I left it.

It took years before I went back into realizing that writing was a gift that I had.

And who knows what would have happened had it 20.

I could have had that,

You know,

A career going forward that who knows where it would have gone.

But I just bought into and bless my dad,

He really was coming from a place of wanting his daughter to make sure that,

You know,

She could pay the rent and not have some,

You know,

Frivolous,

Creative,

Artistic something or other.

And in those years,

Of course,

That's what that creativity was felt and seen that way.

And maybe it's not that different today,

Although it's expressed way more.

Yeah,

It just takes a long time before we get the confidence and the courage and you're all about creative,

Creativity.

And so how does one bring their imperfect best and whatever that line is to make the creative journey easier?

So,

Like you,

I've been inspired to be creative since I was young,

But for a while I tried to be creative and also a perfectionist at the same time.

And that's pretty much torturous because the perfectionist part of my mind will want to compare my ratings to someone else's,

Which is always comparing to apples and oranges.

Or if I wasn't comparing my rating to someone else's,

I was comparing it to some ever-changing idea in my head that kept getting out of my reach.

I would have an idea of making a poem more perfect than I would get that,

But then the idea would have gone farther out of my reach,

So it was just this exhausting thing.

But being creative during my imperfect best is like every morning I sit down at my computer and I type for 10 minutes and what comes out comes out.

And I don't focus on grammar or spelling at all,

But I've noticed as the years go on,

And I do it every day,

It naturally becomes more coherent,

The spelling becomes better,

And all that.

And so it's more imperfect best process in learning that way rather than just writing one thing down two years ago and then editing it every day to get it more and more,

Which sounds nauseating to me.

Oh my God,

It's death to me.

I mean,

I think it's death to the creative spirit.

I mean,

I think that there is a time and place for editing.

It's not during the creative process.

The creative process is let it all rip.

Who cares about spelling punctuation,

Grammar,

Syntax,

Any of it,

Just get it out,

However it wants to come out.

Later you can put on your left brain linear logical,

Give it a field day,

A happy day,

Whatever,

Let it go and do whatever it wants to do.

But during the creative process,

I think that's what stops most of us.

It's that perfectionistic thing that we have to get it right,

Right from the beginning.

And who cares?

You know,

People will,

Right?

I mean,

It sounds glib,

Who cares?

But the point is,

So many of us care.

We want it to be perfect.

We want it to sound like,

I just love Julia Cameron has somebody said to her,

So are you kidding me?

Do you know how old I am?

Do you know how old I'll be by the time I learned to play the piano?

She says,

Yeah,

The same age you'll be if you don't.

And it's like,

Just start.

Just start.

I love it.

You get up,

You go to your keyboard or your computer keyboard and for 10 minutes,

And you just write and see what shows up.

And,

Of course,

Like anything,

Like you said,

The more we do it,

The more,

You know,

It becomes,

The spelling does get better,

Things do get better.

But that's not the point.

It just does though.

You know,

The first time you did yoga or meditation or whatever,

It wasn't the first time that all of a sudden,

Everything became clear and your mind stopped,

You know,

For good.

Yeah,

Yeah,

No,

No.

We wish,

We wish,

But anything I think that is moving in the direction of where we want to go is worth pursuing.

Yeah,

Yeah,

Well,

Pursuing is a process.

Yeah,

Yeah.

So is there a way do you think that using,

You know,

I keep loving your phrase of the imperfect best,

Is there a way that you would find that that would come into making even friendships easier?

Because I just,

You know,

Relationships,

Friendships,

I mean,

We always want to show the best side of ourselves and are so embarrassed of something,

You know,

It's not the way we would want it to be or whatever.

How does that,

Like,

How does that fit into?

Yeah,

We want to show the best side of ourselves and then it's so easy to get for the ego to get offended by what our friends do too.

And so in the more intimate the friendship gets,

The more we want to be ourselves,

But be our best and the more offended we can get.

So things can get really dicey unless we give each other,

Give ourselves and the other person freedom to be our imperfect best.

And like imperfect best in general,

Like we stand up for the best in ourselves and in the other person and have a vision of the best.

But when the imperfections come up,

The things we think are imperfect,

We use those to communicate,

To learn from,

To drive us closer instead of saying,

Oh,

The,

Instead of saying,

Oh,

The imperfection,

Perfection in the present,

In the friendship now,

Oh,

It must mean we're not meant to be friends.

Get away from me,

You know,

Get away from me.

Some of the best moments I found in friendships are when I and the other person felt safe to be vulnerable and have tough conversation and to be kind to each other and the toughness of the conversation and learn so much and drew closer instead of going further apart.

Yes.

That is so valuable.

What you're saying here is so important because,

You know,

I think being vulnerable,

Being real,

Having the courage to just say it the way we feel it and not,

And feel safe enough to do that.

And when we're safe enough to do that,

When we do that,

Like the way you come out in the world and say,

Hey,

This is my imperfect best and you know what,

I am committed to bringing that speech and credit with me wherever I go.

100% committed.

100% committed,

Exactly.

It's that,

You know,

I am committed to be really honest because you're my friend and I want to be honest and I want to know what's in your heart too.

And we're not taught that.

We're not taught that.

We're taught to,

You know,

To have a person,

A persona,

You know,

With this mask that,

You know,

You could be dying inside and your someone says,

How are you?

Oh,

I'm fine.

I'm fine.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Everything's great.

You go home and you just,

You know,

You're lying in a puddle of tears and you're afraid to say that.

And for how,

What a world we would have if everybody would just be able to say,

How are you?

Well,

To be honest with you,

It's a bit of a tough day.

Hey pal,

What's going on?

How much time have you got?

Well,

You know what?

Actually,

I just got to make this phone call and then I'm going to call you right back because I want to know,

But just give me five minutes and I'm calling you back.

And you know,

Because life happens and sometimes somebody says,

Well,

How are you?

And you expect I'm fine.

Good.

I'll let into that when you really care and you've got other commitments.

When can I tell when?

And you just show up and you say,

Let me make this phone call or call you an hour or now I'm here for you,

Bro.

I'm here.

I'm here.

And if we could all just be that way and just share what from our hearts,

What's going on.

I think that we know we've stripped down the layers of everything that we've got going on in front of us,

You know,

Whatever that happens to be,

Whether we're ever society,

Whatever religious beliefs,

Whatever nationality,

Whatever fears,

And we strip them all down.

We're all the same.

We're all the same.

We're all made of the same fabric.

We all want love.

We all want the best for our children.

We all want to be,

You know,

Find,

Be healthy and want the world to be safe.

And we all want that,

Want that for ourselves and for families and for everyone.

And it is that kind of conversation that being our imperfect past,

Being who we are,

That would just increase the quality of life,

Friendships of every kind of relationship.

I love what you do.

I love what you're sharing with the world.

I love that you pursued your dream.

So what would you want to say to people right now who are just on the kind of the edge of not exactly knowing how to go from this mind that never quits,

Of how,

You know,

Why bother,

You know,

You don't have it,

Man,

Forget it,

So and so is better than you.

Like whatever it is for them,

What would you want to say to them right now and what steps can they take initially in order to get to that dream of theirs that they've maybe covered over?

Well,

What I want to say,

First of all,

Know that it's natural to have an overactive mind.

It's natural to have a mind that takes you east when you want to go west.

I mean,

It's very human and as long as there's been human,

We probably struggle with these issues.

So know it's natural.

Next,

I want to say really try to be authentic with what's going on in your mind.

Just notice what it does.

Notice like you're a reporter,

Maybe in a battle zone,

Like you're not going to go to battle with what you're noticing in your mind.

It's not your job as a reporter,

Your job is just to notice and document and maybe raise some things down.

And then next,

Give yourself freedom to dream and this is where things down to but write down your best,

Write down your best.

I didn't mean for that to end,

But write down the things you really want to do in life if you didn't keep getting in your own way.

So then you'll have your best and then you also know something about the imperfection,

Not what may seem like the imperfections your mind keeps placing in your way.

So then the question is how do you turn your process around so that you have freedom to choose what thoughts you want to act upon,

How are you going to get space between the things in your life,

Even the things you dislike about yourself,

Like maybe it could be anything how are you going to get space between that so you can choose a new direction and that involves often,

I mean there's so many options,

Meditation,

Yoga,

Creativity,

Art,

Just become a detective,

What works for you,

What will give you some space so you can move in the direction you want to go.

Don't try yoga because it works for Jason or maybe try it,

But also see if it works for you or if something else does.

And then once you do all this,

Keep going,

Keep going because I gave you some steps that are not necessarily linear and it's not like once you get past when you can pass it off and never think of it again.

Keep going,

Become an explorer of your life and explore what makes you work the best.

A lot of gurus have one exact answer for you,

But you're going to need to find the answer that works for you individually with your mind,

With the things you see are challenges.

I love that Jason.

Sorry,

I didn't mean to cut you off,

We would just like to say,

Add something to that.

Yeah,

Just I wish I could have made that list more concise and like I know exactly what you should do,

But I don't,

But I know through a process each of us can find the answers we need through your own process.

I really appreciate what you're saying because I trust that completely.

We never know what somebody will say and when the penny will drop,

Just like it was for you with your uncle who said,

Who just said,

Hey,

Why don't you try yoga?

And he's like,

Yeah,

Well,

Yeah,

Right me forget it.

And then later it was like,

This is the time and the penny dropped and then you did and it changed your life.

But you got a gumball.

You got a gumball?

Right,

Right.

Right,

I love that.

So the gumball came from the gum machine,

Right?

Yeah.

I like that better than the penny dropped.

I'm going to think of that now.

I mean,

But the penny drops,

So I could get a gumball,

I was just.

Right,

Now I'm okay,

Right.

Yeah,

Yeah.

Yeah,

Exactly.

I love that imagery.

I love it because it's fun and you see what you're talking about is also fun and the reason why I feel that way is because when we do open to the possibilities,

Like just have the willingness to know that it can be better.

That sets us going west instead of east if we don't want to go east.

It just happened.

That's the beginning is that willingness and then somebody would something that you said today could be the spark that just says,

Oh,

I'm going to do that.

I hadn't thought about that.

Or we just don't know where once we open to the possibility that things can work out in a better way.

That positivity itself brings,

I find life will bring it to us.

Life will bring us whatever it is that we are focusing on.

And if we're focusing on improving our lives and putting them and making them better than they are right now,

Then we will be presented with so many opportunities.

The right book will show up.

The phone will ring and somebody will make a suggestion of this.

We'll have a dream and there'll be symbols and all of a sudden something else will show up through that dream.

A friend could call and say,

We never know.

Right?

And the same goes through for if we're thinking nothing will ever change.

We'll have evidence to prove that too.

So it's what do we choose to focus on?

What do we choose?

And knowing that someone like yourself who for so many years of your life lived with a dream that you never let die,

Even though you let it die in terms of it never became,

It didn't go out into the world the way it has been now for many years.

It didn't,

But you didn't let it go.

It still came back.

And I feel that these things,

It will still come back.

It's our soul calling to us.

It's we're being beckoned because I believe every single one of us has an imperfect past.

Every one of us has a best and we're none of us is going to do it perfectly because we don't know how we're always growing,

Evolving,

Learning.

You know,

I figure I'm so they,

You know,

I,

Well,

I lost breath.

I'm going to be growing and learning evolving because there's always more.

There's always more.

And ever,

You know,

We've never reached that nametop or we do,

And then there's something else that becomes,

Oh,

That looks fun.

I'm going to go over there and see what that is now.

Oh,

I don't know,

Have a clue how to do it.

Well,

I guess I'll learn.

I'll start here.

And right.

And then you attain that goal or whatever,

But you're right in that what worked for you doesn't necessarily,

May not work for me.

It may not work for the people who are listening,

But just having knowing that we don't have to show up perfect.

We don't have to put that kind of pressure on ourselves.

We can look at whatever those imperfections are.

Like you said,

As an opportunity to learn what can be better.

How could our lives be better having this gift we were given,

Having this gift.

I mean,

If somebody would have said to me years ago,

Junie,

Mental illness,

That I was diagnosed when I was 20 with a mental illness,

With bipolar,

If somebody would have said,

Wow,

That's going to be a gift to you one day.

I really wonder who the crazy one was.

I mean,

Right.

I mean,

Truly it was like,

There would be no way until I realized when I was able to come out of the closet of shame and hiding and fear and that,

You know,

Look at me,

I've got this illness and I can't always control it and I don't know how,

But creativity led me to a play to help dispel this,

To write it,

To dispel this and the stigmas about mental illness.

And then the most vulnerable thing of all,

Getting on a stage and talking about my own life about it,

Where I really thought that's the end of my life.

But I realized the message was more important than my own life.

The message that we're not our diagnosis,

We're not our pathology,

We're not any of that,

We are so much more.

Then I became,

You know,

People were happy to hear that message.

And after I got over the initial shock that I actually did it and the shame that came up to do it,

And then just breathed into,

Wow,

That took courage.

And I started to recognize,

Wow,

That was good.

Other people could come up and give permission for other people to tell their truth and be vulnerable and start the conversation.

And now 20 odd years later,

Being a huge advocate for mental health,

It has become one of the greatest gifts.

It doesn't define me.

I still have to be really cautious,

But it doesn't define me.

I know about that monkey mind that never quits,

But I become really resilient and you have too.

And we're so lucky.

We live in a time of life.

When you and I were growing up,

There wasn't the internet,

There wasn't TED Talks,

There wasn't inspirational,

Whatever.

We could turn on anything we wanted,

Anytime and find that inspiration that was meant right for us because we had the thought to turn on that or turn on whatever music and watch a YouTube video of our favorite musical band or whatever and just get inspired and get up and dance in our living room.

So I mean,

There's so much available for us.

We just have to take that first step.

Well,

Life is so amazing as the Earth's Storypoints.

We can go from going in the direction of hiding in the shame,

Hiding in the shame,

Hiding in the shame to helping other people here,

Helping other people here,

Helping.

Because I mean,

It's such a gift.

The first time you spoke that,

I'm sure whether people came up to you afterwards or not,

You started helping people in that room where you were speaking to hear.

Yeah,

It's just like that.

I mean,

I had a vision.

I'll do it anyway because I felt the message was so important and it stopped being about me.

It was more about who needs to hear this message.

And the play was the one,

The way,

The vehicle that I wanted the message to be heard or given.

But then giving the talk afterwards was the most vulnerable.

I really had this chatter going on that I'll lose my job.

I was a mental health worker in downtown East Side of Vancouver at the time.

I had a private practice as a therapist.

That's going to all go away now too.

To me,

I was just propelled by the message itself that we're not our pathology and our imperfections.

We're not that.

We are beautiful human beings or spiritual beings that are here on earth having this incarnation being imperfect and being beautifully imperfect.

And to honor that and not make it as something,

A pathology that needs to be put in a DSM,

Whatever number they're at,

Five.

Who knows what they got there going now.

I don't feel like I just want to honor somebody I know who's passed,

But I used to have a friend who,

A very close friend,

Davida.

And this is for you,

Davida.

Years ago,

Davida had a tutorial remediation school in Toronto where we lived.

And it was called Davida's Place and children from all ages,

Young kids right through to high school kids would go there after school to up their levels of study and learning.

And these were mostly the kids,

The parents,

The teachers,

The psychologists,

Everybody said,

Whatever,

Good luck.

And she threw away all the reports,

All the psychology reports,

All the teachers,

Whatever they were saying.

She had a way of making learning fun in that these kids graduated from high school with the highest.

She brought them up from the lowest to the highest,

All ages,

Graduate and go down to university and excel.

And this wasn't like a one-time deal.

This was like 99.

999% of the time that and that was her power.

And that was her gift that,

No,

You're not stupid.

Forget what everybody else is telling you.

And so,

Yeah,

What you're doing,

What I'm doing in my way,

What so many people are out there doing and saying,

Come on,

Guys,

Let's band together.

We got it.

We are basically saying,

Well,

Life can become better.

Life can become better.

We can,

Together we can grow into better and better life.

Life can be better and better.

What's wrong with that?

That is the most wonderful thing.

I mean,

That's all we want.

We want it for ourselves.

We want it for everyone.

So Jason,

This has been such a privilege for me today to be together with you,

For you to share your story of how you went from feeling suicidal and attempting to die because you just didn't see another way to being this extraordinary motivator in the world today,

Helping people all over the globe find a way to move out of their fears of whatever that happens to be that are holding them back into seeing a different way to make it better by being our imperfect best.

Thank you so much.

Is there anything else you'd like to leave with today?

Can I get my website in case?

Oh,

Of course you can.

I'm sorry.

Yes.

I'm going to pull up in when people see this,

It'll be there.

Yeah.

Usually I ask that question,

But please,

Yes.

Where can everyone find you?

Everyone's going to want to know where to find you.

And you've also got your books and yes.

Tell us everything about that,

Please.

So I want you all to go to the website,

Jasonwfreeman.

Com because it's fun.

There's a downloadable copy of my book of Agua Leasamana and there's an interactive copy and there's a lot of the else on the website as websites are.

But one thing be sure to sign up for the newsletter because the guy I work with,

Chris and I,

We just put a hustle into it.

It's just joyful.

So if it inspires you,

Please sign up.

We would love to have you as part of the Agua Leasam tribe.

Oh,

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

I can't imagine anybody watching this today when they watch it,

Watching our conversation and listening to you that won't want you to skip that fabulous book of yours and be part of your awkwardly awesome tribe and by signing up for your newsletter.

And all of that.

And make sure you also watch Jason's TEDx talk.

It is so beautiful,

So inspiring.

So you're so outrageous.

I love it.

I mean,

You're just so out there with your,

You know,

You could be an actor.

I don't know if that's your next goal or possibility.

I'll be fine.

I'll be fine.

I'm just throwing it out at you.

You've got all the moves,

Man.

I mean,

You're fantastic on stage too.

And yeah,

So this has been absolutely delightful.

And all of that information will also be up on the podcast here at the Early Matters Soul Connections podcast.

So again,

Thank you so much,

Jason,

For that beautiful smile and the inspiration that you bring to the world today.

Thanks for having a great conversation,

Junie,

And making my morning spectacular.

Thank you.

Bye for now.