Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Hello pod squad. Welcome back to We Can Do Hard Things. This is the last week of January, settling into a new year. And I think by the last week of January, we have all realized that every one of our resolutions were bullshit and that we were in fact never going to do any of those.
Chapter 2: What is the significance of letting go of self-improvement resolutions?
And we might begin to wonder why we resolved to resolve only to be defeated by ourselves by the third week. So if that is you, welcome back. We too are with you. on the journey. So instead of resolving to change ourselves because that has worked exactly zero times, why don't we resolve to not change ourselves and just get to know who the hell we are underneath all that we desire to change.
So here's the deal. Getting back to who we are, which is where we were always going in the first place. Let's start there. Okay. And one way to get to know who we actually are, if we are brave enough to trust it, is to trust our delight. That is a big clue to us. The thing that taps into
and makes us feel like maybe that was like a little tiny baby itch of curiosity, of creativity, of delight, of what our guest today, the remarkable, delightful Justina Blakeney calls the tingle. When we have lost such touch with ourselves that we're not real sure how to get back in, the tingle is a great clue for us. Okay, so we want to get closer to our wild. We want to sense our tingle.
We want to trust it because our tingle tells us what we desire, what we want, what we love. And those are the things, incidentally, that we will be very good at. Justina talks about her design life, her creativity, her home as an extension of herself. Each object is a story that makes her life more beautiful.
She shares ways to bring more joy and meaning into your spaces to get to know your creativity and bring more joy and meaning into your life. She respects herself so greatly. She respects her creativity greatly. She brings it out of everyone else. She is a designer, but also has designed a damn good life.
Please listen and be inspired and please track your tingle with our conversation with Justina Blakeney.
Thank you.
All right. So real quick, Justina, since I first met you, I think we've only been in rooms together a few times. I just I feel like you are someone to me that feels like you live very close to your wild, like meaning not wild. Like I think what sometimes people think of that as like necessarily loud or no, just I mean, wild, like your truest self. You seem like a human being who lives.
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Chapter 3: How can we connect with our true selves through 'the tingle'?
vary from the inside out and not from the outside in. I can feel it in how you create and how you speak and how you dress and how you parent. And you're always that. What I want for everyone listening is just to be more of who they are. And so what I try to remind myself when I'm around you is not that I need to be more like Justina, but that I need to be But I don't know if you remember this.
We sat in a room together at like a really cool thing we do with a bunch of other women. And we're supposed to go around at the end and all say what our brave goal is for the future after this get together. And everybody was saying things like for their companies or whatever. And I said, my goal is that I'm going to call Justina and ask her to be friends with me. I, of course, did not do that.
But here we are.
Hi. Can I tell a brief little quick story about Justina and I's first real meeting?
Yeah.
Do you remember this, Justina?
Yes, I do.
So we were doing this exercise of, I don't know, it was like an opening up. There's many women there. This is the first time we've met all of each other. And we had to... go to a stranger and stare into said stranger's eyes and thank God Justina was my partner for this.
And it was right after COVID. And I hadn't been in front of anyone's face at all. Anyway, it was pretty wild.
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Chapter 4: What role does creativity play in personal fulfillment?
And it's like this feeling that a lot of us have that I don't belong anywhere ends up offering us this freedom to belong everywhere. Because I wonder if you feel belonging right away because you fit in somewhere, then isn't that in itself kind of a default inclusivity or exclusivity? That must feel really good to feel like you have a belonging in one group.
But doesn't that necessarily mean that you don't belong anywhere else? It reminds me of the Maya Angelou quote that I sent to my kid after this conversation, where she said, you are only free when you realize you belong no place. You belong every place, no place at all. The price is high.
Chapter 5: How does Justina Blakeney define her design philosophy?
The reward is great. And more and more, I belong to myself. I'm very proud of that.
Chapter 6: What are the benefits of surrounding ourselves with meaningful objects?
I am very concerned about how I look at Maya. I like Maya very much. It reminds me of you. Oh my gosh.
Thank you. I'm really honored. I keep on looking at Amanda on the zoom screen and I'm just giving you such a big hug and it's so beautiful to see you.
Just haven't said hi yet. It's really wonderful. And I want the pod squad to remember that you are the queen who directed us to do everything for the good of the realm. Okay.
Does everyone remember that episode 230 that just blew my mind for a solid, you know, trimester where that self-sovereignty that you have, and I've wanted to talk to you about it ever since, but in that lunch, I was just thinking about it the whole time, but not asking you about it. So this is the story where they didn't have any dairy options at a lunch we were at.
And I got very nervous about it because that meant you couldn't eat anything. And so I was feeling very apologetic on behalf of the situation. And you said, no sorries, self-sovereignty. And then you just waved your arms open and said, it's for the good of the realm. That's what I do. When it's good for me, it's good for the realm. So I know I'm not feeling deprived. I'm making a choice.
Can you teach us how to do that? we so often take a punishing approach or deprivation approach to entering what is good for us instead of a, no, this is of my own dignity and sovereignty that I'm doing this thing. Like how the hell did you get there?
I've been thinking a lot about this over the past few years, because I feel like in the ether, we are talking a lot about self-love and self-care and, and, something that really hit me hard that I don't feel like is as much part of the conversation is self-respect. And it's an angle on self-love that I think about a lot because you can love in so many different ways.
And sometimes loving can look a little bit too much like smothering or loving can look too much, a little too much like spoiling or indulging. And I think sometimes for me, I can get into a place where that's true for myself as well. So one of the things that I've been thinking a lot about and that helps me get out of that sort of deprivation feeling, if I'm trying to be more conscious about
what I'm putting in my mouth or how much I move my body or how much time I spend in front of a screen or any of these things is this idea of self-respect and this idea of what is good for me is good for the realm. And that that looks different from indulging at every moment. What that might mean sometimes is restraint and just finding that in-between place in that.
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Chapter 7: How can we cultivate a sense of belonging in our lives?
And the last few years have been about allowing the feelings of all kinds and all stripes. And there's a destabilization that happens when that process begins. And I still feel like I'm at the beginnings of that, you know? So sometimes it's a little destabilizing because I'm like, oh gosh, these highs are really high and these lows are really fucking low. And also no one is used to any of these.
So buckle up sisters. Yeah, for sure. For sure. But I think that, yeah, the decisions definitely, just everything has become more clear for me. And Amanda, you've talked about this before, but I think about life force a lot, vitality and life force. And that's something that I can actually feel in my body very clearly, you know, my aliveness.
And I can feel when it's being drained from me and I can feel when it's being added to. And that is the measure by which I'm currently evaluating all my business decisions. Is it giving life or is it taking it away? And that might be with people who are sitting across from me and I'm having an initial conversation with them and I gauge my my vitality at the end of that conversation.
It might be with, yeah, a design project that some things about it are sound compelling, other things, maybe not so much. And I just try and gauge like, is this giving me life? Like, Am I excited about it? You know, can I not stop thinking about it? And you feel that gurgling and, you know, it's the physical sensations. And so tuning into that has been enormously helpful for me.
And so, you know, I've been making a lot of changes in my life and in my business in the past little bit. And it's really incredible once you start being financed by life force.
Life force is what, when I think of you, I think of vitality. I think of life force. I think that, I don't know how to explain any of this, but I'm going to try. I think that through this last year of recovery for myself, I have learned that much of my anorexia, control, rigidity, was about suppressing life force. Like you can see it. You can see, why am I so attracted to Jungalo?
I look at your writing, your clothes, your Instagram account. And I'm like, what? And it's real. It's like, there's something about white lady culture that I was raised in and like lived in that is about rigidity and no color and, and no, it's about control. I mean, my mom has looked at my closet and been like, we call it jail colors.
It's just 30 different shades of things that you'd be given in jail. Okay. So you're painting now, you know, I love your painting. Interestingly enough, I was recently listening to an interview with you years ago and you said, I do home design. But lately, when I go to museums and look at art, I feel tingly. So tell us about that. So you felt the tingly. Is the tingly the life force?
Is that what you're going towards? And is following the tingly how you do all of your next creative decisions? Because you're oozing creativity.
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