How to tune your inner voice | with Rhonda Ross, Daniel Alexander Jones

0:03Rhonda Ross: You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hu. Like many of us, singer, actress, and mindset coach Rhonda Ross has experienced the most amazing highs and horrible lows in her life. Over time, she's learned that regardless of what we're experiencing, we must first calm the storm inside our minds. To do that, we have to understand it. In this conversation with scholar and TED fellow Daniel Alexander-Jones, Rhonda shares her theory of emotional sovereignty, the idea that your feelings aren't shaped just by your circumstances, but by the thoughts running in a loop in your head.

0:44Daniel Alexander Jones: I felt victimized, and I felt stuck, and I felt like, you know, the world was against me. And after weeks and months of really being in my darkest place, I recognized that I couldn't stay there. I had to figure out a way out of that, even if I couldn't change my circumstances.

1:05Rhonda Ross: Rhonda, who comes out of the jazz and theater traditions, introduces a unique music-rooted practice for taking control of your narrative and finding an unexpected sense of freedom. That's coming up right after a short break.

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4:15Rhonda Ross: And now our conversation of the day. My friend. Yes, yes, yes. It's good to see you. Let's do it. All right, let's do it. So first of all, yours is truly, and I can attest to this, it's a liberatory practice. And I witness you as part of really a grand tradition of artists who focused on capital F freedom in everything that they did. So here we are in a time of tectonic upheaval, of assaults on body and soul, and exponential demands on our attention. In the midst of all this, you make offering to us. Can you please tell us all about your work with Mindset and where in your life journey it comes from?

5:01Daniel Alexander Jones: Yes. Oh, my goodness. I'm so happy to be here. And I'm so happy to be here with you. After all these years of having these types of conversations.

5:15Daniel Alexander Jones: So I'm a singer-songwriter. I'm a performer. I'm an actress. And when I graduated Brown, I went on to do work in that field. And it went really great. And I got on a soap opera and I got an Emmy nomination. And I met and married my husband. And everything was really good. And I was really happy until things weren't good. and then I wasn't happy. And all of a sudden, the Emmy went to somebody else. The soap opera I was on was canceled. My husband and I were, he's here by the way. My husband and I were physically separated because I had moved to LA and he hates LA. And so I was out there trying to work and he was in New York.

6:15Daniel Alexander Jones: We were trying to get pregnant. You can't get pregnant 3 ,000 miles away from each other. No, you can't do that. Haven't figured that out yet. And I was unemployed. I wasn't working. And I went into really one of the darkest times of my life. And I remember in the moment thinking, what just happened? Just a few years ago, everything was great. Like, what just happened? And I started blaming my circumstances. the agents, all the things, all the circumstances in my life. And because none of those were under my control, I felt victimized and I felt stuck and I felt like the world was against me. And after weeks and months of really being in my darkest place, I recognized that I couldn't stay there.

7:13I had to figure out a way out of that, even if I couldn't change my circumstances. And I started to study and read and come to find out there's all of this information about the

7:26Daniel Alexander Jones: power of thought and this idea that between our circumstances and the way we feel about our circumstances, live our thoughts, what I call our soundtrack that's on loop in our mind, and our inner voice. And it's what's coming out of that space that determines how we feel, not the circumstances. But we spend so much time blaming the circumstances, feeling victimized by the circumstances, and then trying to manipulate and control and do what we can do with these circumstances when the truth is the power to feel better, to feel optimistic and at peace and empowered and all of those things is actually within ourselves.

8:11Daniel Alexander Jones: and that's what I call emotional sovereignty. So that's what I've been practicing and then teaching for the last 25 years through my music, through my art, through my mindset coaching and all of that.

8:27Rhonda Ross: I love that. And part of, you know, in our journey, one of the things is, you know, we work in field where it's an intergenerational field. So we had the great honor, both of us, of sharing a mentor later who passed away a couple years ago at 99 years old. Her name was Viney Burroughs. She was a great lady of the American theater. And I'm thinking about what you're talking about, about blaming circumstances versus doing something else. And I know with Viney, right, that she started on Broadway in the 1950s. And like many black actors of that time, she was limited in what they would allow her to play.

9:02Rhonda Ross: And she was so profoundly frustrated by it. And then she dropped into her own agency and she created one of the first solo performance pieces that we now are very familiar with that kind of work in the 1960s and 70s. And by the end of her life, she had performed over 6 ,000 performances all over the world. And so one day I was walking down in the Lower East Side where she was, and we can kind of picture her in our mind. And I saw her at a distance and I said, you know, you always say hello to your elder. So I said, I was going to go say, hey, Miss Viney. And she came up to me, grabbed me by the hand, shook me.

9:44Rhonda Ross: And she had a grip. And she said, life is motion. Life is motion. Life is motion. And she walked away. Right? And so I'm curious if you can talk. because I think even today we've heard so much about how we deal with all of these stresses as we're in motion, as we're in our lives. Can you talk about how your practice has helped you harness life in motion?

10:14Daniel Alexander Jones: I wasn't going to tell this story, but I'm going to tell it. I'm so glad you mentioned Viney. And yes, the work that I do is something that has helped me as life is lifing, right? Because I'm constantly being reminded that there is this space and there's this soundtrack and I can shift it. And the story I'm going to tell, we were in Minneapolis and I was doing your play, Phoenix Fabric, and Viney was in the play. And this might be a little TMI. Okay.

10:51Rhonda Ross: Sorry.

10:53Daniel Alexander Jones: But I was having a miscarriage. and I had just found out that I was having a miscarriage. And so I went to rehearsal and I was on the phone outside pacing, talking to my husband on the phone and Viney was watching me through the windows. And when I came in, she said, what is it? What is it? She was very dramatic. And I said, I'm having a miscarriage. And she said, no. And she grabbed me and she said, it's the end of the world. And I said, yes. And she said, but it isn't. I'll never forget that. And so it's perspective. It's reframing. It's taking these circumstances and looking at them in all the different ways.

11:41Daniel Alexander Jones: And we assume this thing happens. I'm having a miscarriage. I must be devastated. I must be all of the things. But there is a space where you get to decide how you're going to translate that circumstance. How are you going to do it? I had another friend of mine say, during my third miscarriage, say to me, your body's getting ready for the one. And I remember taking that. Instead of giving up and all of that, I said, oh, I'm getting ready for the one. All to say, this work is about recognizing the agency that we have. We have so much more power than we give ourselves credit for, because life is going to life.

12:37Daniel Alexander Jones: Things are going to happen. It doesn't mean you have to like what those things are or choose them or want them, but they're happening anyway. So how can you take that and use it to empower you, to lift you up instead of letting it knock you down? So that's the work. And I was going to tell another story, but I'm going to skip it. But I got lots of stories. But how I try to work this into my life as I'm moving through it, even to this day. I've been doing this work for over 20 years, 25 years, and still I have to do it.

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15:16Daniel Alexander Jones: And now, back to the episode. I had a meltdown on 125th Street two weeks ago. Right? Because my son wasn't where he said he was going to be. And even though we track him, the tracker said he was here and he wasn't there. And I'm literally standing there on 125th Street, Raif, Raif, looking like I couldn't figure it out because I had skipped this part. And it wasn't until I grabbed hold of, wait a second, cool out. Yes, here are the circumstances. He's not where he's supposed to be.

15:51Rhonda Ross: That's right. But you can decide how you frame that.

15:55Daniel Alexander Jones: you can decide whether that terrifies you or whether it cools you out whether you know he's okay whether you give it some time because real talk it was only like five minutes it was like five minutes do I have parents out here like you are

16:10Rhonda Ross: but what I love about this is this gives me a concrete example of something I think that I imagine many of us in this room engage which is we can think of things in these very macro cosmic big picture ways but it's hard sometimes to translate down to the microcosm, to the subtle things, the everyday choices, and vice versa. Something can be a storm inside of you that can totally take you down, and no one else will know about it. And how do you navigate the flow of the world outside? So that is very powerful. And I want to call your beautiful son's name, Raif Kendrick.

16:49Daniel Alexander Jones: Raif Hanak, Emmanuel Kendrick.

16:52Rhonda Ross: Call his name. I mean, he's a beautiful human being, like one of really radiant human being. And I feel like I see in him you and your husband Rodney's love, but also this work that he's a mature young man from that process. And thinking also about this idea, I want to move us into a conversation about connection, continuum and generation. right and a dear friend of mine Alexis Pauline Gumbs a great scholar um once was talking about Harriet Tubman right and she said on the night before the Combahee River raid right where Harriet Tubman freed I believe over 700 enslaved folk she woke from a vision that she had and many of you know she had had an injury and she would go into these these states of a vision and she woke and say, my people are free.

17:43Rhonda Ross: Not going to be free. They are free. Present tense, right? And so I think that's a story that you carry in that changes the outcome of something. The stories we tell ourselves and we give ourselves versus the stories that are told about us, the stories that are told to us and the expectations that others have of how we're going to move in the world. So I'm curious about, you know, purpose and freedom, present tense for you and wherever you want to take that.

18:21Daniel Alexander Jones: Oh my God.

18:23Rhonda Ross: Yeah. Yeah. That's how we roll. That's how we roll.

18:27Daniel Alexander Jones: So I just want to go back to what you said about my people are free, this idea of affirmation,

18:35Rhonda Ross: Right?

18:36Daniel Alexander Jones: So what I, the program, the process that I have, I called it tune your inner voice. Tune your inner voice. And there's a few different steps to it. So step one, I call it the crucial first step, is to acknowledge that there's this space and acknowledge that you have agency in this space and acknowledge that it's your thoughts that determine how you feel and you are the thinker of your thoughts. So you have the ability and the power. So that's the crucial first step. Can't move anywhere beyond until you do that. The next one is to really investigate what you're feeling. What is happening inside of you?

19:21Daniel Alexander Jones: Sit with it. We gaslight ourselves, right? I shouldn't feel that. Oh, I can't be feeling that. You know, all of that. But really sit with it. Name it. There's science behind naming a feeling and how already the feeling starts to kind of dissipate when you can name it. And in my process, I have people really, really name it. Like, not just, oh, I'm upset, but like, what is it? Is it anxiety? Is it terror? Is it like, what is it? So we sit with that for a while. That's step two. Step three is to find the thought that is really triggering that feeling, right? Not the circumstance, the thought. And I call it an automatic screwy thought or an automatic sabotaging thought, an A-S-T.

20:11Daniel Alexander Jones: And so you find that thought, and again, you name it and identify it. And then you're like, nobody could feel good with a thought like that. Because usually it's a thought like, you know, I'm a piece of whatever, right? And you say, no wonder I've been feeling, like that's what's been going on in my mind? So really looking for the thought. And then we shift the thought into what I call an INT, an intentionally nourishing thought. And that is like an affirmation. But because it's come through this process, it's your customized affirmation. Because we talked about this, you can't free yourself through somebody else's stuff.

20:55Daniel Alexander Jones: You got to have done it for yourself. And so this INT becomes the words that work for you, the words that cool you out, that allow you to breathe. So you find those words, the affirmation, the INT, or a mantra that you can have in your mind. And then, because I come from music and I understand the power of it, we then take that I-N-T and attach it to a melody. Make it a song. So I call it a songtra. That's what you mentioned earlier. Songtra for emotional sovereignty. Songtra is now your personalized affirmation, your personalized mantra to a melody that can stick in your head because that's what music does.

21:46Daniel Alexander Jones: That's beautiful. And so I want to speak to when you have an affirmation, a mantra that becomes your soundtrack and it's on loop in your mind, it changes everything. It changes the lens that you are seeing the world. And whether you use that mantra in advance, in preparation, just walking through the world, which I use my mantras like that, you could also use them in the middle of crisis. The thing happens and you think, wait, and you sing your mantra to yourself. You cool yourself out.

22:24Rhonda Ross: One thing that I know you emphasize a great deal is that this can work for everyone. One does not need to be a musician. You don't need to have any particular background. It's a process by which we share resource. You know, I always use this quote. One of my favorite quotes is from the great Grace Lee Boggs activist. and she said at the end of her life, and she lived to be 100, she said, you know, I stopped thinking of things in terms of decades. I started thinking of them in terms of centuries. And I do want to just take time to acknowledge that you belong to tradition, right? And of course, your incredible parents, Diana Ross and Barry Gordy, who were waymakers and they broke molds.

23:05Rhonda Ross: Yes, yes, yes. And also your years of study with Abby Lincoln, right? The great jazz musician, the music we call jazz, right? That's right. And all of these other artists that you've collaborated with. But I'm thinking about, you know, I think of this all as a relay race. That we get from our ancestors something that we should not set down. But we must carry forward. But in our way, coming back to your thing of your voice, your particular inflection. And I just, in our closing moments, I'd like for you to reflect on how you have walked with lineage. and or what you think that idea of a relay race says to you.

23:43Rhonda Ross: What are you doing in your leg of the race? Lord, how much time do we have?

23:48Daniel Alexander Jones: We don't have a lot.

23:49Rhonda Ross: You have two minutes. Okay, I got it. You can't change.

23:50Daniel Alexander Jones: I can do this.

23:51Rhonda Ross: You can. I know you can.

23:54Daniel Alexander Jones: You said so much. I do come out of jazz. My husband, Rodney Kendrick, I want to say his name, He's an incredible pianist, and he taught me so much with Abbey Lincoln about making your own music, that there is no such thing as jazz, that Duke Ellington made Duke Ellington's music, and Thelonious Monk made his music. So to that idea, yes, I'm making my own continuation. And what I want to say is, this is personal work. It's individualized work. But when you do it, it reverberates out.

24:45Daniel Alexander Jones: And Eric Liu, he said this morning when I told him what emotional sovereignty was, He said, oh, I love that because sovereignty is not just get off my lawn. Sovereignty is also I'm responsible for my lawn.

24:58Rhonda Ross: Thank you. And I said, I'm going to say it later.

25:02Daniel Alexander Jones: And so I say that to say when we are responsible for our own lawns and our own selves and our own mindset and our own feelings, that reverberates. We're no longer victimized by what other people do in our circumstances, but we also don't become the victimizers. We don't have to be out there controlling and manipulating and making people do the things. Thank you. Making people do the things.

25:28Rhonda Ross: Yes.

25:28Daniel Alexander Jones: And I think at scale, it's big. I think when we look at all the unkindness, all the inequities, all the violence, all the cruelty, all the genocide, It is because somebody has decided that somebody else has to do something for them to feel better.

25:49Rhonda Ross: Thank you.

25:50Daniel Alexander Jones: And the minute we stop that, it ends.

25:52Rhonda Ross: Thank you.

25:52Daniel Alexander Jones: Yeah, thank you.

25:53Rhonda Ross: Yes.

25:54Daniel Alexander Jones: Yeah.

25:55Rhonda Ross: That's right. That's beautiful.

25:58Daniel Alexander Jones: Yes.

25:59Rhonda Ross: Perfect answer, right? So you see what I tell you she's the truth? Yes, indeed. Thank you.

26:39Rhonda Ross: This episode was mixed by Lucy Little. Additional support from Emma Taubner and Daniela Ballarezzo. I'm Elise Hu. I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feed. Thanks for listening.

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