Rediscover Your Joy w/ Alexis Jones

0:04This is the Ed Milet Show. Okay, everybody, welcome back to the show. So my guest today, I thought I had never met before. And then we just started to talk off camera and it turns out like, I know her family really, really well. And we've been in the same place for like 11 or 12 years off and on. And we recognize each other's faces. And so we actually have a connection we didn't even know that we had. And I'm grateful for it because as I was reading her work, I have to tell you, I felt so connected to her. So many similarities in just the things I think we both have wrestled with and struggled with in our lives.

0:37And so her work really deeply affected me, which is why I wanted her to come on the show. And so she has a book out. It's called Joy Hunter, Messy Face Plants, Radical Love, and the Journey That Changed Everything. And it is a killer story. You're going to love this story, guys. This is a very accomplished woman. She's spoken, you know, been invited to speak at the White House, West Point, Nike, Harvard, Stanford. She somehow got on season, I think, 16 of Survivor. She's been a mega, mega achiever all of her life. And that's kind of part of the deal that we're going to talk about today. So cannot wait to open this up today with you.

1:11So Alexis Jones, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me. What a treat. I love that we put it together, that we've basically been circling each other for a decade. This is wonderful. It's so crazy. It's so crazy to find that out right before we started, because I did feel connected to you when I read your work. So you are, I guess what I would say for everybody, just to set the context, because the book is so interesting. but you're like kind of like a mega overachiever type is that fair to say because i would describe myself that way as well absolutely yeah like seeking gold stars anywhere and everywhere that was definitely yeah the the like insatiably ambitious i always said that growing up in like high school and college grad school that like drugs were never my never my vice ambition was and um so i think that that has always been something that external validation and it just never, ever quenching my appetite.

2:05Okay. I think like millions of people right now went same here. There's a, I think that's my, I think that's an, in general, the people that listen to my work are, would fit some description of that. And I want to start what you said in the book, because it's, it struck me like, like a lightning bolt, but you kind of see, I'll say it my way and then you fix it. Okay. But I want you to talk about this because this may be an eye opener for so many people, just this one thing, which is that essentially you conflated love with attention or acknowledgement. And man, do I relate to that? I think the only time in my life as a child that I felt loved was if I had achieved something.

2:43And I think that started to wire me for that pattern. So just let's just start right there in the beginning. Then we'll talk about the journey. Yeah, that was beautifully said. I think that similarly, and again, just different synonyms, I associated external validation for self-worth. And so that performance-based love that I have to go out there and I have to perform and earn it, but not that it was ever like inherently that I was worthy of that. And to your point, I think as a kid with like two very full-time working parents, unintentionally, what I found was every time I did something extraordinary, you know, if I was like the star soccer player, I was the lead in the school play, like they would always show up.

3:25And I think anyone who grows up in that kind of environment where your parents are, you know, paycheck to paycheck, but they would make time for those extraordinary things. So I think unintentionally, I got the message very early on, the bigger and the badder you are, the more love and attention you get from, you know, the two people you want it from the most. And I think I just exactly what you said, I conflated the concepts and then just became like like a monster, like a machine that just kept going. Yeah, me too. And I always thought, I'll get around to feeling love myself. I'll get around to it.

3:58And I just never got around to it. I have to tell you anecdotally, I had Maria Shriver on the show who's become just a wonderful friend of mine. And she even said to me that she goes, I still find myself trying to get validation and love from my father, who's been passed away for years and years and years, that we can still do it with people that aren't even here. and by the way spoiler alert for later in the interview you guys in the conversation something about those two parents will be very very interesting in a minute because this story is bananas so let's set the stage for a second about the book and like where all this self discovery and self-awareness started to kind of come from so tell them how the the joy hunting sort of began let's just lay the premise of the book i want them to get the book so we're not going to do everything in it but i think the foundation of where this change came from is pretty profound.

4:45Yeah. I mean, I think for me, it was just like everything, like checking all the boxes, you know, like you were saying, like climbing the mountain, never having time, like being so overscheduled, overexhausted, overworked, but never having time to really sit with, is any of this actually make me happy? Like, is this the life I actually want? And so I'm just sitting there climbing up the mountain. And then all of a sudden, in a very short amount of time, everything that could possibly go wrong in my life did. And as you mentioned, it was finding out that my dad was not my biological father on ancestry.com.

5:21It was my very lucrative speaking career, hitting a brick wall with COVID. It was my abruptly going on unemployment because the 150 events that I had for 2020 were canceled within two weeks. And then my husband and I had been trying to get pregnant for years, had battled infertility for half a decade. We finally got pregnant. We lost the baby. And so it was just like in every direction, it was heartbreak. It was identity crisis. It was the rug being pulled out from underneath me. And I always say that like that was when I hit eject from like the life that I was living, that everything was just crumbling underneath my feet.

6:01And I think looking back, that was the invitation to do the real work that I'd been avoiding and running from my entire life. Like that deep, soulful, exactly what you said of like, yeah, at some point I'm going to get around to learning how to love myself. But until then, I'm going to preach about it on stages and go to Oprah's house and post about it on social media. But I don't know how to actually do that for myself. So - The background's so crazy, you guys. Like when she says climb the mountain, like she's actually really done that. She's backpacked in like 50 countries. Like you've jammed, I've done it too.

6:33But when I read yours, like you jam like 60 lifetimes into like half of a lifetime or less. Right. And yet what I want everybody to get is I think a lot of this does serve you like achievement, external validation, external accumulation is not necessarily. In fact, it's not a bad thing if it's not at the expense of the other things. I mean, there should be an internal driver to want to compete and prove yourself. And there's nothing wrong with that at all. In fact, I would, it's interesting. It's kind of odd sometimes when two people that have achieved a lot, then after they achieve it, go, well, it wasn't worth it.

7:06And I'm all screwed up. Yeah. The truth is a lot of those things did serve me. Those, those, a lot of those things provided me, frankly, the space and time to have self reflection, the financial resources to do it, but also the other people around us suffer because you said something about your inability to love other people. If you don't what yourself, I want you to finish that sentence, but it's, it's super Valley because I used to say, man, I'm great at giving love to everybody else, but I just don't feel it myself. But when I read what you said there, I went, I wonder if I do love people to the extent that I could because of this limitation of how I feel about me.

7:41So let's go there. Yeah. I mean, I think you're nailing it like the symbiotic relationship, like the depth and the extent that we are capable of loving other people is directly commensurate with our ability to love ourselves. And so I think I was loving people to the degree, exactly like you said, to the degree that I could, but because there was such a superficiality and a shallowness to the love I had for myself, there was a limit to how much I could love other people. And so there's this irony that we think it's selfish to like really pour into and love ourselves. But again, like the depth by which we love ourselves, that creates the capacity to which we can love other people.

8:22You think you were trying to create, like, I always look, I, sometimes I think I overanalyze stuff, but I tried to provide so much stability in my own life through financial success and achievement. And by the way, I'm very grateful that I did everybody and I highly recommend you all do it. So I'm not telling you that's a bad thing, but in hindsight, my own childhood was so, I guess I'd call unstable being raised by an alcoholic, my dad kind of just, you know, just that instability. And so I was trying to probably create that, I think, through success and achievement. And then I look at your background.

8:55I'm like, grandma's not married nine times, five times to the same guy. Is it right that your mom was married five times too? Yeah, my mom was married five times. We thought three dads between five of us. We would find out it was four dads between five of us. And my mom was working two jobs and going to night school. So she was putting in 80-hour weeks. And as a single mom, yeah, exactly. I mean, the instability, right. Of like not having that consistency. And I think that, you know, being able to take that instability. And for me, I just turned it into like jet fuel, right. Like the not enoughness that I felt.

9:40And, you know, part of my story, and I don't know what your story is from, you know, a financial standpoint, but also being like the poor kid in the rich neighborhood, you know, so like a huge chip on my shoulder about like, Oh, I'm going to show you like one of these days, I'm going to be able to afford all the shit that like all of y 'all are walking around with. And so that was a huge driving force. But I agree that I don't think it's all bad. I mean, I think that like getting bullied and made fun of for like, not having the right shoes and living in shitty houses and things like that. It certainly became jet fuel.

10:14But I think to your point, and this is a word my dad always uses is like when your life becomes cattywampus, when like it was so out of balance that like my desire to achieve and especially financial success was such a huge piece of what drove me, um, came at the expense of my health and wellbeing. And then of course the irony that I was like preaching, right. Health and wellbeing, especially to like major global audiences. And it was like the fraudulency that exists when you know that you're really good at talking the talk, but walking the talk is a whole other thing. So that was kind of the, that was the invitation.

10:51Yeah. By the way, and you do talk to talk so well as I'm watching you and listening to you, you're, you're one of the great communicators I've had on the show. Like I can see why your stage speaking is so profound and why you're so sought after let's, let's cut to kind of the middle of the story a little bit and tell them what you did. So, cause it's kind of radical and my way, not everybody's gonna be able to afford this, but the reason I want to get the book and the reason I want them to hear the the interview particularly is, they can benefit from your RV trip right now today, right? And now that I know your family, but now that I know that I know your family, meaning I've known her family for many, many years, you guys, like more than a decade.

11:28And I love her family. I love certain people in her family that I know. Now that I know that it even makes this even more interesting to me that you did it because you could have done a lot of other things. There's places you could have gone and done that were like, kind of, I don't know, cool things to go do. But yeah, So tell them what you decided to do and how you even set this up, because it's pretty crazy what you did. Yeah, it was kind of like all in that like space of heartbreak and disappointment and like betrayal by God. I mean, I was just like I was questioning every single thing that I knew.

12:01And and we had one of our best friends was also experiencing his own heartbreak for his own reasons. And it was kind of like we were three heartbroken amigos. And we're like, we got to get out of here. It was, you know, May, June in Texas. So it was already a hundred degrees. It was COVID and shelter in place. Like all these catchphrases that are now, you know, we were very familiar with, but at the time we're like, what does that mean? Like shelter in place. So at the time we rented like a celebrity tour bus, like a 38 foot tour bus that like slept nine and had like two full bathrooms just for the three of us.

12:38And, um, we hopped on the road and we just said like, let's just go chase an adventure, which I think that was such oxygen for my soul and had always been. And I think, you know, certainly at the time it wasn't like, oh, we're going to go on this RV trip and it's going to be deeply healing. And then I'm going to write a book about, I was just like, give me the out of here. Like, that's all I knew. Um, so we ended up going on this epic road trip, which of course ends up becoming this like beautiful journey of not even self-discovery as much as like self-remembrance. I think that that was, that was the thing that I think we actually have less to learn in our lifetime and more to remember because the little versions of us, the young versions of us, um, who enter into the world and know who we are so effortlessly before the world kind of gets its hands on us.

13:29And I think it was kind of a great unlearning to get back to the little girl who knew exactly who she was before I started, you know, checking boxes that I thought impressed other people. You write so and speak so eloquently, by the way. I don't I have to tell you it. I relate so deeply that as I'm interviewing you, I'm kind of like processing some stuff. I was doing it last night. I read your entire book last night. Wow. Yeah. And I was processing a lot of it even this morning. And you write such beautiful things that resonate with me. And I have a feeling when people are on the treadmill right now or driving in their car or getting their coffee ready in the morning, it's happening to them as well.

14:15I want to read something that you said, and then I want you to talk about it. I want everyone to hear this really closely because something dawned on me when I read it. You said, I remind myself that letting go of others' expectations and opinions of me allows my inner voice to be my truest and best guide. I believe that validating myself is a single most important act in the pursuit of self-love. I choose my community, the people I do life with intentionally. I love infinitely. I trust discerningly. I forgive quickly. I communicate boundaries early and I lovingly let go of people who are incapable or unwilling to give as much as they take.

14:53That is so beautiful. Once you talk about that, And you know what I realized when I read it? It's letting go of other people's expectations. I'm not even sure in my own life who these other people are anymore or what it is that I think they expect. Totally. But somehow it's there. And I don't even know what these expectations are. It's like I'm making it up almost. I think sometimes these like self-limiting beliefs that we allow like the captors, like the captors inside of us. to be these like paper tigers, right? Just this like these phantom dragons that exist. And oftentimes some people say, well, like, yeah, I don't know what they'll think.

15:35And I'm like, who are they? Who is this like, who's this peanut galley that we have created inside of our minds that heaven forbid we get brave enough to like stand up on the stage in our own lives and like do and say and be all the things that we know that we want and is the truest version of ourselves. Like heaven forbid, we're like, who the hell is this peanut galley that we've constructed inside of our head? And I actually think it's a really good exercise because when we really think about it and we start like writing down those names, like that's something I always like challenge people to do.

16:09Like, who are they? Is it like the guy from high school, like Kevin Funderbutt, who I like talk about in the book? Is it that guy? You know, because like, by the way, like Facebook, I'm like, see what that guy's up to nowadays, you know? And, um, but I, it continues to be a spiritual practice of acknowledging and letting go, because I think the idea that like, we're just going to like snap our fingers and like suddenly not give a damn what people think, like it's, it is part of the human condition to care. And I actually think it is a beautiful part of the human condition to care what people think about us and to seek that love and validation.

16:49and at the same time what I've learned now and I mean this is a bit from Brene Brown's philosophy but the idea of like if you are not in the arena with me and I literally have a list of like my favorites on my phone which are about 10 to 15 people and even when the book came out it was a really good exercise of like three years of internal work and I remember when the book came out and I made a point to say the people who get to have an opinion that matters to me are these 10 to 15 people that are on my favorites on my phone. Everyone else is what it is. And like, I think it's as dangerous to believe the criticism as much as it's dangerous to believe the praise because inevitably from strangers and especially with social media today.

17:35Um, so I think that idea, it is a spiritual practice for me every day. And I actually did a post a couple of days ago, because some dude named Steve from USA posted like a super heinous thing on Amazon review on Amazon, which was really just like a wild personal attack. And I posted it on social media and basically said like the Stevens of the world are always going to exist. Like the haters are always going to hate. And regardless, like having an emotional buoyancy that exists from like the love and support from the people who are, are in the arena of your life. Those people's opinions get to matter.

18:16And I think that I'm not above it. And that's why I'm saying like, for a minute, I like read Steve's review and I was like, what, who is this guy? And then my next thought was like deep breath. So I can respond to not react deep breath. What is, what is my truth? My truth is that Steve is not in the arena with me. It's not even a real person. Let's be real. Like it's definitely not Steve, you know? So at the end of the day, I'm wildly imperfect when it comes to that practice, but it is an aspiration for me to continue to let go. I want to talk about that respond react thing in a second. So here's how right you are.

18:51And by the way, everyone, you hear the, there's some, there's gems inside gems that she gives you. The one thing she said there in the beginning is means you also can't take the accolades and adoration so deeply either. I was at dinner last night with my daughter and we were talking about this very topic. I get this feeling that criticism doesn't bother her quite as much as it does me to this day. I said, Bill, I think that's a superpower. She goes, well, daddy, of course I care. And I said, good, because I still want you to care. And actually, as I was saying it, someone bought my dinner. There was a fan of mine in the restaurant that the server came over and bought my dinner and wrote me a long letter while they were sitting there too.

19:27Beautiful letter. And she goes, read it. I go, oh, come on. And I read her the letter and she and I said, isn't that beautiful? Isn't that wonderful to know? And I but I said to her, I said, Bella, the one thing is if you start to buy in too much to how amazing you are, the flip side of that coin is the other one as well. So I'm grateful I've helped this person. They are a beautiful soul for taking the time to write this letter and buy our dinner. But I don't want it to impact. I don't want to live for that because now I'm addicted to the same side, other side of the same coin on the criticism.

19:58You got to really evaluate this, everybody. really important things she said right there. And because if you start chasing all of that, then you're going to feel a whole bunch of more pain when you get the, the adversary stuff. What about this respond versus react? You said it in the book. You said, you said now I have an ability to respond rather than react. What's the difference to me. It's, and again, back to that kind of spiritual practice, it is the sacred pause. And I think for everyone, for me, I realized I had a huge disconnect between my head and my heart. And there was something about my mind always took over and was always thinking, but I was never feeling.

20:32And that was like a big shift over kind of that internal work. And what I realized was this idea that for so long, something would happen in my life, right? It would be like a text or an email from someone or someone would say something and I would have this huge, like physical reaction. And I could feel it like welling up in my body. And for me, it was like usually my chest and I'd get really big and like all my muscles would flex. And I'd be like, who does she think she is? And like my voice would change. And what I've noticed now is when I get that surge of energy, which almost always, it was a big reaction.

21:06And almost always it was directly tethered to some form of ego, right. Of me defending myself or me feeling like, you know, someone was taking a jab or me feeling threatened or scarcity or whatever it was. And so now again, very imperfectly, what I noticed now is when I have a big reaction that I take a sacred pause. I take a deep breath and I feel into my body. And I ask myself, what do you need right now? What's like, what's really going on? And like a tangible example this morning, you know, I have a four and a half month old baby boy, which means like we get no sleep, right? Like deeply sleep deprived, which are like all my interviews, I'm basically doing them drunk because that's the equivalent of being sleep deprived.

21:50And so this morning, a very tangible example. My husband and I wake up and he wakes up and he's like, Oh, by the way, I think I'm going to get my haircut today. And I have a golf tournament. And I, and I kind of had this like big reaction of me being like, you don't get to do all the things that you just want to do, you know? And before, you know, it, it's like tit for tat. And it's like, well, you just had a girl's weekend and you just, and I took a deep breath and I was like one second, I'm like, put my hand up and I put one hand on my heart. And I said, you know what? This isn't about we're not this isn't about your like golf tournament this isn't about your haircut that what i'm feeling is that i don't have enough time for myself right now and what i'm hearing you say is that you don't feel like you have enough time for yourself right now and he was like yeah and i was like so really like we're feeling the same thing like a paradigm of scarcity around our time how can we best love each other right now because like this isn't what it's really about you know and he was like and we both like the escalation comes down and so i think that's the difference is that and in later we went and had breakfast and i was like by the way bro like high five for like look at us de-escalating our lives like new crushing that fight and burying it totally yeah so i think that like that is i'm a big fan of like give me something tangible give me a tangible example and that was like literally hours ago this morning where i was like that is the difference in me where i can recognize the difference in a reaction which again is almost always like my feelings projecting, um, like whatever injustice I'm feeling on whatever the situation is, instead of taking like radical responsibility for saying, give me a moment.

23:30Let me ask what's really going on. What need is not being met inside of me right now. And how can I honor that and ask for love and support in getting that met? That feels like an entirely different internal dialogue. Really good. The applications, everybody, when she's saying this too. And I forgive me, I didn't mean to interrupt you. No, please. I want to say that the applications of that are profound. Something comes up at work today where it's a big bomb dropped on you and it's just a massive challenge and problem. And it's a real one. That pause of what do I need right now? That taking that breath that allows you to respond rather than react and make the difference in whether your company stays in business.

24:09You stack up of enough of these where you start reacting and not responding and your relationship two years from now is totally different. You know, all of these different things, the application of these things, because at this level, everybody that you're listening to right now, these are the little things that separate and distinguish your life over the life you don't want. These are important things. And it's, it's great work you did when you wrote this. So a lot of it stuck with me. Like I wrote a lot of it down. Like I didn't just read the book or highlight. I'm like, I'm writing this because I own stuff when I write it.

24:41And there's this experience in Jackson Hole. where you run into this fisherman. What a cool trip, by the way. I just did a podcast release today on diversity and variety being richness in life. And that's really what you did. You took a time and you went, I'm going to get some experiences I've never had. Because I said, your brain doesn't change and you don't change if you do the same things with the same people over and over again. The chances of changing with the same people and the same patterns and the same activities, very small. But when you change, even if it's not something that costs anything.

25:14Now you've created an environment. And so you run into this fisherman and you had a conversation about being at a crossroads in your life. And the fisherman says, sure, I spent a lot of my life knowing something needed changing. Often that something was me. This stranger says this. But I was too scared to actually do anything about it. So I just stayed stuck in the abyss of doing nothing and wasting so much time, he lamented. after some more reflection i wrote the following passage in my journal it takes a lot of courage to be who you really are and even more to know what you really want and have the guts to go out there in the world and fight for it all of that is easier said than done have you from that day did that change for you because i i even think as i'm reading it man i'm making it sound like i'm better at this stuff than i am i still am getting around to doing too many damn things in my life I still am sitting here right now talking to you.

26:09So that was like a watershed moment for you? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it was something that kind of like ricocheted inside of me was that idea of like, how much time have I wasted in my life knowing that change needed to happen? But change is terrifying. I mean, I think it is like one of the scariest things imbued in our humanity is the fear of change and like what is on the other side of that. So for me, it was like kind of the first time that I was like, what does that look like? What does that bravery look like? Because as you mentioned early, I think that I had a definition of bravery that was jumping out of planes, that was hiking the world's biggest mountains, that was swimming with sharks, that was starting companies, that was speaking on big stages, like again, all these very external things.