[00:00] Valerie: Rise, renew, reconnect. Welcome to from the Ashes, a podcast where every story ignites hope and healing. In this week's episode, I interview my friend Jeremy Lyons, who has made a habit of seamlessly blending dichotomies. He has been both a football player and cheerleader, a dancer with no rhythm, a stand up comic as an introvert, and so much more. Professionally, he has been a teacher, surveyor, data analyst, artistic figure, model, film runner, and for the last eight years has worked in the recruiting operations space where he has started his own recops company and created the most popular blog and GPT in the space. We've had some great conversations throughout the years, and this one is no exception. I hope you enjoy this interview with Jeremy Lyons.
[00:58] Valerie: Alright, everyone, welcome back to from the ashes. I am your host, Valerie Beck, and today I have my good friend Jeremy Lyons with me and we are going to talk about some fun topics today. I know Jeremy and I have known him for, I would say about ten years, nine or ten years, something like that.
[01:20] Jeremy: Jeff, I think we're coming up on that.
[01:22] Valerie: Yeah.
[01:23] Jeremy: As I was telling people that we were going to be doing this this weekend, people were like, oh, well, how long have you, you known Val for? And I was like, oh my God, it might. It's coming up on ten years.
[01:33] Valerie: Yeah. So it also feels like we've been through several phases of existence together. Um, when I first met Jeremy, it was through the Jet Alumni association. He's the second jet on this podcast. So if you're not familiar with the jet, you will be. It's the Japanese exchange and teaching program. He also has been such a help on some of my artistic endeavors. So we used to run this show called the Shuffle Dance Challenge, where it would be a dance improv adventure each show. And he was such a, such a huge support in that era of my life. So it's really cool to have stayed friends with you, Jeremy. I'm really excited to have you here.
[02:11] Jeremy: Hey, I'm excited to be here. When you started doing this podcast, I was like, oh, good, now we can finally put stuff on wax that we've always talked about.
[02:20] Valerie: Yeah, for sure. Like we finally get those brilliant ideas out there.
[02:23] Jeremy: Except, you know, certainly not my brilliant idea, certainly yours.
[02:29] Valerie: Oh, thank you. But yes, today we're going to dig into Jeremy's from the ashes story. So just to give a little bit of background, Jeremy, you can expand on this in your own way. Jeremy has worn so many hats in his life, and part of it is that, like, you know, you have so many different interests, but also you've been willing to be open in exploring. And then there are certain challenges personally that you have gone through as well that have shaped the way that you approach things in life. So with that being said, I will give you the floor.
[03:03] Jeremy: Well, I mean, thank you for. For giving me the floor, Val. I mean, it's one of those things that, for me, I have been very, very lucky in my life to surround myself with and be encouraged by the people who are around me to be curious and be adventurous and understand that not everything is going to necessarily have a good outcome or a positive outcome. But you learn new things and you learn stuff about it. I saw a quote, actually, yesterday. It's like, from Nelson Mandela that was, I don't lose. I either win or I learn. And I think that that has been kind of an idea that's always sort of stuck with me is, where am I learning and how do I learn? And I think that that kind of gets into a lot about my life story. Many people who oftentimes have heard me talk or ask me questions wonder how I've done so much. And when I look back on it, I don't actually think of it as having done so much. It's just been, hey, I was curious. I was around people who were also curious and doing the same thing. And I. I got to go on a lot of adventures in that sort of way, shape and form.
[04:20] Valerie: Got it. So the first thing that I want to dig into is your chosen from the ashes story. Right. Because we go through so many difficulties, but that are formative, but one that really stands out to you.
[04:36] Jeremy: Yeah. And I think for. It's been kind of interesting because, I mean, you and I have gone through, it feels like so many different lives in just the short amount of time we, we've known each other. We've gone through breakups, we've gone through job changes. We've gone through learning experiences. We've gone through getting married during a pandemic, and what that looks like to our partners, starting. Starting on their new adventures and things that are really their passion, passions and been supportive there. And so I think that it's. It is kind of fun to have this discussion. So my from the ashes story, I think, starts with kind of a down note, and I'll call this, like, the lessons written in blood aspect of my, of my story, which was, I had a very particularly rough 2022. I went through two job changes. One was kind of a lot of people not understanding me, but I knew I needed to, I needed to make a change off of that. And then the other one was, bar none, one of the most torturous experiences of my life. And that led me kind of on a re exploration of who do I want to work with and why. And that led me to not only actually starting my own business and writing a lot about my profession, which is recruiting operations. And really I started writing a newsletter very specifically for our group because it is a group that normally is behind the scenes doing behind the scene type work thats now getting a lot of airtime. And that quickly actually grew to the most popular newsletter in the space. And I had a conversation with somebody about this last week, which was, I remember when it had 500 people. Now it has 2500 plus in essentially a year. And I don't, I could not tell you how it got that big, why it got that big, other than to say that I just have a passion for my space. And that has been the most important guiding star is to provide my space with space with information. But even more than that, one of the things was I got to work with some really, really bright people. And at the time I had known this probably actually since about the time we met was, well, Jeremy, you have add. What does that mean for me? I always thought, well, that means a little bit of inconsistency. Some days ill be able to work really well, really focused. Other days, yeah, you know what, not so much. And that might be a couple of days, that might be a week, just depends. But I started working with a lot of very, very bright people who had add. And what has been very formative to me is it's actually been people who traditionally, if people don't know about add, it's usually diagnosed in men, little boys, because the symptoms are a little bit more culturally like can't sit still, love talking, curiosity, things like that. But I was actually learning it a lot from women where it's not as common and not, and not as easily diagnosed. And so for me it was interesting because these women are brilliant and I have a tremendous amount of respect for them and they were very open about, hey, it's not just an intention thing. It's not just, hey, I can't sit still, hey, I can't do this kind of work. It became, well, actually there are all these different things that are kind of in coincide with add that I just simply hadn't known, I hadn't done enough research. I sort of thought, okay, you know what? Take my Adderall and kind of deal with that as opposed to how do you think and where do things come from? And it led me kind of down my own journey to figure out, well, actually, some of the things that kind of coincide with ADd, things like OCD and dyslexia and things like that in my own life actually had explanations that I didn't know and that these people sort of helped me find and that actually helped me get back to kind of feeling like myself and feeling like I can be myself and really rebuilt what had been largely destroyed in 2022 and given me new words, new language, new ways to discuss new things, new communities to go and engage with and talk to and collect stories from, because I'm somebody who I learned from doing and I learned from asking questions, and those can be fully across the board as validity. You you and I have certainly had conversations ranging from just about everything than some of the dialogues that you've had with other guests on the podcast as well.
[09:49] Valerie: Yeah. So I have a question.
[09:51] Jeremy: Yeah.
[09:52] Valerie: For people. We were talking before about how I feel like it's really hard for people to empathize with add for several reasons. One is that it's humorized, but also that it is really hard to get into the, the shoes of someone who is experiencing these symptoms. So I want to ask you, like, if you look back once you knew your diagnosis and you kind of knew the symptoms, do ever look back at, like, an instance in your life where it's like, oh, so that's what it was. And can you illustrate that for us?
[10:19] Jeremy: Yeah, definitely. And, I mean, I've got numerous things that I go through, so growing up, for me, my parents kind of picked up on it very early on that I could, that I had add. Um, and one of the ways, with the information that they had at the time, kind of, there were three buckets of ways that you could help children with add that werent just medicate them to no end. And my closest friend at the time also had add, and his parents opted to medicate him for it. And I didnt know. I mean, im somebody whos going to talk to everybody like, youre a human being. I dont care about your job. I dont care about how much money you have. Youre a person. Youre standing in front of me. Im going to have a conversation with you like you're an actual human. Um, and those three buckets were exercise, structure, and diet. And growing up, the, the running joke in my family was Jeremy only likes white food. It was pizza without sauce. It was pasta without sauce. It was like, cut up bowls, and they had to be put. I wouldn't just, like, bite into an apple was like, had to be cut. I liked tricolored pasta, but I would eat all one color of pasta first and then go on to the next one. And then go on to the next one. And one of the things that I think people dont necessarily understand about the neurodivergent aspect of add is that there are those other things come into play. So the OCD side of me, it doesn't. It goes into that and my attention to detail. A lot of people who I work with, I'll go, oh, my God, you got an insane attention to detail. I know people who have insane attention to detail, and I'm like, I want that because I find myself making mistakes, and I find myself getting upset at myself for making mistakes because I'm like, you know better. But when I think about my life and I think about my career, one of the things about recruiting operations that I love is you think in systems and you think of scalability, and you think of, how do I make something more efficient? And usually you make things more efficient by kind of making every. Making things the same. And it always bothered me, and I remember an interview question from somebody seven years or six years ago, which was very early on in my career, which was, you sound like somebody who likes structure, likes to deliver structure and all that. And while that is great, how do you respond to people who don't like that? So that's something that stuck out to me. That's always stuck out to me as a question, because at the time, I was kind of like, well, I'm just saying things very confidently, because I was taught to say things confidently, and I like to meet people where they are. I don't like to be like, have very firm rigidity in what I do. But that was an interview question that kind of stuck with me, and it didn't click in my head until last year when I was working with some of these people and continue to work with them now, was like, oh, okay. You were picking up on the fact that, like, I might get frustrated with people when what they're doing doesn't make sense. It doesn't. You can't fit it. Systematic box and how to sort of express that not only in professional language, but have personal conversations with people where it's like, hey, we've designed this thing for everybody to follow. You're not following it. What can we do to sort of make it easier for you to follow. Why aren't you following it and really discovering the why? And I think that also has kind of led into a lot of stuff in my own life where people ask me. One of the questions I love to ask people is, what is your question word? Because I think people have different question words in their own lives. Some people like, what questions? Like, what needs to be done. Some people are how people. I'm a very big why person. If you, you can be as ambiguous as you want, down everything else, but if you give me your north star or you tell me the why behind something that goes into my internal computer and I start going, oh, okay, well, these things are going to start stacking up, and these things are going to be what they're going to be.
[14:49] Valerie: Okay. So I would like to feed some of that back to you and let me see if I got it correctly. So you're saying how, when you got this interview question, she was pretty much asking, like, how would you cope with people not catching on to what the structure you're putting forward. Right. Because, like, ultimately, I think people will have various attention to detail, have various ability to adopt systems, et cetera, et cetera. But you have a particular way of thinking where there is, perhaps because of the OCD, I'm not too sure where it does become a little bit more rigid because of your tendencies. Am I hearing that correctly?
[15:34] Jeremy: I mean, I think, at least in my own personal story, that that might be it. Because when things start to not make sense, there is a definite thing, at least in my own personal world, to philosophize it and to try to make it make sense in sequence and to understand sequences. And I think for that question, and that question alone, part of the thing was, is that about five, six years ago, the profession that I was doing or that I do was undergoing a shift and it was new, and people were still trying to figure out, and people to this day are still trying to figure this out around how do we have people in these roles and how are the other people going to respond to the, to these people in these roles? Because in doing so and in doing it, you're going to have, there's always an adopter curve of things. What are you going to, how are you going to design systems and how are you going to help people who are, you know, need the validation and need the proof and need the, need the pieces in place to really go, okay, now I can make a change. Now I can make a pivot because so much of it at least professionally, you know, that is, there's money on the line, there's jobs on the line. And, yes, money and jobs are two different things, but the culture of a company can be really impacted if there's a lot of people who have really strong personalities trying to kind of duke it out in ways that other people just don't understand. And so you have to learn to the language that you need in order to convey ideas to technical people and non technical people. And so that, for me, was sort of what I go back and I think about all the interview questions ive ever asked. Thats one of those questions that really sticks out to me very heavily because it was so new at the time.
[17:48] Valerie: So in 2022, you said that you went through some of really rough patch, and that, like, part of what you realize is that there was something that you, something had to shift within yourself. Can you tell us a little bit more about that and how you were able to do that ultimately?
[18:07] Jeremy: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, one of the things least about my life and about my career is I've reinvented myself and sort of gone into different directions. And thats been actually a weird, not weird, its been a theme throughout my life. Jeff in high school, I went, coming out of high school or junior high into high school, I went off and I did cheerleading. And most of the people like youre 14 to 16 year old boy going off and doing cheerleading. Why, especially for a school that didn't had a couple of male cheerleader leaders, but not a whole lot of guys were running to, running to do that. And I did that. And then I ended up playing football later in high school while also cheerleading and doing ballet. So it just the perspective I've always been about trying to get perspective. Now, getting into 2022, there were several instances where I did not know the right questions to ask. And I sort of made the assumption that everybody around me and the people that I worked with all sort of had the same motivations that I did and sort of moving things forward. And that wasn't the case. And so I didn't know the right questions to ask to figure out, were these the right people that I should be working with? Is this the environment that I should be working in? And because of that, I oftentimes would dismiss really big red flags that other people might have picked up that I just didn't because I sort of assumed, hey, somebody's having a bad day. This is just one off. This is a one off thing. And eventually those one off things started actually to become very all the time. And I did not understand. And im not saying in those situations I was right, somebody else was wrong, or im not here even on this recording to place blame. I take the ownership and the accountability for my own actions during those times where I didn't fully understand or I was working with incomplete information in my own life and I should have asked more questions or I should have taken new, new thought approaches to stuff. And I think that even though that 2022 period of my life was really, really rough for me, some things that got me out of it were having the right partner. My wife was incredibly supportive, very, very helpful through that entire period of time and really starting to think about my own personal network around people that I spent my time with and how did that have influences on me. And that, I think, is what has gotten me out of those two situations. And basically for everybody listening, the two situations where I ended up losing my job twice, which on all ranked lists, people will tell you are the most stressful, one of the most stressful things up there with buying a house, which is something that we did 2022 as well. And so all of those pieces kind of coming together, you know, were a convergence of a lot of heavy emotions, a lot of big emotions, and needing to understand what those meant to mean in my life and how I was going to respond to them.
[22:02] Valerie: Okay, I want to ask a question because I have felt a certain way about my seeming inability sometimes to just do what everyone else is doing. And I feel like you relate a little bit to this and it's hard to not feel like something is wrong with you. And you have told me before, like, there have been times where that thought has popped up, like, when you were going through this, like, what was your, what was your line of thinking? And like, did, did thoughts like that come up of, like, why is it happening to me? And like, how did you navigate that?
[22:45] Jeremy: So I have never been somebody who has fallen into a despair around, like, why is this happening to me? I wouldn't hesitate to say that I'm somebody who's like, everything, that everything happens for reason.
[23:03] Valerie: Yeah.
[23:04] Jeremy: Because I think that that's a line of thinking that I think it can help be helpful for some people, but I don't think it's been helpful for me. I think what I have looked at it as in my own life is what is this situation that I can learn from? How do I identify when things are going at this direction and how do I control my own emotions within things? Because, again, one of the things that's really interesting. The more I've read up on neurodivergent stuff, and I'm by no means a neurodivergent expert, I want to be clear. I know people who are experts who speak on this, and I would instantly say, don't take my clinical diagnosis for anything other than, you know, my own personal experience in my own personal life. And that is something that I think is also really important to talk about, is standard across the board. People will experience things differently. But for me, I, I needed, I needed some of these lessons, essentially.
[24:12] Valerie: Yeah.
[24:13] Jeremy: And even though I would say that they sucked and I wouldn't necessarily wish them on anybody that I know, I will also tell people that sometimes in a lot of situations, I see myself as a cautionary tale to be able to come through and then tell people these stories so that if they start to go through stuff in their own lives that looks very similar, they know that they're not alone. And I think that not alone perspective is also really, really important. And even through these experiences, one of the things that I've started to do, at least professionally on my own LinkedIn, is a lot of, at least especially at the end of 2022, was when the global job market changed. And the last time that it had changed, which was in Covid, where there were a lot of the COVID related layoffs. Once people sort of figured out what it was going to be like, there was a huge hiring sprint for this most recent round. There are some people I know who have been without a job for up to a year, and when you have been without a job for up to a year, when you interview differently to unemployment benefits only run for not very long, like I think California were up to like 16 weeks, maybe 1216 weeks. That can be really hard on people. And I started doing essentially a post every week so that people knew that theyre not alone and that other people do it. Because originally some companies would get called out as having dumb layoffs, but other companies would miss out. And when you work in recruiting, youre in the business of collecting stories and working to get people hired and hiring people changes peoples lives most of the time. And so for me, ive wanted people to know that theyre not alone and that non own piece is also vital. And I don't think that I would have that same perspective if these things had happened to me.
[26:19] Valerie: Yeah.
[26:20] Jeremy: And by the way though, that post that I do on Tuesday, I don't even think about it as like doing it for me. I like to do things for other people because it's because I think that it's important. I feel like I am letting people down if I don't do that. And so I've set that up in my own mind. It's like, hey, I'm going to do this because I never know when that other person just needs to be felt, needs to feel seen and not disappeared. And how does that help them?
[26:52] Valerie: You know, the last time we talked, you did mention, like, you have felt misunderstood much of your life. Like, how does that, how has that driven you? I mean, I see it because I see it in what you do for people and you want people to feel seen.
[27:11] Jeremy: You know, that's actually probably the first time that somebody's asked me that question, and, you know, I don't have an answer to that. I think that there are a lot of people who might think that there are certain, if they were to be in my shoes and doing those things, that their motivations would be different. And I dont fault people for that. You see everything people do through that lens of your own personal experience, your own personal stories. And I think one of the beautiful parts, at least in the last year, and id call it 2023, as a huge rebirth year for me and figuring out who I am and what I like and how I want to do things, that there are people out there who will take the time to listen and understand so you don't have to feel sort of like that you're misinterpreted. But I think the other piece, too, let's call this technology impacting how people think. One of the things with prompt engineering and AI and the incorporation of AI, which is also kind of coincided with the end of 2022, was how do you write a prompt? And for me, learning how to write a prompt made me realize the importance and the preciseness of words and those specific and very specific words. And to me, obviously, you use words to tell a story. It's one of the reasons why I've never understood modern dance. To me, always looks like somebody throwing a temper tantrum on the floor, but inevitably. But, and people can get mad at me in the comments for saying that, but I think for me, I learned a ton about language and linguistics that I always knew or had learned, but it felt different. It felt more usable. And I think that also changed how I feel representative or understood, too.
[29:27] Valerie: Okay, so I want to switch topics a little bit, but still related. So, you know, back in the day, so you did cheerleading, football and ballet. The cool thing about being able to kind of traverse different worlds in that way because, or archetypes or whatever it is, because like, it's so typical. Like these, these are very typical american teenage archetypes, at least the football, cheerleading dichotomy. Right. So I want to hear your personal experience as someone who did both the reactions that people had to you and also your insights from traversing two or three worlds.
[30:19] Jeremy: Oh, boy. So I think that the, what I go to when people ask me is the reason I did cheerleading was not because, hey, I'm a teenage boy and I want to hang out with girls. The reason I did cheerleading was on a promise. I had said the cheerleading coach at the time had watched me dance with, I was at a camp that was through my school and I was doing dancing and I lifted somebody up as part of the dance. And she came up to me afterwards and said, hey, do you want to do cheerleading? You can lift people up. I said, okay. And it was as simple as that. And the other thing, too was I wanted to be able to go to football games. And I knew that if I wanted to be able to go to football games, the only way I was going to be able to get to football games was to have a ride. And the way to get that ride was, well, be part of it in some way, shape or form and, and do that. And I actually, the cheerleading piece extended through college for me, too. But I think that you need a strong internal dialogue with yourself when you're going to do something that people aren't necessarily going to understand. And trust me, in high school, I heard every name in the book. And if you are not somebody who is self confident and just sort of, you know, your, you know, your story and you know, your direction, there are plenty of things that will break you. And I just was like, hey, I'm going to go and I'm going to do this and I'm going to laugh about it later. And part of doing it means that you have to understand that people aren't going to understand. And then when I started actually playing football and doing cheerleading and doing ballet at the same time, the main concern that a lot of people had was, well, how are you going to balance your time in doing all of this? And that actually lended itself really well into ways that I had come up, which was give yourself structure, get the exercise. And those helped mitigate a lot of my add symptoms because I just simply was, I was getting the exercise that I needed and I needed to be very organized with my time. And I did. And now looking back on it, I always question myself, like, how did I do all of this? And I couldn't give you an answer. I think it was just, this is what's in front of me. Get through it. And now I go back and I take the lessons that I learned, and I think it gives me perspective on a lot of things. I think one of the things that you and I have always talked about is never been comfortable around alpha male type conversations. I just simply dont know how to process that, because Im not somebody who looks at themselves and says that Im a mans man, I am just, Im here and Im in person. And that is how I im a person with stories. And I dont think that I fall into any archetypes now. Other people might be like, oh, no, you totally fall into archetypes. And id be like, which ones are those? So that I can stand it in myself. But I think for me, you know, learning, and, you know, I'd love to kind of hear your response on your archetypes too. It's always been just curiosity. For me.
[33:58] Valerie: I would say that I have had issues with self esteem forever. And so, however, I think my curiosity in a lot of cases, when I was pursuing passions, drove and overtook my self esteem and confidence issues, and that gave me periods of time where I was able to accomplish a lot. Ultimately, the self esteem and confidence did catch up to me. I think I just suppressed it for a long time. And so when **** hit the fan relationally, I guess, with people or whatnot, and it would cause me to spiral down. And I didn't have the self awareness until much more recently to see where those spirals came from, because it was like I was doing a lot of great things, and I would be able to accomplish a lot, and then something would happen in my love life, and then I'd be completely depressed for a year or something. And, you know, I'm really grateful that I have been able to have periods of my life where my curiosity and bravery took over, and that I. This is why I think self awareness, when you have certain, just, like, emotional reactions or mental tendencies, right? It's. It's a. If we don't acknowledge them, they will drag us down. And a pill or a drug can only do so much before you're like, hey, okay, the drug is masking something here. I need to figure out what that is so that it doesn't take over my psyche or my body or whatever it might be. So those are my thoughts.
[35:57] Jeremy: With that, could we dive into that? Because I actually, as you were talking, I had this question this question came up in my own mind, and it involves kind of a little bit of an interlude, which was this, which was, I've always been, I would say, very disciplined in my, in myself for a couple of things. First off, I, I don't drink when I'm angry because I know that there's not going to be a solution for it, and it's not going, all I'm going to do the next day is feel angry and hungover if I been drinking heavily. So I've always made it a very good decision to just not drink when I'm angry. But one of the things that I realized as you were talking is that whenever I went into a new relationship, I would always give myself time to heal between, because I never wanted to get into a relationship where in my own brain I was still suffering from somebody else. And here's this beautiful and wonderful person in front of me who is a blank slate in our relationship, and I'm now taking out on them some unhealed or unprocessed trauma. Yeah, but I think one of the things that's kind of fascinating about that, Washington, while I was able to do that in my personal life, in my professional life, I never did that. And so for you, kind of being able to kind of more or less talk about it the opposite way, where you were able to do the professional things, but the personal life really kind of would torpedo stuff. I mean, how do you feel? Do you feel like you give yourself time to heal between those processes, or do you sort of feel like, hey, I just ran into the next thing and ran into the next thing and ignored sort of maybe some of the common things that I had seen in the past, but maybe this time different. And the wishful thinking that goes into.
[38:00] Valerie: That, oh, totally was me. Yeah. It was almost like a hilarious pattern. There was one point where I had kind of mended a relationship, and then immediately it was like the same day kind of deal immediately fell into another trap of a relationship that was very one sided and like, was all my patterns. Again, I just was not aware of it. And, but it was so stark in my mind at the time after the fact, I was like, you just did that. And then you went straight into another one of the same thing. And that was like, I think that was my aha.
[38:41] Jeremy: Moment.
[38:41] Valerie: Finally, I learned my lesson. It's like one of those universe things. It's like if you don't learn it this time, the universe will, we'll kick it back to you and we'll continue to kick it, kick it back to you until you finally get the message.
[38:53] Jeremy: Yeah, well, I mean, and that was kind of my 2022 in a lot of ways, with my two job, with the two jobs that, that really impacted me. Same sort of thing rushed right out of it, nor every red flag along the way and ran into it. I think one of the things that I would, this is kind of, kind of along still the same line is that you and I are both artistic people, and we, we don't, we, everything we do, we like to not only just do it, but elevate it to an art because we care. We're very passionate about the things we do, and we will go to bat for those things as well. And I think one of my questions for you as well is, do you then take the creativity that you like to do and process that creatively? Like, for me, I write a lot, and there's some things that I'll write that I'll never see the light of day, but I write, and as I write, I process things and I think of the situations and I'm able to work through that for you. I know dance is very, very, is very, very important to your, to you and your identity. Do you ever sort of say, hey, I'm going to take the thing that was impacting me and I'm just going to turn it into a dance and I'm going to just quote Florence in the machine, it's like, shake it off, you know, because it's hard to dance when the devil's on your back. So shake it off. Like, kind of do something like that and sort of, sort of, that's how you're going to put every kind of a nice, clean bow on it and never go back to it again.
[40:31] Valerie: I would say it's really funny, but it won't come through. And dance for me, because dance is no longer a form of expression for me to process pain. Yes. And this is something that I had to really work through is that, like a lot of people do, especially in hip hop, they will use hip hop to process their pain and express their pain and their anger. And the thing is, like, with any emotion, when it does fuel very good art, I have to say, when people are emoting their suffering and it can be beautiful, but at the end of the day, then it's still pain and suffering that you haven't processed otherwise. And for me, it wasn't enough to just dance it out. And I don't want dance to solely be a place where I be emo. I want it to be creative and to be creative doesn't mean that you are stuck in your suffering. To be creative means that you've transcended it and are able to create something new. And so when I dance now, it is very off the cuff, which is I, I do choreography to teach people. But you'll never see me regurgitate moves in any very organized fashion anymore, especially if I'm going out and I'm not really doing much of organized dancing anymore. There's a reason for that. Not to say that I won't ever again, but at least for my dance, I save it for a very specific purpose, and that is to express freedom.
[42:14] Jeremy: Well, I mean, that's phenomenal that you know yourself well enough that you do that. I think for me, kind of reflecting off of that, I didn't stand up as a form of catharsis. And I do. I used to do every week a post that on LinkedIn that people know me for, which was a spicy post. I wasn't saying that it was a hot take. It was spicy because it was a perspective. And I rated on the Scoville scale of spice, depending on how spicy I thought it was going to be. But similar to you, I don't go back and revisit material, and I don't love every time I'm creating something, I want to create it new. When I was doing stand up, I didn't go in with a set list of jokes that I was going to tell. I was going to listen to the audience, listen to what people were reacting to and think on the spot about what the jokes that I was going to tell, how I can make a story out of it that related to me and do all of that. And same now I, if I. But I. Or not. Well, similar now I don't go back and revisit material that I've already done. I've already done before. But also similarly, too, I stopped doing those posts because I had done them when I was angry. And the minute I sort of lost that fire and that anger, it felt empty to sort of keep doing things when I didn't have a strong opinion on them anymore. And people continue to ask me, they're like, well, would you ever go back and do stand up again? No, but it's, you know, I still, you hang around me long enough, I'll, you know, somebody will get me on a go on a streak, and I will. But I'm doing it impromptu. I'm not doing it prepared anymore.
[44:12] Valerie: Yeah. And I think this is helps to, like, beg the question, like, well, then, like, if you're not doing it through your art, like, where's the emotional processing going? And I'm asking myself, Mike, this question at this very moment kind of thing, like, where is the emotional processing going? Because it's not like I don't feel anger, right? It's not like I don't feel sadness. So we can both think on this, and then whoever thinks of the answer first?
[44:37] Jeremy: I mean, I think that I have found different sort of ways to try and cope with it. And, I mean, in the last couple of months, people have talked to me about a number of different things, and I think I have. Once I am around the people that I trust and the people that I care about, and I know that it's a safe space, I will talk about the things that are bothering me, but I don't hold the anchor in. If I can, I vent it as quickly as possible, because I know that anger will destroy you, bitterness will destroy you. And I have been bitter, and I have been angry. I love that feeling. So it kind of takes a knowledge of yourself and deep introspection to try to understand that in yourself.
[45:36] Valerie: I think I agree, too. I think that when I do find myself frustrated or angry these days, I take it upon myself to figure out why and how I can be responsible in the situation of, like, oh, you're angry because you don't feel like your work was acknowledged, and why is that important to you, to be acknowledged? Right. And if it's something that turns out, you know, it just a matter of being seen, and I have a fear of not progressing because I'm not being seen, then I see that, and then I'm like, but that has nothing to do with how, you know, how effective you're being in your work and all of that. And so it's just like, separating the fear from reality helps to see my emotions and decide whether or not they are. They're useful or not in the first place.
[46:37] Jeremy: Yeah, I mean, I think. And as you're talking about, I think we've kind of gone down this path of talking about compartmentalization. Oh, there's a no.
[46:50] Valerie: Because, honestly, this. This week's podcast that was just released, there was a point in the podcast where I was struggling to say compartmentalize.
[47:01] Jeremy: It's just the struggle. It's the struggle bus of the week, and it's a compartmentalized, like, three times fast and see where your brain goes. You know, I think that there are a lot of things that oftentimes get spoken about negatively, again, my tongue is about as tired as I am that have this negative connotation to them, but can also be very effective because if you are able and you know yourself well enough to understand how you are processing something and what you are going through and how to articulate to somebody, hey, maybe now is not the right time to talk to me and maybe thats what people call emotional maturity. But I think that if youre able to compartmentalize certain elements of things, then you can go back to draw on them and other places. One of the things this is probably almost a decade ago that I got really fascinated by was building a mental palace. And for people out there who don't know, there's a concept that a lot of memory experts do to sort of remember things. And it's this idea of a memory palace. And you assign to basically build a house in your palace in your own mind, and you store things in that palace in a very specific kind of way. So instead of saying, maybe it's a memory, and in your memory palace, the memory is you assign it to a book that's read, that is, I don't know, big. And so whenever you need to try to recall things, that is how you kind of, you can close your eyes, you can imagine, and that's where you're going. And we've seen it in characters oftentimes being talked about the Hannibal series, about Hannibal Lecter. He talks about a memory palace. Sherlock Holmes talks about a memory palace. One of the characters in the BBC, Sherlock Holmes, they say, oh, you have all of this information. They go to try to arrest him. And he really just says, it's in my memory palace. It doesn't actually physically exist. And one of the things that I think helps sometimes within compartmentalizing emotions and compartmentalizing things is you can store those things in your memory palace and you can go back to them and use them creativity creatively. So for me, it's just, I like to, I don't like to sit on negative emotions that I can't use for something because then it's just sort of sitting there and I don't really have a nice box to put it in. Maybe it's just like a puppy running around my memory palace trying to like, just causing havoc. And I'm like, hey, can you get back into, like, your cute little crate, please? K. Thanks.
[50:07] Valerie: Interesting. I'll have to think on that a little bit more. I think it's because, you know, there's one thing to suppress, right? Because I think some people just end up suppressing for a lifetime. And it's one thing to just be like, okay, we're going to set this aside until I can address it in a healthy way. I think it is important to get to a point where you could do that rather than just completely be like, I don't have those emotions, we're just going to forget about them.
[50:39] Jeremy: Yeah, definitely.
[50:41] Valerie: Yeah, for sure. So cool.
[50:48] Jeremy: Well, and I think, you know what? I think the other thing, too, and you know, this about me as well. Music, despite the fact that I can't play, is incredibly telling of what my mindset is. I know on a podcast, a couple of, a couple of episodes back, you talked about how you're the sum of the top five people that you're spending the most time with. For me, I jokingly say I don't have a one track mind, I have a multi track mind. And it's very hard when all the songs kind of come together in weird ways in your own head and you're just like, wait a minute, what remix is this? And where can I go to listen to it? And it doesn't actually exist. It's just existing in your own brain. But I think for me, I tend to think, because I tend to think in songs and lyrics and things like that at any given time, I'm sort of the summation of the top five songs I'm listening to. And I've actually been going kind of through a really interesting period right now where I don't actually want to listen to music. I know I want to listen to something while I'm working because obviously there are scientific and facts that have shown it, but I actively find myself not wanting to listen to anything. And that's a different experience and different feeling for me because I'm like, there's all this great, all these great lyrics, all these great things out in the world, and I'm just like, I know I need to listen to something, but I don't know what I want to listen to. And so. No. Go through.
[52:24] Valerie: Oh, no. It's really funny because this is one of the things, the music. I find that if you find yourself being too attached to, like, a set of music that you're playing and listening over and over again, it kind of becomes like an identity thing. Like, I am a person who listens to this type of music and we are both not people who like to be boxed in. And, yeah, so I think to have a point in time where you're not listening to anything kind of gives you a clean slate to be like, okay, what I want to create next.
[52:58] Jeremy: Yeah, yeah. Or what am I searching for? What do I want to listen to? And I think for me, that's been kind of. Kind of fun. And, you know, sometimes it's just a clever lyric or so. I mean, the last. The last time I was on a kind of a sprint of like, here are five songs that I'm listening to on repeat. They could not be more different from each other because one is nobody speak by DJ Shadow. The other one was, like, Austin by Descha, I think is her name. Beautiful things by Benson Boone. And then I kind of, like, re stumbled onto dynamite by lord and SZa, and I think one other Khalid Kalief. So it's like, these are songs that all are going in different places, and the only thing that really connects them is storytelling and lyrics.
[54:04] Valerie: Yeah. So we're coming up on our hour, so I want to ask you, it's been such a, like a big year for you. Where do you see yourself going next? Or what? What is the next thing that you want to try?
[54:25] Jeremy: I don't know. I think for once I get through this, this conference thing that I'm planning with several people in October, I'm really sort of looking forward to peace and calm and taking stock in everything that I've done this year for who I've done it to. And that is kind of where my brain is going on a lot of things because I don't have an answer. I kind of have to take the information as it comes to me and then do that and kind of not come into it with opinions, because then I'm going to try and force it into a box, and I don't want to force things into a box. That's just a box of my own design.
[55:20] Valerie: Oh, I really like that. So not forcing an outcome based off of what you think things should be.
[55:27] Jeremy: Yeah. I mean, I think that that goes back to asking why, starting with why, which, by the way, is a great book by Simon Sinak. I think the only things that I'm thinking about is how do I continue to understand me with the information that I have and the experiences that I've gained and continue to help other people. I mean, I think another way to spin it would be it's like I'm no longer trying to. I'm not a hammer trying to find nails. I'm just trying to find, you know, okay, here are all these things. Now, what tools and toolbox do we do we need to use to do the next thing? And we could probably spend a whole other hour talking about the. I think it leads into this concept, but spend a whole other hour just simply talking about how in this society and in our culture, nobody really teaches you when's the right time to walk away or say no. Yeah, and those are things that I'm trying to understand more in myself so that I don't position myself into situations that, you know, start out very positively and become negative because I just didn't ask the right questions at the beginning.
[56:45] Valerie: Yeah, of that. We'll end that on that note, because I want people to really marinate on that. And maybe another time we will dive into that topic.
[56:56] Jeremy: Yeah, definitely.
[56:57] Valerie: Well, thank you so much for being on here, Jeremy. I had a great time talking to you, as usual.
[57:02] Jeremy: Thank you as always, Val. It's always fun to get an opportunity to chat.
[57:07] Valerie: Awesome. All right, we'll catch you next time.
[57:09] Jeremy: Catch you next time.
[57:20] Valerie: Hey, listeners, if you're enjoying the stories and insights from from the ashes, why not stay connected with our community? Join my mailing list for bi weekly updates on upcoming events, wellness tips, fun tidbits, and, of course, new podcast episodes. I promise, no spam, just valuable content to help you live your best life. Head over to www. Dot intrepidwellness. Dot life and sign up today. Don't miss out. And let's keep the conversation going.
