Justina Blakeney
Appearances
We Can Do Hard Things
Find Your “Tingle” & Live Wild with Justina Blakeney
But whatever's been going on, I've been thinking about a lot of stuff. And my inner voices, I think, you know, I have many as I think we all do. But I think overall, she's pretty dope. I think she is pretty loving and kind and respectful to me and others. And I think that she has high expectations.
We Can Do Hard Things
Find Your “Tingle” & Live Wild with Justina Blakeney
And that is sometimes where I think other voices come in and have to sometimes tell her like, it's okay to relax. It's okay to rest. And it's okay to disappoint people. But overall, I do think that my inner voices, the chorus is a beautiful one.
We Can Do Hard Things
Find Your “Tingle” & Live Wild with Justina Blakeney
Yeah. I remember a conversation I had with a dear friend a few years ago. I said, and this is sort of right after COVID and right after we went through and lived in a whole big house renovation. And I was just not in a good place and working a lot. And I told her, I said, I don't have any free time. But if I did, I'm not even sure what I would do in it. I remember telling her that.
We Can Do Hard Things
Find Your “Tingle” & Live Wild with Justina Blakeney
I was just like, I don't know what I do for fun anymore at this stage in my life. I'm just not sure. If I were to go away by myself for a weekend to Palm Springs or something, I don't know what I would do. And that thought really scared me because I've always felt really clear about sort of my passions and my purpose. And I just felt, yeah, really unsure and really run ragged. And
We Can Do Hard Things
Find Your “Tingle” & Live Wild with Justina Blakeney
I wasn't feeling good in my body. And I'd been dealing with years and years of like a nervous tummy. And I just wasn't in a good place. And I knew. I knew I wasn't in a good place. But I mean, I'm going to get real with the pod squad. I think y'all can handle it. But I'd had diarrhea for like five years straight and just sort of ignored it and just was like, oh, yeah, well, you know.
We Can Do Hard Things
Find Your “Tingle” & Live Wild with Justina Blakeney
this is how my tummy is, you know, and I never really did anything about it or paid any attention to it. And one day I was on the throne and my tummy was just feeling so bad. And I just heard this voice coming from inside. And it was just like, you are not listening to you are not listening. She kept saying that over and over again, you're not listening.
We Can Do Hard Things
Find Your “Tingle” & Live Wild with Justina Blakeney
And she said, I've been telling you everything you need to know for so long and you're not listening. And that was a real turning point for me. I was like, okay. Okay, I'm going to start listening now. And I did. And so that was really the beginning of my meditation practice, which I was very resistant to. I'm an Aries. I have like go, go, go energy, all of that.
We Can Do Hard Things
Find Your “Tingle” & Live Wild with Justina Blakeney
So the idea of like sitting in quiet stillness, I was like, can I at least like... saying, you know, I really like wanted to be active in some way. Can I read a book while I meditate at least? Can I listen to an audio book while I meditate? My therapist recommended I take a class. And that was really helpful.
We Can Do Hard Things
Find Your “Tingle” & Live Wild with Justina Blakeney
I don't think I really would have been able to get into it the way that I was able to get into it without the class. So I took a meditation class and started meditating and literally just started with five minutes a day. And I was in somatic therapy. I was just starting with very, very small sensations, just feeling what I feel in my feet and feeling the tingle or the rush or whatever. And just
We Can Do Hard Things
Find Your “Tingle” & Live Wild with Justina Blakeney
starting to pay more attention to the sensations, get out of my head and into my body more. And did meditation for about a year before I really started to feel like the messages that my body was sending me were just getting a lot clearer. And I started to like heal my digestive issues and just went through a whole process of like really listening.
We Can Do Hard Things
Find Your “Tingle” & Live Wild with Justina Blakeney
It was like, oh, you know, at first it was like I couldn't hear anything. you know, I just felt bad. That's all I could hear was just like, I just don't feel good. But slowly, slowly over time, it just started to become so much more clear. Like, oh, I'm thirsty. I need water. I need to stretch. I need to go on a hike. I need to move my body. I need to dance. I need to sing. I need to make love.
We Can Do Hard Things
Find Your “Tingle” & Live Wild with Justina Blakeney
I need to have a deep conversation with somebody I care about. It just started to become more and more clear. And now, like three years in, I am... so much healthier and so much happier and so much more clear on the things that were hurting my body, the things I can't eat like dairy, and really just that mindfulness piece, which before going on this journey,
We Can Do Hard Things
Find Your “Tingle” & Live Wild with Justina Blakeney
you hear people talking about mindfulness, mindfulness, mindfulness, and it's like, yeah, yeah, yeah. And meditation, meditation. You're like, yeah, yeah, yeah. But actually practicing it, you're like, oh yeah. That's a game changer.
We Can Do Hard Things
Find Your “Tingle” & Live Wild with Justina Blakeney
So much. It's actually that work has made running my business, actually, I'll say it this way, possible for me right now. Wow. Because it was starting to not be possible for me the way that I was operating previously. things come to me much stronger now. I was doing a lot of burying, I guess, of just everything.
We Can Do Hard Things
Find Your “Tingle” & Live Wild with Justina Blakeney
And the last few years have been about allowing the feelings of all kinds and all stripes. And there's a destabilization that happens when that process begins. And I still feel like I'm at the beginnings of that, you know? So sometimes it's a little destabilizing because I'm like, oh gosh, these highs are really high and these lows are really fucking low. And also no one is used to any of these.
We Can Do Hard Things
Find Your “Tingle” & Live Wild with Justina Blakeney
So buckle up sisters. Yeah, for sure. For sure. But I think that, yeah, the decisions definitely, just everything has become more clear for me. And Amanda, you've talked about this before, but I think about life force a lot, vitality and life force. And that's something that I can actually feel in my body very clearly, you know, my aliveness. And I can feel when it's being drained from me.
We Can Do Hard Things
Find Your “Tingle” & Live Wild with Justina Blakeney
And I can feel when it's being added to. And that is the measure by which I'm currently evaluating all my business decisions. Is it giving life or is it taking it away? And that might be with people who are sitting across from me and I'm having an initial conversation with them and I gauge my my vitality at the end of that conversation.
We Can Do Hard Things
Find Your “Tingle” & Live Wild with Justina Blakeney
It might be with, yeah, a design project that some things about it are sound compelling, other things maybe not so much. And I just try and gauge like, is this giving me life? Like, Am I excited about it? Can I not stop thinking about it? And you feel that gurgling and it's the physical sensations. And so tuning into that has been enormously helpful for me.
We Can Do Hard Things
Find Your “Tingle” & Live Wild with Justina Blakeney
And so I've been making a lot of changes in my life and in my business in the past little bit. And it's really incredible once you start being financed by life force,
We Can Do Hard Things
Find Your “Tingle” & Live Wild with Justina Blakeney
Thank you. Yeah, I am just trying to follow the ting. Aren't we all just trying to follow the tingly? But you can't know the tingle.
We Can Do Hard Things
Find Your “Tingle” & Live Wild with Justina Blakeney
We need more tingle, y'all. Yeah, we do. It's so easy to get caught up in everything else, right? Everything else. But I think that when you feel that tingle, it's like for the good of the realm to follow the tingle.
We Can Do Hard Things
Find Your “Tingle” & Live Wild with Justina Blakeney
Yeah, I actually have this like wacky woo-woo theory that if everybody in the world was... following their tingle to their most tinglyest tingle, that the world would be perfect. That that's what is missing from the world is that people aren't allowed to just be who they are and follow all of their hearts and just express that for themselves. You know, it's everyone feels so scared.
We Can Do Hard Things
Find Your “Tingle” & Live Wild with Justina Blakeney
scared to follow the tingles or the tingles are so buried underneath that they don't even know how to begin. Yeah.
We Can Do Hard Things
Find Your “Tingle” & Live Wild with Justina Blakeney
Do you know what I mean? I think you're wrong, Glennon, about your paintings. And I haven't even seen them. Well, there you go. No, no, but it's you. It's an extension of you. And so they're beautiful. And so people who love you are going to find them beautiful. And I truly believe that.
We Can Do Hard Things
Find Your “Tingle” & Live Wild with Justina Blakeney
And I think that when we talk about art, we're talking about perceived value. And we're talking about such different tastes across the whole world. And for me, if my art... makes one person feel good about themselves or one person finds it beautiful, that's a bonus because I'm doing it for myself anyway and it feels beautiful to me.
We Can Do Hard Things
Find Your “Tingle” & Live Wild with Justina Blakeney
And it's a joy to watch myself love my paintings more the more I paint. And it's not about, it's no longer mine once I put the art in the gallery, right? It's for everyone and for myself. And I hope people can experience my work and make, you know, it can make people feel something. But it's also okay if people don't like my work. You know, it doesn't have to be good for everyone.
We Can Do Hard Things
Find Your “Tingle” & Live Wild with Justina Blakeney
I don't like everyone else's work.
We Can Do Hard Things
Find Your “Tingle” & Live Wild with Justina Blakeney
There's an I don't know element to this for sure. But I want to say something about self-expression and expressions on the faces and about how what that means when you read someone's expression and you feel it and it touches you. And so for me, drawing, painting, illustrating faces creates an immediate connection to
We Can Do Hard Things
Find Your “Tingle” & Live Wild with Justina Blakeney
And it was right after COVID. And I hadn't been in front of anyone's face at all. Anyway, it was pretty wild.
We Can Do Hard Things
Find Your “Tingle” & Live Wild with Justina Blakeney
Like on magazine covers, they always try to have the models on the covers looking at the camera because when you look at the magazine cover, she's looking back at you. And there is something very powerful about that gaze and about that connection point. And so for me, trying to capture that in my art is just something very compelling.
We Can Do Hard Things
Find Your “Tingle” & Live Wild with Justina Blakeney
And I really like hearing people talk about, oh, it looks like she's feeling this or thinking this. And, you know, it's yours. It's so personal to you. That is what it is for you. And so I think that's part of it. But there's still the I don't know element to it too. How do you...
We Can Do Hard Things
Find Your “Tingle” & Live Wild with Justina Blakeney
I'm not at risk of becoming too rigid. I definitely lean in the other direction of the too wild. I think that with my creative work, I don't feel I have to be disciplined. If anything, I might have to be disciplined to get other things done when I'm in the flow of being creative. So, you know, mom stuff or work stuff or all that.
We Can Do Hard Things
Find Your “Tingle” & Live Wild with Justina Blakeney
Sometimes I'm like, okay, and I'm toggling back and forth because I'm trying to stay in my creative flow. So I don't feel like I need a lot of discipline around that. I need discipline more around the other things. to do things that I maybe have avoidance around. And routines help me a lot with that and getting into just more regular flow, which is something I'm really working hard at.
We Can Do Hard Things
Find Your “Tingle” & Live Wild with Justina Blakeney
I need that routine to help me with the discipline of the stuff that I may have more avoidance around and things like painting where I'm kind of squeezing it in wherever I can.
We Can Do Hard Things
Find Your “Tingle” & Live Wild with Justina Blakeney
So I have a pretty solid morning ritual that includes my meditation. It includes the morning pages from The Artist's Way, but I oftentimes do my own thing with my journal and my pages. I actually have been doing Elizabeth Gilbert's Dear Love. Wow. prompt that I heard here on this podcast. And it's been really powerful for me. Dear love, what would you have me know?
We Can Do Hard Things
Find Your “Tingle” & Live Wild with Justina Blakeney
Dear love, what would you have me do? And that's been really beautiful. So yeah, I spend about an hour in the morning doing my meditation and my journal and my writing. Sometimes I draw in my journals too. And I also pull Oracle cards and then I have some favorite Oracle decks and I have my tea on my patio and listen to the birds sing. So yeah, Besides that, though, I don't really have any.
We Can Do Hard Things
Find Your “Tingle” & Live Wild with Justina Blakeney
Yeah. So as an artist and a collector and someone who likes to surround myself with beauty, I I love stuff and I love beautiful stuff and I love finding treasures. It's a real joy for me. It's the tingle, you know, finding something really beautiful that speaks to you and calls to you.
We Can Do Hard Things
Find Your “Tingle” & Live Wild with Justina Blakeney
For me, it is akin to going to a museum or going to visit somebody's art studio or something like that and taking something from that experience and bringing it home for me makes my home be the story of my life. And I love that feeling and I love... And experiencing that, not just with myself, but with others. Like I was recently at the Frida Kahlo Museum in Mexico City, where it's her home.
We Can Do Hard Things
Find Your “Tingle” & Live Wild with Justina Blakeney
Hi, pod squad. I like to describe myself as an artist. I like to describe myself as Justina. I don't know. This is a weird one. I think that when I think about What I try and exude, it's self-expression is really important to me. And something somebody said to me recently is ringing in my ears. She said, it's good to be known. It feels good to be known. Hmm.
We Can Do Hard Things
Find Your “Tingle” & Live Wild with Justina Blakeney
And just walking through Frida Kahlo's home and seeing where she cooked and seeing... all the beautiful pots and pans and just imagining her life and the care that she took to choose out all these things and what they say about her and looking at her books and looking at her paints and her paintbrushes and her wheelchair in front of her easel and the bed with the mirror.
We Can Do Hard Things
Find Your “Tingle” & Live Wild with Justina Blakeney
It's just like just seeing her home as an extension of who she is and being to understand so much more about her and her life and the beauty that she brought to the world through that experience was so meaningful to me. And I think... it also just clicked for me. One of the reasons why I enjoy having a home be an extension of myself in that way, it's that same thing. It feels good to be known.
We Can Do Hard Things
Find Your “Tingle” & Live Wild with Justina Blakeney
I just want to express myself. I want people to be able to experience it and feel it. And if it makes me feel good, I'm curious to know if it makes you feel good too. And it might not. I don't know. That's okay. But it's about finding the resonances. So I go through different phases of loving different things and, you know, cycling different things through my home.
We Can Do Hard Things
Find Your “Tingle” & Live Wild with Justina Blakeney
And I have different sculptures or different art pieces and I'll look at them and, you know, we'll have a little conversation. It'll make me smile. I think about when I found it, who I bought it from, what they told me about the item. So for me, it's very similar to, you know, reading a book or something like that, where it's just, it's stories, you know, it's beautiful stories. Yeah.
We Can Do Hard Things
Find Your “Tingle” & Live Wild with Justina Blakeney
It's very personal. I totally understand people who are like, I need minimalism. Like I just have a lot of noise in my head and I need it to be visually quiet. It's not that I don't get that. I totally do. It's just not what resonates with me. And it's not what sort of ignites my imagination.
We Can Do Hard Things
Find Your “Tingle” & Live Wild with Justina Blakeney
I'm struggling with something like I feel the tingle for a certain thing, for painting or for music, but my whole life is set up for other things and where and when and how sometimes I Do I allow myself to just follow the tingle? And how and when and where sometimes do I do the thing that sometimes feels like the responsible thing or the thing that's maybe better for more people?
We Can Do Hard Things
Find Your “Tingle” & Live Wild with Justina Blakeney
And I think that's just probably something that... is never going to be 100% clear, but I'm trying to find tools to help me with it. And I think that I'm also just candidly struggling with just keeping my body healthy. I went through this two-year gung-ho, all in, eating super clean, exercising a lot, like I was in it. And
We Can Do Hard Things
Find Your “Tingle” & Live Wild with Justina Blakeney
And my head's just not in it the same way that it was five or six months ago. I'm journaling and I'm like, my head's not in it. What should I do about that? You know, and I think it's because I'm pretty good at kind of goal setting and like reaching that goal. But when I get to the goal, I have this like now what kind of feeling.
We Can Do Hard Things
Find Your “Tingle” & Live Wild with Justina Blakeney
And with where I was at with my health, where I was trying to reach certain goals, like with my cholesterol and get my cholesterol down and do all this stuff. And I like hit the numbers I wanted to hit and all that. And I'm like, oh, shit. Now I got to keep it here forever. Yeah. That does not feel tingly.
We Can Do Hard Things
Find Your “Tingle” & Live Wild with Justina Blakeney
Keep it here. Forever job is not super tingly. Terrible. So I'm struggling with that. I'm struggling with that. Honestly, that's been something that's been appearing in my journal a lot lately. And I haven't figured it out. And I probably... The figuring out of it probably just means that getting more comfortable with never figuring it out. But, you know, here we are.
We Can Do Hard Things
Find Your “Tingle” & Live Wild with Justina Blakeney
Maintenance energy. That's exactly right. I struggle with maintenance energy. And so, yeah, I really think that's a big part of my work right now is that not sprinting thing. And it's just like, it's okay to walk. You know, it's actually great to walk. And it's the same kind of energy with, you know, my health.
We Can Do Hard Things
Find Your “Tingle” & Live Wild with Justina Blakeney
And that really resonated with me because I feel like that's what my life is. That's what my art is. It's like trying to share my knowing and be known. And it feels good.
We Can Do Hard Things
Find Your “Tingle” & Live Wild with Justina Blakeney
And it's the same kind of energy in business, which we recently, you know, closed down our online shop, which was a big move for us in the business. But it was about many things. But for me, one of the main things was about harnessing a slower rhythm for myself because slowing down just helps me to listen more. It's really hard to feel the tingles when you're moving really quickly.
We Can Do Hard Things
Find Your “Tingle” & Live Wild with Justina Blakeney
And just trying to get more comfortable in that maintenance energy. And maybe we should find a sexier word than maintenance because that might help.
We Can Do Hard Things
Find Your “Tingle” & Live Wild with Justina Blakeney
Yeah. So I'm really excited about two things. The first is that I'm working on a book right now with my mom.
We Can Do Hard Things
Find Your “Tingle” & Live Wild with Justina Blakeney
Yeah, so very excited. It's about halfway done, but it's called Grow. And my mom's doing the lion's share of the writing, but it's about moving through difficult transitions. And it's going to come with a card deck because I do my Oracle card practice and it's been so instrumental for me. So that project and working on it with my mom is...
We Can Do Hard Things
Find Your “Tingle” & Live Wild with Justina Blakeney
And I'm doing all the paintings and the illustrations for the cards and the book and just collaborating with her on the concept. And so that's been just such a beautiful, soulful project where it's kind of encapsulating a lot of these different activities and things that I've been doing for the past few years to kind of get myself unstuck.
We Can Do Hard Things
Find Your “Tingle” & Live Wild with Justina Blakeney
and then layering on her 40, 50 years of experience as a psychologist. And so that's an extremely exciting and fun and different project for me. So that's beautiful. And then the other thing that I'm really excited about, I'm starting song club because I love to sing. And I always thought I was going to be a singer. That was my thing. I'm a singer. And I haven't
We Can Do Hard Things
Find Your “Tingle” & Live Wild with Justina Blakeney
been doing that in the world for many years, just sort of by myself at home with my little family. And we all play different instruments and like to make music together. But I've been doing different book clubs for the past couple years and getting so much out of the book clubs and love them so much. So I decided to start a song club.
We Can Do Hard Things
Find Your “Tingle” & Live Wild with Justina Blakeney
So meeting with a handful of friends and family this weekend to just sing together. So that is something that I've been working on and saying I was going to do for a long time. So finally doing it. And so I'll report back or if you guys want to come.
We Can Do Hard Things
Find Your “Tingle” & Live Wild with Justina Blakeney
Beautiful. I think it's so incredibly healing to sing in community. And, you know, I used to sing in all kinds of choirs and I feel like it's instant harmony, you know, it's instant harmony and it's embodied, you know, it's so beautiful and I can sing by myself all I want, but I can't, get the harmonies by myself. So I'm really excited about that.
We Can Do Hard Things
Find Your “Tingle” & Live Wild with Justina Blakeney
Thank you so much. The feeling is very mutual with you guys. So yeah, so beautiful.
We Can Do Hard Things
Find Your “Tingle” & Live Wild with Justina Blakeney
So, yeah, I grew up in a very multicultural, very big, boisterous, loud, raucous family. And we grew up in Berkeley. So there was this spirit of kind of individualism in the sense that, you know, everyone was sort of allowed to be themselves more in Berkeley, I think, than in a lot of places in the world where it's sort of celebrated.
We Can Do Hard Things
Find Your “Tingle” & Live Wild with Justina Blakeney
But I think growing up multiracial and I'm Jewish and I was raised Jewish, I always felt a little bit like an outsider in different places. And we traveled a lot. And what I noticed when we started traveling was that my sister and brother and I, we could go places. And so many different places in the world, people thought that we were from there because they just didn't know. Yeah.
We Can Do Hard Things
Find Your “Tingle” & Live Wild with Justina Blakeney
They couldn't tell and were sort of ambiguous in that way. And I think that's one of the reasons why I have a good ear for languages. I sort of started picking up different languages and really being able to kind of just figure out how to blend in into different places so that I could feel like I belonged. And that was almost like a hack for me to sort of feel a belonging in different circles.
We Can Do Hard Things
Find Your “Tingle” & Live Wild with Justina Blakeney
And I think that what that orientation did for me as I was growing up was it started to make me feel comfortable not fitting in.
We Can Do Hard Things
Find Your “Tingle” & Live Wild with Justina Blakeney
and being okay with standing out more and having just a general sort of comfort with people staring at me or feeling like I didn't totally know what was going on or didn't belong in that way. And so, yeah, I think there's always the balance of the ricochet between, oh, I feel like I fit in here and I feel like I belong. And oh my gosh, I feel like a total outsider.
We Can Do Hard Things
Find Your “Tingle” & Live Wild with Justina Blakeney
And I feel like there was a lot of ping-ponging between feeling both of those things. But I feel like my parents made a pretty concerted effort not to put any kind of identity onto us as we were growing up. And so in part, that hindered some of my feelings of belonging in the sense that, you know, I didn't necessarily grow up feeling like, oh, this is what I am.
We Can Do Hard Things
Find Your “Tingle” & Live Wild with Justina Blakeney
But on the other side of it, it allowed me the freedom to be on a journey to figure out what that meant for myself.
We Can Do Hard Things
Find Your “Tingle” & Live Wild with Justina Blakeney
Oh my gosh. Thank you. I'm really honored. I keep on looking at Amanda on the Zoom screen and I'm just giving you such a big hug and it's so beautiful to see you. It's so beautiful to see you.
We Can Do Hard Things
Find Your “Tingle” & Live Wild with Justina Blakeney
I've been thinking a lot about this over the past few years because I feel like in the ether, we are talking a lot about self-love and self-care and something that really hit me hard that I don't feel like is as much part of the conversation is self-respect. And it's an angle on self-love that I think about a lot because you can love in so many different ways.
We Can Do Hard Things
Find Your “Tingle” & Live Wild with Justina Blakeney
And sometimes loving can look a little bit too much like smothering or loving can look too much, a little too much like spoiling or indulging. And I think sometimes for me, I can get into a place where that's true for myself as well. So one of the things that I've been thinking a lot about and that helps me get out of that sort of deprivation feeling. If I'm trying to be more conscious about
We Can Do Hard Things
Find Your “Tingle” & Live Wild with Justina Blakeney
what I'm putting in my mouth or how much I move my body or how much time I spend in front of a screen or any of these things is this idea of self-respect and this idea of what is good for me is good for the realm. And that that looks different from indulging at every moment. What that might mean sometimes is restraint and just finding that in-between place in that and
We Can Do Hard Things
Find Your “Tingle” & Live Wild with Justina Blakeney
And temperance is something I've been thinking a lot about lately because I can get into a state of overwhelm or I can get into a state of go, go, go, go, go. And everything's, you know, and so I have to like pull myself back and breathe and practice temperance and remind myself self-sovereignty, right? not just for my good, for the good of the realm, the higher purpose.
We Can Do Hard Things
Find Your “Tingle” & Live Wild with Justina Blakeney
So it's just these little reminders, these mini mantras and things that help me and bring me back when I'm not feeling grounded or when I feel myself starting to go into, yeah, I'm feeling like, oh, I'm so deprived. I can't have that dessert because I'm not eating dairy. Instead of that, it's like, oh, actually this is an opportunity to practice self-sovereignty.
We Can Do Hard Things
Find Your “Tingle” & Live Wild with Justina Blakeney
It's just a way of making myself feel respected by myself that I think is really important.
We Can Do Hard Things
Find Your “Tingle” & Live Wild with Justina Blakeney
Absolutely. And it's an encouraging voice. It's a kind voice, you know, but it's a voice that'll kind of whoop your ass a little bit in the sense of like, yeah, girl, what are you doing?
We Can Do Hard Things
Find Your “Tingle” & Live Wild with Justina Blakeney
It would be too difficult, I think, for me to trace back exactly where this idea of self-respect came from. I've been doing a lot of, I don't know whether, you know, my husband, we're unsure if it's a spiritual awakening or a midlife crisis, but it's something between those two things. Yes. Very close on the food chain.