Creative Status: Episode 65: Jamil Higley: Emotional Intelligence, Trust, and REALNESS

by Oli Anderson, Transformational Coach for Realness

Creative Status is a podcast about using creativity as a vehicle for improving your life by deconstructing ego, integrating the shadow self, and designing and manifesting a real life.

Every episode explores how the creative process can help you GROW REAL by moving towards wholeness in yourself by making the unconscious conscious.

Unveiling Truths: Emotional Intelligence, Trust, & Realness with Jamil Higley

Embark on a transformative journey with Creative Status as we delve into the realm of Emotional Intelligence, Trust, & Realness with Emotional Self-Awareness Coach Jamil Higley.

Join us for a free-flowing conversation where Jamil, a woman on a mission, shares insights from her 20+ years of experience, unveiling the truth about mental, emotional, and spiritual well-being.

Meet Jamil Higley: On a mission to share the transformational power of emotional intelligence, Jamil, a Certified Professional Co-Active Coach (CPCC) and Associate Certified Coach (ACC), believes that every individual is an Enlightened FKN Baller™!

She guides people from awareness to action, challenging perspectives and providing tools to shed limiting beliefs.

From Awareness to Action: Jamil shares how emotional intelligence becomes a catalyst for personal transformation.

Discover how awareness evolves into actionable steps, challenging your perceptions of what’s possible and paving the way for a more authentic, REAL existence.

Trust the Process: Uncover the importance of trust in the journey towards mental, emotional, and spiritual health.

Jamil explores the delicate yet powerful interplay between trust and self-discovery, inviting listeners to trust the process of unveiling their own truths.

Creative Status: Where Truth Sparks Transformation

Tune in to explore the transformative power of emotional intelligence, the role of trust in self-discovery, and the pursuit of realness for better mental, emotional, and spiritual health.

This episode is your invitation to live authentically and embrace the truths that lead to profound transformation.

Stay real out there,

Oli Anderson

—————————–

Leave a voice message to share your thoughts and to be (maybe) featured on future episodes of the podcast: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠anchor.fm/creativestatus ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Episode Links:

Jamil’s website: ⁠https://www.jamilhigley.com/⁠

Jamil on Linkedin: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamil-higley⁠

Creative Status Links:

The Creative Performance Transformation Lab: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠olianderson.co.uk/creativeperformance⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Follow me on Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠instagram.com/olijanderson⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

My YouTube channel: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠youtube.com/olianderson⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Get my books on Amazon: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠amazon.com/author/oli⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

7-Day Personality Transplant System Shock for Realness and Life Purpose: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠olianderson.co.uk/systemshock⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Free one hour creative workshop to take your creative brand or project to the next level:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠olianderson.co.uk/creativeworkshop⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Free 90-Day Journal Challenge: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠olianderson.co.uk/journal⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

The Law of Attraction for Realness (mini-course): ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠olianderson.co.uk/lawofattraction⁠

Show Transcript: Emotional Intelligence, Trust, & Realness

This podcast is about using the creative process to improve your life.

Intro

Oli Anderson: Oh, hi there. Oli Anderson here – you’re listening to Creative Status. This is a podcast about using the creative process as a vehicle for improving your life by allowing it to make the unconscious conscious so you can face yourself fully and remove any blocks between yourself and a deep experience of living life as it is meant to be lived.

That sounds very nice, I’m sure, but we like to try and make it practical. Today’s conversation is an exploration, ultimately, of, the process that we need to go through in order to be able to navigate the kind of thing that I’m talking about.

It’s an interview with Jamil Higley, who is a coach who helps people to develop emotional intelligence. The conversation itself, very free flowing, but we cover a lot of the most important topics, I think, when it comes to this kind of thing, which are beliefs, awareness, acceptance, trust flowing, etc, etc.

Won’t say too much as the conversation’s about to come up, but this is a good one. Jamil, thank you so much for your time. Everybody else, hope you get some value out of this and it helps you to keep moving in the way that you want to. Here we go. Boom.

Interview

Oli: Oh, hi there, Jamil. Thank you so much for joining me on today’s episode of Creative Status.

I have a feeling that the conversation we’re about to embark upon could go literally anywhere, and I think that’s going to be a good lesson in not having expectations and assumptions about things and just going with the flow. So that’s good news.

But before we start doing that, do you feel like introducing yourself, letting people know what you’re all about and what you want to get out of this conversation that we’re about to flow with?

Jamil Higley: I would love to. Can I also want to just comment on that word, expectations? A lesson has come to me very recently that really, we just need to kind of put our expectations on the fire.

Like burn them away, because, when we let go of expectations, what’s left is our truest self. it’s the expectations that create disappointment and frustration and chasing of desire and the avoidance of fear. So, yeah, let’s do away with expectations.

Oli: Let’s burn them. We’ll throw them on the fire.

Jamil: So, yes, an introduction. My name is Jamil Higley, and I’m the face of Alyx Vance in the game Half Life two and in the voice of emotional intelligence.

My passion in life is serving, others in their journey inward to find their truth, to discover that connection that is there for all of us that we keep looking externally for. But it’s really inside of us. And so that job has manifested in the form of leadership and emotional intelligence coaching at, Rice University, which is in Houston, Texas, in the United States.

Oli: Well, that’s amazing. And I think it means you’re in the right place as well, because a lot of what we talk about on this podcast is going from a place where we are conditioned to believe that our lives are not really in our hands, that everything is externalised or predominantly externalised.

But if we go through a process of letting go of our ideas about ourselves and then learning to accept how life really is, then we can kind of see that there’s a lot of internal power shifts we can make involving the expectations, including the expectations thing that you just mentioned. And then we can actually, we live better lives.

So maybe the obvious starting point for this conversation is to pick apart the expectations thing that you kind of shared right at the start. I agree that we should throw our expectations on the fire, but how did you reach this conclusion? And I guess, why are expectations so burn worthy in the first place?

Jamil: Well, I want to do a little bit of time travel to tell you how I got to this point. And, I’m going to try to, I think, weave in this idea and expectations, because the beginning, when I said I’m the face of Alyx Vance and Half Life, too, that’s a meaningful part of this journey.

And that was a place where I had little to no expectations. That was a job I did 25 plus years ago, and I just let it go like it was a few days. A lot of fun work. I did motion capture, I did facial recognition, and, journeyed with Valve, which is a company out of Seattle that produced this game, Half Life, too, and so little to no expectation.

And then we got to 2021 and I had been a coach at that point for about eight years, and someone brought up that this game was still extremely popular, had a huge following and audience, and it was a light bulb moment for me, because at the time, working with university students, I wanted to have a greater impact.

When I coach, it’s one on one. And that matters because that one person I coached and has hundreds of other interactions. So there is impact there, but it’s still limited. There’s one of me, and there are only so many hours in a day. And so when I realised that this character had this great reach, this following of young adults, I thought, this is perfect, because through Alyx Vance, I have a platform to help people again turn inward and know themselves better.

 And so to me, that’s a perfect example of life having a course to which I couldn’t have mapped out a better scenario, in which I could again have a platform to reach more people. And so to me that’s just this manifestation of when you let go and when you stay true to where you’re being called, that opportunities and doors open.

So now my coaching is expanding to include not only gamers who are fans of Alyx, but also having conversation with game developers and studios to ensure that emotional intelligence becomes at the forefront of design rather than an afterthought. So I’m really enjoying that know, again, I’m human, so I have great desire and wishes for what that will look like. But again, if I continue to let go and just, I’m curious and have the next conversation, like this conversation with you, that again, life continues to unfold rather than my trying to orchestrate it all and be in the driver’s seat all the time.

Oli: No, I’ve found something similar in my own life, which is that we can have expectations to some extent. We need a general sense of where we’re going. We can have a vision for what the future might look like. But I found that the more we cling to that vision, the further out of reach it becomes.

The old saying is, “If you chase it, it runs away”. And I think there’s a way of living where we kind of outcome-independent in the sense that we kind of want things, but we can get this internal foundation of realness or peace or whatever you want to call it, where we want them as a kind of gravy.

But the main cause is just our relationship with life and this kind of flow that you’re talking about where serendipity kind of comes into our lives and kind of surpasses the expectations that we have, but only if we have them without having them. And I know that’s a really weird way to say it, but I just mean if we kind of hold them loosely, then it’s almost as though, our expectations are exceeded.

But if we hold onto those expectations too much, that’s when we need to throw them on the fire, even though we don’t realise it, because the more we hold onto them, the less space or room I guess there is for life to come in and to give us more. And I think that is opening this up to this kind of attitude you were kind of alluding to at the start, where it comes down to our internal relationship with ourselves.

And ultimately, I guess the short version, that is, if we have a good real relationship with ourselves, that’s when we can hold these expectations and plans for the future lightly. If for some reason, normally, shame, guilt and trauma, we have an unreal relationship with ourselves, that’s when we try to cling to things too much, and it screws our lives up instead of making them better. Something like that. So this is really just a ramble and a very random conversation.

Jamil: It’s a beautiful conversation. And I think that what you just talked about, the trauma and the pain and expectations, those are all things that take us out of the present moment. So it either our fear of the past coming back to haunt us and those old patterns that pulls us out of the present moment and then our, fear or our desires for the future.

And so it’s really about being in the now. And if you’re not in the now, you miss what’s right in front of you. And so, again, those are those blinders. If we’re holding too tightly to something versus being in flow.

There’s a beautiful metaphor that a bird has to have two wings to fly. There’s no way to fly with one. And so one side of our being is grace and the other is self effort. So if we think that we just need to surrender and not do anything, we’ll have to be completely leaning into grace alone, and we’re not going to end up where we want to be. And then if it’s all about self effort and we don’t create space for grace, then again, we can’t take off, we can’t take flight if it’s all on us.

So it’s that combination of grace and letting go and self effort, having that vision. Right. But also being flexible in that vision and constantly doing the work of bringing ourselves into the now and silencing that chatter, that voice, that’s, ah, always going.

So, that’s kind of where I am in my practice. And I love, I mean, just those moments of helping people slow down long enough to silence, kind of the distracting voice, and instead hear that higher self, that wiser self that knows exactly, what’s next.

Trust is the most fundamental quality that we can train ourselves to develop

Oli: You’re kind of encroaching on my favourite topic now, or the most relevant topic to me in my life, which is trust. And it always comes down to this now, like most of these conversations, because the most fundamental quality that we can train ourselves to develop in order to live a real life and move towards wholeness is trust.

And the analogy you just shared of the birds with grace on one side of its wings on one wing, and then self-control or autonomy on the other, finding that sweet spot so that you can fly is ultimately what it’s all about.

And I often say some people are so open minded that their brains fall out. That is because they have created a misconception of what grace or faith or trust is. And they’ve taken their own responsibility for their ability to respond to life in the moment out of the equation. And they’re just putting it out to the universe to meet all of their needs and all this kind of stuff.

And there’s a saying that I think kind of explains why that’s a fallacy, which is “Why should God do for you what you can do for yourself?”

There’s a whole story that goes around that phrase I’ve heard, but I won’t get into that. And then on the other side, there’s people who are scared to trust because of all their unresolved emotional shame and guilt and trauma and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so as a response to that, that’s when they go into this other side of your analogy where they try and force life through their own expectations, through their own needs and desires and assumptions. But the mistake that they make is they think it’s all up to them, which is a kind of, control freakery.

The sweet spot that I’ve seen work for people and has worked for me, like, amazingly well. Now, in my own life is the middle ground that you’re talking about, where you do your best, ultimately, and then you forget the rest in the sense that you hand it over to God or the universe or whatever.

And by doing your best and forgetting the rest, that’s when you can flow, towards these expectations and your vision by holding it loosely. And you’re holding it loosely because you know that it’s not all in your hands anyway. And that’s how it’s supposed to be. It’s in the hands of life as well. And if you trust life to take hold of it with you, then you’re going to get where you want to be.

The ego can distort our view of reality.

But I guess my question for you is, now we’re getting into this is, how do we get in that sweet spot? What does it look like? How have you learned, I guess, in your own life to live in that way where you’re flying like a bird instead of being weighed down by one wing, being heavier than the other?

Jamil: Well, I’m flattered that you think that I figured that out. And it’s very humbling. I just went through, as I shared with you earlier, before we started recording some pretty significant shifts in consciousness.

Just in the past, let’s call it even five days, where I was in a season in my life where I had absolute. What I thought was absolute clarity and conviction and was on a path. I honestly had created this story that every single door was opening for me because I was doing the right thing. And then to have that turned upside down again.

The humility and the humbling moment of, like, oh, as human, my view of what’s happening is just a fraction of the truth. And so I think that it’s an ongoing work that’s happening. And I think that, I guess, in a way, to champion what you and I do as coaches, I think one way to get closer to that balance, that ability to fly, is having a team.

I mean, it’s not something that you can do on your own. It is an inward journey, but it’s also one where you have to be in dialogue, have conversations that challenge the assumptions that you’ve made because all of us are living out of our past lived experiences, and when we do that, our vision is clouded.

So, as a coach, our job is to ask questions and to make people uncomfortable. And it’s in those uncomfortable moments that we start to weed our garden of what’s toxic and what’s not serving us. But it was reasonable and adaptive when we were children, right? And so it’s like, from our adult higher selves, being able to say, okay, there’s grace here, because this is how I’ve done things in the past, because it’s what was necessary for survival, and it’s no longer serving my highest purpose, my highest good, and who I need to be, not only in relationship to myself, but to other people and to the world.

Oli: How does this sense of who we think we are feed into this? So, if I understand what you’re saying, a lot of how we condition to survive is ultimately what informs our sense of identity.

I always call it the ego, but ultimately, I think the ego, because it was formed in the past and we’ve become attached to it because we think it’s who we are and life has changed around us.

The ego is ultimately, it’s just outdated software. And the consequence of having this outdated software is two main things. It causes us to distort our view of the truth of life as it currently is, because we have distorted assumptions, like you said, of ourselves, the world, and reality.

But because we feel like we need the ego to be secure, we also resist the truth – so we end up distorting and resisting our relationship with the only thing that is going to be able to allow, us to kind of fly in the way that we were talking about, where we’ve got that balance between controlling what we can control, but then just letting go and accepting and trusting life with the other stuff.

And I guess my question is, have you noticed anything there in your life, or you work with your clients about the distortions and the resistance that stop us from truly flying? Which is a very big question.

Jamil: Yeah, I know you’re asking a question, but I also think that you’re sharing profoundly as well. So the way that you’re articulating that is helpful. And I think our job is to just bring that query forward. So that’s what you’re asking your clients.

What I’m asking my clients all the time is to kind of look at that distortion and peel back to get to what’s really true. And again, that humility of what’s true in this moment perhaps won’t be true when you have that next layer peeled back. That’s all about learning, and it’s never black and white in my opinion.

It’s funny, I was just speaking at this conference, m in Toronto on mental health and gaming, and, I threw out the opportunity for a Q&A at the end. And lots of people, I mean, we’re so solution oriented, versus process oriented. And we are so like, “Well, how do I get this person to realize that they need to work on their emotional intelligence? How do I get this person to be, kinder or more considerate? Because they’re assertive to the point that it’s pushing other people away”.

And so it was interesting for me to be on the other side of the podium trying to answer questions. And I found that no matter what, it was like, well, where are you in this? Why do you need this person to change? How is it that you can interact with them in a different way? What are the expectations that you have of them? Why do you have those expectations? That mirror is in front of us.

So I think anytime that we’re triggered, anytime that, we’re challenged, we have an emotional response, whether it’s not even just in the negative column, right, but in the ecstatic column of joy and love, what is the mirror for us? What part of ourselves is being revealed? But either we need to take out of that shadow space and put more light on it, or, maybe even in that column.

And, again, I don’t even want to label things as good or bad. They’re all necessary experiences. But in the column of quote unquote good. How do I stay in flow with that? How do I create more space for that? Ah, alignment that creates resonance in our lives? How do you do it? How do you help shepherd people through that journey of discovery?

Oli: Yeah, so sorry. I was just thinking about what you’re saying, and, I’ll get onto it. Like, in answer to your question, I think it’s really simple. I think we make life so complicated, but when we’re making it complicated and complex, it’s because at some level, we want it to be complicated and complex so that we don’t actually have to take that leap from externalising everything to look at our inner relationship with ourselves and how it’s affecting the results that we’re getting in life.

And think about what people are always looking for, like, as a coach, they’re always looking for clarity, or they’re looking for answers, or they’re looking for certainty or whatever it is. All of these things are just code words for the truth. That’s all anyone’s really looking for, the truth.

And I think – at the simplest level – that is all we actually need to keep in mind. We have to uncover the truth to the best of our ability, and then we have to live that truth to the greatest extent possible for where we are right now. That’s it. It’s super, super simple.

And if you understand that, you can start to reverse engineer what’s really going on inside us because of the results that we’re getting consistently, that we don’t want, because we’re avoiding some truth because of that distortion and resistance we’re talking about. And I’ll get onto that in a second. Or we can simply start to figure out the steps that we’re avoiding that are going to move us towards the truth instead of away from it.

I think, like I said, it’s very simple. We’re all different. We’re all unique. We all have different experiences. We’ve all got different things that we’re dealing with. But the fundamental structure of the human experience is the same for all of us. And it’s simply going from a state of fragmentation in adulthood, which is just over identifying with the ego because of emotional stuff and social programming and all that kind of stuff.

It’s going from that fragmented state back to a state of wholeness. And because wholeness and truth are ultimately the same thing, it’s just that understanding what’s stopping people from moving towards the truth. The process I use in my coaching practice is the same, that this podcast is built around awareness acceptance and action deconstruct the ego. That’s awareness. Start to accept the shadow self, to embrace the things that we’ve been avoiding about ourselves in life, and then take action that’s aligned with that.

That is as simple as it gets. But it works, because by taking action that is aligned with the truth, you start getting results and evidence that show you, all of the unreal things you’ve been thinking about yourself, which are the only things making you miserable, are not real. And then the whole house of cards starts to fall down, and you can start to flow more.

So, there was something that you said. What were you saying before you asked me that question?

Jamil: Sorry, I don’t remember. I will share with you, though. So you prompted me, a memory. I worked with a client yesterday, and it was our last session, and we were wrapping up, and I was like, I always ask, what is your biggest takeaway? And it’s just this ecstatic moment for me when you watch someone get it. Correct me if your experience is different. You’re referring to the truth. And then I want to say, well, what is the truth? And then my answer to that is that you are enough.

Oli: Yeah.

Jamil: And that’s the truth for every single person. It doesn’t matter if I’m coaching a 17 year old male student from Taiwan or a 65 year old, female who’s retiring. We’re all struggling with this idea of, like, am I enough? And am I worthy? And the answer is, yes, you are.

However, we’re always seeking these externals for validation. And so it’s the intellect that goes back to, it’s the grades, it’s the pay cheque, it’s the title, it’s the house, it’s the man, it’s the woman. It’s all of those things, because we want those things to tell us and to validate and say, you’re enough.

But really, if you can truly plug into that truth inside of yourself, then everything else, kind of like you can glide into life in the right next step, because you’re attuned to that truth, that core, that, yes, I am enough. And all of those external, it’s just like I feel it in my shoulders right now, talking about it like we’re carrying such a heavy load.

And when you put all that down and you’re no longer having to do and to be something other than yourself, to take up space, to know that you’re worthy, then there’s just, like, a deep breath. I get to just simply be here. Now.

Oli: This is why we can say it’s simple. Like, what you’ve just shared is the ultimate truth. Like, everybody is worthy, everybody is enough. But for whatever reason, in their early childhood years, they pick up some external judgment that introduces shame into the equation.

Jamil: They have humans as parents.

Oli: Yeah.

Jamil: Right. And so that’s what’s being modelled to them, because those are broken people, too.

Oli: Yeah. But as soon as that shame is internalised, there’s a disconnect to some people. This sounds like an oversimplification, but this is truly why I believe. Now, shame is always a sign that you are disconnected from the truth. It’s that simple. And it’s a sign that you’re disconnected from the truth – because the only thing you can do with the truth is accept it.

That’s the only way you can have a healthy relationship with it. You can try and explain it away. You can try and resist it. Okay, that’s an unreal relationship with the truth. But if you want a real relationship with the truth, then you have to accept it. It’s really that simple.

And because, there’s a version of us that exists in truth, let’s say if we want to be happy, then we have to stop judging ourselves. We have to step away from that shame because it’s not real. It’s an illusion. And when people get it, like you were saying, all they’re doing is letting go of the illusions and returning to the truth, which is that they exist beyond judgment, that they can accept themselves.

There’s the old saying that the hippies, I think, used to use in the 70s or whenever it was: “Love is God is Truth”. That’s basically it. They’re all the same thing.

Like, if you truly love somebody else, you have to accept them, which means you see the truth about them. If you truly love yourself, you have to accept yourself, because you’ve seen the truth about yourself. If you truly love life, you have to accept it. Love and acceptance are the same thing, and you can only accept the truth. And so that is why the simplest way to live a good life is what we said: uncover the truth and live the truth.

And coaching, the only reason that it works, and it does work, is because it’s helping people to see that, to get the clarity where they’ve been distorting their relationship with the truth and holding themselves back from that feeling that you’re talking about, which is “I’m enough”.

The only reason I always say, if somebody is judging themselves, if someone’s beating themselves up, if they hate themselves, it’s because they’ve not been real. All those judgments, etc. are just an externalised idea, standard concept, whatever that they are using against themselves.

But it is literally impossible to not like yourself when you’ve been real. And so, this is why I say you can reverse engineer things like if people are anxious, depressed, constantly judging themselves and feeling guilty and ashamed, and blah, blah, blah, they’ve become disconnected from the truth. And, that’s how simple it is.

Jamil: My spiritual journey has been what it’s been, so I’ve kind of, come in and out of my faith. And within the Christian context, I definitely struggled with the word “sin” and that we are sinful. However, once it was explained to me as sin is anything that is a disconnection from God or creator, I think that that is the denial of, love.

So if you have judgment and if you have shame, then you are denying the truth that you were made perfectly as you are, and that you are an extension of the divine. And so to be in shame is to not be in alignment with your creator.

So, again, the traditional verbiage around that is that therefore you are sinful. But we are all disconnected. And so the quest is to continue to lean into that truth and that connection. As you said, “Love is God is Truth” – and, again, you think about neuroplasticity and creating new neuropathways within our clients.

We’ve got these well-worn pathways that say “I’m shameful”, “I’m not enough”, “Life is a struggle”. “Life is hard”. And so you’re helping people create, a positive feedback loop. And again, I love this idea of Love is God is Truth. And so if they continue to tap into that, then it opens your eyes up to everything that’s around you. Whereas before, we’re talking about having these blinders holding on to things tightly versus that trust that comes with being in the here and the now, knowing that you’re loved and taken care of.

Oli: Yeah.

Jamil: And again, as I say all of this, I need to hear it. I don’t have this dialled in. It’s not like I live on cloud nine. I struggle daily. I’m learning to integrate breath and stillness and saying over and over, even the saying within my consciousness of be here now or be in the seat of consciousness, hear this ongoing rambling voice inside.

Even that is not totally being in it because I’m still observing and, noticing, but I know it brings me closer, and it’s a discipline m that we’re all called to undertake. And it’s freaking hard work.

Oli: Yeah, it’s the hardest way because we’re going against that.We’re going against, our programming, but we’re going against the bad habit of the ego.

The ego is a habit like anything else.

The ego is a habit like anything else, right? We get addicted to it because it helps us to hide from our shame in the short term. I think most addictions are about that, just running away from shame. And you can’t just turn it off overnight unless you have a big epiphany and you become enlightened or something. It’s a practice.

You have to train yourself to see how it operates, the ego, and to shift your focus into a more real intention and real way of being that’s carrying you towards the truth instead of the distortion and resistance that the ego wants to point you in the direction of. So keep its hold over you.

And, this is why I think some people can struggle with, how can I describe it, putting themselves on a spiritual path. Because they do daily meditation and they do affirmations and all this kind of stuff. And, that can help you, but, actually, at the same time, you don’t need it.

And the reason I say that is all of those things, all of those rituals are just about training ourselves to point us in the direction of that trust. And you can trust without those rituals, because you’re not reacting to life because of the ego stuff. You’re responding to it moment by moment.

Those rituals – I think if you look at your intention as to why you’re doing it – that will tell you if it’s carrying you towards the truth in the way that we’re talking about, or if it’s just giving you a kind of false sense of security. And what I basically mean is…how can I explain this simply?

If you’re only meditating because you think there’s something wrong with you, for example, then every time you do it, you’re aware of that intention and you’re actually reaffirming your state of disconnection. If you are trying to manifest a billion dollars, let’s say, and you start, I don’t know how people do it. You write down the thousand times every morning that you want a billion dollars. Your intention for that is to escape the feeling of scarcity that you’re secretly been driven by.

And it’s ultimately about knowing that, like, what is your intention? Are you driven by fear? Basically the simplest terms, the cliché terms, are you being driven by fear or love? By a, need to escape your current relationship with yourself or the trust that life is going to kind of enter the space, if you can make the space, and then you can start to let go of yourself a little bit.

And so this is why I think so many people get caught up in bullshit, pardon my French, on the Internet, about how the law of attraction works and all this kind of stuff. I think the law of attraction does work, but ultimately it only works if you’re aligned with God’s will or universal conscious will or whatever word people want to use. And, that is about the trusting. Again, I don’t know if I’m explaining this adequately.

Jamil: I love what you said about when you’re, quote unquote manifesting or law of attraction. And again, if it’s around something like money, the root really is that you need to work on that scarcity piece. And if you’re able to let go of scarcity, it doesn’t matter if you have $100 in the bank, $100,000 in a bank.

But the root problem or the root opportunity, for growth is around that scarcity mindset. I think that we are always going for the carrot and that the carrot is a distraction. And I think that those practices can become crutches, that it is, both and so there’s something around discipline. There’s something around slowing down and quieting that voice that certain disciplines, like meditation, bring you. But that meditation is not the answer.

Oli: Yeah, exactly. We can train ourselves not to worry. Ultimately, I suppose that’s a shortcut to what I was trying to express. If you’re only doing all these different, gratitude rituals and manifestation rituals and praying to God and whatever else people do, if you’re only doing that because you feel you’re not enough and your life isn’t enough and you want something from life, you’re trying to bring more into your life, then you’re wasting your time, basically.

Jamil: Yeah. You’re reinforcing the negative.

Oli: You’re reinforcing the negative. So if you want to do those rituals, fine. But actually, I found the best thing to do, to somehow connect with life and make it work, is just to stop worrying about life. It’s kind of what we’re saying at the start. Like, you know what you want and you have a vision for yourself, but you’re not overly attached to it because of unrealistic expectations and so on and so forth.

And you don’t worry. Like, trust basically means that, right? You don’t worry. And if I’d heard myself say this, like, five years ago, I would have thought I was a lunatic, but I have basically trained myself now not to worry about anything. And it’s just made so much space for me to just be responsive in the moment instead of having the same old hamster wheel of thoughts playing round and around in my head. And that is ultimately it.

When you see that the truth is that uncover the truth and live the truth, part of that is seeing, a big part of that is seeing the grace  side of your bird’s wing, which is that it’s not all up to you. And the only reason we worry, really, is because we think it is up to us.

The only reason people do those rituals and everything is because they think if they take control and if they do the right thing, then the universe is going to give them what they want, basically. But actually the universe is just life, and life wants to give you life just for the sake of living, if you know what I mean. It’s grace in that traditional definition from Christianity, actually. Like, you don’t have to do anything except go with it. And, that’s unconditional love.

Jamil: We make everything conditional, but it really is tapping honestly.

Oli: Unconditional love is God is truth. That’s same thing again. And so if we see ourselves as that and we accept ourselves, then we just increase the odds of being what we need to be and, not worrying about whether we are or not anyway. And then everything’s amazing. So ultimately, I think we’ve just figured out the human condition and life is on, and it only took us 38 minutes or something.

Jamil: Yeah, we need to bottle this up again. The gift of being a coach is that I have the privilege and the honour of having these conversations daily because I need the reminder myself. Again, I don’t want anyone to think that I’ve got it all figured out.

It’s just such a gift to have this conversation with you. And even my clients who are figuring things out, they shed light on the places that I still need to grow. It truly is a two way street. I do have a true set of skills that I bring to the table, active listening and deep questioning and things like that. And that took time to develop and refine.

But again, I’m a humble human on this planet, observing and experiencing life. And so, when people allow me to join them on their journey, that is a gift, because I get to see myself in a different light. And then when I see them have breakthroughs, when I see them shift their awareness, I know that that’s possible for me too – so they expand my worldview and they expand what I see as being possible when I am able to assist them in that process, because I don’t have any answers for anyone else. I just help people find their own answers.

And you can’t force that upon an individual. It really is in their own timing and in their own experiences. And the revealing that happens, that’s divinely orchestrated for that individual. So that could happen at twelve, that could happen at 40 –  it could happen at 78.

There’s no right or wrong to when or how those come. And they can come in those moments and then go away. And then you’ve got to put on your hiking boots and journey some more, and explore some more. You’ll have that next level of consciousness and awareness, and shifting, and growth and connection and loss and grief and joy and all of it.

And that’s where I think, ah, emotions are so important. And why that’s a big piece of my practice too, is that emotional self-awareness. Most of us, go through life being somewhat emotionally anaemic, at least in our vocabulary. And so expanding what it is that we are witnessing and having words around it, which is the beauty in knowing multiple languages, right, is that you have more ways to describe what you’re seeing, which expands your view of what’s happening and so, yeah, I love helping people kind of enrich the way that they see what’s going on and see that our emotions also are.

You can have two dozen different feelings in a single day and not attaching to strong laid any one of them, but allowing feelings like experiences to flow through us and to inform us such a big piece of what I do as well.

Oli: That’s amazing. And I think it’s just a reminder that it all leads back to the truth. Like ‘good’ emotions, ‘bad’ emotions, in quotes. It’s all just part of the process is what you said. This process is constantly unfolding. We can always go deeper into it. And every interaction we have actually, like what you said about coaching is the main reason I love being a coach.

Every interaction is an opportunity to invite more truth back into our lives. And people are always talking about these aha moments. That’s how it shows up a lot of the time. We just bring it in inside by creating the conditions for people to be what they are – which means that acceptance is introduced into the equation and then the truth in the way that we’re talking about. And it frees people. It’s really that simple.

So we didn’t know where we’re going to end up; we didn’t really know what we’re going to talk about, but it’s been a good one. Like, I’m really happy that we did this.

Have you got any final words of wisdom? No pressure if you don’t, but how would you sum this up? And can you let people know where they can find you if they want to talk to you as well?

Jamil: Yeah, well, just touching on the very last thing that you said, which we didn’t delve into, but I do think it’s the final piece of this puzzle. So moving from awareness to action to freedom, I think that’s kind of where this journey is taking us, is to a place of freedom again, we’re never complete. I don’t think those are my final words, but I would just say that’s where I’m landing right now in this moment is from awareness to action to an opportunity to have more freedom.

Oli: Yeah.

Jamil: And then where to find me? let’s see, I’m on LinkedIn. So Jamielle Higgley. And, also I have a website, and that’s my first and last name, jamilhigley.com. And, through that website, there’s a portal to request a query call -because I love engaging in these conversations. T

hey truly do feed me, feed my soul. And so anyone who wants to reach out and have a conversation and perhaps dig deeper.

Oli: Brilliant. Well, I will share all your links in the show notes. I’m holding, my tongue so I don’t open up a whole avenue of rambling and start us off again. But that was amazing. And, I just really appreciate your time and how this has just flown by, so.

Jamil: And again, I feel like you are setting a standard of engagement and the amount of information and wisdom that you share freely, on YouTube and social media, I think that that’s truly a gift. And I appreciate that’s how you’re showing up and that you’re just out there giving and engaging in these conversations that pull people in and help them in their journey.

So I appreciate you. I appreciate you reaching out to me and inviting me to be in this conversation with you. And again, hopefully that we’re like, sparks, any spark, other sparks. And then out of that comes this beautiful fire that’s not destructive. Going back to our original analogy of what do we throw on the fire, right? But that out of the ashes, when we burn away, what’s untrue? That we uncover our truest selves.

Oli: Well, thank you for that. And even though I said I wouldn’t crack this open anymore. I always think what’s real is always real. And so anything that you can throw on the fire is not real anyway. And it’s just going to leave what was supposed to be there.

And I think that to summarise this whole thing “The truth is going to set you free, but first it probably will piss you off a little bit or make you miserable”, because you have to let go of the things you think you need, like your expectations and stuff like that. So, Jamil, I’m going to stop talking, but thank you so much. This has been awesome, and I really appreciate you once again.

Jamil: Yes, I appreciate you too.

---

Join my mailing list and get access to a powerful 7-Day Course for REALNESS and Life Purpose (with dedicated workbook):