Create The Best Me

How to Listen to Your Intuition and Trust Yourself

• Carmen Hecox • Episode 121

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Are you ready to go beyond your inner critic? In “How to Listen to Your Intuition and Trust Yourself,” I sit down with executive coach and author Jules Kuroda to explore the often-misunderstood voice of intuition and the powerful journey back to the deeper self, Jules calls your “N8 Self.”

If you’ve ever wondered whether there’s more to life than your daily routine, felt uncertain after a big transition, or struggled with trusting yourself, you’re in the right place. Jules joins me to share her transformative book, The N8 Self: You Are More Than Your Mind, Body, and Emotions, and together, we reveal practical tools and inspiring stories that will help you reconnect with your own wisdom and spark. 

5 Key Lessons from This Episode

1. Why Your Mind Is Not Always Your Best Friend
Discover how the mind acts as both protector and saboteur, and how you can gently quiet it to hear your real intuition.

2. The Eight Pillars of Your “N8 Self”
Learn about character, contribution, connection, creativity, generosity, gratitude, courage, and meaning, and how tuning into these traits shifts your self-trust.

3. Practical Intuition Exercises
Hear firsthand stories (yes, including the infamous furniture offer!) and try simple, actionable ways to practice listening to your inner voice, no matter how analytical or skeptical you are.

4. The Hidden Power of Connection and Vulnerability
Understand why loneliness is often self-created, and how opening up (even in small ways) can realign you with joy, meaning, and authentic relationships.

5. How to Spark Growth at Any Age
Discover why midlife (or any “now what?” moment) can be the greatest launching pad for rediscovering your creativity, joy, and sense of purpose. 

Call to Action:

If this episode inspired you to trust yourself more deeply, don’t forget to subscribe, share, and return next week for more tools and encouragement. Remember, you already have the wisdom you need; it’s time to listen in and let it guide you. 

📕 Resources: 

https://createthebestme.com/ep121

https://www.n8self.com/

Purchase “The N8 Self: You are more than your Mind, Body, & Emotions https://a.co/d/iDCvfSr 

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You know, there's something magical about realizing your mind isn't always your best friend. In fact, sometimes it's that little voice in your head that keeps you from showing up, stepping out, or even accepting a perfectly good bedroom set. Ask Jules, we'll get there. Trust me. Today, I am thrilled to introduce you to someone who's a little bit of corporate, a little bit, Carmen San Diego, and a whole lot of wisdom seeker. Jules Kuroda is here to talk about her brand-new book, The N8 Self: You Are More Than Your Body, Mind, and Emotions. We're digging into how you can connect with the part of yourself that's been quietly whispering, hey, there's more to you than meets the eye. If you've ever wondered now what or felt stuck inside your own head, this is your invitation to look deeper, get curious, and maybe laugh a little along the way. So, let's get started, and by the end, I promise you'll never look at your intuition or maybe even a rainy day on a trail the same way again. Jules Kuroda, welcome to Create the Best Me. I am so excited to have you on this show, and this is a privilege to have you on. Thank you so much. I'm, I'm really excited, about talking with you. So, before we begin today's conversation, because you are a hermit social media person, not a lot of information out there about you. Could you please tell the listeners and viewers a little bit about who you are and what you do? Sure. So, I will start with the, what I do, and then I'll get into the who I am. I am an executive coach, and I have been doing that work for about 10 years. But I didn't start there, I've done nonprofit work; I've been in academia. I'm a wanderer and a soul seeker in the sense that I am constantly kind of refining my own journey in life. And that has led me through a really great chapter book version of my life. So, yes, that's a little bit about me. And you, you nailed it with the, uh, the hermit, the hermit comment about social media. And you are also; you left out the number one thing that you were on the show. And an author. I am, I am a new author, so I've gotta add that to my description for sure. Yes. And I will say for those who have not and do not know, this is your new book, and it is a beautiful book. It is a must have, gotta buy it. Go out and get it right now.

It is "The N8 Self:

You Are More Than Your Mind, Body and Emotions. Yes. I love this book. I love it because, well, first of all, well no, I love it because I felt like it gave me a 368-degree view of it was a different kind of self-help book. It wasn't like, do this, do this, do this, do this. It was kind of tying in how community, nature, myself; how all that kind of forms who I am. So, a different, deeper discovery. I love that. I love that description of it, and yes, you nailed it. So, tell us, what does the title mean, other than my little interpretation of what I thought it meant? Yeah, for sure. So, The N8self, and it's spelled like N capital ''N8'', like the number that's intentional in the sense that I believe that we all have a higher nature. And that higher nature has eight characteristics. And it's also innate in every one of us. So, I loved sort of that double entendre, that's my English nerd coming out. But, I think, when we think about ourselves, Carmen, so often we think about ourselves as mind, body, and emotion. And we don't know how to embrace sort of the esoteric spiritual aspect of ourselves. Some people think about it as something that you are, if you have a belief system. Some people think about it as being religious. Some people think about it as not having it at all. And we really do all share this kind of light within us. And so, I wanted to help frame that up in a way that gave framework to it. That's my coaching background coming into play to say how do we engage with this thing, like we would any other aspect of ourselves from a personal development lens and make it a little bit more tangible so that we can actually be working and developing like that aspect of us, um, that is such a crucial aspect to, to who we are. Yeah. And what inspired you to write this book? So, a few things. I have been working in corporate settings for 10 years. And as I got into the work of executive coaching, initially I really didn't know what to expect and I didn't think I would love it as much as I do because I thought it would be much more like stiff and people just focusing on performance and and those are all really important topics. But, I mentioned that soul searching aspect of myself, and what I found is that even in the corporate setting, people, when you spent time with them and you were helping them think through how to be a better leader, how to be a better manager, how to get their team to be more collaborative, the more you would unpack, the more the fundamentals of what it is to be human would come into the conversation. And there's these questions that people would always engage in around well, at the end of the day, like, what am I doing? And what am I contributing? And how do I know if I'm making a positive impact? Am I really getting to use my skills? And I don't feel like I get to be creative enough. There's these like fundamental more deep aspects of us that we long to get to utilize and live and talk about. But there aren't really good mechanisms to talk about them in social spaces. And I wanted to be able to create a framework to be able to engage in that, just the same as we would talk about limiting beliefs. Or, somatic work has become a lot more popular to talk about, like, where are you holding energy or tension? If you're holding tension in your shoulders, it's like, what's the weight? You know, it's symbolic. And this aspect of ourselves is something that we all yearn to get into, like who doesn't want meaning and joy, in their lives and in their work. So, I wanted to create something that would allow us to talk about that, at work, at life, anywhere. Mm-hmm. And so, who did you write the book for when you started putting this book together, who were you thinking about? That's such a good question. I thought about this a lot cause I was like, man, it's for everybody, but you know, you're not supposed to say that. And it's really not for everybody. It's really not for my hyper-analytical, cynics. It's not for those; it's not for people who are super closed off. But I would say it is for people who are seeking for more depth, more purpose. I wanna understand myself on a deeper level. Or I wanna understand why I think about questions like, 'What's the purpose of life?' And I don't know how to engage with that. Or I don't know how to think about how I'm spending the sum of my days, and will I look back on my life and be proud of who I am and what I've done. And I think that, it's really for the seekers out there. The people who are seeking for meaning and joy and depth. Who aren't afraid of the deep conversations or the hard questions. Yeah, because when I was reading, I thought, did she write this book for people like me? You know, midlifers? Because I kind of felt like, you know, cause you reach a certain point in your life where you're kind of asking yourself, now what? What did I do all this for? Or you kind of feel like kind of, um, lost per se. And I felt like, like your book was helping answer the, now what. And let's get a little bit deeper. Yeah. No, I love that you reflect that back because I think that the people that I have so easily connected with in my life are people who are in midlife. And that is true from when I was five years old. And that was true when I was 15 years old. My best friends were, in their forties through sixties. So that has been always, I've held a, a very deep connection to people in that time of life. But interestingly my cousin was telling me the other day that her daughter picked it up, and her daughter's 11. Oh. And she took it to school and she's reading it. And I thought, oh, my gosh, did I write this for young people? I have no idea. So, I think, uh, I think I'm still learning into, what population it will resonate the most with. But the thing I will say is it is for people who are looking, who are looking for, and trying to ask some of those questions around what now? And what do I do with myself and how do I continue to grow and, uh, and change throughout life. And I felt like, the book kind of took us through different phases of your life. And as I was reading, I thought, this girl's young, I know she's young, she's not my age. But yet you seem so mature, no matter what age you were; whether you were that high schooler riding the horse and fell off and broke her elbow. Or you were the one being challenged by the mean girls when she went to public school for the very first time. You just seem so mature. Well, thank you, I'm honored that you say that. I am not sure that my family would agree. But, um, but I think one thing I will say is that I have always sought after wisdom. And I think that's different than knowledge. When I think about seeking after wisdom versus knowledge, like knowledge changes, and it's temporal, like we always will be learning new things. And I think of wisdom as sort of those age-old truisms, the ancient secrets. And so, trying to really find what are those ancient sort of pieces of wisdom that all are evergreen. And I would call myself a wisdom seeker. Now tell us what are The N8's? Okay, so I'll start by, our innate self is, I'll start by talking about it as, a quality that we have because I think it sets a nice backdrop before we get into the characteristics. We are all individuals and yet we all have this innate self, which makes us a part of a collective, and that's why I felt it was really important to talk about nature. I think we experienced this aspect of ourselves deeply when we are with nature, like we feel the energy of nature. And I know that sounds, however it sounds. But it's true, it's a truism. I think if you walk outside or go into a forest and take a deep breath, it's hard not to feel relaxed or to feel positive. The anxiety kind of drips away and there are some studies that are starting to prove that. But I think that it's also tapping into, we are part of the world around us and highly connected to it, but we forget that. And just like that, we think of ourselves as very individualistic. But we are also part of a world, and we have shared experiences, no matter what culture you come from, no matter what belief system you have. And I think it's tapping into that what I call the connective thread, that runs through humanity. And there's so much connection to be found there. So, I start by saying that, cause I think sometimes we think so individualistically when it comes to where we sit, in, in Western culture. And that is a very, like specific cultural lens we carry. It's helpful, I think, to be reminded that we all have some of these aspects of self. So, as we get into the eight characteristics, the first characteristic is around character. Character is a bedrock aspect of our innate self because it's where our values system lives, it's where our moral code lives, it's how we wanna handle the ethical questions of life. And so, I think it's super important kind of foundationally layout. Who do you wanna be in this life and design and decide those things. And I think so often we've been handed frameworks, or we've been told who we are, or we let the narratives of our youth define who we are. And I talk about that as like recognizing the costumes that we kind of get stuck in. But we can decide and choose and cultivate our character. And I think it's a really important thing to recognize in the moment that we're in culturally and socially. It's where integrity lives. So that's sort of the basis of our innate self. And then from there we get into contribution. And I really like the topic of contribution because contribution is really about tapping into what are the skills and the gifts and the talents that you have to offer. And that's where the question of what impact am I making tends to come from contribution. Like, am I contributing? Interestingly, I think we can conflate contribution with recognition. And I do talk a bit about that because I think so often that validation we're seeking, that recognition we're looking for it's the output of contribution, but we can sometimes get that confused. So, we seek the recognition, and we forget the contribution that needs to go behind the recognition for us to have that level of fulfillment. And I think if these kind of build on one another. So, if you think about characters being the bedrock, the more that we define kind of our values and who we wanna be, it helps us inform what are the skills and how do I want to use them. And so that really helps us answer the question around contribution. In the contribution part, I loved where you, I took a screenshot of it with my phone because I was reading and you just said that, if you fail to contribute your gifts and talents, you're robbing the world of your gift. And I thought she nailed it. That's good. Thank you. And I think, there's something really important about that, that we start to talk about as we get in the third characteristic around connection. Because so often what I find in coaching people is they are holding back what they have to offer out of self-consciousness. Not the good kind of self-consciousness. Not self-awareness, self-consciousness. Self-consciousness, that comes with the fear of being vulnerable, the fear of judgment. And so we hold back. But when we hold back, we not only rob ourselves of the joy of giving, but we also do rob the world of the things we have to offer. And it's really noticeable to me when I hear people say in coaching, I will hear them say, well, anybody could do that. And if you start to notice that you're one of those people that underwrite the value you have to contribute, you probably aren't giving your contribution like the pieces that you have to contribute, you're probably not bringing them to light enough because you think they're too normal. And I think there's just something really powerful about recognizing that and allowing yourself the space to get into the things that you have to offer. It uplifts everyone around you when you do. I loved it. Cause, I remember you talked about, the value; I think you were living in Los Angeles and you were teaching, you were teaching, I guess it was, English as a second language and you had this, family all of them came in, none of them can speak a word of English, but they were so connected to you that they invited you to their home and you were kind of a little concerned about going there, and so you had someone go. But you received so much from just embracing that connection. Even though there was a cultural difference, there was a, a language barrier, but there was that connection that had, you had not taken that risk, you would've never embraced that full connection beyond the classroom. Absolutely, and that is the third characteristic, is connection. And you, you've really touched on something important here, which is how do we hold ourselves back from connection. And one of the things I talk about is loneliness is a situation we create. And I think this is one of the ways we create that isolation we pull back because we don't know if we are waiting for certainty that this relationship will work out or that I know what it's gonna be like to sit in this stranger's house, we'll never do it. We get so like squeamish and our, mind starts, alert, alert. I don't wanna go. I don't wanna, I don't know what to expect. And, are we safe? And it's important to notice when those mechanisms are coming from your intuition, and something is telling you that this is not safe that's one thing. But we have kind of a default programming a lot of times that blocks us from connection because we're worried or we can't determine the outcome. And so the story that you're mentioning was one of those personal moments for me where, I had been invited to this family's house, and I almost didn't attend because I didn't know what to expect. And, I fought through it, I brought a buddy with me. Um, and it ended up being one of the most enriching personal experiences around connection. Because this family treated me without any words, it was all acts of service and love. And they treated me to this beautiful dinner. They performed a ceremony over me. And I had never felt so, I honestly had never felt so recognized. And as I had in that moment, I felt so seen and so appreciated and so humbled at the same time. And it was just this beautiful personal moment in my life that I almost blocked myself from having. And I think that, you know, as we get into connection, connection is important on two levels. It's how we connect with ourself and it's how we connect with others. And when we think about connecting with others, there's little ways of connecting and there's big ways of connecting. And it's important to notice how available you are to connection. How much do you walk around with that layer of self-protection? I talk about the mind as being the frenemy, it really likes to protect us. And sometimes that's good and sometimes that's bad. And noticing what your mechanisms are so you can see where you may be starving yourself of connection. And then find little ways, little ways to do it. So we don't always have to have these big, you know, really intense or intimate moments. We can have a smile and a pleasantry exchange with a person across the counter from us at Walmart or, or whatever it is, and those things that uplift our days. And just noticing, I think, is such a, a key part of it, cause we're so often not present in the way we, we run through our daily lives. And that's true, we are not present. That's something that I'm trying to keep telling myself, be present, be present. I know it's hard to do, but it's a state of being I think. So tapping into, we we're not present from a mental perspective. It's one of those interesting truisms I think of like presence requires us actually slowing down the mind, getting out of our thinking, noticing the world around us, slowing down, connecting, tapping into more of our intuition, listening. It's all of these receptive, uh, things that presence requires. And we're so task oriented, we're like, put presence on the list of things to do today. It's just so hard to do, to do like that, you know. Yeah. And you talked about intuition, and I thought that's very interesting because, I've had a couple conversations with prior guests who have addressed intuition, and I thought it was kind of amazing to hear that as we get older we tend to ignore our intuition. And we are kind of like on autopilot doing the to-do list, just kind of going. And we lose that sense of listening to that intuition. Kinda like you did with the furniture gift. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Um, and the story you're referring to is, when, my husband and I were engaged, I had a friend who offered us some bedroom furniture and everything in my intuition said, don't do it. She doesn't really want to give in this way. It's gonna overextend her and she's gonna later resent me. And my husband was like, no, it's so gracious. We should definitely accept this, he didn't have that same intuition. It wasn't his friend and I let him talk me into doing it. And it broke apart our relationship because exactly what my intuition said would happen happened. Which is, you know, a life, learning on, what the cost of not paying attention to our intuition is. And I, I think intuition is a really interesting one, and I don't proclaim to be an expert, but I believe in practicing intuition. That there is a distinction to be made between intuition and your kind of gut instinct and your emotions. And the way I think about intuition, is tapping into something that is not your mind for a moment. It's the thing that you wouldn't be able to assess if you went analytical. It's like how I absorb your energy and like what images might come up to mind or that little tiny voice of the conscience that might come out and, and give me a whispering. But I think it shows up different ways for different people, I think different people have different intuitive gifts. And you have to discover how yours works, which is really hard because it's so non-analytical. And so when we approach it, it's like, but I don't understand it. Or, but I don't know what it does. And we always approach it sort of from a mental construct. And, intuition lives outside of the mind. And so that is a very, we have to wrestle with that. And it's kind of challenging when your intuition is telling you something that you need to follow, and in your situation, you had your husband who says, this is just awesome. You need to accept it. It's kind of like an insult not to accept it. Exactly, exactly. But that's, that is why, I think, you know, I talk a little bit about, using our intuition to understand people. And I think it's not something we practice often. And it's a practice. Your intuition's not gonna always get it a hundred percent right, but it can point you in the right direction. And so learning to have a distinction between, a fear and or an emotion that we might think is intuition versus genuine intuition versus instinct, like there's nuances in, in you as a, as a person. And only you can kind of answer that for yourself. And so you have to create that space, uh, and allow it to allow it to come up. And, and then you have to practice it, which is, uh, which is hard. And I have some tips on how I've done it for what they're worth. Share them. Well, I think one of the things I discussed in the book, so when I was going through my coaching program, we did this really powerful experience on intuition where we sat with another person and the coach basically said, for two minutes, I just want you to sit and stare at this person and just absorb, just who they are, okay. And at the end of those two minutes, you're not gonna say a word, you're not gonna exchange anything. You're just gonna literally be in their presence. And at the end of these two minutes, I'm gonna ask you a series of questions. You're gonna close your eyes and you're just gonna let whatever answer arises, arise. Ooh, Carmen, it was so uncomfortable because your mind goes crazy with these kinds of things. So the partner that I had, so the first, question was what color is this person, if this person was a color? And you just have to say what came up and why you think it came up. And it is a really good exercise in creating space from the mind because your mind goes crazy in an exercise like that, cause there is no way you would, there's, that's a really random intangible question. I just have to tell you what, what came up for me. But what was so powerful in it was the things that I reflected to my partner and the things that she reflected to me, we're representative of, of like secrets in our heart. They were not things we had talked about with anybody. They were not things that, you could know, it's just what your intuition says. And so just practicing creating this space and seeing what happens for you mentally, is one great way of practicing it. I love that story too. I thought it was just like, holy smokes; when you, answered all the questions and then this person told you about themselves, I'm like, holy smokes. How did she get that? How did she even reach, that level of, who this person is without even having any connection with the person? It's so, and that is the power of doing exercises around your intuition. Because if you had asked me ahead of doing something like that, if I could nail down, the example that you're referring to is, I had to say who she would be in time and the person that came up for me was Nelson Mandela. And she told me that she had a personal history and he was this historically mixed figure for her, and she didn't know how she felt about him. And so the fact that that's who I saw her in history, what it meant to her was X, Y, and Z. And it was such a powerful experience, I think, for both of us because, we would never have been able to analytically go into a conversation like that. And if you'd asked me ahead of that, what I would've thought about doing an exercise like that, I would've joked about it. I would've been like, well, this seems kind of hokey. But that's why it's important to practice it because you can learn from yourself, you can learn from your intuition. And it's a totally different muscle, and it does require releasing a little bit of control, and it's very hard to do. And so I think there's something powerful about just seeing, and the trying. And then there's some validation that comes from doing that with another person who's also willing to be vulnerable in that way. Exactly, so connection and then what comes next. So from connection, then we go into creativity. And creativity is, for me, it's a super fun one. I think that we all are born creators and we long to create. But it's interesting because when you start to sit down and talk about creativity different people have different associations with that word. And, going back to the executive clientele that I've typically worked with, a lot of times, this is the activity they'll bristle at the most. They're like, no, I'm not creative, I'm not artistic. And that's kind of the first thing they have in their minds, you know, sitting in front of a canvas with a paint brush and, and being Descartes and doing the whole painting, or sculpting thing. And that's only one type of creativity. And so the more we can expand sort of our definition of creativity, the more we can understand where we might be inclined to create. And there's a quiz that you can take in the book that helps you define how you're maybe naturally inclined. But sometimes we're interested in things that we're not so naturally inclined in, and that's where we can find the space to play. So I think just opening up creativity to us as an avenue to explore. Like our our sense of fun, our sense of joy, our sense of judgment comes out really strong when we start to play in creativity. So, that can be a really great exercise for noticing, how our minds interact when we do something that's foreign or something that maybe we're not great at, what happens for us psychologically. But when we create, we always feel more joyful. Like people's energy always feels, uplifted after we've spent some time doing that. That's where we experience that flow state of being. So, I think it's a really powerful aspect of who we are. Yeah. And when I read the chapter on creativity, I love that you broke it down into different forms of creativity. Because I was thinking for women in midlife who say, now what? This is a good exercise or good section to read, to understand creativity so that you can help figure out your why or your purpose. And the other thing that I liked about this chapter was, or this section of creativity was where you talked about you know, if we don't express our creativity, it can work to our detriment as well. Yeah, I think that's such an important thing. Because to me it's connected back to that we are born creators and if we aren't expressing our creativity, we need to destroy things. And a lot of times that's where kind of some of our self-destructive tendencies will come from is we're not letting; we're not letting the joy out. We're not letting the playfulness out. We're not letting ourselves continue to experience those muscles. And so we've gotta do something with that energy. And I think it's very common, you know, there's cycles in everybody's life where sometimes you're more creative and sometimes you may be more self-destructive. And noticing when, if you're feeling stuck in self-destructiveness, it's a great time to look at, are you creating or destroying. They live together, but on opposite sides of the energy spectrum. So, I think there's something really powerful. And for what it's worth, some of, my mentors have all been mostly women in midlife, and they have been most often the most creative people I have ever known. I think there's something really powerful about hitting that time of life and you've got all these nuggets you've built up over time, and you're a little less encumbered by what people think about you. And you have maybe a little bit more energy or time in your day depending on where, if you've had kids, where they are. But allowing yourself to continue to become and to become new things, I think is so key, and that is a huge part of the personal development. I think that that happens specifically often in midlife. Very true. This is for all you women in midlife who are saying now what? Jules just nailed your exercise to help you figure that out. Thank you. Thank you. Generosity. Yes. So from creativity we get into generosity. And generosity is an interesting one because I think similar to creativity, we sometimes think about generosity as sort of one dimensional. How are you spending your money. Maybe maybe you think about how you spend your time. But I think generosity is, there's multiple ways that generosity can show up. It can be generosity of spirit, it can be generosity of action, which could be time for sure service. It can also be generosity in terms of words. We can speak generous words over people and, and be kind, praising and encouraging. And I think all of those, you know it is more blessed to give than it is to receive it lives in this bucket. Is when we give to other people it makes us feel better. It just does. It's one of those innate things in us. And we talked a little bit about contribution earlier, and I think contribution is about what do you have to give, it's about you. It's about how are you making an impact? But generosity is about the other person. So it's actually not about you, it's about how are you serving people or how are you giving to people. And that act is very enriching to our innate self. So, to that spiritual aspect of us. And so figuring out how you wanna give, I think, is, such an important aspect of kind of being healthy in this space. And yeah, that is the generosity aspect of our innate self. Yeah, and you also talked about having a form of balance too. Because you don't wanna just give or practice generosity just because you're practicing generosity and forgetting about myself. Taking care of yourself. Absolutely, absolutely, yeah. I think it's such an important, thing that you're raising. I talk about how much is too much. I've known a lot of people that have overextended themselves because they're on the quest to become a saint and, you know, they just want to be so good. And, but that can create a martyr syndrome in us. And so really making sure that we are taking care of ourselves as a part of that, are we being generous to ourselves? And I talk a little bit about grace in this section because I think grace is such an excellent way of practicing generosity. And grace, just being a little bit of space and kindness towards ourselves and others. And I think it's a huge piece what you're bringing up to not do it just to do it. And, it should be refreshing to us. It should be renewing for us. Yeah, it should be something that makes you feel good when you do it and not feel depleted at the end. That's right. A hundred percent. Gratitude. Yes. So generosity gets us into gratitude and, you know, gratitude, I spent probably the least amount of time on, mostly because there's so much that is spoken about gratitude. I think gratitude is an important aspect though, to understand in our innate self, because gratitude is the thing that helps us have perspective in life. And our spiritual self has the most perspective when we tap into gratitude. And the way I talk about it is, you know in think about the last time you were sick and you feel really terrible, you feel really rotten. And for three days you just feel that terribleness and then one day you wake up and you feel better and you're like, oh, I'm so grateful for my health. It's like gratitude is so often experienced after we've gone through something hard. And I think just having that lens can be really helpful because sometimes gratitude is used like, oh, just put on your gratitude, attitude and it can feel a little like a platitude, and it can be hard to access. But I think really for me, gratitude is recognizing all of the things that have been given to me that I haven't worked for. It's like the clean air and the beautiful drinking water and my health. It's just these things that exist and sometimes we remember those things better after we've gone through some pain. And so seeing pain as a pathway to gratitude; to me, helps us recognize like even when we're going through something hard, on the other side of it, there's some richness to be found. Not that that's gonna just get us through the pain, but to recognize it serves a purpose. The pain can serve a purpose and cultivating a sense of gratitude. And I think for me, a much more relatable way to step into, uh, gratitude. Yeah, and when I was reading the section about gratitude, what resonated with me was that I remember when I lost my father. I was very upset. I mean, I tried not to show it, but deep down inside, I was so upset. And I remember my primary doctor's, also a really good friend of mine. And I walked into his office and I just started bawling. And he reminded me of, and you talked about this in your book a lot, reminded me about nature and how life has its cycle. And it's just the way life was designed, you know, that we are born, we live, and then we go Mm-hmm. and, just bringing it back to nature. Mm-hmm. And then he said, reflect on the good. You know, don't think about the bad. Reflect on the good and be grateful for the good. So when I read that chapter, I thought, I remember, I remember, back in 2019 when he passed I was sitting in my doctor's office and he reminded me of this, it just made the pain turn into something beautiful because I remember the good. And it just, it lifted me up and I told myself, Hey, you know what, I was pretty fortunate to have had a dad. I was pretty fortunate to have been his shadow. Cause as a little girl, I was always walking behind him, just wanting to be with him all the time. I was a daddy's girl. And I reflected on that, and it just made that healing process so much easier. Absolutely, and you've nailed the heart of what we can gain from pain and it's connection to gratitude. It's like gratitude can help us heal pain. And it's, it's hard, it's hard. There's nothing not hard about losing someone that you love. And the more that we can focus on, and I got this from my relationship from them, and I learned this from that person, and oh my gosh, all the times we laugh together, I got this. Like they become little gems, little heart stones instead of like, just the pain of the loss and gratitude makes that possible. So I think it's such an important thing to practice. And it's such a rich space to step into and nature is one of the best ways that we can daily practice it. And I talked a little bit about this, but during the pandemic, we were those people that got a, an RV and went and lived all across the national parks. And it was such a gift to be able to do that honestly, because it allowed me to sit with big nature. And if you've never sat with big nature, you know, like mountains and majesty, the whole thing, it really gives you perspective on your place in this big, vast, beautiful world. And you feel that abundance. You feel that gratitude. And so I think nature can just help us be reminded of our relationship to it all and how much there is, and just that sense of abundance, which is such a gift. So then from gratitude, we get into courage. And courage is, I love courage. I think courage is such a great one because I ask this question myself of like what is it, why is it that people want to be courageous or brave? And what's the difference between bravery and courage? I think there is a distinction between bravery and courage. I think doing brave things is facing a fear, and I think doing brave things works us up to courage, which is bravery plus some level of like self-sacrifice or being willing to put ourselves in line or being vulnerable, for the sake of other people. And so, who doesn't want to be courageous? Like it's just one of those things I think we admire so much in people and we see such amazing stories about people who are courageous and that really inspires us. So there's a direct correlation between courage and inspiration. And noticing that something that's in us that we want to be and have and experience. And it makes us feel that sense of inspiration is there's some power in stepping into courage. So I think it's such an important kind of innate characteristic to understand. Yeah, well you know how like sometimes you, you'll hear people say, geez, I wish I had her courage. I'd do anything to have that person's courage. Then I would do X, Y, and Z, Yeah. And you're like, just do it. Just do it. Who cares what everybody thinks? You've just earned it, when you stepped out of the security and into the unknown. Yeah, and you know, I think what you're saying is important because I think part of what keeps us from being courageous is the fear we have of what other people will think. And this is why I talk about the mind as the frenemy. Because while it's so good at helping us do so many things and accomplishing so many things, it equally holds us back and makes us afraid and does all the self-protection and does all the judgment and reminds us that everybody else is judging us too. And so just, I think courage is the way in part we can overcome that is to practice doing, things that are hard. And we know it's a little it, we have to put something personal on the line to do something courageous, so it's uncomfortable. And I talk about the relationship of comfort as well. Like comfort, I talk about comfort as a seductress. And it was one of those like, that, I learned that one on the RV trip when I didn't have hot water. Woo, and boy, it's not having hot water in the wilderness, I'll tell you. But the thing that I realized is like, man, when we get so comfortable, we don't wanna do hard things. Its just harder to do hard things. And I recently just went and did a patch of the Appalachian Trail with a good friend of mine. And the reason we did it is we were like, okay, it's been a little while since we both felt like a healthy level of discomfort. Sitting in our houses, and you know, we're at that time of life where we've gotten past the McDonald, Taco Bell days and we're, we're doing okay. And, it's like, when's the last time you've been really uncomfortable? And she's like, oh, I don't know. So, we took ourselves out to the Appalachian Trail and we did 20 miles in a couple of days. And the first day was like downpour rain. It was like a deluge of rain, and it rained us out. We had, we only made it five miles and we had to go and, you know, we're down to our underwear wet. But the thing it reminded us of is because we, when we went back, we got so comfortable. We could go back into the hotel, you get dry, you get warm, you comfortable. And getting up the next day and deciding to go out again was so much harder than it was, to try it in the first place because we already knew how uncomfortable it would be. And that is the thing, like when we attach ourselves to comfort or we are so afraid of getting out of our comfort zone. We don't do hard things, we don't continue to grow. And so we have to just notice that. And I think that's a part of when we correlate why we may get softer as we age in this particular way. It's because it's that comfort. It's like we get so much more comfortable as we have access to it in our lives. Yeah, and I think we forget that in that experience there's so much growth, to develop. Learning about ourselves and learning about the experience. A hundred percent. So courage then takes us to the last and eight characteristic, which is meaning. And meaning is one of those that we, often when we think about meaning, we'll think about big meaning. We'll think about what is the purpose of life kind of questions. And that's what I call macro meaning. But then we also have micro meaning, like human beings are meaning makers. That's why we love stories. We just constantly are assessing and making meaning out of everything. And micro meaning is like the interpretation that we have when somebody doesn't text you immediately back. Or the interpretation when, your best friend didn't respond you know, to your message. Like, what does it mean? And we tell ourselves a story. We make meaning out of that. We make meaning out of everything. And so often we don't even recognize we're doing it. And so we then start to assume that our perception of whatever's happening is true. And so that's a part of like understanding we are meaning makers and know where we assert our own meaning to something and it may or may not be true, is a helpful lens, for us to develop so that we can actually choose the things that we want. It helps us with our intuition. It helps us with really like getting a little bit deeper with people. And then macro meaning is really that search for meaning and purpose and like, really what am I doing with my life and those kinds of things that we're either asking or we're avoiding, I would say. I was talking to somebody just this morning, he was like, yeah, I really don't wanna think about how will I feel about my life when I on my deathbed, but it's the question that's nagging at me. And I'm like, why are you avoiding it? What are you avoiding? Like, what are you afraid of? And you know, the truth is that when we're avoiding a question like that, it's because we're afraid that we're not living in alignment. And that's why you gotta ask it. That's why you have to get into it, because this is like our one precious life. And we need to constantly be assessing like, am I living my life in a way that it brings joy and meaning and purpose, or are there some things I wanna shift? And I think that's the beauty of being wired for meaning, is that it's a constant opportunity to tune and to fine tune the journey that we're on. And I had a prior guest last year who said that when she works with people, she says, this is the exercise that she would give them. And she'd say, pretend like you're writing your obituary. What would it say? And do you have any regrets after writing that obituary of yourself? And if so, what are you doing today to remove that or challenge yourself so that you have no regrets. A hundred percent. My version of that, because some people are just really afraid of death, is imagine that you're 85 years old standing on a stage talking to young people. What will you have told them that you've done and what will you have told them that you've learned and what are the greatest moments of your life? And just like that, what you're saying though, that reflection activity, is such a clarifying way of us determining the things that matter to us. And or determining like, oh, well actually I, wanna do these things, and I keep saying I'm gonna do, these things one day, but actually when will I go and do those things? And, allow some space in your life to get into. Cause don't we all wanna be going after the things that call to us? We're we're wire for it. I do. Yeah, for sure. Jules, what are three pieces of advice that you would give the listener or the viewer based on the conversation that we are having today to help them get more connected or acquainted with their N8 self? Yes. Okay, my first piece of advice would be to get connected with the light that's in you. We all have a spark. We have a spark of joy. We have a spark of energy. It's the things that get you fired up. It's where you feel passionate. It's where you feel alive. What is that thing in you? And that thing in you connect with it. That will be a guiding light for you in terms of who you wanna be and where you wanna go, and like what that calling is. And sometimes we have to nurture it. So, but recognizing it I think is first. Second, I would say get outta your minds. Your mind is not who you are. Your mind is just one tool that you have that makes it part of who you are. But you are equally this innate being that longs for creativity and meaning and purpose and joy. And so get familiar with it, and don't let the constructs of your mind get in the way. And what I mean by that is a lot of times I will talk to people who are highly analytical. I've worked a ton with engineers, and when talking about something like this, they get a little squeamish. They're like, well, I don't know what I believe. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. Beliefs live in the mind. What we're talking about here, beliefs that that's not the entry point to understanding your spiritual self. Sit in your spiritual self beliefs flow out of that. So don't let it be the precursor to note to getting acquainted with this part of you. We all have it. And the third is, I think just to notice where you may block connection. Some of us block connection because we're afraid of judgment. Some of us block connection cause we're afraid of being hurt. Some of us block connection because we're too busy. Notice how you block it and notice how that is impacting your life. And if you're feeling lonely, or anxious, or depressed or isolated in any capacity, this is especially true for you to notice what are you afraid of? Where in and unpack that, like where's that come from? All those things are always founded in something. So it's to honor and recognize where that's coming from, but to not let that then determine the course of your life and your connection. So those are my three pieces of advice. Really good. And what is the one thing that you would want the listener and dealer to hold close to their heart and know that there is hope? I think the one thing to hold close to our heart is we are all wired for this type of journey. The journey of seeking. The journey of connection. We have a spiritual part of us that wants to get deep, that wants to ask the big questions. And I think there is only hope to be found in that. And I think that's where so much hope stems from. And so stepping into that space, um, we need to break down some of the patterns that we're stuck in in our lives, not just personally, but like socially. And this to me is the way through is connecting with this deeper light that we all have. I make a joke in the book somewhere, but like, who wanted Voldemort to win, you know, from Harry Potter. Like we all intrinsically vote for the good guy. And that is a part of what we share. It's a connective thread between us of looking for good and light and purpose. And we can, we can start right there in terms of where we can connect. But connect to it. You have to, we have to start by connecting to that within ourselves. So that would be my tidbit. I love it. Jules, where can people learn more about you and purchase this amazing book that you'll read over and over again because there's a lot of really good nuggets in here. Perfect. So you can connect with me on Instagram. I do have an Instagram. I have like, yep, I'm new to it. But, n8coach. You can find me on, the web, I have a website, the n8self.com, and then you can find me on Amazon, The N8 Self. Great. Jules, thank you so much for writing this amazing book. Thank you for being a guest on the show. I will include all of your information in the show notes so that people know exactly how to connect with you. Thanks so much, Carmen. It's been a pleasure. Great. Remember how we opened up with the idea that your mind might be your frenemy? Well, if there's anything Jules made clear today is that real growth happens when you get out of your head and tune into that deeper spark inside you. The one that connects you with meaning, creativity, and all the messy, beautiful paradox of being human. If you want to dive deeper or connect with Jules Kuroda, just head on over to createthebestme.com/ep121 for links and details. And if this conversation got you thinking or even just feeling a little more helpful or your own, now what moment? Be sure to come back next week for another amazing episode created just for you. And don't forget to pick up your copy of The N8 Self. Until then, keep dreaming big. Take care of yourself. And remember, you were beautiful, strong, and capable of creating the best version of yourself. Thank you for watching. Catch you next week. Bye for now.