Gratitudeology with Jamie Hess

Judd Shaw: [00:00:00] Welcome to Behind the Armor, where we deep dive into the heart of what matters. I’m your host, Judd Shaw, adventurer, storyteller, agent of change, and speaker on authenticity and human connection. Join me as we explore the complexities of human connection, featuring theorists, scientists, and speakers. Our mission is simple, to inspire you to reclaim your true self and create genuine connections with others.

Judd Shaw: Join me as we lay down our armor and live the armor. Hello, you beautiful people, and thanks for tuning in. Today I’m speaking with Jamie Hess, renowned wellness expert, media personality, podcaster, TEDx, and keynote speaker, creator of NYC FitFam, and a global thought leader. Following a 20 year career as a senior level PR executive, Jamie became aware of the rampant rate of burnout around her.

Judd Shaw: She began developing ways to help her colleagues thrive through reclaiming their [00:01:00] health and shifting their perspectives with an attitude of gratitude. Jamie has appeared on shows like The View, Today, Good Morning America, and beyond. Delivering techniques that empower high performing humans to connect to their health, hustle, and life.

Judd Shaw: Let’s see what’s behind the armor with Jamie media superstar with decades of experience in PR marketing as a star senior exec. You’re now doing so much on gratitude. My me. I’m absolutely grateful that you are even on the show. Jamie has welcome.

Jamie Hess: Thank you for having me. I’m really grateful to be here.

Jamie Hess: I’m grateful for you. Your light shines really bright. I hope you know that

Judd Shaw: I so appreciate that. Thank you so much. You know, I wanted to, uh, ask you, I know that you had two decades of real senior, [00:02:00] uh, executive leadership, and I’m talking the biggest names in worldwide corporations, right? And, uh, And I was curious at that time, what did you see going on in workplace culture and team health?

Jamie Hess: Oh my God. It’s such a good question, but it’s like almost hard to compare today to back then because it was just accepted that we were just like literally slapped around a little bit and it was good for you. Built a little character. You know, it’s so funny. Like I don’t feel that old, but I really am from a different time.

Jamie Hess: Generation, a different era of, of public relations in particular. So, um, let me give you the two second backstory. You know, I came from, uh, in my teens and twenties, I was a sick and suffering drug addict. So what’s really interesting about my story is it started in this really dark place. And when I found recovery, I gained this blueprint for living.

Jamie Hess: That has helped me ever since. And it gave me a little something that [00:03:00] other people didn’t have. Like, I feel like I almost had a little competitive advantage going into the workforce because I was a drug addict, because being a drug addict is the only disease that you’ll have that the cure for it actually leaves you better.

Jamie Hess: Then you were before you had it,

Judd Shaw: you

Jamie Hess: just go into remission, but if you’re a drug addict or alcoholic and you get sober and you get like, well, well, I’m a better person. You’re kind of a better person. So I have a lot of really cool coping skills and I like discovered wellness and mindset and gratitude and all this stuff through, through recovery.

Jamie Hess: So I kind of took that into the workforce of me. That said. From the day I went in, in my early twenties, this was public relations in the late nineties, early two thousands. Okay. This is like the devil wears Prada. Like that was the vibe. So like, you know, Oh, you know, you can’t get this celebrity on the phone.

Jamie Hess: I’m going to throw a literal stapler at your head. Okay. I’m going to sit and take it. Please, Sarah, may I have another, my bosses in public relations in the [00:04:00] in the beginning of my career were really vicious and we just kind of took it. There was nobody complaining like my mental health or, you know, I need a mental health day or, um, it’s really interesting.

Jamie Hess: I actually am very grateful. Because I definitely, and we’ll talk a little bit about my concept of gratitude and how I approach it, but I really believe at its most fundamental, simplest concept in learning to love the sucky parts. That is what has gotten me through my whole life, right? Not just being grateful for the nice things I have.

Jamie Hess: That’s easy. learning to be grateful for the parts that suck. So really early on when workplace culture was kind of, uh, you know, vicious and it was just expected that that New York hustle culture was your vibe. Like I was at the office until 10 PM all the time. It definitely did build character. Um, it definitely did.

Jamie Hess: And, but what I found was that. But other people that didn’t have a good [00:05:00] mindset, I was able to use it as character building and it didn’t beat me down because I had a strong mindset. Other people over the years of my career representing brands like McDonald’s and General Motors and LinkedIn and W hotels worldwide, as we were just grinding and grinding and grinding, they started to burn out and they started to drop like flies.

Judd Shaw: Okay. Bye. You are absolutely incredible. Hold on. I’m taking my jacket off here because we’re getting real and raw on this one. Getting real. Oh yeah, alright. So, I love this. Drugs, you know, rock and roll and recovery. Let’s talk about it because it obviously got you to where you are today and I believe that too.

Judd Shaw: You know, I struggle with substance abuse, but what I really struggled with is external validation. So anything that gave me the feeling of peace and happiness was, was my addiction, right? And that also involves success early on. Success was a big [00:06:00] addiction of mine too, right? So I’m wondering when you go, let’s, let’s go back to the teenage years for a minute, right?

Judd Shaw: Is that where, you know, is, is your, what perceived to be, A weakness at one point has that, that sounds like it’s become your greatest strength.

Jamie Hess: You can make your mess your message, but only once you’ve healed, right? So now it is my superpower, but also because I’ve done all the work to understand where it was coming from.

Jamie Hess: So here’s the thing, right? My mom was on is, was on television. She hosted good morning America for almost 20 years. Her name is Joan London. Having her as my mom, she’s like America’s mom, right? You wouldn’t necessarily think. That I would become a drug addict. She was like as American as apple pie.

Judd Shaw: Right.

Jamie Hess: I think that I looked up to her and said, That could never be me.

Jamie Hess: She’s just too perfect. And I just ran [00:07:00] the other direction. I think I had imposter syndrome from the time I was like six years old. I just looked at her and thought, Nope, too hard. It’s too much. Right.

Judd Shaw: Too

Jamie Hess: scary. I could never do it. And so I just wanted to quiet the noise between my ears. And I just ran.

Jamie Hess: Took a left turn. All of that said, you know, understanding, like my drug addiction didn’t come from trauma. When I went into recovery circles, by the way, and I heard people having all this bad trauma, I thought I actually felt guilty. I said, what the hell’s my excuse? I learned you don’t really need an excuse.

Jamie Hess: We all have our reasons. So my mom never said like, you’re not good enough, but the lens through which I heard her and saw her was just, I’m intrinsically not good enough because she’s, she’s amazing and I could never live up to that. And I just had to numb that. That’s very hard to deal with. And so I can give that version of me a hug.

Jamie Hess: I don’t have to, I can give her some grace that [00:08:00] that must’ve been very hard. I remember that being very hard. I understand why that all happened, but I’m responsible for my actions today. And today I choose to not live in a victim mentality. And today I choose to pick myself up by my bootstraps and do better.

Judd Shaw: What’s also amazing about that is it goes to show you that you can have like all of these. Uh, narratives and the narratives that you’re telling yourself, I’m not good enough. It’s not necessarily coming from someone else. So, you know, in a lot of situations it comes from caregivers or others and, but there are times in, and the audience needs to know that there are people like Jamie has, who’s who told themselves that they didn’t hear it from someone else.

Judd Shaw: They gave themselves that narrative and that narrative over time became their belief. I’m not worthy and therefore I might as well be not worthy.

Jamie Hess: And here’s what I learned in recovery. Okay. So my first sponsor was like, okay, welcome to the middle. I was like, what do you mean? She was like, okay, [00:09:00] so here’s what humility is.

Jamie Hess: Okay. I’m going to explain it to you. She’s like, so you, you typically live in either like. I’m like the biggest piece of shit, right? Like I’m just nobody. I’m nothing. I, I stink. Or we get into this like high and mighty and part of the reason that I did drugs wasn’t just to do the drugs. It was to be on the guest list, to be with the cool kids, to be at the club, right?

Jamie Hess: Like I wanted to feel a part of, I wanted to feel accepted. So that allowed me to feel high and mighty. I got to feel better than you and that felt really good. But then when the drugs wore off and, and, and the list closed down and they, they, they were sweeping up the, the, the, the last thing of the nightclub, I went back to feeling like a piece of crap.

Jamie Hess: My sponsor said, welcome to the middle because she said, this is humility and this is how we live, you know, in God’s grace as a worker amongst workers, as a cog in the wheel, like this is how we just live in peace and harmony with the rest of the world. And I’d [00:10:00] never. experienced that before. I’d only experienced high highs and low lows.

Jamie Hess: So the middle became a really interesting place to live. I had to work really hard just to live in the middle. Right.

Judd Shaw: Hmm. You know, so I wonder where you are a true global thought leader on behavioral change, developing gratitude ology. I think it is absolutely incredible and we’ll take a deep dive on it.

Judd Shaw: And, but I was curious is, is what you saw in your experience in that workplace is what you experienced personally? Um, you know, there is coming from gratitude is the highest frequency you can come from, particularly when you’re coming into recovery, you know, is all of that. How did you, how did you develop that?

Judd Shaw: How did you become this absolutely incredible thought leader on that subject?

Jamie Hess: It started with more of a practical tactical approach, right? So when I got sober, I, two things [00:11:00] happened. I basically like discovered wellness. And that happens to a lot of people who get sober. You’re like, well, shit, I have a lot of time on my hands.

Jamie Hess: I can be like, I can wake up on Saturday morning and not still be awake. Interesting. What would I do at that time? You

Judd Shaw: know what

Jamie Hess: I mean? So I showed up at these places, you know, like these boutique workout spots. I literally, Judd, I found what I had been looking for on the dance floor. I was like, Oh my God, it was like literally here the whole time, but I could do it without killing myself.

Jamie Hess: Like there was this like communal tribal energy moving to a shared rhythm and the beat and the music and the whole thing and endorphins. It was so cool. And I started getting fit. I started learning discipline and here’s the thing. So when I started, uh, by just the mere virtue of getting sober, I started.

Jamie Hess: Rising the ranks of my career. Like I was falling off by accident and I wasn’t even like learning any new skills or getting new accreditations. I was getting promoted because I was showing up as a different version of myself. I [00:12:00] was showing up more mindful with more discipline and more of a sense of gratitude and all of that.

Jamie Hess: So. I would be out on the road, right? And I would be on the road for McDonald’s or any of these big clients that I was constantly traveling for and my colleagues, the ones who were burning out right and left, they would see me doing things like I’d bring my spin shoes and I’d get up for a 5 a. m. class at a local spin studio.

Jamie Hess: I would take a moment for what I call bathroom prayer, right? Just like a little timeout for meditation affirmations. And, and you know, God, um, I would do things that had this little modicum of discipline that I had learned in recovery, because by the way, this was all news to me, like no one ever taught me any of that.

Jamie Hess: Like the fact that I wasn’t like the victim, the taking responsibility, using prayer and meditation. 100 percent news to me. Um, I went into recovery circles, an atheist. I had never really had an experience with an odd, uh, an old timer in the rooms told me at the call, you know, recovery circles, he told me, Hey [00:13:00] kid, that’s okay.

Jamie Hess: You can be an atheist. Let me ask you a question. And he goes, okay. You got a bar of soap? And I said, yeah, I got, I got a bar of soap. He goes, okay. I want you to go into your bathroom in the morning. I want you to write on the mirror in that bar of soap, H E L P. He goes, now that stands for his ever loving presence, but you don’t got to worry about that.

Jamie Hess: Just ask for help. He goes, at the end of the day, I want you to wipe it off. I want you to write, thank you. That was my first experience with prayer and meditation. And just that simple thing. Did me good for a long time. So I was learning these new, really simple base level skills on discipline, wellness, accountability, showing up for myself, showing up for my body, all of these things.

Jamie Hess: And all of a sudden they started to translate into, I’m doing better at work. I’m getting promoted. All of my colleagues would have like that stupid, like, especially in the PR world, it’s like all girls. And it was like this dumb East coast, West coast shit. The East coast office hates the West coast office.

Jamie Hess: And the fashion girls hate the beauty girls. And I was always Switzerland. Because I was [00:14:00] like, I am just happy to be here. Like genuinely, it didn’t have to go down like this. I almost died. I am just happy to be here. And that’s gratitude. Right? So I was showing up with this attitude of gratitude. It was the heartbeat of happiness for me.

Jamie Hess: And people started noticing. They’re like, well, Jamie’s pleasant to be around. Like we want her It’s like, let’s promote her. Let’s give her the big account. The clients like her. I started understanding like I, one plus one is two and gratitude became just the baseline. So I started teaching wellness mindset, gratitude.

Jamie Hess: I started sharing about it on social media and that’s when my social media account started growing NYC fit fam and eventually it became the foundation for what I teach today.

Judd Shaw: I love that. And I, and I also really deeply appreciate you bringing a different perspective in the sense that You did not suffer like a childhood trauma that developed all these unhealthy attachment styles that that imposter syndrome, your mother being this [00:15:00] superstar celebrity and living somewhat in that shadow or trying to say, can I live up to that image that you had created in your head?

Judd Shaw: And so we don’t have to always get there by being beaten down. And sometimes the biggest struggle is to struggle in our own head because we become our own worst enemy.

Jamie Hess: Every day, the biggest struggle is the struggle in our head, but here’s the difference now. So like I had to do the reps. So basically what I’m saying is like, I showed up and I did the reps.

Jamie Hess: I got up, I got up when it was hard and I went to the spin class. It could be whatever it could be your meditation. I did the thing when I didn’t feel like doing it. I started having discipline. I used accountability partners to keep me on track because Lord knows. You know, I’m not going to keep doing all this stuff when it’s hard by myself.

Jamie Hess: So I started asking people, will you hold me accountable? Will you hold my feet to the fire? And as a byproduct, I started growing and I started being able to develop this stuff. Now, what happens now is I become a stronger version of me. So all of a sudden I can start [00:16:00] to learn to love the sucky parts. Now what that means for me today is I still have imposter syndrome.

Jamie Hess: I have it every single day. Right. Instead of, of, of. Allowing that to take me out to be like, I literally have to resort to drugs and alcohol Yeah, that’s it’s like too painful I can say Oh cool. What a great opportunity to get a little tougher.

Judd Shaw: What? Oh

Jamie Hess: my god I have to have a hard conversation with a client or an investor.

Jamie Hess: That’s a little scary What a great opportunity to get a little strategic get a little more clever, you know, uh, I use this this uh, Example in my keynotes. Have you seen the movie my octopus teacher? It’s on netflix

Judd Shaw: I have not. I will now if you’re recommending it.

Jamie Hess: Highly recommend. Two thumbs up. Ten out of ten.

Jamie Hess: So this octopus, this guy literally follows an octopus and it like, he learns from studying this, this octopus that’s just this wonder of nature. So the octopus has basically one year to live, right? That’s the lifespan of an octopus. So the [00:17:00] octopus at one point, this, this, this documentarian, he’s watching it and it’s swimming around and it’s.

Jamie Hess: Learning how to be an octopus now lives in the same ecosystem as these pajama sharks, which are vicious sharks I mean, they are just mean buggers, right? So the octopus comes out and it’s kind of doing its thing living as a little octopus life and this pajama shark Smells it and it’s like yum so it goes chasing after the thing and This octopus is is quite terrified and it lets out some ink and it does a couple things The shark actually gets one of its eyes tentacles and it rips it off and the octopus retreats into its den and it’s like Let me regroup.

Jamie Hess: Now here’s what the guy notices about the octopus. Does the octopus sit and stew and say, I am so resentful at pajama sharks? Does it try to get a little octopus valium because it’s like has post traumatic stress and now it has like a mental health disorder? No. The octopus learns [00:18:00] this really cool technique.

Jamie Hess: You want it does? It has thousands of suckers on all of its tentacles, right? It learns in that moment, it adapts, it picks up about a hundred shells, little teeny shells on the bottom of the ocean, and wraps it all around it like a little coat of armor, and basically becomes a rock. It literally adapts, and you can almost see the octopus saying, Cool.

Jamie Hess: Thanks. Pajama shark. Thanks for forcing me to get a little more clever today. I learned how to become a rock. Now, if we could all just take every hard opportunity that comes our way and instead of saying, Oh my God, it’s so hard. I’m going to get so flustered. I’m going to clam up. I’m going to stay home.

Jamie Hess: I’m going to live in fear. And instead we could say, dude, thank you for the opportunity to become a rock. We’d all be better off, but it’s just not our human instinct. But if we could be a little more like an octopus. We’d be better off.

Judd Shaw: I love it. It’s like [00:19:00] seeking opportunities to be grateful. Is that what’s the heart of gratitude ology?

Jamie Hess: Literally leaning into the sock. Okay. So I teach like a three pillar system. You know, many of us have three pillars that we like to teach. Mine is ask, become, connect, but here’s the secret. It’s basically the three things grateful people do right that help them be optimized and energized.

Judd Shaw: Yeah.

Jamie Hess: Here’s the secret.

Jamie Hess: It’s really. And it’s learning to love the sock. So ask is asking yourself in every opportunity, especially those with adversity, like, how do I want to show up?

Judd Shaw: What

Jamie Hess: is the, what is the version of myself? You know, the, the version of myself, the only one I used to know is like a version that ran away, a version that clammed up a version that hid today.

Jamie Hess: I’m a version that shows up in the face of adversity of imposter syndrome and just insists on leaning into the sock. Right. So. That’s who I want to be today. I want to be that octopus that learns to put up my little tiny armor and I’m like, cool, better version of myself today than yesterday become is really using gratitude as a broom to [00:20:00] sweep away the cobwebs that are keeping us from becoming that version of ourself that we just claimed and ask, right?

Jamie Hess: So it’s essentially like, like fake it till you make it is one version of it. You

Judd Shaw: know,

Jamie Hess: I’ll give you a great example. I had gone home like, uh, it was like two, two winters ago to my hometown. And I was talking to a friend of mine who I know just got divorced, right? I know another friend had told me, and it told me that she sold her house and she had like, you know, a couple hundred thousand dollars in the bank cause she had sold her house.

Jamie Hess: So that was, you know, she was going to be okay. But like, it was sucky. She got divorced. But now at that time I had like built a business. I had left my corporate job. I’d become a solopreneur. I had. Made and reinvested, you know, high six figures, low seven figures a couple of times over. But at that point, Judd, I had 414 in the bank.

Jamie Hess: I was just in a place where I was a little over leveraged. I reinvested a couple of times over. I was like, yikes. All right. Well, but let me tell you how, so I had this conversation with her, right? So we’re, we’re home. We’re like in one of those hometown moments. [00:21:00] And we’re chit chatting and the funny conversation came up was just about tipping Uber drivers, right?

Jamie Hess: And I’m always, I love to over tip because I just feel like spirit of generosity always comes back. We keep what we have by giving it away in every way, shape and form monetarily, spiritually, you know, philosophically. Right. So she was like, Oh, I don’t, she was like, I don’t tip. I don’t tip over to Uber drivers.

Jamie Hess: Like I don’t know. She goes, I’m poor. I’m poor. I just got divorced. I’m poor. I know this girl had about 200, 000 in the bank, somebody had told me, and I knew that for a fact. Now, I’m not judging her. In fact, I really felt for her. I went home that night and I talked to my husband about that, that conversation and I said, so interesting.

Jamie Hess: I have 414 in the bank, but I know I’m wealthy. Now why do I know I’m wealthy? I’ve made six and seven figures over the last couple of years, several times over. I’ve reinvested it. I know I’m going to have it in the bank again in a couple of months. I, that 414 doesn’t bother me. Like it’s just, it’s, I’m wealthy.

Jamie Hess: I’m wealthy. I’m a brand ninja. [00:22:00] I operate from a place of success. Everything I do, I succeed. I show up. I win. That is who I am. It’s the only person I allow into my ecosystem today. It’s who I am. I’m not scared of 414. I’ll have six figures back in there in a couple of minutes. It’s just where we’re operating from today.

Jamie Hess: We don’t allow, right. This girl, even with all evidence to the contrary, she had, she had six figures in the bank. She just believes you. In her lack mentality. She believes she’s poor. She believes she’s sick. There’s, there’s a lack of abundance. How do you want to show up today? I am grateful for my core capabilities.

Jamie Hess: I am grateful for my past success because I know that it gives me proof of concept that I can do it again. Every way, shape and form that I operate today comes from a sense of gratitude and because of that, the law of attraction works in my life. It’s that simple. Our words become our reality. And so that’s become, and the last one is connect and that’s like plug in and then plug out.

Jamie Hess: I plug into source. Right. And I [00:23:00] plug out because I give it away. I asked David Meltzer. I was interviewing him, you know, David Meltzer.

Judd Shaw: Yes.

Jamie Hess: Yeah. Huge, uh, entrepreneur. Um, big kind of successful American entrepreneur. I asked him the other day, I was interviewing him. I said, David, what’s more important, cultivating a sense of gratitude within or saying thank you, like, especially in a leadership role, you know, to the people around you.

Jamie Hess: He said, Jamie, it’s the same thing. I was like, got it. We keep what we have by giving it away. Gratitude is a pro social exercise. So at the end of the day, this is all, these are all cogs in the same wheel for me, right? I learned to love the parts that suck. I refuse to live in fear. I refuse to sit in that.

Jamie Hess: I take pro active measures like affirmations and really working past that imposter syndrome to make sure I’m living in the light and I pay it forward.

Judd Shaw: I. Absolutely love that. And I also deeply believe that when you’re coming from the frequency of gratitude, the universe will come back [00:24:00] tenfold. Um, you know, it’s beautiful.

Judd Shaw: And, uh, you know, I know you mentioned the word superpower earlier, and I believe that authenticity. is our superpower. And, you know, my framework, uh, is the connection cure. Uh, C U R E C being the conscious awareness you understanding are renewing those connections and then expanding those connections is the E.

Judd Shaw: And what I found so interesting about the ABC method is that your A Is very similar to that conscious awareness is stopping to say, how are we showing up in our relationships? How are we showing up in the world that we live, love, work and play is, you know, are you curating, uh, you know, an image of being a great person in a philanthropist and all that?

Judd Shaw: And then you go to a party and you’re like a real jerk and, and, you know, and you don’t tip your Uber driver, you know, and, and, yeah. And then, you know, and show. [00:25:00] Like, I believe when I was focused on the ABCs that you had put together and I looked into that, it’s so deeply resonated with authenticity is your superpower.

Jamie Hess: Absolutely. And, and here’s the thing, us as keynote speakers, usually when I have this conversation with my laterally positioned keynote speaker homies. We have this same conversation, which is, Oh my God, our pillars are like kind of the same. They’re like same, same, because it’s all the same thing, by the way, it’s the same thing as the 12 steps, right?

Jamie Hess: Take a step back, understand where, where, what’s, what’s wrong. Where am I powerless? Where can I ask for help? Take an inventory. Understand, get real, get honest, ask for help, stay in like prayer and meditation connection to source. Pay it forward. That’s it. And so we can all teach it in different ways and it doesn’t mean that we’re unoriginal.

Jamie Hess: It means that’s the lesson. That is the universal lesson. We all have different ways of teaching it and people might need to hear [00:26:00] it from different voices on different days.

Judd Shaw: And hear it differently. I love that. That’s so great. And talk about hearing, I have been, uh, grateful of having the honor and privilege of seeing you on the stage.

Judd Shaw: Uh, you do a keynote on gratitude ology. You’re, you’re, you’re speaking is really great. Quite amazing. But behind the stage, behind the curtain, you are a, also like a renowned wellness expert and coach. Tell me about that.

Jamie Hess: Because it all kind of started with this wellness journey for me. Um, you know, I, so part of my story and I share this in my TedX, uh, is that I had gotten sober from drugs and alcohol, but then years later I had like a resurgent, like a little, like relapse with.

Jamie Hess: Eden disorders, bulimia, which by the way presents just as bad, if not worse than anything that ever happened to me with alcohol, it can happen so fast. And so for me, when I [00:27:00] talk about wellness, I think just looking at it as diet and exercise is a little archaic to me. It’s like top down, holistic, radical wellness is how you do one thing is how you do all things.

Jamie Hess: So to me, wellness is no different than like my personal development around wellness is no different than my professional development.

Judd Shaw: It’s

Jamie Hess: all about. showing up, doing the things I say I’m going to do, making sure there’s structure and integrity and accountability and having a plan of action. My husband and I just happened to have the foundation of our relationship formed around wellness.

Jamie Hess: It’s really cool. So I’m 43, he’s 63, which is really funny because we literally never notice. Um, and I think it’s because we have this shared love of fitness and then also, you know, Electronic dance music, which is our other shared space. So they’re two very youthful passions. But fitness for us was the bedrock that we built our relationship on.

Jamie Hess: And it’s a really fun, flirty bedrock to build a relationship. Upon, you know, our relationship started at Barry’s bootcamp. He proposed to me on a treadmill. [00:28:00] And I think that’s why people gravitated towards our journey on social media. And then today I really insist on continuing to share about that. Um, How I integrate that into my family.

Jamie Hess: Every single morning we take my kids in, we have our meditation room and we sit and we meditate with them and we do affirmations and wellness and, and plant based eating and cooking and, and exercise and mindset. It is a big part of the framework of my family life. So it’s just very important for me to share that because, you know, I think the fitness.

Jamie Hess: Influencer space got a little saturated and hokey, but let me tell you something. You never know who you’re going to affect. The people that have reached out to me over the past six years on social media and said that something seemingly innocuous that I shared changed the entire way they approach.

Jamie Hess: Their body, their spirit. It’s amazing. And it really is an amazing byproduct of social media. It can be a horrible place sometimes, but it can be a really inspiring place sometimes [00:29:00] as well.

Judd Shaw: Wait. So I got to catch this again. Mason meditates.

Jamie Hess: Eight years old and four years old. Mason and Asher every morning they meditate.

Jamie Hess: We, so we do, um, we start with a two minute

Judd Shaw: meditation.

Jamie Hess: Yep. And then we do, uh, well, we tell them just to do two gratefuls and two affirmations, but they usually do like eight, you know, and they mimic, right. I am grateful for, and they’ll say they’ll, they’ll copy something they heard us say. They don’t even necessarily totally know the meaning.

Jamie Hess: Yeah. I’m sure I, I am resilience. And you’re like, okay, let’s talk about that. Do you know what that word means? Well, no. All right. Let’s talk about it. And they, and they just want to, they want to mimic. And so my little four year old every day says, you know, I am kind, I am grateful. He says, I am of service, you know, um, then he says, I am grateful for all the dogs in the world, which I think is a great, grateful.

Jamie Hess: I think that’s a really great thing to be grateful for. And they just. They get to tap in with that part of themselves. It’s grateful. [00:30:00] And then the affirmations, they really get to, that’s how we really help them bypass some of their behavioral stuff. It’s like, yeah, you’d be amazed what a kid can do by just saying, I am calm.

Jamie Hess: I am patient.

Judd Shaw: Yeah.

Jamie Hess: Present, you know, eventually they believe it.

Judd Shaw: I mean, the power behind children learning to be able to communicate those, um, emotions, uh, regulate those emotions, have mindfulness. I mean, that’s what they’ll mirror, Jamie. What a wonder. I mean, you are so incredible inside and out. You really are.

Judd Shaw: And not only are you on my podcast, you’re about to launch your own new podcast coming out. I mean, you’ve had a podcast before. Another one’s about to come out. Tell me about it.

Jamie Hess: Yeah. Thank you so much. I had a podcast for the last four years called Off the Gram. We sunset it this fall. I just felt like we’re done.

Jamie Hess: Like one morning I was like, Oh, we’re done. We did it. We did what we set out to do. Like four years of a show about everything kind of at the cross section of wellness and social media. And we had [00:31:00] interviewed, you know, hundreds of icons and industry leaders, but the show that I had always wanted to make, like in my heart of hearts.

Jamie Hess: The art that I wanted to make was a show more in line with like serial. Like I love stories well told. I love investigative journalism. I love a story that takes you through like a, a cliffhanger, like what’s going to happen. Right.

Judd Shaw: Yeah.

Jamie Hess: And so I have this. Concept of gratitude ology that I speak about on stage.

Jamie Hess: I trademarked the word it’s the study and practice of gratitude. But I thought every big leader and keynote speaker and global thought leader that I’ve ever spoken to has their why story, right? It usually something happened and they learned through it. It could be their first business. They lost their first business.

Jamie Hess: They all, they had a near death experience. They got sober. They had infertility, whatever. And then, okay. So what did you learn by doing that? getting through that where you turn pain into purpose and, and how did that affect you with a sense of gratitude? And then [00:32:00] how did you use that gratitude to inspire your success going forward?

Jamie Hess: And everybody has that story.

Judd Shaw: Definitely.

Jamie Hess: I decided to, it’s called the gratitude ology podcast. Season one is in the can 16 episodes of some of the best celebrities, thought leaders, some of our, uh, you know, mutual friends, uh, Justin Wren, who I know is on both of our podcasts and a bunch of people who are just incredible stories.

Jamie Hess: And what’s cool about the podcast is that I go, I do all the interviews live, like in person, I fly to them. It’s a whole thing. But then I come back, I take the transcript and I write the whole script around the transcript. So essentially I go back into the studio and I, Larry, take the Lay down the narration and the sound design.

Jamie Hess: So you feel like you’re in the story. It’s like immersive audio theater. And to me,

Judd Shaw: that’s

Jamie Hess: my favorite type of podcast to listen to. I find that so fun. Like I could listen to that type of a podcast all day because it’s like listening to a book. So I’m now it’s a heavy lift, John. I got to tell you like each episode takes me a couple of weeks.

Jamie Hess: It is the art I’ve always wanted to make and I’m so proud of it and it [00:33:00] launches on February 5th on podcast platforms everywhere.

Judd Shaw: I can’t wait to listen to that. You know, Jamie, I had a question for you in terms of, you know, as a, one of my canisters, I have a law firm, people working for me and all. And you know, I’ve gotten to this place where I’ve started to realize that, uh, it’s also a servant leadership, my role, right?

Judd Shaw: Just as well as your kids mirror you, you know, my team mirrors my leadership and I’ve been cognizant and aware of that. And what happens when you now have a team members who will come up and say more money, More role, more money, more role, more money. And you know, there was a time where I would, okay, you want to, you want to work Friday nights and Saturdays, I’ll pay you to do it, you know, fine.

Judd Shaw: But then I feel like there’s a responsibility that like, what, How am I feeding that and being part of the [00:34:00] cycle or problem if I don’t find other ways to maybe like a bonus or whatever structures things, but also make sure that there’s a stopgap to say, I always want you to make sure that you’re aware that if I lose you, it was because it was more concerned about your mental health than, uh, your wallet.

Judd Shaw: I know you have studied and you, uh, have a lot of information on burnout. How do you deal with these situations?

Jamie Hess: Well, before I even get to the data, I’ll tell you this. I was so lucky and I’m grateful to have worked my last company that I worked for, for six years. I was the SVP of a company called the Narrative Group PR company.

Jamie Hess: It was an agency. When I first started working for them, I think we had like four employees in the New York office, maybe three on the West Coast office. By the time I left, they had just been acquired for About 30 million, a big acquisition by a global company. So I was really there for the whole scaling of the business and all the growing pains and everything to female founders, partners.

Jamie Hess: Um, now the reason I’m so grateful, I worked for that [00:35:00] company after working for all of the devil wears product type of PR agencies. I mentioned earlier was because I have never worked for a, uh, Better company who taught me the employer that I always want to be for the rest of my

Judd Shaw: life.

Jamie Hess: They were generous.

Jamie Hess: They inspired us to be ambitious without burning us out. They inspired boundaries. They encouraged it. They would say to me, Jamie, Hey, we understand that you want to come in and work, you know, like the Jewish holiday or the, this or the, that, or the Saturday. Um, but people really look up to you in this company and you’re welcome to work.

Jamie Hess: We’d appreciate it if you do it from home, just so you don’t set an example for people that they feel like they have to do that as well. They would, uh, come in and we would just have like a, all of a sudden the mental health, not a mental health day, but like a, a growth and leadership day where they would put the tipping point or the power of now on, on all of our desks, and then we would come in and have like a book club, you know, like they just, they would say, thank you.

Jamie Hess: They would, sometimes I would Log on to my computer and there’d be a 250 gift [00:36:00] card to a local spa and said, you, you’ve been killing yourself lately. We appreciate you go get a massage. Now, you know, my mom used to joke, she’s like, they’re so stinking smart. Like what is it bucks and you’re never going to leave over that dumb massage.

Jamie Hess: And I’m like, you’re right. You’re right. Cause people just want to feel, they just want to feel appreciated, right? But it really is a top down ideology. If you want to have a workforce, it’s going to be able to continue working and churning out consistent, good work. I’ve definitely been, uh, at fault for not being the best at setting my own work life boundaries, but I’m very cognizant.

Jamie Hess: That I set them for my team. And I always say, if I send a late email, please don’t respond to this. Now I’m, I’m sending it off in a stream of consciousness, but please know my hours aren’t your hours. And it’s, it’s more important now than ever. I think here’s the interesting thing during COVID. We all learned this.

Jamie Hess: Everybody [00:37:00] got what they low key thought they always wanted, right? Everyone always thought, Oh man, if I didn’t have to commute to work, if I had those couple of hours back, I would really get my life together. I would meal prep and I would get, I would lose 10 pounds and I would get to the gym. It’s like.

Jamie Hess: No, you didn’t Susan, you didn’t, but it’s okay. What we realized was it actually wasn’t a time management issue. It was a managing your own energy issue. And so when you were just left to your own devices, you actually just scrolled on Tik Tok. You actually didn’t meal prep, but it’s okay. You just need to understand that like that wasn’t the problem in the first place.

Jamie Hess: So I think with hybrid working situations and all these new things with, with boundaries and work life balance and hours being out of whack, I think we’re more effed up than ever. With all of that. So I think it really is more important than ever for top down leadership to really help their workforce with their, their mental wellbeing and fortitude, because you can’t fight burnout.

Jamie Hess: You can’t march against those headwinds with the same fortitude that depleted your tank in [00:38:00] the first place. Like you just can’t do it. And so that’s why I, a very simple exercise. I believe gratitude is the antidote for burnout. So I have a simple five step gratitude journal prompt. That fights burnout, you know, and it’s something I share on my social media, like just a simple reframe of energy and getting reconnected with source is the easiest way just to guard against burnout.

Jamie Hess: Cause you get reconnected with what matters. And, and you under, have you ever looked back on a job that you had that seemed so flippant, stressful, and that’s in the moment, like you just, I mean, I would come home crying every day from certain jobs I had, and I look back at it and I’m like, What was I crying about?

Jamie Hess: Like I was crushing it. Like I wasn’t even that hard. Like I was totally capable, but in the moment you’re just crushed by imposter syndrome and overwhelmed.

Judd Shaw: Yeah.

Jamie Hess: If only we could have that perspective, right. That, that five year down the line perspective, you can get that. You can get that, but it takes being able to.

Jamie Hess: Have a mental reframe, have a moment, have a pause. Once you learn how to get a pause button on your remote and that [00:39:00] comes from these simple exercises, you’re in a much better place.

Judd Shaw: What’s that social handle?

Jamie Hess: At NYC fit fam on Instagram.

Judd Shaw: You know, for me, I totally agree that in order to thrive, you need to feel heard, seen, and felt valued.

Judd Shaw: Feeling, feeling that as your authentic, true self.

Jamie Hess: Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, look at work. Many of us don’t show up as our authentic, true self. We’re trying to play a role and like, there’s, there’s, there’s a version of that fake until you make it right. But at the end of the day. You know, people need to be able to let their armor down a little bit.

Judd Shaw: And

Jamie Hess: I kind of get annoyed when people are like, I feel like a lot of younger generations are like your work. I hate when people say work, family, your work, family’s not your family. Mine was mine was man. You spend most of your time with those people. Right? So you better get in [00:40:00] congruence with them. You better.

Jamie Hess: And you got to be able to show up authentically. That’s hopefully why you got hired in the first place.

Judd Shaw: You know, I think about those jobs that you’re talking about where sometimes I beat myself up or felt beat up, but it was also now when I look back at that one particular job, you know, when you said that, you said we all, I went right to the job, right?

Judd Shaw: I knew the job I was thinking about. It was also the job. That had I had Gratitudeology, it probably would have got so much more out of it because I didn’t realize that my greatest lessons, like the ways I then ultimately went and built multiple companies came from that very job. I just, just didn’t realize it at the time.

Jamie Hess: So the work doesn’t feel like the work when we’re in it. It just feels like a series of minor and major inconveniences. And that’s okay. Right? That’s just life. That’s how we learn. The work doesn’t feel like the work. You don’t understand it until you’re through it. But you know, if you can just do your best to be as awake as possible.

Jamie Hess: Throughout the process, and if you could have that, [00:41:00] that elusive kind of like third party perspective where you can take a step out of your, your, your body, like the crushing weight of your overwhelm and be like, I’ve actually got this, right? And also like in most cases, like it’s not life or death. That’s the other thing we just.

Jamie Hess: We really fancy ourselves so, so very important, but at the end of the day, right? Like that’s where I, that’s circling back to what I talked about in the beginning, the humility, being a worker amongst workers, being a cog in the wheel, right? Like it’s just, it’s just not, we used to say, I used to say to my, my team, Guys, it’s pr, not er, you know, when I was in, in public relations, like it’s pr, not er, we, we are not curing cancer.

Jamie Hess: We are literally like running like a paid and organic campaign for McDonald’s so they can sell more Big Macs, which is like, fine, it’s important to McDonald’s, but like, everyone take a breath. It’s gotta be okay.

Judd Shaw: Right. Right. Um, so, uh, mom, media superstar, keynote speaker, coach, wellness expert, uh, you know, [00:42:00] so much is going on in your life.

Judd Shaw: How do you find ways to authentically connect with yourself?

Jamie Hess: It’s such a good question. I wish I had all the answers. I find when I am teeter tottering, the best thing that I have learned to do is to ask for help. So when I started coaching, my first coaching program was called the big ask method and it was really teaching people, specifically women, how to ask for the help that they need in achieving their goals.

Jamie Hess: I tried for such a long time to fix my problems and my broken mind with my broken mind. And then I wondered why I wasn’t getting any better. I can’t solve my problems in a vacuum. Even when I became an entrepreneur, it’s so funny when I left my corporate job, I had been trying to balance a side hustle and a full hustle.

Jamie Hess: And I was like, man, when I leave this corporate job, I’m going to like, in the first 90 days, I’m going to be like, Speaking on stages across the world. I’m going to write six books. I’m going to have seven podcasts. I’m going to, guess how many things I got off the ground in the first [00:43:00] 90 days,

Judd Shaw: Jud.

Jamie Hess: Zero, because I had no short term and long term planning.

Jamie Hess: I was just, and so what I realized was if you don’t have a boss. You better hire one, honey. Like I had to hire like a life coach, a priorities coach, an executive coach. It’s the same thing with my spiritual life, with my reconvening with me. And I’ll tell you something candidly, just last week, uh, do you know who Tim Story is?

Judd Shaw: I do.

Jamie Hess: Yeah. So Tim Story is a, is a spiritual leader. He’s a pastor. He is Oprah’s spiritual coach. I have recently become very friendly with Tim. I had him on my podcast and he became a friend and mentor. And I texted him last week. I said, Tim, can I ask you a question? It was maybe two weeks ago. Can I ask you a question?

Jamie Hess: It’s not about business. It’s about. So it’s a spiritual in nature. He called me back right away. He said, go. No time like the present. I said, Hey, I just feel like I’m out of whack. I’ve been just so hell bent on my ambition and my hustle that I feel like there’s a layer missing. Like my spirituality [00:44:00] is suffering and I don’t know where to go with that.

Jamie Hess: And he said, do you feel like it’s a void or do you feel like you’re being called for something higher? And here’s like the imposter syndrome me. I was like, I’d love to say I feel like I’m being called, but it just feels like a void. I feel like I need more. He’s like, ah, you’re wrong. He goes, you’re being called.

Jamie Hess: He goes, but that’s okay. Let me help you. And you know what he did? Simple. He gave me two pieces of reading, right? Like required readings. Like one was like a daily devotional and the other was like a book, but like simple practical tactical places to start. I went on Amazon. I bought the two books. I started reading them.

Jamie Hess: Now I have a roadmap. I can’t fix my broken mind with my broken mind. So when, when I’m having a hard time reconvening with me, which is like always. I usually go to a thought leader. I go to a mentor and I ask them for a little bit of help because I really think that the biggest problem that we have today is that we’ve been told that we can do everything in a vacuum and that we, we can fix it with an app we can, you know, that we can sit and scroll and our answer is somewhere in the internet and it’s not [00:45:00] like gratitude’s a pro social experience.

Jamie Hess: We got to connect with other people. We got to ask for help. That’s how, that’s how I reconvene with me. By convening with others and, and remembering how to do it.

Judd Shaw: I absolutely love that. So unique that sometimes, and I hadn’t thought about this, that to drive the connection with self is to ask for help from others.

Judd Shaw: That sometimes the connection from others helps deepen the connection with yourself.

Jamie Hess: You know, our friend Chris Shembra, he’s a Gratitude guy as well, and it’s so funny, you know, we were talking about like what you’re for and what you’re against. And like, he’s like, you know what I’m against? One of my big gripe is with the gratitude industry, he goes, Gratitude journals.

Jamie Hess: I was like, really? Tell me about that, Chris. That’s so interesting. He was, yeah, I think everyone’s been sold a lie that you could just sit by yourself and write things down in a journal and then it’s going to solve all your problems. And he’s right. And [00:46:00] so my, like my husband even, uh, and I have a gratitude.

Jamie Hess: Well, my husband’s on a big gratitude text chain with a bunch of his You know, uh, like 12 step recovery homies, which I think is so cool because here’s a bunch of guys getting vulnerable every day. Like, I’m grateful for this. I’m grateful for that. So cool. But my husband and I do it as well. And sometimes a, it’s the accountability to remind me.

Jamie Hess: To be grateful because if it’s just me in a journal, I might skip it. I mean, let’s be honest. I’m a gratitude expert. I might skip it. I’m busy. Right. But when you have accountability with another person, you’re going to do it. So at the end of the day, we are meant to be, we’re human. We’re human beings.

Jamie Hess: We’re human connectors. We’re here to have a pro social experience. Don’t try to do it all on your own. You know, we, we literally amplify the halo effect of our, of our aura, of our, of our being is, is, is just so amplified by the grace of others. That is, if I can leave people with anything today, it’s, it’s just reach out and make that gratitude cyclical and [00:47:00] we keep what we have by giving it away.

Judd Shaw: That’s so spectacular. And I know at least as a man, when I. Can be vulnerable with another man to your point that drives my authenticity that drives my place of safety that drives my place of connection

Jamie Hess: Absolutely,

Judd Shaw: Jamie I cannot thank you enough for coming on the show. You are spectacular in every way, and I am so grateful for you.

Jamie Hess: I am grateful for you as well, my friend. Thanks for having me. Seriously, it was a great chat.

Judd Shaw: Thanks so much, Amy. I want to extend my deepest gratitude to you. to you. If you’ve enjoyed this episode, please follow us on your favorite platform or share this episode with a friend. You can also follow me on Instagram at Judge Shaw Official.

Judd Shaw: A special thank you to personal injury law firm, Judge Shaw Injury Law, for their support in helping us bring this podcast to life. Remember friends, [00:48:00] authenticity isn’t about being perfect. It’s about being real. It’s about embracing our vulnerabilities, celebrating our strengths, and being real. Owning our stories.

Judd Shaw: Until next time.