“Connection is why we’re here. We are hardwired to connect with others; it’s what gives purpose and meaning to our lives, and without it, there is suffering.” – Brené Brown
There have been times in my life when I believed the best way to handle a project or situation was to go it alone, like a lone wolf. Sometimes that approach works, but when it becomes a habit, it doesn’t.
As Brené Brown says, we are wired for human connection. According to my guest today, Jennifer K. Hill, if we are not connected to ourselves, others, and our purpose, it can lead us down a path of disconnection—potentially turning us into what Jennifer humorously refers to as a “jerk.” Just kidding… or maybe not!
In our conversation, Jennifer and I discussed:
- How Jennifer is a “recovering jerk”
- Why human connection is so important to her
- What the Golden Path of Connection is
- How we can connect with ourselves, others, and our purpose
- How her company, Optimatch, helps in understanding human connection
- Jennifer’s free resources, including her book 101 Spiritual Tools for Uncertain Times and her podcast Regarding Consciousness
- Why fun, including watching Minions, is crucial
This conversation was incredibly enjoyable—you’ll hear us laughing throughout. I hope this episode brightens your day and, more importantly, inspires you to recognize the importance of human connection and take steps on your own connection journey.
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Listen to the podcast here
Unlocking The Golden Path: Connecting With Yourself, Others, And Higher Purpose – Insights With Jennifer K. Hill
How are you doing out there? Let’s start the show with a quote. “Connection is why we’re here. We are hardwired to connect with others. It is what gives us purpose and meaning in our lives. Without it, there is suffering.” Brené Brown. You all know I love me some Brené Brown. Let’s start with her, shall we? There have been times in my life when I thought the best way to handle a project or situation was to go it alone and be a lone wolf. I’ve had that work sometimes, and sometimes it’s been successful, but when it’s become a habit for me, it doesn’t work.
I think that it was one of the things that contributed to my burnout. I’ve had people ask me since, “How do you do it all?” I think it takes a village and then to have that village, it requires connection. As Brené says, we are wired for that human connection. If we are not connected to ourselves, others, and our higher purpose, as my guest, Jennifer K. Hill, says, “It will lead us down a path of disconnection to the point of being a jerk.” I would love to say that I was kidding. It’s not . We talk about how she is a recovering jerk.
During our conversation, Jennifer and I chatted about that very thing, how she is a recovering jerk. Why human connection is so important to her? What is the golden path of connection? How do we connect to ourselves, others, and our purpose? Her company that she cofounded, OptiMatch, how it works to help understand the human connection and it’s a cool concept. Jennifer’s free resources include her book, the 101 Spiritual Tools for Uncertain Times, and her podcast Regarding Consciousness.
I had to squeeze in a fun question about someone that she has worked with many times, Deepak Chopra. If you are a self-helper, personal development junkie like me, you have definitely heard that name. How fun, including watching the minions. Yes, we talked about the minions as important. This conversation, I’m sure you’ll be able to tell as you jump in. It was so fun. We laughed. I belly laughed and laughed throughout. I hope this show particularly brightens and lightens your day.
More importantly, I hope that you learn how important human connection is and that you take proactive action on your own connection journey. Here is more about Jennifer. Jennifer Kay Hill is an experienced professional speaker and entrepreneur with over fifteen-plus years of experience. She successfully exited her first company in 2018, which was acquired by a subsidiary of Marcum LLP. She has established herself as a recognized expert in her field, having appeared on major news outlets such as KNX radio, BBC News, ABC, NBC, Fox, and E-news, and has been quoted in reputable publications like The Ladders and Glass Door.
Jennifer’s speaking engagements have included various conferences, law firms, and corporations around the world where she has served as a speaker, consultant, moderator, and host. Jennifer was recently accepted as a member of Deepak Chopra’s evolutionary leader circle, a group of thought leaders from different fields who come together to support a shift in consciousness. She has hosted over twenty TV episodes with Deepak Chopra and Don Hoffman called Conversations at The Intersection of Cutting-edge Science and Spirituality.
She holds a bachelor of arts in psychology from the University of California, Irvine. Giving back to her community is Jennifer’s passion, and she dedicates her spare time to volunteer work. She built her first school in Nepal, which is so cool, in 2017, in collaboration with Build On, and her second school in Senegal in 2019 with her father.
Jennifer cofounded OptiMatch, a SaaS company that utilizes a proprietary matching algorithm to better understand the motivating factors of individuals and create greater coherence in teams. She also hosts a podcast called Regarding Consciousness and is speaking at Deepak Chopra’s inaugural Sages and Scientists events in Mallorca, Spain, on October 24, 2024. Sign me up. I’d love to go.
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Also, if you haven’t yet downloaded one or all three of the freebies on my website, check them out at BraveWomenAtWork.com. The three freebies are 24 Career and Leadership Affirmations for Women, 5 Ways to Managing Your Imposter Syndrome and Getting Paid: 10 Negotiation Tips. You can download those at your leisure. Of course, the best thing, they are free. Go find them at BraveWomenAtWork.com.
The last update is my latest book, Brave Women at Work: Lessons in Leadership. I am excited for this. Available now for pre-order in hardcover. The author team and I have a big goal. This is a big one. It’s in the journey of trying to get there of New York Times bestseller. I would appreciate it if you could pre-order a copy before it comes out in September. It’s going to be September 24th, 2024. How about that for numerology and number sequences?
This book and the entire series have been a labor of love. If you can walk alongside the author, team and me as we lead out loud with this book, I would so appreciate it. Pre-order a copy of the book now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books A Million, or wherever books are sold. Let’s welcome Jennifer to the show.
Jennifer, welcome to the show. How are you?
Jen, it is such a pleasure to be here with you and your readers.
Thank you so much. Everyone, you are my first Portugal resident. I know the second one. That is not true, but you are my second one. It’s been quite a while. How is everything going in Portugal?
Magic, miraculous blue skies, sunshine, great people, and wonderful food. How does life get any better than this?
I know. I was there. For everyone reading, I took a trip there and I was there briefly and it was beautiful. The amount of color. The African, I think, was more Moroccan influence and like the tiles and the walls. It was such a beautiful melting pot of people. I had a great experience there.
Moving To Europe During The Pandemic
It’s a lot of fun. I’ve been living here for about four years. I moved to Europe in 2020, right during COVID. I was originally planning to travel the world. You make plans and then, as they say, God or whatever universe you believe in laughs because I had a year’s worth of travel planned after I sold my first company. I was going to spend a month in Bali, a month in South Africa, and a whole year of travel planned. I found myself in Paris in month one of this trip, and it’s like lockdown or shutdown. I woke up to 64 texts one day on March 12th that said, “Get out of Europe.” I popped over to London and found myself living in London rather unexpectedly for six months, canceling all the planned trips and eventually moving to Paris and then Portugal.
You’ve landed in a beautiful place. Why don’t we go back a little bit farther and tell us a little bit more about your background and how you’ve gotten to where you are?
As I often share with people, Jen, “I’m Jennifer Hill. I’m a recovering jerk. Nice to meet you.”
I have that as one of my questions. I love that you say that you’re a covering jerk.
I have to be authentic for anybody out there. God forbid. I’m sorry if we worked together when I was in my twenties or to my ex-husband, to whom I profusely apologize. I didn’t love myself. That showed up in so many different ways that I thought I was a smart alec. We’re being straight. I don’t even know if I’ve ever shared this with anybody I show before. I thought I was a hot little piece of blank. I thought I knew better than everybody else. If everybody listened to me. The flip side of that was that I didn’t fit in, didn’t belong, and couldn’t get along well with people.
I was like this introvert who spent all my spare time in school, either studying books or helping handicapped kids. I did have a good part of my heart, but I didn’t know appropriate social behaviors and ways to engage with people. That’s what caused me to spend the last 20 years of my life studying human beings and figuring out the keys to human connection. How can I embody those? Honestly, Jen, my dream is to empower a billion people or more to have deep, meaningful connections with themselves and others.
I love what they call in business school a BHAG, a Big Hairy Audacious Goal. There’s one for you. I had to ask. You have been a successful entrepreneur, it sounds like, for some time. What was the company that you successfully exited? I looked at your website in 2018. What was that company about?
The Journey Of Building J Hill Staffing Services
That was a company called JHill’s Staffing Services. Here’s a little funny aside that a lot of people also don’t know. At the time that we were building that company, the website and the company website that the company bought was called JHCCS. Here I was thinking, “How am I all my crap together and I could kick butt and take names without any planning?” Mind you, I was in my late twenties and I went to open my first company ever, which was the namesake of that original website JHCCS, which was JHill’s Career Consulting Services.
I thought if you built it, they would come, and I would have all these classes I was going to with famous speakers. I thought, “That’ll be me.” I failed, Jen, epically. To say I failed, like I went from making like $180,000 one year to $5,000 the next year. An epic failure of epic proportions. Out of that failure, somebody invited me to come back and be a partner at their legal recruiting firm. I had been in that industry and was already very successful at it for five years.
I worked for them for a couple of months and our values were not fully aligned. I left that and God bless my ex-husband, who said, “You are going to have more clients than what to do with why don’t you open your own recruiting firm?” JHCCS, my failed career consulting company, then became JHill’s Staffing Services, which was a joke name. I put no thought into branding, no thought into any of it. Next thing you know, we were one of the most prominent recruiting firms in Los Angeles. I started writing white papers and speaking on stage about it.
We had a huge accounting firm. Actually, I found out the accounting firm that bought us, Marcum LLP, went through a two-point something billion dollar acquisition by somebody else. They’re now the sixth-largest accounting firm in the world. They did an acquisition partnership with CBiT. Our team’s still there and still successful. Hopefully, everything will go well post-acquisition for them.
That’s amazing. You were so successful, so what made you say, what? Nope, I have to leave it. I have to start something new.
That was a myriad of things. I had exited that company. After we sold it, I’ve always been like a builder. I love building, envisioning, creating, and helping people. When we sold the company in 2018, I had a contract to be on for a certain amount of time. Through a series of serendipities, I knew it wasn’t in my heart to work for a 3000-person company. They’re now going to be a 7,000-person company, but we had always been this small little boutiquey family company.
Now, here I was running the California offices for this ginormous company. It was a different vibe for me. Thank goodness our VP and EVP in the company didn’t mind working for larger companies than they had before. I was able to exit the company in late 2019 and move into a remote consulting role and honestly, knock on wood, Jen, I was the luckiest entrepreneur on the face of the planet. As of November 2019, all of my accountabilities disappeared aside from ten hours a week of consulting when I could work from wherever in the world. Winning. What do I want to do next?
In the middle of going on five-hour croissant hunts in my sabbatical year in 2020, I started doing TV shows with Deepak Chopra and getting involved in a lot of spiritual communities. At the end of that year, I got invited by a woman to cofound a new company. First, they eased me in. I swore never will I ever build another company. After you go through building a company, giving birth, and giving it away, you’re like, never will I ever build another company again.
On comes my original cofounder of the company that we have now OptiMatch. Moon said, “Why don’t you be my advisor? You’d be great. You know a lot about people.” She wanted to create a platform to match people with healers around the world. That was in my wheelhouse with therapists and coaches. All of a sudden, we started working together. She’s like, “I need a cofounder.” I was like, “I don’t know. I feel like I’m getting sucked back in.” I was like, “They got me.”
They got you.
Now, it’s so funny. I was hanging up with my CTO, our cofounder Julian, right before this call. He is so sweet. I have never built a tech company before in my life. The last company was recruiting and I know everything there is to know about the human side, the connection, the leadership, and the talent acquisition side. Here I am developing a tech company based on everything I learned from twenty years of recruiting, which is how people organically match based on motivating factors. It has been quite an uphill learning opportunity, but it’s been a lot of fun, too. I’m learning so much every single day and getting to work with our amazing team.
I have a lot of questions, but I want to backtrack to Deepak Chopra and tell me, what does he like? I’ve read a lot of his books. I’ll have to ask him like a fan girl over here. What does he like?
Deepak is Deepak. The thing that cracks me up most about him, he’s very responsive, super thoughtful, very responsive, and loves prayer hand emojis. I never get a time from him. I think his goal was to impact a billion people around the world with what he’s done and he sold his company a couple of years ago. I respect and appreciate him as a scientist and as a doctor and I love how he merges his scientific and spiritual background.
I learned a lot from him, and it was fun to be in these. We did a seventeen-part series called Conversation at the Intersection of Cutting Edge Science and Spirituality. There were many times when I felt ill-equipped to be facilitating these interviews. I literally found myself scratching my head going, “You guys chose me. I’m not a quantum physicist. I am not a neuroscientist.” I did a lot of prayer, meditation, and reading scientific and spiritual books for the four years we were doing that.
Let’s stop at OptiMatch. You said it’s a tech company. What do you do at OptiMatch?
Have you ever met somebody, Jen? You want to punch them in the face or you feel very frustrated by them. Have you ever had that experience?
Yes, I would be lying.
Let’s say hypothetically, I’m sure Jen has never had that experience, but I’ll speak very candidly, I have. What I started to learn in my twenty years of recruiting is that if you have person A and you’re person B and they’re motivated differently, their motivators don’t align and the motivators we measure are fun facts, get shit done or accomplish, and other people’s needs. If my motivators and your motivators are adverse to each other, then that is what becomes what we call an accidental adversarial relationship. We’ve been studying this for three years now.
We started off as Moon originally had brought me on to study this with therapists and coaches. Surprisingly, we achieved an 87% satisfaction rate for over 150 completed sessions. We found unequivocally that if my motivators and your motivators were five points above or below each other across the board, there was a high likelihood, 87.5% chance, that we would feel psychologically safe and aligned with each other. However, I had this happen on multiple occasions, so we reverse-proved the algorithm.
There were a couple of occasions, for example, when I personally interviewed each one of the 100 therapists and coaches who are on our platform. Of course, in interviewing them and doing sessions with them, I’m not going to be aligned with all 100 people. There was one lady in particular who I liked socially, she was totally nice and had never had anything more than a social interaction. The moment we went in to get into a therapeutic session, it was like nails on a chalkboard, Jen. It was the most painful hour of my life.
I am sitting there rocking like, please let this be over. Let this conversation stop but what’s most stunning about this is that I didn’t have her number. It wasn’t confirmation bias. It’s not like how it works is anybody can answer our twenty-question matching survey Om.app/survey. You can test it out and play with it yourself. Anybody can go and answer that. She answered our matching questions, which have been tested and vetted by our psychiatric medical advisory team and others. She answered it two days later.
Understanding Psychological Safety
It was only two days later that I found out that we were adverse to each other in not one, not two, but all four motivators. Remember how I said most people can only tolerate five points, maybe ten points if you’re lucky, variability above or below your numbers? I had 10 to 20 points variability in every category. My obsession is understanding psychological safety and how human beings feel it or don’t feel it. In fact, Google, long before we came along, studied this in 2012 and something they called Project Aristotle. Have you heard of that?
No.
It’s a great study. If you’ve never researched it, you can find all the data and research out there. In 2012, I believe it was Google’s Project Aristotle, sought out to find out what is the number one factor in successful teams. They thought maybe it was people who go out for drinks or people who live in the same area or are the same age. Completely false. Psychological safety is the number one factor in successful teams across 37,000 people in 170 teams they studied. If we don’t feel psychologically safe with one another in the workplace or in an intimate relationship like therapeutics, then that’s where things can become challenging.
We started off building this for therapists and coaches and matching them in that way because that was one form of an intimate relationship. The first time I ever pitched an investor, he said, “I don’t give a crap about this marketplace and your therapist.” He said, “If you are as good as you say you are at matching, you need to white label this, turn it into an API and an algorithm that any company around the world can use for hiring employees, can use for other things.”
That’s what happened. It was unexpected and a pleasant surprise that we have clients now who are outsourcing clients who use it for hiring. We have startup techs and companies that use it for their hiring. We have communities. We have one community of 8,000 members that uses it to intermatch their members to create greater psychological safety and engagement among its members. We have people who want to use it for dating. We didn’t design it for dating. However, the evidence indicates that happy couples match perfectly according to our algorithm. It’s been funny. We do have two use cases that we’re rolling out right now for our algorithm with dating.
That is so awesome. We’ll definitely include that in the show notes so people can go test and see, “That’s why I don’t like it along with that person or I struggle with that person.” I love that you want to crack the code on human connection. On the opposite, and I know you’ve been studying this, is the loneliness epidemic. What’s going on? How can we maybe take some steps to remedy it? I’m not going to say fully solve it, but remedy it.
The reason that we’re having this loneliness epidemic is several parts. I’ll break it down. Part number one is when smartphones were first on the market in 2008 and ‘09, I believe it was obviously post-Blackberry. If you go back to Blackberry, it was the early 2000s. People began to engage more with their devices than they did with one another. You go to a restaurant, you see it and it’s only gotten perpetually more and more. Fast forward to COVID hitting in 2020.
What happens for the first time ever is people have nothing to do except sit on their phones and maybe engage with TikTok or whatever it is. Maybe some people use that to cultivate deeper, more meaningful relationships with themselves, their family, or their loved ones. A lot of people felt isolated and a lot of people had big breakthroughs, “I want a life that’s more meaningful. I want a job that’s more meaningful.” You saw huge waves of people shifting careers, and huge amounts are still happening right now.
My theory on this of what happened is we first began to disconnect with ourselves when all the smartphones came out. We found out what intimacy was like, and it was forced upon us because of COVID. Now you have this gap that has people wondering what’s possible. What I like to teach people is something I call the golden triangle of connection, Jen. It’s a deep, meaningful connection to self on one corner of the triangle and to others on the other side of the lower part of the triangle.
We often disconnect from ourselves when we start engaging more with our devices than with each other. True connection begins within. Share on XAt the top of the triangle, you have your connection to purpose. My theory on this, and it’s not a theory, I intend to spend the rest of my life studying this and finding this out, is that if we are not deeply connected to ourselves, then that collapses the triangle and it falls like a house of cards. I get asked in a lot of these interviews and a lot of the talks I do around the world are about how we connect more to ourselves. It’s been a lot of fun teaching people this because I’m sharing, Jen, everything I’ve had to learn myself. I have 183 tools that keep me from being a jerk every day.
I am not kidding. I’m not exaggerating. True story. Of those tools, some of my favorites for deep, meaningful connection to self are inner child work, meditation, and breath work. What a lot of people don’t realize is that we have this thing that we call the three-brain system. Most of us have heard of our amygdala or reptilian brain. You hear it talked about a lot. The reptilian or amygdala brain is the fight-or-flight side of our brain. It’s that lower part of the brain. You have the mammalian part of the brain, which is the mid part, which is, “Am I safe? Can I trust you?”
If you want deep, meaningful connections, start by understanding yourself. It's the foundation of everything. Share on XYou get to the higher brain function of creativity, thinking, executive function, etc. What most people don’t know, Jen, is if the lower brains don’t feel safe. The higher brain cannot function. That’s why one of my favorite tools to teach people is tools for self-regulation. When I teach people, there used to be a popular talk I did at a lot of corporations and conferences called How to Deal with an Office Jerk. When I’m teaching that, I would tell people that this was my favorite part of the talk. I’d say, “One in three people is a jerk. If you look to your left, if you look to your right. If you don’t see a jerk sitting nearby, that jerk may very well be you.”
One in three people is a jerk. If you look left, right, and don’t see one, it might be you. But there’s hope—self-regulation is key! Share on XOne of my favorite things I used to teach at law firms. Part of that, though, was that I would tell people when you’re engaging with somebody who is the yeller, the screamer, the gossip, or the emotional vampire, whatever it is, you are not dealing with an upset 45-year-old or 50-year-old or a 70-year-old, you’re dealing with an upset five-year-old. If we can connect to that and understand that all of us when we’re engaging in adversarial relationships with one another, heck, the wars that are being fought right now are being fought by five-year-olds if we get down to it.
It’s like people are coming from pain trigger points. I don’t mean to minimize that we have family and people in our lives who are in Israel and I have friends impacted in the Palestinian side of things. It’s that, can we have compassion for where the pain is coming from, an upset 4 or 5-year-old, not an upset adult? When you do that, then you can also develop compassion for yourself when you’re upset. You’re not coming from an upset, higher-consciousness place. It’s your amygdala, your little inner reptilian brain that’s fighting with people.
Heart-Focused Breathing For Emotional Regulation
I love tools for self-soothing and doing inner child work. I’ve worked with any CEO I’ve coached. I’ve taught them inner child work and how to do it. Another one of my favorite tools is Heart Focus Breathing by HeartMath. I’m a HeartMath certified trainer and coach, and I use it every day. There was a week, Jen, where those cartoon characters where you could literally fry an egg on the head and steam is coming out of your mouth? Not in 1, not in 2, but in back-to-back meetings.
If it hadn’t been for heart-focused breathing, when you do heart-focused breathing, you calm that amygdala, you put your body into a biological state of what’s called coherence, which actually has to do with your heart rate variability and you re-access your higher brain function. Think of how many times we’ve said something we regretted in a meeting, in a fight with our kids, loved ones, and friends. That’s because it’s your amygdala fighting with a person. It is not your higher brain function.
When I do the heart-focused breathing, I drop it in my heart if I notice I’m about to be triggered. I do slow focused heart breathing, breathing calmly in and out through the center of my chest to the count of five. Normally, that stops me. As long as I have the conscious awareness, I’ve slept well enough, drunk enough water, etc., I can normally prevent fights from happening with myself, my spouse, my cofounders, or whoever it is, as long as I take that action.
There’s a lot of great tools in there. You’ve given us so much. I’m going to break them down, okay? I’ve done HeartMath. I have done it. I was like, “I’ve done that one.” I think it’s connected to an app and then you see your range of coherence. I think there might be, and tell me if I’m wrong, but I think there’s something that you might wear too, like where you can get it, like geek out into the science. If you don’t have that, we’re going to tell you to go look at HeartMath. I’m sure they have the website HeartMath.com, and things like that. It’s an app and all of this stuff. There’s a whole thing. Not taking away from HeartMath, but can you drop into your heart and do that deep breathing to get into coherence without seeing it on a screen or an app or stuff like that?
Of course, when I’m talking about doing this, I’m not doing this attached to the app. Now, there is a free tool for anybody who wants it. There’s a board I set up called the Global Coherence Pulse, which is a global coherence app. That’s free to measure your coherence. It’s totally free. You can do it with your fingers. If you want to get in the habit of being like, “How coherent or incoherent am I?” You can do that. There are lots of wearable devices that measure your coherence. When I talk about doing that in the middle of an app set, I drop into it. I’m not going to be like, “Excuse me over there, you’re pissing me off right now. I’m going to go clip on my heart math rage to be sure I don’t have to clip it all over without the app.”
I know I was like, that’s why I wanted to ask you. I’m like, “Are you taking a station break to go get your heart math gear? Like what is happening?”
That sounds like a Saturday Night Live skit. Somebody needs to do that. Excuse me.
Maybe take that idea. Take that idea. Do it, maybe put it on one of your biz pages because I think that’s funny. To think that you’re going to get into heart math coherence by using all the gear.
No, it’s great. I mean, some people do geek out in the science. Roland McCready, the head scientist there is a friend and brilliant thought leader on that. He’s been studying coherence for 40 years. I’ll give you a great story actually around it. I deeply appreciate the science side of all of this as well. One of my favorite studies that HeartMath did they took 40 people, they divided them into 10 groups of 4, and in each of the groups of 4 people, 3 of the people were trained in what I was referencing, which is heart-focused breathing and they knew how to put themselves into a state of coherence. The fourth person was not trained at all. In every single one of the cases, the fourth person naturally fell into a state of coherence by being surrounded by three other people in coherence.
That is so cool. Now I’m going to be a student of this. Now I’m going to go look at all this stuff. That’s so cool. The other tool I wanted to talk about is the inner child work. You keep talking about like the five-year-old and things like that. I don’t know if this is the same, but one of the things I’ve done with my own therapist.
I am not a therapist, I know, I don’t believe you are a trained therapist, but I’ve actually shared this with coaching clients where I’m like, “You need to go and study this or you need to go talk to a therapist about this is internal family systems.” I don’t know if that’s what you’re referring to. Internal family systems, IFS is also called parts work and I’ve done this. The theory is that you have all of these parts inside you.
One of those parts is like that young child part. If that part is hurting, it’s going to come out. I didn’t know if this was the same thing, but my therapist has had me even talk to that hurt child. To like give her permission or give her love and compassion or whatever she needs. It’s amazing, Jennifer. I like where I will, I don’t know, soften into the feeling, and feel it dissipate in my body. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about when you refer to inner child work and what that means?
I’m going to first backtrack and say, IFS, Internal Family Systems, right?
Yes.
I love it. I’m not trained in it. Our cofounder Julian, I believe is, because he’s wonderful. He comes from twenty years of executive coaching and other things. He was my business coach before, the one who first introduced me to a lot of this before we became business partners. Jules taught me this, and I will always remember my IFS experience or my parts reconciliation, as it’s sometimes called. I remember I had this part of myself that was called Juicy. Juicy felt like everybody had to be punished.
She was created when I was like 4 or 5 years old. She was like, “Did you remember how I said I was a know-it-all? If we don’t do things the right way, we’re all going to get in trouble and be punished because I’m lonely.” I remember Julian and I did a parts reconciliation session about 10, 15 years ago, and we brought Juicy to the table, and then we brought Angel, who is the good girl to the table, and they were like having a catfight across the table from each other. It was a lot of fun.
That’s when I got introduced to that, but it was only about few years ago that I got specifically introduced to inner child work. My friends are studying it and simultaneously teaching it to me, which is now the methodology I use daily for myself, and I train others on it. That’s a very simple method. You put your right hand on your heart or your abdomen. Sometimes men like to put their hand on their heart. Sometimes, women like to have a hand on the abdomen. I like to put a hand on both my right hand on my heart and my left hand on my abdomen.
A scientist told me that putting your hand on your heart draws attention to that part of your body, which can help you connect to it more deeply. I do that. You can either look at yourself, you can hold in one of your hands a picture, or have on a table a picture of yourself of whatever age you want to connect to yourself at, or you can envision what age you want to talk to yourself at. My little girl, sweetheart, she only wants to be called sweetheart. You do not call her sweetie. Call her sweetie, it’s DEF CON 5. It is over. She will not talk to you.
I don’t know what it is about the word sweetie, but that is not acceptable. It’s very important to find out how your inner child wants to be addressed. They, them, she, him, her, whatever. Sweetheart likes it when I put my hand there. I envision her, shut my eyes, and always use heart-focused breathing as a catalyst. For me, my inner child work happens after I do my morning meditation for normally 30 minutes or so. I go into heart-focused breathing as a catalyst to connect more deeply to my inner child and immediately follow my heart-focused breathing.
I then start talking to my little girl and I’ll say, “Sweetheart.” If you’ve never spoken to them before, you might want to say like, “Hey there. Hi there.” see if they’re open to talking to you. Actually, one of my girlfriends who taught me this had been through so much heartache as a child, like horrible things of abuse and different issues and so forth like that. Her inner child hid behind a tree for the first month. She tried to connect with her. She wouldn’t even come out and say hello. This can look many different ways. There is no right or wrong way to connect.
After a month of creating intimacy within herself, then she came out from the tree and started to talk to her. In my case, I talked to my little girl and I’ll be like, “Hi, sweetheart, how are you?” This is what blows my mind every time, Jen. I’ll say, “How are you feeling today?” She will blow my mind. 43-year-old Jen, I’ll be like, “I’m feeling good today.” She’ll be like, “I’m sad.” I’m like, “We’re sad? What are we sad about?” Somebody hurt her feelings or something happened or she misses somebody. I’ll be like, “Is there anything you need?”
I tell people this all the time, Jen, You will become the sexiest, most desirable person in the universe, the best friend you can be, the best employee, and the best business leader when you do this work because I check in with myself every day and you can too.” When you ask yourself, “What do I need,” I’m no longer trying to grab energy from everyone and everything throughout my day. Unfortunately, not good or bad. It’s how we’ve evolved as human beings. We try to take energy from social media and conversations.
Somebody I know was saying that she was hurt when somebody didn’t tell her something. I was at a talk with a Buddhist monk. I asked him the question. I said, “Everything you’ve shared, all these brilliant stories are great, but what happens when somebody pisses you off or says something mean?” He said, “An ordinary person seeks revenge, a smart person forgives, and a wise person ignores because we take it all so personally.
If we go around taking things personally all day, that’s when our reactive self comes out, and that amygdala runs the show.” I found it by self-soothing, talking to myself, and asking her what she needs. every day, I tell her, “She’s loved, cherished, and adored.” I’ll even give myself a little hug at the end of it. She loves to dance. It’s been amazing, Jen. I was ashamed to dance, to do art, anything. I was made fun of a lot as a kid. I was a very gangly, gawky, weird, strange kid who kept her head in books. Anytime I went to dance, people would call me chicken legs or make fun of me.
Reconnecting With Joy Through Inner Child Work
For decades, I stopped dancing. I stopped self-expressing. When I got deep into inner child work, I turned out some of her favorite things. She loves dancing. She loves painting and loves Pixar movies. After that, I’m going to watch Minions with my husband. Now it’s like all of a sudden, I get to be my fully self-expressed self rather than showing you a piece of myself. My inner child comes out all the time. I find that by allowing my joy to be present with people, whether it’s a business conversation or romantic with my husband or something else, we all suddenly give each other the freedom to allow that beautiful inner nature of ourselves.
I will tell you the best advice that I got when I was going through a divorce about six years ago. My best friend said to me, “Jen, you deserve to find somebody who will cherish you. First, you need to cherish yourself. It’s from the bottom of my heart, if we could all learn to cherish ourselves, we would become a world of givers rather than takers. We would solve world hunger, world wars, etc. Business issues would be resolved and we’d all live happier, more fulfilled lives.”
If we cherish ourselves first, we can become givers rather than takers, and truly transform the world. Share on XThat is so beautifully said. Keep in touch. I want to hear what you think of Despicable Me 4. Go watch that and tell me what you think.
Seriously, what’s killing me is my husband and I went as soon as Inside Out 2 came out. I am a big fan, as is my inner child, of all Pixar and animated movies like that. We get to the movie theater with popcorn in hand, and I’m so excited. I cannot wait to go see Inside Out 2. Normally, when you watch a movie here in Portugal, it’s in English with Portuguese subtitles. I’m buying popcorn from the guy and throwing popcorn in my mouth. I’m super excited. He’s like, “You’re here for Inside Out 2.” I said, “Yes. It’s going to be in Portuguese.” All animated movies are in Portuguese. I haven’t been able to see Inside Out 2.
That’s a beautiful one. Definitely keep in touch and let me know about the Despicable Me 4, too. You probably love Minions, the one that’s from the way back. They’re so fun. It’s interesting what you’re talking about. Tell me if this resonates with you. It feels like by doing this inner child work on a daily basis, you make friends with that inner child and that’s where you can rekindle joy. We talk about adults and adults are always like so serious like 9:00 to 5:00 and different. It feels like there’s always some stuff to do.
This is cliché by now, but you meet other adults and like, “How are you?” “Busy.” I love that’s the story that you’re like, “I’m going to go and watch Minions after this. Catch you later.” There’s real joy in that. I’m going to go to lunch now and I’m going to be like, “Dude, what am I going to go do that’s like super fun before my next meeting this afternoon.” It inspires me to think of things like this, and I’m excited to try this now, so I will keep in touch because I think that that’s maybe where we can find some more joy in our lives.
That was the message from the monk. At the end of the talk, it was beautiful under the forest in Sintra about an hour outside of Portugal. Everybody’s sitting there and the monk says, “If I could leave you with one thing, it is to rejoice. Rejoice when your neighbor gets that new car. Rejoice when you lose your job. Rejoice for everybody and everything. If we all rejoice a little bit more, we’d be living a happier life.”
We’ve given some tools for connecting with ourselves and the golden path of connection. We talked about the loneliness epidemic with what happened with COVID. Even before that, it’s been like a journey and accelerated with COVID. Can we go to how maybe we can connect more with others? I don’t want to forget our higher purpose. Can we go to the second one? How can we connect more with others now that we are living in this hypertechnology, with everyone’s phone in their face? How do we rekindle that connection?
It’s a great question. One of my favorite questions actually, when I do this talk for audiences and keynote and stuff, is I’ll actually take people through heart-focused breathing and then I’ll have them do a paired share. I’ve actually taught this talk several times this year for keynote and people have had the most astounding results. You start off with some heart-focused breathing before any call, which is the best way to start any call. Spend one minute breathing slowly and deeply in and out through the center of your heart, 5 seconds in, 5 seconds out, even if you have 30 seconds or a minute before, even during a call.
Number one, that’s going to move you out of your amygdala and into your higher consciousness. You’re going to be able to be available for a more emotionally intimate conversation that’s more psychologically safe for you and for them. That’s step one. Step two, when I do this exercise, I have people share them and I have them ask one another one question, and person A will ask and person B will share. Person A’s only goal is to listen deeply to what the other person is saying beyond the words. The question that I have people ask and share with one another is, what matters to you?
I kid you not, Jen, it lights people up. I have asked people around the world. Truly listen authentically and ask what matters to you from a place of curiosity. When you do that, then with the openness of the heart, when you listen deeply, and at the end of that, I like to repeat back to people, Jen. It sounds like what matters to you is empowering women in the workplace and helping them live their best lives, whatever it is. You reflect it back. My other favorite way to create meaningful deep connections is to offer resources and be of value.
I’ve been very honored that like 3 or 4 people this week are like, “You’ve referred to me as the best connector in the world or at least in our community.” It’s because every time I get on a call with somebody, you’ll never get off a call with me without me saying, ”How can I be of service to you? Is there anybody in my network or anybody that can add value?” I like to look at it as weaving the fabric and threads of connection. Maybe for you, it’s not a connection. Maybe you’re a mom and you have a great recipe.
Are there things for calming your kids when they’re stressed? Find your superpower. See how you can add value and listen to what somebody needs. Sometimes, somebody will even tell me something they need. I’ll either make a mental note or I’ll make a note in the note section of my phone. Three months later, I might meet somebody who’s perfect for them, and then I’ll ping them and say, “Is this still important to you? I’d love to connect you with this person if this would be valuable.” It has people feel seen, heard, and understood.
When we met for the first time, we got referred by another guest by Jocelyn who referred us and you didn’t know me from anybody. You couldn’t know me. By the end of the call, you’re like, “I got to introduce you to this person and this person and this person.” One of them, I cannot remember her name, but one of the people you connected with me, I’m going to have her on my podcast coming up. It keeps growing and connecting. You’re doing something with this whole idea of human connection. Good for you for being a super connector, for sure. Lastly, in that golden path of connection, talk to me about the higher purpose connection. I don’t know if we use the same tools for that. Talk about that a little bit more.
Connecting With Purpose And Higher Self
When we are connected to ourselves deeply, and when we are connected to others deeply, purpose naturally emerges because constantly we’re being guided to follow certain breadcrumbs that lead us down that path that leads us to the happiness, to the fulfillment, to the joy we were speaking about. I’ll give you a great example. A dear friend of mine who I love and adore, I’ve known many years, she was dating a guy years ago before she met her soulmate. The universe literally did everything it could to stop her from dating this guy, to the point of car accidents on the way to him or home him, like falling down the stairs.
Literally, the universe was trying to do everything it could to stop her from going there and being where she was meant to be, etc. Fast forward to when she started doing inner child work, when she started doing deep self-development work, then all of a sudden she learned to cherish herself, then all of a sudden that led her to finding her soulmate. All of a sudden, it led her to a brand new career path that she had always dreamed of, and she completely pivoted to a new thing.
It’s following those internal higher self-breadcrumbs that are intuitively guiding us. We feel it, Jen, viscerally, vividly, when it’s the wrong partnership, the wrong person, the wrong business deal. Yet how many of us power through it? If your readers want to know something that is hard to hear, I will share with you my secret, which I call the anti-jerk. I normally call it by another name, but for the sake of the show, I’ll call it the anti-jerk.
Let’s go there. Let’s do the anti-jerk prayer.
Here’s one, every day out loud. I find this is always aligning me with the right people, the right purpose, and the right places. Dear universe or put in there, whatever you prefer to call God, source, Gaia, the higher self, whatever you want to call it. Please remove anything for anyone who is not meant to be in my life and give me the wisdom to know it’s happening for my good while drawing the right people and resources towards me.
What starts happening is do people start sifting out.
Yes, 100%.
The better resources or the resources that are more, let’s throw back in OptiMatch. OptiMatch to you, like come right back in.
Yeah, 100%, it’s a magical wall. Literally, I have parties at my house 7, 8 times a year, from smaller dinner parties, of 20 people to bigger parties of 50 to 70 or a hundred people. My husband will never again let me throw another hundred-person party in our house. I’m forbidden. If you’re not on our party list anymore, I apologize. I now have to rotate party guests. At the last party we had for our birthdays, we had probably 67 people here, and people were like, “How do you have so many amazing human beings in the same room?” I said, “You get zapped if you’re a jerk on the way in, so you cannot enter.”
You’re like, “This actually hurts.”
The Anti-Jerk Force Field
Literally, people get repelled. They lose the address. They cannot show up. It’s like an anti-jerk force field.
It’s so awesome. That is so awesome. I love that. Those are awesome tools and on your website, you have a beautiful talk. I know you told me you were very ill when you gave it, but it was like, you would never be able to tell, but go in and to your website and we’ll link all that in the show notes and watch your talk. You gave a corporate talk on the Golden Path of Connection, which was beautiful as well. I’m going to encourage people to go read that.
You also have other resources, like as we’re rounding out, you have a book called 101 Spiritual Tools for Uncertain Times and your podcast called Regarding Consciousness. Is there anything as you want us, like if we’re starting on this path of connection and the whole idea of the golden path of connection, is there anything in the book or on your podcast go, “Yeah, go here?” In the book, “Go Here.”
Actually, I’ll give people a little freebie. I started writing a ten-part series called 101 Spiritual Tools for Uncertain Times during COVID. All of a sudden, I literally was sitting and meditating. COVID, for me, was very happy. I spent 7 to 8 hours a day in meditation, so I was perfectly happy. One day, I realized I was so happy. The universe says to me, “You need to write a book on this because not everybody else has 101 tools.” all of a sudden, that’s how the first book got written. Actually, a couple of the tools in there are inner child work. People can find that in there.
There’s a section that, but I say this because if you go to 101SpiritualTools.com, and click on blog, there’s only one blog article. I include all the resources from the book in that one blog post. It was one I liked cheat sheet, whether or not you ever get the book or not. It doesn’t make a difference, but it’s a lot of my favorite meditations and things. Hopefully, the links are relevant. I haven’t done as much with it, and book two has already been written. I need time to get it published.
Do you have a second book coming out, but you still know when it’s coming?
Yeah. I haven’t mainly written. It’s like, there are hours in the day minions. Another tough choices one has to make.
I get you.
It’s never been said on a podcast.
Not on mine or maybe ever. I don’t know, but I’m with you because I love the minions too. We have that in common. You tell me if and when you want to come back, but we’d love to have you when the second book comes out and we can feature that. Let me know when. Yes, I’m excited for you. Yes, but no, I say minions first. Go minions first.
I get our priorities straight in life. See, that’s the thing. The more you feed yourself with the things you love, the more that love flows through you and happiness and joy. The more you attract the right people, the right circumstances, and the right places.
I have to ask you, what do you believe are 1 to 2 ways women can be braver at work now?
If you’re out there and you’re reading, look at yourself in the mirror today and tell yourself, I love you. That was something that was taught to me by one of my dear friends, mentor, his business colleagues, Arthur Samuel Joseph. When I first started, ladies, I would cry every time I said that to myself. When you learn to love yourself, you learn to respect yourself and stand up for yourself. I will give you another tip, a brilliant one that was taught to me years ago. I was at an airport. It was so uncomfortable for me.
When you love yourself, you stand up for yourself. Self-love is the first step toward bravery in all areas of life. Share on XI was at some leadership development thing outside of SFO airport. I remember I used to be so afraid of ladies asking for what I wanted in anything, in relationships and business, or if I did, I didn’t do it in a way that worked for me or others. The exercise I was given is this. Go out tomorrow and your only goal is to get three no’s. Ask for three things that are outrageous and only ask to get a no to make yourself uncomfortable with expanding how much you can receive.
I remember when I was being taught this; it’s when I first started consulting and coaching back in 2009. The person said, “You come up with an obscenely priced program and offer it to three random strangers and your only goal is to get a no.” I remember Jen, the first person. My knees are literally knocking and I’m like, “I don’t even know how I’m going to do this.” I go and I offer to the stranger like this class for $5,000. I’m doing whatever it is.
The guy looks at me sideways like, “Are you crazy? No.” Second person, the same thing, I get side-eye, “Crazy lady, go back in your hole, whatever.” The third person I say to is like, “That’s a great class. I’d love to do it.” I was like. I helped a friend of mine do it, too. It’s like, “Up your prices, lady. You’re worth it.” Be brave. It all starts with self-love. Tell yourself I love you. Go out there and be unabashedly you.
Love it. We’re going to have tons of resources. Everyone, you may want to read this one again or go to all the resources . How can women connect with you and your work online?
I would love that. The two best places to go, or if you Google my name, everything pulls up. If you Google Jennifer Hill, there’s a beautiful bosomy blonde who dominates everything who’s an actress. I’ve decided to give her that. If you add the K in there, everything pulls up, but you’ll find me on LinkedIn. I’m always happy to connect with people. Please ping me. Tell me you heard me on the show. Also, of course, I have a YouTube channel where you can find a lot of recording consciousness episodes where it’s on iTunes.
I had such a fun time and I’m going to wish you a happy movie here. I wish I was over. I’d be over. I’ll come over.
Up on the movie screen. Come on, let’s do it.
Let’s do it anyway but thank you so much for the work you’re doing on connection and for this awesome conversation. I appreciated your honesty and you being you. Thank you so much.
Thank you, Jen. I appreciate you and your audience.
—
That’s a wrap-up of my discussion with Jennifer. I hope you found our conversation both valuable and inspiring. A few thoughts or questions for you to journal on or think on until next time. The first one is, where are you on the golden path of connection? Do you need to focus on connecting with yourself more, with others, or with your greater purpose? From this conversation, what is one step that you can take today on that journey? What is one way you can be more connected to yourself, to others, or to your purpose?
I promise you that if you take these steps and many of the others that Jennifer and I shared during the show, you’re going to have more happiness and satisfaction, personally and professionally. We are here to do the work at Brave Woman at Work, and I am hoping that this show inspires you to do the same. As a reminder, please rate, review, and subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. The show is also available on any other platform you enjoy. Until next time. Show up. Follow the path of golden connection and be brave.
Important Links
- Jennifer K. Hill
- OptiMatch
- 101 Spiritual Tools for Uncertain Times
- Regarding Consciousness
- Conversations at The Intersection of Cutting-edge Science and Spirituality
- 24 Career & Leadership Affirmations for Women
- 5 Ways to Managing Your Imposter Syndrome
- Getting Paid: 10 Negotiation Tips
- Brave Women at Work: Lessons in Leadership
- Amazon – Brave Women at Work: Lessons in Leadership
- Barnes & Noble – Brave Women at Work: Lessons in Leadership
- Books A Million – Brave Women at Work: Lessons in Leadership
- Om.app/survey
- HeartMath.com
- 101SpiritualTools.com
- LinkedIn – Jennifer K. Hill
- YouTube channel – Jennifer K. Hill
- Apple Podcasts – Brave Women At Work
- Spotify – Brave Women At Work
About Jennifer K. Hill
Jennifer K. Hill is an experienced professional speaker and entrepreneur with over 15+ years of experience. She successfully exited her first company in 2018, which was acquired by a subsidiary of Marcum LLP. She has established herself as a recognized expert in her field, having appeared on major news outlets such as KNX Radio, BBC News, ABC, NBC, FOX, and E! News, and been quoted in reputable publications like The Ladders and Glassdoor. Hill’s speaking engagements have included various conferences, law firms, and corporations around the world, where she has served as a speaker, consultant, moderator, and host.
Hill was recently accepted as a member of Deepak Chopra’s Evolutionary Leaders Circle, a group of thought leaders from different fields who come together to support a shift in consciousness. She has hosted over 20 TV episodes with Deepak Chopra and Don Hoffman called “Conversations at the Intersection of Cutting Edge Science and Spirituality.”
She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from the University of California, Irvine. Giving back to her community is a passion for Hill and she dedicates her spare time to volunteer work. She built her first school in Nepal in 2017 in collaboration with BuildOn and her second school in Senegal in 2019 with her father.
Recently, Hill co-founded OptiMatch, a SaaS company that utilizes a proprietary matching algorithm to better understanding motivating factors of individuals and create greater coherence in teams.
She also hosts a podcast called Regarding Consciousness and is speaking at Deepak Chopra’s inaugural Sages & Scientists event in Mallorca in October 2024.
