Demi Lovato ON: Depression, Healing, & Finding Your Own Identity

the world. Thanks to each and every single one of you that come back every week to listen, learn, and grow. I'm so grateful for the incredible community that we have and just how engaged you are and how thoughtful you are in the insights that you take away from every episode. And I'm so excited to be talking to you today. I don't believe it. My new book, Eight Rules of Love is out and I cannot wait to share it

with you. I am so so excited for you to read this book, for you to listen to this book. I read the audiobook. If you haven't got it already, make sure you go to Eight Rules of Love dot com. It's dedicated to anyone who's trying to find, keep, or let go of love. So if you've got friends that are dating, broken up, or struggling with love, make sure you grab this book. And I'd love to invite you to come and see me for my global tour Love Rules.

Go to Jay shettytour dot com to learn more information about tickets, VIP experiences, and more. I can't wait to see you this year. Now, today's guest needs no introduction whatsoever, but I am so grateful that I get to interview them and spend time with them today. I met them probably first time a couple of years ago, and then we met on a set, and now we're getting to

be together again. I'm speaking about someone that I believe is one of the most vulnerable, honest, genuine and sincere humans that exists, and someone who transparently shares their truth over and over and over again, no matter how difficult or challenging it may be, so that we can benefit from it. I'm talking about the one and only Demi Levado. Demi, thank you so much for doing this. I am so grateful. Honestly, I can't tell you how much you want to give

you a big hug right now. Oh wow, thank you, Thank you so much. That was such an incredible intro, and I it means a lot to me that you I it means a lot to me that you invited me on here, and I'm excited to chat with you. I know me too too. Last time we were together, you were interviewing me for your awesome show and I

got to sit down with you. We were sitting on these amazing clouds and this is beautiful set that you and your team are desire, and today we're doing it virtually, but I still feel your presence like I did that day, and I wanted to start by asking you just just a couple of thoughts to get going. But you know, for a lot of us, the quarantine gave us time

to think about new things. I was wondering if you developed any new hobbies or started doing something recently that you hadn't done before, or experimenting with anything at all. So quarantine totally changed my life, and I feel like I picked up so many little things that I just

didn't used to do. I used to never spend time outside, and I feel like now I go outside and I play with my squirrels, my backyard squirrels, and like, you know, just feeding the animals in my backyard is something that I never used to do, and now I do that and I have a connection with these little beings and they're so sweet. And then I got into candle making, wow, and like making making your own body oils things like that, fragrances. And then I also got into photography. I mean, I

learned so much about myself. So it's just it's been quite the little journey. That's incredible. I love hearing that. By the way, my wife loves feeding all the animals in our back garden as well, until they ended up until they ended up now digging up huge holes in the ground because she keeps encouraging them to come back too much, and now there's all these pot holes in the ground. But I love that you have to keep them fed. Yes, yes, exactly. But candle making sounds phenomenal.

I mean, my wife and I actually tried to create a scent and it's actually really challenging. It's it's so underrated as a skill. It takes so much effort to actually create a beautiful scent, right, Yes, it actually does take a lot of practice. A lot of skill. I feel like for every candle that I nail, there's like twelve candles that I didn't that are going to the trash or like last year, I just ended up giving them as gifts and I was like, look, I don't

know which one smell good? Here, take it, just try it. I love that. Well, Demi, you know you're someone who's always sharing and talking. But I want to want to rewind a bit with you and I wanted to go back to Demi as a child, and I wanted to ask you when you were young, young, like tiny young. I don't you are young, I mean tiny young, when you were really young, a young child, who did you want to be? What did you want to be? What kind of things did you think about? What were you

fascinated by? Well, I was a very ambitious little five year old, but that five year old said, I want to be the next Shirley Temple. And because I knew who Shirley Temple was, I knew what she had accomplished at such a young age, I wanted to I wanted to do that, and I wanted to be the youngest person to ever win a Grammy, the youngest person to

ever win an oscar um and didn't work out. That's okay, um, but you know, that's how how much I dreamed when I was younger, And um, so I've always dreamed really really big. That's that's incredible. And when you dreamt big. And of course you've had incredible success across your career, incredible impact and and you know, won so many awards and accolades, but it seems like the impact that you've had as time has gone on has become deeper and

more profound. I genuinely feel that as someone who's been an admirer of yours and a fan of yours and watching from afar, but I just feel that awards and accolades can't have the impact on people's lives that you've had through through the work that you do off mike and off screen. And I wonder if there was an experience in your childhood or something you went through that encouraged you to be that way, or maybe even something

that you forgot about for a long time. But was there an event or something that happened when you were younger that gave you an inkling or a feeling of the type of work that you're doing today. I used to deal with depression at a really young age, and I always told myself that if I made it, I would help people. And I kind of like made this promise with God, and I said, if you make me a famous singer, then I will try to make the

world a better place. And and then so I became a singer, and here I am trying to make the world a better place. I talk about consciousness a lot because it's something that I feel like is extremely important. Expanding our consciousness is now like my merry goal as a citizen of the earth. Just trying to help people expand their consciousness is really important to me because I feel like that's the only way we can we can

move forward as a species. And yeah, when I was younger, it used to be I want to help people with depression. I want to help people who were bullied because I was bullied in school. And so I've always kind of just taken a part of my life and thought, Okay, how where did I need a role model or where did I need support from someone that I love in the industry. But I didn't get it growing up. And that's what I've always tried to be for people is

something that I never had growing up. I find it so powerful when someone tends their pain into their purpose or something that broke them into a breakthrough for other people. I love that transformation that when you've been through something that's really hurtful, but you use that to help other people heal. I think there's there's so much goodness and greatness in that. And as you've been doing that, I wonder what were the things that helped you expand your consciousness?

I love that. I love what you said. I want to help people expand their consciousness, which is such a beautiful aspiration. What were some of the things that opened you up to those ideas? Were those ideas that you always had or was this something that you experienced that helped you expand your own Most of my life I've spent trying to figure out what it is in my life that's going wrong and how I can fix it.

And in twenty twenty, when the world shut down and we were stuck at home, I wasn't focusing so much on myself anymore because there were so many things going on in the news that were so they felt so much bigger than what I was dealing with. And I realized in that period of time that my life kind of shifted. It was always I'm going to talk about my story, what I went through, how I got out

of it, and I'm going to help others. And then it was like in twenty twenty, I thought, oh my gosh, this is so much bigger than me, This is so much bigger than just my story, and I need to get out there and I need to help people tell theirs. And so it became about sharing stories that weren't my own on my social media pages. And then from there it kind of became I don't know, I started meditating

a lot. Meditation with something for me that was really transformative because I really went inward and when I went inward, my mind grew outward. If that makes sense, and I don't. I don't know how that works, but it just does. Yeah, that's that's such a beautiful way of explaining meditation. I love that definition. I've never I've never heard of it before,

and it reminded me of something though. So in the Vedic tradition, there's a word that I think you'll like, and it's in the Sanskrit language, and it's it's it sounds like this and I'll explain what it means. It sounds like unter a cash and what that means is in a sky, and so it says that we all have this inn a sky and we're all like enamored by the sunsets and the sunrise and the sky that's outward, but there's a sky inside of us. And yeah, there's

a whole universe. There's a whole universe. Yeah. Yeah, when you experience that, it's traveling inward. And I think we all are so fascinated we're traveling, and we all feel so stuck when we can't travel. But there's a whole journey within that that's open for us all to take, which it sounds like you've been on. I feel like I did more traveling in twenty twenty than I did my whole career because most of the traveling that I did was inward and at the journeys that I've taken

just personally have been so profound and life changing. Absolutely. I mean, you've gone on lots of journeys. I wanted to touch on one specifically to start with, but I'd love to hear about others. And you know, gender expression has been a sensitive topic to so many people, but you were very open, brave and courageous to be able

to share with your community earlier this year. And I wanted to talk to you about that because I feel that that's sometimes when you're looking within and you're traveling, you come across things maybe that you didn't know about, or you come across things that maybe were hidden away or covered over or pushed aside, or maybe they weren't

allowed to breathe. Tell us what it was like when you started becoming aware of your identity and was that a surprise or was it something that you knew was there but that you just felt you didn't get to expand your consciousness to it. I felt like it was the ladder of what you just said. I felt like it was always there, and I always knew that I was different. I always I always felt like like like one day it would click, and finally I felt like

it did. I was in a relationship, in a straight relationship with a man and was engaged, and my life was taking a course that I I thought I could see the ending, but at the but when I was in it, I just thought, this isn't this isn't it for me? And when that ended, It forced me to take a look at what is it about myself that I'm that that needs to change or that I need to accept. And I realized that I'm too I would at the time was just too queer to marry a man,

and I wasn't identifying as female anymore. And I realized that because I had become friends with a good friend of my name a Looak Fidmanon, and I went to a poetry slam show or performance that they did and they talked about being non binary, and that show really resonated with me. But it was right after that that I kind of jumped into a hetero relationship and you know, really started to play that role of like the female

just being engaged. Do you know the whole thing I just I wasn't allowing myself time to get to know myself before I jumped into something. And I think that twenty twenty, being stuck at home and you're having you're forced to take a look at yourself outside of the lights and the cameras and the this and the that. I realized that I'm not who I am on stage, and and also there's so much more to me than that, And that was a cool lesson to learn. That's so beautiful.

Thank you so much for sharing that, And you know every I've heard you share that transition before, but as I'm hearing you say it now, I love how it's giving yourself permission to be more of yourself. And in my own way, I can resonate with it because I remember when I graduated, I decided to go and live as a monk for three years instead of going into the world, and those three years gave me time to

really build a relationship with myself. And whenever ever anyone asks me, like, what did you do during that time? I said, the biggest thing I gained from that time was that I got three years where there were no opinions, no expectations, no obligations, no noise, no predictions, projections or interpretations of who I was or who I should be,

and I just got to be. And that it sounds like there's a similar experience and the solitude of being away in yours case from the lights and the cameras, in my case, just from the normal life I would have led. There's so much greatness there. How did you when you're doing that process, though, DENI, there can be so many uncomfortable, awkward, difficult things that you experience and

see and hear. How did you create a mindset that allowed you to accept that with grace, to receive that with openness rather than start to judge or criticize yourself.

What did you do to navigate that? I had a lot of conversations with people around me that were familiar with my situation and what I was experiencing and and what I had learned about being non binary and gender nonconforming, and so I had a lot of support around me to navigate through those times and through those conversations, And yeah, I just started to I started to try on the non binary identity, and the longer that I wore it,

the more it felt right. And for me, I know that there's going to be people that don't accept me for how I identify, but there's always going to be someone that doesn't accept you for some reason. So I just kind of take it with a grain of salt when somebody isn't ready to learn what being non binary or gender nonconforming means. And I just think to myself inside my head when I when I hear someone either

purposely mess up my pronouns or just disregard. You know, I just think, okay, if they're not ready yet, and one day they will be, and that's okay. Yeah, I saw that. I remember when you posted it on Instagram. That was such a you have such a forgiving, open, patient approach to people trying to get to understand you.

And I find that so refreshing and endearing because I think we're living at a time where and I'm not speaking about specifically when we're talk about gender, I'm saying just generally, there's a struggle with patience right now in society, and some of that is needed. We need some urgency,

we need change fast, We do need pushing. What's allowing you to remain patient and gentle with people as they are trying to understand not just you, but understand so many other people in the community, and maybe, as you said, sometimes purposely messing up your pronouns or they may not be taking the time. How are you developing that patience and love and compassion. Well, that patience, love and compassion

doesn't just come from anywhere. It definitely comes from a practice of meditating, having grace in some people just aren't ready and that's okay, And meditation helps me a lot to have grace and compassion for those people. Because when I do sit down to meditate and I'm in a place where I'm angry, I sit and I think, and I you know, I try to clear my mind, but if I can't, I think through it and I end up coming to a point where I just I release

the anger. And maybe it was because I know I'm a Leo, and Leo's can be very stubborn, Like I work so hard not to be stubborn, and so I try to have grace because it is so easy for me to hold a grudge against people. I can hold a grudge and never speak to someone again, and that's not a trait that I'm proud of, because I've realized that that that's not a very human thing to do. Being human is having compassion and and understanding and respect

for people even when they mess up. And because we all do, we all mess up, and I've I've messed up a bunch, but I know that because I've messed up, I could have grace and mercy for other people when they mess up. I love that. I cannot tell you how beautiful that is to hear, and I can't wait

for everyone to hear that. I think it's such a true, true, true statement that the mistakes we've all made, which we all make, I've made loads of mistakes, and you're saying you have to all those mistakes that they ground us, they humble us, they remind us of how we're all. No one is immune to making a mistake, and anyone

at any time can make a mistake knowingly unknowingly. And actually I'm going to play that part specifically to my wife because my wife is a Leo and she's so stubborn and she knows it, yes, And so what you just said to me, I did not know that trait that I didn't know that was a Leo trait. So I'm going to play that exact part to my wife and like, look what DEMI saying. It's about the only thing I know about my astrology sign. Yeah, I did

not know that at all. So now I am I am feeling that I can be more compassionate towards my wife when she when she is stubborn, because yeah, because it's part of part of the traits. Tell me a bit about you know, what do you think when when you're one of the things that you did this year. And this was actually when I when I first watched your documentary Dancing at the Devil, I was completely blown away, Like it was it was incredible, It was, it was incredible.

It's just I couldn't believe where you took us and where you will allowed us in. And and I know you said in this episode, in this podcast, you just said that, you know, you shared your story and then you realized the perspective that it was so much bigger than your story, which, by the way, is again such a wonderful perspective. At the same time, You've been through so much that when you share it helps so many.

You talked about so many. You talked about an experience with rape, you talked about experiences with you know, sexual abuse and assault. And when I hear about those things, and I still see you coming and rising like a phoenix, you know, from from all these like challenges and pain. I wonder where is your strength coming from today? Like where do you look to for strength? You said meditation there and I'd love you to guide us through your

meditation practice. Is there anything else that's giving you strength? What's giving me strength? I mean, there's strength all around me, and that's my support system, whether that's my friends or my treatment team, or it's my friends, my family, you know, it's it's people around me. I always have support and

I never feel alone, which is beautiful. But yeah, I think some of my meditation I listened to guided meditations, but I also I like to tone my chakras and so I do like a sound bath and um and yeah those are like. The great thing about meditation for me is that I thought that you had to be completely silent, still with your eyes closed and your hands like this. And you know, there's different types of meditation. There's different as long as you are quieting your thoughts

and trying to just chill, then like then then it's good. Then, Like you can meditate with your eyes open, you can meditate while you're doing things. It's just people don't realize how how easy it is and you don't have to be perfect at it. And that was what kept me away from meditating for so long, was trying to be perfect at it. Yeah, thank you, thank you for simplifying

for everyone. I couldn't agree more. I when I when I learned how to meditate when I was eighteen, I was introduced to three practice is breathwork, visualization and mantra and sound, and it was so refreshing to realize that there was breathwork for the body, there was visualization for the mind, there was mantra for the soul and the spirit and the energy. And to me, I was like, Wow, there's there's a menu for meditation and you could you could try which one worked for you, and you could

build it. And as you said, there is no perfect meditator, and the practice of trying to be perfect is almost as far away from meditations as there can be. So I love that you're simplifying it for so many people and making it natural. What's what's been one of your favorite meditation experiences? If you had any that have really maybe maybe you've gained a message or an insight, or you've just been able to be really calm. Has there

been an experience that you could share with us. There's been so many experiences that I could share with you. I mean, it's having a realization about things that you thought you would never figure out in your lifetime, Relationships that you thought were completely over, and then all of a sudden they pop into your mind during meditation and you feel the need to reach out to them. So you do, and all of a sudden you've rekindled a

relationship or you've repaired a relationship. That that stubbornness I thought I was holding onto, you know, for good. It's when I was able to release that stubbornness. And so sometimes I feel like my intuition is when I meditate, it just like raises its hand and it's like, hey, you know, like listen, listen to me. Here's a song, ideas, reach out to this person, or or even sometimes weird things happen where I don't reach out to that person,

but they reach out to me, you know. And it's interesting how your intuition starts to work when you really start to listen to it. Yes, yes, And that is such a good point most of us, when we talk about the word intuition, a lot of people say, well, Jay, I don't hear any voices. And the truth is, we don't hear voices because we've been ignoring it for so long. And you're right that as soon as you start to listen to it, it gets louder, it gets stronger, it

gets more powerful. That's that's such a great point that as soon as you start listening even if it's the tiniest bit of intuition, if you start listening to it, that voice gets so much more stronger and powerful. And I you're so right to me that in that meditation, you're giving space for that voice. Yes, you are. You You're giving You're putting that voice in an amphitheater, you know what I mean. You're giving that voice a huge platform to reach out and say, hey, this is what's

on my mind. Your voice sounds very cute, though, saying hey with with a little hand out that sounds like that sounds like an adorable voice. It seems like an emoji with a voice. Whereas yeah, whereas whereas you know someone else might be like, I don't like the voice in my head, but that's the noise. That's the noise. The voice in our head should feel like a smiley face EMERGI. That's like, please listen to me, please, yeah, please.

I hope anyone who's listening to this right now, if you're not watching, you have to go back and look at the video of of Dermi doing hey, because it's adorable and and you have you have to see it because now every time I hear my voice, my intuition. I'm going to see that little Yeah. So I love that. I love that you're laughing too, because one of the things that's always been important to me is that meditation and mindfulness and consciousness it can be fun and it

can be playful. Yes, and it doesn't have to be this really like it's disciplined, but it's it's not this artificial hardcore, you know, rough and like it. It can be playful and fun. I could you share a bit about that, because I see you as such a fun loving person and even now we're both laughing about voices in our head. But but tell me a bit about that. Have you Have you allowed your playfulness to come through more and your energy? Yes, I quieted my intense meditation

personal trainer voice that was in my head. You know, like when you go to the gym and you have a personal trainer or somebody that's like really pushing you, and that just doesn't work for me. And that is the voice that I had in my head every time I went to meditate. It was stop opening your eyes, stop thinking about this, stop thinking about that. And it was just like to the point where three minutes would go by and I'd be like, I'm already over this, you know what I'm saying, And so I had to

really quiet that voice down. And when I started meditating, especially outside, you know, there's gonna be noises, there's gonna be animals, things like that, planes that fly over. And if I felt myself wanting to open my eyes, I just allowed myself to because I thought, what are you going to gain from opening your eyes and just taking a second to appreciate the sound that you're hearing. And sometimes I had really beautiful insights. Sometimes I was like, Wow,

it's a big lane. But like other times, I had beautiful moments where I thought. One time, for instance, I was outside and there were all these bugs and I was trying to meditate, and I thought to myself, what do I do about the bugs? Right? Like, what can I do? Because I'm just shooing them away? And then I had this moment where I thought nobody was shoeing bugs away at Woodstock when they were perfectly like content and having the best time and that like in the wilderness.

Basically they were hippies that like they learned to share and coexist with the bugs that were there, And I was like, wow, these little, tiny organisms are flying around me. They're maybe just trying to say hello. They're just or they're just living their lives, but like in my head, they're trying to say hi, and that makes it more appealing and fun for me. And so I opened my eyes and I just like let the bugs just kind of fly around me. And if it was a bee,

it's a bee. If it stings you, it stings. I mean, I'm not allergic, so but you know, other people may be different. But it's just about like shrinking that judgmental voice that's saying keep your eyes closed, don't focus on anything, you know, It's it's about quieting that voice and really just like learning to appreciate. Okay, why do I want to open my eyes? What is it that I can gain from this experience of opening my eyes and looking

at this little bug? Or sometimes I'll open my eyes and I'll see a hummingbird, and hummingbirds to me signify like my ancestors, and and so I think, oh, maybe that's their way of saying hello to me today. And I wouldn't have seen that had I not opened my eyes. That was an amazing description because you just you just described how meditation is really a conversation, not a command. It's not a command. You're not commanding yourself to do this or do that. It's it's not like you have

a drill sergeant in your head. You actually want to have a conversation and a dialogue to yes, understand and uncover yourself. And I always think about that, that the simplest form of meditation is having a conversation with yourself, having time to meet yourself. And we always we would never cancel an important meeting with someone else, but we

never even schedule one with ourselves exactly. And I always I always used to overanalyze things, and I always used to tell myself that was a negative trait that I had, that I'm always overthinking things. But then when I started meditating, I started to have those over analyzation conversations in my head. And then I started thinking, Wow, I could go somewhere with this, you know, like I could expand these thoughts.

And it kind of gave this like it turned my brain into like a kitchen for all of them, the like thought dinners and food for thoughts that I wanted to have, you know, and I just started expanding. And now the way that I think is just completely different. And that's cool too. M. Yeah, no, that the way you've just explained how we have to silence even that you know that trainer voice, as you said, like a

personal trainer in the gym. Or it's so true, it's so true because otherwise you just become subservient to this other voice. Again, your expansive consciousness is being contained and limited, yes, by this other yes, and you don't get experienced it anymore. So I can agree with you more. You've you've you've

helped me massively refine that. And we as monks, we would always talk about how you always saw the you always saw the noise in your head just like a little monkey running around, and and that kind of made it playful, and so it was always the it was always the monkey mind versus the monk mind, and so the monkey was always playful. And sit and you notice it, and you don't want to trap the monkey or hurt it or anything. You just are entertained by just how

silly it can be. But you want to help organize it a little and help it a little bit, but you don't, you don't need to hurt it. And so yes, I you've really helped me. I think my meditation is going to be different tomorrow based on what you just said. So I'm wow, Yeah, best compliment. I mean it, I really mean it, I really do. I think. I think you're so right. I think you're so right. We get we get lost always in these We get always lost

in just judging ourselves. Just somehow we get even even when we know we judge ourselves, we now judge ourselves for judging ourselves. It's like, oh my god. Every day, not every day, but you know, it is something where I do have to catch myself sometimes daily where I look. Sometimes I look in the mirror and I and I find something immediately wrong with what I see, and I have to stop and say, okay, why did you why

did you go there with it? Why can't you look at how beautiful your hair is today or whatever, or why don't you think about a quality about yourself that has nothing to do with your appearance and then like tell yourself how proud you are for gaining that quality. And it's like it's just always kind of reminding ourselves every day, and that way it gets easier over time, so that I'm not looking and sometimes it's harder than others.

Sometimes sometimes it's just easier to go in that shame spiral, you know, the shame spy role where you get onto yourself for one thing, and then all of a sudden that, oh, well, because I don't like my hair, that means that my body is wrong, or because I'm not liking my body, you know, now I feel unlovable, and and it just goes into that spiral and the quicker you can stop that spiral from bottoming out, the quicker that you get with that moment every day where it's like, now I

look in the mirror and if I see something I don't like, I'm it's like a reflex. I just go, Okay, what do we like? You know? And so you just gotta you gotta start to in a loving and compassionate way, train your mind to remind yourself what you do love about yourself. So powerful, I really hope everyone tomorrow morning

is going to practice what Dama just said. When you look in the mirror tomorrow morning, I want you to remember what Demi just said, because it's such an incredible trait that we all have where we draw these huge conclusions based on one tiny thing. So like you said, we draw this conclusion I am unlovable based on one thing we don't like about ourselves. Or it could be

as simple as your hair. It give me as tiny, Yeah, it give me as tiny as a spot on your face, right, and you turn that spot into I am never going to feel attractive, and you just amplify it to these great degrees and we all do it. And I love what you said that that's how to approach it. That when we look in the mirror, you have to you have to nip it in the bud. You have to catch it there and then and there, because otherwise it just gets I was thinking about I was talking to

someone about this the other day. There was a small crack in one of the floors in our home and I was saying, oh, I want to get it fixed today, and someone was saying to me, they said, no, no, no no, it doesn't matter like it's it's gonna be like is before. That's an issue, And I was like, that's my point. I was like, I don't want the track to get an opportunity to get bigger and bigger and bigger. I would rather mend it today. And I don't think that

just applies to flaws. I think it applies to our lives and how we feel about ourselves and how we talk to ourselves. It applies to relationships. You may think you just had a tiny argument, but if you can solve it now, you save yourself years of headaches. So I love that you gave everyone a practical tool to

actually do that. Or another one is if you might think that what you have to say is not super important, but honor that voice inside of you so that when you are in a relationship, you're immediately starting out with this is who I am, these are my values, and this is how I want to be respected, and that way you like you said, you nip it in the bud. Sometimes it's not about Sometimes it's just about speaking up too. Yes, yes, you're right. And that will come back to what you

were saying earlier, the confidence of your intuition. If you if you keep ignoring it and you say, oh, well that's that's not important right now, Well that's not relevant or that's insignificant. If you keep talking to yourself in that way, that voice just gets quieter and quieter and quieter, and now when you really need it, you can't hear it. Anymore. Yes, exactly, So I think that's a beautiful full circle. Got back

to what you were saying earlier, Demia. You know, we've talked a lot about and I love that we're talking a lot about expanding consciousness because I think that that's not just a noble aspiration. I do believe it's it's a root thing. It's like going to the heart of the issue. As you said that if we don't expand our consciousness and as a whole, as as a world, it's we can try and solve this one area or this one area, but we're going to keep kind of

bashing heads to some degree. I wonder what are some of the ways you think that people can expand their own consciousness If they're listening and saying I want to know how to do that, I'm open to that. Where would they start? What are some of the things, What are some of the books. I know that you've been interviewing some phenomenal people on your podcast for d which you're encouraging people to live through this fourth dimension. I wonder have you had any conversations or people that you'd

love to introduce people to. I interviewed someone recently on my podcast name Justin Baldoni, and that conversation with them really opened my mind because just what they had to say in relation to gender norms that are placed on us at a young age, how we evolve as adults, and how we tend to carry those things from our childhood into our adult lives today. I thought that was so interesting. And you know, he has a book called Man Enough. A lot of the people that I'm having

conversations with, you know, you have a great book. And I think reading is something that has helped expand my consciousness a lot too. And it doesn't even have to be about anything all that intense. It can just be just reading is good for your mind. Journaling is something that's really helped me because sometimes my thoughts race so fast that that it's hard to I don't know, it's good to just get it out and then I can go back to it and look at it later. So yeah, reading, journaling,

and like I said, meditating, meditating is really important. But find out what meditation works for you, because it is different for everybody. Yeah, those are great great insights reading journaling, of course meditation. As you said before, and we talked about a length I can agree with you more. I remember I was just speaking to a friend I was I was reorganizing my bookshew, and he was saying, how

much have you been reading recently? And I said, I remember a year in my life where I read a book a day for a year, and you know, it was it was an incredible year. And I was just saying to him how much I miss it. That was around I think that was around four or five years ago. I did that, and I've been I've been reading. I've been trying to read about a book a month at the moment. But I've been really trying to find things that I'm fascinated by. And it's not about I'm not

trying to make it about a numbers game. I'm not saying that. So anyone who's listening or watching this isn't a competition of how many books you've read. And that's not what I'm emphasizing. What I'm emphasizing is what Demi is saying is just to really expand your consciousness, you need to let your consciousness connect dots in lots of different areas. And so when I read, I don't just

try and read from one genre. I try and read from lots of different genres and lots of different authors and backgrounds, because then my consciousness has the ability to connect dots that it finds interesting. And Demi, I remember when we last were together, you were talking about your fascination with UFOs and you were talking about your fascination with extraterrestrials, and that's become a real thing for you now. I think when we've met, it was something that you

were becoming passionate about or intrigued by. And I wanted to know how you started to get fascinated with that, because again, that would be considered something that's very different from talking about gender, or talking about music, or talking about mental health or talking about depression. And all of a sudden, we're talking about UFOs. And I loved that because that's what's fascinating about expanding our consciouness. So tell me about tell us about how that world opened itself

up to you. I watched a movie called Close Encounters of the Fifth Kind, and it really expanded my view of meditation of how important it is for us to shift our consciousness and and so I started. In this documentary, they talk about this protocol where you can where you meditate and then you play these sounds and then you look up you do like a SkyWatch. And I tried

it a few times, nothing had really happened. And then one night for my birthday, I was in Palm Springs and I had five friends with me, and I said, all right, I want to try to make contact. And making contact isn't like you know, touching fingers with an et. It's just like you you set an intention and then something appears, and so if God willing, you know. And so I'm sitting there and we had meditated for like I told my friends, I said, hey, it's my birthday.

I know this isn't like super fun, but I want to meditate. And then I want to go outside and look up. They're like, yeah, down, whatever. So we all start meditating and then we look up and I see something in the sky that I can't explain that was way high above me all of us. It was brighter than any star in the sky, and it moved in a way that that a plane wouldn't move. I mean it made like a question mark in the sky. And then it just kind of backed out. And I was like,

did everyone see that? My friends were like yeah, and we were just like, oh my gosh, so it's real. So so it's real. This this works and it's real. And my mind was just blown. And I realized that from going inward, we can connect to beings that are so far beyond what we know of our universe. And

I think there's no there's no coincidence. Whenever I have been meditating in my backyard and I look up, I get that urge in my intuition to open my eyes, and so I do, and I see something I've seen, like I've seen a this sounds out there, but I've seen a flying saucer in the daylight just right above, like from my neighbor's house, not right above it. But

and my best friend was meditating with me too. We both kind of had opened our eyes at the same time, and she was like did you just And I was like, yeah, did you? And so it just things like that that just start to happen, and there you can't explain it, but I think there's a tie. I think that these beings from other planets or solar system, I don't know, these beings want us to expand our consciousness, and I

think that they're rooting for us. And I think that every time we start to meditate, we start to go deep within. They can sense it and and hopefully, you know, the rest of humanity catches onto that and we can

save our species. I love it. I love it. I remember, I know, I remember reading studies on astronomy extraterrestrials, other planets when when I was fascinated by this a bit earlier, and and I remember reading a study by I obviously was born and raised in London, so this was by Her Majesty's astronomer and it was the astronomy team in England, and they had found that he was just saying that he didn't know, but he was saying it would be ridiculous for me to not believe that there was life

on other planets and other solar systems. And that was just categorically stated. Although whereas at school this wasn't really encouraged. We didn't really get brought into recognizing that there were other life forms. You know, you kind of believe that there are lots of planets, but we're the only planet with human life, and therefore we kind of think of

life as a very limited way. As your consciousness expands, your your vision expands, your imagination, your experiences, what you know, what has really you've resonated with you when it comes to experiencing life or experiencing joy, What today would you say brings you the most joy or brings you the most a light or peace in your life today? What brings me the most joyous spending time with people that help me coregulate, So my friends, you know, my family.

I think that being in nature, whether it's going out to the desert or going to Colorado and the mountains, or you know whatever, it is, just getting away with my friends and just really having time to recharge, you know, meditate, whatever it is that we want to do, and with my pups, my dogs, And that's what really makes me joyful, find happiness and recharge. App It's beautiful, Demi. I have to ask you where in Colorado did you go? Because I just went Crestone. Okay, I just went to Dunton

and it was stunning. So when you said that I was literally there ten days ago, I was literally there about ten days ago too. I went to Crestone, Colorado for like a for a UFO seminar. I love that. I love that I was there. I was there for a wedding, so slightly different. I was there for a wedding, but it was it was beautiful. I did not realize that that was a UFO hot spot. Crestone is. Yeah,

Crestone is. Um, you should actually check it out, look into it because there's a bunch of religions that find Crestone a sacred spot. Well, and they even called it the Bloodless Valley because it was so there was like no bloodshed back when you know, pilgrims came in and kind of took over. So yeah, or at least that's what my understanding of it was. Wow, incredible, it sounds amazing. Well, Demi, you've been so gracious and kind and generous with your time.

We end every On Purpose episode with a final five. This is a fast five round, so every question has to be answered in one word or one sentence at a maximum, and so Demi Levado, these are your fast five. The first question is what is the best advice that you've ever received? The golden rule that you learn as a kid. Just treat others the way you want to be treated. Yeah, I think that's so important. You and Russ had the same answer to that question, Just so

you know, just throw it out there there. It is great, which is great because it's such a it's such an important rule. It's it's because you know you both agree. Okay. Second question, what is the worst advice you've ever received? You should wear spanks with that. That was probably the worst advice I've ever received, and that scarred me for years. Oh God, tell us about tell us about how simple things from authoritative, opinionated people in our life can affect

us in that way. I want to expand on that. I think that's such an interesting thing that often when we say things to people, we don't know how much power they hold, and if they end up living through it, that it can have ramifications. Maybe just speak to that a little bit. Yes, Well, that experience I had had just shortly after I had come out of treatment for a neating disorder, and I thought that my stylist knew better.

At the time, this was over ten years ago. It wasn't even the stylist, It was the stylist assistant and they just said it like, oh, would you like spanks? You should wear spanks with that? And it could have been because the dress was silk and it was thin, and or maybe it just wasn't flattering, But in my head, I took that as you look bad, you need to wear a body sculpting thing underneath. And I took that, and I internalized it so much that I kind of spiraled.

It was I was supposed to do a performance on like Dancing with the Stars or something, and and I was so thrown off by that one common that I just got so sad and so in my head, and I started and I thought about it for years. We don't realize the weight that our words hold when we speak to other people because we don't know all of their triggers. We don't know all of their life experiences.

We have to be careful when using words with others that could potentially trigger people because you don't know what they've been through. Well said, thank you so much for expanding on that. Okay. Question number three is what is the first thing you do when you wake up? And what's the last thing you do before you go to bed. The last thing that I do is I put on my sleep meditation music as I sleep too. Yes, I sleep to meditation music, so that the second that I

wake up, that's the first thing that I hear. And it's the last thing I hear when I fall asleep beautiful, wonderful. Okay. Question number four, what's the biggest lesson you've learned in the last twelve months. In the last twelve months, so Jesus I there's so many lessons. Tell us a few, Um, don't get engaged after knowing someone for three months. Yeah, that's a that's a big one. Um. Maybe also be super sure of who you are as a person before

you take a leap like that. You know you can't you can't love anyone else until you really learn to love yourself. And I had to kind of learn that the hard wake. Every time I think I love myself, I learned that I could love myself a little bit more. And that was what happened to me last year, as I realized, you know, there's a lot of room that I could use to expand my love for myself. And so I started working on that and I've been single

ever since. But I'm it's been some of the most important months of my life trying to figure out who I am today and who I want to be in a relationship going forward. That's incredible and I love the idea of learning to love ourselves because I think often we try to jump to just love us, yes, and it's about learning to love. It's it's the learning process that is what we're all trying to skip and miss and leap frog and hopefully just end up a love

and it's not. It's the learning part. And you're so right that we can all learn to love ourselves a little deeper. Fifth and final question is if you could create one law that everyone in the world had to follow, what would it be. Well, my it would be it would be that you have to try to meditate. Okay, that's good because because I know not everyone is going to be able to, but at least if you just if you try just one minute a day, if you try, that would be my law because I think that would

really shift things. That's awesome. Everyone, Thank Demi. Thank you so much for taking the time, your energy, your laugh, your little hey voice in the head that will never forget. I am so I am so grateful that we got to spend this time together, that you shared so much about meditation, about expanding our consciousness. I know this is going to impact so many people, and I encourage you all to tag Demi and I in your post to

tell us what you learned. I'd love to know what you learned from them and what you took away from them, and so please, please please make sure you let us know. And thank you for listening to on Purpose. A big thanks to you and you and your team, and we'll see you again next week, Demi, thank you so so much. Thank you,