The Pursuit of Curiosity

time as if it's infinite like sands. And whether you are partnered with or without children, or in a career where you want more boundaries, this is the place for you for all family structures. We're here to take a time out to learn, get inspired, and most importantly, reclaim our time. Good afternoon, add high E. Great to see you as always. I know I really enjoy our our own little unicorn space that we've carved out for each other. But I wanted to tell you a story today about

a journey, a Unicorn space journey. But that journey is going to take us through three things. It's going to take us through curiosity, connection, and completion. So why those three things? Why those three c's. Well, for me, it started with curiosity, my own curiosity with understanding our obsession with happiness. So when I was researching for fair Play, so many women were saying to me, I don't feel happy.

I have everything that society told me I wanted. I have the two point five kids, the nice apartments or a house. I have house plans that don't die. I have a nice partner. I have a good job, and all these things things that I've been searching for the path that was set out for me. I ticked every single one of those boxes. And yet I still feel unfulfilled. I still feel unhappy. And so I got really interested

in this idea of happiness. What is it? One woman said to me, Eve, I'm gratitude journaling myself to death, and so I said, oh, yeah, there has been a lot. There's been a lot of books on happiness the past ten years. We've spent a lot of time and happiness podcast, happiness books, happiness journals, and so I sat in a few of them. I sat in some happiness labs. I

read many positive psychology articles. I spoke to many experts, and here's what I came to happiness and the pursuit of happiness is going to make you more sad m This is when I start to understand from the research. What I understand is that off and happiness and meaning correlate, and for a lot of my life maybe it did, especially when I was on that extrinsic path. And then there are times where happiness and meaning don't go together.

Happiness without meaning, we know what that is. It's actually been a lot of my coping mechanisms during the pandemic. That's my emotional eating, doom scrolling, binge, watching TV, things that ultimately feel empty when they're done, but in the moment, I think, okay, that that feels good. And then I found out that there is meaning without happiness, and it's sometimes correlated with caregiving, and that's how I often feel too that existentially taking care of my kids, I feel meaning.

But as a study show, people would rather be in a freaking root canal than hanging out with their toddler, and by people, I mean me. So happiness without meaning, meaning without happiness is where I think a lot of us have been stuck, especially in the past two to three years. And here's the good part when happiness and meaning intersect, where those two come together, that's a sweet spot. And so the idea of mental health as being a place where we want to be happy is a misnomer.

As my colleague Lisa de Moore says, real mental health is having the appropriate emotion at the appropriate time and the ability and strength to weather it. Those experiences of happiness and meaning, where those collide like fireworks, is what we want people to have because those experiences become our umbrellas. And so I'm really excited because we can't tell you what it is for you. I wish we could. But what we can do is help you discover it, find it,

reclaim it, get curious about it. And the first step starts with curiosity. What's so beautiful about what you say is it is true that meaning and happiness are two separate things and separate entities even in the brain. There

are two ways that we register happiness. The first is hedonic happiness, like you were saying, binging on Netflix, buying a fancy car, buying that designer bag, all of the things that we do for that instant in the moment rush, and that fades quickly and leaves a vacuum and avoid and us wanting more so we do more of those coping behaviors, So it's this negative feedback loop. The other type of happiness, which we don't talk about because it's

not sexy and not flashy, is you demonic happiness. What it means is the happiness that is filled with meaning and purpose. And if you want to think about those two a little bit differently, one is the thrill kind of happiness and the other is that deep contentment type of happiness. And scientifically, the way our brains and even our bodies process those two types of happiness are very different.

So what's most interesting to me is that with hedonic happiness, you don't get those same deep brain or cellular benefits as you do with you diamonic happiness. With you diamonic happiness, it impacts our immune system and our cells in our body. So even at the deeply cellular level, our bodies know the difference, and unfortunately, in our modern society, we are always chasing that hedonic happiness because it's easy to see

and shout out to Professor Laurie Santos. She teaches the most popular class at Yale, and she also has a wonderful podcast on happiness. But even Professor Laurie Santos, who is the ultimate expert and happiness, was able to say to me and give me a quote for my book, that happiness as the end goal is really a fool's errand. And so I believe you adity right that you demonic happiness. Is that cellular happiness. And it's harder because it's an investment,

it's a journey. It doesn't hit us the same way that maybe, like you said, going online and getting a box in the mail from internet shopping does, But it's worth it. Here's a great news. We can all access the three cs of this creative life that brings these meaning and happiness experiences. We can access our curiosity. And by curiosity, we don't mean, as my friend said, well I scroll my friends Venmo transactions that makes me curious. No,

not that type of curiosity. Connected curiosity, values based curiosity, an active pursuit that you love so much, that you wondered about, that you learn so much about that you want to share with the world. So that's the connection piece curiosity, and then this connection to the external and then the third see which is my favorite see but it's often really hard, especially for women, completion, because we've been taught that to complete anything adity, we have to

be profoundly excellent as women, God forbid, were loud and wrong. Though. Perfection and completion are two different things, but often they're conflated. And so we're going to take you on a journey through curiosity, connection and completion. But today we're starting with one of our favorite guests, Justina Blakeney, who is a bastion of not only beauty and wonder, but she is a person who can connect us back to our curiosity and I'm so excited to learn from her today. Today's

guest is Justina Blakeney. Justina, who has become an amazing friend of mine, is an incredible artist and designer. She's known for her love of bright colors, old patterns, her beautiful use of nature. We're so excited to have her with us. Welcome Justina. Thank you so much, Justina, you are really leading the way in terms of creativity. I wanted to first start off our conversation if you could tell us a little bit about your journey. This beautiful

finished product of Jungalow. It wasn't an overnight success, and so how did you get to where you are now? Who you want? Some stories? Stories? Gosh, It's been such a long and windy path to where I am now, and I'm still on the path. Junglo started as a blog, which really was just that. It really was a way to follow my curiosity and to record and share my curiosity with the world and create a conversation around things that I loved, things that I loved doing, things that

lit me up, and really really very free form. It started just as a way to chronicle my creative adventures, and that really could have meant and it still means so many different things. I didn't really know what I wanted to do, or what I wanted to be in the world and how I wanted to show up. All I knew was that I had a lot of ideas, was really creative, and I really loved making things and connecting with people around the world, and so I just

started with a commitment. That's really how Junglo started. It was just a commitment to be curious every day, to be creative every day, and to track my progress and to track what I was making and what I was thinking about and what I was seeing in the world that I was feeling inspired by and that come it meant was to blog five days a week, and I committed to it, and I stuck to that commitment for about ten years. And that's really where Jungalow was born.

And it started in very small, small ways, just um sharing a photograph of a plant outside my apartment that was changing colors and bringing me joy, a photograph, a drawing a project I was working on with a friend. Little by little, things started to snowball. And when I say little by little, I mean, you know, after about five years of of doing this every day, right, and and and I started to get asked to collaborate with people, friends, relatives, strangers,

people around the world, brands. All of a sudden, the things that I just started noticing or the things that I started making, began to connect me with really amazing creatives, other people, clients, projects, And really that's how the brand was born. Just following my curiosity and having the commitment to stick to it five days a week. Sort of sounds maybe a little bit oversimplified, but that's really what

it was. In the early days of blogging, especially in the home decor kind of world, things were pretty monotonous. There was a specific style that it seemed like the online world was kind of adhering to. It was a style that was very modern. It was a style that was somewhat devoid of color, of personality of UM life,

in my opinion. So when I came on the scene with my colors, my patterns, my plants, taking inspiration from my heritage, from my travels, bringing that out into my space, showing that a space could be maximal, didn't have to just be minimal, it didn't have to follow UM these specific trends. It was like the more I dug into that and found that within myself and brought it out

and shared it, the more I attracted my community. And then little by little, with the help of so many smart and talented folks that are now on my team, we've been able to turn this curiosity into a brand. You said something beautifully, Justina, about taking inspiration from You said your heritage, from your travels. We've talked about this before. I've Gracis Lee taking your time already your diamond time at interview for Unicorn Space, and you you helped me

inspire a game that we're gonna be playing later. A remix game, because I became so obsessed with this idea of a remix that there could be a batter. But you can't really have a batter unless you have your baking soda and your flower. And it's into the delicious batter that I want to eat before I even bake it. But your life and your travels and your experiences in

your heritage really are all in that beautiful batter. And I'd love to hear a little bit about the things that are in your remix, like what are those ingredients? If you were a recipe, what are you What is your recipe for your remix? Oh, my goodness, I love this question. Um. How fun. So my heritage, my dad is Black and Native American, and my mom is of Eastern European Jewish descent. My dad grew up in California. My mom grew up on the East Coast in New Jersey.

She moved to here in l A. Actually she moved to when she was ten, and they met in Berkeley, which is where I grew up, kind of during the Civil Rights movement, And so I grew up in this very multicultural household. And my maternal grandmother, Betty, who I was very very close with Growing up, she was a

travel agent. The thing that lit her up was planning family trips to different places all over the world, and so from a very young age she would plan these exuberant trips for us to different places around the world and would cut coupons and it was like a whole thing, and we get that to the paper tickets in the mound. Was like, Oh, we're going to Mexico, or we're going to Israel, or we're going to Europe. You know, we've got to travel from a young age and see so

many different places. So that was so important and I just always loved, loved traveling ever since I was a very small child. When I was thirteen, my family moved to Switzerland for a year. My parents were teaching at a university there and so we did kind of a sabbatical year and I went to the public school in

Switzerland in a very small town. I learned to speak Swiss, German and some French, and learned what it felt like to be a foreigner and how much about yourself you learn when you're in Trench and a culture that's so different from the culture that you were raised in. So that was a really pivotal thing for me. So I ended up going back to Switzerland and living there for another year when I was in high school and lived

with a Swiss family. And then I ended up going to u c. L A. And did my junior year abroad in Italy and fell in love with a boy while I was there and ended up moving back to Italy and staying for another seven years. So this mix of these different locations that were very close to me and we're sort of pivotal. And then my heritage with Black culture and Jewish culture were sort of the main cultures that I was raised with, and I was really

raised with both cultures. Those are some of my main ingredients. Um, the mix continues and ingredients continue to be added, and I think that that's one of those things that's um also really important about learning about yourself and and curiosity, right Like, I think that when it comes to your own personal identity and unpacking who you are are, that

something that never stops, and and it shouldn't stop. You know, I'm listening to your story and then I see the visual representation of your life story in your work at Junglow. One of the things that even I have spoken about is that you have really brought us to That idea of creativity is not nice to have. It's an essential part of who you are for our listeners who may not have had such a colorful life story and that self awareness that you have to translate that life story

into being a maker. What is the first step that people can take with their lived experience and their sense of identity to really delve into their creativity in a deeper way. It's easy for me to share what that is for me, but I think when it comes to everyone else, everyone's going to have their own vibe. You might like coloring in a coloring book, you might like cooking as your outlet for creativity. I think there are so many ways to express one's creativity, and there's no

one right way to do it. For me, I love the experience of input and output. So, for example, this weekend, I was at the Huntington's here in Pasadena, which just these incredible like botanical gardens, and I absolutely love going to a botanical gardens and taking photos. I like to get really abstract, get really close up to the leaves, noticed the textures, the patterns, all the different colors. It's

something that's so inspiring for me. So I love just really taking my time walking through these gardens and noticing all the special little moments. I really think that's something that everyone can do, right. You just open your eyes to something that brings you joy, that brings you that that curiosity that delight. Take a photo. Then I sort of catalog these photos for myself. Then when I get home,

I usually get out my watercolors. I could maybe do it on my computer or an iPad, like maybe it's just a pencil and a paper, but just sketching and drawing and just allowing yourself some time to explore without thinking about the outcome. It's really just an exploration. One of our mottos at Jungalow, and one of the things that sort of part of the DNA of the brand is that everyone is creative and that everyone can find

ways to express that creativity in their home. And so I think it's really about just carving out time, right. And I know that can be tricky for so many of us, like dedicating even small amounts of time, but I really consider dedicating even just fifteen minutes a day to creativity as a form of self care, and it can take so many different shapes, and it doesn't have to include crazy supplies or an art studio or an

office or anything like that. It's just something as simple as collecting some leaves off the ground and noticing the different shapes and the different colors and how they play off of each other. That's creative. Jina. You're telling me either day on our Instagram live about reconnecting to the simple pleasures of that daily creative practice, because obviously you have many creative practices going on in a whole cycle of curiosity, connecting to others in your community and completing things.

And we've talked about your love of completion, and I'm a huge fan of yours because you complete things. Thank you for doing that for all of us. But we were talking about that time where you were like, oh, I was having a bad day and sort of that exercise you were doing in the morning. Can you talk to us a little bit about that, because I think I want to recreate a version of that for myself.

Everyone should recreate a version of this for yourself. It started almost a decade ago at the apartment I was living in at the time. We had this little courtyard and there was a peppercorn tree, and the leaves of the peppercorn tree looked like eyes, and the little peppercorns kind of looked like eyeballs. So I was like just sweeping up one day and I was like, these kind of look like eyes, these kind of like eyeballs. I

looked over, Um, they're watching you. They're all watching you. Um. So there's a bougun via bush across the way, and so there's all these bright pink bracts and then they just looked like little pockered lips. So they've got the line that goes right for it looks like someone's wearing

like my favorite shade of Nars lipstick. And so I just started playing, and I had a little white table on the patio and I just started putting the peppercorns and the leaves and the bougon Via bract and all of a sudden, I had a face and it looked so realistic, and I was looking at it and kind of tripping out. I was like, oh my god, this

really looks like a face. Right, So I just started playing with it, taking a few pictures, and when I was done sweeping, I just sweep the leaves away, swep the leaves away and put them in the compost, and that was it. But every time I saw that face on social media, yeah you so that moment, she's watching you. It's returning this activity into something creepy. But no, it's no, no, it's accountability. She's watching you to make sure you do it.

She's like the goddess of the Folian. So this, this activity, and especially when my daughter was young, became something that I did every single day. Is I would go out.

I would take my daughter out on walks, and I'd have a little ziplock bag and anytime I all like an interesting looking seed, pod or leaf, I would just collect it and put it in my little ziplock And then I would get home, when I would put my daughter away for a nap, then I would go outside and do these little faces and take pictures of them and started sharing them on Instagram, and I invited my community to make them too, because it really felt like

something so easy. You needed no supplies to do it. It's so fun and everyone's always really smitten with the results because their faces look like real faces, and they have expressions, and they like look nad or like they're laughing, or like they have a secret and they want to share with you. And so I kind of started creating

these little narratives around these faces. I called the project Face the Foliage and there's a Face the Foliage Instagram account and hashtag as well, and so now people from all over the world take part in this movement of making these portraits out of leaves and flowers. And it's just it couldn't be more simple. Okay, how did I not know about this account? Because I'm like dying it is. That's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen a lot of joy. What I love about this Face the Foliage

is that anyone can do it. That creativity doesn't have to be something that's out of reach. You don't have to be quote unquote a creative person. Why do you think it is that anyone can be creative? Because I've seen it. I've seen it over and over and over again. I've seen it in my daughter when she was a baby. I've seen it in language and learning new languages, even just in a single word. There's so much creativity there.

And I love thinking about the origins of things, right, and so in order to create the world that we live in, it just wouldn't be possible without human creativity. And the human creativity is just it's so clear that it's inside everyone. And so when I hear people saying like, oh, well, I'm not creative, Like you couldn't get up in the morning if you were creative, you're making creative to say, visions all throughout your day, whether you realize it or not.

Putting your clothes on in the morning is a creative decision. And so some people value those creative decisions in different ways than other people. And so I think that when it comes to home decor, which is a world that Junglow is housed in, people are also making creative decisions about their homes all the time. Even if that create decision is to leave your walls white, not to inject a lot of personality into your home, to do the

basic basic stuff like, that's still a creative decision. And so I think creativity is all around us, and it's really inside us all and it's about whether or how you choose to tap into it and cultivate it and practice it. And that's something that I think is really undervalued as well. I think a lot of times we talk about people as being talented or creative the same way we might talk about somebody who's a brunette or has brown eyed is. But to me, this is something

that is cultivated throughout our lives. And even something as simple as a face the foliage project in the morning and getting up and doing something like that, it changes the way you see the world. Last week we are on the podcast, we were talking about making space, just how the space time continuum has been collapsing on all

of us and what a true boundary is. And I wonder from what you're saying, if instead of saying I have to make space and then doing it, maybe what you do is you start with a creative practice, like I'm going to do a face the foliage painting. Because if you're going to say you're going to do that, or if you say to yourself, I'm going to blog for say fifteen minutes every single day, you need the space to do that. By making that decision to do that thing, then space has to be created around it.

And so I think space could be looked in those two different ways, where you can intentionally say I'm going to make space or something, or you can pick the thing the practice and then say I have to make space around how to do that? If we could wrap up by talking about the word space sort of like a free a free association, because a lot of how people associate Jungalow and you is this idea of taking

the mundane, as we said, to a sublime level. It can happen without millions of dollars, with color, with plants. That's a physical space. You have metaphorical space in your brain for different types of creativity. But can you talk just free association about what you think of the word space. I hear a lot about holding space right now in the wellness arena and talking about holding space for yourself,

holding space for other people. So I think about holding space as sort of this sacred place where you're there for someone that you love, or maybe someone that you don't love, maybe someone that you're just getting to know and really listening powerfully. Then I think of making space and making space for me. What that means is having a space that reflects who I am and a place where I can really grow and thrive with my family.

And it means being in a in a space that's inspiring and a space that I allow to be ever changing, in a space that I allow to not be perfect and to know that this is going to change tomorrow, because I'm going to change tomorrow, and that's okay. This is a wet campus. Well. I think we wish for you time space, physical space, metaphysical space, mental space to be and Justina, thank you for becoming a friend. I can't pay you back for all the times that I

have been inspired by you as well. Thank you both so much. Hi, it's me Eve. I wrote Find Your Unicorn Space as a permission slip for you to reconnect and discover that thing that makes you come alive without the guilt, without the excuses. Especially in our all too busy world, making time for ourselves is essential work. It improves our health, our relationships, and it just might be the antidote to burnout. Join me on a journey to

find your unicorn Space. Visit unicorn space dot com. So every episode of this podcast will be ending with an action item for you are listeners that we call a time out. This is really a time for you to focus on yourself and reflect on what you're hearing today. Unicorn Space is not a hobby or a one time passion or a side hustle, but a space you can get curious about something, connect with other humans, and complete

an idea and so getting curious. Let's you a time out today to start getting people inspired, getting people curious just this week. You don't have to be choreographing anything. You don't have to be writing a giant book. Let's just talk about inspiration that we could do this week. Small start where you are time out to get inspired. No fair playbook Adity comes out without some version of a card game. So I'm prototyping this card game. It's

a remix game. It's like Cards Against Humanity or I like to call it Cards for Humanity, because that's what we're really trying here. We're trying to be more human. So this game starts with me reading you fifty cards, and I want you to pick one that you feel curious about right now, just anything, don't think too hard about it. And then what I'm gonna do is I'm going to pick another card that you can remix with it,

just to get you inspired for this week. And by the way, for our listeners, this is what you're gonna be doing. You're going to be with us, taking out your journal, picking one of those cards and then asking yourself, why you picked it, and if you're interested in getting a PDF copy of the game, go to fairplay life

dot com and sign up for our newsletter. Here we go otherworldly pursuits like taro, astrology or magic, genealogy and lineage, spiritual wellness, racing, cars, horses or boats, circus, theater and production, snow sports, sports with balls, triathlon, running, memories and archiving, sports with wheels, rhetoric, martial arts, dance, performing animals, travel and culture, outdoors, water sports, storytelling, art, stitching in needles, metallurgy, music, woodworking, photography,

gardening and farming, florals, pottery, beauty, arrows and axes, building in d i y, restoration and renovation, cooking, baking, coding, games, video games, health and wellness, language and anthropology, event planning, finding, collecting and forging, fashion, writing, teaching, research and learning, design, math and sciences. So which card of all those just stuck out to you today? Travel and culture. I have so many, but I can't name them all, so I'll

just stick with travel and culture. Tell me a little bit about why. Prior to the pandemic, I was an avid traveler. I've been to so many different places, lived in various parts of the world, and the pandemic put all of that to a halt. It's been very difficult to be landlocked and stuck, and it's taken a toll on my mental health, as it has for everyone who used to travel as their restpit and their winter escape hatch and to really get a sense of the world

beyond themselves. And now I want to hear the values that it connects with. I've always been fascinated by the human story. That's why I went into medicine. I'm an extrovert and I love speaking to different people, learning about different cultures. I speak several languages and I'm always trying to learn new different words and different languages because communication

is something that it lights me up. And of course seeing different places, the visual aspect of travel, the foods, the fashion, the sites, the sounds like, all of that. It's an immersive experience. And I love that feeling of feeling small in a place that's so vast. Being in a city where I don't know anyone and I'm exploring it brings out that sense of childlike wonder for me. Okay,

I love it. I want to just repeat back to you what I hear so that I can pick a card that I think we can remix with your travel and culture. I heard the values of the human story. I heard the value of connecting with others. I heard the value of learning languages and other cultures. I heard the value of communication. I heard the value of beauty. I heard the value of being out of control, like the idea of surrendering to the unknown. I heard the

value of taste and immersion. And wonder does that do it? Okay? Job reflecting what you said? Perfect? Okay. So I'm going to pick a card that can remix with travel and culture, and I'm picking research and learning. So what I'd like you to do is to have a learning night with your family or with yourself. I'd like you to have your whole family put ten different locations into a bowl, so have them look at it alas You're gonna pick

just random, tend pop and Guinea or Argentina. Just have everybody pick at least two or three put in the bowl. Then you're going to pick out one of the pieces of paper at random. You'll open it up, so say you pick buen us aires Argentina. Now, the research and learning part of travel and culture is that since you can't go to that place yet, what I'll ask you to do is that for everybody to bring one piece of research and learning to your travel and culture dinner.

So maybe that's a craft from Argentina. Maybe that's a local food like an empanada like you have to order in empanadas. Maybe it's bringing Spanish words to the table so that your whole family just converses in Spanish that night, even if it's you've never spoken the language before. Maybe it's a YouTube video with a festival from Argentina. So that's what I'll ask you to do this week. Find a traveling culture night and then I love it, learn about it. I have the biggest smile on my face

because that is the Unicorn space. It allows you to be wherever you are and still pursue that sense of curiosity and wonder which lights you up. So listeners, what you're gonna do is you're going to play the solitaire version of this. Take a card, any card, pick it, write down why you picked it, write down the values it connects with you, and then take any other card from the deck and remix it, combine it, make it into a delicious batter with another card and pick one

thing you're going to do this week. That's a remix. So that's today's time out, and next week we'll be back to build on the commitment and creativity conversation we had with Justina. We're gonna be talking about goals. Thank you for listening to Time Out, a production of I Heeart Podcasts and Hello Sunshine. I'm Eve Rodsky, author of the New York Times bestseller fair Play and find your Unicorn Space. Follow me on social media at Eve Rodsky and learn more about our work at fair Play Life.

And I'm Dr Addi Narucar, the Harvard physician with a specialty and stressed resilience burnout in mental health. Follow me on social media at Dr add Narucar and find out more about my work at doctor a d D dot com. That's d R A D I t I dot com. Our Hello Sunshine team is Amanda farrand Aaron Stover and Jennifer Yonker. Our I Heart Media team is Ali Perry, Jennifer Bassett, and Jessica Kranschitch. We hope you all love

taking a much needed time out with us today. Listen and subscribe to Time out on the I heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your favorite shows.