#AskGaryVee Episode 238: Jewel, Never Broken, Mental Health, Staying Happy & the Future of Music

“Jewel, why do you think so many
people struggle to be happy?” – Because happiness
is a byproduct, not an actual destination. And so people have this
misconception that they’re gonna find happiness like it’s Europe and they’re never
gonna move out. (laughs) Happiness is a
byproduct of certain behaviors and can set yourself up to win and you can set
yourself up to be happy. The sad thing is happiness is a
learned skill and a lot of our houses don’t teach happiness. That was the situation
I was in and so I actually just started studying
people that were happy and I saw what
the algorithm was. What did they do that’s similar
and for me I don’t focus on happiness as much as harmony. I don’t really believe in the
word balance ’cause balance is a binary thing like oof,
it’s a great very tedious. Harmony is saying my
life has many components. I’m a woman,
I’m a mom, I am sexual,
I am spiritual. I’m a businessperson, all of
those limbs have to have tone and that brings about harmony. That brings about satisfaction. If only have one limb
that is very buff and the rest of us is atrophied, we have disharmony,
we have dissatisfaction but there’s no human school and so that’s what I’m
looking at starting. I want to be able to teach
people emotional and mindfulness skills so that they can
gain tone in every area. – From my standpoint, you know
since Jewel took it up here, I will take into one very narrow
place that I’ve been really try to spend a lot of time
on and that’s perspective. It’s so interesting to me why
I deem myself happy because I just am so grateful.
– Mhmmm. – Like the thing we got excited
about of you know the data behind being a human
being is 400 trillion to 1. When you just start there and
you realize forget about the odds of like beating
homelessness and like other or like being born in a communist
country like just actually becoming a human. I always make the joke that your mom could have had
another glass of wine. Or your dad could have
been late because of traffic. The odds are so insane. I’m just so grateful for what
I have versus what I don’t have and I think people just have all
these admirations and envy and all these hard-wiring things. To me, it’s perspective
just like there’s always, I just generally believe there’s
always somebody that has it worse and the problem is that’s
where I default into mentally and have practiced
to put myself there versus somebody’s got it better. – And the importance
with gratitude is, I do a gratitude
practice every night, and when you’re grateful,
you can’t be angry, you can’t be resentful. It literally just leaves
no room for anything else. – I’m just grateful. Alright, And.
– [Andy] Cool. Alan asks,–
– Alan.

“the future of
music is going to be? “How and where do you
earn most of your money?” – I’m actually very excited by
the disrupt in the music space. It’s deserved to be disrupted
for really quite a long time. And this deserved to fail and
I say that with all kindness. – You mean the people in the middle having
disproportionate economics? – Yeah, if I could do
a brief history of music. Musicians spent a long time
understanding who they were and what they offered as musicians. People call that a brand now. But they were
natural brand creators. And so Led Zeppelin
stood for something. You know, loving a
musician was like an ethos. It was an entire culture and
they were culture builders and they spent years cultivating
that culture on the road. Radio came along and it
just super boosted things. And there’s a golden time there
for when that happened and then radio became so
powerful people realized, “Hey, I don’t have to
have a whole great record. “I can have one good song,” and
then the record labels were like and we can charge for an entire
record with only one good song and the consumer
started going, “Hey, screw you guys.
I’m getting ripped off. “This is a sucky
record with one good song.” Enter the digital age
and people could say, “Oh good, I only have
to buy one good song.” – At first, they’re like, “Wait a minute, Napster.
I’m not buying shit.” – Yeah.
(group laughter) And streaming. I don’t personally feel that
music will be monetizable in a very foreseeable way. I think that we should focus
on musicians as brands and we’re lucky enough to use
music as our brand builder, as our calling card and the
future of the music business is learning to build
brands around artists. The artists get
to have equity in. – Yep. You know, obviously the
monetizing of live event. So I think access is
where all the magic is ’cause it’s the
limited resource. – Mhmmm.
– Right? So whether that means
in a show or one on ones or the brands they touch. I mean look, it’s funny
here you go with the brand move of the equity thing.
– Mhmmm. – When you think about the
economics 50 Cent made on just his sponsorship deal of Vitamin
Water let alone what you’re seeing now where
you’re, you know, celebrities and
musicians are getting 5, 10, 15, 30% of a
business before it launches on the back of their brand. It’s a very entrepreneurial
answer but it’s the truth. It’s a race to the bottom of
control of those economics. – Yeah. – Andy?
– [Andy] Cool.

– That’s a good one. – I love it.
I’m in control of it. I’ve always really welcomed it. I’ve lived my
life with transparency. I hide nothing. That said, I always honor–
– We love Jewel. (group laughter) You’re giving all the answers
that nobody, nobody else says. Yeah and what’s weird is it’s one thing say it that
came and grew from it. You were real, real
famous when it came along so it’s an even more
impressive answer. You know, I was a byproduct and
benefited from the transparency and grew from there.
– Yeah. – But for you to
be where you were and love it speaks to
that rare authenticity. – Well, I also was able, that’s
funny I was put in a college textbook from when
the grassroot marketers, one of the four founders of
grassroots marketing online. – Sure. – It wasn’t because of me.
It was my fans. And it was the early days of the
internet but it was the reason I broke through grunge. – But your fans, I was there. I was doing the
Wine Library thing. It’s why I was so excited. We talked a little bit
about this the other day. Your fans got there and
give a crap because of you and then they took over. What my fans do now is insane
the level of love but it starts with I love them first.
– Yeah. – You have to love them first. – Yeah, music comes
second in all honesty. I think people
and what I’ve been, it’s just been incredible. I have no middleman. I get to talk to my fans
directly and tell them who I am. I don’t have a journalist going, “You know the truth about
Jewel was blah blah blah blah.” And it’s not true. I actually get to
tell people what’s true. I get to have that direct
relationship and not to mention I should be a gift in, we’re all
a gift in each other’s lives. If I’m not a gift
in the life of my fans, I am not doing my job. This isn’t all about me and so
the way technology is evolved it’s much easier
for me to watch my fans, see how their
families are doing, encourage them to be
supporting one another. I love it.
– Amazing. Andy?

culture and look at zeitgeist. Where is culture
swinging and where do I authentically
intersect with that? For me, I’m great at connection and I love the
technological age. I love how
accessible information is. I love that with
education at our fingertips. I love that it’s
disrupting everything. It have the tremendous ability
to cause a distraction addiction and we need to be careful with
our children and with ourselves of how we consume. Now what does that mean?
It’s a very interesting topic. How do we consume in a way that
doesn’t hurt our mental health? That doesn’t cause
neural pathways of addiction and distraction addiction and that’s actually a
very fascinating topic. – I think the thing that a lot
of people are talking about, Simon Sinek has a video that’s
going viral on this right now. I think the question
becomes that we never do is what was the alternative?
– Mhmmm. – So, it’s one thing to say that
we’re addicted to this and we’re spending our time on this. My question is
that same human being, what would they have been
doing with this time– – Mhmmm.
– in 1989? Would they be
addicted to television? I had plenty of friends who
played 11 1/2 hours of Nintendo. – Yep. – You know we’re deploying our
angst against the medium and we’re not looking at
the human being enough. – Absolutely. – You know there’s a lot of,
there’s a lot of kids sitting in their room on their phone all
day long creating Instagram accounts and doing
stuff that would’ve been on the street doing something bad. Like this thought that it’s all
bad is very fascinating to me. I don’t know. I am unbelievably
pro-human being. – Yeah. – I mean back to just data
and behavior and patterns, like we’re still here.
– Yeah. – Like we’ve
had all the ability, when you think about what we could be doing to
each other negatively. We’ve all, there’s so much
carnage that could happen in one second and we don’t and so we
are scared of what we don’t know and I think that, I think that
I’m surprised by the collective cynicism of the of
the American market, for sure, around these
technologies but it makes a lot of sense to me because
every time there is a massive communication shift we
are very cynical of it. – Yeah. And we’re frightened. – We’re scared.
– But what I love is the Millenials already
have the antidote. So they’re already a
product of the culture of being, having the ability to do this
and look at their screen and what are they telling us? We want experiences,
we don’t want things. – Of course.
– That’s the antidote. We get to get out
and have experiences. – Guys, this is nothing
compared to VR in 20 years. – Mhmmm. – People are
gonna sit in their home. You’re never
gonna see them again. They’re gonna put their contact
lenses on and they’ll be gone. This is, I’m being, this is it. Be happy that they’re
actually out and about looking at the phone ’cause of
the San Diego in a pod and they’re not coming out.
– Right. Yeah. – Andy? Really though
because by the way,– – Yeah? – to your point, and I
see where you’re going. It’s why we’ve
always loved reading books, and watching movies. We need to escape–
– Yeah. – for our mental health.
– Mhmmm. – That’s what this is. It becomes the
alternative universe. The much more extreme version
of that is gonna be the virtual reality world when they
can absolutely in 20 years technology put in
contact lenses and be somewhere. – I always add in caveat–
– Go ahead. – a lot of people talk
to me about mindfulness and, you know, about
being in your head. It’s actually not about,
we do need an escape. – Yes. – Our minds will
run us, they hijack us. – Yeah. Yep. – And so a lot of us use
escape so that we don’t, so that we can escape our minds. I look at our bodies
as an amazing machine. And it’s an amazing machine, our brain is
actually not the driver, it’s the steering wheel. So who’s the driver? I think it’s our observer. When we get so
caught up in our mind we’re desperate for an escape. For me that’s when mindfulness
tools come into play with how we interface
with everything. You have to give yourself a
break from your mind that’s healthy habit and not
just constantly a distraction. – Jewel, just because
you’re so deep in this. This is what I want
to ask you for me. I’m being selfish now. I don’t know the answer. I’m curious for
your perspective. I don’t need an escape.
– Mhmmm. – I don’t want to escape. I’m super duper pumped.
– That’s good. – Like I mean it. Like, I’m even
scared to do meditation, this is real because I’m so
happy with my mental state that I don’t anything that
rejiggers anything ’cause I never need an
escape from anything. I’m super it’s true, And. I deal with plenty of stresses
and things of that nature. I don’t know, I like it. It’s fine, it’s part
of the, I don’t know. What do you think about that? – I don’t know what
to think about that. But I know you
can trust yourself. – Yeah, and?
Have you seen that? How do you think about that? It’s just interesting to me that I don’t gravitate
towards an escape at all. – That’s awesome. – I don’t want to, I want to
stay in my head all the time. – Yeah?
– It’s cozy. – Uh-huh. What’s it like in there?
– Fucking awesome. – Yeah?
(group laughter) That’s good.
– Alright, And. One more time.
One last one?

“help stop the stigma
around mental health?” – Well, that’s taking
it into a different place. Right, mental health issue
versus meditation but that’s where he’s asking.
– [Andy] Yeah. – What do you think about that? – Well mental health is
a really broad scope so how would we
define mental health? We could talk very
narrowly about something, anxiety. It’s something a lot of people,
it’s the number one thing I hear people talk to me about. Anxiety and I think that’s a
mental health issue and I do think one of the best antidotes
to anxiety for me when I was having panic attacks and anxiety
bouts was learning to be mindful which is just learning
to be present right now. I did it by following my hands
around in the day and it let me not worry basically because
I was forced to be present. And so it was actually a very
profound tool for change for me. – Can I interrupt
you for one second? – Yeah, go ahead. Before we get into guns.
– Yeah. Before you get into guns, and by
the way I’ve done an incredible job not interrupting. I know all of your
watching, I’ve crushed it. Are they commenting?
I’ve crushed it. Biting nails.
– Mhmmm. – Now that frickin’,
you know I’m so curious, do you know anything about,
is you looking at your hands, is biting nails
something that I’m… Listen, I’ve got Jewel. She knows her shit,
I’m excited here. Biting nails,
do you think that’s a move? – A move? – Like the way you did that, am
I so at peace and pumped because I bite my nails all the time? Like I’m trying to
figure out what that means. – Do you bite your
nails all the time? – Yeah. When I’m
really in an interesting spot. – Mhmmm. My guess is that’s how you’re
handling a type of anxiety and you’re gonna think and you’re
gonna figure things out and that’s your way of doing it. I don’t know if you’re mindful
while you’re doing it or if it’s an absent distraction. – No, it’s
definitely not mindful. – Yeah.
– I’m just not. I’m just like, wait,
fuck, I’m eating my hand. Keep going.
Gun control. – True to yourself,
so mindfulness would be, “Oh, I’m eating my nails.” – Yes.
– Get curious about it. Just observe it.
– Yep. – That’s mindfulness.
– Got it. – And it takes you from
being hijacked by your brain to back to being the driver.
– Yeah. – I’m in control
of my brain, Jewel. – Yeah? If you’re biting your
nails and you don’t know why I’m not sure that you are. – Well, I respect that but
that’s only a micro one example on a macro level, anyway.
– Good to know your answer. – Guns. Guns? – I think guns are
a mental health issue. – I do too. In a big way. – I think it’s really
important to focus on. Learning to calm our anxiety,
learning about mental health does nothing but help our entire
culture a multitude of ways. And so, I would encourage
both sides of the aisle to start looking at
mental health, mindfulness, mental health solutions
instead of talking about highly polarizing things
look at the deeper cause. – [Andy] Do you think there’s a
stigma around those solutions? – I do and I often
have people say like, “Why do you, how do
you talk about this? “Isn’t it scary?”
And I look at them and go, “Have you never not
felt anxiety? Jealousy? Fear? “Am I inventing new emotions
somebody’s never come up with?” No. I don’t know why
people don’t talk about it. – I think we’ve had enormous progress in the
last half decade. This was not even
being talked about. – Yeah. – Ten years ago this
was (clicks tongue) zero. – I did a pre-tape interview
for the “Today” show and we were talking about the movie
that’s coming out and she said, “I looked at your
website,” she talked to me about mindfulness
the entire time. That would not have
happened to me five years ago, two years ago. I was flabbergasted.
– 100%. – Yes, I said
flabbergasted. Two points. – (laughs) Tell me
two seconds about this.