Loneliness After Loss: Miist on Finding Your Voice and the 15 Seconds That Can Save a Life | EP 501

Close your eyes and imagine. What if the things in life that caused us the greatest pain, the things that bring us grief, are challenges. Challenges designed to help us grow to ultimately become what we were always meant to be. We feel like we've been buried, but what if, like a seed, we've been planted? And having been planted, we grow to become a mighty tree. Now, open your eyes. Open your eyes to this way of viewing life. Come with me as we explore your true, infinite, eternal nature. This is Grief to Growth, and I am your host, Brian Smith. Welcome to Grief to Growth. I'm Brian Smith, and whether you've been with me for years, or this is the first time you found you right here, I am so glad that you're listening. This show is about making sense of life, especially when life doesn't make sense. We talk about grief, loss, and the questions that keep us up at night. We talk about how the heaviest seasons of our lives don't have to bury us. They can plant us, and we can grow from that. And I bring on guests who help illuminate the path, no matter how dark it feels. My guest today is Mist. Mist is a singer-songwriter who didn't write a single song until she was in her 30s, and has written more than a hundred cents. But the music is only part of her story. Mist was abandoned at five years old. In her late 20s, she was handed a terminal cancer diagnosis. And somewhere in the middle of all that loss and uncertainty, she discovered she had a voice. One that's now charted on Billboard, made it the first date of Chinese artists to reach the pop AC chart, and turned into a top 10 mental health podcast and her new book. What drew me to Mist isn't the charts or the records. It's that she took everything that could have hardened her. The abandonment, the fear, the grief, and turned it into a question worth asking out loud. How do we reconnect with ourselves, with each other, when everything tells us to shut down? In this episode, we're going to talk about what it feels like to find your gift late after you've already been broken open. We'll explore why something as small as 15 seconds of intentional action can change the texture of a grieving day. And we'll sit with the idea that loneliness might be one of the quietest griefs of all. And what it actually takes to come back from it. If you've been carrying a loss or feeling more disconnected than you'd like to admit, and you're wondering whether there's a way through that doesn't require it all figured out, then this conversation is for you. And if you want to continue the conversation after the episode, head over to GriefTheGrowth.substack.com. There you'll find an article about today's discussion, where you can comment and connect with me and with other listeners. So with that, I want to welcome the Grief The Growth Mist. Thank you so much for having me, Brian. It's my honor to be here. Yeah, I'm really excited about having this conversation with you. We talked a little bit before we started recording about our mutual backgrounds and things, you know, the grief events that kind of form us. And I know one of your first grief events happened when you were a small child. So tell me about that. You're absolutely right. When I was waiting in the waiting room for this, I was thinking, what's my losses? I kind of trained my brain to forget a lot of those or to paint them a little differently. But you're right. Abandonment is some kind of loss. It could be even worse than losing my parents to death. I'm not saying it in a disrespectful way. They yanked themselves out of my life. And it's not like I know they couldn't contact me or come and see me. I know they can. They just chose not to. That was a horrible feeling to deal with. But at the time, I had no idea what I was dealing with. I was just desperately trying to get rid of this very uncomfortable feeling. I don't want to feel left behind. I don't want to feel that they didn't want to see me. They didn't want to be here with me. And when I had to deal with different emotions at such a young age, I had nobody to go to. So I learned all kinds of ways just to suppress feelings, not to show it to anybody. Then I can pretend I don't have them. So I don't have to deal with them. And so from a young age, because of that, I also always ended up pushing away my close friends. When we start to get very close and feel everything just clicks, then I get very scared. Subconsciously, I was asking myself, what if they also leave me? It's going to hurt. So things are going too well. I better cut it off. So I ended up hurting some potential best friends for life. And now, as an adult, I realize what I did as a child. I start to understand why I did what I did. Now I lost contact with those friends, and I can't go back and say sorry. Like you said, I discovered music late in my 30s. I started using music to write about all these feelings. And I could write an apology letter to those friends and tell them how I really feel. And I hope when they will hear the song and receive the apology. I'm sure they will. And I want to acknowledge there are many, many types of loss. It's not just losing someone to death. The loss of abandonment can be even a deeper wound. When we lose someone, there's always this irrational thing, no matter how we lost them, we feel kind of abandoned. But there's certain losses, like when someone dies by suicide, that there's a feeling of abandonment. Like they left me. And I'm sure it's very similar in your case when someone removes themselves from your life, it makes you feel unworthy. What did I do wrong? Even as a child, we tend to blame ourselves. And that pain being so deep, I can see why you say, I never want to feel that again. So we make a vow that says, I'm not going to get close to someone so they can't hurt me that way. Absolutely. And I also believe that the earlier in life we experience something like this, the deeper the wound is, and all the other later events build on it. Yes. This deeper one is the root of a lot of other issues. I see that affecting my life every day. I have to fight it, non-stop. Yeah. Well, the beauty is, as we get older and get some wisdom and experience and perspective, we can start to see those things. And it's really important not to judge ourselves as children for not seeing it that way. So it's great that you want to offer an apology to those people that you hurt when you were younger, but you didn't know any better. You were coming from a place of not understanding what was really going on. Thank you. That's one main thing I have to deal with every day, is to not judge myself harshly. I tend to do that. Sometimes I've been doing it without realizing. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And then you had another thing that happened to you when you were only in your 20s. You were diagnosed with cancer. Yeah. First of all, I want to say this event, right now I'm talking about it, still don't feel any bad feelings towards it. I'll explain why. Because that feels like the event that finally brought my family back to me. I remember when I was in middle school, I had to have my appendix removed. That's when my dad came back and took care of me for a few days in a hospital. That's after he abandoned me at five. That was the first time we actually spent a few days together. So I always had this good feeling about being in the hospital. That's when people show up in my life. So when I was diagnosed with cancer, my family also all came back to me. They were traveling with me from a city to another to seek the best treatment there is. So even though it was very scary, I felt like I could. All the doctors say you have one month to live, three months to live, but all that's consistent is you will die if you don't get properly treated soon. Just to explain how powerful the emotion to the feeling to want my family back is, it overpowered the fear. I want them back so badly when I see them with me. I feel bad that they're crying every day, feeling that they're going to lose me permanently. But I felt like I was surrounded by love. I was happy. That's the first time I had a break in my life. I didn't have to work or study. I was just relaxing, waiting for the appointments, waiting for test results. So I picked up ukulele and just started playing. That's the first instrument I picked up. But at that time, I didn't write any music. I just can't play a few chords, but that's how happy I felt at the moment. That's really, really interesting. I've heard people say that maybe, and you didn't say the exact words, but a cancer diagnosis might have been the best thing that ever happened to me because it gives us a chance to reset, like you said, to take a break from all the other things about life because we've got to put our focus on our physical body, but also the feeling, and it's unfortunate sometimes, that's what it takes to get the love that we need, to get the care, and that's the most important thing there is in life, maybe even more important than our health. Absolutely. The need for love and for connection is like the need for eating food and drinking water. When we don't have it, it drives us crazy. We do all kinds of things either to surprise it or to get it in another way. Even though it's very unhealthy, but we just have to have it. Otherwise, we feel we're going to die. It's interesting, as we're saying, I'm thinking about Maslow's hierarchy of needs, where it starts with shelter and food, and they say we need those basic things before we need actualization, but I think it's actually the other way around. I think if we don't feel love, if we don't feel hope, if we don't feel those things, then the other things don't really matter. That's how some people literally give up on their life, then the body just quit. Everything is normal the moment before, and now everything stopped completely. You go through this thing, you pick up the ukulele to make yourself feel happy. How did you discover you could actually write music? During that time, I did record one or two little videos of me singing on ukulele. Very simple. That's all I can do. I left it on my social media posts buried down below. Then I started getting better after the surgery, after losing 60% of liver and gallbladder. Then I got back to work, then the ukulele was played less and less, and life restarted. However, after a few years, a friend introduced me to... At that time, I didn't know, but it was my future husband. He has a five-year-old little girl, so they were flipping through my Instagram posts, and they found the downburied little clips of ukulele playing, and they started listening, and she started crying. That's what made him decide, okay, I have to actually talk to this girl. Even though the friend already introduced us, we didn't talk at all, but it's singing that got their attention. The girl kept crying, so he asked, can you please record a few lullaby songs for my daughter to listen to before she goes to bed? So I did, and she continued crying after she listened to the songs every time. Eventually, they came to Canada and met me. It's because of that, we got married during COVID, we all started learning new things, and I wanted to learn more, because I love to sing. I just want to learn a few piano chords so I can also accompany myself on the piano. That's when my husband started stopping me from watching YouTube videos, because he said, from listening to you, I know that you have the gift of writing your own music and play by ear. Don't let YouTube videos limit how you use your gift. Explore first. Later, if you want to learn something, fine, learn it, but don't do it at such an early stage. But I said, no, I wanted to. I just want to learn something. It felt very scary to me to do something without learning. So we argued for six months, but he wouldn't give up on encouraging me and stopping me from watching YouTube videos. So after six months, I said, okay, that's enough. Let me show you today that I really can't play by ear. I can't write music by just messing around on the piano and give it a try. But before I realized I wrote three songs that day and totally proved myself wrong. Sounds like your husband's a wise man. Totally. Yeah, it's really interesting how we sometimes play ourselves small, right? You have this voice in you that somehow he knew, and he had to convince you to put it out there. So how were you discovered? Did you put these out on YouTube, or how did people start finding out about you? Actually, that's an interesting story because music business is a whole different world. And we didn't come from that world. We have no idea of how to get people to listen to your music and watch your videos or anything. Because there are thousands of people putting out so many songs every day. It would just be a drop of sand in the ocean. So we just did it the old way. Everybody we meet, we talk to them and tell them. He's very bold about it and proud. He's like, my wife is a musician. One day we just met another musician at a house showing and we swapped music. We listened to each other's music and he forwarded my music to a friend of his who happens to work for one of the greatest producers, Narda Michael Walden. And I just received a call from Narda and said, I would like to meet you. Please come to my studios. So I went. That's how I was discovered. The day I went there, I didn't know what to expect, but he put me on the exact piano and microphone where Aretha Franklin recorded respect on and said, sing me something. Wow. That had to be intimidating. Wow. I know. And I only know the few chords I learned finally from YouTube and with my songs that's not recorded at all. I thought about, maybe I should bring a few songs just in case. So I did. And I sang him a song. And after that, he said, sing me another one. Then sing me another one. Sing me another one. Then he started coming to the piano and said, you can do this on the song. Then he went to the drums and said, oh, you can do this on this song. Then three hours later, he had to go. But before he left, he said, next, I want to produce an album for you. That's amazing. Wow. Wow. So how did you feel in that moment? I felt like very surreal. The whole thing just felt like a dream. So before he left, I also told him, Narda, this is like a dream that I'm afraid to dream. But after what she told me, I'm not afraid to dream again. He told me, you should write a song about it. It's a song. And I did write a song, and it was on that album. Oh, wow. Wow. That is truly amazing. And as you said, it's good and bad, I guess, in the music field now because we can break through without going through the gatekeepers. But then on the other hand, that means literally millions of people are putting music on YouTube every day. And to break through all that, you have to have something really, really special. And I guess it's the emotion that you're putting into it, the feelings that we've talked about. And I love when you and I asked you earlier about what are the grief events in your life. And you said, I don't really see them that way because you've learned to reframe them. And that's what I think life is all about. How do we look at things? And you've learned to see because of this, I have this, I wouldn't have this. You wouldn't have discovered your ability to play music if you hadn't been slowed down by the cancer. Also, earlier before I came in, I was also thinking about how I dealt with grief the last time I felt it. It was a few months ago. It was December. So it's got almost half a year ago. We lost our 12-year-old dog who's been with the family from the beginning. And it felt like losing a family member. So I was trying to recall what I did. I remember before she passed away, I started thinking about this and I told my husband, we have to wait. After she passes away, we have to embrace the grief for a while because now experiencing enough, I learned that there is no bad emotions. Whatever feelings good that we feel easier to feel or harder to feel, they're all there for a reason. If we can just sit with it and embrace it, we'll hear what it's trying to tell us. So we can learn from it. That is so wise. And I felt sorry for your younger self when you were telling the story of your abandonment, how you stuffed those emotions because they don't feel comfortable. And we don't want to feel them. But the thing about grief is it is here to teach us something. It's also very patient. We'll wait for us to be ready to face it. Absolutely. Because that's why I was telling my husband before it happens because I know once the emotions kick in, I might not be able to think straight and pace myself. I'll just try to grab everything to get rid of that feeling. So I have to think ahead of time to really decide, make a choice to embrace it. So also in the moment, I wouldn't feel that I was forced into having to deal with this. I chose to sit with it. And I did learn a lot from it. I also had an episode on my podcast called Three Days to Say Goodbye because the vet came and said, explain to us that she's not enjoying her life anymore. She's just living for us. She's basically sleeping all day long because she physically can't enjoy it. So we said, please give us three more days so we can say okay to everything she wants to do and just really spend some quality time with her. And as a whole family, including my 12-year-old daughter, we learned so much from that. And it's through that event, I decided to reconnect with my dad that I haven't seen for over 20 years that has left the family over 30 years ago. I reconnected with him and I forgive him because I realized from those three days, I re-thinked how I should treat everyone in my life if I had the knowledge of I'm going to lose them in three days. I will change how I treat them. But in reality, it could happen. We can't control everything that happens in our lives. So we should start treating everybody like the way we want to treat them if we knew that we were going to die in three days. That is so profound. That is so beautiful. And I'm sorry for the loss of your dog. And losing a dog, it's not like losing a family member. It's losing a family member. Our pets are parts of our family, so I can feel that with you. I had to make a decision for my dog. This was several years ago now. She was 14. And it was a point where she couldn't get out. We'd keep her in the mud room, she would stay there when we would go out and stuff. And I realized she hadn't left the room in a couple of days, except for me carrying her outside. And I'm like, that's no way for her to live. But our dogs, they love us so much that they'll stay here with us. Even when they're in pain, because they want us to be happy. So that decision that you made, it's a very beautiful thing. And I love what you said about treating everybody as if they're going to be gone in three days. We never know. My daughter passed away suddenly. She was fine one day and she passed in her sleep. I have a friend who was just a few weeks from being 60 years old and just suddenly passed. And so we know now that life is precious and we can tell ourselves we've got so much time. We'll make up later. So I'm glad to hear that you reconciled with your father. I think that's a beautiful thing that you've done. Thank you. Yeah, that's the power of embracing the grief and learn something from it. So next time it will help us to feel a little better. I'm sure it will still feel very painful, but knowing that we made it through this time and knowing that we learned something from it and knowing that we're applying it every day with everybody we love, somehow it will ground us and help us through the next time and we'll come out even stronger and better. Yeah. Well, you asked the question I think is really important to ask. What are you here to teach me? Why is this happening? What can I learn from this? And for me, I'm a spiritual person. I believe that things happen for a reason. For people that maybe don't believe that, okay, that's fine too. But what can you learn from this, right? What can I take from this? What can I change? How can I grow from this? We can all do that whether you believe it happens for a reason or not. Absolutely. That's something all of us can do. And if we do, we'll, yeah, we'll benefit from it. So I'm sure as people are here, people who may not be familiar with the music, what are some of the songs that people can look up and listen to from you? Thank you. Like you mentioned a little bit about loneliness. That was my last year's project. The song is called Could You Land Me a Smile? Yeah. It's written based on a real story of a young guy who died in his own apartment alone in Japan. So I started thinking about, because he's just like what I talked about earlier, he's not lack of material or he has his own apartment. He can buy food and support himself. He just had nobody. So he gave up. That's what happened. So I started thinking every time he goes outside, he should have easily met hundreds or thousands of people in a busy city. And if anybody just made a meaningful eye contact with him or let him borrow their smile for a second, that could have changed his life. Because his life means something. So I wrote a song called Could You Land Me a Smile? You don't have to give it to me. Just let me borrow it for a second so I can hold to the hope for a little longer. And I realize it's not a one area problem. It's everywhere, including here in the U.S. So we tried to reach out to singers all over the world, adapted the song properly into their culture and their language. Not just word by word. It has to move the same to them in an authentic way. So also delivered by singers that actually speak the language. So we did 16 language inversions. And yeah, distributed them all over the world. To remind each other that it's not a big ask, just a tiny thing that could actually change our lives and theirs. That's amazing. You know, we sometimes think I can't do anything because the problem is too big. You know, I can't fix this, so I won't do anything. And I love your ideas of doing small things. Mother Teresa said small things done with great love will change the world. And I don't even call them small things. We call them small from our human perspective. But from a spiritual perspective, they're very big things. There's a project that I love. There's some people are producing t-shirts that say on the front, says you are enough. And the back that says, dear person behind me, the world's a better place with you in it. Sign the person, love the person in front of you. And so I got that sweatshirt and I wear it. And it's amazing the reactions you get from people. And I've heard people have actually said seeing that shirt has saved a life because people just hearing, not even hearing, just seeing it on a t-shirt that the world's a better place with you and it can save someone's life. You're absolutely right. And that's exactly the reason that I started talking about these 15 second actions. Yes. Every episode other than the song and explaining why I wrote the song and expand on the topic of how we become disconnected and how we can reconnect. There's always a call to action as the first step that we can do to start this process. Just because we see so many problems these days and we tell ourselves there's nothing I can do. It's such a big problem. There's no way that anything I do can be helpful. So we just gave up. So when I started doing, the idea started from this song. When we tried to boil it down to the tiniest step it can be. So nobody can say, oh, I don't have the time to do it. Or I just can't do it. Everybody was given the ability to smile. And everybody has a second. And that's only the first step of all the call to actions. I had 48 episodes. So there are 48, one of them. And in every episode in Make Me Smile podcast, I stop. I say, now I'm going to pause for 15 seconds. And I'm going to do this action. When I come back, I will tell you what I did and how I feel. Yeah. So tell me about some of these actions. Yeah. That's what we knocked off earlier. I have this little kindness cube that I give away on my website on a donation basis that has some of the actions on it. Of course, on the top, it's smile. And I love this one. Be silly. Every one of them, we, as a family, always try it first. For be silly, we have a walk right outside our house that we go on about twice a day. So now we do all the experiments on the walk. We start smiling at people all the way. And be silly. Our 12-year-old start to get shy and start to act bashful around people. So when there are people walking by us, me and my husband would hold onto her so she doesn't run away and we start skipping. She would feel so embarrassed, but people laugh. And sometimes it's a loop. On the way back, we see the same group of people that laughed the first time. We would do it again. And the second time, usually my daughter joined us. So be silly is a good one. It doesn't take long. 15 seconds is plenty. And be grateful. Even in the worst situations, there's always something we can be grateful for. And that's a little bit light that we can have. Yes. And I love this one. Say a kind word. Yeah. To anybody in our life. If we buy coffee every morning, we can be kinder and smile and say a kind word to them. Maybe you are the first person saying something very nice to them. Just comment on their hair, their clothes, anything that's changed. Or comment on how kind they were to you. How much we appreciate you making coffee for me every day. And that might change their day. And they might just wake up from whatever they are feeling and start to show that to others. And we start a chain reaction from right there. And the last one on this cube is my favorite. Remind someone that you love them. When was the last time you received a phone call that somebody you know just said, oh, there's nothing I just want to tell you. I love you. Have a good day. Bye. How would you feel? If it's a voicemail, how long would you keep it? Yeah, that is a wonderful thought. It's really wild. We're recording this on my birthday. Today is my 65th birthday. So I'm getting all these things on Facebook. And my father just called me and stuff. And it's great because we do that on birthdays. If we tell everybody, happy birthday. So we feel great on our birthdays. I get like a couple hundred people saying, we're glad that you're here. But how many times do we do that when it's not a special day? And I actually, I'm on Substack. I'm not very big on Substack, but I made a post one day and I said, it was just a normal day. I just called my father to say hi to him. That was my most viral Substack post like ever. And I'm like, why is that? Because we don't do that. We don't just call someone out of the blue. It always has to be an occasion. So I love what you're doing by saying, energy is infectious. We can put negative energy in the world, which spreads and grows, or we can put positive energy into the world. And we get to make that choice. Absolutely. And I was going to say, yeah, we don't celebrate birthday with our daughter and also ourselves, but we celebrate every day. Yes. We can give you gifts whenever we want to. We can have a big gathering whenever we want to and just show each other that it doesn't have to be a special occasion. And every day, just like you said, we can choose to celebrate. We can choose to spread that positive energy. And all the ones you mentioned are, I think, really important. Being grateful is extremely important. And we see what we choose to focus on. So when we're going through illness, we can choose to focus on our illness or we can choose to focus on the kindness it brings in people around us. We can choose to focus on maybe it gives us a chance to slow down. And no matter how ill we might be, the fact that we can open our eyes. I was listening to this guy the other day. He's a biologist that's working on some health things. He goes, you know how many things are going right in your body all the time? Even when you feel like everything's going wrong, what do we focus on? We focus on the diagnosis. But we don't focus on the fact that we can see, we can walk, we can talk, we can speak. We still have those things. So that's the gratitude piece. It's really, really important. Absolutely. I think, I feel most of us more naturally tend to focus on negative things. Much easier than focusing on positive things. And like you said, it's a choice that we make. We can choose to focus on the positive things and do little positive actions to remind us. Once we get our body involved, the more senses we can get involved, the easier we can remember this feeling. And it's easier for us to do next time. And I was going to say, all these things, none of them that we didn't know as a three years old. We're not learning anything new. There's no learning to do. We might be unlearning some things. Or we're just reminding ourselves what we already knew as a three years old and be that three years old. We're much happier when we were. Yeah, that's a great point. The world, and music is my life. I listen to music 24-7. I walk six miles every morning. I'm listening to music usually the most time I'm walking. And there's a song by Earth from the Fire called, That's the Way of the World. And how we come in and we're innocent, and we're basically happy beings. And then we get all this junk around us. All the things that the adults tell us are important. And we start focusing on those things. So it's really a matter of reminding ourselves. And music is such a great way to do that. It's such a great way to take and put in three or five minutes some great wisdom that we can go back and just remind ourselves. Absolutely. Music is maybe the only thing or one of the few things that can change our emotions in a matter of seconds. Yes. And it could feel very gloomy today. And when you listen to your favorite song, it could change it in seconds. Yeah. You know, you talked about that. I actually wrote a subject about emotional regulation. We talked about it. I'm like, what if we did it intentionally? So I'm very intentional with the music that I play. And sometimes I want to feel down. I want to get those emotions out. And so I want to connect with someone who can actually say it better than I could. Right. So I find a song that lets me express that. So I go through the emotions. I don't want to avoid those emotions. I'm angry. I'll put on Lincoln Park and I'll get really angry. But then I and I get, I take this big block and it's a loop. By the time I come back, I put on something happy. I want to, I want to, I want to be uplifted as I come back to start my day. So we can choose. We can choose our mood and express it through music. And you're right. We could. And I tell people, try it. Take a song that's really angry, put it on and think about something that makes you mad. And you'll feel the anger come up in you and then do the same thing with, with love or forgiveness. And letting it out, I feel is a good way instead of, oh, I think I'm feeling angry. That's no good. Let's just get rid of it. Or we're thinking about it, but instead you let, let it out through music. It's a healthier way. And afterwards you feel so much better. Earlier, I just remembered one thing that we were talking about changing our lives. It is a good, it is a good thing, but I wanted to point out it's not always easy. Sometimes losing an old habit that doesn't serve us anymore can feel like a loss. Because in a weird way, in an unhealthy way, it's been soothing us for so long. It's been with us. It's like almost becoming part of us. It's something we feel familiar to. And when we try to change it to something positive that actually will serve us better, it can still feel scary. And it could feel like losing some old skin. It's not like taking off a jacket. It could feel very painful. Yeah. That's a really good point. You know, you talked earlier about how we focus on the negative. That is, that's biology. That's the way we're evolved. Our brains are designed to keep us alive. And the way that brains keep us alive is by looking for danger, for looking for things that are wrong. So we're constantly scanning for things that are wrong. So don't beat yourself up if you're a person that says, I have this negative bias. That's a natural human thing. But we also have free will, and we can choose to look for positive things. And that's where your kindness thing comes in, your cube, your project, you know, that's a choice that we can make. It takes energy, which again is why our biology says, I want to do the things that are easy, because that's a conservation of energy. So we keep doing the same thing, as long as we feel like it's kind of working for us. And we have to say, no, this isn't really working. This is how I want to be. I want to change this. You know, you could choose to stay angry at your father. That would be a natural, easy thing to do. And that might soothe some part of you that says, I'm justified in doing this. But you realize there's a deeper part of you that says, I want to let this go. That's why that's why we want to set the goal very small and make the action. Yes. And every time we do this one thing, we can tell us in the morning that I'm only going to do one of them and it's only going to take 15 seconds. I'm not going to set my goal very high. Once I have done that, I'm good. I can tell myself. So at the end of the day, you come back. It doesn't have to be this cube. But if there's something that that's there to remind you, oh, I did it, then you can feel very good about yourself and about the action. And the next day you try to do just that one thing again, set the goal very small. And like you said, when we couldn't do something, don't beat ourselves up. Yeah. Well, I can see why your podcast is so popular because what you're saying to me makes so much sense. And when I'm working with clients, one of the things I tell people is like, I could give you a list of all these big things to do. And we could set really big goals. I'm a big believer in small achievable goals. It's so cliche, cliche. There's an old movie called What About Bob? And there's a scene with a psychiatrist and he says, baby steps. It's all about baby steps. And that's what it is. It's taking these little, these small actions because that's positive reinforcement. Your brain goes, oh, that felt good. I was able to accomplish something, as opposed to I'm going to meditate for two hours every day. That's not something you want to start trying to do. No, I've tried both. And this is so much easier. And now if I think about it, actually do a lot of these actions in a day without having to think about it. Body is trained from one action at a time. Then it starts to build a positive habit. Yeah. And that's the thing about habits, right? Habits are, again, it's another shortcut for our brains and stuff because our brain likes to keep things simple. So we build habits. We think of habits a lot of times negatively because we do build negative habits, but we can build positive habits. And I have a gratitude practice and I started off in the morning but wake up and try to think of the three things I'm grateful for. And I've realized in the last, this has been just the last few weeks or months, I'm like, I really don't have to do that anymore because I don't have to think about it. It happens all during the day. And this is not a natural thing for me. It wasn't before, but it's become just ingrained. So I think having the cube and looking at that and saying, today I'm going to find a person to smile at, or today I'm going to be silly in a moment or whatever it happens to be. Once you do that, then you have to think about it anymore and you can move on to do other things. It just becomes part of you. Yeah. Sorry. I forgot earlier you asked me about the songs people can look. Yeah. I was telling you my last year's project and the song, Could You Land Me a Smile? Right now, I'm actually having a new song that was built on top of that. And it goes just exactly almost like what she said earlier about love. It's called Love Will Show Us Our Way. Oh, yeah. Encouraging people to let love guide our big and small actions in our life. I'm not asking anybody to change any action, but before you take that action, try to let love guide it and see how you actually want to do it. And, you know, as I'm talking to you, Miss Demi, people might say, oh, well, she writes music and she has a podcast and these are two different things. It's all part of the same thing. It's all part of what you're doing, right? So the music is a way for you to get your message out. And then the podcast is the way that people can go deeper with it. Maybe what you might not get out of listening to just the song, but you are providing a service to the world, right? That's so badly needed right now, recognizing loneliness and then sitting there and analyzing and looking at it and saying, okay, not only am I just going to look at the world and see there's loneliness, but what can I do about it? I was just thinking as I was listening to you talk about this, it's like you took the place of, I write a lot of these written interviews too, and people ask me these questions. They grab music, podcast, book, and they ask me, how does this go together? What you just said has answered it perfectly. I feel it's so easy to come to your podcast because you just understand it all and you summarized it beautifully for me. Well, yeah. Yeah. I just meaningful music and podcasts. They're all the same goal. Exactly. Exactly. You're delivering a message, you know, and that's to me, you know, it's funny because I said I love music and some people like, I just like listening to the musicality or I listen to the lyrics. I have people say I don't even listen to lyrics, which I just don't understand how you can listen to music and not listen to the lyrics. That's what the message is. But what you're doing is you're saying, I have something I want to say to you. Here are the ways I can say it. I can say it through music. I can say it through a podcast. I can say it through my book. But the one thing is that it's that message that you're delivering that you're not alone, you know, that you can make the world, it might be a scary place, but you can make the world a better place. And I think that is the message that we all need right now, which is why when I saw you, I was like, I really want to have her on because you're not just a musician. I mean, you've written some really popular music and you've had great success with that, but it's because I think people are resonating with your message. And I think there is one message that's also very important that both what you're doing and I'm doing is trying to tell people that is yes, at some point of our life, very likely we will be in a very dark place and experiencing some very heavy emotions and dealing with some very difficult stuff. But first of all, you're not alone. There are other people also experiencing it. And second, there is a way out and there is a way. It's not easy, but you will come out as a better person. Yeah. Yeah. And that is the thing that's really, you know, the first message I want people to get is you will survive this, right? My tagline is plant it, not bury. So when we bury something, it's gone. We put it away because we don't expect it to come back. When something's planted, it's the exact same motion. We're putting it in the ground, but we're putting it in the ground with a different intention. When we plant a seed, we plant it because we expect something to come back. And you are, and I was telling you before we get started, I've been fortunate enough and I've done almost 500 of these episodes and I've got to meet people like you who said you've gotten to the point now where it's like, well, what are the grief events in my life? It's hard for me to think of what they are because I don't view them that way anymore. These are the way these are the ways that I was planted. And this is what grew out of that. The reason why you feel compassion that you feel so deeply is probably because of that very early wound you had as a five year old. And you're saying people are lonely and they're hurting. And I want to be a healer. Absolutely. It's people like you and I who's been there, who usually start things like these, like a group, a community to help other people to understand. We've been through there. We know how hard it is and we know that we can come out. So we have experience on both sides to show them. And through helping others, we also get healed more and more deeply from what we're still dealing with. We're not, you and I are not over with what we've experienced. We're still healing from it. We tell other people and show other people how we're coping. We're still healing. Yeah. I think it's really important to say because sometimes people might look at someone like yourself or maybe even me and say, Oh, well, they've gotten through it. They're okay now. They've done. No, it's an ongoing process. And grief is it's kind of a cyclical thing. We'll think we've dealt with something and then we'll come back and we'll deal with it on another level. My daughter's angel versus coming up again comes up every year. Right. It's coming up again in about a month. And that's always a very difficult time of year for me. Big events, you know, weddings, funerals, et cetera. When she's not there, I was just on vacation last week with my other daughter and I was really missing my daughter, you know, badly because we were in the same location we were 12 years ago on vacation. So I wanted people to know it's not like we've got this all figured out or like, you know, we don't have more difficulties in our life, but there's there's a hope that always comes through, I guess, from having known we've experienced what we have and come through and you're willing to go back and share that with other people. I think that's a beautiful thing. Absolutely. Yeah. The struggle doesn't get less actually. And every new struggle comes. It reminds you all of the old ones and you feel like, I've done all this work and now I have to redo everything again. But now I start to accept that it's the norm. I have to expect struggles. I shouldn't expect that. Okay. Once I've done this huge task, it's just all easy way after. No, there's still struggles and I want to tell everyone that I'm still struggling. So that also helps them to see that, okay, even people who's been through very tough stuff, they're still struggling so they could feel better and not be too harsh with themselves. I tell people being human is hard. It's a hard thing that we've chosen to do to come here and to have these bodies in this world at this time. But on the other hand, there is so much beauty here. There's so much joy to be had here. There is gratitude while we're here and there's fulfilling work to do here. And I feel like you are one of the light workers. You are one of the people here to encourage other people to keep going and to do the work and to learn from the struggle. I don't believe that the struggle that we have is an accident. I believe it's a feature. It's not a bug. I think this is what we're here to do, to grow. And like you said, people that are doing the things that you're doing, of all the interviews I've done, I don't talk to people who have had easy lives. I don't talk to people who have never had a struggle. And we all struggle on some level. But it's the struggle that has built the character coming through the fire that's built who you are today. Absolutely, totally agree. We sometimes talk about some people ask, why are all these young people's new songs are about love, losing love, breakoffs, cheating? Because they haven't experienced other things to write about yet. So that's a big part of their life. So they're writing it. One day after they experience those things, they will also write about other things. But that's what my music can bring is all the experiences and other things that not everyone experiences every day. It's interesting, as you said, this is just a total thing that hit my head when you said it, though. But I love Led Zeppelin and Aerosmith and all those old groups, The Beatles. And I think about how young they were when they wrote some of that music. And I'm like, I don't know how they did it. I mean, I believe it's channeled. I believe that music comes from above because I was listening to, I was 64 last year, and I was listening to the song When I'm 64, and the Beatles wrote that when they were teenagers. And I'm like, how do you know that? And Aerosmith wrote Dream On, Stephen Tyler wrote that when he was like a teenager. So there is some level that people can tap into that. But, you know, generally, people write about what they know about. And generally, you know, you'd listen to young people's music. It's going to be pretty simple. Yeah. Also, the technologies and the social media all has changed how people live their life today than in the 70s. So maybe they had more chances to experience a more variety of things at a younger age. Yeah, it's a good point. Yeah. Well, we're coming to the end of our time. I really enjoyed our conversation today. Is there anything I haven't asked you that you'd like to address? Just if people want to listen to the podcast and dig more into the topics I talked about about human connection is Make Me Smile With Mist. Also, if you prefer to read books, we also convert it into books, which the first one is out. It's also with the same name, Make Me Smile With Mist. There are QR codes for the songs that's in every episode of the podcast. Oh, wow. Again, and listen to When It's Time. I talked about it first. Then at a certain time, I said, please listen to this song. Then come back and I'll talk more with the knowledge of them already listening to the song. Oh, that's beautiful. I love that. I think that's so again, delivering the message in different ways and using music to do that. And I think that music touches us at a deeper level than just words alone can. So having the message and the words and then reinforcing with the music, it's wonderful. So I have links to the website, but like you said, it's pretty simple, Make Me Smile With Mist. I want to tell you, I've really enjoyed spending time with you today. And thank you for what you're doing in the world. I want to say the same thing. Thank you for what you're doing for the world. It's every little bit that each one of us do that helps a great deal. Yeah, absolutely. Well, enjoy the rest of your day. You too. Bye.