Running a Business While Battling Depression

🛑 Trigger Warning: This episode discusses depression and mental health struggles.

Entrepreneurship is hard. And sometimes, it’s lonely.

In this raw and honest conversation, Amy Porterfield and I sat down to talk about something most business owners don’t share publicly: depression.

We both know what it’s like to build a successful business while struggling internally—waking up with a heavy heart, feeling like a failure despite external success, and wondering, "Why do I feel this way when I should be happy?"

In this episode, we discuss:

✨ The difference between situational vs. clinical depression

✨ The shame and stigma around depression in entrepreneurship

✨ How I first realized I needed help (and why I resisted it)

✨ The mindset shifts and tools that changed the game for both of us

✨ Why talking about mental health makes you a stronger leader

If you’ve ever felt like you’re the only one struggling, this episode is for you. You’re not alone. You’re not broken. And you don’t have to go through this in silence.

🎧 Listen now and DM me on Instagram @JasmineStar to share your thoughts.

Click play to hear all of this and:

[00:00] Jasmine’s initial resistance to talking about depression publicly

[02:47] Amy’s experience with depression during her early years in business

[06:45] The difference between situational vs. clinical depression

[10:30] Why stigma around mental health makes it harder for entrepreneurs

[15:12] How Jasmine’s cultural background shaped her view on depression

[18:55] The impact of therapy, self-awareness, and mindset work

[22:41] Practical steps entrepreneurs can take to care for their mental health

[27:33] Why opening up about depression creates space for others to heal

🔗 Connect With Amy Porterfield:

Website: https://amyporterfield.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/amyporterfield/

Facebook: https://facebook.com/amyporterfield

📧 Join my Newsletter for a weekly cocktail of insider business strategy, personal reflections, and the journey of being a thought leader: https://jasminestar.com/newsletter 📧

For full show notes, visit jasminestar.com/podcast/episode531

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Transcript

Jade Hall 00:00:00  I'm Jade, CEO of Jasmine Star and social curator, and we're about to listen to a conversation that Jasmine had with Amy Porterfield on her podcast, The Amy Porterfield Show, about something most entrepreneurs don't talk about enough depression. In this episode, Jasmine and Amy share their real experiences, from the pressures of business to the personal battles they've faced with mental health. If you've ever felt alone in your struggles, this is the reminder that you're not alone. Let's dive in.

Amy Porterfield 00:00:27  When I called you and said, let's talk about depression on my podcast, what did you think? What did you feel? What went through your head?

Jasmine Star 00:00:34  Well, you and I both know, and I've said this a thousand times before. Whenever you ask me to do something, it's always yes. Like when Amy asks anything, I'm like, yeah, of course. Duh. Like, why? Why are we asking? Let's let's move forward. And so when she's like, hey, I have a question. My knee jerk reaction in answer was like, well, yes, of course.

Jasmine Star 00:00:52  And all of a sudden she finished sentence and I was like, whoa, whoa, there, what are we talking about? And how is this going to look? And I started feeling a lot of resistance. And whenever I feel resistance, the thing that I always have to do is take a step back and ask myself, why am I feeling this way? What are the stories that I'm telling myself? And then make a decision based on number one, if it will get me closer to my purpose, and number two if it will help people. And regardless of how I feel about it emotionally, if the answers are both affirmative in that, then I know that I have my answer regardless of how it makes me feel. And then also, I had just before that conversation had read a quote by Elie Wiesel. I swore never to be silent. Whenever and wherever humans endured suffering, we must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.

Jasmine Star 00:01:51  And when I read that, it was like I automatically knew that my silence was going to impede progress and that my silence was going to encourage people to wear a mask or to not talk about really difficult things in their lives. And I just felt, well, Amy and I talk about it openly. Why can't we invite other people who might be interested in the conversation to have a healthy, positive, open, non stigmatized conversation about what it means to run a business, to do it with other people, even when the days are hard.

Amy Porterfield 00:02:20  Are so good, so true. And so this is exactly why I wanted Jasmin on the show. I knew that she'd be really open and honest about this one thing. She said, well, we were talking about it before I started recording and she said, I have to be 100% open and 100% honest about this topic. And of course I would expect nothing less of Jasmin, but I love that she like made the declaration. So that's what today is about an open, honest conversation.

Amy Porterfield 00:02:47  So I wanted to kind of start and to share with all of you that I have definitely, definitely struggled with depression throughout most of my college years and then into starting this online business. So a lot of a lot of it came up in my corporate years, and then it really moved its way into the years that I started this business. And for me, what depression has looked like is that there have been mornings that I have not wanted to get out of bed and felt like almost like I couldn't get out of bed, that the the sadness and the the black cloud. That's how I have always explained it has just been lingering over me. And when I would tell my mom, I'd say mom. I feel I would confide in her a lot about this. I feel like there is a black cloud over me. But the problem that I really struggle with is there's no reason why it should be there. I would look at my family and my home and my my son Kade and everything about our lives and think everything is so good.

Amy Porterfield 00:03:46  I have a beautiful husband, a beautiful life, and I am sad all the time. And so I felt a lot of shame around it, a lot of embarrassment around it, and it really came up a lot in my first few years of starting this business. That's where I felt it most, but it didn't start there. Like I said, it started mostly in college. I got on meds because of it, so my doctor prescribed medication for my depression and that really helped a lot. But then I thought I shouldn't take medication, so I got off of it. There's a stigma with it, and I know Jasmine's going to talk about her story with that. And I love what she talks about in terms of looking at medication and depression. And so I got off and on of medication for many, many years up until a few years ago. And I told Jasmine that now I don't struggle with it nearly as much. Of course, everybody has depression here and there depending on what's happening in their life, but I don't have those moments anymore of I can't get out of bed, or those moments of everything feels like despair and sadness.

Amy Porterfield 00:04:49  And so I've worked on it throughout the years, but I also wanted to talk to somebody that still has to deal with this more often than I do. So I wanted you to hear from a few different people. And so, Jasmine, I want you to talk about your experience with depression.

Jasmine Star 00:05:05  Well, I should probably start by just really reaffirming, affirming and explaining, clarifying that everybody struggles with depression. However, there is a situational depression. You know, everybody has bad days or a series of bad things that happen. And there's clinical depression, and clinical depression has to do more with the chemistry makeup of one's brain. And I have to clarify, I am not a trained medical professional. I will not be giving any medical advice. All I can do is speak my truth. And if there is a kernel that resonates with you or your journey, that the hope that the reason why I want to stand up is that other people say, I hear her, I identify with that, and it's giving me hope in spite of maybe not having all of the answers.

Jasmine Star 00:05:50  So my I guess story, my journey with depression. I feel like I had a really great childhood, really wonderful, amazing, supportive parents who did their absolute best and for a myriad of unexplainable reasons or explainable reasons. I kind of struggled my first bout of depression when I was around 25 years old. I was in law school and I think I kept on pushing it aside like my mom has brain cancer. I'm in law school. There's a lot of pressure on myself. It's okay to feel this way, and I kind of pushing it off and pushing it off, pushing you off, which I think is a pattern in a story in my life. I just continued to push through things instead of giving myself the permission to take a step back and really analyze what's going on. But I'm getting to the end. I'm getting to progress. So put a little pin in that notion of taking a step back and saying, what am I feeling? And why am I feeling this way? Instead of just saying, well, I'm going to continue pushing forward.

Jasmine Star 00:06:45  So put a pin there, 25 years old and I realized that I am so sad. I am not sleeping. I'm wildly stressed out. I am working out like a mad woman because when my life is spinning out of control, that I control the things I can control. I started controlling excessively what I ate, how much I exercised, how much I studied, and I think it manifested in like really a deterioration of a health. Like my hair was falling out, I wasn't sleeping, I didn't feel like I was in like a really good headspace. And so I was at UCLA law school. And part of being a student is you get access to UCLA medical center, which was pretty incredible. I made an appointment, I walked into the doctor's office and I didn't walk in saying I had depression. I don't think I could even, like, articulate those words. I just kept on saying, like, I'm really sad. I'm really, really, really sad. And when I listed all the reasons why I was so sad, which is the reasons I just listed, the doctor said, okay, this is indicative of something a little bit more.

Jasmine Star 00:07:47  My first suggestion would be medication. And so prescribed medication. Got it filled. And I have a very open relationship with my family. And I talked to my dad and I kind of explained, like, this is what's going on. And I think in retrospect, which is what he would probably say and admit now, was that we both didn't handle the conversation the way that we should have, only because maybe, maybe. And I don't want to put any words in his mouth, but maybe the conversation around depression was a little stigmatized. Perhaps it's not something that we really spoke about specifically, like in Latino culture, in first generation American culture. I mean, we were like really poor. So it was this whole kind of like new navigation of what it meant. And my father and mother both expressed their desires that their daughter wouldn't be on medication. And for me to try to do my best coping and understanding that there were certain things that everybody goes through, funks and stuff like that. And we ended the conversation there, and probably a few months into the medication, I realized that it wasn't having an effect that I was still really, really sad.

Jasmine Star 00:08:56  And I felt like that gray cloud that Amy describes. So apropos, like that's the perfect description. And in addition to me feeling that way, I felt cloudy. I felt so much more sleepy. I didn't feel like I was who I was. I felt like I was a different person, and as a result of that, I stopped taking the medication. But that led to like a cycle of beating myself up, like, come on. Like, who doesn't medication work for? Like, who are you? Like, really? Like, are you that much of a mess that this medication is not going to work for you? And so again, it just led to another cycle of beating myself up. And when I look back at that situation, I realize in retrospect, years after it's been over a decade since kind of had that first kind of like reckoning with what it meant. And what it means is that what I did in that moment was a pattern that I had created for myself, starting distinctly when I was 13 years old.

Jasmine Star 00:09:51  And that pattern was to beat myself up. And what I didn't know then, which is what I know now, is the way that we speak to ourselves has the possibility to amplify and or not and or diminish emotionally how we feel about something. And so I think that the biggest takeaway years later, giving myself the permission to talk openly about it with my friends and my family, was that when we have the ability to come out and ask for help, when we have the ability to admit we don't have the answers, and we have the ability to say, I feel very alone, it becomes a very different conversation. And I think that's why I really knew that I had to like, step up and talk openly about it. Although the resistance did come the resist. I told Amy I was like, I feel all these emotions. And I'm like, on the way here, I had a conversation with my husband and my business partner, JD, and he noticed that when I left the house, I just wasn't myself.

Jasmine Star 00:10:48  I woke up this morning and I did all my I love patterns. Now patterns have become a game changer for me. Like I do the same thing every morning. I pray, I meditate, I take a hot bath. Basically, I'm 87 years old. I'm like a lot of I do. I do four in the morning, I do, I know I send a text message. It's like early in the morning, I'm in the bath. Got this idea. so anyway, he, I did all the things to prepare me for what I felt could be a lot of resistance around this conversation. And on the five freeway driving up here, he said, let's take a step back. And that's been one of the first things. So before we actually get into what how I'm working through this, the thing I wanted to lead with was I did not want to give anybody the opportunity to label me as, oh, she's like the depressed entrepreneur. And I felt like if I came out and admitted that, that that would become a title.

Jasmine Star 00:11:34  And I have to remember that I write my own story, that even people can call me anything. They can make X, they can call my why, they call me depressing, call me happy. I get to define that story, and I want to encourage other people to say that there could be labels, but there's no stigma around it because what we Identify how we want our labels to be, or we are the ones to determine what that actually is and how we manifest it out.

Amy Porterfield 00:11:57  Are so good. It's so funny that when we are thinking about talking about a topic that is sensitive to us, we come up with all these stories. Because when my team said, why don't we talk about mental health? I knew that I don't experience depression like I used to. So then I thought, well, who am I to talk about it? My audience will think that I don't know enough about it or I don't have a strong enough story. But then I realized, especially after talking to Jasmin, that everyone has their own story and it shows up in so many different ways.

Amy Porterfield 00:12:28  And here's the thing that also comes with that. When I did have depression on a daily basis, there was so much shame and embarrassment around it. And so I talked to Jasmin about that, and I said, one of the reasons why this episode makes me nervous is because I remember all that shame. I don't want to bring it all up again. The shame I felt of feeling depressed, and it's really hard to talk to people about it if they've never experienced the depression before. So a lot of the times many people do not talk about it, or they sweep it under the rug, or they keep it a secret. And remember when I talked about the goals of this episode, Jasmine and I wanted it to become part of a conversation for you and whoever you need to have that conversation with. We want you to start talking about it. If it's something that you struggle with because, Jasmine, would you agree that once you start talking about it, it starts to slowly take that stigma off of it?

Jasmine Star 00:13:26  Oh, absolutely.

Jasmine Star 00:13:28  100%. And one thing I don't think I mentioned to you is I'm actually super excited that you are having the conversation because what you're saying like, who am I, who am I? And I think to myself, who are you? Not how amazing that you can look back and say, I no longer struggle with that. I think that that in and of itself is so hopeful. So I think it's really great to offer different perspectives, people who have gone through it Successfully people who are working their way through it and then just actually opening the doors, having a conversation.

Amy Porterfield 00:13:54  So very true. So one thing I wanted to talk about a lot was or like really get into is how we got here. So both of us have wildly successful businesses. You would agree right. Come on. Well it's not.

Jasmine Star 00:14:09  Porterfield size but yeah it's climbing up there. Yeah. I mean no we definitely yeah. That's exactly thank you God.

Amy Porterfield 00:14:16  Yes. And we both have amazing marriages. That's one thing that we really bond over is that we have amazing husbands who support us.

Amy Porterfield 00:14:24  We're very lucky.

Jasmine Star 00:14:25  We married out of our league. We were out of our league.

Amy Porterfield 00:14:27  I mean, let's be serious. So we have these great businesses, we have these great lives and we are at different places. And this is where I want to show each of our own sides. I have been able to move past the depression again. When I talk to Jasmine about this, she pointed out, because I said, well, it's not totally gone. It comes up when I'm struggling with stuff. She's like, yeah, that is what you call it, situational and but I don't have clinical. That would be the other one. Right. So in a clinical depression. But anyway, my point is that I've been able to move past it. And and I'm never really took the time to realize I had until I really started to dive into this topic for this episode. And Jasmine, I asked her and when I said, do you, Jasmine, do you feel that it looks different now than it did back then? What did you say?

Jasmine Star 00:15:14  I said, it does.

Jasmine Star 00:15:15  It absolutely does.

Amy Porterfield 00:15:16  In what way?

Jasmine Star 00:15:17  And it looks different in that when I made when I became aware that I needed help, and when I became aware that there was people who wanted me to become who I was destined to be. And the minute I gave myself the permission to ask for help and have very open conversations, and that for me, I kind of feel like I've it's like this metamorphosis probably happened about two and a half to three years ago, and that's to me when I started making like, such cognitive decisions about all of the things I had just mentioned and who I am today. And so I'm a nerd. Like I already said, I'm 87 years old, so after my mouth I get on a journal and not like long. I just a few sentences and is a 365 day journal. And I can go back to days and just see my emotional maturity, my progress where I needed help, like the pitfalls I notice, cycles in my emotions and why I was feeling a certain way.

Jasmine Star 00:16:13  That right there has been a game changer.

Amy Porterfield 00:16:16  Okay, so I'm so glad you brought all of that up because I wanted to talk about how we got here and give them specifics of our lives and what we've done, and so I'll go first in the sense that, number one, and I know some of this is going to overlap, Jasmine, but I still want her to tell her story. Number one is I definitely went to therapy and I've done a lot of different type of therapy. So although the depression hasn't been around for a few years now, I'm still very aware of my anxiety and when things come up for me. And so just not too long ago, I don't know, maybe a year ago I went to eMDR training and this was amazing. And you can look it up to learn more about it. I'll link to some details about this training, but it was training that I went through or therapy, I should say therapy I went through to deal with some childhood issues that just kept coming up for me.

Amy Porterfield 00:17:07  When things got hard, these issues from childhood would come up and rear their ugly heads. And I think, why are you here? Like, I thought I got past this, but I hadn't. And eMDR therapy literally helped me immensely move past some childhood issues and trauma that I had dealt with. And so I recently did that. But back in the day, I went through a lot of therapy. I've had numerous therapists that have helped me deal with the depression, and I think to me, that was the number one thing that helped more than anything else. And I'm going to give you guys some resources at the end of where you could find a really good therapist, even if you're on a tight budget. So we're going to share that at the end. The other thing that I did is that I made sure that I was always fueling my brain with resources and resourceful, valuable information that would help me see things in a different light. And so, of course, I work for Tony Robbins.

Amy Porterfield 00:18:03  And yes, I had depression while I was there. Doesn't mean just because you learn from Tony Robbins doesn't mean that it's not going to be there. But I will say that much of what I learned from Tony, I was able to use and start moving past the depression. So a lot of what Tony teaches help me move through the depression. And also I listen to podcasts, I read books, I am always into self-help and making my mind stronger in terms of what I think, how I feel. Also, just recently, you all know that I've been working with the weight loss coach. I've talked about this on my Insta stories and working with my weight loss coach. We don't even talk about food and we don't get into what the diet looks like. We talk about how my thoughts turn into feelings and how my feelings turns into actions. And so with that, if I change my thoughts, I change my feelings and I change my actions. So literally once a week I meet with a coach where we are drilling down on what kind of thoughts am I having and what am I making them mean.

Amy Porterfield 00:19:08  So I work on myself every single day. Even after the depression I feel has kind of taken a backseat in my life, so constantly fueling my mind. Going to therapy. And here's my last one, and that is that the relationships in my life have changed everything. So Marion Hoby, I will say that that definitely made a huge impact on the depression. Jasmine's smiling.

Jasmine Star 00:19:31  I am hope he's great.

Amy Porterfield 00:19:33  He's great, and he was just somebody in my life that was able to not judge the depression, not put a label on it, not make it mean something that it didn't mean. He just sat with it with me and he listened when he needed to. And then he offered advice when I wanted it. And to have that kind of support system means everything. When you are feeling depressed and you can't get out of bed in the morning. And so I know that some of you are surrounded by people that are not helping you with the depression, that they don't know what to do or what to say.

Amy Porterfield 00:20:03  But your support system means everything. And so I've gotten people out of my life because of it, and I've invited new people into my life. And I know this is cheesy, Jasmine, but you are one of those people in my life that if I called you and said that Black Cloud is back, and here's why, you would sit there for hours with me and talk to me about that.

Jasmine Star 00:20:26  So I would sit there for hours and then I would drive. I would drive down, I drive down here. We're going to sit here. It's so true. And do a little rain dance. Yeah. I make that cloud go away I like. Yeah. So you need the.

Amy Porterfield 00:20:39  Friends who will do the rain dance with you to make the clouds go away. I mean, how perfect is that? It is true. And so those are some of the tools that I used. I wanted to share them with you because I told Jasmine, I want to talk about how we got to a better place.

Amy Porterfield 00:20:52  We're not perfect, it's not totally gone, but we are both in better places than we were with the depression. So I wanted to talk about how we got there. So I want.

Jasmine Star 00:21:00  You. I actually love that you brought that up, because I feel like it's just encouragement for what I am currently working through. So all of those four main points that you articulated are things that I am still doing. So in light of full disclosure, I have come a very long way, and I look forward to the day that I can be just like Amy and say it has been a thing that I have worked through, and it is a thing of my past. I am not quite there yet. I do struggle with it. I have come a long, long, long way. First steps and this. And I just want to make sure that I'm very open and super respectful. I have to understand that my parents are immigrants. America is different. How we navigate conversations is different. And so I don't think that they ever stigmatize the idea of speaking to a therapist.

Jasmine Star 00:21:46  But they made it very, very upper class. And so for people who aren't from California, Halpern is very segmented and it's segmented by county. And so my parents L.A. through and through like gold diggers, that's my dad. Okay. So when I told my parents Asher's okay. So when I told my dad that I really wanted that I was going to start seeing a therapist and he said, holds up his pinky finger oil. Orange County. Ha! Your storage county. And it was a joke. It or as my dad says, only joke. Okay, so it was a joke. It was a joke. But I think that it was a difficult conversation to have. Like, what does it mean? Because my whole childhood, we had groceries donated on the porch and we rode the bus to church. And so this idea of paying somebody to hear you talk was as foreign as, like literally a flying pig. And so I felt like what I realized and I had to make a hard decision with that.

Jasmine Star 00:22:42  I cannot expect anybody in my life to accept the responsibility to walk me through a very difficult path. So if you feel like you don't have that person, that's okay. Your next objective would be to take the responsibility to find people in your life. Now I will say that my husband is my best friend and my just foundation, and he is so good and he is so kind and he listens. However, I also don't think that my husband should be a therapist. That's a great point. And if you have the if you have the luxury, I think that's phenomenal. But I also do think that I really wanted to have like a clear distinction. And I'm just like Type-A and very pigheaded. And I'm like, well, do you have a degree? No, you don't like it. So that was the first step. So hearing that you found a great therapist makes a big difference. And there was a really, really, really dark time in my life. And that was around 2015 where I knew that I had nowhere to go, like I was just rock bottom.

Jasmine Star 00:23:44  And I said, I have nobody to talk to. I am just I'm strung out like my heart, like my. My soul feels broken. And so the minute I found a therapist, initially, I didn't think he was all that great. But I tell myself, and this is what I tell friends, people who are looking for a therapist is to be fair to yourself and to be fair to them. And that would give them at least three opportunities. Love that, because I feel like every therapist.

Amy Porterfield 00:24:07  I've ever been to, I did not love them right out of the bat. Well.

Jasmine Star 00:24:10  It's like you're literally going on a blind date, right? And, you know, therapist websites are terrible. Like they basically need to go through one of our trainings to be like, guys, you got to brand yourself a little better.

Amy Porterfield 00:24:19  A student that he helps therapists with websites because they're so bad, God bless him.

Jasmine Star 00:24:23  Like they're terrible. Like they they literally say nothing. So you kind of go in, it's like literally a blind date.

Jasmine Star 00:24:28  And so I didn't really like vibe with him all that much in the first time. But I said, hey, my rule of three. The second time he came around, and the third time was when he's just started, kind of just like itemizing, asking questions after the note that he takes, he's like, I'm seeing a pattern in the stories that you're telling, the way that you're talking. And I was like, okay, let's go for meeting number four. And then I had stayed with him for about three years. And throughout that time when I was in a really, really bad place, that I felt that as a business expense, I needed to get help. I couldn't keep running at that pace. And so I met with him once a week for about six months, and then from there started meeting every other week, every three weeks, once a month. And that was like the first step. And then I just started taking the time in my life and my business to start doing research like I needed to understand.

Jasmine Star 00:25:15  So I once heard this analogy, like when you break a bone, you get an x ray and they find out what's wrong with your bones. And if you have a tumor, they have an MRI or a scan and they understand that. But if you go into your doctor and you say, I'm, I'm sad like something's wrong in my head, what is done with that? Right? And I started doing research and I came across a doctor here, actually in San Diego, Doctor Amman, and he wrote a book. And I think it's like, change your brain, change your life.

Amy Porterfield 00:25:41  Love him.

Jasmine Star 00:25:42  Oh, you know him? I thought it was.

Amy Porterfield 00:25:44  Amen.

Jasmine Star 00:25:44  Well, here's the thing. If you're religious, it's Amen. Because to me, he's like, Amen. Yes. This man. Amen. And then other people who are like, you know, agnostic, it's Amen. so I'm just kidding. I actually don't know the exact pronounce him right. Yes. Right. Kind of just, like, so brilliant.

Jasmine Star 00:25:59  So his book was like his book was scientific proof. After years and years and years of studying, the brain is like the thoughts we have impact our brain. They literally have a physical manifestation. If you think negative thoughts, your brain reacts to the negative thoughts and gives out physical manifestations of your thoughts. It is no longer speculative, it is just the truth. And so he had said that every morning he starts the day and he says, today is going to be a great day and our brains are hardwired to listen. So we didn't make a distinction. The mind and the brain are two different things. Wait. See?

Amy Porterfield 00:26:35  This is you lost me. What do you.

Jasmine Star 00:26:36  Mean? So the mind is in control? Yeah, and the brain is an organ. Okay, so when you understand your mind, you can control your organ. So when you say your mind says, I'm going to have a great day, your brain then says, yes, sir, right away, captain, we're going to make that happen.

Jasmine Star 00:26:54  It's hard wired to listen. So if we have control of our mind and this is not like a feel good, everything's going to be happy, hunky dory. You know, this is literally the very first step that you can do. I also heard that when Einstein woke up, he would say thank you 100 times before he got it to stop.

Amy Porterfield 00:27:12  That is so good. That actually makes me emotional because.

Jasmine Star 00:27:15  Because thank you and all you do. And every morning I put my hand in my heart and I say, thank you, thank you, thank you. Okay. You know, it's just because when you wake up and you think you just see the gratitude and gosh dang it, there are some really hard days. But when you say, oh, I have a roof over my head, I have something in my refrigerator. I have gassed my car. We are literally the 1%. When we say those three things, we are the 1% of the world. And I think even on the dark days, you realize that we are just so, so, so lucky to be where we are.

Jasmine Star 00:27:46  And if we could find a glimmer of that silver lining, we're already taking a step forward. So real quick. Am I just making this like the is this just happy hour with Jasmine? Like basically like you and I and Lacroix, like, I mean, we're getting drunk on sparkling water, y'all.

Amy Porterfield 00:28:00  I forgot to tell you, she's also in a bathing suit.

Jasmine Star 00:28:02  Oh, my God, are we going there? Are we going there? Are you not. Do not. Come at me. I am Puerto Rican. I will throw you under a big yellow bus in 2.5 seconds. Splash! I am, I actually am in a bathing suit. Okay. It's California, get over it.

Amy Porterfield 00:28:16  To my house. And she says, listen, I'm in a bathing suit right now.

Jasmine Star 00:28:19  No, don't judge me. I said, don't judge me.

Amy Porterfield 00:28:22  Picturing like you standing at my house in a bikini. And that's actually not it.

Jasmine Star 00:28:25  Okay, I haven't been in bikini since I was three years old.

Jasmine Star 00:28:26  Okay, so we need to get that right. Oh, girl, I hail from the school of one pieces. Don't get it. Don't get it twisted. But.

Amy Porterfield 00:28:33  So she comes in jeans with a bathing suit and a little cover up, but she's going to a pool party. Of course she is. She's fancy like that. Fancy, really?

Jasmine Star 00:28:42  It's actually a beach party for a 12 year old at Bolsa Chica. Fancy is not that I'm a girl. Get it right. Come at me and I will come at you.

Amy Porterfield 00:28:49  Forgot I was a 12 year old. So yes, my house in a bathing suit, which I am cracking up. But this is. This is happy hour, which is so appropriate when we're talking about depression. So yes, I do love this, but I love all these tools. I wanted this to be a conversation about like, what did we do? We? I love to follow people that are just a little bit or a lot ahead of me. Like they've kind of figured something out and there's a lot of stuff we have not figured out.

Amy Porterfield 00:29:15  But with this, I feel like we've worked really hard on making ourselves better and healing ourselves around the depression. So I thought, we have to talk about what we've done. Absolutely. You talked about the therapy, but there's other stuff. Like when we were chatting in my office, you talked about the mastermind we're in and oh, what that's done for.

Jasmine Star 00:29:34  Oh, absolutely. And I think that people listening could say, well, I don't have a supportive family or I don't have a supportive spouse, or I don't have supportive children. And that could be true. And let's back up one tiny second. Doctor. Amen. Since we're since we're being religious, Doctor Amy has a series of questions and I have applied them, and I think it has had the most profound change in my perspective. This in addition to other few things. But if anybody's listening and be like, I'm tired of hearing these girls talk, I want something practical. Let's get into the practicality before we actually talk about the decisions we made as a result of the practicality.

Jasmine Star 00:30:07  Great. So when you are having a negative or overwhelming thought, first things first, write it down. There's something about writing the act of stopping and writing it down. It's as if it's like an exorcism. It comes out of you and then you see it. It forces you to look at it. And doctor is very specific about that. So you write it down, okay. So you write it down and then you ask yourself, so let's use you as an example. So if you were to write something down you were to get up out bit, a bit. What would be one thing that you're struggling with? Okay, since we're being 100, we're being 100.

Amy Porterfield 00:30:38  We're being 100. So I would say that there's a lot I'm trying to think of one if I want to do personal or business. If I did business, I'd say I can't get it all done fast enough. And if I don't, I'm going to be irrelevant.

Jasmine Star 00:30:55  Okay. That's what you write on your paper. Okay.

Jasmine Star 00:30:57  And then the second question is, is this true?

Amy Porterfield 00:31:02  I love that question. And instantly I know it is not true.

Jasmine Star 00:31:06  Now there could be people listening and think, well, it could be. Yeah.

Amy Porterfield 00:31:09  Because there's sometimes I have dark thoughts that feel very true, such as my body will not release this weight. So if we got personal, we talked about my weight loss. There's days I get on the scale and it hasn't moved for days and days or a week. And I think my body wants to be fat like it will. It will not. I cannot lose weight and that feels true some days for me.

Jasmine Star 00:31:29  Okay. If we were looking at both of those situations, I don't move fast enough, I'm going to be irrelevant. Yeah. I am destined to remain this. Wait. Yes. And if we were to ask ourselves, is this true? And even if you responded, maybe. Then the third question you have to ask yourself is, am I 100% certain of my response?

Amy Porterfield 00:31:48  Oh my gosh.

Amy Porterfield 00:31:49  So right away, right away, right away.

Jasmine Star 00:31:51  Yes. It's no, because we are not fortune tellers. We don't know with certainty if we are destined to be irrelevant or destined to be overweight. We don't know that, right? And then once we answer that, then we know. How does it make me feel? How does let's just focus on the business right now, okay? How does being irrelevant feel to you?

Amy Porterfield 00:32:11  It makes me feel small. It makes me feel scared. It makes me feel like I'm not enough. I'm less than or I'm not good enough.

Jasmine Star 00:32:21  And once you and this is all written, and once you see that, do you think that those feelings will keep you from the purpose you have been sent here on the world?

Amy Porterfield 00:32:29  Yes and yes.

Jasmine Star 00:32:32  Last question. What would feeling the opposite of this? Like what if you were to look at that, say I'm going to be irrelevant, I'm not moving fast enough. And you feel all these negative emotions. What if you were to say I am moving at the right pace? I will always be relevant for a group of people.

Amy Porterfield 00:32:48  It would make me feel grounded and secure and confident and excited to work on the projects I'm working on. Oh, these questions are good. We will certainly be listing them in the show notes.

Jasmine Star 00:32:59  And okay, so now this is something that I learned from our mastermind organizer mentor Unicorn James. We are not our thoughts. He reminds me of that all the time that the things that we think are not us, they're just our thoughts. So if we were to look at a piece of paper based on this, like walking through from Doctor Amman, we can choose to feel irrelevant and lost and like things are passing. Or we could choose to feel grounded and hopeful and secure. The choice is ours. It takes just as much energy to feel fearful as it does to say, I choose faith instead of anxiety in this moment.

Amy Porterfield 00:33:39  Okay, this is exactly what I work on every single week with my weight loss coach, and I think this is what has moved me. So I love that we both are on the same page.

Amy Porterfield 00:33:48  I didn't even know that you were diving into questions like that, but I just realized this is exactly why I've been feeling so good lately is because I examine that like every.

Jasmine Star 00:33:57  Day, every day. And what happens is people like, I don't have time. Like I'm in the carpool line, I'm at the grocery store, I have two jobs. I have a side hustle. When am I just going to walk around with a diary and like, writing my issues down seems like a luxury. Listen, boo boo, you do not take care of yourself. There are a line of people who need you. So if you're in that carpool line, you need to pull on over and you say, baby, you're going to wait 30s because moms just got to do this real quick. If you're at the grocery line, you bring out your phone, you write it all down, and then you ask yourself, in this moment, I choose to feel what that is been the most profound difference in how I look at everything now.

Jasmine Star 00:34:33  Do I think that I have the capacity to move through depression as a result of this process? No. Do I believe with all of my heart that I have the capacity to change and expedite the process as a result of this? Hell yes.

Amy Porterfield 00:34:48  Hell yes is right. I want to point out you just reminded me of this when we were talking about it earlier. You brought up Brené Brown's gold plated.

Jasmine Star 00:34:57  Grit and grit.

Amy Porterfield 00:34:59  Now with, first of all, with the gold plated grit. If first came up for me when I called you to tell you I wanted to do an episode about my weight, but I was too scared to do so, and I was a.

Jasmine Star 00:35:12  Little bit mean to you.

Amy Porterfield 00:35:12  You were. You're like, you're doing it, and you're telling a story about how you ate a lot of cupcakes that were your son's for his birthday. That was probably the hardest part of the push when you do push me in love. So with that, though, I told Jasmine, I said, I don't want to do this episode about my weight.

Amy Porterfield 00:35:28  And for those of you who haven't heard it, it was a while ago. I can link to it in the show notes, but I didn't want to do it because at the time I hadn't started losing weight. I wasn't on a weight loss journey. I didn't have any tools to help me at the time, so I had nothing to give in that moment except the truth that I don't like doing video because I am overweight and that is embarrassing to me. That's all I had to give in that episode. And you said, that's enough, and you brought up this gold plated grit. So first of all, will you tell people what that means? Because I don't do a good job explaining it. But second, it came up when I asked you to talk about some of this.

Jasmine Star 00:36:05  So Brené Brown, she is like basically our best friend. She doesn't know it yet. We love her. Here's the thing. I want to light her. Your house, not mine. Your house is like way more show.

Jasmine Star 00:36:14  Ready. Let's be like I was like, Renee, welcome to my house. Well, come into my closet.

Amy Porterfield 00:36:19  Her and love her voice.

Jasmine Star 00:36:21  She has an amazing voice. Yeah, and she's from Texas. Yes. Without she's like y'all. And she could say just so, like, says.

Amy Porterfield 00:36:28  A lot of bad words and I love.

Jasmine Star 00:36:29  That. But coming from her, they're almost like sacrosanct. Like you're like, oh, look at how sweet. Bless her heart. Okay, so she talks about gold plated grit. And gold plated grit is our ability to talk about things after we've already accomplished them. So how easy it is for us just to diminish how hard a situation was when we can just say, oh, guys, I went on this journey. I lost £100 and this is how I did it. What we do by keeping our story to ourselves is inadvertently protecting ourselves, protecting our ego. We do not want to be vulnerable because the minute you say I'm on a weight loss journey, all of a sudden you give people the permission to watch you when you're out eating dinner, right? When you decide to have a glass of wine.

Jasmine Star 00:37:12  And so Gold Plated Grit is talking about something in retrospect. And the thing that I encouraged Amy to do, which would come back to haunt me all the way back to today because I said, you got to show up. You don't have to have the solution. You just have to first admit it. And so when you invited me to come do this the show. I was just like, oh no, I'm not past it. I cannot talk about it. And then I thought to myself, oh good God, woman, the advice you give is the advice you need to listen to. Yeah. And so this is me talking through it and now it's on tape. And I hope that if not next year, and even if it takes me ten years that I could look at this and say, this was the first time that I was very public and open about what the journey looks like from the inside.

Amy Porterfield 00:37:50  I truly hope so, and I love that you shared it, even though you might be still going through it in different ways.

Amy Porterfield 00:37:56  And I'm so very glad, Jasmine, that you have come on the show and talked to all of us about it, because this is exactly what I wanted. I wanted a conversation around it, and I think that's exactly what we got.

Jade Hall 00:38:08  If this conversation resonated with, you, know that you're not alone. Jasmine and Amy opened up about their journeys so that more entrepreneurs feel safe talking about their mental health. If you need support, reach out to a trusted friend, therapist, or support group. And if this episode helped you share it with someone who might need it. Until next time.