We recently connected with Jessie Douglass-Smith McGraw and have shared our conversation below.
Jessie, appreciate you joining us today. Was there a moment in your career that meaningfully altered your trajectory? If so, we’d love to hear the backstory.
Growing up and throughout my twenties, I was always very clear on what I wanted to achieve professionally. I was the type that would have a goal, do everything I could to make that goal attainable, climb the ladder to achieve it, then move on to the next goal. At nearly 30 years old, I very quickly segued into a career that I thought was going to be the career I would retire from. Less than a year into it, I started getting whispers from inside that something was off. Did I listen to it right away? Absolutely not. I negotiated with it constantly. You see, not only was I in a job that was extremely different from anything I had experienced before, but I had also left a career in the arts that was my childhood dream, to pursue this new career. So to have whispers from inside that I was perceiving as my gut telling me that I had made the wrong move, was debilitating.
After a few months of a spiraling depression (on top of the anxiety I was very used to managing for most of my life), I felt so lost I didn’t know where to turn. It felt like I had a spinning compass inside of me, with no direction to be found, which was extremely disorienting. Finally one evening after a long day at work, I hopped in the shower to alleviate my anxiety and with my head hanging in the water, I said to myself, “I’m just so sick of thinking the same ten thoughts over and over again. How am I ever going to get out of this if I don’t get a new idea?!” And like a crack of lightening, a new thought came into my head: “Everything you’re feeling is coming from your thoughts, not the world around you”. WHAT?!
I had spent my entire life believing that my anxiety, my suffering, or any bad feeling was in response to my circumstances, my environment, or the people around me. In that moment everything changed. It was an epiphany that challenged my way of thinking – and coming from a family of therapists along with having a degree in Psychology, I couldn’t believe what I had realized. I saw for the first time that my constant analyzing was keeping me trapped in a spiral, not getting me any closer to the AHA! I was so desperate for. I was completely working against myself when I thought I was doing all I could to help myself. In that moment, everything changed. I knew I needed to tell the world what I saw: That we are scaring ourselves left and right and believing it’s life doing the scaring. I decided to stay in my job until my wisdom, my gut instinct, told me it was time to go. About a year later, I got the call from inside of me – give 30 days on October 1st – that was 6 years ago and I’ve been helping people ever since. Clearly, taking the job when I did was not a wrong move at all, in fact it couldn’t have been more right. It brought me to the doorstep of my purpose.
Jessie, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
Although I obtained my degree in Psychology and come from a family of therapists, in my youth, I had no plan to enter into the field of helping people. After college, I pursued my dream of being a professional dancer, which I was for many years, and it wasn’t until I had a seminal moment of realization around where my own suffering was coming from while in the midst of a deep depression in a subsequent career as a talent agent, that I knew I wanted to share with the masses what I had realized.
I had no idea it would mean me starting my own business, I was purely driven to help people see what I had seen.
Before I go on, please note that I am NEVER knocking on other modalities of therapies. There are 8 billion people on this planet and I’m grateful for any and all helpers out there. With that being said, why my work is incredibly helpful and very different from therapy is that it is based in an education of looking at how we all have innate health and we think our way away from it. Meaning, our innate health, our okayness, doesn’t ever go anywhere, but we don’t experience it as often as we like because we’ve all drawn conclusions about ourselves and how we think life works based on our past experiences, that make us believe that we are broken, that possibilities are limited, and that make us scared of our emotional life on the inside.
Traditional therapy or coaching would look at the contents of your thoughts to try to make sense of your emotional experience and how to manage it differently; how to learn tools and techniques to make your feel more whole, make up for your shortcomings and improve upon yourself. In my work, you are already whole, you have no shortcomings, and there’s no improving necessary; you’ve just believed these things your whole life. And when you think something everyday, it sure can look like reality and it absolutely changes your behavior and how you move through the world. I like to say that armed with the understanding that I teach, folks come home to themselves, and when they do – all bets are off. Life gets more rich, they slow down to the pace of life – being able to enjoy the view while also following a path that is 100% their own, creating careers and relationships that are incredibly successful and fulfilling because they’re in alignment with their true self – that ‘home’ inside where they know they are ok underneath the noise of their mind.
Here’s an example so you don’t have to take my word for it: What happens AFTER an anxiety attack is over? Something to consider, right? Your mind settles and you feel ok for a little while, yes? What does that show you? That your mind is innately built to settle and when it does, you sense your okayness, your innate health, inside of you. That is so important to consider and one of the first questions I ask a new client who has come to me because they’ve been labeled with anxiety disorders and feel hopeless. And guess what happens when they see that? Immediate relief and a sense of hope again (and this is in the first session). You see, when armed with an education about how we work inside, people become less afraid of their internal world and therefore begin to experience more internal freedom to see beyond what their mind or their circumstances are serving up. And since they become less afraid of their thought/feeling experience within them, they can step into the unknown of where their true self is guiding them – glass ceilings become shattered all over the place.
What I am most proud of is that in the 6 years of being in business with my work, I have had the opportunity to work with hundreds of clients from artists to executives, former gang members to retirees, and everyone in between, and time and time again, waking my clients up to how they put things together inside of themselves completely changes their life and gives them a new experience of themselves. I have seen people transform physically in my midst, literally standing up straighter and losing years off of their face and physicality, because they go from hopeless and scared to hopeful and sturdy in who they are. And by the way, all of what I have shared is probably making sense to you because at some level, we all know these things, we’ve all seen glimpses of how we work inside, we just haven’t taken the time or have been given the opportunity to appreciate it. But the impact of taking a little time to understand it in this way? Profound. Folks experience huge shifts in a short amount of time while seeing results that last.
For nuts and bolts, I work with clients one on one in my private practice, I have a coaching program at the prestigious Bloc Agency providing coaching for their clients, I consult with companies and organizations and am currently expanding my work within the dance and entertainment community as well as implementing my work into higher education institutions and dance and theater companies. I love working with folks who have a desire to have a different experience of themselves and their lives.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
One of the highlights of my work includes showing people that their resilience, very much like their health, is innate – it’s built-in. If you look back on your life, I’m sure you have at least one experience that illustrates how you were met with a challenge and even though you had no idea how you were going to navigate it or if you were going to be ok, you somehow managed to follow the next indicated steps that occurred to you to take to get to the other side of the challenge. You see! It’s built-in!
For me, building a business was completely antithetical to all of the conditioning in my head about what it means to have financial safety and security. Resilience is key in wading through the waters of lower-income weeks or months due to the facts of building a business and it was very challenging for me to consider that I would be ok and I wouldn’t end up on the soup line during those times.
Until I realized I needed something to change…
One day, I was in the shower and I knew I was revved up in my head about my money worries. I had a moment of pause and said to myself, “Jessie, you better get curious about this and see if you can see something new because if you don’t, you’re going to die from the stress it’s creating”. The next idea that popped in my mind was, “Where in your life do you completely trust in your resilience – the next indicated steps that come to mind without any worry or negotiation – and you have evidence of it being supportive and successful?” Immediately, my marriage came to mind. I’ve been with my husband for 20 years and I have never once been vigilant of how my marriage is going. Of course I’m thoughtful in my marriage and I think of my husband all the time, but I’m never assessing how it’s going, I just listen to my deeper self and honor the ideas that come to me… and look where that has led! So then I considered, “Ok, so there’s proof of how your resilience, those great ideas that come from your deeper self, has helped you and you’ve got an incredible relationship to prove how impactful that is… why then, does the subject of money look so different?!” And that’s when I realized that I had a belief that my resilience wasn’t going to be enough to not get me thriving… but keep me merely surviving!!! I immediately saw how made up that was and like a bubble getting popped, that belief system literally left my brain and I haven’t experienced it since. Do my finances look hairy sometimes? Sure! But I don’t identify with any beliefs that my current circumstances mean anything about my future – I have been able to embrace the ebbs and flows of life, my energy, and business in a way that allows me to stay inspired, motivated and productive no matter the number in my bank account.
Putting training and knowledge aside, what else do you think really matters in terms of succeeding in your field?
More than training and knowledge, what I know for a fact has been the key piece to my success is my rapport with people. As Maya Angelou said, ‘I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.’
I spent many hours worrying people wouldn’t trust me based on the fact that I’m not a licensed therapist. I spent many hours worrying that people would discount my worth or the impact of what I do because it was birthed from an insight as opposed to my education. Turns out that neither of those things have ever entered the conversation because folks can feel where I’m coming from. On top of that, I stay open, honest and curious in others and giving someone the opportunity to feel seen, heard and a sense of belonging from your presence, means more than any certificates, plaques or awards could ever mean.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://whatmovesyouwithjessie.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/whatmovesyouwithjessie/ (Handle: @whatmovesyouwithjessie)
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessie-douglass-smith-mcgraw-b5475077/
- Other: Podcast: What Moves You with Jessie on all streaming platforms Email: [email protected]
Image Credits
Laurent Hurt Veronica Crawford