Increasing Connection Through Laughter and Integrity, Part 1 with Jason Hewlett

Get ready to have your spirits lifted as we sit down with the extraordinary Jason Hewlett, an award-winning entertainer with a knack for finding and sharing joy. This one-of-a-kind comedian reveals how he discovered his unique gifts and developed his career on stage. Through the ICM process (Identify, Clarify, Magnify), Jason helps you uncover your own signature moves and shares the importance of mentorship in his journey.

The episode takes a heartwarming turn as we delve into the power of giving and spreading joy. Inspired by his mother's example, Jason shares the impact of service and philanthropy in his life. His infectious laughter is not just a signature act, it's a means of spreading validation and happiness around him. His unwavering integrity and love for people have undoubtedly shaped his life and career.

Our conversation with Jason doesn't stop there. He talks about his initiative to share his wisdom with others, from mentoring aspiring stage performers to running a YouTube channel filled with educational videos. We also unpack his book, 'The Promise to The One', and the lessons he learned from broken promises that strengthened his commitment to keeping his own. This episode is a rollercoaster of emotions, laughter and valuable insights that you simply can't miss!

Jason and I would love to hear your thoughts! If you'd like to support the podcast, please follow/subscribe to be alerted to upcoming episodes and also, leave a review.

Wishing you lots of love on your own hero’s journey,
xoxo, Karen

Thanks so much for listening!  Please share this episode with your loved ones and spread the love to bless others!
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Connect with Karen Hall

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/karen.o.hall
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Instagram: @theherowithinpodcast
Website:  https://KarenHallCoaching.com/
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Podcast: The Hero Within Podcast

Connect with Jason Hewlett

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jasonhewlettentertainer/
Instagram: @jasonhewlett
Website:  https://jasonhewlett.com
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/jasonrhewlett
 LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonhewlett/    

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:03

Hey there, welcome back. I'm Karen Hall, your host of the Hero Within podcast. I'm passionate about sharing inspiring true stories of unsung heroes who've overcome some of life's most challenging adversities. Come along with me and learn how you too can find hope and healing to return to love.

Speaker 1: 0:28

Jason Hewlett, an LDS award-winning comedian and entertainer and world-class performer, was inducted into the prestigious National Speakers Association Speaker Hall of Fame. He was one of the youngest ever inducted with the Council of Peers Award for Excellence. He was invited to be a part of a Middle East tour, performing in support of the US military in Kuwait, afghanistan and Africa. Among the many other awards he has received, he also received the prestigious Star Award from the Sarah Theater for the Arts and had a long-running comedy show in Las Vegas. Jason thrives being married to the most beautiful woman in the world, tammy, and they have four incredible children. Their family donates tremendous hours in community service and philanthropy. Today, in part one, jason shares what he dreamed about as a child for his future, including being an artist, being an NBA basketball player, singing and being on stage. Jason learned that he could connect with people through laughter, being a cheerleader to others and being true to his authentic self. Listen in as he shares his process covering and identifying his gifts and clarifying those gifts. It's also wonderful to hear about those mentors who changed the trajectory of his life to be who he is today. Jason also shares how he casts his bread upon the waters, and others have told him he has a whole bakery coming back to him.

Speaker 1: 2:02

When I first saw you perform, I was just so touched by you as a person and just the quality and the depth of your character. So I've just followed you on Facebook and read your blog posts. I just wanted to know more about your life and as I've been reading the promise to the one, I just had so many more questions and I thought I've just got to talk to you. So thank you so much for being willing to share about yourself with my listeners, because I know that you're going to bless so many people by your message. You already have blessed so many people with your messages. Oh, thanks for asking. So I thought if you could just tell us a little bit about you, I wanted to know when you were a child, what did you dream about for your life?

Speaker 2: 2:48

When I was a child, what did I dream about for my life? Oh, my dad was a financial planner and life insurance salesman, so I thought that's where I was headed and I was not quite so sure if that's what I wanted to be. But I knew that he had a nice life and he created a great one for us, and so that was part of what I thought I wanted to be. But I dreamt of becoming an artist, first for Disney, and I loved drawing, and that was my first true gift was finding out that I could draw.

Speaker 2: 3:25

Eventually I wanted to also be an NBA basketball player, because I grew up in Utah and there was a guy that kind of looked like me. His name was John Stockton and he was a white, six foot one guard and had hairy legs, and so did I. So I thought, well, maybe that's my path, because if he could make it, then maybe I can. And so I dreamt a couple of different dreams. Eventually I had this kind of pipe dream of maybe I could be on a stage somewhere making people laugh. I didn't know what that looked like, although I had seen singers, people in concert. I saw a guy speak at my school once, and it changed my life and I thought that would be neat. Imagine doing that.

Speaker 1: 4:09

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 4:10

And so through the years, I think as I dreamt about other things like NBA, stardom and basketball or being an artist for Disney, and then thinking what if I need to take my dad's business over? All of those things led me to where I've gotten to live an actual dream life. So it's pretty cool.

Speaker 1: 4:29

That is cool and it's interesting how dreams you had on how many gifts you recognized in yourself and then later developed. I mean you didn't even mention music yet, but that was another talent that you have used. So tell me about your process of moving through your life and using your gifts.

Speaker 2: 4:48

Well, originally I found out that I was unique because I had a big mouth and the first day of school everybody noticed that and I was kind of bullied for having a big mouth and eventually it turned into a blessing because I found out with a big mouth I can smile, I can do funny things with my face.

Speaker 2: 5:07

I was a blessing to the dentist he could use his hands, and so I was finding out those gifts from an early age and realizing that, even though people said the funny things I was doing with my face were quite ugly, but it also was something that made them laugh, and so laughter was probably my very first go-to as a person who would connect with others was to make them laugh. It was through a funny voice, a funny face, imitating someone or a teacher and doing a sound or a noise. Those were some of the first things I realized I was different for I call it our signature moves, and I think that everybody has signature moves that they've used their whole life. It's what makes you unique, it's what people know you for. It can even be the thing that makes it so they don't like you and that's okay as well. So to discover those and the promise to share them is what I write about and speak about now.

Speaker 2: 6:07

My process of doing that in my book, the Promise to the One, chapter Two is called the ICM process and how to discover your signature moves.

Speaker 2: 6:16

So the process is really identify, clarify, magnify, icm.

Speaker 2: 6:22

And when we identify that we have certain gifts, skills or talents, and eventually we clarify that with other people, that those are things that are actually beneficial to the world, then we can magnify them and share those gifts and that's called keeping the promise.

Speaker 2: 6:38

And so that was really my process, even though I didn't have it outlined and defined like that actually, until I met with a fellow who's way smarter than me, big fan of mine and I'm a big fan of his. He was trying to improve his speaking as a storyteller, as somebody who shares more about himself, because he was mostly using examples of others. Because he heard me and he said you need some process or system that you can teach people. And it was ICM identify, clarify, magnify and that's sure helped a lot of leaders and a lot of people I speak to now through the last couple of years since we created it, and his name is Steven Shapiro, one of my best friends. He's a masterful writer, gifted speaker and a thinker beyond thinking. I'll tell you that guy saw in me what I needed to share. So there is a process to all of this and it's been beneficial to know it for myself.

Speaker 1: 7:30

That's awesome. So, besides Steve Shapiro, can you tell us more about mentors and how they influenced you in your life?

Speaker 2: 7:39

Oh, certainly plenty of mentors through the years I think all of us start with, hopefully, if we're lucky enough to have parents that are around and interested and included in our lives. My mom was my first great mentor. She saw in me things that others didn't see and she also was that comfort that I went to and everyone's calling me ugly and that I have a big mouth, and my mom said you're not ugly, but you have a big mouth.

Speaker 1: 8:06

And tell us the advice that she gave you when I remember she said to smile. You know when they said you had a big mouth, and then she said what are you doing?

Speaker 2: 8:14

You have a big mouth. I said I open it like ah, and she goes don't do that, you need to just smile at people. And I said I don't want to smile at people. You know that's weird because I was only five when she taught me that and she said if you smile at people, they'll smile back and the light that you shine is the light you receive. And she's right.

Speaker 2: 8:34

I've noticed that throughout the world as I've traveled, before and after the masks. Being able to smile at others, it really does welcome an opportunity to engage, to bless their lives and to actually perhaps even give them something nobody else could have. That day I noticed when I walk around just in a busy city, people are not looking at each other, they're not smiling, they're keeping it themselves. Their headphones are in. I generally prefer to walk around with a big smile, unless I've just done a marathon or a workout. That's too hard, and so I like to smile as I walk through the airport, smile as I walk through the mall, smile as I walk down a street. I'm just doing my best to spread some light and joy, and so I think, with the size of my mouth and this big smile, that I can actually Bring a smile to somebody who may not have had one that day, and that's an important thing for me and one of the first signature moves I realized I had.

Speaker 1: 9:31

You know I love that saying that your mom said because here you were being bullied and it was causing you pain. And your mom turned that around and said look at what you can give and then that will come back to you. And one of my favorite scriptures is Cast your Bread Upon the Water and it shall come back. And you quoted that in your book and I thought that scripture must have met something to you at some point in time.

Speaker 2: 9:54

Yeah, no question. We've talked and joked for years that I give so much bread that I have a bakery coming back all the time. And the fact is that I try to do as much charitable work as I possibly can, because it's part of my nature to give and to want to serve others. I obviously like making a living. That's helpful. It's an interesting thing when you do what you do as a hobby, but also it becomes your living and when you do something that so many people want you to come and do for free.

Speaker 2: 10:26

That's been a really tricky thing to educate an audience as to. Hey, I can't do this always for free. I can do it for free for certain groups, like maybe a church group or a charitable group that really needs something, and so then we set those boundaries. But yes, in terms of giving and casting our bread upon the waters, I don't believe it comes back, saga, you're just drifts away. I believe it comes back in spades and there's a power and a magic in giving as much as we possibly can, and I know that when we give, heavenly Father blesses us to receive all the sustenance we'll ever need.

Speaker 1: 11:03

That's beautiful, and I remember when you were in school you gave a lot and you helped others that were struggling, and I remember you would volunteer to help. Can you tell us a little bit more about your giving? Was it because of what your mother taught you when you were five? Where did this giving come from with you?

Speaker 2: 11:20

Yeah, well, candidly, my parents gave a lot. My dad was always buying double or triple the groceries, it seemed, and then my parents would go and give it away and they were some of the first people to buy young living essential oils and they were very much into homeopathic remedies and so forth, and I remember my parents were not distributors. If I recall, however, they would order double or triple and give them to everybody else. That's just how my parents were.

Speaker 2: 11:51

So I grew up as a kid having an opportunity to give and to serve and to use my talents and to volunteer and to do all that I could. In that sense, and any time I had a chance to serve, I wanted to, and I still love to do so. It's a real important thing to me, and so, yeah, it was being the biggest cheerleader for anybody who was doing something in front. I always would smile at them and I found out real early that if I was a good audience, others would be a good audience for me, and if I was a cheerleader for people, they would cheerlead for me. And I think a lot of the time our service starts in a selfish way like what can I get out of this? And then eventually we realize, oh, this was actually a blessing for me to just get to serve, and so that's part of it for me.

Speaker 1: 12:40

I love that because I feel like the joy that you got from serving continued to motivate you to continue to serve, and I feel like you are such a cheerleader for other people and that's a really rare gift especially for a performer that's so used to having people cheer for you to then also give, and I sense that connection is really important to you and your life.

Speaker 2: 13:05

Oh, certainly. I mean, we don't get where we get without the help of others, right? And so I feel like one of the great blessings of my life is having people that are such cheerleaders of me and I've been able to cheerlead them back. I'll tell you one of the great compliments I've gotten and I didn't realize this was a signature move of mine, but I had a fellow say this to me the other day.

Speaker 2: 13:27

It was for a conference of all the speakers in the country. It's the National Speakers Association, the NSA, and we were all together at this influence conference. There was a couple thousand of us there and a fellow came up to me and said, hey, when did you get here? And I said, oh, just now. And he goes.

Speaker 2: 13:48

I figured that you must have been late. I said, why did you figure that? He said because I couldn't hear you laughing in the audience and I was a day late to the conference. I don't know if that's a bad thing, that my laugh carries that much, but I do believe, from what I've understood from others, that my laugh is a validation in when they understand that it's me out there and I've had people come off stage that are famous and I've met them and then they realized that was my laugh and they go hey, you drove that whole thing for me because you were the one leading that laugh. And I think I was just doing that because I was enjoying it. I wasn't trying to create something, but I am trying to give them energy. I am trying to be the audience I wish I'd had.

Speaker 2: 14:39

And so I like being that guy.

Speaker 1: 14:43

That is awesome. I love that and I love the energy that you send to the performer that way, and it does feel really good when you're connecting. And so I am sure, as a performer, you feel that feeling when you're connecting with the audience and then to be the audience that's connecting with the performer Wow yeah you know what's interesting?

Speaker 2: 15:02

Yesterday I spoke to a group of about 50 teachers and that's difficult because I'm used to speaking to at least 500 to a thousand, if not more, and the more people you get, the better it is in terms of laughter and it carries longer, and when it's a smaller audience it's a little awkward. But there was a lady in the second row and she was with me the whole time and I appreciated her so much and eventually I asked a couple of them in my audience what their gifts and talents were and one of the things that she pointed out was she said I like people before I meet them. And I was like, what do you mean? And she said I just assumed the best in everyone and I assume I'm going to like everybody. And I thought what a cool gift, and especially that she knows that about herself.

Speaker 2: 15:58

Yeah, she was the one that was driving the laughter. She was the first one to laugh, first one to clap, first one to respond and I thought, yeah, I want somebody like that in my audience. I want someone like that in my life. I want to be that kind of person. Can I know that I'm going to like you before we meet? I thought that was profound. What a cool teacher, what lucky students you know.

Speaker 1: 16:21

Yeah, that is profound. That's really beautiful and I love that you're even known for your laugh. That people can recognize that. I think it's great. My family always says that when they can't find me, like if we're at Walmart, they just stand still and just wait and listen for my laugh and they're like oh, there she is, she's over there in an aisle. There you go, so I can relate to what you're saying.

Speaker 2: 16:44

And I don't know when my laugh went from just a subtle giggle to a bursting, rousing, arena-filling thing. But honestly it's become a thing where my peers have said I knew you were there and I knew I was nailing it because you were laughing and I'm like, right on, I'm glad I can be that guy for you.

Speaker 1: 17:03

Well, and I love that you're free, that you're able to just express that happiness inside you so freely. That's a wonderful thing.

Speaker 2: 17:11

There's a few things like laughter. Laughter is a wonderful connection and I can testify to that around the world. I can honestly testify that when I was in Brazil as a 19-year-old missionary, I was walking the streets trying to figure out how to connect with people in a different language for two years, selling Jesus. That's a big sale and that's a hard one to get doors open, hard one to get people to like you or listen. Eventually I realized I could make people laugh in a different language and I could barely speak it. That's when you know you're on to something and I've now made a living through the last two and a half decades just by being able to connect with people through laughter. That's a very special thing that all of us, I believe, have that way of connecting with people in our own way.

Speaker 2: 18:05

But for me, I was in Macau, which is the Las Vegas of China, a couple of months ago and I just stood up and made them laugh. I just did. Funny faces and funny voices. They all understood English. It was a fascinating conference. Thousands of people from all over Asia, and yet I made them laugh, not with the things I said, but with the things I did With my body, my face, my moves, my dancing, my music. It was very interesting. So laughter is a very important part of my life.

Speaker 1: 18:35

Oh, that's wonderful, and I do find interesting about laughter. I've noticed that if there's conflict or something and you can interject humor, it can just totally de-escalate the situation and then it's almost like we're on the same page, we're buddies again, because we're both laughing together, and so I think laughter is very powerful.

Speaker 2: 18:59

Yeah, laughter is a great equalizer, especially in a tense situation. And if you can do it appropriately, if you can do it in a way that a family can enjoy it together or it's not offensive, that's a great gift. And there are plenty of people with that extreme wit, and if you match that with a spiritual integrity, that's a pretty powerful thing that most people don't have.

Speaker 1: 19:21

Yeah, yeah, that's true. Well, so tell me about some of the mentors and how they've influenced you in your life.

Speaker 2: 19:29

Oh, so many mentors Talked about my mom a little and my dad. Those are great mentors to have and they still are. I'm grateful they're still around as they're entering their 70s. Now the mentors that I really speak about the most on stage are the people that discovered things in me I didn't know I had, and that was part of the ICM process, which I identified for myself what I thought I was good at, but then mentors helped clarify what I failed to identify. So it's truly the mentors, or the qualifiers of what you need to identify for yourself.

Speaker 2: 20:03

I had a basketball coach at a basketball camp.

Speaker 2: 20:08

His name was coach Tony Engel and coach Tony Engel was the assistant coach at BYU, which is Brigham Young University in Provo, utah, and I went to that camp when I was a sophomore in high school and he was so funny and so interesting.

Speaker 2: 20:26

And then he became interested in me when I met his sons and became friends with Golden and Izzy and Tony Jr and Elliot and these kids were just so funny to me as well and we connected and coach Tony Engel actually eventually offered me a full ride scholarship for basketball to BYU, even though I wasn't that good, I mean, I was OK, but I remember asking him why would you give me this scholarship? And he said because you're so funny. You give me a scholarship for basketball because I'm funny. And he said, jason, you're probably never going to play much on this team, but what we want is somebody that wants it and that is fun and would be the perfect guy to have around. And that really knocked me out to think that that was an opportunity.

Speaker 2: 21:21

When I came home from my mission, that opportunity was no longer there. The coach had left and gone to another school, but he and I still became dear friends and worked on his speaking and his career until he passed away a couple of years ago during COVID, unfortunately. But I'll tell you that mentor for me was somebody who saw something in me that I didn't realize was that valuable. I thought that making people laugh was just a side thing that I would do, and he said to me it's valuable enough to offer you a full ride scholarship At a major university.

Speaker 2: 21:56

And it's valuable enough that you could make a living at it. You're that good at it. He infused something in me when I was 16 years old that nobody could have, no matter how many friends. Tell you you're good at something when A person in a place of influence, a coach, someone you look up to, someone you think is funny too, tells you that you're the funniest person they've ever met and that you could make it. That really helped me. Eventually he introduced me to my main mentor, chris Paulus.

Speaker 2: 22:25

I wrote pretty much a whole chapter in my book about mentoring, about Chris Paulus, and I call it the Chris Paulus Effect. Chris was in his 70s when I met him and I was in my 20s after my mission and he just sat there with me on his couch and I talked to him about my philosophy and I would perform something and he'd critique it and then he'd say how can you tie Donald Duck and Goofy to Billy Joel and Elton John? Because I could do all of these different things and he helped me put my act together. He helped me string some words together so that I could speak well, handle myself better, and he got me my first many, many gigs and launched my career.

Speaker 2: 23:10

So those two mentors, tony Ingle, the coach, chris Paulus, who also passed a year ago, on Christmas Day. Actually, those were my two great life mentors outside of my parents, and what a blessing to have mentors that see things in you, and that's why I talk about the clarified process within ICM. They clarified for me stuff I could never identify and that's why we need to have that connection with others to ask them what am I good at? What do you see in me that I could share? What are my qualities, my gifts, my signature moves? And when we ask the right people, they can actually give us all the power we need to then go magnify that promise with others. It's a wonderful thing to have mentors.

Speaker 1: 23:56

I thought it was so interesting that Chris Paulus in your video with your last visit thanked you for mentoring him and you also had mentored Coach Ingle. It's interesting that they mentored you and then you also mentored them and they felt grateful for you as well. So it came full circle.

Speaker 2: 24:17

That's interesting, isn't it? I remember when Chris would say hey, man, I'm supposed to be the mentor here. You're teaching me stuff. You need to stop. We would laugh about it. But eventually he did say look, it's so cool to think that you've learned so much in showbiz. And honestly, he had never been in showbiz. He had taken the stage once in a while. He was a very good eloquent speaker oh my goodness, his vocabulary is crazy. You can remember every Jimmy Durante line that's ever happened in the history of comedy. But he didn't go and make a career of it. And so as I started to do more and more gigs and events and opportunities, I'd come back and say to him hey, this is what I learned. And he's like hey, now you're the mentor. So he was big on. It's one thing to have a mentor, it's another thing to then become the mentor.

Speaker 2: 25:10

And we all have that opportunity, and so when I speak on stage, I share about teachers that were important to me. I share about how a music teacher heard me singing in the hall.

Speaker 1: 25:22

Mrs Hall.

Speaker 2: 25:23

That's right, mrs Rosland Hall. She heard me singing in the hall in high school and she discovered me and that was really a wonderful thing. And, mrs Hall, I say to the audience Mrs Hall probably came into your life at some point. Hopefully you listened to them discovering you, because she did. She literally said you're not going to play basketball, you are a singer. You're going to make a living with your voice. Coach Engel on one side, saying you're going to make a living as a funny guy. Mrs Hall, on the other hand, saying you're going to make a living with that voice.

Speaker 2: 25:59

And I say to my audiences have you thanked the person who was your mentor? Do you share their story? And if you can't think of who they are, you're it. And if you can think of who they are and you thank them, you're also it. It's now your turn to go mentor and discover others. And that's a really fun message to realize that we can become the mentor. And I think most of the time when we mentor someone well, they eventually do become the mentor back to us, and that's a beautiful circle.

Speaker 1: 26:32

And now you are mentoring with your new YouTube channel. Can you tell us more about that?

Speaker 2: 26:39

Yeah, there's lots of different ways to mentor. So the chair behind me is where my mentees sit, and for years I did what was called Mentor Mondays and I would have people come here every two hours from about 8 am till 8 pm and I would just help them and get them launched or give them some advice and listen to them mostly and see if I could help in any way. But then there were some that wanted more of that with me and so then we would set something up where I would be able to do that and that would be time well spent for both of us. But a lot of the questions I would get were the same over and over. People would come to me and say I want to become a performer or I want to make a living as a speaker. How do I put a speech together? How do I not be scared of speaking? What should I do to be a good speaker? I mean all the same questions over and over, and so eventually I created a course called how to Make a Career from the Stage and it was really just like a 60 page workbook with multiple videos that I put together and people would buy that for about $1,000 online course. I did some retreats and some other things, and I'll be doing more of those things in the future.

Speaker 2: 27:56

At the time when I put that together, I thought I should probably be doing this on YouTube, where at least it's free to the open public, that anybody could go watch and see what I'm going to be teaching.

Speaker 2: 28:09

But you give me a topic and I'll share as much as I can about it, but I can only give you five or 10 points in a YouTube video and then there's a whole lot of other things we can talk about that's personal to the performer or speaker, and so, yeah, recently I've launched a YouTube channel and so I'm excited to share with everybody about it. It's just my name, jason Hewlett. This is an actual educational channel where I'm answering either questions or speaking on specific topics about speaking. So if you go to Jason Hewlett on YouTube and you type it in, you'll probably find a couple of different channels and the channel you want to find is the one with only a few videos so far. But I'm excited to flood the internet with YouTube free videos. People can watch and learn and hopefully it's helpful, and then if they want to learn more, they can come to me about mentoring or coaching or even retreats and other things that we're doing to teach and help them get to a place that they can really feel comfortable on stage.

Speaker 1: 29:08

That's so generous of you, so generous. When I saw that you were doing that, I thought that's just so aligned with your generous giving nature to do that and to share that, because there are so many of us that want to learn from you, and so to have you just open your heart and share that, that's so generous of you.

Speaker 2: 29:29

Well, I appreciate that, but I don't view it that way Honestly. I view it as like a here's the thing. Try filming a 10 minute video just talking about one topic. That's a hard thing. Yeah, now try to film 20 of those in one sitting. That's a really hard thing.

Speaker 2: 29:53

Now I'm challenged when I get on stage, because that's always a challenge Winning an audience over, having the right audio visual equipment, whatever the setting might be being prepared, getting there on time.

Speaker 2: 30:06

There's lots of things that go into it. Right, there's a whole different animal to trying to create this much content and, in reality, as much as I feel like I'm giving and trying to be helpful, it's also helping me in such a massive way to exercise my brain and to recall what I've been through over the last 23 years doing this full time. It's really been a wonderful exercise for me. So it's beneficial to me in terms of working out my brain and trying to become better at video, which I have not really mastered. I'm okay on video, but I'd like to become the kind of guy that they watch me and say I have to watch all of these. I would like to get to that point and I think when I'm on stage people a lot of the time would say I could have listened to you all day. That's a nice place to be at. I would like that to be the same on video too.

Speaker 1: 31:03

Yeah, and that's interesting because here you are, even recognizing the gift that is coming back to you to be able to crystallize that and to be able to remember that and articulate that. That's blessing you by giving. That's just so, you, and it just goes right back to what your mother taught you. That's a beautiful thing. I was going to ask you about the promise. Why did you decide to focus on that and to have that philosophy?

Speaker 2: 31:31

Tell me more about your, why, behind the promise to the one, Well, there are three elements to a promise, and I talk about how. The first is your audience and the second is the family. The third is the one. So the audience, or your clients or your customers, if you're in business, if you're a teacher, it's the students, if you're a preacher, it's the congregation. If, when the elements of the family come into play, there's two folds to this. The first is the work family, the second is the home family. So work family might be your team that you work with and the people you serve with in the community, that sort of thing, but then there's a home family and the people that are the most important to us. And so the final element is the promise to the one. A lot of people think I'm talking about God, and in some ways, tangentially, it is there, but the promise to the one is yourself, and I believe that when we are truthfully aligned within our promise to ourselves, then we are doing what God wants us to do.

Speaker 1: 32:30

Takeaways from today. You've probably heard Jason Hewlett's comedy show and who would have thought he started out as an artist and was offered the chance to play college basketball? Wasn't it interesting how he discovered his gifts by the things that brought him joy and the things he did that brought others joy? I was so impressed by Jason's love for people and his desire to lift others and help them magnify their gifts, as well as his integrity to keep his promises to himself, to others and to God. Stay tuned for part two, in which Jason shares why he wrote the book the Promise to the One and how his experience with broken promises in his life reinforced his desire to keep his promises. Thanks for listening. I know you're busy. Did you know that you help spread the love by leaving your review and following? This helps increase our visibility so people can find us online. I really appreciate your help. I'm wishing you lots of love in your own hero's journey.