IE107 Tania De Jong: Mind Medicine: Creativity & Psychedelic Therapy

Our guest for this week is Tania de Jong, Acclaimed Australian soprano, award-winning social entrepreneur, global speaker, spiritual journeywoman and creative innovation authority.

About Tania

Tania is one of Australia’s most successful female entrepreneurs and innovators. She has developed 5 businesses to this day and continues to be a marvelous agent of change. In 2009, she founded the ‘Creative Universe’, an organization with a goal to help develop creative leaders and build a culture of innovation. 

Around that same time, she created ‘Creative Innovation Global’ which offers conferences, master classes, deep conversations, performances, and other special events in an effort to promote new strategies and techniques for creative leadership and innovation.

Aside from being a successful entrepreneur, Tania is renowned for her charity work and has founded 3 charity organizations so far. She co-founded her most recent organization with her husband back in 2018. It’s called ‘Mind Medicine Australia’ and it aims to create a new paradigm for mental health through the development of regulatory-approved and research-backed psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy in Australia.

Her singing career is also sensational. She has released 7 albums with her acclaimed singing group Pot-Pourri and released 3 solo albums. Throughout her career, she has sung in many different languages including Spanish, French, Latin, German, Italian, Russian, Mandarin Chinese, Japanese, Yiddish, and Hebrew. For this episode, Tania prepared a sweet surprise for the Inspired Evolution Tribe - 10% off of all her music albums! Visit her website here and use the promo code 'INSPIRED' to get your discount!

On her impressive list of public recognitions, you can find awards such as Ernst and Young Australian Social Entrepreneur of the Year, the ‘Outstanding Individual Contribution to Australian Culture’, Churchill Fellowship, and The Melbourne Award. She was also inducted into the AGSE Entrepreneurs Hall of Fame at Swinburne University and named Brainlink Woman of Achievement.

Today’s episode is a two-parter and it has a segment of the third and final interview from the ‘Get Hacked Get Hi’ conference held in November 2019! Enjoy!

Connect with Tania:

• LinkedIn: https://au.linkedin.com/in/taniadejong
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/taniadejongam
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/TaniadeJong
• Website: https://www.taniadejong.com/

In This Episode We Canvas:

• Creativity and Problem-Solving

Tania is an expert on creativity and she demonstrates that a lot of us have certain illusions when it comes to the question of being creative. She makes a really cute demonstration by bringing up a person from the audience and in doing so, raises the vibration of the entire room. What a way to get started!

“One of the mistakes that I think people make is that creativity is about the arts. That it’s about painting or drawing or doing ballet… Creativity is also about solving problems. All of us are creative, solving problems.” - Tania de Jong

• Innovation and Why We Desperately Need It

She continues to explain what we can use our creativity for. Applied creativity is innovation and we can use it to make real contributions to our society. And we could definitely use a wave of those contributions right now.

“Innovation is the next part of that stage. So creativity, coming up with a lot of different ideas, solving problems, and then innovation is turning those ideas into something of value. Which doesn’t have to be of commercial value it could be of social value. And social value is exactly what we need right now in a world of increasing social and economic problems.” - Tania de Jong

• Why It’s OK to F.A.I.L.

Tania tells a story about her grandmother invented the first foldable umbrella, which is an incredible tale. You should definitely tune in to hear more about it. We touch on the notion of failing in this section and Tania offers a wonderful acronym that will help us maintain the right perspective.

“I like to think of ‘F.A.I.L.’ as ‘First Attempt In Learning…’ That really is the secret of entrepreneurship and creativity. Is going through that fear of failure. ” - Tania de Jong

• Creative Abrasion and Positive Human Collisions

The true potential for learning from our social interactions is in our diversity. In this section, Tania talks about ‘positive human collisions’ and explains why they’re a necessity for efficient personal growth and transformation.

“Our greatest gains as human beings are when we connect to people who are really different from us...You get that set of life experiences through connecting with people… who challenge you, who disagree with you… But it’s in that moment when you experience what’s called ‘creative abrasion’ and you feel that discomfort that really true creativity and innovation can spark. And I like to call that ‘positive human collision.’” - Tania de Jong

• How Does Singing Together Help Us Grow?

At the end of our conversation at the ‘Get Hacked Get Hi’ conference, Tania shares some insights around the benefits of group singing and how it affects our brains. This section ends on a really high note and I can’t urge you enough to go and check it out!

“The research shows that when we sing with other people we literally become smarter, healthier, happier, more creative. Our memory, language and concentration improve, our brains become neuroplastic, our neural pathways start to connect in new and different ways and it literally gets us high.” - Tania de Jong

• The Disconnection Epidemic

This is one of our frequent topics but it’s always lovely to hear different perspectives on it. We talk about the disconnection epidemic at length and Tania offers some really cool suggestions for what might be able to help us bridge that gap.

“People are feeling more and more disconnected. They don’t feel part of anything anymore, they don’t feel a sense of meaning and purpose. And they’re playing out their lives on social media but it’s unreal, it’s not actually something that’s truly meaningful… We need to work out what bringing back community and family and a sense of connection is really about. And we can probably use ancient wisdom and ancient modalities to bring us back to ourselves and to really connect with others and the planet so that we can feel a sense of purpose and service.” - Tania de Jong

• Creativity as a Form of Survival and Thriving

I don’t think that there’s a better way to top off this amazing conversation centered around creativity. Tania reflects on her grandmother’s journey once again and explains how creativity can lead us from the most difficult of times into a life of service.

“Once you use creativity to survive the hard times, you can then use it to thrive, then you can use it to become generous and of service.” - Tania de Jong

Tania’s Message of Inspired Evolution

If you’re looking to learn more about creativity, look no further! Definitely check out this episode because Tania’s diverse experience that comes from entrepreneurship, social change projects, and art allows for some incredible insights into the power of the creative process. She is truly an inspiration and I’m so grateful we were able to create this episode together. The conversation is also themed around servitude and how we can achieve that stage. Creativity is absolutely one of the most amazing ways of stepping into a life of service. I hope Tania’s story encourages you to explore your creative self.

“Once you’ve got through your hard obstacle… and you come out the other end, you feel a greater sense of light and purpose. And it’s from that place that you can give to others. - Tania de Jong

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