Hello Joy Tribe and welcome to another episode of The Joyful Life. I am your hostess with the Mostest Joy Villa and this is the Joyful Life, the podcast where we talk about positive living enrichment to your life, everything that can help you have a better, more joyful life. So I want to have a full disclosure here to my Joy Tribe listeners, this is what I call my fan base. Some of you know me from my music, some of you know me from TV appearances, some of you know me from my dresses at the Grammys. Some of you know me from my outspoken opinions on different things and others of you know me from my movies. And really this is a place where I love to be known. And full disclosure, this podcast is as much for me as it is for you because I get to be honest, I get to be real. We get to talk about all things that are joyful and a joyful life. And I want to talk about something that's maybe a little controversial today. I want to talk about frustration and how frustration can actually be a part of creation.

Today I had to rerecord this podcast because the first one that I did, the sound was not good. And so I recorded it on Wednesday when I do my live show on YouTube, and I was all happy to put it out. And I'm telling my team, we're going to put this episode out. And I looked beautiful in the video and the setup was great. This is the first time using for my listeners who are also watching the video cast available on YouTube. And on Spotify, the video, we have the new background. We have the Joy Villa Life, joyful Life background, the studio. And I set this up and this is in my home. And well, things didn't go as planned because when I was ready to upload it, I had to tell my team, listen to the audio. The audio is not working. So I was frustrated. So today we're going to talk about frustration and how that can lead to creation if you use it for the right reasons, right? Motion comes in, use it and win. So that's our topic. So sit back, grab yourself a cup of tea. Mine is green and let's dive into today's topic. So I recorded this whole podcast, was ready to release it, and unfortunately the sound sounded like the mic was not on because guess what? The mic was not on.

And I tell you, nothing frustrates me more joy tribe than having bad sound as a musician myself. I'm not a sound engineer. So I played with it a little bit, tried to edit the sound, got frustrated, gave up and said, you know what? I told my manager, crystal, we're going to rerecord this episode. And that's what I did today and that's what I'm doing now. And actually I said, well, this is a good way to segue into a new topic because what's happening in my universe, I like to share with you guys. So right now, I am redesigning my life and I am getting a new renaissance to appear in my life. I'm creating my life. And the topic of the other podcast episode, which we may bring up again, was becoming or being the architect of your life. Well, I want to talk a little bit about that today, but I want to talk about how frustration can set in when we start planning our life, when we start designing our life, a lot of times frustration can rear its ugly head.

And what do I mean by frustration? Well, I mean this defeatist mentality and that can interrupt the joyful life. Now, I do believe it's important to know that when something is tough or hard, that doesn't necessarily mean it's wrong. Many times we have struggles in our life and that means we should keep going. That means something's working. The ocean's rising. It doesn't mean you get out sometimes you just got to swim harder to make it to your destination. And truly, if our destination is peace, prosperity, harmony, happiness, and success for those that we love for ourselves, our family, for those around us in our community, then we will have to go through struggles. It was never promised to have an easy life. This planet is not easy to live on. I don't think any planet is easy to live on. Now that we've discovered aliens, I guess we can ask the aliens, right?

Well, we're here, and I could have said, I want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. I want to get rid of everything. I don't want to do this podcast anymore. This is too tough. This is too frustrating because I really felt that in that moment I really felt like, why am I doing this? And then I said, well, I'm doing this because I love this. I'm doing this because this is a need that fulfills something in me to reach the audience. It's also a need that fulfills something in them to reach me. This is my communication to you guys, and this is the communication you get to receive and then bring it back to me. I love your letters. I love your emails. I love everything about my community. This community is so strong and so beautiful. So we want to build and grow and the only way for me to do that properly is to get through the frustration and create anyways.

So it's all about creation. It's all about continuing to create, continuing to make something valuable, even if it feels like it's not working, because it doesn't always feel good when we're creating. It should feel good when we're creating, but sometimes we come against old ideas, old habits, trials, tribulations, maybe others' opinion. Maybe I don't look right, I don't look great, or what am I doing anyways? Right? Who has those thoughts? I know I do. I'm sure some of you guys have those thoughts. Sometimes these negative thoughts can almost take over to where we feel like I don't even want to create anymore. What's the purpose? What's the purpose? And that's when frustration can destroy everything we've built because frustration can lead to despair, it can lead to anger or can lead to despair, and it can lead to going down into depression and just giving up, just giving up and then becoming apathetic.

I knew I couldn't do it anyways. How many of you guys can relate to that, you guys and you girls? Because I know for me, being a professional artist has not been the easiest route. My goodness. If I wanted to do something easy, I would not be an artist. If you're an artist, I'm sure you can relate because creating from yourself and being your own boss and creating that life where I want to do this and I want to do that and I want to do this, but I don't want to have a day job or I want to do this, I want to do that, and I want to limit my day job, right? Either way, it's hard. It's a hard decision to make. It can be difficult, but the beautiful thing about being a professional artist and creating your life is that you can create your life.

I wake up every day and I think I am living the life I want. I am the person that I looked up to as a child. That's incredibly powerful. It's incredibly powerful to me. It's incredibly dynamic To have a life where I don't feel hemmed in, I don't feel locked up. I feel extremely free, but it also comes with its price. The price is discipline. Now, it depends on how you look at it. My dad, military army man, pastor of a church, strong salesman, owner of a company, strong father, father figure, and father talk about him often biggest mentor in my life. I lost him in 2012, unfortunately, and I lost my mom before that in, I lost her in 2008. It was 2008. Wow, it's been a long time. But I talk about my parents a lot because they instilled in me such a great responsibility to myself and to my community to be an artist.

They gave me that gift that I can be an artist Now, I don't think they could have stopped me. I was such a strong-willed child on I'm being an artist no matter what, thank God. But it also became something where it was my purpose in life. This is what I do. I don't need a day job. I don't need to try to do anything else. I can create. I can be free, and that's something that I carry with me every day. This is why my actions dictate or my thoughts, my life, my policies, my life, they dictate my actions. So rewinding it back, visualizing that life that I wanted to lead as a child created this sense of urgency in me as an adult to continue doing that, and it was just like black and white. This is what I do. This is what I love.

And so now today I have the life that I created back then, even as a child, I've always been an artist, and not just because I had the talent or the skill, it was because something compelled me to do it, even in the face of incredible obstacles because I have had all kinds of hate thrown at me, all kinds of inner and outer dialogue, and I'm not a victim by any means. I would never classify myself as a victim, but I would say that I've definitely been through pain, abuse, frustration and frustration can accompany a lot of emotions, right? Because frustration can be failure or the feeling of failure, the feeling that I can't do it, I shouldn't do it. Why am I doing it? Then you answer that all consuming question of why with well, you shouldn't, and that is when that self defeatist mentality can take over and then you stop creating, and then you become stifled.

And instead of continuing to create and continuing to do the things that make you happy and doing the things, pursuing the passions in your life because of that purpose you had as a child, you then take on this mentality of, well, I should be doing X, Y, z. I should have a day job. I should be living with this person or doing this thing because that's what society dictates I should do, and that is the hardest voice to say no to this society, this I should do this. The should haves should have, would've coulda, but it's the should. That always got me. I don't know about you guys. The could have. I could have been a contender who knows that movie reference, but I mean that could have done something. I didn't really have that growing up. I didn't have that regrets because I always knew it was in my power and in my possession to go after my passions, but it was more of the I should.

That kind of came into play and I've done a lot of wild, creative, crazy things. I've taken a very hard stance on many things and I've developed a softer approach in many ways as well. I don't regret anything I've ever done, but I always want to come at a place of unification to be the unifier rather than combative to break down things. My philosophy has changed to one, instead of, you must accept me and you better accept me, that sort of rock and roll in your face push, which I had a lot in my younger years, it's changed and softened to a Let's talk about it. Let's look at this. This is who I am, but you don't have to accept it, and that's okay. I'm who I am. You are who you are. We're going to let that be the way it is. We're going to let it simmer.

We're going to let it glow. We're going to let it glisten the way it has to glisten and glow. We're going to let it be what it is rather than trying to make it something that's not. That lesson has come through for me from incredible amounts of hardship, incredible amounts of confront, confronting the things that are hard. Ooh girl, it is hard to go and dig deep into what you are doing that's wrong. It is very hard to have self-awareness. It is extremely difficult to face your fears and do it anyway. But that is why I live this life, and that is why I have a joyful life because it's exciting for me. A joyful life is full of life. It's full of excitement. It's full of being the best person I can be and achieving great things and setting the legendary status for myself that then I have to achieve and taking others along with me.

Because joy, tribe, my community is everything to me. You are everything to me, you guys and girls. You are a part of me. That is what keeps me going. And every artist, every performer knows that they are indebted to their fans in a way that is not negative, but positive in a way that I must create for you so that you have somewhere to go. Because if I don't, who's going to do it? If I don't create it, if I don't make it, who's going to do it? And in the times of frustration that leads to creation for me. I take responsibility and I say, if I don't do it, who will? If I don't take the reins and accomplish great things in my life, then who will put that vision? Who will create that world? Who will finish that project that I started? Nobody else has the same vision that I do.

Just like nobody else has the same vision that you do, and creation is a part of life. If you're not an artist, it's okay it because you're still creating. You're always creating. You're always making something, even if it's making lemons. Well, no lemonade out of lemons, even if it's turning the bad things into good things. That's a skill. That's a talent, that's a creation. Life should be art. I believe living is art. Living a truly accomplished lifestyle is an art, and it takes a lot of work. It takes a lot of skill. It takes a lot of know-how. And it takes not just the knowledge, but the willingness to apply that knowledge. And that is when no amount of frustration, no amount of negativity, no amount of self-doubt or fear or bad self-talk because all of that bad self-talk, by the way that talk, it comes from other people.

It comes from things you've heard as a child, things you've heard from others, things that other people have said doesn't come from you. You would never talk that way to yourself. You don't talk that way. That is somebody else's opinion from God knows where all different places knock it off. Tell it to go home. Say, excuse me, I've got to go to the bathroom. I got to go. I don't need to sit here and listen to that. You tell that negativity, that negative voice that's in your mind to go home and you walk away from it and you get into something else. You do something else. You push through to the other side. That is how you handle that frustration because it's not just annoyance, but there's something behind it. There's always something behind that. And that something though is you needing to handle it, needing to tell that voice to go home or that doubt to stop or to look at it and to examine what you're doing and say, do I really want to do this?

Maybe I'm frustrated because I don't actually want to do this. Now, you can't always do that every day. If you have a podcast to record or you have a family member that needs your help, a child that needs your help, a spouse, a job, a boss that needs you to come in and you're frustrated, a dog that's yapping in your ear, it could be a myriad of things. It could be hunger, a diet, nutrition. The gym is calling. You got to work out. You got to lose the weight. You got to get your blood pressure down. Any of these things that are vying for your attention, you need to remember one thing. You're there for a reason. You chose this life for a reason. You chose this scenario, the situation that you're in for a purpose. Remember that purpose, recall that purpose and push through anyways.

You see how simple that is. You can recall the purpose, the real reason behind why you're doing something and push through anyways. You can do that for yourself. You would coach yourself if you could. And guess what I'm telling you? You would be the best coach for somebody else going through a similar situation. You would be the kindest, most gentlest person. But for some reason, when we get in those situations where we feel like we can't do something, we immediately pile on the self-doubt, the attacks, the negativity. Why do we do that to ourselves when we would never speak that way to someone else? Your inner dialogue is so important. It's because you're allowing that negative tape, that negative self-talk to enter into your mind and keep replaying over and over and over again. But you allow it and you need to stop. It is not okay beloveds for you to talk that way about yourself.

It is not okay for you to disrespect my friend a k a you. I'm not allowing that. And you shouldn't allow it either. So when those negative voices come in, when that negativity starts, if it's in your universe, when normally it is, you turn it off, you shut it off, and you stop it, you stop it and you tell it to go home, that's the only way you're going to be able to work through the frustration because if you stop and you focus on it, ooh child, it just gets bigger. So you do something else. You change the topic. What do you do when a toddler's having a temper tantrum? You change the subject. You say, Hey, look at this. Who's baby set? Who's a godmom? I'm a godmom. I'm a godmom. I was a stepmom. I hope to be a mom one day. I'm a birth mom. You guys might know my adoption story. I gave a child up for adoption when I was young. I was a teenager. I had a baby. I was not married to the father. It happened very suddenly. It was my second ever relationship, and it was very tough. It was extremely hard. I found myself pregnant and I don't believe that that life deserved to be ended because of my situation, because of my poor mistakes. I tried to work with the father. It was not a healthy situation.

It was not healthy at all, and I had to make the decision. I prayed and I cried. I was pregnant four months pregnant, and I said, what am I going to do? And the answer came to me. I looked down and I saw adoption, loving an ad. It was an ad in the newspaper, loving parents looking to adopt. And I called that number and it led me to an adoption agency and it's the best thing I've ever done. I could almost say it's the best worst thing I've ever done, but it's not bad. It's not worst. But it gave me the feeling of the worst loss of my life. It was so hard, joy tribe, but it was so the right thing to do. It was 100% the right thing to do.

It gave me an incredible sense of power and compassion for the life that was inside me, to know that I was giving her the best life she could ever have because I knew it wasn't with me in that moment. I knew it. And when you know something is not right, you've got to do the right thing. And the right thing would not be ending her life because of my mistakes. So I became a birth mom and I'm in touch with my daughter. I'm in touch with the child who's my daughter, and she calls me Mama Joy and her birthday passed not too long ago. Happy birthday. Beautiful. And she knows who she is and where she comes from, and it's an incredible love story. What can I say? It's a tough love story. Some of you might've known that story, some of you might've not. But I just knew that pulling the plug on a human life or deciding to take away the chance for her to live because I felt stuck was not the right thing to do. And I knew that this was an opportunity to give life to somebody else.

And giving birth to a human is incredible. It's an incredible experience. So I'm a birth mama and I want to be a birth mama again. In the right timing, in the right place, children are incredible blessing. And I'll tell you any situation, even a situation as dark as that can turn into the light, out of that, I created beautiful things. I wore a dress, a hand-painted dress at the Grammy's. I painted a photo of her in the sonogram in 2018, I wore this dress where I hand painted it and I had a bag that said Choose life. That was at the Grammy's in 2018 in New York, and that was dedicated to her, my beautiful daughter. I've shared this story to People magazine. I've shared the story online. I've shared the story at the Faith and Freedom Conference. I'm very vocal about this. And her birth parents were staying in really good touch and I see her often and I respect that this was a part of my life that was incredibly tough and moving and touching, but it gave me a perspective on going through life and having a joyful life.

Despite circumstances, you can turn those lemons into lemonade. I had to learn that the hard way. I had a lot of anger issues when I was younger, believe it or not. I suffered from a sense of I want to go do things, but I don't know how to do things. Everything I'm sharing with you here, I have dealt with myself. And one of the biggest lessons I've learned now is the sooner you confront these uncomfortable feelings, the sooner you look at something and really look at it and really, really look at it. You know what I mean? Really, really look at it. Not with your eyes, but with your heart, with your soul. When you really look at something, you say, this isn't right. This thing I do, this isn't right this way that I handle things or this way. I look at people, this anger, this frustration because it's really anger, which comes from pain, which comes from hurt, being misunderstood or having misunderstood things.

This scenario you don't understand. And instead of dealing with it in a healthy way and admitting, Hey, I don't understand, or I'm confused, or I'm looking at this, we react. And anytime you're reacting to something, you're not in control. You're not in control of your emotions or your expression of pain. I express it now. That's what the joyful life is about. It's not about running from pain. It's not about running from frustration. It's not about running from difficult situations. It's about expressing them, looking at them head on, not running to drama, not getting after drama or trying to be in difficult situations. I've made a lot of mistakes in my life. I'll be the first to admit. But it's also not about trying to be perfect either because nobody is. Nobody's perfect.

We're flawed human beings, but we are spiritual beings living a human existence. And that's important to take into, take that aspect into your life as well. And I knew I'm a spiritual being. I know I'm a spiritual being. And I knew at that time, going back to my adopted daughter, when I adopted her out and I signed the papers, the paperwork, I knew this was going to be the best thing for her. I was not fit to be a mom at that time. I was destitute. The situation was dire. My ex was physically abusive, emotionally abusive in jail after abusing me while I was pregnant. And I looked at that situation, I said, I don't want her to be in that. I don't have a right to end her life, but I have a right to give her the right life. And it was the hardest thing I've ever done in my life. But it was also the most beautiful decision. It really was. Joy, tribe and I stand by my decision and it made me a better woman because I now want to give that life, that right life with love and vitality and independence and interdependence and that mindset. I want to give all of that to my future children and to her and to you.

I've been big on community my whole life, and I've fallen away from it before too. And I've realized when I'm not grounded by my community and helping others and speaking to others and sharing the truth, my truth, I do love that when you speak your truth, not as an excuse to not take responsibility, but as actually the opposite. Because some people can say, I speak my truth. This is my truth. When they're saying, well, this is my viewpoint, or I don't see the facts. This is what I think. This is my opinion, which can be a form of truth, but also truth indicates truth, something. You can feel it in you when something's true, when something's real, when something's genuine, you can feel when someone's fake. You can feel when someone lies. You may think you don't feel it, but there's this kind of lack of, there's something about it, right? When someone lies, you can feel like something doesn't ring true. It literally rings true. And there's literally this sense of I just don't buy it. I heard someone the other day, I was watching a YouTube and he was breaking down relationships and he goes, honey, I don't buy it. I'm not buying it. I'm not even renting it.

I thought, that is so good. That is so good. I'm not buying it. I'm not renting it. And that's really what it comes down to. So few people are genuine and authentic and willing to be vulnerable and willing to be real and true that we get used to fakeness. We've got social media, we've got this. So that's where that, it's my truth. I'm standing in. My truth can come from, but that's not, I don't believe that's the essence of where that is supposed to come from. Your truth is the things that are true for you in your life, calling a spade a spade, being frank, being honest, being real. And when you live that way without regard to fear, and I mean do it within respect, you're still respectful to others. All due respect, I don't agree with what you're saying. You can say that you're allowed to say that you're allowed to not agree with people.

You're allowed to not agree with me. You might think this whole message is agreeable. I can think of some other words here, but it's a family podcast. But that's your right. But that doesn't mean I need to change who I am. And it doesn't mean you need to change who you are. The unifier. That is who I was born to be, to unify people together. That is the chosen field I want to do. That is the joyful life for me. That is what led me to the joyful life. Not trying to hit people over the head with my messages or my ideas or my design of the way their life should be. It's really disrespectful when we try to change somebody else rather than teach or grow with that person. It comes down to a relationship with that person means loving them for who they are, accepting them for who they are.

They're not going to be perfect, and that's okay. You shouldn't ask them to be perfect because you're not perfect. What if they did the same thing to you? See, that comes back to that frustration because real true frustration is extremely fleeting if you recognize where it's coming from. I recognize, listen, I am not an audio engineer. I cannot fix this podcast. I'm going to have to rerecord it. Fine. The frustration just blew nothing but a consideration. Nothing but a thought after that. And I just said, just do it, joy. And now I'm here, here and here we are into a beautiful conversation together. Joy Tribe here on the Joyful Life Podcast. And we're here. And by the way, speaking of conversation, I have got some incredible guests lined up for Future podcasts, podcast episodes. So I'm really, really excited to have these guests come on.

There's a lot of planning. We're scheduling it with my team, but there's going to be better and better and better content here for you guys. And that's the space I want to create. A beautiful space where you can feel free, you listen, but it is a dialogue. There's a poll currently going on for every podcast I release on Spotify. You can answer the poll if you'd like. And I ask my subscribers here to subscribe on YouTube because we're building the YouTube channel. We're hitting at 60,000 subscribers. We're currently sitting there. The road to 100 subscribers begin. So I would love your help, joy Tribe in joining the Joy Tribe Inner Circle. You can become a member on my YouTube or you can just become a subscriber and you're part of the fam. I appreciate that. Bringing it back to the subject at hand, frustration and how that leads to creation.

You see how in life we're going to be hit with challenges. Life is not for the faint of heart. Life is not something that we should look at and say, I want it to be easy. I don't want life to be easy. I want it to be gentle in a way, easy for me to be there, easy for me to be in control of what I do, easy for me to be. Cause instead of being the effect, but I don't want it to be easy, as in boring, stable. I do want stability. I do want it to be stable, but I also want adventure and excitement. So there is this sense of stability, but not, I don't want the white picket fence boring, two and a half children, car house. Of course, I want all these nice things, but I don't want it to be the end all, be all the middle class lifestyle that I'm just going to be normal.

I just want to live a normal life. Just leave me alone. Let me be normal. I've never been that way and I never will be. And that gives me true joy. It gives me true happiness, true freedom, because I know what I want. I'm not like everybody else, and that's okay. And joy, tribe, I know you're not like everyone else. It's also okay to want what everyone else has and to be average and be normal and to say, I just want that. There's nothing wrong with that. The thing is for you to recognize what you truly want, why you want it, the purpose behind it, and then when you get it, you just deal with it. Frustration comes in, deal with it. Handle your business. You just handle it. You handle it with everything you are. And that's why frustration can lead to creation because you use it as a chance to look deeper.

Say, what am I working with here? I don't know, audio engineering. Maybe I should know that. Maybe I should learn that so that I can be better. Or next time, make sure the mic is turned on. Best belief. I did a little rehearsal beforehand. Great, so nobody died. Nobody got hurt. You just get right back into it. I could have totally thrown the baby out with a bathwater, which is a saying. My dad used to say all the time, the very old fashioned saying, which means you throw everything away because one thing is dirty, right? The bathwater is dirty, so you dump, and then your baby's in there and you dump it all. I mean, it's kind of terrible imagery, but it's not literally to be taken literally. But you don't throw away something just because it's messed up or dirty. You fix it, you get into it.

And if you don't know how to fix it, you find somebody who does. There is nothing wrong with asking for help. That's a beautiful lesson. That could be a whole podcast episode in itself. There's nothing wrong with asking for help. Well, I am honored and happy to live joyfully, to live the Joyful life and to present to you another episode. Thank you so much for listening. Joy Tribe. I welcome your thoughts, concerns, comments. You can go head on over to joy villa.com. My email address is joy@joyvilla.com. Take a listen there, take a look. We've got plenty of episodes here for you. Guests coming, lots of exciting things in the works. And shout out to Andre Soriano. I'll have him on the podcast. My incredible Grammy's designer, he's in London at London Fashion Week. I got invited to perform and to be there. Unfortunately, I couldn't make it as I have a concert here in Tampa at a private event for a church event this Sunday, which I'm honored to do. I gave my word, but I wish Andre the best at his show. He's doing incredible things. And take a look at the Grammys because Andre and I will be working again together. So how's that for creating? I love you, joy Tribe, and I will see you in the next episode of the Joyful Life Podcast.