The Success Nuggets

The Success Nuggets #55 - Jenlyn (En Jen to Heart) From Muchness to More

• David Abel • Season 3 • Episode 12

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Former firefighter–paramedic turned cinematic brand architect, JenLyn (EnJen to Heart) brings a rare blend of lived resilience, neurodivergent leadership, and creative rigor. In this conversation we unpack how to stop asking for permission and start using it as a system: build safety, tell the truth, then express fully.

We cover practical courage for people who don’t fit the mold, emotional intelligence you can use by Friday (awareness → resilience → agility), and the nervous-system tools behind calm in action - breathwork you can do in a minute, “first-hour” hygiene, and body care that keeps you present. 

JenLyn shares how daily artistry became meditation, why color and story cues reduce friction, and her mission to gather a million people around Sing Your Song, an immersive “living movie” movement.

If you’ve ever been called “too much,” this episode shows how to turn your muchness into more for your life, your work, and the stories you bring into the world.

Nugget of the day:  “You don’t need permission to fit in; you need courage to be more.” 

With thanks to One Golden Nugget and Maxwell Preece for editing, support and artwork

SPEAKER_01:

Tell me about your look today, uh Jenlin.

SPEAKER_02:

I'm doing a uh a book launch later, and I was just inspired by Tim Burton and uh Alice in Wonderland slash ringleader circus kind of feel. I never know. I just get my tools ready and then I will generally have an idea, and then it just unfolds.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. I think that's a nice place to start because today's episode I think is one for anyone who didn't quite fit the mold. For sure. I think for anyone who's tired of asking for permission, permission to belong, and this is their episode to be seen and to be moving. Like in today's episode we can talk practical courage, how to build safety, and not shrink in who you are. Jenlyn, uh you bring a rare combination of lived experience and hard-won expertise into emotional intelligence. And we've had some deep conversations about your past as well. And you're an intersection of neuroscience, design, soulcraft, how you look different every day. Welcome back to the Success Nuggets.

SPEAKER_02:

Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here today and to talk about all of those things, especially learning and developing that permission to live in your muchness. And then eventually you move from muchness to even more, which is shocking to some people, but it is entirely uh possible.

SPEAKER_01:

What does that what does that mean? Muchness to more? Is there is there a time where you fit it in? People call me slovenly. I don't know if you know what this means.

SPEAKER_02:

No, I do not actually. I would love to learn though. Thank you so much for teaching me something today.

SPEAKER_01:

Slovenly, yes, I got called Slovenly by a business director, and she said, Oh ha ha, don't be offended. She said, I'm Slovenly. People who are slovenly just can't help looking a bit scruffy. My daughter is also slovenly. I couldn't tell until she went to secondary school and they put her in a blazer. So being told to fit in, we we talk about ADHD as well, and and you want to go your own way. Was there a time when you weren't the makeup artist who changed their look every day?

SPEAKER_02:

There was a time where I would not change my look every day. I do joke about that a makeup brush was one thing that I was just born with in my hand. I would get in trouble even in kindergarten and um first grade on the playground because I would have makeup snuck in and I would pretty us, and then we'd all get in trouble and we'd all get sent to the bathroom to clean our faces. It's just something that I've always loved art. I've always loved art and I've always been especially drawn to being talking, living, breathing art in one way or the other. About six years ago, that escalated, for lack of a better word, if you will, when I'm most happiest, when I'm most confident, and when I'm able to be most present. And so it is something that I start my day with. I get up earlier in the day. It's meditative to me, and it's spending very intentional time at the edge of the universe with curiosity and openness to what the uh day holds, dipping into the pool of possibility. Every day, part of that permission was that I would be artistic because as I was experiencing the changes in my body through illness, I had lost the time where I was doing that. And what I realized is how how important it was to me to be able to do art. And and I could have picked up a piece of paper and just continued on in that way with charcoal or paint. But what I decided was ultimately it made me the happiest. And it really actually extended the way that I spent time with myself quietly, meditatively, while it is that I am changing my appearance every day. And so for myself, it's to have that in my life every single day. And for others, it's so that it allows permission to just flow outwardly from me to others and that for them to pick up that they have the permission to also be themselves in whatever way it is that they choose.

SPEAKER_01:

I see how people are caught up in the nonsense. And so you're just saying, look, it couldn't be any more obvious that you have permission to be yourself, to do what you want.

SPEAKER_02:

Yep, here I am being 100% me safely.

SPEAKER_01:

I was someone who felt they couldn't complete things, personal things. I don't have all these personal ambitions, but just stick to work. Did you ever have that?

SPEAKER_02:

Um, yes, because I have a lot of ambitions, right? With an ADHD, and I think that's part of that. And then there's the autism on top of that. And then I think what we don't understand is that we actually feel the most joy in the pursuit of something. And the moment that we get close to it, yeah, we tend to walk away. And it's not because we don't have the ability to complete it, it's just that, well, that's not our part, right? Like that's what it feels like because we start experiencing that drop down and learning neuroscience specifically really helped me understand that about myself. You just kind of jump around from one thing to another and just go back. And it gets to be okay. It's okay if you were doing something and you lay it down and you don't touch it for six months, you know, while you're doing something else. You can that all of those things get to be okay. And if you don't want to do that, the one thing that I do to help myself is set alarms. I have all kinds of calendars. I even schedule my outreach, like to not just clients, but to my own family. I will create a voice note or a text message, and I will set it to just randomly send off so that when they reply to me, I know that that's my signal to myself from my best and highest self, and that in fact, to stop what I'm doing and answer and have a conversation with that person.

SPEAKER_01:

Six years ago, was this sort of COVID time? Yes. Was that where it really pushed on for you?

SPEAKER_02:

Yes. Besides COVID, I had had some chronic illness. And so about the same time that the rest of the world was actually falling ill, I was actually stepping into my best ring of health that I'd had in about 10, 15 years. I've actually had COVID six times, and uh I've had every string of uh, but I have autoimmune, so that happens. It did allow me to step into you that being reminded in a in a larger way that we only have right now. And it's been an evolution. So the muchness is that's what I consider everything that ever separated you out. The the too loud, uh, too quiet, too big, too small, too, too much, too little, those all of those little pieces that we hear throughout our lives, that is the magic of your authenticity.

SPEAKER_01:

That's not a phrase I've heard before. Is that relating to honesty?

SPEAKER_02:

And it's honesty with the innermost core of yourself. There's a time and a place to be fully yourself, and then there's a time and a place where you're not, and read the room and adapt. What I have found is that when you show up completely as you are, completely confident, and you're not having that record playing in the background that's saying, say that thing that you're wanting to say, but you're not, because you don't feel safe, or you don't feel uh that it adds to the conversation, or that you're intelligent enough, or whatever it may be that's going for you on the inside of yourself. When you just allow that to flow and be that person, that that's your authentic self. That is your muchness. That's what the room's begging for.

SPEAKER_01:

I think so. Now you've got so many layers as well that have that have made you a a strong person.

SPEAKER_02:

If we were to explore some of those layers and and how you got to where you have even though some of my stories feel and sound a little extreme at first, when you get underneath it all, we all have the same experience as far as the emotions that we feel. And we all know what it feels like to be abandoned, to feel not enough at that severe crux of pain where you feel like you just can't go on. We've been, we feel on top of the world. Like that's the human experience. And I think that that's something that we all feel, and I think you would find an ocean of of compassion and empathy. But it's it's not been it's not because of what I've been through. I I do not subscribe to that line of thinking. I've always been compassionate and I've always been strong and resilient. And things are, however, like a muscle. That's just a story that we tell ourselves and or that we allow others to tell us that we're not ready.

SPEAKER_01:

Permission is like one of my most favorite words in the last two years. And I guess you're saying giving ourselves permission when we're not ready. Where did that come from?

SPEAKER_02:

I was a paramedic firefighter for 15 years. And so I learned that giving my I learned a couple of things. One was uh around fear and trauma. When I gave myself the permission to run to and not away, that it boosted my ability to do so because our natural lean to's of what we might do, whether that's fight, flight, freeze, flop, fawn, we can even experience all of those throughout our lifetimes. But we have one that we generally kind of uh lean towards more so than the others. And mine is actually flight. I'm gonna run, I'm gonna run that burst of panic, I'm gonna run that initial shock off. Then I'm gonna kind of turn around and come back, right? And so I had to really practice at not doing that because you can't show up to help somebody that's having an emergency and run, right? It doesn't, it doesn't work very well. So I learned that if I give myself permission to be courageous, or if I give myself permission to do opposite, to let my body let to allow my body give it permission to allow me to do what I want it to do rather than what it initially wants to do, and those types of things is where I really started giving myself different permissions and being able to steer your life rather than allowing your life and your body to control you because we can actually be in the driver's seat.

SPEAKER_01:

I don't really get into it that often, but I'm a fight. I can be for sure. Actually, in your way of taking a step back and then coming towards it, mine has to be don't and take a step back. It's the same thing. Both take a step back. I think everyone's got a huge respect for people who are firefighters, paramedics. That's a the big job. What did you do next in your career?

SPEAKER_02:

I had to end that role because of my autoimmune that I mentioned earlier. So I was unable to physically do the job. I had been experiencing flares of something, and we weren't really sure what. And I would have a day or two where I was very weak, miserable, and in a lot of pain. And then it would lift. And at first, I'm I could have weeks, months without any kind of symptom at all. And then it would hit again out of nowhere. One day we were with a patient, and I almost physically dropped the uh the cot and the patient because I did not have the strength. And I got a terrible Charlie horse that's in my arm, and that had been something that had been happening a lot, and I just knew that that was that was it, that I could not be responsible for causing harm to another human. And so we went back to the station. I immediately clocked out, and I never clocked back in ever again as a medic firefighter. And then I actually had eight years or a little more, actually, probably about 10, where I was in a constant fight with my health and for my life. And so I didn't do anything but that for about for the next 10, 10 years.

SPEAKER_01:

And was this this was, I guess, in your 30s? Yes. Were you an ambitious person to do nothing for sort of eight, 10 years? It must have been dark.

SPEAKER_02:

It was it was very torturous. At the same time, I still managed to do everything that I could do. And I do have um one son. And so that was also his school age, and so it was everything that I could do to help support him with homework, get him up and get him to school and keep the house in um, order cook meals, those sort of things. At the same time, as it was a great struggle and it was a great journey also in learning to uh let go and learn, let the dishes sit in the sink sometimes right overnight, because at the end of the day, it didn't really matter. I left the dishes in the sink and well, the world kept turning. And uh I quickly realized that if I did not understand what was going on with me, I could not advocate for myself. And so everything that I had, I poured into making sure that my son had the most normal life that I could possibly muster and understanding the languages that my body was speaking that had become foreign to me. How old is your son now? He is uh 28. He's he's doing great. He's got two businesses. He also was a paramedic um firefighter for about eight years. Then he left. He started uh his first business, and then he started his second this earlier this year, and uh he's got four beautiful babies, and he's married. Does he does he really remember those times? Oh, yeah, yes, yes, absolutely. There it was not, um he did not make it through unscathed. There was there were times that I was very sick. I owe so much to him because when I could not move my body myself, he's helped me move my my body and exercise and move my arms and legs when I couldn't myself. So there's definitely a time of shared resiliency, determination, and will between us that I think is extraordinary. You know, he would say, Mom, it's not like that, right? It's not like that. And uh every time I'm like, I'm so proud of you, right? That was such a that was such a good thing that you did there, or encourage him that he's doing something really hard, really well, and things like that. He's the first and quick to say, I learned it from your mom. And so that becomes this beautiful experience of understanding that the humans are resilient and strong, and age doesn't necessarily have anything to do with that. It's just naturally who we are, and at the same time, we still want to protect our children, but our children are capable of handling so much more.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, they're stronger than we think, aren't they? But he sounds like a beautiful person as well for that. So you've been through a lot, especially the health issues. You've got the son into adulthood. Where do you come in? When was this great change, though, that that I want to hear about that you really went, no, I've got it.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. Like we mentioned before. Six years ago, I was going through my third big life separation. And that's something that the moment that I realized that that was happening and the relationship that I was in was ending, I just began to give myself permission slips because what was happening in life was telling me that it was not okay for me to be sick. It wasn't okay for me to be well either. It wasn't okay for me to have this experience of uh duality and paradigm and nuance. And well, that's life, you know. I wasn't following podcasts or books or anything like that. I lived in the library when I was young, but as an adult, I've studied specific things, but I don't necessarily read that again when you look, sounds odd. I don't spend a lot of time reading these days. I stopped listening to the outside world because the outside world had always said all of these other things about me. And I really started leaning into what do I say about me? What do I really say about me? And how can I lean into that? And even in our self-development practices, mindfulness practices, spiritual or religious practices, most everything is pulling you out, is pulling you outwards and it looking right for those things on the outside to help support you or solve the problems or the emotions or experiences that you're experiencing. What I discovered when I dove into the ocean of myself is that I absolutely am unique. I have unique ways to talk about and experience this world, and that is the same for each of us, and we can only do that if we're really truly embodied. I call it embodied, I in that I'm in this body, because actually most of the time what I what I discovered was that I was not. I actually physically remember at about 18 months old, I had a fever, I was really sick and I'd been taken to the hospital, had a febrile seizure, and I remember being thrown in an um pail of ice water. And the moment that that happened, I very vividly remember having an out-in-body experience where I was on this up at the ceiling looking down at myself and all the nurses, the doctors, my parents, and what I kind of discovered in a in a big way, I spent most of my life then actually not really aware of the inside core of my of myself. I kind of floated through life.

SPEAKER_01:

Wow. Wowzers. What can other people do though to find themselves? I I do daily mantras and I'm on board with what you say. It comes from your heart. People don't like writing, but I think they feel happy having written. What other things can people do to steady themselves, get back in the moment?

SPEAKER_02:

You have to be willing to lose your mind. So at first, it's gonna feel very scary. It's gonna feel like you're spinning out of control. People are going to uh tell you as such, as because you begin to change. It feels a little erratic, and it can become a little erratic. And people notice that. Stick with what it is that you're doing. You're kind of shedding everything that's not you. And when that happens, there is debris, uh, for lack of a better word. I think that there can also be grief, fear, anger, shame, guilt, and all of those kinds of emotions. And typically why it's those emotions is that because we're told um that we have to suck it up, we have to uh pull up those bootstraps, we have to, you know, you can't let other people, especially your children or your spouse or your parents or any um your teachers see you not to be strong because the moment you're not strong, the moment that everybody circles around, most of the time, even though their heart's good and we're all in the right place, we don't actually encourage each other in the right way. But that's not really what actually supports us. How to process our emotions, understand what they are, because we get we become so separate that we don't even know what it is that we're feeling. We don't even know that it's sadness or that it's anxiety, anger. And what we also don't understand is that that could be from right now in this moment, and that anger could be from 30 years ago, still kind of floating around in our system. So it comes up, and so there's exercise, eating right, and taking the time to sit in silence and understand what it is that we're experiencing. Start saying yes if you say no, start saying no if you say yes. The truth of the matter is especially if you're in a place where you feel completely miserable and detached from life, do everything opposite of what you're doing because you get you into certain grooves and habits, and it does so because it's comfortable, it does so because it feels safe, it does so because it understands the logic of what's happening, and that doesn't necessarily mean that it's good for you. And I mean everything, what you're eating, when you go to bed, what you like, what you don't kind of start spinning that all around and question everything. Start questioning yourself, though. Everything that you feel is about you, even if you think you're feeling it about another person. It is inside of you, it is your feeling, it's your thoughts, it's your beliefs, it's it's you. And no one else can do learn to understand. And then those things will dissipate. They're only hanging around because they're being ignored, misunderstood, not processed physically. Our bodies know exactly what we need to do. We do it naturally when we're two and when we're three. When we get upset and we know that our personal boundary is being overpushed, we are most excellent at saying, uh, no, my boundary is being overstepped, right? And we start crying, screaming. If we are ignored, we start stomping around, right? Like if we are ignored and that keeps coming towards us, that's what happens. And I'm not joking when I say that I throw a tantrum safely by myself in my home every single day, because that is what our body naturally would do. Just like a gazelle when it runs, we don't finish out those processes. We don't allow because it's not accepted. We're seen as uh superior to that. But the truth of the matter is we're still mammals, and our body actually knows exactly what it needs to do if we'll just allow it.

SPEAKER_01:

Oh, so many great things there. I'm gonna have to rewind just a sec. Okay. So uh do not concern yourself with the rights and wrongs or others is a way to let maliciousness enter your heart. But as you say, it's the reflection on you as well. But I'm so glad you said you had a daily tantrum as well, because I think everyone does. And again, they're holding it down. Uh where I don't know where you stand on nature because the cyclical rhythms of nature are huge clues. As far as I went for a walk the other day at 7.30 in the morning, and a flock of geese flew over that gone from one part of the town to another. And I went for a walk last night and I heard the same geese, and it was dark, I couldn't see. And I looked at my watch, it was 7.31. And this morning in the kitchen I heard them and I looked out and it was 7:30. Almost to the minute, morning and night. But the the cyclical rhythms of nature in ourselves is huge. No one's no one's picking that up.

SPEAKER_02:

No, they're they typically don't, and that's just we shut that off. We're we become so consumed, we're so busy walking out industrialism um and leaning into patterns of construct, of man constructed patterns, of when we have to go to sleep, when we have to wake up, when we have to move, and I only have 15 minutes to do lunch, but I still have to do these other hundred things that I'm trying to do at the same time, that we become separated from those clues and the natural cycle of life that we are still a part of. I get up at no later than 4 a.m. every single morning, and I go outside at during that time period because there's this magic that happens between uh in that middle area between night ending and day beginning, and the world is coming to life in little small ways. The birds begin to. Seeing the dawn into existence and the night um nocturnal animals beginning yawning and stretching to uh end their cycles in the world, and it's just this beautiful time to be aware of all of those things. I very much believe in the cycle of life and grounding being outside and being with plants and nature because as I said earlier, we are we're still technically mammals. We are not separate from the from source. And in this body and this life, our source is the earth. And it our brothers and sisters are the animals that live it. When I was very young, I remember, you know, everyone usually says when the grass is fresh been cut, you know, like, oh, I love the smaller fresh cut grass. And it always made me cry. It always made me feel so sad. And I could never I couldn't understand why everybody thought it was such a uh a beautiful thing and something that they loved. And I just knew that my experience was different, very different. And I used to get in trouble. I would be crying when I had to go out and mow the grass myself, and then I'd get in trouble because I was just not wanting to do the work. And I was just filled with this sadness, this grief. And when I was in my early 20s, I discovered that that smell is a chemical. The grass is crying, it is releasing a chemical, it is signaling to the other grass blades around it that there is danger, that that their life is is in danger, and it's a real thing. Not all of us are in tuned to those, you know, types of things. And so it's all those little things that are part of what makes you unique, what makes each one of us unique is those little things that we don't know how to explain, and or that other people were really didn't know how to understand or explain. So you closed it off, you we put it in a box, all right, we zip it up nice and neat because that separates us and when we're younger, that's uh not safe.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, it's hard to explain, isn't it, as a kid the that energy you fear, especially within the times we grew up as well when there wasn't phones and not even cable TV. We only had three channels here in in the UK.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. The occasional bam bam on the top, you know, too. Oh, damn it. I think that it is interesting that you know, we didn't have ways to find out what we were experiencing or what was happening in the way that can be done today. Although that can also be even more difficult.

SPEAKER_01:

It is difficult because of the amount of synthetic toxification going on TV, screens, drink, drugs seems to be worse than ever. I think too many people latch onto it. They don't separate themselves from disorder, they welcome negative thoughts as well. Uh did you see the full moon last night? That was something, wasn't it? Yes, it's quite beautiful, large, and just stunning. It felt very powerful. Jen Lynn, it's been great having you on, but let's talk about today's world cinematic brand, architect, executive producer, storytelling, sing your song, making things immersive. What's your mission now and what you're achieving?

SPEAKER_02:

Right now, the mission is literally to gather uh a million people around a story, and that story is sing your song. A sing your song is also a business itself, and and it's a movie. And so what most people don't realize is that most movies actually are a business because there's a lot of things that they go through, and what we're doing that's different is bringing that immersive experience to the forefront. As audience in the world of entertainment, entertainment wouldn't thrive without the audience, but the audience is always only evolved in the very end, and a lot of the ways that audiences are involved are very superficial. And we want to change that. We want the audience to build their experience, come be part and build the experience together of what do you love about story? What do you want to experience in a story as it unfolds? Do you want extra backstory? Do you want the ability to see what's happening behind the scenes during the moment? What are the things that could bring that experience more to life for you as a person? And also the other part is to do so, you know, human-centrically, the human body, psyche, emotion, emotional body in place and remuneration. There is abundance in this world, and we want to be a part of sharing that abundance out with the world. And so that looks like a lot of different things in the in the days and years to come as we're able to bring that to life. But ultimately, it's about coming together as community, building and becoming the systems that we want to see. We have the the power and the ability to do that. It's not about ending or warring against or fighting against the systems that already exist. It's about finding your place. And then the system will bend around you. And both get to exist in a place of balance. When we are able to do that, we can do so empathetically, compassionately, with strategy, intelligence with heart. And I really believe that love is the answer in all things, and especially in business.

SPEAKER_01:

Smart move. It's very difficult in business not to concern yourself with the rights and wrongs of others, and as you say, go to war, try and take down systems and just the way press is these days. I'm with you. The best commodities to trade are sincerity and love as well. So it's been brilliant having you in today. Before we go, what is your one golden nugget for life?

SPEAKER_02:

My golden nugget is to breathe. Just breathe and keep breathing. Because when you breathe, your mind, your body, and your brain can all come into alignment and just trust. This is where the trust the process comes in. Trust the process, because it may not feel like that's happening, but it is. And if you will just just keep breathing. And I want to just one little tadbit with that is in through your nose, out through your mouth, hold it slightly at the very top. And the reason why is that if you are legitimately running for your life or fighting for your life or frozen in fear, you cannot have that level of control. And when your brain realizes that you actually have that level of control, it begins to change the hormones and the chemicals that it is dumping into your body. This is the way that your body communicates with your brain, and your brain communicates with your body is through your breath.

SPEAKER_01:

Brilliant stuff. Right, guys. Keep your mind focused. Learn the principles of nature. Train hard. Dreathe well. Be sincere. Have love. Oh, what great messages from the show, gentlemen. Thank you again for coming in.

SPEAKER_02:

Thank you so much for having me. I have thoroughly enjoyed our conversation. I can't wait to join David and his incredible guests next time on the Success Nuggets podcast. And to find out more, visit one golden nugget.com. Thank you for listening.