In this Episode

• [04:03] – Ione agrees with Orion’s point that the people you surround yourself with are incredibly important.
• [04:28] – Ione shares her origin story, including her ethnicity, where she was born and raised, and how she got into acting. She also digs into how she realized that creating Uplifting Content was important to her.
• [09:56] – Orion points out the ratio of bad news to good news, and mentions some of her own upbringing and childhood.
• [11:48] – We hear about Adam Siddiq, a mutual friend of Ione’s and Orion’s, and Ione points out that Adam’s family could still find the joy despite some terrible circumstances.
• [16:16] – How did Ione start Uplifting Content? In her answer, Ione talks about the earliest days of the now-popular site.
• [18:34] – Orion brings up Abraham-Hicks and shares some of the inspiration she gleaned regarding focusing on the positive.
• [20:33] – Ione points out that pain is inevitable but suffering is optional. Orion then points out that worrying is praying for what you don’t want.
• [23:11] – Orion shares a powerful point about chasing the horizon, which is a mental construct that our brain creates to separate the earth from the sky.
• [26:14] – What was the emotion behind creating Uplifting Content? Was Ione excited about getting millions of views, or did she just want to put it out there and see where it went?
• [29:15] – Ione has been struggling with the idea of being addicted to social media, and she and Orion debate the necessity of being viral.
• [32:34] – Orion talks about the overall balance between darkness and light in the grand scheme of things.
• [33:14] – What makes a video go viral, and what makes people want to share your content?
• [34:26] – Ione talks about the size of her team, which is surprisingly small. She then talks about where she sees her company going in the future.
• [35:41] – Who was the most surprising person who Ione has ever collaborated with?
• [36:40] – Ione discusses whether her relatively young demographic has surprised her.
• [37:53] – We hear about how Ione helped herself feel worthy of the good in life when she was going through a hard time.
• [40:36] – One of the things that Orion teaches her clients is that it’s okay to feel all of your emotions, she explains, but not to stay there for too long.
• [44:46] – What are Ione’s three top tips to living a stellar life? #1: Spend your time and energy surrounded by people you love. #2: Do things that you enjoy doing for the fun of doing them. #3: Travel a lot.
• [45:30] – Where can people reach Ione and get more of her uplifting content?

About Today’s Show

‏‏Hello, welcome to Stellar Life podcast. I want to know, do you watch the news? Do you sometimes get sucked into all the drama in the world, everything that is not working, everything that you see in the media, all the terrible things that are happening in the world? Sometimes, it’s easy to get sucked into all this negative content that’s around us. This is why my guest is creating content that will uplift you, engage you, and make you smile, or at least make you think in a better way. She is a multi-faceted woman. She does acting, voice over commercial work, and pretty successful at that. What we’re going to talk about on this episode is her uplifting content. She just started it a couple of years ago and already have millions of followers. She collaborates with extraordinary experts, she creates those short, super cool videos that are really fun to watch and really make you feel something good. I really enjoy her as a friend and I really enjoyed talking to her on this episode. I’m sure you’re going to enjoy it and really get inspired. Talking about getting inspired, if you’ve been inspired by this podcast and if something good happened to you because you’ve listened to some empowering information here on Stellar Life podcast, please write a review. It will just take you a few minutes, just to go iTunes and write a review, or go to stellarlifepodcast.com and leave me a comment. Also, if you have any questions for me or any requests for guests or topics or for my own solo episodes, let me know. I would love to give you what you need from my heart. Now, without further ado, onto the show. Hello, Ione, and welcome to Stellar Life Podcast.

‏‏Thank you so much. Thank you for having me, beautiful woman.

‏‏Oh, my God. I’m so excited that we’re talking. Last time we met was, when was it? Three days ago at my birthday party?

‏‏That was right. Your fun birthday party where I had an awesome time and met some really fascinating individuals. It was really great. I was a nice mix of people. I really enjoyed it. Thank you–and great food.

‏‏Thank you.

‏‏And dancing! She knows how to party, everybody.

‏‏Thank you. Yeah, I love my friends. I really like collecting amazing, inspiring people like yourself because it’s so important to surround yourself with the good people. People that are big thinkers and big doers. They wanna change the world and they see beyond themselves and beyond the Kardashians, and Instagram, and Jersey Shore, whatever.

It’s so important to surround yourself with the good people. People that are big thinkers and big doers. Share on X

‏‏Yeah.

‏‏Those reality shows. I just feel like so many people almost live in a bubble.

‏‏Yeah, yeah. Agreed. Yeah. I totally agree with you. Who you surround yourself with is so incredibly important. Yeah, because that’s kind of who you become, those people that you’re with. If you wanna be in that place.

‏‏Yeah. I’m really curious, what’s your origin story?

‏‏Do you mean my ethnicity? Where I was born and raised?

‏‏Yeah, ethnicity, the way you grew up. What brought you to where you are today?

‏‏Sure. My mom is English and my dad is from the Bahamas in the Caribbean. I just did a 23andMe test which isn’t very specific.

‏‏I know, I was so disappointed when I did mine.

‏‏Yeah. Not at all specific. It was like I’m pretty much half and half, and my dad, their region, because I was curious to find out whereabouts my dad’s family originated from and it just basically said West Africa. I was like, “Yeah. Cool. Thanks.” Lots of the DNA, I got some Irish and some German—this is actually kind of cool—German and French. Then there’s some like Jewish back there somewhere. Some Jewish ancestors, cool. I’m born and raised in England. I was always interested in performance. From about 13, really started getting into acting and performing and followed my passion for that because I just loved becoming a different person, really. The impact that you can have, how to change people and make them feel by acting, I just love that. That became my passion and purpose and focus and went to drama schools, some really great drama schools in the UK. Then graduated, after four years hustling in London, decided to move to LA and then did four years of hustling in LA. All the while with this trying to pursue my passion and find that joy in performance, I dealt with a lot of depression, I dealt with it a lot which the more I talk about it, the more it’s so not unusual like it’s everybody’s story. It makes me so sad that so many people struggle with this and struggle in silence with it especially when there’s so many people that are going through the same thing. I dealt with that. When it comes to acting and performance, it’s tough because if you’re not making it, you take that on like it’s…

‏‏Rejection.

‏‏Yeah. I mean it’s hard. I think, because this rejection is one thing but it’s what I do to myself that is the thing. Because we create these stories about ourselves and we do all of this stuff to ourselves and it’s very tough. It’s pursuing that, dealing with all of that. Then a couple of years ago, I just got to the point where also I look a lot of TV and it’s not really stuff that I wanna watch, it doesn’t makes me feel good. I don’t really like the stories that are often told. I wanna feel good when I watch TV and I don’t often feel that way. A couple of years back, I’m so desperately trying to pursue a career and be in shows that I don’t even watch, what’s the point in that? I’ve met a really amazing person who created such a fantastic beautiful content, spoke on my videos and things like that. He was just such an inspiration because he was just basically following his passion, his path and doing his thing. From that, his whole career blossomed and bloomed and blew up. It really just made me stop and just think, “What do I wanna do?” That was uplift people.

When I’m feeling depressed, I want help, I wanna be able to feel good, I don’t wanna turn on the news and have it send me into despair and feel awful. Uplifting content came about in that way. A platform that people can go to to be reminded of all the incredible things that are going on not just all the stressful, horrible, nasty things. Sometimes, the misconception that I have people think is that it’s like fluff peace stuff that doesn’t really just, “Oh, it’s so nice stupid stuff.” But now I think you can still tell stories, you can still talk about what’s going on in the world, but if there’s a wall for example, it’s a horrible thing, yes. But there’s amazing people in a wall who are doing their best to raise their children or try and create peace, or all of these other things that are happening amongst these situations but we don’t hear their stories. It’s my intention with Uplifting Content to just remind you of all of that stuff so that we can see the truth of what’s happening, there’s more to the story than just one crazy person went and shot a bunch of students in a school, that’s one thing. I hate people go, “What’s happening to the world?” That everyone’s awful. It’s like, “Okay, what about the thousands of people, doctors and nurses, who stepped up in that situation or all the people that’s donated blood or all the volunteers or complete strangers?

‏‏You just gave me goosebumps. Oh, my God.

‏‏Totally, we never think about that. We just hear one awful thing and we go, “Everything is awful, the world is terrible, human beings are terrible.” Then we don’t think of the thousands of people everyday that are doing remarkable things in spite of all this stuff. I’m just saying, not ignore stuff, because I think that’s dangerous to ignore. There was a time where I was like, “No news.” But no, if there’s no news, that’s how the holocaust happened, that’s how these horrible things happen when nobody’s reporting it but share the news but also share the stories that inspire us. Because right now, everything that we get disempowers. It’s like that showing you that life is all about money and having things and you’re not worthless. You’re worthless unless you have a car and a lot of money. It’s either all of that type of messaging which kind of makes us feel inferior or it’s a bunch of stuff about the horrible things that are happening and the old policies, things out of your control making you feel powerless. It’s kind of just shifting what we consume because I really think that what we consume really shapes what we believe which shapes everything, what we believe, how we feel, how we action, and what happens in our life.

‏‏Just look at the news. If you look at the ratio of good news to bad news–I don’t watch the news. I grew up in Israel and unfortunately I lived through some wars, I lived through the gulf war where I was a little child wearing a gas mask on and being in that sealed room like being afraid of a nuclear attack and missiles and the alarms. I lived through terror attacks and I lived in a war. I think because–especially my culture–we have been exposed to all that, we really value life. What I remember the most vividly out of the gulf war for example is like Saturday Night Live Type Show that was hilarious and I remember how the whole country, people were coming together and people were laughing together, regardless of how dark and depressing the situation was because you wanna focus on life, you wanna focus on delight, you wanna focus on what works rather than what doesn’t work. There is so many things in this world that don’t work. If you just wanna focus on what doesn’t work, it’s so easy to get sucked into that and like you said, it’s just adding on whatever you experience, you’re just adding more pain. Like you said, there is so much good. When I remember those wars, I remember people coming together, I remember people supporting each other, I remember that wicked humour that was going on. I remember people living their lives regardless of whatever the situation is and going to party and hanging out because life is precious.

‏‏Yeah.

‏‏You want to focus on what’s worked rather than what doesn’t work.

‏‏Yeah, yeah. I agree, and I never knew that. I never knew that was something that you lived through. The struggle is real for a lot of people and I have so much respect to a friend of mine who’s written a book called SHACKLED, his name is Adam Siddiq. It’s about his–

‏‏Oh, I know Adam. Adam is my friend too.

‏‏Oh, you know Adam? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

‏‏Yeah, he was supposed to come to the party but he couldn’t make it.

‏‏Ohh.

‏‏Bummer, bummer, bummer. Adam if you are listening,

‏‏Yeah, make sure you show up next time.

‏‏Bad boy.

‏‏Have you read his book?

‏‏I haven’t.

‏‏Have you read about that?

‏‏We talked about his story, we talked about his story.

‏‏Yeah.

‏‏But I haven’t read his book yet, no.

‏‏Yeah, it’s about his grandfather who was a political prisoner in Afghanistan from six years old and he was first under house arrest and then ended up in jail for like 20 some years. Even after their release, they were still kind of held hostage by the government. For me, even hearing what you’ve just said, my life, what it really did was just put everything in perspective for me. I have not had anything that did horrible with my life to deal with at all and yet him and his family could still find the joy–

‏‏Yes.

‏‏And still keep meeting through this stuff. They set up a school so that the kids could still get an education. When he was older he was taken out of house arrest and put into jail, he just basically spent the years learning from this incredible man, learning all these different languages and all these different poems and learning from philosophists while he was in prison just to make something of the experience. Those are the stories that we need to hear because when we’re faced with these hardships and stressors, this person can do that, you can do that.

‏‏Yeah. Have you read [00:11:33] by Viktor Frankl?

‏‏No. No, I don’t think I have. But definitely heard of it though.

‏‏Yeah. Viktor Frankl, he was a psychologist. He was in a concentration camp, he was actually in two of them. He was studying the psychology of the people that survived and compare to the people that perished in this super hard situation. For him, it was about focusing on how he’s gonna get out of there and how he’s gonna tell the story and help impact the world. One thing that he did in the concentration camp, year after year, he would look over the fence and look at this tree and be really grateful for this beautiful tree and really admired that tree everyday throughout the season. The harsh winters, and all the seasons, he would look at that tree and find how beautiful it is. It was about moving his perspective from what is and how hard it is to what’s beautiful. I don’t remember exactly but everyday he would go into gratitude and then he would find a way to help somebody and get out of himself and help somebody. Also he used humour, even in this super dark, devastating situation where people are dying around him and suffering and are sick and being treated like dehumanized, worse than I don’t know what–he still found humour, he still found a way to help somebody and he still found a way to be grateful for something.

‏‏Yeah.

‏‏Yeah.

‏‏That’s amazing. Really, really amazing. Yeah. I just love hearing stories like that. That’s kind of the point of Uplifting Content is just telling more of these stories–making these the things that we say about humanity other than just everything else. Yeah.

‏‏Yeah. How did you start Uplifting Content? You partnered with that person, and right now Uplifting Content is a household name and has millions like something like 250 million people watched your videos, probably 300 million?

‏‏Yeah.

‏‏This is a global movement and we’re talking millions not even thousands.

‏‏Yeah.

‏‏But it didn’t start that way. Take me back to when it started and how it started.

‏‏Yeah. My friend and I who is an influencer, and like I said, make really beautiful video. The idea was that we were gonna start a production company and make these really great videos with messages. We did that and it was a couple of years ago and I was acting and doing voice over and travelling with this video game I worked with and stuff like that. He was also very busy and often about and doing things. It was like trying to start a business between two people that had full time other businesses and then whatever. We did some stuff and create some video and that was great and did really well. He lived in a different state. We realized that it wasn’t gonna be kind of this collaborative, we weren’t going to be able to work together to make stuff because we just had completely conflicting schedules. We went separate ways last year. But then what I turned into was this idea that it’s a hub of inspirational and uplifting content. We’ve made a few videos and shared them and they had gone viral. That helped to boost the following and then because we were getting a bigger following, it was helpful for us to share stuff from other creators on the page. That was the idea that becomes like hub of inspiration. That was how it kind of helped me connect with some really amazing people like Jay Shetty, who’s just like an absolute lege. Yeah.

‏‏Lege.

‏‏Yeah. For legend–#lege. So are all the other people that we kind of partnered with and worked with. It grew from there. I think most people get it. The thing that I love about the people that I work with and we share the stuff and I interview, it’s just everybody wants to make a difference, everybody wants to help people in some way. Everyone’s intention is to just uplift people. That just gets me really excited and I just love it, I love it because you see there’s a lot of people that are focused on fame and status and just self-serving stuff. Sadly, in our society that seems to be what is admired and respected. But then I’m in this world and I’m just working with so many incredible people and I’m like, “Ahh, you see. There is hope. There’s thousands of people that wanna be of service and wanna help other people.” It’s just nice.

‏‏Yeah. Have you ever heard of Abraham Hicks, Esther Hicks?

‏‏Yeah. Ask and It Is Given is one of my favorite books actually which I need to read again, I haven’t read it for a while.

‏‏Yeah. Every once in a while, I listen to her videos on YouTube. They’re so, so good. I’m going to be living in Israel for five months and I’ve been working really hard, packing until, I don’t know, [2:00]AM. I was getting really tired so I put it on so I can get more inspiration and I had a second wind. What she was talking about was exactly this, I was thinking to myself how perfect it is. She was talking about what you focus on. So many people are focused on global warming and about the evidence that the world is coming to an end. She says it the more beautiful way, but she says actually, we’re living in the best time to live in by knowing what we don’t want, we create a contrast and we know more of what we do want. Then we can help heal the world. There is so much more than the ‘I can see’ and our planet has the capability of healing itself but the more we pour negativity, negativity in what doesn’t work and we focus on what doesn’t work, that prevents the healing process. She had a woman come to her, she was in pain, she was sick, she was really in pain, she was saying, “How can I feel good if I’m in so much pain?” She said to her, “You can be in pain and be positive or you can be in pain and be negative. The only difference is that when you’re in pain and you’re thinking those positive thoughts, this is what launches the healing process. If we’re in the negative, we cannot heal. Also our planet cannot heal because we’re creating more of what we don’t want.

‏‏Yeah, yeah. I’m having [00:19:11] this really amazing guy called Doctor Robert Parkson, which is a great name. He talks about that as well, pain is inevitable, we will experience pain, the problem in life is people go around saying, “Doctor, I don’t want my children to ever feel pain.” We’re about stupid because it’s inevitable. Denying that is you’re just setting yourself up to fail. But suffering is optional and suffering is the thoughts that you give to the situation. I love that you can be ill and be physically in pain, but the suffering comes from the whole why is this happening to me? I shouldn’t feel this way. Why am I going through this pain? Why does God hate me? That is the thing that is causing the suffering. How do you switch that? Switching the thoughts to stuff like the gratitude for being alive and having this experience and growing through it. What am I gonna get from this experience? It’s easier said than done, and it’s something that I’m working through all the time. I’m still struggling with a lot of this stuff. But yeah, I think we just need to just watch our thoughts, watch our thoughts because a lot of time people aren’t even aware of the things that they’re thinking and how that’s having an impact.

‏‏One thing I’ve heard, I don’t remember where I heard it, was that worrying is praying for what you don’t want.

‏‏Yeah, definitely, it is.

‏‏Yeah.

‏‏It is. It’s such a pointless thing too because the mind tries to think its way around situations. We have an argument or something happens and we have this inner argument that we should have said this to somebody because the mind’s trying to control things that haven’t happened and it just does that. It’s just obsessive and not helpful. With the worrying as well, it does nothing, there’s not a single thing that it does to make anything better, the act of worrying. When I’m reminded of that, just kind of checking myself or reminding myself that this incessant thinking and worrying about a thing is not gonna make any difference and then bringing myself back to this present moment. Something I love, is that in this moment, if you’re not thinking what is wrong, when you don’t have a thought in this moment what is wrong with your life right now, and nothing, nothing, all the suffering, all of the depression, all of the hardship, all of that stuff comes from the thoughts that we’re thinking. It’s just getting better control of it. Our mind is this magnificent tool but it’s taking over, it’s taking over for a lot of people and it’s in control and it’s out of hand. People have forgotten that this is a tool that we have to serve us and it’s kind of working in the opposite way. Yeah, mindfulness and paying attention to the thoughts is so important.

Our mind is this magnificent tool but it’s taking over, it’s taking over for a lot of people and it’s in control and it’s out of hand. Share on X

‏‏I heard Dan Sullivan talk about the horizon and at some point in our life, we see the horizon and there’s no such a thing as the horizon, it doesn’t exist, it’s just a mental construct that our brain creates so we can separate the earth from the sky. When you chase the horizon, you never go to the horizon. Because the horizon is always a mental construct that is in the horizon. You can drive and drive and drive, and you will never touch the horizon. We don’t have any emotional problem with the horizon because the horizon is the horizon and it’s out there. We don’t need to reach it, so we don’t get depressed or sad that we cannot touch the horizon, it’s just there. The depression starts—like you said—from the gap where our ideal life, what we see on TV, our perceived reality of what needs to happen, our own personal horizon of where we wanna go to, this is where the gap starts, this is where the emotional problems and sadness and negative emotions begin because if our ideal is I wanna make $2 million and I’m not there and $2 million is my horizon and I work hard year after year and I don’t get there, and then I create thoughts around it, and emotions around that, that is what creates the sadness and the depression. But when you put your ideal and you see it, “Okay, this is my self-imposed horizon and I might get there, I might not. I’ll do my best to get there but if I’ll lose the negative thoughts and the attachments to my ideal, to my horizon, and I just be here.” Use what Viktor Frankl did, I’ll use humor, I’ll use gratitude, I’ll use getting outside of myself and into service, and into serving other people, then I probably will get to that ideal quicker but I won’t suffer while getting there. I will embrace my life at the moment. Life is so precious, time is so precious and when we’re not in the present moment in appreciation and we’re just sad about the past or worried about the future or just we’re not here, we’re just dealing with some mental construct that we ourself, we create it for ourselves.

‏‏Yeah, very true. Yeah, we’re wild. We’re silly.

‏‏What was your mental construct when you came to Uplifting Content? What was the emotion behind creating it? Did you have high expectations of all the million views that you’re gonna get or were you just like, “I’m just going to put it out there and see where it’s going.”

‏‏That’s a good question. I think it’s actually a mix of both because the friend I was working with had already done really well with content and had a good understanding of making stuff that works. That was fun to work together. In fact, the first video that I posted, I felt that it would get a lot more views than it was. I think that can be such a dangerous thing when we’re driven by the outcome rather than just the creating and doing stuff for the fun of it, it’s so much about, so programed by getting those likes and shares and video views. I think it kills the creative process in a way because we’re kind of just trying to make stuff for the sake of algorithms and things like that. The intention was to make stuff that helps awaken people, helps give people stuff to think about, it was always about bringing people together and connecting people and inspiring people to step up and do their stuff. That was always the goal and intention. But yeah, I guess, I did have the thought of wanting it to reach a lot of people and do really well.

‏‏Yeah. But there’s a certain sense of allowing this. You allowed it to happen. There was something energetic in you and the bigger vision than yourself that allowed it to happen because I don’t think that you focus Uplifting Content around you, you’re a con to it and you will be there, you will show up, you might be in some videos, you might talk to people, but what I think that you do and which is super beautiful, it’s not about you, it’s about the greatest good.

‏‏Yeah, yeah.

‏‏Yeah. That’s what I’m getting from it.

‏‏Yeah. I’m glad, thank you. Yeah, at some. I just think people needs something uplifting. [00:27:33]can be notoriously depressing, or if you’re comparing yourself to other people and things like that and so I just wanted something that was more to benefit you.

‏‏And all the hearts, the shares, and like. The way they program Facebook, for example, the social networks, they program them to be addictive.

‏‏Yeah.

‏‏They take engineers that worked on whatever, casino engineers, and they use all kinds of techniques to reward the brain when we see our brain loves reward. When we hear that like little “ding!” oh, my God, reward, I want to do it more. When we see the little heart, “ding!” Oh, I want more heart, I want more heart. It creates addiction. I watch it and it seems like Facebook is getting smarter and smarter with it. Every other day, there is a new feature; you see more hearts, more likes, more different sounds. I don’t know if you noticed that, but it’s expanding and it’s sucking us into become more and more addicted to it. When we’re there, it’s almost like we live in a computer game and we don’t see the real reality. If our life is how many likes, shares and hearts and fame we get, then who are we?

‏‏Yeah, yeah.

‏‏What is our real value?

‏‏Yeah, exactly. That’s something that I’ve been struggling with. I’m thinking about what I wanna do because I don’t like being addicted, I’ll go into Instagram and scroll through it for like 15 minutes, I’m like “I don’t wanna be on this for 15 minutes getting sucked into this thing.” Then, it’s the same with Facebook. I’m limiting my use. Now it seems the thing I’m focused on more is getting people off the platform and getting people connected in real life is the thing that I wanna focus on, doing more speaking engagements, doing more trips and travel, working on a book, and using the platform as a way to connect with people and contact people and share what’s going on, but not make it the focus of the business. I think that’s the issue, we’re getting so caught up in growing a following and having followers and viral stuff and it’s like, “Ahh, I just don’t think that that’s important. An important thing is helping people.”

‏‏It is and it’s not, yeah, because if it’s not viral, it won’t reach people. If it’s not viral, people won’t get it. The Facebook algorithm is gonna block it.

‏‏Yeah.

‏‏They won’t go anywhere.

‏‏Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s a completely fixed system designed just to make you hey for stuff. They’ve gotten out. I’m actually interviewing a marketing woman soon who did this post about, she’s worked in social for years and was really hard to create great content that does well and the reason algorithm changes just killed everything. They’ve done paid ads, they’ve done organic stuff. It’s really not a level playing field. They have this watch feature right now that whenever Facebook rolls out any feature, it gives you tons and tons of reach for that feature, it becomes common thing and then they pull back the reach of it and then you have to kind of pay for it. Now, they have watch features which is open to certain people and certain people are getting paid for it. Those videos are getting huge, huge amounts of reaches, and then other stuff is not getting organic reach at all. If you are constantly trying to keep up with and be disappointed by these ever changing things, I’ve just learnt to let it go because there’s no point in me trying to fight Facebook algorithms, there’s just no point, there is absolutely no point. As much as you say, “Yeah, it’s great to have things go viral.” I think you just keep doing what you’re doing, sharing, learning, and then making it more about not using social media anymore to collect your audience. Having a more, whether it’s a newsletter or a text thing or something that you can connect with your audience, everyone’s gone from having a Facebook page to a group because they’ve killed to reach your pages.

‏‏Right, that’s awesome.

‏‏Yeah. But they’ll do the same thing with the group too.

‏‏Yeah.

‏‏You might have a group with 5,000 people and only a few people see them. I think it’s really about nurturing the community and the relationships you have in a medium that works for you so that you’ve got those people to connect with all the time because I just don’t think that it’s about money, it’s not about what people want, we’re not associated with it.

‏‏Yeah.

‏‏I kind of felt bad saying it. I’m like, “Is that right?” But no they really don’t, it’s not about us, it’s about making money.

‏‏Unfortunately. When I look at the world and the grand scheme of things, the world, the way I see it it’s like a yin and yang and there is always the forces of darkness and the forces of light. The more the darkness grows, the more the light grows; it just an ever expanding universe and there is plenty of both and without both, we won’t have contrast. This is just the way we are, the way we are designed. What makes a video go viral? What did you learn about viral videos and how to make them more shareable? What will make people wanna share your content?

‏‏I think it’s having something that has a very strong message, something that really resonates. There’s so many different types of viral things, you got like silly cat videos and you’ve got a ton of somebody falling over. It really depends on the type of person. But for Uplifting Content, the stuff that really resonates, things that just kind of connect the stuff as human, that connects the stuff that people are thinking and feeling, stuff that makes you feel, I think, for our type of stuff especially, things that are simple, keeping your message simple. And then there’s stuff like having captions on videos, which again, this is just playing into Facebook algorithms. The type of layout that you have on your video and stuff like that. But that changes overtime, it’s not necessarily that. But yeah, stuff that for us is kind of stuff that has a really strong beautiful message seems to resonate with people. Yeah, like I say, you can have someone scoring a goal and that goes viral. It really is dependent on the type of person and what’s going on, what’s going on in the world, the time, so many different variables. That’s why I think is good to experiment and just keep putting stuff on and playing with it. Just seeing it once.

‏‏Yeah. How big is your team?

‏‏Not big at all. I have some virtual assistants that work, that help me out, so there’s like three. Me and Kevin that helps with social and graphics, and [00:35:11] that helps with video editing, and Karen that helps me with kind of admin stuff.

‏‏Oh, my God. You’re such a one person empire, almost. That’s insane.

‏‏Yeah, it’s kind of crazy.

‏‏Where do you see your company going?

‏‏I’m working on a book at the minute. I’m really excited about that, working on a book and potentially turning that idea into a TV series because I like to connect and interview people and talk to people and go out and do stuff. The book is the focus right now followed by the TV show and more speaking engagements, in person events where I can go and connect with people and just share my story, share my message because again, I’m a human who likes to connect with people, I need to be around people, and then more travel stuff. I love travelling and I know a lot of people in the community do. Kind of creating trips that are for people that wanna travel is the next stage of stuff as well.

‏‏Beautiful. Who is the most surprising person you’ve ever collaborated with?

‏‏Surprising is an interesting word. There’s just so many interesting people that I talk to all the time. I would say Donny Epstein is very interesting and his work and my experience with Donny Epstein has been very cool.

‏‏I love Donny.

‏‏Yeah.

‏‏In my heart, I call him uncle Donny. I almost always feel like his family.

‏‏Yeah.

‏‏I love this person.

‏‏I mean we all are family.

‏‏Yeah.

‏‏He’s interesting and fascinating. Surprising is [inaudible [00:37:09] anyone’s ever surprised me.

‏‏Shocked you.

‏‏Yeah. No. I think a lot of the people that I do work with, Jay Shetty, I wouldn’t say he’s surprising but he’s very humble and loving and just very selfless, wonderful person. Yeah, that’s always been really inspiring to me. Lots of people.

‏‏Your demographic is 18-34 year old. Was it surprising to you? Do you think that people at that age range need more support?

‏‏I think that our demographic is very, very broad, it’s nearly 50-50. That age relates to people online and people using social media. But then at the same time we still got a good amount of people that are, I’m trying to get the insights I have right now, there’s still a good amount like 10% is 35-44 and then 60% is 45-50, oh sorry I’m a bit confused maybe this is men and women. There’s still like a good chunk in like up to 40s. But everytime the people that engage with the page and a lot of people that I talk to on chat always very eclectic like all different ages, different demographics, different countries. I just think that everyone wants to be uplifted, it’s not like it’s a female empowerment page, or it’s not that it’s a get better at business whatever page is, it’s Uplifting Content and everybody I think wants to be uplifted.

‏‏Yes. Amen to that.

‏‏Yeah.

‏‏When you were going through a hard time, how did you help yourself work on feeling worthy of the good in life, feeling worthy of expanding and giving and receiving?

‏‏It’s an ongoing process for me and there’s different times that I’m dealing with it. I deal with it in different ways. But one of the things that I’ve recently learned is just to be okay and allow myself to feel where I’m at and be where I’m at with things. Again, everything is very much about my thinking. I can just go down into this really dark places of thinking and it’s very difficult to get out of, just very difficult to give myself credit and help and to get out of that. Kind of accepting that I’m in this place right now and that it’s gonna pass is always incredibly reassuring. Surrounding myself with wonderful people really helps, like Adam, our mutual friend, has been a real blessing and kind of helping me see my value when I haven’t always been able to see my value.

‏‏Really? Aww.

‏‏Yeah. He’s a phenomenal person at that. I think just–

‏‏I’ll help you see your value too.

‏‏Thank you, thank you. I appreciate it.

‏‏You’re so incredible.

‏‏Thanks.

‏‏An outstanding human being. If you ever need a reminder, give me a call, I’m gonna tell you how much I love you and how amazing you are.

‏‏Thank you, you beautiful soul.

‏‏Yeah. I’ll do that too, I’ll call you, I’ll be like, “Ione I don’t feel like I’m the shit today.”

‏‏Yeah.

‏‏“I feel like nothing is working and my gap and ideal is so far away and I’m not reaching it.”

‏‏The thing is it’s a reality for so many people. So many of us are going through it.

‏‏Yes.

‏‏That idea and that belief, that’s what’s causing the friction and holding us back. I had an interview with somebody today and he opened up and said, because I just shared so openly about everything that’s going on with me, he opened up too and said, “You know this time’s right.” He feels that impostor syndrome, doesn’t feel worthy and things like that. The thing that I struggle with is I do believe in authenticity but I think being honest and real but it’s finding that balance of how do you think yourself into this place or think yourself up when you are not quite where you wanna be yet, it’s like that, it’s me kind of trying to balance that, being honest, and real, and authentic which is like such a core of my being. But then also needing to give myself that boost, that confidence boost, that kind of fake-it-till-you-make-it thing, needing to do a little bit of that too. That’s the type of stuff that I keep coming up against. But the thing that really helps is just being reminded—either by the people or just myself—of the impact that it’s having in the work that I’m doing is having and making my focus be on that of like being of service and giving back and doing something for other people and letting go of that feedback loop and needing validation by likes and views and things like that, letting go of that thing and just connecting with people as much as possible wherever I can and having that be my focus.

‏‏Yeah. What I teach my clients is that it’s okay to feel all your emotions, you don’t wanna be in denial, you don’t want to shove it under the rug because it’s gonna pop.

‏‏Yeah.

‏‏It’s about feeling all your emotions but not staying there for too long. I went to an Ashram in India, Oneness University, and the Oneness Monks taught me, they said, “Let the tiger devour you.” Meaning, you allow these emotions to be, they are your guiding system, your sadness, your anger. Sometimes, they are driving forces, sometimes they are there as contrast for you to know, “Okay, I’m not thinking right, I’m not doing right. This is not the right place for me, how can I shift?” It’s okay and it is actually important to not just ignore it to feel all your emotions, but then stay there for 10 minutes. I think mastery is not about not feeling our emotions, it’s about not staying in those negative emotions for two days, three days, four days. I think the more I work on myself, the more I evolve. I have days where I’m angry and sad and frustrated, but the more I am connected, the more I work on myself, I don’t stay there for as long as I did 10, 15 years ago. It’s like okay, I feel sad and I’m gonna stay there for maximum an hour or few hours but then I’m gonna bounce back. A, because I have the tools to do that, I have the support system that I created for myself, but also the practice and the desire because dealing with emotions is a learned skill and it’s a learned skill, you can learn how to do it and there’s so many ways to deal with those.

‏‏It’s a work in progress.

‏‏Yeah. Keep at it and stop judging yourself. Just embrace everything that you are–the good, the bad, the ugly, because all of it, it’s you and you’re adorable just the way you are. Those emotions are just thoughts that we are thinking. The good news is that we can change the thought and change the emotion. If it’s hard to change this thought, we can change our physicality. It’s easy to change your state if we feel really depressed; go for a walk, go to the gym, go to yoga, change your physicality and that will affect your mindset.

‏‏Yeah.

‏‏It’s about the words you tell yourself, it’s about what you focus on, and it’s about your physicality. When you change those three things, you can change your state and you can move forward to what really matters which is your well-being and your contribution in the world. By the way, contribution does not mean giving money to people or necessarily going and volunteering in Africa. Your contribution is your energy and the way you show up because your energy shifts people. You can go into a room feeling horrible and you’re gonna contribute to the negativity of the room, or you can come and you can have this beautiful energy about you and you can shift the energy of the room and everybody in it just by holding a higher state. Your contribution in the world is first and foremost—it’s not about the money you make, it’s not about the things that you do—the energy that you’re bringing into the physical space and also into the collective consciousness.

‏‏Yeah, well said.

‏‏Yeah, that was pretty good.

‏‏I like that. You were in flow there, that was beautiful.

‏‏Yes. Thank you. Ione, my darling, darling, before we finish, what are your three top tips to living a stellar life?

‏‏Oh, great question. I would say spend your time and energy with people that you love or surrounded by people that you love. Do things that you enjoy doing just for the fun of doing it; like if you’re a singer, sing for fun. It’s so sad when we start to focus on trying to make a career out of things, the love and the joy comes out of this. Do the things that you love because you love them. And, travel, travel a lot.

Do the things that you love because you love them. Share on X

‏‏Yeah. Beautiful, beautiful. Where can people reach you? How can they reach you? How can they get more of your Uplifting Content and your beauty?

‏‏Sure, thanks. They can go to upliftingcontent.com or Uplifting Content on Facebook is the page, Uplifting Content – Because The World Needs More Of It. Then there’s my personal stuff which is Ione Butler on just social. Uplifting Content or Ione Butler and it will pop up somewhere.

‏‏Thank you so much, Ione. I really appreciate you.

‏‏Thank you, appreciate you. Take care, my love.