We Can Do Hard Things · Treat Media and Glennon Doyle

Follow the Tingle with Justina Blakeney

January 27, 2026·1 hr·4 clips

Justina Blakeney ignored her body's signals for five years until a voice from within said, 'You are not listening.'

1. We Can Do Hard Things hosts Glennon Doyle and Amanda Doyle interview designer and artist Justina Blakeney about following the 'tingle'—her term for authentic creative desire and bodily intuition. 2. Justina Blakeney is a designer, artist, and founder of Jungalow; Glennon Doyle is a memoirist and podcast host; the episode opens with Glennon noting January resolutions have collapsed and proposing self-knowledge instead of self-improvement. 3. The episode's core thesis is that listening to the body's signals—the 'tingle,' life force, vitality—is a more reliable guide to creative and personal decisions than external rules or discipline. 4. Justina grew up multiracial and Jewish in Berkeley, traveling extensively, and found that her racial ambiguity meant people worldwide assumed she was local—she learned to blend in by picking up languages, which paradoxically made her comfortable standing out anywhere. 5. Glennon introduces Maya Angelou's quote—'you are only free when you realize you belong no place, you belong every place, no place at all, the price is high, the reward is great'—as a frame for Justina's relationship to belonging and identity. 6. Justina introduces the concept of self-sovereignty with the phrase 'for the good of the realm': instead of framing dietary or behavioral choices as deprivation, she treats them as acts of self-respect that serve the people and purposes that depend on her. 7. She distinguishes self-respect from self-love, arguing that self-love can tip into indulgence while self-respect holds you accountable with a kind voice—'baby, your time is so important'—rather than a shaming one. 8. Glennon contrasts this with her own inner voice, which goes 'straight to shame' when she scrolls her phone instead of sleeping, and notes that self-respect presupposes importance: 'you have a realm, you have people.' 9. Justina describes the turning point that launched her meditation practice: she had endured chronic digestive distress for five years, dismissing it as 'just how my tummy is,' until she heard an internal voice say 'you are not listening—I've been telling you everything you need to know for so long.' 10. She began somatic therapy and took a meditation class, starting with five minutes a day, and over three years healed her digestive issues, identified foods she couldn't eat (including dairy), and rebuilt clarity about her own needs and desires. 11. Justina describes the progression of her interoception: early in the practice she could only hear 'I feel bad'; over time she began receiving specific messages—'I need water,' 'I need to dance,' 'I need to have a deep conversation'—and now can feel when something is right or wrong for her. 12. She introduces life force as her primary business decision filter: she measures her vitality before and after conversations with potential partners and evaluates whether projects give or drain energy—'am I excited? Can I not stop thinking about it?' 13. Justina explains she is in the middle of 'a lot of changes in my life and in my business' driven by this framework, and describes it as what made running her business 'actually possible for me right now.' 14. She describes her art practice—painting faces, which she says create an immediate connection because of the gaze—as intrinsically motivated, and says she is 'very lucky' that her paintings are not widely liked, because external judgment threatens intrinsic motivation. 15. Justina states her core 'wacky woo-woo theory': if everyone in the world followed their tingle to the fullest, the world would be perfect, because what is missing is the permission and space for people to simply be themselves. 16. She describes her morning ritual: one hour of meditation, morning pages from 'The Artist's Way,' Elizabeth Gilbert's 'Dear Love, what would you have me know?' prompt, Oracle card pulls, tea on the patio listening to birds. 17. The conversation addresses the tension between creative flow and business discipline, with Justina noting she needs discipline most for the things she avoids—administrative tasks, routines—not for creative work, which flows naturally when she is in touch with her body. 18. The tone is warm, relational, and intimate—two friends who had an awkward eye-staring exercise at a women's retreat and are now having a deep public conversation about body wisdom, belonging, and creative practice. 19. Listeners who are creatives, entrepreneurs, or parents struggling with burnout, chronic self-criticism, or feeling disconnected from their own desires will find the episode immediately applicable. 20. Listeners who want concrete business advice or find somatic and spiritual frameworks unappealing will likely find the episode too abstract.

As heard by us

Justina Blakeney's tingle framework is a quietly useful map back to the self you stopped hearing.

The episode opens on the comedy of failed January resolutions before finding its real subject: the argument that self-knowledge matters more than self-improvement as a starting point.

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Why you'd press play

Your body has been trying to get your attention. This episode names why you stopped listening.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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