Shownotes
What happens when grief takes not only someone you love, but the version of yourself you once knew? On Healthy Mind, Healthy Life, hosted by Avik Chakraborty, mindset expert and spiritual teacher Joe Hehn shares his deeply personal journey through loss, identity, healing, and consciousness.
This episode is for anyone navigating grief, emotional exhaustion, or a season where life feels unfamiliar. Joe opens up about rebuilding from the inside out, finding meaning after loss, and learning how self-acceptance can quietly transform every area of life.
About the Guest
Joe Hehn is a mindset expert and spiritual teacher who spent years studying Buddhism, Taoism, Stoicism, Sufism, meditation, and consciousness after losing his wife to cancer. Today, he helps individuals and leaders transform how they show up in life.
Episode Chapters
00:00 – When Life Falls Apart Overnight
04:18 – The Truth About Healing Beyond Time
09:42 – Rebuilding Identity After Grief
15:08 – Consciousness, Self-Acceptance, and Inner Growth
21:10 – Life, Death, and Spiritual Understanding
25:33 – Giving Yourself Grace Through Healing
28:04 – Finding Meaning in a New Life Path
Key Takeaways
- Healing requires conscious inner work, not just time
- Self-acceptance can reshape every relationship in life
- Grief often includes losing parts of your identity
- Small moments of gratitude help rebuild emotional resilience
- Compassion toward yourself is part of true healing
How to Connect With the Guest
Website: Joe Hehn Official Website
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Transcripts
00:00:09 Nazish: Welcome to Inner Peace Betterhealth, the show where we explore the connection between an inner life that's at peace and a body, mind and spirit that can finally heal. I am Nazish and today I'm in conversation with Joe, and Joe is a mindset expert and spiritual teacher. And the people and what people connect the most with him is that he is deeply human. His teaching doesn't come from a textbook. It comes from the years of his experience of his life. After losing his wife to cancer, Joe walked away from everything his job, his belongings, his country and spent more than a decade studying Buddhism in Nepal, Taoism in China, and self-realization in India. Stoicism is in Europe and Sufism in Middle East, while also exploring meditation and consciousness. Today he's remarried. Raising a son and leading a thriving business and helping leaders, teams and individuals transform how they show up in life. Joe, I welcome you to the show.
00:01:17 Joe Hehn: Thank you. That was a mouthful. I'm sorry you had to have that long intro. Felt like a little bit of a novel, but now people know everything about me. Yeah.
00:01:26 Nazish: Yeah, that was the aim. So before we go ahead, listeners, some statements reflect personal belief and experiences and are presented as individual views, not medical advice. Listeners should consult qualified professionals for medical condition.
00:01:44 Nazish: So welcome to the show again. So, Joe, before we get into the bigger story, I'd love to start somewhere small. So what did you think back the very first morning of that one trip to the South America, where the small detail about that day that stayed with you all these years.
00:02:09 Joe Hehn: The day where I kind of had to make a choice. And I was traveling through Bolivia at the time, and I had been volunteering for months with children. We're visiting, you know, like orphanages, teaching women and volunteers self-defense. And it was exciting and it was fulfilling. But then like the moment I would get out of one of those experiences, something cultural or significant or nature, beauty, or just really present of like helping, I would remember my grief. I would remember like my, my, my, my circumstance. And I felt like a victim. I felt like imprisoned in a life that I didn't want to live. And so months this built and built and built and built. And then I got very, very sick in Bolivia. And I was just on kind of, I would call it a deathbed in the sense that I didn't want to die, but I didn't want to live. So I was caught in that gray area, and I knew that I made a choice there, that maybe I don't have to do either, but I have to learn how to live differently. The way I was living was not the way because I found myself in the space. So I had to then understand what can I do to live differently? And that's when I decided I was actually going to stop traveling through South America, head back to the United States for a few weeks, and then moved to somewhere in Central America and Costa Rica to kind of like settle somewhere instead of traveling constantly and then start learning about consciousness, about mindset, about spirituality. So I, then I started diving in, but that was a very powerful moment because I fought for life. And I think a lot of people have been maybe in a similar situation where life is just so bleak and so depressing or so shallow and so, you know, unfulfilling and maybe numbing that it feels like, what's the point? And it's because that way of living that led up to that is what got us there. And so we have to kind of look at life differently. And that's what I embarked on as a journey and then say, how can I learn to live life in a way that I am empowered and present and grateful and loving, etc.? So it was a very powerful experience that happened over ten years ago. You know, it's like twenty fourteen and has really just kind of guided me to this point. And I've learned a lot since then.
00:04:54 Nazish: Yeah. I believe what is the beauty is that these are lived experiences that really puts a deeper understanding and sets the tone for this whole conversation.
00:05:09 Joe Hehn: Yes. Yeah. You know, it expanded from there. Sure.
00:05:14 Nazish: Yeah. You know, I think there's often a misconception about that healing after loss or after a life that's been broken open. It's mostly that time, like, you know, you just give it time. But your story makes it clear the time alone wasn't the medicine. So from your experience, what is the biggest misunderstanding people carry about how, you know, real healing actually works?
00:05:41 Joe Hehn: So yeah, I don't I think that is a tremendous misconception that time heals all wounds because it doesn't. I believe that what you do with that time is what empowers you to heal, so that over time, you shift from being a place of in deep anguish and suffering to a place where you're kind of registering some beauty, some appreciation. So it's not time. Because if time we're the answer, then there would be a certain amount of time that kind of work for anybody, no matter what their circumstance. But that's never the case. Everyone usually takes their own kind of path through grief and like also a certain amount of time. So it's not time to the to that sense. Time is what Allows perspective to take hold. And what happens is we start looking at life differently. And so a lot of people may not go do all the work and they just time goes by and then their, their life, they finally find like new things to be, you know, like in love with or appreciative with or a new spouse or something else to fulfill the hole, the void. And so that is a shift in perspective. But if you're consciously going to want to try to heal after some kind of loss or traumatic event or something, then you can you can do that by understanding the power of your consciousness. First is understanding what consciousness is within yourself and then externally and how we're this kind of this big stew, and that we're an ingredient in an ecosystem and an environment, and that your consciousness has a flavor, it's higher consciousness, lower consciousness, and that it's adding either bitter or sweet to your ecosystem and then the ecosystem, the quantum field, the universe. Your life and reality that surrounds you will respond to your consciousness. So you can then do the inner work by understanding. One. The power of your consciousness. And then two. How to wield that power to create a different experience for yourself. And that's, you know, beliefs, thoughts, emotions and feelings and kind of putting in practice of the different meditations and affirmations and visualization, but also like setting goals and working towards them. There's all these things that are all floating around there that help people train their consciousness. I've developed a three step program in for a workbook for people that are looking to be very precision oriented, to get maximum results and efficiency, and just optimize their experience to have a different experience inside and externally. And so It really, anybody that may be listening here that is going through some hard times when you understand what consciousness is that's spoken about in spirituality and in even neuroscience and quantum mechanics and psychology, you understand what's going on mind, body and spirit. You can start harnessing that and training that. Like you would train your body to run a marathon or to, you know, compete in the Olympics or, or surf or scale mountains, whatever it is. You can train your consciousness to do the same thing, and you'll have a much better kind of internal experience where you're loving yourself, you're extending patience and compassion to others. You're finding gratitude in the moment, as opposed to us finding all the strife and the flaws and the fault and doubting ourselves or, or giving ourselves such a hard time or being kind of horrible with other people. And then once you train yourself, that will ripple out and it will affect the ether, the environment, the stew that we're living in so that you can have a more aligned life that you know within your mind, heart, body and spirit. And so long winded answer, but, you know, there are people out there seeking that healing. And to know one consciousness creates reality. Two, if you learn how to wield the power of your consciousness, you help to control your reality in a sense, influence it, create it depending on how much you're leaning into this.
00:10:01 Nazish: Absolutely. And I believe that is the distinction that matters so much because, you know, time can dull the edge of the pain, but it can't rebuild a person. And rebuilding is a different kind of work. It is like it requires slower, quieter, and being far more, far more honest with your own self.
00:10:24 Joe Hehn: Absolutely. Yeah. Well said. Yeah. It's, you know, you're rebuilding because, you know, the way you were living before was insufficient and unsustainable. And so you have to rebuild yourself because you are the one common denominator in all of your experiences. So there's others, there's life, there's maybe God, there's family, friends and work, but you are the one that is always there. And so when you are rebuilding yourself, you're rebuilding every facet of your life. I call it like the tide coming in, you know, like when we do the self work and we come into a place of just self acceptance. Self love is tough for some people, but when we just accept ourselves for who we are, the pros and the cons, then that self acceptance is showing up with others, with relationships, with jobs, with opportunity, with whatever it is. Because it's like the tide coming in and all these different things in our life, the relationships and career and money and finances and, and all that are boats. They're individual boats. But when we, really invest in the self-love. The tide comes in and all the boats go up, all the boats strengthen and ascend because that that self-acceptance is, is the tide bringing that into our life. And so it's very astute of you to kind of point out that, you know, basically rebuilding yourself is what happens in a lot of the healing process, whether it's from grief or trauma or whatever, you know, ailment caused that we're rebuilding self-acceptance, self value and, and creating an identity that we're holding with confidence and pride.
00:12:06 Nazish: Yeah. let's just stay with that for a moment. You know, underneath the visible laws and the wife, the home and the life you thought you were going to have, there's almost a deeper layer of identity that has come apart and be put back together. So was that actually happening inside you during those darkest years or the layer beneath the grief?
00:12:31 Joe Hehn: No. It was yeah, it was definitely happening because I remember, you know, being in the hospital when I had to say goodbye to my my first wife and I didn't recognize it then. But, you know, I'm well, it was very desperate for her not to leave me. And it was a very long journey of battling cancer that led up to it. And we were finding ourselves in the hospital. And she was the most severe patient in all of the hospital, big hospital in Chicago. And she took her last breath and we said goodbye. And I realized then that this huge component of my life had just exited that basically. She was my wife, my business partner, my best friend, uh, you know, my lover and even future realities of like, she was going to be the mother to my children and my future best friend. And, you know, all this stuff was gone and it was taken away from me. But then in that same moment when I reflected many months after that, I was that to her, I was her husband, this, this best friend, this, this person who had a corporate job and, and all these things. And when she left, all those things evaporated too, because I was no longer a husband, a best friend, a soulmate, a business partner, a corporate, you know, a successful professional and stuff, because I quit the job and everything. But yet I was here living and breathing and I go, oh my gosh, all those identities, they're not real. They're just a facade. They're little placards and ribbons and trophies that we want to brandish to society saying, I matter. But again, when we circle back to self value, self acceptance, we don't need any of that stuff. It's just so it's a resume. So people kind of understand where we're coming from. And that's why I say I'm a mindset expert and spiritual teacher. You kind of know what I'm about. But like, I don't think of myself like, oh, look at me. I'm this great mindset expert and spiritual teacher and like, kind of, you know, applauding myself and celebrating myself. It's more of, you know, I'm grateful for what I do and I do the best I can, but that's not a real thing. It's not a real thing for the soul, for, for the consciousness that is embodied in, in my form and stuff. And so when I was rebuilding, the identity was more of me rebuilding something that no matter the name, the title and whatever that I had to tote to society, I was just Joe, just a regular guy that knew he was a soul living a human experience. And to just try to find fondness in that and acceptance in who I am and who I was going through that. And so the identity I was trying to build was just understanding what I was and who I was. And you actually kind of mentioned this when you said, uh, who am I in the beginning? And there's, um, I love the, the mystic, the Indian mystic Ramana Maharshi. And he wrote that book like, who am I? And you just kind of go in to the depths that when you look at all these identities and these surface kind of names of father, husband, worker, this, that, and the other, um, you know, five foot ten and muscular, handsome and all these things, they don't really exist. And when you kind of go inside and through deep reflection or meditation, plant medicine, whatever it is that helps you get there, that you understand that you are just this infinite consciousness that is exploring what it is to be this person, this man going through this life. But you are one in the same. You are just like this other person and you kind of start building confidence and pride and acceptance because. You know, you're not alone and you are enough because you are everything. You are God. Experiencing God as God, with God through God, in a sense, and that God is interchangeable with the word consciousness or source or spirituality, whatever you want to call it. And so that helped tremendously because I didn't and this didn't happen right away because I still had the identity crisis this that, you know, through the years. But I didn't have to fight to be something to, to, you know, to showcase society. And I, I can let the stuff go of being the best husband and being the best father or being the best mindset expert and just being present that I was doing my best to be aware when I was wearing those different hats. And so it's a much easier way to live because the pressure and the stress of being successful don't exist. Because you can't be successful in something that doesn't exist. In a sense.
00:17:35 Nazish: You know, that goes right to the center of it. The loss takes the person we love, but the deeper grief is often watching the version of ourselves that loved them, the version that they need that knew the life slowly disappeared, too. And that grief takes its own kind of healing.
00:17:57 Joe Hehn: Yes. Yeah. Absolutely. And so it's just kind of a journey. And then that's where the time comes in, however long it takes to kind of accept that. And I don't even know if there is a conclusion, especially for those who have lost a loved one spouse or a child or a parent or just sibling, somebody like tremendously close to you that you're forever going to kind of be dinged a little bit, you know? Caught off in swirling emotion and maybe five, ten, twenty, thirty, fifty years down the road, you'll have fondness or memories. And I don't think that's a bad thing to like. Yeah. Relapse in, in honoring what the love you had for that person. But you know, to be free of, of suffering, I think people get confused as to being free of any kind of emotion of that. And I think there's always going to be some emotion tethered to that person and that time period. And I think that's a good thing because it just shows that's a human experience.
00:19:08 Nazish: And I believe that is what we can count as real healing, that by having those little memories, the little fondness that that little things that reminds you of them.
00:19:19 Joe Hehn: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And that's like, it's a good thing. You know, it's like a postcard that you find in your closet of, of a cherished journey and adventure somewhere else. And it just brings you back.
00:19:35 Nazish: So, for someone listening in right now who is in their own version of having lost too much, who feels like they don't want, they, they don't quite want to die, but don't know quite how to live yet. So what would you want them to hear today?
00:19:54 Joe Hehn: That's a great question. And I don't I don't see death as what I did before she passed because I learned a lot about, you know, what happens to the soul, to the consciousness after a person's body is, is done in a sense. And so they go on and we're left here. It's harder for us. They're free. They're they're in heaven, if you will. Or the beyond, as I like to say. And they're able to guide us, they're able to speak into our life. They're able to kind of reveal some some help, some truths, some guidance. And so there's a lot of different things that you can kind of learn because I think the best thing that helped me was realizing she wasn't gone forever, that she was actually still there. It just kind of in a different room where I can't see her and interact and everything. But we still had this connection and that she was going to help guide me through the rest of my life. And that was a tremendous help because instead of it being like the whole story, it was just a chapter in a very long story. So I believe in reincarnation and, you know, the soul navigating many lifetimes on earth to have these different human experiences. And so that brought me a lot of peace and understanding that this is just one life. And so then that kind of set the stage for me to understand, well, if that's the case, then what am I here to learn? What am I here to experience? And then that was the kind of me embarking on this whole spiritual or consciousness journey to discover what can I do as a human embodying this soul? Like, can I transform my life and do some different stuff and live a life that's more aligned with my heart and spirit? And so the first thing is to understand that there is no death, right? And it's been spoken about forever. This is not news to those who are kind of into this stuff. And then to maybe learn a little bit about what happens after death, you know, the Tibetan Book of the dead or many lives, many masters, journey of souls. And there's all these different resources that you can read. And then from there, then you gravitate and find a little bit of your your resources. If it's Buddhism or self-realization and Hinduism and Taoism or stoicism, Christianity, Islam, whatever it is, there's infinite ones out there, self-help and new age and esoteric things like, you know what I'm talking about, Ramana Maharshi. And so you're just going to find some resource to help you understand. Now, how do I train my consciousness to be empowering, to help me navigate life and seek fulfillment and peace and love, you know, whatever's aligned. And then you can do that. So first step, second step. And I think that will be tremendously helpful. And then if you're into like the second stuff, you can, you know, find my website and I'm sure other novice will give information about how to get the workbook and stuff to help kind of reprogram your consciousness to achieve your goals. And so that will really help anybody out, both of those and just kind of separate them. And then you'll continue to learn as you go, and you may come back and learn more about near death experiences and astral projection and, and, you know, lucid dreaming and remote viewing, all this other stuff about what you can do with that consciousness is infinite and it doesn't pass away. It just transitions to another space. So it just kind of this beautiful exploration that you open up and you can utilize a lot of different information resources and train yourself to do great things.
00:23:57 Nazish: Thank you so much for this beautiful, you know, piece of wisdom. And I believe people are going to it is going to land with a lot of our listeners today who are going through that loss or who are dealing with those things in their life. Healing isn't always something you know, isn't always about getting back to life you had. Sometimes it is about discovering the life you had wasn't the deepest version of you, and the deepest version has been waiting underneath all along, ready to be found. And inner peace isn't the absence of pain. It is the relationship you finally built with the parts that survived it.
00:24:39 Joe Hehn: Very well said. Yeah, absolutely. And give yourself some grace through that. You're not supposed to have it all figured out like the journey is the obstacle course. Yeah.
00:24:50 Nazish: Yeah. You know, you have to be easy on yourself, you know, because I believe our surroundings are always pushing us to do this and that and all that. Yeah, but if you show a little grace to yourself, if you be a little easy on yourself. I believe you need it.
00:25:07 Joe Hehn: Yeah. I mean, it's never going to be a bad thing. You know, it's like medicine, like to be kind to yourself and know that whatever journey you're on is the right journey and and nobody else's interpretation of your life. Oh, get over it. Why can't they do this and that? Don't worry about all that. They don't. They're having a hard enough time living their own life. They don't need to speak into yours. Right. And so you can just give yourself kindness and grace and patience and compassion, but also be very empowering and boost yourself up and encourage and motivate yourself. Try to inspire yourself and celebrate yourself. Find moments of confidence and pride and gratitude for being who you are, and all the little micro wins that happen throughout the day. And that is probably one of the best things you can do to continue to heal and, and grow.
00:25:59 Nazish: John, for our listeners who want to learn more about your works, your teaching, and how to work with you and your team, what is the best place for them to find you?
00:26:10 Joe Hehn: Uh, my website, Dot com, J o e h e h n dot com, and there's a lot of information there. I have communities and I have the workbook available, uh, that should be coming out soon. We're having somebody work on that and then just YouTube and Instagram and TikTok, the regular social media stuff too. So you can get access to all that there. So yeah, that's the best place to find me.
00:26:38 Nazish: Thank you so much for sharing that with us. I will make sure to include all these details into the show notes, so that a lot of people can reach out to you and learn from you. Thank you so much for joining us today for such a profound conversation.
00:26:50 Joe Hehn: Thank you for having me. I appreciate you and thank you to everybody else listening. I hope you are doing well on your journey.
00:26:57 Nazish: Absolutely. Dear listeners, inner peace, better health is built on a simple lived truth that the body and the mind heal best when the inner world is no longer at war with itself. So here's something to carry with yourself from today. The life you were meant to live with might not be the one you originally planned. And the version of you that's living it might not be the one you originally were. But sometimes the most healing thing you can do is stop mourning the path you didn't get and start meeting the one that's actually unfolding. Thank you so much for being here, and I will see you in the next conversation.
