Jewel: Her Secrets to Finding Joy

Once a homeless teen, the singer Jewel Kilcher wants her greatest legacy to be not her music, but her work for mental health!

Now 50, Jewel’s breakout song was "Who Will Save Your Soul” and she has seemingly answered her own question by co-founding an organization called Innerworld to provide affordable health care for everyone, no matter what their income. Here are her secrets to finding the joy in life no matter what your circumstances.

"When I finally put my happiness first, my whole life started changing," the singer explained. "I realized if I wasn’t happy, nothing else mattered, so I made it a goal. I got practical about it, made a plan and had metrics around it. I would ask myself, ‘Is it working today? Am I happier this month than last month?’ I poured all my stubbornness into this idea that nothing else mattered more than that sense of joy. In time, I made being happy a science, and it worked.”

"My job in a day isn’t to be smart. My job is to have heart. I don’t want to come from my mind — I want to come from my heart," she explained. "My day goes better when I do that. I don’t think anybody in the world has said, ‘I wish I had smarter people around me.’ They say, ‘I wish I was more loved. I wish somebody saw me.’ Those are the things I think matter, so that’s where I focus.”

"I’m a huge nerd, and I’ve been studying alternative health since I was really young," the blonde beauty noted. "The biggest lesson I’ve learned is that stress and anxiety wreak havoc on our hormones, causing imbalances. So I encourage women — of any age — to test their hormone levels and use it as a road map. I have mine tested every three months, but if you can’t check them that often, definitely test them when you feel stressed, tired or off so you can reset.”

"Anxiety doesn’t mean something is wrong with you; it usually means that something is right with you," she said. "It means your body is doing its job in letting you know that something you’ve consumed doesn’t agree with you. I try to take some time to journal every time I feel anxious. I ask myself, ‘What was I thinking? Feeling? Doing?’ You’ll start to see a pattern and then once you see that pattern, you’ll be able to start to change it.”