Skylight.org represents a next level effort to bridge the gap between mental health and spiritual wellness. By addressing the unique challenges faced by GenZennials through a multi-faceted approach, the platform offers a comprehensive solution that goes beyond traditional mental health interventions.
In today’s fast-paced and digitally driven world, the mental health of the younger generation is an increasingly pressing concern. The rising incidence of stress, anxiety, loneliness, and sleep disorders among Gen Z and younger millennials, collectively termed “Genzenials,” necessitates innovative solutions that encompass not only mental but also spiritual wellness. Skylight.org has emerged as a promising platform dedicated to addressing these issues through a holistic approach that integrates spiritual practices, thus fostering mental resilience and overall well-being.
Skylight.org, a nonprofit initiative under the Radiant Foundation, is a spiritual wellness app designed to cater to individuals from diverse faith traditions and spiritual backgrounds. The app offers an array of guided spiritual exercises, including prayer, meditation, affirmations, recitations, spiritual movement, and music therapy. These practices are tailored to support mental health, emotional stability, spiritual wellness, and social connection. The platform’s inclusive approach ensures that it is accessible to Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, and individuals from other spiritual backgrounds, thereby promoting a universally beneficial experience.
The impetus behind Skylight.org’s development was the recognition of the unique challenges faced by today’s youth. Genzenials are growing up in an era marked by unprecedented digital connectivity, yet many grapple with feelings of isolation and inadequacy exacerbated by social media. The COVID-19 pandemic has further amplified these issues, disrupting social development and increasing mental health struggles. Skylight.org aims to counteract these effects by leveraging the very technology that often contributes to these problems, turning smartphones and devices into tools for spiritual growth and mental health support.
John Die, the Executive Director of Skylight.org, emphasizes the importance of integrating spiritual practices into daily life to combat mental health issues. Drawing from his extensive background in marketing and cause-based initiatives, Die advocates for a balanced approach that respects individual spiritual journeys while promoting universal principles of wellness. The app’s design reflects this philosophy, offering over 500 spiritual exercises that are concise yet impactful, ensuring ease of use and accessibility for users with varying schedules and needs.
One of Skylight.org’s distinguishing features is its commitment to reaching underserved populations. The platform’s free access model underscores its mission of altruism and inclusivity. Additionally, Skylight.org is expanding its linguistic and cultural reach, with plans to introduce Spanish-language content and eventually extend to other languages such as Mandarin and Portuguese. This strategic expansion aims to resonate with a broader demographic, thereby enhancing its global impact on youth mental health.
Moreover, Skylight.org collaborates with educational institutions through its University Ambassador program. This initiative enlists students and staff to promote the app within their communities, fostering a supportive environment for mental and spiritual wellness on campuses. By empowering these ambassadors, Skylight.org not only increases its visibility but also ensures that its resources are effectively utilized by those in critical developmental stages.
Welcome to Soulfully Aligned You, Mindset and Strategy for Multi-Passionate Mompreneur Coaches and Creatives. This is the podcast where we talk about and teach confident mindsets, overcoming limiting beliefs at the subconscious level, and online brand strategies to help you build out your signature services, get more visible with your target audience, and boldly launch out in the online world with your God-given gifts. I believe God cares more about your soul than your success. So get in alignment with his will and what he thinks of you so you can activate the success he already has planned for you.
Hey there, lovely souls, and welcome back to our podcast, Soulfully Align You, where we dive deep into the realms of inner healing, kingdom mindset, subconscious mind-body work as it relates to you manifesting the life you desire through co-partnership with the King.
In today’s episode, we have a special guest, John Die, the executive director of skylight. Org. Skylight is your gateway to spiritual fitness, offering guided spiritual meditation that supports mental health, emotional health, spiritual wellness, and social connection through engaging videos. We’ll delve into the app’s mission and purpose, shedding light on the unique approach Skylight takes to honor all religious beliefs. If you’re a Christian, this app is for you too. Don’t shy away from mind-body practices out of fear. Through the use of this app, you can discover how gratitude, prayer, meditation, sound therapy, and breathwork can help you sleep better, feel better, and deepen your connection with the Holy spirit. Stay tuned as we learn more about John Die and explore this inclusive prayer-focused app. Right. I am so excited to have executive director Director of Skylight Org, John Die, with us this morning.
I feel like this is going to be a really good episode. I’m really excited about it because I’m just intrigued by just the creativity of the app. Your background, all that good stuff. So welcome to Branded For His Glory. This is a segment of a Soulfully Aligned You. And we always open up with our interviewees’ favorite scripture. The scripture that you put into our app in our form, do you remember? Some people don’t.
I do. Basically, Let your light so shine before men.
I love that scripture.
I love a lot of scripture. But that, to me, being a light to the world is a huge part of my personal mantra. I hope, and I’m sure it’s part of your audience’s mantra and their life principles as well. It’s We can make a difference in others’ lives. We shouldn’t hide our talents. We should not let our light be under a bushel. We should show it to everyone. We should magnify the efforts and the talents that we have been given by God. When we do, we bless others’ lives. I love that. It’s don’t keep to yourself. You have so much more to offer the world and make the world a better place. Anyway, that’s my favorite scripture from the New from the Bible, from the Hebrew Bible, and love it. Love what it says.
Yes. Oh, my goodness. Every time a new interview me puts in their scripture, I’m always looking over it. It always inspires me for that day or that week when I’m reviewing that scripture. This is going to be a little bit off topic, just a little bit, but it is relating to the scripture itself. For anyone that’s listening to the podcast and listening to this season, they’re going to find that we’re talking a lot a lot about soul parts, internal family systems, some of those psychological frameworks and things. When I came back to reading your scripture, Let your light shine before men, there’s this thing where when we have soul parts, some of those parts want to come to light, and they’re the not so healed parts of us, the ones that get triggered, the ones that are maybe trying to just be defensive and all of that. When I read this scripture again, I was like, Oh, my goodness. God is saying he wants our soul alive in Christ to come to light, right? Not this, the unhealed version of ourselves or the inner child wounds and all that stuff. So if people are actually listening to the podcast in its entirety, they’ll get that context of what we’re talking about.
And it’s just so beautiful because, like you said, God gets the glory out of that every time. And then I thought to myself, this is such a perfect scripture. I never even thought of it in relationship to the podcast. So thank you for bringing this scripture to light. And it revealed something more to me, even this, branded for his glory, that we are shining our light and bringing it before men, and God gets some glory out of that, which is so beautiful. I love to learn about people’s background, their education, how they got into the work they’re doing today. So can you start off with Tomas a little bit, personally, even as much as you’re willing to share about yourself, your background, your education, all of that?
Absolutely. Yes. Thank you, Justina. I grew up in Montana. It’s interesting. Very sparse state, the fourth largest state in the Union, but probably one of the lowest populations, right? A lot of open land up in Montana. Loved growing up there. Just beautiful place. Eventually ended up in college in Utah at Brigham Young University in Provost, Utah, and got my four-year degree in English there and also my master’s. But before I did that, I did serve a two-year service mission to Taiwan. I learned Mandarin, Chinese. For those of you maybe unfamiliar with a service mission in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints, it is very similar to the Peace Corps or something similar where traditionally young people and some older couples as well go and dedicate their time. Specifically for me, it was two years when I was 19 to 21 years of age, serving on the island of Taiwan, just off of China. So learn Mandarin-Chinese, blessing lives, serving people over there, helping them in any way I could, and just love the time. What a great way, at least for me personally, I’ll speak for myself, to be selfless during the first quarter of your life, to give of your time and unpaid.
Obviously, it was something I paid for and my family paid for, but just felt very strongly that would help me keep my eyes on those key service principles and others and being able to help people learn the gospel, be connected with Jesus Christ and his gospel and hopefully improve lives, help them that way.
Yes.
Now, that impacted me a lot, Justina, because I loved that. I went back and I studied English with the hopes of maybe returning back to Asia and teaching English. Life comes upon you and things happen and changes are made. But I still have utilized a lot of my English background in doing things. But I went into the ad agency side of things here in Utah. I loved learning about all of the different ways to help people become aware of things and of services and all the different myriad things that people try to market every day. However, one of the things that I enjoyed the most was when nonprofits and cause-based companies would come to me as president of the ad agency and say, John, we need help in getting our cause out there. We believe in this. We want things to happen. And they were all doing good in the world. I had a chance to really help them. It got to the point where I felt my life’s mission was really to become more cause-based, to help people from that perspective and help promote on social media and traditional media, all the different ways that you can get the word out about good things happening.
And so I love that. I still love that. I love the marketing side of things. I love being able to link arms with causes and awareness and help people really become aware of all of the good things in the world. And so I really went and delved into that. So from 2012 to 2019, I was pretty much exclusively helping an organization really help promote its beliefs and its efforts in making the world better. I absolutely love that. Then from 2019 to about 2022, I then went to a company, an essential oils company, where I was over marketing for North America. And that was a fun little segue in my opportunity of growing myself and helping this company grow. I did have that tug at my heart string, though, Justina, that God is calling you to a cause-based company, to do something where you can make a difference in the world and bless lives. I took that little departure, but eventually ended up coming back to cause-based efforts, and specifically with skylight. Org. We’ll talk more about that, I’m sure, but any questions that you may have about that trajectory?
Wow. First, I want to say we I have something in common. The English part. My husband was stationed in South Korea, and I actually taught English at a private school in Korea, and my kids got a chance to go as well. Oh, that’s beautiful. So beautiful stuff there because I heard that part about potentially going and doing the English and everything in Asia, which is so cool. I love that. And then as far as the doTERRA Company, when I saw that little piece, I was like, This is so cool. This is the guy that helped with marketing. Your marketing efforts probably got doTERRA Oils in my hand. Yes, I love that so much. So this idea of a little departure, what came to my mind is we have this inner calling or this thing that we know we’re supposed to be doing, and we may take a detour from it. We’ll try something different, but it doesn’t mean we can’t get back on track. So that’s what I’m hearing in your story is, No, you got back on track to what you felt God was really leading you to.
Yeah. I think you put that extremely well, which is, I don’t know that in life we ever go off the path that God intends for us, per se, meaning I call that a departure or a little segue into something else. I’ll liken this to the prodigal son. He wanted to cash out, so to speak, get his inheritance early. Eventually, he made it back home, but he had to go through life’s journey to do that. And he went through some hard things. Dōterra wasn’t that experience. It was wonderful. Love the people, love the product. But sometimes it takes a little segue or a departure in your life to really help cement what that mission is or where you feel that calling. And I feel like DōTERRA was that. Again, it was a wonderful experience. The people were wonderful, but it really helped me refine where I found joy and I think I can have the biggest impact, amplifying the word of God and the will of God, what he wants me to do and what he’s asking me to do and where I can impact the most lives.
I love that. The word you said that stood out to me the most is refined, refining the personal calling. Because I know we all have as the church, the body of Christ, we have our, I’d like to call it from one of my mentors, the big seed calling. You mentioned it, just spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ. That’s it. Then we have our personal little sea calling, which is where we walk on a path that God is wanting to just truly just manifest his presence, his love through the work that we do and how we show up in the world. I think that’s beautiful, and I think that is amazing. Now, you’ve told us a little bit about your education, your background, being this marketing person with Deterra Oils, which is one of the fun facts for me. I I think is really cool. How does your background and even the detours and all the different things, how does it lend well to what you do today?
Yeah, great question. What I do today with skylight. Org, just so everybody understands the mission and really where I spend my daily efforts, skylight basically was created out of this context. The youth of today, the rising generation, we consider them Genzenials. We hear about the term Gen Z and millennial. Genzenials are all of Gen Z in the younger part of millennials. We know that these are individuals that are dealing with anxiety, dealing with stress, dealing with loneliness and sleep issues, and other key things that are really, I would say they’ve always been around for people that are growing up, but they’ve been exacerbated due to many things. I think one of those is the pandemic, right? That is something that was unprecedented for people. It’s been 100 plus years. I think the Spanish flu or something back in early 1917s or somewhere around there that was similar to this. Nobody really has lived through something like this, and so the younger generation has been impacted by that. A time when they’re really social, they’re really creating friendships, and their brain is forming and socially and in other ways. This was a real diversion for them.
It caused a speed bump, I think, in some of their maturation. That’s one issue. The other thing I think, that really causes issues with this rising generation is we’ve been coddling them in real life We also haven’t been as concerned about their online activities or their online life, because what we see there is back in the day when I was growing up, again, in Montana, cowboy country, we would just go out and free range and roam. I’m not saying that doesn’t happen today, but what it forced us to do when we went out with friends was create and work through problems in a play setting so that we would have the real-life skills and the assets available to us from a mental perspective to get through disagreements and to be able to form relationships in a way I think that was healthy. We see, I think sometimes, and this has been multiple decades, again, this is more of my feeling and some authors that I believe have this down, that doesn’t do well when we coddle our kids too much and keep them… We have to Give them the chance to play and create those relationships because real world and further down the road relationships are going to be impacted by what you learn when you’re young.
Similarly, though, online, virtually, I I don’t think we’ve paid as much attention to individuals, specifically the younger generation. I love technology, personally, but I also understand it has its downsides. There’s many things that can go wrong when you’re worried about FOMO, the fear of missing out, or you equate your average day to what everybody puts as their best day on social media. When they’re in Hawaii, they post, not when they’re in Atlanta, Georgia, or Provo, Utah, they don’t post as much. You see them living their best life, and you equate that to your average day, and you say, Wow, something’s wrong with me. I don’t have my life together. That can really cause some issues of disparity between the The Ideal and the Real. Anyway, we noticed all of this, and it still is happening. Rain Wilson talks about it in his book, Soul Boom. You might know Rain Wilson from Dwight Schrutt, the character on The Office. Then there are other books that talk about this that are really good that describe this. But we noticed this. We noticed that there is a problem, there is an issue with the rising generation. We all suffer from different things, but the rising generation specifically deals with stress, loneliness, sleep issues, et cetera.
We said to ourselves, how can we potentially help this? How can we make a difference? When we had the idea for Skylight, number one, we wanted this to be free of charge. We didn’t want this to be monetized. We knew that to do this and to do this right, we had to be a nonprofit. Skylight is part of the Radiant Foundation, which is a nonprofit. We offer skylight. Org, which is the web app, free to everyone. There’s also iOS and Android. No matter what device you have, you can get skylight. Org on this device. The beautiful thing is this device causes so many issues with many of the things that I just talked about. We believe the very device that causes the issue can also remedy the issue. We’ve created, like I said, this app, and we call it a spiritual wellness app. It’s meant for people of all faith traditions and spiritual palettes. I myself am Christian, but it works just as well for a Muslim or for somebody who practices the Jewish faith or somebody that’s Hindu, et cetera. We refer to a higher power in it We believe when we look at a life well-lived, if we consider that to be a math equation, we know that there are multiple variables in that equation.
One of those variables is God. If God is not part of that equation, at the end of the day, that equation doesn’t balance out. It’s not true. It doesn’t equate to something. Again, our feeling for a full, complete, happy life has to include a higher power in it. For me, that’s God. For other people, it may be Allah or someone else. But we believe being able to say, I believe in a higher power, and to know that there is a higher power in life brings peace, brings joy, brings hope, brings happiness, and those other things into your life.
Yes. So good. I think for our listeners, we have a lot of mompreneurs. We have homeschool moms who listen, all of that. When you started talking about about free range, parenting, all this stuff, I homeschooled my kids for… Wow, we’re still homeschooling. It’s been 12, 13 years of being a homeschooler. Charlotte Mason, Nature Studies, free range. My kids have pictures so many of them in the creeks and the ponds and just living life. And there are some fights and arguments and all these things. I love that part where you talk about the real life, like imagination, imaginary play, role playing, like them just working those things out in real life and not everything being on this device. And being able to monitor our children’s social media, my kids, they are sick of me because I’m like, What are you looking at over there? What are you doing over there? What was that sound? Because it’s, wow, we are allowing the Internet to raise our children or social media. They have so much access to things that we did not have access to. Oh, my goodness. I love everything that you’re sharing here. I love that the lens is through serving the youth and helping them in those key areas that you mentioned, that stress, the loneliness, the sleep issues.
I’ve heard children that I work with in this inner healing realm of things say that, My mom said that I’m not even old enough to have stress. You don’t even know what stress is. And that breaks my heart because they do. They have their own stressors.
And I love that you brought that up because what is real and valid to them, if we don’t recognize that, if we don’t have space in our time and in our heart for that and be able to talk to them about that, then they probably won’t understand that, yes, stress It is a normal thing to feel. Everybody feels it, and there is a way to work through that. You have to validate their experience, though, because what you consider not to be stressed because it’s on their level, if they feel like they’re not validated, then they may work through that in a non-productive way, and that’s not what any of us want.
Exactly. That validation is so important. Now, I have a question for you When you decided to be a part of this mission with Skylight, what really inspired you to, and I know you spoke about a little bit, you’re being mission-based and wanting to help organizations and all that stuff. But did you always know that you would end up doing this work? Because the way I look at it is like prayer in business. Who puts those? Some people would think, You don’t put those two things together. What is this? Tell me a little bit about that.
Good question. Very good question. And I should mention this, too, about Skylight the App, because this ties into, I think, answering your question. When we talk about stress and anxiety and loneliness and sleep issues, et cetera, our remedy to that, or I shouldn’t… It’s not a silver bullet, right? You don’t wave a magic wand and it’s all the way gone. But we believe we’re building resilience in people. And we do that through prayer, meditation, affirmations, recitation, spiritual movement, and spiritual music. So when we do that, and now to answer your question and how this ties into that, I truly believe that what you face in real life, there’s spiritual components that go along with that, and you have to bring your whole and undivided self to work. We are who we are, and that oftentimes is our hobbies. That oftentimes is our family. That oftentimes is our religious or spiritual traditions or beliefs that we bring with us. And I believe you shouldn’t have to suppress those, and you shouldn’t suppress those in public, right? That’s part of who I am. Now, you can do it in a very kind way and a respectful way to others.
You don’t go around hitting people over the head with your beliefs. I don’t believe in that. But they should respect your beliefs and you respect theirs, and We can all live in harmony that way. To answer your question, though, Justina, I truly felt that my calling from God or the request I was getting from God were to spend more time in helping other people see that there was a need to connect and center themselves individually, outward with others, and then upward with a higher power. Again, a rising tide lifts all boats. When I say this, I truly believe in missionary work and being able to help people bring what you consider to be the truth. But I also believe in respecting others’ beliefs. At the end of the day, if we all recognize and believe in a higher power, then, again, a rising tide lifts all boats. Society becomes better. I truly felt that calling from God to say, there’s some inter faith work, there’s some faith-based work that needs to be done. To help my children. This is one way that we can help a generation become better.
Yes, I know. Just because of the nature of this podcast, with it being Brandon first glory and all, we’re really outward about our faith, the Christian faith, all of that. An elephant in the room is, Oh, how do you reconcile with your work when it recognizes more faith than just the Christian faith? Did you want to speak to that a little bit?
Yeah. No, that’s beautiful. Again, it comes back to me more than anything, I think, to being respectful of other faiths. Again, being able to say, I unembashedly am a Christian. I believe in Jesus Christ. I know what he’s done for me, and I love him, and I want to share that with the whole world. That’s one of the reasons why I serve that two-year mission earlier in my life and why I’m doing this now. I also truly believe, again, in the value of choice. I believe God has given us choice, and with that comes the ability to be able to choose your own path. Oftentimes, I think it breaks his heart when people don’t choose him. At the end of the day, he loves them enough. My belief is he loves us enough to be able to let us choose. And just like the prodigal son, right? Eventually, I think a father’s love is never lost. It’s never gone. And being able to help people become their best selves. And that may not look like my path, and that’s okay. I want to just help them see that there is power in turning to their higher power.
And eventually, my personal belief is all roads lead back to a God and one true God. And eventually, it’s not a bait and switch in any way, but I believe lives become better when God is in those lives.
Yes. I think something I struggled with, even Even in my background in psychology and counseling and all of that is in my classes, I remember one of my professors saying, Are you going to be a Christian counselor or a counselor who is a Christian? And neither one is wrong. There’s no shame. There’s no beating you over the head because you’re not bringing scripture into your practices or you’re not, as a counselor, speaking about that. You’re not telling them about Jesus. You’re actually helping them with the psychological things that they need support with to help their life be better. There’s nothing wrong with that. And I hear that in skylight is that, yes, your faith is you love Jesus. However, you are in a bigger mission in that, look, we want people to better their sleep, better their stress. When they are able to be better from the loneliness, depression, all those type of things, they’re going to have a better life. And that is what this app is about. I love that the spirituality piece is in there because I feel like in a corporate, so to speak, you don’t get to talk about these things.
You don’t get to be spiritual. It’s ground upon. Keep your spirituality and your politics out of it. Yeah.
Check your religion at the door, we hear sometimes. And again, personally, I believe there’s a right way and a wrong way to share your beliefs with others. And some people are very overt and Maybe a little, like you said, hitting people over the head with them. I’m more of a, if you live your belief, you live by example, people see the difference it makes. You have an aura almost around you, right? You love people, you love God. That changes you, that changes your innermost being and how you impact other people. I believe that’s visible. I believe people can see that. And when they see that, many of them will say, Why is that person that way? Why is John Why is Justina that way? It’s because they’re living their gospel. They’re living in concert with God. I believe that visibly changes a person’s countenance.
Yes. So what impact has the highlight had on its users or just even the environment that it exists, the culture online, the app itself, like how many downloads, all those type of questions.
Yeah, wonderful. That is a good question because Because we often ask ourselves, when do we know we’re achieving success? Because there’s so many ways that you could slice and dice this. Apps have a term called monthly active users. How many people are logging back in to do something monthly? We decided on the aspect that we wanted to really measure success by. That measure would be the number of people who have started an activity, a spiritual activity, lives impacted. The The reason why we say that is, again, there’s many ways to slice and dice data. But if we’re attracting people to the app that do find themselves in an anxious or a stressful or a lonely position, those are people that are almost calling 911 They need help right then. We believe with self-harm and all of the things, again, those rates are on the rise. People, as they find they feel they don’t have hope, how can we be an antidote to that and help them find that hope. And so lives impacted is what we are measuring that on. In 2023, we touched 4 million lives. We rounded just to the next number, and it’s 4 million.
We have a goal to impact 8 million lives, to have them be connected with a spiritual exercise or the spiritual journey, again, through a prayer, through a meditation, through an affirmation, any of those things. We’re We’re going to double it with the same amount of budget. That’s the one way we are measuring success. The other way we’re measuring success, right now, since we’re relatively new, we’re just in English. But in June of this year, we’ll be going into Spanish. We’re excited We’re excited really to see more and more of this impact people that speak other languages and have maybe a different cultural tradition toward the way that they may react toward anxiety and loneliness and some of those We’re excited about that growth trajectory to double our impact this year and continue to grow. We impact more the world population that is out there that needs this. One other thing, Justina, that I wanted to mention, and this is just for the United States. I don’t want to be an alarmist, but I want to be a realist when we talk about these things. When we look at people who are 18 to 35 today, those people that that fall within that age demographic today, by the end of this decade, so by 2030, those individuals will make up one-third, 33% of the population that are working in the United States.
I want to frame the impact. If we can’t get in front of this and if we can’t figure something out, I don’t believe… Government, I believe, can impact it a little. I believe we and our families can impact it more. By doing things that can validate the experience of our youth will probably be the best thing we can do. Helping them learn how to deal with those situations are important. But if we don’t impact this 33% of the population that are working out there. Every time you go into McDonald’s or into a bookstore or into another restaurant or a hotel, one out of every three people will have a background in dealing with a lot of these issues. Issues. Think of what that does to society. Think of what that does to our communities, much less to us individually. Everything aggregates. From the individual to the community, to the state, to the nation, et cetera, et cetera. It all gets bigger over time. Again, if you think of from a societal perspective, it’s important that we get in front of this. From a personal and spiritual perspective, it’s important that we get in front of this because just like Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, if you If you can’t take care of some of these basic things that people are dealing with, it’s hard for them to build a relationship with God.
So let’s use God to help them overcome these challenges.
Yes. So good. You hit on what my next question was going to be for you about the impact this app is going to have for the youth in the future. Just like you said, their brains are still developing up 25, I think, or it might even be a little bit older. I’ve heard 27, but I’ve seen in research, 25, that their brains are fully developed. So, man, if they can get axelon, what’s the age that… Because I know some apps are like, you have to be 18 or older. What is the age you suggest for the youth to be on this app?
You know what? It’s funny you ask because we do talk about Genzenials being 18 to 35, that age. That Being said, though, we’re in talks right now with some wireless providers that have devices going in potentially to a younger age range because I think it could help them. What we need to be careful of just when you get under 18 and you’re not an adult, personally, again, this is just personal. This is not tied to skylight or anything else. But it’s so scary to open up the social media world to somebody whose brain is developing and create that in a 13-year-old or in a 14-year-old. And one of the reasons why I am talking to some of these providers, number one, they are providers who don’t allow Facebook or Instagram or some of the other TikTok or some of the other larger social media platforms to be on the phone. The phone mainly is, help me communicate with you, right? Help me communicate with you either via text or call. Now, to the youth, that feels a little watered down and less fun, right? Because their peers are on social media and doing things. But we feel if you can create good habits, good digital habits online, and much of that, I believe, should be, again, it can make you a more spiritual person.
It can make you a smarter person. The internet is beautiful in its variety of what it provides. It’s also scary. Some of the best things in the world are brought because of the internet, and some of the very worst things are amplified because of the internet. If we can teach good habits in our youth to our youth in their younger years, I believe those will carry on through their aging and make them better people over time.
So 18, they can be on the app. Is there some I know there’s something about colleges and ambassadors. What do you have going on in that area?
Thank you for bringing that up, Justina. Again, I look at our mission as twofold. Number one, the first pillar is really to impact those people that need our services now that are dealing with sleep issues or anxiety or stress. The second, though, pillar, I would say, is how do we help those who are influencing this generation? So think of gatekeepers Pastors, preachers, imams, bishops, that’s just religious. But think from a university level of student services, those staff who are over student services and deal with mental health or other types of interaction with the students. If we can help them understand the importance of what this can bring from a free perspective, then there’s great opportunity for them, obviously, and for us. Again, we’re free of charge. We just want to make a difference. It’s truly altruistic to try to make people be better and do better. So on these college universities, in addition to that, we also have five to six universities we’re working with right now to create We call them university ambassadors. So these are young people that are students that believe in our mission, that believe in the importance of spirituality in their lives to combat some of these mental health maladies.
And these are people who represent us, that talk to their peers and help us get downloads or help us draw attention to Skylight and say, wow, if you’re having issues or you know somebody who is, try Skylight. That can make a difference. The These university ambassadors also work with staff and with university administration to help them understand the importance of mental health and spiritual wellness. And by doing so, to say, Hey, Skylight is an app that’s free of charge, something that we could incorporate into our university offerings. Our hope is we have a lot of these nodes around the nation that start to combine and the synergy really creates this 10X effect. So we’re trying to impact not only the individual, but also the people that impact those individuals, because if they’re aware of this, they can bring this to the people. Otherwise, it’s just Google and other things that people are searching. Hey, I’m stressed. What can I do? Or they’re typing in other search strings and search queries that bring them to skylight. If we can really make this societal movement of some sort, that’s where we think will make the biggest difference.
Yes. I love it. We’re going to have a little bit of a marketing conversation here. You’re like the gatekeepers. I was like, yes, we got to pay attention to that. So even the women that are listening, you have your own business and you’re listening to this podcast. Those are some little tips and stuff. You got to be able to pull it out from what John is saying to us, right? I love that you’re utilizing that in-person impact as well as the online impact because what you said, yeah, they can Google. Yeah, they can go on the, what is it, the app store on their iPhone and try to find, but what if we go into the community and we actually go to the people that are impacting them already? That’s like a direct line. You can do that. So whatever your business is as you’re listening to our podcast, and you need to be thinking like that. Think like John. He’s a marketing professional. Oh, that’s funny. Yes. I love when you say mental health and spiritual wellness, because those are two different things.
They all are.
Oh, my goodness. Can you speak to that a little bit?
Yeah, that’s a very good question. Sometimes we’re erroneously called a mental health or a wellness app, a mental wellness app. The door we have to enter, there has to be a problem we have discovered for most people to look for a solution. We know that the youth of today, the Genzenials, are dealing with some of these mental health maladies I mentioned. If there’s not a reason to give them a purpose to look for a solution, they wouldn’t even consider many of these people a spiritual solution. Again, when I talk about that equation for wellness and a whole and fulfilling life, one of those variables has to be a higher power, we believe. Again, there’s a lot of mental health and wellness apps. Think of Calm, think of Headspace, Insight Timer. There’s a lot of religious apps that are very good. Think of Hallow, right? That is really huge. That has really blown up around the Super Bowl and to today. I think it was the top 10 downloaded app in the past few weeks. So that’s incredible. And we love their mission and we love what they’re doing. We’re a bridge, I would say between the two, meaning we’re not solely spiritual or religious in nature.
And we also believe to overcome these mental health maladies, you need the spirituality. So we tie those together. But again, you’re right. Those two things, spiritual wellness and mental wellness, are not the same. Those are two separate and distinct things.
Yes. I definitely see the value in it. Myself, I am a practitioner like a mind-body practitioner. I’m always saying I am complementary to what your therapist is doing. I want to work alongside your therapist. So when I think of skylight, I’m seeing the meditation. I’m seeing, do you all have someone who does EFT tapping? I don’t know all the different pieces on there, but it’s spiritual because you’re holding your intention and you’re looking to that higher power for that insight and download and understanding. It’s just so beautiful. The mind-body work part, the regulating the nervous system, a lot of these things that they’re going to encounter on skylight, I feel that it is going to help on the mind-body the spiritual level. And it’s not just mental, where you’re having to talk through things all the time. So some of it is really just transcending deeper than just the talk it out method. So looking inward, I think is so important. Yeah, this has been so good. I do have a question for you. How can one contribute to the platform? I see all these beautiful people that are actually putting out their information or they’re sharing.
Are there people that are listeners here that can actually contribute, or how does that work?
That’s a great question. There’s a few ways, yes, and we would love everyone to be involved. The first and easiest way is, A, become aware of it, download it yourself, test it out. We have over 500 spiritual exercises, most of them 3-5 minutes in length, so they don’t take long, and you can do as many as you want. Again, it’s free of charge, but Give us feedback. We want to hear feedback. Rate the app on the app store, become familiar with it, reach out to me. I’ll even give you, Justina, my email address so you can put it in the show notes. We’d love to hear from people. That’s probably the first and easiest way people could do that. Number two, if you have a specific area of interest and you consider yourself, like you said, an expert in some of these different arenas, if you want to become a contributor to the app, we’d I love to talk about that. Right now, we have, I would say, gosh, 25 to 30 plus contributors. Gosh, it’s probably even much larger than that now. It’s probably close to 100 or more that we have. If you want to contribute to the app, we’re always looking for talent.
If you have other language skills, like I said, we’re moving into Spanish. We hope to move into Mandarin, Chinese, and Portuguese, and maybe some other languages here in the near future. So that’s something that always interests us. The third The other way, I would say is, and I haven’t mentioned this yet, but I should, it’s something called the playbook, the skylight playbook. We have an hour presentation of things that we’ve learned about the rising generation, the Genzenials, and how they react and respond most well to spiritual type activities and spiritual type prompts. We know that a lot of people, like I said before, university individuals or pastors, preachers, imams, others, they’re very interested in understanding how to keep the rising generation interested in the efforts that they’re involved in. We’ve discovered some things, and we’ve boiled that down into an hour presentation. We give those free of charge. Our hope is, and I’m going to use a football analogy here, if most people start off on the 20-yard line, we want to get you to the 40-yard line, at least, with what we’ve learned so that it’ll help you in your efforts. If you could understand some of the things that it took us three years to understand, if we can boil that down into an hour and have a short conversation with you and really help you understand some of the things that we now know, we want to do that free of charge and make your efforts better.
Because as you become better working with this rising generation, these group of Genzenials, again, a rising tide lifts all boats. It helps all of us. We become a better individually from a societal perspective. I believe believe it just makes us better because we have that connection with the higher power.
What are some of the experts that are on the platform? I think that’s also one doing yoga. There’s the different pieces. If you can maybe share three to five different things that people can expect when they come to the app and what they’ll actually see.
Yeah, beautiful. We have people from all different cultural and ethnic backgrounds. You’ll see different skin You’ll see we are still doing a better job of representing everyone, but we’re well on our way there. But you’ll see people doing prayers and meditations that literally you can repeat after them or with them and do better. Affirmations are big. Yoga, you mentioned, we have people doing singing bowls. If you like music, that’s a way to surround yourself with spiritual music and really center yourself. We have individuals who… We have Shinrin Yoku, which is Forest Bathing. That’s on there as well. We have people doing mini courses on how to connect better with a higher power, how to focus and really feel that love and that hope and that intensity that can come from having that personal relationship. So the sky is the limit. We have playlists, we have other types of things. And so if you go to the Explore tab at the bottom, that’s where you can search and put in either the the thing you’re suffering with, which may be anxiety or stress, and something will come up, or you can put in yoga, or you can put in different keywords.
We don’t have Tai chi yet. We’re still looking for somebody that can help us out there, but we would like to really embody the full aspect and the full features of all of the different aspects of spirituality that someone might be interested in.
What about Qigong?
Qigong, not yet. We don’t have anything.
I know a young lady I can connect you with that does that, and she’ll be on the podcast, too. So how cool.
Thank you. Yes, we’d love to be connected.
We’ll definitely connect you with her. This is so good. I just want to speak to my listeners real quick because my demographic, we do have a lot of Christian women that come and listen. I’m just going to say that there’s a book for you to go read that’s called Redeeming Energy Psychology for the Kingdom of God, because you all just heard some stuff, and you all probably Oh, my goodness. I can’t listen to her podcast anymore because she brought up meditation and bowls and all these things. But I want you to really go read that book and then come back and comment on this. Okay?
And Justina, I want to thank you because that’s one thing that concerned me when I first started. When I was growing up, it felt like meditation and affirmations were on the outside looking in. As I’ve gotten older, what I’ve realized, prayer in all its myriad formats is connecting with the higher power. It’s not just kneeling bedside with your hands clasped or arms folded. It’s not just bowing your head reverently. It’s a continual conversation with the Almighty. Sometimes, I’ll be honest, I have felt the most connection with God when I’ve been doing prayer, but also affirmations and meditations. Those buttress my efforts to create a connection with the higher power. So they’re augmenting. They don’t detract or take away. They actually supplement and add, too. So I would strongly recommend that, too, from my personal experience. It’s made me a better person. It’s made me a better Christian. It’s made me a better son of God and a better neighbor, a better person to other people. Again, before you would throw it out, the baby out with the bathwater, understand how it fits in the ecosystem of spirituality. It’s not taking away it’s actually adding to.
Yes. I’ll say this. I feel like I grew up in this realm of, Oh, your flesh, that thing where your flesh is. You’re just leaning into your flesh. You’re going by your flesh, and that’s the body. It’s what God created our bodies, and they are good. Okay, so stop it, people. Our bodies. And when we literally are able to pay attention to the brain and the body, some of this is neuroscience and science-backed things that are happening through a lot of these different, the QiGong, the Emotional Freedom techniques, neuroemotional technique, EM, all these different pieces that I’m sure you’ll be able to have all those on the platform at some point, all the things. They’re so good for us in relieving stress and activating the prefrontal cortex. And who made that a thing? How does that work? If we say God is the ultimate creator. He is the one that makes it that way. So I just love when we’re able to really, like you said, look at things in the greater context and not throw out the baby with the bath water is so important. Yes. Thank you so much for just coming on, sharing with us about Skylight, letting us know the demographic.
I think that if you’re a parent, you’re listening to this, you have college-age students. I’m definitely going to have my college-age student hop on this and find the things around Stress, because she’s a musical theater major at the school right across the street. I can see the campus literally right out of my window. And yes, stress is a performer all of that. So to be able to really just center your thoughts and relieve the stress, get better sleep, all of that is so important. And also managing loneliness. Our college students, although they’re on campus and they are surrounded by people, they still feel lonely. They really do. So them being able to work out their feelings and emotions will hopefully help them to have better communication with others and to have the confidence to even put themselves out there to build relationship. I think that is getting out of the insecurity, building the self-esteem, all of that. I think spirituality definitely plays a role in all these pieces. And I’m All about holistic care for sure. This has been beautiful. Is there anything else that you want to tap on or talk about before we bring this to a close?
Actually, the last thing I’d like to say is thank you, Justina. As we mentioned, letting your light shine before men and women and everyone. So thank you. This is a beautiful podcast, a beautiful effort that you have going. I love the transparency. I love the simplicity and the complexity because you create something that can be complex and really drop it into a simplistic format that’s easy to understand. So love the listeners. I don’t know many of you, but again, thank you for your efforts. That’s the reason why you’re listening to this now. You have good intents in your heart, and let’s take those to the real world and make this world a better place.
Yes, yes.
Thank you so much.
It has definitely been a pleasure. Remember, you’re Our reviews give us a higher ranking in the podcast world and allows more listeners like you to find us. Did I mention we were on the top 200 podcast charts in Canada? Thank you so much to all of our listeners around the world. We look forward to growing with you. Are you a successful woman in business but feel like you’re hitting a wall time and time again? You’ve made great strides, achieved financial success, and are resilient and self-reliant. But lately, personal hurts, business traumas, and past disappointments have been holding you back. You’re ready to scale your business and reach the next level, but self-doubt and limiting beliefs keep creeping in. Introducing the Soulful Business Alignment Mastermind, a faith-fueled, subconscious belief mastery program. I understand the importance of mindset work, and I’ve combined energy psychology tools that honor Jesus to help you heal at the DNA level. My 12-week coaching program with personalized one-on-one sessions will help you overcome limiting beliefs and subconscious programming that keeps you playing small. It’s time to code truths and new beliefs into your system so you can break free from overthinking, self-reliance, indecision, doubt, and procrastination.
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J Washburn
