If you’ve ever wondered what psychology, science, mindfulness, and music have to do with internal audit, this #jammingwithjason episode will explain. When you listen, you will see I’m not as crazy as I may first appear 🙂
Traditional internal audit is no longer serving our organizations, and it’s time to start a revolution and shake it up baby, twist and shout our way to being elevated so we can fly like the eagles in our organizations and be seen as trusted advisors adding real value. It’s time to live from a place of possibilities and opportunity instead of being stuck in fear, negativity, and communication breakdowns.
Even when it’s worse than it appears, it’s alright. We will get by, we will survive … together.
Listen in at: http://www.jasonmefford.com/jammingwithjason/ or where ever you enjoy listening to podcasts.
If you listen to the podcast, please do me a favor.
- Connect with me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonmefford/
- Send me a personalized connection request and let me know you listen to the podcast (if you don’t personalize the invite I may not approve due to all the random, spamming requests I get each day)
- Let me know what you like the most about the podcast
- Bonus points if you can list the songs/artists I made reference to during the podcast and in the show notes
Jamming with Jason is the #1 #internalauditpodcast in the world has interviews and discussions (jam sessions) relevant to Chief Audit Executives and professionals in #internalaudit, risk management, and compliance.
Transcript
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Jason Mefford: Welcome to another episode of jamming with Jay, Sam. Hey. Welcome, my friends, I am good to be back with you this week and this week I’m actually going to do a little something different.
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Jason Mefford: Something new that we’ve never done here on the episode. So since it’s just you and my me and my friends. We’re just gonna actually kind of go with it today.
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Jason Mefford: You know, I’ve well. But before I get started let me let me. You know, I appreciate all of you that actually reach out to me and let me know that you’re actually listening to the podcast, so
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Jason Mefford: Here’s how you can do that is connect with me on linked in now. I’m very easy to find on LinkedIn, just type in Jason Medford, and my smiling face will pop up.
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Jason Mefford: Then what you do is connect with me but send me a personalized connection. So when you click on connect. If you’re on the computer. Just add a note and let me know that you listen to the podcast.
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Jason Mefford: Because then I can accept your connection request. Now, I asked you to do that just because I get lots of random people
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Jason Mefford: Who tried to connect with me and so on. Some days I have to kind of look through and figure out who these people actually are.
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Jason Mefford: And most of the people I just ignore. But if you make sure and send me a personalized message and let me know that you’re listening to the podcast and that’s why you’d like to connect
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Jason Mefford: I’m happy to do that. And I would love to do that so that I can actually interact and we can message back and forth.
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Jason Mefford: Now if you do that, too. And actually, let me know what you like about the podcast, you may get featured just like Andy is getting featured this week. So Andy and I’m going to miss pronounce your last name. I apologize. As a strangle
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Jason Mefford: sent me a message connected with me and he said, I’ve been listening to your podcast for the last 12 months now.
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Jason Mefford: probably the single most valuable source of my ongoing CPD and general career advice. Thank you so much. Now, Andy, thank you. Actually, for listening and for sending me this message.
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Jason Mefford: You know, I sit here in the recording studio and I talked to myself in front of the mic, but I really love to hear from people
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Jason Mefford: That are listening to the podcast are actually learning and getting value from this
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Jason Mefford: So I really appreciate you. How long time 12 months now. So you’ve been listening for a long time and really appreciate that.
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Jason Mefford: Now as I said at the beginning. Today I want to take a little bit of a different approach to it. So it’s going to be a little ad lib.
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Jason Mefford: And we’ll see where it goes. And I apologize. I have a little bit of a frog in my throat it’s seasonal allergy time for me. And so sometimes I cough, a little bit, but I hope your understanding of that.
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Jason Mefford: I was actually interviewed for another podcast. This last week. And so the tables got turned on me. I was the one getting asked all the questions, instead of normally I’m the one asking the questions.
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Jason Mefford: And a couple of the questions that came up. I thought, you know what, I don’t think I’ve actually shared with my listeners. Some of these answers. So I thought,
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Jason Mefford: I would take a little bit of time and share some of that. Now, when this other podcast comes out. I’m supposed to be able to get a copy of that and will actually post that here as well.
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Jason Mefford: And I can forward you back to the other podcasts as well. But the question came up, you know, Jason. You’re a little bit different. You talk about psychology science mindfulness and music.
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Jason Mefford: And why do you talk about that with internal audit. So let me just share with you a little bit about that now.
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Jason Mefford: You know, if you’ve listened. I think it was last week’s podcast or the one before that that I love to learn. I love to learn things and I love to share that learning with other people.
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Jason Mefford: And, you know, the longer that I’ve been in this profession. I’ve actually realized that, you know, traditional internal audit is just not working for organizations.
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Jason Mefford: We see it get downsized. We see a lot of other executives just believe it’s another compliance function. And that’s because that’s unfortunately how a lot of people are doing that.
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Jason Mefford: And so I’ve made it my life’s purpose now to try and teach people in my space internal audit risk and compliance and actually teach the technical, but also the soft skills.
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Jason Mefford: That you need to be able to succeed in your career. Okay. And, and, again, a lot of times in our profession we focus so much on technical and we think that technical will get us by
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Jason Mefford: But it’s actually a lot of the soft skills that are going to be those things that really make the difference.
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Jason Mefford: And so again, you hear me talk about that a lot. I’m going to talk more about it. I’ve got more courses coming out about that.
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Jason Mefford: But here’s the reason why. Why, Jason, do you talk about psychology science mindfulness and music.
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Jason Mefford: Well, I like the alliteration of those four words is one thing psychology science mindfulness and music right to s sounding words.
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Jason Mefford: To em sounding words. Now, let me start with psychology. First, you know, my favorite class and undergraduate when I was going to college was psychology
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Jason Mefford: That was my favorite class that was the one that I really enjoyed. I really enjoyed learning about psychology, you know, about how the brain works. Some of the things like that. And so, of course, though, being the logical practical one. I got an accounting degree instead of a psychology degree.
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Jason Mefford: Go figure, right. So I got into accounting. I got in CPA firms ended up in internal audit and again I’ve loved my career.
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Jason Mefford: But I have always had a fascination with psychology. Okay. And so I have continued to learn, you know, for the last 25 or 30 years about psychology
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Jason Mefford: And again, the more that I that I learned as I develop myself as I’m coaching and helping other chief executives and people in our space. I realize how important psychology is to what we do.
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Jason Mefford: And the problem is nobody else’s really talking about it. So I’m talking about psychology
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Jason Mefford: Now, why do I talk about science. Well, again, sometimes a lot of people are not talking about that in our particular area.
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Jason Mefford: Now, sometimes I might say some things that people go, oh, Jason. You’re a little whoo, whoo, like when we get back to the topic of mindfulness that I’m going to talk about next.
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Jason Mefford: But what I can tell you is all of these things that I talked about whether it’s psychology how your brain works. You know how to influence people how to actually take care of yourself.
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Jason Mefford: How to Unlock your potential and get what you want out of life and out of your career, some of the things that I say may sound a little hippy dippy
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Jason Mefford: And I know I live in California, but I’m not some pot smoking hippie. That’s just espousing crazy shit. Okay, there’s actually science to back this up.
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Jason Mefford: And so I like to talk about the science and let you know I’m not as crazy as I sound okay there’s actually backed science for everything that I’m telling you in teaching you how to do as well.
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Jason Mefford: Because I think that’s important to make sure that what I’m talking about. What I’m telling you is actually real and has been supported both by my own experience.
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Jason Mefford: Excuse me by the experience of others that I know, but also that it’s backed up by scientific research.
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Jason Mefford: So the mindfulness, why do I talk about mindfulness. I mean, I’ve got a whole separate podcast.
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Jason Mefford: You know, with my friend Kathy where we talk about a lot of these type of things in more detail about how to be more calm.
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Jason Mefford: How to be more present how to use things like meditation and breathing and even hypnosis and some of these other things to be able to be more mindful.
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Jason Mefford: Now, one of the reasons that I do, that is, again, I told you that I wanted to teach and share the technical and soft skills that you need.
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Jason Mefford: To be able to develop and unlock your potential in your life and in your career.
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Jason Mefford: One of the biggest ways to do that is through mindfulness practices and there’s lots of different ones that you can do. And I’m going to talk about a lot of them, you know, again, as and
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Jason Mefford: Those of you that have been listening for a while, you probably heard about some of those already. Okay.
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Jason Mefford: But the reason is to, is it is especially important for us in internal audit risk and compliance areas because we tend to focus on the negative in our job.
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Jason Mefford: And as a result of that we we see lots of negative at work. We’re looking for fraud. We’re looking for risk where we’re fearful were uncertain.
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Jason Mefford: And a lot of times what we do at work ends up carrying over into our personal lives, and I’ve seen this with lots of people
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Jason Mefford: And and I don’t want that to happen. Because again, one of my biggest purposes to is to help you learn
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Jason Mefford: Learn how to learn, learn those the knowledge, skills, abilities and and have the experiences that you need.
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Jason Mefford: But one of those is around mindfulness about getting out of fear about getting out of anxiety, learning how to control your brain so that you can actually have a peaceful joyful, happy life as well.
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Jason Mefford: Now again, I know that sounds kind of crazy. You’re not going to hear lots of internal auditors talking about being happy and being grateful and you know how to calm your mind and be joyful, but I’m that crazy one. Okay.
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Jason Mefford: And so I’m going to talk about those. And I’m going to talk more about it because it’s something that I’m passionate about and especially my friends.
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Jason Mefford: At this time, as we’re going through a lot of the things in the external world.
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Jason Mefford: I know there’s a lot of uncertainty out there. I know that a lot of you are fearful you’re anxious, you’re worried about what’s going to happen.
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Jason Mefford: And I want to help you to calm down and realize that everything always has been. Okay, everything is okay now and everything will be okay in the future.
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Jason Mefford: And it’s it’s through mindfulness that we actually are doing a lot of this. Okay, so that’s why I like to talk about mindfulness as well.
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Jason Mefford: Because you know what our job is hard enough. There’s enough stress at work and you need to be able to unplug a little bit
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Jason Mefford: reduce your stress levels, both at work, but I really don’t want you to bring in that home to your friends and your family and in your own personal life as well.
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Jason Mefford: So I talked about it as ways to help you so that you can separate that and have more peace throughout both the business day
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Jason Mefford: And at home as well. So that’s psychology science mindfulness. Now let’s talk about the music, why do I talk about music is because I love music. Okay, and also in having
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Jason Mefford: You know, studied learning how we learn how best to learn music is one of the best ways both to learn as well as for us to be able to help
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Jason Mefford: To adjust our feelings and the emotions that we’re actually feeling so as an example. Right.
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Jason Mefford: One of the things that I do every single morning to help anchor myself and get ready for the day is I have a playlist of music that I listened to.
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Jason Mefford: Its music that reminds me of certain things. It makes me grateful, it gets me ready and pumped up and ready to start the day feeling good, that’s something that you can do as well. Now I like music as well because I believe I’m a poet.
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Jason Mefford: Underneath all of this. I’m an artistic excuse me person as well and I write poetry and I will tell you that, again, a lot of the lyrics in music.
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Jason Mefford: Is great philosophy. It is great poetry and it is things that we can learn from as well.
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Jason Mefford: And so I like to try to incorporate music, you know, you’ll hear me reference certain lyrics and other things like that when I’m going through and doing a lot of stuff.
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Jason Mefford: That’s one of the reasons why. And in fact, as I told you at the beginning. Today we’re going to do something a little bit different.
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Jason Mefford: And it’s going to involve music. So hold on for that. Okay. Now, again, I told you I didn’t really know quite where this was going to go, but I wanted to help
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Jason Mefford: Share with you or explain why I talked about psychology science mindfulness and music, along with all of the internal audit risk and compliance things that I talked about.
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Jason Mefford: Because ultimately, again, as I said, traditional internal auditing is failing us, we need to start thinking more progressively
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Jason Mefford: We need to start our start seeing how we can actually truly add more value to our organizations, by taking a real risk based approach.
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Jason Mefford: Not risk ranking systems and other stuff, but actually looking at how we can help our organizations most
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Jason Mefford: And some of that’s going to fly in the face of what you have been taught as a profession that we’re supposed to do.
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Jason Mefford: But again, more to come. More to come on that. But again, the reason why I’m doing this is because I care about you. I care about our profession.
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Jason Mefford: And so what that’s going to mean is figured, hopefully, you know, you’re, you’re listening to me through the Internet.
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Jason Mefford: And at some times. I’m going to kind of reach my hands through the Internet and I’m going to grab you by the shoulders, and I might shake you a little bit
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Jason Mefford: In fact, sometimes I might even slap you around a little bit, figuratively. And the reason that I do that is because I care about you.
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Jason Mefford: And people who actually care about you are willing to tell you, and say the things that you need to hear
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Jason Mefford: Even if sometimes it’s not the things we want to hear. Okay, so think about some of those friends and family that you have that are actually really people who care about you.
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Jason Mefford: And sometimes they tell you the tough message because we need to hear it. Okay.
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Jason Mefford: And so I’m going to do that sometimes. Like I said, I’m going to figuratively reach through and and shake you up a little bit. I might say some things that piss. Some of you off.
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Jason Mefford: Okay, I do it from a place of love and of caring. Okay. And I use. The L Word right I do actually love the my friends out there in the world right I care about you.
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Jason Mefford: Now, other times. I’m going to figure lovely reach through the Internet and give you a big hug. Because you know what we all need a hug, sometimes and and and that’s what I kind of wanted to do a little bit here to kind of end up the episode.
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Jason Mefford: To bring some music into this and you know the the the podcast is called jamming with Jason. And usually, you know, again, it’s me kind of talking and jamming with people.
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Jason Mefford: But today. Again, I figured I want to do a little something different. I actually want to play some music and sing with you.
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Jason Mefford: Because again, we’re friends were here. I’m a little rusty, like I said, My voice has got a little frog in it.
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Jason Mefford: And I might make some mistakes. But again, I’m I’m jamming with friends. So I hope that you will all be understanding and loving towards me, but
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Jason Mefford: The reason that I want to do this again is, it’s a song that many of you have probably heard before. And if you looked at the title of the podcast. You probably saw it and thought, this is a little bit different. Right.
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Jason Mefford: Excuse me.
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Jason Mefford: This is one of those songs that especially at a time like this.
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Jason Mefford: You know, in previous episodes. I’ve talked a little bit about don’t focus on the negative but focus on the positive
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Jason Mefford: Because there’s always a positive in every condition that we are going through and this song touch of grey from the Grateful Dead.
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Jason Mefford: Is one of those songs that speaks to me. Okay, you know, and it’s got some crazy lines in here you know the the cow is giving kerosene.
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Jason Mefford: You know, the kid can’t read it 17 it’s about all these things that seem to be going wrong.
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Jason Mefford: And you know what, there’s a lot of things that sometimes tend to go wrong in our lives. But if you remember the chorus says, I will get by, I will get by, I will survive.
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Jason Mefford: And that’s a message that I want to bring home to you, regardless of what you’re feeling or thinking right now whatever emotional state. You are in
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Jason Mefford: We are going to get through this. We are going to get through this together. There are ways to elevate yourself up if you feel yourself down in that fear and depression area.
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Jason Mefford: If you feel yourself and anxiety. There are ways to raise yourself up and always remember that we will get by. So because of that, I wanted to. And again,
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Jason Mefford: unscripted. So here we go. I’m going to just play a little bit here for you and saying, as we kind of close this out as a reminder
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Jason Mefford: And bringing music into this to remind you that, you know what, even if there’s a little bit of touch of grey going on in your silver lining that we’re going to get by. So here we go. I’m going to grab the guitar here and
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Jason Mefford: And see how we go. So, so, so, be gentle. Be gentle with the right
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Jason Mefford: So phone
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Jason Mefford: Down is breaking every
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Jason Mefford: Addict candle and goodness
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Jason Mefford: Java curtains.
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Jason Mefford: See you.
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Jason Mefford: Say you’re
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Jason Mefford: Sorry, Dad, you feel that way.
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Jason Mefford: The only thing to say.
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Jason Mefford: Every
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Jason Mefford: Day.
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Jason Mefford: But that my friends. I’m going to sign off for this week after a little jamming and again remind you and let you know.
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Jason Mefford: You will get by, we will get by and we will survive and together as we come together as a community, as we actually
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Jason Mefford: deepen our human connection with other people. There are lots of people out there that are going through exactly the same things that you are going through
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Jason Mefford: And the more that we can be a light to other people and help other people. We’re all going to get through this together.
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Jason Mefford: So with that, my friends, I’m going to sign off for this week. Keep on rockin it in the audit world and I will catch you on a future episode of jamming with Jason. Have a great week.
