mental health · Tania de Jong AM

BROKEN

We are broken and I don’t know what it’s going to take to put us back together. I am sitting on a plane flying out of an Australia that no longer feels like home.

In fact, it’s not felt like a safe place to be since 2020, when the mighty division between us was highlighted by the appalling measures taken to control and separate us during the pandemic. The us versus them, the taking of sides, the censoring of any debate or discussion, the ‘othering’ and exiling of those who chose to deeply think about their choices …

How can we become a truly inclusive nation and not allow and enable dark forces to come in and destroy our home? What would it take to stop the enormous greed that forced millions to take experimental injections that damaged so many lives? How might we start to truly care for one another and seek understanding between opposing views? Can we step out of our rigidly defined boxes and start to think differently?

When I was checking in at Sydney Airport this morning, I could not stop sobbing. My heart felt so shattered. Waves and waves of unstoppable emotion for the unspeakable loss and the shocking devastation. So many living in fear and hypervigilance … millions of lives lost over generations and lifetimes; perpetrators and victims living out unspeakable intergenerational trauma without the support and healing tools needed to break the cycle.

The Virgin check-in attendant asked my husband what was wrong. He told the gentleman that I was Jewish. I was crying for all those innocents who had lost their lives and their families, and for all of us collectively. And he came out from his desk, and he gave me the biggest hug. I sobbed even more but it felt like a release, like a letting go of something that had been wound so tightly in my heart and soul for an eternity. Something that came from ancestors long gone, yet still alive in me.

I believe if we could all go up and hug a stranger and start to see other points of view, then we might start to feel safer. We might feel that we all belong; that we are here to connect as a community with one other for a good purpose. We might feel that the lights of lives extinguished was not for nothing.

I have received hundreds of messages from all over the world empathising, weeping with and for us, feeling helplessness, hopelessness, asking how they can help. Some know that I am the daughter and granddaughter of Holocaust survivors. And everyone is suffering and seeking collective healing for humanity.

Together, we can decide we are going to STOP this ‘othering’ from today and start to see the goodness, kindness and light shining through each of our souls.

What if we really chose to light our candles and walk each other home?

I am sharing my recent song ‘Walking Each Other Home’ inspired by my time with Ram Dass in 2018. May it inspire, illuminate and soothe you. Please share widely. Together we can choose to heal.

Mind Medicine Australia

ARE YOU STEPPING OUT OF YOUR BOXES?

It’s hard to believe that it’s nearly 2026. What a tumultuous year it has been. My prayer for 2026 is that we find more loving kindness, curiosity and understanding between us.

We stand at a precipice. Our world faces complex, interconnected challenges that demand new ways of thinking—yet we remain trapped in limiting frameworks and structures that prevent us from finding solutions.

Many of us live constrained by expectations we never chose. We inhabit boxes of others’ making or construct new ones in our search for belonging and meaning. We attack those in different boxes, forgetting we are all part of a greater whole. This division leaves us anxious, disconnected, distracted and unwell.

Our medical specialists work in isolated silos, unable to address holistic health crises. Professionals across industries face obsolescence as AI reshapes our relationship with work and each other. To remain relevant, young people need to master multiple disciplines. Meanwhile, unprocessed trauma—our own and our ancestors’—fragments us, severing our connection to wholeness.

The path forward requires stepping outside our boxes, dissolving the walls between us, and honouring the interconnectedness that transcends all boundaries.

If you haven’t yet seen it, my TED Talk explores the power of stepping out of our boxes, thinking laterally and unleashing our creativity to unlock human potential and build community.

My own journey has taken me through many unexpected worlds — elite sport, law, performing arts, entrepreneurship, and building purpose-driven organisations. None of these interests were planned; they unfolded through curiosity and the desire to be a learn-it-all rather than a know-it-all.

How are you developing yourself to remain relevant and inspired in the age of machines?

As many of you know, one of my deepest joys is helping individuals, teams, and communities unlock their creative potential. Over the past years I’ve had the privilege of presenting keynote speeches, leadership programs, creativity workshops, innovation labs, choirs and community-building sessions for organisations across the world.

If your organisation, conference, retreat, school, or community group is looking for:

I would be honoured to walk that journey with you. My sessions are designed to uplift, energise, heal and transform the way people see themselves and each other. In a world of increasing uncertainty, these spaces of connection and creativity are more important than ever. If this resonates, I warmly invite you to reach out so we can explore how I may support your next event or organisational gathering. Let’s continue this beautiful journey together and keep walking each other home. Here is a link to my latest song:

Please watch, sing along, like and comment on the YouTube link and share widely. Thank you for your support – it truly means the world to me.

With much love and healing thoughts,

Tania 💕

Developing Collective Intelligence and Raising Our Consciousness to Solve Wicked Problems in an Increasingly Challenging World

We are living in an increasingly challenging world – division and wars, mental illness and social isolation, climate change, economic stress, fear and uncertainty about the future … and so much more. There appears to be a complete breakdown of our social fabric; that glue which always bound us together has vanished in a sea of technology which threatens to wipe us off the planet.

We urgently need to increase our collective intelligence, raise our consciousness and build our resilience to heal individuals, families, workplaces and entire communities. It is critical to come to terms with the level of trauma in our world and ground ourselves, so that we can start to build bridges of understanding.

I work with a lot of companies and top teams globally to help build and unleash creative potential and develop a true culture of innovation and wellbeing.  Recently, some futurists said that creativity has become the most endangered species of the 21st Century. We have a broadband culture but not the creative, original and critical thought to fill it.

A global cross-sector study of 1,500 CEOs by IBM showed that in an increasingly complex and uncertain global environment the most important leadership attribute is creativity. So how do we develop our own creativity, courage, compassion and commit to changing ourselves and the structures that are no longer serving us?

Steve Jobs said: “Creativity is just about connecting things”. I’d like to suggest that those things might be all the experiences in your life up to this moment. So, the broader and richer your experience is, the more tools you’ll have in your creative toolbox for when you want or need to be creative. I believe that the best thing to unleash your creativity is what I like to call ‘positive human collisions’. That is, connecting with people on a regular basis who are different from you.

We spend most of our lives talking with, dressing like, and endorsing those who are just like us. They have similar education and backgrounds – around them we feel safe and good about ourselves.

However, I believe that our greatest gains as human beings are when we connect to people who are different, who challenge us and the way we think, who take us outside of our comfort zone. And boy, can it feel uncomfortable!

When we connect with ‘others’ outside our usual circles we may experience ‘creative abrasion’. It’s in that moment when we disagree with someone, that creativity and innovation can truly spark.

I find that taking leaders and teams out of their comfort zone increases creative thinking, trust and psychological safety, shared understanding and a stronger community. It also helps us to step into the right side of our brain.

The right hemisphere of our brain is responsible for our intuition, imagination, and all our creative functions. It connects us to a world of possibilities and all that is. The brain is like a battery; the right-side charges it and the left side uses energy and empties it. So, our goal is always to keep our mental battery charged up.

It has been estimated that we spend more than 85% of our time using the left side of our brains, being overwhelmed by facts and figures. We are literally draining our batteries and burning out. It is no wonder that loneliness and social isolation are considered the global epidemic of our era.

We talk more to boxes and screens than we do to one another. We are forgetting how to communicate with clarity and empathy, and machines are learning more quickly than we are. Many jobs are under threat.

In this environment, it becomes fundamentally important to nurture the attributes of human beings that set us apart from machines: love, compassion, empathy, kindness, caring, creativity and determination.

Democracy and capitalism are under stress … our institutions are no longer trusted and cannot keep up with the pace of change. In this rapidly changing world, we urgently need to transform our leadership, develop right-brained skills, resilience, compassion and courage. We need to align business metrics with creativity and wellbeing, find bridges between our worlds and reconnect to the unity and love which underpins all of life.

Engage Tania de Jong AM to help your team and organization step outside their comfort zone, unleash creative potential and wellbeing and outperform your competitors.

Be inspired by Tania’s short 3-minute showreel.

If the Medicine Works Shouldn’t We All Have Access to it? A Recent Poll of Australians Says Yes We Should

Written by Scott Leckie and Tania de Jong

(As published in The Daily Telegraph on 16th February 2022)

The painful COVID-era will fade but it will never be forgotten. This unanticipated period will be remembered for many things – death, suffering, economic and social disruptions and words like lockdown, iso, quarantine, social distancing, Zoom, omicron…

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A Prayer to Humanity in a Time of Crisis

As we look into the shining eyes of a child so we look back at ourselves – in all their wholeness and light.

It’s time to return, for we are all children;

And as we pass into adulthood and elderhood, we come to learn that nothing in this material world is permanent;

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I feel so sad about what Australia has become

Our politicians say things like “we are all Australians” and “we are all in this together”. We are NOT.

They hide behind secretive ‘health advice’ that has banned everything, from playgrounds to golf and sunsets, contrary to global scientific evidence. They keep children from attending school which has led to a crippling, devastating shadow pandemic of self-harm, mental illness and domestic violence. This will lead to lifetimes of suffering due to the inter-generational nature of trauma and mental illness.

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A Sad State of Affairs

(This article was originally published in the Herald Sun on October 10 2020)

I am really missing home, especially my Mum.  I miss my Melbourne; the way it was before this mess. I even miss my office and all the meetings I used to have. And I sure miss singing and connecting with audiences.

My husband and I came to NSW for a short holiday in June and here we still are, working and Zooming. Where we are, you’d never know there was a virus. People go about their lives. They go to school, bands and the beach and have friends over for parties, BBQs and dinner.  It reminds me how much I miss sharing happy times with friends and community.

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How Psilocybin-Assisted Therapy Changed My Life

From Singing to Psilocybin

I don’t drink or smoke. I’ve never taken any drugs till four years ago. Yet today, my life revolves around psychedelic medicines — heavily stigmatized substances still illegal in this country and most others across the world.

How did this happen?

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Tania de Jong performing at an event

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