Meet Jude Berman

We recently connected with Jude Berman and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Jude, thanks for sharing your insights with our community today. Part of your success, no doubt, is due to your work ethic and so we’d love if you could open up about where you got your work ethic from?

My parents were refugees/immigrants who fostered the strong sense that one has to work hard and failure is not an option in life. At a young age, I learned about the concentration camps where my relatives died—not that persecution correlates with the need to work hard, but the message was that if you didn’t put your nose to the grindstone, bad things could happen. Bad things might happen anyway, but at least you could try to beat the odds by working hard.

My work ethic during those early years got me good grades, into a good college, into a very selective graduate program, and a fair amount of stress.

Then a surprising thing happened while writing my dissertation, which was on the topic of cross-cultural communication. I approached it with my usual mindset, which included taking on double the work so it would qualify as both theoretical and experimental. I saw others struggling to write and assumed I was in for the same—if not double—the struggle.

And then I started writing. Suddenly, I had the sense of doing nothing beyond showing up and letting the words flow through me. With hindsight, I’d say my new meditation practice had something to do with the shift.

It revolutionized my work ethic. Instead of associating work with qualities such as sacrifice and hard and overwhelm and burnout, work became play. It is easeful and fun. I may be diligent and disciplined, but ultimately I do what I do—write, edit, paint—because I love it.

Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?

At this phase in my life, I’m focused on writing fiction. I actually started in the 1990s, but my manuscripts languished in a drawer, largely because I prioritized serving others over my own creative pursuits. I’ve finally found a way to make time for both.

In October, The Vow, a book I began in the 90s, is being published by She Writes Press. It’s historical fiction about the artist Angelica Kauffman, and I feel this is great timing because we need more than ever to hear stories about women who succeeded against all odds.

Also timely is The Die, a book of speculative fiction that came out in April and in which I draw on ancient wisdom to shed light on the task of saving democracy. It’s set in the near future but I think it speaks directly to our current world. It was the 2024 International Book Awards Winner in Visionary Fiction and Cross-Genre Fiction as well as the 2024 American Fiction Awards Winner in General Fiction. Both The Die and The Vow are distributed by Simon & Schuster and available on Amazon and anywhere you purchase books.

More books are stacked up behind those two. And I continue to paint, time permitting, as well. One thread across all my work/play, including books and paintings, is the visionary/metaphysical. I bring that to everything I do because I believe we are multi-dimensional people, and if we can learn to live with that in our sights, our world will be a happier place.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

The three qualities or perspectives that have been most important to me and that I recommend for others are the ability to experience oneness, self-acceptance, and integrity.

By experiencing oneness, I’m not necessarily speaking about religion. You can be religious and not experience oneness, and you can experience it without being religious. Or you can be/do both. You can’t manufacture or fake the experience of oneness; it is a gift. Even so, you can seek it and prioritize it. I think it’s important because we tend to go through life in a self-centered manner, seeing ourselves as the center of the universe, which leads to disappointment much of the time. Seeing the oneness of it all—sometimes only for a second—cuts through all that. The experience of oneness allows me to see that others are not different from myself and lets me love in a more profound way. Being a mystic also allows me to create freely, because I can open to greater forces in the universe rather than relying on a limited vision of reality.

Self-acceptance might sound contradictory to oneness, but it’s not. When you accept yourself, you do so knowing you aren’t perfect, but you are part of the greater oneness of life. Accepting myself means I can enjoy silence and time alone, rather than needing to cram in too many activities. It also means I don’t have to twist myself in order to win others’ approval. I can be who I am and be comfortable in my own skin.

Integrity is important because, without it, we tend to be swayed by the opinions and pressures of others. I was in a situation for years where I felt I should follow group norms—to the point where I became physically ill. As soon as I made the decision to stand in my own integrity, realizing it was all I ultimately had, I regained my equanimity as well as my health. Integrity goes hand in hand with courage, because it’s not always easy to hold to your values when others deny them. But I wouldn’t live any other way.

One of our goals is to help like-minded folks with similar goals connect and so before we go we want to ask if you are looking to partner or collab with others – and if so, what would make the ideal collaborator or partner?

One of my goals is to uplift the genre of Metaphysical/Visionary Fiction. To be clear, I find the force-fitting of books into genres to be a destructive trend. Nevertheless, to the extent that it is a reality in publishing, I want to advance books that center on the visionary/metaphysical and that use fiction to bridge the spiritual and political realms in order to promote a more hopeful and resilient world. I am always seeking collaborators in this endeavor. The best way to reach me is through my website (judeberman.com)

Contact Info:

• Website: https://judeberman.com/
• Other: https://linktr.ee/judeberman