I am a huge consumer these days. No longer of stuff, products and things, but of information, knowledge and experiences. My joy of learning seems to be growing at a rapid rate and I am constantly awe filled with the amount of creative and intelligent people contributing wonderful things to the world and the fact that I get to absorb it all.
I am asked all the time a few key questions (outside of daily routine, travel recommendations, and my most frequently asked question ‘can I actually meditate with what you teach, even if I have never had success with meditation before’, (the answer is a very strong and confident yes). Mostly I am asked these in person and over social media. And I have been pondering do I start to share lots of juicy key things that captivate me, and share this inspiration in our newsletter.
Then I received Tim Ferriss’s newsletter today and he calls it 5 Bullet Friday and he answers 5 key questions on what he’s reading, playing, reading, watching and pondering. This struck me as the perfect list. So today I am publishing through our Newsletter my current interests, learnings, pondering with the aim to inspire and share creativity. It’s the only medium to receive it all, I won’t be putting these on our Journal.
Now Tim is a machine and most of what he does is delivered online. I on the other hand do most of my teaching and delivery in person, so please stay with me as I am not as digitally organised (and I’m not sure I want to be), so this won’t be a weekly exercise, but I will try put something together as much as I can!
I would also really love your feedback on what I am writing to you about, and if you find it relevant or not (this format of article and all the others I send). What lights you up? What delights you. What’s totally boring and irrelevant. These newsletters aren’t just to fill my time, they are for YOU. So I would love YOUR personal insights so that I can take that on board. Many of you write back with lovely constructive feedback (especially about my horrific grammar, English was never my strong suit. Our poor Japanese teacher – I am constantly saying, ‘hang on, what’s a verb again?’ hahaha) and I really appreciate it. I don’t get a chance to write you all back to say thank you, but please know I read them all.
Ok so here it is, at the moment…
I AM READING…(note, I am a ferocious reader and always have multiple books on the go)
This utterly breathtaking article One Man’s Quest To Change The Way We Die http://www.nytimes.com/2017/
NY Times Daily Briefings that now conveniently pop into my inbox
Vogue Living Jan/Feb Issue for it’s amazing Japan travel stories
Harmony is Success by Ken McClean
The Complete Guide to Fasting by Jason Fung and Jimmy Moore
Deep Work by Cal Newport
Tools of Titans by Tim Ferriss
Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
I AM LEARNING…
Hiragana and Katakana through Dr Moku’s super fun app
About Fasting, Water Fasting, Intermittent Fasting – some good resources here, here and here
Diving deeper into Learning Processes. This is fascinating here
I AM LISTENING TO…
Anything I can on Joshua Waitzken who is impossible to find much on as he has very little digital presence – but you can find him on this, this and this
I AM UTTERLY GRATEFUL FOR…
– Self Employment and the guts to have fun with it (I didn’t always have the guts and the fun part!)
– Arran’s constant patience and openness to experiment.
For example ‘We should sell/give away everything we own!’/’We should move to the middle of nowhere on the beach at Palm Beach!’/’We should got to Japan at the drop of a hat in 10 days!’/’We should have no technology in our bedroom even though watching your iPad in bed is your fav downtime!’/’We should have one giant communal area in our new house!’/’We should make your work studio a massive sprawling art area for us all to enjoy!’/’We should learn Japanese, and we start tomorrow!’. I mean, can you actually imagine being married to me. The guy deserves a medal.
– The gift of Vedic meditation, and teaching our enhanced program of Vedic Meditation through The Broad Place. I snuck in a little private course to two absolutely wonderful humans before they jet back to London, and a week later, we had a little group meditation and check in yesterday, and sharing this technique for better living blows me away every single time.
– The ocean; Soaking in salt under sun or cloud does my soul so much good
– Skype; Being able to be in contact with friends overseas is the best.
– My relationship with Marley, which is growing with trust and honesty and witnessing her grow into the remarkable little human being that she is. Seeing her learn to own her own stuff, work through it, witness her thinking patterns and processes and learn to be vulnerable and raw is an honour.
– Our small team at The Broad Place of Shearry and Emily, who continually smile and say ‘that sounds amazing’ even though I’m sure they’re gritting their teeth. When I have taken a month off and am now so inspired, and I say with breathy excitement; ‘so I have decided to rework EVERY element of what we do, and how we do it, and it’s going to create a shit tonne of work for us all but it will be incredible!’. And they just roll with it. No resisting, no resentment, no ‘what the hell, I just spent 78 hours on that new system and now it’s being re-worked, I can’t’. My heart beams for them.
I AM PONDERING…
How I can contribute to the learning of our students in a broader form?
How can I package up all that I have learnt and make it dynamic and wonderful and include meditation within this?
How can I shift and edit and evolve my weeks so that I can not only prioritise that which is important, but fit in all that I wish to?
And ultimately, what does time even mean?
How can I grow my relationship even deeper with Arran and Marley?
How can I make this year go ‘boom’ even greater than last year (and is that even possible!?)
I hope this contributes to inspiring you this week, to live a high grade life and explore your creativity!
Love Jac x