Welcome back to my monthly reflections 🎉

This newsletter has three purposes:

1. A dedicated time for me to reflect on and draw meaning out of the last month ✏️.
2. An entry for conversation – if anything of what I write awakens something in you, I encourage you to reply 🙋‍♂️.
3. An insight into my thoughts regarding the topics I write about 💭.

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If a person you know would benefit from what I write about, forward this newsletter to them! At the bottom, they'll find a link in case they want to subscribe, too.

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In this very email, I write about going with the flow, suicide prevention, released More Life episodes, the new mastermind, mentoring (giving and receiving), authoring with ChatGPT, a lack of rainwater and learning from Nature.

I hope you enjoy!

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Going with the Flow

If I look back, the last two months have been chaotic. I am surprised that, given the chaos, I've managed considerably well. There are a couple of things that made that easier, one of them is going with the flow.

Especially when coupled with not overthinking and overanalysing, it brings me a certain calm and acceptance. I've touched on this in the podcast episode The Power of Breath, Movement, and Sound in Cultivating Aliveness: Insights from Akshi Coelho.

On the 13th of March, I felt inspired. Shortly before, I had decided to be more focused on not start new projects (I even put the 11 open books I had laying around back into the shelf, leaving just 1 in the living room).

But I felt inspired...

to do something new!

And I did go with the flow (and against my logical brain) and started writing my book!

I got into the flow immediately and didn't stop typing for the rest of the evening. It felt good. I rode the wave of inspiration.

Nonetheless, the book is not my focus at the moment and I don't know yet when I will continue writing.

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Saving Lives

Something unexpected happened the other day at Emerging Men: someone shared he was contemplating suicide. That hit deeply. It hit even deeper when he showed the rope he had bought to hang himself.

None of us were prepared for that... or were we?

At Emerging Men, we practice both sharing and listening from a place of acceptance. The atmosphere felt tense, certainly for me, and full attention was paid to this man.

He shared. We listened. Then we shared and he listened. We went on to share our best memories of him (and recorded it!) and at one point I shared a short story:

Just a couple of weeks ago, my coaching students asked me "what do I do if my client comes with depression or PTSD or some other psychological problem that I'm not trained for?". I told them it was important to know one's own limits and refer people, if fitting.

And I also shared what I usually do: Offer to listen. I don't know exactly what this man went through. My last suicidal thoughts are decades away. I've never been in the situation that provoked his despair. But I can listen. And allow emotions to be expressed.

Listening is powerful. Sharing is powerful.

Felipe facilitated this session and, reflecting on what happened, I can say that I'm proud. Of how he and the rest of us responded and, zooming out, of this incredible community we have created.

That day, we saved a life.

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More Life Episodes

I spontaneously decided to push out More Life episodes weekly (rather than fortnightly as planned). That means, since my last email, three more episodes were published:

​EP5: The Power of Breath, Movement and Sound in Cultivating Aliveness with Akshi​

I re-listened to it this morning and it was really powerful. Akshi shifted my thinking about emotions! One thing I got from the conversation is rather than categorising emotions in pleasant (eg gratitude) and unpleasant (eg fear), looking at them as emotions that are comfortable vs uncomfortable for me to express (compare this to my last newsletter!). And then focus on creating a space within which all of them are comfortable enough to be expressed! Wow, what a shift!

​EP6: Mindful Tech Use and Personal Growth with Kevin Palmieri​

One thing that sticks with me is that Kevin mentioned he doesn't believe in "balance". For him, it's all about juggling. It resonated with me because if I pay quality attention to things, it really is just one thing at a time. In juggling, I throw up one ball at a time, too!

And then, there is EP7 with Sharon Rolph and EP8 with Le-an that's to be released on Wed, 5th - of which I'll share the sneak peak below already :)

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I'm still getting into the flow of things when it comes to More Life. I've had great conversations but also no-shows. I've had tech issues, like yesterday when I had to record an episode on my phone because Zoom didn't recognise my mic. I haven't focused much on marketing More Life yet. But altogether, I'm happy I've launched and am doing this!

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Start Your Entrepreneurial Endeavour!

Getting started may be the hardest thing! But if you have social support, it becomes easier. So often, own doubts or getting distracted keep people from doing what they actually want and set out to.

I've noticed that in the mastermind! By having weekly check-ins with people who know the goals I set myself, I cannot get distracted. And if doubts pop up, I can voice them and talk them through!

As the current one is coming to an end, I am opening a new one - specifically for people who want to get their entrepreneurial endeavour started. Is there something you already wanted to try out for a long time... but haven't actually committed to yet?

Maybe now is the time (now is always the time!)...

3 months of weekly check-ins and insightful and relevant information exchanges.

Or perhaps you know someone who fits that description! Let me know if you're curious!

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Invisible Mentors

I know a lot of smart people. And I'm sure you do, too. One thing I learnt - and keep reminding myself of - is to ask questions when I have them.

Sounds simple but, for a long time, I didn't really do that. There are a lot of people in my network that could give me some advice on specific topics. Why not send them a message?

Every now and then, I receive such a message myself. It may be a previous student or a person I used to have some contact with. It always delights me to receive their questions or requests for my perspective.

I want to do more of that!

If it delights me, it probably delights others as well to receive thoughtful messages! Do you ever do this?

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My co-author: ChatGPT

The other day, I wrote a book with ChatGPT (not the book I mentioned above!).

It's a short book titled Leading Your Startup: Essential Leadership Strategies for First-Time Founders.

I spent a whole evening(!) on it and am 80% happy with the outcome. There are awesome opportunities but also serious limitations in using ChatGPT to generate ebooks.

What I noticed is the following:

First, ChatGPT is built on a vast amount of information. But, without giving more context to the prompts, it takes the most commonly held beliefs, for example about leadership, and regurgitates them.

That presented me with a problem because it brought me legacy views of leadership that I do not support nor have found useful in my own experience or with my clients.

For example, it wrote about the importance of controlling and motivating people. Both not things I endorse.

That said, with AI on the rise, I'm concerned that more and more old ideas will be regurgitated and it might get more difficult to expose new ideas!

New ideas, of course, are necessary to evolve... so, with AI, we might be making it more difficult to evolve our consciousness!

Second, there was a lot of repetition. Because of current capacity limitations, ChatGPT generated lots of paragraphs that were repetitive in content.

If you're still curious how I created the book, I generally followed this scheme:

1. Generate ideas on the title, get critical feedback, incorporate feedback
2. Create a content outline
3. Generate each sub-chapter one by one

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Lush Green Yet?

Our borage is growing huge! I've never seen borage that big!

It seems to like the conditions and will flower soon (you can see the buds on the picture!).

And all of that without the expected rain! I was really worried about the lack of rain: only 1 day in the last few months. Last year, we had ~5 weeks of rain in spring. Surprisingly, the dam is full. So, apparently, the rain was there, not here...

Unfortunately, that means less green around here and more watering required. I'm concerned how the rest of the year will be for the vegetation. Last year, we had a heat stroke and problems with drought. And that after a wet spring. Now, spring is dry already!

I see that represented in the margaritas: they are beautiful but much less lush than last year...

I've not been so motivated to be in the garden but did get round to sow peas and beans. We actually already have the first fava bean pods but because they are in a corner with little direct sunlight, they don't grow a lot.

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Learning from Nature

We homo sapiens have been here on Earth for 200k years. But Earth is 4.3bln years old. And plants been here for almost 600mln years! They have a huge advantage over us when it comes to knowing how it is to live on Earth!

We can learn a lot from Nature. Unfortunately, lately, many humans haven't paid attention to her principles. With everything digital, the connection with nature has suffered. Maybe with AI - that is predicted to especially take high-paid thinking-heavy jobs - there will be an opportunity to be more physical and more connected to nature again.

Principles of nature, like resilience through redundancy, can be applied pretty directly to human activities. For example, I have three devices that run Zoom. Yesterday, I wanted to record a More Life episode and my laptop didn't recognise the mic. But my phone did. So, I was able to record with the same quality thanks to the redundancy.

Curious what else we can learn from Nature? Check out Dare to Care!​

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Made it!

And that's my reflection for March!

There are two things I'd like you to consider:

• Reflect on my reflections. I'd be happy to receive a reply from you.
• Forward this newsletter to a person you think would appreciate it.

Until next month,

Jorim