Spark : Jonathan Reynolds : Concentric Circles of Practice : Personal, Professional, People

[00:00:00] Intro

Welcome to the mindful fire podcast a show about crafting a life you love and making work optional, using the tools of mindfulness envisioning and financial independence. 

I'm your host, Adam Coelho and I'm so glad you're here. 

Each episode of the mindful fire podcast explores these three tools through teachings, guided meditations and inspiring interviews with people actually living them to craft a life they love. 

Today's episode is what I call a mindful fire spark, a mini episode pulled from one of our most popular episodes.

To listen to the full episode, just click the link in the show notes, wherever you're listening to this. 

At its core, mindful fire is about creating more awareness and choice in your life. 

Mindfulness helps you develop self-awareness to know yourself better. And what's most important to you by practicing a kind curious awareness. 

Envisioning is all about choosing to think big about your life and putting the power of your predicting brain to work, to create the life you dream of. 

And financial independence brings awareness and choice to your financial life. Empowering you to make your vision a reality by getting your money sorted out and ultimately making work optional. 

 And here's the best part. 

You don't have to wait until you reach financial independence to live out your vision. 

Mindful FIRE is about using these tools to craft that life now on the path to financial independence and beyond. 

Adam Coelho: If you're ready to start your mindful fire journey, go to mindful fire.org/start and download my free envisioning guide. 

And just 10 minutes, this guide will help you craft a clear and inspiring vision for your life. 

Again. You can download it for mindfulFIRE.org/start 

let's jump into today's mindful fire spark.

[00:01:55] Spark Content - Less than 8 minutes

Adam Coelho: Add content here

[00:02:07] What it mean s to think about my practice in concentric circle

Adam Coelho: So Jonathan, You mentioned you think about your practice in concentric circles. I found that interesting. Can you tell me a little bit more about what that means? 

Jonathan Reynolds: There years ago? I had and a very informal practice.

I like acronyms. I like alliteration. I like things that are simple to remember. And so I had something that was personal professional people. I had said my three PS and so personal was my individual practice. And so I reserve a time each day where I'm alone sometimes that's, reading sometimes that's meditation, sometimes that's yoga. Most days, it's all. and so that's the inner sort of ripple. And then as this thing ripples out then I have my family and my community my culture, my world. And again, that's sort of the spiritual piece perhaps, but then that also is echoed in sort of impact while I have my team and then the client base and then prospective clients.

And so I view it like that as that if the core isn't strong if the core isn't nourished and resourced, then the ripple isn't going to actually have maximum. Length or distance or impact. And so I've always viewed it as that, that I am, a prime mover of my life. And if I'm not the prime mover, I'm not making deliberate choices or not planning that seed intentionally and as deep as possible, then my impact is curtailed necessarily and indirect for proportion to the depth, to which I planted that seed.

And so I've put a lot of focus on planting that seed.

Adam Coelho: Gotcha. So it sounds like the planting of the seed is really the focus on taking care of your own personal practice. So you can show up in your life to then have that impact on the expanding circles, around, your family, Your community, the society, and so on and so forth.

So the focus is making sure that the core is strong, which means that your practice is strong. 

Jonathan Reynolds: Is that right? Yeah, I think it's essential. I think without that, especially like over a duration, like COVID I really have a lot of compassion and feel a lot of empathy for folks that didn't necessarily have a personal practice.

Because my life changed. I found practice in my early twenties. Everybody has some practice and the question is first of all, was that practice chosen deliberately and consciously, and then does it actually serve them on the deepest possible levels that they needed to function?

And so over a period, like COVID where we were locked in. The practice was essential for keeping my sanity for staying grounded, for managing shifting environments, changing policies, changing rules and coming home to that ground, that baseline. I think is essential for both recharging, but also to have something reliable. And it's not reliable because it's always the same. It's always changing, but it's reliable because it's there in some continuity or some consistent way. and I think that's really important because there's gonna be great days. There's gonna be terrible days. What is the same about those two?

If we have some sort of a practice, then we have the same, if we don't, we're at the whim of the rollercoaster. And so I think it's, essential to have a practice and I love all the reports and all the information coming out on leaders, meditating and things like. You'll find that most leaders, it might be formal meditation.

It might not, but they have some practice that helps ground them. Whether it's a walk with a dog in nature at 5:00 AM every day, or there's something like that in pretty much all of their lives. And I think it is essential if we wanna be a leader of ourself. 

Adam Coelho: Yeah. No, that makes a ton of sense. I appreciate you going into that a little bit more.

Yeah. For me personally, I can tell the difference when I'm having that consistent practice and when I'm not, and I've heard the analogy and you hinted at it. It's like coming home. It's having that home base where you can come and yeah. It's not gonna be the same every day.

Sometimes mine might be all over the place. Sometimes it might be calm, but it's that same place that you can come to. And, I've been realizing that I need to make it a little bit more formal. I've had times in my life where I had a strong morning routine and that was exactly what you were describing.

It's like, okay. A really nice way to start today since my son was born, he's now three. So it's been a while. I haven't exactly had that. So I've been fitting it in around that. And I'm finding, I was just thinking this last night that like not having a plan or not having a consistency in the routine, especially around practice or journaling another mindful practice.

It doesn't work as well. Right. I don't have that strong foundation on which to build the day. And I'm craving that again. So this is a nice reminder to, to go and do that. 

Jonathan Reynolds: I can relate when my son was born, the same thing happened. Formal practice time was obliterated. It was shattered and the line between formal and informal dissolve.

And in some ways that was a gift. It's like, oh, when I was rocking my son, I did like a G gun routine, cuz that was the only time I was gonna get into my lower body in the day, like when I was trying to get him to nap time. And so all sorts of things, sometimes I had to get up at 3:00 AM to meditate because that was the time that was available.

And I think it's really important to have sort of a plan, but then also not to hold it too rigidly because Some days don't have the energy to practice formally. And sometimes a practice is taking a bath and it can be that. And so again, I think the conscious intention and the deliberate choice is the piece but I also agree with what you're saying.

At some point there has to be some grid or framework by which to say this is the baseline. Because that trains us, that teaches us and it is a training. It's not like, oh, because I get up at 5:00 AM every day and meditate. When I'm in a difficult situation, I'm gonna meditate, but that's a training for the rest of life.

Right?

Adam Coelho: Absolutely. Absolutely.

[00:07:52] Outro

 thanks for joining me for today's mindful fire spark. To listen to the full episode, just click the link in the show notes, wherever you're listening to this.

If you enjoy today's episode, I invite you to hit subscribe wherever you're listening to this, this just lets the platforms know you're getting value from the episodes and you want to be here when I release additional content. 

Adam Coelho: If you're ready to start your mindful fire journey, go to mindful fire.org/start and download my free envisioning guide. 

And just 10 minutes, this guide will help you craft a clear and inspiring vision for your life. 

Again. You can download it for mindfulFIRE.org/start 

Thanks again. And I'll catch you next time on the mindful fire podcast.