F.I.R.E., Life Hacks, More experienced Investors, New To Finance, Review, Uncategorised, Uncategorized

Review: Atomic Habits by James Clear

Love London Real because of the depth of the conversation and the interesting questions that he asks.

I love to listen to inspirational youtube videos. The ones I like aren’t the ones that promise to make you the ‘world’s greatest’ or give you unattainable or grandiose, hyperbolic dreams of success.

The ones I like are the videos that contain processes that can lead you step by step to success through doing small regular actions.

I like to watch people who use words like productive, practice, regular, continual, growing, meaningful, contributory, valued, asset, creative, progress.

I like videos that talk about the aggregation of small gains.

That’s exactly what James Clear talks about.

Small daily habits that can literally change your life, and how to go about making them and putting them into place.

Love this guy for the science he puts into his work. Warning: lots of advertisements.

My husband and I decided to get into a really good savings habit.

One of the things we saved for was our wedding. We got married during COVID lockdowns, so we never had a party.

We saved $50 per week for several years, and we ended up with our party.

The aggregation of small gains meant that we had enough in our ‘party’ bank account to pay for gifts for our guests, as well as a wonderful lunch with trays of food for everyone to take home.

We are so blessed to have people like James Clear on our radar teaching us how to do well.

We’ve reduced our spending on the ‘party’ account now that the wedding is over to $50 per fortnight.

Now we’re saving $50 per fortnight for an amazing new flute for me (as well as all the other stuff like investments, property, etc).

Thanks for reading my blog! I love putting money into future good!

Please note: there are no affiliate links in this blog, and I don’t get any income from the owners of the website’s links I’ve put here. They are all businesses I either use or respect.

Life Hacks, politics, Uncategorised, Uncategorized

What I learned in 20 years of teaching…

One of my favourite poems is ‘you get proud by practising’ By Laura Hershey.

Those tiny actions that you repeat every day?

They change you.

Growing butterfly bush or buddleia in Australia is a wonderful option

Your tiny daily actions change your muscles and posture—ever seen the way a cellist or violinist holds their head at the dinner table?

They way you regularly think changes the way your mind works.

People who do systematic work become increasingly technical.

People who learn a style of deductive reasoning such as lawyers become increasingly bound by rules and logic.

Grevillia in flower

Your speech and communication habits change your relationships.

Have you ever noticed how many psychologists have similar communication techniques or attitudes?  Or how teachers adopt a particular metre when speaking to 5 year olds?

Have you ever been talked down to by someone when they should have been talking up to you?

Sun shines light on the harbour

Your tiny repeated actions don’t just change what you do everyday, they change fundamental aspects of how you are in the world. They change your identity and your internal processes.

So my advice, for anyone really is to pick something to learn.

Could be a language, could be a way of walking, could be a skill, could be a craft, could be a body of knowledge, could be a sport, could be just about anything:

But pick something, and work on it for 5 minutes on a regular basis.

In time, I almost guarantee you’ll be really proud of yourself and how far you’ve come.

And I’ll be proud of you, too.

Note: None of the links in this post are affiliate links, but they do build my blog.

F.I.R.E., Life Hacks, More experienced Investors, New To Finance, Uncategorised, Uncategorized

Plenty of Honey in my Cupboard (Part 2 of 3)

How to get honey in the cupboard and things that are real honey instead of fake honey

  • Real honey: touch. Sit with your partner and massage his hands, feel happy about the physical touch time. Let your partner touch your back and your hands and spend time just talking and touching and hugging
  • Real honey: conversation. Spend time ringing and speaking to friends, past and present. Spend time speaking your heart and listening to them speak their heart. Listen.
  • Real honey: exercise. Spend time building your muscles, strength, balance, flexibility, and cardio ability.
  • Real honey: rest and sleep. You need to rest and sleep each night. Ask for vitality and calm productivity. At least one day per week should be at home pottering around and resting/cleaning etc.
  • Real honey: nature. Spending time outside in nature is physiologically good for us.
  • Real honey: creativity. Spending time doing creative stuff is real honey. This could include creative things which you can use to make money.
  • Real honey: mindfulness and inspiration. I like James Clear, Robin Sharma (the less egoic videos), Thich Nhaht Hanh, Brene Brown, Paula Pant, Andrew Hallam, Bill Gates and many more. I also like to meditate and be mindful.
  • Real honey: Kindness. When you do nice things for someone you feel good.
  • Real honey: virtue. Do things that are virtuous and you feel good. If in doubt, read an Old Fashioned Girl Louisa May Alcott or Tell me if the Lovers are Losers by Cynthia Voigt.
  • Real honey: savings. Having savings in the bank is real good honey. I don’t feel right if I don’t increase my savings by a little each week (increased by around $33 this week to a total of nearly $46k).
  • Real honey: satisfying food. Yes this includes animal products for me, also vegetables, fruits, vinegar, fermented foods, and sweet forbidden carbs.
  • Real honey: supplements. I take lots of supplements, and they help me feel healthy and safe.
  • Real honey: learning and teaching. This is the best.
  • Real honey: charity. Give to charity. Volunteer. It feels damn good to build up the community that supports you. And pay your taxes. We all like the Doctors to be paid, the sewer to run, the curbs to be maintained, and the poor people to have income.
  • Real honey: confront your demons and learn about hard stuff. A book on my current to-read list: http://www.katemanne.net/down-girl.html