By Markus Gnirck
The podcast currently has 11 episodes available.
Talking and listening to Bjorn is like wandering through a big library full of books about wellbeing and mindfulness. His wealth of knowledge in this space is so resourceful that one can only take note of the books that we need to read.
Bjorn has always been involved in passion projects. From starting over a decade ago with a startup community platform (which became the well known media and events company e27), he worked in Silicon Valley and Singapore in various product companies to now founding Mindfi. He tried and is still trying various forms of meditation and keeps learning about how to optimise his work-life integration in the age of technology and constant input. He believes in good habits. One of them is his 4 staged morning routine after waking up: breathing, a full body scan, being grateful and showing self-affirmation.
This episode is for everyone that is keen to enter and learn more about a mindful life. Being mindful doesn't take much to start with, but then requires hard work to stay on track. Training the mental muscle takes time and effort is rewarded over time. Bjorn states that is takes up to three months to see the first results of meditation.
Melanie spent 10 years in Singapore corporate to realise that this wasn't it for her. In her early thirties she went on to do a 10-days Vipassana course which lead her to one dominant thought: she wants to do something that brings her close to water. With that, she discovered Wakeboarding. And not only she spent some days on the board in the water, she actually became one of Singapore's best Wakeboarders! In 2015 and 2017 she represented Singapore as part of the Southeast Asian Games and came 2nd.
While she was doing what she loved, she also faced multiple challenges. Getting badly injured was one of them. However, that taught her even more how to understand her mind and body and use this knowledge for a better recovery. As a doctor told her, 'given you are so spiritual, you will recover faster'. In her late thirties she was eventually competing against teenagers again, with a body of an 18 year old and a mind that was much stronger than before.
Melanie is a prime example of someone who listens to her heart, who pushes mind over matter and who has a flair of eternal youth.
A few years ago, Matteo walked up stairs in New Delhi and was panting heavily when reaching the top. The next day he ran his first kilometer. He never liked running. It was boring. It was something he didn't enjoy.
From that 1km in India, Matteo got hooked and started to run, run and run. Races after races. Recently he finished the world famous Marathon Des Sables, a 6 day multi-stage event in the Sahara dessert. It is said to be the toughest foot race on Earth, crossing the dessert in 251km with self provided nutrition all the way.
Matteo has worked across multiple continents and has built successful technology companies (a mobile first bank in India and a mobile money tech company in Myanmar for example). He is a busy man driven by creating positive impact in the world, especially bringing financial innovation to the underserved societies in emerging markets.
With all that under his belt, he decided to start running. When running long distance, he got to learn so much about his mind and body. He had to adjust his nutrition, sleep and recovery times. Being out there in the dessert, cut off from any modern technology, Matteo got a sense of purity - in a way a deeper understanding what it means to be human again. Eat, drink, run, sleep - and again.
The only key factor for success: Have a plan, stick to it and don't give it up. Trust that the rest will work out.
Listen in to this episode to learn more about Matteo's journey from having ran 1km to completing 251km in the Sahara dessert.
After having smashed her laptop keyboard at work in Hong Kong, Tricia decided to step out of her corporate life and focus on her passion: exercising! She went on to become a competitive MMA fighter (one of the few females at that time in Hong Kong) and started a transformation journey that led her to experiment with her mind and body.
Tricia has tried almost every diet out there, apart from vegan, and got to learn what kind of nutrition has different impacts on her body and mind. A f*** it diet (eating anything) was as interesting as a keto diet. Listening to her body, measuring every single gram of food intake and pushing her limits in exercising gave her a great understanding how to optimise her lifestyle. She is now a big believer of only having nourishing food ('it is good for you if it grows, flies, runs and swims') and calls it the 'Cell Diet' - nutrition that has healthy impact on a cellular level in the body.
With science progressing and technologies allowing for optimised nutrition plans, Tricia shares her views on what she sees happening in this space to make humans more bionic.
Listen in to learn more about Tricia's experiments, her various diets and great insights into biochemical reactions in your body.
Lingga is on his 5th company now. He started his entrepreneurial journey by selling porn during his student days in Jogjakarta (Indonesia) and learned quickly his lessons on what it takes to build successful companies. He went on to found several other companies in various industries, from design to waste management. He is now the co-founder of Salestock, a 800 people strong, fast growing e-commerce company in Indonesia
However, being an workaholic has its limits. His physical and mental health deteriorated a year ago and so he started a profound transformation that has changed his life. Lingga shares his recipe for a healthy and successful life:
It can be that dead simple.
For him, it is not about weight loss, but about reinventing himself to be an entrepreneur with a good physical foundation for a successful professional and personal life. He understood how to manage his 'flow' and how to have a more mature passion to run his company.
Listen in to this episode to learn more about how a company is always the amplification of its founder and how Lingga's transformation has changed everything.
What does running a financial technology (fintech) company and competing in 100 mile races have in common? Quite a lot as it turns out.
Ned, a Singapore based entrepreneur and extreme sports athlete, talks in this episode about his experience in building fintech companies for the past decades in Asia and his thirst for achieving more and more in extreme sports. A true believer in testing his boundaries, Ned uses the power of the mind to tackle challenges step by step - quite literally. For example, counting every step during a half marathon (over 22,000 steps) has taught him how the mind overrules it all in situations of doubt and suffering, either during Ironman races or when building technology companies.
'When I grow up...' is one of Ned's favourite quotes and it is a true pleasure to hear from him how he keeps his optimistic outlook. Listen in to learn more about Ned's story and why he celebrates passing on having a delicious ice cream.
Tom Hill is an achiever. Having grown up in Australia, he took part in national swimming competitions, is a passionate surfer, pilot, sailor, cyclists and runs a successful family businesses in the boating industry.
Life changes dramatically when he was diagnosed with Arthritis at the age of 23.
In this episode, Tom shares his journey of fighting a rare and aggressive form of Arthritis, a disease that eats away bone structures, and demonstrates how a healthy mindset and a positive approach to life is everything! Being used to pushing barriers in every dimension, he learns to understand his limits and develops a deep gratitude and awareness for his well-being.
Listen in to Tom's truly inspiring story - and how his determination got him recently 2nd place in the Gold Coast Ironman.
Michael Lints is Partner at Singapore based venture capital firm Golden Gate Ventures and also a passionate street cyclists. He shares insights on how important cycling is to him, why he is doing it and what impact it has on his daily life of a busy venture capital investor.
Markus and Michael also discuss how venture capital investors are supporting entrepreneurs to have a healthy life.
In this first episode of Mastering Mind & Body, Markus sits down with Jaslyn Koh, founder of Broc n Bells and BusyWomanProject to chat about her mindful journey from banking in Singapore to a more purposeful life.
As Jaslyn is very plugged into the Southeast Asian community of active busy people, she elaborates on the trends how individuals are mastering their mind and body in this part of the world.
Also, Jaslyn reveals which sense she would like to have enhanced to become uberhuman.
The podcast currently has 11 episodes available.