Mindful FIRE : Life Design for Financial Independence

Welcome to the mindful fire podcast, where we explore living mindfully on the path to financial independence and beyond. I'm your host, Adam Coelho and I'm so glad you're here.

On today's episode, I'm joined by my new friend, Cara Bradley. Cara is a leading authority of mental fitness having led thousands to her signature strategies to work and play in flow.

She shares her 30 years of body brain training with fortune 500 companies, startups and premier college sports teams.  Cara's expertise includes science back tools for optimal performance, including nervous system flow, state, and mindfulness training. In addition to strategies to optimize the gut brain connection.

She's the author of the book On The Verge, Wake Up, Show Up and Shine, founder of the award winning verge yoga center and host of the On The Verge Mental Fitness Podcast.

On this episode, Cara and I explore the idea of mental fitness, an area she's dedicated most of her career to. We learn what it is and how we can practice it.

We also explore the connection between our gut and our brain.

And we spend a good bit of time talking about the flow state and Cara shares, how mindfulness and meditation help us to identify our own flow triggers and the activities that put us in a state of flow. And she shares a number of  practices, including breathwork practices.

Cara also generously offered to share her mental fitness protocol with our audience. And you can get that at mindfulfire.org/cara.

Finally Cara shares her thoughts and experience building a business around the ideas of teaching and sharing mental fitness. And she shares how she used her award-winning yoga studio, which she started just around the time that yoga was becoming mainstream in the United States, as a laboratory for developing a deeper understanding and practice around mental fitness, health, and wellbeing.

Connect with Cara Bradley

• Cara Bradley's Website - CaraBradley.net
• Cara's Free Mental Fitness Protocol

Full Show Notes | https://bit.ly/3ujnfJd
More Inspiring Interviews | https://bit.ly/3uen2ac
More Guided Meditations | https://bit.ly/3o9BhMt

One of the most important parts of living a fulfilled and happy life is answering the question "What is enough?". 

It seems simple but in our culture of "more, more, more" this question looms large for all of us; not just with our money but with our time, energy, effort, and so much more.

We may feel like we don't have enough, that we're not doing enough or even that we, ourselves, are not enough. I know I've felt all of these and am still reflecting to learn more on how these beliefs show up in my life.

This practice invites you to practice having enough, feeling enough and being enough right here in this moment. For just a moment, can we let go of everything we hope to achieve and attain and just let being here, alive in this moment be enough.

I hope you enjoy this practice. If you do, please hit subscribe or follow where you're listening to this to let the platform know you're getting value and you want to be here for future episodes.

Full Show Notes | https://bit.ly/3nQtfI2
More Inspiring Interviews | https://bit.ly/2XsLfx7
More Guided Meditations | https://bit.ly/3AsbYIF

Welcome to The Mindful FIRE Podcast, where we explore living mindfully on the path to financial independence and beyond. I'm your host, Adam Coelho and I'm so glad you're here.

On today's episode, I'm joined by my friend, Anna Kozenkova.

Anna joined Google people operations six plus years ago and she's based in Prague Czech Republic. Previously, she worked for over 10 years in executive search consulting across Europe.

At Google in addition to her core role in recruitment, Anna takes an active part in facilitating Googler to Googler programs. Her passion is people development and creating sustained well-being and psychological safety in teams. For the last five years, she's been an active member of the global search inside yourself, facilitator cohort. She also offers career and life coaching at Google and externally.

In this conversation, Anna and I talk a lot about creating space in your life.  Anna shares, how practicing mindfulness allows her to create more space in her life on a day-to-day basis and on a more macro level allows her to design a life that's aligned with her values and her passion for travel.

We explore how this idea of space applies to money as well and Anna shares her thoughts on money, financial independence, retire early, and how creating this space in your life gives you more choice about how you want to live your life. She also shares how she's applied these principles in our life to design her life around her number one, passion, which is travel.Anna is one of the most well-traveled people that I know having traveled to over 90 countries including a lot of places that most people don't even think to go like Antartica.

I really enjoyed this conversation with my friend, Anna Kozenkova and she really helped me reflect on my life and some of the things that are most important to me I hope that you enjoyed it as well.

You can find the full show notes for today's episode, including any resources, links or books mentioned in today's episode at mindfulfire.org/44.

If you enjoy today's episode, I invite you to please hit subscribe or follow 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 we produce additional content.

And if you're enjoying the podcast, I'd love to ask you to do me one favor, and that's just a take your favorite episode and send it to a friend or two who might get value from listening to it. Doing that will help the podcast, reach new people and would really mean the world to me.

Thank you so much for all your support!

Full Show Notes | https://bit.ly/3AccytU
More Inspiring Interviews | https://bit.ly/3nrMCqQ
More Guided Meditations | https://bit.ly/3A8ZhT5

Impermanence - the fact of life that everything is constantly changing and nothing stays the same for long - can be best observed and experienced within our own body.

I took this picture in November 2017 on the last day of my 10 day silent Vipassana meditation retreat in Northern California.

It was at this retreat that I truly observed the impermanence of life, not on an intellectual level but on an experiential level. At this retreat we practiced body scan meditation, being aware of each part of the body from head to toe, for 10 hours per day starting at 4:30 am. Paying close attention to the body it becomes clear that even something that seems fixed, say a pain in my shoulder, is actually changing and moving continuously. Nothing is staying the same. If you've ever scratched an itch to find that you suddenly have another new itchy area in another part of your body, you've experienced this.

Impermanence is all around us. At the 10 day retreat each day I walked past this mountain scene many times and each time it was different. Some mornings it was covered in frost, others fog and others bathed in sun. It was an outward lesson on impermanence mirroring what I was learning inwardly through body scan meditation.

I invite you to have a small taste of the ever changing nature of our bodies and of our lives, with this guided body scan meditation.

I hope you enjoy and would love to hear about your experience in the comments below.

Full Show Notes | https://bit.ly/2VlxnUN
More Inspiring Interviews | https://bit.ly/3zLoBhL
More Guided Meditations | https://bit.ly/38OHd4F






#bodyscan #bodyscanmeditation #meditation #mindfulness #bodyawareness #impermanence #vipassana #insight #goeka #ssgoenka #dhamma #10daysilentretreat #meditationretreat 

"Imagine that your body and even your mind  are rooted, grounded, planted here in this spot while the crazy world just keeps on spinning." - Adam Coelho

This quote captures what this grounding meditation practice is all about.

A lot of the time, especially theses days, it feels like we're caught in a strong storm. It feels like we're being blown in many different directions and it's hard to maintain our balance and stability.

Mindfulness helps us to regain our stability by grounding in the timeless moment of now. This practice invites you to let go of everything happening outside, in the world, in the past, in the future and to just ground in this moment, right now. To imagine that you're like a tree with deep roots, grounded in this moment, no matter which way the winds of the storm blow.

I hope you enjoy it and I welcome your comments. DM me on Instagram @TheMindfulFIREPodcast.

If you'd like to support the show, the best way you can do that is by sharing your favorite meditation or episode with a couple of friends! Thanks for all your support!

Full Show Notes - https://bit.ly/3Dee6Wv
More Guided Meditations - https://bit.ly/2WdYYb0
More Inspiring Interviews-  https://bit.ly/3ybMXQ4

Welcome to The Mindful Fire Podcast where we explore living mindfully on the path to financial independence and beyond. I'm your host, Adam Coelho and I'm so glad you're here.

On today's episode of the podcast. I'm joined by my new friend, Jessi Shuraleff.

Jessi spent 13 and a half years at Google leading and coaching sales teams using authenticity value-based selling and storytelling to drive impact in revenue for her customers.

She's worked with brands both big and small across numerous industries, including retail technology, real estate and B2B.

She recently left the corporate world and has taken the leap into solopreneurship as the founder of the podcast and community, This Is My Truth.

Creating building and maintaining relationships is at the core of who she is and authenticity, vulnerability and storytelling have been the cornerstone of her skill set to get where she is today as a leader, podcaster and mom.

 Her personal mission is to create community and connection through the sharing of personal stories, to empower individuals and brands, to step into their own light, reclaim their voice and drive greater impact.

In this conversation, Jessie and I explore her journey over the last 13 and a half years at Google, where she had a ton of success, but ultimately found herself at 6:03 in the morning, brushing her teeth a few years ago and having her husband asked her a question he's asked many times, " Are you happy?". And she had to answer "no".

She realized that she needed to make some changes in her life to reclaim her voice, find her own way, rediscovering herself and what's truly important to her in the process. This moment, what she calls her 6:03 moment, really catalyzed a ton of change for her in her life.

And while she didn't leave Google overnight, it began a process of self discovery that included therapy, coaching, self exploration, and just really untangling a lot of the go go, go culture that she had internalized growing up in this society and building a career within Google, which I can tell you is quite the go go, go type of place.

We explore a lot around this idea of the go go, go culture, where we all are taking on so much. So many projects, parenting, working, taking care of our houses, taking care of our family members, trying to fit all these things into our life and all the while forgetting to take care of ourselves and forgetting to listen to ourselves and asking the question, what do I need right now?

And we both share how the practices of mindfulness and journaling allowed us to build the self-awareness to recognize when we need to slow down, look inward and ask some tough questions about our life and our priorities.

Jessi and I had a really great conversation. I think there's a ton of wisdom here.  I share a lot around how I've been feeling quite burnt out recently and how I noticed that I needed to start doing the self-care things that are so important to find my way back to balance and to showing up in the way that I want to show up for myself, my son, and my wife.

Full Show Notes | https://bit.ly/3CUqzOD
More Inspiring Interviews | https://bit.ly/3mamlNe
More Guided Meditations | https://bit.ly/2XzgZ3N

Welcome to The Mindful FIRE Podcast, where we explore living mindfully on the path to financial independence and beyond. I'm your host Adam Coelho and I'm so glad you're here.

Often our busy minds feel like the choppy waves of the ocean during a storm. But even during a storm, if you drop below the surface just 10-15 feet, the water is calmer and quieter. 

I like to think of meditation as a practice of dropping in, dropping below the busy and tumultuous waves of my mind, into the calmer, quieter peace of this moment.

That's what this practice is all about. I share simple guidance to help you drop into this moment, so you can enjoy the simplicity, peace and ease that exists below the surface.

We finish up with some gratitude and drop into the feeling of gratitude in our bodies.

Full Show Notes | https://bit.ly/2TQGo7q
More Inspiring Interviews | https://bit.ly/3yuhKZC
More Guided Meditations | https://bit.ly/3imJtWd

Welcome to The Mindful FIRE Podcast, where we explore living mindfully on the path to financial independence and beyond. I'm your host Adam Coelho and I'm so glad you're here.

I am so thrilled to bring you today’s episode with my good friend, Dan Arwady. Dan works at YouTube and heads up Partner Engineering for the YouTube Music Labels operations team. On the side, he's an engineering student, a drummer, a music producer, and an amateur woodworker, and when he's really doing life right he's a meditator and an avid reader too. But in reality, he's usually spending a bunch of quality time with his 1 year old son TJ, his wife Ang, and his dog Levi.

This conversation truly felt like 2 good friends catching up and talking about life and as a result we forgot to have Dan introduce himself until about 40 minutes into the conversation. Luckily we were recording the whole time and caught all of the gems he had to share. Editing was interesting to say the least and took me longer than usual but I am really proud of the resulting episode and it was an exercise in practicing my craft of podcasting, which we discuss in the episode.

In this conversation we dive into the many lessons Dan has learned in his pursuit to constantly learn and grow as a person and musician through deliberate practice. Dan is an incredibly talented musician, playing several instruments but with a focus on drums. We discuss how he approached getting better at drums through deliberate practice even when he didn’t have much time because of work and life. And he also shares how he continues to hone his skills as a drummer by working with expert coaches and now collaborating with friends to put his music out in the world. He just released his first solo track which you can check out on Spotify.

In the last 5 years Dan has also made a career switch from Sales to Engineering at Google, which I can tell you is extremely difficult and not something many people are able to pull off. Dan shares how he came to love engineering and how he went about learning this difficult skills, ultimately finding himself pursuing a second Bachelors of Engineering and Computer Science, all while working full time and starting a family.

Dan shares a ton of incredible wisdom throughout the episode and I throw in a few pieces of wisdom I’ve picked up over the years as well.

As you may have noticed, on recent episodes of the podcast I’ve talked a lot about “envisioning” which is all about using the power of your predicting and ever changing brain to create the life you’ve always dreamed of. If you were ever curious about my current vision, we go into it in detail. I won’t spoil it here, you’ll have to listen to the whole episode to hear the wild ideas floating around in my mind, many of which are already starting to come together in my life.

I hope you enjoy this episode and I would absolutely love to hear what you think. Drop me a DM on Instagram @themindfulfirepodcast and don’t forget to subscribe for new episodes every Tuesday!

Be well, my friends.

Full Show Notes | https://bit.ly/3A2BxiR
More Inspiring Interviews | https://bit.ly/3A34lI7
More Guided Meditations | https://bit.ly/3Cc6Big

In life it's easy to get pulled off course despite the best intentions.

I find that meditation and the cultivation of mindfulness offers a moment by moment experience of this fact of life. Despite our best intentions to focus our awareness on our breath, our attention wanders away into distraction, story, planning, etc. It can be minutes before we even notice we've been pulled away.

But the beautiful thing about the practice is that once we notice our mind has wandered, we are already aware again and we can CHOOSE to bring our attention back to the breath and start again. Over and over, our mind will wander and we can choose to start again.

This guided meditation offers you and opportunity to start again. Whether you've been meditating every single day or if you've been off it for a while and struggling to make it a daily habit (as I sometimes do), this practice is your chance to start again.

I hope you enjoy it!

Full Show Notes | https://bit.ly/3zDo40H
More Inspiring Interviews | https://bit.ly/3BIFWJq
More Guided Meditations | https://bit.ly/36ZhbKS

Welcome to the mindful fire podcast, where we explore living mindfully on the path to financial independence and beyond. I'm your host, Adam Coelho and I'm so glad you're here. 

On today's episode. I'm joined by my friend, Martie Adler, a consultant coach, and end of life, doula, who I met at the wisdom 2.0 conference.

Among a conference of thousands of people, Martie and I ended up in a community gathering breakout room on zoom and really connected on a number of topics. And I knew I had to get her on the podcast. 

In this conversation, Martie and I dive into a number of topics, including  conscious living, envisioning the future we want and the gift of elderhood.

Martie and I dive deep into the idea and practice of envisioning something that's been really impactful in my life. We discuss how we can apply envisioning to our life as we think about financial independence and retiring early. She's worked with a lot of people who get to the point of their life where they don't need to work anymore, and then don't know what they want to do with their life. 

And so she shares why it's so important that we envision what we want our life to look like all the time, as an ongoing practice and how the language that we use when we think about what we are creating and as we interact with other people in the world, how that really shapes our environment. I share a number of stories in this episode around how I've envisioned both positive and negative things in my life and the impact that that's had.

Lately I've been feeling really called to dive deeper into this idea of envisioning and to create a workshop, to empower listeners of the mindful fire podcast, to get clear on what their vision is for their future. 

So if after listening to this episode, you feel that you want to dive deeper into this practice and you'd like to attend a workshop on this practice of envisioning, please let me know. I want to understand what would be most useful for you. You can let me know by reaching out to me at [email protected] or reaching out to me on Instagram at @themindfulfirepodcast.

Martie also shares how she's worked with elders in her career, both as they explore what's next for their life and as they approached the end of their lives. She shares her thoughts on the gift of elderhood and how people who are younger can really learn from their elders and leverage that experience to improve how they live their lives. 

Martie's also an end of life doula, which means that she works with people as they think about and approach the end of their lives. And as she tells us in the episode, none of us are going to get out of here alive. So it's really important that we use death as an advisor on how to live our lives.

 I really enjoyed this conversation with my  friend, Martie Adler, and I hope that you enjoyed as well. 

Full Show Notes - https://bit.ly/3rpuldQ

More Inspiring Interviews - https://bit.ly/2TpkFDu

More Guided Meditations - https://bit.ly/3wSQ9zB