Book Quotes: Lean In by Tara Henley

Corporate Girlie, Career Woman, Working Mom, Lean Out, Lean In, Nature, Balance, Work Life Harmony, Family and Friends, Forest Baths
Corporate Girlie, Career Woman, Working Mom, Lean Out, Lean In, Nature, Balance, Work Life Harmony, Family and Friends, Forest Baths

I read “Lean Out” last year, and as you can imagine – it pokes holes in the lean-in narrative.  I was never able to get behind or even read lean-in.  It didnt sit well with me (even though I had only heard about it in passing).  The quotes below are the reason why I would rather lean out.

Pg 38 – As I did, the dispair of the city seeped in through my pores, rearranging the molecules in my body and plunging me into darkness.

Pg 39 – In societies with a massive gab between the rich and the poor, everyones physical health suffers, even the rich…  Likely caused by lack of social cohesion.  A result of severed connections.

Pg 53 – I was primmed to seek my solace here, among the trees.

Pg 54 – Shinrin-yoku (forrest bathing), essentially meditation in wooded settings have been shown to reduce stress chemicals….those who spent time in nature inhaled plant-based compounds that increased white blood cells. Forest walks have been proven to relieve confusion.

Pg 63 – What exactly would life look like if it was not lived in fast forward? What would it mean to live simply, slowly and in harmony with the natural world?  Was there anyone who was leaning out?

Pg 64 – Every day on the bike trip is like the one before – but it is also completely different.  Or perhaps you are different, woken up in new ways by the mile.

Pg 67 – The model of the modern cosmopolitan woman, whose lifestyle is now as oppressive as her job.  She works until 1am, and is so harried she barely has time to chew her 12 dollar chopped salad she buys every day at her Sweetgreen (served up in record time by fevered clerks “as if it were their purpose in life to do so and their customers purpose in life to send emails for sixteen hours a day with a brief break to snort down a bowl of nutrients that ward off the unhealthfulness of urban professional living”)… The salad represented a kind of idea for a creative class. It was a symbol of…you work all f—— day and you just do everything as efficiently as possible, including your lunch….and the workers handling ticket orders like they were stock brokers.  This monstrous efficiency struck me as so upsetting.

Pg 68 – For what Barre is truly good at is “getting you in share for a hyper-accelerated capitalist life”… These classes prepare you “less for a marathon than for a 12 hour workday, or a week alone with a kid and no child care, or an evening commute on an underfunded train”.

Pg 73 – “Just because we care about our children, and our parents and the environment, doesn’t mean we we don’t want make our mark on the world and bring our creative magic”.

Pg 81 – There are of course, lots of other reasons to eat: pleasure, identity, ritual & community

Pg 113 – I think we should not be focusing on everyone having a job, we should be focusing on everyone being able to survive with the bare necessities.  He thought we were waking up to the lie of advertising… a “manufactured inadequacy” that made people believe they were not complete

Pg 124 – Early retirement helps the planet because it gets the fortunate people to consume less fossil fuels and natural resources.

Pg 127 – Like many gen-x’ers who came before the age of the internet, I missed the way time used to feel.  The vast expanse that was the weekend, with it’s stretches of uninterrupted hours.  The deep contemplation of staring out a window, or sitting on a bus. The luxuriousness of being out in the world for hours, days even, untethered from work, unimpeded by the pressure to respond to texts and emails and social media.   Free to think, and be, and focus on what was in front of you.  Which was, generally, other people. People who were similarly focused, similarly engaged.  There were other things I missed, too. Phone calls, neighbors, walking down the street without people steering into me absentmindedly, engrossed in their phones.
The whole character of public space, really. What it felt like to sit in a café before we all had to listen to each other’s work calls, made in that exaggerated professional voice everyone uses. Eye contact and casual conversation; not sitting in isolated islands, hunched over devices, in thrat to flickering lights. What friendship felt like before social media, and dating before texting and apps. Punctuality. Privacy. Newspapers, long attention spans, foldout maps.  The experience of being lost in a city, unaccounted for.  Boredom, even.

Pg 138 – A love born out of shared pain, but also shared joy. At managing to make something beautiful from this mess.  At putting pain into words, and having those words mean something to someone else.  Easing someone’s pain, in however small a way.

Pg 143 – The digital world now felt utterly inescapable “even if you dont want to participate, all you are really doing is putting your head in the sand”

Pg 144 – Facebook founders knew that they were building systems that exploited a vulnerability in human psychology – and went ahead and did it anyway….God only knows what what it does to [our] brains.  The short-term dopamine-driven feedback loops are destroying how society works. Leading to a lack of civil disclosure, misinformation and mistruth.

Pg 148 – The ever intensifying industrialism: wide spread surveillance in our pockets, colonization of wilderness, indigenous lands and our mindspace.  When you are connected to wifi, you are disconnected from life.  It’s a choice between machine world and the living breathing world.

Pg 152 – What gave me joy was pretty simple: waking up everyday without an alarm, reading all the books on my nightstand, eating when I was hungry, rest when I was tired, moving my body everyday, being outside and cooking for those I cared about <3

Pg 172 – There is a Western mindset of more more more.  Of packing too much into too little time.  Of doing instead of being.  Of rushing around all of the time.  Going forward, I knew I must find a way to dwell in the calm.

Pg 177 – Throughout history, we have needed each other to hunt and gather, to defend against attacks from animals and other humans, and to brave the extreme weather conditions. But now, as we buy prepackaged meals, live alone in secure, climate controlled condos – that need is no less powerful.  We are still hardwired for connection and interdependence.  And when we don’t have it – we sink into despair.

Pg  178 – Of course I feel anxious in a society where a homeless man could stand outside a gourmet grocery store, largely ignored, selling community newspapers to make enough money for a sandwich, while mega-mansions a few blocks away sat empty and unused.

Pg 186 – There is a snowball effect to loneliness.  Brain scans show that lonely people are suspicious of social contact, perpetually scanning for threats.  On a subconscious level, they know nobody is looking out for them, so they become hyper-vigiliant. Which in turn makes them hard to be around.

Pg 198 – Our brains are wired for collaboration, cooperation. Serving others gives us a rush of oxytocin and the sense of belonging so many of use are lacking these days.  It goes back to tribal life, and how much we’ve always depended on each other for survival.  And it’s why experts often suggest volunteering to people who are suffering.  These days, volunteer work has gone the way of other work, becoming intensely bureaucratic, competitive and all consuming.  But applying to become a volunteer was, I soon discovered, exactly like applying for a job. 

Pg 202 – Profound healing is possible.  Probable even, under the right conditions.  But in order to foster these conditions we have to stop telling the story of healing as one of individual triumph, and start acknowledging the role of the tribe.  We have to focus on what we must do for each other, instead of what we must do for ourselves.

Pg 209 – So Senghor dove into autobiographies, looking to see how other people had overcome adversity, how other people had healed.  

Pg 220 – The concept of home is a tricky one in the 21st century.  For those of us born with Western passports, there are now endless options for how and where to live.  This mobility is a gift an a curse.  As globalization spreads, we of fortunate birth fan out, following the jobs from one country to the next, loosing each other as we go.

Pg 234 – What they eventually discovered was that in the US, if you wanted to become happier, you did something for yourself.  You buy something, you show off on instagram, you work harder.  Where as in more communal countries, if you wanted to make yourself happier, you did something for someone else: friends, family, community.  We have an implicitly individualistic idea of what it means to be happy, they have an instinctively collective idea of what it means to be happy. 

Pg 249 – What are our needs for happiness? [quoted by the mayor in Happy City]: We need to walk, we need to be around other people, we need beauty.  We need contact with nature, and most of all, we need not to be excluded.  We need to feel some sort of equality.

Pg 250 – Connecting the dots on the epidemic of overwork and anxiety had not led me to unplug from society, leaving a trail of helpful tips for readers in my wake.  It had instead led me here, to the most pressing issue of our time: economic inequality.

Pg 253 – I’m talking about the psychosocial effects of inequality.  Feelings of superiority and inferiority.  Of being respected and disrespected.  Status competition.   Which he believes is also driving the consumerism in our society.  Which leads to widespread feelings of insecurity, even violence.

Pg 256 – The ideology of MarketWorld is defined as a rising powerful elite (of people) operating on contradictory impulses – both to do well and to do good, to change the world while also profiting from the status quo…. We talk a lot about giving more, we don’t talk about taking less.

Pg 263 – Facebook has solved harder problems than this.  Companies like Facebook have the imagination and the resources to implement better leave and flexibility in working hours so parents don’t have to choose between their children and their careers.  It may come as a cost initially, but the return on investment will be more women staying in the workplace, higher employee satisfaction and the knowledge that we are doing right be our people and children.  

Pg 263 – Sandberg’s upbeat philosophy then, disregards the crushing realities of the current labour market for women.  I believe telling women to raise their hands and try harder in the open sea of hostility we face in the workplace is like handing a rubber ducky to someone hit by a tsunami (Katherine Goldstein, a former lean-in advocate turned critic).  It inadvertently encourages us to internalize our own discrimination, leading us to blame ourselves for getting passed over for raises, eased out of our jobs, not getting called for job interviews and being denied promotions.

Pg 263 – the biggest lie of lean in is the underlying message that bosses are ultimately benevolent, that hard work is rewarded and that if women shed the straight jacketof self doubt, a meritocratic world awaits…. this is untrue.  We have Sandberg fretting about the “ambition gap” and to work up to the very moment we give birth…and then resume emailing from the hospital beds immediately afterwards.  What kind of life is that?

Pg 264 – If we are honest about it, if we look at the actual numbers, overwork is essentially taking all of our precious life energy – all the hours we could be spending with family, laughing with friends, learning new hobbies, getting out into nature, exercising our bodies, eating home cooked meals, sleeping, participating in our communities and creating real change – and converting all of that time and energy into profit. Profit in fact, for a very small group of people.

Corporate Girlie, Career Woman, Working Mom, Lean Out, Lean In, Nature, Balance, Work Life Harmony, Family and Friends, Forest Baths
Corporate Girlie, Career Woman, Working Mom, Lean Out, Lean In, Nature, Balance, Work Life Harmony, Family and Friends, Forest Baths

7 ways to show up for yourself

As we round off the year, I like to share tid bits of wisdom that I’ve gained or read.  And I think it’s really important that we show up for yourselves.  Sometimes we have to be our own hype person, our own hand to high hive or shoulder to cry on.  The list below are some of my tried and true methods to showing up for yourself.

*all pictures are my own* do not use without explicit and written consent.

  1. Commit to routines that are good for your well being – be disciplined to do them enough even when you don’t want to.
  2. Practice self awareness – listening to your needs and course correcting when you aren’t aligning to your ultimate goals
  3. Give yourself grace – we don’t need to be perfect, it’s okay to fumble, take the rest you need, what matters is getting quickly getting back to your routines.
  4. Take care of your daily human needs: stay hydrated, eat healthy, get enough sleep, get sunshine and practice moderate activity
  5. Be curious – take every opportunity to learn and stretch yourself
  6. Make yourself a priority – show up for yourself, take care of yourself and be proud of your accomplishments
  7. Always have a grateful heart – it gives you perspective

How nature promotes flow state

Being in flow state is when you feel like everything is aligned.  Your day is effortless.  And even if it’s not, you have an inherent trust that everything will work out for the best.

Being in the flow state means you are in the zone.  And being the in the zone means the world is your oyster.  You put your mind to something, work hard enough and it’s yours… #manifestation

There are many things that can help you get into flow state:
– Deep Breathing
– Meditation
– EFT Tapping
– Dancing
– Distract yourself from what’s taking your peace
– Be creative
and of course…getting outdoors and enjoying nature’s beauty!

One thing about our modern fast paced society is that we have forgotten about including nature and leisure in our day. Something I’ve realized myself only recently.  Whether it’s working in a concrete jungle and not getting out for some sun.  Or being so busy working from home that the only time I get up from my desk is to do school pick up!  It was about 2 years ago that I really felt like there was a mis-alignmnment (between my soul & body from nature) and randomly (well not a coincidence) stumbled upon the benefits of forrest baths.  

Forrest baths is a Japanese practice of relaxation – simply put its a method of being calm and quiet amongst the trees. 

After I read more and researched this practice – I began changing my habits.  Whenever, I was dealing with certain emotions (stress, fear, sadness) – I would force myself to go for a walk.  And specifically make sure I walked in a forest.  I do my best to immerse myself in the forrest.  I would go so far as to think about the architecture of the tree.  It’s connection to the earth (ie: what the roots looked like, how far they went into the earth, how they connected to the roots of other trees), what the trees look from the top or look up at the trees and lastly imagine the energy flowing through these trees.  

Of course it does not need to be this involved.  Some days I would just sit on the steps outside my house, and even sometimes I would just open the windows in my room.  

So if you are finding yourself sitting for long stretches of the day indoors, considering being intentional about stepping outside once in a while.  And if you want to try forest bathing – use the 3 tips to get started:

  1. Walk slowly in nature or be still.  This will help you pay attention to your surroundings and really taken in the natural beauty.
  2. Use your senses to experience.  Make note of the scent, the colours, how the light is shinning.  Focus on one sense at a time.
  3. Savour the beauty.  When something catches your eye, take a few extra moments to truly appreciate it.

If you want this… practice that

I was able to get over a summer reading slump with a fast paced thriller – which I thought meant I could then start another book that peaked my curiosity.  I love personal success and personal dev books (unfortunately, they are also the cause of me being 1 book behind schedule on my “read 12 books in 2023” self-set challenge).  

OOTD, Fit Check, 40s Fashion, Summer Style, Fashionista, Spiritual Advice, Self Care, Personal Success, Printed Skirt, Blazer Vest, Nude Shoes

Skirt & Body Suit – Reitmans | Shoes – Call it Spring | Blazer Vest – Suzy Sheir | Purse – Target

Although I also believe these types of book don’t necessarily help someone, unless that person actually executes on said advice.  However, books can be eye opening and for me personally I like to spread the word so to speak.  Whether it helps me create content for this blog, a caption for an IG post or an insightful tweet, I feel it lets me help raise the vibration of this planet, even if the wisdom only reaches 1 other human.

OOTD, Fit Check, 40s Fashion, Summer Style, Fashionista, Spiritual Advice, Self Care, Personal Success, Printed Skirt, Blazer Vest, Nude Shoes

Anywho, the reason why I shared that thought process was because if you are out there and you are not sure you should share you idea, opinion or art (remember as long as you aren’t hurting anyone) – you should do it anyway.  When we share something, we always put our own unique spin on it – which inherently makes it compliment the millions of other ideas that already exist.  So in conclusion – I may not execute on everything I read in a personal success book, but I’m sure to share the wealth of knowledge!  But because I want to continuously up my creative game (this?), I need to get more comfortable with sharing (that!)

OOTD, Fit Check, 40s Fashion, Summer Style, Fashionista, Spiritual Advice, Self Care, Personal Success, Printed Skirt, Blazer Vest, Nude Shoes

On the note of sharing… I’m also sharing a quick list on how to raise your vibes when you want to get to the next emotional level/frequency.  Want to read more on this topic, check out more from my blog: here, here and here.

Abundance ↔ Gratitude

Joy ↔ Service to Others

Freedom ↔ Laugh More

Calm Mind ↔ Nature Walk

Intuition ↔ Meditation

Peace ↔ Journal

Confidence ↔ Self Compassion

Review, Refocus & Readjust – Mid year goal review

As we round out the first half of the year and slide into the second half, I thought it would be a great idea to provide some inspiration to reset, readjust, restart and refocus.

Greenery in Paradise
Sunset in Tulum
  1. Review your goals and determine priority
    Before blindly continuing to do something that may no longer be serving you, take some time to review your goals. Maybe you’ve plateaued in some areas, or maybe you haven’t given enough time to one area of your life. Even better, maybe you’ve accomplished a goal and it no longer requires your attention. Creating self awareness is really important and it’s also a good idea to get organized in a way that makes sense to you. Maybe writing the goals that you will continue to work on on a sticky or using a Moleskin to help refocus an area where you’ve been lacking.
  2. Disrupt and edit your routine
    Once you’ve figure out what you want to focus on, redesign your daily habits to meet those goals. It’s true what they say…success is a series of small wins. Use your day planner, Gcal or Notion to structure your day and include activities that help you work towards ticking off those goals by end of year
  3. Level up, track your progress & give yourself grace
    As you continue your goal achievement journey, do you best to stay accountable (whether that is through a private IG account, blog or good ol’ pen & paper). I’m a big believer in documenting your life and it’s always nice to see how far you’ve come. But what’s even more important is giving yourself grace. Working towards your personal and professional goals are not meant to be invigorating and inspiring so remember to take breaks/rest, celebrate your wins and smile!
Waves hitting the break wall
Reflections are everywhere

Activities to build mindfulness into my day

As a working mom, blogger, etsy shop owner, wife, home owner – I’ve become really aware of how mindfulness plays into my day.  My ability to focus, being intentional, doing this without rushing and not multi-tasking.  I know mindfulness is important to me because it’s helped me have a greater enthusiasm for life and higher self esteem.  Read on to learn some activities I’ve started incorporating mindfulness to help me observe my thoughts & practice the art of leisure

Mindful art / art therapy

I’m still guilty of multi tasking. But I’ve found when I’m making art (painting, mixed media, photography) I don’t actually multi task! Making art is a great way to express myself beyond words. It encourages us to be present in the moment & experiences, through noticing the sensations we are experiencing as well as how our art (the way the paint moves or how the picture I just captured looks on my digital display) responds to our input.

Listening to solfeggio music:

Ever step into a spa and feel immediately relaxed? Spas help you relax because of their environment. And part of that environment is the music! I recently found solfeggio music and how the different tones can help you promote benefits to different parts of the mind and body. The use of tones and frequencies music dates back to ancient Sanskrit chants (read: Om) but the modern science is fascinating. Apparently DNA become more healthy (ie show increased UV absorption) when they were exposed to different tones (such as the Sanskrit chants). Further research confirmed that the certain frequencies of the Earth’s ionosphere matched that of the human brain wave patterns! (Notably the frequency that encourages cell regeneration & healing) Most musical instruments were tuned to match the earth’s vibrational frequency so by default listening to solfeggio music (specifically designed to recreate the earth’s & human brainwaves) can help you feel at ease and change the your DNA!

Deleting social apps

Mindless scrolling is the most obvious of activities to remove from your day. I delete social media apps which immediately stops the scrolling for no reason. This then improved productivity because I am more focused!

Anytime gratitude & visualization as often as I can

Being able to take control of your self talk/the voices in your head is an important way to be mindful. Not letting negative self talk run a muck in your mind can be prevent by training yourself to see the good (have gratitude) and be positive (visualize something that would be help you think the opposite of the negative self talk).