Expect Mind Energy
Welcome to the 12th edition of IV Ventures - the home base devoted to Conscious Entrepreneurship, Founder Mental Health, and Fashion’s Best by Isis Valliergues. Come along behind the scenes for the development of my ventures - Favorable, Gaia Founders, and Sentí.earth.
Thank you for reading us! I hope you will have fun discovering these ideas put together for you with care. Share us with your friends & family, and subscribe here to be included in all our updates.
Dear Readers, Favorable OGs, new Gaia Founders Fans, and all around IV Ventures followers – thank you for being here!
We are – almost – getting to hitting our stride.
We’ve spent 18 months getting a handle of how to run social content systems, while creating 5 ebooks and our first course. It has been fun and delicious giving life to vision, gathering an incredible soul family along the way, and giving shape to vibrant mental wellness and nature SOULutions! I’m glossing over the gruelling dedication (ref. “starting a company is like eating glass and staring down the abyss”, Elon Musk); we all know what devotion looks and feels like… the rewards of entrepreneurship. By being here you also get to peak inside the heart and mind of a neuroscientist founder and see where and how it all fits together.
The format today is straightforward and sweet: a text with key concepts from yours truly, and an edit of gems gathered from my latest learnings. Also - apologies for skipping last month! We had our first retreat! Details coming up. The read isn’t short, but we promise your time spent here gets you ahead out there.
Generally speaking, I am thrilled because I poured very special attention and care in creating the first product for GAIA Founders: The 12 Temples of Mind, and I am seeing its echo in the zeitgeist in a nice way - I am happy to contribute to this conversation. The Mind Energy Miracle experience is a hand-holding that solves and bolsters all of the exciting reading bytes you will discover below. In 2 hours. Staying true to the Favorable promise to keep you firmly ahead of trends.
Key Happenings:
The 12 Temples of Mind is our newly launched course and online wellness experience of Neuroscience, Consciousness, and Mind hacks to help Entrepreneurs think, feel, and perform better, naturally and instantly.
Discover, like, and share the Reels here, and here. Read on for special goodies.
We are so excited to have participated in our first Wellness Retreat as Transformation Partners with the One Love Sanctuary and Reserve, with whom we share vision and values connecting Nature, Wisdom, Spirituality, and Wellbeing. We are infinitely grateful to One Love for inviting Gaia Founders | Sentí.earth to tell the tale of The Regenerate ONE: Wisdom of Plants Retreat. Come inside with the new eBook at our dedicated Partnership Portal here.
One Love has a full calendar of amazing retreats this year, including a second instalment of the Wisdom of Plants this November, and an inaugural, exclusive focus on Spagyric Alchemy in August. Reach out to us via email, and check out their website to find out more, and join us!
Pssst… remember what we just told you about trends? Check out Condé Nast Traveller’s Number 1 Travel Trend for 2023 and let’s go!
The Word
Nature is a spiritual matrix.
It’s a good thing the McKinsey institute’s latest report on health and longevity, along with all longevity research, states Spirituality as one of the 4 core pillars contributing to a healthy lifespan : a long healthspan.
We can now discuss our mental, psychological, biological and spiritual experience in the interconnected context of Reality, without brushing it off as Woo.
But what is it really.
It’s the feeling of being connected to Life: of feeling securely, and vibrantly, alive. It is the opposite of the illusion of separateness. It’s a big subject altogether, we know.
We offer here simply a thought:
Nature is (and as) a spiritual matrix. It is the canvas of dynamic universal and life forces interplaying, colliding, flowing, and harmonizing across time, space, and matter. It is our mind’s capacity to read, anchor, and make sense of our environment while enacting our singular self as both observer and all-creator of our human experience. One day we’ll get into the relevance of Schrödinger’s cat, but not yet.
From this meta-vantage point. One understands the role of Jungian archetypes, oracles, and “reading” energy, elements, and frequencies (the vibes) to understand, in real-time, how to exist in exalted form in this massive universal soup, meaning: how to make the most of our experience; how to imagine, create, and actualise our greatest destiny by optimising the Present.
The role of mental wellness is key here: at any given moment you are either playing into or deterring from your best path. No pressure.
Self-awareness is the key to creating a strong and stable relationship with this constant momentum (change, delta). It also allows you to separate out the pressure and replace it with systems and confidence. And, Self-awareness can be trained: this is why we took the time to create the 12 Temples of Mind, witnessing the dire need for this today.
Take a step back for a moment.
In your mind, connect to your favorite place in Nature. What do you see? What comes to mind? What do you feel? Meditate on this nature – spirit connection and feel the great infusion of Chi in your energetic field and mind space.
We do a whole lot of this and much more in the course, guiding you swiftly to your own Mind Energy Miracle.
Expect Mind Energy.
Why? Because, to quote from the course:
“The Energy crisis exists in politics, on the power grid, in business dynamics and energetics, and in interpersonal relationships.” Energy, and frequencies, underlie our entire existence. Biologically, using your greatest mind means supplying it with what it needs to serve you at its best.
Get your best mind by establishing your virtuous energy cycle. This is the 12 Temples of Mind Experience.
Check it out, share it along, follow us on instagram and twitter, and give our reels a like! We cherish your support.
Other Words, from Great Minds
Karl Lagerfeld is majestically honored by the Met Gala this year. We’ll let him open this conceptual ball:
“ Books are a hard-bound drug with no danger of an overdose. I am the happy victim of books.” - Karl Lagerfeld
Really though, books are so exciting. Do you get that feeling of wanting to read all the books. Still the boom of podcasts and books and knowledge is a thing to keep up with, here are some highlights to save you some time on our subject’s leading edge, Mind Hacks and Mind Energy, Neuroscience, Wellness, and Leadership.
On Biological Energy, and, what is Biohacking, exactly?
Excerpts from The Spark Factor, by Dr. Molly Maloof.
“The Human Energy Crisis: There’s a spark of life inside each of your cells that powers your body with electricity. Some call it Chi or Prana or Life Force. It’s a concept that exists in every culture and mythology because it’s universal, but it’s not a myth. All life arises from this spark. But for many of us, and especially for women, the demands of life have begun to dim that spark. We feel crushed by chronic unrelenting stress. We live in an environment polluted by environmental toxins. We eat processed food that increases inflammation, interferes with hormone balance, destabilises blood sugar, and disrupts our microbiome health. […] We communicate digitally and don’t spend as much time face to face, in person, with the reassuring and supportive influence of eye contact and physical touch. Life as we know it moves by in a flash, and feels lonely. And all of this contributes to a dimming of the spark that energises our lives. This isn’t just a metaphorical dimming, it’s a measurable reduction in the output from our cells. Without that spark, we can’t live as long or as well. This quelling of energy production at the cellular level threatens to reduce the bright spark that should animate us all. Harnessing your spark is the key to reaching your physical, mental, and spiritual potential, and biohacking – intentionally manipulating your biology to optimise your health – is a method for doing just that.
Biohacking [is] a lifestyle that promotes energy capacity and resilience.
After I started cutting back to a cup of coffee a day, sleeping regularly, doing yoga daily, eating a more plant focused diet with balanced nutrition, and meditating regularly, I was able to do more work with less effort.
A lot of us exist on autopilot. We live day-to-day, doing what’s expected, following the rules, eating like others eat, moving like others move, and working like others work. […] Biohacking means: shutting off the autopilot. It means bringing conscious awareness to what you do and how it affects your body, and mind. And then using what you’ve learned to make changes, whether they are simple or complex; low-tech or high-tech; to heal and optimize your biology. It means recognizing, in your complex body, when something doesn’t feel right, before it can turn into a big problem. And it means solving problems you already have with things you can do yourself. How to change is hard, but biohacking is a way to achieve it because it takes habits off autopilot. It gives you a method: self-knowledge through observation, measurement, and tracking, and tools: lab tests, practices, interventions and ways to monitor for progress to change them. Your body is your home and its entire purpose is to serve and protect you. […] There are plenty of interventions that are free, or cost very little. But any investments that you do make will pay for itself over time, as you reap the enhanced health, productivity, and performance benefits biohacking offers.”
More good news!
In Superabundance: The Story of Population Growth, Innovation, and Human Flourishing on an Infinitely Bountiful Planet, economists have tallied numbers that take the pressure off existing and eco-anxiety. Turns out we shouldn’t feel ashamed for being alive and striving to thrive, and that things, by the numbers, are actually massively hopeful. A byte:
“For every 1% increase in population, your personal resource abundance increased by 3,5%. Biologists would’ve been right [about the planetary resource apocalypse] if they would’ve considered knowledge as the key unit of measurement instead of atoms. If you measure knowledge, information, rather than just pure matter, knowledge can not only grow, it can be shared with another person in a way that is not rivalrous. You and I can share the same knowledge. Atoms are finite, knowledge is potentially infinite.”
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast, episode 284. Superabundance: The Age of Plenty | Marian Tupy, Gale Pooley. Debunking the myths on overpopulation and the demonizing of modern man, simply for existing.
Heard of Infinite Games? Bytes of an excellent leadership lifestyle focus with Simon Sinek: in “The Infinite Game”, Sinek develops the distinction between finite and infinite games, acknowledging that great leaders view business as more than just a competition – some call this whole-life success. Finite games have rules of engagement, designated players, and clear criteria for who wins and loses. In infinite games, the goal isn’t to win, it’s to keep playing – ie. Longevity. And here, our biological longevity studies come to meet business longevity thought leadership. Read on.
“There are 5 practices that somebody who wants to play in the infinite game has to obey, and the analogy I use is like getting into shape. Somebody says, well what do I have to do to get into shape? Well, you have to exercise, you have to sleep well, you have to eat well, and you have to have good close loving relationships. If you do a couple of those things, things will be better but you really want to do all of those things. And it’s not like you hit your weight goal and you stop exercising. You can have finite goals but this is a lifestyle, that you have to practice all of these things. And the infinite game is exactly the same. These are 5 practices, it becomes a lifestyle. And like you said, the first one is to have a just cause. To have an idealized sense of the future. Of where you are going. Of the kind of world you want to live in. That you commit your resources and your organization to help advance. You give people the opportunity to be a part of something bigger than themselves. That their energy and their effort and their blood sweat and tears are worth more than the money you make or the products you sell. It’s about contributing to something bigger than yourselves. It’s a basic human need to feel like we belong. You have to give your people a just cause.
“All leaders doubt themselves. All leaders fear they’re making the wrong decisions. All leaders hesitate. All leaders think they can’t do it. There’s loneliness. And all leaders, at some point, will say I need to give up. I can’t do this anymore. And the reason we continue is because somebody in our lives says ‘I gotcha, I got your back, you need to do this, and I’m with you, I’m by your side.’ And that’s what gives us the courage to keep going [check out the incredible Cor:age leadership retreats by One Love partner Re-Treated]. And at the end of the day, being a player in the infinite game is way more difficult than being a finite player. Why would you want to advance a just cause. That’s so big. It’s so much easier to just hit a quarterly or annual number. It’s actually easier to organise your company for the short term. To build trusting teams, that’s the hard work of leadership. It’s so much easier to hire and fire people willy-nilly. Your performance is down, just fire you. Why would I spend the time coaching you to become a better person, it’s just easier to hire someone else. These things are hard. It requires a lot of people, it requires deep relationships and it requires courage to do these things. Not to mention all the pressures on us are almost exclusively to play the finite game. We’re judged by how much money we make. If you work for a public company on Wall Street, it’s a big open secret. Every public company executive knows that Wall Street puts pressure on them to make decisions that are bad for the company. And puts pressure on them to avoid making decisions that are good for the company. It’s not a revelation to say these things. And yet they do them anyway. Well how come? It’s because the pressure is overwhelming.
How to play an infinite game with Simon Sinek: Forget winning or losing. EntreLeadership Podcast episode #338.
From the brilliant repository that is the Navalmanack:
“The business world has many people playing zero sum games and a few playing positive sum games searching for each other in the crowd.” - Naval Ravikant
Raise your hand! We’re here.
And a sweet take on Self-Awareness and love:
“The love you are able to give to yourself and your partner is determined by your self-awareness. If your self-awareness is growing, you will have a greater capacity for intentional actions that are authentic. If you both find methods to help you unload the past that you carry, you will find your minds lighter and there will be more space for you to deepen the connection. Love is a dynamic force, if you are both able to loosen your attachments, it will help you flow together with greater ease.” Yung Pueblo on Love, Substack, September 2022.
Reader Discount!
My cherished readers, enjoy an extra 20% off The 12 Temples of Mind! Use the code FREEMIND20 at checkout.
A heartfelt thank you for being here and reading through. What did you think? Hearing from you is my happy place and this is a community driven space – share your thoughts with me by commenting here or reaching out at gaia@gaiafounders.com.
We Dance!
Dedicating this instalment’s Music Byte to Juliana of Mujer.Tributo, who regaled us with the words “Grandiosa Vida” as we wrapped the Wisdom of Plants Retreat. Soul Family is everything. Come, join, and dance along.
With Heart,
Isis