Cultivating a Mindfulness and Meditation Routine

Cultivating a Mindfulness and Meditation Routine

Introduction The terms mindfulness and meditation are very popular at the moment, and this can clearly be seen in the rise of mobile apps such as Headspace, Calm, Buddhify and The Mindfulness App. However, there are many things which hit the mass conscious and are quickly forgotten or proven to be fakes, so for a long time I was sceptical. Two things quickly showed me that my scepticism was perhaps unfounded: The concept of meditation and mindfulness has been around…

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Reviewing 2017 & Planning 2018

Reviewing 2017 & Planning 2018

  Introduction  This won’t be yet another New Year’s Resolution blog post, I’m sure your sick of reading or hearing about them by now.   I don’t like making New Year’s Resolutions, primarily because it often feels like people make them purely to break them! Often people know they need to make a change but don’t really want to, therefore proclaim to everyone that it will be their New Year’s Resolution, so that no-one is surprised – and the individual isn’t disappointed – when they give…

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Book Review: Tom Miles – Stoicism

Book Review: Tom Miles – Stoicism

My Perspective  If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you’ll see that ancient philosophy, and Stoicism in particular, re-occurs every so often. The fundamental reason is because we live in a world of so many inputs, one of the biggest being people’s desire to have and do more to keep their social media image suitably maintained. Stoicism reminds us to remember we are all human, that having material wealth is out of our control and should not impact our emotion, and also to equip ourselves for when bad events occur. This is particularly important given the festive excess many…

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Book Review: Malcolm Gladwell – Outliers

Book Review: Malcolm Gladwell – Outliers

My Perspective Malcolm Gladwell shot to fame when his first book ‘The Tipping Point’ was released in 2000, and ‘Outliers’ – his third book – is arguably his most famous. The most often quoted part of the book is his view that 10,000 hours is the magic number to achieve mastery of a given skill. This fact is often misquoted and misunderstood, but is nonetheless a core concept in a book focused on explaining why and how we concentrate on…

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Benefits of a Scottish Shower

Benefits of a Scottish Shower

Introduction Having a daily hot shower is a habit that is almost universally shared in developed countries and something most of us have never thought about, but it is normal to turn on the hot tap when you get into the shower? For the majority of human existence having a hot shower was abnormal, primarily because it isn’t necessary and it was very costly and time consuming to warm the water only to throw it over you for a couple…

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First Time Managing Others

First Time Managing Others

Introduction Directly line managing someone – instead of just leading a small segment of what they do – is an extremely important skill to foster, but one that sufficient direct training and coaching isn’t often provided for. If you want to learn about accounting or programming you read a book and/or take an online course, but you can’t simply do that to learn how to manage people. Each individual is different and the type of person you are impacts what…

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Moving to Irregular Posts

Moving to Irregular Posts

Since creating jablifestyle.net back in April 2016 I have posted new content, either a blog or book review, almost every week. However, in recent weeks, and moving forward, my approach is changing. I wanted to share with you what has led to this change in approach, what content I’ll be sharing in the future and also take the opportunity to review the best of what I’ve shared to date.  My reasons for starting this blog haven’t changed significantly over the…

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Top 10 Recommendations for Singapore

Top 10 Recommendations for Singapore

Introduction My fiancée and I fell in love with Singapore immediately, it’s a fantastic city-state and I’d highly recommend it to anyone to visit. I’m sure our perception was influenced by the fact we were riding the wave of happiness as a result of the fact we had just got engaged, but even if that hadn’t occurred, I think I’d still have fallen in love with Singapore. Having flown in from the quaint and empty islands on the east coast…

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Josh Waitzkin – The Art of Learning

Josh Waitzkin – The Art of Learning

My Perspective Josh Waitzkin is the child prodigy Junior Chess Champion whose early life formed the book, and later the film, Searching for Bobby Fischer. In his early twenties Waitzkin’s focus moved from chess to martial arts, specifically Tai Chi. He subsequently went on to win several US national medals and become the 2004 world champion in Taiji Push Hands. I have to admit that I am not a huge fan of either chess or martial arts so you might…

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Benefits of Giving Blood

Benefits of Giving Blood

Introduction: Giving blood is something I have thought about doing a number of times over the years but never seemed to find time to actually do it. I finally managed to break a habit of a lifetime when I booked an appointment in December 2016, and had my first experience giving blood a couple of months ago. It wasn’t until the time approached that I started to look into the benefits of doing so, obviously there were the altruistic reasons,…

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