Today on the podcast we have the very first conversation on Seedling! My aim with these conversations is to shed light on subjects that as a society we *need* to talk about in order to grow. My first conversation is with the lovely Tamu Thomas who is a life coach, podcaster, speaker and writer.
I met Tamu at one of her podcast events and loved listening to her thoughts and knew a conversation with her would be enlightening and of course, it was. We talk about all things wellness, including the problems within the wellness industry, we talk about what self-care means to us, society’s obsession with youth and the importance of everyday joy.
I hope you enjoy and be sure to check out the links below.
You can listen wherever you get your podcasts or listen here.
LINKS AND FURTHER READING:
- Connect with Tamu on Instagram: @livethreesixty
- Here’s what’s wrong with the wellness industry
- The study that shows mind wandering doesn’t make us happy (and being in the moment does)
- More information on the brain’s default mode network
Transcript:
Introduction:
Well hello everyone and welcome to the very first conversation here on Seedling! My hope for these conversations is to introduce you to someone who can shed light on a topic that, as a society, we need to talk about in order to grow. And I’m excited today to be talking with Tamu Thomas, who’s a life coach, podcaster, writer, and speaker. And in this conversation, we talk about all things wellness, including some of the problems within the wellness industry. We also talk about what self care means to us, the different cycles women experience in their life, and the importance of everyday joy.
I feel like I learned so much in this conversation and I really hope that you do too! So, without any further ado, let’s get into the conversation!
Episode:
Hello Tamu! Thank you so much for joining me today!
Hello Kat, thank you so much for having me! I’m so thrilled to be here.
No, yeah, I know! And you’re my first ever guest, so it’s really exciting for me as well. It’s definitely a first.
Half honoured, half pressure?
Oh not at all, not at all. I knew talking to you would be nice, easy, and really meaty conversations, so I’m really excited.
So to start with, could you perhaps tell any listeners who might not know who you are and what you do, just a bit more about yourself and the work that you do?
Yeah, my name is Tamu Thomas. I’m the founder of the brand called, well, Live360 is my social media handle and then name of my website but 360 is the brand, but I think I’m just going to change it to Live360 because that’s what we all say. And I am the founder of Live360, which is a wellness brand aimed at - but not solely for! - women in their late 30s and 40s and beyond. So my target audience are generation X women, and I deliver my work through various means. So I have a podcast, I have a really beautiful ecosystem of a membership group, I have a group coaching program, a rolling group coaching program, and did I say I’ve got a podcast? I’ve got a podcast.
Yes, yes.
A central theme of all of my work - oh! And I’m a speaker, I’m a speaker. And the central theme of my work is supporting women to be able to create lives where they are connected to their true, authentic self, not their roles, not their titles, the person that is beyond and deeper than that. The person that is with them throughout all of life’s seasons. So that they can develop practices that enable them to create lives where they feel connected and can treat themselves with nourishing, living kindness
What I have found is that all women, and particularly women in the generation X bracket and above, are emotionally malnourished because we were very much brought up in a system that taught us that being a good person, being a productive person, being somebody that achieves well, means taking on armour, putting yourself last, and doing everything that you can do, so that your output is effective. And I think it left us, to be quite honest, emotionally barren, when it comes to ourselves.
That’s so true and, hearing you talk about that, it just makes so much sense, the way that we’re brought up and the way things have changed, that’s so, so interesting. And this is one of the big reasons why I wanted to get you on the podcast, was to talk about this idea of wellness and what it means. Because I think it means, as you quite eloquently said there, it means something different to everybody depending on their backgrounds, their ages, and I’d love to hear, for you, what does the idea of wellness mean to you?
For me, the idea of wellness is being able to engage in life in the manner that enables you to, you know, self actualise, reach your true potential, whatever that may be. And when I say your true potential, I mean your innate true potential, not being the chief financial officer of whatever organisation, or being the award-winning CEO. Your true potential as a human being. And living a life where you are connected to your authentic self and knowing that your authentic self is variable.
So, quite often, on social media, for example, and that’s something that we access a lot, the narrative around authenticity is very constricted because it gives people the impression that being authentic means that you’re one way all the time. And actually, being a human being means that you’re multifaceted. Being a woman with our four phases of our hormonal cycle means that we are slightly different throughout the month and depending on what’s going on.
So being your authentic self in that moment and wellness means that you are self aware enough to know what it is that you need, not just as a reaction to a period of ill health or emotional instability, but as a preventative measure to keep you, I guess, on an even keel as much as you possibly can because a lot of our - and, for me, wellness is integrated. It’s mind, body, spirit, whatever spirit means to you. Because a lot of the time, we think about wellness and self care as a response to not feeling well. And when we think about mental health, there’s mental ill-health and there’s mental fitness, so for me, wellness is about maintaining your mental fitness so it reduces the likelihood of you experiencing mental and physical ill-health.
I love that. That is everything I wholeheartedly believe in myself. And I thought it was very interesting that you mentioned cycles because, this week actually, I had to take a sick day because I had such bad period pain. I was not well and this idea of being authentic, especially on social media, yeah, I can really resonate with that. I actually did tell followers that I took a day off, and took a day off for this reason, and I said, you know, I had it in my content plan to talk about this, but actually, I’m feeling really rubbish this week!
I saw that post. I loved that post.
Yeah! And it’s just, yeah, I agree, we’re completely multifaceted, we change throughout the months, throughout in our hormone cycles and our lives as well.
Mm-hm.
And yeah, that’s just so interesting. I couldn’t agree more, that wellness is about keeping yourself well, whether or not you’re feeling unwell, or whether you’re feeling well and just reacting and responding.
Mm-hm, absolutely.
So interesting. So, I’d love to move onto a little bit more about the actual industry of wellness itself, because I think you and I both work in it, but I think we’ve probably have had very different experiences, so I’d love to hear from your side of things what you think of the wellness industry.
Oh, Kat, so I’m a bit - I love people, I love to connect, I think that the most important part of our human relationship, after our relationship with ourselves, is our relationship with other people. We’re social creatures, that’s how we’re designed, to a lesser or greater degree.
But my truth is that I’m - I feel like I’m on the fringes of the wellness industry because it feels a bit icky and standardised and I just don’t rock with that very well. I’ve always been somebody that kind of struggles with quote-on-quote ‘authority figures’ and, what I see in the wellness industry, as a whole, is that they are talking about, or the industry is talking about, living in a way that is authentic to you and living in a way that you can be your best self. But it is still quite restricted.
And it seems like there are some rules and there are some standards that we should be working towards. And I think it’s a bit more bespoke. I think it’s a bit more variable. And, also, a lot of it is really serious and I’m like, we’re making self care boring! Self care shouldn’t be boring!
And the other issue I have is that, if you look at the wellness industry as a whole and the way things like self care and wellness have been commodified, they had been commodified in a really, for me, capitalistic way. And I say that in the full knowledge that I am here, taking up space in my corner of the wellness industry, selling services, but I mean in a branded way, whereby, whether that is the intention or not, it can be quite exclusive.
So if you look at the wellness industry as a whole, it looks very middle class, so it’s quite elitist, it looks very European, so it’s quite- it excludes people that don’t fit a model-Western-European standard aesthetic cultural norm, and it gives the impression that you need to be somebody that has oodles of time to be able to dedicate to improving yourself, making changes, being your best self, coming home to who you really are.
And I think that a lot of the people that are being excluded from accessing the wellness industry, and I don’t think it’s deliberate but it happens, they need it the most. If you’re from a low socioeconomic background, if you are from a ethnic minority in the Western world, and even if you are living in a African, Caribbean, Latin American, Asian country, we still are governed by the European, particularly Western-European norms, because white supremacy has had such a profound impact on the whole world that the whole world is viewed through the lens of aspiring to a Western-European standard aesthetic et cetera. So even Africans in Africa. I’ve been to a few different African countries, I’ve been to three different African countries, Zambia, where my family are from, Ghana, Gambia, where my family are also from, and they still aspire to a western standard. Because let’s not forget, there was slavery from the late 1500s, early 1600s, and then there was colonialism from the 1800s or so, and that was a really really long time. Like slavery ended something like 200 years ago or 300 years ago or something. That’s not that long, if you think of human evolution. So the shadow of white supremacy is cast over everywhere and I feel like - no, my observation is that the wellness industry is also replicating, embodying, perpetuating that standard.
Yup, I- yeah. I couldn’t agree more. I know we’ve spoken about this already. And something I remember you speaking about when we actually met at your podcast event was this idea of assimilation.
Mm-hm.
And I feel like it sounds like the wellness industry is kind of encouraging ethnic minorities to do that, to fit this ideal and assimilate. Would you agree?
Yeah. I agree wholeheartedly and I would say that it’s not confined to matters of race and ethnicity. I’ve also observed that within, for example, the body positivity movement. Now, I’m very aware that I’m speaking on this as a woman whose body does fit into the accepted Western-European aspiration. I’m slim, I’m tall, whatever, well, I don’t know if tall is one of them, but I’m slim.
But what I have observed, even within body positivity, is that there are lots of rules about body positivity. So if someone is plus size and they’re talking about wanting to lose weight for whatever reason, they could be talking about wanting to lose weight by doing things like eating a healthier diet and working out a few times a week, and that’s construed as shaming, or that’s construed as not loving yourself. So there are really - it’s become really really regimented.
And in terms of race and ethnicity, it’s really really tricky because - no, it’s not tricky, actually. It’s a lot more simple than we are acknowledging, but because it makes people feel uncomfortable, they will avoid.
So I had a situation very recently with somebody that was organising an event where I noticed that I’m the only person of colour in 13-or so women that are going to be at the event. When I was contacted initially, the names that were being mooted, or were being, were going to be part of the event, were quite diverse. I don’t know what happened. When I raised this with the event organiser, she said something along the lines of while she appreciates it, she tried to make sure that it was diverse, that was their intention, they reached out to various women of colour to be part of the event, some of them didn’t get back to them, some of them were not available. Well, number one, the five people that you contacted are not the only people that are working within wellness and are very skilled, experienced, and qualified. Number two, she said something like, ‘the focus was having women that were, let’s just say, qualified, to be able to speak on and run workshops on the topics at hand and it would be weird speaking to people or reaching out to people merely based on the colour of their skin.’
Now, while she thought that was a valid justification, when you peel back the layer, that’s very problematic because what you’re saying is that you think you would be speaking to women of colour purely as a tokenistic gesture to get Black and Brown bums on the seats rather than acknowledging that there’s a lot of talent out there and you’re not aware of that talent so you need to do some extra work to be able to access that talent.
Now, I’m not saying by any means that, if you have an event and you have two people of equal ability, one of them is a white woman, the other one is a woman of colour, that you should automatically discount the white woman so that you can have the woman of colour. But it’s about looking at the skills, looking about what you’re wanting to produce, and, most importantly, thinking about the people you want to serve and making sure that your lineup is serving people well.
I know that, as human beings, we have a natural tendency to gravitate towards what looks familiar, so that will also include people that look like us, but what we also know - there’s been lots of studies and lots of research on marketing and this that and the other - and, if we’re thinking about it from a business perspective, there is lots of data that shows that when an organisation, let’s forget diversity because diversity is just saying, ‘we’ve got one of this, one of that, one of the other,’ when an organisation is truly inclusive and they are including people in all ways, on all levels, their profits go up. So if you’re running a business that you want to be profitable, it’s in your best interest to be inclusive. And then furthermore, sorry!
No no no, keep going!
This sparks my passions! But furthermore, if you are in the business of wellness, so there are a lot of women in the wellness industry currently that are talking about wanting to support women to be well, wanting to support women to have financial independence, and also one of the newer conversations that’s happening more and more and I’m totally here for it, wanting women to be in a position where they’re able to generate wealth. If you are really committed to that, what you need to know is, one of the major barriers to Black and Brown women being able to achieve economic independence, achieve economic wellbeing and generate wealth, and have emotional wellbeing, is lack of inclusivity. And let’s be all the way real: lack of inclusivity, and I know people don’t like this word and it automatically makes people go “oh, oh my gosh, that’s not me,” but I invite people to lean into it and dig deeper into why are they having this reaction, but not being inclusive is founded in racism.
Yep, 100%. Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. It’s - I think it’s so easy for organisers of events like this and people within the industry to stick with what they know, to stick in their same little bubble, to do what’s safe, and to pick the people that they know other people can potentially relate to. And rather than doing the extra work of trying to find different people in the industry from different backgrounds who have a different view and invite them along to these and the, I think the conversation about wealth and the economic struggle, and helping women gain that, I couldn’t agree more. I think it’s that and the self care industry is not being opened up to everybody.
And the irony is, one of the things that we bang on and on about in the wellness industry is that growth comes from discomfort. No growth occurs in your comfort zone. So if you’re sticking to the comfort zone of women that look like you, sound like you, have the same beliefs as you, say the same things as you, you’re not growing. You’re stagnant.
Exactly, exactly, And that’s for you as an individual and for us as a society as well.
Exactly. Because my last bit of this section is that we seem to think that we can only learn from people that look like us, sound like us. But true learning comes from difference. And when we start to learn from difference, we will start to see that we are more connected than we are disconnected. We are all one. And the more that you open yourself up to learning from other people, the more that you learn about life, about care, and, ultimately, about love than when you remain within your echo chamber. So it’s really really important.
We do our entire society a disservice when we’re not being inclusive. And I would also say, to my Black and Brown women in the wellness industry, we also have to let go of the notion that, when we’re creating, that we can only create for ourselves. So I have a number of Black women that have conversations with me, whether it’s on social media or face-to-face, that comment on the diversity of my community. My community is for everybody and within my community, we don’t shy away from topics. So if I’ve had a particular experience that is due to racial inequality, we’re discussing it. If people have a particular experience that is due to gender, we’re discussing it.
I do think that there is a need for safe spaces because there are times, fortunately not within my community, my membership group, the people that I consciously connect with, and those are people that are outside of my zone of comfort. One thing that I’m really proud of is that we’re all open to those conversations, but there are many people who are not, and because we are brought up in a world where we think that we have to be good at all times, and anything less than good is a real slight on our character, we need safe spaces because we shouldn’t always have to be dealing with what-aboutery and people trying to find other ways of rationalising what, ultimately, is racism. So yeah.
Yeah, exactly, yeah. I think that’s a very good point to make, that it’s all about discussion with everybody else but also having that safe space to go to. And now we have kind of touched on this a little bit, but I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on the changes that really need to happen within the industry to perhaps make it more inclusive or things like that.
See, I think that we… I feel that we have to be careful when we talk about changes in the industry because the industry isn’t a lone entity. The industry is us.
Yeah, that’s true, that’s true.
So the work really really… We say things like, oh, our social media is this place, social media doesn’t exist on its own: we fuel social media. So I think that we really have to take stock of ourselves and hold ourselves to a higher standard. So it’s all well and good being on social media and talking about being inclusive, about being authentic, and ultimately doing work that enables you to be self aware, but we also need to be self aware about the things that make us feel really really uncomfortable and quite frankly really really shit. And until we’re prepared to strip back those layers and do that, the industry will continue to be a reflection of our society.
So something that you can do very easily is stop being scared. If you are organising an event, for example, or you have a podcast, or you’re doing anything where you need people, and you do not have a diverse part of people within your immediate network, reach out to people. Contact people. Hit up people in their DMs and ask them to point you in the right direction. And don’t expect to have it for free. There are some people who have curated directories and so on and so forth, and they’ve taken their time to do that. They’ve researched that. They’ve made sure that they’ve got credible people, so if they’re charging a fee for it, pay that fee for it.
Don’t limit seeking a diverse group of people when you are merely, merely when you’re talking about matters of ethnicity, marginalisation, varying abilities, et cetera. Reach out to people for anything! And you know, Black history month is coming up. Don’t let October be the only time that you contact people of African origin, for example. Don’t contact me just because you’re having a conversation about racial inequality or whatever. My thing is joy. Contact me if you want to have a conversation about joy! Contact me if you’re saying, I want to have a conversation about people in business being able to be visible in what they’re doing. Contact me! I’ll refer you to Nicola Rae-Wickham, of ‘The Life More Inspired.’ There are - sorry, I had to plug her!
No, do it, do it! Love her.
But there are a diverse group of people. Me, as a forty-two year old woman, I struggle finding women that fit my demographic because everywhere seems to be so focused on youth and being young, that women who are in their late 30s, 40s, and beyond don’t get a look in. So I put a call out!
Sometimes even I struggle to find Black women outside of my immediate - not struggle, sometimes I have to make extra effort to contact Black women outside of my immediate network, so I put a call out. Sometimes I want to speak to women or champion, hear from, celebrate, uplift, whatever, women from diverse levels of ability. So I put a call out.
There are times that I’m sure I’ll get into a situation where somebody says, ‘oh that’s not fair, you’re not being inclusive,’ or whatever. Number one, I don’t have to take that on. Number two, I’m doing it from a position of integrity and I know what my intentions are so I have no qualms about going back to a person, if I feel like it, to explain the rationale, but most of the time I don’t feel like I have to explain myself to anyone.
Yeah. I love that and there’s so many points there that I think are so valuable for listeners to take on board. Especially paying for emotional labour, if you’re going towards someone, if you’re getting advice from them, if they charge a fee, pay that fee. And just reaching out for - it’s very interesting to hear that you yourself struggle sometimes to get more of a diverse kind of people for things, but it’s the integrity, as you said, it’s the intention.
Exactly.
It’s the fact that you’re actually trying because a lot of people don’t even take that step, because they’re scared.
Mm-hm, mm-hm.
And I really love that your work is focused on women around their kind of late 30s and 40s. I’d love to hear a little bit more about that, about why, at what point in your life did you decide to shift your focus onto that.
Well, when I got there! To be honest. So this brand was precipitated by me having an existential crisis. I was dissatisfied with life for a really long time and somehow I just thought that I will turn 40 and everything will poof! Magic, and life will begin and that kind of stuff. I started dabbling in personal development work, probably when I was about, not probably, my daughter was 3 so I was 33. But it was something that was very difficult for me to access because I just had so much conditioning, so many layers. Vulnerability was like ‘ugh, yuck!’ And I got to 38 and I thought, feeling like this for 5 years isn’t normal. It is not normal to have a cold that lasts for 6 months of the year and peaks with bronchitis, sinusitis, laryngitis, pleurisy, and all those other things. I was like, my body’s talking to me! And I applied my social work and I was like, damn, your body is crying out and it has moved onto psychosomatic illness because you’re not paying attention.
So when I started to look outside of books, I wasn’t seeing anything that was speaking to me. Everything was very millennial, was very youth-orientated. If it was anything that was related to women that were in their 40s it was always about anti-aging, being young, being youthful, 40 is the new 30. No it ain’t. 40 is 40, 30 is 30, and there’s nothing wrong with that. I wasn’t finding anything that was supporting women to accept and then embrace the season they were in.
And I knew I had a business in me and I thought, I have some really great skills from my 15 years of social work. Because social work, pretty much, is taking academia, science, you know, psychology, psychiatry, and distilling that into plans that people can action to make long lasting changes in their lives. So I thought, I’m going to look at the world of personal development, psychology, neuroscience, spirituality, and combine them in a manner that enables women to access and apply them in the way that works for them. So yeah.
Mm, I love that. And I think a lot of our work definitely comes from personal experience doesn’t it? So it’s really interesting to hear your story there.
And it was being mirrored everywhere! All the women that were around me, whether they were in my personal network or outside that, to a lesser or greater degree, were mirroring these things. And it’s really interesting now, when I observe women in various spaces, when they’re approaching 40s, the language that I hear all the time. ‘I don’t know who I am anymore. I’ve lost my sense of self. I feel really stuck. I feel like I’m wading through treacle. I used to be able to do this. Previously I was like that.’ And I’m just like, I want to - I feel really passionate. I feel like it’s my divine assignment to support these women to accept and then embrace the season they’re in, let go of martyrdom, let go of our obsession with achievement, because achievement isn’t the same as fulfilment.
I know many high flying C-suite women who are all-singing, all-dancing, rocking it at work, and at home, they’re sliding down the shower and they haven’t got a sense of who they are. And I think that that is - you know, I grew up with magazines about ladette culture, being able to drink as much as a man, be like a man, women can have it all, how to slay in the boardroom and slay in the bedroom - well, no, it wasn’t using words like ‘slay’ because they didn’t exist at that time, but it was, you know, how to be a boss in the boardroom, how to be a boss at home.
And it’s like, actually, we’re being sold a lie! It’s not true. Yes, we can have it all, but we can’t have it at the same time. And there is nothing wrong with what we associate with femininity. What I grew up with was very much a push for, if you want to be taken seriously at work and in the world, you have to embody toxic masculinity.
That’s the good old patriarchy at work.
Ayy! Yes.
And I would love to hear a bit more about this kind of concept of everyday joy, because it sounds like this kind of permeates all of your work and especially with these women. So yeah, I would love to hear more about what this entails and how you help women to embrace that.
Everyday joy is, well, at first, when I was really in my stuck place, was a saviour. And it has now morphed into a agent of my thriving. So, everyday - for me, self care isn’t a big ceremony. It isn’t you having to do this particular ritual one day a week. It is having rituals that you perform, engage in, whatever, always, throughout your day, at any time, it fits. You see fit.
Something that I observed was that I was either working really hard so that I could be happy on holiday, working really hard so I could buy this thing that would make me feel joyful, it was all hinged on work, work, work. And I would get this thing, I would be excited, woo! Dopamine hit, I’ve got this thing, I’m on this holiday, but as soon as the dopamine rubs off, the serotonin wasn’t kicking in to softly peter out the dopamine. It was all like empty calories. I was living life, and many of us do it, where, instead of having a meal, I was having a Snickers bar and wondering why I felt flat, barren, starving, like ten minutes later.
So everyday joy, for me, are those moments of joy that occur all around us, that we miss because we’re too busy being busy or we’re looking for a big massive woomph. And that’s not what it is. Everyday joy, it’s a bit like a tea bag. If you just dunk tea, a tea bag, in hot water, you’re not gonna get a good cup of tea. But the longer you leave that tea bag to steep and get stronger, you get a cup of tea that is worth your time.
So even things like when you’re walking to wherever you’re walking, rather than looking down or being in a rush, looking at your phone, multitasking, hurrying and hustling and bustling, how about looking up? Appreciating the majesty and the wonder of the sky? We live on a planet that is suspended in the black cosmos, yet we have a vibrant blue sky up above us. Maybe it’s not blue everyday, but we have a sky up above us every single day. Isn’t that one of the most magically delicious things?! But we don’t think about that. Because we’re on our phones, we’re in a hurry, we’re thinking about the next thing, the next thing, the next thing.
Everyday joy gives us the opportunity to be present in that moment and appreciate life’s wonder. When you think about how life works and how we came to be, that is incredible. But we don’t think about that. We think about, oh gosh, I didn’t make that phone call. I didn’t phone that person. My to-do list hasn’t been ticked off. I’ve got Jemima’s play on Monday, I’ve got to take so-and-so roller skating, I’ve got to go shopping for - Stop.
Most of the time, the things we have on our agenda are not going to cause anybody any harm, they’re not going to cause the world to stop spinning, nobody’s going to die. You can take five minutes to look at leaves on the trees blowing in the wind and thinking about how that mighty oak tree was once an acorn.
These sorts of things enable us to really connect with ourselves. Sometimes, and as I say this my inner critic feels like, you prick, because sometimes I find my moment of everyday joy even if it is when I’m sitting in the living room and I can hear my neighbour and her daughter on the scooter and her daughter chuckling. That is a beautiful moment of everyday joy! That is telling me that I am alive! And that there are times when I am taking a mindful moment to appreciate something and I could - I feel watery, misty-eyed. Look at things like when you see a crack in the pavement and a flower has somehow managed to push its way through that crack in the pavement and blossom.
Ah, I love that. What’s so interesting about all of this is I’ve actually recently been doing a course on the science of wellbeing and a huge amount of what makes us happy, they’ve found so many countless studies, is being present in the present moment.
Yeah!
So they’ve found that, I think, most of the time there’s a system in our brain, I can’t remember the terminology now, but there’s a system in our brain that makes our mind wander. And that’s a lot easier for our brain to handle, so we are kind of, I think it’s 50% of the time or 60% of the time we’re mind wandering. And they’ve found that when we’re not mind wandering, so when we’re in the present moment and when we’re savouring things that are happening, we’re happier.
Yep.
So everything you’re saying, scientifically makes absolute sense that it’s easier for our brains to do the mind wandering so we have to be intentional about taking these mindful moments and put effort in. So yeah, that’s fascinating.
It really is. And do you know what’s really really beautiful to see? That the world of neuroscience, psychology, even biomedicine is evolving to realise the importance - well, not realise, science is advancing so that it is now more able to rationalise some of the things that we weren’t able to previously, and therefore dismissed.
Because, you know, along with the industrial revolution, we moved over from sort of faith-based thinking to positivism, where everything needed to be evidenced. A lot of the magic that really makes life worth living was dismissed as frivolous and nonsense or witchcraft or whatever. And now we’re seeing that, actually, there is a lot more to it than that.
And it just makes me think to myself that there’s a lot, just because someone’s reading something that was saying the opposite of science is magic, and just because we don’t understand the magic, doesn’t mean that we should dismiss it. And, actually, having magic and not fully understanding how everything works, is part of what makes life worth living. If we knew absolutely everything, it would be so damn boring!
Oh, it really would, wouldn’t it?
Mm.
It would be so boring. And there’s so much that we’re only starting to understand and learn now. Yeah. So so interesting. Thank you so much Tamu, that’s been such an enlightening conversation. I felt like I’ve learned so much from you and I wanna go and have a mindful moment to myself now!
Please do! Bask in it! Bask in it! I’m going to do so. And thank you so much for inviting me on. And I feel really really honoured to be your first guest. I really love the work that you do, I really love the way that you use your social media to spread calm because social media can be a really chaotic place and it’s really lovely to see moments of calm popping up on my feed, whether it’s the imagery you use or the caption. So thank you. And also the work that you do, your writing work, just really invites us to take a moment and consider what really matters. So thank you very much.
Aww, thank you! That’s definitely the aim, is to, as you said, we’re so busy all the time, we can get so lost in the day-to-day that we forget to take these moments of just calm and to be with ourselves.
Indeed.
So I’d love to finish up by asking what’s coming up for you and also how our listeners can find you and follow you online.
So, how you can find me and follow me online. Instagram is my friendship bench, so come along and find me there, I’m @livethreesixty and that’s all letters, no numbers. And what have I got coming up? So, I would say have a look at my Instagram page because, depending on when this is coming out, I may be welcoming people into my membership group. Every three months I open the doors and welcome new people into the membership group. And I may have started a new group coaching program, or I might have pulled my finger out and launched my one-to-one coaching, so check me out on Instagram.
Yes.
And that’s also the place where I share my latest episodes and information about where I’m speaking and any events I’m organising. So yes, Instagram would be the best place.
Brilliant. Thank you so much, Tamu.
Thank you, Kat. Take care!
And there we have it! I really hope you enjoyed listening to the conversation as much as I enjoyed having it. And a huge thank you once again to Tamu for sharing her time and wisdom so generously. For more information about Tamu and any of the links we mentioned in our conversation, including some links to those studies I was talking about about mindfulness and savouring, they’ll all be in the shownotes so definitely head over to bluejayofhappiness.com to read those. And I’ll be back with you next week for another solo episode. But until then, I hope you have a really joyful, intentional, and mindful week.