Good morning and welcome back to On the Brookeshelf! OTB is a weekly digest of the most interesting content, products and ideas I come across, so you can skip to the good parts.

If you were forwarded this issue, subscribe to get the next one delivered straight to your inbox.

Let’s get into it.

🧠 Read/Watch/Listen

🌟 Favorite Of the Week

1. 🎥 NYAD Format: Film, Drama – based on a true story | available on Netflix Time commitment: 2 hoursWhy bother: This film tells the incredible story of Diana Nyad, the woman who dared to swim from Cuba to Florida across 100 miles of open ocean. Starring Annette Bening and Jodie Foster, this film feels like a thriller and keeps you in suspense until the very end. It is a remarkable story of resilience and determination, and proves to the world that age truly is just a number.

👩‍💻 Other good content

• 🎧 Melissa Wood interviews Jenna Zoe about Human Design. Warning: This podcast fully sent me down the Human Design rabbit hole in the best way. If you aren’t familiar with Human Design, it’s sort of like a mix between astrology and an enneagram, the main difference being that it’s designed to be actionable. You could say it’s like your manual for doing life. Download Jenna’s app here, plug in your birth details, and get ready for a wild ride. I recommend paying the $5.99 to unlock your full details, grabbing a pair of headphones and heading out for a walk while you give your full chart a listen.

• 📚 Gut by Giulia Enders. I’ve been interested to better understand the connection between our gut and our brain, and how the food we eat impacts us on a daily basis. This is a great overview book for anyone new to the subject. Enders does a solid job of breaking scientific concepts down in ways that just make sense. Her tone can be cheesy at times, but overall an enjoyable and informative read.

• 📰 Relatedly: we know ultra-processed foods are terrible for our bodies, but evidence suggests they may be equally bad for our brains, too. This article reviews a few studies that indicate that consuming ultra-processed foods may be fundamentally altering our brains and the way that we process new information, and not in a good way.

• 📰 They say no press is bad press but is that really true? Apparently so. According to Ryanair’s CEO Michael O’Leary, bad press has done more for Ryanair ticket sales than good press, perhaps because inflammatory headlines do more to pique our interest. Ryanair saw a 6% uptick in ticket sales after climate protestors threw pie in O’Leary’s face. I find this somewhat liberating.

• 📰 Your food delivery may soon be arriving by drone. SF-HQ’ed drone delivery company Zipline recently received approval from the FAA in the US to start commercial deliveries “beyond visual line of site.” Zipline began its journey delivering medical supplies, vaccines, and blood for transfusions to hard-to-reach parts of Rwanda, Ghana, and Nigeria, and are now expanding into commercial use.

Source: https://stephsocial.com

☕ Something to Try

Replace coffee with organic celery juice as your first drink of the day. I’ve been embarking on a caffeine detox and have been on the lookout for supplements to help make the transition easier. Organic celery juice purportedly helps keep your digestion on track, aids in blood pressure regulation, and contains antioxidants that neutralize free radicals in the body, which may help prevent chronic conditions. I’m also told it helps keep your skin hydrated and smooth. Transitioning from espresso to celery juice has been surprisingly easy. Within a week, I was able to push my caffeine start time back to 4 hours after waking up (huge for me), and reduce my daily intake from 4 to 2 espressos. It took about 5 days for the immediate urge to have coffee in the morning to dissipate. I still get cravings, but they come in the late morning, 4-5 hours after I’ve woken up.

If you’re based in Dubai, reply to this email and I’ll shoot you a discount code for the service I used. They deliver fresh juices every 3-4 days directly to your doorstep :)

💡 Something to Think About

I am not somebody who has always had a strong connection to my intuition. I’d often receive advice along the lines of, “listen to your gut”, but I never felt that I could quite hear the message. Worse, from time to time I’d get the feeling that I was receiving mixed messages. Was my gut defective? Was that voice even there for me? Throughout my early life and into my mid-twenties, this led to decision paralysis and frankly, a lot of anxiety around major decisions in my life and my career.

Recently, I’ve made a dedicated effort to reconnect to that inner voice through a combination of tactics. It’s been a months-long effort, and I am definitely still a work in progress. But I have felt these efforts starting to pay off in a tangible way.

In case this resonates with you, here are a few things that have helped me build a relationship with that inner wisdom:

• Daily meditation practice. Make time for at least ten minutes, though longer sessions can be even more impactful. If you’re just starting out, I recommend Balance (1st year is free right now) or Open (30 days free via this link).

• Weekly yoga. I love warm vinyasa. Try out some classes in your area, and when you discover a teacher/a class that lights you up, make it a weekly practice. Unlike other forms of exercise that I feel work just as well online, I do believe yoga is best practiced in a physical space with your teacher and the energy of others around you. I find that warm yoga works best to get me into a flow state. My 8am warm vinyasa class has become my Friday morning routine.

• Daily gratitude journaling. This can literally be a one-minute activity, just take a pen to paper and write down 3-5 things you are grateful for in the morning.

• Weekly long-form journaling. This is your opportunity to enter into conversation with yourself. The framework I use to check in with myself is this series of questions: What feels aligned in your life right now? What’s feeling stuck? What is exciting you? What are you feeling drawn to and repelled by? What’s one thing that you are proud/happy/satisfied with in your life right now? What’s one thing that you want to change about your life right now? Are the decisions you made this week aligned with your long-term vision for the life you want to create? If not, what next step can you take next week to bring yourself back into alignment?

• Daily exercise. As little as 20 minutes per day goes an incredibly long way. My routine consists of daily 20-45 minute workouts which alternate between strength training (3x/week), pilates (2x/week), yoga (1x/week), and cardio (1x/week). Find what works for you, but know that cardio and HIIT are not the only forms of exercise. A light 15-minute pilates workout may be just what you need on some days. The important thing is that you move your body every day. Movement helps to clear the mind of the background noise, which in turn clears the way for your inner voice to shine through.

• Eating clean. You are what you eat, and how you nourish yourself is a big part of how you care for yourself. This shouldn’t come from a place of restriction, but rather, wanting to fuel your body with the things that make it feel its best. For me, this translates into an 80% plant-based diet full of fresh veggies and legumes, healthy fats like halloumi cheese, olive oil, and avocado, and a healthy dose of foods that just bring me joy, like freshly baked bread and pastries.

The more I act from my intuition, the more convinced I become that there is a force connecting all of us in invisible ways. Our lives are overflowing with evidence of invisible strings. Call it the Universe, call it G-d, call it the Oversoul. Whatever you call it, there is an undeniable flow of energy that emerges when you are in conversation with your higher self. You start to realize that the things the universe is putting in front of you (and taking away from you) are not random, but all part of a plan we can’t begin to comprehend other than in hindsight.

🫶 Something from me

• 20% off FORM fitness & nutrition. If you’re looking for a new exercise routine or want to start moving but find yourself with limited time, I recommend giving FORM by Sami Clarke a try. I’ve been using this as my daily workout for the last 18 months and I’ve seen incredible results in my cardio fitness & muscle tone. I love that she posts weekly schedules every week, so you don’t have to spend time choosing a workout every day. Use code BROOKEROBBINS at checkout for 20% off an annual membership after your 14-day free trial.

• 30 days free on the Open Mindfulness App. I love Open for their meditations and daily breathwork sessions. They also have movement sessions on the app, though I haven’t tried these. Get 30 days free using this link.  

• 30% off DORE&ROSE silk sleep masks. I recently invested in a silk sleep mask from DORE&ROSE and it has completely transformed my sleep, especially while traveling/in transit and on planes. As someone very sensitive to light at night, I’ve used sleep masks for many years. But cloth ones often irritated my face and at times felt too tight and uncomfortable on my eyes. This one is gentle on skin (the company claims it can eliminate under-eye bags, though I can’t speak to that), and most importantly, has a velcro strap and a very wide frame, which creates an ultra-dark and extremely comfortable fit. I noticed they’re 30% off right now for Women’s Month, so it’s a great time to grab one.

That’s all for now, thank you for being here, see you next week!

love, brooke