What is a Good Life? #117
The Power Of Living With Intention with Jamie Bristow
On the 117th episode of the What is a Good Life? podcast, I’m delighted to welcome Jamie Bristow. Jamie is a writer and policy advisor known for his leadership within the emerging field of inner-led systems transformation. He has deepened the dialectic between ancient wisdom, modern science, politics and public policy through a string of influential reports and collaborations with intergovernmental organisations, government agencies and politicians around the world. He currently leads on public narrative and policy development for the Inner Development Goals, and from 2015 to 2023 played an instrumental role in the UK's All-Party Parliamentary Group on Mindfulness, acting as its clerk and serving as Director of the associated policy institute, The Mindfulness Initiative. Jamie is a Senior Fellow at Life Itself, Research Associate at the Climate Majority Project, Honorary Associate at Bangor University and a Fellow of Mind & Life. He has also taught on programmes connecting inner and outer transformation at the Universities of California and Oxford.
In this enlightening conversation, we explore the question of what we are truly practising—merging mindful practices with our livelihood, the significance of our informal practice, and moving towards greater wholesomeness in our lives.
It serves as a wonderful invitation to fully integrate our mindful inquiries with the way we live.
The weekly clip from the podcast (3 mins), my weekly reflection (3 mins), the full podcast (64 mins), and the weekly questions all follow below.
1. Weekly Clip from the Podcast
2. My weekly reflection
Just now, as I sat down to write this, I propped up a sapling that was tilting over a little on the table. It reminded me of something Jamie said, and of fragments from other recent thoughts and conversations.
The simple thought is that we need each other.
When discussing the challenges of embodying what one might learn at a retreat back in daily life—or the capacity to weave these embodiments into our livelihood—he mentioned the significance of contact with other people on their own path.
Listening back to this interview, that acknowledgement made me think of a couple of conversations I had last Friday. Two people I found to be wonderfully soulful and connected to some sense of mission, energy, or expression they believed in. How incredibly alive I can feel in these conversations, and how, in observing my own reactions to their story and vice versa, how helpful that is.
I have so many people in my life and around the world that we drop in on each other occasionally like that. The conversations can feel like deep explorations and ways of expanding my own thoughts and ideas. However, at the core of it, I sense what attracts us most is how we prop each other up.
Like this sapling on the table.
In a recent workshop I held around the question of what is a good life?, while one participant bemoaned their capacity to change a pattern or be aware of their judgements, that it took someone else to point it out. Another participant gently offered: maybe you’re not meant to figure this out on your own.
Maybe the very point of many of the contradictions, blindspots, and missteps, is to show how much we need each other. We simply weren’t designed to do this ourselves.
Maybe our self-development journeys stall because we get stuck in the self. Maybe many of our relationships suffer because we feel we need to figure it out ourselves first—not wanting to “burden” partners or loved ones with our inner struggles, because the individual is supposed to remedy it first.
Another simple but important point Jamie makes is that we feel good when we contribute a wholesome act to ourselves or the world.
In our striving to figure ourselves out—putting the thousands of years of our brain’s development, our evolution, our family constellations and history, our culture, let alone our own blink of an eye on this planet on our backs—we deprive those around us of the potential to contribute to our lives. The chance to help and feel that wholesomeness themselves.
It seems so basic to me this morning to write these points out, as they seem so simple—yet in our culture, they seem highly ignored.
Jamie suggests that, when discussing societies becoming more developmental and the perspectives we could take in light of the mounting crises the world is facing, it is incredibly easy to take a glib view of everything if you haven’t experienced such developments or shifts yourself—like a genuine shift in your being, or the attentiveness to note how an experience truly feels.
I sense when we do experience this, it turns so much of the world and what we value on its head. The felt experience of wholesome action, when fully felt, makes many of the myths we prioritise seem empty. It also leaves me with optimism while still feeling the pain of the world.
I suspect the new frontiers or discoveries we are suggesting might save us are actually within us. Being attentive to the felt experience of our lives—our actual feelings in the moment—will guide us to unimaginable places.
I can only speak from my own lived experience, but in continuing to do so, my life feels incredibly rich and abundant, even during a span of time in my professional career where my earnings have not been lower.
I’ll leave you with something I wrote this week as part of something elsewhere:
“I came home one evening and, as tends to be the case, my dog was already sniffing hard through the door. She quickly greets me and, before summoning me to the couch, pauses to look at me. At the same time, my wife has popped her head out of the living room and smiles, and my daughter is excitedly reaching for me. All three of them in the same shot. I don’t know what it feels like to possess a billion dollars; I suspect it doesn’t feel as full as this.”
When we see the world through the clarity of our hearts, the dust settles, the fog lifts, the bullshit crumbles, and what truly matters comes sharply into view.
To explore one-on-one coaching with me
3. Full Episode - The Power Of Living With Intention with Jamie Bristow - What is a Good Life? #117
4. This week’s Questions
Where in your life do you notice the greatest tension with your mindful or spiritual practice?
What part of your life is most in need of greater intention?
About Me
I am a coach, podcast host, and writer, based in Berlin, via Dublin, Ireland. I started this project in 2021, for which I’ve now interviewed over 250 people. I’m not looking to prescribe universal answers, more that the guests’ lines of inquiry, musings, experiences, and curiosities spark your own inquiry into what the question means to you. I am also trying to share more genuine expressions of the human experience and more meaningful conversations.
If you’re interested in exploring your own self-inquiry through one-on-one coaching, joining my 5-week Silent Conversations group courses, or fostering greater trust, communication, and connection within your leadership teams, or simply reaching out, feel free to contact me via email or LinkedIn.