The Mindful FIRE Podcast

“What are my values and what are my goals? Am I moving myself in that direction. If I'm not moving myself in that direction, what am I doing?” - Nicholas Whitaker Welcome to the Mindful FIRE Podcast, where we explore living mindfully on the path to financial independence and beyond. I’m your host Adam Coelho and I’m glad you’re here.  Today we talk to my friend, Nicholas Whitaker. Nicholas has an incredible story of going from living in poverty, with housing insecurity and just scraping by, to changing his mindset and his entire life to ultimately be working at Google for the last 10 years.  For the past decade, Nicholas has leveraged the scale and resources of Google to support the journalism industry through high impact educational products, programs, and strategic partnerships, reaching more than half a million journalists worldwide. Throughout his time at Google, Nicholas has also managed stress and anxiety through an active mindfulness practice, extensive study of emotional intelligence, resilience, and the impact of technology on well being as well as regular therapy.  He spends a portion of his time facilitating mental health talks, meditations, host experts in the industry to talk about mindfulness and resilience, and facilitate team development experiences to help teams and colleagues manage stress, cultivate trust and psychological safety, and learn more mindful ways to communicate. I'm also coaching a limited number of clients outside of Google. In this episode Nicholas and I dive into: Nick’s philosophy on life: Figure out how I can have the most impact on the world around me, in a positive way.  How can I do that in a sustainable way. Is there some reality where I could be doing that full time?  Why he’s inspired by the quote “Chance favors the prepared mind” What is neuroplasticity and how does it shape our lives? How🔥 Did you know that only 14% of reorgs are successful? That means 86% of reorgs fail to achieve their goals. Shocking! Honestly, after living through 11 reorgs in my last 10 years at Google it kind of makes sense. I created the Ask What's Possible Workshop to help newly formed teams rebuild trust, create psychological safety, and align around a BIG shared vision in hours, not quarters. 🔥 Want to accelerate your speed-to-alignment? Book a no-obligation fit call with me 🔥 What teams walk away with: Rebuilt trust and psychological safety A co-created, ambitious shared vision everyone is energized by Clear alignment between personal goals and team vision A short list of mini-experiments to generate momentum immediately 🔥 What makes this workshop different: Executive-level facilitation with a track record at CEO-level forums, including sessions with 27 Google VPs at Sundar's leadership conferenceOne VP shared: "Adam was masterful as he guided us through exercises to expand our perspective and ambition on our vision of what we could be and do." Neuroscience-backed, mindful conversation practices th...

🔥 Did you know that only 14% of reorgs are successful? That means 86% of reorgs fail to achieve their goals. Shocking! Honestly, after living through 11 reorgs in my last 10 years at Google it kind of makes sense. I created the Ask What's Possible Workshop to help newly formed teams rebuild trust, create psychological safety, and align around a BIG shared vision in hours, not quarters. 🔥 Want to accelerate your speed-to-alignment? Book a no-obligation fit call with me 🔥 What teams walk away with: Rebuilt trust and psychological safety A co-created, ambitious shared vision everyone is energized by Clear alignment between personal goals and team vision A short list of mini-experiments to generate momentum immediately 🔥 What makes this workshop different: Executive-level facilitation with a track record at CEO-level forums, including sessions with 27 Google VPs at Sundar's leadership conferenceOne VP shared: "Adam was masterful as he guided us through exercises to expand our perspective and ambition on our vision of what we could be and do." Neuroscience-backed, mindful conversation practices th...

“Anytime we connect with others, if we're open to the possibility, we can find ways to benefit each other” - Valerie Poon Welcome to the Mindful FIRE Podcast, where we explore living mindfully on the path to financial independence and beyond. I’m your host Adam Coelho and I’m glad you’re here.  On this episode I’m joined by my friend Valerie Poon, who I met through a Grow with Google coaching session a few months back. Val and I connected about our shared interest in mindfulness and financial independence.  After our conversation, I knew I had to bring her on the podcast to share her perspective on FIRE and mindful living as a young person. The concepts and practices surrounding mindfulness and financial independence are powerful at any age but starting early makes an incredible difference. I often think how powerful it would have been for me to have the knowledge and practices of FIRE and mindfulness early in my twenties.  Val is currently a student in her last year at OCAD University where she studies design. On top of her studies she’s keeping herself busy with exploring social innovation, emotional intelligence, community building, sustainability and youth empowerment.  In this episode Val and I dive deep into living intentionally amidst a world full of uncertainty.  In this episode we explore:  The concept of uncertainty, including what the ocean has to teach us about it as a part of life.   That there is power in trusting in the uncertain nature of the world. What a 10 day silent meditation retreat taught me (Adam) about uncertainty and the constantly changing nature of experience How Val attempts to infuse her life with intentionality, from how she starts her day to how she approaches her time at university and with each person she interacts with My thoughts on living intentionally as a practice🔥 Did you know that only 14% of reorgs are successful? That means 86% of reorgs fail to achieve their goals. Shocking! Honestly, after living through 11 reorgs in my last 10 years at Google it kind of makes sense. I created the Ask What's Possible Workshop to help newly formed teams rebuild trust, create psychological safety, and align around a BIG shared vision in hours, not quarters. 🔥 Want to accelerate your speed-to-alignment? Book a no-obligation fit call with me 🔥 What teams walk away with: Rebuilt trust and psychological safety A co-created, ambitious shared vision everyone is energized by Clear alignment between personal goals and team vision A short list of mini-experiments to generate momentum immediately 🔥 What makes this workshop different: Executive-level facilitation with a track record at CEO-level forums, including sessions with 27 Google VPs at Sundar's leadership conferenceOne VP shared: "Adam was masterful as he guided us through exercises to expand our perspective and ambition on our vision of what we could be and do." Neuroscience-backed, mindful conversation practices th...

Feeling stressed or worried about tomorrow’s presidential election? You’re not alone. That’s why I created a special mindfulness and compassion guided meditation practice and am releasing it a day early. Please share it! #ShareKindness No matter who you support in this election, Biden or Trump, blue or red, I made this meditation for you and you’re welcome here. I hope you find it supportive during this stressful time. It starts with a simple mindfulness practice of checking in with yourself and noticing how you’re feeling. Then I invite you to relax into peace and ease with each exhale. Finally I guide you through a simple compassion practice where you’ll practice sending compassion to yourself, people who agree with you, people who don’t and finally all beings. I hope you enjoy this practice and would love to hear what you think! Please share your feedback with me in the comments below. Please share this with your friends and write us a 5 Star review on Apple Podcasts! Full show notes available mindfulfire.org..🔥 Did you know that only 14% of reorgs are successful? That means 86% of reorgs fail to achieve their goals. Shocking! Honestly, after living through 11 reorgs in my last 10 years at Google it kind of makes sense. I created the Ask What's Possible Workshop to help newly formed teams rebuild trust, create psychological safety, and align around a BIG shared vision in hours, not quarters. 🔥 Want to accelerate your speed-to-alignment? Book a no-obligation fit call with me 🔥 What teams walk away with: Rebuilt trust and psychological safety A co-created, ambitious shared vision everyone is energized by Clear alignment between personal goals and team vision A short list of mini-experiments to generate momentum immediately 🔥 What makes this workshop different: Executive-level facilitation with a track record at CEO-level forums, including sessions with 27 Google VPs at Sundar's leadership conferenceOne VP shared: "Adam was masterful as he guided us through exercises to expand our perspective and ambition on our vision of what we could be and do." Neuroscience-backed, mindful conversation practices th...

“I found that work was an ability for me to bring out my spiritual teachings and share my values with other people.” Welcome to the Mindful FIRE Podcast, where we explore living mindfully on the path to financial independence and beyond. I’m your host Adam Coelho and I’m glad you’re here.  Today we talk to my friend, Colm Dolan who was one of the first people I met when joining Google back in 2010. Colm is a former Googler and founder of Publift - an adtech business that helps online publishers build sustainable revenue streams. He is an ad ops veteran and sports fanatic with a passion for self-improvement and creating better life situations for all. I’m excited to share this episode with Colm where we explore his entrepreneurial and mindfulness journey both of which started after he and I had dinner together in Sydney, Australia 7 years ago. After that dinner he quit his job and set out on his own path. His mindfulness practice developed alongside his business and provided incredible support to him and all of the people that his business touches.  In this episode Colm and I dive into: Colm’s thoughts on how entrepreneurship is a spiritual path in it’s own right How there is so much learning and growth that come from building a business and dealing with the challenges that come along with it. Why Colm has found it essential to build structure in the your day How Colm thinks about his metal diet to keep a healthy mind by avoiding news and social media Why Colm says it’s important to find a few minutes of mindfulness throughout the day to reset and flush out the “mental build up” that comes from living and working in the modern world.  How to discover what your values are and how you can check in with yourself from time to time to see if you are actually living in alignment with🔥 Did you know that only 14% of reorgs are successful? That means 86% of reorgs fail to achieve their goals. Shocking! Honestly, after living through 11 reorgs in my last 10 years at Google it kind of makes sense. I created the Ask What's Possible Workshop to help newly formed teams rebuild trust, create psychological safety, and align around a BIG shared vision in hours, not quarters. 🔥 Want to accelerate your speed-to-alignment? Book a no-obligation fit call with me 🔥 What teams walk away with: Rebuilt trust and psychological safety A co-created, ambitious shared vision everyone is energized by Clear alignment between personal goals and team vision A short list of mini-experiments to generate momentum immediately 🔥 What makes this workshop different: Executive-level facilitation with a track record at CEO-level forums, including sessions with 27 Google VPs at Sundar's leadership conferenceOne VP shared: "Adam was masterful as he guided us through exercises to expand our perspective and ambition on our vision of what we could be and do." Neuroscience-backed, mindful conversation practices th...

In this 18 minute guided meditation, Adam Coelho leads us through the practice of visualizing how we’d like to show up in our lives. I generally consider this an affirmations practice, one in which I’m affirming the belief or way of being I’d like to cultivate in my life. It’s also a great meditation to try if you enjoyed the last episode of the podcast with Frazer Kirkman on Brain Programming.  This session begins with a simple mindfulness of breath practice, simply resting in awareness of the sensations of breathing in the body. No where we need to go, nothing we need to do, simply observing this in breath and this out breath, as it is, right now.  After settling the mind on the breath, I invite you to bring to mind a belief or way of being you’d like to embody as you show up in your life. Then I guide you as you practice visualizing yourself embodying that belief in the past, present and future. You’ll practice seeing how you’ve lived that belief in the past, how you’re living it in the present and how you will live it in the future.  This is an incredibly powerful practice and one that I do most days. This practice had a profound impact on me during one of the most difficult times in my life. The more we practice visualizing ourselves living out these beliefs, including providing evidence to our mind’s of times we’ve lived them in the past, the more we orient our minds to living them out in the future.  I hope you enjoy this practice and would love to hear what you think! Please share your feedback with me in the comments below.  Please share this with your friends and write us a 5 Star review on Apple Podcasts! Full show notes available mindfulfire.org. 🔥 Did you know that only 14% of reorgs are successful? That means 86% of reorgs fail to achieve their goals. Shocking! Honestly, after living through 11 reorgs in my last 10 years at Google it kind of makes sense. I created the Ask What's Possible Workshop to help newly formed teams rebuild trust, create psychological safety, and align around a BIG shared vision in hours, not quarters. 🔥 Want to accelerate your speed-to-alignment? Book a no-obligation fit call with me 🔥 What teams walk away with: Rebuilt trust and psychological safety A co-created, ambitious shared vision everyone is energized by Clear alignment between personal goals and team vision A short list of mini-experiments to generate momentum immediately 🔥 What makes this workshop different: Executive-level facilitation with a track record at CEO-level forums, including sessions with 27 Google VPs at Sundar's leadership conferenceOne VP shared: "Adam was masterful as he guided us through exercises to expand our perspective and ambition on our vision of what we could be and do." Neuroscience-backed, mindful conversation practices th...

Welcome to the Mindful FIRE Podcast, where we explore living mindfully on the path to financial independence and beyond. I’m your host Adam Coelho and I’m glad you’re here.  Today we talk to my friend, Frazer Kirkman, a very interesting character who I met teaching meditation at work. Frazer is now a software engineer but has an incredibly interesting story which includes him traveling the world teaching mindfulness and positive thinking for 10 years while living an incredibly minimalist lifestyle.    In this episode Frazer and I dive into: What “brain programming” is and why it’s so powerful How we can use mindfulness to become aware of our current “programming”  How we can choose a different “program” for our minds that will take our lives in a different direction How “brain programming” can be applied to any area of our life How Frazer traveled the world for 10 years teaching mindfulness and positive thinking How Frazer lived on less than 10k per year Frazer’s thoughts on the positives and negatives of being a minimalist Frazer’s thoughts on the Financial Independence Retire Early movement  How Frazer builds community in his life and has a ton of fun while spending almost no money His thoughts on what it means to be and have enough How we can be more intentionally loving to our partners and people we care about Frazer’s top advice for people starting out with meditation and mindfulness 🔥 Did you know that only 14% of reorgs are successful? That means 86% of reorgs fail to achieve their goals. Shocking! Honestly, after living through 11 reorgs in my last 10 years at Google it kind of makes sense. I created the Ask What's Possible Workshop to help newly formed teams rebuild trust, create psychological safety, and align around a BIG shared vision in hours, not quarters. 🔥 Want to accelerate your speed-to-alignment? Book a no-obligation fit call with me 🔥 What teams walk away with: Rebuilt trust and psychological safety A co-created, ambitious shared vision everyone is energized by Clear alignment between personal goals and team vision A short list of mini-experiments to generate momentum immediately 🔥 What makes this workshop different: Executive-level facilitation with a track record at CEO-level forums, including sessions with 27 Google VPs at Sundar's leadership conferenceOne VP shared: "Adam was masterful as he guided us through exercises to expand our perspective and ambition on our vision of what we could be and do." Neuroscience-backed, mindful conversation practices th...

Welcome to the Mindful FIRE Podcast, where we explore living mindfully on the path to financial independence and beyond.    In this 20 minute guided meditation, Adam Coelho leads us through the practice of Open Awareness. This practice is a bit different than what we’ve practiced in past weeks but I think you’ll really enjoy it.    As you may know, meditation is not something mystical or magical, it’s simply mental training. It’s literally exercise for your brain, specifically the mental muscles of attention and meta-attention.    Attention, everyone understands, as simply directing your focus to a particular object, for example the breath. Meta-attention however is “the attention of attention” or the ability to know your attention has wandered.    Both the mindfulness practice I posted a few weeks ago and this practice train the mental muscles of attention and meta-attention, but do so in different ways, much like different exercises at the gym can strengthen certain muscles in your body.  This practice begins with focusing our mind on the breath. From there we expand out until we’re resting in an open, choiceless awareness. In this open awareness, we’re practicing simply observing our experience as it comes, stays for a moment and then moves along. We notice the breath, sounds, sensations in the body, and thoughts in the mind as they come and go.  I find this practice very helpful, especially when I want to be creative or would like to open my mind to new possibilities. That’s not exactly the point of the practice but I find it to be a nice side effect. The point is, as with most mindfulness practices, to develop awareness of what’s happening right now with an attitude of openness, curiosity and kindness.  I hope you enjoy this practice and would love to hear what you think on Facebook or LinkedIn (#mindfulFIRE) Please share this with your friends and write us a 5 Star review on 🔥 Did you know that only 14% of reorgs are successful? That means 86% of reorgs fail to achieve their goals. Shocking! Honestly, after living through 11 reorgs in my last 10 years at Google it kind of makes sense. I created the Ask What's Possible Workshop to help newly formed teams rebuild trust, create psychological safety, and align around a BIG shared vision in hours, not quarters. 🔥 Want to accelerate your speed-to-alignment? Book a no-obligation fit call with me 🔥 What teams walk away with: Rebuilt trust and psychological safety A co-created, ambitious shared vision everyone is energized by Clear alignment between personal goals and team vision A short list of mini-experiments to generate momentum immediately 🔥 What makes this workshop different: Executive-level facilitation with a track record at CEO-level forums, including sessions with 27 Google VPs at Sundar's leadership conferenceOne VP shared: "Adam was masterful as he guided us through exercises to expand our perspective and ambition on our vision of what we could be and do." Neuroscience-backed, mindful conversation practices th...

Welcome to the Mindful FIRE Podcast, where we explore living mindfully on the path to financial independence and beyond. I’m your host Adam Coelho and I’m glad you’re here.  In this episode, I’m again joined by my friend Morgan Bricca for Part 2 of our conversation. Today we explore the idea of “Craftsmanship”, which I think of pursuing and getting better at something for its own sake. For Morgan, her primary focus for craftsmanship is painting beautiful murals that make an impact but she has also applied craftsmanship to her blog, podcast and now a book she wrote and will release in the near future. In this episode we focus on craftsmanship as it relates to podcasting, since I’m new to the game and learning so much with every episode (BTW, thanks for being here!). In today’s episode you’ll also learn quite a bit about me including things that even some of my close friends don’t know. That’s because Morgan turns the tables on me and starts asking me questions that make me reflect on some of the limiting beliefs I have about money, self-improvement and what it means to be and have enough. I’ve got to be honest, things get pretty real but I learned a ton about myself. If you haven’t yet listened to Episode 6, I recommend checking it out to learn more about how Morgan applies the principles of financial independence and mindfulness in her life to live a life filled with alignment and purpose.  As a reminder, Morgan Bricca is a mural artist, meditator, blogger, author and podcaster in the San Francisco Bay Area. She discovered Financial Independence early on in life and immediately applied the principles in her life, which allowed her to reclaim her time and ultimately leave a job that was unfulfilling to pursue being a professional mural artist. Now, Morgan enjoys life on her terms and has built a mural painting business that allows her to work part-time while earning six figures and making an impact in the community.  In today’s episode Morgan and I dive into:🔥 Did you know that only 14% of reorgs are successful? That means 86% of reorgs fail to achieve their goals. Shocking! Honestly, after living through 11 reorgs in my last 10 years at Google it kind of makes sense. I created the Ask What's Possible Workshop to help newly formed teams rebuild trust, create psychological safety, and align around a BIG shared vision in hours, not quarters. 🔥 Want to accelerate your speed-to-alignment? Book a no-obligation fit call with me 🔥 What teams walk away with: Rebuilt trust and psychological safety A co-created, ambitious shared vision everyone is energized by Clear alignment between personal goals and team vision A short list of mini-experiments to generate momentum immediately 🔥 What makes this workshop different: Executive-level facilitation with a track record at CEO-level forums, including sessions with 27 Google VPs at Sundar's leadership conferenceOne VP shared: "Adam was masterful as he guided us through exercises to expand our perspective and ambition on our vision of what we could be and do." Neuroscience-backed, mindful conversation practices th...

Join Adam Coelho for a 20 minute guided meditation in which we practice a Tibetan practice called Tonglen in which we imagine ourselves transforming suffering into love and kindness and sending that love and kindness out into the world. During this practice we begin by calming the mind and then transition to the Tonglen practice in which we imagine ourselves breathing in suffering, transforming it into love and kindness and sending it back out into the world. We close by practicing embodying hopefulness and sending that out to those that need it most right now. I hope you find this guided practice to be supportive. As a reminder, I will be releasing a new guided meditation practice every other week, alternating with a new podcast episode (Hit the Subscribe button!). Since this podcast is all about developing mindfulness and living the life that is ours to live, here and now, I share these practices with you in hopes you use them and grow in your own self awareness and self compassion. I love taking requests when I lead meditations. Please share your feedback and requests for what you’d like me to focus on in the guided meditation by commenting at MindfulFIRE.org. Please share this with your friends and write us a 5 Star review on Apple Podcasts!🔥 Did you know that only 14% of reorgs are successful? That means 86% of reorgs fail to achieve their goals. Shocking! Honestly, after living through 11 reorgs in my last 10 years at Google it kind of makes sense. I created the Ask What's Possible Workshop to help newly formed teams rebuild trust, create psychological safety, and align around a BIG shared vision in hours, not quarters. 🔥 Want to accelerate your speed-to-alignment? Book a no-obligation fit call with me 🔥 What teams walk away with: Rebuilt trust and psychological safety A co-created, ambitious shared vision everyone is energized by Clear alignment between personal goals and team vision A short list of mini-experiments to generate momentum immediately 🔥 What makes this workshop different: Executive-level facilitation with a track record at CEO-level forums, including sessions with 27 Google VPs at Sundar's leadership conferenceOne VP shared: "Adam was masterful as he guided us through exercises to expand our perspective and ambition on our vision of what we could be and do." Neuroscience-backed, mindful conversation practices th...