Podcast Episode 120

with our guest Beth Kempton

Wabi Sabi: The Beauty of a Simple Life with Beth Kempton

This week on The School for Good Living Podcast:

• Experiencing the dance of nature as active, conscious creators and passive witnesses
• Beth’s background in Japanology and experience with shinrin-yoku
• Forest bathing as a meditative practice and its potential to heal
• Japanese aesthetics and how it has been impacted by industrialization
• What wabi-sabi means, how it’s been misused in the West, and why Beth wrote a book on the subject
• The dangers of social media’s conversation on image, achievement, and perfection
• Why wabi-sabi is less about what we see and more about how we see
• The collective yearning for beauty and a simple life
• The heart-mind and how different decisions are made in different parts of the body
• The tendency of writers to only write about a single topic forever and the underlying theme in Beth’s books
• Helping people explore the values of stillness through her book, We Are In This Together
• The relationship between mental health and the holiday season
• The Five Stories of Christmas and how finding your Christmas Constellation can change your experience of the holiday season
• The historical roots of holiday traditions
• Writing what you want to know and letting your books become your mentors
• Being unsure of whether the world needs your book and how writing a book is about clarity and confidence
• How writing a book proposal can help you push past the inner critic
• Podcasting as an effective platform to build authority
• Why writers need to think of marketing their books as a service to their prospective readers