Living with Intent by Mallika Chopra; review

Mallika Chopra is the Founder and CEO of Intent.com, a website where people can share their intentional living with the world. Struggling with living intentionally herself, she decided to explore intentional living and started this book, Living with Intent: My Somewhat Messy Journey to Purpose, Peace, and Joy.

Like any busy mother having anxiety with balancing work, marriage, friendships, children, health, and spirituality, Mallika Chopra was searching for ways to find more balance in her life. She had previously written works based on things that she was struggling with so why should intentional living be any different?

She's definitely her father's daughter in some ways, but I found her writing a breath of fresh air and very different from her father, the famed proponent of meditation, Deepak Chopra. Mallika doesn't try to stay away from being his daughter in her book, and quotes him, and little anecdotes of growing up with him as her father, are interspersed throughout the book. I also actually appreciated that she used her connections via her father to get more information for this book from people like Eckhart Tolle and Dr. Andrew Weil, because, why not? These are people who are some of the foremost thinkers in the world on living healthy, intentional, mindful lives.

I found this book to be part workbook, part instructional guide, part autobiography, and part investigative research into intentional living. I'm honestly only halfway through it and I have found it invaluable and relatable.

The chapters of the book follow the acronym of INTENT, after chapter one which is a quasi introductory/purpose chapter.
I-Incubate
N-Notice
T-Trust
E-Express
N-Nurture
T-Take Action

And finally, chapter 8, Living with Intent. The end of the book has an afterward by her father, a cheat sheet, workbook style pages for My Intents, and a few other accompaniments to the idea of Intent.

Already, I would put this book in my top 5 for the year and I'm literally only halfway through it!

Now that I'm finished with the book (I wrote the above paragraph when the thoughts on the first half were fresh in my mind and HAD to get them down). I still love this book. I loved that she didn't shy away from her concerns with raising children in a more American world from her upbringing. As someone mixed, I've definitely struggled with finding my place among my father's White family, and my mother's Hispanic and Native American world. I love that she also vocalizes that, yeah, she knows she's been privileged in a lot of ways but that she also does not have to follow in her famous father's footsteps in order to matter! I think a lot of us feel like in order to make a difference, we have to do something big and bold. 

Things I'm implementing because of this book? Setting intentions in my life. I've always just said "I'll do that eventually" without actually putting more thought into it than that and getting mad about it later when I didn't do ANY of it. 

I'm using a notebook I had sitting empty that I had started journaling in and didn't do much with to write down times I've done meditation, and how I felt before and afterwards. I'm also using it to jot down intentions for my life. And likely, some of it will appear on here. 

This will be a book I hold on to, reread (especially the guidance sections at the end of each chapter), and recommend to others. 

Interesting Health/Fitness Kickstarters

I was looking around Kickstarter after someone posted a link on Twitter and found a few interesting ones, so I thought I'd share.

First is a small, almost backpack like thing to keep your ipod in, and headphones attached to for easy access.

It's called a SpyderGrip and you can look at it here. It helps keep your headphones from getting snagged. My only concern is it chafing your underarms with the straps.

Another one, and the reason I ended up on Kickstarter, was the Ring Cozy! I wear gloves sometimes, but might back it regardless because it's pretty neat!

It seems interesting! If you don't wear rings, don't lift, or wear gloves, might not interest you, but I think it's a pretty cool concept. The link to the Ring Cozy Kickstarter is here! For $10 you get one in the color of your choice, and for $28 you get three. I know I've caught my finger on things before when wearing rings so this actually interests me!

The next one I was interested in, until I saw how much they were going to cost, and how much they were doing for Kickstarter. Maybe it's worth it but I'm not sure. It's called Night Runner (link on the name) and are clips with lights you can attach to your shoes while running in the dark. Looks really neat, but unlike most Kickstarters, they are charging an additional price for shipping, and a very small discount, which with shipping, is expensive. The minimum donation to get the lights is $50 plus $8 shipping.

National Geographic sells something similar for $20. It's uglier but it would work! 

And on the go Yoga mat/rug is next. It seems good, and if goals met, will come in about 6 colors. It is called the YogoMat (Redux) and for $45 you receive a mat, sticker and personal note. It folds up for convenience, so it isn't bulky or heavy.

This one looks fun. It's called Pedal, Stretch Breathe: The Yoga of Bicycling and it's yoga with your bike! To  get a copy, it's only $10 and sounds interesting. It shows yoga positions that include your bike. May sound simple but also sounds pretty neat. She's a yoga teacher and cyclist and originally had done an e-zine, smaller edition that sold out quickly.

Daily Burn-yoga

I haven't used this site much, but I received an email about it and was curious. They have a Yoga session with Briohny Smyth also featuring her husband Dice Iiad-Klein in the first one. It looks like just over a weeks worth as well as a few other specific types of classes, such as handstands and inversions. If her name isn't familiar, she was the woman featured in the controversial Equinox videos (in her underwear) that went viral.

http://dailyburn.com/join/38047
With that link you receive a free 30-day free trial and after that, it's $10 a month (Disclosure: I also receive a $10  bonus upon completion of the free trial). I'm going to follow the plan for a couple of weeks and will blog about how I feel and such throughout. I'm not very in depth with Yoga yet, but these sounded doable and something to look into.

Daily Burn also offers several other programs and trainers, such as a body weight program, a dance oriented one, and kettle bells. This is my first time trying these classes, so I'm not biased! I'm going to try them out, however, and see how they are and if I like it.