ALIGN
Know what it means to be you
This page will feature visually conceptual, intuitive, fun, colorful and emotionally evocative art, articles, talks and contemplative words by Asher Jay, in an effort to inspire individuals and brands to wake up to their true self and purpose. Yoke And Anchor LLC aims to bring everyone in to the fold of awareness and action that can result in positive change for both people and planet.
I wanted to share what I do and why I do it in a personal way, so people who have yet to learn what I offer as a consultant, can find the answers in one succinct article. This passion is what I wake up to get more deeply acquainted with daily...
Wrote this to cast a light on why I work on communications strategies & calls to action that take brands away from the unproductive narrative of banking on a person's "goodwill" to banking on one's "self interest.
Need for Quick Change In The Fast Corporate Lane
Wrote a short piece on Stakeholder Capitalism versus Shareholder Capitalism under the labels of ecological economics and doughnut economics, so companies can realign how they show up at the market place to empower social well-being while respecting planetary boundaries.
Setting Identity Aside for Self
I wrote this piece to encourage people to turn on the light within, and not forget who we each truly are, at a time when there is such a lot of pain and darkness in the world around.
Harvesting the Açaí Berry: Exploring the Nexus Between People, Planet, and Prosperity
A detailed article about the incredible work that Sambazon is doing on the ground for both communities and conservation, a story that I got to experience and report on first hand!
Read The Inertia post here to learn more!!
Discover how Sambazon an acronym that stands for the “Sustainable Management of the Brazilian Amazon” gives back to the communities on the ground and how they protect the #amazonrainforest by being a truly sustainable brand! Click the link below⬇️ for a first person account of the entire experience!
5 Ways to Walk Your ‘Fair Trade’ Talk
Learn what it means to embody #fairtrade as a #business practice by exploring how Sambazon acts with integrity to champion people, planet and prosperity. Learn what it means to be ECOCERT Group #FairTradeCertified by reading this post.
5 Questions a Conscious Consumer Brand Would Ask
Learn what questions to raise as a conscientious consumer and know what you should be holding a corporation or brand accountable for!
Sambazon embraces transparency, as should you.
Read how to vote with your dollar through the "Fair Trade" Label in this article. Three minutes, for three vital things to know about why you should buy fair trade products!
This article explains why acai is good for you! Learn when the term "superfood" was coined, and why Acai is so potent despite only 10% of the berry being pulp!! Less is more where this fruit is concerned and you're about to find out why with Sambazon & me!
Brand Positioning: How to Get it Right
In this piece learn the ten steps to getting your brand's core identity, vision, mission and positioning right! See how Sambazon does it and use their outline as a successful business model worth emulating. If you want to be labelled a "sustainable brand" you have to have the courage to walk the talk.
How Businesses Can Survive the Covid-19 Pressure
I had to create this short spot for a firm in Germany about why I think businesses are hurting during the covid19 lockdown. Since we have ecommerce, businesses still have access to their consumers, and while some consumers prefer in person retail therapy, most opt to buy things online, at the convenience of a click. So here's the 'at my desk with a cup of tea', quick take on why businesses are hurting.
I am a storyteller. Know how people say we are made of stardust, I say we are made of stories. I am not the first to think, much less write this, others have said it before, and perhaps more eloquently. Read More….
Community, Conservation, Commerce
Want to know how to embody stakeholder capitalism instead of the antiquated, myopic shareholder capitalism?
By prioritizing people and planet as part of your brand's prosperity. Read this article to learn more about how we can use the #lockdown to reshape our present paradigm, as we simply cannot afford to return to "Business as usual". Use Sambazon as a case study, to emulate holistic brand stewardship.
Just wrote this piece titled "5 Ways to go Zero-Waste!" Learn how you can reduce you waste footprint and discover how sustainable brands like Sambazon finds ways to see their waste as a valuable resource and fuel.
Just published How To Reclaim a Rainforest https://lnkd.in/gvbjhaz Learn how you can get involved in mitigating the threats devastating #Rainforests worldwide. Sambazon through its partnership with Rainforest Trust has seeded change in the Amazon. What can you do to help?
5 Conversations Consumers Should Have with Brands
This piece explores the conversations I usually try to harbor with the brands I buy from, support or work with. When you recognize the impact you have as a consumer, you being to vote with every dollar, wisely and proactively.
Birding 101 : Unidentified Flying Organisms
A few weeks ago, if someone had asked me what I thought of Tanagers, my mind would have honed in on the obvious typo in a term that obviously describes the most obnoxious phase of any human's life cycle. Oh, how the past ten days in Colombia have changed me, for now I know Tanagers refers to the second largest family of birds. That's right my brain has now allocated prime real estate for such facts as: Tanagers constitute around 4 percent of all avian species, nearly the value we assign to our collective understanding of what constitutes the universe we inhabit. Read More…
Does your new friend sleep with binoculars by his/her bedside table. Does this person have a telescope at every other window in his/her house? This is not because they are perverts or peepers, they are just passionate birders. They perceive a world, you fail to, they also forget that you perceive a world, they fail to. Read More…
Keep your story simple, the more complex your narrative arc becomes the less effortless it is to lure your audience into the reality you are building. A story is about sensory immersion, for which it needs to be articulated in an accessible vocabulary and relate content that is meaningful to the receiving parties.
Read More…
Podcast Launch: Wanted Single. Season 1: Women
There are four distinct stages you endure as a captivating story is being unveiled one juicy sound byte at a time to you.
Neural coupling is a term assigned to the audience’s ability to mirror the storyteller’s brain.
A good story keeps pace with your internal workings, it unveils insights when you think it should, it hides information when you need it to, and throughout its length you are able to discern its underlying pattern, predict its outcome and identify with its characters.
Keep your story simple, the more complex your narrative arc becomes the less effortless it is to lure your audience into the reality you are building. A story is about sensory immersion, for which it needs to be articulated in an accessible vocabulary and relate content that is meaningful to the receiving parties.
When your intimate partner and you can remain in silence and still be the well heard voice in each other’s heart and mind space there is deep communion between two authentic, sovereign, open, vulnerable souls.
To awaken to such a bond is to first awaken to self. To truly awaken to one’s own self, is to experience what it means to be richly and inextricably connected to, interdependent on, and expressed in and as all life. To be truly your self, is to be in union with all there ever was and is. There is no experience of separation, just the continuous awareness of the boundless, timeless bonds you share with all life. This inter-relatedness is ever evident in your cellular blueprint. That is how abundant you are as an individual, why segment that immensity of self to satiate the ignorance of a few? Do not shrink your cosmic whole into a diminutive role. When you offer your whole to another who is whole too, you are able to show up for one another from love instead of lack.
Do not dim your shine. Your inner landscape is a culmination of the unique experiences you have been privy to. Dialing back how you process and feel your way through your life experience only represses your capacity to be fully and passionately present for life as it is unfolding. Be present. Feel. Connect. Unfold authentically and organically. Let your inner light shine brightly upon the world.
Are you original? Are you self aware of your unconditional self expression and thus available to spontaneously co-create your presence with life at large in each unknown, unfolding moment? Or is who you are an unquestioned result of assimilating and articulating what others have expressed you as being or need you to be in order to find their conditional approval and acceptance? These voices that speak within your head, can belong to your parents, your immediate family, or authority figures you encountered as a child. You trusted them to see you, and you began to flesh your self out through their eyes instead of your own. Those voices taught you not to trust yourself, and took you away from your own core essence. Years later you wake up, have a quarter or midlife crisis and you begin to question who you are, and how you came to be this person who is so miserably unhappy. And you come to realize nothing you say or do is actually original to you. It was all hand me down sound-bytes and inherited actions. How do you shed all that external baggage? From conditioned responses, predetermined roles, and claustrophobic labels to find your unrehearsed, unbridled, uncensored, all encompassing enunciation of raw, real self? You start now. You shed your past, and you learn to embrace your presence. You stop performing your roles and embrace being your whole instead.
Codependency is rooted in fear. Fear of loss, abandonment, hurt, death, being alone, being lonely…. Love begins within, not without. It is what you show up with, not what you expect to experience from another. Love, that blossoms from the self, empowers you to stand in your own inner truth, strength and awareness. This enables you to love from the resilient, powerful foundation of self integrity, and self alignment.
Fear on the other hand causes you to define yourself by or in relation to your externalities, like your partner, friends, family, job, heresay, belongings or assets. When fear runs the show, what someone else thinks of you comes to define you more than your own understanding and real time experience of self. This ignorance results in the willing participation and perpetuation of toxic connections that can last the length of your lifetime. Such stale mate relationships occur when we stop holding our selves accountable within, and dismiss our need for personal expansion, transformation, and original, vulnerable self expression.
Love evokes joy and invokes freedom and abundance.
Fear underscores lack and results in cycles of inner and outer paucity.
It is thus unequivocally important to make the conscious choice to show up for your self and others from a space of love, not fear.
Those who frequently defer to posing questions, projecting problems and perceiving hurdles in interactions that require emotional intimacy and authenticity are moored in the abyss of fear within. They rarely effort to come up with answers or solutions because they would rather remain unaccountable, and plagued by a perpetual state of indecision. To escape personal liability such an individual will find manipulative ways to transfer all responsibility conveniently onto another. This enables him or her to continue shirking his or her agency to be involved, present and vulnerable to his or her own self and personal relationships. If you are always asking questions that you never effort to find the answers for, you are either not proactively contemplating intelligent inquiries, or you are trying to find a non confrontational way to remain evasive. Unfortunately the only one who misses out on the rich and dynamic experience of life by doing this self sabotaging shtick is you, because if you made it your business to know, you would have the will to act in alignment with such self-realized wisdom. There would be no shying away from intentional decisions, or avoidance of contextually necessary actions.
By contrast, when you do have the integrity, curiosity and courage to uncover the unknown by framing intelligent queries that make answers self evident to you, you will always be decisive, clear minded, forthcoming, vulnerable and fully available to interact in real time. You are thus able to show up enthusiastically with answers and optimistically to apply yourself toward discovering solutions to any problems that do tangibly arise. Individuals who behave in this enlightened, compassionate, mature, responsible manner, are anchored in the well spring of self love and self awareness. If you are mindful enough to be present and actively engaged in all your relationships then have the integrity to expect the same of those you relate to. You cannot make someone show up as you do, but you can be discerning of what you offer and whether you are able to have the inner alignment to not settle for anything less than genuine reciprocity. Conscious participation and partnership begins with your own self, before it can be wholeheartedly proffered to another.