181: Suzanne Jewell (The Mindful Entrepreneur)

Nature started to find her balance when we slowed down. I hope we don’t forget those lessons. – Suzanne Jewell

Welcome to Season 4 of Innovation City (The Miami Edition), a podcast featuring innovators, creators, and disruptors to discover how business is changing in the modern world.

Created and produced by SLAM! Agency and Aīre Ventures, Innovation City gives you an inside look at how rapidly business and culture are changing thanks to increasing diversity and inclusion, heightened creativity, and a stronger and better-connected business community.

Today’s guest is Suzanne Jewell, founder of The Mindful Entrepreneur. Suzanne is also a wellness coach, hosts a radio show, Mindful Mornings Miami, and many other hats in the mindfulness/wellness space. Suzanne sits down with the team to discuss Suzanne’s mindfulness journey, the human nervous system evolution, her mindful pocket park practice, and much more! 

They discuss:

• Suzanne’s superpower
  • Her capacity to pay attention
  • She has hyperfocus abilities
  • This applies both for mindfulness and work
• Suzanne’s mindfulness journey
  • It began when she was 11 years old in Grand Rapids, Mich.
  • She had ADHD, and was extremely smart
  • Spent her 6th grade year going to school at a nature center
  • For 45 minutes every day, she had to be in the woods, observe, write about what she was feeling – which she now recognizes as mindfulness
  • She had a successful career in the television industry but her soul felt empty
  • She discovered she had a rare neurological issue
  • #wokeupaboveground
  • Neurologist recommended mindfulness, and she embraced it
  • Mindfulness has become her reason for being
• Climate, communities, communities of color, Earth, our living experience needs our attention
  • She started noticing the disparity in parks in underprivileged communities
  • Even the signage is unwelcoming
  • How can parks be more welcoming and purposeful?
  • Suzanne started researching and found that 20 minutes a day of time spent in nature will lower cortisol levels
  • Re-wilding the concrete core of cities
• Mindful pocket park practice
  • “Nature pill”
  • 10 minutes of walking park practice
  • 10 minutes of sitting practice
• Environmental factors impacting our physiological experience
  • Too much concrete impacts your “chi”
  • Types of light
  • Proximity to plants
  • Circadian rhythms
  • The human nervous system is going through an evolution
    • The pause was for a reason
• Suzanne’s greatest challenge at the moment
  • She thought it would be finding space
  • In Miami, they have offered her space
  • She’s working on financing
  • She would love to have a pocket park in Overtown
  • Another dream would be to do this as a popup as an art experience
• Bringing mindfulness to different people in different life stages
  • You’re trying to learn how to pay attention
  • Mindfulness is like a wheel
    • On the outside is everything vying for your attention
    • Come back to the bullseye
    • If that’s all you mastered, it would still be a win
    • A wandering mind is an unhappy mind
• Get in touch
  • Themindfulpark.com
  • On LinkedIn 
  • @MindfulMorningsMiami on Instagram
  • @Suzannejewel and @mindfulmorningsmiami on Facebook

Lightning Round:

What makes you lose track of time?

• Natural beauty

What is something new that you recently tried and loved?

• Kayaking on the Little River

What risk are you happy that you took?

•  Putting my “tush” on a “cush” and learning to meditate

What makes you feel loved?

• I feel loved right now. Being in the presence of other human beings. I’ve missed this!

What challenge do you want to overcome?

• The department of judgment that lives in my head. To make peace with that judge.

Where do you feel the most at peace?

• Nature. Any place I can see something not man-made.