Hey there, it's Susan Peirce Thompson and welcome to the Weekly Vlog.
So 29 years ago and change, I got clean and sober, and one of the first habits I picked up when I stopped using drugs, stopped drinking alcohol, and joined a recovery community was I started reading a daily meditation reader. So the one I started reading was called Just for Today, and it was about living a life of recovery without drugs. What I would do is every morning I would wake up, I would make a cup of coffee, I would put tons of cream and tons of sugar in it. I would sit outside if it was nice enough or I would sit inside if it wasn't. I would light a cigarette, I guess I was always outside if I lit the cigarette. So I was outside, I would light a cigarette. Just a little note, I was a non-smoking crack addict, so I was crack smoking but not cigarette smoking. And then I got clean and sober and I picked up cigarettes just because people were socializing and yeah, I guess my brain just needed more dopamine.
So anyway, I would smoke my cigarette and I would sit there and I would read the one page from my daily meditation reader. So a daily reader is like a little book that has the date at the top of every page. Not the year, but just January 1st, March 8th, September 12th, whatever. And every day there was just a different thought for the day, and readers do it differently. Some of them have quotes, some of them have mantras.
Anyway, so I would read the book Just for Today and sit there and reflect on it a bit, and my life started getting better. It really did. And at the same time, I very distinctly remember feeling sick after all that cream and sugar and that cigarette, or two or three. And I remember then needing more coffee with more cream and sugar. And so obviously I was not using that time with my daily meditation reader optimally, and yet the power of absorbing that message and living with it throughout the day started to change my life.
And so in this week's Vlog, I want to offer you four tips for getting the most out of your daily reader because the Bright Line Eating daily reader, which is called On This Bright Day: A Year of Reflections for Lasting Food Freedom is about to be published, and it's time to pre-order your copy if you haven't already. So I just want to share with you four ways to get the most out of it once you have it. And at the end of this Vlog, I'm going to share with you how you can have it today, even though it's not available truly until October 24th, which is the publication date, October 24th, 2023.
Okay, four tips. This is what I learned over the years. First of all, I started picking up a meditation practice maybe about 10 years after I got clean and sober where I would actually sit and breathe and meditate. And when I started to meditate, reading the daily page out of my daily reader before meditating became my rhythm. And that's my first tip, is read the page and then meditate even if it's only for 60 seconds. Because a page out of a daily reader is so potent, and having some time to reflect on it and absorb it is really helpful. Again, even if it's only 60 seconds, read the page, then meditate. Now I started a meditation practice. I dove right into the deep end with 30 minutes a day. You don't have to do that much. Research shows that meditation has huge benefits even at 10 minutes a day. But again, no matter how long, read the page, then meditate.
My second tip is going to sound funny. It's to remember it. Now, you might think, "Well, I don't really have control over that. I either remember it or I don't." And the answer is, no, no, no, that's not true. You actually do have control over remembering it. A lot of remembering something is encoding it properly in the first place. A lot of what we don't remember, like people's names that we meet at a party, the issue is that we never actually were paying attention when they said their name, and so we never encoded it. When we encode something deeply with a marker to ourselves of, "I want to remember this later," we can and we do. And so if you read it with an eye to remembering it later, you can take the daily message with you all day and reflect on it.
And of course, if you forget it, you can refer back. Remembering it has a lot to do with developing the habit of reflecting on it later, really calling it to mind throughout the day. So I guess the tip is not just to remember it, but to use it to really use that page's message to inform your day, to really take it with you into the day.
And this leads me directly into my third tip, which is, believe it or not, read only one daily reader in the morning. Only one. A lot of us have a habit of having all these books. We've got The Daily Stoic, and we've got the For Today, and we've got the Just for Today, and we've got the 24-hour book, and we've got this book and then that book. Read only one. And the reason is that you won't find you can do tips number one and number two unless you do tip number three, meaning if you're reading all of these books, you're not going to remember them all. Your brain will engage with them in a more sort of junk food kind of way, like I'm not savoring it, I'm just having this and then more of that and then more of that, and then more of that. And it's like you're not even intending to really use it. You're just sort of reading it like, "Oh, that's interesting. That's nice." Like perusing the news or something.
You want to use a daily reflection book to actually move the needle on your life. And so choosing just one book every morning to read. Now here's the little asterisk. You can read a second book at night before bed to ponder before you go to sleep at night. And so I use a daily reader in the morning, and then I use the Rumi book at night. I read a poem out of the Rumi ... A Year with Rumi, I think it's called, 365 readings or whatever. You can have a different one at morning, at night, but for the morning to take with you all day, stick to just one.
And now the last tip actually will provide that part of you that is already experiencing FOMO at the thought of having to trim down to just one daily reader. It will give some relief there, which is as soon as you're not getting full nourishment from that daily reader, switch it up and go to a different one for a while.
You might find a daily reader that nourishes you in a sustained way month after month for year after year. I have found the Rumi book to be that way for me. I've been reading it every night for four or five years now, and it's not getting stale. But the minute a book starts to feel stale, switch it up, switch to a new one.
Now, I'm curious how long On This Bright Day: A Year of Reflections for Lasting Food Freedom will work for you without getting stale. My hope is that it will be like the Rumi reader. It will be timeless, and you will be able to read it month after month, year after year, getting tons of value out of it to inform your day all day long.
And right now today, you can experience that. You really can because it's already available to you. All you have to do is pre-order your copy of On This Bright Day, and there's a link down below where you can pre-order the copy or you can just go to Amazon. It's available right now. It's called On This Bright Day by Susan Peirce Thompson. And you can pre-order your copy of the book and then you can get our bonus package.
We have the most amazing bonus package if you pre-order the book right now. It consists of so many things. And the first one is an immediate download of the PDF of all the daily readings for September and October. So if you're watching this Vlog in real time or listening, it's September or October, and you can get the readings for this month and October right now, and that's a PDF that you can just start reading immediately so you can see for yourself how amazing this reader is. That's the first bonus.
The second bonus is an audio ... It's an experience, a behind-the-scenes peek of the audiobook recording. I did the audiobook recording in August, and a lot of things went wrong. Many things went right. There was a natural disaster, I cried, and there was one reading beyond all the rest that blew my mind, blew my heart wide open, made me cry, and I tell the story of why in that behind the scenes exclusive. You also get to listen to a full entry, I play the one that's my favorite one for you so you can taste the audiobook and really see how you like it. You might want to get the audiobook as well. So that's the second bonus is that behind the scenes glimpse of the audiobook recording, including a little tour of the studio, the whole nine yards.
You also are going to get a menu. So this is the weight loss food plan, my Susan Peirce Thompson's top recommendations for what to eat specifically for a full week of optimal weight loss.
And you can use that menu and wash, rinse, repeat, just eat exactly that week after week after week if you want, and lose all your excess weight. So I did a version for omnivores and a version for plant-based eaters, and you can download that today and just get started losing your weight with Bright Line Eating if you want. You also will get access to a bookmark PDF file that you can download and print your own Bright line Eating bookmarks. Cut them up. You can use those bookmarks for marking your favorite pages in On This Bright Day or any of your other favorite Bright Line Eating books. They're beautiful bookmarks designed by our own graphic designer, Angie, and you're going to love them.
And last but not least, you'll get entered into a drawing where 10 winners will win a free version of the audiobook and a free signed name plate of the On This Bright Day book. I will inscribe the name plate, send it to you, and you will get to put that in your book when your book arrives, and you will have an author-autographed copy of the book. So a fun bonus package. And of course, if you want to be in the grand prize running, order a lot more than one copy because the three individuals who buy the most copies will get to come to Rochester, New York for a three-day, two-night visit with me. The number one most purchaser will get all expenses paid for that trip. Super fun.
And even if you shoot for the moon, you'll land among the stars because the top 20 people who buy the most books will all get five inscribed nameplates with one inscribed personally to them. So you can have an autograph signed copy of the book.
So lots of fun prizes, lots of fun things. But remember, the bonus package is yours immediately today if you order just one copy of the book. So please go ahead and click the link below, or if you're just listening, you can go to onthisbrightdaybook.com.
Again, that link is onthisbrightdaybook.com, and that's where the bonus package is, the links to pre-order. You don't need special links to pre-order by the way. You can just go to Amazon. It's super easy. Just go to Amazon and order On This Bright Day and then use the book. Really use it.
Starting today you'll get the daily readings immediately. Starting today, use the book to inform your life. Breathe into it. Remember it. It's an amazing thing to start your day with a touch of inspiration, aspiration, wisdom to carry with you all day long on your Bright journey. So, very excited for this book. I hope you will enjoy the bonus package.
Get started today, pre-order your copy, and I'll see you next week.
