Sonya's Patates Braavos: Edition #8 💌🥔

TLDR: Misha, ballet, death

welcome note 👋 

Hello, brave patates! This week, I was a very brave potato and completed Misha Saidov’s 4-day intensive on exponential coaching. More on that below. In a fit of brave-potatoedness™️, I also did a 30-minute ballet stretching class with the first soloist of the esteemed Mariinsky theatre in Russia, Maria Khoreva. It was the most challenging thing I’ve recently done, a fantastic workout, and an amazing check-in with my flexibility. Is it delusional to have absolutely zero ballet training and then follow a prima ballerina’s daily stretching routine? Maybe. But it was amazing, even if I can’t do splits (yet).

random cool things corner

• Wealthsimple’s TLDR newsletter is a fantastic source of money news, and the recent edition went over Canada’s dumpster fire of a housing crisis. Fascinating stuff and cool charts.

• I attended the SCI_ART Symposium II at SAW, hosted by 10+ European embassies. That was an 8-hour day of lectures. My favourite was the presentation by Irish-Iraqi artist Basil Al-Rawi, who created the Iraq Photo Archive to challenge the misrepresentation of Iraq in the media as solely a place at war, with personal photographs of peace and joy (know what other country this sounds like…?)

• Just got my tickets to the Powerwolf concert in Canada this year. One of my favourite melodic fantasy metal bands.

• Long-read: Death may be more alive than we thought.

• The 4-day intensive with Misha was amazing. We learned the problems with classical coaching that have had a chokehold on corporations over the last 50+ years. We learned what makes exponential coaching different—consistent lengthy work with emotional intelligence and cognition that has lasting positive behaviour changes—and how to lead a coaching session. I enjoyed playing the role of the coach. In a practice session where I was the client, my partner clarified a situation for me that I’d been mulling in my mind for months. Now I feel more free and aware. Most of what holds people back isn’t circumstance, it’s our own limiting beliefs, insecurities, and defense mechanisms that bring us down. Only by learning them and becoming aware can we effectively change our behaviour.

business updates

• In an amazing turn of events, Eitan Chitayat (whom my mentor Roger Greenberg financially supports and I oversee the process and deliverance of results) is coming to Toronto all the way from Tel Aviv. If you’re interested, I will share the link with you directly.

• Allied Voices for Israel—an allyship-building non-profit completing educational workshops to combat antisemitism on university campuses—reached out to me to work together, a few weeks after our initial conversation. (timing, timing, timing…)

• Someone I went to school with submitted a project request via my LinkedIn Services Page for my business. Very cool to see my investment into my professional social media pay off. Results are never overnight.

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[My info here is of Saturday, April 6th. Today, on Sunday, April 7th, new information is coming out from the investigation into the WCK accident, citing deliberate Hamas involvement. Morbid reminder to see how things play out and not share things that haven’t been investigated immediately. More to come.]

This week’s news summary, from the tragedy in Gaza to the strike in Damascus, by The Free Press. Another view directly from inside Israel, including the GPS shutdown which affected thousands.