Jordan Hedi Productions

Creating

I think it’s about time I talked about this subject.

Something that has become a major part of my life and something I find myself doing regularly throughout the week, is creating. Not long ago, it wasn’t even something I would ever think possible, as I hadn’t really picked myself as a creative type. But I guess that is all just a stereotype that we use to pigeon hole people in society.

Coming to this point now, where I have released a number of short stories as well as personal development blogs and videos; I’m finding that creativity and having something to say isn’t really about the external, as in what you perceive about yourself. Instead, it is more of an internal thing, where novel and exciting ideas come forward.

For me personally, I’ve gotten so much enjoyment out of various endeavours. For instance, creative writing, when I finish a piece there is always a huge sense of fulfilment that I feel. I guess it comes from the idea that I managed to actually accomplish something, even if it isn’t a New York Times best seller, it still has the appeal and sense of endearment that only occurs when you manifest something from nothing. Most of the time, I don’t even know where the story will go but I just go along for the ride and it is always fun.

When it comes to the personal development blog and videos, I find that, even though my work in that space is pretty low budget. It still has the direct charm of trying to convey the most important details, without needing an expensive camera or a professional staff. It’s solely my vision and focuses on the things I believe to be true and important. So, seeing so many people from all around the world respond so positively is an amazing bonus; because in many respects, I never anticipated that this passion would receive so much success.

But to bring it back to you and what I want for you. I think you should sit down and have a think about something creative, by creative I mean you create something, and that could be anything really. Like this personal development stuff wouldn’t be considered creative by most people’s standards, but there is still a creative process going on. So, finding some avenue to allow your own inner voice to be expressed is what I want you to do.

Now, it could be writing like me, or maybe painting, making songs, starting a podcast, whatever feels right for you. It might be best to do something you’ve always thought about doing but never stepped out of your comfort zone to attempt. Don’t worry, everyone is hopeless the first time, but once you finish the first piece I can guarantee you that it will be worthwhile; and in time you will improve. Witnessing that improvement is actually where most of the enjoyment comes from.

So, give it a try. And if you feel like sharing, you can post about it here in the comments. I would love to see what you all come up with.

Until next time, thanks to everyone, especially my Hedites.

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Posted on May 13, 2022 by Jordan Hedi Productions

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Australian author, Creating, Creative writing, mindfulness, self development, self help, self improvement, wellness

Sleep Good – Part 4

Friends

Recently there have been a lot of temporary changes going on in my life and it has given me an opportunity to think about social connections with people. So, today I would like to share my thoughts.

For context, in Australia there is a federal election going on, this is our country’s highest form of government so it’s kind of a big deal. I’m a member of one of the two major parties and if you have paid attention throughout all my blog posts and videos you should know which one, but I’ll leave that for you to figure out.

What this has meant for me over the past two months, is weeknights filled with direct voter contact through making phone calls to members of the community. On the weekends, we hold street stalls and do doorknocking in the area, amongst other various activities for voter engagement. It’s a fairly time intensive experience, requiring me to volunteer for large stretches of time. I’m aware it’s my choice to do so but the commitment has meant I have had to shift my priorities for quite some time.

The good news is that there is only two more weeks to go until election day and once that is over; then my situation will return to a bit more of a normal schedule. However, I’ve also had university study as I’m about two thirds through this semester with just the last major assignment to go. When June 10^th hits, then I’m relieved of that responsibility for a month or so before it starts back up for semester two of this year (that one is my final semester, yay).

With my free time away from work and daily life admin being a little on the short side recently. I’ve had to skip out on seeing close friends. Normally, I meet up with them on a Saturday evening but that hasn’t been possible considering all that’s going on. It’s not the end of the world as it will be possible to return once these temporary time sinks disappear.

What I have noticed as a result of my current situation is that social connection with friends is so important for us as individuals. I’ll admit I’ve never really been the type of person who tries to go out to make a million friends, I think quality is better than quantity in that department. But not seeing the ones that I do have, has me feeling a little empty. Maybe empty isn’t the right word for it but it’s like what’s the point of doing all that you do if you can’t smile alongside someone else?

That’s why, when I can see my friends once again. I’m going to try to do everything to make them laugh and to be the giver of good feelings.

So, I guess what I want you to remember is that, although we are all on our own individual journeys in life. Journeys that might keep us apart from those we deem close to us. It is vital that when the time comes, we reunite with them and ease each other’s burdens in life by just being present with ourselves and our friends. Since in life, you don’t ever really do anything by yourself.

Shout out to my Hedites who come back week after week to read and share with what we’ve got going on here. You are all wonderful people.

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Posted on May 6, 2022 by Jordan Hedi Productions

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Australian author, friends, mindfulness, relationships, self development, self discovery, self help, wellness

Sleep Good – Part 3

Vices

I want to talk to you about vices as they are something that I have recently been grappling with, and I wanted to share my experiences from dealing with them.

For me the two major vices I have when it comes to substances would have to be soft drinks and the other would have to be nicotine. Both have different histories as to how I become involved with them:

Soft drinks were always something I very much enjoyed, starting in my youth. Maybe from the age of eight or so, it became an allowable thing for my parents to give me soft drinks. As the years went by I very much retained this love of soft drinks. But it was after high school when the habit got much worse. Seeing as I was at that point considered an adult, I could at any moment freely go out and buy bottles of the stuff. This increase in independence gave me the capacity to do what I wanted even if that wasn’t good for me. That is however, very much a common trait of that time in most people’s lives.

Luckily, I eventually wised up and realised that with new found independence also comes new responsibilities. I can’t honestly describe how much of a love I have for those sugary carbonated bottles, it’s something that has grown and matured over years. But as I’ve got older, I’ve accepted that I have a responsibility to look after myself (as in not developing Type II Diabetes in this case). So, I’d say since 2020 I’ve really tried to make an effort to cut them out completely. It’s interesting because I might be able to resist for a couple of months; but then the teasing allure gets to me and I buy one, that then starts a period of a couple weeks where I drink them again.

The great thing is that, even though I do have relapses at times. The stretches of time that I can go without have been increasing each time, while the relapse periods have gotten shorter. I’ve still got a long way to go, but each day that I don’t have one, I take as a small victory in my fight. I even have this thing where I fill up a bunch of plastic bottles with water then leave them in my freezer overnight. Then the next day I use them as an ice block to constantly have iced cold water throughout the day as opposed to soft drinks.

Nicotine, that’s the other major vice I have. I first started consuming nicotine when I finished high school, I had just started smoking weed and the group of friends I was with did a thing called ‘spinning’. What that essentially means is that you combine weed and tobacco together to increase in theory how much you have to smoke and improve how easy it is to light the weed. Because weed by itself can be difficult to burn.

So, for maybe 3 years after leaving high school I was smoking weed thinking that I was doing just that, smoking weed, but in reality I was also developing a penchant for nicotine due to the spinning. Some way down the line I got the great idea to stop smoking weed, so I did, but then I picked up smoking cigarettes as a way to cope with the withdrawals. But it wasn’t withdrawals from weed, it was from the nicotine; which I was then satisfying by smoking cigarettes. Whoops.

And let me tell you about the blend of tobacco I smoked. It’s a thing called Port Royal: Rum and Wine. I’m not sure if it’s only available in Australia but let me tell you it is amazing, so smooth with a tasteful thickness of flavour that really leaves you satisfied, until you need another… hahaha. Imagine the feeling of an old friend coming to visit, that’s what it feels like, if you didn’t think smoking was fun, you would after a Port Royal.

Now that I’m done gushing about that, my stint smoking cigarettes lasted about a year and a half, maybe two. Then I once again accepted that it was time to give it up, 2020 was the year where I gave it a real go. To my surprise, and I think due to how busy I was working on the COVID-19 response, I managed to go months without one. Another reason why I found it easier to give it up was that I never actually learned how to roll cigarettes. Port Royal only comes in a pouch, which meant I had to get a friend to do it for me. So, as long I didn’t ask him to roll there was no need to buy tobacco, because I didn’t know how to do it myself. Unfortunately, a new threat emerged on this front in the past year, vapes.

Vapes have been a way for me to get a nicotine hit without needing to have a friend roll a cigarette for me. They are readily available in my country even though they are supposedly banned, and with the range of different flavours available, it was hard not to get sucked in. I’m in the process now of purging that habit, it’s a similar situation to soft drinks, where I will go time without it, then relapse and at some point, quit again. It’s difficult but I know it is worth it in the long run. I always try to remind myself each day is victory if I can go without these vices.

One day I will fully overcome them, it’s just a matter of time.

Look I know that today might have seemed like I was talking all about me, but I wanted to give a brief run down of some of the bad habits I grapple with. Just wanted you to see that I’m not perfect by any means, but I’m trying to do things better. And most importantly, getting the idea that any day where you avoid doing your bad habits is worth treating as a victory (That doesn’t mean that you celebrate by doing some other kind of bad habit, but instead you praise yourself and your improving restraint and willpower).

Thanks like always to my Hedites, you’re the best.

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Posted on April 29, 2022 by Jordan Hedi Productions

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Australian author, mindfulness, self development, self discovery, self help, self improvement, vices, wellness, willpower

Sleep Good – Part 2

Self Authoring

Okay, it’s time once again for our weekly catch up on how we can improve aspects of our selves. This week I thought it would be good idea to talk about a technique we can use to make better sense of our day to day lives.

Now, seeing how you are viewing this on a digital device of some sort, that means that there are no costs preventing you from starting. I know it might sound pretty by the numbers but this technique, in many respects is just a form of journaling.

Essentially what you need to do is open up some program for taking down notes, in my experience I use Microsoft Word as it is the easiest and most common word processor. All you need to do, is at the end of day write up all that happened during the day, make sure to properly date each entry.

These can be minor events like the rude way someone served you when you bought your lunch or it could be something major like finding out a relative has injured themselves. Either is fine, it’s important to understand that no one else is going to see this so it can even include embarrassing things as well, like falling over as you tried to board the bus. All are welcome.

Being as descriptive and detailed as possible really helps when it comes to this technique, as it’s hard to understand the happenings of your day when you only have two sentences written down. Remember, this isn’t a chore or something you have to do just to cross off a to do list; it’s about conceptualising the events that have occurred over the past 24hrs and being able to map them out.

What’s the benefit of following this habit? Well, to take the example of the rude server at lunch, by writing it down you may realise that the event put you in a standoffish or pensive mood; and that might be why you were mean towards your coworker when you returned from lunch and they asked you about the progress on some project.

By understanding the events of our lives, we can better anticipate our behaviour and emotions. With that knowledge we can go about preparing to respond appropriately when similar events occur in the future.

This technique is different to the page of conscious thoughts that we should be writing each day, even though similar topics or themes may appear in both. The cause of this difference, is that the self authoring is about observing yourself from the perspective of your past, while the conscious thoughts is about where your mind is at in the present moment.

Hope this helps.

Like always, more to come, and thank you to all the Hedites that regularly come on down to this blog to pick up tools and ideas to better their lives. You are all awesome.

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Posted on April 22, 2022 by Jordan Hedi Productions

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Australian author, journalling, mindfulness, self authoring, self development, self discovery, self improvement, wellness

Apr ’22 Release: COVID Calamity

Released about half way through this month is the piece for April 2022. This one is titled, COVID Calamity, and is based off a true story. The central issue in this piece revolves around two people in a recently formed relationship being kept apart due to COVID-19 border restrictions. It is meant to detail the extreme journey that someone is willing to take to be with the one they want; now, the factors for this separation might not always be disapproving relatives or friends. Instead, it could preternatural circumstances resulting from a global pandemic.

This work like all my others can be found on the Amazon store and Kobo store, I’ve linked directly to the story in the below links. Check it out and tell me what you think back here (It’s a short read so very digestible):

Amazon

Kobo

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Posted on April 19, 2022 by Jordan Hedi Productions

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Australian author, COVID-19, Creative writing, pandemic, relationships, short story

Sleep Good – Part 1

The future of escapism

Howdy my Hedites, how’s your week been? I hope everything’s going in the right direction for you and those close to you. Today I feel a desire to talk about the worrying future of escapism.

I don’t know about you, but the whole idea about the metaverse scares me as a concept; terrifies me actually. It’s being advertised and promoted as a way to experience almost the entirety of the real world but instead in the virtual.

The fact that the technology and the platforms being built for this metaverse endeavour, are still very much in their infancy. Doesn’t fill me with too much confidence as growth in these types of areas, usually don’t have straight line increases but rather tend to have exponential gains.

Don’t get me wrong, escapism has always existed, I view social media as the most recent development down this path. So, much of this social media landscape is fake and really is just a whole game of fools fooling fools, just to get fooled themselves. However, before social media became the most frequented escape destination, there was the Television. The black screen, an omnipresent feature in the modern developed world. Even before Television, Radio was the media to; turn your brain off for a while (But I am talking about decades ago though).

To my understanding, we have become known as a species who wants to run away from reality. I understand why someone might feel that way, but what I also know is that the more you run away from the problems and issues in your life; the bigger and badder the consequences become, not just for you but all those people in your circle of influence. What has facilitated this increasing reliance on escapism in our societies? Well, all those technologies mentioned above do not operate in isolation of one another, but rather compliment one another, trapping people in a virtual net that some people never get out of.

Someone might say that, I’m using social media at this moment to connect with all of you, doesn’t that make that escapism? No, this channel and its content are about developing ourselves in the real world, so that we can become the most ideal versions of ourselves. When we are on that uplifting path, the lustful allure of the virtual world losses much of its appeal. I don’t know about you, but I’d much rather be happy and grateful in the real world than living out the insipid fantasies of the virtual.

To link back to the metaverse and what I’m terrified about. I feel in some capacity it might have some good uses; like any tool should. Then again, the past has shown us time and time again that people are drawn towards the shiny and new, just like a moth to a flame. This technology could have the potential to conveniently design and edit virtual environments and experiences that are specifically tailored for people to live out their personal fantasies. This in my mind would lead to at least a subpopulation of society feeling completely unfulfilled unless they are in the meta verse. I just hope it doesn’t get to the point where people spend most of their lives looking through a Virtual Reality headset.

Look my Hedites, I feel like I’m starting to ramble, so I’ll leave it there. This was more a piece about something that has been weighing on my mind recently. I’m sure you share some of my concerns or maybe you have some of your own, if that’s the case then comment down below, and don’t forgot to leave a like.

Thanks to you all!!!

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Posted on April 15, 2022 by Jordan Hedi Productions

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Australian author, escapism, goal setting, metaverse, mindfulness, self development, self discovery, self help, social media, technology, wellness

Guest on 100X Dudes Podcast

A little while back I mentioned that I appeared on the 100X Dudes podcast and can I say it was a pleasure. It was my first time on a podcast and I really enjoyed the experience. We cover a whole range of topics from self development and how I got interested in it, to politics as well as many others. Do give it a listen and go check out their other episodes as well, links below: