Everything I Need to Know About Life I Learned from My Houseplants

Life is a journey and finding our place in that life can feel overwhelming. Who am I? Where do I belong? How do I cultivate a life that makes my heart happy?

“He who knows others is wise; he who knows himself is enlightened.” ― Lao Tzu

While there are many books written on self-discovery, Everything I Need to Know About Life I Learned from My Houseplants is unique in its approach by using the growth cycle and care of houseplants to impart wisdom and essential life lessons for living an authentic life.

Throughout the book, the author’s own journey of personal growth unfolds alongside practical information and care tips for raising happy, healthy houseplants. While this little book tackles some tough topics, such as her struggle with depression and experience in an abusive relationship, it is done with a lightness and humour that makes you feel like you’ve known the author for years.

This book will leave you feeling inspired and ready to change and improve your own life, as well as those of your houseplants.

Everything Is Living Energy

What is it to be alive?

Most definitions of life describe a virus as non-living, yet the coronavirus that caused so many world deaths was a structure that benefited from and replicated itself by taking control of and using the energy and structure of human cells.

Not all structures can replicate themselves but all structures have a desire for the energy of their surroundings. Their atomic particles always seek to create more efficient ways of getting such energy. It is why structures like us evolved.

The atomic particles that make for structures are alive. They are composed of energy, have roles to play and they communicate and interact via light-speed energy with other atomic particle energies in their environment.

Science struggles to explain gravity, calls it a force but knows it is not a force. It is the motion of energy-desiring particle structures toward energy-releasing structures; it is why we are drawn toward the earth and why the earth is drawn toward the sun.

The thing to understand is: everything is living energy.

Evolution: The Pattern

The origin of life is the fusion of two slightly different halves: fusion-fission, fusion-fission, fusion-fission… the rhythm of Life. In the beginning of all beginnings, an energetic proton and neutral neutron had fused into one whole. On planet Earth, the fusion took monumental proportions until the mating ritual has reached the highest conceivable degree. Love has a power to create life but also has a power to destroy it if its integrity is violated. Psychopath-men attack women, psychopath-women attack own children while breast, prostate and colorectal carcinomas are responsible for more than 20% human deaths whose incidence in great apes is less than 2%. Are humans on the decline? To find out this we have to unravel the mystery of the origin of life. Only if the sequence of the events in the story of life is correct, a pattern will emerge.

Exploitation

In Exploitation, readers are taken on a heart-wrenching journey through the mind and experiences of a frontline soldier. Through intense and extreme pressure, the soldier must navigate their way through the challenges of combat and emerge on the other side. With raw and emotional storytelling, this book offers a unique insight into the thoughts and actions of those on the front lines, leaving readers with a deeper understanding of the challenges and sacrifices of military service.

F*cking Up Adulthood

I didn’t ask for this. There’s no consent form for adulthood, you just get thrown in the deep end. One minute I’m jerking off my way through high school, the next I’m spending £5 on cheddar cheese. If you’re fed up with adulthood and its merry band of shite like me, let’s fight back against the conventions we so dearly hate. Join me on my runaway mission as I moan my way through the themes of young adulthood. Longing to be back on his feet, escaping the country to recover from what broke him. All the while dissecting the political and social landscape the world enters.

Fallen Through The Cracks

Press your chin hard against your throat. Now turn your head to the left and lift your left shoulder until it touches your ear. Keep your chin against your throat, your left ear against your left shoulder, contract your neck and shoulder muscles as tightly as you can and hold it like that for the rest of your life. That’s right. Eat like that, brush your teeth like that, drive like that and keep your head like that when you go to sleep at night.

This is what psychiatrists in South Africa did to me and they expect me to live like that for the rest of my life.

Far From Worries

A couple of years ago, the author moved next door to the King of Thailand working as an editor of an online magazine published in Hua Hin, a seaside town. At the time, the king lived there permanently in his summer palace known in Thai as the Klang Kangnon palace, which delightfully translates as ‘Far from Worries’. The book is a chronicle of the author’s year there, but in a larger sense, it is a portrait of contemporary Thailand; part memoir, part history and part travel book.

Fastovski's Tales of Hampstead

Imagine that Isaac Babel’s Cossacks wassail together with Runyonesque Liverpool Jews outside the plate-glass window of a Hampstead café where a Klezmer band is playing to a packed and tea-drinking congregation of jazzmen, Hasidic scholars, surrealists, old soldiers, and retired strippers; and you have the tone and temperature of this unique and unclassifiable memoir – no, not memoir, more a stream-of-consciousness novella – no, not a novella but a piece of autobiographical fiction – no, not autobiography but a picaresque drama conquered from the unreliable and fertile brain of the eponymous Fastovski.

And who is Fastovski? Is he real or invented? Is he perhaps the alter-ego of real-life jazz pianist, Klezmer swinger, big band leader and flaneur, Wallace Fields, who stares at us from the book’s frontispiece in shades, Diaghilev coat and moustache, over a cup of strong black coffee? Fastovski’s not telling and anyway, who cares.

This is a book to be devoured, disseminated, denounced, and delighted in. It belongs to all who think art and life are one and that the Arch-Savant of Canterbury, Issy Bonn, Rashid the Manic Berber Chef of NW3, and Mrs Karl Popper, have an equal claim on history. I haven’t had such a good time since I shared Sir Ralph Richardson’s motorbike with a parrot and a striking grandmother clock.

Piers Plowright
August 2008

Female Olympic Weightlifters

Not many books are available in the market of the weightlifting world to guide coaches on how to help female weightlifters, and lonely female weightlifters who don’t have a coach. Since I moved to the UK, I have had the chance to coach 1350 young and junior lifters in over 28 schools and my 6 clubs in 5 different London boroughs, of which half of them were female and I learnt how to deal with female lifters and educate myself to give my best knowledge to help them find their best. Since I became chief coach of the Odisha high performance center, I have worked hard to update my knowledge up to the world standard of a coach who deals with 40 lifters at the same time, 24 hours a day. I am still learning and would like to pass on what I learn to others from my 35 years of coaching and lifting experience. I have also written another book about how to coach at weightlifting competitions called How to win Olympic Weightlifting Competition.

Fighting for Hanne

Hanne Schafer, 63, had just retired as a psychologist from her position in a mental health clinic. Youthful and energetic, she looked forward to engaging in more travel, socializing, hiking and ballroom dancing with her partner, Daniel Laurin. When Hanne received a devastating diagnosis, she asked Daniel and Mary, her long-time friends, for help in dealing with a grim reality. She asked them for the ‘unthinkable’.

How would you respond? What would help you deal with one obstacle after another?

This memoir, written from Mary’s perspective, is based primarily on Hanne’s emails to Mary over a three-year period. It details how Hanne, Daniel and Mary persisted in pursuing Hanne’s goal of remaining in charge of her life.

Canada passed assisted dying legislation in June 2016, but some obstacles still remain and impede a person’s choice to die with dignity. Further legislation is anticipated. Hanne’s receipt of a court-ordered exemption in February 2016 is one facet of Canada’s history of assisted dying. Telling Hanne’s story reflects our mutual desire to eliminate obstacles that others may encounter.

Fighting To Sleep

Sleeping is like breathing and eating, we all need to do this, but what happens when out of the blue you suddenly discover you are awake all night and the little sleep you do manage is barely enough to get by on and nothing you do seems to help? You try everything you can think of, but the trouble is the less you sleep the more you are unable to function and think properly. Learning to cope with every day is an effort and you are trying to combat being perpetually tired and depressed. Then days turn into weeks and weeks into months and even medication doesn’t seem to work. Even though on the outside you look normal, you do not feel normal, EVER. What happens then? Are you able to live as usual? Should you accept this and just try and manage or do you fight? This is the story of one woman’s attempt to free herself of insomnia and get on with life because, as we know, we all need sleep.

Filo Fanfare

Unlock the secrets of filo pastry and discover a world of culinary delights. This authentic pastry, dating back to the 15th century, has a rich history that includes the famous baklava, a sweet treat created to commemorate the 40 days of Lent, with its 40 layers of thin, flaky pastry filled with nuts and spices, and soaked in syrup.
From savoury appetizers to decadent desserts, filo pastry is a versatile ingredient that adds a touch of elegance to any dish. Whether you’re a seasoned baker or just starting out, this fully illustrated book will teach you how to work with filo pastry and create impressive dishes that will delight your senses.
So why wait? Dive into the exciting world of filo pastry and start exploring its endless possibilities today!