Jo's Journal - October 2019

Autumn is really here now, and our thoughts are turning to cooler days and chillier nights, and the kind of activities we can do indoors.

But first, we made the most of the last days of the late Summer sunshine, taking Mantra to Fearne Cotton’s second ‘Happy Place’ Festival, at Tatton Park in Cheshire.

Another wonderful event, with great content and lots of interesting and friendly people. We met many more of you there, and were able to share your stories of why you chose a specific mantra.

One of our very loyal customers, Claire, came to see us there – buying a personalised myMantra necklace for her daughter, and another one for herself. The mantra she had engraved for her daughter had such a powerful and personal meaning to her – it was really heartwarming to hear her story. We love hearing what a mantra means to you.

Also in September, we were lucky enough to be invited to run our ‘Find your Mantra’ workshop at Lululemon’s flagship London store on Regent Street. This is a 40 minute workshop where I take people through various exercises to use different methods to write powerful and inspiring mantras for aspects of their lives. You can find out more about writing mantras here.

In the middle of the month, I attended an inspiring and energising entrepreneurial event in Birmingham, run by Roger Hamilton. He is a huge advocate of entrepreneurs working for social good and to help improve the world – rather than simply focusing on business. He uses the framework of the UN’s Sustainability Goals to urge the audience to consider how they can align their business objectives with these global aims.

Our own charitable initiative, ‘Mantra changes lives’, helps us to focus on goals which we feel passionate about – many of which fit with the UN’s global goals. For example, our ‘Empower’ necklace helps to support Care International’s work with women in developing countries, while our ‘Sisterhood’ piece is aimed at helping Women for Women International’s work with women in conflict zones. Both of these support the UN’s goal for equality for women.

Our ‘Strength’ necklace for MIND helps support mental wellbeing – which fits with the UN’s global goal around improved health and wellbeing; and our ‘Breathe’ necklace for Trees for Cities enables more trees to be planted in urban areas, supporting the UN Goal of more sustainable life on the land.

However, we aren’t yet selling enough of these necklaces to make a real difference. So - we’d like to ask your help, to shout about them and tell your friends.

For each sale of one of our ‘Mantra changes lives’ charity necklaces, we donate a full 25% of the sale to that charity – so it is a great way of showing your support. Throughout October, we will be working hard to raise awareness of our charitable collection, so we can do more to make a difference.

Towards the end of the month was my 51st birthday. My husband very kindly whisked me off to Normandy for the weekend to see an exhibition of one of my favourite painters, Raoul Dufy. We had a truly wonderful time, walking along the beautiful coastline near the cliffs at Etretat, famously painted by Monet; and staying in the lovely Medieval town of Honfleur. 

As many of you will know, art is a passion of mine, and I find exhibitions of paintings deeply inspiring and enlivening, so it was a wonderful way to spend my birthday.

I also managed to get to London at the end of the month, to the Royal Academy, where I saw two more exhibitions – Felix Vallotton and Antony Gormley. So – a very cultural end to the month of September for me!

Keep staying true to what inspires you.  

Jo xx