46. You’re invited to our transformational book club for rebellious readers
SUMMARY
What happens when India commits to integrating a pandemic hobby into her life going forward? A one-of-a-kind book club for rebellious readers!
In this solo conversation, the Flaunt Your Fire CEO shares the inspiration behind her “no rules!” book club, hosted inside Pause On The Play The Community. She also explains how fewer guidelines encourage participants to engage more with the content and each other.
Whether you like taking your time with a book or prefer to devour one per week, this book club is home to every kind of reader. Join India on a tour of our virtual hub and discover which of her many quarantine reads made the inaugural reading list.
In this discussion:
Integrating quarantine hobbies into everyday life as social restrictions ease
Reading as both an introverted pursuit and extroverted activity
Giving yourself permission to just get started
Why individual reading pace shouldn’t dictate one’s ability to participate in book club discussions
Supporting a favorite independent, Black-owned bookstore
QUOTES
India Jackson
“It can be a bit challenging to take yourself out of [hustle] mode and actually give yourself grace and permission to do really passive things that are just for pleasure.”
“Book clubs had a lot of rules, and a lot of rules don't work for me.”
“There is such immense power, transformation, and inspiration that can come from deep-diving into one story, topic, or theme that a book can present to you.”
ARTICLE
It's been a little over a year since COVID-19 quarantine began here in the Washington DC area. As a result, India had to seek out some new ways to entertain her brain. “My hobbies were very much the extroverted life hobbies of booking speaking engagements out of town and deciding to stay a couple of extra days to vacation while I was there to sightsee and explore,” she says. Before the pandemic, her list also included lots of physical activity: rock climbing, group workouts with friends, trying new sports, and lifting heavy weights at the gym - all of which proved essential for her physical and mental health.
Once gyms began limiting access, most of those activities became a no-go. India had to find new activities that would refill her cup.
Permission to Slow Down
To that end, India permitted herself to read again. “I say giving myself permission because [if you follow FYF], you’re probably a hustler to some degree.” But constantly being in high gear has its downsides. “It can be a bit challenging to take yourself out of that mode and actually give yourself grace and permission to do really passive things that are just for pleasure and don't necessarily have to be about business or performance or winning.”
For India, that meant allowing space for an activity that initially felt a bit frivolous: sitting and reading a book. “Giving myself permission to do that, I knew it required working through some mindsets as to why, you know, watching even my dad growing up, working sometimes over 12-hour days really kind of instilled into me this hard work ethic.” She had to remind herself that passive activities inspire, excite, and combat burnout.
“The other thing that I had to give myself permission on was to just get started.” Rather than setting up a bunch of parameters around which book to begin with and why, India simply picked the first book she saw at home: Subliminal: How Your Unconscious Mind Rules Your Behavior by Leonard Mlodinow. “The cool thing about getting back into and starting with this book is it really allowed me to also do my own allyship work because, sorry to break it to you Black people, but we have our own diversity, equity, inclusion, and allyship work to do, too.”
The book allowed India to see how, even after we get outside of race or gender, our unconscious mind continues to influence our behaviors, a theory she’s well-acquainted with in conjunction with the use of repetition within the marketing and branding space. The book, which also explores unconscious bias related to race and gender, impacted India - even though she’d read it before. “It gave me so many oh shit moments!” she says, adding, “I think it's important to take the information that we're taking in and integrate it into our lives, integrate those takeaways or those lessons into our lives. And then also take any necessary actions associated with it.”
She found herself wanting to connect with people about the book but didn't know anybody that had read it. “I also didn't know how to find out if anybody had, so I did a post on social media asking what are you reading right now? And, I got some really great responses that informed some of the next books that I read.”
Cultivating a Club
India discovered that many of the suggestions, especially those from Pause on the Play The Community members, were the same. “Maybe we're reading them at different times, but we're unpacking similar information in similar stories...It sparked the question ‘Do other people want people to talk this through?’ and I was, like, well, that exists. That's book clubs, right?”
She immediately began researching book clubs as she moved on to her second read, The Body Keeps The Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel van der Kolk. “What I found was that book clubs were not reading these types of books,” she says. “The other thing that I found was that book clubs had a lot of rules and a lot of rules don't work for me.” Nor do they work for the people India attracts as fans and clients of FYF or as friends.
Even if you’ve never engaged with a book club, you’re probably aware of their relatively rigid boundaries governing participation:
discussions every X day of the month at X time
must read chapters A through C
predetermined discussion questions
The typical restrictions are needlessly exclusive. “Like, no, my people like to read books at different times. Some people like to read three books at once. Some people like to read one book in five days. Some people like to read one book in 30 days, you know?” One particular method shouldn’t dictate the procedure for the entire group. “I don't think that wanting to read books in your own way and your own pace should stop you from being able to be a part of a bigger discussion.”
As India moved from the deep content explored in Daring Greatly by Brené Brown to the “lighter” narrative of Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women that a Movement Forgot by Mikki Kendall, the seed quickly germinated. “There was nothing light about that book for me,” she says. “Reading Mikki Kendall's story brought up so many things, and it had words for experiences that I had that I just didn't know how to articulate to someone else.” The experience compelled India to start her book club - but with much-needed inclusive twists.
“I decided that I didn't want to limit people to video conversations or voice conversations,” she says, noting that date-and-time specifics immediately exclude some people from the conversation. “I also realized that I didn't want to dictate how quickly someone needs to read something or at what point can they get into the conversation with others. I realized that I didn't want to overwhelm people.” With those concerns in mind, India structured the book club so that a new title would post to the club every other week, but participants aren’t obligated to start reading that book at that time.
Nor do folks have to finish a book to add to the discussions. To give a more tangible idea of how this structure works, India pulls back the curtain on Pause on the Play The Community. “There's conversations happening in that space about everything from boosting your brand visibility, pitching podcasts to increase the visibility for your business, getting partnership deals, building out your own awards programs, or retooling scholarships you already have for your business into awards. We have a lot of really cool things included with your membership. And I felt like the book club needed its own little hub.
“I built this out in a way where the book club is a topic, and underneath the book club, there are specific posts for each book,”. Using Alice Wong’s Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-First Century as an example, there’s a post within the hub about the book, then options for participation. The countless conversations allow members to connect with information in a different way. “And not all of these books are social justice-related or subconscious mind-related,” India adds. “Some [are] actually, just for pleasure.”
Books, Brainstorms, and Uncle Bobby’s
So, how do you get your books? The library is totally free, of course, and a great way to support your community.
If you are going to buy our suggested titles, FYF recommends purchasing from Uncle Bobbie's Coffee and Books, a Black-owned bookstore by Marc Lamont Hill. He’s a well-known activist and social justice advocate whose physical bookstore and cafe offers online shopping for those outside of Philadelphia, PA.
We chose the second option, Amazon, for its accessibility to those in various countries. Of course, we’d love for you to support your hyper-local bookstore or one operated by an underrepresented owner. The reality is, every time we choose to spend money at a particular place, we're deciding who stays open and thrives and who closes their doors.
“The second thing is, I think it's important as we're consuming content, especially really deep content,” India says, “to have a space to share and process our thoughts about what we're reading.” Sharing quotes that stand out, engaging with new insights, or asking questions that aren’t often covered in other places is why this hub exists. “Having a place to unpack all of that and to really work through it with other people who are there to support you, I think is so important. And it really is the difference between consuming and then moving on, or consuming and then integrating and becoming something different.”
In typical India fashion, this book club screws the template and charts an entirely new course. “My book club is going to be for rebellious readers. In this book club, you make the rules, basically. Like, there are no rules, not because we want to be lawless for lawless sake, but because we don't want people to feel like the only way that you can be able to share what you're learning and process is by following really specific rules that may not work for everybody.”
You’re a rebellious reader if…
you take your time with books, reading them over several weeks or months
you devour books quickly
you read one at a time
you read multiple titles at once
We’re here for all of the above! We encourage our book club members to create their own rules, their own timeline. Rules often get in the way of a book club’s best intentions.
The real purpose of our hub “is a place to process what you read with other readers, a place to get diverse perspectives on the content that you're taking in,” India explains. “The truth of the matter is, we can all read the same book, and if there's 20 of us, we will take away 20 different things.” Our book club invites people to keep the conversation going, integrating tangible actions as they go, no matter when they enter the discussion - or how.
One of the things contributing to other bland book club conversations is the reliance on pre-formatted questions. “This isn't to shit on other people's book clubs; that's not what I'm trying to do here,” India clarifies. “At the same time. I do think that when we open up the room to ask any question instead of having specific questions that we need to answer, we can deviate respectfully from bland conversations.”
Another contributing factor to blandness is the general understanding that book clubbers need to finish a title before participating. Not in our hub! We encourage our community members to hop on the discussion at any point in their reading.
“Sometimes the best time is when you hit a part in the book that it's like, ‘Oh gosh!’” India says, “and you're in the energy of that. Share stories. Ask questions. We encourage our members to tag fellow members and what they're posting post quotes. They get to make the rules. They get to be the book rebels.”
Sustainable Hobby Integration
“I share all of this with you because, as things are opening back up here in the United States,” India says, “I'm asking myself, how can I carry the hobby that I created during COVID into my life going forward?” Having created this virtual place has encouraged her to keep reading, “to know that I'm not on this reading and educational journey on my own, right? I have other people to do this with. And so do they.”
As restrictions lift, now is a great time to consider the following actions:
Explore ways to integrate pandemic-necessitated hobbies into your life going forward.
How might you adjust those hobbies for them to remain sustainable? “I've probably read about 15 to 20 books since March of 2020. Prior to that, I would read maybe two books a year,” India admits. Realistic goal-setting is key to sustainability. “I’m actually going to reduce the amount of books that I'm reading to probably one a month or less. That way, I'm actually able to take it in as I'm doing other things and not just speed-read through something.”
She also intends to practice what she preaches, setting aside time to unpack specific quotes or journaling about topics then sharing them within the book club as insights come up rather than pressuring herself to wait until she’s finished the entire book. “I think that there's immense power for me in that, of being able to do things as they come up.”
Read more books!
“There is such immense power and transformation and inspiration that can come from deep-diving into one story or topic or theme that a book can present to you,” India says. Whether you opt for a physically printed book, a digital title, or an audiobook format, you get to make your own rules regarding reading speed and engagement level! Exploring new titles, integrating discussion takeaways into your life, and allowing that integration to inspire further actions and new behaviors is what the rebellious reader’s hub is all about.
YOUR ACTIONS FOR THIS EPISODE
Purchase your next book from Uncle Bobbie's Coffee & Books (Black-Owned).
Join the book club for rebellious readers! Visit PauseOnThePlay.com/community for full details and the additional benefits of belonging to our hub of entrepreneurs and change makers connecting at the intersection of values and visibility.
We’re here to take imperfect action together, creating a global impact that extends far beyond what we sell, as we weave our beliefs into our brands.