I've been passionate about something for a few years now. I finally finished writing a book about it.
It's called NINE70, and as of this morning (when I received my copy) it's a real book you can hold — on Amazon in paperback and Kindle. Here’s a ten minute preview to listen to chapter 7
Always exciting once you can get your hands on the first copy
A few weeks ago I wrote a newsletter on whether religion is helping you or hurting you, and I told you about the personal trainer test: fifty-two sessions in a year, and if nothing measurably changed, you'd fire the trainer. A lot of you wrote back. Apparently, I wasn't the only one chewing on the idea. Thank you for your feedback.
This book is the culmination of a few hundred presentations and a few years of chewing on what value (if any) religious communities bring into our lives.
It's more than just a book
The core is the book, but I also recorded a talk that goes with each chapter. To help measure your growth, I created a free assessment that measures where you're at with your spiritual health, emails that encourage you on the 70 day journey and a reassessment at the end of it all to see what moved. The difference between those two snapshots is the whole point of the book.
What's it about?
NINE70 measures spiritual health nine ways — love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control — and gives you seventy days and five simple disciplines to move the numbers.
Why seventy days?
Because when researchers actually tracked how long a new habit takes to take root, the median was sixty-six days — not the twenty-one many of us have thought for years. Seventy days was me rounding up to make it simpler. (ok and maybe Route 66 is too iconic to borrow from)
And why measure at all?
To make the world a more wonderful place of course 🙂
But also because across sixty years of research and 811,663 people, self-reported goodness runs about two and a half times stronger than goodness anybody actually measured. We grade ourselves generously. Especially those of us who check the religious box.
There is science I share in each chapter that shows you how to move the needle on things like your patience, your discipline (will-power), and more.
The nine stories I dive into are full of people who may or may not be admirable. One married a prostitute. One takes a man's wife and arranges for her husband's death. One dragged people out of their homes. They're in here because they're like us — and somehow they grew anyway.
Listen to ten minutes of it
Every chapter comes with an audio talk in my own voice — me across the kitchen table, not me reading the audiobook version. Here's the first ten minutes of the Chapter Seven talk: the prettiest song of the last fifty years, and the worst night of King David's life.
The other eleven talks come free with the book.
I've written other books. I just never mentioned them here, because they didn't really fit between HRV and sauna protocols. But many of you have been reading my content long enough. I am learning health is more than numbers we can easily measure. You should know what else keeps me up at night – or what wakes me up in the morning.
I'm not only interested in personal health. I care about the health of a nation — specifically the one I live in. So over the last year, I wrote America's Trojan Horse and shared it quietly with a few friends. They kept telling me to share it wider, so: it's about what happens — every time, without exception — when religion and government merge, and why freedom of conscience is the one idea that has outlasted every empire that tried. It is not a left-wing book or a right-wing book, which these days is the most controversial thing a book can be.
And Love & War — perhaps the strangest thing I've written. Sci-fi meets ancient history: the oldest war there is, love versus selfishness, told the way I wish somebody had told it to me. (It exists in Spanish too, as Amor y Guerra.)
To borrow some ideas on how to flourish from my latest book – NINE70
Read something older than you — twenty minutes each day. There are benefits.
Find a time, space and place to get outside to pray, and meditate in awe and gratitude
If you take the assessment, tell me your lowest number. I'll tell you mine — it's in the book, and it wasn't the one I expected.
If you read NINE70 (or any of my books) and it does something for you, an honest review on Amazon is the single biggest thing you can do for a book. Not a kind review. An honest one. Of course kind is much appreciated.
Seventy days from today is somewhere around October 27. Imagine not just having a fresh new sense of spiritual health, but that those traits are felt by the people around you too!
-Jared
P.S. — My wife Baddie Crocker has a beautiful newsletter where she shares her perspectives on tending the land, recipes, women's health and more.
I’d love to hear from you. 👋
P.S. - This newsletter does not provide medical advice. The content, such as graphics, images, text, and all other materials, are provided for reference and educational purposes only. The content is not meant to be complete or exhaustive or to be applicable to any specific individual's medical condition.
Here are links to things that have helped me improve my health:
Whoop - Track your HRV and REM Sleep
Function Health - Optimize Your Health via 160+ BioMarkers
Here are a few topics I think you’ll love if you haven’t checked them out before:
