Life Design

Javan’s contribution to our Permaculture Design Courses in Cuba has been critical for our Cuban and Canadian participants alike. His offering of a ‘Life Design’ workshop as part of the course provides students the unique and very valuable opportunity to consider how they might systemically integrate all they are learning more fully into their lives and their livelihoods – a wonderful innovation and addition to the usual PDC.”

Javan’s impact on my professional life has been critical to my success. He has a unique ability to perceive opportunities and to provide sound feedback. It’s a pleasure working with such a down-to-earth mentor and friend.

When I need someone to make sense out of chaos and despair and give me purpose and a roadmap for how to move forward, Javan is the guy. We all know what being in a funk does to productivity levels and as a small business owner, those hours, days, and even weeks spent spinning my wheels means a lot of money, which for me translates to missed leisure time and freedom. When I look at my books and see what a good day of work can bring financially, I am thankful I have a mentor like Javan to make those difficult times short, manageable, and most importantly understandable, so I can get back to doing what I love!”

Javan’s innate ability to help others cut through the mystery and confusion of their life’s purpose is incredible. His process helps others generate a business plan that integrates their individual passions and skills, then directs that focused energy towards problems in the world that they were literally born to solve. For me, Javan has been a much needed voice of reason in my life. His insights around marketing, in particular, have given me the clarity I needed to create a marketing strategy that has me spending less time herding people, and more time herding cows.

I am honoured to say that I am Javan’s longest running client. (I’ve always been a bit of a slow learner).

In this case my ‘slowness’ might have been because I was unaware that the collection of small steps towards a new direction would eventually have such impact at a core level. Like a spaceship changing course by a mm and ending up on Mars instead of the Moon.

I can best describe the totality of my experience with Javan as a slow blooming lotus.

At first I was cranky to be digging up old patterns, and laying a new foundation for what felt like an impossible fantasy. But by trusting Javan’s process, and progressively zeroing in on my life design, I started gaining a surprising momentum.

I see now that the things that are most crucial to me have come out of the rafters and taken centre stage, and the things I thought that mattered, or mattered to other people, have sloughed off.

I was very much a believer that I didn’t have time to do yoga or practice ‘less is more’, or develop a self-appointed profession based on my passions. But really that’s ridiculous, of course I have the time to do these things! What I do not have time for are the things, unnecessary commitments and distractions that take me away from my passions (as much as I love Netflix).

Javan’s patient and persistent guidance made me accountable to creating and pursuing my unique path in a way that now feels potently simple.

We called Javan after listening to Permaculture Voices podcasts about creating a Holistic Context. His ideas, depth of knowledge and candid approach resonated with us both. As parents of young kids trying to start a diverse small farm using permaculture principles, but struggling with overwhelm, lack of clarity and with our relationship, Javan seemed to be a good fit. We were in a space where planning was difficult if not impossible because of conflict. We were hoping for direction and clarity about our farming enterprises thinking that the clarity would help settle the overwhelm and the relationship issues.

From the first call, Javan gave us tools to begin strengthening our relationship so that we could work effectively together. Incredibly, we began shifting immediately as Javan helped us define and commit to a single common purpose. With Javan’s guidance, we continued to strengthen our relationship and to open the lines of communication as we began to develop our Holistic Context.

We often felt that Javan’s knowledge, skills and gifts were perfectly suited to the needs of our situation. He is highly intelligent, widely experienced, perceptive, intuitive, inspired, compassionate, and well grounded.
The result of our work together is a living document and decision making tool that we can use for any decision to create clarity, to simplify and to move forward in a mutually beneficial direction. We now have a stronger and healthier relationship with each other, our children and ourselves. We now have the tools to continue to take charge of our lives and create our own ideal lifestyle.

The time and money we invested in this process has had an incredible amount of impact on our lives, more than we could have imagined or hoped. We would highly recommend working with Javan to anyone who has a great desire to take charge of their life and embody their full potential.

Deep gratitude to you, Javan, for sharing your gifts with us.

Javan provides an immeasurably useful service; he helps find value. We found and prioritized value through dealing with Javan. The context allowed us to determine what was the most important to us. Javan strengthened our resolve to focus on those facets of our life and business through his ability to cut through the noise to discover what drives us. He brings with him a wealth of information and assortment of techniques, centred in holistic management, on how to achieve direction in your context. We found our time with Javan to be a catalyst on our way to achieving, or attempting to achieve, our goals. His incredible value comes in us finding our value. It helps that he is a wonderful being who we loved working with. Thank you Javan!

After working with Javan, I have learned more about myself then I knew before. He made me look at myself, the things around me and the people in my life, asking hard questions and digging up answers from deep inside, reflecting on thoughts, feelings and memories from past and present. It meant a hard look at the future. At times I was confused but after his phone calls and reflection, he helped me reach clarity and realise that I could build a better life not only for myself but those close to me, whether family or just those involved in my life.

Using my work with Javan I was able to quickly make a decision that saved me $22,000 in tractor costs and repairs. This work made a real difference on the farm.

It is with great thanks that I say these things as Javan helped me more then he thinks he did. For anyone looking to work with him I whole-heartedly say GO for it! It was and is well worth the time and effort.

Let’s say, you have gotten a beautiful blank canvas, and you are working away on your painting, you are working and adding all sorts of colour and texture because you know how to paint and you know exactly what you want it to be.

All of the sudden, you take a step back and you realize you have lost the plot, you have added so much stuff it is hard to tell what the initial inspiration was and it looks like a mess, no-one including yourself knows what you are trying to achieve anymore.

Javan, for us, was the voice from the back of the room, the teacher that gives you the honest truth about what he sees and hears and gives you the tools to peel off the layers of unnecessary elements that have confused the whole picture.

Working with Javan gave us a framework to make decisions with ease, confidence and clarity. We feel like we are in a safe place and the beautiful thing about it is that you can always paint a new painting!!! It makes it fun. We can keep on going back into the structure we created with Javan to make it as precise and unique as we choose. Many Thanks Javan!!!

Hey Javan, I’ve rediscovered Permaculture Voices and I’ve been on a podcast marathon, and just listened to your 3rd and 4th editions. Also watched your recent video… I want to express my enormous gratitude for the value you bring into this world, and continue to bring into my life. In particular your story about “taking two sunsets and calling in the morning”, as well as your story about the children and their recognition of regenerative activities and relationships (the activities/relationships that yield 2 units for every 1 input.) Profound insights resulting from applying this… You are a gift to this world Javan, thank you for your commitment to helping others uncover theirs. Take care Javan!