Good Life Project – Details, episodes & analysis

From abandoned child to internationally renowned trauma expert, Rupda shares her transformative journey of resilience and healing.

Learn powerful practices for self-belonging, embodying trust, and creating authentic community that allow you to break free from limitations and live your most fully-realized life. Rupda's inspiring story and nurturing presence are a soul-stirring reminder of your infinite capacity for growth.

You can find Rupda at: Website | Instagram | Episode Transcript

If you LOVED this episode, you’ll also love the conversations we had with Bessel van der Kolk about healing trauma through the body.

Check out our offerings & partners: 

• Join My New Writing Project: Awake at the Wheel
• Visit Our Sponsor Page For Great Resources & Discount Codes

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

With refreshing candor, renowned author Judith Viorst shares profound insights from her latest book, Making the Best of What's Left: When We're Too Old to Get the Chairs Reupholstered, inviting us into the vulnerabilities and unexpected joys of aging.

Discover practical strategies for navigating loneliness, building community, and reigniting curiosity in your 80s and beyond. Through Viorst's empathetic lens, explore what it truly means to create meaning in life's final chapters.

You can find Judith at: Website | Episode Transcript

If you LOVED this episode you’ll also love the conversations we had with Karen Walrond about befriending the experience of growing older.

Check out our offerings & partners: 

• Join My New Writing Project: Awake at the Wheel
• Visit Our Sponsor Page For Great Resources & Discount Codes

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What if the games we play reveal deeper truths about human nature and society? In this mind-expanding conversation, neuroscientist Kelly Clancy, author of Playing with Reality: How Games Have Shaped Our World explores the profound role of games and game theory in understanding ourselves and actively shaping reality itself.

Get ready to rethink what constitutes "winning" and embrace an "infinite game" philosophy focused on mutual flourishing over ego-driven conquests.

You can find Kelly at: Website | Episode Transcript

If you LOVED this episode you’ll also love the conversations we had with Nir Eyal about becoming indistractable.

Check out our offerings & partners: 

• Join My New Writing Project: Awake at the Wheel
• Visit Our Sponsor Page For Great Resources & Discount Codes

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

You can lose almost any part of your body, except one, and still be you.

What is that one exception? Your brain.

Because...

The brain is the seat of your memory and your identity.

Which is why brain injuries can be so devastating. And taking care of your brain is so incredibly important to a life well-lived.

Question is, how do you do that?

Turns out, there's a lot of "neuro-myths" floating around today. We love to spout all sorts of supposed facts about the brain. Things like, "the average person only uses 10% of their brain." Or, "you can completely rewire your brain through meditation." And, "exercise is like Miracle Grow for the brain."

To find out what's fact and what is fantasy, I sat down with today's guest, Dr. Wendy Suzuki.

Wendy is an award-winning neuroscientist and NYU professor. She runs an acclaimed research lab, teaches classes, and is the author of the new book, Happy Brain Happy Life. She is obsessed with how our brains either fuel or hold back our best lives.

But as she explains in our conversation, her dogged quest to become a leading researcher and professor came with a cost. She gave up nearly every other part of her life. A few years back, she awakened to her reality and set in motion a series of radical changes in a renewed quest to reclaim her life.

In this week's conversation, we explore her personal journey, do a bunch of myth-busting and discover how best to optimize our brains for life.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It’s not the box society puts us in that limits who we become, it’s the box we put ourselves in.

There's no secret to success. No magic bullet. No pixie dust. Success in any endeavor is about doing the work, every day and not running for cover when things get hard. Because they always will. Even when it's right.

Taking fierce, consistent action, though, is easier said than done. Especially when that action potentially exposes you to failure, or being judged or ridiculed, or cast out of a family or group or community. So our “seemingly” rational brains assume into existence all sorts of reasons not to act.

This week's Good Life Project Riff is the first in a series about the lies we tell ourselves that keep us from doing great work and living extraordinary lives. With each new offering in the series, we’ll do a bit of myth-busting and box-breaking, then offer something to do. Sometimes, multiple things.

Today, to kick off the series, we're starting with something we've all said, many, many times...

Life-sucking Lie #1: I don’t have time

Sure, there are some people for whom this claim is legit. But as you're about to discover in this week's Riff, that person is likely not you. And, not to worry, we won't leave hanging. Jonathan will also share 4 key elements to reclaiming time and turning time into an ally in your quest to live an extraordinary life.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today's episode is sponsored by Camp GLP, the ultimate summer-camp for entrepreneurs, makers and world-shakers, recently featured in USA Today!

+++

"Brand is the exhaust fume of the engine of your life."

A show of defiance at the age of 18, Nilofer Merchant packed a box, declared she was leaving home and walked out the front door. She though her departure would last an hour, it turned into a lifetime.

Since then, her fierce intellect, bundled with a relentless curiosity and drive to learn, uplift and serve has fueled an astonishing career and life. Working in some of the largest companies in technology, she became known as the "Jane Bond of innovation," finding ways to not only generate more than $18 billion in revenue for those businesses, but also rebuild teams and ventures deemed unsave-able.

She's written numerous books, spoken all over the world, taught at Stanford and even inspired millions to trade sitting for walking in her famed TED talk. In fact, this entire podcast was recorded standing up in our Manhattan studios.

Maybe more impressive than the depth of her curiosity and the quality of her ideas, though, is the size of her heart and her willingness to be real. To walk the walk of someone who is committed to inciting profound change in the world and to sharing her vulnerability and humanity along the way.

This is a conversation you will likely want to listen to a few times over and share with friends and colleagues.

Links we mention:

• Nilofer Merchant
• Adam Grant
• Tim Cook
• Heidi Roizen
• Mad Men
• Tom Peters
• Carol Dweck
• Candle Cafe
• Austin Kleon

Follow Nilofer: Website | Twitter

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

"Don't make people work to learn what you know."

Today's short and sweet Good Life Riff is about the increasing value of ease and simplicity in a world that seems designed to overwhelm and pummel.

It shared an experience I had in law school, one that revealed the power of brevity and respect in a massively stressful environment and, in turn, led to a dream outcome.

A few lines from the episode:

When you force the person who you seek to serve to be pummeled by the spray of the firehose as a precursor to receiving the true nuggets of wisdom you have to share, how receptive do you think that person becomes? Contrast that with listening deeply, thinking more deeply, taking your time and then offering pre-digested, immediately-actionable tactical strikes with less frequency.

Not only is this more helpful and respectful to the recipient, it’s also more likely to keep those in a position to judge you in a state of mind that makes them not only place a higher value on your contribution, but want more. More of what you have to share. More of what you see. More of you.

This is especially true in the world in which we live today. Because, increasingly, we live and breath into a barrage of constant connection and information. A firehose world.

How do you shine in that world?

"Be a source of value. But more important. Be a source of ease."

Enjoy the Riff, and if you're inclined, feel free to share with friends!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

"The creative act is surrendering to not knowing."

There's this scene I have etched in my mind. This week's guest, Cynthia Morris is dancing around a fire in Costa Rica, giggling mercilessly, utterly at home in her playfulness as another friend plays guitar and belts out 80s hits. In that moment, she's the person I wish I could let go enough to be on my best days. Yet, for Cynthia, it's simply who she is. Every day.

Beyond an alluring level of ease with her essence, Cynthia is also a gifted writer's coach and creativity coach, a multi-time author, both fiction and nonfiction, an international workshop facilitator and, more recently, she's taking her seat as an illustrator.

What started as her own personal process for visual note-taking as she traveled and learned turned into a form of arresting artistic expression. Her main canvas was the little-known accordion Moleskine journals. And it's led to not only a burgeoning career illustrating, but also her powerful Capture the Wow process, which she teaches in workshops around the world. Cynthia's energy and viewpoint on trusting the creative process are profound. We discuss how she found her way through her varied creative pursuits, how she crafted a fulfilling career out of them, and how she's built a very real living traveling, creating, laughing, teaching and speaking French.

This episode is for everyone who wants to be an artist but thinks they don't have it in them, or they could never make a living doing it.

Follow Cynthia:

Website | Instagram | Facebook | Twitter

"True power is our resourcefulness."

Check out our offerings & partners: 

• My New Book Sparked
• My New Podcast SPARKED
• Visit Our Sponsor Page For a Complete List of Vanity URLs & Discount Codes.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

After years of paying to wear your favorite shoes, you're getting paid to be seen in them.

After years of speaking for free and paying to travel, you're now getting paid to speak.

After years of buying your favorite meals, jewels and gear, you're getting paid to eat, wear and use them.

After years of writing for free, you're getting paid to contribute.

How did this happen? How do you go from working for "free" or even paying for the "privilege" to getting paid to do the exact same thing?

It's all about a little thing called “brand hand." It's the defining element in your ability to make the leap from paying to learn to being paid to build your own brand.

And it's what we're diving into in today's Good Life Project Riff.

Along the way, we'll bust some huge myths about what's really happening when you're working for "free." We'll come to the realization that it's never really about free versus paid, but rather cash versus non-cash compensation.

We'll dive into how and when "free" is not only okay, but smart, when it should be off the table and how to leverage this experience to make the leap from non-cash compensation to cold, hard money.

If you'd like to read the full text of this week's Riff, you can find it here.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Imagine this...A financial genius spends his life developing a complex financial model with the intention of telling you what stocks to buy and sell, and when, in order to make the most money and minimize risk.

You'd expect that model to out-perform a single rule that says something like "just split your money evenly between 20 stocks." Except, according to today's guest, Simple Rules co-author, Donald Sull, when that very experiment was run, the simple rule beat the expert every time.

As amazing as technology and sophisticated systems are, they often end up performing no better than far simpler, yet often ignored simple answers. Same holds true for life. We spend so much time looking for the fancy methodologies, systems and technologies. We assume they've got to better than something that appears so simple. So we ignore the simple and waste tons of time and money building something that makes us feel better, but doesn't beat the easy answer. And that is a huge mistake.

In this fascinating conversation, Sull draws on everything from his experience as a bouncer at a biker bar to his experience teaching entrepreneurship at Harvard and building and advising global brands to prove a simple point. With rare exception, from weight loss to wealth, simple always wins. If you've been feeling overwhelmed with complex problems, take a deep breath and listen to this episode.

Follow Don:

Website | Twitter | LinkedIn

"Willpower is a reservoir, not a stream."

Check out our offerings & partners: 

• My New Book Sparked
• My New Podcast SPARKED
• Visit Our Sponsor Page For a Complete List of Vanity URLs & Discount Codes.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.