Good Life Project

Latest Episodes:

Bronnie Ware: Beyond the 5 Regrets of the Dying Nov 16, 2015

Show notes

In November 2009, Bronnie Ware published a short essay entitled, Regrets of the Dying.

It was a reflection on the years she worked in palliative care, taking care of people in the final days of their lives.

She had noticed that the same basic set of profound regrets kept coming up, over and over again, as those in her charge would lie waiting for the end, often sharing the deepest parts of themselves.

That short essay exploded online. It was shared, reprinted and read millions of times, leading to an international bestselling book, The Top 5 Regrets of the Dying, along with a frenzy of attention, travel and the start of a new career as a writer.

Those regrets have since been discussed and deconstructed many times. They are important reminders of what truly matters in life.

But, what about Bronnie?

Who was this Australian artist turned banker turned palliative care-worker? What led her to do such soulful work, in a field so many others could never imagine embracing? What were the deeper drivers, hidden passions, big dreams and, also, profound and dark struggles? What happened to her after the global phenomenon took hold, shaking her existence in a powerful way, both for the better and for the worse? And, what is she up to now?

I asked Bronnie these questions and more when she came to the Good Life Project studios in NYC during a monthlong trip from Australia. The conversation got very real and deeply truthful. She was incredibly generous with both her inner thoughts and beautiful lens on life.

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Attention is Reality: The Odd Thing About Pleasure and Pain Nov 11, 2015

Show notes

You know the old question, "if a tree falls in the woods and nobody is around to hear it, did it make a sound?"

What if we asked a similar question about pain, suffering, anxiety or any other "experience or emotion" that exists only in the space between our ears?

What if many of the things we experienced throughout the day, whether good or bad, were less about what was happening to us, and more about where we focused our minds "while" it was happening to us?

What if our reality was not just about circumstance or "thoughts," as is popular to offer in the world of personal development ("with our thoughts, we make our world")?

What if reality was really about attention?

In today's short and sweet GLP Riff, I make this very concrete, applying the idea to one of the most common pains out there, headaches. We talk about how shifting attention can profoundly change the way you experience pain, and potentially even eliminate it for a window of time.

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Buddhism, Bravery, Love and the Good Life Nov 09, 2015

Show notes

Lodro Rinzler is that increasingly rare Westerner who didn't find Buddhism through a later-in-life quest for answers, he was brought up in the tradition of Shambhala Buddhism and has lived its teachings since he was a child, at one point even exploring the monastic path.

That said, he's very much "of this world," deeply connected to the realities, demands, challenges and joys of life in a world that seems to be moving faster and faster and placing less and less emphasis on relationships, compassion and the deepest parts of love.

His desire to share his lens on Buddhist wisdom applied to modern life led Lodro to eventually take his seat as a teacher, penning a number of wonderful books, the latest, How to Love Yourself (and Sometimes Other People): Spiritual Advice for Modern Relationships.

He's also a co-founder of a very cool new center for meditation in New York City called MNDFL.

In today's conversation, we explore Lodro's remarkable personal journey and what it was like being the Buddhist on the block as a kid.

We also dive into some of the major ideas, practices and teachings from Buddhism, like meditation (what it is and isn't), Karma (how to really think about it), compassion and love, and discuss a bit of mythology and misunderstanding around each.

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Should You Brand Your Face or Your Work? Nov 03, 2015

Show notes

What's more important for people to know, your face or your work?

This question came up at a recent dinner with a few author/founder types.

We were talking, in particular, about whether you should have your picture on the cover of your book, or something else.

But, the conversation is really about something much bigger.

It's about how you want to bring yourself and your work to the world.

It's about how you want to become known and what you want to become known for.

One of the big awakenings for me has been that, whether you lead with your image or your "personal brand" or not, if the quality of work you're creating is remarkable, people will want to know more about the person behind the work.

That's what we're talking about on today's short and sweet GLP Riff.

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How Two Moms Built an Empire From Green Smoothies and Big Love Nov 01, 2015

Show notes

Jadah Sellner and Jen Hansard are the founders of Simple Green Smoothies, a quest-driven company that has grown into a massive global community in an astonishingly short amount of time.

They're also the co-authors the new book Simple Green Smoothies: 100+ Tasty Recipes to Lose Weight, Gain Energy, and Feel Great in Your Body.

Just a few years ago, though, they were two young moms, struggling mightily to get by, on every level.

Money was tight, they both "had" to work to help support their families. Jadah was acting in educational plays for schools and Jen was doing design work. But it just wasn't enough.

Neither found any sense of deeper purpose or sustainable income in what they were doing, so they began to hatch a plan to work together to create a community for moms.

They spent every extra minute trying to build an education website and community, but it just wasn't working. At the same time, Jadah was trying to figure out how to reclaim her health, but as a young mom, she wanted something fast and easy to start. So, she began making one simple green smoothie a day.

That one act changed her health and her life, fueling the loss of more than 25 pounds and giving her tons of energy. And, it became the trigger for a much bigger change. Wanting to share this simple solution with other moms, Jen and Jadah created an instagram account, named it Simple Green Smoothies, and began to create smoothie recipes and share them. The account exploded. People loved their images, detailed recipes and generosity. As I write this, 382,000 people follow the account.

Over the next few years, Jen and Jadah parlayed that one instagram account into a massively popular Simple Green Smoothies website, a global community that has now seen hundreds of thousands of people go through their 30-day challenge and now a new book.

They've also built a powerhouse business fueled by health and love and become successful enough to become the main financial supporters of their families. Most important, they love working together, they love what they do and they have a fierce commitment to building their company and community from a place of love.

We dive into their inspiring journey together in today's episode.

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Lewis Howes: Always Be Learning Oct 27, 2015

Show notes

Today we're featuring a very special GLP Guest Riff with Lewis Howes.

Lewis is the founder of the School of Greatness podcast and author of the new book, The School of Greatness: A Real-World Guide to Living Bigger, Loving Deeper, and Leaving a Legacy,

At various stages in his life, Lewis has been an All-American, collegiate and pro athlete, an entrepreneur focusing on business development training, a salsa dancer, a professional speaker, spokesperson, investor, podcast producer and now author.

With each new endeavor, he rises quickly to the top, even after being knocked to the ground more than a few times. Lewis wasn't just an athlete, he was one of the best in the country. He wasn't just an entrepreneur, he was the best in his category. When he set his sights on podcasting, same thing, he shot to the top.

What's fueled that ability to consistently attain greatness? In no small part, it's his obsession with learning and skill acquisition.

Always be learning!

That's what Lewis is talking about in today's special GLP Guest Riff. It's short and sweet, as all GLP Riffs are, and it's a great reminder of the power of perpetual learning and skill development.

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Tom Kelley: IDEO, Creative Confidence and Innovation Oct 21, 2015

Show notes

Tom Kelley is a partner at renowned design and innovation consultancy IDEO.

He's also a best-selling author, along with his brother, IDEO founder and Stanford d.school creator David Kelley, of a fantastic book called Creative Confidence.

Beyond that, he is an Executive Fellow at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley and the University of Tokyo. As a leading voice on innovation, Tom travels the world, speaking on how to tap the creative potential of individuals and organizations and create a culture of innovation.

During his time at IDEO, he's helped the company grow from 15 designers to more than 600 innovators, working on projects that often make a global impact and lead to wide-scale paradigm-shifts. Even as an avowed entrepreneur, when I think about whether I could work with a larger company again, IDEO pretty much tops the list of dream places. Actually, it IS the list.

In today's conversation, we take a step back in time. Tom shares how the freedom to play and experiment he had as a kid led to the way he views the world now. We talk about creativity and innovation, especially design thinking, applying the process of design to business and innovation. He and his brother, David, are often credited with helping to define and bring this methodology to the world.

We explore the power of story, both in creativity and communications. We also talk about creative culture, what's necessary for it to flourish and we dive into the cancer diagnosis that led him to collaborate with David to write a fantastic book together and how that changed them both.

If you are looking to bring more creativity and innovation into what you're doing, this is a don't miss an episode with a leading voice in the field.

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Lose the Jargon: The Truth About $10 Words Oct 20, 2015

Show notes

We do the weirdest things to make people think we're worthy of their attention, or money.

No matter what you do or where you come from, there's this little voice in most of us that just wants to be wanted. We want people to think we're worthy, we've got something really good to offer.

For many of us, part of that equation is that we want others to see us as smart. If you're building a career around being what my friend calls a smarticle particle, it's pretty important. That's cool. But, here's where things often go off the rails. And, trust me, I'm speaking from experience.

Not infrequently, that urge to be seen as smart enough, coupled with a wee bit of imposter syndrome (seriously, does anyone not have at least a touch of it?), leads us to want to say things in a way that make us sound smarter.

Where a $1 word or phrase would do, we use (and often make up) a $10 word or phrase. Because, hey, preternatural sounds smarter than weird. Proprietary Multisensory Phased Metaphor Story-Architecture Persuasion Framework (PMPMSAPF) sounds better than "tell stories that make people buy." And exponential growth-hacking sounds fancier than "grow faster with less effort." That last one, by the way, I've found myself using recently. Ugh!

Here's the deal...

Using jargon—large or sometimes even made up terms of art that don't easily describe what we're talking about on the surface—don't make us sound smart, they make us sound arrogant and inaccessible. They don't draw people in and engender trust and rapport, they push people away.

And they create an understanding gap. People don't learn anything, but they nod their heads because they don't want to admit they've got no idea what you're talking about. Then, instead of asking what you mean, they just walk away, still dumbfounded. Everyone loses.

That's what I'm talking about on today's GLP Riff, along with what to do about it.

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Owned By Your Phone? It’s Complicated. Oct 18, 2015

Show notes

Ever wonder what your mobile device is really doing to your relationships, your happiness...your life?

Today's guest, famed MIT Professor, bestselling author and researcher on how technology affects the human condition, Sherry Turkle, has been studying questions like this for decades.

In her new book, Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age, she looks at what phones and the technology that rides inside them are doing not just for us, but to us.

What she reveals is beyond scary.

Put your cell phone on the table when you're with someone else, she offers, you've just destroyed the possibility of deep conversation. Without even realizing it, everything gets superficial. You don't go deeper, because you want to be able to scratch the near-addictive phone-checking itch. And that's okay when the convo is light, but not when it gets real.

We also talk about how apps and texting are destroying empathy and solitude and making it harder and harder to actually know ourselves and develop real relationships. We explore the "I share, therefore I am" ethos and how technology is profoundly altering the dating scene. We talk about what computers and mobile devices do to classrooms and learning, seeing how some professors who at first welcomed them are now banning them and why. Turkle offers:

"Technology doesn't just change what we do, it changes who we are."

We need to understand how, then leverage it to work with, rather than against us.

In the end, Sherry isn't anti-technology, she'll tell you. She's pro-conversation.

This conversation led me to immediately change how I use my cell phone and think about the model I'm creating for my daughter. It was also a reminder of why I record these conversations, with rare exception, in-person, rather than remotely. Because it changes the conversation and the depth of the relationship.

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What If You Were Defined By Your Worst Moment? Oct 13, 2015

Show notes

We love to judge. To gossip. To belittle.

Not everyone, and not all the time, but enough for these feelings to fuel multi-billion dollar industries.

Even if we never say it out loud, we derive a certain pleasure from others' misfortune. There's even a name for the phenomenon—Schadenfreude.

We do it partly, because our brains are wired for comparison and social currency. And in part, because we're trained societally to determine our own value relative to others.

Pile on the anonymity of the screen or the page and we've become a culture that not only judges, but determines the entire worth of a human, all too often, by their worst moment.

We see it in the news cycle, in politics and Hollywood. But, we also see it in our towns, the local club, our own families and supposed friends.

What if the value of your entire existence was judged by the meanest thing you've said or thought, or the biggest mistake you've made? What would that look like? How might it make you feel?

What if, instead of reveling in the belittling of another human based on a moment, we looked through the lens of empathy and compassion? How might that change things?

That's what we're talking about on today's short and sweet GLP Riff.

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