Good Life Project || Inspiration | Motivation | Happiness | Meaning | Success

Elizabeth Lesser wants to set the record straight. The one that started all the way back with Adam and Eve. The origin story that positioned man as firstborn and favored and women as second-born and scorned. The mythology that seems to exist in nearly every faith, tradition, culture and history about the “place” of women in relationships, family, society, business, power and the world. Lesser decided it was time to do some myth-busting, some reconciliation and some reimagining about what this world, on every level, might look like if truth found its way into the narrative and power were more evenly distributed.As the co-founder of the iconic Omega Institute, recognized internationally for its workshops and conferences in wellness, spirituality, creativity, social change and women’s leadership, Elizabeth has been gathering people from all walks of life to explore the intersection between gender, power, equity and impact for more than 40 years. She has presented at TED, was named to Oprah’s Super Soul 100, and

Bryan and Shannon Miles fell in love when they were young, got married, started a family and each started building their own successful careers. But a series of unexpected experiences led them to re-evaluate what they wanted out of their lives, and the way they wanted to contribute. So they pretty much blew everything up and went out on their own, starting a new venture together with the goal of creating freedom, by building a company that helped others create freedom. Not a bad vision, right?Their passion is all about empowering small business owners and entrepreneurs to be more efficient as they achieve success in business (and in life). Having now generated more than $100M in revenue as the Co-CEO's of BELAY SOLUTIONS, a virtual staffing company, they graduated to Co-Chairs where they are stepping into a more educational role, sharing the Own Not Run philosophy that led them to build their own company. I was fascinated by their approach, since it’s always been a large part of my aspiration, too. To build s

Bruce Feiler is the author of six consecutive New York Times bestsellers, including Walking the Bible and Council of Dads, the presenter of two primetime series on PBS, and the inspiration for the COUNCIL OF DADS series on NBC. He describes himself as an experiencer and explainer. Growing up in Savannah, Georgia, for as long as he can remember, he’s loved going out into the world, creating powerful experiences, then sharing what he’s discovered, first in letters home, then eventually in books, talks, and TV. But his latest set of experiences were ones he neither sought out nor saw coming. Collectively, they dropped him to his knees, and nearly took his life. Still, fueled by a relentless curiosity, Bruce became fascinated with moments of profound transition, "lifequakes" as he calls them, where life after looks very different than life before. So he spent years traveling the country investigating this phenomenon, gathering and coding stories, and that’s led to the groundbreaking new book, Life is in the

Today is a special conversation, featuring two guests. Dr. Yusef Salaam was just fifteen years old when his life was upended after being wrongly convicted with four other boys in the “Central Park jogger” case. In 2002, after the young men spent years of their lives behind bars, their sentences were overturned. Now known as the Exonerated Five, their story has been documented in the award-winning film The Central Park Five by Ken Burns, Sarah Burns, and David McMahon and in Ava DuVernay’s acclaimed series When They See Us. Yusef is now a poet, activist, and inspirational speaker. He is the recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award from President Barack Obama, among other honors. Ibi Zoboi is a novelist and editor, born in Haiti, and raised in Brooklyn, she found a love of writing, and poetry and eventually pursued an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts, before launching a career in journalism and then fiction. Her novel American Street was a National Book Award finalist and a New York Times Notable Boo

Kate DiCamillo writes books for kids and young adults that also just happen to break open grownup’s hearts. Moving to Minnesota from Florida in her twenties, homesickness and a bitter winter helped inspire her to write Because of Winn-Dixie(https://amzn.to/39I3Vee), her first published novel, which became a runaway bestseller and earned her a Newbery Honor. Since then, Kate’s written for a wide range of ages, earning a devoted audience and heaps of accolades.Her #1 New York Times bestseller The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane was a deeply moving reflection o life, meaning and legacy, through the eyes of a toy china rabbit. The Tale of Despereaux, her Newbery Medal-winning novel, later inspired an animated adventure from Universal Pictures and Kate was named National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature for 2014–2015.She’s fiercely honest, always tells the truth, but also always leads you to a place of awakening and hope, especially in circumstances that seem destined for the opposite. And right n

Maybe you’ve seen today’s guest, Arian Moayed, on HBO’s Emmy-Award winning show, Succession, where he played Stewy. Or, in movies where h worked with legends like Bill Murray, Spike Lee. Or, on stage, where he was nominated for a TONY. Or, you might’ve caught his groundbreaking thriller, The Accidental Wolf (http://theaccidentalwolf.com/), which he wrote and directed, starring Kelli O’Hara, Laurie Metcalf, Denis O’Hare, and a cast of 36 Tony nominations. Stumbling into a love of acting, Moayed began to pursue it as a career early in life. He was met, as most actors are, with an unending parade of "you can't do that's." But, to him that just meant, make it happen on your own. "Do" your way through it. And, so he did. Which has been an enduring theme in his life.Arian's family fled Iran when he was just a little kid, taking a years-long journey that split the family between different countries, and eventually landed them just outside Chicago, where they set about building a new life in a radically different wor

In February 2006, Sir Ken Robinson (http://sirkenrobinson.com/) stepped onto the TED stage and delivered the most viewed talk in the history of TED, entitled Do Schools Kill Creativity. Viewed by than 66 million people, Sir Ken called on us to re-examine how we learn, and to encourage every kid, every person to seek out the myriad unique ways intelligence shows up in every one of our lives, then honor and build around it. To reimagine and even revolutionize the way we see each person’s gift, their brilliance, and create opportunities that nurture it, even if that means blowing up the rigid systems that serve some, but also utterly demoralize and sometimes even demonize others. He reminds us to ask not "how intelligent are you?" but rather, "how are you intelligent?"He devoted his adult life to creating and stoking the fires of a global creativity and education revolution. I had the amazing gift of sitting down with him in the studio a number of years back to not only explore his ideas, but also his perso

Donna Carpenter met Burton founder, Jake Burton Carpenter in a Southern Vermont bar on New Year’s Eve 1981. Within a year they married and became partners in business and life, working side-by-side dipping snowboards in polyurethane and answering the customer service line that rang in the bedroom. Donna quickly became a driving force, working with Jake to build Burton into the world’s leading snowboard company and also making Burton a brand of choice and employer of choice for women. In 2010, Donna stepped up to the role of President and eventually became Burton’s first female CEO.Over the last decade, Jake began to experience a series of health challenges, and in November 2019, he lost his life to a recurrence of cancer. His last words to Donna, as she shares later in our conversation, speaks so much to the way they live their lives, the relationship they had, the community they built, and the lives they created together. Earlier this year, Donna stepped out of the role of CEO to become Chair of the Burton B

Dave Evans is a Lecturer in the Product Design Program at Stanford, Management Consultant, and co-founder of iconic gaming company, Electronic Arts. Having participated in forming the corporate cultures at Apple and EA, Dave decided his best work was in helping organizations build creative environments where people could do great work and love doing it. And, maybe, along the way, answer the question, "what should I do with my life?" Helping people get traction on that question finally took Dave to Cal and Stanford and continues to be his life’s work. Bill Burnett is Executive Director of the Design Program at Stanford. He got his BS and MS in Product Design at Stanford and has worked on a wide variety of projects ranging from award-winning Apple PowerBooks to the original Hasbro Star Wars action figures. Together, they wrote New York Times bestselling book, Designing Your Life, and the follow-up, Designing Your Work Life (https://amzn.to/3hflUvz), train coaches and run workshops for individuals and organizati

As a kid, Arlan Hamilton loved music and eventually found her way into the world of live concerts, working as a tour manager. Along the way, she also published a magazine and wrote the popular Your Daily Lesbian Moment blog, that drew a large, devoted community, before pivoting into the world of venture capital where, with no connections, degree or experience, she built a fund from the ground up, while homeless.Hamilton is the Founder and Managing Partner of Backstage Capital, a venture capital fund dedicated to minimizing funding disparities in tech by investing in high-potential founders who are People of Color, women, and/or LGBT. Started from scratch in 2015, Backstage has now raised more than $10 million and invested in more than 130 startup companies led by underestimated founders. In 2018 Arlan co-founded Backstage Studio which launched four accelerator programs for underestimated founders in Detroit, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and London. Arlan was featured on the cover of Fast Company magazine in Oct

The incoming Academic Director and core faculty member at the Spirituality Mind Body Institute (SMBI), Teachers College, Columbia University, Dan Tomasulo holds a Ph.D. in psychology, MFA in writing, and a Master of Applied Positive Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania. He authors the daily column, Ask the Therapist, as well as the Learned Hopefulness blog for PsychCentral.com, and developed the Dare to be Happy experiential workshops for Kripalu. His award-winning memoir, American Snake Pit tells of the first experimental group home releasing inmates from America’s most notorious asylum, Willowbrook. His most recent book, Learned Hopefulness, The Power of Positivity To Overcome Depression (https://amzn.to/2WuXKFc), is needed now more than ever. Even more amazing, before heading into the world of psychology and writing, Dan started his career in comedy and was hailed by the legendary Improv as one of four top comics alongside people like Robin Williams and Andy Kaufman.You can find Dr. Dan Tomasulo

Marta Zaraska is a Polish-Canadian science journalist who has written everywhere from the Washington Post, and Scientific American to New Scientist, the Atlantic, Discover, and more. Her articles and books have been turned into TV programs in the US, Spain, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Russia, Bulgaria, Germany and Poland, and reprinted around the globe from Oman and Dubai to Australia and Singapore. She’s visited over 80 countries around the world and lived in six of them, reported from Rwanda, Democratic Republic of Congo, Nicaragua, India, Togo, Cameroon, and many other places and currently lives in a tiny French village with her husband and daughter. Marta’s new book, Growing Young: How Friendship, Optimism and Kindness Can Help You Live to 100 (https://amzn.to/2WkQdZs) is a research-driven case for why optimism, kindness, and strong social networks will keep us living longer than any fitness tracker or superfood. This is a conversation we need now more than ever.You can find Marta Zaraska at:Website : https:/

Al Roker is a co-anchor of NBC’s Today, an Emmy-award winning journalist, and a New York Times bestselling author. He has been at NBC for 40 years and he's the celebrated host of the annual Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. He is also a host on SiriusXM's Off the Rails and the owner of production company Al Roker Entertainment, Inc. He recently starred in Broadway's Waitress.What many people don’t know, though, is that Al is also an award-winning television producer and CEO of Al Roker Entertainment, Inc. For the past 26 years, his company has produced TV programs and digital content for network, cable, digital, and streaming channels including The Weather Channel, Science Channel, Nat Geo, Food Network, Discovery, TLC, NBC, CBS, among others, as well as commercials, and branded entertainment for a wide array of sponsors and non-profits. The recent ARE production, Side by Side, celebrated the frontline workers in NYC. Al Roker Entertainment helps brands forge deeper connections by producing social good content

As a physician with specialties in addiction medicine and psychiatry who has spent her career focusing on stigma reduction and health equity, Nzinga Harrison is uniquely positioned to help people navigate the stress of current events including from opioid crisis and COVID to racial violence and systemic injustice and move from thinking to action with the goal of improving health and society. Dr. Harrison is the Chief Medical Officer and Co-Founder of Eleanor Health, an innovative company who provides comprehensive outpatient care for individuals experiencing opioid and other substance use disorders. She also holds adjunct faculty appointments at the Morehouse School of Medicine Department of Psychiatry, is Co-Founder of Physicians for Criminal Justice Reform, Inc. and Campaign Psychiatrist for Let’s Get Mentally Fit, a public education and stigma-reduction campaign. As host of the In Recovery weekly podcast by Lemonada Media, she engages a large audience on all things addiction including drug addiction, but a

This conversation is different, it’s actually two conversations recorded four-months apart. Be sure to keep listening after our guest, Nicholas Palmquist, answers what is usually my final question. The dialogue after is powerful.Palmquist is a dancer, teacher, and choreographer who has toured the world, performed and choreographed for stage, TV, Saturday Night Live, The Tonight Show, The Tonys, and feature films. Finding his way to NYC, Nicholas focused more on choreography and began teaching packed classes at the iconic Steps on Broadway studios. There, he'd eventually bring cameras into the studio to share the experience with a global community on Instagram, and introduce a sponsorship/patronage model that allowed people from all over the world to sponsor dancers who struggled to afford his class.Then, the pandemic hit. Everything shut down, including Nicholas' work. A few weeks in, he found himself, like so many others, awakening to the realities of racial injustice, violence, privilege, and protests. This

Gay Hendricks exploded onto the human potential scene in 2009 with his mega New York Times bestselling book, The Big Leap, where he introduced the concept of the upper limit problems and the zone of genius, which he’s now re-envisioned as a spiral of genius. These ideas, along with tools to help work with them, were based on decades of clinical application and explained so much about why, even when we succeed, we tend to revert back. And it gave us a structure for understanding, then devoting ourselves to the type of work that accesses our fullest potential. Along with his wife, Katie, he’s continued to write, lead workshops around the world, often focused on mind-body practices, cultivating potential and deepening relationships, and he realized something. Without intending it, he’d figured out a methodology to cultivate what he calls conscious luck. Hendricks began codifying this idea years back but got busy with other projects until as luck would have it, just the right person would land in his world t

Starting as an unpaid intern at The Moth when it was still a local storytelling group in New York City, Lea Thau rose up to become the Executive & Creative Director, where she remained for a decade. During her time there, she co-created The Moth Podcast and The Moth Radio Hour, helping to launch the "brand" into a global phenomenon. Thau has since become a Peabody Award-winning producer and director, now hosting her own popular podcast Strangers, which won the 2015 Public Radio March Madness Contest. She is also a storytelling teacher and coach who's worked one-on-one with people like Ethan Hawke, Marc Maron, Gabriel Byrne, Darryll “DMC” McDaniels, Margaret Cho, Suzanne Vega, as well as post-graduate fellows at Harvard, inner-city kids in New York and Los Angeles. Thau also teaches storytelling for businesses like Google, Nike, Intel, and many other companies.You can find Lea Thau at:Website : http://www.storycentral.org/Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/strangerspodcast/-------------Have you disco

Joél Leon is a storyteller, performer, poet, musician, and author. Born and raised in the Bronx, from the earliest age, art, performing and music became both a refuge and a source of creative expression. He’d eventually land a spot at the famed New York High School for Performing Arts, where Joél continued to hone his theatrical chops. But driving it was always a fierce devotion to language and writing that led him to deepen into the craft and become a powerful voice and public storyteller exploring everything from parenting, joy, mental health, creativity, and performance to race, activism, and justice. Leon's work and devotion to revelation, truthtelling, and elevation have led to appearances at the legendary Apollo Theater, TED, TODAY Show, Joe's Pub, Rockwood Music Hall, Columbia University, NYU, Webster Hall, among others. You can find Joél Leon at:Website : http://mydaughtermayhave.com/Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/joelakamag/-------------Have you discovered your Sparketype yet?&n

T Kira Madden is a writer, photographer, amateur magician, and a powerful voice and editor, earning fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, Hedgebrook, Tin House, the MacDowell Colony, and Yaddo. She is the founding Editor-in-chief of No Tokens, a journal celebrating work that is "felt in the spine, run entirely by women and non-binary individuals, dedicated to featuring the words and artwork of all voices of the past, present, and future, here to keep stories alive and to make a physical object to hold in your hands." Madden's 2019 memoir, Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls, was a New York Times Editors’ Choice and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, dropping you into a wildly colorful and character-filled childhood. She also teaches at Sarah Lawrence College and we explore all of this in today’s conversation.You can find T Kira Madden at:Website: http://www.tkiramadden.com/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tkiramadden/-------------Have you discovered your Spark

Michael Gervais is a high-performance psychologist working in high-stakes environments with some of the best in the world, training the mindset skills and practices essential to pursuing and revealing one’s potential. His clients include world record holders, Olympians, internationally acclaimed artists and musicians, MVPs from every major sport and Fortune 100 CEOs. A published, peer-reviewed author and recognized speaker on optimal human performance, Dr. Gervais has been featured by NBC, ABC, FOX, CNN, ESPN, NFL Network, Red Bull TV, The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Outside Magazine, WIRED, ESPN Magazine and others.He is the co-founder of Compete to Create, (http://competetocreate.net/) a digital platform business helping people become their best through mindset training and the host of Finding Mastery, (https://findingmastery.net/) a podcast that takes you inside the rugged and high-stakes environments of those on the path of mastery to explore how they train minds to be at their very best.You can