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

Luck. It’s a source of envy, denial, opportunity, anger, frustration, creation and astonishing success. When it happens to us, we revel in it. When it happens to everyone but us, we lament it. It’s become vogue in the world of performance and popular psychology to say it does not exist. Luck, we are told, is […]The post The Truth About Luck [a 4-part formula] appeared first on Good LifeProject. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Success is not just about knowing what to do. It is about doing it.All the information in the world, the best laid plans, the clearest, most-defined, measurable and attainable goals will not deliver the outcomes, results or resolutions you want.There is something missing. In order to succeed at anything worth the effort, you also need to put in place critical changes in environment, culture, mindset and community that enable the consistent action that, over time, delivers astonishing results.I call this "Success Scaffolding." And, I've been diving into, experimenting with and refining the key elements for years, across a wide array of domains, from health and fitness to art, innovation, careers and entrepreneurship.In today's episode, instead of our usual long-form conversation with a special guest, I am doing something different. I'll be sharing what I call the 7P Success Scaffolding™ framework.Every element, every step, nothing held back. Why? Because it is that time of year when millions commit to big, new

Ever try to help someone who had absolutely no interest in being helped? It’s one of the most frustrating experiences we can have. Maybe it’s a family member or partner. Maybe it’s a close friend or colleague. Or even a customer or client. So many times, we end up banging our heads against a wall […]The post Motivation: Why You Can’t Change the One You Love [Best of] appeared first on Good LifeProject. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

On September 17, 2009, Simon Sinek stepped onto a small stage for a local gathering...and proceeded to blow away the world.The event was TEDx Puget Sound. He had no slides, no fancy presentation. Just an idea and an easel. For 18 minutes, he spoke about an awakening. Something he called "the golden circle," and the need to know your "why." The audience was captivated.But that's just the beginning...The event was filmed and posted to Youtube 11 days later. So powerful was Simon's presentation and idea that it was quickly pulled onto the main TED site. There it exploded into the world's consciousness, becoming one of the most-watched TED talks of all-time with nearly 30 million views. A book called Start With Why soon followed, becoming an instant hit.Funny thing is, Simon doesn't really care about all of that. What he does care about is the Idea. The opportunity to inspire people to wake up to the possibility in their own lives. The ability to serve from a deeper, more humble yet powerful place. And to ac

What if the “perceived imperfections, quirks or annoyances” that triggered you in other people were the very same things that, viewed differently, reminded you how blessed you were (and how great they were)? Today’s GLP Riff about a simple idea, a realization that so much of what bothers us in life is actually the very […]The post Annoyed or Blessed? It’s a Matter of Choice appeared first on Good LifeProject. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Debbie Millman is a creative, design and storytelling force of nature.Millman was drawn into the world of news and print in her early twenties, cultivating an appetite for artful communication, storytelling and news. By her early thirties, though, life had dealt a series of challenges.In quick succession, she found herself without a job or a sense of purpose, bound by her own self-loathing. Unlocking and even mining that negative cycle, though, was the key to her turnaround.She started down a path of discovery that would lead to a series of serendipitous adventures, eventually becoming a leading voice in the world of design, branding and media, and co-founding and chairing the Masters in Branding Program at the School of Visual Arts in New York. She's also hosted the acclaimed Design Matters podcast for 11 years, which was a major inspiration for our show.As Debbie shares in this conversation, you "have to create your own happiness."On this "Best Of" episode of Good Life Project, Debbie Millman gets

There’s something about working with your hands that changes you. Over the last generation, we’ve shifted largely to a “knowledge economy.” We value and compensate cognitive intelligence on a much higher scale than artistic, mechanical and physical intelligence. We elevate the importance of thoughts and ideas and diminish the role of hands and body and […]The post Finding God in the Grain appeared first on Good LifeProject. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

How did a kid who grew up on a farm in Alberta, Canada end up an elite performance coach to Olympic athletes and CEOs?This is the story of today's guest, performance savant and founder The 90 Day Year, Todd Herman.Did Todd get an advanced degree? Nope. Did he write a bestselling book? Again, no. Was he hyper-connected to high-level gatekeepers and influencers? Not unless you consider horses and other farm animals to be conduits to greatness.Then how did he end up the go-to person at the highest levels of sport and business? The answer lies in the same relentless drive that let him launch a packed consulting practice from a cold start by talking his way into speaking 68 times in 90 days.Todd is one of the most focused and productive people we've ever met. He honed his skills over nearly two decades working with many of the top performing athletes in the world, before making a pretty radical shift to online education with the creation of his accelerated productivity training, The 90 Day Year.In this week's

Calling all rule-breakers, rebels and deviants from the norm… Before you run screaming from convention, consider why the rules, the norms, the cultural guides exist in the first place. Then, ask yourself, before choosing to abandon them, if they still matter, and whether the better path to creativity, innovation and expression might be to master […]The post Attention Rule-breakers: Not So Fast. appeared first on Good LifeProject. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This week's guest, Mark Nepo, is a renowned poet, philosopher, author, master storyteller and spiritual teacher.He has appeared numerous times on Oprah, his Book of Awakening was a #1 New York Times bestseller.Mark originally appeared on the show about a year ago, where we explored his bigger life story, how cancer forever changed him, physically, psychologically and spiritually and his relationship with faith and spirituality.In this episode, we invite Mark Nepo back to explore a different topic; living in a rapidly changing world, poetry as truth and life, not just words and how we're called to live and lead. This year is also a special year as Mark has released two books, The One Life We're Given: Finding the Wisdom That Waits in Your Heart and the three-part collection of 20 years of his original poems and essays, The Way Under the Way: The Place of True Meeting. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Can you start and build a business if you’re an introvert? This was a question from our someone in our listening community. Truth told, it’s a question we get on a pretty regular basis. There is a lot of mythology about how social, forward-facing and mass-scale public you need to be in order to be […]The post Introvert Entrepreneurs: A Quieter Approach to Building Business appeared first on Good LifeProject. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Emily McDowell is a writer, illustrator, and entrepreneur who specializes in chronicling the human condition.In 2012, she left a successful career in advertising to launch her greeting card line, making cards for the relationships we actually have. Now a multimillion-dollar stationery and gift company, Emily McDowell Studio products are sold online and in nearly 2,000 stores worldwide.In 2015, Emily’s Empathy Cards, designed to help people connect around serious illness and loss, struck a nerve around the world and gave people a way into conversations that seemed brutally hard to begin and deepen into.Her first book, There Is No Good Card For This: What To Say and Do When Life Gets Scary, Awful, and Unfair To People You Love, will be released in January 2017.In today's conversation, we take a step back in time, explore the experiences in her younger life that were defining moments, revealing who she really was and how Emily began to connect with an irreverent blend of art and humor that touches so many.We exp

What if the quest to be perpetually happy was actually making us miserable? Who doesn’t want to be happy? Who doesn’t want to laugh all day? It’s a wonderful state, deserving of a powerful seat at the good life table. Happiness has become a hot subject of study over the last two decades, along with […]The post Happiness. It’s Complicated. appeared first on Good LifeProject. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Gabrielle Bernstein is the #1 New York Times best-selling author of The Universe Has Your Back and numerous other books.She's been featured on Oprah’s Super Soul Sunday as "next-generation thought leader" and leads talks, retreats and meditations for sold-out audiences around the world, embracing her role one of the voices of an emerging generation of spiritual teachers.Gabby is a also certified Kundalini yoga and meditation teacher. GShe is trained in the Emotional Freedom Technique, is a student of the metaphysical text A Course in Miracles, and practices Transcendental Meditation as taught by the David Lynch Foundation.In today's conversation, we take a step back into Gabby's personal story, exploring her relationship to faith and how feelings of isolation as a kid led to her become an organizer and leader at a young age. We dive into her year's long struggle with addiction and then work, and her more recent awakening to the role of childhood sexual trauma in her life's journey and the choices she's made.W

There’s a line in the Good Life Project Living Creed: “Life is a story, if you wouldn’t read the one you’re telling, write a different ending.” That’s what today’s short and sweet GLP Riff is all about; the role of stories in our lives. What is the story you’re telling with the way you’re living […]The post What Story Is Your Life Telling? appeared first on Good LifeProject. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Today's guest is Radhanath Swami, a Vaishnava sanyassin (a monk in a Krishna-bhakti lineage) and teacher of the devotional path of Bhakti-yoga.He is author of The Journey Home, a memoir of his search for spiritual truth. His latest book is The Journey Within: Exploring the Path of Bhakti. His teachings draw from the sacred texts of India such as The Bhagavad-gita, Srimad Bhagavatam, and Ramayana, and aim to reveal the practical application of the sacred traditions, while focusing on the shared essence which unites apparently disparate religious or spiritual paths.Born Richard Slavin, on December 7, 1950, in his teens he came to confront a deep sense of alienation from suburban Chicago life and the civil injustices of mid-century America. At the age of nineteen, while on a summer trip to Europe, his internal struggles culminated in a commitment to search for God wherever it might lead him. Meditating on the Isle of Crete, he felt a supernatural calling and the next morning set off alone to

So often, we look at life as a game to win, or a journey to get from where we are now to that magical, far-off destination where, finally, we get to live a good life. Except, it doesn’t work that way. There is no there there, there is only here now. When we look at […]The post A Good Life is a Practice, Not a Place. appeared first on Good LifeProject. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Orly Wahba is a teacher, entrepreneur, and community activist passionate about inspiring and motivating people to make the world a kinder place.Orly began her career as a middle school teacher, empowering children to embrace unity, build self-value, and use their power to influence the world for good. Trying to reckon with the death of two kids in her school, and guide her students through it in 2011, Orly founded Life Vest Inside (LVI), a non-profit organization with a mission to empower and unite the world with kindness.Through LVI, Wahba encourages people to embrace the incredible power of giving and recognize that in times of hardship, kindness, like a life vest, keeps the world afloat. LVI gained international acclaim when Orly’s award-winning film, Kindness Boomerang, went viral, receiving over 100 million views and eventually landing her a spot to speak at TED2013 on the magic of kindness.OWe got curious about where Wahba's unrelenting devotion to kindness and respect came from. What were the foun

Are you measuring your success by the wrong metric? It’s so easy to get caught up in vanity metrics. To measure how full your Good Life Buckets are with the wrong metrics. Funny enough, I got caught in this trap. And, the irony is, it was all in the process of measuring my success with […]The post Are You Measuring Your Success With the Wrong Metric? appeared first on Good LifeProject. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This week's guest, Panache Desai, is a contemporary spiritual teacher, author of Discovering Your Soul Signature, and recent guest of Oprah Winfrey on Super Soul Sunday.Desai's connection to spirit, to something bigger than him or any one being, arrived as a child. Embracing it and allowing it to move through him came easily. But, because it also came so early in life, he'd not yet developed the seasoning to be able to understand and apply this wisdom in the most constructive way.It would take years of grappling, growing and even stumbling, often in the public's eye, to begin to forge a deeper wisdom and a more capable channel that would allow him to fully step into, understand and share his gift.TThe catalyst for this rapid evolution, though, would be something Panache Desai never saw coming, his daughter's devastating diagnosis of heart failure. Hours after we spoke with Panache, he would be on a plane to the hospital to join his wife and daughter, who had just been placed on a list for a heart-tr