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

So, what if being fiercely self-reliant and individualistic was actually a terrible thing? I know, I know, sounds silly. I mean isn’t that the very thing we’re told to strive for from the youngest age? And, especially, in our culture now? Problem is, living in a me-first or me-over-you world is not only destroying our personal relationships, it’s destroying us, our states of mind, and even physical wellbeing. And, intimacy, deep connectedness, even reliance on and elevating others just might be the solution to much of what ails us.That idea may sound strange at first, it’s hard to argue that the rise of a wildly individualistic society has also gone hand-in-hand with the destruction of social bonds, friendship, mental health and nearly every marker of health in communities as well. As humans, we are all designed to be in relationship with others to experience the positive effects of connectedness, when that breaks down, so do we. And today's guest, Terry Real is an internationally recognized family thera

My guest today, Danica Roem, went from fronting a Death Metal band by night while building a career as an accomplished journalist by day, to being the first person to be elected and serve in any U.S. state legislature while openly transgender.When you hear that story, you might think, “wow, that’s amazing, but I don’t really relate.” Not so fast. When you zoom the lens out, Danica’s story is really about the quest to live as the truest expression of yourself, to not stifle or deny who you are, and to find a sense of home for all parts of you within a community. Which is something nearly all of us often struggle with. I know I do. This is why I was so excited to be in conversation with Danica Roem. My chat with Danica takes us back to her teenage years, where she first found her community in (what may sound surprising now, but won’t later) metal music. We talk about the struggles of masking the authentic parts of yourself in order to fit in, and how she’s been able to use her experiences to relate with pe

Imagine being a kid who loved music, who’d been brought up with jazz literally in his blood, graduating college, then, instead of heading into a “responsible” adult job like all your friends, opening a record store in the heart of Seattle at a time where the neighborhood musicians, the ones who’d hang out all day and talk about all-things-music, also just happened to be budding icons who’d go one to become scions in the industry, forming bands like Pearl Jam, Nirvana, Sound Garden, and so many others. This is just one season in the extraordinary life and career of today’s guest, Nabil Ayers.Now, years into a powerhouse career in music, he heads-up of one of the most iconic labels in the business, one, in fact, he fell in love with as a young kid. Growing up mixed-race, Jewish and Black, in NYC in the eighties, with a father who was a legendary jazz musician, but also entirely absent from his life, Nabil’s mom and uncle made sure to surround him with music, musicians and other quirky characters. And, that seed

With everything going on in the world recently, we've likely all thought to ourselves at some point, "Is humanity lost?" You are not alone if the news makes you feel like everything is hopeless, and it's fair to wonder if collective and individual hope in empathy, compassion, and humanity will ever be restored. As we move forward past the darkest days of the COVID-19 outbreak, many people are still searching for hope, inspiration, and answers to some big questions like: How do you regain access to empathy? Or what truly matters in life in the end? And I can't think of a better person to explore these questions with than my guest today, Rabbi Steve Leder. He is a graduate of Northwestern University and was ordained at Hebrew Union College, and he currently serves as the Senior Rabbi of Wilshire Boulevard Temple in Los Angeles. He's also a writer and the author of several critically acclaimed books, including his best-seller, More Beautiful Than Before: How Suffering Transforms Us, and his latest

When we consider the qualities and traits passed down throughout our family tree, we may think of the curly hair we share with a sibling or a natural talent like singing. But what about the not-so-pleasant traits, beliefs, or patterns that appear generation after generation that are hard to shake? Do we keep making these same old mistakes just because "old patterns die hard," as they say? Or will you be the one who takes a new path, no matter how hard or long it takes?Jennifer Grey is no stranger to taking the road less traveled. From her most visible standout moments, like her iconic role as the star of the 1987 film Dirty Dancing, to her personal journey to self-acceptance, Grey has found her way back to herself one step at a time. And you'll hear today that she's just as forthcoming about her journey as she is in her recently released memoir Out of the Corner.In this transparent conversation with her, we explore how Grey views and juggles her family's history and culture, her identity, and her role as

When Chef Irene Li opened a food truck, mei mei, with her siblings, hoping to have fun together, build something cool, and reimagine Chinese comfort cuisine with a playful, modern twist, what happened next took everyone by surprise. Mei Mei exploded, becoming the talk of the town within months. They soon found themselves looking for space and opening a full-service restaurant that was perpetually abuzz. The restaurant was a big success. But, beyond the chance to do something cool with her brother and sister, and push the culinary envelope, there was something else going on.Growing up, Irene’s grandparents immigrated to the US and slowly built up their own restaurants. While her brother had been in fine dining for years, she’d developed a deep passion not just for food, but also for the environment, viewing agriculture, the food and restaurant industry as a potential vehicle to change people’s lives, to completely upend the way restaurants run, and weave in a powerful thru line of social justice, advocacy and

If you google the word “Trauma” you’ll find the top search results arrive in some form of the question “What is trauma?” This then begs the next question: what are we really talking about when we’re talking about trauma? In today’s episode, Dr. Paul Conti and I unpack what trauma is, what it means to have experienced trauma, and what makes trauma so hard to resolve. What I found so fascinating in this conversation was the idea that there are 4 types of trauma we can experience and how, if we can create safe spaces to talk about our trauma and support one another, we can more readily recognize who we were before the trauma occurred and who we want to be after. A graduate of Stanford University School of Medicine, Paul completed his psychiatry training at Stanford and Harvard. Now living in Portland, OR and founding his own clinic, he serves patients and clients throughout the United States and internationally, including the executive leadership of large corporations. He is the author of TRAUMA: The Invisi

Have you ever asked yourself: “Who am I? What do I stand for?” Many of us do ask these questions and when we do, it can be a catalyst that sets us on an alternative path - even though we know it might disappoint those around us. Yet, all too often, even when our inner knowing is forcing us to pay attention, life can pull us in the direction of expectations versus desire. We hesitate to follow our curiosity for fear we might let down our family and loved ones. As a result, we stay on course towards what “we’re supposed to do”. But it doesn’t always have to be this way. Sometimes choosing the new path is just what we need to honor our voice, culture and family. This is why I’m excited to share this conversation with Connie Lim, whose artist name is MILCK for this Best Of Conversation. MILCK rose to widespread attention after a video of an a capella performance of her song "Quiet" on the street at the 2017 Women's March exploded into the public’s consciousness going viral and becoming embraced as an anthem for t

What if, instead of trying to fit in and be accepted, you embraced and harnessed the power of your inner outlier? How could you leverage different experiences and environments to turn the parts of you that no one else can replicate from a potential source of exclusion into a superpower and differentiator? In today’s episode with my guest, Julian Gilliam, who goes by the artist name, LOGIK, we explore these ideas in the context of LOGIK’s upbringing, living in 9 different places and having to constantly adapt, to his work as both a change-maker and creative innovator in the world of advertising and media, a Creative Director for Google, as an artist and painter who creates stunning lifesize works, and has recently been making giant waves in the world of art, community, Web3, and NFTs.And all the while, he’s done it by immersing himself in different experiences and cultures, including Japanese art and language, studying the dynamics and often unspoken social context, then rather than trying to fit in, brin

We’re all in a process of reimagining when it comes to work, looking at the changes we’ve made over the last few years, and trying to figure out what we’ll keep, what we’ll let go of, and how else we might want to change the way we work in order to feel the way we want to feel. And, what so many are realizing is that we’ve got more power to reimagine every aspect of work now than we’ve ever had before. Question is, what do we do with that power? And what do we do with this moment of openness to new ways of working and living?These questions are what we dive into with today’s guest, Anne Helen Peterson. Anne is a journalist whose wise, often irreverent, funny, and provocative writing appeared in Buzzfeed, the New York Times and more, before leaving the mainstream to become the voice behind the wildly-popular newsletter, Culture Study. She’s also the author of four books, most recently Out of the Office: The Big Problem and Bigger Promise of Working From Home (co-written with Charlie Warzel) and Can't Even: How

I’ve come to believe that the quality and richness of our lives is, in no small part, determined by the depth and quality of our attention. If it’s massively distracted, perpetually spinning out, and focused on negativity, that will also largely be the state of our lives, regardless of the actual objective circumstance of our lives. And, that is where we go in a powerful way with my guest today, Johann Hari. Johann is a writer and journalist, whose work appears in everywhere from the New York Times, Le Monde, to The Guardian and many other newspapers and media outlets. His TED talks and NowThis viral video have been viewed almost 100 million times, and his work has been praised by a broad range of people, from Oprah Winfrey to Noam Chomsky. He was the Executive Producer of the Oscar-nominated film “The United States vs Billie Holiday” and of a forthcoming eight-part TV series starring Samuel L Jackson. And following an incident with his Godson a few years back, he decided to turn his attention to the top

What do you think of when you hear the word influence? Or the phrase, “be an influencer?” Maybe you think about the ability to affect another person, to have influence over them. Or, to persuade them to adopt an idea, point of view or opinion. Or, maybe take an action or commit to something, or buy something. Whether we’re comfortable with the notion of influence or persuasion or not, we’re all immersed in overlapping processes of subtle and not-so-subtle influence all day, every day. And to better understand how to both cultivate our own skills and tools, and also become more aware of the scripts that are running all around us, I’m so excited to be able to sit down with my friend, Dr. Zoe Chance. Zoe is a writer, teacher, researcher, and climate philanthropist obsessed with the topic of interpersonal influence. She earned her doctorate in behavioral science from Harvard and now teaches “Mastering Influence and Persuasion,” the most popular course at Yale School of Management. And, her framework for beha

Is energy medicine real? What about Ayurveda? What about Western/modern medicine, what’s right and not so right about it? Does the gender of a patient make a difference in how they’re treated, or in their health outcomes? What about the role of plants, herbs, and intuition? These are all questions that have come up in conversations over the years as I’ve had the incredible opportunity to sit down with women who are leading voices and often voices of change in various approaches to medicine and wellbeing. And, in today’s episode, we’ve curated key elements from four of those conversations to share and potentially pull back the curtain on so many myths, misunderstandings and confusion and plant some seeds to explore a different lens and maybe even some different modalities when it comes to exploring your own physical, mental, and energetic wellbeing. If you LOVED this episode:You can find Jill at: Website | InstagramYou can find Avanti at: Website | InstagramYou can find Aviva at: Website | InstagramYou ca

My guest today, Blair Imani, grew up in a house where sitting quiet in the face of any level of injustice was just not an option. Whether it was advocating for the needs of a sibling or standing up to right a wrong in her community, her parents set a powerful example and invited Blair to always rise to the challenge. And that’s exactly what she’s done. But, along the way, Blair also discovered, there are different ways to make a difference, and we each need to figure out how to take up the mantle of change, while also honoring our unique circumstances and needs, and that includes acknowledging our own, very personal psychological and physical wellbeing. Building on this, Blair transitioned from organizing and activism to focusing on education, but in a way only she could do - harnessing the power, reach, interactivity and visual impact of social media by creating short, punchy, informative and entertaining bursts of wisdom and inspiration she calls her Smarter in Seconds series, which, at this point

We all breathe. It just happens. But, what if the way you breathe made a massive difference in everything from your risk for debilitating illness to your depth and quality of sleep, energy, creativity, and performance? Turns out, it does. Breathing is maybe the single most effective and accessible switch we can throw to radically transform and take control of the way we feel and live. And, by the way, when we leave it chance - as most of us do - our breathing often defaults into a mode that sends us spiraling into poor physical and mental health, and underperformance in all parts of life. Which is why I was so excited to sit down with James Nestor for this Best Of conversation.James is a science writer who has written for Outside, Scientific American, The Atlantic, Dwell, The New York Times, and more. His award-winning book Deep: Freediving, Renegade Science, and What the Ocean Tells Us About Ourselves was a revelation and, in no small part, kicked off this science writer’s fascination with the breath. That l

When was the last time you felt truly at peace? Relaxed, physically and emotionally at ease? How can you downregulate your mind and body and reclaim control over everything from your current state of mind to your sleep, risk of illness and even how fast or slow you age? What if you had so much more control over these than you imagined, no matter what seemingly breathless circumstance swirls around you? Turns out, we do, and it’s all about understanding our nervous system and how to actively bring ourselves into what my guest today, Professor Sara Mednick, calls the downstate. Sara is a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of California, Irvine and author of the powerful new book, The Power of the Downstate: Recharge Your Life Using Your Body's Own Restorative Systems. She is passionate about understanding how the brain works through her research into sleep and the autonomic nervous system. In fact, her seven-bedroom sleep lab works literally around the clock to discover methods for boosting co

I’m fascinated by the idea of snap decisions, how some can lead to amazing outcomes, and others can destroy lives. What you so often find is that nothing actually happens in a moment, there is no real snap, but rather a series of experiences leading up to it, often years in the making, were as much authors of the moment as the instance itself. And, sometimes, when those moments lead to something you’ll regret for a lifetime, you get to the next question - what is recoverable - redeemable - how do you make that happen, and who gets to write the story of your reclamation? This is the powerful thru line of my conversation with Shaka Senghor, New York Times bestselling author of Writing My Wrongs: Life, Death, and Redemption in an American Prison. A leading voice on criminal justice reform, tech investor, head of Diversity, Equality & Inclusion at TripActions, former MIT Media Lab Director’s Fellow, and member of Oprah Winfrey’s SuperSoul 100, he took another young man’s life at the age of 19, served the

I still remember the first time I heard Joan Osborne’s iconic song, One of Us. I was 29, a couple of years into my career as a federal enforcement attorney with the SEC, and not loving my time in the industry. Asking big questions, when I turn on the radio and hear Joan’s soulful blues voice, asking “what if God was one of us?” It stopped me in my tracks. That was 1995, and that song still has the same effect on me. It also changed the trajectory of Osborne’s career and life in ways that still affect her.Joan was a fixture in the downtown New York music scene in the 90s. But when her debut album, RELISH, came out and One of Us took off, it exploded her into music super-stardom, led to 7 Grammy nominations, and fueled what has become a decades-long career populated by world tours, many more albums, a deepening commitment to weaving together music, advocacy, and activism, and collaborations with everyone from the Funk Brothers to Stevie Wonder, The Grateful Dead, Pavoratti, Bob Dylan and so many more. And, what

Anxiety, even saying the word makes me a bit anxious. But, what if there was a way to unwind it and come back to calm that was counterintuitively simple. And, what if a lot of the popular thoughts around anxiety and how to deal with it today were wrong? That’s what we’re talking about today with my guest, Dr. Jud Brewer. He’s a New York Times best-selling author, neuroscientist, addiction psychiatrist, and thought leader in the field of habit change. Jud is also the director of research and innovation at Brown University’s Mindfulness Center, where he serves as an associate professor of Behavioral and Social Sciences in the School of Public Health. He is the executive medical director of behavioral health at Sharecare Inc. and a research affiliate at MIT. And, he’s developed and tested novel mindfulness programs for habit change, including treatments for smoking, emotional eating, and, yes, anxiety. He is the author of Unwinding Anxiety: New Science Shows How to Break the Cycles of Worry and Fear to Heal

Ever wonder why a certain sad song or even a few bars of just the right melancholy music will stop you in your tracks and maybe even move you to tears? Turns out, you’re not alone. My guest today, Susan Cain, has spent years researching why certain experiences - ones that connect us to sadness, longing, or sorrow - move us so deeply, and actually add profoundly to our lives. Susan’s first book, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in A World That Can’t Stop Talking, has been translated into 40 languages, spent seven years on the New York Times bestseller list, and was named the #1 best book of the year by Fast Company magazine, which also named Susan one of the Most Creative People in Business. Susan and I have been friends since before she launched her quiet revolution, I’ve always appreciated her deep wisdom, generosity, kindness, and a level of introspection, curiosity, and contemplative thought that’s so rare these days. And, lucky for all of us, she’s been focusing those observational and intellectual sup