Good Life Project

This week, our in-depth conversation features  Cathy Burke , speaker, author, and global change maker has served as CEO of The Hunger Project Australia for nearly two decades, and has traveled extensively across the villages of Africa and South Asia in her work of ending hunger. Cathy has been profoundly changed by what she has experienced. The women and men she has met have given her th...

There are times it makes sense to throw money at a problem, and times when that's not only the worst thing you can do, it's also the least effective. When we think about performing better, whether it's at work, in sport, even relationships, we often focus first on the things that are easiest to "tweak." Without fail, those things are less about the "core of the matter" and more about 'optimizing t...

Today's  Good Life Project Roundtable™ features guests-in-residence  Emiliya Zhivotovskaya , MAPP and and  Bob Gower . Emiliya is a leading voice in the world of positive psychology  and the science of flourishing, and is the founder of the Certificate in Applied Positive Psychology program, which is the largest in the world. In a past life, she was a party...

Today’s guest, Eric Zimmer, is the host of the wonderful The One You Feed podcast. Growing up in Ohio, his life took a hard turn and began to spin out of control. He eventually found himself addicted to heroin and alcohol, living in a van and struggling to make sense of the world. After years living in an ever-darkening place, though, he was able to tap into a hidden well of strength, get help, ge...

This week's Good Life Project Riff is a reply to a question from one of our wonderful listeners. You've spent your whole life working at something that pays the bills, something that gives you time to be with family. Life, on the whole, is pretty good. But the thing you're doing to put food on the table and a roof over your head is emptying you out. You'd love to wake up feeling like the way you c...

Today's  Good Life Project Roundtable™ features guests-in-residence  Emiliya Zhivotovskaya , MAPP and and  Bob Gower . Emiliya is a leading voice in the world of positive psychology  and the science of flourishing, and is the founder of the Certificate in Applied Positive Psychology program, which is the largest in the world. In a past life she was a party e...

For most of us, dealing with change is tough. We're wired to avoid wading into the abyss where we don't know how things are going to end. Even tougher, though, is leading others through change. Today's guests, Nancy Duarte and Patti Sanchez know this. Nancy is the co-founder of her eponymous firm, Duarte , the top presentation design firm in the world. Patti is the Chief Strategy Officer, and a li...

There's a somewhat ironic relationship between willpower and thinking. They don't play nicely with each other. The more you tax your brain with what we'd call a "cognitive load," the more your ability to regulate your behaviors craters. So, if you're working on a complex problem under deadline or trying to innovate or create, there's a good chance that, while you're in that hyper-thinking, innovat...

Today's episode is part 3 of our latest experiment, a new show format we're calling Good Life Project Roundtable™. What is it? A new weekly show that won't replace, but will be added to our long-form conversations and short riffs. Two "guests-in-residence" and I will be hanging out for the better part of a month, usually 3 weeks. This really lets you get to know them and benefit from their deep in...

What if you could take an idea and turn it into a website with more than 12 million visitors a month and a powerful global community? That's exactly what today’s guest, Jason Wachob , did. He is the founder of  Mind Body Green , one the web's top wellness websites, featuring thousands of articles, a growing catalog of courses, contributors that include many of the top voices in medicine,...

I don’t like following, never have. Other peoples' rules and procedures and constraints and processes often don't sit quite right with me. I prefer to take my own path, follow my own rules. It’s why I was the “Lemonade Stand Kid” in my neighborhood—I wanted my own money, own responsibility. It's why I've been an entrepreneur the better part of my adult life. I enjoy figuring things out on my own,...

Today's episode is part 2 of our latest experiment, a new show format we're calling Good Life Project Roundtable™. What is it? A new weekly show that won't replace, but will be added to our long-form conversations and short riffs. Two "guests-in-residence" and I will be hanging out for the better part of a month, usually 3 or 4 weeks. This really lets you get to know them and benefit from their de...

Originals are the non-conformists who drive creativity and change forward—the ones who help us progress as both independent cultures and a unified species. They're Steve Jobs' "crazy ones." Yet in spite of this, humanity has always had a fascinatingly dysfunctional relationship with originality—we simultaneously venerate and scorn it, particularly in the workplace. Originals may eventually come to...

Every large scale creative endeavor, from writing a book to building a body of work, creating a collection or a company, is made up of dozens, maybe even hundreds or even thousands of smaller scale benchmarks, along with the "pushes" it takes to hit each. Every time you hit a benchmark, it feels great. You get to ease off the push and check a box that takes you one step closer to your ultimate que...

Today's episode is our latest experiment, a new show format we're calling Good Life Project Roundtable™. What is it? A new weekly show that won't replace, but will be added to our long-form conversations and short riffs. Two "guests-in-residence" and I will be hanging out for the better part of a month, usually 3 or 4 weeks. This really lets you get to know them and benefit from their deep interes...

Imagine you're on stage, charged with holding the attention of a thousand people. Knowing that, as soon as you stop talking the free cocktails begin. Your job is to keep the audience rapt for a solid 60-minutes. It's you against the taunt of free partying. That's often the speaker's worst nightmare. But, this week's guest,  Jon Acuff , loves those moments. A New York Times bestselling author...

Here’s a great question from one of our listeners, David: If your work is truly cutting edge, how do you effectively market if people don’t even have the distinctions yet to “get it,” and you need to get their attention AND it takes a longer conversation to really open it up? The art of conveying […]The post Conveying the Cool: How to Sell an Idea That’s Ahead of it’s Time appeared first on Good L...

Imagine you're an actor. You work your entire life to generate a magic moment. A call, offering you the role that could open the door to your dreams. But, there is a cost. The gig will require you to cancel the trip of a lifetime with the one person in the world who leaves you breathless. And, on a deeper level, it represents a choice you've vowed not to make, picking craft over love. What would y...

Last week, Jonathan shared a GLP Riff about how he prioritizes major projects. He talked about his move away from "batching" tasks and parallel creation to taking a longer view and adopting a  Serial Creation approach to getting big projects done better, faster and more humanely. Apparently, that spurred a lot of conversation. And, it led to a lot of questions, one of which was... With betwee...

Today’s guest,  Elena Brower , dedicated her life to the practice and teaching of yoga nearly 20 years ago. She rose to acclaim, becoming known first as a wonderful teacher on the New York yoga scene, and then a teacher of teachers on a larger stage. But she also had a secret. Actually, not so much a secret as an addiction. And there came a time where she felt she not only had to get sober, b...

The process of creation breathes me. Always has, always will. I wake up every day thinking about what I am going to create, from business to art and health to relationships. The bigger challenge for me has never been about having enough ideas, it's been about process. How do I get the most important things done AND pursue my creative quests in a way that both lets me create my best work and feel g...

Imagine a career...no…Imagine a life where you travel the world earning your living by taking jaw-dropping photos of some of the most astounding athletes, action-sports, and breathtaking backdrops the planet has to offer. Sound too good to be true?—it’s not—this is the life of award-winning photographer Chase Jarvis ...but it almost wasn’t, nor is it where he's resting. Chase started dow...

“No.” It’s such a simple word, and yet… massively impactful. Too often we find ourselves standing toe to toe with No —challenging it as an unwarranted slight, or an underserved rejection. My question is— why? No isn’t about passing judgement, it isn’t about demeaning your worth—it’s about communicating “X” is not the best possible fit for the promised outcome of “Y”. At Good Life Project, we use a...

Imagine yourself as a child uprooted from your home, and bouncing from nation to nation as a paperless refugee… Envision the fear of being unexpectedly foreign in lands when the customs are as alien as the language being spoken… What would you do? Would you follow your dreams and thrive, or merely play it safe and survive? These were the questions facing Maria Konnikova , an author and psychologis...

If you ask someone who is working on turning an idea into a business what they call themselves, a likely answer these days is "startup founder." If you'd asked that same question a generation ago, you'd have probably heard "entrepreneur" or "business person." The difference isn't just about semantics or generational change. It's about a profound shift in both the mindset of entrepreneurship, and t...