Work Life Play with Aaron McHugh

I'll be the first to admit. I can be easily distracted. Ping, blue dot, check email, etc. Nir Eyal named my interference as pain management. "Unless we deal with the root causes of our distraction, we'll continue to find ways to distract ourselves. Simply put, the drive to relieve discomfort is the root cause of all our behavior." I invite you to put aside your biases and assumptions about distrac...

My guest today on Work Life Play is Caitlin Landesberg, founder and CEO of Sufferfest Beer Company, for those who believe in earning their beer. Caitlin Landesberg is an Athlete, long-distance trail runner, and is relentlessly curious. We talk about living fully, pursuing wormholes with curiosity and abandoning demands for outcomes. Her disarming charm, tech-startup roots tenacity kneaded the gosp...

My guest today is Canadian Andrew Jensen , PGA pro tour golfer and avid spokesman for the pitfalls and hope for those of us who struggle with depression and anxiety. "I turned pro and embarked on just this lonely, isolated life and isolation is not good for the depressed brain." Rich, earnest and real. I know you'll enjoy his story today. 

In 2018, I interviewed Bryan Falchuk, author of Do a Day: How to Live a Better Life Everyday. What struck me about Bryan was how his lowest-life moment, became his redefining inspiration. Here's what he had to say, "I walked into our room and my wife's in bed, my son's standing there and he's looking at his mother who's dying in front of his eyes and he turns and looks at me and it all smacked me...

What is the Cult of Average? Today, my friend and guest Tom Davis liberates our thinking by guiding us to a values-based operating system for our lives. A 'pay the rent' lifestyle is one that is based on living life for other people. It's about paying the rent, paying my bills, going to my job, doing what everybody else tells me. What happens is, slowly but surely, I start to erode away. I start t...

Usually, I wouldn't write an introduction to a podcast episode that I am the "guest" or the speaker. But hey, this is the best talk I've ever given at my new book launch party on February 1st, Fire Your Boss: Discover Work Your Love Without Quitting Your Job , What makes that accurate? Ninety of some of my favorite humans on the planet were in the room transferred to me through osmosis, and I gain...

Alastair Humphreys is unusual. He cycled around the world (46,000 miles) and rowed across the Atlantic Ocean unsupported. Those feats are unusual, but more accessible for the commoner are his microadventures, short, local, burts of curious wanderings out your front door. I'd pair beautiful and unusual together to give a crisper coupling of his leadership invitation to each of us "Live Adventurousl...

Peb Jackson is uncommonly attracted to risk and survival. Today at age 75 it remains true-it's in his bones. We talk about learning to empty yourself, living an adventurous life of the heart and in wild places where blank spots on the map still exist. 

Leith McHugh , my lovely wife of 26 years, is in the house today on the Work Life Play podcast. She's up to some amazing things in the world. We talk about "How McHugh's Roll" and the importance of inviting our children into our family ethos. She shares about her LEITH brand, and the coaching work she brings to women focused on identity and story.

My guest today on Work Life Play is Ultrarunner, Author, mom, and Outside contributing editor Katie Arnold . Katie's book, Running Home serves as the backdrop for our conversation, " A memoir about grief, motherhood, adventure, and finding your stride" .  

Today. Closing the gap between where I was and where I am. Choices. Tradeoffs. Grace. Reboot. Start. Rest. Pray. Reflect. Celebrate. My book goes live today into the world. A decade ago, I sat on my back patio and wrote the first draft of this liberating idea for Firing My Boss. My life changed that day. Not all at once, but it sparked the beginning of a journey. I remember deciding to make that m...

Wake up to your life. It's time to make a ruckus at work. Hi friends, new and old, after 10 years of soulful wrestle, iteration and innovation, I'm excited to announce the release of my new book. Fire your boss-discovering work you love without quitting your job is about becoming wholehearted. Yes it's about work, and it's about living true in all that you create in the world. Check it out anywher...

The Far Green Country , a documentary  film  about RV living in the national parks, marriage, and parenting. Eli Pyke shares his story of he and his family living in an RV for a year as they reset their lives.

Our world is fast-paced, being everything to everyone at all times (except to ourselves), and the demands of our modern world aren't sustainable if we don't learn to listen to our body, mind, and spirit to excel in our life, work and relationships. Here is Jen Fisher's story of burning out and today leads as the Managing Director of Well-Being at Deloitte consulting.

Today's interview is with Blaine and Sam Eldredge with And Son's Magazine. We talk about their eight-year dream of creating a print magazine, the power of transformation v.s. entertainment, masculinity as a lens by which we can view everything else, in defense of millennials, the joy of words, vulnerability and going first, the temptation to quit, brotherhood and hearing God's voice.

Which relationships bring you life? Do you know which relationships drain your energy? Begin by mapping your relationships across your work and life to gain insight about where you need to invest your time and energy. 

What do you value most, not your stuff, but deeper than the stuff you own?

Today's podcast is from session #1 from Reboot Live last October 2017. Last year, we held two Reboot Experience Workshop and took people on an inward journey to answer big questions like what do you want in life? And How do I find my path to a well-lived joyful life?

What if you listened to the voice of light and easy? What would it tell you to do? What truth would it remind you of? Maybe things are about to go great for you in your career, with your relationships and in that new thing you want to try. Lean in and listen.

Mark Evans carves into leather hides to reveal light from darkness. As a kid, he started drawing and his Archimedes moment came when a drop of blood stained his new Christmas present, a leather jacket. He pulled out his boyhood knives to scratch off the blood which revealed this discovery of a now eighteen year career. To tell his story, we drove our JoyBus to an empty dirt road and retraced his l...

Jeremy Stewart and I talked flip flops, political science, pediatric cancer and the power of why. Learn from his wisdom in this episode.  Wanting to do more than just create a great flip flop and stunned to learn that pediatric cancer is the most fatal disease among American children – more fatal than almost all other childhood diseases combined – Hari Mari set out to help.

Hope must be cared for, nurtured and protected. Hope stays alive when we steward even the smallest glimpse or the thinnest thread. An action is required for transformation to happen. Talking about, thinking about, and dreaming about change isn't enough. Doing something and trying something different creates possibility. We are not failures. We fall short, we make mistakes, and we can screw stuff u...

My savings account just hit zero. We've bet our life on what we believe, and I'd like to shoot straight with you about what its been like the last seven months. In October, I left my cushy $six figure career. It was intellectually challenging, but it wasn't soulfully and purposefully satisfying. With the support of my wife, family and close friends, it was time to leap. My big life experiment- the...

The future is difficult to forecast, but our next brave step is the one thing we can do. Where are you suppressing the parts of you that appear to not fit in your world today? Where can you experiment with expressing the fullest version of you? Where do you feel that you don't fit in?  Come join me on an adventure trip in June. More details here. 

Today's episode was previously recorded at our Reboot Live event back in October, 2017. In 2015, we sold everything we owned, pushed pause on our life and started over. Not everyone needs to jettison their life like we did. But everyone can benefit from the lessons we've learned from taking the road less traveled. Read our full story here . As your guides, we will take you on a journey to help you...