Christopher Rausch is a coach, speaker, workshop facilitator, and retreat leader whose life apprenticeship started hard. That he was able to lift himself from victim to victor is a small miracle.   Today, Christopher empowers people to accept whatever life has dished out so far, embrace change, and take action to make their lives better. He helps people live a kickass life without excuses.   He holds a Master’s Degree in Organisational Management and over the last 30 years has worked hard on his own growth and development and brings that knowledge and experience to his clients.    He also gives back to his community by mentoring at-risk kids from The Brightest Star organization and the Olive Crest Children’s Foundation.   More at www.http://christopherrausch.com/  

Problem-solving and decision-making are critical life navigation tools.    My next guest is Mike Kallet. He is the founder of Headscratchers and the the author of Think Smarter. He spent over 25 years learning to think critically as a technology executive leading teams that created award winning products and services. Now he teaches people how to use critical thinking to improve their problem solving and decisions making skills.    Mike believes everyone can learn to think better. And as he likes to say, these are not just a business skills, these are life skills. In this episode, we talk about critical thinking and how to use it every day.

My next guest is Michael Sorensen, a marketing executive who never set out to be a best-selling author, relationship coach, and personal-development junkie, but he ended up being one. While working through his own issues for over 4 years with a therapist, he hunted up every best principle and practice he could find about living a rich, full, and connected life.

He is the author of I Hear You - The surprisingly simple skill behind extraordinary relationships. This book is a non-fiction #1 best-seller on Amazon.com and it's all about validation and how it can improve every conversation you ever have.

My next guest is Dr. David Ludden. He got his PhD in cognitive psychology from the University of Iowa and has a Masters in linguistics from Ohio University. His primary academic work looks at how language is processed in the brain, and how our social world both shapes and is shaped by the language we speak.    He is the author of the textbook The Psychology of Language: An Integrated Approach and also writes the blog Talking Apes: How natural selection reprogrammed the brain for language on the Psychology Today website.   That's where I found some of his excellent articles on communication issues for couples. In this installment we talk about communication. 

Boomers were born between 1946 and 1964. They have a collective gift and a collective burden - they are going to outlive past generations by a long ways.   Dan Zeman has been an exercise physiologist for over 38 years. He has worked in the fields of health, fitness and sports medicine, has designed exercise programs for athletes from the NFL, NHL and the NBA, and worked very closely with 3 time Tour de France winner Greg LeMond.   In this installment we talk about his new book, You're Too Old To Die Young, where he outlines the new and unique issues all boomer men will face when increasing life-spans and decreasing physical activity sideswipe each other as we get older.   More about Dan at  https://www.imdanzeman.com/.  

My next guest is Dr. Gary Salyer. He helps people find real love that really lasts.   After being married and divorced twice, he set out to find what makes a relationship succeed long-term.   He found four feelings and six rights (what he calls the brain's true GPS system for love) that are key to any loving and lasting relationship.   In this episode we talk about Gary's new book, Safe to Love Again - How to release the pain of past relationships and create the love you deserve. These tools will help you navigate through the roughest seas of love.        

Larry Colton always wanted to be a baseball player. He gave it a good shot.    He holds the UC Berkley single game strikeout record of 19 batters, was a pitcher for the Philadelphia Phillies (he only pitched 2 innings), was the designated hitter for the Portland Mavericks (independent league A ball) for a few weeks and finally left baseball behind to become a writer - and a very good one.    He is the author of five books and one of them, Counting Coup, about a girls’ basketball team in Montana, was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.    I met him at a baseball coaches clinic in Gresham Oregon and he agreed to come on the show because our local senior league team is named after the Portland Mavericks. This one is just for fun.

My next guest knows what stress is.    His experiences include a dysfunctional childhood, rocky relationships, divorce, suicidal family members, director level sales and marketing roles, and teaching at UC Berkley.   His professional success ,and the stress that came with it, finally landed him in the hospital with a severe case of diabetic ketoacidosis. He was just a few hours away from being comatose. He was knocking on death's door.   Pete Alexander is the author of LIGHTEN Your Day: fast, easy, and effective stress relief for when shit happens.    We talk about some of the 100+ stress relief tools and techniques he describes in the book. You can find something that will help you for almost any stressful situation. Since no single stress relief tool works for everyone, having a large variety of options to experiment with will give you the best chance of finding the right one for you and your situation.       

In this episode I talk with A.M. Pfeffer about his first book titled Of, By, and For the Hanged Man. It's about how to thrive in a messy world.   A.M. grew up just north of New York city and in Denver Colorado. He earned his marketing degree from Indiana University's Kelley School of Business and has been in Los Angeles for the last 20 years working in the entertainment industry and running his real estate related business. He is a devoted husband and father, and a ruthless tennis player.   You can find out more about A.M at  www.ampfeffer.com

In this episode I talk with Dr. Bob Rich about his latest book - From Depression to Contentment - a self-therapy guide. Bob earned his doctorate in psychology in 1972 and has been an academic, a researcher, and an applied scientist until “retiring” the first time when he was 36 years old. But it wasn't too long until he went back to work and became a Counseling Psychologist, running a private practice for over 20 years. He was on the national executive board of the College of Counselling Psychologists for the Australian Psychological Society and also spent three years as the Director. He was the therapist other therapists sent their toughest cases to. He has written 18 books and his latest one talks about how to help get yourself out of depression and find contentment. We talk about ways you can take immediate action, tools to control it and to get rid of it — most of the time.