Good Life Project

This week’s episode is a replay of a powerful conversation I had with famed author and grounded theory researcher Brene Brown.

Brene and I met a few years back while speaking at a conference together. We clicked immediately, grabbed lunch and laughed a lot. I asked her to come share a bit of her journey with our community. The conversation that unfolded left me changed.

Brene’s fascination with what she calls wholehearted living eventually led her to explore how we dance with shame and vulnerability. She wrote about this in her blockbuster book, Daring Greatly. I asked her to join me on Good Life Project in October 2012 and the conversation that unfolded moved us both to tears as various points. Brene was so beautifully real, raw, candid and wise.

A few gems -

"Being courageous is more important to me, as a value, than succeeding."

"I have no intake at all of any feedback or criticism from anyone who's not in the arena."

We also talked about gratitude and the power of honoring the smallest moments, that’s when things got emotional. And that’s led me to decide to re-share her gorgeous spirit and words with you during this week of thanks and gratitude. Enjoy!

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We spend a lot of time thinking about the legacy we're building. What is the thing that threads everything you've done together? What is the mark you're leaving on the world, both in the career or work you do and the way you live your life?

These are big questions. And they're what we're exploring in this week's episode with Jocelyn Glei.

From the time she was a kid, Jocelyn had been drawn to writing, publishing and entrepreneurship. In high school, she launched her first "zine," printed on copiers at her dad's office. Her interest in language deepened through college, and upon graduating she moved through a series of ventures that kept putting her in charge of bigger and bigger editorial teams and budgets. Then, in 2009, Glei hooked with Behance founder, Scott Belsky, to head up now legendary creative mega-site and the annual conference for creative pros, 99U.

Along the way, she's also curated a powerful three-book series, the latest of which, Make Your Mark, releases this week, boasting extraordinary essays from creative legends like John Maeda, Warby Parker co-founder and CEO, Neil Blumenthal, SY founder, Keith Yamashita, Sugru inventor, Jane ni Dhulchaointigh and many others.

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Fueling your body for optimal health, performance and vitality is an important part of living a good life. Question is, how?

I don’t know about you, but it’s more than a bit maddening trying to keep up with the latest nutrition advice.

High-fat, low-fat, paleo, vegan, gluten-free, grass-fed donuts, who knows what’s next. Despite the onslaught, though, one ingredient seems to be emerging as a a potential nutritional black hole across nearly all the pundits, regardless of the approach. It's something that’s claimed to be more addictive than drugs, devastating to health and perfectly legal. In fact, according to today's guest, the average person eats about their body weight in this ingredient every year.

So, who is that guest and what are we talking about?

Leading voice in nutrition, wellness and weight loss, and bestselling author of The Virgin Diet and her newest book, The Sugar Impact Diet, JJ Virgin.

That potential nutritional sinkhole she's talking about is a little thing called sugar, in all its forms, even the ones that don't sound like sugar. I thought I'd heard all the arguments, but JJ opened my eyes in a big way.

You'll learn a ton from this conversation. But, as with all of our conversations here, this one's not entirely about sugar.

You'll also learn about JJ's personal journey. In fact, the episode starts in a very different, very personal place. A hospital ICU, where two years ago, JJ's 16 year old son lay with doctors telling her to just "let him go."

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There’s this myth about being a grown-up, especially, being a parent, that it’s a time where the play ends and the serious work begins. That laughter and surprise and curiosity and spontaneity, very often the things that got you where you are, need to cede to more responsible behavior.

But, what if the exact opposite was true?

What if the real secret to a life well lived, was to never let them go. Better yet, to build your waking hours around them? That's what we’re talking about on today’s episode

My guest today is Tina Roth Eisenberg. Over the last 9 years, she’s founded:

• Swiss-Miss.com: A design-turned-lifestyle blog
• CreativeMornings: A breakfast conference for creative pros now hosted in more than 100 countries every month
• Tattly: An artist-driven temporary tattoo company
• Studiomates: A flourishing co-working space in Brooklyn, and
• TeuxDeux: A task-management app

All while raising a family and even documenting her son's epic 2-year old meltdowns at ItsHardBeingTwo.com. And it all seems to come from a place of deep service and play, a desire to connect with people and help them connect with each other.

By the end of this conversation, you'll be looking at business and life differently, and very likely searching the internet for confetti!

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There’s this legend about the sole creator.

That person who goes into their creative cave, cloistered in solitude for days, months or even years, only to emerge with a work of genius. Exploding into the zeitgeist and changing everything.

But what if that was story was just a myth? What if the whole of idea sole genius was really a fantasy, obscuring the truth that almost nothing truly profound was created in a vacuum? That’s what we’re talking about on today’s episode

My guest today is bestselling author and essayist, Joshua Wolf Shenk. He recently published a provocative new book called The Powers of Two that explores both the myth of the sole creative and the complex and often legendary power of creative partnerships. Along the way, we also dive into Shenk’s own creative process, what it’s like to live the writer’s life and spend nearly 5 years working on a single book.

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There a certain inertia that often takes hold of our lives when we hit a certain age.

One that says “you know that dream, it’s just not that realistic, so why don’t you just buckle down and do the adult thing?” It’s the voice of the inner critic, sometimes bundled with a whole lot of outer critics.

Together, they keep you from playing big. From refusing the call to do something that might leave you exposed. How you handle those voices, that’s what we’re talking about on today’s episode.

My guest today is womens’ leadership expert and author of Playing Big, Tara Sophia Mohr. Fresh out of Yale and on her way to becoming Shakespeare scholar and womens’ activist, she took an unexpected turn. Mohr headed to Stanford to get her MBA, where she confronted both the reality of the largely "male-born" and sense of disempowered voice.

Emerging into the world of business, she kept seeing more of the same all around her. Powerful, strong women not stepping into that power and strength. And she wanted to do something about it. This became her calling. We dive into her remarkable journey in this week's conversation. You can learn a lot more about her process in her new book, Playing Big: Find Your Voice, Your Mission, Your Message

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When you hear the phrase “coming out,” what do you think about?

For most people, it’s telling the world you’re gay. Truth is, we’ve all got closets. Deep thoughts, experiences, beliefs, often so painful they lay buried under piles of emotional laundry in the dark corner of our closets.

Thing is, holding these things back is a source of pain. You can push it away, deny it, but it’s always there. Until one day, the pain of keeping it hidden exceeds the pain of letting it out. And, so you do. That moment is hard. Really hard. And there's no comparing your hard to someone else.

Ash Beckham knows this. She's lived it. And now, she's talking about it.

When Ash stepped onto the stage at TEDx Boulder last year, her intention was simple. Share her story. Talk about closets and comparisons. And how they can unlock or destroy our lives. Twelve minutes later, the audience rose to applaud and Ash thought that was that. Until a few weeks later when the video was posted and exploded online. Seems she’d touched a nerve. That talk is now one of the most watched TED talks of all time. And it’s thrust Ash into a global spotlight.

Now, we're talking to her in this week's episode of Good Life Project.

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Ever wonder why everything that happened during your teens has stayed with you for so long? And, for many, continues to control you to this day?

In today's episode of Good Life Project, I'm sharing a fascinating conversation with acclaimed professor and adolescence expert, Laurence Steinberg, Ph.D..

We're talking about what new brain research is showing us about the "care and feeding" of the adolescent brain, and what parents, schools and society can do about it.

We'll also explore why, years after adolescence, it seems to keep such a tight grip on how we interact with the world.

Adolescence, also know as “the oy vey years” is not a time most families look forward to. But what if almost everything you thought about those angsty teen years was wrong? What if the rules we laid down as parents, teachers and people who supposedly “knew better” were actually doing more harm than good?

Well, it turns out, that just might be the case. New research on the adolescent brain seems be turning everything we thought we knew about the care and handling of young adults on its head. And, it’s also exposing something else. Something that juuuuust might terrify a parent or two.

Adolescence is now twice as long as it used to be, starting at around 10, and continuing to almost 25 years old. Which is really important, because until it ends, you’re impulsive hedonistic desires are on overdrive, but the part of your brain that stops you from doing stupid things hasn’t really developed enough to keep you safe.

So, how do you handle that? How do you create a world that lets kids take the risks needed to rock adulthood without destroying their futures, and maybe themselves along the way?

And how do you take a part of life most families look at as a battle to be survived and turn it into something to be exalted and enjoyed?

That’s what we’re talking about on today’s episode with my guest, Laurence Steinberg, Ph.D. He’s one of the world's leading experts on adolescence, a Distinguished Professor of Psychology at Temple University, the author of more than 350 articles and essays on development during the teenage years, and the author or editor of 17 books including his new one, The Age of Opportunity: Lessons from the New Science of Adolescence. In other words, when it comes to angsty adolescents, Larry knows his stuff.

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So, I’ve got something different for you today. It’s a bonus episode that features a 90-minute audiobook version of something I published last week called The Art of Revolution.

It’s about an idea. Actually, something that started as my own personal geek-fest. I was trying to figure out if you could tap the power of movements and revolutions to build a career or business or body-of-work. What I discovered, well, let’s just say, it surprised even me.

What does this have to do with living a good life? Well, potentially, a lot.

Because if you can earn your living by surrounding yourself with people who are fiercely committed to building something together, fueled by shared values and aspirations, something astonishing happens. You light up. And contributing to the world in a way that lights you up, that’s a pretty important part of a life well lived.

But, enough of the set-up. Here’s the audiobook. The Art of Revolution.

As always, you can listen below or, probably a better option for this (since it's 90-minutes) is to head over to iTunes, subscribe and download it to your phone, then take it on the go.

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Sometimes you can do everything right in life. Give to others, live with compassion, love with every fiber of your being and fill your days with work you love. By all rights, the universe should be rallying to support you. And, most days it does.

But then, one day, it seems to abandon you. It pushes you off a cliff and, instead of flying, it clips your wings and pulls the net out from under you. It thrusts you into chaos, devastating loss. Darkness so deep, you wake up every day wondering whether to move ahead or end it all.

How we handle those places, how we rediscover life in moments of deep darkness, that’s what this week’s episode is about.

Our story begins with an old friend, Erin Moon. Erin and I first met about 10 years ago, when she wandered into my yoga studio in Hell’s Kitchen. Back then, she was a working actor looking for free yoga. All I really remember was, her smile made everyone smile. She was also in love. Living her dream. It’d last a while longer. Then, in a moment, everything would change…

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