Good Life Project

My guest today, Mansi Shah, spent years building a stunning career as a lawyer in the fast-moving world of Hollywood entertainment, working with some of the most iconic storytellers in the industry. But, behind her success as an entertainment lawyer, a lifelong yearning was brewing. She felt deeply called to not just help others tell their stories, often built around narratives that didn’t resonate with her background, but to actually be the storyteller, herself. And, to focus her lens on bringing the authentic immigrant experience, her own personal and family story, to a wide audience. 

So, she started writing her own stories, eventually penning the book that would become the groundbreaking and beautiful new novel, The Taste of Ginger. But that journey was anything but easy or linear. Over the 10-years since she started writing, the story and the book took countless turns. The early manuscript was, in fact, rejected by the very editor who, years later, would circle back to acquire and then champion it. Along the way, Mansi’s lens on what the story could be and needed to be, and how she needed to honor her creative impulse, commitment to advocacy, and desire to speak to people who were so often left out of the popular storytelling narrative, evolved and became centered in a way that only time and reflection could have crafted. We explore all of this in today’s conversation.

You can find Mansi at: Website | Instagram

If you LOVED this episode:

You’ll also love the conversations we had with Dr. Sayantani DasGupta about writing stories that expand the landscape of popular narratives.

My new book Sparked.

Check out our offerings & partners: 

Outschool: Inspire kids to love learning with Outschool classes. It's 100% fun, live & teacher-led. Explore over 100,000 topics and learn in small groups via Zoom. Perfect for ages 3-18. Join for free. To learn more about all Outschool has to offer and to save $15 off your child’s first class go to Outschool.com/GOODLIFE

Parachute: Premium quality sheets, towels, robes and more. Like nothing you've ever felt. Make staying in more comfortable with our modern home collections. Responsibly manufactured. Visit ParachuteHome.com/GOODLIFE for free shipping and returns on Parachute’s very comfortable home essentials.

Bean Box: Give the coffee fanatic in your life an unforgettable coffee-tasting experience with Bean Box. Our coffee is expertly curated and always fresh, with fast delivery and free shipping. Order today at beanbox.com/GOODLIFE and get 15% off purchases of $40 or more.

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How do you live a good life? That’s the question we’ve been asking here for nearly a decade. My guest today, Cathy Heller, has been along a similar journey, exploring the role of intentionality, purpose, and presence in a life well-lived. Raised in a household where mental illness and conflict were the norm, she took on the role of peacemaker at the age of 5, became a deep observer of human behavior, first, out of necessity, then out of curiosity, and eventually from the lens of calling. Cathy is a seeker in many ways. 

After studying mysticism and religion in college, followed by 3 years deepening her study of mysticism and self-actualization in Jerusalem, she headed back west, landing in LA, and looking to make her mark in the world of music. She eventually did, but in a way Cathy never saw coming. She became so successful, in fact, Cathy felt called to share what she’d learned, which launched her into the world of teaching, writing, distance learning, and launching her wildly popular Don’t Keep Your Day Job podcast, which has over 25 million downloads. Her book of the same name, Don’t Keep Your Day Job, offers a step-by-step approach to not just building a purpose-centered living, but also a deeply intentional life. 

Cathy is a sort of modern mystic meets kindness crusader meets creative visionary meets business savant. More simply, she’s a walking bundle of love and wisdom, and we talk about it all in today’s conversation. 

You can find Cathy at: Website | Instagram

If you LOVED this episode:

You’ll also love the conversations we had with Morgan Harper Nichols about crafting a creative life and living around openness and honesty.

My new book Sparked.

Check out our offerings & partners: 

Outschool: Inspire kids to love learning with Outschool classes. It's 100% fun, live & teacher-led. Explore over 100,000 topics and learn in small groups via Zoom. Perfect for ages 3-18. Join for free. To learn more about all Outschool has to offer and to save $15 off your child’s first class go to Outschool.com/GOODLIFE

Bean Box: Give the coffee fanatic in your life an unforgettable coffee-tasting experience with Bean Box. Our coffee is expertly curated and always fresh, with fast delivery and free shipping. Order today at beanbox.com/GOODLIFE and get 15% off purchases of $40 or more.

Theragun: A deep muscle massage treatment, unlike anything you've ever felt. Feel better, move better, and recover faster with tension and soreness relief. Try Theragun for 30-days starting at only $199. Go to Therabody.com/GOODLIFE right now and get your Gen 4 Theragun today. 

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You may know my guest today, Jeffrey Marsh, from their spiritual and inclusive messages that have received over 1 billion views on social media. Jeffrey is a viral TikTok and Instagram sensation, the first openly nonbinary public figure to be interviewed on national television, and the first nonbinary author to be offered a book deal with any "Big 5" publisher, at Penguin Random House. 

Jeffrey’s bestselling Buddhist self-esteem guide How To Be You, is an innovative, category-non-conforming work that combines memoir, workbook, and spiritual advice, inviting anyone and everyone into the conversation through a lens of kindness and inclusivity. How To Be You topped Oprah's Gratitude Meter and was named Excellent Book of the Year by TED-Ed. Jeffrey has also been a student and teacher of Zen for over twenty years, and this practice has been central to both their lens on life, and capacity to do the work they do in a grounded, deeply-present, open-heart and joyful way.

You can find Jeffrey at: Website | Instagram

If you LOVED this episode you’ll also love the conversations we had with Trystan Reese about living and advocating for your truth.

Check out our offerings & partners: 

• Join My New Writing Project: Awake at the Wheel
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We tend to take on one of 3 modes as we head into the end of the year:

• Rush To The Finish | Goal Striving Mode
• Check Out | Vacation Mode
• Reflect, Integrate & Assess | Review & Plan Mode

That last one is my approach. I love to use these final weeks to understand what happened over the last 12 months, in all parts of life, consider what went well and why, where I stumbled and why, and how I can learn and integrate all of it into setting up the year to come to rise higher.

And, I thought I’d walk you through my process - it’s a very different take based on a model I developed a number of years ago around the key elements of living a good life I call the Good Life Buckets. Super excited to share this powerful process with you in today’s episode.

You can find the 1-page worksheet HERE.

My new book Sparked.

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Have you discovered your Sparketype yet? Take the Sparketype Assessment™ now. IT’S FREE (https://sparketype.com/) and takes about 7-minutes to complete. At a minimum, it’ll open your eyes in a big way. It also just might change your life.

If you enjoyed the show, please share it with a friend. Thank you to our super cool brand partners. If you like the show, please support them - they help make the podcast possible.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This has been a year that has tested our boundaries on nearly every level. Work, friendship, family, community, geography, politics, religion, social issues, love, wellbeing. It’s like we’re being asked to draw lines, all day, every day. Question is, how? How do you create and uphold boundaries that are clear, healthy, and constructive, while also acknowledging the nuance, kindness, and understanding this moment demands? 

Well, my guest today, Nedra Glover Tawwab, can help. A licensed therapist and sought-after relationship expert, she has practiced relationship therapy for 12 years and is the founder and owner of the group therapy practice, Kaleidoscope Counseling. Every day she helps people create healthy relationships by teaching them how to implement boundaries. Her philosophy is that a lack of boundaries and assertiveness underlie most relationship issues, and her gift is helping people create healthy relationships with themselves and others. Nedra is also the author of New York Times Bestselling book, Set Boundaries, Find Peace: A Guide to Reclaiming Yourself, along with her newly-released Set Boundaries Workbook.

You can find Nedra at: Website | Instagram

If you LOVED this episode:

You’ll also love the conversations we had with Terri Cole, who brings a beautifully complementary lens to the critical exploration of boundaries.

My new book Sparked.

-------------

Have you discovered your Sparketype yet? Take the Sparketype Assessment™ now. IT’S FREE (https://sparketype.com/) and takes about 7-minutes to complete. At a minimum, it’ll open your eyes in a big way. It also just might change your life.

If you enjoyed the show, please share it with a friend. Thank you to our super cool brand partners. If you like the show, please support them - they help make the podcast possible.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From the age of 3, Micah Johnson knew what he wanted to be when he grew up - a professional baseball player. From that moment on, he lived baseball, and in 2012, his dreams came true when the Chicago White Sox drafted him. But, what Micah didn’t know was that his true calling in life was just getting started.

Traded to the LA Dodgers a few years later, Micah, almost on a lark, discovered painting, something that had never been a part of his. And it called to him in a way he never saw coming. Now, while his full-time job was pro baseball, drawing, painting and creating art became a new, increasingly consuming passion. But, it was a single moment, when his young nephew came and asked him whether Black people could be astronauts, that changed everything. Micah painted this moving depiction of a young, confident, Black boy in an oversized astronaut helmet, ready for adventure, as a way to not just answer yes, but create a powerful visual depiction of courage and possibility. 

At the same time, Micah was feeling called to bring his baseball career to a close and go all-in on art. But, no longer a novelty as a pro-athlete painter, he found his art hard to sell. Until everything came together when the character he’d painted for his nephew met the emerging world of NFTs, crypto-art, Web3, and the power of digital aspiration movements. He turned that painting into a character named Aku, then began to build a world, a community, an enterprise and a movement around it. Micah’s work has centered around empowering young African-American kids to see the possible & dream without limitations. Micah began releasing NFTs in January of 2020 & in February of 2021, and Aku’s message became a viral sensation and the first NFT ever optioned to become a major feature film. As we air this conversation, Micah is just coming off of helming a 15,000 square-foot, immersive, multidisciplinary experience in Miami’s Art Basel called Aku’s world.

We dive into all of this in today’s conversation, along with a bit of a mini-primer on these mysterious things called NFTs, which has been creating quite a stir these days and become a growing fascination of mine. 

You can find Micah at: Website | Instagram

If you LOVED this episode:

You’ll also love the conversations we had with Lisa Congdon about coming to art later in life.

My new book Sparked.

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Have you discovered your Sparketype yet? Take the Sparketype Assessment™ now. IT’S FREE (https://sparketype.com/) and takes about 7-minutes to complete. At a minimum, it’ll open your eyes in a big way. It also just might change your life.

If you enjoyed the show, please share it with a friend. Thank you to our super cool brand partners. If you like the show, please support them - they help make the podcast possible.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Imagine going to college and getting a minor in ‘you!’ Well, that’s just one of the semi-wild ideas that bubbled up during my conversation with week’s guest, Mark Groves. Mark describes himself as a Human Connection Specialist on a mission to help individuals step into their most authentic, effective, loving selves by way of a little bit of tough love and no-BS relationship guidance. Immersing himself and pursuing an education in the world of psychology after his model of life and relationships feel apart, he’s become a bridge between the academic and the human, inviting people to explore the good, bad, downright ugly, and beautiful sides of connection. And, given the state of the world these days, we could all use a bit more wisdom around how we show up and relate to others. 

Mark shares insights, ideas, and strategies about being a better human, living a better life, and understanding how to craft relationships that are truly nourishing with a global community of over a million people on his Create the Love Instagram account, his eponymous podcast, and through a growing library of courses, and programs. What I’ve always found so powerful about Mark and his work is that he doesn’t pull punches. He doesn’t hide who he is, what he believes, his irreverence or willingness to poke fun at himself and, really, any other paradigm or system that just doesn’t make sense. He is, in many ways, a truth-teller, and we need more of that these days. 

You can find Mark at: Website | Instagram| Mark Groves Podcast

If you LOVED this episode:

You’ll also love the conversations we had with Diego Perez who uses the name Yung Pueblo online about finding peace and clarity in an upside-down world.

My new book Sparked.

Check out our offerings & partners: 

Bean Box: Give the coffee fanatic in your life an unforgettable coffee-tasting experience with Bean Box. Our coffee is expertly curated and always fresh, with fast delivery and free shipping. Order today at beanbox.com/GOODLIFE and get 15% off purchases of $40 or more.

ZenBusiness: ZenBusiness has helped hundreds of thousands of people get their business off the ground by guiding them every step of the way and making it easier to launch a successful business. Get started today for as low as $49 at zenbusiness.com/GOODLIFE.

Come From Away: Broadway’s Tony-winning, feel-good again musical is welcoming audiences back into the heart of the remarkable true story. In the middle of nowhere, one small town showed the world that the kindness of strangers could bring us closer. Come back together at Come From Away.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

With the rigor of a world-class researcher and the intention of someone who cares deeply about the human condition and understanding how we all got to this moment in history, Dr. Keisha N. Blain is an award-winning historian of the 20th century United States with specializations in African American History, the modern African Diaspora, and Women’s and Gender Studies. She is an Associate Professor of History at the University of Pittsburgh and the president of the African American Intellectual History Society. 

She is also the author of the multi-prize-winning book Set the World on Fire: Black Nationalist Women and the Global Struggle for Freedom, and co-editor of the Charleston Syllabus: Readings on Race, Racism, and Racial Violence. Her #1 New York Times Best Seller Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019, edited with Ibram X. Kendi, drew together an incredible collection of voices with a vision to reclaim the historical narrative. And her new book, Until I Am Free: Fannie Lou Hamer's Enduring Message to America, is a powerful look not just at the role of civil and voting rights activist, Hamer and other Black women in social and political change, it’s also an invitation for us all to explore our individual roles in the path to equality and freedom, led by Hamer’s famed rallying cry, “Nobody’s free until everybody’s free.”

You can find Keisha at: Website | Instagram

If you LOVED this episode:

You’ll also love the conversations we had with Austin Channing Brown.

My new book Sparked.

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Have you discovered your Sparketype yet? Take the Sparketype Assessment™ now. IT’S FREE (https://sparketype.com/) and takes about 7-minutes to complete. At a minimum, it’ll open your eyes in a big way. It also just might change your life.

If you enjoyed the show, please share it with a friend. Thank you to our super cool brand partners. If you like the show, please support them - they help make the podcast possible.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We’re entering a time of year where gratitude is on our minds. And, honestly, it’s also been a year, even a season, where being thankful, noticing what’s wondrous or good, or even just not bad, well it's not always the easiest thing. 

And, yet, gratitude, attentiveness, and appreciation are such deeply-wired contributors to the human condition, ones that carry with them the capacity to transform nearly any experience - one of anger, one of loss, one of fear, one of anxiety, one of sadness, agitation, futility, or grief - into a moment of awakening, solace, connection and, in its highest forms, grace. There’s even powerful research on the psychological and physiological effect of gratitude and appreciation, both as a state and a willful intervention.

So, we wanted to take the occasion of this week to explore a few different takes on gratitude, appreciation, and generosity-of-spirit, drawing upon conversations I’ve had over the years with famed author and social-observer extraordinaire, Anne Lamott, writer, producer, and big thinker, Janice Kaplan, and I’m also weaving in a few thoughts from one of my books, How to Live a Good Life. 

I hope you enjoy this exploration of gratitude, attentiveness, and appreciation, how it changes us, and why we might want to bring more of it into our experience of life.

You can find Anne Lamott at: Website | Instagram | Dusk Night Dawn

You can find Janice Kaplan at: Website | Instagram | The Gratitude Diaries

You can find the audiobook Jonathan's book at: How to Live a Good Life

If you LOVED this episode:

You’ll also love the full-length conversations we had with Anne Lamott & Janice Kaplan.

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Have you discovered your Sparketype yet? Take the Sparketype Assessment™ now. IT’S FREE (https://sparketype.com/) and takes about 7-minutes to complete. At a minimum, it’ll open your eyes in a big way. It also just might change your life.

If you enjoyed the show, please share it with a friend. Thank you to our super cool brand partners. If you like the show, please support them - they help make the podcast possible.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

One of the leading physicists of her generation, Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein is a Professor of Physics and Core Faculty Member in Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of New Hampshire. She’s also one of fewer than a hundred Black American women to earn a Ph.D. from a department of physics. Born in East Los Angeles, a devout Dodgers fan, she’s a citizen of both the United States and Barbados and a descendant of Afro-Caribbean and Ashkenazi Jewish immigrants. Chanda decided to become a theoretical physicist at the age of 10, after an experience, which we dive into, lit a fire of curiosity and possibility. Her vision of the cosmos is vibrant, buoyantly non-traditional, and grounded in Black feminist traditions. 

A powerful voice in her field, Chanda urges us to recognize how science, like most fields, is far from an equal playing field, with racism, sexism, and other dehumanizing systems playing a role not only in who participates in the field but also in the essential nature of the work and the potential discoveries and insights it yields. She lays out a bold new approach to science and society that begins with the belief that we all have a fundamental right to know and love the night sky. In her groundbreaking new book, The Disordered Cosmos, Chanda shares her love for physics, from the Standard Model of Particle Physics and what lies beyond it, to the physics of melanin in skin, to the latest theories of dark matter — all with a new spin informed by history, politics, and the wisdom of Star Trek. We explore her personal journey and many of these ideas in today’s conversation.

You can find Chanda at: Website | Instagram

If you LOVED this episode:

You’ll also love the conversations we had with Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor about the science of the brain.

My new book Sparked.

-------------

Have you discovered your Sparketype yet? Take the Sparketype Assessment™ now. IT’S FREE (https://sparketype.com/) and takes about 7-minutes to complete. At a minimum, it’ll open your eyes in a big way. It also just might change your life.

If you enjoyed the show, please share it with a friend. Thank you to our super cool brand partners. If you like the show, please support them - they help make the podcast possible.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.