Life on Purpose

For Life on Purpose Episode #29, my guest is Marc Allen, the internationally renowned author and president/publisher/co-founder of New World Library, which has published numerous classics in the personal growth field including Eckhart Tolle's The Power of Now, Shakti Gawain’s Creative Visualization, and The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success by Deepak Chopra.

Marc joins me for a deep and inspirational conversation about the updated edition of Tantra for the West: A Direct Path to Living the Life of Your Dreams, in which he introduces a brand new way to experience the ancient and yet modern tradition that is called tantra.

About: Marc Allen is an internationally renowned author and president and publisher of New World Library, which he co-founded (with Shakti Gawain) in 1977. He has guided the company from a small start-up with no capital to its current position as one of the leading independent publishers in the country.

Marc is a well-known musician and composer as well, having released five albums of his music for the label he co-founded with Sky Canyon and Robert Powell, Watercourse Media.

His latest book is The Greatest Secret of All. It may be Marc's most important book, because it gives us not only one of the clearest explanations of the "secret" of creating what you want in life, but also the far greater secrets of a life well-lived, a life of happiness, inner peace, ease, and fulfillment, where you contribute to making the world a better place for all.

His previous book, The Type-Z Guide to Success, has been released both in print form and as an innovative multi-media ebook. His most popular book is The Millionaire Course: A Visionary Plan for Creating the Life of Your Dreams. It is an entire course, filled with keys to success.

Over the years, he has written and published several other books, including Visionary Business: An Entrepreneur’s Guide to Success, which brought his principles to those in the business world, and A Visionary Life, which remains one of the best books ever written on personal fulfillment. He has also published The Ten Percent Solution: Simple Steps to Improve Our Lives and the World, and produced a popular audio CD, Stress Reduction and Creative Meditations.

His books, audios, and workshops have been highly rewarding — even life-changing — experiences for thousands of people, and he has produced a 12-part audio version of his powerful seminar called The Success with Ease In-Depth Course.

He lives in northern California, with his wife and two children. Marc and his wife Aurilene have founded the Brazil Hope Foundation to help street kids in Brazil.

To learn more about Marc and his work, visit: http://marcallen.com.

For Life on Purpose Episode #28, my guest is Michelle Jones, a former traditional-model college professor who is starting her own college called the Wayfinding Academy in Portland, Oregon. Michelle joins me to discuss higher education re-imagined for the 21st Century, the importance of asking questions, passion-based leadership, and the crucial importance of real-world skills and experience.

Many listeners also know Michelle as "Michelle the Magician", the behind-the-scenes guru at the annual World Domination Summit (WDS), that was the inspiration behind my first podcast Radio Enso. We talk about that experience and how she's applying what she learned there to her new venture.

About: Michelle Jones is a former traditional model college professor who is starting her own college, the Wayfinding Academy. Her 15 years teaching leadership and organizational behavior courses at colleges and universities across the country has prepared her well to re-imagine what higher education can be with this new endeavor. She is also drawing on her experience organizing events and communities with TEDxMtHood and the World Domination Summit and founding non-profit organizations such as SuperThank.

About the Wayfinding Academy: We're a group of professors, students, higher education professionals, non-profit and community leaders, and everyday citizens with over 100 years of experience in higher education who know college can be the incredible experience it promises to be.

Right now too many students can't afford college, drop out, or even finish college without finding direction or purposes in their lives. We believe there is a better way. We are starting our own college. A new model for higher education.

The Wayfinding Academy will be an affordable, 2-year college based in Portland, Oregon focused on what matters most in education: real world experience, community support and individual passion. Students won’t be asked to choose a major from a list, they’ll be supported in discovering their own personal mission. They’ll take core classes building skills that will serve them on any path. And they’ll work with advisors to create handcrafted experiences meaningful to them and build a portfolio through real experiences.

To learn more about the Wayfinding Academy, visit: http://www.wayfindingacademy.org/.

For Life on Purpose Episode #27, my guest is training consultant, coach, writer, and mediator Louisa Rogers, who at 63 has never held a day job and has lived in eight different countries. Louisa joins me to discuss how she built a life living and working on her own terms and saying "yes" to life at any age.

About: Louisa Rogers has been training and facilitating workshops on leadership and management skills for over 30 years. Her clients have included corporations, government agencies and nonprofits throughout the USA and in eight foreign countries from Kansas to Kazakhstan.

In addition to her business trainings, she speaks and writes on wellness, travel and simplicity. She grew up overseas (a diplomat kid) and still loves traveling. She and her husband divide their time between Northern California and Mexico, along with regular visits to Europe--with their folding bikes, naturally.

To learn more about Louisa and her work, visit: http://louisarogers.vpweb.com.

For Life on Purpose Episode #26, my guest is psychotherapist, workshop facilitator, and former journalist Kim Schneiderman. Kim joins me to discuss her brand new book Step Out of Your Story: Writing Exercises to Reframe and Transform Your Life, a self-help writing program designed to help anyone who can compose a simple sentence get a fresh perspective on a familiar story— their own. As a psychotherapist and freelance journalist, Kim utilizes research-inspired methods to help people who are stuck — in a dead-end job, relationship, or stage of life — to imagine themselves as the star of their own stories with the power to reframe and reclaim their personal narratives.

About: Kim Schneiderman, LCSW, MSW, is a psychotherapist, workshop facilitator, former journalist, and spiritual essayist who lives and works in New York City. She counsels adults through her private psychotherapy practice and has facilitated therapeutic writing groups at the 92nd Street Y, the JCC in Manhattan, FEGS Health and Human Services, the Jewish Board of Family and Children’s Services (JBFCS), Art Studio NY, Limmud New York, and various other venues.

When she’s not seeing clients, Kim writes a psychological advice column for the New York, Boston, and Philadelphia Metro daily newspapers http://www.metro.us/newyork, which have an aggregate circulation of roughly 4,000,000 readers. She has also worked as an adjunct professor for the Long Island University’s School of Social Work and served as a Guest Lecturer for NYU’s Post-Graduate Social Work and Spiritual Care certificate program. She also completed a year-long certification at the Association for Spirituality and Psychotherapy in New York.

Before pursuing her MSW at the University of Maryland, Kim worked as a journalist for a chain of weekly newspapers in the Bay Area. Subsequently, she has written dozens of freelance articles, including cover stories, for major Jewish newspapers, including The Jewish Week, the Baltimore Jewish Times, and the Northern California Jewish Bulletin.

To learn more about Kim and her work, visit: www.stepoutofyourstory.com.

For Life on Purpose Episode #25, my guest is artist, entrepreneur, writer, speaker, and coach Emilie Wapnick. Emilie joins me to discuss what those she calls multipotentialites, people who have many different interests and creative pursuits in life. We also discuss her recent TEDxBend talk entitled Why Some of Us Don’t Have ONE True Calling, overcoming fear and confidence challenges, and how she lives a life on purpose.

About: Emilie Wapnick is an artist, entrepreneur, writer, speaker, and coach. She says she was blessed with so many interests that she was unable to pick just one. She studied music, visual arts, film production and law, and graduated from the Law Faculty at McGill University. After years of feeling anxious about her zigzagging career path and hyphenated credentials, she finally decided to embrace her plural nature and start a movement for others who lean toward being what she calls “multipotentialites.”

Since launching her website, Puttylike, in 2010, Emilie has inspired thousands of multipotentialites to stop trying to fit themselves into boxes, and embrace their plurality. She has been featured in Lifehacker, The Financial Times, and The Huffington Post. Currently, she is working on her forthcoming book, “Multipotentialite.”

This past April, Emilie stood in front of 1,400 people at TEDxBend and gave a talk entitled Why Some of Us Don’t Have ONE True Calling, which encapsulates her findings on multipotentiality in 12 minutes!

To learn more about Emilie and her work, visit: http://puttylike.com.

For Life on Purpose Episode #24, my guest is Master Coach, NLP Practitioner, and author Sandi Amorim. Sandi joins me to discuss her new book The 100 Day Promise, which is designed to guide you over the course of one hundred days to create a promise based on a change you want in your life, and to develop your capacity to follow through with daily actions to bring that promise to life.

About: Sandi Amorim is a Master Coach, NLP Practitioner, and creator of the 100 Day Promise, a successful online program created to help people change with greater ease and effectiveness and the title of her BRAND new book. She has spent the past twenty years studying what makes us tick, what keeps us stuck, and most importantly, what helps us thrive.

As a seasoned professional in the field of coaching, she holds coaching certificates from Erickson Coaching International in the Art & Science of Coaching, and Neuro-Linguistic Programming, as well as a Master Coach designation from the Harmony Integration Academy. In 2014 she became one of the first coaches in the world licensed to lead Danielle LaPorte’s Desire Map workshop.

About The 100 Day Promise: Change can be challenging, frustrating, and sometimes impossible, but we all want to change something about ourselves. The problem isn’t that you want change; the problem is that you judge yourself harshly when you fail to change the way you want. So how do we get there – to our desired change – from here, the feeling of dissatisfaction and longing?

Frustrated by the popular belief that change only takes 21 days, author Sandi Amorim decided to answer that question for herself and her clients. It was a question that led her down a rabbit hole of neuroscience, the cycle of change, the law of attraction, and positive psychology. Like Dr. Joe DiSpenza, she believes that we have to “Go beyond knowing … to know how.” She shares what she discovered in The 100 Day Promise, a guide to changing from the inside out.

What will you have at the end of one hundred days? You get to decide. For some, it’s a new habit or practice in life. For others, it’s releasing an old habit or fear. The best part is that The 100 Day Promise gives you resources and strategies you can use over and over again that will help you shift from struggle to ease, and a newfound sense of freedom.

The 100 Day Promise is a journey that goes deeper with each promise you make, and this will have a profound impact on how you see yourself. You'll realize - maybe for the first time - you've got what it takes to change.

To learn more about Sandi and her work, visit: http://sandiamorim.com/.

For Life on Purpose Episode #23, my guest is author, ghostwriter, "flourisher," and free-range home-worker Cheryl Rickman. Cheryl joins me to discuss her latest book The Flourish Handbook: How To Achieve Happiness With Staying Power, Boost Your Well-Being, Enjoy Your Life More and Reach Your Potential, as well as some of the tools she uses to live a purposeful life.

About: Cheryl Rickman is a Hampshire (UK)-based author/ghostwriter, "flourisher" and free-range home-worker. Her practical books and products empower and enable people to enjoy and appreciate their lives more, boost their well-being, start-up in business, pursue their purpose and reach their potential.

Cheryl's latest book, The Flourish Handbook, is a compelling and easy-to-digest practical guide on how to flourish; packed with worksheets, guidance, to-do lists and planners to help people find their forte, boost their positivity, and bolster their resilience, mindfulness and gratitude. Drawing on extensive research and her own methods of coping with adversity and tragedy, achieving dreams, and harnessing the power of gratitude, The Flourish Handbook is about much more than merely achieving happiness. It's based on the five pillars of well-being as set out by leading positive psychologists: positive emotion, engagement, supportive relationships, meaningful purpose, and achievement.

Meanwhile, The 7-Step Flourish Challenge has been designed to help busy people to flourish. It provides a comprehensive workbook along with daily e-mail reminders to maximise positivity, minimise negativity, bolster resilience, focus and action steps towards growth and achievement.

To learn more about Cheryl and her work, visit: http://www.cherylrickman.co.uk.

For Life on Purpose Episode #22, my guest is Ayurvedic Lifestyle Counselor, yoga and meditation teacher, and author Michelle Fondin. Michelle joins me to discuss all things Ayurveda — from how it helped drastically change her life after she was diagnosed with cancer at age 28 to how it can help you find the health answers you're seeking by tapping into your body's inherent wisdom, as well as some of the tools she uses to live a purposeful life.

About: Michelle Fondin is an Ayurvedic Lifestyle Counselor, yoga and meditation teacher, author, and since 2008, the Owner of The Ayurvedic Path. She holds a Vedic Master certificate from the Chopra Center and has worked with Drs. Deepak Chopra and David Simon at Chopra Center events teaching yoga and meditation. She regularly sees clients and teaches them how to live an Ayurvedic Lifestyle and achieve optimal wellness. She’s a member of the National Ayurvedic Medical Association, The Association of Ayurvedic Professionals of North America and Yoga Alliance and writes for Chopra.com. She lives in Virginia with her three kids and two cats.

Her most recent book, The Wheel of Healing with Ayurveda: An Easy Guide to a Healthy Lifestyle (published by New World Library) offers an in-depth exploration of Ayurveda, which originated in India at least five thousand years ago and has stood the test of time. Ayurveda, the “science of life,” is a complete wellness system that includes all that we associate with medical care — prevention of disease, observation, diagnosis, and treatment — as well as self-care practices that are generally absent from Western medicine.

The book is built around eight “spokes” of the Ayurvedic wheel of healing — physical, spiritual, emotional, relationship, occupational, financial, and environmental health, as well as healing the past. Using the system of three principle doshas (Vata, Pitta, and Kapha), Michelle offers readers a self-assessment for discovering their mind-body type, as well as practical ways they can enhance their health based on their type.

To learn more about Michelle and her work, visit: http://www.michellefondin.com.

For Life on Purpose Episode #21, my guests are Heather Thorkelson, a location-independent business strategist, certified life coach, occasional Antarctic expedition guide, and founder of the Republic of Freedom and Leah Kalamakis, a location-independent freelance web designer & developer and the founder of The Freelance To Freedom Project. Heather and Leah join me to discuss making the LEAP to self-employment and freelancing (which we've all three done); the joys and challenges of self-employment; and their helpful LEAP Guide, which includes "everything you need to know to start and grow your freelance business so you can quit your soul-sucking job and start living life on your own terms."

About Heather: Despite seven years working for a pharmaceutical company that she’d rather forget, she left the golden handcuffs behind with no plan and still managed to do all kinds of grown-up things like buy a house and get a dog and travel the world while building an awesome passion-fueled business where she gets paid to help people. (She’s still in disbelief about that.) 43 countries traversed, 7 continents visited, and 7 countries inhabited outside of her homeland (Canada), Heather is an entirely self-made woman who knows fear, uncertainty, adventure, and personal responsibility (plus a few languages) like the back of her hand. She can often be heard waxing poetic over a craft beer, “It ain’t always easy, but it’s always worth it.”

About Leah: She spent years in a corporate job because that’s what she was supposed to do, but was only thinking, “This is as good as it gets?” She decided to learn a new skill (web design) after discovering you don’t need a 4-year/$40k degree to do so, side-hustled to build her business and surpassed her corporate income 3 months after her LEAP. Along with running a rockin’ web design business, Leah now helps freelancers take their skills, escape their soul-sucking jobs and start living life on their terms. When she’s not hanging out online, you can find her eating popcorn, riding her scooter along the French coast, or taking le apèro on a terrace in Biarritz.

To learn more about the LEAP Guide, visit: http://www.leapguidetofreelance.com

To learn more about Heather, visit: http://heatherthorkelson.com

To learn more about Leah, visit: http://freelancetofreedomproject.com

For Life on Purpose Episode #20, my guest is author, speaker, and teacher Gregg Krech, one of the leading authorities on Japanese Psychology in North America. Gregg joins me to discuss the importance of taking informed action, how maintaining awareness of our finite reality can infuse your life with passion and urgency, the Japanese philosophies of Naikan and Morita Therapy, and some of the tools he uses to live a meaningful and purposeful life.

About: Gregg Krech is an author, speaker, teacher, and one of the leading authorities on Japanese Psychology in North America. He's also the founding Director of the TohDoh Institute, an educational center for purposeful living, based in Vermont.

He is the author of the award-winning book: Naikan: Gratitude, Grace & the Japanese Art of Self-Reflection, which has been translated into five languages, and he's the editor of Thirty Thousand Days: A Journal for Purposeful Living. His work has been featured in a wide range of publications including THE SUN magazine, Utne Reader, Fitness, Counseling Today, Cosmopolitan, and Experience Life.

His most recent book, The Art of Taking Action: Lessons from Japanese Psychology brings an eastern perspective to the issue of purpose is currently an Amazon best-seller in the Zen category. It offers an empowering approach to meeting our own personal goals, but also focuses on the impact on our actions (and inactions) on the world..

To learn more about Gregg and his work, visit: http://www.artoftakingaction.com or http://www.todoinstitute.org.