Run Your Life Show With Andy Vasily

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In this powerful, reflective conversation, author, attorney, and former NFL executive Nathan Whitaker joins Andy Vasily to explore how risk, resilience, and trusted mentors have shaped his life—from walking on at Duke, to working in NFL front offices, to co‑authoring bestselling books with NFL legendary coach Tony Dungy, Heisman Trophy winner Tim Tebow, and others.

Nathan opens up about the fragility of athletic identity, the pain of unfulfilled potential, and the years he spent avoiding the very places that symbolized his perceived “failure.” Through honest stories, he and Andy unpack how we can reframe regret, connect the dots of our past, and move forward with greater courage and clarity.

This is an episode about trust, character, vulnerability, and choosing to see the good, even when life’s plans don’t match our expectations.

About Nathan

As Nathan Whitaker shares with his audiences, “Every one of us is creating a legacy. It’s up to us to determine its impact.” This belief underscores both his literary and speaking career. Learn more about both at www.nathanwhitaker.com.

Nathan Whitaker is a motivational speaker, an author, and a Super Bowl champion. He has a Super Bowl ring from his time working for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, was a two-sport athlete at Duke University, and holds graduate degrees from Harvard Law School and the University of Florida. 

A sixth-generation Floridian, he currently lives in Gainesville, with his wife, Amy, their dog, RickyBobby, and two cats, Fezzik and Scout. They have two daughters, Hannah, an assistant librarian at the University of Florida and Ellie, a recent graduate of UF.  

Connect with Nathan

LinkedIn

Website

You can find Nathan Whitaker's books here. 

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To mark 300 episodes of Run Your Life, Andy hands over the mic. His close friend Derrick Jefferson steps in as host, joined by writing coach Ryan Fahey, to interview Andy about the release of his book, The Wisdom of Alignment: Connecting Our Heads, Hearts, and Hands to a Greater Purpose.

In this episode:

• The origin story of the book's title — a full-moon "download" that came to Andy seven years ago, and why he burned the paper he wrote it on
• Why Andy started writing eight years ago, and how losing one brother to suicide and another to addiction, plus a near-fatal accident in Cambodia, shaped the book's foundation
• The difference between being watched and being seen (Father Gregory Boyle), and how that distinction shows up in leadership and relationships
• Derek's own story of a transformative moment involving a Dalai Lama book and a very bad morning for the neighborhood pigeons — and what it taught him about compassion
• Ryan on FOPO (fear of other people's opinions) and how it nearly kept him from publishing his own first book
• Daniel Pink's four categories of regret, and why examining regret is a doorway to identifying our true values
• A tribute to Ella Edgar, Andy's trust-work mentor, whose passing led Andy to change the book's dedication
• How the book is structured: 18 chapters, each built from a past podcast conversation, closing with journal prompts designed as invitations, not assignments

Takeaway: This episode is as much a conversation about vulnerability, purpose, and self-work between three friends as it is a book launch. Listeners walk away with a preview of the book's themes — and a rare look at Andy on the other side of the microphone.

The Wisdom of Alignment launches end of August 2026, available on Amazon, Indigo (Canada), and Barnes & Noble (US).

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Connect With Derrick: LinkedIn

Connect with Ryan: LinkedIn   Website

If any listeners are interested in joining Andy's pre-launch book team, please sign up here: Wisdom of Alignment Book Launch Team or email Andy at: [email protected]

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What if the purpose of school isn't grades, rankings, or test scores — but helping young people discover their own purpose? In this rich and wide-ranging conversation, Andy sits down with Dr. Cinde Lock, Head of Pickering College and author of Connections, Academics, and Purpose: Designing the Future of School, to explore what education can look like when it's built around real problems, genuine connection, and meaningful work. Cinde brings a rare combination: the scientific rigor of a chemistry background, leadership experience across six countries and a lifelong conviction that schools can — and must — do better by their students.

What You'll Hear in This Episode

The Childhood That Shaped a Leader Cinde was always the new student. Moving frequently while her father quietly hid the fact that he couldn't read, she never stayed in one school long enough to remember a teacher's name before Grade 5. That experience forged in her both deep empathy for learners whose gifts go unrecognized — and a bird's-eye view of education that let her see which "non-negotiables" in one classroom weren't even mentioned in the next.

The CAP Framework: Connections, Academics, Purpose At the heart of Cinde's book and her work at Pickering College is a deceptively simple shift: start with a real problem people care about, then embed the curriculum into it — not the other way around. Polluted rivers. Carbon-neutral islands. Pig scratchers for an animal sanctuary. Acoustic panels for an echoey classroom. When students genuinely care about the outcome, the learning follows naturally — and the academic results speak for themselves. At one IB school in Korea, this approach helped lift results into the top 1% globally.

Redefining What School Is For What if the purpose of school is to help kids find purpose? Cinde is building a tech framework at Pickering College that gives students a real menu of authentic projects, allows them to map their own learning (including outside achievements like music grades), and pursue "minors" and "majors" — going deeper where they're most alive. This is agency in practice, not just in theory.

The Changing Role of the Teacher In a world where students have AI and global information at their fingertips, Cinde argues the teacher as sole expert no longer holds. The role shifts to coach, co-learner, connector, and critical thinker — someone who pushes students further and guards the deeply human dimensions of learning that technology can't replace.

Regret, Connection, and the Ghosts We Carry Drawing on Denzel Washington's "ghosts of unfulfilled potential" and Daniel Pink's research on regret, Andy and Cinde explore what we leave unfinished — particularly in relationships. Her biggest regrets aren't about missed opportunities, but about people in different countries who shaped her deeply and drifted away with time and distance. The episode closes with a quiet but powerful invitation: think of someone who changed your life, and reach out.

Key Takeaways

• Real-world problems are the best entry point into deep learning — curriculum follows context, not the other way around
• Student agency isn't a program you add on; it's a philosophy that changes everything, from how you plan to how you assess
• The "soft skills" — empathy, connection, emotional intelligence — are actually the hardest, and schools need to prioritize them more as technology accelerates
• Meaningful change takes patience; leaders must meet people where they are, not where they wish they were
• Connection regrets are among the most common and most painful — and a short message of gratitude can be a powerful act for both the sender and the receiver

About Dr. Cinde Lock Dr. Cinde Lock is the Head of Pickering College and the author of Connections, Academics, and Purpose: Designing the Future of School. With a background in chemistry and leadership experience across six countries, she has spent her career reimagining what school can look like when it's built around human connection, real-world relevance, and student purpose.

Connect with Cinde: 

Cinde's Website

Where to find her book

Pickering College

LinkedIn

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This episode of Four Times Mindfulness is an honest conversation between Andy Vasily and Neila Steele about the coping mechanisms we cling to, the regrets that quietly reveal our values, and the relationships that remind us who we are.

Four Seeds. Four Takeaways.

1. Identify your coping mechanism. We all carry behaviors that once kept us afloat — people-pleasing, numbing, withdrawing — but now hold us back from the shore. The work isn't to drop the log overnight. It's to loosen your grip, slowly and with self-compassion, until you trust yourself enough to let go.

2. Let your regrets teach you. Author Daniel Pink's research shows that our deepest regrets — around foundation, boldness, morality, and connection — are actually a map of what we value most. Stop bypassing them with shame. Sit with them long enough and they'll point you straight back to your core values.

3. Be a companion, not a rescuer. When someone you love is struggling, the most powerful thing you can offer isn't advice or solutions. It's presence. A hand. A quiet willingness to sit beside them in the dark.

4. Don't let the flame quietly go out. When we stop pursuing genuine meaning — in our relationships, our purpose, our inner life — something in us slowly erodes. Andy's reminder: double down on what lights you up and who you want to become. Connection is often where that starts.

Books & Resources Mentioned:

• Eating in the Light of the Moon — Anita Johnston
• The Power of Regret — Daniel Pink
• Love Bites — Ila Edgar (in memory)
• The Wisdom of Alignment — Andy Vasily (releasing June 1)
• FOPO (Fear of Other People's Opinions) — Dr. Michael Gervais

Connect With Andy and Neila

Neila: LinkedIn 

Andy: LinkedIn

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In today's episode, I interview the brilliant Jason Moss, an entrepreneur, a very impactful business coach and someone who has done the deep work to truly know himself. 

Jason believes that our businesses are a mirror reflecting ourselves. Whatever is unresolved on the inside will show up in how we build, market, and lead. The inner work is not separate from the business work — it is the work.

Getting out of our own way is a practice, not a destination. Fear of people's opinions, the need to look impressive, the urge to make an impact — these are all forms of self-consciousness that create a wall between us and the people we're trying to serve.

Strategy matters, but strategy that's disconnected from our genuine strengths and natural way of showing up will eventually run dry. Jason believes that we need to build ourselves around who we actually are.

In this episode he shares that Many of our fears around visibility, feedback, and being seen trace back to early experiences we haven't fully processed. Meeting those parts of ourselves with curiosity and care — rather than trying to override them — is where lasting transformation lives.

There are many gems that I hope you take away from this conversation. As well, I hope you connect with Jason on social media and his YouTube channel to learn more about him and his work. 

Connect with Jason

Website

Facebook

YouTube

Instagram

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In today’s episode, we’re going to sit with something that every one of us will face in our lives, but most of us struggle to talk about openly: grief.

My guests are author and educator Frank Stepnowski and his daughter, Sam Welch. Together, they’ve created a beautiful and deeply moving picture book called Where Did Cain Go? A Family’s Walk Through Loss—a book that grew out of the death of Frank’s son and Sam’s brother, Cain, who died at just 13 days old from a congenital heart defect.

This conversation is not about neat answers or tidy closure. It’s about what it actually feels like to live with loss over years and decades. You’ll hear Frank talk about what it meant to carry his infant son’s coffin, to try to stay strong when everyone else went silent not knowing what to say or how to act around Frank and his wife Dawn after their profound loss. You’ll hear Sam share what it was like to grow up sensing a grief she couldn’t fully understand, and how later losses—of her uncle, her grandparents, and a pregnancy—reshaped her understanding of her parents’ pain and her own.

We explore how grief and love mirror each other, how gratitude can slowly change the way we carry our pain, and how art, story, and honest conversation can help families—especially children—talk about death in a more compassionate and grounded way. 

We also get into ideas from positive psychology, the power of journaling, and the Japanese art of Kintsugi as a metaphor for putting ourselves back together with gold after we’ve been broken.

My hope is that as you listen, you don’t just think about loss in an abstract way, but gently reflect on the people you’ve loved and lost, and on the legacy they continue to have in your life.

Connect with Frank and Sam

Frank- Facebook

Sam- Facebook

Where to purchase their book: Amazon and Barnes and Noble

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My guest today is Matthew Hoffman, the artist and creative force behind the global “You Are Beautiful” campaign. If you’ve ever seen those three simple words on a sticker, a mural, or an installation somewhere in the world and felt even a small lift in your day, there’s a good chance Matthew’s work has already touched your life.

Matthew started this project in a very humble way: with 100 paper stickers he printed as a kind of “public intervention” in Chicago. He didn’t set out to build a brand or become known. In fact, he stayed anonymous for almost a decade, because he wanted the focus to be on the message rather than the person behind it. Over time, though, this quiet act of kindness grew into a global movement.

Today, more than 10 million “You Are Beautiful” stickers have been shared around the world, translated into over 100 languages, and expanded into public installations, murals, and sculptures across the United States and beyond. His work has been featured by Oprah, mentioned by Seth Godin, and sustained by a worldwide community of people who take these words and pass them forward.

What I love about this discussion is that we don’t just talk about the project—we talk about the person and the philosophy behind it.

In this conversation, Matthew and I explore:

• Purpose and calling – Using an Oprah quote as our starting point, we talk about how Matthew found his way from a high school graphic arts class to a life devoted to spreading a simple but profound message.
• Perspective and empathy – How constantly moving as a kid, feeling like a chameleon and an outsider, gave him deep empathy and shaped his desire to create work that is open and accessible to everyone.
• Creative courage – The importance of getting ideas out of your head and into the world quickly, even when they’re imperfect, and how to move through the fear of other people’s opinions.
• Anonymity, humility, and identity – Why he called himself a “custodian” rather than the creator, what it was like to be “outed” by Seth Godin and later invited by Oprah to reveal himself publicly, and how that became a kind of returning home to his true self.
• Mental health and impact – Including a powerful story about a sticker placed on a bridge where someone had died by suicide, and how that moment shifted Matthew’s understanding of the weight and responsibility of his work.
• Sustaining motivation – How he navigates the highs and lows of creativity, deals with self-doubt, and anchors himself in his values so he can keep doing work that matters—while also being a dad and modeling purpose for his son.

This is a conversation about art, yes—but more than that, it’s about belonging, worthiness, and essence. It’s about the quiet, consistent ways we can remind ourselves and others that there is nothing we need to do and no one we need to become to be “enough.”

If you’ve ever struggled with perfectionism, fear of judgment, creative blocks, or just feeling like you’re not quite enough, this episode is for you.

Connect With Matthew:

You Are Beautiful Campaign Website

Matthew's Personal Website (last part of this show features Matthew's work)

Order Matthew's Stickers Here

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Today's episode is with the brilliant Dr. Brent Hogarth who is a clinical psychologist, executive coach and team flow expert. He currently works with Dr. Michael Gervais and his team of coaches at Finding Mastery and is focused on enterprise size high-performance mindset training around the globe.

Brent spent years researching what he calls "the dark side of flow"—and what he discovered challenges everything we've been taught about high achievement and peak performance.

Flow states feel incredible. They're optimal for performance. The neurochemical cocktail they create—dopamine, norepinephrine, endorphins, anandamide, serotonin—makes us feel invincible. But Brent's groundbreaking research revealed something most performance coaches won't tell you: flow can also create addiction to peak experiences, lead to burnout and depression, cause us to neglect our relationships and values, and make ordinary life feel unbearable.

As the former Head Peak Performance Coach at Flow Research Collective, working under New York Times bestselling author Steven Kotler, Brent trained thousands of "corporate athletes"—Olympic athletes, Navy SEALs, startup CEOs, hedge fund managers, engineers, doctors, and creatives. He taught them how to access flow. But his most profound insight didn't come from a lab or a boardroom. It came from living in Buddhist monasteries in India, where he learned that sustainable high performance requires something radically different from what the hustle culture preaches.

The insight: We need to learn to cycle between flow-state and mindfulness. Flow gives us focused execution and optimal performance. Mindfulness gives us emotional regulation, behavioral flexibility, and the ability to stay connected to what truly matters. 

In this conversation, Brent—now a father of two, licensed clinical psychologist, and ultramarathon finisher—sits down with host Andy Vasily for a discussion that goes far beyond productivity hacks and performance metrics. They explore:

• The science of inter-brain synchrony and why our nervous systems literally sync up when we're deeply connected with others—and what this means for team performance, parenting, and leadership
• How to transform suffering into growth using Buddhist teachings and psychological research
• The power of vulnerability in creating real intimacy, and why Brent's decision to share his deepest shame with his now-wife became the foundation of their marriage
• The inner narratives that shape our lives more than any external circumstances
• What legacy really means when you strip away ego, achievement, and societal expectations

Andy and Brent both share deep histories of loss, trauma, and grief. They've both done the hard inner work of rewriting disempowering narratives. And they both understand that the greatest achievements mean nothing if we lose ourselves—and the people we love—in the pursuit of them.

Connect With Brent: 

Website       LinkedIn.      Finding Mastery

You can also connect with Brent by email at: [email protected]

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In this insightful episode, Andy connects with Hadleigh Fisher—founder of the Resilience Agenda and passionate advocate for mental fitness—to explore practical strategies and mindsets for thriving in today's fast-paced world.

Key Takeaways:

• Redefining Mental Health: Hadleigh explains why mental health is a continuum for everyone, not just those in crisis. Learn the difference between mental health and mental illness, and why thinking in terms of "mental fitness" is a game-changer.
• Personal Stories: Both Andy and Hadleigh share candid stories of family and personal struggles, highlighting the importance of resilience, agency, and self-compassion.
• Mental Fitness Toolkit: Discover the foundations of mental fitness—movement, nutrition, sleep, connection, and mindset—and how small daily habits can make a big difference.
• Connection Matters: The episode explores powerful research (including the Harvard Study of Adult Development) showing that strong relationships and community are key predictors of long-term well-being.
• Practical Skills: Listeners get actionable advice on habits, goal setting, the importance of journaling, and skills like active constructive responding to strengthen relationships.
• Leader Insights: For those in leadership, find out how autonomy, competence, and relatedness play a role in motivation and performance.
• Tools & Resources: Hear about the Resilience Agenda’s highly-rated planners, their 28-day “Mental Fitness Reset” course, and the free “Mental Fitness 3-2-1” newsletter.
• Fresh Goal Setting: Hadleigh introduces the idea of “new month resolutions,” empowering you to reset and grow every 30 days, not just once a year.

Why Listen? If you want to move beyond surviving to thriving—or if you're a leader, parent, or simply someone interested in practical, research-backed well-being—this episode is packed with stories, science, and tools you can use right away. I hope you share this episode with anyone who you feel will benefit from listening. 

Connect With Hadleigh

Website      NewsLetter    LinkedIn      Facebook

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In the episode you are about to hear, Andy Vasily sits down with the legendary Udo Erasmus—renowned health educator, nutritionist, author, and creator of Udo's Oil. Udo shares his remarkable life story, from his childhood as a refugee during World War II, through deep personal traumas and his relentless quest to understand the true nature of health, happiness, and human existence.

The discussion explores profound themes of self-discovery, healing, and the importance of turning inward to connect with our authentic selves. Udo describes how crucial it is to spend time in stillness, embracing solitude, and listening deeply to one's inner voice—a journey that led him from the pain of his early years to pioneering breakthroughs in health and nutrition.

Udo offers practical wisdom for listeners on dietary habits and the foundational principles of health: focusing on fresh, whole, raw, organic, and primarily plant-based nutrition. He emphasizes how inspiration, rather than obligation, fuels meaningful lifestyle changes.

The episode also covers Udo’s professional journey—how a personal health crisis led him to develop safe, undamaged oils for human consumption, resulting in the worldwide success of Udo’s Oil. The conversation weaves in stories of resilience, spiritual insight, and the pursuit of purpose, highlighting Udo’s unique blend of scientific rigor and philosophical wisdom.

Listeners are encouraged to visit Udo Erasmus’ website, YouTube, Instagram, and LinkedIn to explore his teachings, products, and ongoing mission to transform health education.

Connect with Udo

Website  

Facebook

LinkedIn

Instagram

YouTube

You can find Udo's books here

Udo's Oil