The High Performance Life

In this week's episode, I am joined by Dr. Karyn Gordon!

Dr. Karyn Gordon is the Wall Street Journal bestselling author of The Three Chairs: How Great Leaders Drive Communication, Performance, and Engagement.

In addition, she is a leadership and relationship expert; professional counselor; the CEO of DK Leadership, a global leadership coaching company; and a TV personality for Cityline.

Her popular TED Talk ranked Mid Year Top #40 Most Popular TEDx Talks 2022 and she was nominated for the RBC Canadian Women Entrepreneur Award 2022.

Dr. Karyn has given over 1000 keynotes to more than half a million people in 17 countries, including Fortune 500 companies, professionals, parents, and hundreds of school boards across North America.

She was invited to collaborate with professors from The Wharton School to develop an EQ curriculum for family businesses and The Consul General of Canada in New York hosted a private reception honoring her work for organizations and families.

Dr. Karyn has a Doctorate in Marriage & Family with additional certifications in leadership, Emotional Intelligence and career direction. She has served as the media spokesperson for Maple Leaf Foods, Microsoft, eHarmony and UNICEF.

Dr. Karyn is a professional counselor for 25 years, an executive coach, and she is also a media personality who has consulted for Good Morning America, Forbes, Inc, The New York Times and Cityline. Key Points

• The 'Three Chairs' concept explained

• CARDS: 5 skills for confidence • Confidence impacts decisions

• Visual tools for learning

• Goal setting boosts growth

Best Quotes

09:30 - 09:42

• "So the first step is to understanding the chairs, then the mindset. The second is understanding the impact. And the third step is then how we get ourselves all in the middle chair. Because this is learned. It is not genetic, which is why I love this topic so much."

10:18 - 10:31

• "But we really wanna spend as much time as we can in that middle chair and that confident, comfortable chair where we're not afraid of feedback, we're not afraid of people helping us be better. We're learning and growing every day." 11:19 - 11:27

• "So a lot of us, we don't even realize, why am I making this decision? We're not gonna realize, but deep underneath it all is our mindset."

12:00 - 12:12

• "A lot of times when I coach and teach this, whether or not it's with c-suites or managers or parents or teenagers, people will say, okay, when I'm at school, I'm sitting here. When I get home, I sit here."

12:44 - 12:51

• "It's a great leadership framework because it, you, it impacts who you hire, who you fire, who you, you know, who you promote."

In this week's episode I am joined by Carrie Sun!

Carrie Sun was born in China and raised in Michigan. She is a math and finance dual-degree graduate of MIT, successful Fidelity Investments analyst, and holds an MFA in creative writing from The New School.

Private Equity is her first book - gripping memoir of one woman's self-discovery inside a top Wall Street hedge fund, and an urgent indictment of privilege, extreme wealth, and work culture.

PRIVATE EQUITY not only chronicles her experience within the instant tornado of information, colossal expectations, packed schedules, 24/7 accountability, and normalized last-second changes to plans (all set to world-class standards), but, more importantly, provides a searing examination of our relationship to achievement, family, labor, the promise and destructive power of money, and the illusiveness of our own identity.

Key Points

• Resetting Life's Optimization Equation

• High Performers: Excellence & Intensity

• Flying Private vs Choosing Simplicity

• Burnout: The Pitfall of Constant Optimization

• Defining Success on Your Own Terms

Best Quotes

06:49 - 06:59

• "And I think what drove certainly me, my boss, and I, from what I can tell everyone else at the firm, was just this constant drive for excellence."

14:22 - 14:34

• "I just, I now substitute it with new variables. There's nothing more meaningful to me than writing and seeing my worth on a page at the end of a day."

28:56 - 29:08

• "I think it intersects with your philosophy of life so, so much and to be able to just have an impact and bring about the energy that I want in the world..."

48:12 - 48:18

• "But I also think that that future comes from actually confronting your past self."

51:52 - 52:10

• "I really wanted my book to be one woman's journey of professional sort of self-realization and coming of age and to just, but also more than that, it's primarily set at work, but it's so much more than that."

For more about Carrie: https://www.carriesun.com/

In this week's episode, I am joined by Kristin Kirkpatrick & Dr. Ibrahim Hanouneh!

Kristin Kirkpatrick, MS, RD is a bestselling author, presenter, president and CEO of KAK Nutrition Consulting, a dietitian with the Department of Wellness & Preventive Medicine at Cleveland Clinic, and a senior fellow with Meadows Behavioral Healthcare. She has appeared on the TODAY show, NBC Nightly News, and Fox News, among others, and has contributed to publications such as The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and TIME.

Dr. Ibrahim Hanouneh completed his internal medicine residency and gastroenterology and hepatology fellowship training at the Cleveland Clinic. He served as an associate staff at the Cleveland Clinic before moving to Minnesota to join MNGI Digestive Health in 2015, currently serving on their Board of Directors. Dr. Hanouneh has spent a great deal of time in liver disease. He has a passion for studies related to fatty liver. He has presented at several national and international meetings and has been an author on over seventy papers as well as numerous abstracts.

Key Points

• 1 in 4 people have silent fatty liver

• Metabolic syndrome links to liver health

• Diet choices are key, not just weight

• Intermittent fasting as a health strategy

• Seven colors of food for liver rejuvenation

• Small diet changes make a big difference

Best Quotes

02:19 - 02:26

• "The liver is so incredibly resilient. I mean, talk about an organ that takes a beating and just keeps coming back."

05:00 - 05:07

• "This disease has nothing to do with alcohol. It is, has all to do with metabolic syndrome."

10:35 - 10:49

• "So when we think about waist size, we were really interested in waste versus BMI... but waist size is a great indicator because it indicates what kind of fat you have and where is it in terms of the closest to other organs."

11:28 - 11:42

• "So when we came up with what are the four metabolic profiles, we essentially tune them in terms of what is your waist? So is your waist lean or non-lean? And then in addition to that, what is your, what does your metabolic numbers look like?"

27:27 - 27:32

• "Coffee detoxes your liver, believe it or not, very useful for fatty liver disease."

For more information on Kirstin, visit here: https://www.kristinkirkpatrick.com/

For more information on Ibrahim, visit here: https://www.mngi.com/provider/ibrahim-hanouneh-md

In this week's episode, I am joined by Jamie Gruber!

Jamie is an entrepreneur, multifamily investor, mastermind leader, and the host of the popular Tribe of Millionaires Podcast.

Several years ago, Jamie quit his high-paying corporate job to pursue his entrepreneurial dreams and has since become a passionate messenger for others seeking to make big pivots in life.

Whether through the podcast or his work with the Gobundance mastermind group, Jamie is on a mission to help as many people as possible escape unfulfilling jobs and careers to pursue lives filled with meaning, authenticity, and freedom. Key Points

• Finding fulfillment beyond high income

• The struggle of leaving corporate for freedom

• Harnessing energy in right direction

• Finding freedom through bold choices• Leveraging relationships, not return

Best Quotes

02:21 - 02:28

• "Walking away from that was a big piece as well. You know, I got the job I dreamed of, I thought it was gonna fulfill me. I thought it was the thing that was missing in my life."

03:27 - 03:39

• "So when I made the decision to jump, which was in April of 2021, honestly it was, I, I didn't really have, I did not have a replacement for my income fully."

03:41 - 03:53

• "I had money saved and I had a thought and an ambition and a dream. And amazingly, it was extremely, it was an extremely calm and, and, and i, a non-emotional decision."

27:36 - 27:45

• "I could see this going. That was that thing I believed in when I left and I had some real estate to anchor me. That was that thing I believed in when I left and I had some real estate to anchor me."

For more about Jamie visit: https://www.gobundanceemerge.com/?

In this week's episode, I am joined by Dr. Neha Sangwan!

Dr. Sangwan, CEO and founder of Intuitive Intelligence, is an internal medicine physician, international speaker and corporate communication expert.

Her private practice and corporate consulting focuses on empowering individuals, organizational leaders, and their teams with the tools for clear, effective communication.

She addresses the root cause of stress, miscommunication, and interpersonal conflict, often healing chronic conditions such as headaches, insomnia, anxiety, and depression.

She regularly consults with organizations such as the American Heart Association, American Express, Kaiser Permanente, and Google, and has shared her keynote presentation on the stages of TEDx.

Key Points

• The profound link between body and emotions

• Overcoming the trap of people-pleasing

• Understanding the people pleaser in you

• The power of saying "no" with confidence

• Building self-trust in personal & work life

• Embracing life's lessons for growth

Best Quotes

05:09 - 05:20

• "So what I will tell you is that the first time that I heard them, you know, after I was 30, I thought to myself, oh, there's never gonna be an end to climbing other people's mountains."

06:51 - 07:02

• "When I decided to figure out what I valued and what I stood for, I get to be the same me at work, at home with friends."

13:48 - 13:57

• "Self trust and the ability for us to know and trust in something higher."

35:05 - 35:15

• "Every interaction, experience, and relationship is meant to help us grow."

35:20 - 35:37

• "If we trust ourselves and we trust each other to do this sacred dance of our souls together, where we learn our life lessons together, we can evolve as one world family, serving as a catalyst to make this happen is the purpose of my life."

40:17 - 40:29

• "And that's my wish for people that, you know, society tells us that it's gonna be money and the name on your door and whether you have a corner office and what car you drive and how many likes you have on social media and all these things."

In this week's episode, I am joined by Darleen Santore, AKA Coach Dar! Coach Dar is passionate about helping people break through adversity to achieve greatness. Recently named Senior Fellow of PathNorth—an organization of world leaders and CEOs of Fortune 100 companies—her powerful message continues to reach a global audience.

Coach Dar blends a knowledge of psychology, life, experience, and her personal mission in life to inspire greatness in everyone she meets. The result? Individuals, corporate executives, and professional athletes discover their own personal missions, individual gifts, and set their sights on the goals that they thought impossible.

It is her unique style and approach during transformational seminars, high-impact speaking engagements, and exclusive one-on-one sessions that has helped countless people say NO to the status quo, raise the bar in their lives, and breakthrough adversity to reignite their fire.

Coach Dar was awarded the Most Inspiring Woman of 2017 by the WNBA, recognized in the 2018 VoyagerPhoenix series titled Trailblazers: Rewriting The Narrative, and is a founding member of WISH (Women in Service and Hope) for the Society of St. Vincent de Paul in Phoenix.

Coach Dar is also a United States Ambassador for the Global Pay It Forward Day Initiative, driven by the belief that #RaisingTheBar includes acts of kindness that leave every person and every place we encounter better than when we found them.

Key Points

• Tools to recover fast from setbacks

• Family roots cultivate resilience

• Faith is the fuel for adversity

• Gratitude shapes a fulfilling life

• Depth creates enduring relationships

Best Quotes

04:14 - 04:19

• "So I suffered a stroke. I did have paralysis, but it messed up my vision, my perception, my speech."

05:10 - 05:24

• "But here's the difference. When you start to learn mental skills, which is the specialty that I teach now over the years, I train on this, I train how to get yourself mentally fit so when the hits come, you know how to deal with them."

08:21 - 08:41

• "Because it gives you hopes. You, you understand you're not doing this on your own strength anymore. There's a bigger purpose. And there are so many, what I call God winks, things that just remind you that there is absolutely something bigger that is overseeing our lives in this world."

19:13 - 19:25

• "So no matter what happens, someone goes down, you got someone that's gonna pick it right back up. You have depth in your world. And man, that just fits. If you want longevity in life, have community and have depth around you."

In this week's episode, I am joined by Dr. Sue Varma! Dr. Sue Varma, MD, PC, DFAPA, is a distinguished psychiatrist and cognitive behavioral therapist based in New York City.

With over two decades of private practice experience, Dr. Varma has made significant contributions to the field of mental health.

Dr. Varma holds the position of Clinical Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at New York University (NYU) Langone Health.

Her accomplishments have been recognized by the American Psychiatric Association (APA), where she was honored as a Distinguished Fellow.

Dr. Varma has garnered national acclaim as a sought-after medical commentator, appearing on major news programs and networks.

Her expertise has been instrumental in guiding the public through various mental health challenges, from trauma and resilience to stress management and relationship issues.

Dr. Varma can frequently be seen discussing breaking news on the morning shows including the Today Show, CBS Mornings and GMA, as well as prime time specials and news documentaries.

Dr. Varma is a captivating speaker, engaging diverse audiences with her messages of inspiration, compassion, and hope.

From C-suite executives to healthcare professionals, educators, and the general public, she imparts valuable knowledge on topics such as self-compassion, psychological safety, work-life balance, and women's mental health.

Throughout her career, Dr. Varma has received numerous prestigious awards for her groundbreaking work in mental health education and advocacy, including the Sharecare Emmy and a Mayoral Proclamation.

Notably, she was recognized as one of the world's top five leading health experts by Global Citizen for her contributions during the pandemic.

Dr. Varma's integrative approach to mental health, encompassing the 4 Ms of mental health, empowers individuals to boost their mood, mastery, and sense of meaning in life. Key Points

• Aligning life with true desires

• Growth as a measure of life

• Interdependence vs. Independence

• The power of purpose in life

• Relationships as a cornerstone of health

• Aligning your career with passion

• Practical optimism, not toxic positivity

• Parenthood with purposeful growth

Best Quotes04:54 - 05:03

• "I want to give people tools and not everybody will see a therapist, whether it's for because of cost, because of availability, because of any number of barriers."

14:16 - 14:26

• " don't want to ever be driven by fame and likes and all these things that, that are soul crushing and make you empty and are endless."

19:37 - 19:45

• "I just thought of myself as never good at school, but I didn't realize I actually had something that was treatable or diagnosable that I could have if I'd gotten treatment for it."

29:11 - 29:24

• "Good for you, good for the person who, who, who knew from a young age, if they were like a musician, you know, or an artist, like a lot of times people will say I was good at it. And then also they had luckily a parent that had the time to invest."

40:53 - 40:58

• "Practical optimism teaches you that the glass is refillable and there's free refills."

For more about Dr. Sue Varma, visit here: https://www.doctorsuevarma.com/

In this week's episode I am joined by Eric Hinman! At 26, Eric's career dictated his life. He worked set hours, dressed the part, followed a schedule dictated by others and he didn't really exercise.

He traded his time for money, and cared deeply about the public perception of success.

But he was miserable...

Now at 43, Eric's life dictates his career and he gets to live his best day ever, every day.

Eric is a hybrid athlete (5x Ironman and counting), an angel investor, serial entrepreneur,and brand builder, who specializes in scaling early-stage consumer and wellness brands.

Eric works to build, grow, and evolve businesses in the health + wellness space with brands including Ten Thousand, Slate, Ice Barrel, SISU, HVMN, The Normal Brand, Blokes, MASA Chips, Kane, Flux, GORUCK, Kreatures of Habit, and more.

He has partnered with some of the biggest names and brands to help them launch, scale, and exit. Key Points

• Life's imbalance can lead to fulfillment

• Ironman training teaches balance lessons

• Burnout and learning when to delegate

• Slowing down boosts productivity

• Crafting the perfect day for success

Best Quotes 04:16 - 04:25

• "I realized that like, I'm having fun. It's, it's fun. I'm not out of balance in a way where I'm like, my job sucks, my relationship suck, my life sucks."

13:14 - 13:25

• "I'm hitting the gas and then I hit the brakes and, you know, that's kind of how the months flow oftentimes for me too is I'm hitting the gas for several months and then I, I pump the brakes a bit."

17:47 - 17:56

• "My, I generally reserve my CrossFit session, which is the hardest training. I'll do that day for the morning and then afterwards I know my mind is gonna be on fire, I'm gonna be sharp, I'm gonna be energized." 32:15 - 32:24

• "The beautiful thing about the internet is it allows for compound interest much easier than, you know, a brick and mortar store in a town."

For more about Eric: https://erichinman.com/

In this week's episode, I am joined by Lee Benson!

Lee Benson is the business scaling master who grew his first company, Able Aerospace from 3 to 500 employees with 15 consecutive years of 20 percent compounded average annual growth before his exit of 9-figures.

Now, he is on a mission to equip parents with a simple roadmap to help their kids understand finances and value, in his brand new book Value Creation Kid.

Lee is also the WSJ, Amazon and USA Today Bestselling Author of Your Most Important Number.

Key Points:

• Value creation in family talks

• Gravy Stack Method: A family blueprint

• The Importance of Healthy Struggles

• The powerful tug of intrinsic motivation

• Value creation's critical role in society

Best Quotes:

05:17 - 05:25

• "I always encourage parents to start with what would the ideal launched high school, graduating senior into adulthood look like?"

05:26 - 05:35

• "In the Gravy Stack book that we have here, a value creation kid, and the subtitle is really important, the healthy struggles that your children need to succeed."

05:41 - 05:50

• "You could, you could call it operationalizing value creation in the family to step by step, you know, walk them through becoming these amazing adults over time."

31:30 - 31:40

• "But wow, I really admire how close and loving your family is in the emotional energy when I come over to, for, you know, a barbecue in the backyard."

40:20 - 40:23

• "And the kids today are gonna be running the world that I age out in."

44:14 - 44:25

• "I believe that everybody does what's in their own best self-interest, whether it's for this life or the next, I think everybody does. So by definition everyone is selfish, but are you win-win selfish or are you win-lose?"

In this week's episode, I am joined by Dr. Jud Brewer!

Jud Brewer, MD, Ph.D. ("Dr. Jud") blends over 20 years of experience with mindfulness training and a career in scientific research. He is passionate about understanding how our brains work, and how to use that knowledge to help people make deep, permanent change in their lives — with the goal of reducing suffering in the world at large.

Dr. Jud is the director of research and innovation at Brown University's Mindfulness Center, and the executive medical director of behavioral health at Sharecare, the digital health company helping people manage all their health in one place.

He has developed and tested novel mindfulness programs for habit change, including Unwinding Anxiety, Eat Right Now and Craving to Quit.

Based on the success of these programs, he co-founded MindSciences, Inc. to create app-based digital therapeutic versions of these programs for a wider audience, to put effective, evidence-based behavior change guidance in the hands of people struggling with unwanted behaviors and "everyday addictions." Sharecare, Inc. acquired MindSciences in 2020.

His published work has been featured on 60 Minutes, TED, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Today Show, TIME, The Washington Post, Forbes, CNN, BBC, NPR, and more.

Current work - The Hunger Habit: As Jud did for addiction and anxiety, he is now doing for hunger. In The Hunger Habit (on sale Jan 9, 2024), Jud examines how "hunger" went from a tenant of survival to a mechanism for pleasure, an outlet for pain, and a habit rather than a need. Key Points

• Habits: Trigger, Behavior, Reward

• Mind as Habit Loop Map

• Anxiety & Worry as Habits

• Cravings: Awareness Kills Them

• Bigger, Better Offers to Habits

Best Quotes

17:47 - 18:02

• "When we can see very, very clearly that an old habit is not actually rewarding, we get something what's called in our brain, we get a negative prediction error, meaning we, our brain expected it to be, you know, at some level of reward and it's not as good as expected."

19:13 - 19:22

• "You know, I, I was thinking, okay, they're probably gaining weight. 'cause most people, you know, they eat as a replacement for smoking, right? They provide a substitute behavior."

19:52 - 19:56

• "So this reward thing, and I was talking about, you know, something has a certain reward value."

24:19 - 24:26

• "So we create this unwaning anxiety app and we do a randomized controlled trial in people with generalized anxiety disorder."

46:15 - 46:25

• "If we look at those and we, you know, we have this craving to eat, we, we can fight that craving, right? That's that willpower depletion type of thing at best."

59:39 - 59:50

• "And I'll also say, let's, let's circle back to Ted. You know, the belief comes from experiencing these things ourself."

For more about Dr. Jud: https://drjud.com/