Is Conformity or Originality the Best Path in Life?

“Originality brings more bumps in the road, yet it leaves us with more happiness and a greater sense of meaning.” Adam Grant

In his book Originals, Adam Grant closed with this: “Becoming original is not the easiest path in the pursuit of happiness but it leaves us perfectly poised for the happiness of pursuit.”

Conformity is not a recipe for success nor is it a recipe for happiness. It is a path for staying average. The struggle, the challenge, the chaos, the heartache that comes by creating our own paths in life is what stops many people from pursuing it but it is these paths that create the greatest sense of freedom, fulfillment, and happiness. (more…)

Summary Founder of the Affluence Method, Tera Maxwell, Ph.D. teaches motivated people how to consciously bring their dreams into physical reality and live a life of abundance. She counters the…

What I Have Learnt – If Anything!

“That’s been one of my mantras – focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.” Steve Jobs

Episode 400. It feels like I’ve been doing this podcast for a lot longer but since launch it’s been a year and a half. However, time has a tendency to slow down when things are new and unfamiliar. And for this reason time over the last years has slowed for me, partly due to this podcast and several other changes in my life.

I have learnt a heck of a lot in that time. The information has really led me along a deeper personal transformation journey. It’s been amazing! (more…)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Summary

Frank Hanna is CEO of Hanna Capital LLC. He has been engaged in private equity and venture capital for over 27 years and is featured in the PBS documentary, The Call of the Entrepreneur. Mr. Hanna has advised and served on the boards of numerous think tanks and speaks frequently about macroeconomics, education, and philanthropy.

He is the author of two bestselling books, What Your Money Means: (And How to Use It Well), and A Graduate’s Guide to Life. We discuss why understanding money and how to use it can afford us a deeper appreciation for what money can’t by. And Frank also shares 3 things they don’t teach us in college, including why wealth and success are not what we think it is and how a life of happiness is easier to attain than we imagine. (more…)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

What Makes You Feel Alive? Why? A Meditation by Mark Nepo

Happiness: The feeling of being alive. Marty Rubin

In this episode, I explore a mediation by Mark Nepo that I discovered in his book The Book of Awakening. Make sure you are subscribed so I can inform you when I release my book reflection of this one.

The meditation is to simply close your eyes, slow the breath, calm the mind and think about a few things that make you feel alive. What are they and why do they make you feel alive? (more…)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Summary

Lisa Feldman Barrett, PhD, is a University Distinguished Professor of Psychology at Northeastern University, with appointments at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital in Psychiatry and Radiology. She received an NIH Director’s Pioneer Award for her research on emotion in the brain, and the 2018 APS Mentor Award For Lifetime Achievement.

In this episode, we discuss her new book, How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain, a book on how the brain constructs emotions — one that could revolutionize psychology, health care, the legal system, and our understanding of the human mind. (more…)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

The Lady with The Hairy Legs – Challenge Conditioned Perspectives & Be Authentic

In this episode I wish to share with you an experience I had that, yes, believe it all not involved a lady with hairy legs. There are two thoughts that I hope you take away from this talk and they are why we must challenge our perspectives and be authentic.

The first is that it’s good to be authentic. We are so pretentious and consumed by pleasing and externally created definition of the Self. I think women and men both succumb to these pressures just in differing ways. The expectations we place on ourselves rob us of our authentic beauty. There is an attachment to an expectation that such behaviors will raise our level of self-worth yet when it doesn’t this causes dissatisfaction in life.

(more…)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Summary

“Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.”

Dr. Tasha Eurich is an organizational psychologist, researcher, and New York Times bestselling author. With a PhD in organizational psychology, she is also the founder of The Eurich Group, where she’s helped thousands of leaders and teams improve their effectiveness through greater self-awareness.

In her second book, Insight, Tasha delves into the connection between our self-awareness—what she calls the meta-skill of the twenty-first century—and our performance and success, both in and out of the workplace. Fortune calls it a “sprawling exploration of the psychic frailty that leads to self-delusion and self-aggrandizement, and—importantly—a compassionate, helpful guide for avoiding that path (or reversing it).” This forms the basis of our discussion in my interview with Tasha Eurich. (more…)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download