School for Good Living Podcasts

December 27, 2022December 30, 2022

195. 2022 School for Good Living Podcast Highlights

What is life about? What is something about which you have changed your mind in recent years? What have you started or stopped doing to live or age well?

These are some of the questions that I have asked many of my guests this year and their responses have been both insightful and entertaining. Join me for this final episode of 2022 as we look back at many of the guests I have interviewed and their take on many things including getting creative work done and living a good life.

This year on the School for Good Living Podcast:

Resources Mentioned:

http://goodliving.com

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Thank you for listening to this week’s episode of the School For Good Living Podcast, I hope you found it as insightful as I did! If you enjoyed this episode, then be sure to head over to goodliving.com and sign up for our email list to receive special reminders and exclusive content sent right to your inbox. Explore our website to learn more about the many services I offer, like my Transformation Coaching Program, Coach Training Program, and my catalog of quotations to help you live a good life!

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November 22, 2022March 21, 2023

194. Ryland Engelhart – Kiss the Ground

Ryland Engelhart is a philanthropist. He’s a lover of people and of life. Ryland co-founded Kiss the Ground in his living room with a friend ten years ago. It’s a nonprofit organization that he leads today as executive director. Ryland is also the producer of The Kiss the Ground documentary and the co-creator of the documentary film “May I Be Frank?” He’s also co-owner and formerly served as Mission Fulfillment Officer of the nationally recognized plant-based restaurants Café Gratitude and Gracias Madre, located in Southern California.

In this interview, Ryland joins me to discuss sacred commerce, using business as a force for good, the possibility of restoration and regeneration, and gaining a sense of optimism toward the future of the Earth and humanity. We also discuss one of Ryland’s strategies to deal with challenging moments and to avoid closing down or shrinking from difficulties. We talk about finding our thing, whatever it may be, and creating ways to express what we value. We also talk about building and solidifying habits related to creativity and writing, and a lot about Ryland’s sustainability efforts.

“Regeneration is playing a role in reversing or balancing the climate.”

This week on the School for Good Living Podcast:

Gaining a sense of optimism towards the future of the Earth and of humanity
Finding our thing and creating ways to express what we value
Striking inspiration and turning it into something that can grow
Ryland’s sustainability efforts through “Regenerate America”
Building and solidifying writing habits

Resources Mentioned:

Connect With The Guest:

Ryland Engelhart

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November 1, 2022November 1, 2022

193. Diane Dreher – The Tao of Inner Peace

Diane Dreher is the writer of The Tao of Inner Peace as well as other nonfiction books, and her work has been translated into ten languages. She is an award-winning positive psychology researcher and her work blends wisdom from the past with contemporary psychology and neuroscience. Her work combines knowledge of the western world with traditions of the eastern world including many insights from the Tao Te Ching. Her work helps teach people to live with the pains of life without also suffering.

In this interview, Diane joins me to discuss how to better understand and cultivate your unique strengths, how to understand and cultivate a relationship to your intuition, and the power of stillness. We also discuss the four stages of discovering your purpose or calling, recognizing, and resolving false dilemmas, and finding paths through “either / or” situations that seem unwinnable. Another interesting thing we talk about is the wisdom of bamboo, what we can learn from it about strength, flexibility, and resilience; How we can use our differences to help us work together to find solutions.

“There are times when to be strong is to be flexible.”

This week on the School for Good Living Podcast:

Being aware of and using our strengths
Combining eastern and western philosophy
The false dilemma and Seeing through “either / or” situations
The wisdom of bamboo, learning to be flexible
Allowing our differences to help us work together to find solutions

Resources Mentioned:

Connect With The Guest:

DianeDreher.com/contact

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October 18, 2022October 18, 2022

192. David Bradford – Connect: Building Exceptional Relationships with Family, Friends, and Colleagues

David Bradford is the author of Connect: Building Exceptional Relationships with Family, Friends, and Colleagues. He has taught at the Stanford Graduate School of Business for over 50 years and helped to cultivate a course affectionately known as “touchy-feely” where he has coached and consulted with hundreds of people to help them cultivate excellent relationships.

Join us in this interview on the School for Good Living Podcast as David and I discuss how we can better deal with conflict, the three realities in any situation and how to leverage them to strengthen relationships, and how to differentiate between thoughts and feelings. We also discuss how we can give better feedback and productively address pain points in relationships.

“Emotions are important because they give meaning to facts.”

This week on the School for Good Living Podcast:

The “Touchy-feely” course David helped develop at the Stanford Graduate School of Business
The keys to exceptional relationships
The tennis court model and the three realities in any interaction
Feedback as information rather than a requirement for change
Breaking away from feedback sandwiches to create more actionable feedback
How to correctly identify feelings and cognitions
Breaking through fear by understanding their limitations
Feeling pinched rather than hurt

Resources Mentioned:

Connect With The Guest:

David Bradford

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October 4, 2022October 4, 2022

191. David Kadavy – Mind Management, Not Time Management: Productivity When Creativity Matters

David Kadavy is the author of multiple books, including Mind Management, Not Time Management: Productivity when Creativity Matters and The Heart to Start: Stop Procrastinating and Start Creating, and a book called Design for Hackers. David has spoken at South by Southwest, TEDx and his writings have been featured in The Observer, The Huffington Post, Ink Magazine, Quartz, McSweeney’s, Upworthy, Lifehacker, and many other places. In addition to his writing and publications, he is also the creator and host of the Love Your Work podcast.

In this episode on the School for Good Living Podcast, David joins me to discuss creativity, productivity, and living a meaningful life. We discuss creating something David calls a curiosity management system and how he uses “crumb time” to learn and to create more than you otherwise might. We explore how David escaped being born in the wrong place, a suburban area in Nebraska, surrounded by people who didn’t understand him and with whom he didn’t really connect, and how he managed to create a fulfilling life of creativity and contribution and create a life in Columbia where he lives now. We also discussed the struggle that many artists and creators have of figuring out what their unique message is, exactly what their voice is, who their audience is, and how David has approached these things. Join us to explore these ideas of writing as a process of teaching ourselves and learning what we need to know and the fact that writing is often not a linear process and how to use that fact to your advantage.

“That’s kind of the secret of anything, being okay at being bad at it.”

This week on the School for Good Living Podcast:

Looking past money, knowledge, and experiences to find meaning
Using “crumb time” as a curiosity management system
David’s “beige period” and how he found his way out of it
How to finally just get started
What happens if the human race goes extinct – and is it really a bad thing?

Resources Mentioned:

Connect With The Guest:

David Kadavy

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September 20, 2022September 20, 2022

190. Coaches Commonplace Book – #5

The Coaches Commonplace Book is a candid extention to the School for Good Living Podcast. My co-host and fellow member of the Marshall Goldsmith 100 Coaches group, Dean Miles, joins me to dive deeper into what it means to be a coach, find fulfillment, and ultimately to live good lives. This series includes several fun thinking activities where we explore quotations and news articles.

Join me this week as Dean and I discuss our recent information diet and what it takes to be a coach. In this discussion, we talk a lot about where we find out motivation, our purpose, and ultimately how we seek for good living.

“On the other side of any emotion felt fully is peace.” – John Wineland

This week on the School for Good Living Podcast:

Brilliant and Dean’s information diet
Training versus fight training; what it takes to really be great
Masculine and feminine energy
The wisdom of the pages
- Dean’s article: Six Signs You’re Lying to Yourself: How to Recognize When Your Confidence is Covering up Your Self-Deception – Dr. Evan Parks
- Building a Personal Brand – Success Magazine
Finding and following your purpose

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September 6, 2022September 6, 2022

189. Sam Carpenter – Work the System: The Simple Mechanics of Making More and Working Less

Sam Carpenter is the author of Work the System: The Simple Mechanics of Making More and Working Less. Sam is an author, an entrepreneur, and has extensive experience in a variety of fields, including engineering, journalism, publishing, surveying, forestry, construction management, telecommunications, and a myriad of other blue- and white-collar enterprises and jobs. Sam has owned and operated Centratel, the leading telephone answering service in the United States, for nearly 40 years.

In this Interview on the School for Good Living Podcast, Sam joins me to discuss how we can find good living through the good results of managing our systems. We all deal with systems and processes and Sam is someone who helps us learn to deal with recurring systems and processes to make our lives easier, free ourselves up, reduce our stress levels, earn more money, and have more free time.

“Unhappy people’s lives are out of control because they spend their days coping with the random bad results of their unmanaged systems.”

This week on the School for Good Living Podcast:

Which way should the toilet paper roll face?
How we can avoid ‘fire fighting’ against our tasks and challenges
Finding the organic processes in a business and making them mechanical
The documents required to guide a business’s goals and principles
Sam’s systems for writing books that make a difference

Resources Mentioned:

Connect With The Guest:

Sam Carpenter

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August 30, 2022September 6, 2022

188. AJ Jacobs – The Puzzler: One Man’s Quest to Solve the Most Baffling Puzzles Ever, from Crosswords to Jigsaws to the Meaning of Life

My guest today, AJ Jacobs, is a man who’s in the puzzle business. He can help you solve puzzles. He can help you live a more meaningful, happier, healthier life by cultivating something he calls the puzzle mindset. His most recent book is called The Puzzler: One Man’s Quest to Solve the Most Baffling Puzzles Ever, from crosswords to jigsaw puzzles to the meaning of life. AJ sees his life as a series of experiments in which he immerses himself in a project or lifestyle, for better or for worse. And then he writes about what he’s learned. The puzzler helps us to live with more curiosity, and more flexibility.

In this interview, AJ joins me to talk about how we can become more curious and less furious. We talk a lot about riddles, questions, puzzles, and new ways of looking at things in our lives that can help us not be so frustrated by them. We also talk about his work before The Puzzler. When he was a guest on this show back in 2019, he had written a book called Thanks A Thousand, in which he wanted to thank, and he embarked on a quest to thank every person who had a hand in making his morning cup of coffee, from the barista to the roaster to the truck driver to the warehouse operators to the grower.

“Curiosity is the only thing that can save the human species.”

Bonus Riddle From the Interview:

What is greater than God, but worse than the devil? Poor men have it, and rich men need it. Dead men eat it, but if you eat it, you will die.

Watch the full interview to find the answer!

This week on the School for Good Living Podcast:

How puzzles can help us to live better lives
Keeping an open mind and remaining curious
The benefits of pattern finding and the dangers of apophenia
How puzzle games can help us overcome some of the damage in society

Resources Mentioned:

Connect With The Guest:

AJ Jacobs

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August 23, 2022August 25, 2022

187. Ralph De La Rosa – Don’t Tell Me to Relax: Emotional Resilience in the Age of Rage, Feels, and Freak-Outs

Ralph De La Rosa teaches about two things, the suffering that comes from emotional confusion and the freedom that comes from emotional intelligence. Ralph began practicing meditation in 1996 and has taught meditation since 2008. He was a student of Amma’s, the hugging saint, for 16 years. He began studying Buddhism in 2005. Ralph’s work has been featured in the New York Post, CNN, Tricycle, GQ, Women’s Health, and many other publications and podcasts. Ralph is a PTSD, depression, and opioid addiction survivor, and their work is inspired by the tremendous transformation he’s experienced through meditation, yoga, and therapy.

In this interview, Ralph joins me to discuss how we can live a better life, understand ourselves, and make the contribution we would make if only we could get out of our own ways. We also talk a good bit about Ralph’s books. The first is Monkey is the Messenger: Meditation and What Your Busy Mind is Trying to Tell You. Ralph offers an insightful perspective here that the mind, the monkey, is both an agitator and an ally. It’s not something to wish it would go away or shut up, it actually has some incredible messages for us of growth and healing. Ralph’s second book is called Don’t Tell Me to Relax: Emotional Resilience in the Age of Rage, Feels, and Freak-Outs, a book that’s very timely, even still as it was published a couple of years ago.

“Life is like an exploding train wreck of beautiful possibilities.”

This week on the School for Good Living Podcast:

Music and the role it has played in Ralphs’ journey
Neurodivergence and how it has helped Ralph understand himself
How our suffering can teach us compassion
Ralph’s new learning interest called “attachment styles”
Ralph’s writing journey

Resources Mentioned:

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August 16, 2022September 6, 2022

186. Coaches Commonplace Book – #4

Dean Miles is a fellow member of the Marshall Goldsmith 100 coaches group. Dean joins me in this special series where we dive into some of our philosophies about coaching and good living.

Join us in this episode of the Coaches Commonplace Book where we dive into the information that we have been consuming recently, what things we have been learning from that information, emotional fitness, emotional resiliency, and a bit about making money and influencing others as a coach.

“There’s what you achieve and then there’s being happy. Don’t blend those two together.”

This week on the School for Good Living Podcast:

An update on Dean and Brilliant’s information Diet
Spending time and learning from Marshall Goldsmith
Wisdom of the Pages
- Brilliants magazine article “Damn Good Advice for Fathers”
- Dean’s magazine article “Six Ways to Spend a Mental Health Day”
How to be a coach