Month: August 2020

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108. Jennifer Louden – Why Bother?: Remaining Open to Life’s Possibilities

Jennifer Louden is a coach, speaker, and best-selling author of Why Bother: Discover the Desire for What’s Next. Jennifer is a pioneer in personal growth and development who helped launch the concept of self-care with her first bestseller, The Woman’s Comfort Book: A Self-Nurturing Guide for Restoring Balance in Your Life. For over 26 years, Jennifer has helped millions of creative women create extraordinary lives through her books, communities, and writing retreats. She has appeared on several television, radio, and podcast shows, and has been cited in Brene Brown’s books, Daring Greatly and Dare to Lead.

Jennifer joins me today to explore our fear of being undefended and explain what an emotional immune system is. She shares her experience with depression and loss and the lessons she learned from them. She explains what “why bothers” are, how they work, how we can use them, and the role that desire plays in it. She defines the difference between signature themes and life purpose and explains how the latter can harm us. She also shares her ideas and processes on writing and explores how a teacher’s highest calling is to live her lessons.

“Life wants to carry you down the river with no forcing or holding back. You need to open yourself up to it.” – Jennifer Louden

This week on The School for Good Living Podcast:

  • The experience of being alive and what is life about for Jennifer
  • Why it took 12 years to write Why Bother and for whom Jennifer wrote it
  • What our emotional immune system is and how we can expand it
  • How we impart meanings to our circumstances and our “why bother” periods
  • Desire as the flow of life and how it plays into our “why bothers”
  • What a signature theme is and how it’s different from a life purpose
  • How the idea of a life purpose can stop and hurt people
  • Shadow comforts, time monsters, and how we close off ourselves to the feeling of aliveness
  • Jennifer’s definition of self-improvement and how they may not help us find what we want most out of life
  • The Four Conditions of Enoughness and learning to stop in the gaps of life
  • Why Jennifer chose to work with the publisher, Page Two
  • The most significant influences on Jennifer’s writing
  • Writing in the morning with a latte in hand and other writing routines
  • How to avoid procrastinating as a writer
  • The importance of planning a writing project and how Jennifer organizes ideas for her books
  • How Jennifer deals with self-doubt when writing
  • Why we’re all great writers and how we can develop great sentences

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Thanks for tuning into this week’s episode of the School for Good Living Podcast, with your host, Brilliant Miller. If you enjoyed this episode, please head over to Apple Podcasts to subscribe and leave us a rating and review.

Don’t forget to visit our website, like us on Facebook, and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn. And be sure to share your favorite episodes with your friends and colleagues on social media to inspire others to improve their lives and reach their full potential.

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107. Gavin Edwards – Kindness and Wonder: The Fred Rogers Philosophy

Gavin Edwards is a journalist, nonfiction writer, and New York Times best-selling author of 12 books, including Kindness and Wonder: Why Mister Rogers Matters Now More Than Ever and The World According to Tom Hanks. Gavin is a veteran writer who has penned magazine cover stories on celebrities such as Jared Leto and Travis Barker and has written for several publications, including The New York Times, Wired, and Rolling Stone. In addition to his work as a writer, Gavin is also a public speaker who has appeared on NBC’s Today, NPR’s All Things Considered, and VH1’s Behind the Music.

Gavin joins me today to discuss the life and philosophy of Fred Rogers. He explains what led him to write about Mr. Rogers and shares some of his favorite stories about him. He describes his process of selecting personalities, icons, and topics and how he approaches the people he writes about. He also underscores the power of research in making interviews engaging and explains why the act of writing is valuable unto itself.

“If people spent their days being 3% more like Fred Rogers, we’d all be in a much better place.” – Gavin Edwards

This week on The School for Good Living Podcast:

  • Writing an oral history of Bill Murray and how Gavin approaches an icon he wants to write about
  • Writing about people who have a philosophy of life and how they’re manifesting it in the world
  • What led Gavin to write about Mr. Rogers and how he wanted his book to impact readers
  • Asking a child for a prayer and Gavin’s favorite stories about Fred Rogers
  • How Mr. Rogers lived a life of congruence and direction
  • How Gavin’s life was touched by delving into Mr. Roger’s life
  • The willingness to look at the world through another person’s eyes
  • How spirituality informed Mr. Roger’s work and his connection with other people
  • The fundamental lesson from Mr. Roger and what he thought about death and dying
  • The power of presence and attentiveness in giving interviews
  • Asking the right questions to bring an interviewee away from a routine response
  • A writing lesson that has served Gavin well and why he writes in long-hand
  • The impact of anecdotes and using writing tools to bring life to a story

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Thanks for tuning into this week’s episode of the School for Good Living Podcast, with your host, Brilliant Miller. If you enjoyed this episode, please head over to Apple Podcasts to subscribe and leave us a rating and review.

Don’t forget to visit our website, like us on Facebook, and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn. And be sure to share your favorite episodes with your friends and colleagues on social media to inspire others to improve their lives and reach their full potential.

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106. Nicholas Webb – What Customers Crave: Driving Disruption & Innovation

Nicholas Webb is the author of What Customers Crave: How to Create Relevant and Memorable Experiences at Every Touchpoint and The Innovation Mandate: The Growth Secrets of the Best Organizations in the World. Nick, widely regarded as an innovation evangelist, is a speaker and entrepreneur who founded LeaderLogic Management Consultants, an organization dedicated to driving strategic excellence, innovation, and customer experience design. He was honored with a Doctorate in Humane Letters by the Western University of Health and Sciences, where he also serves as an adjunct professor and Chief Innovation Officer.

Nicholas joins me today to discuss how to foster innovation in companies. He reveals the three key trends that drive disruption as well as the critical risks to companies. He explores the idea of improving and evolving yourself every day, serving a mission that matters, and the importance of living life consciously. He also explains why legacy is an insidious problem in an organization, why spoken communication is the future, and how a post-COVID-19 economy will require individuals and organizations to be innovators.

“Consumers want an Apple-like experience: they want it friction-free, customized, and relevant.” – Nicholas Webb

This week on The School for Good Living Podcast:

  • What Nicholas believes are the three things that create an amazing life
  • Finding joy and fulfillment in the service of a mission
  • Nicholas’s journey from growing up in poverty with an educational handicap to adjunct professor and innovator
  • What meaningful consequences are and why pain may be the universe’s way of taking us to our purpose
  • Nicholas’s three principles for finding your innate form of genius
  • The meaning of developmental stasis and the role of conscientiousness in improvement and change
  • The three trends that drive disruption and what it means to innovate
  • The five touchpoints of an organization and the necessity to architect them
  • The power of future casting and its impact on the future of organizations
  • What asynchronous communication is and why spoken language is the future
  • How to develop effective communication and the characteristics that make a compelling communicator
  • Nicholas’s process and approach to writing and the stage-gate analysis for books

Resources Mentioned:

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Thanks for tuning into this week’s episode of the School for Good Living Podcast, with your host, Brilliant Miller. If you enjoyed this episode, please head over to Apple Podcasts to subscribe and leave us a rating and review.

Don’t forget to visit our website, like us on Facebook, and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn. And be sure to share your favorite episodes with your friends and colleagues on social media to inspire others to improve their lives and reach their full potential.

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105. Gary Taubes – The Case for Keto: Rethinking Obesity & Weight Loss

Gary Taubes is the author of five books, including The Case for Keto: Rethinking Weight Control and the Science and Practice of Low-Carb/High-Fat Eating and The Case Against Sugar. He is the co-founder of the Nutrition Science Initiative, a non-profit dedicated to improving the quality of nutrition research. As an unconventional thinker and investigative & science journalist, Gary questions established thought and prevailing wisdom on obesity, nutrition, and how scientists do their work. Gary has been awarded numerous recognitions for his journalism, including the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Investigator Award in Health Policy Research, among many others.

Gary joins me to explore the history of obesity research and the dangers of dogmatic thinking in the scientific community. He describes the physiology of obesity, including the roles of hormones and enzymes in the body’s ability to accumulate and store fat. He explains how carbohydrates can lead to obesity and how a low-carb, high-fat diet can address it. He also delves into the moral implications in the view that obesity is the result of energy imbalance and describes the interplay of assumptions and terminologies in science and writing.

“A ketogenic diet minimizes insulin, reducing the fat stored in your tissue and burns them as fuel.” – Gary Taubes

This week on The School for Good Living Podcast:

  • The fundamental laws of obesity research
  • How the view that energy imbalance causes obesity leads to fat-shaming
  • Obesity as a fat-trapping disorder and the physiology of fat accumulation
  • The role of insulin and its secretion in obesity and diabetes
  • Using ketogenic and low-carb, high-fat diets in response to obesity
  • The history of obesity research and how dogmatic belief systems perpetuate themselves
  • Why Gary devoted his life to his work as an investigative journalist and how he transitioned to journalism from physics
  • What pathological science means and the dangers of groupthink
  • The importance of accuracy of terminologies in science and writing and how assumptions get embedded in terminology
  • Adopting the ketogenic approach in vegan, vegetarian, and other plant-based diets
  • The appearance of Western diseases in people who transition from their traditional eating habits to the Western diet
  • The presence of obesity in impoverished populations
  • Why Gary writes in the morning and what his writing process looks like
  • The value of writing with a specific reader in mind and Gary’s advice for people who want to be writers

Resources Mentioned:

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Thanks for tuning into this week’s episode of the School for Good Living Podcast, with your host, Brilliant Miller. If you enjoyed this episode, please head over to Apple Podcasts to subscribe and leave us a rating and review.

Don’t forget to visit our website, like us on Facebook, and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn. And be sure to share your favorite episodes with your friends and colleagues on social media to inspire others to improve their lives and reach their full potential.

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