Month: March 2021

I lived in Japan for a period and love the country, culture, and language. It is what drew me to read Héctor García’s book, Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life, co-authored with Francesc Miralles. In my conversation with Héctor, we discuss how the book takes some Japanese concepts and combines them with other Eastern thought, Western philosophy, and practical philosophy.  Perhaps this melding of ideas is why the book has sold so well. Its influence has been far-reaching and remarkable – translated into at least 58 world languages and is the most translated book to have originally been written in Spanish.

As Héctor explains, the term “ikigai” roughly indicates one’s purpose in life (technically translating as “a reason for being”). To use Héctor’s own vivid explanation, it is what wakes you up with excitement in the morning. Héctor’s insightful exploration of this profound theme shapes not just the book bearing its name, but also Héctor’s other works. He is the author of The Book of Ichigo Ichie, Forest Bathing, and A Geek in Japan (which shares a title with his long-running blog).  His most recent book, The Ikigai Journey, offers action steps to accompany the philosophical ideas in Ikigai, and his soon-to-be-released Ikigai for Teens offers to help younger readers navigate questions of purpose. 

Héctor is a thoughtful person whose life experience spans countries and cultures – from his Spanish hometown to his many years in Japan – as well as fields of study and engagement.  He was training in computer science when he realized his affinity for writing, and even now he combines working in IT with his ventures as a writer and self-styled aspiring philosopher.  I find his ideas to be inclusive and compelling.  Any listener can learn from Héctor about living deeply and well, and aspiring writers are sure to be intrigued by his unique writing process.

“I’m aspiring to become a better thinker, . . . to have clear thoughts about what all this is about.” – Héctor García

This week on The School for Good Living Podcast:

• How the purpose of life can be conceived of in terms of a two-fold search – plus having fun!
• How Héctor believes people can learn about themselves
• Héctor’s tendency to become obsessed with things and the new interest he wants to pursue
• Héctor’s photography and why he considers himself an aspiring philosopher
• Thoughts on why Ikigai resonates with so many Indian readers
• How Héctor and his co-author arrived at the model on the back of their book
• What ikigai is, what holds people back from living it and whether or not it changes over time
• Why compasses are to be preferred over maps and what makes for a bad ikigai declaration
• Thoughts on action steps, laying aside expectations and universal realities
• What life is like and the fact that people can achieve greatness in most areas with effort
• Hêctor’s “Do It” shirt and accompanying advice to would-be writers
• Who to read and why travel is better with a physical book
• Héctor’s story of how writing brought healing and of finding himself by removing things
• His reflections on the US culture’s sense of being the center of the world
• What four pieces of insight Héctor has found to help his relationships work
• How to think about emotions tied to money
• When Héctor first realized he was a writer and how he persisted in the face of rejection
• The way in which Héctor thinks about and has used personal connections
• The place of proto-ideas, ongoing books, green tea and more in his writing process
• How co-writing has worked and the persona being developed now
• Remembering that great authors were once children can be helpful to new writers

Resources Mentioned:

• Héctor’s own work:
  • Ikigai (written with Francesc Miralles)
  • A Geek in Japan (book and blog)
  • The Book of Ichigo Ichie
  • Forest Bathing
  • The Ikigai Journey
  • Ikigai for Teens
• Ken Robinson TED Talks
• Mark Winn blog, specifically regarding ikigai
• Haruki Murakami
  • What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
  • Norwegian Wood
  • Kafka on the Shore
• Kiva.org
• The persona Nobuo Suzuki and book Wabi Sabi

Connect with Héctor García:

• Visit his website – hectorgarcia.org
• Hector on Twitter
• Hector on Instagram

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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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My guest today joined the Stanford Design Division faculty in 1962. He was the youngest member of the university faculty and now decades later, he’s the oldest faculty member.  His name is Bernard (Bernie) Roth and he is the author of The Achievement Habit: Stop Wishing, Start Doing, and Take Command of Your Life. As one of the founders of Stanford’s d.school, he remains active in the d.school’s development and currently serves as the Academic Director.  Bernie’s primary intention as both an educator and a person, is to empower his students, family and friends to have fulfilling lives. He’s the kind of teacher we all want, and some are fortunate to have in their academic careers. 

In 2003, Bernie joined a group of colleagues looking to bring more cross-disciplinary collaboration into education. This was the genesis of the d.school, and it represents the sense of well-roundedness and personal integration that Bernie exudes.  He is a person whose philosophy and commitments mark all he does, from the classroom to the home and whose consistency in denying fallacious crutches in our beliefs, is rivaled only by his consistency in trying to live and be as best he can.  Bernie’s work is perhaps epitomized in the way he encourages his students and others to take concrete action to either produce a result that matters to them – something they have always wanted to do but haven’t done – or resolve a problem in their life. 

Bernie’s insight is fascinating and counterintuitive.  His ways of conceptualizing the world and the ways people and events engage in it made me think. I have no doubt they will make you think as well.  I found myself challenged by Bernie’s differentiation between trying and doing, along with his charge to trade contemplation for action.  I was grateful to be able to speak with Bernie and I hope that the conversation, and Bernie’s work, are useful and inspiring to you.

“The best thing in life is to just say what you do or what you don’t do without worrying about why.” – Bernie Roth

This week on The School for Good Living Podcast:

• Bernie’s belief that life is about itself and that the rest is all made up
• What Bernie means when he says he’s dedicated to living
• How two improbable and unplanned events led Bernie to work at Stanford
• Why Bernie thinks our behavior is automatic and our so-called reasons are excuses
• The complexity of our motivation and the driving force of self-image
• How we should focus on what we do and don’t do, not on the question of why
• How we can change our attitude and self-image and Bernie’s story about timeliness
• We can change things and life is basically a problem-solving activity
• How we impart meaning to our lives by where we start and stop a story
• What Bernie’s class called “The Designer in Society”
• How a course project has led to concrete change and stories Bernie is proud of
• How this course and the d.school have changed over time
• Why Bernie believes people need to differentiate between trying and doing
• Life is like a crap shoot and most big things happen accidentally
• Bernie’s thoughts on presence, living day by day and being able to say, “I am here”
• Thoughts on traveling light, spending sabbaticals abroad and shedding a critical outlook
• How Bernie thinks Americans can best think about American “specialism”
• Don’t over-rate or under-rate money and know some of our money-mindset is inherited
• How Bernie’s two books differ and what his most recent book writing process looked like
• How writing the book and connecting with his agent involved accidental happenings
• Why Bernie says writing a book is a living process and his advice to aspiring writers

Resources Mentioned:

• The Achievement Habit: Stop Wishing, Start Doing, and Take Command of Your Life by Bernard Roth
• Theoretical Kinematics by Bernard Roth
• Stanford University
• Stanford d.school
• Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
• The Adjusted American by Gail and Snell Putney
• West with the Night by Beryl Markham
• Kiva.org

Connect with Bernard Roth:

• Visit his website – achievementhabit.com
• Stanford faculty profile
• Email – [email protected]
• Bernie on LinkedIn

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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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This week my guest is Jeff Speck, a city planner and urban designer who advocates internationally for more walkable cities. His book, Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time was written not just for designers, but to also convert generalists to his cause. Walkability doesn’t just impact city planning; it has huge effects on economics, health, and the environment. Jeff’s TEDtalks on the subject has been viewed over 4 million times.

We built our cities to accommodate pedestrians for centuries and they worked well. Now we’re building our cities structured around the idea of everyone driving cars and they are significantly less efficient. Separating the work, home, and hobby aspects of our lives through city planning has created less livable, less equitable environments. Jeff shares the ways our government and laws have made walkability more difficult and how he and other city planners have been working to change those laws and add value to communities. This is a slow process, but Jeff says every city across the US could benefit from a walkability report.

We remind listeners that there are sacrifices to be made by living in a more walkable environment, but the benefits can significantly outweigh them.

“You should have as good a time you can while you’re alive, while giving as good a time to as many others as you can.” – Jeff Speck

This week on The School for Good Living Podcast:

• Life is about having as good a time as you can
• Jeff’s skill in collecting and communicating ideas
• Why sprawl is the worth thing we’ve ever invented
• The economic argument for walkability
• The health argument for walkability
• The environmental argument for walkability
• How millennials living priorities have changed now that they’re having children
• Why is America like this?
• Focus as a commodity and writing in Italy
• Who is the reader Jeff has in mind when writing
• Getting your ideas out into the world – public speaking vs. writing books

Resources Mentioned:

• Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America One Step at a Time
• Walkable City Rules: 101 Steps to Making Better Places
• Suburban Nation (co-authored with Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk)
• TED Talks
• Color of Law

Connect with Dr. Antonio Zadra:

• Visit his website ­– jeffspeck.com
• Twitter @JeffSpeckFAICP

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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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Dr. Antonio Zadra is the author of When Brains Dream: Exploring the Science and Mystery of Sleep alongside co-author Robert Strickgold, they detail a new theory on why we dream and call it the NEXTUP model. Antonio is a researcher who focuses on the scientific study of dreams, including everyday dreams, nightmares, lucid dreams, sleep terrors, and sleep walking. Together with his students and collaborators, Antonio has published over one hundred research articles and collected thousands of firsthand dream reports. 

Antonio is committed to balance – balance between a sense of presence and an ability to plan for the future and balance between soaking all he can out of life’s moments without becoming too caught up in things either good or bad.  As a college student, a dream turned him to psychology, which led him to fulfill his ultimate aim of studying dreams and becoming, as he styles it, an oneironaut.  Through his many roles as a professor, author and speaker, Antonio has approached dreams with both scientific rigor and childlike curiosity. He grounds himself in objective study while losing himself in explorations of the mysterious worlds our sleeping selves create.

If you’re interested in understanding yourself, the world, life on a deeper level, if you’re intrigued by dreams – what they are, where they come from, how we use them, why they even happen, then you’ll like today’s guest.    

“Dreams are really any kind of subjective experience we have while asleep.” – Dr. Antonio Zadra

This week on The School for Good Living Podcast:

• What is an oneironaut?
• How Dr. Zadra became a student of dreams
• How frustration with misconceptions about dreams eventually produced a book
• How the idea for When Brains Dream expanded and came to include a new theory
• What this new theory behind dreaming entails
• Dreaming is not equivalent to REM sleep
• How Dr. Zadra defines a dream and thinks about different valuations of dreams
• Why “Dreaming is Like Taking LSD” and what the Grateful Dead have to do with telepathy
• How to (not) explain the dreams of Mendeleev and a woman who won the lottery
• The science of the brain at play in some seemingly miraculous dreams
• How dreaming, neural integration, monitoring, and evolution interrelate
• How the scientific and academic communities are responding to this new theory
• Why Dr. Zadra is fascinated by dream characters
• Whether anyone can learn how to navigate lucid dreams with proficiency
• How dreams shape Dr. Zadra’s worldview
• Thoughts on headlamps, smoking, igloos, listening, patience, and not wasting money
• Why Dr. Zadra has mixed feelings on whether or not to call himself a writer
• Why he considers fiction writing very enjoyable but harder than scientific writing
• The value of enjoying the journey rather than fixating on the endpoint
• How marketing and promotion are difficult and in many ways out of our hands
• The value of coherence and enjoyment in a work of fiction
• Final thoughts on sleep, paying attention to dreams and the appreciation of books

Resources Mentioned:

• When Brains Dream, by Antonio Zadra and Robert Strickgold
• THE DREAMKEEPERS: An Invictus Mystery Thriller, by Dr. Zadra
• “Dreaming is Like Taking LSD” by Dr. Zadra
• Works by Carlos Castaneda
• “A Pilot Study in Dream Telepathy with the Grateful Dead,” by Stanley Krippner
• Mendeleev’s Periodic Table dream
• CNN article about a woman’s lottery win and her husband’s dream
• Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming, by Stephen LaBerge
• Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, by Robert Pirsig
• Kiva.org

Connect with Dr. Antonio Zadra:

• Visit his website, antoniozadra.com
• Twitter @DrZdreams
• email at [email protected]       

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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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One of the questions I always ask guests is, “What does it mean to live a good life?”  For the first time, however, a guest has left me thinking about changing that question to, “What does it mean to die a good death?”  This guest is Eve Joseph, an award-winning poet, incredible storyteller, and the author of a book about death and dying (which also happens to be her memoir) entitled In the Slender Margin: The Intimate Strangeness of Death and Dying.  The book flows out of Eve’s lessons and insights from working with and serving people at the end of their lives as a hospice care provider and represents the two central themes of the conversation: death and writing. 

Eve’s life has been marked by distinct seasons.  She fell in love with writing in fifth grade, but for about thirty years stopped writing.  In that intervening period, Eve got married, had children and became a social worker within the hospice care system of her native Canada.  Profound family events shaped her cessation from writing and later resumption of the practice, and the writing of her later years is shaped by the cumulative impact of her decades of remarkable experience.  She has experienced indigenous culture, faced illness and tragedy, and spent herself in service to others.

Eve is an insightful and creative person committed to drawing as much as she can out of both life and death. I thoroughly enjoyed speaking with her.  In this conversation, Eve and I talk about our society’s relation to and (limited) understanding of death, what it means to have a good death, lessons in metaphor, the creative process and the role of solitude in it, what Eve learned from having a stroke, and what is common in different cultures’ understandings of death.      

“Poetry knows more than I do.” – Eve Joseph

This week on The School for Good Living Podcast:

• Why Eve doesn’t have an answer to the question of what life is about
• What sets her memoir apart from her previous books
• When Eve started writing, why she stopped, and what she did while not writing
• The intersection between the drive to be creative and the drive to be helpful
• The family events that have shaped Eve and her writing
• How all factors of life come to bear in writing and in being with a dying person
• Can you be a poet and not write?  What does it mean to be a poet?
• Eve’s sense of self and authenticity is related to poetry
• How society denies and is frightened by death
• What the significance is of death kits and not dying at home
• Why a too-firm concept of a good death is problematic, and how Eve wants to die
• What Eve has seen different cultures share in their approaches to death
• Why Eve named her book as she did
• What Eve has to say about outsourcing, community, rituals, and even gardening
• Living poetically and why young writers should follow what they love
• Eve’s thoughts on metaphor and how her stroke shaped her
• A wild ride, living generously, avoiding slogans, the value of books, and care for others
• Give money away and it comes back
• Why Eve values solitude as a writer, but doesn’t call herself a writer
• Eve’s perspective on technology and audience as a writer
• Why Eve suggests writers start with a passion, send their work out, and try different forms

Resources Mentioned:

• In the Slender Margin: The Intimate Strangeness of Death and Dying, by Eve Joseph
• Man’s Search for Meaning, by Viktor Frankl
• The Year of Magical Thinking, by Joan Didion
• Five stages of grief (from On Death and Dying, by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross)
• “Gravy,” by Raymond Carver
• Kiva.org

Connect with Eve Joseph:

• To connect with Eve Joseph and learn more about her and her work visit her website

Subscribe, Rate & Share! 

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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