11 : From Poverty to Google with Nicholas Whitaker (Part 1)

“What are my values and what are my goals? Am I moving myself in that direction. If I'm not moving myself in that direction, what am I doing?” - Nicholas Whitaker

Welcome to the Mindful FIRE Podcast, where we explore living mindfully on the path to financial independence and beyond. I’m your host Adam Coelho and I’m glad you’re here. 

Today we talk to my friend, Nicholas Whitaker. Nicholas has an incredible story of going from living in poverty, with housing insecurity and just scraping by, to changing his mindset and his entire life to ultimately be working at Google for the last 10 years. 

For the past decade, Nicholas has leveraged the scale and resources of Google to support the journalism industry through high impact educational products, programs, and strategic partnerships, reaching more than half a million journalists worldwide.

Throughout his time at Google, Nicholas has also managed stress and anxiety through an active mindfulness practice, extensive study of emotional intelligence, resilience, and the impact of technology on well being as well as regular therapy. 

He spends a portion of his time facilitating mental health talks, meditations, host experts in the industry to talk about mindfulness and resilience, and facilitate team development experiences to help teams and colleagues manage stress, cultivate trust and psychological safety, and learn more mindful ways to communicate. I'm also coaching a limited number of clients outside of Google.

In this episode Nicholas and I dive into:

• Nick’s philosophy on life: Figure out how I can have the most impact on the world around me, in a positive way.  How can I do that in a sustainable way. Is there some reality where I could be doing that full time? 
• Why he’s inspired by the quote “Chance favors the prepared mind”
• What is neuroplasticity and how does it shape our lives?
• How

🔥 Did you know that only 14% of reorgs are successful?

That means 86% of reorgs fail to achieve their goals. Shocking!

Honestly, after living through 11 reorgs in my last 10 years at Google it kind of makes sense.

I created the Ask What's Possible Workshop to help newly formed teams rebuild trust, create psychological safety, and align around a BIG shared vision in hours, not quarters.

🔥 Want to accelerate your speed-to-alignment?

Book a no-obligation fit call with me

🔥 What teams walk away with:

• Rebuilt trust and psychological safety
• A co-created, ambitious shared vision everyone is energized by
• Clear alignment between personal goals and team vision
• A short list of mini-experiments to generate momentum immediately

🔥 What makes this workshop different:

• Executive-level facilitation with a track record at CEO-level forums, including sessions with 27 Google VPs at Sundar's leadership conference
  • One VP shared: "Adam was masterful as he guided us through exercises to expand our perspective and ambition on our vision of what we could be and do."
• Neuroscience-backed, mindful conversation practices th...