Good Life Project

There’s this mythology. Go all in. Don’t dabble. Don’t play. Don’t make it a hobby, make it your “one thing.” From the very beginning. Even if you have no idea if you’ll like it, how it’ll make you feel and whether it can ever really be what you’ve told yourself and the world you’re going […]The post The Experimental Life appeared first on Good LifeProject. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Born in Ghana, West Africa,Kute Blackson was the child of a Japanese mother and a Ghanaian father who was a legendary faith leader with some 300 churches across Ghana and a massive following in the U.K.By his early teens, Kute was being groomed to rise up in his father’s church, but that would all change when Blackson rejected the path his father laid out for him and chose his own instead.Estranged from both his father and his community, and feeling called to blaze his own path, Kute headed to the United States where he’d struggle on nearly every level and finally come to a place where his true hero’s journey would begin.That process of stripping away, hitting rock-bottom and eventually mounting his own search led Kute to rediscover his path to freedom, and rebuild his life and living, becoming a respected voice in spirituality and consciousness on his own terms, in his own way. His story and philosophy are detailed in his recent book, You. Are. The. One.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We are taught, from a young age, to exist in the middle. Everything in moderation. Don’t be a tall poppy, nor a shrinking violet. Good enough is good enough. The middle way, middle-class, mid-tier. That’s where we want to be. Not so big that we get cut down, and not so small that we can’t […]The post The Unfortunate Middle appeared first on Good LifeProject. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

You know that little button on Facebook you click to "like" something? Well, as one of the early employees at Facebook, today's guest, Leah Pearlman, came up with that idea.Actually, its original incarnation was the "awesome button," but what's more interesting is why she created it. And, what was going on in her life that led her to want it, both for herself and the millions of others flooding the platform.Turns out, Leah was leading a double life. Publicly, she was a fiercely smart, driven technologist as the hottest startup in Silicon Valley. But, privately, she battled near-debilitating perfectionism that led to a decade of bulimia. On any given day, she'd move between helping to build a revolutionary company, and purging in the women's room.Until, one day, tragic news about her father, and the way she caught herself dealing with it, led everything to fall apart. She was forced to bring her dark side into the light and find a way through. And, from that emerged something she never saw coming.Having been a devout "art-atheist" her whole life, drawing became her salvation. She began to share her simple illustrations and they touched a nerve. Thousands of people began to share them. That led her down an entirely different path in her career and life. Many of her Dharma Comics have now been published in a book entitled Drawn Together, as an offering to help others find wisdom, hope and transformation in simple moments. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

There’s this odd thing that happens the moment after we ask for help. While we’re asking, we stand in a place of surrender. We hit a point, often deeply uncomfortable, where we’re riddled with uncertainty and we step into a place of vulnerability and say, “please, I don’t know where to go from here. Can […]The post Naked and Silent: Asking Is Not Receiving [encore] appeared first on Good LifeProject. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A pioneer in functional and integrative medicine, Dr. Frank Lipman is the founder and director of the Eleven Eleven Wellness Center in New York City and the author of many New York Times-bestselling books, including 10 Reasons You Feel Old and Get Fat, The New Health Rules. and Revive: Stop Feeling Spent and Start Living Again.Born into an activist family in then apartheid South Africa, he was taught to always question norms and authority. This ethos followed him into his initial training as a doctor in South Africa. In his early work in a Soweto hospital, he was exposed to non-traditional healers who were able to accomplish what a more traditional approach to medicine struggled with.He then emigrated to the United States in 1984, where he worked in the South Bronx, becoming Chief Medical Resident at Lincoln Hospital at the height of the crack epidemic. There, again, Lipman, began to see the limitations of traditional medicine in treating addiction, and embraced complimentary modalities. He deepened his study of nutrition, acupuncture, Chinese medicine, herbal medicine, functional medicine, biofeedback, meditation, and yoga and began to form a more integrated approach to the practice of medicine and wellbeing.Frank eventually founded the Eleven Eleven Wellness Center in 1992, combining cutting-edge nutritional science with age-old healing techniques from the East. In a quest to bring this unique approach to the masses, he then founded BE WELL, based on the belief that everyone should have a fundamental right to be healthy.Frank lives according to the philosophy of Ubuntu, a Xhosa word that serves as the spiritual foundation of African societies and articulates a basic understanding, caring, respect, and compassion for others. In his words, “what makes us human is the humanity we show each other.”Be sure to subscribe to our weekly Good Life Updates and listen on iTunes to make sure you never miss an episode!+++THIS WEEK’S PODCAST IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY+++Today’s episode is sponsored by Camp GLP, the ultimate summer-camp for entrepreneurs, makers and world-shakers! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What happens when you take a social risk? Simple truth, we’re all wired for a certain level of human interaction. Some of us cannot get enough of other people. We’ll walk up to anyone, introduce ourselves, enter conversations and engage with just about anyone, even total strangers. It’s a bit like each new human is […]The post Social Risks: When is it Worth It to Say Hello? appeared first on Good LifeProject. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

When Tiffany Dufu left for summer camp as a teen, both parents dropped her off. Only one picked her up.She’d soon discover her parents had split while she’d been gone. Not long after, her mom’s boyfriend moved in and began to behave in ways Dufu, a self-described preacher’s daughter, had never been exposed to. When this stranger in her home became violent she left to live with her father and began to rebuild her life.But it wasn’t until years later, when returning from maternity leave to assume her role as Chief Leadership Officer of Levo, that she found herself in crisis-mode, and began to ask deeper questions.While Dufu had spent years as a strong advocate for women in leadership positions at the highest levels of industry and government, she’d never examined the far more personal roles she and her husband had “defaulted” to in everyday life. She’d never realized how it was stifling her life and stopping her from truly stepping into her potential.Things had to change. How she navigated this challenging moment, recreated her relationship with her husband and opened space to thrive in life is a major focus of today’s conversation, along with the moments and stories that led to the wisdom in her new book, drop the ball.Be sure to subscribe to our weekly Good Life Updates and listen on iTunes to make sure you never miss an episode! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

There’s this beautiful verse in Khalil Gibran’s book, The Prophet that speaks to the interplay between reason and passion. It reminds us that these two qualities, so often treated as opposing forces and even warring world-views, are actually essential and hopelessly co-mingled elements of a live well-lived. They each make the other possible. Gibran writes: For […]The post Reason and Passion appeared first on Good LifeProject. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today’s guest, Dr. Aviva Romm, has been referred to as “the face of natural medicine in the 21st century by Prevention Magazine.”She’s a Yale-trained, board-certified physician with a specialty in women’s health and obstetrics; a midwife and herbalist, and a founding member of the Yale Integrative Medicine Program’s Advisory Board.Dr. Romm practices medicine in New York City and is a nationally sought speaker, author, and consultant. She is also one of the nation’s leaders in botanical medicine and is the author of 7 books on natural medicine.In this week’s episode, we begin with her service-mission to Haiti after the earthquake, then find our way back to explore the key ideas from her groundbreaking new book, The Adrenal Thyroid Revolution. Aviva describes a pervasive yet often undiagnosed condition—Survival Overdrive Syndrome (SOS)—which leads to the feeling of being in perpetual survival mode, overcome by everything from fatigue, overwhelm and brain-fog to pain, disease and even death, when left unaddressed.We also explore how so many of us push beyond what our physiological and psychological systems are adapted to be able to handle healthfully, all in the name of a success that ends up leaving us gutted and exhausted. Critically, she offers ways to identify the symptoms of SOS that can so quickly drain our Vitality Buckets and make our good life feel perpetually beyond reach.And, we talk about the key steps to take to advocate for ourselves, find the right answers and people to help us, and also begin to walk the road back to health ourselves through a series of simple, yet proven lifestyle interventions. Her full recovery protocol is offered in an immensely “doable,” practical and powerful 4-week program in her book.Mentioned in This Episode:Dr. Aviva’s 2014 Good Life Project video episode: Medicine 3.0: What Got Us Here Ain’t Gonna Get Us ThereBe sure to subscribe to our weekly Good Life Updates and listen on iTunes to make sure you never miss an episode!+++THIS WEEK’S PODCAST IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY+++Today’s episode is sponsored by Camp GLP, the ultimate summer-camp for entrepreneurs, makers and world-shakers! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.