Good Life Project

Emily McDowell is a writer, illustrator, and entrepreneur who specializes in chronicling the human condition.In 2012, she left a successful career in advertising to launch her greeting card line, making cards for the relationships we actually have. Now a multimillion-dollar stationery and gift company, Emily McDowell Studio products are sold online and in nearly 2,000 stores worldwide.In 2015, Emily’s Empathy Cards, designed to help people connect around serious illness and loss, struck a nerve around the world and gave people a way into conversations that seemed brutally hard to begin and deepen into.Her first book, There Is No Good Card For This: What To Say and Do When Life Gets Scary, Awful, and Unfair To People You Love, will be released in January 2017.In today's conversation, we take a step back in time, explore the experiences in her younger life that were defining moments, revealing who she really was and how Emily began to connect with an irreverent blend of art and humor that touches so many.We explore what happened when she was diagnosed with cancer at a very young age and watched friends struggle to figure out how to be there for her. We dive into how she compartmentalized this experience, seeking to not let it define her, both as a person and, soon enough in art and business. We also track the launch and growth of her company and her recent move to rework the business in order to not just serve a "customer" need, but also give her what she needs, the ability to do the work that most lights her up.Mentioned in this Episode:Dance Neurosis Resume by EmilyEmily's famous quilt-making mom, Ruth McDowellEmily's talk at World Domination Summit 2016Emily's Awkward Dating CardHand Letterer Mary Kate McDevittStupid Cancer :: The Voice of Young Adult CancerBrené Brown - Researcher + Storyteller+++The 108: Conscious Business Collective - Entrepreneurship is lonely. To build what you're here to build, not just in business but in life, you need people. Nobody does it alone. The 108 is a conscious business collective of entrepreneurs helping each other rise. Move into 2017 with a powerful new family of allies, mentors, champions and collaborators as you work to build a living and a life on a profoundly different level. Learn more now. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What if the quest to be perpetually happy was actually making us miserable? Who doesn’t want to be happy? Who doesn’t want to laugh all day? It’s a wonderful state, deserving of a powerful seat at the good life table. Happiness has become a hot subject of study over the last two decades, along with […]The post Happiness. It’s Complicated. appeared first on Good LifeProject. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Gabrielle Bernstein is the #1 New York Times best-selling author of The Universe Has Your Back and numerous other books.She's been featured on Oprah’s Super Soul Sunday as "next-generation thought leader" and leads talks, retreats and meditations for sold-out audiences around the world, embracing her role one of the voices of an emerging generation of spiritual teachers.Gabby is a also certified Kundalini yoga and meditation teacher. GShe is trained in the Emotional Freedom Technique, is a student of the metaphysical text A Course in Miracles, and practices Transcendental Meditation as taught by the David Lynch Foundation.In today's conversation, we take a step back into Gabby's personal story, exploring her relationship to faith and how feelings of isolation as a kid led to her become an organizer and leader at a young age. We dive into her year's long struggle with addiction and then work, and her more recent awakening to the role of childhood sexual trauma in her life's journey and the choices she's made.We dive into her approach to transparency as a spiritual teacher, how she dances between public and private, how opening to the fear in others can serve as a bridge to understanding and so much more. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Exploring the impact of storytelling on life, the emotional resonance of stories, seeking out others' narratives, and crafting a fulfilling personal story for a purposeful life.

Today's guest is Radhanath Swami, a Vaishnava sanyassin (a monk in a Krishna-bhakti lineage) and teacher of the devotional path of Bhakti-yoga.He is author of The Journey Home, a memoir of his search for spiritual truth. His latest book is The Journey Within: Exploring the Path of Bhakti. His teachings draw from the sacred texts of India such as The Bhagavad-gita, Srimad Bhagavatam, and Ramayana, and aim to reveal the practical application of the sacred traditions, while focusing on the shared essence which unites apparently disparate religious or spiritual paths.Born Richard Slavin, on December 7, 1950, in his teens he came to confront a deep sense of alienation from suburban Chicago life and the civil injustices of mid-century America. At the age of nineteen, while on a summer trip to Europe, his internal struggles culminated in a commitment to search for God wherever it might lead him. Meditating on the Isle of Crete, he felt a supernatural calling and the next morning set off alone to find spiritual India.The Journey Home documents his odyssey as a penniless hitch-hiker though Greece, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and finally India. There he lived as a wandering ascetic, first amongst the forest dwelling Himalayan yogis and later amongst a wide variety of gurus and spiritual practitioners throughout India and Nepal. Ultimately, he was led to the holy town of Vrindavan, where he found his path amongst the Bhakti-yogis.In Vrindavan he found the teacher he was searching for in A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada (1896-1977) the founder of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), and representative of Gaudiya Vaishnavism, (the Krishna-bhakti tradition stemming from the 16th century mystic avatar Sri Chaitanya). In choosing Bhaktivedanta Swami, as his guru, Radhanath Swami felt compelled to shear his matted locks and reenter Western society with a mission to share the sacred wisdom he had received.This return exemplifies the form of devotional yoga which is at the heart of Radhanath Swami’s teachings, a spiritual practice expressed as tangible action meant to bring about personal fulfillment and benefit the world. At the the age of 31 he took the monastic vows of a Vaishnava sanyassin and became known as Radhanath Swami.Today Radhanath Swami travels regularly throughout India, Europe and North America, sharing the teachings of Bhakti-yoga. He resides much of the year at the Radha Gopinath Ashram in Chowpatty, Mumbai. For the past twenty-five years he has guided the community’s development and has directed a number of acclaimed social action projects including Midday Meals, which daily serves more than 260,000 plates of sanctified vegetarian food to the children of the slums of Mumbai. He has also worked to establish missionary hospitals and eye camps, eco-friendly farms, schools and ashrams, an orphanage, and a number of emergency relief programs throughout India. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

So often, we look at life as a game to win, or a journey to get from where we are now to that magical, far-off destination where, finally, we get to live a good life. Except, it doesn’t work that way. There is no there there, there is only here now. When we look at […]The post A Good Life is a Practice, Not a Place. appeared first on Good LifeProject. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Orly Wahba is a teacher, entrepreneur, and community activist passionate about inspiring and motivating people to make the world a kinder place.Orly began her career as a middle school teacher, empowering children to embrace unity, build self-value, and use their power to influence the world for good. Trying to reckon with the death of two kids in her school, and guide her students through it in 2011, Orly founded Life Vest Inside (LVI), a non-profit organization with a mission to empower and unite the world with kindness.Through LVI, Wahba encourages people to embrace the incredible power of giving and recognize that in times of hardship, kindness, like a life vest, keeps the world afloat. LVI gained international acclaim when Orly’s award-winning film, Kindness Boomerang, went viral, receiving over 100 million views and eventually landing her a spot to speak at TED2013 on the magic of kindness.OWe got curious about where Wahba's unrelenting devotion to kindness and respect came from. What were the foundational experiences and stories, the moments of both struggle and revelation? How to did she write, film and produce her Kindness Boomerang video on her own, and why does she believe it resonated so widely?Turns out, Orly's earlier life was filled with polar opposites, deep familial love, and also profound social isolation and loss. This led to a years-long spiral after a fire in her childhood home splintered the family into different locations. Emerging from this dark window, she felt compelled to help others, especially kids, experience the world from a place of acceptance and generosity. We go deep into this journey in today's episode.Orly's forthcoming book, Kindness Boomerang, is available for pre-order now. As Orly's global community grows by the thousands, more people are experiencing the grace and connection of kindness with activities, events and more. Their 5th annual Dance for Kindness Worldwide Flashmob is happening November 13, so you still have time to get involved!+++++++++Order your copy of Jonathan Fields’ new book, How to Live a Good Life: Soulful Stories, Surprising Science and Practical Wisdom, today! It’s available at booksellers everywhere. And, you can download the first chapter and invest in your copy now.Also, big news - the book is now available as an audiobook! Get it here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Are you measuring your success by the wrong metric? It’s so easy to get caught up in vanity metrics. To measure how full your Good Life Buckets are with the wrong metrics. Funny enough, I got caught in this trap. And, the irony is, it was all in the process of measuring my success with […]The post Are You Measuring Your Success With the Wrong Metric? appeared first on Good LifeProject. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week's guest, Panache Desai, is a contemporary spiritual teacher, author of Discovering Your Soul Signature, and recent guest of Oprah Winfrey on Super Soul Sunday.Desai's connection to spirit, to something bigger than him or any one being, arrived as a child. Embracing it and allowing it to move through him came easily. But, because it also came so early in life, he'd not yet developed the seasoning to be able to understand and apply this wisdom in the most constructive way.It would take years of grappling, growing and even stumbling, often in the public's eye, to begin to forge a deeper wisdom and a more capable channel that would allow him to fully step into, understand and share his gift.TThe catalyst for this rapid evolution, though, would be something Panache Desai never saw coming, his daughter's devastating diagnosis of heart failure. Hours after we spoke with Panache, he would be on a plane to the hospital to join his wife and daughter, who had just been placed on a list for a heart-transplant.He was in a process of reckoning. This is where our conversation began. We dropped into the deep end of the pool very quickly and never really came out. The conversation was powerful, emotional and it will challenge your idea of meaning and connection and remind you of the importance of staying open, leading with love, being forever a student and owning our impact on those around us. We wish Panache and his family love and healing, grace and ease.Get your free guided meditation from Panache to change the energy that surrounds you and access the greatness that has always lived inside you.+++++++++Order your copy of Jonathan Fields’ new book, How to Live a Good Life: Soulful Stories, Surprising Science and Practical Wisdom, today! It's available at booksellers everywhere. And, you can download the first chapter and invest in your copy now. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Order your copy of Jonathan Fields’ new book, How to Live a Good Life: Soulful Stories, Surprising Science and Practical Wisdom, today! It’s available at booksellers everywhere. And, you can download the first chapter and invest in your copy now. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++ What is our podcasting setup? That’s one the most popular questions we get. So, we figured we’d […]The post Our Podcast Setup: In the Studio and On the Road appeared first on Good LifeProject. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.