I say it all the time. Change is not an overnight miracle, people. I know there's nothing like the neatly packaged narrative of the overnight success story, but honestly that’s just well, not that honest.The truth is that long-lasting, sustainable personal growth is never instantaneous. It’s messy. Non-linear. Two steps backwards for every step in the right direction. It’s forged out of self-experimentation, research, discomfort, failure, courage, and all too often a lot of stumbling around in the dark.The point? It’s not a clean line. We don’t have to hold on to this perfectionist ideal. In fact, it’s this ideal that generally hold us back. Paralyzes us. Or leads to self-defeatism when we fall short of idealized goals.When I began the process of repairing my health, I made a million mistakes. Slipped up countless times. And when I committed to getting fit, Ultraman didn't even qualify as a fantasy because I had never heard of it. I just wanted to be able to run a mile. Goals and success came later. I was able to get off the dime because I just started. Implicit in this was the permission I gave myself to fail.Let go of perfection. Whether the change you seek is related to diet, fitness, career, finances, education or some specific skill set, the important thing is to allow yourself to just begin, and begin messy. You don’t have to know where anything is leading. You don’t have to change evertything overnight. And the steps you take don’t have to be plotted, overthought or even pretty. But you do have to start.Or as today’s guest suggests, Lean In…My friend Kathy Freston is a 4-time New York Times bestselling author of The Lean, Veganist, Quantum Wellness and Quantum Wellness Cleanse. She has appeared frequently on national television, including The Oprah Winfrey Show, Ellen, The Dr. Oz Show, The View, Good Morning America, Charlie Rose, The Martha Stewart Show, and Extra. Her work has been featured notably in Vanity Fair, Harper’s Bazaar, Self, W, and Fitness. In addition, she is a regular contributor to her pal Ariana Huffington's publication, Huffington Post.Back in 2011, it was Kathy’s appearance on Oprah that inspired the great Ms. Winfrey herself – and her entire staff of 378 — to go entirely vegan for 21 days.

Life throws all of us obstacles. Everyone meets barriers. Nobody is immune from setbacks. It’s how we confront and navigate past the curve balls life throws that moulds character and ultimately defines who we really are.Do you crumble or rise to the challenge? Do you shrink down and become the victim? Or do you stand tall and walk through adversity like a warrior?And what do you do if everything just goes to shit?You are hard pressed to find a man who has met so much adversity with such a grounded sense of purpose and honest willingness to share about it as Mark Miller.Meet Fightshark. Just make sure you check your grousing at the door.Born with both Type-1 Diabetes and a congenital heart defect (CHD), Mark was reared by the back hand of an alcoholic abusive father. A World War II vet and notable professional athlete who played in the very fist NBA game ever, “Moose” Miller was a domineering force of nature who experienced the world as a dark, unfair and often violent place – and made sure he prepared his son accordingly.To escape the emotional and physical violence that greeted him at home, Mark immersed himself in the world of sports at a very young age. Thrown into a boxing gym at age 6, he quickly adapted, eventually mastering every sport imaginable by the time he finished high school. During his free time he worked in the Pittsburgh Steelers locker room (from age six through high school), grabbing towels, taking grief and learning about sport and life from the hand of legends like Lynn Swann, Mel Blount, Jack Ham and Mean Joe Greene while also working on his pitching with guys like Barry Bonds. All champions that in some sense served surrogate dad duty for this evolving teen.By the time he was 18, Mark was poised to go professional as a major league pitcher. But Mark had other plans – he wanted to become a professional kickboxer.By 2007, Mark was a rising star in this emerging sport until a routine physical uncovered a serious cardiac condition that required open-heart surgery to replace his aortic valve.The crisis helped to temporarily reunite his fractured family. But everybody thought Mark's fighting days were over. Once again, Mark had other plans — the surgery just made him more determined than ever to return to the kickboxing ring. Astounded by the rapid rate at which Mark's heart healed, his doctors gave him the green light to resume training. Everything in Mark's life seemed to be getting back on track.But 2008 had little respect for Mark's plans.Over the course of that year, Mark lost both his parents and his drug addict brother to an overdose. A confluence of events that led Mark to lose himself in drugs and alcohol, culminating in a boozy accident that hurled his already fractured and fragile body through a car windshield and onto hard unforgiving Austin, Texas pavement.Eventually, Mark found the wherewithal to get and stay sober. Renewed, he set his sights once again on his kickboxing comeback. Despite being labeled damaged goods, in 2011 Mark returned to the ring in Moscow and shocked the fight world when he took out one of the world’s best with a knockout in just 8 seconds.To this day, Fightshark is the first and only combat sport athlete to return to competition after undergoing open heart surgery.Fast forward to 2013. Just prior to his fight debut in storied Madison Square Garden, Mark contracted pneumonia, which set in motion a devastating domino effect of health cataclysms that have left him with chronic kidney failure, blindness in one eye, and the need for not one but three organ transplants: heart, pancreas and kidney.Mark is currently fighting for his life. Literally.

If you are a consistent listener to this show, then you know very well that my goal is to elucidate the experience, insights and knowledge of my guests as a tool to aid you on your progress towards greater self-actualization.Food is a super important aspect of this process. I believe it’s the best place to begin the process of transforming your life. But it’s also easy to get overly caught up in the dogmatic aspects of diet and nutrition. Unnecessarily boxed in by labels. Overly focused on details and minutiae. This presents a treacherous social, political and internal minefield that can result in truncating long-term growth potential. Because when we obsess on our plate at the exclusion of objectively redressing the many other very important areas of our lives that warrant focus and attention, our overall development towards full actualization is arrested.I didn't clean up my diet so I could get stuck pontificating on the various types of dark leafy greens until all my friends fled for the hills. I cleaned up my diet so I could raise my energy levels, shift my consciousness and direct my newfound lease on life towards continual growth and expansion. A search for greater meaning, purpose and answers that will hopefully occupy me for the remainder of my days here on Earth.Optimal nutrition based on plant-based foods is a great step in the direction of optimal wellness.. But that is all that it is — a step. Hardly the be-all-end-all. Because wellness encompasses so much more than food. Far from the end of inquiry, think of quality nutrition more as a right of initiation that will repair your physical body, raise your vibration, elevate your consciousness and take you on a wild and unexpected journey towards healing, a sense of purpose, greater authenticity and actualization that will be unpredictable and challenging but ultimately astounding.This is a process Julie and I call going beyond the kale. And it's the primary theme of this week's offering.Enter Tim Van Orden.If you have been with me on this podcast journey since it's inception, then you will recall my conversation with Tim back in the early days – RRP Episode 15 to be exact. Over the course of that conversation we delved into Tim's personal story, particularly his trajectory from relatively aimless and unhealthy junk food vegetarian to the raw food fueled running champion he is today. An exploration of food, athleticism, consciousness and holistic minimalism that transformed this non-athlete into a 10-time US Masters Trail Running National Champion.You may also recall the horrible Skype audio. At that time I was still trying to find my voice and had yet to master the technology (I still haven't, which is one of many reasons why I resist interviewing guests by Skype). Moreover, I had yet to actually meet Tim in person. Fast forward 92 episodes and now we’re friends — conversing in person and picking up where Episode 15 left off.This week it's less about diet and more about the bigger picture. Specifically, this conversation focuses on the psychology and emotional landscape that informs and drives self-perception, habits (both healthy and unhealthy) and decision making. This is a very frank, honest, open and soul bearing exchange about ego, vulnerability, authenticity, and attachment. It's about self-image as a predictor of mood, action and outcome. It's about the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves that inform how we see ourselves in the world. It's about the self-acceptance required to confront and ultimately overcome the dreaded and unhealthy aspects of ourselves we keep hidden that handicap growth.Enjoy!Rich

The subject of “Millennials” generally conjures up adjectives like lazy or entitled. No work ethic. Spoiled brats, the lot of them. TIME Magazine went so far as to call millennials the “Me Me Me Generation”.This has not been my experience with the teens and twenty-somethings among us. In fact, I can honestly say that I find myself relating to many millennials better than I relate to my own generation. Maybe that just makes me juvenile. But that's a perspective lazier that the millennial stereotype itself.Admittedly, my exposure to this cross-section of our society is somewhat self-selecting. But it's worth noting that over the last several years I've had the good fortune of meeting dozens of incredibly dynamic, conscious and entrepreneurial young people. Kids highly engaged in things my generation didn’t give a crap about like permaculture, social issues, sustainability, conservation and mindfulness. Students with doctorates and business degrees who could be on Wall Street instead toiling away on organic farms, working for non-profits, or starting their own — choosing career paths based not on security and salary but on impact. People leveraging the power of social media to challenge societal norms, disrupt outdated modalities, create self-styled careers that didn't previously exist and launch their own grassroots movements.The common thread is the singular goal — to make the world a better place for all of us.Jackson Foster is one of these guys — the best kind of millennial. A guy whose life presented him with every open door possible, it would have been easy for Jackson to simply step into a safe and secure (an illusion I know, but you get my point) high paying business career.But Jackson has other plans.In high school, while most of Jackson’s teen peers were playing video games, partying and generally just acting like, well teenagers, Jackson spent a year in the Colorado wilderness. After being accepted into the prestigious Rhode Island School of Design, he decided instead to defer so he could travel – a year spent bicycling across the US, hiking the John Muir Trail, mountaineering in Laos and even working at an orangutan orphanage in Borneo.These experiences left him thinking about one thing: food.Jackson noticed how food greatly affected the livelihood of different communities around the world, which motivated a desire to immerse himself in diet and lifestyle study. This exploration left him with no choice but to walk his talk; a wholesale transition from a beer drinking, weed smoking, junk food vegetarian teenager reborn as a whole food plant-based activist and educator.Jackson transferred from RISD to Colorado College as an Environmental Policy major and went to work. Outside his college coursework he found the time to: become a Certified Yoga Instructor; obtain a Certification In Plant-based Nutrition through the T. Colin Campbell Center for Nutrition Studies ; start the website Plantriotic ; found and chair a vegan student group at Colorado College; write for Vegan Health and Fitness Magazine ; spend his summers working with environmental groups like 350.org ; help with student recruitment for the recent...

Some people are artists. Others are athletes. It's the rare individual who can excel at both.As I kid, I was interested in sport and things creative. But for some reason, I came to the conclusion that you just can't do it all. I had to pick and never the ‘twain shall meet. Call it a left brain, right brain thing.Most of us lean in one direction. We're either logical and calculated by nature, or we're whimsical dreamers. We settle on a side and call it a day. But what if we really could excel at both?My Australian mate Daniel MacPherson is great example of someone who seamlessly traverses back and forth between seemingly unrelated worlds, tightrope walking both hemispheres of the mysterious cranium with facile grace and ease. Not only is he a tremendously talented and gifted athlete – a guy who has competed at the highest levels in triathlon, he is also a quite gifted artist – as an actor, television host and media personality. Not to mention an exceptionally successful and celebrated one at that.It's by no means a stretch to call Dan the Ryan Secrest of Australia — and I mean that in the most complimentary, non-perjorative sense. Brimming with good looks, endless charm, intelligence, athletic prowess and creativity to boot, quite simply put it's hard to imagine there is anything Dan can't do, and do well.Dan has qualified for and raced the Ironman World Championships, the Half Ironman 70.3 World Championships, and began his triathlon career at the storied Cronulla Triathlon Club in the suburbs of Sydney, training amidst the sport's greatest athletes – world champions like Craig Alexander & Chris McCormack (my guest on RRP episode 24 ). This is the same club that produced triathlon legends Greg Welch and Michellie Jones – the biggest names in the more formative years of triathlon.As a youth, Dan was intent on becoming the best triathlete he could be. Then something totally out of the blue happened. At the conclusion of a local race, he was “discovered.”The rest is history.Best known for his role on Australia’s long running series Neighbours, Dan starred in City Homicide , the British police drama The Bill and was the host of Australia’s X-Factor. He is the currently co-host of Australia's wildly popular Dancing with the Stars and is starring in a soon to be released independent sci-fi drama called Infini.But despite Dan's blinding good looks and impeccable fitness, what is amazing is that it wasn't always this way. You might be surprised to learn that Dan was actually a chubby and somewhat insecure young bloke. 

Safe to say I am mildly obsessed with Ganesh, the famous Hindu elephant boy god.Even if you don't know anything about this odd creature or what he represents, you likely know who I'm talking about. The iconic youngster’s unmistakeable visage is ubiquitous these days — adorning yoga studios, hanging around people’s homes, emblazoned on t-shirts and even splayed across brick wall street art in hipster neighborhoods across America.But how does this have anything to do with this week’s guest?Patience. I’ll bring it around. I always do.The thumbnail fable of Ganesh goes something like this: young boy warrior fiercely devoted to his beloved mother Parvati meets his match in Parvati's abusive husband Shiva. Defending Parvati from Shiva's angry rage late one night while Parvati bathed, Shiva up and just decapitates the young boy. Cut his head straight off!Inconsolable and furious, Parvati is determined to bring her boy back to life. Towards this end, she strikes a deal with Shiva that (inexplicably) involves replacing Ganesh's missing head with that of a young elephant (again, don't ask me how this works, it just does). Rejoice! It works. Not only does Ganesh return to life, he ascends the covetous deity pecking order, becoming one of the most worshipped of ancient Hindu devas.Ganesh the remover of obstacles. Ganesh the patron of arts. Ganesh the deity of intellect and wisdom. Ganesh the Lord of success.The elephant head represents the displacement of individual ego with Universal ego – the idea that before we leave this life we must no longer identify with the limited individual self, but rather with the large universal Self. In this way, our spiritual life is renewed, maturing into one that can truly benefit Creation.Associated with mental agility, Ganesh’s single broken tusk represents the “pen” he creates to transcribe epic poetry — the vast learnings he has experienced. What I'm saying is that Ganesh was a writer.Ganesh was also a god of astounding appetites. And – most importantly for today's discourse — a god that befriended a tiny mouse, often depicted under his foot as his ever present companion. The mouse is commonly interpreted as a symbol for those seeking to overcome powerful low vibrating desires and become less selfish — the quest to find greater meaning and purpose in life.Here’s where things get weird. The life arc of todays guest Mishka Shubaly (in his fifth appearance on the podcast – more co-host than guest at this point) bears more than passing similarity to our little Hindu friend.Sorry Mishka, but I would go so far as to call you guys doppelgängers. Metaphorically at least.Like Ganesh, Mishka is a man devoted to the arts and greater self-wisdom. A man devoted to his mother and scarred by a troubled relationship with his father. A man who has made his mark on the world by transcribing his broken past and attraction to destructive appetites as a primer for greater self-knowledge with a fearlessness that evokes Ganesh’s broken tusk. A man now ascending to become foremost among literary talents.Mishka's words serve up someone toiling with identity, his place in the world, and the conflict that breathes between ego and Universal Self. A man grappling with his own obstacles on a path towards maturing into one who can truly benefit Creation. An appealing yet reluctant determination for greater self-wisdom I think we can all — on some level — relate to our own personal challenges and life experiences.And yet quite ironically, Mishka is also man who just just weeks ago knew little to nothing about this Ganesh character. This despite the huge elephant tattoo covering the better part of his left arm.Enjoy!Rich

Wise words that capture the essence of this week's guest, Preston Smiles.When you meet Preston, you immediately understand who this guy is. He wears it on his sleeve. It's written all over his face. He just is exactly who he is.It's much harder to describe Preston in words. But I'll give it a shot. A leader in the emergent world of conscious media, Preston is a pretty unique cat — one of the most present, focused, passionate, open and giving people I have ever met. But honestly, everything that Preston is can be boiled down to one word – maybe the most important word in our lexicon – love.A wellspring of creativity, Preston is a writer (Huff Po / The Daily Love), a motivational messenger, a thought leader and co-founder of something called The Love Mob – a global, grassroots flash mob movement that ignites community building through “Organized Acts of Love.”The Preston I know is an unlikely evolution from a very different guy. Raised under challenging circumstances, young Preston was a hyperactive, dyslexic gang member prone to beatings and beating others. An angry, disenfranchised young man looking at an almost certain future of violence, drug abuse, jails and institutions.But Preston was able to escape this path. An emotional and spiritual transformation that instead produced a man full of life, devoted to serving others and downright unafraid to embrace and exude love, consciousness and unity — hardly the most popular subjects among men in our society.Preston is both a friend and an inspiration, and I am proud to share his powerful story and message with you today.I sincerely hope you enjoy the conversation. Let me know your thoughts in the comments below.Peace + Plants,Rich

In case you missed it, and because it's highly relevant to today's show, let's begin this week's offering with a read (or re-read?) of a piece I posted a while back on Medium.com entitled, Why You Should Stop Hacking Your Life & Invest in The Journey.Before you pounce on me for going all Grandpa Roll on you, let me point out that I’m all for efficiencies. But I’m more about the 10,000 hours of hard work that goes into creating something amazing. The hustle, passion, focus, and grit required to birth a dream. The work ethic and commitment to not just be good, but great – not just for you – driven by ego or self-aggrandizement – but for the betterment of everyone.Whether you get there or not, it’s the commitment I admire. It's the action that matters. So stop resisting it by obsessing on shortcuts and instead just embrace the work. Because the inherent value in any undertaking is the road travelled to get there anyway. Do this, and you will be amazed by the places your life will take you.Today’s guest embodies this ethos perfectly.I love Amanda Slavin because she gets it. Someone who had a crazy vision, set aside her fear, took a leap of faith, followed her gut and worked her butt off — all because she believed in something big — the possibility to improve lives and make a positive difference in the world.Looking back on her life, it all makes perfect sense. She was born to do what she does. It wasn't always that way however. But things began to change for Amanda when she made a firm decision to just start surrounding herself with positive, inspiring people committed to advancing change. Over time, Amanda began to exude the wavelength of these new associations, providing her with the courage and self belief to then channel that positivity into her dream — the creation of a new community of paradigm-busting thought leaders leveraging technology and relationships to forge positive social, economic, educational and civic change in urban centers across the nation.Disillusioned with traditional modalities of education in the wake of receiving her masters degree in curriculum, Amanda began her professional career as an event planner for various restaurants in New York City. Blessed with natural people skills and an innate talent for getting crowds of cool people to show up where she wanted them to show up, Amanda started to think about how she could channel this facility for good. Her first big dream was realized when she helped birth the first Global Citizen Festival — a now annual concert series in New York City's Central Park that draws 60,000 attendees and this September will feature Jay-Z, No Doubt, Carrie Underwood, fun., The Roots and Tiësto.This experience ultimately led Amanda to some very interesting posts as both a brand and event consultant with incredible organizations like Life Is Beautiful (Las Vegas' version of the Global Citizen Festival) and Summit Series — a series of events and a growing community of inspiring thought leaders that catalyze entrepreneurship, achievement and positive global change (as someone who has spent time with the Summit community, I can attest to the power of this unique and incredible organizati...

It’s been a crazy week. This past Monday, we launched our new iOS mobile app to immediate and rave reviews, posted our 100th episode and surpassed 3 million podcast downloads.Pretty awesome, thanks entirely to you guys — the audience. Most appreciated. But how did all these momentous milestones mysteriously transpire on the exact same day?I call this the principle of Universal Synchronicity.In my book, I wrote something like, “when purpose aligns with faith, the Universe will conspire to support you” (actually I don't remember exactly what I said and right now I'm too lazy to look it up, but I digress). Toss service into the equation and that’s when stuff gets really crazy. My version of the age-old precept (and again I am paraphrasing), give of yourself freely and you will receive tenfold in return.I don’t know why – it doesn’t make sense in the context of our logical three-dimensional world based in fact and physical laws like gravity. But that doesn't change the fact that these karmic principles seem to indeed be law. Spiritual tenets I suppose. Truths you can't touch, feel, see or hear. And yet without a doubt they are undeniable certitudes.The aforementioned events in my life are a small thing in the context of life. They really don't mean that much. And easy to chalk up as mere “coincidence.” But through direct experience I know better. Cosmic signals. Roadsigns along the journey. I am being supported. And for that I am incredibly grateful.When you begin to pay attention — I mean center your attention, turn off the chattering mind, get present and really tune in to your environment — you begin to realize that even the tiniest observations, events and exchanges can carry meaning. Not always. And not necessarily in any external sense, but with the implication that everything is evidence — forensic tools to help calibrate the compass of your life's trajectory.To put things in perspective, I don’t have enough fingers and toes to count the number of times I have found myself in a metaphorical canoe without a paddle – unsure where I was being directed and just surrendering to the current, present and open to what might come downriver and proceeding only on intuition, instinct and faith.Every time I allow myself to get out of the way, simply let go and allow, I end up someplace unexpected. This is not to be mistaken for giving up. In my experience it takes great courage to surrender the reins of control. And at the time it might not seem like it leads to such a great a place. I might (often?) temporally judge it as disastrous. But with the passage of time and the onset of objectivity, it's almost unilaterally something great. Typically a better situation I could never have anticipated. And inevitably a superior outcome than I would have handpicked for myself if given the opportunity to dictate the result.By contrast, when I am clinging to ego, fueled by character defects, self will, self-interest or base impulse (which is more often that I care to admit, although I guess I am admitting it now), my instincts are unreliable. My intuition is adrift. The result? The Universe will inevitably deliver me the lesson I need, which generally involves enduring a proper right-sizing. Time for another compass recalibration.In either case, it's always and without fail exactly where I am meant to be. I know this to be true because every time I peer into my rear view, it always adds up. Good or bad, the math is inevitably perfect. I wish I could access this perspective looking forward, but for whatever reason life just doesn't work that way. That kind of sucks. But it's also kind of great.If I lost you, I get it. I still struggle mightily with these ideas. Too new age for me broseph – I'm out!If you are still with me, I get that too.Enjoy!Rich

100 EPISODES!Wow. I can't believe how amazing this podcast journey has been.Over the last week, I have been flooded with inquiries on social media – so who is going to be the special guest for the big episode 100?A lot of speculation. Big names getting thrown around with anticipatory question marks. I understand the appeal. But this landmark has me sentimental. Thinking a lot about what was going on in my life when I made the decision to start this show. And when perceived through this lens, there is only one person appropriate to sit across from me for 100 — the same person who sat across from me for #1.Julie Piatt.The wheel turns. We come full circle. Revisit. Reflect. Give thanks. And move forward.So much has changed since November 2012 when the show launched. To take a quantum leap forward, we must connect with and better understand the past. So I went back and listened to that very first offering — for the first time since I recorded it. Admittedly rough. Unpolished. Nervous energy, echo chamber audio and uncertainty converging in a vacant warehouse on an organic farm on the north shore of Kauai. Just me, Julie, a couple really bad mics and no expectations or idea as to where this leap would land.And yet I was dumbstruck by just how much the show has stayed true to the seed I planted that day.I vividly recall that day. My son Tyler and my nephew Harrison jerry-rigging their musical equipment to manage the audio. I remember the theme music they wrote and recorded in the warehouse just hours before the first show — a riff they came up without much thought and always intended as “temp” until they wrote something better. Julie and I sitting across from each other, wondering just what we might talk about.Two years later and I'm astonished at just how little has changed. Today Ty (who is now my producer and the guy behind all the show music) and Harrison strummed guitars and checked audio levels as I set up in our garage. That temp theme music still begins each episode. And Julie and I still stare across at each other before every show we do together, wondering just what the conversation might bring.But what really struck me about that first episode is that my improvised introduction and meandering thoughts, words, intentions and aspirations for what the show might become mirror exactly what the show has indeed become 100 episodes and hundreds of recorded hours later — compelling long-form conversations with inspiring, paradigm busting minds and personalities in health, wellness, nutrition, fitness, entrepreneurship, creativity and spirituality with one singular goal – to help you discover, uncover, unlock and unleash your best, most authentic self.Although I know I have gotten better at this, I still consider myself rather amateur behind the mic. But I’m proud of the show we’ve built. A show that has promoted dialog around new ideas. A toolbox of inspiration and education for transcending your circumstances. A platform for unlocking your inner potential – in whatever form that may be – by introducing and discussing new (sometimes controversial or fringe) ideas with the hope that you will take what resonates with you and not only use it, but share it.The Power of CommunityI send the show out into the ether every week. But it's you, the audience, who has taken what alone is nothing more than an inert digital file comprised of ones and zeroes — and fertilized it. A seed you have fostered into something much bigger and more important than a simple weekly .mp3. Something remarkable:Community.