School For Good Living Podcasts

In this episode, John Philip Newell returns to the School for Good Living Podcast to discuss his latest book, The Great Search: Turning to Earth and Soul in the Search for Healing and Home. John Philip, a leading Celtic teacher and spiritual guide, offers deep insights into the spiritual longings of the modern world, especially in light of the growing sense of religious exile experienced by many today.John Philip speaks on the urgent need for healing in our relationship with the Earth and one another, as well as the quest for a deeper sense of home—not just in a physical sense, but in a profound spiritual connection with both the Earth and the human soul. His reflections on spiritual exile, the deep yearning for divine experience, and the wisdom of past teachers are woven throughout this thoughtful conversation.In this interview, John Philip and Brilliant discuss:The Great Search and its focus on spiritual yearnings during times of transitionThe concept of “religious exile” and how many people are spiritually

Neal Allen is a spiritual coach and a speaker whose chief concern is removing obstacles of the ego. Neal has written a book called Better Days: Tame Your Inner Critic, the subject of most of our conversation here today. This is Neal’s second time on the School for Good Living podcast after our first conversation about his book called Shapes of Truth: Discover God Inside You.In this interview on the School for Good Living Podcast, Neal joins me to talk about our inner critic. Sometimes Neal refers to it as a parasite. You might call it your conscience or your superego. But Neal distinguishes that it is not you. It's a part of you. He talks about how it forms, what its purpose is, and how we can live healthier, happier lives when we learn to manage our inner critic and make space for our authentic self. We also talk about how we can live with less anxiety, have more fulfilling relationships, and be more content more often. In this conversation, Neal also shares what he learned from a six-month experiment he con

Colin Campbell is an author who knows a lot about grief. When Colin and his family were hit by a drunk and high driver that killed his two children, his life was sent into a whirlwind of grief, pain, and isolation. This grief led him to write “Finding the Words: Working Through Profound Loss with Hope and Purpose” to help us understand what it takes to accompany people in their grieving process. His personal experiences has helped him to navigate the human tendencies that we all face when we experience loss or in our efforts to accompany others through their pain and grief. In this Interview on the School for Good Living Podcast, Colin joins me to talk about confronting pain to help us have good living. In this interview, we discuss the profound losses that we face in life and some techniques we can use more quickly and fully get to places of peace, joy, and love. We also discuss some of the hardest parts of helping others who are grieving and finding the words to help them through it. Colin believes that

Doug Evans has been a prominent figure in the natural food industry for over three decades, dedicating his life to promoting healthy eating habits and sustainable agriculture practices. As a devoted advocate of sprouting, he has inspired countless individuals to embrace a plant-based diet and lead a healthier lifestyle. Evans’ latest book, The Sprout Book: Tap into the Power of the Planet’s Most Nutritious Food, is a culmination of his lifelong passion for sprouts, and provides readers with a comprehensive guide to growing and consuming these tiny but mighty superfoods. In this book, he shares his knowledge and experience on the benefits of sprouts and how they can help us lead healthier, happier lives. In this special episode on the School for Good Living Podcast, Doug joins me in the studio in person today. In this interview, we talk about all kinds of things related to sprouting. Why to do it, how to do it, and even some insight into his favorite recipes. We also dive into what Doug’s health journey has

What is life about? What is something about which you have changed your mind in recent years? What have you started or stopped doing to live or age well? These are some of the questions that I have asked many of my guests this year and their responses have been both insightful and entertaining. Join me for this final episode of 2022 as we look back at many of the guests I have interviewed and their take on many things including getting creative work done and living a good life. This year on the School for Good Living Podcast: 168. Suzanne McConnell – Pity the Reader: On Writing With Style 169. David Henkin – The Week: A History of the Unnatural Rhythms That Made Us Who We Are 170. Ron Lieber – The Opposite of Spoiled: Raising Kids Who Are Grounded and Smart About Money 171. Phil M Jones – Exactly What to Say: The Magic Words for Influence and Impact 172. John Philip Newell – Sacred Earth, Sacred Soul: Celtic Wisdom for Reawakening 173. Kim Scott – Just Work: How to Root Out Bias, Prejudice, and Bullying

Ryland Engelhart is a philanthropist. He’s a lover of people and of life. Ryland co-founded Kiss the Ground in his living room with a friend ten years ago. It’s a nonprofit organization that he leads today as executive director. Ryland is also the producer of The Kiss the Ground documentary and the co-creator of the documentary film “May I Be Frank?” He’s also co-owner and formerly served as Mission Fulfillment Officer of the nationally recognized plant-based restaurants Café Gratitude and Gracias Madre, located in Southern California. In this interview, Ryland joins me to discuss sacred commerce, using business as a force for good, the possibility of restoration and regeneration, and gaining a sense of optimism toward the future of the Earth and humanity. We also discuss one of Ryland’s strategies to deal with challenging moments and to avoid closing down or shrinking from difficulties. We talk about finding our thing, whatever it may be, and creating ways to express what we value. We also talk about buil

Diane Dreher is the writer of The Tao of Inner Peace as well as other nonfiction books, and her work has been translated into ten languages. She is an award-winning positive psychology researcher and her work blends wisdom from the past with contemporary psychology and neuroscience. Her work combines knowledge of the western world with traditions of the eastern world including many insights from the Tao Te Ching. Her work helps teach people to live with the pains of life without also suffering. In this interview, Diane joins me to discuss how to better understand and cultivate your unique strengths, how to understand and cultivate a relationship to your intuition, and the power of stillness. We also discuss the four stages of discovering your purpose or calling, recognizing, and resolving false dilemmas, and finding paths through “either / or” situations that seem unwinnable. Another interesting thing we talk about is the wisdom of bamboo, what we can learn from it about strength, flexibility, and resilien

David Bradford is the author of Connect: Building Exceptional Relationships with Family, Friends, and Colleagues. He has taught at the Stanford Graduate School of Business for over 50 years and helped to cultivate a course affectionately known as “touchy-feely” where he has coached and consulted with hundreds of people to help them cultivate excellent relationships. Join us in this interview on the School for Good Living Podcast as David and I discuss how we can better deal with conflict, the three realities in any situation and how to leverage them to strengthen relationships, and how to differentiate between thoughts and feelings. We also discuss how we can give better feedback and productively address pain points in relationships. “Emotions are important because they give meaning to facts.” This week on the School for Good Living Podcast: The “Touchy-feely” course David helped develop at the Stanford Graduate School of BusinessThe keys to exceptional relationshipsThe tennis court model and the

David Kadavy is the author of multiple books, including Mind Management, Not Time Management: Productivity when Creativity Matters and The Heart to Start: Stop Procrastinating and Start Creating, and a book called Design for Hackers. David has spoken at South by Southwest, TEDx and his writings have been featured in The Observer, The Huffington Post, Ink Magazine, Quartz, McSweeney’s, Upworthy, Lifehacker, and many other places. In addition to his writing and publications, he is also the creator and host of the Love Your Work podcast. In this episode on the School for Good Living Podcast, David joins me to discuss creativity, productivity, and living a meaningful life. We discuss creating something David calls a curiosity management system and how he uses “crumb time” to learn and to create more than you otherwise might. We explore how David escaped being born in the wrong place, a suburban area in Nebraska, surrounded by people who didn’t understand him and with whom he didn’t really connect, and how he m

The Coaches Commonplace Book is a candid extention to the School for Good Living Podcast. My co-host and fellow member of the Marshall Goldsmith 100 Coaches group, Dean Miles, joins me to dive deeper into what it means to be a coach, find fulfillment, and ultimately to live good lives. This series includes several fun thinking activities where we explore quotations and news articles.  Join me this week as Dean and I discuss our recent information diet and what it takes to be a coach. In this discussion, we talk a lot about where we find out motivation, our purpose, and ultimately how we seek for good living. “On the other side of any emotion felt fully is peace.” – John Wineland This week on the School for Good Living Podcast: Brilliant and Dean’s information dietTraining versus fight training; what it takes to really be greatMasculine and feminine energyThe wisdom of the pagesDean’s article: Six Signs You’re Lying to Yourself: How to Recognize When Your Confidence is Covering up Your Self-Decepti

Sam Carpenter is the author of Work the System: The Simple Mechanics of Making More and Working Less. Sam is an author, an entrepreneur, and has extensive experience in a variety of fields, including engineering, journalism, publishing, surveying, forestry, construction management, telecommunications, and a myriad of other blue- and white-collar enterprises and jobs. Sam has owned and operated Centratel, the leading telephone answering service in the United States, for nearly 40 years. In this Interview on the School for Good Living Podcast, Sam joins me to discuss how we can find good living through the good results of managing our systems. We all deal with systems and processes and Sam is someone who helps us learn to deal with recurring systems and processes to make our lives easier, free ourselves up, reduce our stress levels, earn more money, and have more free time. “Unhappy people’s lives are out of control because they spend their days coping with the random bad results of their unmanaged system

My guest today, AJ Jacobs, is a man who’s in the puzzle business. He can help you solve puzzles. He can help you live a more meaningful, happier, healthier life by cultivating something he calls the puzzle mindset. His most recent book is called The Puzzler: One Man’s Quest to Solve the Most Baffling Puzzles Ever, from crosswords to jigsaw puzzles to the meaning of life. AJ sees his life as a series of experiments in which he immerses himself in a project or lifestyle, for better or for worse. And then he writes about what he’s learned. The puzzler helps us to live with more curiosity, and more flexibility. In this interview, AJ joins me to talk about how we can become more curious and less furious. We talk a lot about riddles, questions, puzzles, and new ways of looking at things in our lives that can help us not be so frustrated by them. We also talk about his work before The Puzzler. When he was a guest on this show back in 2019, he had written a book called Thanks A Thousand, in which he wanted to than

Ralph De La Rosa teaches about two things, the suffering that comes from emotional confusion and the freedom that comes from emotional intelligence. Ralph began practicing meditation in 1996 and has taught meditation since 2008. He was a student of Amma’s, the hugging saint, for 16 years. He began studying Buddhism in 2005. Ralph’s work has been featured in the New York Post, CNN, Tricycle, GQ, Women’s Health, and many other publications and podcasts. Ralph is a PTSD, depression, and opioid addiction survivor, and their work is inspired by the tremendous transformation he’s experienced through meditation, yoga, and therapy. In this interview, Ralph joins me to discuss how we can live a better life, understand ourselves, and make the contribution we would make if only we could get out of our own ways. We also talk a good bit about Ralph’s books. The first is Monkey is the Messenger: Meditation and What Your Busy Mind is Trying to Tell You. Ralph offers an insightful perspective here that the mind, the monke

Dean Miles is a fellow member of the Marshall Goldsmith 100 coaches group. Dean joins me in this special series where we dive into some of our philosophies about coaching and good living. Join us in this episode of the Coaches Commonplace Book where we dive into the information that we have been consuming recently, what things we have been learning from that information, emotional fitness, emotional resiliency, and a bit about making money and influencing others as a coach. “There’s what you achieve and then there’s being happy. Don’t blend those two together.” This week on the School for Good Living Podcast: An update on Dean and Brilliant’s information DietSpending time and learning from Marshall GoldsmithWisdom of the PagesBrilliants magazine article “Damn Good Advice for Fathers”Dean’s magazine article “Six Ways to Spend a Mental Health Day”How to be a coachResources Mentioned: BridgepointCSG.comgoodliving.comConnect With The Guest: Dean Miles LinkedinBrilliant@goodliving.comSubscribe an

Tamar Haspel coined the term first-hand food. Food that you grow, you cultivate, you forage for, you fish for, or you hunt for so that you get yourself. Tamar writes the James Beard Award-winning Washington Post column “Unearthed,” which covers the intersection of food and science, exploring how what we eat affects us and our planet. She’s also written for Discovery, Slate, Fortune Eater, Edible, Cape Cod, and other magazines and publications. For this week’s interview on the School for Good Living Podcast, Tamar joins me to talk about her book “To Boldly Grow: Finding Joy, Adventure, and Dinner in Your Own Backyard.” Join us as we discuss the structure of gardening, chickens, fishing, foraging, turkeys hunting, and many others, including the ethics of eating animals. We get into first-hand food, what it is, why it matters, and why it could matter to you. Relationships are another recurring theme in this interview and I think Tamar’s take on what it takes to create and sustain a lasting and fulfilling rela

Leah Weiss, Ph.D. is an author and a speaker who helps leaders be better humans. Leah has taught and spoken in more than 100 organizations worldwide, including Goldman Sachs, Nasser, the European Commission, Google Intuit and more. Her work has been covered by outlets including the New York Times, BBC TEDx, The Financial Times, A Harvard Business Review, and on and on. Leah co-founded Skylyte, a company that specializes in using the latest neuroscience and behavior change to empower high-performing leaders and managers to prevent burnout for themselves and their teams. In this interview, Leah joins me to explore a lot of things that can help you not only be a better leader, but also a better human. We talk a lot about her first book “How We Work: Live Your Purpose, Reclaim Your Sanity, and Embrace the Daily Grind.” that was also endorsed by the Dalai Lama. One interesting thing we talk about is purpose, not just as a concept, but how we can incorporate it into our day to day lives. We talk about mindfulnes

My guest today is Gary Ferguson. Gary has written 27 books on Science and Nature, including a book called “The Eight Master Lessons of Nature: What Nature Teaches us About Living Well in the World.” Gary’s most recent book is called “Full Ecology: Repairing Our Relationship with the Natural World.” Garry has created an organization called Full Ecology with a cultural psychologist named Mary Clare, who is not only has co-founder and partner, but also his wife. Gary describes full ecology as an idea and an organization dedicated to breaking down the walls between the human psyche and the natural world. Together, he and Mary Clare offer workshops, retreats, keynotes and continuing professional development to help individuals, families and or organizations traverse life’s changes with integrity and vision. In this interview, we discuss how to renew your relationship with nature and how to deepen it. We also talk about things like the many, many hundreds and thousands of miles that Gary has spent in Yellowstone

182. Coaches Commonplace Book – Episode #3 Dean Miles is a fellow member of the Marshall Goldsmith 100 coaches group. Dean joins me in this special series where we dive into some of our philosophies about coaching and good living. Join us in this episode of the Coaches Commonplace Book where we dive into the information that we have been consuming recently, what things we have been learning from that information, emotional fitness, emotional resiliency, and a bit about making money and influencing others as a coach. “As things grow, they become more complex, but they don’t need to become more complicated.” This week on the School for Good Living Podcast: How humans are “infovores”What are Brilliant and Dean currently reading?The information diet of a coachWhat Brilliant and Dean would include if they wrote the Men’s Health article “Are You Mentally Fit? 31 Ways to Power up Your Brain”Da Vinci’s work and philosophiesBrilliant’s habits for mental fitnessDean’s habits for mental fitnessEmbrace fai

Steven Kotler is a New York Times bestselling author and an award-winning journalist. He is the Executive Director of the Flow Research Collective, as well as the co-host of a podcast by the same name. He is one of the world’s leading experts on human performance and has appeared in over 100 publications. In addition, he has been nominated for two Pulitzer Prizes. In his latest book, The Devil’s Dictionary, he writes about what the world could look like in 15 years if we manage to solve some of the biggest problems we face as a species and what adjustments we would see in society. In this interview on the School for Good Living Podcast, Steven shares about his latest book, The Devil’s Dictionary. It’s a near-future thriller about the evolution of empathy in the tradition of William Gibson and Neal Stephenson. In this interview, we talk about empathy and why it’s critical for us as humans to cultivate at this time to expand our sphere of caring and how we can do so. Steven shares personally from his life ab

David McRaney is a science journalist fascinated with brains, minds, and culture. David is the creator of the blog, the book, and the podcast called “You Are Not So Smart.” His most recent book is “How Minds Change: The Surprising Science of Belief, Opinion and Persuasion.” In this book, David writes “You are about to gain a superpower. A step-by-step script of how to change people’s minds on any topic without coercion, by simply asking the right kinds of questions in the right order.” That’s a pretty bold claim, but David has traveled the world to learn from experts in communication and human behavior such as scientists and psychologists. He’s also talked to 911 truther cult members, flat earthers, all kinds of people who believe just about everything to find out why they believe what they believe and when they stop believing it, what caused them to stop believing it and to believe something else instead. It’s not exaggerating to say that it very well could change your life. In this conversation, we explo