Good Life Project

Shawn Achor spent twelve years at Harvard studying the science of belief and success, and his TED talk has been watched more than 25 million times. His new book, The Power of Beliefs, grew out of research with the NFL, NASA, and six Marine battalions at Camp Pendleton, and out of watching his own daughter fight for her life three months early.

The 7 core beliefs that control much of our lives, without us knowing it
Why believing you’re alone in your effort can make hard things harder.
The two small words that turn a hollow pep talk into a path to success.
What a stranger's ten seconds on an escalator taught Shawn about the difference between mattering less and not mattering at all.
A five-minute weekly habit Shawn's family calls the Memory DeLorean, and what it does to the story you tell about a hard season.
How time-stress can make you abandon everything you believe is important.
How to harness hidden beliefs to feel more alive and connected, and thrive in all parts of life.

For anyone in a season where the ground feels tilted against them, this is a reminder that the tilt might be more changeable than it feels.

You can find Shawn at: Website | Instagram | LinkedIn | Episode Transcript

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Today, we’re introducing a new conversation format that we’ll be working into the mix called Good Life Jams. These sessions take on 2-3 hot topics and go deep. Today’s conversation partner is Leah Smart, a senior editor at LinkedIn, a writer and speaker, and the host of Everyday Better.

The topics we’re digging into: When women earn more, the physical housework shrinks. The mental load doesn't move at all. What’s going on there? And why are self-help books crashing, while coaching is taking off?

In this conversation, you'll explore:
Why the most common fix for an overloaded household leaves the heaviest part completely untouched
The question Leah's husband asked her about the word "good" that quietly reset her entire standard for running a home
What the data leaves out, and why the scorekeeping it invites can erode a long partnership
Self-help book sales fell roughly 25% in a year while coaching grew about 15%, and what people are actually paying for instead
The one thing a human can do that no book and no chatbot can, which may be the real reason the advice stopped working

Both halves of this conversation land in the same place, which is that the discomfort you keep trying to optimize away is usually the thing worth turning toward instead.

You can find Leah at: Instagram | Everyday Better with Leah Smart Substack | Episode Transcript

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Martial artists spend years learning how to fall before they learn much of anything else. The rest of us just brace, then wonder why the landing does so much damage.

This is a best-of conversation, first aired in 2023, and it has only gotten more useful with time.

Mark Nepo is a poet and spiritual teacher who has been working in poetry and spirituality for more than fifty years. His book The Book of Awakening was a #1 New York Times bestseller, he has written twenty-six books translated into more than twenty languages, and he was named one of Oprah's SuperSoul 100. In his thirties, he was diagnosed with a rare form of lymphoma, and that experience runs underneath everything he writes about adversity, grief, and what it costs to stay open. He wrote Falling Down and Getting Up when his cancer years came flooding back during the pandemic. Since this conversation first aired, Mark has published The Fifth Season: Creativity in the Second Half of Life.

What you'll explore in this conversation:

Why aikido teaches students how to fall before anything else, and what that translates to when the fall is emotional rather than physical
The journal question Mark asks people in circle that tends to surface, fast, whose voice you have actually been living under
What a friend in the depths of grief told him about "the life after tears," and the line that separates it from everything that came before
The difference between grounding and chasing, and the small reorientation that changes where you go looking for a life
What happened in a bar after the Iraq war that taught him how to feel for pain he had never lived through

If you are somewhere in the middle of a fall, or still carrying one that never quite finished, this conversation offers you something steadier than advice: company, and a way to keep going that doesn't ask you to pretend you're fine.

You can find Mark at: Website | Instagram | Episode Transcript

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Jonathan sits down with Scott Harrison, charity: water founder, for a wide-ranging reflection on his 20-year mission to bring clean water to everyone on earth. Scott revisits the original spark, the scale of the problem, the storytelling strategy that helped build the movement, and the personal tension of leading a global nonprofit while raising a family.

We discuss the long game of solving a problem that is both massive and solvable, why generosity is often unlocked through story rather than statistics, and how Scott thinks about balance, legacy, and “the work with no end.”

Key topics:

Scott looks back on the early days of charity: water and the energy of the original nightclub fundraiser that launched the organization
The scale of the mission has grown to more than $1 billion mobilized, 216,000 projects across 29 countries, and about 700 million people still without clean water
Storytelling, not statistics, is the core tool charity: eater uses to overcome apathy and make distant suffering feel personal
The Rachel Beckwith story shows how one child’s birthday campaign became a global movement that ultimately helped more than 100,000 people
The conversation digs into the tension between mission and family, especially for leaders whose work could easily consume all their time
Scott shares how his kids reflect back the values he hopes to model
The closing theme is generosity as an endless practice - giving, serving, and sharing rather than accumulating

You can find Scott at: Website | Charity Water Instagram | Scott's Instagram | Episode Transcript

Next week, we're bringing you a best-of episode with Mark Nepo, to talk about why falling down might be the most useful thing that happens to you all year. Be sure to follow Good Life Project wherever you get your podcasts so you don't miss that or any upcoming episodes!

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Susan Bratton has spent over two decades teaching people the passionate lovemaking and intimate communication skills that sex education (and life) never covered. At 42, after eleven years of marriage, she had never had an orgasm from intercourse, and her husband was already having an affair to cope with it. What actually turned things around wasn't couples therapy. It was something else entirely, and it changed how she teaches everyone who's come to her since.

Susan is the author and publisher of 44 books and programs on lovemaking, sensual communication, and what she calls regenerative intimacy, reaching more than 1.5 million people worldwide. She's become one of the most trusted, least censored voices teaching people how sex actually works in the body, at every age. This conversation is guest-hosted by acclaimed author and coach Cynthia Morris.

What you'll explore:
The three different things people lump together under "low libido," and why untangling them changes what you actually need to fix.
Why Susan stopped using the word "sex" altogether, and the shift she's seen in how people respond once she doesn't.
The physical reason arousal builds so differently in men's and women's bodies, and the one image that makes it click instantly.
The specific framework Susan built after her own marriage nearly came apart over unmet needs, and how any couple can use it.
What changed the moment she stopped treating tools and technique as something to be ashamed of.

If you've quietly decided your best sex is behind you, this conversation is the case for reconsidering that, whatever decade you're in.

You can find Susan at: Website | Instagram | Episode Transcript

You can find Cynthia at: Website | Instagram

Next week, we're sitting down with Scott Harrison to talk about how twenty years, a lot of failure, and one story told the right way turned into a movement that's brought clean water to tens of millions of people who never had it. Be sure to follow Good Life Project wherever you get your podcasts so you don't miss that or any upcoming episodes!

Check out our sponsors and resources: Visit Our Sponsor Page
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.