Listen to those three questions again - Can I Succeed? Do I Belong? Am I Loved? I’m tempted to feel those questions address the root issue of every human on earth. As I continue to research personal identity and how we as a culture seem to be more fragile and threatened than ever, I feel these questions are primary. So I had a conversation with Dr Gregory Walton. Greg is the co-director of the Dweck-Walton Labs. Dweck as in Carol Dweck, the legend of mindset. Greg is also a professor of psychology at Stanford. Much of Greg’s research investigates psychological processes that contribute to major social problems. His research is supported by many foundations, including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. As weighty as all this sounds, Greg’s quest is to discover simple psychological shifts that build trust, belonging, and confidence. He’s culminated his findings in a new book, titled Ordinary Magic: The Science of How We Can Achieve Big Change with Small Acts. So can addressing these huge questions be so simple? What I came to as we talked, was, yes, the answers can be simple, because they cut to the root cause issues of ourselves. But. I don’t call them easy. Not at all. At the top of the show I pull this quote out from Greg, “An hour-long surgery can change your life forever. Is there any reason a precise psychological exercise can’t do the same?” But going under the knife is a big decision. So is choosing to believe differently than you have.

We are at a time when anyone with a message is pushing to have a book and a podcast. I have been in the podcast game a long time and things have changed a lot. But the question of what makes a good podcast and if you should even have one, hasn’t changed. So I’m bringing back a discussion I had a few years ago with Jordan Harbinger. Jordan has an incredibly large and successful podcast with The Jordan Harbinger Show. He started his show from scratch and built it up by doing the hard work and playing the long game. He’s fairly skeptical about podcasting and right at the beginning of this talk you’ll hear Jordan flat out state he feels very few people should start or have a podcast. Do not be disheartened, as he qualifies this throughout the show and I strongly encourage you to listen and I think you’ll find incredible insight into podcasting and whether you will be well served to have a podcast. Or not. This episode will give you some wisdom on having a valuable podcast, and likely save you a lot of time and hassle if you realize it’s not a good fit. If you appreciate Jordan, find him at The Jordan Harbinger Show wherever you get your podcasts.

The topic today is courage and my guest defines courage as, consciously choosing to act in the presence of fear and potential risk, real or perceived, and she cites it as a learnable skill. Dr. Margie Warrell is a five-time best-selling author and Forbes columnist. She’s the author of the upcoming book The Courage Gap: 5 Steps to Braver Action which is what got my attention. This is not looking at monumental feats of bravery against life-threatening circumstances. This is the everyday fears we seem to be failing from culturally. I’ve been thinking of our current fear culture like a toxin in the air at your home and office that you don’t detect, that is slowly poisoning you. And you grow steadily more sick and don’t understand why. As you’ll hear me discuss with Margie, throughout history human kind was only exposed to a couple fearful issues per day. If that. Today we are flooded with infinite fears from around the globe and even the galaxy. We can’t eradicate fear, and shouldn’t, but we sure can decrease it. And then, we can be conscious and choose when to be courageous, which again, is not something we do once we’ve overcome our fear. It’s something we do while we are still afraid. I really enjoyed and benefitted from this talk with Margie, we really resonated, and it helped open up my understanding of both fear and courage, and gave me tangible concepts of where I’m not being courageous, and how I can be far more. You can find her book, The Courage Gap, anywhere, and find her at the Live Brave podcast and Margiewarrell.com

I submit that few of us know and most of us are falling to one side or another of unhealth. On one side we exercise very little self-reliance, which means if we are not relying on self, we are relying on others. On the other side is an overabundance of self-reliance where we rely almost exclusively on ourselves and hardly at all on others. So is there a happy medium? Or are there some aspects of our lives where we should be super self-reliant and other areas where we should seek out help? This is why I brought on Maha Abouelenein, as her new book is titled, 7 Rules of Self-Reliance: How to Stay Low, Keep Moving, Invest in Yourself, and Own Your Future. Maha is a personal branding expert, CEO and founder of global communications consulting firm Digital and Savvy, and a best-selling author. She has a long, impressive pedigree of success in the corporate world in the Middle East and in America, but none of it is why I brought her on the show. Maha had a challenging upbringing that gave her every reason to be a victim and not practice self-reliance. And she’s experienced the consequences of unhealthy self-reliance on both sides. My focus was taking on the topic of self-reliance to understand how we are doing it poorly, and how to do it with greater success. Find her at mahaabouelenein.com/

In this episode we’re talking about trust. In today’s culture more than ever, trust is the number one asset of success. But we are often failing to gain people’s trust, and we don’t understand why. We inherently think of trust as something you have and are, or don’t have and are not. Most everyone hearing this will believe themselves to be trustworthy because they are honest, moral people who live with integrity. But you are about to hear eight aspects of trust you must intentionally and proactively engage in if you want to really be viewed as trustworthy and benefit from it in your life and business. If you have a business, it takes more than you think to create loyal clients and get their referrals. It takes more than you just having good character and being honest. David Horsager is with me and this is his devotion and area of mastery. He’s CEO of the Trust Edge Leadership Institute, and national bestselling author of The Trust Edge.

I find people who are seeking to evolve personally, greatly desire to contribute to humanity. The people in need are endless and there are global plights that we feel impotent to address. What I’ve come to learn is how much good we can do with our simple grocery store purchases. This isn’t an ad, just my normal curiosity in evolving myself and maturing my impact in this world. Paul Rice founded Fair Trade and just came out with a book about it. I’ve known vaguely about Fair Trade but didn’t realize what it really meant. In this conversation you’ll hear Paul’s story about living in Nicaragua for a decade to help small coffee farmers. Then coming back to America to create Fair Trade and how it helps people and really doesn’t cost us any more. You can literally walk into your grocery store and look for a product like cherry tomatoes, and for no greater price, buy the ones with the Fair Trade stamp, and know you are helping a truckload of people live a sustainable life and treat the earth well. You’ll learn all you need about converting some of your purchases to Fair Trade, right in this episode. I also really enjoyed getting to know Paul. I may be joining him in Costa Rica later in the year to visit some coffee farmers and work to spread the message. His new book is, Every Purchase Matters: How Fair Trade Farmers, Companies, And Consumers Are Changing The World. I found the book intriguing, but you can engage right now by looking for Fair Trade products in your next grocery trip.

I’m skeptical of any claim of a “formula” regarding personal evolution. And you’ll notice I say “a formula” and not “the formula.” But many things can be boiled down to some core ingredients. The difference in my opinion is this formula is less like a cooking recipe you just easily mix and bake and is more like an intense formulaic math equation you must diligently work out. I feel Steven Kotler does a masterful job of deducing peak performance down into its essence and from it you can see where you need to give focus and attention and work. Steven is a New York Times-bestselling author, an award-winning journalist and the Executive Director of the Flow Research Collective. He is one of the world’s leading experts on human performance and has become very well known for his insight on flow state. Steven has authored multiple bestsellers, including The Future is Faster Than You Think, Stealing Fire, The Rise of Superman, and Bold and Abundance. His work has been nominated for two Pulitzer Prizes and translated into over 40 languages. The following conversation happened after he published The Art of Impossible and I bring it back to you again because it’s worth revisiting.

Sumit Paul-Choudhury shares that in his childhood he somewhat lost faith in mankind after starkly coming to the realization that not everyone is kind, good, and caring. Sumit went on to pursue science, technology, and the future. He became Editor-in-Chief of New Scientist, trained as an astrophysicist, and received a Sloan Fellowship in strategy and leadership from the London Business School. Then his wife died and on that day, he became an optimist. It was a life reset for him and optimism became his area of focus and research. Sumit has now written a book, The Bright Side: How Optimists Change the World, and How You Can Be One. I was raised in an optimistic home and while I side with optimism, I'm also sensitive to the concept of toxic positivity. So I sat down to hear Sumit's story and learn more about his research. He cites that in today's culture, it can feel "darkly glamorous to think it’s the end of the world. There is kind of a seduction to it." And yet his research shows that optimism simply breeds more opportunity for us. So he's using his research to help us understand what healthy optimism is and how to harness it consciously and healthfully. Find Sumit’s book, The Bright Side, anywhere, and connect with him at alternity.com

Failure is a popular topic in the self-improvement world, but I feel it's generally addressed like a motivational talk. Don't let failure get you down. It's part of life. It's not failing, it's trying. Which is why I was interested when I heard about Manu Kapur (Man-oo kapoor) work on failure, who is a professor at the same university where Einstein attended and then taught. Manu studies learning and growth from a scientific standpoint and actually developed the Theory of Productive Failure, which is the name of his new book. He approaches failure completely differently. Not as something to cope with as if it happens, but something to make sure happens. And without it we have less understanding. The point isn't really even failing, but understanding. Example. I have two kids with permits right now. These are the 6th and 7th kids I've taught to drive. We have the benefit of living out on forest roads, so they can start driving with a little more freedom. I don't tell them how to do everything. I give them the basics to get started, then they get going and...I try to stay silent. Let them look around and figure things out. I take them into a wet or snowy parking lot and have them turn till they slide. It's amazing how much better they drive when they figure out for themselves. Even them asking me instead of me telling them. This is some of the essence of Manu's research and findings. You're about to hear some paradigm shifting perspective on using and leveraging failure to help your mastery, and like me, I think it will make perfect sense to you.