Good Life Project

Luck is not a personality trait you either have or you don't. It is something you build, and science tells us there are specific, learnable skills behind why some people consistently seem to be in the right place at the right time while others walk right past the same opportunities.

Tina Seelig has spent over 25 years at Stanford teaching and studying exactly this. As Executive Director of the Knight-Hennessy Scholars program and a longtime faculty member at the Stanford d.school, she has watched thousands of students move through the world, and the differences between those who generate luck and those who don't are far more concrete and actionable than most people realize. Her new book is What I Wish I Knew About Luck: A Crash Course on Turning Aspirations into Achievements.

In this conversation, you will explore:
What separates fortune from luck, and why that distinction changes everything about where you actually have agency in your life
The ship, crew, and sail framework for understanding what it really takes to become luckier, and where most people skip a step
Why your mental model of failure, whether it feels like a trampoline or a black hole, may be the single most powerful predictor of how much luck you create
The hidden social behaviors that consistently show up in the luckiest people, from thank-you notes to a very specific way of asking for help
Why luck is a long game, and the story of how behavior at a disastrous Costa Rica resort determined the outcome of a job interview fifteen years later

If you have ever looked at someone who seems consistently lucky and wondered what they are doing differently, this conversation will give you some clear answers.

You can find Tina at: LinkedIn | Episode Transcript

Next week, we are featuring one of our most talked-about conversations from the archive, Tj Power on the four brain chemicals that are quietly running your life and why the modern environment is throwing them out of balance in ways that make everything from motivation to genuine connection harder than it should be. Be sure to follow Good Life Project wherever you get your podcasts so you don’t miss any upcoming episodes!

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There is a particular kind of loneliness that hits in the middle of a full life.

Not because you are isolated. Because the relationships that used to hold you steady are all being renegotiated at once. Your kids have left. A parent has died. A marriage needs new terms. A friendship has frayed. And the cultural rituals that once helped people move through moments like this are mostly gone.

Bruce Feiler has spent the last three years traveling to 26 countries, attending over 100 ceremonies, and interviewing hundreds of people to understand what happens when we stop gathering in intentional ways. He's a seven-time New York Times bestselling author and the creator of the LifeQuakes framework. His new book, A Time to Gather, makes the case that we are living through both a celebration recession and a ritual renaissance at the same time.

In this conversation, Bruce and Jonathan explore what it actually means to feel homesick in your own home, why the four traditional life rituals no longer match the lives most of us are actually living, and what it looks like to design a ritual from scratch when the ones you inherited don't fit.

What you'll explore in this conversation:
Why 5,000 Civil War soldiers were officially diagnosed as dying of homesickness, and what that history reveals about the longing you feel now
The five building blocks of any ritual, from drawing the circle to creating a web of hope, and how to use them to mark a moment that matters
Why Bruce calls this a celebration recession: what we stopped doing, when, and what's quietly replacing it
The live ritual Bruce helps Jonathan design in real time, walking through every step from welcome to close
Why rituals are not just for grief and weddings, and the new ceremonies people are creating for divorce, mastectomies, miscarriages, sobriety, and career endings

If you have ever felt the ground shift under you and not known how to steady yourself with the people you love most, this is the conversation for it.

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

Next week, we're sharing our conversation with Stanford professor Tina Seelig to talk about something most of us have completely backwards: how luck actually works, and why most of what we call luck is the result of deliberate actions hiding in plain sight. If you have ever wondered why some people seem to catch every break while others keep missing them, this is going to change the way you see that. Be sure to follow Good Life Project wherever you get your podcasts so you don’t miss any upcoming episodes!

Check out our offerings & partners:
Join My New Writing Project: Awake at the Wheel
Visit Our Sponsor Page For Great Resources & Discount Codes
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Here is something most of us have never been told: falling in love was never supposed to be easy, and the fact that it hasn't been isn't a character flaw. It's a design problem. Your biology may be working against you. Your cultural programming works against you. But, more than anything, the list you've been carrying around of what you want in a partner is almost certainly pointing you in the wrong direction.

Bela Gandhi is a dating coach and the founder of Smart Dating Academy, where she has helped thousands of people find lasting relationships. She was a longtime dating expert on Good Morning America and the Steve Harvey Show and built her methodology after realizing that love, like anything else worth doing, benefits from a system.

What you'll explore in this conversation:
Why 74% of third marriages end in divorce, and what that tells us about how most people approach finding a partner
The "elevator people" exercise that reveals what you actually need in a relationship, and why it almost never matches your dream list
How biology, attachment patterns, and cultural messaging conspire to make us fall for the wrong people, again and again
What highly accomplished, independent women often get wrong in the dating world, and what to do about it instead
Why attraction can grow rather than just appear, and how pacing changes everything

If you've been wondering whether love is still possible for you at this stage of life, Bela's answer is clear. She's seen too many people find it at 50, 60, and beyond to believe otherwise.

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

Next week, we're sitting down with seven-time New York Times bestselling author Bruce Feiler to talk about something most of us have felt but never quite had words for: the particular loneliness that arrives in the middle of a full life, when the relationships that used to hold you steady are all being renegotiated at once, and the rituals that helped people move through moments like these for thousands of years have largely disappeared. Be sure to follow Good Life Project wherever you get your podcasts so you don’t miss any upcoming episodes!

Check out our offerings & partners:
Join My New Writing Project: Awake at the Wheel
Visit Our Sponsor Page For Great Resources & Discount Codes
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Most of us reach our 40s and discover something unsettling: the ambitions we've been chasing weren't entirely ours. They came from parents, from culture, from the two or three careers we happened to see up close. Tom Rath calls this looking through a pinhole, and he thinks it explains more midlife restlessness than most of us are willing to admit.

Tom is one of the most widely-read researchers on how careers shape health and wellbeing. His books, including the instant number one New York Times bestseller How Full Is Your Bucket? and StrengthsFinder 2.0, have sold more than 10 million copies. His latest book is What's the Point?: Turning Purpose into Your Daily Superpower.

In this conversation, you'll explore:
Why only 50 jobs represent half the entire labor market, and what that means for the choices you made at 18
The difference between a ladder and a garden as frameworks for a life and why one of them is making you miserable
What headstones actually say (and never say) about what we thought mattered
The legacy question that most people answer wrong and what Tom's grandfather's final hours taught him about the purest form of giving
Why purpose is less about finding your calling and more about something entirely different

There's a particular kind of grief that comes from realizing your striving belonged to someone else. This conversation is for anyone in midlife who's starting to ask whether the ladder they've been climbing was theirs to begin with.

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

Next week, we're sharing our conversation with Bela Gandhi to talk about why midlife is actually the moment most people become more ready for a real relationship — and what's quietly getting in the way. Be sure to follow Good Life Project wherever you get your podcasts so you don’t miss any upcoming episodes!

Check out our offerings & partners:
Join My New Writing Project: Awake at the Wheel
Visit Our Sponsor Page For Great Resources & Discount Codes

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ever have something clearly wrong, and yet no expert can tell you what’s causing it? Or, worse, they DO tell you, but they’re wrong?

Nearly everyone will experience at least one diagnostic error in their lifetime. Not a minor mix-up, but a missed, delayed, or wrong diagnosis that shapes how long you suffer, what treatment you receive, and whether anyone believes something is actually wrong with you. For people in midlife, when the body starts sending new signals and the stakes of getting it right feel higher, that statistic carries a particular weight.

Alexandra Sifferlin is a science and health journalist and the author of The Elusive Body: Patients, Doctors, and the Diagnosis Crisis. She spent years inside hospital systems, talking with leading diagnosticians, tracing families who waited decades for answers, and mapping the structural gaps that let real suffering fall through. Her book is dedicated to her sister, who spent years being told her severe hip pain was a pillow-placement problem, until imaging revealed torn cartilage that required surgery.

In this conversation, you will explore:
Why receiving a diagnosis is more than a medical event, and how a diagnosis gives you permission to be ill (in the best of ways)
How physicians actually build a diagnosis in real time, and what gets lost when appointments shrink to seven minutes
The case of the Proctor family, five siblings from rural Kentucky who spent decades with a mysterious, painful condition before becoming the first diagnosed case of the NIH's Undiagnosed Diseases Program
Why the best diagnosticians in the country share one habit that has nothing to do with medical genius
How AI note-taking in the exam room is making some appointments more human, not less
What to do when you've seen four practitioners and nobody can tell you what's wrong

If you've ever walked out of a doctor's office with more questions than you arrived with, this conversation is for it.

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

Next week, we're sharing a really meaningful conversation with Tom Rath, whose books have shaped how millions of people think about their work and lives. His new book makes a direct challenge to the whole "find your passion, follow your purpose" framework, and argues that the source of real fulfillment isn't looking deeper inside yourself. It's what you contribute to other people every day. Be sure to follow Good Life Project wherever you get your podcasts so you don’t miss any upcoming episodes!

Check out our offerings & partners:
Join My New Writing Project: Awake at the Wheel
Visit Our Sponsor Page For Great Resources & Discount Codes
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.