The aim is not to grow into someone other than who you are; the goal is to work through the layers of doubt and fear that you’ve accumulated on this earthwalk to remember who you truly are.

Use any fear surfacing to heal, grow and strengthen yourself. Hard times activate hidden wounds that can be remedied. Making you stronger, wiser and more loving when the pandemic ends.

Remember — times of discomfort are periods of elite growth. We don’t expand so much when everything’s fabulous.

Recode Your Emotional Architecture for Fearlessness

Ροδούλα Παππά
«Το παιδί που στο κεφάλι του φύτρωσε ένα δέντρο»
Κρατικό Βραβείο Παιδικής Λογοτεχνίας 2013
Διαβάζει ο ποιητής Βασίλης Αμανατίδης
Το βιβλίο κυκλοφορεί από τις Εκδόσεις ΝΕΦΕΛΗ στη σειρά «Τσαλαπετεινός» (www.tsalapeteinos.com), με σχέδια του Paolo Ghezzi.

06 - κεφ. 5, «Σου πάει πολύ!»

Courage In Her Pocket

When we think about improving our health, we typically think about altering our diet, trying to exercise more, and taking vitamins and supplements. But my guest today argues that none of that stuff really matters if we haven't improved something even more foundational: our breathing.

His name is James Nestor and his latest book is Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art. At the beginning of our conversation, James explains why he paid thousands of dollars to have his nose plugged up, and what happened to his body when he could only breathe out of his mouth. We unpack the dangers of the common problem of being a habitual mouth breather, including the fact that it can even change the shape of our faces, and why modern humans started breathing through the mouth rather than the nose. James then reveals what happened when he switched his experiment around and breathed only through his nose, and explains why simply switching the passageway of your breathing from oral to nasal can have such significant health benefits. He also shares his weird trick to switch from mouth to nose breathing at night, which I've tried myself and found effective. We then discuss the importance of getting better at exhaling, and why you counterintuitively probably need to be thinking more about getting carbon dioxide into your body rather than oxygen. In the latter part of our conversation, we discuss more advanced breathing techniques, including hypoventilation training, where you double your exhales to inhales to acclimate yourself to higher levels of CO2, as well as other experimental breathing techniques that may allow people to take conscious control of the supposedly involuntary autonomic nervous system in order to boost immunity and heal diseases. 

Get the show notes at aom.is/breath.

#638: How Changing Your Breathing Can Change Your Life

Studying philosophy can be a metaphorical journey into wisdom. My guest today experienced it as not only that, but as a very literal journey as well.

His name is Eric Weiner and he traveled thousands of miles around the world to visit the haunts of numerous philosophers as he sought to better understand their insights and how he might apply them to his own life. He wrote about this philosophic pilgrimage in The Socrates Express: In Search of Life Lessons From Dead Philosophers. Eric and I begin our conversation with why he chose to take all his trips by train, and why rail travel is particularly conducive to thoughtful reflection. We then turn to the physical and philosophical stops he made on his journey, including why Marcus Aurelius wrote so much about getting out of bed and what ultimately motivated the emperor to start each day; what Thoreau can teach us about seeing; why Gandhi was very interested in the idea of manliness; how Nietzsche's idea of eternal recurrence can change the way we live our daily lives; and the lesson Simone de Beauvoir offers us on aging well. We end our conversation with Montaigne's insight on how to get comfortable with death.

Get the show notes at aom.is/socratesexpress.

#643: Life Lessons From Dead Philosophers

In 13 minutes, practice cultivating unconditional friendliness which research has shown to increase happiness, resilience and goal-attainment. As lawyers in training, this meditation can help you be more balanced, rather than needlessly adversarial or aggressive, in your practice.

Lovingkindness - 9-18-20

Losing stinks. Nobody wants to suffer defeat in a game, flunk a test, or get passed over for a promotion. Losses can feel like stinging humiliations, insurmountable setbacks, like the end of the world; they can even push us to quit pursuing something we love. And yet losses can be the most instructive and meaningful parts of our lives, and be central to our ultimate success.

My guest set out to study and explain these underappreciated upsides of getting bested. His name is Sam Weinman, he's a sportswriter, and he shares what he learned in his book, Win at Losing: How Our Greatest Setbacks Can Lead to Our Greatest Gains, as well as in today's episode. Sam and I begin our conversation with how losing is typically a lot more interesting than winning, the difference between losing and failing, and how you can lose without failing, as well as fail without losing. Sam then illustrates the lessons in humility, growth, personal responsibility, and resilience that can come from losing by sharing the stories of famous people who dealt with famously big losses, including golfer Greg Norman, soap star Susan Lucci, presidential candidate Michael Dukakis, and speed skater Dan Jansen. We end our conversation with how Sam's study of how to turn loss into gain has influenced his own children and the way they deal with setbacks.

Good insights here both on how to deal with your own losses as well as how to help your kids deal with theirs.

Get the show notes at aom.is/winatlosing.

#646: How to Win at Losing

Indigenous peoples burned their land for thousands of years to prevent much larger fires. Why it might be an important part of future wildfire prevention.

Science Friday

How Indigenous Burning Practices Could Prevent Massive Wildfires

We typically think of fear as a negative emotion. Something that feels terrible, and not only keeps us away from true danger, but also inhibits us from going after our life's goals and passions. 

Fear can indeed be an unwelcome hindrance, but, my guest today argues, it can also be a powerful propellant and a signpost towards success. His name is Patrick Sweeney, he's a tech entrepreneur, a university lecturer, a coach and consultant to CEOs, professional athletes, and Navy SEALs, and the author of Fear Is Fuel: The Surprising Power to Help You Find Purpose, Passion, and Performance. We begin our conversation with how a diagnosis of leukemia forced Patrick to confront the fact that he had led a life dominated and shrunken by fear, and inspired him to face those fears and to spend six years talking to leading neuroscientists about how to live more courageously. He explains how fear should be thought of not only as an early warning system for danger, but as an early warning system for opportunity. We then unpack the three kinds of fears which exist, and how you can be fearful in one area but courageous in another. Patrick then explains how it's possible to train the brain's courage center to control and reprogram its fear center, so you can get the best from fear, rather than letting it get the best of you. We discuss how uncertainty creates something called "free energy," how free energy creates fear, and how to reduce both forces by exposing yourself to a wide range of experiences. We end our conversation with how to find the motivation to take the first step into a fear, and three things you can do to gain the confidence to take action in the face of uncertainty.

Get the show notes at aom.is/fearisfuel.

#651: How to Turn Fear Into Fuel

The kitchen of a busy restaurant can be a chaotic, frenetic environment. But the best chefs create a kind of personal eye in this storm, from which they can efficiently craft meal after meal without ever moving their feet. The system they use to do this is called mise-en-place -- a French word that means "to put in place," and signifies an entire lifestyle of readiness and engagement.

My guest today spent years interviewing over a hundred chefs and other culinary professionals about the mise-en-place philosophy and then translated it into a system that can be used outside the kitchen in a book called Everything in Its Place: The Power of Mise-En-Place to Organize Your Life, Work, and Mind. His name is Dan Charnas and we begin our conversation with how Dan, a writer, realized that mise-en-place was something that could be used by everyone, and the system's three general principles and ten tools. We then unpack some of those tools, both in how they're used by cooks in the kitchen, and how they can be applied by regular folks at home and the office. We begin with the importance of squaring your checklists with your calendar and the one organizing process Dan most recommends: something called the 30-minute "meeze." We then discuss how to arrange your physical working space for greater efficiency and the importance of working clean. From there, Dan explains what he thinks Stephen Covey's famous idea of putting first things first doesn't take into consideration, and why it's important to understand the difference between what Dan calls "process time" and "immersive time." At the end of our conversation, we discuss the tension between perfection and delivery, the way the "call and call back" communication system used in kitchens creates teamwork and respect, and the fact that the success of any organizational system rests on daily commitment.

Get the show notes at aom.is/workclean.

#652: Chefs' Secrets for Organizing Your Life

Law and order, it’s one of the catchphrases of this election. Crime rates, in some cities in America, are on the rise but crime, in general, is down. But 2020 has been a chaotic year and our news feeds are filled with violent images of militant groups, protestors, riots, burning buildings, and everything in between. The sad fact is that not all crime in America is reported on in the same way, that the protest movement is overwhelmingly peaceful, but not always, and that police militarization has exacerbated all our current problems. Here to help us untangle some of this is Danny Gold. Gold is a Pulitzer Center grantee, a documentary producer whose work has appeared in VICE Nice, The New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal. He’s also the host of the new Underworld Podcast—a series about the global criminal underworld. <ul><li>Recorded 10/6/20</li></ul> Angry Planet has a substack! <a href="https://angryplanet.substack.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Join the Information War</a> to get weekly insights into our angry planet and hear more conversations about a world in conflict. <a href="https://angryplanet.substack.com/subscribe" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://angryplanet.substack.com/subscribe</a>You can listen to Angry Planet on<a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/war-college/id1023774600?mt=2" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"> iTunes</a>,<a href="https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/jason-fields/war-college" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"> Stitcher</a>,<a href="https://play.google.com/music/listen#/ps/Ioueaqtuifyfrxlbf6e6ec6difm" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"> Google Play</a> or follow our<a href="http://rss.acast.com/warcollege" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"> RSS directly</a>. Our website is <a href="http://angryplanetpod.com" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">angryplanetpod.com</a>. You can reach us on our Facebook page:<a href="https://www.facebook.com/angryplanetpodcast/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"> https://www.facebook.com/angryplanetpodcast/</a>; and on Twitter: <a href="https://twitter.com/angryplanetpod" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">@angryplanetpod</a>. &#10;&nbsp; <hr>See <a style='color: grey; ' target='_blank' rel='noopener noreferrer' href='https://acast.com/privacy'>acast.com/privacy</a> for privacy and opt-out information.

#651: How to Turn Fear Into Fuel

The Art of Manliness

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