One of my favorite TED Talks of 2016 was Neil Pasricha's How do you maximize your tiny, short life? Entirely composed of questions, Neil likes to call it the world's first TED Listen, and it's a great thought-starter about the impact we each want to make in our lives.
Watch: How do You Maximize Your Tiny, Short Life?
Listen: Want Nothing, Have Everything: The Happiness Equation with Neil Pasricha
Today I’m re-sharing my podcast episode with Neil from September, where we discuss the success trap, why advice is irrelevant, and the reason you wake up in the morning. Listen to the Pivot Podcast in the embedded player below or subscribe on iTunes, SoundCloud, Overcast, or Google Play Music. And be sure to check out the book giveaway at the end!
"Be you. Be you, and be cool with it. There is nobody else you can be better."
—Neil Pasricha, The Happiness Equation: Want Nothing + Do Anything = Have Everything
Neil Pasricha's writing is like a cup of hot chocolate, or as he would describe it in Awesome Thing #119, like watching butter melt on a hot piece of toast. It is comforting and delightful. His latest book is about what he learned along his own roller coaster ride of reaching smashing success with his 1,000 Awesome Things blog and books, then realizing he still wasn't happy. We break down topics like The Saturday Morning Test, the three time buckets, and many more. Enjoy!
More About Neil Pasricha
Neil Pasricha is the New York Times-bestselling author of The Happiness Equation and The Book of Awesome series, which has been published in ten countries, spent over five years on bestseller lists, and sold over a million copies.
Pasricha is a Harvard MBA, one of the most popular TED speakers of all time, and after ten years heading Leadership Development at Walmart he now serves as Director of The Institute for Global Happiness. He has dedicated the past fifteen years of his life to developing leaders, creating global programs inside the world’s largest companies and speaking to hundreds of thousands of people around the globe. He lives in Toronto with his wife and sons.
Topics We Cover
- Feeling trapped by extrinsic motivators, ever-escalating goals
- Achieving massive success—multiple bestsellers, TED talk—then feeling trapped by the never-ending search for more
- Overcoming compare-and-despair
- The Success Triangle: sales, social, self
- The Meat Grinder of marketing, stress from emphasizing sales
- "The goal is not to be perfect, it's to be better than before."
- What the healthiest 100-year-olds in the world can teach us
- Ikigai, a Japanese term for the reason you wake up in the morning
- Retirement is an arbitrary, relatively new concept; many of the world's healthiest places to live don't even have a word for stopping work
- The Saturday Morning Test
- Advice is irrelevant; "When we are looking for advice we are usually looking for an accomplice."
- How he decided when to leave his job as Director of Leadership Development at Walmart
- Why having a side hustle for so long as an author allowed him to take big risks at work and in his writing
- Three Bucket Model of the Week: Sleep, Work, Free/Creative/Fun (56 hours each)
Podcast: The Happiness Equation with Neil Pasricha
Listen below or on iTunes, SoundCloud, Stitcher, or Overcast:
Resources Mentioned
- Neil on Twitter
- 1,000 Awesome Things
- The Institute for Global Happiness
- TED Talk: The 3 A's of Awesome
- Previous Pivot Podcast: The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking
- Neil's Books:
Check out other episodes of the Pivot Podcast here. Be sure to subscribe via iTunes, Android or SoundCloud, and if you enjoy the show I would be very grateful for a rating and/or review! Sign-up for my weekly #PivotList newsletter to receive curated round-ups of what I'm reading, watching, listening to, and new tools I'm geeking out on.
Book Giveaway
We're excited to announce that one awesome Life After College reader will receive a copy of Neil Pasricha's The Happiness Equation!
To enter to win, please answer the following question in the comments by Friday, February 3. We will pick a winner via random.org and email to let you know! Good luck!
Comment to Be Entered to Win:
As Neil asks in his TED Talk: "What story or idea of yours might survive as a tiny, flickering light millions of years into the future?"