Vanderkam is the bestselling author of multiple books on productivity and time management, including I Know How She Does It, 168 Hours, and What the Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast. She recently joined Leah Weiss, a professor at Stanford Graduate School of Business, writer, and consultant who specializes in the application of mindfulness to workplace environments, for a Heleo Conversation on incorporating mindfulness into our day-to-day lives. This conversation has been edited and condensed.  Laura: Could you talk a little bit about what you mean by mindfulness and purpose? Leah: Mindfulness is a term that is be... posted on Apr 1 2017 (14,402 reads)

of being a social entrepreneur. She will be followed by Mark Finser of RSF Finance who has been embedding these questions into organizations that deal with the intersection of money and value. Then we'll have Barbara Sargent from the Kalliopeia Foundation, who has not only been embodying these questions, but also helping dozens of organizations into the inquiry.      To illustrate a bit about my own edge, I'll share a personal story. A few years ago, I was working at a company and was pulled in for my year-end review. My boss, who is part of an investment firm said, "I'd love to reward you for your good performance this year, so what would you ... posted on Oct 2 2017 (10,715 reads)

for at-risk youth.  The Foundation has had a remarkable history and impact, from its initial focus on environmental education for young people to now addressing a range of needs for the young, the elderly, and many populations in between. What follows is the edited transcript of an Awakin Call interview with Edmund Benson. You can listen to or read the full interview here. Rish Sanghvi: Dr. Venkataswamy (Dr.V.) of the Aravind Eye Hospitals, one of the largest eye care networks in the world, didn’t start his career until he was 58. Civil rights leader, Mahatma Gandhi, didn’t return to India until he was 40. Our speaker today, Edmund Benson, is of simil... posted on Nov 1 2017 (8,095 reads)

meditation may hold the key to grappling with interpersonal racism, says Rhonda Magee, because it helps people tolerate the discomfort that comes with deeper discussions about race. And it can help cultivate a sense of belonging and community for those who experience and fight racism in our everyday lives. For more than 20 years, Magee has worked to address issues of race, racism, and identity-based conflict while teaching law at the University of San Francisco. Over the years teaching hundreds of students about the many ways that racism affects law and justice, she came to realize that we can’t just think our way out of racism or other biases—we need to go de... posted on Jun 10 2020 (9,923 reads)

Löfgren on speaking with Kate Raworth Kate Raworth is an economist. A renegade, maverick, rockstar economist. After graduating from Oxford University, she worked in the villages of Zanzibar with micro entrepreneurs, co-authored the Human Development Report for the UNDP and worked for a decade as a Senior Researcher at Oxfam. In 2017 she published her seminal work, Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist. In it she highlights how traditional economics has not only failed to predict or prevent recurring financial crises, it has allowed for worsening environmental degradation and increased social inequality. Old economic models created tools, langu... posted on Jul 19 2020 (8,096 reads)

regardless of financial, social, or physical challenges. The Sounds True Foundation is a nonprofit dedicated to providing these transformational tools to communities in need, including at-risk youth, prisoners, veterans, and those in developing countries. If you’d like to learn more or feel inspired to become a supporter, soundstruefoundation.org. You’re listening to Insights at the Edge. Today, my guest is Matt Licata. Matt Licata is a practicing psychotherapist whose work incorporates developmental, psychoanalytic, and depth psychologies, as well as a contemplative, meditative, and mindfulness-based approach to transformation and healing. He hosts in-person retrea... posted on Dec 12 2020 (5,794 reads)

first met Lydia in Byron Bay, at Folk, a café wedged between wetlands and a caravan park on very sacred Indigenous land. At the time, she was the co-CEO and executive producer of Ilbijerri Theatre Company, one of Australia’s leading companies showcasing the work of First Nations artists, where she has fostered in a new era of maturity for the organisation during a period of growing awareness—maybe even awakening—of the broader Australian culture to the richness of our First Nations people’s traditions and voices. Lydia has lived many lives in this one life. She is a Worimi woman, born on Bundjalung country, now living between the Kulin nations and Gubbi Gubbi... posted on Dec 19 2020 (4,186 reads)

Globe described her as a “prairie mystic” and Rolling Stone wrote that she is one who “asks all the right questions.” She has been called a “conversational, introspective” songwriter who “celebrates and savors the ordinary sacred moments of life”. And Krista Tippett notes that Carrie is “best known for her story-songs that get at the raw and redemptive edges of human reality.” Carrie has produced an amazing array of work...18 solo CDs, eight collaborative CDs, DVD’s, two LP’s, and has received numerous awards for her music and related charitable activities. She has released two books of poetry & e... posted on Jul 15 2023 (2,677 reads)

Consequently, they are transformed and thrive. He says, “I state what I stand for in life and stand firmly in the ground of my being. I proactively engage with Father X, a Catholic Priest, and I have been openly threatened for collaborating with him. I have attended many interfaith dialogues and meetings and appreciated what is common in our religions -— the common ground. This creates a very different space for dialogue. Father X and I deeply respect each other as human beings and work together to address social issues, such as the stigma related to HIV/AIDS, from the ground of our being, far beyond the common ground of our respective religious tenets.”   Thi... posted on Jul 20 2012 (17,469 reads)

from being a real tongue-twister for non-Scandinavians, ‘Arbejdsglæde’ is a wonderful word that literally means ‘work-love’ or more literally ‘work-glad’. Sadly, there is no direct translation for this word in the English language. Here at Maptia, we loved the concept behind this word so much, that we decided to ask people to help us crowdsource an alternative translation and created an illustrated ‘Translating Arbejisglæde’ poster to share the results. Huge thanks to Ella Frances Sanders for transforming our poster into this colourful illustration. Over 200 people shared three words that described how they felt on a Mon... posted on Apr 28 2021 (40,520 reads)

effective thing you can do to reset your brain and body health each and every day,” -- Matt Walker, Professor of Neuroscience and Psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, and Director of the Sleep and Neuroimaging Laboratory. Calling the global sleep-loss epidemic “the greatest public health challenge we now face in the 21st century,” Walker examines the impact of sleep on human brain function in healthy and clinical populations.  Through his work at UC Berkeley, he has been at the forefront of sleep research. He has linked sleep deprivation to psychiatric disorders, obesity, risky behavior, post-traumatic stress disorder, learning, and me... posted on May 31 2017 (58,595 reads)

actually be in pain. The grumpiness that I sometimes sense in people—maybe they’re suffering from back pain or something like that. So how prevalent is chronic pain in our society today? Peter Levine: To give you an idea of the scope of the problem, more people are suffering from chronic pain than from diabetes, cancer, and heart disease combined. So if you’re going through your day at a checkout line, at an [car] mechanics—and some of the people that are your coworkers, your colleagues, that you know—a significant proportion of those people are suffering, usually silently, from chronic pain. And unfortunately, most doctors don’t really have much ... posted on May 26 2018 (21,626 reads)

touch and feel the moment. Growing up in New York City the daughter of two photographers, Sarah was encouraged to “always look for the light.” Every day at school as a child, she would open up her lunchbox to a poem among her snacks, a small gift from her parents that taught her to pay attention to the world and find joy in it. At age 14, her heart bursting with poetry and chutzpah, she performed at the famous Bowery Poetry Club, uncertain of the work but compelled to share it anyway. It was a defining moment: in the dimly-lit space before a roomful of adults, she discovered the magic that happens when we listen to and share our... posted on Jun 17 2018 (10,591 reads)

restoring surgery, steer clear of fund-raising, and market to the people who couldn’t pay them. At the core of Aravind’s baffling success are radical principles and profound insights. They speak to the heart of Dr. V’s selfless vision and demonstrate how choices that seem quixotic, can, when executed with compassion and integrity, yield incredible results. Results that have lit the eyes of millions. **** Dr. V passed away in 2006, but his vision lives on through the work of Aravind and its 4000 person team, that today includes over 25 eye surgeons across three generations of Dr. V's family.  The following are edited excerpts from Infinite Vision:... posted on Oct 1 2018 (9,590 reads)

such as the motive to actualize our capacities to become more of what we truly are.  These inner experiences are wonderful; but they are not the final goal. The hope is, that if we immerse ourselves in these kinds of experiences, they will become part of our personality. The altered states will become altered traits. The peak experiences will become a more enduring plateau, a way of being and something we can share with others.     Aryae:  How does that actually work? lf I engage in a meditation, for example, and if I experience  an altered state, what is it that takes me from the altered state to the altered trait?   Roger: There are several th... posted on Jan 17 2019 (6,201 reads)

“the experience was an eye-opener for students — a powerful way to help them understand, at a visceral level, the nature of violence. And it also sparked Perlman’s lifelong professional and personal interest in the prison system.” What follows is the edited transcript of an in-depth Awakin Calls interview with Dr. Perlman. You can listen to the recording here. Preeta: I'm really pleased to be here in conversation with Lee today. I think the work that he is doing is so tremendous and remarkable. As you said, the ability to radically step into a different environment and be open and curious to the learnings we receive from that. He is a te... posted on Dec 28 2019 (6,828 reads)

more, or feel inspired to become a supporter, please visit soundstruefoundation.org. You're listening to Insights at the Edge, today my guest is James Clear. James Clear is the author of the New York Times bestselling book, Atomic Habits: An Easy and Proven Way to Build Good Habits and Break Bad Ones. He is also the creator of Habits Academy, which is a training platform for individuals and organizations that are interested in building better habits, in life and work. In this conversation with James, my own approach and the approach of Sounds True historically, which has been the depth of internal change and discovery, meets external behavior change, how they... posted on Jan 2 2020 (9,485 reads)

the past ten years, Sachi Maniar has nurtured breathing spaces for young people in the midst of profound intensity. When she first stumbled into the company of youth in conflict with the law, with runaway, orphaned and abandoned children, Sachi felt herself inexplicably at home. The work that blossomed from that feeling would eventually turn into a full-fledged organization that has now touched thousands of young lives, across three facilities in Mumbai as well as 18 other facilities in India. At its core Sachi's work reminds us of each person's fundamental belonging, of the beauty inherent in wholeness, and the power and freedom that come... posted on Jan 9 2023 (2,431 reads)

If you have an idea of what you want to make, what you were put here to do, then just go and do that. And that's much harder than it sounds and, sometimes in the end, so much easier than you might imagine. Because normally, there are things you have to do before you can get to the place you want to be. I wanted to write comics and novels and stories and films, so I became a journalist, because journalists are allowed to ask questions, and to simply go and find out how the world works, and besides, to do those things I needed to write and to write well, and I was being paid to learn how to write economically,  crisply, sometimes under adverse conditions, and on time. ... posted on May 21 2023 (4,385 reads)

brilliant in its entirety, but the part I find of especial importance and urgency is his meditation on social validation and the false merit metric of “prestige”: What you should not do, I think, is worry about the opinion of anyone beyond your friends. You shouldn’t worry about prestige. Prestige is the opinion of the rest of the world. […] Prestige is like a powerful magnet that warps even your beliefs about what you enjoy. It causes you to work not on what you like, but what you’d like to like. […] Prestige is just fossilized inspiration. If you do anything well enough, you’ll make it prestigious. Plenty o... posted on Apr 22 2012 (55,848 reads)