Over the past year, the world has gone through profound changes. And we’ve changed along with it. It’s been a year of unimaginable loss, but also a time of reflection and discovery. We’ve learned what we need and what we don’t need, what adds purpose and meaning to our lives and what simply depletes us. We’ve learned valuable lessons about ourselves that we’ll carry with us long after the pandemic finally ends. And that’s why I’m so excited to announce the launch of my new podcast, “What I’ve Learned,” sponsored by Audible.
The series features people I love and admire across music, technology, sports and industry sharing deeply personal stories of what they’ve learned over the course of an unprecedented year of pandemic, protests and politics. We’ll hear how they’ve created new routines that have allowed them to be productive, how they’ve learned to strengthen their resilience and cope with daily stresses, how they’ve maintained relationships in a time of isolation, how they’ve tapped into the power of gratitude and, above all, how they’ve learned to connect more deeply with themselves and their own wisdom.
My guests include Jay Shetty, Van Jones, Adam Grant, Bozoma Saint John, Marc Benioff, Tim Ferriss, Lindsey Vonn, Alexis Ohanian, Dan Harris, Laurie Santos and Jonathan Biss. And at the close of each episode, I share a Microstep inspired by the conversation, so you can immediately start taking small steps in your own life to incorporate the lessons shared in each episode.
Here is some of what you’ll hear…
Adam Grant on what he’s learned about gratitude:
“I didn’t want gratitude to become just another task on my to-do list. I decided that instead of keeping a gratitude journal, I would focus on telling people why I appreciate them. Gratitude exists to help people who have been generous feel valued. It’s an important vehicle for strengthening bonds and reminding people how much they matter. My gratitude practice has not been to experience more gratitude. It’s been to express more gratitude.”
Jay Shetty on getting to the bottom of his fears about his family:
“When the pandemic started, my biggest fear was, ‘Oh no, I won’t be able to see my parents in London.’ And then I asked myself, ‘Well, why am I scared of that?’ And I was scared because I thought, ‘Oh, I won’t get to be with them this year.’ And then I asked myself, ‘Why am I scared of that?’ And I thought, ‘Oh, I’m scared of that because I won’t get to tell them I loved them and how much they mean to me.’ So the honest answer at the root, when I kept asking myself ‘why,’ was that I don’t tell them I love them enough right now.”
Van Jones on how he’s learned the value of taking care of himself, and that his value isn’t tied to his work:
“Slowly but surely I started getting the message that I need to take this as an opportunity to just take care of myself. That doesn’t sound like a big deal, I think, probably to most people. But the idea that I would have any kind of value to anybody not doing all that work — even to myself — would have, this time last year, seemed so preposterous to not even consider it as a serious statement. And now it makes all the sense in the world to me.”
Bozoma Saint John on redefining her mantra of living life urgently:
“2020 shook me up and challenged me to change the way I think about living urgently. I was constantly getting on and off planes and interacting with new people all the time. It began to feel like urgency meant how quickly I could move through life. And then, boom, I was forced to be at home and re-evaluate how to live life urgently without moving at all. Now urgency is no longer about moving fast, but about intention and living every day with that purpose in mind. And the way I do it is by going deeper, by going further in.”
Tim Ferriss on why he’s been spending more time on his inner game:
“I’m more at peace than I’ve ever been before. I think that it really has to do with prioritizing the inner game over the outer game… It has been very rewarding. And I don’t think that that’s something you have to wait to do after you’ve achieved some modicum of success — in fact, I think that I would have spared myself a lot of suffering, and probably achieved even better results.”
Dan Harris on how he’s learned to “embrace the cheese”:
“The big breakthrough for me in the last six months has been to get myself to do something I call ‘embracing the cheese’ and actually incorporating self-compassion into my meditation practice and into my life. What self-compassion leads to is not an unending efflorescence of goo. It doesn’t work like that, but it does give you access to a virtuous cycle. It improves your inner weather. And when your inner weather gets warmer, your relationships get better, and upwards you go.”
We all know that we learn more about ourselves in times of adversity than we do when life is easy. This has been an extremely challenging year, and we’ll all be the wiser if we share the lessons we’ve learned and the insights we’ve gained with each other. I hope you’ll join me for “What I’ve Learned.” You can subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
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