We celebrate our 200th Episode with President John F. Kennedy demonstrating some of the most remarkable leadership during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Kennedy overcame the fear and pressure that came from the threat of Nuclear War and found a peaceful solution for the world.
Join us as we examine clear thinking, objectivity, and remaining calm themes.
"Mankind must put an end to war before war puts an end to mankind."
John F. Kennedy
Yvon Chouinard, a Moonshots favorite and the founder of Patagonia, gives Away the Company to Fight Climate Change. So let's revisit this pioneer and remarkable leadership through his story.
In Let My People Go Surfing, Yvon Chouinard, the legendary climber, businessman, environmentalist, and founder of Patagonia, shares the persistence and courage that have gone into being head of one of the most respected and environmentally responsible companies on earth.
To whet our appetite before launching into the 'Achieving Your Goals' series, we revisit an icon. During our 'Media Innovation' series, we dove into Mark Cuban (Episode 73) and listened to his techniques for staying successful, and being ahead of competitors.
Entrepreneur and professional sports team owner Mark Cuban has ventured into many diverse businesses. He made his fortune through the sale of startups MicroSolutions and Broadcast.com in the 1990s, and later became known as the zealous owner of the NBA's Dallas Mavericks.
Cuban has also invested in film production and has appeared on such TV series as Dancing with the Stars and Shark Tank.
"It's not about money or connections. It's the willingness to out work and out learn everyone.” Mark Cuban
Sir Isaac Newton was an English mathematician, physicist, astronomer, alchemist, theologian, and author, widely recognized as one of the greatest mathematicians and physicists of all time and among the most influential scientists. He was a key figure in the philosophical revolution known as the Enlightenment. His start in life was fraught with illness and according to his mother, at birth, he could have fit inside a quart mug.
He was born especially tiny but grew into a massive intellect that still looms large.
"My powers are ordinary. Only my application brings me success." Isaac Newtown by James Gleick
Angela Duckworth is the world’s leading academic in the study of grit: something she defines as passion and perseverance for long-term goals. Is success all talent? What do successful people have that allows them to achieve their goals? The book Grit, teaches us that success is not all talent. To have talent is an essential factor and it will give you the edge over others who don't, but more importantly, you need the grit to see things through.
"Grit is living life like it's a marathon, not a sprint." - Angela Duckworth
Hello, listeners, members, and subscribers! The fourteenth Moonshots Master episode is here and we are leaping into Personal Transformation and Happiness!
We start with Tal Ben-Shahar who states that a happy life does not need to be happy all the time; instead, we should learn to embrace painful emotions and accept pain. Continuing on the path and getting us truly inspired are Shawn Achor and Oprah, who both teach us that the most successful people - in work and in life - believe that their actions have a direct effect on their outcomes.
With a foundation of inspiration, we now lean into the details by hearing from the awe-inspiring Dalai Lama, who discusses the idea of hope and gives us a lesson on the meaning of life. We then hear from a Moonshots-first thinker, Russell Brand, who introduces us to a study comparing happiness levels between lottery winners and quadriplegics, and how your inner state is more connected to your purpose than pleasure.
Helping us adopt new habits and practices to be happier today, we learn out loud with Neil Pasricha and his top 3 tips to start with a happy mindset, and how to want nothing. Closing the Master episode on Happiness is Naval Ravikant and Joe Rogan, who both talk about why we all need to make happiness our priority and understand that Happiness is a Choice.
Our recommended reading list will help you go even deeper into the topic and our shows on Happiness:
Happier: Learn the Secrets to Daily Joy and Lasting Fulfillment, Tal Ben-Shahar
The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness, Eric Jorgenson
What key lesson are you taking from the Master Series shows? Get in touch and let us know! Thanks for listening. That’s a wrap.
The Happiness Advantage by Shawn Achor shows us how to rewire our brains for positivity and optimism to reap the happiness advantage in our lives, our careers, and even our health.
How small shifts in our mindset and habits can produce big gains at work, at home, and elsewhere. Happiness is not the belief that we don't need to change; it is the realization that we can. Our most commonly held formula for success is broken. Conventional wisdom holds that once we succeed, we'll be happy; that once we get that great job, win that next promotion, and lose those five pounds, happiness will follow. But science reveals this formula to be backward: Happiness fuels success, not the other way around.
Habits are like financial capital – forming one today is an investment that will automatically give out returns for years to come.
― Shawn Achor
To whet your appetite for the upcoming Isaac Newton show we wanted to reshare one of the greats, Albert Einstein - enjoy!
A lot of people think that Albert Einstein’s greatest ability was his mathematical mind, but Einstein’s greatest skill was the ability to sift the essential from the inessential — to grasp simplicity when everyone else was lost in the clutter. Problems are an integral part of everyday life. So is problem-solving. But where people differ is in their ability to solve problems. Problem-solving has a synonym today, especially in the corporate world — fire fighting. Up to 70% of employees’ time is spent ‘fire fighting’. They spend more than six hours a day grappling with problems that should not exist. Imagine what organizations can achieve if hundreds or thousands of employees get these hours daily to work on something constructive!
Some problems should be solved. Some problems should be left alone. Some problems should not exist at all.
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them"
Albert Einstein
Getting rich is not just about luck; happiness is not just a trait we are born with. Building wealth and being happy are skills we can learn. Naval Ravikant is an entrepreneur, philosopher, and investor who has captivated the world with his principles for building wealth and creating long-term happiness. The Almanack of Naval Ravikant is a collection of Naval’s wisdom and experience from the last ten years, shared as a curation of his most insightful interviews and poignant reflections and written by Eric Jorgenson.
So what are these skills, and how do we learn them? What are the principles that should guide our efforts? What does progress really look like?
“The most important trick to be happy is to realize that happiness is a choice that you make and a skill that you develop."
The Almanack Of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness
What is the formula for a happy life? Neil Pasricha's, The Happiness Equation is a book that will change how you think about pretty much everything—your time, your career, your relationships, your family, and, ultimately, of course, your happiness. Neil Pasricha is a Harvard MBA, a New York Times–bestselling author of the Book of Awesome series, and a Walmart executive.
After selling more than a million copies of the Book of Awesome series, wherein he observed the everyday things he thought were awesome, he now shifts his focus to the practicalities of living an awesome life.
"Happiness is when what you think, what you say, what you do are in harmony" Neil Pasricha
Serena Williams has revolutionized women’s tennis with her powerful style of play and has won more Grand Slam singles titles than any other woman or man during the open era. Serena holds the most Grand Slam titles in singles, doubles, and mixed doubles combined among active players and even won the Australian Open in 2017 while pregnant.
INTRO
Most underrated athlete of our lifetime
Colin Cowherd_ Serena Williams
Don’t let others stop you from rising.
Serena Williams reads Still I Rise by Maya Angelou
START WITH YOU
What motivated Serena to fight and make it
Train hard
Don’t let negative thoughts overtake and take priority
Serena Williams_ 'Never Quit'
From the master to the student, Focus on the present, and you can handle pressure.
Serena Williams’ Childhood Coach (Rick Macci)
MENTAL MODELS
Keep coming back after you fail; not everyone makes it the first time, SO KEEP TRYING.
6. Not everyone makes it on the first go
When you turn up, you have to play to win.
7. Always take part to win
Relax, have fun, and think about the big picture
8. Don't focus on the short term
OUTRO
If you fail, you can learn and be 10X better.
9. What does failing do for you
Every time you see him, he's laughing. And he makes everyone else around him feel like smiling. He's the Dalai Lama, the spiritual and temporal leader of Tibet, a Nobel Prize winner, and a hugely sought-after speaker and statesman. If you ask him if he's happy, even after so much loss, the Dalai Lama will give you an unconditional yes. What's more, he'll tell you that happiness is the purpose of life and that the very motion of our life is toward happiness.
How to get there has always been the question. The Art of Happiness is the book that started the genre of happiness books, and it remains the cornerstone of the field of positive psychology.
"If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion." Dalai Lama
Jim Collins in his own words is a student and teacher of what makes great companies tick. His timeless concepts stem from more than 25 years of rigorous research into the question of what makes the best companies and what makes great leaders. But which book should you read first? Read on, we have some clues!
Can You Learn to Be Happy? If you feel like you’re floundering when it comes to finding meaning in life, look no further than Tal Ben-Shahar’s Happier: Learn the Secrets to Daily Joy and Lasting Fulfillment. He’ll give you some specific and actionable tips to increase your joy today.
Learn about this emotion in just 3 lessons:
Happiness breeds success and all life goals point toward it.
Balance your outlook on the present and future to get more joy in your life.
Nurturing worthwhile relationships will make you happier.To me, 'design thinking' is another way of saying empathize with the customer. It's consideration for the person you're designing for. Joe Gebbia, Airbnb
"When you appreciate the good, the good appreciates". Happier by Ben Tap Shahar
Airbnb Inc. Co-Founder Joe Gebbia is stepping back from a full-time role at the home rental giant to spend more time with his family and explore new projects at the company that made him a billionaire.
The Moonshots Podcast leaps into the world of design innovation with the co-founder of Airbnb, Joe Gebbia. To celebrate his work and learn how to make design breakthroughs and discover the courage and curiosity it requires.
To me, 'design thinking' is another way of saying empathize with the customer. It's consideration for the person you're designing for. Joe Gebbia, Airbnb
Matthew McConaughey’s Greenlights is not a conventional memoir. As he neared age 50, the Oscar-winning actor revisited the journal he kept for 35 years to see what he could learn from it.
Matthew McConaughey describes a greenlight as a sign you should continue with what you are doing. You may believe these signs come from the universe, God, or by chance. All that matters is you pursue this greenlight when it emerges.
“This is a book about how to catch more YESs in a world of NOs and how to recognize when a NO might actually be a YES. This is a book about catching green lights and realizing that the yellow and the reds eventually turn green.” – Matthew McConaughey
Hello members and subscribers! The thirteenth Moonshots Master episode is here and we are leaping into Leadership and Shared Vision!
As always we kick off with a slice of inspiration, and who better to get us started than Ken Blanchard who discusses how being a better manager starts with having a mindset that leans towards servant leadership, and our differentiation of vision and mission statements. We then have the heavy-weight champion, Simon Sinek, who breaks down the importance of having direction and introduces us to what a ‘Vision’ is.
Looking forwards, as we plan to adopt vision and mission statements, we have Weekdone and their breakdown of how to measure objectives with team members, helping us learn how to set good OKRs. Closing out the show is Simon Sinek who has 3 ways to stress test your vision, including resilience, being inclusive, and being service-oriented.
Our recommended reading list and downloadable frameworks are available to help you go even deeper into the topic, so you can create your vision and mission statements today:
Apollo Advisors, How to execute your bold business vision like Jeff Bezos
Dan Sullivan, Who Not How: The Formula to Achieve Bigger Goals Through Accelerating Teamwork
Ellevate, 11 Steps to Creating a Shared Vision for Your Team
What key lesson are you taking from the Master Series shows? Get in touch and let us know! Thanks for listening. That’s a wrap.
Dan Harris the Author of 10% Happier and Nightline anchor embarks on an unexpected, hilarious, and deeply skeptical odyssey through the strange worlds of spirituality and self-help, and discovers a way to get happier that is truly achievable. After having a nationally televised panic attack on Good Morning America, Dan Harris knew he had to make some changes.
Harris realized that the source of his problems was the very thing he always thought was his greatest asset: the incessant, insatiable voice in his head, which had both propelled him through the ranks of a hyper-competitive business and also led him to make the profoundly stupid decisions that provoked his on-air freak-out.
We all have a voice in our heads. It's what has us losing our temper unnecessarily, checking our email compulsively, eating when we're not hungry, and fixating on the past and the future at the expense of the present. Most of us would assume we're stuck with this voice that there's nothing we can do to rein it in, but Harris stumbled upon an effective way to do just that.
10% Happier takes you on a ride from the outer reaches of neuroscience to the inner sanctum of network news to the bizarre fringes of America's spiritual scene and leaves you with a takeaway that could actually change your lives.
What will you learn? How to deal with stress more effectively, mindfulness, and how to meditate.
Jordan Peterson has crafted a modern understanding of how to pursue what is truly meaningful for you. We dive into our top 5 motivating and inspirational rules from Jordan Peterson, spanning both his books and popular global bestsellers Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life & 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos
Dr. Peterson has published more than a hundred scientific papers and authored books, advancing the modern understanding of antisocial behavior, play, emotion, creativity, competence, personality, and finding meaning in the chaos.
“Order is not enough. You can't just be stable, and secure, and unchanging, because there are still vital and important new things to be learned”. Jordan Peterson
Between the training and three attempts, Goggins did more than 67,000 pull-ups in nine months. But more than his physical endurance Goggins showcased the power of repetition.
He tried three times to accomplish this goal
Learning from each attempt
Never accepting he couldn’t meet the challenge
Not listening to the negative comments - that he didn’t have the physical strength to do it
Four pull-ups an hour doesn’t seem like much. Over time, it becomes increasingly more challenging to the muscles, but increasingly more empowering to the mind.
Small numbers grow through consistent repetition. Small numbers are boring and don’t seem useful in the grand scheme. But small numbers are a necessary step before getting to the large numbers.
“You have to callus your mind to overcome your doubts and failures and keep moving forward.” - David Goggins
