On the show today is New York Times bestselling author Neil Pasricha, who returns for his second appearance on The Knowledge Project.
We discuss the importance of gratitude and how simple acts can change the way you feel, where confidence comes from, the specific routines and habits you can use to counter anxiety, the recipe for building resilience, a productivity routine that works, the small steps that strengthen your relationship with your partner, and so much more.
Available now on: YouTube | Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Transcript
Pasricha is the author of seven books that collectively have sold over 2 million copies and spent over 200 weeks on bestseller lists, including The Happiness Equation and Two-Minute Mornings. His first TED talk, “The 3 A’s of Awesome,” is ranked as one of the 10 Most Inspiring of all time, and he also hosts a podcast called 3 Books, where he uncovers the 1,000 most formative books in the world.
Neil previously appeared on Episode 72 of the The Knowledge Project, one of the show’s most downloaded conversations to date. His new book, Our Book of Awesome, will be released Dec. 6.
Here are a few highlights from our conversation:
Add those four things up, story, social, structure, and stimulation. Those add up and into a satisfying career. Sometimes, you’re talking about being untethered from community or being untethered from the connection. Inspect those four Ss and see if you’re getting them and, if not, can you figure out ways to work those into your career or your day-to-day career?
We don’t rise to the level of our goals, we fall to the level of our systems.
The wins pile up when you pile on the number of times you step up to the plate.
Your mindset matters. An optimistic mindset isn’t going to make good things happen, but a negative mindset is going to almost guarantee that negative things happen.
And resilience, in part, comes from knowing that you’ve done difficult things in the past. And everybody’s done something difficult here but it doesn’t come top of mind.
A key question to ask yourself and whatever work you’re doing and don’t just want to confine this to corporate work is “Would I do this for free?” Doesn’t mean you should do it for free, but would you do it for free? Asking yourself that genuine question, if the answer is yes, it probably means that you have some burning intrinsic motivation inside of it.
Timestamps:
00:00 – Intro
01:20 – Happiness and the pandemic
06:07 – How to defeat anxiety
08:12 – How to focus and balance the important things
22:51 – What you need from a job to be satisfied
25:40 – On giving back to your community
29:06 – Why you should have a schedule, routines, and rules
42:41 – How to become resilient and reduce stress
59:15 – On quiet quitting and remote work
1:01:15 – Why we let others determine what we do
1:14:25 – How to live an intentional life
1:24:08 – On work life balance and achieving success
1:31:08 – On comparing yourself to your past success
1:35:11 – Why you should do interesting things
