TOOLS FOR YOUR MENTAL TOOLBOX
Opposition directs your growth.
Being willing to face and work with obstacles is how you’ve grown personally and professionally. You did not accomplish whatever good you have by avoiding challenges. Getting to where you need to go will require that same alchemy of turning obstacles into opportunities.
My hope is that here you will find the mental models, tools, and ideas that can help you to do just that. Welcome!
Hey, I'm Larry
I’m a Navy brat born in Hawaii and after living in 10 states I’m currently staying warm in Florida. I’m a former Googler and for over a decade I’ve advised some of the world’s largest brands and digital platform companies.
Recently I’ve become fascinated by systems theory and how we acquire knowledge through challenges. As a result, I’ve felt compelled to talk to thought leaders across a variety of fields, ask dumb questions, and record it.
Let’s connect and I’ll share what I’m learning.
Popular Podcasts
- November 14, 2020
On this episode, my focus is on finding peace of mind amidst persistent uncertainty. So many things that are directly affecting our lives are out of our direct control - and it can be maddening. Ancient Greeks used the term ataraxia, which means a state of serene calmness. Steven Gambardella writes in the Sophist “Ataraxia is not a positively-defined state such as “happy” or “excited” It was believed by the Hellenistic philosophies to be a “resting” state of serenity.” To achieve this state, the 3rd-century Stoic sages taught the need to discern between “things not up to us” vs. “things up to us”
- October 20, 2020
What do you do when you're faced with a big decision? My guest is Annie Duke. Annie is an expert on decision fitness and is the author of two books on decision making, the bestseller Thinking In Bets, and her latest How To Decide, Simple Tools For Making Better Choices, is the topic of the show. This episode follows from our first conversation except here we shift from highlighting causes of bad decisions to discussing in more of the process for making better ones. We talk about her tools and heuristics to make quality decisions - and create your own crystal ball.
- September 6, 2020
Dr. David Burns is one of the pioneers in cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) and largely responsible for its widespread adoption in psychotherapy today. Dr. Burns says that our negative moods do not result from what’s wrong with us, but rather -- what’s right with us. And paradoxically, when you listen and “hear” what your negative thoughts and feelings are trying to say, you won’t need them anymore, and recovery follows. The goal, according to Dr. Burns, is not just complete elimination of negative feelings, but the development of joy and enlightenment.
- June 27, 2020
On this podcast, we talk about what happens after we make a terrible mistake. What is our response to our mistakes? Do we try to brush it off? Do we say screw it and double down?
Mistakes don’t end with the mistake itself - it can get worse, much worse. My guests are Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson. They co-authored the book “Mistakes Were Made (but Not by Me):
- May 26, 2020
Rory Sutherland is a best selling author, ad man being the Vice Chairman of Ogilvy and Mather and co-founder of Ogilvy Change, a behavioral science practice where they believe the greatest gains to be made in business and society are psychological, not technological.
- May 26, 2020
James Altucher has been talking with a wide variety of experts about the Coronavirus, everyone from an immunologist, physicians, geneticist, economist to policy experts and super forecasters in the form of regular updates starting in February. He also lives in Manhattan, which is ground zero for the epidemic here in the states, which gives him another perspective I don’t have.
- May 26, 2020
The Stoics’ realized that even though you have limited control over what setbacks you experience, you can develop considerable control over how you respond to them. The 1st century Stoic Seneca wrote about the differences between experiencing a setback and suffering from it, by changing the perspective of how one thinks of setbacks.
- May 26, 2020
This episode is about trying to understand our true capacity to cope with stress and how to arouse the dormant resilience in all of us. My guest on this show seems to be proof there are benefits from extreme physical challenges. In his case, actually seeking out stressors and using them to hack the nervous system - reprogramming it's response to those stressors.
- May 26, 2020
As I publish this on April 6, 2020, there are 340,000 cases of the Coronavirus in the U.S. with over 9,700 deaths. Over 70,000 deaths world wide. The amount and velocity of information on the pandemic can be overwhelming and much of it is conflicting. Do this - don't do that, this works, no it doesn’t.
- May 26, 2020
Dr. Steven M. Southwick, is the author of Resilience: The Science of Mastering Life’s Greatest Challenges. In this show he summarizes his research into the psychological, biological, and social impact of trauma, combining the latest scientific findings in the area of resilience drawing on two decades of work with trauma survivors
- February 21, 2020
This podcast is about every promise you made to yourself but broke. Let me introduce you to the Pope of Procrastination, who forgives you of all that. My guest is Piers Steel. Piers is a Distinguished Research Chair at the University of Calgary. He's also the inventor of the procrastination equation, encapsulating pretty much every scientific finding on procrastination out there to date.
- December 24, 2019
This is about your time and attention, why you lose control of it and how to get it back. Nir Eyal is the author of the bestselling books, Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products and Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life.
