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Our guest today is someone who has dedicated their career to helping people lead themselves toward crafting a good life with good work. Gregg Vanourek is a high-impact leadership developer, executive, and award-winning author training, teaching, and speaking on leadership and personal development. Gregg’s work has been featured in the New York Times, BusinessWeek, Entrepreneur, and his book, Triple Crown Leadership was a winner of the international book awards in 2013. In today’s episode, we dive deep into how we can avoid falling into numerous traps we find in our life paths.
Life in Sweden – Gregg spent years in Sweden with his family. We talk about how life is different in Sweden, the adventures Greg and the family went on, and the experience of raising his kids in Sweden.
Gregg's Books – Gregg and his father interviewed 55 people about their life paths, decisions, choices regrets in an effort to collect ideas for one of his books. Greg shares with us what he learned through this experience and also other book projects.
Authentic Integrity – Greg shares his thought on what the concept of authentic integrity is based on, ways to evaluate our authenticity, and habits that help us maintain authentic integrity.
Comparing vs. Contributing – In modern society, we are surrounded by things that influence our minds to compare our lives with others. This sort of behavior has unintended consequences. Gregg dives into how we can improve our lifestyle by adopting a habit of contributing rather than comparing.
Avoiding Traps – What causes us to fall into traps like business, burnout, ego, fear, and how we can modify our habits and behaviors in a way that helps us avoid falling into these traps.
Climbing the Ladder – Chasing goals and being successful is something that's embedded deep into our culture. While it leads people to have better lives in many cases, there are instances where focusing only on chasing our goals can lead us to reach a place where we no longer feel happy. Gregg shares his perspective on how to iterate between chasing success and discovering ourselves so we can avoid falling into the trap of climbing the ladder.
Contact Professor Rao
Website: greggvanourek.com
Triple Crown Leadership: triplecrownleadership.com
Twitter: twitter.com/gvanourek
Facebook: facebook.com/TripleCrownLeadership
Mentioned in the episode:
Tara Brach – Awakening From the Trance of Unworthiness:
www.tarabrach.com/articles-interviews/inquiring-trance/
Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
www.goodreads.com/book/show/11468377-thinking-fast-and-slow
Bobbi's Takeaways:
I hope that you found that conversation helpful. I know that I was scribbling notes throughout it. Here are my three insights for thriving.
Instead of worrying about having the the vision, think of it as having a direction that feels true to you. And then pursue that with intention, awareness, and what Greg called authentic integrity.
Comparison is the thief of joy. Instead, focus on contribution. How can I contribute and add value and where can I contribute and add value?
The treasure chest at the top of the ladder is empty. And like Greg said, it's not the climbing in and of itself is bad. But we don't want to lose focus on the things and the people and the values that are important to us. My takeaway from that is to make your own choices about what is in your treasure chest, and then live your life in a way that is continuing to fill up that chest.
And I have to say, it was really hard for me to keep that to three takeaways, three insights.
