Brilliant's Blog

For many people, “What is your favorite book?” stands alongside questions like “Who are you?” and “What do you want on your tombstone?” as difficult questions to answer. Without exception, whenever I’ve read a book that someone has told me is their absolute, all-time favorite book, I too have enjoyed…

I just finished Roman Krznaric’s excellent book The Good Ancestor: A Radical Prescription for Long-Term Thinking. In this book I learned about the Long Now Foundation, an organization whose website explains, “[We hope] to provide a counterpoint to today’s accelerating culture and help make long-term thinking more common. We hope to…

Tools to Help You Tend the Garden of Your Mind “Your mind is like a garden: whatever you plant will grow.” – Charles David Heineke Once you’ve seen something, you can’t unsee it. That’s why it’s important to be careful about what you see in the first place. To help…

Safi Bahcall is a second-generation physicist (the son of two astrophysicists) who sees and thinks about the world very differently from most people. Safi coined the term “loonshot,” “A neglected project, widely dismissed, its champion written off as unhinged.” His book, Loonshots: How to Nurture the Crazy Ideas That Win Wars,…

About five years ago I made the life-changing decision to attend Tony Robbins’ six-day flagship seminar Date with Destiny. You might have seen the documentary Netflix released about Tony—shot at that same seminar—called I am Not Your Guru. Prior to signing up, I’d never done any of Tony’s programs, hadn’t…

As I write this, Wednesday afternoon, the top headline on Washington Post’s site is “Pro-Trump mob storms Capitol building.” You, like me, might have naively thought that we’d left the tumult and uncertainty of 2020 behind simply because the calendar rolled forward to “2021.” But this is clearly not the…

A balance board, says Wikipedia, is a device used as a circus skill, for recreation, balance training, athletic training, brain development, therapy, musical training and other kinds of personal development. I recently began using an Indo Board after reading about the benefits that flow researcher Steven Kotler has found from…

Great questions and great listening make for great conversations, especially when we’re talking to friends and family—people we think we know. To help you ask great questions, check out this list created by StoryCorps. StoryCorps is a non-profit organization whose mission is to record, preserve, and share the stories of Americans from…

Have you discovered the great work of your life? Are you doing it? Do you have a big goal you want to realize? Maybe you want to do something like publish a book, launch a startup or charitable foundation, or become a doctor, a farmer, astronaut or coach. If so,…

Nearly ten years ago, I attended an event produced by Summit, a global community of entrepreneurs, academics, athletes, artists, astronauts, authors, chefs, engineers, explorers, philanthropists, spiritual leaders, scientists and beyond. At the time, I was none of those things. In fact, I didn’t really know who I was, what I…

Middle school health class opened my eyes about so many things. And although the lessons about puberty, maturation and the human reproductive system permanently expanded my mind, it was a lesson about nutrition that truly changed the way I look at the world. In one class, our teacher pointed out…

In 2010, I drove with four friends from London to Ulaanbaatar as part of the Mongol Rally. The event’s organizers describe it as “Motoring stupidity on a global scale.” For this rally, there’s no support team, no set route and no guarantee you’ll arrive safely (or at all). Our journey…

As we go through life, sometimes we get stuck and need a little help. Other times we get lost and need a bit of direction. And occasionally we even find ourselves wishing we could blow up everything about our lives (or maybe just one thing) and start over entirely. That…

You have gifts and talents. To a large degree, your happiness—and the contribution you make to others—is determined by whether or not you share your gifts and talents. And believe it or not, your happiness does not depend on making a living or becoming famous or even widely recognized by…

You learn to swim by swimming. You learn to create by creating. You learn to give by giving. Below are four lessons I’ve learned about podcasting over the last two and a half years as I’ve created more than 100 episodes by interviewing authors. Many of these lessons apply to…

Like me, you’ve probably learned A LOT from classrooms, seminars and books. Maybe too much. 🙂 In recent years I’ve endeavored to learn more directly from nature, indigenous traditions, the breath and body, and mysticism. That’s why it was such a privilege when Sadhguru invited me to ride motorcycles with…

On the evening of September 1st, 1992, Matthew McConaughey lay on the top bunk in the Delta Tau Delta fraternity house at the University of Texas at Austin. Before he nestled in for a good night’s sleep, he opened his journal and wrote, Ten Goals in Life: Become a father…

Inner Engineering: A Yogi’s Guide to Joy is a book that changed my life. When I discovered it in 2016, I didn’t know who Sadhguru was, and I certainly had no idea how broadly I’d travel with him or how much he’d teach me. And it would never have happened…

In the fall of 1968, a man named Don bought a truck from a dealership in Salt Lake City. As part of the transaction, Don paid for a trailer kit to be installed on the truck. When he called to see if it was ready for him to pick up,…

Having Strange Dreams? You’re Not the Only One Since the Pandemic started, many people report having more—and more bizarre and vivid—dreams than in pre-Covid times. Scientific American recently published an article called “The COVID-19 Pandemic Is Changing Our Dreams”. It explains, “anxiety about social distancing and infection is altering how…

Tim Ferriss has shown millions of readers and podcast listeners the way to design their lives in ways they love. His latest podcast, he says, is the most important one he’s ever produced—and that’s saying something given the caliber of people he’s interviewed.  In it, in conversation with author and…

It was an early morning, and cold enough to see your breath. Mark heard a loud “crack!” and felt a bullet whiz past his ear, so close he could feel the wind as it flew by. He turned to find Chris, a fellow special forces operator, pointing a 9mm pistol…

Why I Started I didn’t start meditating to find God, improve my health or take a few strokes off my golf game.  I started meditating to escape from pain—mental, emotional and spiritual. Never mind that I was the one causing all that pain. In my thirties, if my life was…

My brother Roger passed away in an accident three days before his 45th birthday. He was a thoughtful and loving, and I suspect his highly sensitive soul never felt truly at home in this world. When my mom called to tell me, I sensed that something was wrong even before…

Bucky suffered greatly early in his long life. His daughter died of spinal meningitis before her fourth birthday. He lost his job after his second daughter was born and couldn’t support his family. One day during this difficult period, he walked along the shores of Lake Michigan, deep in thought….

No offense if you own one, but I’ve never liked maroon cars. And it doesn’t matter what you call it—burgundy, carmine, rosewood, auburn—I just think that color goes better on farmhouses, fire stations and school buildings. Don’t get me wrong, if someone gave me a maroon Maserati, I’d take it…

Although she goes about it without much publicity, my mom—in partnership with my dad when he was alive—has now given away more than a hundred million dollars to improve the quality of life in communities where our family businesses are located. Believe it or not, it’s harder to give money…

In my last post, I told you about Adam, the friend who saved my life by answering my phone call during one of my darkest times. In this post, I’ll tell you about a gift I gave him that might have saved his life. Here’s the story, as told to…

One night, after a particularly nasty argument with the woman who was soon to be my ex-wife, I drove home on I-80. As I made my way past the Great Salt Lake, headed deeper into Utah’s desert, I seemed to be driving into a darkness that would swallow me whole….

When we’re faced with big or difficult decisions, it can be hard to know when to listen to ourselves and when to listen to those around us. Years ago, when I told my dad I was thinking about going back to school to earn an MBA, he tried to talk…