1132: How to Find Deep Satisfaction While Pursuing Excellence with Brad Stulberg

How to Be Awesome at Your Job

How to be Awesome at Your Job

Sharpening, Self-improvement, Meaning, Winning, Development, Money, Interview, Writing, Health & Fitness, Speaking, Mental Health, Success, Wins, Fun, Skills, Business, Careers, Training, Education, Collaboration, Decisions, Career, Selfhelp, Mockaitis, Thinking

4.5 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 26 February 2026

⏱️ 39 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Brad Stulberg shares foundational principles for making the process of self-development more fun and fulfilling.

— YOU’LL LEARN —

1) What true excellence looks and feels like

2) Why to stop chasing happiness—and what to focus on instead

3) The best tool for building focus and concentration

Subscribe or visit AwesomeAtYourJob.com/ep1132 for clickable versions of the links below.

— ABOUT BRAD —

Brad Stulberg researches, writes, and coaches on performance, well-being, and sustainable excellence. He is the bestselling author of The Practice of Groundedness and Master of Change, and coauthor of Peak Performance.

Stulberg regularly contributes to the New York Times and his work has been featured in The Wall Street Journal and The Atlantic, among many other outlets. He serves as the co-host of the podcast “excellence, actually” and is on faculty at the University of Michigan. He lives in Asheville, North Carolina.

• Book: The Way of Excellence: A Guide to True Greatness and Deep Satisfaction in a Chaotic World

• Website: BradStulberg.com

— RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THE SHOW —

• Study: “The comparison of Imagery ability in elite, sub-elite and non-elite swimmers” by P. Duarte-Mendes, et al.

• Study: “Brain Drain: The Mere Presence of One’s Own Smartphone Reduces Available Cognitive Capacity” by Adrian F. Ward, Kristen Duke, Ayelet Gneezy, and Maarten W. Bos

• Book: Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

• Book: The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains by Nicholas Carr

• Book: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values by Robert Pirsig

• Past episode: 164: Sustaining Your Peak and Avoiding Burnouts with Brad Stulberg

• Past episode: 415: Pursuing Your Passion the Smart Way with Brad Stulberg

• Past episode: 699: Redefining Success for More Fulfilling Days with Brad Stulberg

— THANK YOU SPONSORS! —

• Monarch.com. Get 50% off your first year on with the code AWESOME.

• Shopify. Sign up for your $1/month trial at Shopify.com/better

• Factor. Head to factormeals.com/beawesome50off and use the code beawesome50off to get 50% off and free breakfast for a year. (New Factor subscribers only)

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Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	In order to be excellent, in order to be awesome at your job, you've got to make yourself vulnerable.
0:15.4	You have to pair. You have to risk failure. You have to risk heartbreak. And at a certain point,
0:19.6	it's inevitable that you are going to fail and you're going to get your heartbroken. But the upside of all the meaning
0:25.4	and the satisfaction and the potential performance gains that you get from caring deeply,
0:30.3	way outweighs the downside of occasional heartbreak and occasional failure.
0:42.2	That's Brad Stolberg.
0:45.7	He's the best-selling author of multiple books on performance, well-being, and sustainable excellence.
0:46.3	His latest book is The Way of Excellence, a guide to true greatness and deep satisfaction
0:50.4	in a chaotic world.
0:51.8	Brad has spent many hours researching and pondering what it means to be truly excellent. So you'll learn, one, what true excellence looks and feels like. Two, why to stop chasing happiness and what to focus on instead. And three, the best tool for building focus and concentration. And if you want to get a summary write-up of the actual wisdom that Brad shares, please sign up for the free Gold Nugget email newsletter found
1:11.6	at awesome at your job.com. I'm Pete McItis. This is How to Be Awesome at Your Job. And now here's Brad.
1:21.4	Brad, welcome back. Pete, it's a pleasure. Well, I'm excited to talk about excellence. That's one of
1:25.8	my favorite things. And so you will share with us the way.
1:30.8	But I'm very curious up front.
1:32.5	You have achieved excellence in lifting vast quantities of weight.
1:38.3	Can you tell us a little bit of the story of this journey and what that illustrates about excellence?
1:44.0	Yeah, I can.
1:45.0	So I am a armchair powerlifter.
1:50.0	I'd say armchair because I'm not actually being at a national or world-class level or
1:54.8	anything like that.
1:55.9	But I got really into deadlifting in particular, maybe five or six years ago.
2:00.7	And I've just been working
	...

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