Hello and welcome to being well. I'm Forrest Hanson. If you're new to the show,

thanks for joining us today. And if you've listened to before, welcome back. Today we're talking

about something that's both topical for the start of the year and has been very relevant for me personally. Life tends to feel

better when we are trying in a sustained way at things that genuinely matter to us. We're not checked out,

or disengaged, or drifting, but we're also not white-knuckling it through life. We're in a kind

of middle place with it. It sounds simple and

obvious, but it runs counter to both much of the advice that we receive these days and is surprisingly

hard to do. How do you find good things to care about in the first place and decide what to

stick with and what to move on from? How do you work with fear and distraction? Or even just the

structure of modern

life altogether that makes this stuff really difficult? How do you avoid common traps and

pitfalls along the way, like chasing goalposts that get constantly pushed back? To help me dig

into this topic and answer some of these questions, I'm joined today by writer and coach, Brad Stolberg. Brad is a regular contributor at the New York Times, the co-host of the Excellence

Actually podcast, and on faculty at the University of Michigan's Graduate School of Public Health.

He's also the author of a number of books, including Master of Change, which he came on the show

to talk about a few years ago, and now his new book, The Way of Excellence, A Guide to True Greatness and Deep Satisfaction in a chaotic world. So, Brad, thanks for joining me today. How are you doing? I'm great, Forrest. It is a pleasure to be here back on the show. Yeah, for sure. And you mentioned that this is like one of the first kind of big interviews you're doing for the book. I was so happy to be in that position. Yeah, I am fresh and ready to roll. So listeners, all success goes to forest and all mistakes are mine. Oh, well, I wouldn't put it that way, but I do appreciate it. So I would love to start here, Brad, with kind of a funny question.

What do you mean by excellence?

I define excellence as involved engagement in something worthwhile that aligns with your values and goals.

So it has three parts.

Involved engagement means deep concentration, a sense of caring, a sense of intimacy.

And often we think about intimacy is love for a romantic partner, but you can also have intimacy

with an activity with a craft.

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