The Power of Awareness: Lessons from the 100 Best Books for Work and Life with Todd Sattersten
The One You Feed
Eric Zimmer, The One You Feed
4.6 • 2.5K Ratings
🗓️ 7 October 2025
⏱️ 61 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this episode, Todd Sattersten explores the art of awareness with lessons from his new book “The 100 Best Books for Work and Life. He delves into how we can reshape the way we live, work, and become who we’re meant to be. Todd also discusses how mindfulness, Zen practice, and self-awareness can help manage emotions and navigate life’s challenges. He shares insights from his book curation process, discusses the importance of balancing personal growth with acceptance, and highlights how influential books can guide us through change, purpose, and self-discovery.
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Key Takeaways:
- Exploration of Todd's book, “The 100 Best Books for Work and Life”
- Importance of mindfulness and awareness in managing emotions
- The tension between striving for improvement and accepting life as it is
- Insights from Zen Buddhist practice and its application to personal development
- The impact of a growth mindset versus a fixed mindset on personal growth
- The interconnectedness of personal and professional development
- The significance of self-awareness in aligning actions with values
- The role of curiosity in adapting to change and personal evolution
- Recommendations for influential books across various disciplines related to personal growth and life skills
If you enjoyed this conversation with Todd Sattersten, check out these other episodes:
How to Embrace Awareness and Let Go of Ego with Grace Shireson
How to Create Change at Work Without Losing Yourself with Melody Wilding
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Most of the time, what the author's talking about is, there are symptoms of the problem. |
| 0:03.6 | There's some kind of diagnostic that you recognize. |
| 0:06.1 | What good authors do is they say, hey, reader, here's the symptoms that you're dealing with. |
| 0:10.9 | But the problem is actually something else that maybe you haven't thought of. |
| 0:15.2 | And it's that unlocked that happens when they say, here, look this way, because the problem's actually over here and you're not even looking. |
| 0:26.2 | Welcome to the one you feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the |
| 0:35.7 | thoughts we have. Quotes like garbage in, |
| 0:38.7 | garbage out, or you are what you think, ring true. And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don't |
| 0:44.8 | strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we |
| 0:52.2 | don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back |
| 0:56.0 | and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, |
| 1:02.5 | consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people |
| 1:08.1 | keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their |
| 1:11.7 | good wolf. |
| 1:15.5 | When I first picked up Stephen Covey's The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, it was |
| 1:20.4 | in the early days of my sobriety, but it gave me a framework that changed the way I lived. |
| 1:26.6 | We all have books like that, ones that arrive |
| 1:29.5 | at just the right time, shaping who we are and how we see the world. My guest today, |
| 1:35.6 | Todd Saterson, has spent his career identifying those kinds of books. He has a new book |
| 1:41.4 | called The 100 Best Books for Work and Life, and it gathers the most |
| 1:45.5 | enduring lessons from across business, psychology, and spirituality. |
| 1:50.9 | Together we explore how stories and ideas can serve as companions on the path of becoming, |
... |
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