Run Your Life Show With Andy Vasily

In today’s episode, I feel very fortunate to have interviewed Simon Dyson. Simon, who is from England, was a 17-year veteran of the European Golf Tour having won 6 times in Europe and 3 times in Asia. Simon played in 20 majors over the years, having made the cut in 9 of them. Anyone who knows and understands the game of golf, knows just how hard it is to qualify for a major, let alone make the cut.  Simon played in 2 Masters, 4 US Opens, 9 Open Championships, and 5 PGA Championships. His best showing in a major was in the 2009 Open Championship at Royal St. George’s Golf Club where he finished 9th place.  His best world ranking was in 2012 when he was ranked the 26th best golfer in the world.  One can only imagine the hard work that a professional athlete has to put into their game in order to develop the physical and mental skills necessary to compete at such an elite level.  In this episode, Simon digs deeply into his own journey and the mental framework that he developed and applied that not only helpe

In todays’ episode, I sat down to have a face to face conversation with educational consultant and cartoonist, Matt Smith.  Matt has a great story and is genuinely a person of the world. He is a third culture kid. If you haven’t heard this term before, this is what the actual definition is: Third culture kids (TCK) are people raised in a culture other than their parents' or the culture of the country named on their passport (where they are legally considered native) for a significant part of their early development years. As a young person, Matt lived in Germany, Thailand, and Malaysia. Having attended international schools, Matt was constantly exposed to a multitude of different cultures and experiences and it is during these very formative years when he began to develop an identify that was deeply rooted in a love of film-making.  After graduating from high school in Malaysia, Matt attended the Vancouver Film School then ultimately went on to get a degree in education.  Matt jumped right into the world

In today’s episode, I sat down with Hamish Brewer. Anybody who has seen Hamish in action can immediately feel his presence, his passion, his zest for life and learning, and his desire to make a genuine difference in the lives of the teachers and the students he serves.  Hamish is the principal of Fred Lynn Middle School in Woodbridge, Virginia. One the the very first things you can notice about genuine difference makers in this world is their ability to clearly articulate their purpose in life.  Without question, Hamish knows and understands that his purpose in life is to serve others and to bring out the very best in them. Although every decision he makes in his role as an educational leader is about students, Hamish has a very strong commitment to supporting teachers on their autonomous journeys of personal and professional development.  Having grown up in New Zealand, Hamish felt, from an early age, that he was meant to use his talents in a way to change the world. It took him some time to figure out wh

In today’s episode, I had the privilege to interview Shawn Livingston. Shawn is a 10-year military veteran having served in Iraq during his time in the military. Having sustained a serious back injury while serving, he required long term use of narcotic pain killers to get through each day due to the intense pain he was experiencing as a result of the back injury.  Over the course of two years, military doctor’s continued to prescribe these meds to Shawn which resulted in him developing a severe opioid addiction. This is when everything began to unravel for Shawn in his life. After finishing his time in this military, Shawn’s life spiraled further downward. Feeling lost and displaced, he turned to heroin to ease his physical and emotional pain. It was this heroin addiction that led to his arrest and landed him in prison for a period of time on drug possession charges. Almost three years ago, Shawn was facing a 15-20 year prison sentence for drug possession charges, but in that very dark and desperate moment

How habitual is it for you to take out your cell phone when waiting in lines or when in the company of strangers? How often do you strive to stay present and mindful in difficult situations? Is chaos more easily embraced when we practice mindfulness? How does practicing mindfulness help you to produce the best work possible? How does being present and truly listening help to improve the quality of relationships in your life?  These are some of the questions that we explore in this installment of 4 X Mindfulness. Neila Steele shares a recent difficult situation that she found herself in, but how employing mindfulness allowed her to diffuse the situation and make a genuine connection with a complete stranger. As well, Neila shares a great mindfulness strategy that can easily be applied in very little time in our own life. This strategy helps us to stay present and focused and to better observe our surroundings.  Andy shares a story that he recently learned about the amazing jazz musician Keith Jarret. The sto

In today’s episode, I had a chance to speak with renowned lecturer and author, Alfie Kohn. Alfie writes and speaks widely on human behavior, education, and parenting. He has published 14 different books since the late 1980’s and has been described by Time magazine as being America’s most outspoken critic of education’s fixation on grades [and] test scores.” As well, Kohn has been featured on hundreds of TV and radio programs, including the “Today” show and two appearances on “Oprah”; he has been profiled in the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times, while his work has been described and debated in many other leading publications. There were so many questions that I wanted to ask and themes that I wanted to discuss with Alfie in this episode, but I mostly focused in on the areas of self-efficacy, agency, feedback and assessment, as well as individualized learning.  Alfie and I also dug into the key factors necessary for teachers to feel empowered in their own professional learning journeys. Alfie is ex

In today’s episode, I feel very lucky to have sat down in person with Caterina Carna, who has become a good friend of our family here in Saudi Arabia. Caterina is from a small village in southern Italy, but has lived here at KAUST in Saudi Arabia for the past 5 years. Anyone who knows Caterina knows what a kind, caring, and compassionate person she is. What makes Caterina uniquely special is her ability to connect with others in an effort to build community and give people a greater sense of belonging. The reason why I wanted to have Caterina on my podcast is to share her very inspiring journey of transformation within herself over the past year. Caterina has spoken very openly about her struggles with being overweight for most of her life. In this episode, Caterina discusses how her relationship with food impacted her health for many years, especially growing up in a small village in Italy where food was one of the major ways that people in her life connected and came together to celebrate life and frien

Today’s episode is part two of a two-part series devoted to sharing the inspiring journey of professional endurance athlete Adam Campbell. Although this was originally going to be just one episode, there was so much depth to our conversation that I literally lost track of time. I had scheduled in approximately 45 minutes for our podcast but before I knew it, I was asking Adam if we could do a part two in order to dig more deeply into his story. In part 1 you learned that Adam spent the first 17 years of his life growing up on the beaches of Nigeria. Physical activity, movement, and outdoor pursuits had been ingrained in him from an early age but it wasn’t until going to boarding school at Trinity College in Ontario, Canada for his last couple of years of high school that he found a deep love and passion for more endurance-based movement pursuits. This ultimately led to Adam becoming a professional endurance athlete competing in multiple fields of endurance sport before ultimately finding a special niche i

Today’s episode is part one of a two-part series devoted to sharing the amazing journey of professional endurance athlete Adam Campbell. It was originally scheduled to be a hour-long podcast, but as I dug more deeply into Adam’s journey, there was so much more that I wanted to talk with him about, so we made a decision to record two separate episodes a week apart. Adam is Canadian but spent the majority of his childhood and teenage years growing up as a third culture kid in Nigeria. It was in Nigeria that he developed a deep love of physical activity and movement which ultimately led to Adam embarking on a career as a professional endurance athlete. Adam has represented Canada on 5 different national teams. You’ll hear about the different teams he represented and more about this journey later in this episode. Part 1 of this two part series really sets the context for a very honest and open discussion that we have in part 2. Adam was almost killed in a serious fall in the Selkirk mountains in 2016. He

I feel a great sense of gratitude to have had a chance to interview Leon Logothetis in the episode you are about to hear. Leon is a global adventurer, motivational speaker & philanthropist but It wasn’t always that way. He used to be a broker in the city of London where he felt uninspired and chronically depressed but he gave it all up for a life on the road. This radical life change was sparked by the inspirational movie The Motorcycle Diaries Leon recently returned from filming the second season of his Netflix TV show The Kindness Diaries. In season one he circumnavigated the globe on his vintage yellow motorbike named Kindness One, and in season two he drives a vintage yellow Volkswagen Beetle convertible which he names Kindness 2 all the way from Anchorage, Alaska down to Argentina. Along the way in both season 1 and 2, Leon gives a life changing gift to an unsuspecting good Samaritan in each episode. All of this while relying on the kindness of strangers to get him through each day. Leon is no strange