Olympic-Level Life-Coaching: 5 Expert Tips to Help You Win Gold in Life
Just in time for the Olympics, we’ve drafted a dream team of advisors for a different kind of fantasy competition: winning at the game of life! Ideas from these five pros will help you kick butt in the arenas of productivity, happiness, financial savviness, and more. Ready? Let’s meet your coaches!
1.Your Adversity Coach: Ryan Holiday
The Obstacle is the Way
- 16 min reading time
- audio version available
From heartbreak to water damage, life has a way of throwing a few curve balls our way. Perhaps you’re not meeting your quarterly goals, or maybe a loved one has a scary diagnosis. Whatever the case, in The Obstacle is the Way, media strategist Ryan Holiday teaches us how to change our perspective and prepare ourselves so that we can anticipate obstacles in life and use them to our advantage.
2.Your Investment Coach: Benjamin Graham (advisor to Warren Buffett)
The Intelligent Investor
- 21 min reading time
- audio version available
Remember the tortoise and the hare? That parable taught us that slow and steady wins the race. While this may not work so well for those athletes at the Olympic games, this is exactly what Benjamin Graham counsels in his book, The Intelligent Investor. Graham advocates for a more risk-averse approach to investing in the stock market. Someone who’s followed this advice? Warren Buffett. And while investing with high risk may be exciting, the point of investing is not to be entertained, but to profit!
3.Your Positivity Coach: The Dalai Lama (via Daniel Goleman)
A Force for Good
- 21 min reading time
- audio version available
Turn on the television, and even something as positive and exciting as the Olympic games is riddled with bad news: doping scandals, alleged corruption, and polluted water. Sometimes, the world can seem overwhelmingly negative. But what do we do? The Dalai Lama counsels us to replace our negativity with compassion and love, for these positive traits are as deeply human as the negative ones. Within each of us rests the capacity for indifference and hate, but also for compassion and love. In A Force For Good, the Dalai Lama shares his insights on fomenting real change and managing powerful emotions.
4.Your Work-Life Balance Coach: Arianna Huffington
Thrive
- 13 min reading time
- audio version available
It took a rude awakening for media mogul Arianna Huffington to realize that she was overworking herself at the cost of her health and happiness, striving to meet unrealistic ideals of “success.” In her book, Thrive, Huffington counsels that we must stop thinking of success in terms of only money and power. Rather, we should redefine it in a way that makes room for our well-being.
5.Your Creativity Coach: Adam Grant
Originals
- 13 min reading time
- audio version available
Being creative is what will set you apart from others. Those with the more original ideas go far and leave lasting impressions on the world. The good news? Everyone has unique ideas. What many of us struggle with, however, is how to make these great ideas a reality. In Originals, Adam Grant walks us through how to gain the courage to realize our dreams.
