As 2016 comes to a close, many of us are strategizing, planning and visualizing how we would like 2017 to unfold. More specifically, we are giving serious thought about what we want to accomplish, how we want to be better and what kind of impact we want to have on the world.

With this in mind, I have been blown away by two things over the past few weeks that I’d like to share with you. And in my view, these are two absolute must-listen and must-read pieces of information.

LEWIS HOWES’ INTERVIEW WITH JOHN ASSARAF

My friend Lewis Howes has one of the most popular podcasts on the planet – The School of Greatness – and he has interviewed some incredibly accomplished and successful people, ranging from Tony Robbins to Scooter Braun to NFL great Ray Lewis.

Yet out of the 400+ podcasts he has done, it was his very recent one with John Assaraf that impacted me the most.

Not only was it one of the best podcasts that Lewis has done, but it was one of the most impactful podcasts that I have ever listened to. How good was it?

I cannot remember ever listening to a podcast multiple times and taking notes throughout the entire interview. Furthermore, I plan on replaying it at least once a month just for the reminders. Read more »

In the summer of 2001, after being on Prozac for more than a decade, I made the life-altering decision to go off of antidepressants.

Despite what doctors and nearly everyone else around me were saying – that I had a chemical imbalance and that antidepressants were essential to keep me going – I believed otherwise. Intuitively, I knew that there was a better way to live, yet almost no one in my support system was in agreement with this line of thinking.

For the millions of people facing depression and who have similar doubts about medication being the only answer, a book has arrived that completely validates our concerns.

In the New York Times best-seller A Mind of Your Own: The Truth About Depression and How Women Can Heal Their Bodies to Reclaim Their Lives, Dr. Kelly Brogan, an MIT and Cornell-trained psychiatrist, gives us the hard facts about antidepressants and busts all of the widely believed myths about this class of drugs.

In fact, the medical community is so terrified of the truth being exposed in A Mind of Your Own that Dr. Brogan and this book have been blacklisted by the mainstream media. Yes, blacklisted!  Why? Read more »

I’ve been fortunate to do many amazing things and meet a ton of inspirational people in 2014.

Yet, if I had to pick my highlight of the year, it is probably the article that I just wrote in Mantra: Yoga+Health magazine.

When the magazine first hit the stands, I vividly remember being hunched over in the aisle at Whole Foods Market in NYC’s Union Square, absorbing every single word. What I felt after reading these few pages touched me in a way that nothing else had in a long, long time.

To be honest, my reaction really took me by surprise and I never imagined that I would be so overcome with emotion. Why was I so moved by this article?

I write blog posts all of the time that get shared throughout the world on the Internet. Additionally, I also have been lucky enough to have been profiled in The New York Times, CNN, Fox News, Bloomberg and many others major media outlets.

So, what was so special about this one? Read more »

Here is a list of of my top 10 organic food moments from 2013, and these are both industry achievements and personal highlights.

1) Whole Foods announces that all GMOs in its stores will be labeled by 2018

Unwilling to wait for a federal labeling law, Whole Foods decided to take matters into its own hands and made this historic announcement in March of this year. The importance of this decision cannot be underestimated as it has already kickstarted an enormous shift in the non-GMO and organic supply chain.

Immediately after the company released this news to its vendors and to the media at Natural Products Expo West 2013 in Anaheim, I spoke with Co-CEO Walter Robb and President A.C. Gallo about the announcement.

Without question, this has to be the most important event of the year and its reverberations will be felt for decades to come. Read more »

On Monday night in New York City at about 8PM EST or so, I was literally ten minutes away from publishing a post about all of the organic food that I bought before Hurricane Sandy’s arrival.

Yet, the electricity went out and the post never went up.

Scroll down to the bottom to see these foods and read about them if you wish. However, this information seems really trivial and unimportant to me right now. Why?

The devastation that this storm has caused to NYC, New Jersey, Long Island and other parts of the East Coast is the only thing on my mind right now. Lives have been lost, homes have been ruined, communities and towns have been completely upended, and countless small businesses are sure to go bankrupt.

Since I was in downtown Manhattan during and after the storm, here is what I experienced. Read more »

Early this morning was the start of a 3-day silent meditation retreat I am doing here in New York City hosted by an organization called The Art of Living. (Last night was the introduction/orientation but today begins the official silence).

I took the beginning course at The Art of Living in 2004 where I learned the very powerful
Sudarshan Kriya breathing exercise and hadn’t been back there until an Open House event a few weeks ago.

It was at this Open House that several people told me the Art of Silence course completely rocked their world. One woman told me that she had never been able to create a profitable business until she took this course, and her company has exploded ever since and revenues continue to grow like crazy.

When she told me this story, it really hit home. Why? Read more »

To be honest, the amount of juicing I have been doing lately has been pretty inconsistent.

The reason for this?

I play this game of trying to convince myself that drinking a large quantity of wheatgrass on a daily basis means that I don’t have to juice nearly as much. Read more »