TYE 135: Google X Co-founder Tom Chi on how to think like an inventor
Release Date: 05/10/2022
TYE 157: The Gift of Imperfection (Why I’ve Been Away From Podcasting)
The YES Effect
Today, I want to talk about accepting and embracing the wonderful gift of imperfection. As someone who has struggled with perfectionism, I realize it’s been holding me back from creating content lately, including this podcast. Oddly enough, as a speaker, podcaster and content creator, I am not comfortable in the spotlight. The amount of times I’ve shied away from posting videos or recording interviews because I hated how I looked that day, or the lighting was off, or I just didn’t feel “camera ready” is more than I can count. And it has let so much magic go to waste. If we continue...
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TYE 156: Unlocking the Brilliance Inside Challenging Kids with Dayna Abraham
The YES Effect
Dayna Abraham has developed a guide for parenting “challenging” kids - those with big emotions, power struggles; the misbehavers and neurodivergents. Her new bestselling book is aimed at reframing what we typically label as “challenging” behaviour as an opportunity for adults to learn and empower their kids to reach their full, innate potential. In this episode, Abraham talks about how her framework helps parents foster connections, understanding, and empowerment, while removing the stress and overwhelm of parenting. After all, some of the world’s greatest innovators and...
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TYE 155: Focus On The Next Step, Not The Whole Mountain (How I Wrote A Song)
The YES Effect
To make a big dream happen, you have to break it into small, individual steps and focus on the next first step. This way, you can make even the wildest, even most absurd, idea a success. This episode is a story about how my 13 year-old step son Ry and I co-created a song with the help of a celebrity music producer, without ever meeting him, and with almost zero musical abilities myself. I just really wanted to make a song with Ry, and focused on the next first step. Listen to the end to hear the song itself and a super inspiring Q&A with Ry at the end. Whatever your big, even...
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TYE 154: How to overcome perfectionism and embrace the messy steps to success
The YES Effect
Perfectionism is a killer of hopes and dreams. The challenge is learning to accept and embrace the messy, imperfect steps necessary to create momentum. It’s how every successful person gets to the top of the mountain, and why so many people never reach it. This quick episode is about my holistic approach to doing things the most human way possible: imperfectly. Please listen, share and I hope this lights your fire to keep taking messy, imperfect steps forward to your ultimate “yes!” In this episode, you’ll learn: Why people often fail at their goals Why New Year's Resolutions often...
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TYE 153: The life-changing power of a small act of kindness
The YES Effect
We often never know how far an act of kindness can go or how it can change someone’s day, or their entire life. Here’s a quick story of kindness from a recent trip to the grocery store, which started with something rather unkind. Too often, people are dismissed and not looked at for the wholeness of who they actually are. Everyone has bad days. But everyone deserves our kindness. Please listen, share and let me know what you think - leave a review or DM me on Instagram
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TYE 152: Say What You Need to Say Before It’s Too Late
The YES Effect
This holiday season was a difficult one for me, and in this episode, I explain why & what I learned from it. In the very days leading up, one of my absolute closest people fell ill and died quite suddenly. I spent Christmas Day in the hospice at her side, spending those final inevitable moments in deep sorrow and reflection. But those moments also reminded me of a valuable life lesson - woven beautifully into one of my favourite John Mayer songs. Please listen and share with someone who needs to hear it. Death and dying are indeed both heartbreaking and beautiful. Join for a...
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TYE 151: How To Overcome The Fear of Asking Questions (A Personal Story)
The YES Effect
At some point we developed this fear of asking questions. For so many people, the thought of potentially hearing “no” is crippling enough to pass up the incredible possibility of “yes.” But as the saying goes, “you’ll never know until you ask,” and not asking at all, ironically, leads to that same dreaded “no” by default. So how do we find the courage to ask questions? In this episode, I’m sharing two occasions where - scared as I was - I took a shot at asking. One resulted in a business deal with one of the biggest luxury car companies in the world (for a firefighter...
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TYE 150: How a no-sugar diet can change your life with Netta Gorman
The YES Effect
When Netta Gorman stopped eating sugar, it not only changed her life, but also the lives of hundreds of others. She now helps people eliminate sugar through her coaching programs and immensely popular But Netta’s journey to the land of no sugar, flour or sweeteners wasn’t easy (as we’ve all tried and mostly failed). But after a lifetime of digestive issues, doctor’s visits and failed efforts, Netta caved to this small but life-changing recommendation of a Nutritional Therapist. Her results were so effective, she’s now dedicated to guiding others past the emotional and societal...
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TYE 149: I wasn’t meant to be the prettiest girl in school
The YES Effect
Jealousy and comparison can shatter us. But when we focus on others’ success, money, fame, appearance, situation or whatever, we forget the truth - the truth of our own gifts and the true story of what’s beneath the surface. I wanted to share this quick story about a girl in my high school - hands down the prettiest and most popular girl in the school. Every fibre in my short, geeky body badly wanted to be her. Turns out, there was so much more to the story, and it made me forever grateful for my own gifts and for being exactly who I be. I hope this inspires you to...
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TYE 148: How to build positive company culture by learning about your people and their stories
The YES Effect
To build a positive company culture, you first need to show that you care about your people. Sounds like a simple concept, right? Then why does so much toxic company culture still exist? It’s because leaders need to learn more about what drives their people and why, and most importantly, genuinely care. In today’s episode, I’m going to explain how leaders can build far more successful businesses and create a much more positive work environment using the power of story. The perfect example: how the Wright Brothers won the highly competitive race to invent the airplane by...
info_outlineTom Chi’s list of accolades - much like his work - stretches from here to outer space: Co-founder of Google X where he helped develop Google Glass & self-driving cars, he’s launched things into space, built award-winning robots, worked on the development of Microsoft Outlook and Yahoo Search, has released over 20 albums as a musician, and even released a comic strip. He began his career at 15 as an astrophysical researcher…immediately after getting rejected for a job at Burger King.
Tom has pioneered a unique approach to rapid prototyping and now speaks and teaches the fundamentals of learning versus knowing, related to how inventors and creators think. He’s literally the best speaker I’ve ever heard and you’re about to hear why!
After 5 years of trying, I’m thrilled to finally interview Tom Chi on The YES Effect show.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
- Why Tom was given the name “Tom” in grade one, because he didn’t actually know his name after his parents immigrated from Taiwan.
- Why Tom believes school doesn’t necessarily teach practical thinking
- The inventor mindset Tom Chi developed as a child
- The difference between practical thinking and abstract thinking
- Why knowing things as a noun prevents us from noticing and learning their nuances
- How Tom uses a fork to explain how things are nuanced
- How Tom uses rapid prototyping to help people problem solve
- Why our brains struggle to know and learn at the same time
- How we’re able to learn more as a child than as an adult
- Why our culture of determining winners and losers prevents us from pursuing genius
- Why getting stuck in a perception usually means that perception is wrong
- How creators and inventors think
- How the joy of learning creates an environment to invent and create
Quotables:
“Part of the reason people don’t invent things and create things is they very quickly come to judgment on what things are.”
“We get so allied with abstract concepts and ideologies that we stop noticing what the actual world is like.”
“If your perception is stuck for a long time, it’s probably not a correct perception because everything in the universe is in some process of change.”
“If you think about the way a kid learns, there isn’t a lot of justification required before they try something new.”
“Anybody learning anything is going to be bad at it for a while. We take something that’s a natural part of the learning process and heighten it into some kind of problem.”
“What I’m trying to do in my work is dig into what types of cognition serve us and allow us to continue to learn and create a great education for ourselves. Not in the ‘I went to Harvard and got a 4.0’ kind of thing. But the ways of thinking that allow us to invent, create and how to be in the world.”
Links mentioned in this episode:
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