Notes for An Awesome Life with John Spence
Notes for an Awesome Life with John Spence takes you beyond the boardroom into the habits, reflections, and small decisions that can help you create more clarity, resilience, and balance in your life.
This show features one of the world’s top leadership thinkers, John Spence, named by the American Management Association as one of America’s Top 50 Leaders to Watch. John has lectured at more than 90 universities, including MIT, Stanford, Cornell, and Wharton, served as CEO of five companies, and advises organizations from startups to the Fortune 10.
But here, he’s not talking about business strategy. He’s sharing the principles, stories, and reflective tools that help people live more joyful, successful, and yes…awesome…lives.
Every episode delivers candid conversations about failure, resilience, and growth. You will also hear practical strategies to align your life with your values and stories that prove it’s never too late to design your life with purpose.
Follow now and start your journey toward an awesome life, one decision at a time.
Episodes
17 episodes
Finding Balance
What does a balanced life actually look like and is it even real?This week on Notes for an Awesome Life with John Spence, Josh and John dig into the idea of balance beyond the usual “work-life” cliché. FThey examine a practical ...
Blind Spots: Looking for Change in all The Right Places
Sometimes the most important things to change are the ones you can’t see yet.In this episode of Notes for an Awesome Life, John Spence and Josh Wilson dive into one of the hardest challenges in personal growth: recognizing the patt...
Facing Distraction, Procrastination, and Resistance
In this episode of Notes for an Awesome Life, global top 100 business thinker John Spence joins host Josh Wilson to unpack one of the biggest obstacles to a fully awesome life: resistance.From staring at a blank page to h...
Stop The Spiral Of Overthinking
Ever notice how overthinking feels like responsible prep while quietly draining your energy and time? We go straight at that tension with John Spence, exploring how deep thinking tips into rumination, how to spot the shift in real time, and how...
Mailbag: Flexible Minds, Defining Wisdom, Work/Life Balance
In this special listener driven episode of Notes for an Awesome Life with John Spence, John and Josh open the mailbag and tackle real questions from the audience.The discussion moves from the hidden dangers of “helpfully” putting butter ...
Rewriting The Stories We Tell Ourselves
What if the biggest thing holding you back isn’t your circumstances, but the story you keep telling yourself?In this episode of Notes for an Awesome Life, John Spence and host Josh Wilson explore how personal narratives shape id...
The Importance of Human Connection
The Importance of Human Connection - Busyness, anxiety, and introversion are real, but they don’t change a foundational truth of being human: we are wired for connection. John and Josh dig into what happens when we ignore that need and why lone...
Failure: Your Worst Mistake Can Be Your Best Teacher
Failure sits at the center of every meaningful life change, yet most of us meet it with fear, shame, and avoidance. In this conversation with John Spence, we explore how to turn losses into leverage by focusing on what we can control and what w...
Make It Easy to Win: Goal Setting That Works
In this week’s episode of Notes for an Awesome Life with John Spence, John and Josh break down what effective goal setting really looks like. John shares how to use SMART goals without overcomplicating them, how checklists create reliable progr...
Living in the Moment and Practicing Gratitude
What if the most powerful change you could make is only a breath wide? We dig into the “gap” between stimulus and response, the tiny pause where you can trade impulse for intention, and show how gratitude and presence turn that pause into a lif...
How Self-Awareness and Emotional Intelligence Shape an Awesome Life
In this episode of Notes for an Awesome Life with John Spence, Josh and John dive into one of the foundations of a truly “awesome” life: self awareness. John explains why emotional intelligence, especially self awareness and self regul...
Influences: You Become What You Focus On
John and Josh explore how our areas of daily focus shape our future and how small, deliberate choices can compound into a massive change of course towards a life of success and joy. John shares personal stories, practical tools, and a two-list ...
Envisioning Your Ideal Life
Episode 5 - Envisioning Your Ideal Life What does your ideal life actually look like and how do you get there? John and Josh unpack a practical visioning process, talk about why “hope is not a strategy,” and then talk about...
Purpose That Pulls You Out of Bed
What is your mission, your reason for bounding out of the bed in the morning? John and Josh look at the importance of setting a direction for your life that aligns with you values and abilities. We explore purpose as a living, practical f...
Borrowing Beliefs? Try Writing Your Own Values
John and Josh explore why clear personal values make hard decisions simple and how to align daily behavior with what matters. John shares the pitfalls of borrowed values, how safety and fear and recognizing what you can control play a roll in g...
Having A Successful Life on Your Terms
What if “success” isn’t rich, famous, powerful but values lived daily and relationships that last? In this episode, John and Josh talk about defining a successful life, résumé vs. eulogy virtues, the importance of relationships and a deceptivel...
Start Where You Are for An Awesome Life
About this episode: John Spence is one of the world’s top thought leaders but he almost wasn’t.Before the accolades, before lecturing at MIT and Stanford, before helping people and businesses around the world…he failed out of col...