When the Game Designer Tells You to Put the Phone Down Joel Bergman makes video games for a living. He runs an indie game studio in Indianapolis called Grizzhoot. He has spent his entire adult life designing the very loops that pull people in, keep them engaged, and make it harder to put the controller down. And he is the one who told Dave Rodriguez to read Digital Minimalism. That tension is the entire episode....Continue reading...
How a Wellness Coach Finds the Time and Motivation You Swear You Don’t Have Most people who walk into a wellness conversation start the same way. I want to feel better. I want to lose the weight. I want to have energy again. Then almost immediately the second sentence: but I do not have time. Laura Burdick has heard that second sentence in every coaching meeting she has ever run. And she has a simple,...Continue reading...
There Is a Statistic That Should Stop Every Man Reading This Laura Burdick was running a hot yoga studio, coaching nutrition clients, and on the path she had carefully planned. Then a drunk driver hit her. She woke up paralyzed from the chest down. Most people would call that the end of the story. Laura calls it the moment her purpose got louder. On this episode of The Vitality Journey Podcast, hosts Dave Rodriguez and...Continue reading...
Most People Are Treating the Wrong Problem We medicate depression. We talk about anxiety. We scroll through articles about mental health at midnight while doing absolutely nothing to address what is actually wrong. Psychologist Dr. Dan Franz, who joined Dave Rodriguez and Dimitri Snowden on The Vitality Journey Podcast after 30 years of clinical practice, offered a reframe that cuts through all of it. The opposite of depression is not happiness. It is connection. That...Continue reading...
There Is a Statistic That Should Stop Every Man Reading This Primary care physicians, the first line of defense in this country’s healthcare system, miss the diagnosis of depression in men upward of 70% of the time. Not because they’re bad doctors. Because men are conditioned to show up at a doctor’s office with physical symptoms and never once mention that they are barely holding it together inside. That gap between what men feel and...Continue reading...
You Are Not Just Tired. You Are Carrying Four Different Things. Most people call it burnout. Some call it the mental load. But according to Mel Goodman, founder of WorkMom, what we vaguely call “overwhelmed” is actually four separate, distinct burdens, and lumping them together is exactly why nothing gets better. Lucy King, co-host of the podcast “We’ll Sleep When We’re Dead,” joined Dave Rodriguez and Dimitri Snowden on The Vitality Journey Podcast to break...Continue reading...
The Real Reason Moms Feel Like They Are Drowning Most moms know something is wrong before they know what to call it. The days feel heavy. The nights are short. The to-do list never ends. And somehow, even in a room full of people, there is a specific kind of loneliness that only a mother can recognize. That is where this episode of The Vitality Journey Podcast begins. Dave Rodriguez and Dimitri Snowden welcome Lucy...Continue reading...
The Question That Changes Everything Dave Rodriguez was lying on a gurney in the ER, two pulmonary embolisms confirmed, when a second question hit him that had nothing to do with survival. The first question was predictable: am I going to die? The second one surprised him. In the middle of monitors beeping and doctors measuring their words, another question surfaced quietly and clearly: who do I tell? Not about finances. Not about legacy. Just:...Continue reading...
Your Calling Already Exists. You Just Haven’t Found It Yet. There’s a question most people never ask themselves. Not because they don’t care about the answer, but because no one ever told them the question was worth asking. What were you put on this earth to do? Not what job should you have, not what career ladder should you climb, but what is the thing that, when you do it, makes you feel like you...Continue reading...
