017: Balancing it all as a mother, founder, & multi-dimensional woman w/ Ariel Garten, co-founder of Muse

Ariel Garten is probably one of the most interesting people you will meet. She is a Neuroscientist, mom, former psychotherapist, former fashion designer, and the co- founder and visionary of an amazing and highly successful healthtech startup Muse. Muse tracks your brain activity as you meditate to give you real-time feedback, while also guiding you into the “zone” and solving the problem most of us have when starting a meditation practice: telling us when we are doing it right! And now Muse is helping its users improve their sleep. 

Muse is now used by hundreds of thousands of people to start or deepen their meditation practice, including by the Mayo clinic. The new 2nd generation Muse S uses advanced EEG technology to track how well you focus, sleep and recharge. And the recently launched “Digital Sleeping Pill” presents the latest in non-pharmaceutical sleep support, providing immediate and intelligent assistance with falling asleep and nighttime interruptions. 

With no formal business background, Ariel personally raised $18M to found Muse from Silicon Valley investors (as well as Ashton Kutcher). Ariel and Muse have been featured in over 1000 articles, including CNN (3x), Forbes, Fortune, Popular Science, NYT, WSJ, GQ, Men’s Health, O Magazine, and Wired. Ariel’s mission in life is to help people understand how their brain and mind work–both the nuts and bolts and neurons–and how that plays out in the messy and beautiful human experience of living. She inspires people to understand that they can accomplish anything they want by understanding what actually goes on in their own mind. Ariel is also the co-host of the Untangle Podcast.

Curious about meditation? Check out Muse - Receive 10% off with CODE: “POD10”

💫 We cover :

• Shifting your identity as a successful entrepreneur, new mother, creative, & ambitious woman. Does she as a mother: “toggle between” identities or merge the two?
• How Ariel raised millions of dollars (PREGNANT) for her company, Muse
• How balancing it all is unrealistic - & how as women we need to start to define what success looks like for each of us, individually
• Allowing your priorities to shift; self compassion on the journey of transition
• How your brain changes as a mother; what’s happening physiologically
• Navigating postpartum depression; what is happening chemically & tools for healing
• Tools to reintegrate & heal from trauma; from the perspective of mindfulness & psychology
• What happens in the brain when we’re meditating + remarkable research (leveraging Muse!) around meditation and stress, cancer care, focus, and more!
• What’s more important: time spent meditating or consistency? 
• High achievers: how to break perfectionism
• How Muse helps meditators tune into “if they are in the zone” when meditating
• Exciting new research & innovations Muse is creating around: sleep, pain, managing emotions, creating new neural pathways, dreams, and more!

💫 Mentioned in this episode:

• Muse - Receive 10% off with CODE: “POD10”
• Ariel’s podcast, Untangle