Shabnam Mogharabi | CEO @ SoulPancake

TL;DR

Shabnam Mogharabi, CEO of SoulPancake, describes how she transformed personal despair into joy after hearing Rainn Wilson’s NPR interview about a site tackling life’s big questions. She reached out, joined the company, and credits three tools – detachment from outcome, gratitude, and avoiding comparison – for her shift from an “Eeyore” to a more joyful approach.

Key insights

• Mogharabi’s family perceives her as more of an “Eeyore” than a “Tigger,” and she identifies this tendency as rooted partly in being the firstborn child of immigrants – carrying their struggle alongsid
• Her college thesis argued that media needed to make philosophical and spiritual topics cool again; years later, hearing Rainn Wilson describe the same idea on NPR made her feel he “stole” it.
• At the time (fall 2008), she was simultaneously depressed after calling off an engagement, forced to lay off half her staff in the housing industry, and stalking high school classmates on Facebook.