132: Leon Logothetis: Author, TV Host, Cause Adventurer, Motivational Speaker & Philanthropist overcame depression and became an advocate for kindness through his books and his television work on The Kindness Diaries.
Leon Logothetis
Leon Logothetis talks about how he managed to change his life by putting kindness front and center and thinking with his heart, writing books, and television show The Kindness Diaries. “I did the first season of the show, which was also on Netflix. I took a vintage yellow motorbike from Los Angeles and I went all the way around the world all the way back to Los Angeles, relying on the kindness of strangers. People can now watch it on Amazon Prime. But the way it started, you have to go back to 2004, when I was working as a broker in London. On the outside, I pretty much had everything that you could want. But on the inside I was pretty much broken, and no one really knew except me.
On this episode of Finding Your Summit Podcast, we talk with Leon Logothetis, Author, TV Host, Cause Adventurer, Motivational Speaker and Philanthropist. Leon talks about how he overcame feeling lost, depressed, isolated, resistant to share his pain with others, until he came across the movie The Motorcycle Diaries. “When I watched it I realized that there was another way to live. It was about a guy traveling around from his heart and not living from his mind, and it just showed me there was another way to live. It showed me that I didn’t have to sit behind that desk. I didn’t have to follow someone else’s dream. I didn’t have to live another person’s life.”
What You Will Learn:
Leon Logothetis discusses what is is like looking for people to provide random acts of kindness in his television show. “Once you come from your heart they also more often than not come from their heart too. Yes, there are people who don’t and that’s fine. Whatever. But, the people that you see on the screen, it’s like you are bypassing the mind and you are going directly to the heart. You are connecting with them on a level that can’t be seen. It can only be felt, and if you mirror it to them, they will feel it.”
Leon shares his take on living mentally and living emotionally. “We are emotional creatures. Yet we live in a society that tells us you have to live from your mind. You have to live from your brain. You have to be clever. You have to be cunning. You have to be all of these things. But they forget that are super power is to be in touch with your feelings, and if you are in touch with your feelings, you are living in a totally different world. It doesn't mean that you let people walk all over you.”
How great was Leon’s fear of the unknown when he made the life transition away from the comfort of being a successful broker? “It is not an easy thing to follow your heart. But I would say, if you can find the courage to do that, everything will change. And what I am going to say now is, what truly pushed me to do what I do, what I did, was pain. I was in so much pain emotionally that I couldn’t sit behind that desk any longer and the pain pushed me to do something different. So, you know how many of us try to stay away from pain. I get that. But the pain is actually a gift. If you face the pain and you walk through the pain, at the end is a pot of gold.”
How have the people that showed Leon Logothetis kindness in the show affected him? “I started chatting with this guy, and I say, ‘Can I stay at your house tonight?’ And he goes, ‘Look, I’m really sorry. I’m homeless.’ So I’m like, ‘OK I just asked a homeless guy to stay in his house.’ I feel a little ashamed. But, I walk off and he turns around as says, ‘You know what, if you want, you can stay with me tonight. I will feed you. I will protect you. And I will give you some clothes.’ And that is exactly what happened. I ended up sleeping on the streets of Pittsburg with a homeless man for one night. The next morning I was able to set him up with an apartment and send him back to school.”
Why has kindness become the core message of Leon’s work and his life? “Kindness is freeing. It doesn’t matter how much money you have. It doesn’t matter how much money you don’t have. What matters is that it flows through all of us. We get to choose...True wealth is not in our wallets. But it is in our hearts.”
Experience the World
Having traveled all over the globe in the pursuit of happiness from the heart, Leon Logothetis gives his golden wisdom on how this quest has shaped his life. “One thing that I learned is, travel is the school of life. When you go out into the world you become better. You become wiser. You become kinder. You turn off the blinkers. If you just grow up in one little small place, and that is all you see. You turn on the channel and all you watch is one TV station, whether it is left-leaning or right-leaning, you are living in a little bubble. Go out into the world.”
Go Be Kind
During this episode of Finding Your Summit Podcast, Leon Logothetis also gets into the work that he has done as an author. He shares the backstory and inspiration behind his book Go Be Kind: 28 ½ Adventured Guaranteed to Make You Happier. “I created the book, it is really a journal for kids and adults to go and have a kindness diary adventure themselves. So they would go out and do these adventures in kindness to kind of just feel what it is like to live from the heart. And ‘the half,’ I mean, to be honest with you, it just sounds better.’
Links to Additional Resources:
Leon Logothetis: Linkedin Instagram Twitter Facebook Leon Logothetis’ Website: leonlogothetis.com Book: Go Be Kind: 28 ½ Adventures Guaranteed to Make You Happier by Leon LogothetisEP 273: Adrian Ballinger - Guiding and summiting big mountains all over the world!
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