Speaker 1: Everybody gets into the habit of comparing their inside to
Speaker 1: other people's outsides, and the moment you do that, you
Speaker 1: lose Welcome to the One You Feed. Throughout time, great
Speaker 1: thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have.
Speaker 1: Quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what
Speaker 1: you think ring true. And yet for many of us,
Speaker 1: our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 1: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 1: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 1: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 1: just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 1: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 1: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 1: the right direction, how they feed their good Wolf Welcome
Speaker 1: to the show. Before we start today's interview, we'd like
Speaker 1: to ask our listeners if they'd be interested in participating
Speaker 1: in a new segment of this podcast. We had the
Speaker 1: idea of recording some shorter interpretations of The One You
Speaker 1: Feed parable instead of full interviews, and we thought a
Speaker 1: great place to start would be with some of our
Speaker 1: regular listeners If you're interested, please contact us through one
Speaker 1: you feed dot net and as always, a great way
Speaker 1: to support the show is to go to the iTunes
Speaker 1: store and leave a review. So our guest today is
Speaker 1: Jonathan Fields, and award winning author, serial entrepreneur and host
Speaker 1: of The Good Life Project, which explores a life well
Speaker 1: lived with acclaimed entrepreneurs, artists and authors. His latest book
Speaker 1: is called Uncertainty, Turning fear and doubt into fuel for Brilliance.
Speaker 1: Here's the interview. Hi, Jonathan, welcome to the show. It's
Speaker 1: great to be with you. It's a real pleasure to
Speaker 1: have you on. There's been a few pie casts out there,
Speaker 1: and and you've also got a video show that we're
Speaker 1: sort of a model for what we were trying to
Speaker 1: do in years is definitely one of them. So I
Speaker 1: love what you do with that. Thank you. I appreciate that.
Speaker 1: So our podcast is based on the parable of Two Wolves,
Speaker 1: where there's a grandfather who's talking with his grandson and
Speaker 1: he says, in life, there are two wolves inside of us.
Speaker 1: What is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness
Speaker 1: and bravery and love and patience well stuck in traffic,
Speaker 1: and the other is a bad wolf? Which represents things
Speaker 1: like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops
Speaker 1: and he thinks, and he says, well, grandfather, which one wins?
Speaker 1: And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd
Speaker 1: like to start off by asking you what that parable
Speaker 1: means to you in your life and in the work
Speaker 1: that you do. For me, it's about choice, that you know.
Speaker 1: The parable to me is that we wake up in
Speaker 1: the morning, we open our eyes, and between that time
Speaker 1: and the moment we close our eyes in the evening,
Speaker 1: we have we have a series of choices to make
Speaker 1: and um, and one of those choices includes our state,
Speaker 1: our state of being, our state of mind, our state
Speaker 1: of body, and uh, I think we default to believing
Speaker 1: that those are set by default, they just happen. To me.
Speaker 1: The parable is about owning the state that you bring
Speaker 1: to everything that you do as a choice, rather than
Speaker 1: just saying this is happening to me exactly. I think
Speaker 1: that's that's very much on point with with a lot
Speaker 1: of what we talked about. And I think that choice
Speaker 1: is I made the joke in the opening about being
Speaker 1: stuck in traffic, and it's one of those where I
Speaker 1: recognize this is what's happening, and do I get upset
Speaker 1: or not get upset? And you know I do better
Speaker 1: sometimes than others. But I agree with you that I
Speaker 1: recognize at least that that is a choice that I
Speaker 1: can make versus a you know, I'm a victim of
Speaker 1: this thing. Yeah, I mean I think it's about you know,
Speaker 1: you look at the world and there are circumstances within
Speaker 1: your control and circumstances outside of your control, and if
Speaker 1: you can control them, then control them if it makes
Speaker 1: sense too. But if you can't, then own the fact
Speaker 1: that you can't, and then on the fact that you
Speaker 1: can control how you respond to them. I think it's
Speaker 1: one of the most profound things that we say, which is,
Speaker 1: you know, act on what you can control, what are
Speaker 1: How do you go about making that determination because there
Speaker 1: tends to be a gray area sometimes. Do you have
Speaker 1: any method that works for you? Yeah? There is. To me,
Speaker 1: there's actually an intermediate step, um, and that is actually
Speaker 1: cultivating the awareness needed to understand what's actually happening. So,
Speaker 1: you know, one of the biggest things you have to
Speaker 1: figure out is you know, it is is this something
Speaker 1: I need to just deal with or is it something
Speaker 1: where I actually can change the real circumstances the fact,
Speaker 1: and and most people are so disconnected with a sense
Speaker 1: of present awareness or mindfulness that you can't even really
Speaker 1: assess that. So to me, the immediate step actually is
Speaker 1: to to develop some sort of practice in your life
Speaker 1: that allows you a sense that allows you the capability
Speaker 1: to stop what you're doing. Um, zoom the lens out
Speaker 1: and kind of look down on the situation and say,
Speaker 1: what's really happening here? Um. I'm reminded of when I
Speaker 1: was a young lawyer, which is a really past life
Speaker 1: ago I was. I was in a government room taking
Speaker 1: a deposition, and opposing counsel was a very famous, um,
Speaker 1: very famous author and lawyer, and uh, and I was green.
Speaker 1: I was like a couple of months out of law school,
Speaker 1: and I had no idea what I was doing. Um,
Speaker 1: And at one point I started, I started deposing his client,
Speaker 1: and a couple of minutes in he started getting really
Speaker 1: contankerous and says that completely irrelevant, there's no reason to
Speaker 1: ask that, And and my normal reaction would have been
Speaker 1: to just kind of melt down. But like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: I'm an idiot, I'm new, I don't know what I'm doing.
Speaker 1: He realizes this, and he's going to destroy me for
Speaker 1: some reason. I'm not sure why, but I kind of
Speaker 1: just looked and I zoomed the lens out and and
Speaker 1: I can there's almost a thought bubble over my head
Speaker 1: that said, Okay, what's really happening here? And what I
Speaker 1: realized pretty quickly when I actually kind of took the
Speaker 1: meta view was that he was testing me. That he
Speaker 1: wasn't actually angry. He was this was a test. We
Speaker 1: were a couple of minutes in. He was going to
Speaker 1: see if I was green, and he could and he
Speaker 1: could basically run what was about to happen. So I
Speaker 1: looked at him and said, off the record, I said,
Speaker 1: I get to choose what's relevant what's not. If you
Speaker 1: have a problem with that, here's a phone, let's call
Speaker 1: the judge. End of story. You know. So it's the
Speaker 1: ability to kind of to get the meta view and
Speaker 1: really look down on the facts and say, Okay, what's
Speaker 1: really happening here? And that's the intermediate step that gives
Speaker 1: you the opportunity to them to make a choice. Stephen
Speaker 1: Covey said, you know, there's a space between stimulus and response,
Speaker 1: and I agree, mindfulness and meditation, there's different things, at
Speaker 1: least for me, have made that space just a little
Speaker 1: bit longer. It's not huge, but long enough that that
Speaker 1: I can start to do some of those things you described,
Speaker 1: which is to back up and and take a look again.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I'm better, We're all better at it than others.
Speaker 1: But I definitely find that that's been really helpful to
Speaker 1: me over time. Yeah, now it's been a huge asset
Speaker 1: for me as well. You've got a list of of
Speaker 1: maxims or it's a creed excuse me, you've got a
Speaker 1: creed for the Good Life project, And I thought maybe
Speaker 1: we just talked through a couple of those. So one
Speaker 1: of them that we were I think points a very
Speaker 1: closely to what we've just been talking about would be
Speaker 1: the one that says, a good life isn't a place
Speaker 1: at which you arrive, it's a lens with which you
Speaker 1: see through. Yeah, and it's really that actually to me,
Speaker 1: that one line is really it's the hard and soul
Speaker 1: of the entire you know, their thirties something lines, But
Speaker 1: that's really what it's all about. And as soon as
Speaker 1: you I've had so many conversations and actually, let's just
Speaker 1: make this personal, right, So I've I've launched, grown, um,
Speaker 1: you know, successfully built certain ventures and then completely created
Speaker 1: I've done I've been through the process of creativity and
Speaker 1: creation many many times over and and been. You know,
Speaker 1: you get to this flash where like I just want
Speaker 1: to be there, like what you know, I just want
Speaker 1: to have made it already, Like what am I going
Speaker 1: to be there? And and what you find is that
Speaker 1: even when you succeed with that something, you know, you
Speaker 1: get to that place where you thought I'd be like, Okay,
Speaker 1: now I've made it, And then what what clicks into
Speaker 1: your mind is just a little bit more, like how
Speaker 1: much is enough? Just a little bit more and just
Speaker 1: a little bit more and just a little bit more.
Speaker 1: And what you really start to discover is this idea
Speaker 1: that you know there there is no place, there's no
Speaker 1: there there, you know, there's the choice to just own
Speaker 1: what's going on in front of you. And and it's
Speaker 1: really much more. You know, it's like putting on glasses
Speaker 1: rather than arriving at a place. It's like I choose
Speaker 1: to view the way I experience each day, and I
Speaker 1: relate to the people that I care deeply bad, the
Speaker 1: people I choose to serve, And what I'm making in
Speaker 1: the world with a certain lens, and I approach it
Speaker 1: with a certain sensibility of gratitude and all these different things,
Speaker 1: so that I don't have to wait until I achieved
Speaker 1: some designated bench point, you know, a benchmark. Just start
Speaker 1: living my good life. I can open my eyes and
Speaker 1: start this moment. And it's a little bit of a mystical,
Speaker 1: metaphysical and kind of woo concept for a lot of people,
Speaker 1: but it's actually not at all. You know, there's there's
Speaker 1: just a great volume of research that's coming out of
Speaker 1: the world to positive psychology, which is kind of deconstructing
Speaker 1: a lot of this and making people realize, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: that this is actually pretty legit. That always a little
Speaker 1: bit more thing I totally relate with. And it's what
Speaker 1: I finally recognized it is exactly. It's the it's the
Speaker 1: mindset that's the problem, because the mindset will there's no satisfaction.
Speaker 1: It never it never ceases. I mean, it's you know,
Speaker 1: in some ways, it could be considered sort of a
Speaker 1: bad wolf. It's always I need something more, and um
Speaker 1: one of the you know, we wrestle a lot. We
Speaker 1: talked on this show a lot about some sort of paradoxes.
Speaker 1: And one of them that kind of comes up is
Speaker 1: the idea of being driven to make changes in your
Speaker 1: life and to strive for the best life you can
Speaker 1: and being happy with the life you have, and how
Speaker 1: those are how to do those two things at the
Speaker 1: same time, I think is the is the is the
Speaker 1: trick and it's it's it's so fascinating, cause I've looked
Speaker 1: at that a lot also, you know, I've I've taken
Speaker 1: a lot of time looking at Buddhism sort of thought.
Speaker 1: And a good friend of mine is a is a
Speaker 1: long time UM teacher and dot and I actually asked
Speaker 1: her this once and I was I was talking to
Speaker 1: her about the context of the head of Shimbalba Buddhism
Speaker 1: sacomer in pochet Um is you know, very devout and
Speaker 1: and follows all of these tennants. But at the same
Speaker 1: time he's a nine time marathon or an accomplished equestrian,
Speaker 1: and he will play a fear scheme of bad mitten
Speaker 1: against you if you issue a challenge, and so like,
Speaker 1: how is how do you hold this duality of striving
Speaker 1: yet um acceptance of your current reality at the same time,
Speaker 1: and you know, take not Han writes about this as well,
Speaker 1: where he says, you know, at a certain point he
Speaker 1: can't just sit and accept that UM. He you know
Speaker 1: that he should accept a mass amount of suffering among
Speaker 1: people that he cares deeply about. Felt compelled to have
Speaker 1: you take some kind of action. And and I think
Speaker 1: it's this really interesting duality that you're holding at this
Speaker 1: At one time, you know, you want to appreciate what
Speaker 1: you have UM and at the same time be open
Speaker 1: to and take action towards the possibility that UM, you
Speaker 1: may be able to attain a state which is UM
Speaker 1: more rewarding UM. And you know, in in a way
Speaker 1: and the answer would be, you know, from serving Eastern
Speaker 1: without perspective, is that you can. You know, there's a
Speaker 1: difference between desire and aspire and it has to do
Speaker 1: with attachment to the outcome that you can work hard
Speaker 1: and aspire to a certain end while simultaneously appreciating whatever
Speaker 1: your current state is and UM. And so you know,
Speaker 1: the goal is to do the work and appreciate the
Speaker 1: now and UM and be open to the possibility that
Speaker 1: you may end up in a better place, but also
Speaker 1: know that if you don't UM, you're still okay. And
Speaker 1: and I'm not saying that that's uh at all an
Speaker 1: easy concept for me or for a Western mindset, but
Speaker 1: you know, when I think about it, that's kind of
Speaker 1: the way that I try and frame it. So that said,
Speaker 1: it feels feels sensible to me. I agree with that.
Speaker 1: The thing I've been thinking about in regards to that
Speaker 1: is I I certainly in the earlier parts of my
Speaker 1: life it took pain to motivate me to change, um.
Speaker 1: And I've started to look at can can the motivation,
Speaker 1: the striving, the desire come from a different place. I
Speaker 1: think there was a link between. It's sort of the
Speaker 1: the old link between you know, some degree of pain
Speaker 1: and an artist, whether that be a writer or a
Speaker 1: musician or a painter, and and trying to wrap my
Speaker 1: head more around that it doesn't have to be a
Speaker 1: painful thing. Um, a sense of dissatisfaction that drives that,
Speaker 1: but maybe simply the joy of doing, of striving for
Speaker 1: whatever that thing is, just the very enjoyment of doing it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And you know, I think a lot of the pain
Speaker 1: of the artists pain and the creator's pain, the entrepreneurs
Speaker 1: pain is actually revolves around um. You know, the suffering
Speaker 1: is about trying to make certain the world that you
Speaker 1: live in. And the one thing that I know for
Speaker 1: certain is that there is no certainty. You know, I
Speaker 1: can't lock down the future. Um, but we are wired
Speaker 1: to want to do that. I mean, our brains are
Speaker 1: literally softwire by the time we become adults too to
Speaker 1: respond um, really fiercely against actions and thoughts that move
Speaker 1: us into a state of uncertain to the challenge being.
Speaker 1: You know, the definition of an artist or a creator
Speaker 1: in any realm is really bringing something to life that
Speaker 1: didn't exist before, which demands existing sometimes for really long
Speaker 1: windows of time in a state of uncertainty, in a
Speaker 1: state where you don't know how it's going to end,
Speaker 1: and and we don't like that, so we try and
Speaker 1: move towards certainty rapidly or eliminated. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: you know, we destroy the possibility of creating something really
Speaker 1: astonishing along the way. So to me, a lot of
Speaker 1: the suffering, a lot of the pain of an artist
Speaker 1: or a maker or an entrepreneur actually comes from banging
Speaker 1: your head up against um, the reality of uncertainty and
Speaker 1: and the fact that it has to be a part
Speaker 1: of your process rather than just owning the fact that, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, for me to do the work I'm here
Speaker 1: to do, there's going to be large window of windows
Speaker 1: of uncertainty. I can't control that, So let me see
Speaker 1: if instead I can actually cultivate a set of skills
Speaker 1: or practices that allow me, you know, the sort of
Speaker 1: a baseline level of equanimity and the face of that.
Speaker 1: In one of your blog posts recently, you talked about
Speaker 1: the question of of a legacy that a lot of
Speaker 1: people are thinking. It's a it's a thought that's on
Speaker 1: everybody's mind. There's a lot of talk about leaving a legacy,
Speaker 1: and and you say that the the question when you
Speaker 1: start to think in those terms, those questions can become
Speaker 1: paralyzing rather than catalyzing, and that maybe the better way
Speaker 1: to approach your legacy is what you do today and
Speaker 1: sort of connecting the dots backwards as as Steve Jobs said,
Speaker 1: versus trying to think forward to where it all goes. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean very people, um that I either know of
Speaker 1: or no who are towards the later parts of their
Speaker 1: lives who you feel like they've created some sort of
Speaker 1: substantial legacy, have been able to see what that legacy
Speaker 1: is with any any sort of like realistic detail, um,
Speaker 1: thirty years before it happened. You know. The ones that
Speaker 1: that tend to really create something extraordinary, I think are
Speaker 1: the ones that that aspired to do good work and
Speaker 1: serve on a certain level every single day and um
Speaker 1: and wake up you know and do that. So yeah,
Speaker 1: that that whole conversation was really about. You know if,
Speaker 1: in my mind, probably the most powerful legacy that I
Speaker 1: could leave would be the collective output of a decision
Speaker 1: to wake up every day and spend as much of
Speaker 1: this day, um doing things that light me up, with
Speaker 1: people who light me up, for people I love to serve,
Speaker 1: and then waking up tomorrow and doing the same thing.
Speaker 1: And I really feel like if I can do that,
Speaker 1: if I can make that my focus, then I have
Speaker 1: this innate sense that the long term legacy that I
Speaker 1: end up creating will be the best possible legacy I
Speaker 1: could have created. It'll take care of itself. In other words, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think so. The other thing you read I read
Speaker 1: recently that sort of struck me, and I think these
Speaker 1: things are all kind of in a in a similar vein.
Speaker 1: But you say the path to becoming is littered with
Speaker 1: the remains of those who missed the grace in being. Yeah,
Speaker 1: everybody wants to become their next better self and uh
Speaker 1: and I'm not against that, but it's about not um,
Speaker 1: not owning the grace that you have today. You know,
Speaker 1: it's about about completely striving, making your life, about striving
Speaker 1: for the next thing and forsaking whatever beauty you have
Speaker 1: in front of you. And yeah, and again I'm I
Speaker 1: have no issue with aspiring and pursuing evolution and change. Um.
Speaker 1: I think it's fantastic. Um. I love to learn. I love, love,
Speaker 1: love to learn. Whenever I take a strength space test,
Speaker 1: it's always one of my top three strengths. I just
Speaker 1: I love to learn and to grow. Um. But I
Speaker 1: also you know, I love taking care of myself. I
Speaker 1: love being present in the lives of my daughter and
Speaker 1: my wife. I love, um just curling up on accounts
Speaker 1: and hanging out. And so there's you know, and when
Speaker 1: you just when you forget about those moments. Funny I had, um,
Speaker 1: you know, in our project, I guess about a year
Speaker 1: and a half a guy, I had the occasion to
Speaker 1: sit down with Burnee Brown, and when I asked her
Speaker 1: what it meant for her to live a good life.
Speaker 1: She started to cheer up and um, she kind of
Speaker 1: looked up and off to the side, and she said,
Speaker 1: I'll get it wrong, but some variation of it's the
Speaker 1: little moments that so many of us steamroll over in sir,
Speaker 1: of the big moments, And she said, like, that's what
Speaker 1: it is for her, you know, it's waiting online to
Speaker 1: pick up your kids at school. It's these little moments
Speaker 1: where we're just like, can we just get it done
Speaker 1: with already? Rather than saying, man, how blessed to be
Speaker 1: in in a in a state, and in a position
Speaker 1: in a world where I actually get to do this. Um,
Speaker 1: and if it can, if it can be even better,
Speaker 1: that's awesome. I'm open to a possibility. But but don't
Speaker 1: just steamroll those current moments, you know, in in the
Speaker 1: hope that you'll find another moment that's bigger down the
Speaker 1: road that's better. You may, but what if you don't.
Speaker 1: And with that mindset, as we said earlier, even if
Speaker 1: you do get to that bigger moment, that it can
Speaker 1: ring hollow if you always think it's somewhere else. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's been the biggest lesson for me maybe over my lifetime,
Speaker 1: is just is to learn to want what I have
Speaker 1: to some degree, I mean, with while balancing those other things,
Speaker 1: because I you know, the story I always tell is
Speaker 1: I when I was younger, I had been I'd been
Speaker 1: like eight years without a car, and I had lost
Speaker 1: my drivers. It's a long, horrid story, but basically, I'd
Speaker 1: been like eight years without a car, and I finally
Speaker 1: was working and I got a brand new Dodge Neon,
Speaker 1: which you know, it's a Dodge Neon, right, but it
Speaker 1: was a brand new car after nothing for eight years.
Speaker 1: About the first two or three days, I was ecstatic.
Speaker 1: By about the fourth day, I was looking at other
Speaker 1: cars on the road going, well, it's not a bmw MM,
Speaker 1: which is such a shitty way to live. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: but it's also wired into us, which is why, you know,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Hyde wrote about this in the Happiness Hypothesis, and
Speaker 1: and there's a bunch of research around this, which is
Speaker 1: that we tend to for some reason, we're wired in
Speaker 1: a way where we tend to measure our success relative
Speaker 1: to what the community people around us have. So you know,
Speaker 1: I live in New York City, um, so no matter
Speaker 1: how much money I make, there will always be a
Speaker 1: community of people in New York City that make, you know,
Speaker 1: as zillion times more than me, have bigger apartments and
Speaker 1: all this stuff. So you know, but it's it's bizarre
Speaker 1: that we're actually kind of wired to be happier that way,
Speaker 1: where you know, their research done where somebody said, you know,
Speaker 1: would you rather have, uh, you know, make a hundred
Speaker 1: thousand dollars a year but be but know that the
Speaker 1: people around you, your neighbors, are making a hundred fifty
Speaker 1: or would you rather make seventy five thousand dollars a
Speaker 1: year and know that you're making more than all of
Speaker 1: your neighbors. People chose to seventy five, I know, which
Speaker 1: is crazy, and it's it is a perspective. We had
Speaker 1: this conversation with Lewis House when we were out in
Speaker 1: l a And we were sitting in his He's got
Speaker 1: an apartment and I and you know, I think maybe
Speaker 1: you've been there, but looking down over go Hollywood's gorgeous, right,
Speaker 1: But we were talking about the fact that if you
Speaker 1: step out on his porch and you turn your head
Speaker 1: to the left right, there's houses up on the hill
Speaker 1: from there that are even better. And and it seems
Speaker 1: like any place you find yourself at in life if
Speaker 1: you you can look up or you can look down.
Speaker 1: But I think the thing and I've been thinking about
Speaker 1: lately is neither of those things connect me to either
Speaker 1: those people or my life. Yeah, totally agree. And yeah,
Speaker 1: it also kind of ties in with some of the
Speaker 1: work that Daniel gilbert Um shared in his books Done
Speaker 1: upon Happiness a number of years back, where he was
Speaker 1: looking at you know, when we project how we think
Speaker 1: will feel and when we hit a certain place for
Speaker 1: or they call that effective forecasting. Yeah, we think will
Speaker 1: be pretty good. Well, you know, like if I've got
Speaker 1: a million dollars in the bank twenty years from now,
Speaker 1: then this is the life I'll be able to lead.
Speaker 1: And it turns out that if you ask a complete
Speaker 1: stranger who's, you know, twenty years senior to you and
Speaker 1: has that amount of money in the bank, their answer
Speaker 1: about how happy they are will be more accurate than
Speaker 1: your For your life, then your guess is about how
Speaker 1: you'll feel when you get there. Yeah, we tend to
Speaker 1: not know what will make us happy. No, we really don't.
Speaker 1: I mean it's not it's kind of like there's a
Speaker 1: little bit of a cruel trick being played in the
Speaker 1: way that our brains are wired. And it's like, you know,
Speaker 1: part of our work on the planet, that guess, is
Speaker 1: to h to explore how to how to wire things
Speaker 1: a little bit differently, maybe to a certain extent. I
Speaker 1: also think it's very culturally based. You know. This is
Speaker 1: that you know, we're having this conversation to English in
Speaker 1: the United States, but if you had a similar conversation
Speaker 1: you know, in parts of Asia, um, India, uh, you know, Europe,
Speaker 1: South America, this conversation would be radically different because the
Speaker 1: value said is radically different. Nearly everybody we talked to
Speaker 1: about how do you feed your good wolf? A part
Speaker 1: of that is who's around you. And I think that's
Speaker 1: so much a part of what makes a life good
Speaker 1: or not good is who who were around because we
Speaker 1: are so even as individuals we like to think we are,
Speaker 1: we do tend to absorb a lot of what's around us. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and not completely great. It's funny people will often ask
Speaker 1: me what's the best thing about being entrepreneur and working
Speaker 1: with entrepreneurs, and uh, you know, is it the money?
Speaker 1: Is it? The freedom? Is that the creativity? I'm like, oh,
Speaker 1: those are all nice, you know, all the you know,
Speaker 1: the truth is, in the early stages of entrepreneurship, you
Speaker 1: generally have none of those for it takes a while. Um,
Speaker 1: and that's if you succeed. I said, you know, the
Speaker 1: really cool thing about it, at least for me, is
Speaker 1: that you get to pick both the people you surround
Speaker 1: yourself with and the culture that you build. And when
Speaker 1: you when you understand that and when you make that
Speaker 1: the big priority, it's a game changer because you you
Speaker 1: can wake up and your business can be having a
Speaker 1: tough time, you can be struggling, you can be in
Speaker 1: the start up stage and it's brutal. But if you've
Speaker 1: built a team, you know, family of people where every
Speaker 1: day you love being around them, and they share a
Speaker 1: set of values and beliefs and aspirations and and you know,
Speaker 1: you together you've built this culture which is incredible. It's
Speaker 1: it makes everything. Okay, Yeah, that's well. That's why I
Speaker 1: picked my partner Chris Here to do the podcast with
Speaker 1: because it was somebody I wanted. He's going to Happy Sigence,
Speaker 1: somebody I wanted to be around. And I've I've had
Speaker 1: entrepreneurial truths before where I made decisions differently and when
Speaker 1: things got tough, it was it was really unpleasant. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's the same thing, and it's a huge focus.
Speaker 1: We're as we were building a team for Good Life Project.
Speaker 1: Now you know that's we're like a family. Um. We
Speaker 1: just love being around each other, we love working together
Speaker 1: and it's uh, it's definitely one of the biggest blessings.
Speaker 1: I'll turn your question back on you. What does a
Speaker 1: good life mean to you? Um? There are a lot
Speaker 1: of different ways that I could answer that question, but
Speaker 1: I think the simplest way is, um. You know, to me,
Speaker 1: there are three buckets. Uh. There's contribution, connection, vitality, and
Speaker 1: it's structuring your life in a way where you're constantly
Speaker 1: filling all three buckets. So you know, deeply connected with
Speaker 1: a sense of self and soul and service and community
Speaker 1: and people you care about, your your vital and healthy
Speaker 1: as as healthy as you can be and and pain
Speaker 1: free and strong, and your mindset is sound and and calm. Um,
Speaker 1: and that you're contributing to the world on a level
Speaker 1: that fills your soul and also serves something bigger than you.
Speaker 1: And UM, you know the shorthand for that for me
Speaker 1: is to um, spend your time doing things that light
Speaker 1: you up, with people who light you up, for people
Speaker 1: you love to serve. You know, if I follow that
Speaker 1: as a guiding I think it's it's it's hard to
Speaker 1: go wrong. Yep. Let me ask you, uh, let me
Speaker 1: come at that slightly different way, because the question I
Speaker 1: get from some of our listeners sometimes is what's easy
Speaker 1: for Jonathan Fields too to have a good life? Because
Speaker 1: he does choose some of those things. And but I've
Speaker 1: you know, my life circumstances are a little bit different.
Speaker 1: Maybe I'm not in a position where I think where
Speaker 1: I can create my own business that's going to feed
Speaker 1: my family and do all that. How do I build
Speaker 1: a good life within that structure. It's kind of funny
Speaker 1: because people make assumptions and you look at me like that.
Speaker 1: Dudes living high in New York cities making a great living,
Speaker 1: got a great business, great family. Um Everybody gets into
Speaker 1: the habit of comparing their insides to other people's outsides,
Speaker 1: and the moment you do that, you lose. You know,
Speaker 1: it's because there's just you don't know what my reality is.
Speaker 1: You don't know what anybody else's real inner truth is.
Speaker 1: You don't know what we're living with struggling with UM
Speaker 1: because nobody shares on that level of transparency. I certainly don't.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm not I'm not transparent or anywhere near
Speaker 1: it with the way that I live my life or
Speaker 1: the way that I shared publicly. UM. So you know,
Speaker 1: on the one hand, you tend to make yourself more
Speaker 1: miserable by comparing your your inner life with you know,
Speaker 1: the outer life of people you perceive as being you know,
Speaker 1: successful or having the thing that you want to have.
Speaker 1: So number one, just stop, don't do it, UM. But
Speaker 1: the other thing is that it kind of goes back
Speaker 1: to what we were saying before there. You know, there
Speaker 1: are ways to um own the circumstances that you can
Speaker 1: uh that you can't control, and then figure out how
Speaker 1: to get some level of ease. You know, just sort
Speaker 1: of change why are your brain the way a little
Speaker 1: bit differently to be able to respond to UM the
Speaker 1: things that you can change in a way with a
Speaker 1: lot more equitimity and also really basic practices. You know,
Speaker 1: it's not a good life happiness. UM. It's not about
Speaker 1: what you've got, you know, it's really it's about who
Speaker 1: you're with. It's about how well you are. UM. And
Speaker 1: it's about the level of meaning that it's in your life.
Speaker 1: You know, you look at um, you know, Victor frankel
Speaker 1: Man search for Meaning, and you read that book and
Speaker 1: you're just weeping to see what he went through in
Speaker 1: the Holocaust. And you know, he makes a really really
Speaker 1: powerful point in that we become giddy, especially in this country,
Speaker 1: um at the thought of happiness as the defining thing
Speaker 1: to pursue. And he's like, you know, maybe that's a
Speaker 1: little bit overrated and even potentially seriously misguided. What about meaning?
Speaker 1: There's a lot around meaning, you know, and maybe the
Speaker 1: most fulfilled people are actually the ones with the greatest
Speaker 1: meaning in life. And that meaning can come from doing
Speaker 1: the smallest tests and being of service and seeing like
Speaker 1: a child, Uh, flourish every day can come from so
Speaker 1: many different things, and very often, as Frankel shares and
Speaker 1: many other people share, it actually comes from sacrifice. It
Speaker 1: comes from what other people would consider outwardly to be
Speaker 1: suffering and pain, but the it yields a deep sense
Speaker 1: of meaning that leads to a deeply gratifying um life.
Speaker 1: So you know, I wonder often whether you know people
Speaker 1: make that comment and they're focused on well she or
Speaker 1: he has things I don't have and I don't see
Speaker 1: how to get them. Rather than, um, how can I
Speaker 1: create more meaning with anything and everything I'm doing? If
Speaker 1: my job is making nine bucks an hour, you know,
Speaker 1: sweeping floors or in a factory, is there some way
Speaker 1: that I can actually show up at work and do
Speaker 1: that job and imbue it with with a deeper sense
Speaker 1: of meaning or pride or or gratitude. Um. And I don't.
Speaker 1: I absolutely don't want to profess to you know, I
Speaker 1: don't have the arrogance to say that I have all
Speaker 1: the answers and that you know, people who are living
Speaker 1: in deep poverty you need to just pick themselves up
Speaker 1: by the bootstraps and it's you know, it's their choice. Look,
Speaker 1: this is a really really complex problem when you're talking
Speaker 1: about deep poverty, and I don't profess to have the answers,
Speaker 1: um all. I So I can't just sort of say
Speaker 1: this is a sell for that. But what I can
Speaker 1: say is that increasingly you learn about people who have
Speaker 1: been through the most horrific experiences and circumstances and still
Speaker 1: found a way to feel like, you know, what this day,
Speaker 1: this moment, there's meaning of what I'm doing and that
Speaker 1: makes it okay. You know. It's was a comp that said,
Speaker 1: you know, you can endure almost anyhow if you have
Speaker 1: the right why. I think that really is powerful. Yeah.
Speaker 1: What I love about Victor Frankel also is he really says, look,
Speaker 1: there isn't a universal meeting. You can't look out there
Speaker 1: for it. You make it. It's your it's it's up
Speaker 1: to you to make and find your own meaning. And
Speaker 1: that will be different for every person. And that's a
Speaker 1: very freeing Um. In some ways, I think there's some
Speaker 1: pressure with it, but it's a very freeing concept. Instead
Speaker 1: of trying to figure out the meaning of life, it's
Speaker 1: what what's my life mean? Yeah? And I also it's
Speaker 1: it's an evolutionary process. You know. You'll there's a lot
Speaker 1: of focus in these days, especially in the pop psychology
Speaker 1: and the internet sellth help world and yeah, you've got
Speaker 1: to find your life's purpose. Um. I'm not so much
Speaker 1: a believer in that, you know. I think there are
Speaker 1: a small handful of people who touched down the planet
Speaker 1: and some you know, at the age of six, they
Speaker 1: know they want to be a vet, um, you know,
Speaker 1: or a painter, and boom, that's it for life. Milton Glazer,
Speaker 1: who it's one of maybe the most iconic living designer
Speaker 1: in the world age six years old now, had an
Speaker 1: amazing opportunity to sit down with him last year and
Speaker 1: he knew what he wanted to do with his life
Speaker 1: when he was five years old. But that is so
Speaker 1: rare most people, you know, you go out there and
Speaker 1: you just keep trying things, and you keep doing things,
Speaker 1: and you build data that at some point starts to say,
Speaker 1: these are the qualities of uh, you know, an experience
Speaker 1: on the planet that makes me feel good, that that
Speaker 1: made me feel happy and filled with meaning. Some people
Speaker 1: never get there, um and but most people who do
Speaker 1: get there connect the dots looking backwards. They don't take
Speaker 1: a test and say, boom, this is it. You know,
Speaker 1: it's just And I think sometimes when you put pressure
Speaker 1: on people to have to do that and know it
Speaker 1: before they can actually build anything meaningful, it's more more
Speaker 1: it paralyzes people more than it frees them to act
Speaker 1: and experiment, right, which is right back to the thing
Speaker 1: we talked about earlier, of that if you if you
Speaker 1: imbue yourself with such heavy questions, those become paralyzing versus
Speaker 1: focusing on what you can do right now that that's positive.
Speaker 1: Something you recently, Um. I don't know if it was
Speaker 1: a podcast or a blog post, but you talked out
Speaker 1: the idea of a guru and I so resonated with
Speaker 1: what you said because you talk about how you know,
Speaker 1: for a large portion of your life you were looking
Speaker 1: for that one person that would that would transform you
Speaker 1: and give you sort of the direction for life. And
Speaker 1: that how every time you you've got involved with that,
Speaker 1: you'd get to a certain point with a person or
Speaker 1: a school of thinking, and there eventually come a point
Speaker 1: where it didn't it didn't fit you. And what you
Speaker 1: say is that you eventually realized that the person you
Speaker 1: were looking for was the person that you had to become. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know it's interesting when I shared that, then
Speaker 1: somebody offered in the comments which was really powerful and
Speaker 1: very true. She said, you know, it's like dot dot
Speaker 1: dot or the person you already are. Yeah, And I
Speaker 1: was like, yeah, that's more what I mean. Um, but
Speaker 1: it's a peeling. You know, there's an interesting concept and
Speaker 1: uh in uh yoga, um, people say it's about trans formation.
Speaker 1: If you really actually drill down and you translate the
Speaker 1: sanscript um there's there's a phrase jievan mukti or jiva
Speaker 1: mukti um, which translates to liberated being. It's not transformed being,
Speaker 1: it's liberated. And the idea is that it's in there already,
Speaker 1: you know. It's like it's like Michelangelo the David. It's
Speaker 1: like like I didn't create this, I just chipped away
Speaker 1: all the stuff so that you could see, you know,
Speaker 1: the David that was already inside this huge slab of stone.
Speaker 1: And the concept is that you know, it's all there
Speaker 1: inside of us. Now it's more about peeling away all
Speaker 1: the gunk that gets layered on through life and and
Speaker 1: just to get back down to your essence and realize
Speaker 1: that you pretty much have everything that you need. And
Speaker 1: we've spend so much time out in the world looking
Speaker 1: for somebody to tell us it's going to be okay,
Speaker 1: rather than just doing the work to know exactly. And
Speaker 1: that's a I think, like some of the other things
Speaker 1: we've talked about, that's both a liberating and a and
Speaker 1: a scary concept at the at the same time. But
Speaker 1: it for me, I think I had the realization that
Speaker 1: you did that I kept I kept looking for this
Speaker 1: person that was who I was going to grow into.
Speaker 1: And nobody's going to grow into that except me. There's
Speaker 1: nobody who's going to see the world the way that
Speaker 1: I do or have the experiences that I have. And
Speaker 1: as soon as somebody didn't do those things, I was like, Oh,
Speaker 1: they're not the one for me, versus taking what was
Speaker 1: useful from who they were and what they were learning
Speaker 1: and realizing though those those final few steps, I'm the
Speaker 1: only one that's going to take them. Yeah. No, absolutely,
Speaker 1: And and also, you know, it's it's important to say
Speaker 1: that I don't discount at all the the importance and
Speaker 1: the beauty of having teachers. You know, I think it's wonderful.
Speaker 1: I think there's sometimes just a misplaced expectation that this
Speaker 1: is the person that will solve your life, right, and
Speaker 1: and that's that's not it's it's not useful for you.
Speaker 1: And it's also having oddly been placed, um, had those
Speaker 1: expectations placed on me by other people. It's it's unsettling
Speaker 1: to be on the other side of that equations. And also,
Speaker 1: at least it was it has been for me on
Speaker 1: the times that's happened in the past. Because I don't
Speaker 1: hold myself out to be that person. Well, that's one
Speaker 1: of the things I think that people resonate with you
Speaker 1: about is that you don't you don't do that, and
Speaker 1: you're fairly I get what you're saying. You're saying about
Speaker 1: not being totally transparent about every emotion, but there's a
Speaker 1: fair degree of of Um, I think openness there at
Speaker 1: least to not having it all figured out. I think
Speaker 1: there's there's a lot of questioning in your writing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's it's very deliberate, you know. I love to
Speaker 1: A lot of my writing is about starting conversations. Um.
Speaker 1: What's kind of fun also is that there are times
Speaker 1: where I actually I'll ask questions where I I kind
Speaker 1: of know the answer that I have to the question,
Speaker 1: but I really want to I want to hear from
Speaker 1: other people and I want to plant the seed where
Speaker 1: they can have a robust conversation that becomes very often
Speaker 1: the conversations you know on on the blog end up
Speaker 1: being way longer and to be honest, probably a lot
Speaker 1: more interesting than the initial the initial post which was
Speaker 1: all often use just as a prompt to get people talking. Yep.
Speaker 1: And I think that the the beauty of that a
Speaker 1: lot of times is it's it's a lot more authentic
Speaker 1: when you kind of come to those conclusions yourself by
Speaker 1: thinking through them versus having them handed to you on
Speaker 1: a plate, which I think, and we're nearing the end
Speaker 1: of time, but I'm gonna that ties to one last
Speaker 1: thing that I was struck by in some of your writing,
Speaker 1: and it was about how people will come and say,
Speaker 1: you know, I need help with whatever that thing is,
Speaker 1: and then not really be willing to accept that help
Speaker 1: because the feeling is we have to have it all
Speaker 1: figured out. And that ability to say I don't know
Speaker 1: what's happening here and I will learn from someone else
Speaker 1: is so frightening for some people that they can never
Speaker 1: move beyond that. Yeah. Um, it's just we are We're
Speaker 1: so wired to run from vulnerability, and it's not even vulnerability,
Speaker 1: it's public or vulnerability. Were so wired not to want
Speaker 1: to own the fact that we don't know which way
Speaker 1: is up in any kind of public way, whether it's
Speaker 1: with a partner, with you know, like people at work,
Speaker 1: whether it's you know, completely publicly. Um. The in a
Speaker 1: um Steve Dobin or Levitt's Last Freaking Omics book, I
Speaker 1: can't remember exactly what's the name of the latest one
Speaker 1: was but they were talking about study where you know,
Speaker 1: they basically did all this research that showed that even
Speaker 1: you know, from a young age, people just they don't
Speaker 1: want to use the words I don't know because you
Speaker 1: just feel like it's wrong. You know, like you're somehow
Speaker 1: lesser if you do that. So it's interesting to have
Speaker 1: been on the end of an equation where people would
Speaker 1: seek me out or people would seek out of consult it.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's funny when I wrote that post that
Speaker 1: actually didn't phrase it as me um. But you know,
Speaker 1: somebody will go to seek out help of a consultant
Speaker 1: or a master or you know somebody or a mentor,
Speaker 1: and then that mentor gives them exactly what what they're
Speaker 1: looking for. Um. But for them to accept it, they
Speaker 1: have to admit that they completely had no idea which
Speaker 1: way was up and and they can't own that, so
Speaker 1: they reject everything that's being offered and say, well, like,
Speaker 1: you're not helping, you're not helping, not helping, You're like, no,
Speaker 1: it's some You've got to own the fact. You have
Speaker 1: to be open and people ask for help, but very
Speaker 1: often they're not actually open to what they know to
Speaker 1: what they are. They're asking for being given, and there
Speaker 1: are two different things and two different practices. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think you said asking is not the same as receiving.
Speaker 1: And I think that circles back around of the conversation
Speaker 1: about the blog about putting questions out there, because people
Speaker 1: can arrive at those conclusions and then they feel like
Speaker 1: it's their conclusion and it's easier to accept in that case. Yeah. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: And also, you know, I've got a great, great community
Speaker 1: and who you know, they're probably a hundred times smarter
Speaker 1: than me when you put it all together collectively. So
Speaker 1: why wouldn't if I'm sort of really exploring something, Um,
Speaker 1: why wouldn't I just put it out and say, hey, listen,
Speaker 1: this is what I'm thinking. But what do you guys saying?
Speaker 1: Because maybe I'll learn something great from them. Well, thanks
Speaker 1: so much for taking the time. It's been a really
Speaker 1: enjoyable conversation, and like I said, I'm a big fan
Speaker 1: of the work that you're doing and looking forward to
Speaker 1: seeing what you continue to do. Thanks so much, it's
Speaker 1: been my pleasure hanging out with you. Okay, thanks Cia
Speaker 1: right for more information on this podcast, and Jonathan Fields
Speaker 1: go to one you feed dot net slash fields