Speaker 1: I think we're in a moment in time where a
Speaker 1: lot of people are asking the big existential questions, and
Speaker 1: central to that for a lot of people is what
Speaker 1: am I going to do with my life? Welcome to
Speaker 1: the one you feed Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized
Speaker 1: the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like garbage in,
Speaker 1: garbage out, or you are what you think ring true,
Speaker 1: and yet for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen
Speaker 1: or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy,
Speaker 1: or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
Speaker 1: what we do. We think things that hold us back
Speaker 1: and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.
Speaker 1: Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort
Speaker 1: to make a life worth living. This podcast is about
Speaker 1: how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction,
Speaker 1: how they feed their good wolf m Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 1: Our guest on this episode is Jonathan Fields. He's a father, husband,
Speaker 1: award winning author, executive producer, and host of one of
Speaker 1: the top ranked podcasts in the world, Good Life Project.
Speaker 1: Jonathan also speaks globally to groups and organizations, and his
Speaker 1: work has been featured widely in the media, including New
Speaker 1: York Times, Wall Street Journal, Oprah Magazine, and many many others. Today,
Speaker 1: Eric and Jonathan discussed his book sparked Discover your unique
Speaker 1: imprint for work that makes you come alive. Hi, Jonathan,
Speaker 1: welcome to the show. It's awesome to be here with you.
Speaker 1: It is a pleasure to have you on again. And
Speaker 1: we'll be talking about your upcoming book here in a moment,
Speaker 1: But before we do that, we'll start like we always do,
Speaker 1: with the parable. There's a grandparent who's talking with their
Speaker 1: grandchild and they say, in life, there are two wolves
Speaker 1: inside of us that are always a battle. One is
Speaker 1: a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery
Speaker 1: and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which
Speaker 1: represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the
Speaker 1: grandchild stops and thinks about it for a second and
Speaker 1: looks up at their grandparents says, well, which wolf wins.
Speaker 1: The grandparents says, the one you feed. So I'd like
Speaker 1: to start off by asking you what that parable means
Speaker 1: to you in your life and in the work that
Speaker 1: you do. So as I reflect on that story, given
Speaker 1: the current moment that we're in, and the context. You know.
Speaker 1: On the one hand, I think, well, it speaks to
Speaker 1: all of us have the capacity for both doing harm
Speaker 1: and for compassion, and how we move through the world.
Speaker 1: What actually shows up is about intention, about which one
Speaker 1: we honor, about which one we cultivate practices around, and
Speaker 1: about our awareness of the fact that they exist within
Speaker 1: each of us. The other thing that really comes to mind,
Speaker 1: giving the current moment and really the years that we've
Speaker 1: been moving through um and the fact that we are
Speaker 1: sort of upon the twentieth anniversary issue of nine eleven,
Speaker 1: is in the context of beloved community and mothering. You know,
Speaker 1: I see so much of the harm that we do
Speaker 1: to ourselves into others when we lose the capacity to
Speaker 1: see ourselves and other people and to see them in us.
Speaker 1: And that feels like a very of the moment context
Speaker 1: for me from that parable. Yeah, and you know that
Speaker 1: other ring, I see it on kind of both sides
Speaker 1: of the aisle. You know. One of the fundamental problems
Speaker 1: that's underlying so much of what happens is we just
Speaker 1: other people for believing differently than we do, and instead
Speaker 1: of at least starting from some commonality. I so agree, Um,
Speaker 1: I love Valoride Core's work and the phrase he uses,
Speaker 1: which is, you know, a stranger is just a part
Speaker 1: of me I have not yet met, and that keeps
Speaker 1: coming into my thought process lately. Well, let's turn our
Speaker 1: attention to your latest body of work. You've got a
Speaker 1: book called Sparked, Discover your unique imprint for work that
Speaker 1: makes you come alive. I'll just let you lead us
Speaker 1: into where that comes from, the spark type assessment, but
Speaker 1: I'll let you take us in. Yeah. You know, for
Speaker 1: probably my entire adult life, I have been fascinated, deeply
Speaker 1: fascinated just by the human condition, by how we show
Speaker 1: up in life, by how we get what we need
Speaker 1: from life, by how we choose what we're going to
Speaker 1: contribute to life. You know, a lot of this is
Speaker 1: couched in the context of work. And when I use
Speaker 1: that word work and not necessarily just talking about the
Speaker 1: thing you get paid for. You know, it could be
Speaker 1: the thing you get paid for. It could also be
Speaker 1: a role that you play. Like I know that you
Speaker 1: just personally you have things you get paid for, but
Speaker 1: also you invest a lot of effort and energy and
Speaker 1: work into taking care of others in your family right now,
Speaker 1: and that is part of the blend. You know, it
Speaker 1: could be a devotion that is part of what makes
Speaker 1: up the thing where you wake up in the morning
Speaker 1: and you invest effort. And I've been fascinated by the
Speaker 1: way that we choose where to place our effort, where
Speaker 1: to invest ourselves in work and not, and whether those
Speaker 1: choices give us the feeling of meaningfulness, allow us to
Speaker 1: sort of drop into that place of flow where we
Speaker 1: get lost in this amazing state. Whether you know it
Speaker 1: excites us and energizes us we want to get up
Speaker 1: in the morning and do this thing, Whether we have
Speaker 1: sort of a sense of expressed potential it's like we're
Speaker 1: not holding anything back, we're not stifling anything. And finally,
Speaker 1: whether it gives us a sense of purpose on two levels, One,
Speaker 1: you know, a more immediate sense of purpose, like there's
Speaker 1: something specific that we know that is deeply meaningful us
Speaker 1: that we're working toward. And then more broadly, on a
Speaker 1: meta level, you know, do we have a broader sense
Speaker 1: of purpose in life? And I've always been curious about
Speaker 1: how we can make better choices for what to say
Speaker 1: yes or no to in the context of work that
Speaker 1: would get us closer to these feelings and when I
Speaker 1: look at those five different things I just described, the
Speaker 1: sweet spot of those is the feeling that I would
Speaker 1: call alive or feeling sparked. So for years people have
Speaker 1: been coming to me asking the question what should I
Speaker 1: do with my life? Which is kind of funny because
Speaker 1: I see myself as having just on so many different
Speaker 1: directions and taking so many different handents, And I'm like,
Speaker 1: why are you asking me this question? Of all people?
Speaker 1: You know, I'm still on the road just like all
Speaker 1: of us. But on the other hand, maybe I have
Speaker 1: been um slightly more intentional on some of the choices. Maybe,
Speaker 1: you know, spent more time building my life so that
Speaker 1: I can really reflect on the past and the choices
Speaker 1: that I've taken and digest and really think through um
Speaker 1: what's going on, and developed frameworks, and like you, I
Speaker 1: have been blessed to have this incredible opportunity to sit
Speaker 1: down for years now with some of the most accomplished
Speaker 1: leading voices in nearly every domain of science and art
Speaker 1: and industry and life and philosophy and theology, and see
Speaker 1: a lot of patterns and learn from them. And over time,
Speaker 1: what I started to wonder was, are there a set
Speaker 1: of impulses that we all have that underlie whatever job
Speaker 1: or role or devotion or title that we may have
Speaker 1: at any given time, that would be relatively innate to us,
Speaker 1: and that would really just give us this feeling of
Speaker 1: a drive to to invest ourselves in a particular way
Speaker 1: for no other reason than the way it feels, because
Speaker 1: it gets us closer to that state of coming alive.
Speaker 1: So I started really wondering, and I had no idea
Speaker 1: if I would be able to identify a set of
Speaker 1: impulses like this or not. And I literally started looking
Speaker 1: at every imaginable job. I'm like finding lists of jobs
Speaker 1: and industries and titles, and I start asking myself, what's
Speaker 1: underneath this, what's underneath this, what's underneath this? And I
Speaker 1: keep trying to distill and distract from, or extract from
Speaker 1: these the more fundamental ways that you would exert yourself
Speaker 1: in all of these different contexts, and slowly they all
Speaker 1: start to distill down to an unbelievably small set of
Speaker 1: universal impulses for work that give you this feeling potentially
Speaker 1: of coming alive, which really surprised me. I mean, we
Speaker 1: landed at ten of these impulses. I had no idea
Speaker 1: if it was possible to distill this down. If it was,
Speaker 1: I thought, well, we'd end up potentially with hundreds or thousands.
Speaker 1: So it was interesting to me to sort of say, well,
Speaker 1: you keep inflating things into each other and into each
Speaker 1: other and into each other, and it's actually we're a
Speaker 1: lot more basic than we think, you know, We're a
Speaker 1: lot more primal in terms of the fundamental drives for
Speaker 1: effort that we all have. And once I identified and
Speaker 1: mapped out these ten impulses, I started to realize, you know,
Speaker 1: each one of these they have their own sort of
Speaker 1: quirky set of tendencies and behaviors and preferences that tend
Speaker 1: to get wrapped around these impulses, and those form archetypes.
Speaker 1: So then I gave them the name sparkat type. I
Speaker 1: mean really just because it's a fun way of saying
Speaker 1: the archetype for work that sparks you. And from there,
Speaker 1: I started just testing them out and I started running
Speaker 1: them by a lot of different people, gathering stories around them.
Speaker 1: So I realized that we have these impulses, and we
Speaker 1: have these sparka types. But I wanted to go deeper
Speaker 1: into whether they were real or not. I wanted a
Speaker 1: way to figure out like can I validate these or
Speaker 1: invalidate them? And I was I was kind of agnostic,
Speaker 1: you know, the scientist side of me is sort of like, Okay,
Speaker 1: there's this, there's this really interesting idea. It seems to
Speaker 1: be validated on a story level, an anecdotal level by
Speaker 1: so many people where I shared with them and they're like, oh, yes,
Speaker 1: this this is me, this is me, this is how
Speaker 1: it shows up. So we spent most of developing an assessment,
Speaker 1: the spark a type assessment, and beta testing different more
Speaker 1: levels of people through it until we found it was
Speaker 1: giving fairly stable results where people could literally have an
Speaker 1: experience where they spend a reasonably short amount of time
Speaker 1: answering about fifty questions and they say about because the
Speaker 1: algorithm underneath this assessment is actually dynamic and it adjusts
Speaker 1: the number of questions based on how you're answering and
Speaker 1: actually sort of watching you as you answer, and then
Speaker 1: it kicks out some really fascinating results. So we finally
Speaker 1: came out of beta with that assessment, and I was
Speaker 1: looking at two things. One I wanted to create a
Speaker 1: tool that would give us a ton more data, and
Speaker 1: two I wanted to create a tool where we could
Speaker 1: share it with the world, make it freely available, completely
Speaker 1: accessible to anyone who wanted to interact with it, so
Speaker 1: that they could actually use it to help them figure
Speaker 1: out what is my personal impulse. So we release that
Speaker 1: into the wild. We came out of beta right around
Speaker 1: the end of beginning. Since that time, we've had well
Speaker 1: over five thousand people completed. We're generating over twenty five
Speaker 1: million data points and just stunning amounts of information and insight,
Speaker 1: really powerful validation not just of the fact that these
Speaker 1: imprints are real, but also of the fact that they
Speaker 1: are in fact tied to those states that I had
Speaker 1: talked about. And you know, once it's out in the wild,
Speaker 1: then we start getting mountains of stories and use cases
Speaker 1: and how these things are being expressed, how they're showing
Speaker 1: up in personal life, in work, in business, in leadership
Speaker 1: and team building, even social dynamics within families and friends
Speaker 1: and community cultures. And it's just been this stunning gift
Speaker 1: to sit at the center of this and know that
Speaker 1: you know, this whole started as a fascination, probably if
Speaker 1: I'm being honest, almost two decades ago. That led to
Speaker 1: a deepening into questions that led me in no small part,
Speaker 1: to eventually start Good Life Project so that I could
Speaker 1: gather teachers and learn from for a decade. And in
Speaker 1: the middle of that that leads to this more refined
Speaker 1: question around the nature of work and what work makes
Speaker 1: us come alive, and then this much more focused body
Speaker 1: of work around the sparchetypes. And it's been this really
Speaker 1: incredible evolution and eventually gathers enough insight and information that
Speaker 1: I start to realize, oh, this actually has to be
Speaker 1: a book, because I started to realize my head was
Speaker 1: starting to feel like it was going to explode because
Speaker 1: there was so much more info in my head that
Speaker 1: I had gathered from over a number of years, from
Speaker 1: so many different people, from my own experimentation, from working,
Speaker 1: you know, eventually with teams within organizations around this that
Speaker 1: just needed to be distilled into something that was not
Speaker 1: my head, so that all lines didn't point to me
Speaker 1: for answers, so that I could just have something that
Speaker 1: would go out into the world and share pretty much
Speaker 1: everything that I have learned about these ten imprints. So
Speaker 1: it's been this sort of evolution over time of thought
Speaker 1: um which led to insight, which led to the development
Speaker 1: of imprints and then tools, and then eventually book. It's
Speaker 1: a great book, and it's a great tool. I want
Speaker 1: to break down a couple of the different things that
Speaker 1: you said in there and pull them out a little bit.
Speaker 1: One is you've referred to these different You called it
Speaker 1: impulses as Sparka types, So somebody has a spark A type.
Speaker 1: One of the things that you say early in the
Speaker 1: book is that words like life purpose or singular passion
Speaker 1: often lead people down the wrong path or a path
Speaker 1: of confusion. In what way is what you're doing with
Speaker 1: the Sparka types different than that because it's playing in
Speaker 1: the same domain. So when I think about passion and
Speaker 1: life purpose, they become these really nebulous words. And one
Speaker 1: of the things that concerns me is the focus on
Speaker 1: the phrasing of what is your one passion or what
Speaker 1: is your singular life purpose? And I do think maybe
Speaker 1: some people actually show up on the planet literally wired
Speaker 1: for a singular expression of an impulse that is there
Speaker 1: for life. But I also believe that most people do not.
Speaker 1: You know that we have a set of impulses and
Speaker 1: they may show up in any number of surface level expressions.
Speaker 1: So my Sparka type is a maker. For example, the
Speaker 1: impulse for the maker is to make ideas manifest. It's
Speaker 1: all about the process of creation. And I've been that
Speaker 1: way since I was as young as I can remember. Now,
Speaker 1: that deep and sort of DNA level impulse for effort
Speaker 1: may show up as a passion for painting, a passion
Speaker 1: for building houses, a passion for writing books, a passion
Speaker 1: for creating media. All these different things all equally valid,
Speaker 1: and it may shift over time. I may be drawn
Speaker 1: to express it in different ways over time that I
Speaker 1: may be fiercely passionate about, and I may almost identify
Speaker 1: myself with those surface level expressions. I may say I
Speaker 1: am a painter, I am a builder, I am a producer,
Speaker 1: and I could do all of those at once, where
Speaker 1: I could, you know, like have a season for each
Speaker 1: one of those. But the deeper impulse is the thing
Speaker 1: that stays relatively stable. So I feel like we need
Speaker 1: to allow space for an evolution or a collection of
Speaker 1: passions and things that will give you a sense of
Speaker 1: purpose over time that can shift and change. I feel
Speaker 1: like sometimes when we say it has to be this
Speaker 1: singular thing, or you have to have a life purpose,
Speaker 1: it becomes more harmful and constraining than expansive and permissive.
Speaker 1: An extreme example of this, I remember hearing somebody who
Speaker 1: became an evangelist for basically finding and investigating people who
Speaker 1: cause harm to others. It was because that person lost
Speaker 1: a child to an extremely violent event. And I remember
Speaker 1: hearing them say that moment set in motion my life purpose,
Speaker 1: which was to go out and make sure that I
Speaker 1: was protecting everybody else against this type of thing. And
Speaker 1: I'm thinking to myself, what a horrible thing it is
Speaker 1: that somebody would have to feel like they have had
Speaker 1: to wait for this horrific thing to happen in their
Speaker 1: life in order to give them this purpose for life,
Speaker 1: And like, that feels wrong to me on every level.
Speaker 1: You know. Um, what what I could see is that
Speaker 1: that person may have had a lifelong, underlying impulse for
Speaker 1: advocacy or for nurturing, and that this one particular moment
Speaker 1: honed in and really focused on a very specific channel
Speaker 1: for that impulse to now become a central focus in
Speaker 1: that person's life because of an extreme event and because
Speaker 1: of their values. But I get concerned about the use
Speaker 1: of the word life purpose and passion for those reasons. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it points to this idea that if there's
Speaker 1: a right answer for me, it's this thing, then there's
Speaker 1: only one right which I think you and I both
Speaker 1: agree is not the case. You've sort of shown how
Speaker 1: this underlying impulse to do this sort of activity, to
Speaker 1: engage in the world in this sort of way, there's
Speaker 1: actually a huge number of ways I could take that
Speaker 1: basic impulse out into the world, and that frees up
Speaker 1: a lot of energy because I think we get really
Speaker 1: wrapped around the actual of what's the thing I should do.
Speaker 1: The example I always used for this to sort of
Speaker 1: illustrate what I was talking with my son about college,
Speaker 1: and you know, we've got it down to like five colleges,
Speaker 1: and I was like, what's the right one. I'm like,
Speaker 1: I don't think there is right. Each one is going
Speaker 1: to offer different experiences. It's going to have more to
Speaker 1: do with how you engage while you're there. We've done
Speaker 1: enough to get us down to a reasonable list of
Speaker 1: as as we think you would thrive beyond that, there
Speaker 1: isn't a right answer. There's just the path you're going
Speaker 1: to take. Yeah, I so agree with that, you know,
Speaker 1: I think the example of college is really interesting. And
Speaker 1: as you're talking what immediately pops into my head as
Speaker 1: you're describing colleges. Yes, and there's that, And what if
Speaker 1: we took that same approach into the world of work
Speaker 1: as grown ups, you know, where we say, okay, what
Speaker 1: if it's not about you know, like trying to find
Speaker 1: that like threading the needle of the absolute perfect job,
Speaker 1: but just finding a job where it looks like there
Speaker 1: will be an opportunity for me to express this impulse
Speaker 1: and also on or whatever values I have for security
Speaker 1: and whatever else it may be. And then I step
Speaker 1: into that space and whatever it is that makes me me,
Speaker 1: if I'm given the freedom and the agency and enough
Speaker 1: latitude to bring that to the job. Whatever the job
Speaker 1: description is, I can probably make it into whatever I
Speaker 1: need it to be to feel fully expressed in that space.
Speaker 1: So it's less about trying to thread the needle with
Speaker 1: the job title and the organization and the industry and
Speaker 1: basically saying, do I think that this thing, this opportunity
Speaker 1: is going to give me the space to actually step
Speaker 1: into it and really be who I am, Even if
Speaker 1: that that's not exactly what's in the job description. It
Speaker 1: gives us so much more freedom, just like you were saying,
Speaker 1: freedom to choose a particular college. If we look at
Speaker 1: work that way too, it just opens up the universe
Speaker 1: to us totally. Yeah, and options within reason are certainly
Speaker 1: a good thing you've mentioned. There's ten of these SPARKA types.
Speaker 1: You've got a great online free assessment to figure them out.
Speaker 1: I went out today with the intention of breaking it.
Speaker 1: Why am I not surprised about that? Well? All right?
Speaker 1: I took it the first time very seriously, and as
Speaker 1: I did it, it emerged for me. My primary problem
Speaker 1: with a lot of personality tests is for me, and
Speaker 1: I'm not saying this is a personality test, but it's
Speaker 1: in that genre. Roughly, for me, it's always, well, what
Speaker 1: day am I answering these questions? You know? So, like
Speaker 1: one of the ways that you're getting at is like
Speaker 1: do you like solving big, challenging problems? And I was like, well,
Speaker 1: some days I really do. In other days I'm like,
Speaker 1: just give me a bite size little thing, you know.
Speaker 1: So anyway, I took it once seriously and we can
Speaker 1: talk about what that was. But I went through today
Speaker 1: and I was like, you know, the way I end
Speaker 1: up answering almost every question in tests like this is like, well,
Speaker 1: I end up just being like right in the middle.
Speaker 1: So I thought, I wonder, what will happen if I
Speaker 1: just go right down the middle? Which of these ten
Speaker 1: Sparka types was gonna put me in? And I should
Speaker 1: have known, knowing you that I wasn't going to break it,
Speaker 1: because I ended up getting You called me a special
Speaker 1: case the shape shifting. So let's just talk about that
Speaker 1: for a second, because I think that's an interesting result,
Speaker 1: which was a shape shifter, and then maybe we can
Speaker 1: talk about your maker Sparka type. I could talk about
Speaker 1: what mine shows up as. But I was just kind
Speaker 1: of curious as I went into that, you know what
Speaker 1: this shape shifter is? Yeah, so we created that category
Speaker 1: for it exactly what you just did, but especially for
Speaker 1: people who answer honestly that way. So when you take
Speaker 1: a lot of assessments, the algorithm beneath many of them
Speaker 1: is actually pretty straightforward. It's just simple addition, Like like
Speaker 1: there are different categories and you have a series of problemts,
Speaker 1: you add up the points and whatever is the highest
Speaker 1: point value, that's like the number one, and the next
Speaker 1: one is the next one. The next one is the
Speaker 1: next one. I didn't feel in developing our assessment that
Speaker 1: that was necessarily an honest way to go about doing it,
Speaker 1: because you know, each question you can answer, you know,
Speaker 1: on a spectrum, which is you know, this is absolutely
Speaker 1: like me or this is absolutely not like me. Right,
Speaker 1: so half of the answers could be on the absolutely
Speaker 1: not like me side. And as we were thinking this
Speaker 1: through in the logic, I said, you know, if all
Speaker 1: of the questions end up either neutral or only not
Speaker 1: like me side, how do we actually have the ability
Speaker 1: to say okay? Just because like whatever is the greatest
Speaker 1: point telly for anyone is to you when you're answering
Speaker 1: all of them in a way where you don't resonate
Speaker 1: with any of them. So we needed to have a
Speaker 1: catch all category which says okay. For some reason, the
Speaker 1: way that you have completed this assessment tells us that
Speaker 1: we are actually not able to sort of ethically assign
Speaker 1: you any type. And that can happen for any number
Speaker 1: of reasons, but the most predominant ones are one either
Speaker 1: you kind of rushed through and just blew it off
Speaker 1: and like you went through in a way where you
Speaker 1: really weren't making any kind of discerning answers, which can happen.
Speaker 1: So the algorithm is built to detect that and to
Speaker 1: not just falsely assign you something. The other thing is
Speaker 1: that you may be somebody who has reached a point
Speaker 1: your life where you have lived in a bit of
Speaker 1: a container and you actually haven't stepped out and had
Speaker 1: a lot of experiences in the process of making or
Speaker 1: the process of coaching or mentoring or abusing and the
Speaker 1: process of going deep into burning questions or you know,
Speaker 1: in which case you don't necessarily have a really rich
Speaker 1: data set of a experiences and preferences that you can
Speaker 1: draw upon in answering the prompts in a really honest
Speaker 1: and intelligent, in a discerning way, and that's completely fine.
Speaker 1: Or at the same time, you may actually have those experiences,
Speaker 1: but you may be somebody who's not super self aware
Speaker 1: and you just haven't really paid much attention to how
Speaker 1: you've felt or how these experiences have made you feel,
Speaker 1: whether they give you the feeling of being more alive
Speaker 1: and dropped in flow and wow, I felt like I was,
Speaker 1: you know, like doing the thing I was here to do.
Speaker 1: You may just be somebody who really has never developed
Speaker 1: the skills and the practices of self awareness. So when
Speaker 1: the assessment detects that and it's extremely rare, by the way,
Speaker 1: but it is sort of coded to pick it up.
Speaker 1: It will drop you into this alternative category that we
Speaker 1: call the shape shifter. And I try and phrase it.
Speaker 1: You know, if if you're in there just saying this
Speaker 1: is not a terrible thing, don't feel bad that we
Speaker 1: haven't assigned you one of the ten types. You know,
Speaker 1: this is actually a really fertile moment, because what this
Speaker 1: is telling you is you're in a moment right now
Speaker 1: where they're amazing opportunity to start to run experiments, to
Speaker 1: start to be intentional about trying a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: different things, and to ask yourself, how does this make
Speaker 1: me feel, so that you can start to develop that
Speaker 1: discernment engine, start to develop the preferences and the understanding
Speaker 1: and the self awareness that is going to be really
Speaker 1: necessary for you to move forward and understand what to
Speaker 1: say yes or no two in life as you're making
Speaker 1: decisions about the way you're gonna bring yourself to work
Speaker 1: probably for the rest of your life. So that was
Speaker 1: what was behind that whole thing. It's interesting because the
Speaker 1: algorithm is actually much more complicated and nuanced than some
Speaker 1: people may think it needs to be. But for me,
Speaker 1: I felt like we had to go deep into the
Speaker 1: way that we were actually thinking through the logic underneath
Speaker 1: the assessment. I don't want to spend a lot of
Speaker 1: time on this question, but did you bring in data
Speaker 1: scientists to help you with this in the analysis of
Speaker 1: the data and the data parts of it? I started
Speaker 1: to yet, because I'm not somebody who can look at
Speaker 1: giant data sets and say, like, this is what's happening here.
Speaker 1: We have a preliminary follow up survey that was looking
Speaker 1: at correlations between doing the work of your SPARKA type
Speaker 1: and actual markers for those five states. I was talking
Speaker 1: about meaningfulness, flow, engagement, express potential, and purpose and you know,
Speaker 1: we got data on this, and I am not the
Speaker 1: data scientists, so I was not in a position to
Speaker 1: look at this data and understand things like correlation coefficients
Speaker 1: and our values, which are really important to know. So
Speaker 1: I had somebody else actually come in and do the
Speaker 1: analysis and the data visualization on it. And when that
Speaker 1: person came back to me and said this is what
Speaker 1: we found, I literally said to them, cool, um, what
Speaker 1: does that mean? Like is this good? Is it terrible?
Speaker 1: And She's like No, it's actually pretty amazing. UM really
Speaker 1: really strong correlation coefficients here. The our values are super
Speaker 1: compelling on these things. So this was not something where
Speaker 1: it was, you know, possible for just me to sit
Speaker 1: down and create on my own. I was just talking
Speaker 1: with a friend the other day who was saying, they
Speaker 1: can't work out at home. They have to go to
Speaker 1: the gym, but they don't really want to go to
Speaker 1: the gym because it's far away, They're worried about safety,
Speaker 1: et cetera. And I was saying that, Yeah, I was
Speaker 1: that way too. For a long time, I felt like
Speaker 1: I had to go somewhere to work out. I just
Speaker 1: couldn't figure it out in my own house until I
Speaker 1: got the Peloton. The Peloton bike completely changed that equation
Speaker 1: for me, and now I get really good workout in
Speaker 1: my home. One of the great things is the social engagement.
Speaker 1: You can keep up with close friends, and you can
Speaker 1: also work out with people from around the globe. You
Speaker 1: can hand out high fives on the leaderboard and join
Speaker 1: specialty groups like Working Moms of Peloton or Tabata for Tacos. Also,
Speaker 1: there are limitless things to do. In addition to the bike,
Speaker 1: you've got cardio strength, yoga, pilates, outdoor runs, meditation, and more.
Speaker 1: The music is wonderful. I often send a picture to
Speaker 1: Chris of a song that comes on because it's so
Speaker 1: fun to get like a song we really love on
Speaker 1: the bike. And it's a seamless fit with your lifestyle.
Speaker 1: You can take live classes and thousands of them on demand.
Speaker 1: Plus you've got the app to get you moving anytime anywhere.
Speaker 1: With the Peloton bike, there's nothing like working out from home.
Speaker 1: Learn more at one peloton dot com. New members can
Speaker 1: try Peloton classes for free for thirty days at one
Speaker 1: peloton dot com slash app. So even if you don't
Speaker 1: have the bike, one peloton dot com slash app terms apply.
Speaker 1: That's O N E P E L O t O
Speaker 1: n dot com. So in personality tests kind of back
Speaker 1: to this idea a little bit. When I take them,
Speaker 1: I tend to be sort of middle of the road,
Speaker 1: like I'm a nine inngeogram, right, So I'm curious in
Speaker 1: the data do you see, like you know, some people
Speaker 1: are really clearly like there's no question this is what
Speaker 1: they are, and other people who group closer to the center.
Speaker 1: I'm sure you do. And how strong does one person's
Speaker 1: tendency need to be in order for you to classify them,
Speaker 1: and maybe this is why it's worth talking about. Maybe
Speaker 1: you can use this transition into the difference between primary
Speaker 1: shadow and anti yes. To answer your first question, there
Speaker 1: definitely are different levels of differentiation between the strength of
Speaker 1: how different one impulse might be from the next one,
Speaker 1: and from the next one and the next one. So
Speaker 1: for some people, you know, one is just massively dominant.
Speaker 1: For some people they may be clustered more closely together.
Speaker 1: We do have tolerances built into the algorithm to basically
Speaker 1: be able to tease out, and in fact, if we
Speaker 1: see a fair amount of clustering, this is one of
Speaker 1: the things the algorithm actually will dynamically insert additional questions
Speaker 1: designed to prompt you to go a little bit more
Speaker 1: deeply into the values that have been closely clustered, to
Speaker 1: ask you literally to help tease out which one of
Speaker 1: these actually feels more like you, more like the stronger
Speaker 1: impulse or the weaker impulse, or which one is in
Speaker 1: service of the other. So it's actually built to tease out.
Speaker 1: So when there's a very strong differentiation, then um, we
Speaker 1: can kind of immediately assign a type profile. When it's
Speaker 1: a bit closer, will add in dynamically new prompts, additional
Speaker 1: problempts to basically guide you through a process of helping
Speaker 1: us determine which feels most right to you, so that
Speaker 1: allows us to assign. And I think that's probably one
Speaker 1: of the reasons why when we surveyed a group of
Speaker 1: people who have completed the assessment and and how valid
Speaker 1: does this feel to you? Like, does this actually feel
Speaker 1: accurate to you? Came back to us and said it
Speaker 1: feels anywhere from very too extremely accurate, which was actually
Speaker 1: way higher than I expected for a tool of this nature,
Speaker 1: which is like a big broad sort of like general
Speaker 1: population tool. And we'll probably continue to refine over time.
Speaker 1: We've already released one updated version of the assessment and
Speaker 1: the algorithm, the two point overs and earlier this year actually,
Speaker 1: which added a new metric to it. And then you
Speaker 1: asked me to sort of like a transition into well,
Speaker 1: what do you actually learn when you take this thing?
Speaker 1: So you learn three different things. You'll discover what we
Speaker 1: call your primary sparka type, and you can think of
Speaker 1: this as your strongest impulsive for work that makes you
Speaker 1: come alive. You'll also learn your what we call your
Speaker 1: shadow uh sparka type, and this is not shadow as
Speaker 1: in the young gie in shadow, where it's sort of
Speaker 1: like the dark side that you have to work with.
Speaker 1: I call it shadow because it lives in the shadow
Speaker 1: of the primary, and you can think of it as
Speaker 1: one of two ways. It's sort of like your runner up,
Speaker 1: like your next longest impulse, but very often there's a
Speaker 1: more nuanced relationship between the shadow and the primary, and
Speaker 1: that's this that you do the work of your shadow
Speaker 1: in order to be able to do the work of
Speaker 1: your primary at a higher level. So I'll give you
Speaker 1: an example to make that a little easier to understand.
Speaker 1: My primary is a maker, so that impulse is all
Speaker 1: about making ideas manifest, just creating stuff. I build things
Speaker 1: I have forever my entire life, physical objects, homes, painting, jackets, books, brands, businesses,
Speaker 1: it doesn't really matter, honestly. My shadow sparkat type is
Speaker 1: what I call the scientist, and the impulse for the
Speaker 1: scientists is to figure things out. It's all about burning questions, puzzles, problems,
Speaker 1: and finding the answers the solutions to these things. So
Speaker 1: I'm led primarily by the quest to build cool stuff.
Speaker 1: And I will just be in this fiercely generative process.
Speaker 1: I'm making, making, making making, and inevitably I'll hit a wall.
Speaker 1: There's a complex problem. There's a thorny thing that needs
Speaker 1: to be deconstructed. I need to figure out it's not
Speaker 1: necessarily part of the process of continuing to build, but
Speaker 1: it's a block, and I have to figure out how
Speaker 1: to get past that so I can get back to
Speaker 1: the process of building. So I dropped into my shadow,
Speaker 1: and that shadow goes deep into the burning question and
Speaker 1: the puzzle side, and as soon as I have the answer,
Speaker 1: then I dropped back out of that mode into that
Speaker 1: hypergenerative maker state, and I'm all in on the building. Now.
Speaker 1: If this was reversed, or if the scientist was actually
Speaker 1: my primary, I would drop into that question and I
Speaker 1: would just go deeper and deeper, and I'd be looking
Speaker 1: for tangents. I'd be looking for more complexity. I'd want
Speaker 1: to like solve the biggest, baddest, most complicated version of
Speaker 1: this thing that I possibly could, because that's the impulse
Speaker 1: that really leads me. But for me, the minute I
Speaker 1: have what I need to go back to the process
Speaker 1: of creation, I tap out. I'm done. So those are
Speaker 1: the primary and the shadow, and then we added in
Speaker 1: this one new metric in the beginning of it had
Speaker 1: been on my mind for a long time before that,
Speaker 1: and I call it the anti sparka type. And you
Speaker 1: can think of this as your weakest impulse for work.
Speaker 1: You can think of it as the type of work
Speaker 1: that takes the most out of you. It takes the
Speaker 1: greatest amount of external motivation. It's the heaviest lift, requires
Speaker 1: the most recovery when you do it, even if objectively
Speaker 1: from the outside looking in, it's it's really not that hard,
Speaker 1: you know, from other people looking at it. And what's
Speaker 1: so fascinating is, you know, we had been gathering eight
Speaker 1: percent of the data needed to actually tease this out
Speaker 1: and help people understand what this is for them. But
Speaker 1: similar to the way that I described, there's a fair
Speaker 1: amount of complexity in helping us figure out and assign
Speaker 1: the primary in the shadow. We hadn't built out that
Speaker 1: level of complexity and nuance around the bottom end. So
Speaker 1: eventually we built it. But before we did that, because
Speaker 1: I kind of want to get a sense for whether
Speaker 1: anyone would care about this thing called the anti sparket type,
Speaker 1: I was doing this engagement with the executive leadership team Giant,
Speaker 1: like one of the giant global consulting companies, you know,
Speaker 1: the seven sea level people in this organization, and they
Speaker 1: all took the assessment. This was the first version, and
Speaker 1: they learned their primary and their shadow, and then I
Speaker 1: went into their data and it just so happened. They
Speaker 1: got really lucky. The data was super clean for all
Speaker 1: seven of them, and I was able to manually calculate
Speaker 1: the anti sparket type for all seven of them, and
Speaker 1: then I shared it back to them and it was
Speaker 1: like they were lighting up. The conversation shifted immediately to
Speaker 1: that they want to know all about it, and then
Speaker 1: that kind of let me know. I was like, Oh,
Speaker 1: this is something that actually people want to know and
Speaker 1: they want to understand more for for a lot of
Speaker 1: different reasons and in a lot of different ways. So
Speaker 1: we went back and we built that part into the algorithm.
Speaker 1: We released the two point oh version of it. And
Speaker 1: what's interesting is so many people are geeking out on
Speaker 1: that part of the profile now. But the same time
Speaker 1: we had just been building this out and releasing it
Speaker 1: when I was closing the pages for the book. So
Speaker 1: I do speak about the anti sparkotype and the role
Speaker 1: in the book. And since then, I've actually gotten so
Speaker 1: much more nuanced understanding and insight and stories around it.
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure I'm just going to release a sort
Speaker 1: of a bonus chapter, you know, in the next few
Speaker 1: weeks that just talks more about the anti sparkotype, because
Speaker 1: you know, we've understood things like, Okay, so let's say
Speaker 1: you get the anti sparkotype of nurturer. So the impulse
Speaker 1: of the nurturer is to lift others up. It's about
Speaker 1: to give care and to take care of other people.
Speaker 1: It's a deeply empathic impulse. And if people get the
Speaker 1: nurturer as the anti sparkotype, some people have been like, wait,
Speaker 1: does that just mean I'm an awful person? Like does
Speaker 1: that mean I just could care less about other people?
Speaker 1: Or they're like, does that mean I'm totally off the hook?
Speaker 1: Like I never have to help another soul in my life? Sorry? Mom? Right,
Speaker 1: it's like the two to the spectrum. And I've really
Speaker 1: had to think seriously about these questions, and you know
Speaker 1: the answer for those questions like that is on the
Speaker 1: first one, No, it doesn't mean you're terrible person at all.
Speaker 1: You know, you may care deeply about other people and
Speaker 1: invest seriously and helping them feel good and lifting them
Speaker 1: up and being of service to them. What it tells
Speaker 1: you is that for some reason, there's something in you
Speaker 1: where that type of effort, that type of work, it's
Speaker 1: going to be a heavier lift for you, and it's
Speaker 1: probably going to require more recovery from you. So it's
Speaker 1: a really good idea to know that, to know that
Speaker 1: there's nothing wrong with you, you're not a bad person.
Speaker 1: But also you may need to take care of yourself more,
Speaker 1: you need to spend more time filling your well because
Speaker 1: it's just going to be a bit more effort for
Speaker 1: you than someone else. And the other question like does
Speaker 1: this let me off the hook completely? The answered to
Speaker 1: that also is no, it doesn't. You know, because we
Speaker 1: live in a society where we're not hermits living under
Speaker 1: a bridge. You know, we're part of a collective where
Speaker 1: we are part of one big, giant macro organism, and
Speaker 1: the health and the well being and the elevation of
Speaker 1: all of us is interconnected. And if you hold the
Speaker 1: value of being a constructive and good part of that society,
Speaker 1: then you know we all have a certain value set
Speaker 1: that says we want to play this role, you know,
Speaker 1: in different ways and the ways that feel good to us,
Speaker 1: because it honors this secretly held value, even if it's
Speaker 1: not the work that comes most naturally to us. What's
Speaker 1: your anti sparkat type? So my anti sparkat type is
Speaker 1: the essential List. So the work of the Essential List
Speaker 1: is to create order from chaos. It's about systems, process, utility, clarity.
Speaker 1: That kind of work makes me just want to cry,
Speaker 1: you know. But the funny thing is, you know, as
Speaker 1: a lifelong entrepreneur, as somebody who's made a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of things and like built businesses, I've had to get
Speaker 1: good at it, you know, because in the early days especially,
Speaker 1: I don't have the resources to have anybody else do it.
Speaker 1: So over time I've built a skill set around it,
Speaker 1: and I'm competent at it, and it's made it better,
Speaker 1: you know, It's made me able to do it more
Speaker 1: efficiently and faster at a higher skill level. And I
Speaker 1: get a little bit of that hit of just being
Speaker 1: competent at it. You know, that always makes anyone feel good.
Speaker 1: But to this day it will always be a more
Speaker 1: emptying experience for me than filling no matter how good
Speaker 1: I've gotten at it, and it's generally the type of
Speaker 1: work that I love. When we find others who can
Speaker 1: do that work, you know, on our team, and it
Speaker 1: nurses them where that is their orientation. When we built teams,
Speaker 1: were looking for good people more than anything else. And
Speaker 1: then we always want to help people invest in their
Speaker 1: own personal growth and then figure out, like, where do
Speaker 1: you want to be in a way that allows you
Speaker 1: to feel fully expressed. So for me, my my anti
Speaker 1: is essentialist, and it is the thing that I just
Speaker 1: really really I love when it's done. I love the
Speaker 1: fact that, you know, our podcast producer for Good Life Project, Lindsay,
Speaker 1: who you know, is an essentialist, you know, and she
Speaker 1: builds this massive spread cheets of editorial calendars with forty
Speaker 1: different episodes in actually at any given time. I love
Speaker 1: the fact that we have all that ready to go.
Speaker 1: It makes my life so much easier. And I also
Speaker 1: really love the fact that I don't have to do
Speaker 1: any of it myself. What about you, I'm curiously what
Speaker 1: yours came out as? Yeah, when I didn't try and
Speaker 1: break it, I came back. My primary is advisor, my
Speaker 1: shadow is Maven, and my anti is advocate interesting, all
Speaker 1: of which feels directionally correct. I think I'm one of
Speaker 1: those people that probably if you went and looked at
Speaker 1: the data, you'd say, oh, things cluster up a little
Speaker 1: bit for him. But as an advisor, I mean, I
Speaker 1: coach people. That's what I do, right. The coaching work
Speaker 1: that you do is sort of spot on for that.
Speaker 1: I know that you really enjoy that. Yeah, And I
Speaker 1: thought about you know, the maven, which is learning, and
Speaker 1: I was like, yeah, I do love to learn, but
Speaker 1: you're right, it stands in service. Usually anytime I'm reading
Speaker 1: or learning anything, I'm immediately thinking how can I use this?
Speaker 1: It's my primary flaw in meditation, My primary distraction and
Speaker 1: meditation is always an insight or an idea or a
Speaker 1: thought about the meditative process. Instantly, I'm like, how am
Speaker 1: I going to share that? Where am I going to
Speaker 1: share that? Who else can use that? So both those
Speaker 1: feel pretty true. And yeah, I'm not a natural advocate.
Speaker 1: I can do it and have had to do it,
Speaker 1: but I don't like it. I'm generally like a here's
Speaker 1: what I've got If you want it, great, If not, okay,
Speaker 1: you know, like I'm not I'm not out here to
Speaker 1: change your mind. Yeah, and that that lands I mean,
Speaker 1: like we've known each other for a bunch of years now,
Speaker 1: and just from the outside looking in, that lands as
Speaker 1: pretty accurate from the outside looking in. So interesting thought
Speaker 1: about the advocate in the role of the anti sparket
Speaker 1: type too, that same question that people have asked me, now, well,
Speaker 1: does that mean I don't have to do it at all?
Speaker 1: Or you know, does that mean I'm a bad person? Um?
Speaker 1: And the answer to both is no and no. You
Speaker 1: may still have a deeply held value, Like if you're
Speaker 1: advocating on behalf of someone you love to get healthcare,
Speaker 1: it may be hard for you, it may not come
Speaker 1: naturally to you. You may make you really uncomfortable and
Speaker 1: empty you out energetically. And yet because you have such
Speaker 1: a deep connection to that person and any sacred value
Speaker 1: of no, this is what I need to do, you're
Speaker 1: still going to step in and do it. Like it
Speaker 1: doesn't necessarily let you off the hook. You just kind
Speaker 1: of know that you may also really need to take
Speaker 1: care of yourself along the way. So let's talk about
Speaker 1: once you get this information. You know, if you're very
Speaker 1: young in your career, then this can be very guiding thing.
Speaker 1: But for a lot of people who are further along
Speaker 1: in their careers, they may get information from this that
Speaker 1: shows like, oh boy, I'm not really engaged the type
Speaker 1: of work that most brings me alive. And you and
Speaker 1: I've actually talked about this over the years in different contexts,
Speaker 1: right about, like, don't go blowing up your primary gig
Speaker 1: just because you feel mildly unsatisfied with it, despite that
Speaker 1: being sort of the cultural norm we get quit today job,
Speaker 1: you know, but talk a little bit about this so
Speaker 1: I find out that I'm not doing work that aligns,
Speaker 1: or at least it doesn't seem to me initially that
Speaker 1: it aligns. And yet I'm, you know, forty five years old,
Speaker 1: and I've got a kid in college and a mortgage,
Speaker 1: and you know, what do I do with this? I
Speaker 1: love this question, and you're so right, Like we've both
Speaker 1: thought about the fact that I am not a fan
Speaker 1: of the hay blow it all up and start over option,
Speaker 1: especially once you're further into life, because that's going to
Speaker 1: cause a whole lot of pain, not just to you,
Speaker 1: but to everyone around you. Like if you have a family,
Speaker 1: you know, um and you are you know a big
Speaker 1: part of the financial security engine for that family. It
Speaker 1: is not just about you. So I think there's more
Speaker 1: of a bit of a staged approach that makes more sense.
Speaker 1: So let's say first you find out this thing about yourself. Okay,
Speaker 1: I have these impulses, the real they really matter, I know,
Speaker 1: the feeling that they give me, I really really want,
Speaker 1: and I'm not finding that I can actually express these
Speaker 1: things in my current work. So step one is look
Speaker 1: at your current work and then sort of start to
Speaker 1: note what am I actually doing in this particular job.
Speaker 1: You know, what are the activities, the tasks, the processes,
Speaker 1: what are the tools that I'm using, the platforms, the
Speaker 1: channels that I get to use, what are the topics
Speaker 1: that I'm focused on, the areas or the themes, And
Speaker 1: note what all of those different things are, and then
Speaker 1: ask yourself, in all of these different things, is there
Speaker 1: an opportunity for me to take what I now know
Speaker 1: is the type of work that is really really important
Speaker 1: for me and do more of it. Can I do
Speaker 1: this little task over here? Can I involve myself in
Speaker 1: this project over here? Can I step up and you know,
Speaker 1: ask to be a part of a team that's doing
Speaker 1: this one particular thing, even if it's not necessarily part
Speaker 1: of my job description, just because it will be a
Speaker 1: conduit for me to do something that gives me the
Speaker 1: feeling I so deeply want to feel. And what most
Speaker 1: people find is that over a period of time they're
Speaker 1: able to largely reimagine the very thing that they thought
Speaker 1: was a container that was unmalleable and was a trap,
Speaker 1: and rather than feeling stuck and a sense of futility,
Speaker 1: they start to realize that actually they can kind of
Speaker 1: change this thing in a lot of different ways that
Speaker 1: will give them so much more of what they're looking for.
Speaker 1: And a lot of times we can get all the
Speaker 1: way there, which is an amazing thing because now we've
Speaker 1: got whatever illusion of security we want to hold onto,
Speaker 1: whatever financial security like we hold dear, without having to
Speaker 1: endure the pain of a big, disruptive change, and we've
Speaker 1: been able to largely rework the work that we're doing
Speaker 1: to give us so much more of what we need.
Speaker 1: But let's say it gets you part of the way there,
Speaker 1: but not all the way. Well, that's okay too. Now
Speaker 1: be is you've got this thing, it's a whole lot
Speaker 1: better than it was, and you've also probably got a
Speaker 1: whole lot of time outside of that, or maybe not
Speaker 1: a whole lot of time, but you've probably got windows
Speaker 1: of time. And then you can start to look for
Speaker 1: different roles, different activities, different devotions that you can do
Speaker 1: around it that will be really pure expressions of this
Speaker 1: impulse where you have a lot of control, you have
Speaker 1: a lot of agency. You choose the size and the
Speaker 1: shape and the path, and you start to do those things.
Speaker 1: And the blend of having a very sparka type optimized
Speaker 1: main job and then activity is on the side that
Speaker 1: are really beautiful, high level expressions of this thing. They
Speaker 1: blend together to create this sort of blended feel where
Speaker 1: you're getting so much more than you imagine that you
Speaker 1: could do. So I'm a huge fan of first optimizing
Speaker 1: what you currently have, reimagining it, adding things around the
Speaker 1: margins that will really bring more of the fire of
Speaker 1: coming alive to you, that spark all parts of your life,
Speaker 1: and then for most people that actually gets you there.
Speaker 1: But let's say it's still doesn't what. Then well, you
Speaker 1: may reach a point after you've done all this work
Speaker 1: and you say, you know what, things aren't actually a
Speaker 1: lot better, but I'm still not there. I'm not getting
Speaker 1: as much of the feeling that I want to feel.
Speaker 1: I don't have enough of a sense of meaning or
Speaker 1: flow or excitement and energy, express potential or purpose. It's
Speaker 1: a lot better, but I just sense that it could
Speaker 1: be way more. And I'm now at a place where
Speaker 1: I don't feel like I'm futile, I don't feel like
Speaker 1: I'm without power. I actually have realized I have a
Speaker 1: lot of control over my ability to reimagine and make
Speaker 1: choices and discern I'm emotionally and psychologically energetically in a
Speaker 1: much better place personally, and chances are actually that's showing
Speaker 1: up in a lot of different ways, and people are
Speaker 1: responding to that around me, and I'm showing up in
Speaker 1: my work in my life differently. And if you decide
Speaker 1: at that point, you know, I still think I want
Speaker 1: to go out and look for something entirely new and differ,
Speaker 1: and you're going to step into that process of exploration
Speaker 1: and seeking in a very different psychological and emotional state
Speaker 1: from a place of much more empowerment and confidence and
Speaker 1: understanding of who you are, what you're capable of, what
Speaker 1: really matters, what doesn't matter. So rather than stepping into
Speaker 1: that exploration with almost a victim mindset of like, I
Speaker 1: have to get out of this thing. I really don't
Speaker 1: know which way is up. My life is kind of spinning,
Speaker 1: and I'm feeling kind of flatlined. You step into that
Speaker 1: space from a really empowered, positive space, and you have
Speaker 1: to know that people are going to respond to you
Speaker 1: profoundly differently as you move through that exploration that is
Speaker 1: said really really well and mirrors very much my experience. Right,
Speaker 1: it's so similar. We've talked about this where I knew
Speaker 1: at a certain point I wanted out of the job
Speaker 1: I had because I knew what I wanted to do.
Speaker 1: I wanted to do this podcast, I wanted to do
Speaker 1: this coaching, and I tried to app coaches in this
Speaker 1: one of which you describe in the book, which is
Speaker 1: I subtly just thought, maybe if I hate what I'm
Speaker 1: doing enough that that'll that'll get me out. That didn't work.
Speaker 1: That made everything else I did less good in service
Speaker 1: of getting to where I ultimately wanted to be. I went,
Speaker 1: I've got to figure out how to really like what
Speaker 1: I'm doing fifty hours a week, Like, I've got to
Speaker 1: really optimize that to give me the psychological energy to
Speaker 1: carry on in a different way, So I couldn't agree more.
Speaker 1: You and I are going to wrap up here in
Speaker 1: a minute, but any last thoughts on the book, sparkle type,
Speaker 1: anything we've talked about that you'd want to leave people with. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, I think we're in a moment in time
Speaker 1: where a lot of people are asking the big existential questions,
Speaker 1: and central to that for a lot of people is
Speaker 1: what am I going to do with my life? What
Speaker 1: should I do with my life? And they're really talking
Speaker 1: about work in a lot of ways, and the first
Speaker 1: step for me is always it's self discovery, you know.
Speaker 1: So my invitation would be, don't hide from yourself. I
Speaker 1: think a lot of times we have resisted a process
Speaker 1: of self of discovery because a we don't actually know
Speaker 1: how to step into it. It's It's a big part
Speaker 1: of the reason I've created this body of work to
Speaker 1: make that first step in easy. But also even if
Speaker 1: we do, we're not entirely sure. We want to know
Speaker 1: what it might tell us, because, like you said, what
Speaker 1: if you learn what you're doing actually is really misaligned
Speaker 1: with who you come to know you are. And rather
Speaker 1: than avoiding the process because you don't know what's going
Speaker 1: to come next step into it, learn about yourself and
Speaker 1: know that there are really healthy, constructive ways to then
Speaker 1: move forward once you're in this process of self discovery. Beautiful. Well,
Speaker 1: I think that's a great place to leave it. We'll
Speaker 1: have links in the show notes to the book and
Speaker 1: the sparka type assessment test where people can get access
Speaker 1: to all those things. As always, it's a pleasure chatting
Speaker 1: with you, Jonathan, always so great. Thanks so much for
Speaker 1: having me. If what you just heard was helpful to you,
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