Big Signs You're BURNT OUT & How To FIX IT Today! | Jonathan Fields & Lewis Howes

A lot of us have a window that's opened up that says the world has been turned upside down. Everybody is revisiting their reason for being. They're revisiting their lives, their relationships, their work, their physical and mental well-being. And there's this like window right now where there is a level of understanding and forbearance for change.

I think you gotta have a dream.

The School of Greatness.

Really?

Yeah. Please welcome Lewis Howes. I saw a stat in a recent report from Indeed that found that employee burnout is on the rise and 52% of all workers are feeling burned out. So almost half the workforce is feeling burned out. Why do you think we're seeing this rise in burnout and what do you think we can do about it to start living a more intentional life that you talk about here?

Yeah, it is such a fascinating question and you're right. We're in this moment right now. that is we haven't experienced before. There's been this underlying dissatisfaction with the way that we spend a third of our life, like most of our waking hours for most people. People pointed to a lot of different reasons for it. Maybe we'll dive into some of that. But the recent focus on burnout is really fascinating because you're right, that is one stat. There are tons of other stats. Everybody is talking about this and everyone's trying to figure out what's underneath it. and there's some kind of obvious things, right? There's the fact that when we kind of annihilated the separation between work and home in terms of like the actual physical space. It's all happening.

It's work and home.

Right. So people, you know, used to have a much easier time creating boundaries. You know, they're sort of like, okay, so I'm leaving the place where I do that thing called work. Even though the boundaries have been blurred a lot more in the recent years through technology, there was still some level of boundary. And now when it all exists in one space, And most people, they never learned how to create that boundary within the same space. It's a whole different thing. And then you pile on an existential crisis, a global health crisis, extreme stress and anxiety about well-being, and we don't have the cognitive bandwidth to actually figure out how to remake our work world in a way that actually allows us to breathe. And so I think that's part of it. And I think that's what a lot of people are pointing to. Basically it's the conflation of everything happening in one place, the demands of the workplace not going away, and people not being structured and set up and having the systems and process and boundaries to do it. But I think that's not the whole story. Because I think we're pointing to that. But what I think we're missing is the fact that this is not a new problem. It's been exacerbated for sure. But burnout has been on the rise on every survey, every bit of research that I've seen for the last 10 to 15 years. So this is just kind of bringing it to the surface because it was the perfect storm of circumstance. But it's been going on for a long time. And I think there's an underlying issue, and that is that the average person tends to wake up in the morning and go to do something that is not necessarily well aligned with a fundamental impulse for work that would nourish them in a deeper way. And over time, that level of misalignment turns into outright conflict. But we never really deal with it. We never address it. A lot of us just sort of look at work as the thing we do. Put money on the table, a roof over our head. And it does all those things. And those things matter to everybody. But there's this, has caused a level of sort of existential crisis where people are saying, you know, like, not only am I working way more hours with no boundaries, with no one overseeing what I'm doing.

Right.

But also we're, the fact that I'm doing these things that really don't nourish me are making it that much worse and, and everything is imploding. But there's an amazing opportunity at the same time.

Yes.

And There was a day after 9/11 you opened up a yoga studio. Is that right?

Yeah, so I signed the lease. I signed a six-year lease for a floor in a building in Hell's Kitchen, New York, to open what I hoped would become sort of like one of the premier yoga studios in the city, the day before 9/11.

Oh, the day before, yeah.

The day before 9/11. I was married, I had a three-month-old baby, a new home, lived in the city, and I woke up the next day. and, you know, like everybody else, like my first thought is who did I know? Because everybody who was a long time lawyer knew people in the towers. And then the next thing was, you know, what am I doing here?

But was there a point in your career as a lawyer before then where you were feeling burnout or there was a lot of integration of alignment and what you meant to do and your skill set? And so you're like, so you started to shift into asking yourself this question, like, what should I be doing with my life?

Yeah, I mean, it's funny because, you know, This is something that's become really front and center in my work over the last chunk of years, but the truth is the bigger question, the seeds really got planted about two decades ago. I was working as a lawyer in a very past life, you know that. And I was working insane hours, just nonstop basically, 100 hour weeks with very little breaks, sometimes never going home for a couple days at a time. huge amounts of stress because I was a securities lawyer at a big firm and the stakes were massively high. And you had to be perfect. That's what we got paid for. And I ended up doing that. Basically my immune system fell apart. A large infection exploded in the center of my body, eating a hole through my intestine from the outside in and sending me into emergency surgery. Wow. So burnout?

Yeah.

You felt burnout, yeah.

Yeah, I mean literally like my body was eating a hole from the inside out. It was beyond burnout. It was sort of like I had nothing left inside of me and that was a huge wake up call. Well, this was late 90s.

Okay.

So this is- A couple years before 9/11 or is it like- yeah, this is like 96, 97. That was a huge wake up call for me. Like I went back to work after that and you know, like I recovered, I took a couple of weeks. I went back to the office. But from that moment on, I knew, like I had this question, which was like, how do we do this differently? How do we do this thing called work differently? Like how can I show up and say, well, I'm going to do something that's meaningful, where there's a sense of purpose behind it, where I feel like I'm alive when I'm doing this thing, where I'm excited and enthusiastic to do it. And there are a lot of things that contribute to that. But the seed, I think, it's because I've been trying to trace it back recently. I think the real original seeds for this work were planted 20, 25 years ago.

Yeah.

And I've never let go of that question.

Do you think if someone's feeling a physical sickness or pain or like skin rash or whatever, that they should be taking notice of those signs as part of like burnout or out of alignment with your relationship or your career, like the physical manifestation of pain?

Right. Okay, so first let's preface this by saying I am not a doctor. Yes. But Isaiah-- I don't play one anywhere.

As an intuitive spiritual human.

So let me talk to you about my experience. Personally, yeah, I, when I, and I'm under psychological, emotional, physiological, you might even call it spiritual stress, existential stress, my body takes the hit. What I've learned over time is that as a multi-time entrepreneur and somebody who just works really hard, I've trained my mind to a point where my mind can actually take a lot. Yeah. But even when my mind is kind of like, you know, the world is spinning, but my mind is relatively okay. The tell for me is my body, my physical body. It manifests in illness and pain and all the stuff you just laid out. Inflammation, right? And I've learned over the years that if I don't listen, eventually it brings me to my knees, you know, because, and I don't think I'm alone with that. I mean, does it show up for you?

I think it does. You can do a lot. Yeah, it shows a, I feel it in my chest, I feel it in my throat, like I feel something's like strangling me, depending if, you know, that's usually like intimate relationships in the past where I feel like, okay, I feel trapped in like my heart and my throat. But then like I started to notice, yeah, I started to have like this eczema that came out at one point in the last couple of years when I felt like things were unaligned. And literally the moments that I eliminated those things from my life and just said, okay, I'm not doing this anymore. I'm not abandoning myself or whatever it is from what I'm supposed to do, it's like it cleared up within days. after like months of it happening. And I was like, there's not a coincidence. I did all the blood work, I did all the allergy tests, and they were like, no, you're fine.

Right.

I was like, well, what is this then? Like, why is this happening? But it was because I was out of integrity with my own, I was abandoning myself, essentially with what I felt like I should be doing with my life. I felt like I'm supposed to be doing and I wasn't doing the thing I was supposed to do.

Right.

And that would man, like my body.

Was screaming at me, Stop.

Yeah.

Course correct.

Well, I mean, it's so interesting that you bring it up, right? Because I know we both spend a lot of time seeing a lot of different types of medical specialists, wellness specialists, done every test you can do on the planet. And it's fascinating to me that when you go into somebody who takes a very holistic or functional medical point of view very often, the first session with them is hours long. And it's not just, let's look at all of your labs, tell me where it hurts.

Tell me about your relationship.

Like, how are you feeling? Are you stressed out? Are you sleeping well? Like, yeah, right. How many friends do you have in your life? How often do you, like, all this other stuff? Because there's definitely a growing acknowledging the fact that the way you live your life, that the, you know, the appearance of stress, the appearance of, you know, poor relationships, it affects you in a really powerful way.

Huge way.

Yeah.

I remember Dr. Lisa Rankin. She talked about this where she was on, I think, seven or eight medications, but she was a doctor treating people, but she was sick. And it's like, I think it was something with her relationship or her marriage wasn't working. And once she addressed the root of the emotional pain, she was like, oh, I got off medication and I didn't need this for my body. I don't know if that's 100% the true story, but something like that. And I think it's, this idea of burnout or the body getting inflammation or feeling pain are signs. What's the analogy of the frog that goes into water and then it starts to boil?

The story that I've heard is if you slowly turn up the heat, slowly, slowly, slowly, it basically never leaves.

It doesn't jump out until it dies. Right.

By the way, I've been told recently that that's an urban legend.

Yeah, you put a frog in water.

And you jump it out.

It's an awesome story. Right, right. The story is like if you put a frog in water, like lukewarm water, it won't jump out.

And if you turn up the heat.

And it starts to boil, it'll stay there because it's not feeling it.

Yeah.

Sometimes it's like, you know, we need to go through some type of extreme.

Pain for us to feel it and kind of wake up and ask ourselves, what should I be doing right now? And man, I wish that was not the case. I have asked so many people, I know you've asked similar questions also. I've asked so many people over the years, you know, who have made these profound changes in life, you know, and went through, literally they were brought to their knees and they had nothing on so many different, you know, different domains of life and then found their way back. And I've asked so many people and I've asked great philosophers, great spiritual teachers, scientists, you know, do you think you can actually get to the place where they were? without having gone through some big profound thing like that. And almost to the one, the answer has been no, which really bugs me because I want to believe that you can have a profound and powerful moment of reckoning, realization, reawakening, and reclamation without that. And I've probably spent a large part of my adult life trying to figure out what are the insights, what are the moments and experiences that we can create for people that would allow them a more easeful, process of awakening. But it's hard.

-Yeah, it's hard. And I've been, I have this theory that it's the scariest place to be as a human being is when things are really good. In my opinion, the scariest place to be is when maybe not really good but when they're good. -Things are just good.

-What'S underneath it?

-I would rather take things are really bad than things are good. Because I meet so many people that are like, you know what, Louis? I've got a good life. I've got I'm married, I've got like my kids, I've got this job. It's a good job. It pays me like, you know, I've got a six-figure salary. It's good, but you know, it's just, it's not exactly what I want. It's not everything I want, but it's good just enough to not drive them to want to make a change or see like growth in some area. Like, it's almost like they're just, okay, like it's good, you know, but I want more, but I don't know how to do it. And I'd rather have like, man, everything is breaking down right now because then I can wake up and go for something like what I'm supposed to be doing with my life and how I can really lean into that. So when things are good, and I know the whole thing is about the Good Life project, but it's like when things are good and you're not driven to do 100% of what you're supposed to do. You're like 70-80% of what you're supposed to do, but not all the way there. It's hard to get that extra 20% I think, personally. Yeah, it's scary for me.

I know, and we've had this debate over years.

It's like, can you just be satisfied with where you're at?

You'd be like, Right, and I think a lot of it actually is, I think we actually really agree, but we just use different language.

Yes, of course.

You know, because what you just described to me is actually not a good life or the good life. To me, that's the complacent life of sort of baseline getting by. But what I'm interested in, is underneath that, whether we use the word great or good, like underneath what I'm looking at the qualities of the life. Absolutely. Do I have a strong sense of meaningfulness?

Yeah, fulfillment.

Yes.

You like, do I have a sense of like immediate purpose and also a larger sense of purpose in life? Am I excited and enthusiastic about what I'm doing? Do I feel like I'm fully expressed? And on a personal level, on a potential level?

Yes.

And.

What I'm more focused on, and I think this has been an evolution just in my personal thought, is like, what are we actually talking about? And I think when you're talking about greatness and I'm talking about good, we're actually talking about the same underlying qualities.

Of course.

And I think the pursuit of those is amazing. And when you don't have any of that, then yeah, you wake up every morning and the world is just not right.

Yeah, it's like the superficial, like things look good, but you know there's something more for you. You know you're like, you're supposed to be doing something.

See, I thought you were gonna go to a different place too.

Really?

Yeah.

'Cause I thought what you were gonna say was, when, for some people, when everything's going well, everything's going good, there's a different anxiety experience that very often crops up.

Like what?

And there's a different set of fears, which is all about loss aversion.

This is all gonna go away?

Right.

Which is like, I've been- When's the shoe gonna drop? Right, like the relationship, the money, the job, the security, the health, all of this. things are so good that I think there is a pathology that I've seen in a lot of folks which says either, I'm not worthy, it's not going to work, it's not sustainable, and I'm terrified about this all going away or pieces of it going away. And then that creates an anxiety spin that actually leads to sort of like a contraction in all of the efforts and all of the outreach and all the conversation, the honesty and integrity that would let everything keep going, and then you inadvertently sabotage a genuinely good status quo without realizing that you're doing it by contracting and not no longer supporting or investing in it.

Right.

Not realizing that it's actually that contraction and like the, you know, everything starting to go away is a direct result.

How do we not sabotage when we are finally aligned and we set up like we have the alignment with our mission or career or business. We have the alignment with like, wow, we're actually integrating the things we want into our relationship. We're aligned by not abandoning ourselves or how do we not sabotage ourselves when everything is going really, really good?

I have no idea.

How do we not fall back into old patterns?

Yeah, you know, I think it's interesting, you know, a lot of it has to do with, I think it's a blend of Wisdom, so like personal learning, a commitment to growth, inner practices.

And.

Those are the practices that keep you physically, emotionally, psychically, spiritually healthy and focused and present and able to be resilient and respond rather than react, and also external scaffolding, the circumstances in your life, and that might include relationships that might include your physical environment, that might include creating all sorts of default states that help you do the thing that you know you want to be doing to support the life that you're living without you having to every day consciously make the choice to do it. Katie Milkman talks a lot about this in her work and her research on behavior change. And that it's not just about self-control, it's not just about willpower. There's a whole bunch of inner and outer scaffolding that you can create that make it so you don't have to wake up every day and use all this cognitive bandwidth to make the decisions to make everything stay okay. Some of that you do want to be intentional, but there's also a lot of things that we can kind of put on autopilot that will help us basically take the decision or take the actions that we want to take by default without even having to think about them. Right, right.

What about if we feel like we're in a rut? How can someone, do you think, get out of it through Is it through a set of questions? Is it through a set of changes in their life? Is it through analyzing it? Is it through action?

You know, I'm gonna give you like an answer you probably didn't expect. 'Cause I looked at almost every system that you could look at to try and figure things like this out. And there's a simple set of prompts that I've come back to over the years that I find really powerful. And that is Katie Byron's the Work.

She's great.

Right?

I mean, it's like, what is it, four or five questions, right? Like, really simple questions, like, you know, you're in a moment where something's spinning in your head that's stopping you from taking action, and you make all sorts of assumptions about it that paralyze you. Then you ask these really simple questions, like, is it true? Where's the evidence for? Where's the evidence against? So I think a really simple set of prompts can be incredibly powerful with that. If you're really in a rut where it's causing you mental illness or genuine emotional struggle, seek help. Obviously, go and find professional help. But I think really basic processes and prompts like the work are really powerful. For me, one of the anchors in my life is a meditation practice, a daily meditation practice. I wake up every morning for over a decade now and I have both a breathing and a meditation practice. that changes my physiology, but it also changes my state of mind. So that as I move into my day, things may go south. There may be things that drop into my day that I don't want to happen, that I didn't see coming, that really just knock me back. But what I found is that over the years, that practice creates a baseline level of equanimity that allows you to sort of like, be more intentional about the way that you move through it. And also relating back to being in a rut, zoom the lens out a little bit, take a little bit more of a meta view into the thing that is causing you this feeling of stuckness and be able to kind of say, huh, what's really happening here? Because usually it's not the thing that you think it is. There's something bigger going on. And if you can address the bigger thing, then everything starts to free itself on its own.

Yeah.

And I think a lot of the things where you feel like you're in a rut is you don't feel like you're implementing meaningful actions in your life or you don't have meaningful work. So what would you say are the key factors to identifying meaningful work for yourself?

Yeah, you know, it's funny because I think a lot of people like at work and like we said, it's all about taking care of the basic stuff. And it is, that all matters. We gotta sustain ourselves in the world and feel secure. I think the first way to actually really understand how to find meaningful work is to realize that meaningful work matters. Most people don't look at a job and be like, oh, is this meaningful to me?

Interesting.

Is this opportunity meaningful to me? Is this project? Will it actually give me the feeling that it matters? I matter. That there's a sense of meaning. We're not actually using that as a criteria to judge what to say yes or no.

What are we using? Like, is it pay well?

Is it Will it advance my career? Will it give me power, prestige, status? Will it help build certain relationships? And again, it's not that any of those things are bad, right? But if all of those things are purely a proxy for meaningfulness and a sense of purpose and express potential and excitement and enthusiasm, then you may find yourself super accomplished and utterly empty inside.

That's true.

You know, you've climbed the ladder, awesome. you've got the money, you've got the job, you've got all the stuff that, like, you. You wanted to check off on your achievement box. And then you're sitting there, and you're like, okay, so I don't feel the way I thought I would feel. And now I've gotten everything that I tried to get. I don't know what my next move is. And. And the answer is because those things aren't actually the things that matter in life. They aren't the things that make you feel good that they're not. They alone will not give you the feeling that you're looking for. There's got to be something deeper. Whether you do that something deeper in the context of your J.O.B. that you get paid for, or you do it as a role in your life or as a devotion or as a volunteer on the side, if it doesn't get out, if it doesn't get expressed in some way, shape, or form, that feeling of emptiness never goes away.

It's almost like you need to chase more power, fame, money, to try to feel something, but then it's never enough.

Yeah, I think that's a big part of it. We're in this moment now where, so everyone's heard the term midlife crisis, right? The classic, you hit your 40s and all of a sudden you want to blow everything up and regain your hair and lose weight. But the thing about an existential crisis, an existential crisis is not a crisis of money, it is not a crisis of power, it is not a crisis of fame, it is not a crisis of what is a crisis of is meaning. You are questioning the meaning of your existence. Because you show up at a certain point in your life and something inside of you says, I do not matter. And the thing that I wake up in the morning doing that consumes third of my life, most of my waking hours, does not matter to me and it does not matter to the world. And when you cannot find something that gives you the feeling of meaningfulness, you experience profound sense of loss. And that can lead to really dark places. So what we are seeing now, where.

People just blow up their lives, they cannot be divorced, I am going after this, I am changing this.

So a lot of people will work for 20 years and then hit that point where they are kind of like, all right, it's just all built up, you know, and they almost cause it themselves. What we're seeing now is that people aren't raising their hand and saying, okay, it's time for my sort of, like, existential change. You know, the world has served this up at scale to everyone. So a lot of folks have looked at generations and sort of, like, seen, looked at their expectations for work. Yeah, I'm Gen X. So, like, we're, we're the disaffected generation in theory. We expected nothing. And, and, and it's just, like, put your head down and do the You know, the generations behind me, I hate to use like generational terms because it's like, but the interesting thing is that like Millennials, even though Millennials is not one generation, it's actually like a wide range of people. But like, so you fall into that group, right?

Like an old Millennial, I think, yeah.

Right.

So a lot of the corporate world for years has struggled because something happened in the generation behind me where the expectation for meaning, the expectation for purpose beyond money, beyond status, has gone up dramatically. So corporations, organizations that were built without assuming that that had to be something that was part of what they provided. And then they have millions of new workers coming into the organizations expecting that. And if they don't get it, they go on really fast. Corporations have been grappling with this in a way that, and they haven't figured out how to actually deliver this. And now all of a sudden, the last 18 months happens. It's not just millennials anymore. It is everybody who's showing up at work and saying, we want more. We want more. Like the way that I have felt for the last 20 years is not the way that I want to feel for the next 20 years. And I don't know how to to make a decision that will make me feel different. And this is something that the world of work is starting to grapple with right now at a scale that we've never seen before.

I've seen different studies and people saying like, okay, the work from home culture is here to stay and people have more flexibility and they're around their families more and they're enjoying that less commute, all these different things. But then I'm also hearing that on the other side of coins, like, okay, well, company culture is down and there's not the connection in person and the productivity is down because it's blended between work life all at the same time with interruptions at home. It's almost like we were mentioning before, it's almost like the people used to complain about the commute to work, but that was almost the time like you, I don't know, you cross over from like, okay, here's my boundary. I do what I need to do to get to work and then I focus and then when I leave, I like clear my mind and I get home and then I'm at home and now it's you're working and you're at home the whole time. It seems like it's almost like the thing people complain about the commute is actually one of the best things. Whether it's 10 minutes or maybe two hours is not good.

For sure. You know what I mean? Yeah, because it provided a transition window.

A window, not like I'm in my bedroom and now I'm at the chair.

In my bedroom in front of a computer. And like we'd already seen a blurring that over the last decade because of connectivity and technology. you know, the expectation that you're always going to be on seven days a week. And if, like, your device is on, then you should be responding. But when you actually then physically conflate your work environment with your home environment and you remove even that opportunity to, like, physically transition from one place to another, the problem gets exacerbated in a really big way. So, like, all these things we were already sort of, like, spiraling down into not a good place. But this has sort of brought everything to the surface. But at the same time, it's sort of like you look at all the stats and there is no such thing as disruption without possibility. It doesn't exist.

What is that?

It's not a natural phenomenon. Disruption and possibility are two sides of the exact same coin. So if there's a massive disruption, you may be reeling because you have personally been disrupted. an organization and industry may be reeling because all the assumptions that they've built everything on have been shattered. But that moment, that level of upheaval, uncertainty, and stakes cannot exist without equal and sometimes opposite possibility being birthed simultaneously. So the question becomes when we're talking about like an individual at work is, yeah, nobody saw, well, I can't say nobody saw it the last couple of years coming, but what has happened has been profoundly disruptive in a way that we've never imagined was possible. And at the same time, we're moving through a lot of pain and a lot of people had to figure out in the blink of an eye, okay, so how do I get myself as okay as I can in the context of work? There's a lot of other domains that they've had to do that in health and relationships. but in the context of work specifically. And they've kind of, a lot of folks have figured it out. But what's happened in the middle of all of this is if there's this level of disruption, then you start asking the question, where is the possibility? Because it has to exist. It has to exist.

What's the possibility right now?

Right.

So I'll use me as an example.

Right.

For We've been in the podcast world for a long time together, right? For the entirety of our show.

Part.

Of the big differentiation was like Good Life Project will always be produced in the studio in person, like what you're doing, right? We want to raise the bar from the earliest day for production value. We said no to a lot of people I thought would be amazing to speak with because they weren't in New York, they weren't going to be in the studio, and I I wouldn't do anything remote. You weren't doing Skype or anything? Right, I could not conceive. You were doing all video and everything. Right, I could not conceive of being able to have the quality of conversations, the safety, intimacy, and trust in a virtual space. I was just like, I can't do it, and if I have to do that, I'll do something else. So for six years, we produced conversations in person, in the studio in New York. And then I wake up one day, and I'm like, oh, that's over. Can't do that anymore, yeah. Right, and in New York, we were the very early thing, so New York devastated and completely shut down. I still remember the last live interview that we actually produced was Macy Gray who came off the stage from the Beacon Theater, which was three blocks from the studio and like came in after performing and like that was it. Like she left the studio and we shut down.

Wow.

Right?

So immediately I'm reeling because I'm like, are we done? You know, because this like a central part of what I'm about and everything we produce and what we're known for is these in-person intimate things in the studio. And I'm like, but we can't do that. It's just not an option anymore. So then my brain goes into the next mode. Okay, so massive disruption, didn't want it to happen, still don't want it to happen. But I know also that you cannot have this level of disruption without a similar level of possibility. So where's the possibility? If I'm feeling like I'm the one that's being crossed right now, where's the possibility? And I said, all right, so let's start to test all the assumptions, right? Katie Byron's the work. What is true? Where's the evidence for? Where's the evidence against? And once you start to realize a lot of my assumptions were really wrong. And now how can we actually completely redo our production process so that we can recreate the trust and safety and intimacy in the virtual space? How do we experiment with different platforms? How do we change the way that I go about creating things. And we started to realize, okay, so we're up and running again, but doing everything virtually. And then I'm realizing, okay, so I always believed you could never create safety and intimacy in a virtual space. But what I'm seeing is that everybody is in their home right now. So we don't have the cocoon effect that I love, like, you know, where we're like in this, where we're casting a spell in the same space. Right, yeah. But what we do have is the safety and trust of somebody being in their own home. And feeling comfortable in their own space. Which is different. Not in their office and not in the house.

Right, right.

Because everybody's home at that point. So it's different, but at the same time it made everything okay. And I realized we're having still like tremendous conversations. Would I love to get back into the studio soon? And do I hope, you know, like we'll do more of this as we, of course.

Yeah.

Then I widen the lens out. I'm like, okay, so, if my assumption has been we always have to be in New York because that's where everybody who I'm going to want to talk to, similar reason to why you're in LA, like everyone's going to be in one of these two cities at some point.

Right?

Well, if we're actually producing remotely and our team is distributed around the world, you know, from the post-production side, on a personal level, what kind of freedom does that give us? Well, we thought about living somewhere else. Right. not staying in New York. So all of a sudden we find ourselves in September of last year after growing up outside of New York, living in New York City for 30 years, pulling up our roots. And literally, as I sit here with you right now, if you ask me where is home, I can tell you legally I'm a resident of Colorado or living in Boulder, Colorado. We're pulled out entirely of New York, but we're also sort of experimenting with different locations. you know, and I'm traveling around sometimes with my wife who's also my business partner. So we're in life and work together sometimes with our daughter, you know, like who's in and out of college. And so, so there's this kind of like magical possibility where when you start to actively look for it, you know, that is all around you. But when you're so fiercely disrupted without seeing it coming and there's a lot of pain that goes along with it, It sometimes takes a huge amount of energy to pull out of the feeling of trauma and sometimes support and help mental health, like support from your community, everybody, to get to a place where you can actually start to ask the question, what is true? What is not true? And where is the possibility? Those are really long kind of ranges.

So if we go back to the question, what should I be doing with my life right now? How do we start to answer that.

And figure it out.

Yeah.

So, you know, and this has been the focus of so much of my work, you know, even in before times, what is really how do we find and do work that nourishes us, that makes us come alive? And when I say come alive, I'm talking about those things that I've already talked about. Like for me, it's like five things. It's meaningful, it's excitement, enthusiasm, it's expressed potential, It's flow. You become absorbed in the activity and lose the sense of time and sense of actually you being apart from the activity. And it's a broader sense of purpose in life. So how do we find a new work that gives us that feeling? Like all five of those things weaving in and out of the way that we experience work. And for me, you know, I've been fascinated with this question for so long. And a couple of years ago, I came to believe something I never would have thought that I would believe. And that is this. That we all have a unique impulse for effort that gives us that feeling of coming alive. Effort, you can just use the work instead. Like we're all wired in a certain way where there's if we invest ourselves, if we do a certain type of thing, then we get a lot closer to that feeling. Once I started to feel this in me, I was like, oh, I know this when I always do, when I do this type of thing, I feel this type of way. I'm not talking about a job or a title or a company or a role or an industry. I'm talking really, really, really granular. I'm talking about like DNA level. So when I invest myself in a particular way, I feel alive. And then I started wondering, is this just me or is this everybody? And then are there a mappable set of imprints? Because if there are, and we could identify them and then somehow create ideas and tools that would let people understand what that is for you relatively easily. A whole lot of angst would go away. And fundamentally, if I want to make things that move the needle in people's lives. That's what I want to do. And that has literally been my devotion for years now is sort of identifying those and then helping people figure out what is that thing.

And I took this, you have this book called Spark, Discover your Unique Imprint for Work that Makes you Come Alive. And there's kind of a quiz that you can take online. And I took the quiz and it tells you your spark type. How many spark types? Nine.

So there are 10. And I'll break it down for you, right? So, yeah, once I identified these imprints, I also realized, okay, so we found these 10 impulses, these 10 imprints for work. It also became really clear that each one of these kind of comes with its own behaviors, tendencies, and preferences that are really common. They're fairly universal for each one of them. And, you know, it can be expressed in a really healthy way and also in a really neurotic way. And it was amazing to see like a larger archetype form around these. So I call them sparketypes just because it's fun. It's the archetype that sparks you. But this was still my idea and I needed larger scale validation. So we built an assessment over a period of a year. We've now had about 500,000 people complete the assessment. That's crazy. 25 million data points and gotten some really powerful validation from what started as an observation years ago. And, you know, so for me, my, and the spark types, you basically break down to a profile and there are three things that are part of that profile. So we can talk about like yours if you want, right? And first I'll tell you what the three elements are, then let's talk about what yours is. I think it's really fascinating. So there's what I call the primary spark type. Think of that as your strongest impulse for work that makes you come alive.

This is about work or this is about life in general? It's more about life.

Okay, it's a really good question because when I use the word work, I'm including all of the ways that you could actually devote yourself to effort.

Okay.

It could be the job you get paid for.

Or it could be just a side hustle.

It could be being a parent. It could be being a volunteer. It could be like the art that you do on the side because you just can't not do it because of that feeling that it gives you. It's really nice when you can make it the thing that you wake up in the morning, spend eight to 10 hours a day and get paid for it. That's awesome when you you can do it. You can't always do it, but a lot of times you can get way closer than you thought you could once you realize what that thing is. So the primary sparketype is your strongest impulse. Then we have what I call the shadow. And that's not like the dark side. I call it the shadow because it lives in the shadow of the primary. And you can look at that one of two ways. You can either say- It's like the secondary. It's like the runner up, but what we We've teased out a much more nuanced relationship over the years, and that is this. Most people do the work of their shadow in order to be able to do the work of their primary better. And we'll break that down in a second. And then there's a third piece of the profile, and that's what I call your anti-Spartan type.

So what you don't like, what you're not messing with.

This is the work where like, Don't do this. If you have to do it, it's just, it's emptying. You'll literally, you'll do everything you can do to not have to do this. When you do it, it takes the greatest amount of recovery. Now, the thing is, for a lot of us in everyday life and in our jobs, we do have to do some of that work.

Of course.

It is what it is. But knowing that there's something deeper that makes you feel this way, it helps you frame it in a way where you understand what's really happening, where you don't picture yourself as lazy or just not devoted or incompetent. You actually understand there's something deeper going on. And on a team basis, when you're working with other people, when everyone understands the impulses at both ends of the spectrum, it becomes an experience where you can really optimize. And also, there's a lot of forgiveness and shame loss that becomes a part of this. Because you don't feel a sense of shame for not rising up because there's something else going on. Again, you may still have to do it, but at least there's a more forgiving emotion wrapped around it. So those are the three parts of any given person's spark type profile.

Okay.

So let's talk about you.

Yeah, so my primary is the maven.

Right. So the fundamental energy of the maven is all about knowledge acquisition. And that shows up in a couple of different ways. For some people, it shows up in this just broad interest in everything. You wake up in the morning and you just want to dive into fascinations, topics of interest, people. You'll talk to everyone on the planet. You want to know their story. you don't want to use it for anything else. You're not solving a big problem. You just want to know and you have no idea. You know, like everybody that you bump into, you just want to know. It also shows up in sometimes really, really specific ways. We talked about this recently because we go back a long time. And when I first met you, you're not off your sister's couch for that long.

Right?

And you had you had kind of said, okay, so kind of done with being a pro athlete.

Yeah.

But that was sort of like the only thing that I knew. I devoted my entire life to this. So I'm going to look at this thing called LinkedIn at the time. And I'm going to learn everything on the planet about it. I'm going to know more about this platform than anyone, and I'm going to just dive into it.

Right.

And you became absolutely possessed.

Yes.

With being like the one person who knew more than anything, you know, about the platform. -uh huh. So it's like, I've seen this show.

Up in your life broadly.

Yeah. And I've also seen you go like, you just, you find rabbit holes, right? And sometimes there's some like really good like other thing you want to use the knowledge for, but sometimes it's just like so fascinating just the process of learning, becoming encyclopedic about something in particular. Yeah, I love that.

I mean, I love learning multiple skills and having just a tool belt of skills that I've acquired where maybe I obsessed for three months, maybe it was a year, maybe, you know, I did that public speaking, with salsa dancing, with, you know, I'm in Spanish classes now. It's like all these different things, broadcasting, it's like whatever. It's just like assessing for a period.

Of time to learn. And what's interesting is for a lot of math is from the outside looking in, people think that the core drive is the things that they're creating with the knowledge that they're accumulating. And that's nice. You know, it's great that you've been able to build like a powerful career and affect a lot of people's lives and like show that makes a really big difference. And at the same time, at the end of the day, for you, like, this is almost like in part a funding engine for your relentless desire to just go deep and learn and learn and learn, just go for new things and like go deep into that sort of knowledge acquisition rabbit hole. So that's the primary for you. That's not the whole thing.

Right. So there is this sense of like, okay, because you have all these questions are very interesting that are in the assessment. And it's like, you know, I think one of them was like, do you want to, do you want to learn for learning's sake or do you want to learn to create something to, like, better something? And it's like, this, there's all these different types of questions. So that's the primary, the maven for me. The shadow is the maker.

Right.

What is the maker?

So the maker for me is, is my primary. That is my, my main impulse. And that's all about making ideas manifest.

It's like turning an idea into a thing. and I've always thought of myself as an alchemist where it's like, I love to turn ideas into a reality, whether it's like, I want to learn a skill and be able to apply it. I have an idea. I want to launch a book or a podcast. So you've also said is like, they.

Might be complementary, like one, two, and they could, they could kind of be like fairly close impulses. Um, and they, they often work, they, they kind of like tag team with each other because they serve each other in a really, really powerful way. You know, so for me, the maker showed up in my life. I was the kid when I was like eight or nine years old where I would have my parents drive me to the town dump. We'd throw bike parts into the back of the old Chevy Blazer. And then I'd go home and duct tape them together into Frankenbikes. And I've been making things from the time, literally, I cannot remember a time in my life where I didn't open my eyes and be like, what can I create today? I'm obsessed. I'm driven by the impulse to make stuff.

So you're the maker.

That's your main thing, yeah. And that's shown up as books, it's shown up as companies, it's shown up as experiences, events. The fundamental energy is idea to something.

Right, okay. So that's my secondary.

So that's like the high end of like, that's the strong impulsive for you.

Right, right.

Now let's talk about your anti-spark type.

The anti-spark type is the essentialist.

Right, okay. So you and I share an anti-spark type.

We have the same type of... Yeah.

We have similar profiles. My top end is I'm a maker scientist. So maker primary and scientist shadow. I make stuff and then I figure out complex things, but it's almost always in service of being better at the creative process. I don't just go down a rabbit hole because there's a really cool complex thing that I just want to solve this huge big burning question. An actual scientist, Sparketype, would be driven by that. I get to the point where I figured out what I need to figure out to go back to the creation process. So the anti-Sparketype.

Right?

That's your weakest impulse or the thing that empties you the most, takes the greatest amount of recovery. So the essentialist, the primary essentialist, the impulse is to create order from chaos. It's about systems, it's about process, it's about clarity, it's about a lot of granular, it's taking complex data sets, processes, steps, all these things that need to happen, like behind the scenes production for the show. Guaranteed, you've got spreadsheets, you've got platforms, you've got ton of moving parts.

I can't deal with it though.

We have, we have like for our show, we have around 40 episodes in production at any given time.

Wow.

I can't like I have, when I look at that, I just want to cry.

Right, right.

Like my, because my impulses run when I see that.

And some people see that like this is a beautiful piece of art.

Right. So our producer is an essentialist and she looks at that and she's like, yeah, let me add it. Like I want to build out these systems. I want to run them. I want to optimize them. I want to make them function better. I want to create order and clarity rather than chaos. And I want to create utility from it also. So, you know, when you're not an essentialist, having to do the work of an essentialist is experienced generally as not fun in a really big way. Like I, when I think about that in any company I've built in the past, that type of work Before I really even understood this about myself, it would always be the thing that if I had to do it, I would do it for as long as I had to do it because that's what you do when you're starting a business and you're bootstrapped. But as soon as I was sort of like well enough resourced to have the ability to hand it off or delegate it or contract it out, it would be the first thing. And also because there are people where that impulse is primary. They wake up in the morning and they're like, Let me add it. You know, so why not have that person aligned with that work? Absolutely. Because then they're going to show up wanting to do it. They're doing it because of the feeling it gives them and the fact that actually it's a full-time job and you can support yourself. That's awesome. But they're probably also doing things on the side on a volunteer basis or a free basis that are really similar just because of the feeling that it gives them.

Yeah.

But for me and you, not that. No, I'm gonna run from that stuff.

Yeah.

It's almost like taking this could really help you discover, like, what I should do with my life and what meaningful work I should be doing. Or is maybe this is why I'm feeling like I'm in a rut or avoiding things, or I feel like I'm resistant to doing certain work that I'm supposed to do.

No.

Because it's not what you're aligned to do. And it's also, it seems like it could be an assessment that you get to potential people that you want to bring on your team and say, Is this person gonna be a good fit for this role?

It's interesting because I've been asked a lot. We've started doing a fair amount of work with this body of work in organizations in the context of leadership and engagement and team dynamics. And I've been asked, is this a hiring tool? Should we use this to hire people? The answer is actually no. I don't think this or really any other than mainstream assessments that are on the market for organizations right now are really well used that way. My take is, It's actually a great tool to look at the people you have, who you love, who are a good culture fit, and figure out, okay, so how do we navigate what they're doing? How do we give them a set of tools and some insights that will help them really understand how to contribute to their role, to their work, to the organization, to their lives in a way which is going to be most nourishing for them. And then within the context of the organization, potentially say, okay, so like how can we support that? Like does it mean that you're doing this type of work? Are you job crafting or re-optimizing, re-imagining what you're doing in a way that goes beyond the job description that you were first brought in to do, but maybe it's actually going to make you not just happier but more fulfilled, a stronger sense of meaning, and allow you to access that sense of potential that you know is there. So, you know, one person who I know who has who I've spoken with who runs two different companies, has described it to me as it's been a really powerful way to remove friction within teams, within individuals' experience of work and organizations. It's just like the wheels are greased. Everything just works easier. There's less tension, there's less friction. People are showing up doing more of what actually makes them come alive. Right, right.

So it's not necessarily a hiring tool, but more of a optimization of team. I think so.

And I think on-- Make sure you're.

Aligned to what you're supposed to be doing.

Right, from an organizational standpoint, yes. And then just from an individual standpoint where it's like, you said, how do we help human beings flourish? The more that you understand, what is that impulse that makes you come alive and you can show up and do it, the better off you are as an individual and the more you're going to contribute to society and show up as your best, which at this moment in time, we really need more than ever.

Absolutely. What's the link to the assessment?

You can just find it at sparkatype.com Spark a type. Yeah, E, Spark E type.

Spark E type.com, it's free, people can take this.

Yeah, and that was sort of like one of my commitments is, you know, I wanted to make the core tool that we created, you know, initially in no small part to test and validate the idea and now just to be available publicly as a tool. I feel like that needs to be accessible. So rather than, you know, a lot of sort of corporate style things right now where they're behind some sort of a gate. I feel like at this point, this tool just should be available for everyone, especially at this moment in time.

Absolutely. What are the best ways you've learned how to maximize and multiply our time to being more effective, more efficient in our hobbies, our passions, our work?

Yeah, these strategies you have? So this is not going to be a super granular strategy, but I'm always, I'm kind of like a meta thinker. You know, like a little bit like our mutual friend Tim Ferriss in that way. Like I'm always sort of like zooming out and saying like, what's the system at play here? And how do we, where's the lever? I'm always in search of levers. Yes.

Right?

And to me, being able to discern what actually matters, is the ultimate optimizer, you know, because you can optimize all the different, there's all sorts of tools and apps and platforms that you could use, there's strategies that you can use to optimize what you're doing every day to make it more efficient and quicker. And those will make differences, but the bigger issue is, what should I just not be doing at all?

Right.

What should be eliminating?

Right. You know, what do I actually need to pull out of the system? What is the thing where it's taking 40% of my time, but it's only contributing 2% to whatever outcome that I genuinely care about in my life, in the work, or whatever's being measured. And I think when we start to ask that question, then we gain the ability to understand what really matters and what to focus on, rather than just looking at all the things that we do on a regular basis and say, how do we optimize all of these? What's the technology? Zoom the lens out and optimize your discernment engine and understanding what truly matters. What is the big lever in whatever metric is being measured and in the way that I want to feel?

Yeah, eliminating tasks that aren't meaningful. That's the best way to multiply your time.

I've seen you do that over the years. You have a team. There are things that you're really good at and you love to do. And there are other people on your team that doesn't mean things don't need to get done.

Right.

But it doesn't necessarily mean that you should be the one doing them and.

Then optimizing to do them. Yeah, I was telling Matt this even last week, Matt on my team, I was like, what can I do to eliminate more and more things? Just focus on the thing that I'm really good at and how do I double down on those things? Just to multiply what we're creating, impact, income, all that stuff, and to just feel more fulfilled in my work as well.

Yeah.

So he was like, Well, we don't need to do these two meetings every week. We can just do an email debrief for you and save an hour there. We don't need to be doing this with you in it. You should be focusing on the other things to get you more ready, more focused for the interviews, booking guests, being out there networking now that we can be out in the world and all that stuff, and not being in meetings all day.

Right.

For me.

Yeah.

Which is more about organization and everything. I'm like, that stresses me out. The essentialist stresses me out.

But that's what we're talking about, right? so rather than saying, like, rather than Matt saying, well, Louis, let's take a whiteboard and let's map out everything that you're doing to figure out, like, what are the, what's the technology? What are the platforms? How can we do this more efficiently? He was like, no, no, no.

Let's just talk about what you shouldn't.

Be doing at all.

Yeah.

You know, because that's the biggest optimizer. And I think the, the test for people is, like, when they start to eliminate things and they see, like, they have more space in their calendar, they tend fill it with some other busy work somehow. I'm going to deject email or social media. I'm going to be distracting myself. But it's like really scheduling the things that you need to be doing, in my opinion, and making sure that my time is scheduled for free time. Like I try to schedule in like nothing. I'm just going to goof around or have idea time as opposed to just checking social media or email.

100%.

And eliminating all that stuff the most you can. So that's what I'm trying to deal with. with my time.

Yeah, like if you look at my calendar right now, like I keep a digital calendar and I have certain critical things in different colors, but then there's also a block that you see all over my calendar with the letters KF in it. That just means keep free. Keep free.

Keep free. For whatever, maybe you're gonna do a.

Meeting, maybe do a call, maybe relax, maybe you're in nature. And I'm like literally unscheduled. Like I'm hanging out here, you know, and I've been in LA, Santa Monica for a little bit now, and I'm realizing at a certain point that I'm three blocks from the beach. I'm a water kid. I grew up on the water. Water is the place where I touch stone. It's where I like, I breathe. Everything exhales in me. And I'm realizing I'm like three days into like a 10-day window here, and I haven't seen the water yet. And I'm like, I have the ability to walk through the blocks.

Yeah, right?

There's, I can completely rearrange my schedule because this actually matters to me. this nourishes me, it makes me feel good. I'm literally adjacent to this thing that gives me a sense of life. And I'm just literally filling in busy work that's stopping me from doing. So I immediately reorganize what I was doing. And now I end every day. I just literally go down. I walk along the ocean. I don't even go in it. And then I go and then I just sit. And while the sun is dropping behind the mountain, north of Santa Monica, I it's beautiful. And it's like, it's completely transformed me being here because. Because I realize that matters to me.

Absolutely. Are you gonna move out here, you think? Be by the ocean, man. So, Mark is calling your name. We're like, Newport Beach or.

Yeah.

Manhattan Beach or something.

Yeah.

Sparked. Discover your unique imprint for work that makes you come alive. Make sure you guys get the copy of this. Take the. Spark A-Type, Spark E-Type.

Yeah.

And if you happen to drop the E from the URL, we own the misspelling.

Yeah, we own the misspelling. Sparketype.com, a lot of good stuff in here that'll explain all the different Sparketypes.

Yeah.

And give you kind of like application on how to implement certain things, how to remove certain things for each Sparketype. So we've shared four of the 10 here, but there's six more in here, so make sure you guys check this out and get it for your friends. It's really like a self-awareness tool, right?

It's like...

It is. And the more self-aware that we can become about how we feel, how we think, our behaviors, our actions, the better we can perform in our life, in all areas of our life. I'm all about self-awareness and like just learning more and taking in everything as feedback and information. So this is a tool that'll give you feedback again, take the free test or the assessment, get the book. What else do we need to know about this?

I think what we need to know right now is that we are in this unique moment in our history, like as a culture, as a world, but also just personally, where a lot of us have a window that's opened up that says the world has been turned upside down. Everybody is revisiting their reason for being. They're revisiting their lives, their relationships, their work, their physical and mental well-being. And there's this window right now where there is a level of understanding and forbearance for change that has been open because everybody's in it together. It's been normalized on a way that it's never been normalized in our history, in our living history right now. But that window's gonna close. The window's gonna close. it may be a year from now, maybe 18 months from now, it may be six months from now. And once it does, you will very likely find the process of trying to reimagine and going deeper and then potentially making changes, potentially a lot less supported or just a lot less comfortable for you. And I would just invite folks, whether it's a spark to type stuff, whether it's your relationships, whatever it is, whatever domain of your life, you're like happening right now, to not let the opportunity, the possibility, the magic of this moment go away. Don't let the window close without at least reexamining some of the assumptions that got you here.

Yeah.

Whoo, I'm liking this, man. I'm liking this a lot. A couple of final questions for you.

Yep.

Before I ask those questions, is there a specific link for the book.

Everything is just at sparketype.com.

Sparketype.com, the book, Good Life Project, make sure you download the podcast.

And obviously the book is just all over, you know, all this stuff.

Sparketype.com, okay cool. And you're gonna be getting back on YouTube soon. So Jonathan will have more videos finally.

We are reanimating the thing that started like Good Life Project all the way back in 2012. 2012.

Nine years ago?

Yeah.

Gosh, man.

I know. It's amazing.

You led the way for video, like high quality video production for years.

Yeah.

It inspired me.

We were all in.

And I just fell in love with audio. Yeah, yeah. Well, it just, it just like worked for me. And now I'm like feeling the call to do something cool back on video. Yeah, yeah. It was a combination of both.

Yeah.

If it's not all video, it's part audio, part video, but So make sure you subscribe to Jonathan over on YouTube as well, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, everywhere for the Good Life Project. A couple of final questions for you. This is called, I don't know if I asked you those last time, but it's called the Three Truths. So hypothetical scenario, it's your last day on earth, many years away. You've accomplished all your dreams, you've put the meaningful work out into the world, you've made your unique imprint, has come alive fully, you've expressed it, But for whatever reason, it's your last day and you've got to take all of your meaningful work with you or it's got to go somewhere else. And no one has access to your information anymore. All your videos, content, this interview, books, gone. Eliminated, unfortunately. But you've learned a lot of lessons and you get to share three lessons with the world. Three final things that you would share to be of service to the world. What would be those three truths for you?

So you would think I'd talk about this and I would talk about work. And that is for sure my deep fascination in professional devotion. But when you frame that question, my mind says meaningful to whom? And to me, the immediate answer, my intuitive answer is to my daughter. What would matter to her? And the three things that come to mind are all related. which is be love, do love, and open to love. You know, be a presence of loving kindness in your life to yourself. Be loving and kind to yourself, but also just be a presence of loving kindness to other people. Even if you don't do anything, just be that presence. Let it radiate from you. Do love. Like do the verb of love. You know, like make your decisions based on whether It will allow you to move into the world, acting from that place and expanding that sense of love. And then the third one, open to love. A lot of people have a lot of trouble receiving love and kindness. And I struggle with it. We've known each other for a long time. You and I are like, I will tell you, Lewis, I love you. you know, and you'll tell that to me and we're good with that. But I'm not good with that with everyone else. Right, right, right.

You know?

Yeah.

But as, as a, literally as a practice for that, the, the signal line, like the automatic line on every email that I send where it's just my default is with a whole lot of love and gratitude, even if it's like to, you know, somebody who's a CEO and it's like a pitch or something like that.

Right, right, right.

You know, because I want to be that element. I do it. And I want to remind myself to continually open to it.

Oh, that's good, man. Be do be open to love. I love that. Before I ask the final question, I acknowledge you, Jonathan, for being an incredible friend for many years. 12 years, I think now, 13, 2008.

Yeah, something like that.

It's 2008. You go back fall of 2008, I believe. Maybe it's 2009. I can't remember. But I acknowledge you for. For showing up in many important moments of my life. for again, helping me facilitate an important conversation on my podcast about sexual abuse. And that experience that we facilitated just impacted so many men and women who were listening and helping them heal. So I acknowledge you for being an incredible friend, showing up, being just a wise spiritual guide for me over the years, and very, very grateful for you and acknowledge you for the gifts you constantly definitely bring to the world this book included and all that you're trying to help people with the awareness about themselves. So, I appreciate you and I acknowledge you for your incredible gift, my friend.

Thank you.

Yeah, of course.

Before you ask your final question, can I acknowledge it?

Sure.

Because I'm going to put you on the spot to be open to receive love. Because I think you've been in the public eye a lot. People look at you and they see what you've quote built. They see this stunning engine of impact. They see the conversations you facilitate. They see, I know you as a person. I know as a human being. I know you as a friend. I know your essence and I have for a lot of years. And I've seen behind the scenes, I've seen you struggle. I've seen you go through a lot of things. I've seen you make decisions from profound integrity and not so much just like we all have. We all go in all different directions and then own them. And I've seen you have this deep devotion to self-examination and growth and to constantly going back to checking in with your heart and saying, is this right? Is this right? And is this like, is this coming from love? Is it coming from service? And I want to acknowledge you for that because I think people see what you've created professionally from the outside in, but being your friend and seeing your to your own growth, to the own expansion of your heart. It's been beautiful.

Appreciate it, bro.

Thank you, man.

Appreciate that. I receive. I'm open to love. Thank you. Final question. What's your definition of greatness?

Greatness is the ability to close the gap between your felt and expressed potential. What I mean by that is I feel like we all walk through life feeling like we're capable of more. Maybe it's more love, more relationships, more achievement, more impact, more work outcomes, whatever it may be. I think a lot of us, we walk through life having this feeling like there's something in there. There's a potential. There's like a hidden reservoir. We can't exactly identify what it is, but we know it's there and we have no idea how to unlock it. And to me, greatness is not a state we arrive at. It's a path. And it is the ability to close that gap between felt and expressed potential.

My man. How does it feel? Appreciate you, brother.

Thank you.

Love you too, brother. Let me know some of your biggest takeaways in the comments below and make sure to share this with someone you think needs to hear it and stick around for more inspiring content coming up right now.

The book you talk about three buckets to how to live a good life. What are the buckets? Connection is community or connection is one of them.

Yeah.

And I want you to just create, there are so many, it's funny for me to write a book called How to Live a Good Life, except who am I?

Sure.

It's like thousands of years of philosophers, great sages and thinkers. But what I realized is that, you know, all I have are my stories and my lens. And the question for me was, if we've known everything there is to know for thousands of years, why are we still not okay in the world?

Why are we hurting?

Yeah.

And I think a big part of it is because it's the models, it's the way that what we know is conveyed. It's not conveyed in a way which is like really simple, straightforward. You hear it once, you remember it. And the other thing is it's so simple that it's almost impossible not to act upon it. It's got to be actionable in somebody's lives who's a grown-up, who's busy. You can't ask somebody to just constantly blow up their lives and walk away from everything because your average person in the middle years isn't going to do that. They would rather live the rest of their lives miserable than suffer the pain of blowing it up and starting over. And you can certainly debate on both sides of that but that's just the shoes on the ground. So I wanted to just create a really simple model where somebody would hear it once, they're like, yeah, that makes sense. And they would understand every day how to do a little something so that over time, it wasn't about big disruptive moves. It's like, there's a little something I can do today, and then tomorrow, and then tomorrow, then over a couple of weeks or months, you're kind of like, stuff is actually better. And I didn't even really have to try it. So the idea of the buckets was, look, life is fundamentally about filling three buckets. Connection, we talked about love and belonging to your relationship, right? Between other people, friends, lovers, family, colleagues, source, if that's something which is meaningful to you, the natural environment or the physical setting you're in. So that's connection is one bucket. Second bucket is vitality. It's the state of your mind and body. And to me, to actually try and explain those as two different things is just ludicrous. mind and body are 100% one universal feedback mechanism. You can't work with one without affecting the other. So it's optimizing around a lot of mind and body, which you kind of become a master at. And then the third one is what I call contribution. And that's really about how are you bringing your gifts to the world? Are you moving into the world in a way where there's meaning and a sense of purpose, where you feel lit up, where you feel like you know your strengths and your values and your beliefs and you are 100% stepping into them every day with what you do. And when you lay your head on the pillow at night, you're like, yeah, like that. I feel good about how I spent my time on the planet.

Meaningful work, yeah. Contributing and living in service. You know, one of the, I think Tony Robbins said that the key to fulfillment is growth and contribution. If you want to feel fulfilled, you need to be doing one of those two things, if not both of them. You could be growing, learning, you know, in your own personal life, then also serving other people. It could be your family, your community, the world. It could be anything, but you got to be in service in some way.

Yeah, totally. And I think you also, like, you need to feel like you're being fully utilized. Yeah. You know, there's, we did a survey, I want to say it was like a year or two back now, and, and it was, it kind of asked me, I can't remember the exact question. It's like, do you feel like you're leveraging, like you, you're actually accessing your full potential. And we had a whole bunch of different things that were potential pain points for people. And the number one pain point was a feeling of, I know that I have so much more, but I can't figure out how to close the gap between the potential that I'm leveraging every day and the potential that I know deep down I have. Like I can't figure out how to close that gap. And a lot of it has to do with self-ignorance, with just not knowing yourself well enough to understand what matters to you? Like what do you actually believe matters in this world? Because you can't be intentional, you can't wake up in the morning and do what matters if you don't know yourself well enough to understand what matters to you. You don't know yourself well enough to understand what are your actual strengths? What do you believe in the world? So how can you decide to do more of that if you don't actually know what it is?

So how do you find out what you believe? What if your beliefs change? When you learn new things, you're like, oh, what I thought I, I lived in this religion my whole life and I realized like that stuff is not what I believe anymore.

Yeah.

Certain things, you know, my whole life's.

A lie now, you know, whatever, I don't know. Yeah. And, and it's, it's, there, there's sort of like this interesting split, right? There are certain things which you probably consider more like on the level of a trait. It kind of is what it is. You know, it's like, you know, you're a tall dude. You're gonna be tall dude your whole life. You know, you've got a certain color eyes. But there are also certain internal traits. And so things like strengths, where there's been a ton of research and exploration around them, increasingly a lot of people would now argue in the research world that you kind of have your strengths. And you can definitely help build strengths, but they're relatively stable over the period of your life. So it's really important to understand them. And they're great short and fast assessments that you can use to actually figure that out these days. And then say, okay, I want to leverage these as much as I can, like when I'm out there doing my work in the world. Beliefs is the other thing. Those change, right? I mean, my belief system now is profoundly different than it was 10 years ago and 10 years before that. What I believe matters to me, what I believe is about what's possible and what's not possible, is hugely different. You can change believe. You can snap beliefs.

You can change them in a heartbeat. I think that's a good thing or a bad thing if our beliefs change every...

I think it's a great thing. About 10 years or whatever. I think it's an awesome thing. I think the moment that you lock yourself into certainty about your beliefs is the moment that you stop growing. It's the moment where you, Milton Glazer, had this amazing conversation with who's one, yet the most iconic living designer. And at one point, I mean, he has designed some of the most incredible things on the planet. You may not know his name, but you know something that he's created. And he said to me, certainty is a closing of the mind. The moment you are certain, the moment you lock down the possibility that something might be different or you might believe differently in the future is the moment that you stop asking questions. It's the moment where curiosity ends. It's the moment where the uncertainty that's necessary for possibility to emerge in your life vanishes. Because if you're certain about something, then you stop exploring anything beyond that, right? And the moment you stop exploring, there's no possibility in your life anymore. Your life starts going sideways. Man, I don't know about you or your listeners. I'm pretty sure about you and pretty sure probably about your listeners too, but I'm not here to go sideways. Yeah.

What if your beliefs are already pretty solid? If you're like, you've got really solid beliefs.

Yeah.

It's so part of what... Why change them?

If already you're living a good life with these beliefs.

Well, but that's the second part of what you were just saying is a really thing, right? So if you are indeed living a good life with your beliefs, no reason to change them, right? But the question you got to ask is like when somebody's like, well, this is what I believe, I believe, and I'm pretty sure I'm right, and it's all good, and it's given me the life that I have. The next question is, well, how's that working for you? Are you actually sitting here living a good life? Do you have these beautiful, deep and enduring relationships? Are you doing meaningful work where you feel like you're fully leveraging, utilizing the world? Are you connected to source and people? Are you vibrant? Are you radiating health? Because if somebody says, I'm locked into my beliefs and they're good, they're viable, solid beliefs, and that's how I live my life according to those beliefs. and you can point to major places in their lives that are relatively disastrous. Something's not working. So part of the process, I think sometimes if you have that conversation with somebody, is literally ask them, not from an arrogant little how's that working standpoint, but just how's that actually working for you? That's cool. If you have these beliefs and they've been with you for life and you feel like you're actually really living the life that you want to live and you're meant to live, go for it. Keep them. But if you're not, something's got to change. It's like I say in the book, I'm not asking for anybody to buy into anything. The only thing that I ask anybody for is to be open to the possibility that there might be another story, another truth, something else that they can do out there that might allow them to be better in the world and then try it. and I'm not a huge fan of just, like, leaning into what anybody tells you on Pure Faith.

Sure.

Run an experiment.

Yeah.

You know, let your personal experience tell you whether your belief is still valid or whether something's got to change.

Right. Yeah.

You talk about how to fill the buckets up, right?

Yeah.

You go through each chapter and how to fill them up.

What is.

How does someone fill up the connection in the community bucket right now with Just this overwhelming amount of I need to generate more following on social media and constantly on their phones. How does someone get away from that when it's the source of their business?

Yeah.

It's digital connection, you know?

Yeah, it's such an interesting question. We're moving from just hanging out like this, like we are now, to always having a screen between us nonstop, you know? And on the one hand, it's not a bad thing because a lot of really great relationships can start digitally.

Absolutely. For me too, yeah.

Yeah, you know, and but the relationship never really happens to me on the level that it can happen until I'm in a room with somebody. Even if it continues almost entirely digitally after that, it's different if I've actually spent some time face to face. Part of what happens when you put a screen in front of somebody is that there's really interesting research that's been done, Sherry Turkle out of MIT and some other people, is that it removes empathy. from the conversation. And so we stop actually having empathy with somebody else. It creates a level of not just anonymity, but like so a lot of conversation happens in the digital space and it's what they call asynchronous, meaning it's not just like we're not just talking and like we can look at each other and the conversation happens in real time. It's like you get a text or somebody snaps or whatever it is and you got to respond respond to it and you're thinking, you actually take a couple of seconds to think about how am I going to formulate, what should I say? And when you do that, you're always going to present sort of cleaner, better version of yourself when you do that. The problem is it removes those moments of real time vulnerability and those mini snapshots of vulnerability of your dorkiness or geekiness or whatever it is that really makes you you. When those leave the conversation, that those are the most profound. Those are like, those are the moments where, where you connect on a level that blows apart, like the shiny, happy self that you tend to show other people when there's a screen in between them. You know, what's kind of interesting about Snapchat to me is that it's almost become a, a, a, like a step back into that place of, like, being totally vulnerable. I think maybe because a lot of people know it goes away.

Right.

Right. So when I look at you like the way that my daughter uses Snapchat, like her and her friends like they're, you know, like sharing all sorts of like crazy, silly, like dopey pictures, like hyper vulnerable.

Yeah.

Bad angle. All the time. Whatever.

Yeah. Right.

And, and that's kind of like become the ethos on that particular platform. Whereas, but almost every other one, it's all, it's all high. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. And that kind of kills your ability to connect on that deeper level where it's like, I'm struggling today, man, or I'm a bit of a weirdo or I'm different than you in this way or like I just made a mistake. Those are the moments where the most profound relationships take root. Even on a personal level, like one-to-one with a partner in life, if the conversation always stays at the level, it's like, well, tell me about the good stuff that happened to you today. Tell me about the bad stuff too, but tell me in a good way. I don't want any of the mess. that's not a relationship. So when you allow for that stuff to happen, that's where the really juicy stuff happens. And so often technology takes a lot of that away or just enough of it away that it strips away what's really awesome about the relationship. And there's an argument to maybe it also that it deludes you into thinking that you actually are connecting with a lot of people and stops you from then going out and having those real face face or deeper conversations that make a real difference. So I'm not like anti-technology. I mean, we're sitting here right now and there's a lot of technology happening between us. But I think it has its place and very often its place is to find people who you think would be really well aligned with you, start a conversation and then as soon as you can, like take it real time. Because that's where the magic really happens. And the flip side is also, we talked about individual connections. but also community. You know, building, being part of something bigger than you, where you feel like there's shared values and beliefs and aspirations, is really important to us.

How can people find that? Through their hobbies, through... Yeah, I mean.

For like, again, this goes back to first you got to do a little bit of work to know yourself.

Right.

You know?

And that's why, you know, you have so many freshmen show up in college and they join everything in the planet. Right. And they come home at the end of the freshman year and they feel alone and isolated. isolated. And it's not because they haven't tried. They're surrounded by people all day, every day. It's because they actually never just hit pause long enough to do a little bit of work to learn about themselves enough to actually know, well, this is what needs to be in place. I want to join a club where everybody's social wiring is a little bit quieter and they want to get into art. and they really dig nature and they have deep philosophical conversations rather than I want to join a fraternity where it's all about partying, people like really extroverted and social, not that that's every fraternity, but to know which of those things is right for you, you got to know yourself first. And we don't do that work. It's actually not to just get at least a baseline level of knowledge about who we are and what we care about doesn't take that much work. It just takes a willingness to go a little bit deeper into ourselves before we try and actually go out into the world and find, like, involve ourselves with relationships and communities that actually resonate with who we really are rather than the facade of who we think we should be.

How do we find ourselves?

Asking questions. You know, there are a set of baseline assessments that we've used in different programs. that we've run, stuff like that. Like we've used for strengths, for example. There are two big assessments. One is strengths finder, which a lot of people know. There's probably a lesser known one called the VIA strengths assessment. And that actually is really heavily researched and came out of the world of positive psychology. And so both of these things generally, they'll give you, you take a questionnaire, takes about 20 minutes, right? And they'll give you a list of like 20 to 25 strengths and your top five are generally million ones, which really are the heartbeat of the things. But they're different also. The VIA strengths is more about your virtues. And whereas StrengthsFinder would probably be more apt to describe them more along the lines of your talents or your gifts. But either way, the idea is once you have a sense of these things, can you move through your day in a way where you're leveraging them as much as you possibly can? Because when you build your life around your ability to leverage those things, rather than spend all of your time trying to fix what's wrong, a lot of what's wrong starts to drop away. Yeah. And you feel like really empowered. Same thing when it comes to, you know, like your values and beliefs, you start asking questions. Like the most fundamental question, like the question you start with is what's important to me? You know? And then your first line answer is going to be something like, well, family or money or power or, you know, cars, whatever it may be. You know, a lot of people stop there. Like, let me just what are my top five there? And that's going to give you really shallow answers which is going to give you really shallow life. So then you ask the next question. You essentially keep asking that question. Well, of these things, why are they important? And then why are they important? You keep asking the why question until you get down to a deeper emotional level of why these things matter. So it's not hard, but sometimes it's not fun. and that's why we don't do the work. You know, I know over the last few years, Nick, we've been friends for a while now, you've gone deep, real deep, on a personal level. You know, like to see what you've gone, like to see the depth that you've like learned yourself, it's kind of stunning. And so much of the, of the shift that you've made in your professional life and your personal life over the last three years, you know, have been an outgrowth of just a deep process of self-discovery, really knowing yourself on a.

Level that when we first met, like.

Your level of self-knowledge and the way you bring yourself to the world is so different. You know, it's like, it's palpable. And I think people feel that.

They respond to it.

Yeah.

You know, the funny thing is, I feel like I'm just getting started, you know? Yeah, totally. Like, oh, man, there's so much more.

To discover, you know? Yeah. I feel like I figured something out. It's like, no, you haven't figured anything out.

Right, right.

You always hit that threshold. You're like, I think I have it dialed in. Like, the next step is, like, I know nothing.

I know. It's the worst. Completely ignorant. It's good, though, to questioning your beliefs.

And values and make sure that you're doing what works for you and the world.

Yeah. And it's like it goes back to what we were talking about earlier, like is to be open. And I look at things like this as, okay, this is my snapshot. This is a moment in time right now. This is what I think I know and understand about myself and about the world and the way that I move into it. But I'm going to keep asking questions. I'm going to keep running experiments. so my current company, we've been around for four years now, we're growing NestE, but built into the name of the company is the word project. Because to me it's a series of experiments. This is a project for me. And I wonder if we looked at building a good life as just a project with a series of experiments, that would give us so much more freedom to allow ourselves to be open to whatever the experiments yield. rather than saying like, this has to succeed now in this window of time. It's like, no, I'm going to run an experiment. You know, my goal is to actually just learn, you know, and this may give me an answer that I really want, which would be awesome.

Yeah.

Maybe give me an answer that I'm not all that comfortable with. Right. But then the question is, so what do I do with that?

Right.

You know, and then how do I actually run the next experiment? And then the next.

I'm such a huge fan of experiments. or games, whatever you want to call them for me. I feel like that's the way I learned is by taking on a challenge. Okay, for this week, for this month, I'm going to do something every single day to see what works, what didn't work, or what I learned from it. And I feel like, and I usually do it around things I'm most afraid of.

Things I'm most afraid of.

What's an example of that? When I was a teenager, I was terrified to talk to girls. So every day I was like, anytime I get butterflies when I see a girl that I like, I have to go up and talk to her. That's my challenge. That's my game for the day. and just say hello and see where the conversation goes. It was like terrifying. Another one was public speaking. I was terrified to speak in public. So I said, okay, every week I'm going to go to a public speaking class for a year. And I did that and I was able to see so much growth over the year. It was terrifying, it was horrible, it was a lot of work, a lot of pain and suffering, but I see where I'm at now, like eight, nine years later from when I started that challenge. Like I'm able to really be in front of people and make an impact, you know, still a lot more to go, still a lot farther to grow. But if I didn't take on that experiment or that challenge of that project years ago, then I wouldn't be here.

Yeah.

And so I constantly take on challenges, projects, games, whatever you want to call it. And I feel like that's the juice. It's like we learn. That's like my master's program, you know?

Yeah.

It's when we take on those projects.

Yeah.

And it's like, I mean. the moment that you decide that you're done, that you're good, that you got it all figured out, to me, is the moment that you start living and stop living, you know, because that's the moment that, like, we said, that's the moment that growth ends, you know? And at some point, you'd love to be like, I mean, this is, you know, the quote that I throw around. It's part of, like, our good life project, living, creating, right towards the end, which is a good life is not a place at which you arise. It's a lens through what you see and create your world, you know? And so many of us are like, When I get there, then I'm going to be living that good life. It's like when I get this, I'm going to be living that good life. I just need this much money in the bank or this house or this relationship or this power job. And then they get there and they're like, you know, just a little bit more. That's the answer. There's actually really fascinating research around this that's been done where people, you know, they'll ask, well, how much do you need to feel like, you know, like you're you're good in life, you know? And they say, well, a million dollars or whatever. And then they'll track people like, you.

Know, like when they actually hit that number.

And then they're not good.

Never.

Literally never. You know, then the amount is always a little bit further down the road. Why is that? It's, I think it's just the way that we're wired. We're const, we're wired for more. You know, we're wired for discontent to a certain extent. And it's really interesting. I think part of it is just societally. We're taught that these particular things matter. There's a set of metrics that tell you when you've made it, when you're actually living that good life. And it's kind of predefined by culture. So what's interesting is that if you actually look at the American culture or Western culture in general, it's pretty universal. It's a certain amount of money, it's a job that makes a certain amount of money, it has a certain amount of prestige, a certain amount of cars in the garage, a house of a certain size or an apartment of a certain size. It's all these standardized things which basically are checkpoints that say, okay, now you're living that good life. But when you actually leave Western culture, you go into more Eastern based cultures, the metrics change pretty profoundly. Even Western culture that's European versus American, the emphasis on family, family community, in Europe or South America, Central America, totally different. You know, it's so much less about what we have or how much we're making. I mean, if you go to Ireland and you're like, the first question out of your mouth is, so what do you do for a living? People are like, what's wrong with you? Right. You know, it's like they care about like, who are you as a human? They can't, they're actually more interested in like, you know, who is your family? And so there's, there's just become this really strong emphasis on what you have as the metric for living a good life in the US. and even in Western countries where it's not the US base, it shifts pretty quickly to how deep are your relationships? How much time do you spend with people that you love that you can't get enough of? Then when you go even farther east, it's how much stillness do you have in your life? You know, it's how at peace are you? You know, do you lay your head down at the end of the day feeling like you've done meaningful work, you've been of service, and you're at peace? You know, so if we actually started to exalt those, as metrics that really define a life well lived. Man, so many of us would then start to realize, oh, I could actually have that right now.

Yeah, I don't need to chase something.

Yeah, yeah. Like, I could be living this now. It's just a matter of, like, I want to wear a different lens, you know, now. And it. It relieves so much pain because we don't have to feel like we're just. This is all about suffering until I go, make it. It's like, no, you know, like. maybe circumstances aren't exactly as I need them to be now, but there's a whole lot of good right now too. And if I shift the metrics of what it means to actually be living that awesome life, there's so much which I can either just see right here now that I don't see or create in the moment. You know, because I have control over my choice. Like I can move from being massively reactive and maniacally busy doing things that are generally not all that meaningful to me and set by somebody else's agenda. So I rest my head on my pillow at the end of the day being frazzled, stressed, no peace at all, wiped out. And when you ask me how my day was, I'll tell you busy and you'll ask, what did you do that mattered? And you'd be like, I really don't know. Versus saying, okay, I'm going to wake up in the morning and the first thing I'm going to do is just spend a few minutes illness to just like, you know, get into myself and then ask myself, all right, what's the single most meaningful thing that I, the one single most meaningful thing that I could do today? You're like, let me do that. Everything, anything else that happens beyond that, awesome.

Bonus.

Bonus.

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah. Yeah.

So check as many boxes as you want after that, you know, and ask, you know, and you wake up in the morning and this is like a morning bucket check, right? Really quick scan. how full is my vitality bucket today? Zero to 10? It's about a seven. How full is my connection bucket today? It's an eight. I feel like I'm doing really good. I'm in loving relationships. I've been talking to my friends and hanging out with them. How full is my contribution bucket? I don't feel like I've been doing stuff that's really mattering to me or my strengths, I just don't feel like I'm really leveraging myself all that fully. It's kind of low. I'm probably going to say, okay, so today I want focus on doing a little something to fill that contribution bucket. I want to really figure out, okay, what can I do today that's really going to make me feel like I'm standing in my strengths? You know, and you just like, you don't have to make the whole day monogamously about this. Just like, what's one little action I can take that'll fill that bucket a little bit? And like, you can rest your head at the pillow, you know, on your pillow at the end of the day saying, yeah, like, okay, A, I chose instead of just responding to other people's agendas. Right away it's a win. There's something I call reactive life syndrome, which is basically we go through life, you're being dominated by other people's agendas and being maniacally busy with stuff that doesn't matter to us. The minute you choose, then that goes out the window because you move from being reactive to intentional. That's where life really starts to light up.

Where do you think our suffering comes from?

Life.

I think so much of it comes from expectations. Expectations about what we should have, who we should be, what life is supposed to be like. I think part of it is also, so part of it is expectations that have us chasing things that we think really matter, that don't. So part of it is that part of it is that we are also, most of us are softwired to seek security slash, which also just another word for certainty. So there's only one thing in life that I am absolutely certain about and that is that we can never have certainty. So there's literally no conceivable way. There's nothing that we can do today or for the rest of our lives to lock down a certain future, a certain minute, a certain moment. 9/11 for me was a huge wake-up call. So by definition, if we invest the vast majority of our waking hours in trying to pursue something that's impossible to attain for our entire lives, that's suffering. Rather than saying, listen, I don't know what the future holds, I'm going to lock it down as much as I can. You know, I want to have a vision. I want to have some money in the bank so my family's taken care of, you know, like yes. But fundamentally, I'm also going to acknowledge the fact that to a large extent, it's unlock downable. I'm going to work really hard to do great work and do good things in the world. But at the same time, I know.

At the end of the day, life's uncertain. Yeah, I think I learned that early on when I was 23 or 24, you know, I had a dream to play in the NFL and I got injured. And I was like, my whole life.

Was changed because there was no other option.

This is like, this is happening. I'm gonna make it happen. But when I wasn't open to, okay, well, things change or things are uncertain or things, you know, maybe there's a different path for me. Like, I wasn't even open to it. And so there was, like, this suffering and this pain and depression for a year and a half, two years, because I was just like, what do I do now?

Yeah.

What?

So I'm curious.

What.

Yes. It's interesting. We've talked about this, right? Probably a bunch of times. I don't think I've ever asked you, like, What snapped you out of it? What took you from a place of laying on your sister's couch to back to a place of curiosity and possibility?

I think my dad had gone through a really bad accident at the same time I had trauma. He was in a coma for a few months. He's still alive, but he hasn't been able to fully recover to the dad that I knew emotionally, spiritually. He's just had a head trauma and it's, you know, so it's been hard for him to get back. And I remember taking care of him. We like had to teach him how to write and how to talk again and how to just do normal functional things, remember certain things. And I remember being like, wow, okay, like I don't have my dad to like just have my back or to like go to mentor me to kind of lean back on. He was always like my safety net.

Yeah.

He was always like, go live your dream and then come work for me. You know, go do your thing and then when you're ready, when you're done with that, like I've got a spot for you type of thing. So I never had to like figure it out on my own. He was always there to support me. And after a couple years, I'm on my sister's couch, I was like, oh, my dad's not gonna be able to support me. I'm not gonna be able to like have him anymore as a safety net. I was like, while I can either continue living like this and feel like a worthless piece of crap on my sister's couch, adding no value to the world, or I can figure out what I'm gonna do the rest of my life. And that's when I started taking on these challenges. I was like, okay, well, I want to make an impact. I need to learn how to speak and communicate. Because I was just a big dumb jock, you know? I mean, I had a big heart and I could connect with people, but I didn't know how to deliver and package my message in a way that people were able to receive it. And so I started doing public speaking and then learning about online marketing because I was like, I just need to make money. And I was just like, okay, I'm discovery mode now. and I'm gonna try everything. And I think that's what it was. I just made a decision after a couple years. I was like, okay, I'm gonna be something. I'm gonna make something of my life. I'm gonna make an impact. I'm gonna make a difference. I'm gonna show people that I matter and do something with my life. So that's just time and awareness and awakening.

Yeah, and I think that's what happens with so many people too. It's sort of like you're Like you're wallowing and wallowing and wallowing and like you hit a point where you just.

Like look Sick and tired of being.

Sick and tired, right?

It's like if I don't make a different choice now this is gonna be my life and I'm not liking the trajectory that this is taken it's sort of like this is this is one of the things that made me leave the law like way back in the day It's like I was I was coming up on 30 years old, you know, and I'm like if I don't do this now It's gonna be another 20 years. Yeah, before I made this decision and even though I wasn't comfortable doing it.

Because you're making good money, you've got security.

I had the job that everybody wanted. And I was like, but if I don't do this now, it's going to be a couple of decades before I'm going to be back in this place where I'm going to be willing to actually extract myself from the pain that I'm feeling now. I'm always so curious what those inciting incidents are for people.

I think I also had nothing to lose. I didn't have a job. I didn't have a family. I didn't have these things. Let me just go see what I can create since I'm already at the bottom, you know? Yeah, it was interesting. It was definitely an interesting time. We gotta build momentum, you know? It's like we had nothing and I just had to build momentum. It takes a while.

So here I'm sorry, I'm like I'm taking over the interview. But I'm really curious because we've never talked about this. So part of the reason I wrote this, like when it really comes down to it, is because I would love for this book to go out into the world and be the inciting incident that inspires somebody to say, Wait, let me think about things differently. Maybe this is a moment where I don't have to blow things up. I can actually start. I'm curious with School of Greatness when you wrote the book, was that in your mind at all too as one of the reasons for the book?

To be like... To sort of be.

This thing that kind of like... Yeah, catalyze somebody.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

I mean when I read four hour work week. That was like the catalyst for me to start working and everything I was doing eight years ago. And I was like, I want to create a piece of work that opens people up to possibilities.

Yeah.

To what's possible in their life until I start moving forward towards that life that they want. And absolutely. So that's great. I mean, I like also you have a thing about nature in here, too.

Yeah.

Right.

I mean, you have all these different challenges, you know, a 30-day challenge here about how to, you know, fill up your buckets, which I think is extremely important because playing games, having challenges, having a project, whatever you want to call it, is something I think we should always be doing. And I think you give some great examples of how to take it on so we don't have to think of our own challenge.

And that was the whole idea. I was like, you know, I could, I'm a writer fundamentally. So I love, I just the craft of writing. I love, I love actually like obsessing over sentences and stuff like that. So I'm a weirdo like that. But Fundamentally also, I want to write something that was, you know, I'm in the middle of my life. I have my days are full, you know, and I have a lot of friends that are in the same position. And I want to create something that was actionable for somebody that already had a full life and where they could just, like they could, there was something to do every day where they could just flip it open. I mean, literally you can read this not linearly. You can pick a chapter, it's a day, say like, this is something I'm gonna do today. It's short, it's sweet, but it makes a difference. A lot of the stuff is also all scientifically validated. There's research behind it. But you brought up the tree thing, which is something that I've known intuitively for life, is that my reset is nature. It's either the woods or the beach. For me, I grew up, the beach was the end of my road, so the water for me is really where I touch stone. But also, there's something about being in nature, especially walking in the woods, which is just profoundly calming. It's a major reset for me. So I got really curious. It turns out there's a ton of research on how nature literally changes our physiology and our mindset and the chemicals that are coursing through us. There's a Japanese word, Shinrin-yoku, which translates to forest bathing. And there are Shinrin-yoku designated forests in Japan. where they literally designated where you can go into them and just walking in these forests, it will literally change your life. But not all of us have forests, right? So the research also shows that simply being in an office or being at home during the day and being in a setting where you have a plant in view that you can see versus having no greenery at all, even that tiny thing makes a really big difference.

Interesting.

Yeah.

So have plants or... It's crazy.

Something in your office or in your house. So it's like as simple as you go out for a walk where you're around a whole bunch of green, but even if you can in your home or work setting, put something green in it and it actually makes a difference.

Like little things. I believe that. I mean, just imagine yourself in a box all day with no life in there. It's hard to feel alive, I guess, when you're in a box constantly without life. But when you put life in there.

Then Yeah, you know, you're connected in a different way. Yeah, I mean there's studies done on hospital patients. Ones where you're in a room where you can't see out the window with trees and others where there's actually a window with trees. The recovery rates are faster than the experience less pain and they're discharged more quickly from the hospital. That's crazy.

When you have a window where you can see like nature outside. That's crazy. It's amazing. I think it's all, I mean, it seems, I mean it seems true because it's like if you can see possibility of growth and you can see like, Yeah, something that's alive. You probably feel more inspired to get out. I don't know. But as opposed to just seeing a brick wall in New York City, you know, across the street from your window or something.

Right. Whatever it is, it just it makes a difference. Yeah, that's all I know.

Amazing. Amazing. What's missing in your life right now?

Space. Two things. Space, but that's a deliberate choice right now. And working with my hands. So for me, whenever you're bringing something to life, which is a big project you worked on for years, things get compressed and your days get busy. And I hate that word busy, but the saving grace for me, and I think it's really important for anybody, is that it's okay to fill your day with a lot of stuff, but do it deliberately. Don't just take it by default. Don't let other people stuff pile into your day to fill it up. fill your day with stuff that you've chosen matters to you. So right now, there's not a ton of space in my days because I'm bringing something that I care deeply about to the world so they're filled as I bring it out there. But I'm choosing, so I'm choosing what I'm going to do, I'm choosing what matters, why it matters, and I'm choosing to be in this place for a certain window of time where I know I'll then step back out of it. And at the same time, I still have a daily practice, which keeps me, my mindset still and allows me to still optimize and fill my vitality bucket. And if that starts to get messed up, I'll pull back. The other thing is working with my hands. There's something like that. I don't know if you feel this way too, but I grew up as a kid working with my hands and I was an artist also. And then I built houses in the summers during college. There's something about creating where you're physically using your hands to make something. And at the end of it, you can step back and just like see it and touch it and feel it and be like, I made that.

That's cool.

And I haven't been, I've been creating a lot, but in the digital space over the last couple of years.

Not the same.

And I'm feeling this itch to actually dive in and just work with my hands more.

What would you make?

A guitar. I've been talking about this for years. And so part of it is like that's gonna be actually kind of like probably one of my rewards.

After the book comes out.

Yeah, exactly. It's to learn to actually do that?

You haven't done it before?

I haven't. You can go to these programs, basically. Classes, schools, dive into that. I've had friends do that too, yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Go for like a week or two and you make a guitar, right? Yeah, exactly. But even just little things like working with my hands, like I'll start, like I'll start painting a little bit again and just to feel like I'm making.

Stuff with my hands. I'm making art, yeah. That's cool. Yeah, I feel like I don't have that itch when I have the itch to create art through sports.

Yeah, yeah.

To play, to use my hands to throw a ball, to catch to like touch people, like be messy in sports and playing basketball. It's like, that's my itch. Yeah. But maybe because I'm just not that talented at the artist stuff yet. It's not even that.

It's that that is your artist. Right, right. Your canvas is athletics, it's sports, it's movement.

For me, it's beautiful.

Yeah.

It's, you know, I feel like... I've seen you, I've seen like footage of you in various different settings.

I'm like, that is mastery.

That is artist.

Yeah, yeah.

So, what are you grateful for in your life?

My family. Like, I mean, I'm grateful for so much, my God. There's like almost nothing that I could say I'm not grateful for. But the thing that comes to me first and foremost, my family. I mean, you know, my wife is just one of the most amazing people on the planet and my kid is, you know, an awesome human being who's growing into a really just a, you know, a good person.

Yeah.

Who cares about the world. And my wife is also my business partner too. So we literally work together and live together and breathe together 24/7. And we're married almost 20 years now.

How do you navigate that when you're married and working together?

It's so funny, people are like, you guys should do some sort of program or workshop on building a life and building a business together. And we're like, honestly, we don't know how it works. It just does. We have different skills. I think a big part of it is we're really fortunate in over a period of a long time together, we've grown as individuals in a way where we're still deeply complimentary to each other. And sometimes honoring your own personal path has people growing away from the way that they need to be to stay together. And that's a tough thing, but it's also an okay thing.

Wait, say that again. Honoring your own personal path, what?

I think so it's really important to honor your own personal growth, to grow into the person that you know, like to become fully expressed as who you are as an individual in the world. And when we're in relationship with other people, whether it's a partner or friends or even business partners, if each one of us are doing what we need to do to become who we need to be individually, we change, we evolve. And over a period of years or decades, sometimes you change and evolve in a way where you're still deeply connected and complementary, and the relationship still is profoundly beautiful. You know, sometimes you evolve in a way individually where you're not as complementary anymore. You know, it doesn't mesh nearly as well anymore. Maybe it's a business partner. It's time to, you know, grow apart. Maybe it's a partner in life. And so part of, you know, a part of it, I think, is work. A part of it is all the classic stuff for relationships. Part of it is also, you know, honoring who we need to become individually. and there's a certain amount of just luck in that still being the person who's still deeply complimentary and we're blessed in that we've both grown individually in a lot of ways in a way where we're both just so profoundly still in love with each other and love working together.

That's amazing.

You know, and co-creating stuff together and building community and we also just on a practical level from a business standpoint, we do different things.

Yeah.

And we have different MOs and we're good at different things.

It works.

It works. It's not for everybody.

Yeah.

That's crazy.

Yeah.

I mean, we're growing so much. I feel like so many people are growing apart in relationships as well.

Right.

Marriages, it's like more and more divorce. Do you think it's because people are growing into who they truly are more and more, or do you think it's more of a cop out or they're just not working enough?

Yeah.

I don't know if I have an answer to that.

Yeah.

Because everyone's different, huh?

Yeah, although here's a really interesting bit of data and I haven't validated this, but I've sort of actually been told it recently, is that arranged marriages actually have a higher success rate than what I would call sort of like a natural love-based marriage. And I don't, there may be all sorts of societal constructs that make that not healthy or healthier. I don't really know, but it's kind of like that when I heard that it stopped me. I was like, huh, what's really going on there? But, yeah, I don't, I don't have, I don't have an answer to that.

But, I just, it's crazy this life.

Knock on wood every day.

Consider myself blessed. That's great. Yeah, that's great. Congrats on that. Um, this is called the three truths, three truths question. Cool. So, it's your last day many years from now. All your work has been erased from time. Yeah. and you have a piece of paper and a pen to write down three things you know to be true about everything you've created in your life that you would then pass on to your family, friends, and the world. What would be your three truths?

Lead with love, meaning matters, and embrace the unknown.

I like those. They're solid. Two final questions, but before I do, I want to make sure everyone Before I ask, I want to make sure everyone gets the book How to Live a Good Life by Jonathan Fields, Soulful Stories, Surprising Science and Practical Wisdom. Make sure to pick it up right now. And on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, there'll also be a link on the show notes on how to get this. So go pick up a copy and let Jonathan know what you think. Before I ask the final question, I want to acknowledge you for a moment, Jonathan, for your incredible your friendship to me and your incredible grace. I look at you as such an incredible, as a graceful human being.

Thank you.

And that grace for me is like, is like guidance. You're like this guiding individual human being that really leads with soul. And for me, it's something that I really appreciate because, you know, you helped me with so many things. And when I was going through a lot of discovery myself, I turn to you for guidance and grace. So, I want to acknowledge you for what you've created in the world and how you've shown up for me to be willing to, you know, bare my soul to you and talk about things that happened to me and really reveal it on the podcast a couple of years ago. And, you know, that episode that we did together brought so much healing for not only me but so many people in the world. I just want to acknowledge you for your continual showing up, giving, leading with love and being so graceful.

Thank you, man. I appreciate that.

Of course, yeah. And the final question is, what's your definition of greatness?

Yeah, it's like it's probably evolving for me. Doing the work. to really understand who you are, what matters to you in the world.

And.

How you need to express yourself. And then aligning the actions, aligning the way that you live every day with the truth of who you are in a way where you close the gap between that person and the person you bring to the world.

Shout out to the fields. Thanks, man.

Yeah, appreciate it, bro.

When you show you are passionate about something, people are attracted to energy that.

Is passionate, that is grateful, that is.

Fun, that is loving, that is expressive, that is creative, that is expansive. They're not attracted to people who are closed off and guarded.