Burnout Is a Sign You're Doing the Wrong Work | Jonathan Fields

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Welcome back, everyone, to School of Greatness podcast. Very excited about our guest, my friend Jonathan Fields.

In the house.

Pumped to see you, man.

You too.

Appreciate you. Excited to have you back on. And this is all about asking ourselves and answering, what should I do with my life? And I think, uh, that's, that's what, you know, what we're here to do is to figure out what should I be doing with my life and what should I be doing with my life right now, especially specifically after everything that's happened in the world in the last couple of years. And 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. You know, 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 have 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, like that, that is one stat. There are tons of other stats.

Right.

Like 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.

Hmm.

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, like, to breathe. And so I think that's part of it. I think, and I think that's what a lot of people are pointing to. They're like, 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.

Okay.

You know, 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.

Wow.

Right? 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 the 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.

Right.

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 and no understanding, right? But also, we're— the fact that I'm doing these things that really don't nourish me, um, 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 for— I signed a 6-year lease for a floor in a building in Hell's Kitchen, New York, to open what I hoped would become sort of like, you know, one of the premier yoga studios in the city the day before 9/11.

Oh, the day before.

Yeah, that's right. The day before 9/11. You know, I was married. I had a 3-month-old baby, a new home, lived in the city. You know, 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 longtime New Yorker knew people in the towers. And then the next thing was, you know, what am I doing here?

But was it, was there a point in your career as a lawyer before then where you were feeling burnout or there was a lack of integration of alignment in what you meant to do and your skillset? 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 2 decades ago. I was working as a lawyer in a very past life. You know that.

Yeah.

And I was working insane hours, just like 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. I ended up— basically, my immune system fell apart. A large infection kind of exploded in the center of my body, eating a hole through my intestine from the outside in, sending me into emergency surgery.

Wow.

So burnout.

When was this?

Yeah.

You felt burnout.

Yeah. I mean, literally, like, my body was eating a hole through me 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. 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. 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, I want 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?

Yeah.

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.

Wow.

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 I was saying—

Don't play one anywhere.

As an intuitive spiritual human.

So let me talk to you about my experience. Personally, yeah, when 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. 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 or whatever, yeah.

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, how does it show up for you? Because you've been through a lot.

Yeah, it shows up— I feel it in my chest. I feel it in my throat. Like, I feel like something's strangling me depending if— You know, that's usually like intimate relationships in the past where I feel like, okay, I felt 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 years when I felt like things were unaligned.

Hmm.

And literally the moments that I, 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, what 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— like, my body was screaming at me Yeah. Course correct.

Well, I mean, it's so interesting that you bring it up, right? Because I know we've both spent a lot of time seeing like a lot of different types of like medical specialists, wellness specialists, done every test you could do on the planet. And it's fascinating to me that like 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. Tell me about this.

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 acknowledgement of 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.

Yeah, sure.

She talked about this when she was on, I think, 7 or 8 medications and But she's a doctor treating people, but she was sick. And it's like, I think it was something with like her relationship or her marriage was out of— you know, wasn't working. And once she addressed the roots 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 it's something like that. And I think it's, um, you know, this, this idea of burnout or the body, you know, getting inflammation or feeling pain. Are signs. What's the analogy of like the frog that goes into like water and then it's like it starts to boil?

If you— the story that I've heard is like if you slowly turn up the heat, slowly, 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, it's jumping 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 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 who have made these profound changes in life and went through— literally, they were brought to their knees and they had nothing on so many 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, 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.

Yeah, I know.

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 Um, process of awakening. Um, but it's hard.

Yeah, it's hard. And I've, 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, right? Things are just good.

What's underneath that?

I would rather take things are really bad than things are good, because I meet so many people that are like, you know what, Lewis, I've got a good life. Like, I've got— I'm married, I've got like my kids, I've got this this job. It's a good— it's a good job. It pays me, like, you know, I've got a 6-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— 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, you know, 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 your, your whole thing's about the Good Life, uh, Project— but it's like when things are, when things are good and you're not driven to do 100% of what you're supposed to do, you know, 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, it's scary for me. I know, and like, we've had this debate over years.

It's like, can't you just be satisfied with where you're at?

You'd be like, driven to go more. 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, like, 'cause what you just described to me is actually not a good life or the good life.

Right.

To me, that's the complacent life of sort of like baseline getting by, right? But what I'm interested in is underneath that, whether we use the word great or good, like underneath what I'm looking at are the qualities of the life, right?

Absolutely.

Do I have a strong sense of meaningfulness?

Yeah, fulfillment.

Right.

You know, 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, you know, on a personal level, on a potential level.

Yes.

And I'm like, 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 we're talking, you're talking about greatness and I'm talking about good, we're actually talking about the same underlying qualities.

Yeah, 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.

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

Really?

Yeah, yeah, 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 built all this strong.

This is when the shoe hits the road.

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, 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 no longer supporting or investing in it.

Right.

Not realizing that it's actually that contraction and everything starting to go away is a direct result.

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How do we not sabotage when we are finally aligned and we set up, like, do 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— how do we not sabotage ourselves when everything is going really, really good?

Yeah, I have no idea.

How do we not fall back into old patterns?

Yeah, you know, I think it's interesting, you know, um, a lot of it has to do with— I think it's a blend of Wisdom. So like personal learning, a commitment to growth, right? Inner practices.

Yes.

You know, whether— 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.

What does that mean?

The circumstances in your life. And that might include relationships. That might include your physical environment. That might include, you know, like creating all sorts of default states that help you do the thing that you know you, quote, 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.

Yeah.

Katy 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. You know, there's, 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 wanna 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, or take the actions that we wanna 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?

Yeah.

Is it through analyzing it? Is it through action?

Do you know, I'm gonna give you like an answer you probably didn't expect, because I looked at like 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 She's great.

Right?

I mean, it's like, what is it, 4 or 5 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. And 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. You know, 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. You know, 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.

Hmm.

You know, so, so that as I move into my day, things may go south. You know, there, there may be things that drop into like my day that I don't want to happen, that I didn't see coming, that really just knocked 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— a lot of 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're not— you don't have meaningful work. So what would you say are kind of the key factors to identifying meaningful work for yourself?

Yeah, you know, um, it's funny because I think a lot of people look at work and like you said, it's all about taking care of like the basic stuff. And it is, that all matters, right? We got to 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. So 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 to.

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

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 expressed 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 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. Um, and, and the answer is because those things aren't actually the things that matter in life.

Mm-hmm.

They aren't the things that make you feel good, that they're not They're— they, they alone will not give you the feeling that you're looking for. There's got to be something deeper. Whether, 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, like, 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, prestige to try to feel something, but then it's never enough.

Yeah, I think that's a big part of it. You know, we're in this moment now where— so everyone's heard the term midlife crisis, right? The classic, you know, like you hit your 40s and all of a sudden you want to blow everything up and like regain your hair and like lose weight and like But, you know, and I think the thing about an existential crisis— an existential crisis is not a crisis of money, it's not a crisis of power, it's not a crisis of fame, it's not a crisis of— what it is a crisis of is meaning. You're questioning the meaning of your existence, like, because you show up at a certain point in your life and something inside of you says, I don't matter, and the thing that I wake up in the morning doing that consumes A third of my life.

Doesn't matter.

Most of my waking hours. Doesn't matter to me, and it doesn't 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. You know, so what we're seeing now—

Where people just blow up their lives. I can't believe the divorce. I'm going after this. I'm changing this.

Right. work for 20 years and then hit that point where they're kind of like, all right, it's just all built up. 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 existential change. The world has served this up at scale to everyone. So a lot of folks have looked at generations and sort of looked at their expectations for work. Yeah, I'm Gen X. So like, we're the disaffected generation in theory. We expected nothing. And it's just like, put your head down and do the work. 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?

Yeah, I'm like an old millennial, I think.

Yeah.

Right.

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.

Since your time.

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're gone really fast. Corporations have been grappling with this in a way that— and they haven't figured out how to actually deliver this.

Mm-hmm.

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 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 the coin, it's like, okay, well, company culture is down and there's not the connection, the 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 2 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.

Right. And like we'd already seen a blurring of that over the last decade because of connectivity and technology.

Yeah.

You know, the expectation that you're always gonna be on 7 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 like 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. Doesn't exist. What does that mean? It's not a natural phenomenon. Like disruption and possibility are two sides of the exact same coin. So if there's a massive disruption, right, you may be reeling because you have personally been disrupted. An organization, an industry may be reeling because all the assumptions that they 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.

Mm-hmm.

So the question becomes, when we're talking about like an individual at work, is Yeah. Nobody saw— well, you can't say nobody saw 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, we, you know, 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?

Right.

We wanted 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 wouldn't do anything remote.

You weren't doing Skype or whatever.

Right. I could not conceive—

You were doing all video and everything.

Right, right. I could not conceive of being able to have the quality of conversations, the safety, intimacy, and trust, you know, in a virtual space. I was just like, I can't do it. And if I have to do that, like, I'll do something else. So for 6 years, we produced conversations in person in the studio in New York. 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 it? Where's the evidence against it? 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 then 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 together. But what we do have is the safety and trust of somebody being in their own home.

And feeling comfortable in their own space.

Right, which is different.

Not in their office and not in—

yeah. Right, 'cause 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 tremendous conversations. Would I love to get back into the studio soon? And do I hope we'll do more of this as we— of course.

Yeah.

Then I widen the lens out and 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 gonna wanna talk to, similar reason to why you're in LA, everyone's gonna be in one of these 2 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 New York, living in New York City for 30 years, pulling up our roots, you know. And, and literally, like, 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, right? Living in Boulder, Colorado.

Yeah.

You know, um, like, we're pulled out entirely of New York, but we're also sort of like experimenting with different locations, you know. And I'm, 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, 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.

Yeah.

And sometimes support and help, mental health, like, you know, 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? That was a really long kind of rant.

It's all good.

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So if we go back to the question, what should I be doing with my life right now?

Yeah.

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, um, you know, even in before times, what is really— how do we find and do work that nourishes us, that makes us come alive? Um, and when I say come alive, I'm talking about those things that I already talked about. Like, for me, it's like 5 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.

Yeah.

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 5 of those things weaving in and out of the way that we experience work. And for me, you know, I, 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, um, that we all have, um, 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.

Yeah.

Once I started to feel this in me, I was like, oh, I notice 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. You know, like, so when I invest myself in a particular way, I feel this way. feel alive. And then I started wondering, is this just me or is this everybody? And then are there a mappable set of, you know, imprints? Um, because if there are and we can identify them and then somehow create ideas and tools that would let people understand what that is for you relatively easily, Right. A whole lot of angst would go away. And fundamentally, if, you know, like, I want to make things that move You know, the needle in people's lives. You know, that's what I wanna do. And that has literally been my devotion for years now is sort of like identifying those and then helping people figure out like, what is that thing? So.

And I took this, you have this book called Sparked: 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 kind of, it tells you your spark type.

Yeah.

How many sparks do I have?

9? So there are 10. 10 spark types. 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, like, can be expressed in a really healthy way and also a really neurotic way.

Yeah.

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.

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 sparketypes, you basically break down to a profile. And there are 3 things that are part of that profile. So we can talk about, like, yours if you want, right?

Yes, great.

And first I'll tell you what the 3 elements are, then let's talk about what yours is because I think it's really fascinating. So there's what I call the primary sparketype. 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 work.

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 thing you get paid for. Or it could be just like—

It could be being a parent.

Gotcha.

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 the feeling that it gives you. You know, it's really nice when you can make it the thing that you wake up in the morning, spend 8 to 10 hours a day and get paid for it. That's awesome when 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 sparkotype is your strongest impulse. Then we have what we— what I call the shadow, and that's not like the dark side, right? I call it the shadow because it lives in the shadow of the primary.

Okay.

And you can look at that one of two ways, right? You can either say, well, secondary, it's like the runner-up But what 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, right? 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-sparkly type.

So what you don't like, what you're not meant to do. 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 do everything you you can do to not have to do this. When you do it, you know, 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, you know. 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.

Right.

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, right? 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, like, you— there's a more forgiving emotion wrapped around it. So those are the 3 parts of of any given person's Sparketype 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, right? And that shows up in a couple of different ways. For some people, it shows up in this just like broad interest in everything. You wake up in the morning and you just want to dive into fascinations, topics of interest, people. Like you'll talk to everyone 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.

It's curious.

You just want to know it and you have no idea.

Yeah.

You know, like everybody that you bump into, you just want to know.

Yeah.

Right? It also shows up in sometimes really, really specific ways. We talked about this recently, right? Because we go back a long time. And when I first met you, you know, you're not off your sister's couch for that long.

Right, yeah.

Right? And 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 gonna look at this thing called LinkedIn at the time, and I'm going to learn everything on the planet about it. I'm gonna know more about this platform than anyone, and I'm gonna just dive into it, right? And you became absolutely possessed.

Yes.

With being like the one person who knew more than anything about the platform. 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 3 months, maybe it was a year, maybe, you know, I did that with public speaking, with salsa dancing, with, you know, I'm in Spanish lessons now. It's like all these different things, podcasting. It's like whatever. It's just like obsessing for a period of time to learn.

And what's interesting is for a lot of mavens, 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 a 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, discover new things and like go deep into that sort of knowledge acquisition rabbit hole.

Right.

So that's the primary reason. That's not the whole thing. Right.

So there is this sense of like, okay, because you have all these— these questions are very interesting that are in the assessment.

Yeah.

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 there's, there's all these different types of questions.

Yeah.

Uh, so that's the primary, the Maven, for me. The shadow is the Maker, right? What is the Maker?

So, so the Maker for me is, is my primary. That is 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 wanna learn a skill and be able to apply it. I have an idea, I wanna launch a book or a podcast. So what you've also said is like they might be complementary, like one-two and kind of like—

Yeah, and they could kind of be like fairly close impulses. And they often work, they kind of like tag team with each other. 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 8 or 9 years old where, you know, like 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.

Right.

You know, 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. But the fundamental energy is idea to something.

Right.

Okay.

So that's my secondary type.

So that's like the high end of like— that's the like the strong impulser for you.

Right, right.

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

The anti-sparky type is the essentialist.

Right. Okay. So you and I share an anti-sparky 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. So I'm like, I make stuff and then I figure out complex things, but it's almost always in service of being better at the creation process. Yeah. Like, I don't just go down a rabbit hole because there's a really cool complex thing that I just want to like solve this huge big burning question. An actual scientist spark archetype would be driven by that. I do it, 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-spark archetype, right? That's your weakest impulse or the thing that empties you the most, takes the greatest amount of recovery.

Drains you.

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. Taking complex datasets, 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 a ton of moving pieces. I can't deal with it though. We have, we have like for our show, we have, we have around 40 episodes in production at any given time.

Wow.

I can't, like, I have, when I look at, at that, I just wanna 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 make it— 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.

Right.

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 new 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.

Yeah.

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 gonna 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.

Yeah.

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

You know, it's interesting because I've been asked a lot— we started doing a fair amount of work with this, with this body of work in organizations in the context of leadership and engagement and team dynamics. And I've been asked, like, is this a hiring tool? Like, should we use this to hire people? My answer is actually no.

Hmm.

Like, I don't think this or really any other of the mainstream assessments that are on the market for organizations right now are really well used that way. My take is it's actually, it's 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 gonna 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, reimagining 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.

Right.

So, you know, one person who I know, who I've spoken with, who runs 2 different companies, has described it to me as it's been a really powerful way to remove Friction within teams, within individuals' experience at work and organizations. It's just like, it's like the wheels are greased. Everything just works easier. There's less tension, there's less friction because 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 an optimization of team.

I think so. And I think—

Make sure you're aligned with what you're supposed to be doing.

Right. From an organizational standpoint, yes. And then just from an And then 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 gonna 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 sparketype.com.

Yeah, sparketype.com. Sparketype.com.

It's free.

People can take this assessment.

Yeah.

And that was sort of like one of my commitments is I wanted to make the core tool that we created 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 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.

Yeah.

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What about, what are the best ways you've learned how to maximize and multiply our time to being more effective, more efficient?

Yeah.

In our hobbies, our passions, our work. What's some 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. 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 I be eliminating?

Right. 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.

Yes.

In 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 is the best way to multiply your time.

Right. I've seen you do that over the years. You know, like you have a team. Like there are things that you're really good at and you love to do. I'm not doing all myself.

I'm trying to be perfect.

Right. And there are other people on your team where they're— that doesn't mean things don't need to get done.

Right.

But it doesn't necessarily mean like you should be the one doing them and then optimizing to do them better.

Yeah. even last week, uh, Matt on my team, I was like, what can I do to like eliminate more and more things and 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 this, 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 2 meetings every week. Like, 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. Like, 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 like more about organization and everything. And I'm like, that stresses me out, you know, the essentialist stresses me out.

So, but that's what we're talking about, right? So rather than saying like— rather than Matt saying, well, Lewis, let's take a whiteboard and let's map out everything that you're doing and figure out like 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, no.

Cut it out.

Let's just talk about what you shouldn't be doing at all.

Yeah.

You know, because that's the biggest optimizer. Uh-huh.

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 to fill it with some other busy work somehow.

Right.

So, well, I'm gonna check email or social media. I'm gonna be distracting myself. And 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 gonna goof around or have idea time as opposed to just checking social media or email.

100%.

And, 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, 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 you relax, maybe you're in nature.

Exactly. And I'm like literally unscheduled. Like I'm hanging out here, you know, and I've been in LA, in Santa Monica for a little bit now. And I'm realizing at a certain point that I'm 3 blocks from the beach. I'm a water kid. I grew up on the water. Water's the place where I touched stone. It's where I breathe. Everything exhales in me. And I'm realizing I'm like 3 days into a 10-day window here and I haven't seen the water yet.

Wow.

And I'm like, I have the ability to walk 3 blocks. 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 life. And I'm just literally filling in busywork that's stopping me from doing it. So I immediately reorganized what I was doing. And now I end every day, I just literally go down, I walk along like the ocean, I don't even go in it. And then I go and then I just sit and like while the sun is dropping behind the mountain, you know, like north of Santa Monica, I meditate.

It's beautiful.

And it's like, it's completely transformed me being here. Because I realized that matters to Absolutely.

Are you gonna move out here, you think? Be by the ocean, man. Santa Monica's calling your name, or like Newport Beach or Manhattan Beach or something.

Yeah.

Um, Sparked: Discover Your Unique Imprint for Work That Makes You Come Alive. Make sure you guys get the copy of this. Take the, uh, sparketype— sparketype.

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

sparketype.com. A lot of good stuff in here that'll explain all the different Sparketypes 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 4 of the 10 here, but there's 6 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 is.

And the more self-aware that we can become I'm 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 like window right now where there is a level of understanding and forbearance for change that has been opened because everybody's in it together. It's been normalized in a way that it's never been normalized in our history, in our living history right now. But that window's gonna close.

Hmm.

The window's gonna close. It may be a year from now, maybe 18 months from now, it may be 6 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 the sparkly type stuff, whether it's your relationships, whatever it is, whatever domain of your life you're examining 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 final questions for you.

Yep.

Before I, before I ask those questions, is there a specific link for the book website?

Everything is just at sparketype.com.

sparketype.com, the book.

Yep.

Good Life Project. Make sure you download the podcast.

And obviously the book is just on All over, you know, all this stuff everywhere. Yeah, everywhere.

sparktype.com. Okay, cool. Um, 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, 9 years ago. Yeah, gosh, man.

I know, it's amazing.

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

Yeah, we were We were all in, and I just felt— I 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, there's a combination of both. Yeah, maybe 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 final questions for you. This is called— I don't know if I asked you those last time, but it's called the 3 Truths.

Yeah.

So hypothetical scenario, it's your last day on earth, many years away. You've accomplished all your dreams, you've put the work, 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 3 lessons with the world. 3 final things that you would share to be of service to the world. What would be those 3 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 and 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 3 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.

Right.

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.

Yeah.

You know, and I struggle with it. You know, we've known each other for a long time. Like, you and I are kind of like— I will tell you, Lewis, I love you.

Right.

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 a— literally as a practice for that, 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. I want to do it.

That's good.

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 want to acknowledge you, Jonathan, for being an incredible friend for many years. 12 years, I think. 13 years, I think now. 13, 2008?

Yeah, something like that.

I think it was 2008.

You go back.

Fall of 2008, I believe. Maybe it was 2009, I can't remember. But I acknowledge you 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 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 acknowledge you for your incredible gift, my friend.

Thank you.

Yeah, of course.

Before you ask your final question. Yes. Can I acknowledge you?

Sure.

Because I'm gonna put you on the spot to be open to receiving 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, 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. You know, I know your essence, and I have for a lot of years. And I've seen behind the scenes I've seen you struggle.

Yeah.

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? It's 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 devotion 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.

Mm-hmm.

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.

Yeah.

And we have no idea how to unlock it. And to me, greatness is— it's 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's it feel? Appreciate you, brother. Love you too, brother.

My friend, I hope you're enjoying this episode right now because we are on a mission to impact 100 million lives every single week. And every follow here on this podcast helps us reach more people. Make sure to hit the follow at the top of this show's page right now. It's the single biggest thing that you can do to support the show and the impact of us reaching you every single time we have new episodes. I appreciate you, and I can't wait to see you in the next episode. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's episode with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me personally, as well as ad-free listening, then make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Share this with a friend on social media and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts as well. Let me know what you enjoyed about this episode in that review. I really love hearing feedback from you and it helps us figure out how we can support and serve you moving forward. And I wanna remind you of no one has told you lately that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.

At Edward Jones, we believe rich isn't about having life all figured out. It's opening yourself to all the possibilities. That's why your dedicated financial advisor Advisor provides long-term planning built around you, meeting you where you are and helping you get closer to where you want to be. So no matter where you're starting from, you can move forward with confidence. The key to being rich is knowing what counts. Let's find your rich. Edward Jones, member SIPC.

Hey, Fidelity, how can I remember to invest every month?

With the Fidelity app, you can choose a schedule and set up recurring investments in stocks and ETFs Oh, that sounds easier than I thought. You got this.

Yeah, I do.

Now, where did I put my keys? You will find them where you left them.

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