Dealing with BURNOUT & Finding Your Spark w/Jonathan Fields EP 1162

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This is episode number 1162 with Jonathan Fields.

Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur and each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin. Welcome everyone.

My guest today is Jonathan Fields, a good friend of mine who is an award winning author, executive producer and host of one of the top ranked podcasts in the world, Good Life Project. He's currently the founder and CEO of Spark Endeavors and lead architect behind the sparkotypes, an online assessment system to help individuals and organizations identify, embrace and cultivate work that makes people come alive. And a lot of our conversation revolved around the ideas in his new book, Discover your unique imprint for work that makes you come alive. And in this episode we discuss why burning out is becoming more common in today's society and how to shift that narrative for yourself. The relationship between internal stress and physical pain, how to not self sabotage once your life is finally in alignment, how to find find out your own personal spark type, what to start doing with your life right now and so much more. And if you're enjoying this, make sure to share this with a few friends and make sure to take the online assessment as well. We'll talk more about that throughout this episode and as well, leave us a review sharing your part of this episode that you enjoyed the most. The biggest takeaway that you had from today over on Apple Podcast Review section. Okay, in just a moment, the one and only Jonathan Fields.

Welcome back everyone to School Greeners Podcast. Very excited about our guest, my friend Jonathan Fields in the house. Pumped to see you, man.

Me too.

Appreciate you. We were having a conversation before about how eight years ago we did one of my most important episodes ever, opening up about my sexual trauma and abuse. And that's not going to be what this episode's about. But always grateful for you for guiding me, leading me and facilitating that conversation in many conversations to help me continue to heal certain things from the past and spark things for what I'm supposed to do now and in the future. And 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 that's 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, 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 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 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 the actual physical.

Stuff, it's all happening. It's work and home, right?

So people used to have a much easier time creating boundaries. 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. They're like, basically it's the conflation 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 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. Put money on the table, a roof over our head, and it does all those things, and those things matter to everybody. But 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 the things you're doing, right? But also the fact that I'm doing These things that really don't nourish me are making it that much worse 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 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, you know, one of the premier yoga studios in the city. The day before 9 11, right?

Oh, the day before, yeah.

The day before 911 I was married, I had a three month old baby in a new home, lived in the city. And I woke up the next day and like everybody else, my first thought is, who did I know? Because everybody who was a longtime worker 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 in 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 like non stop, basically 100 hour weeks with very little break, 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, 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.

Burnout was this?

Yeah.

You felt burnout?

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 not left inside of me. And that was a huge wake up. 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, 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. 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. 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.

Don't play one anywhere as an intuitive, spiritual human. So let me talk to you about my experience personally. Yeah, I. 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. 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. 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? How does it show up for you? You can do a lot.

Yeah, it shows up. I feel it in my chest, I feel it in my throat. Like I feel like something's like strangling me. Depending if you know, that's usually like intimate relationships in the past where I feel like, okay, I felt trapped in my heart and my throat. Then I started to notice. Yeah, I started to have this eczema that came out at one point in the last couple 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 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 my life, what I felt like I'm supposed to be doing. And I wasn't doing the thing I was supposed to do. And that would mean it. 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, like, a lot of different types of medical specialists, wellness specialists, done every test you could 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.

How are you feeling? Are you stressed out? Are you sleeping well? 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, 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. Lissa Rankin. Yeah, sure, she talked about this, where she was on, I think, seven or eight 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 an. 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, you know, 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 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 and 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 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 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 have this theory that 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, they're like, you know what, Louis? 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 six figure salary. It's good, but, you know, there'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 growth in some area. It's almost like they're just, okay, it's good, 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 your whole thing's 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 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.

Yeah.

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, 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.

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. Right. But what I'm interested in is underneath that, whether we use the word great or good, underneath what I'm looking at the qualities of the life. Absolutely. Do I have a strong sense of meaningfulness? Yeah.

Fulfillment?

Do I have a sense of 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 on a personal level, on a potential level? And what I'm more focused on, I think this has been an evolution. Just in my personal thought, is, 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. 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. Because 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 a drop, right? Like, the relationship, the money, the job, the security, the health, all of this. Like, 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 gonna 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, 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, do we have the alignment with our mission or our career or business? We have the alignment with, like, wow, we're. 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?

I have no idea.

How do we not fall back in 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. 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 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 everyday, 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.

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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?

Gina I'm going to give you an answer you probably didn't expect because 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, 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. 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 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 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 kind of the key factors to identifying meaningful work for yourself?

Yeah, you know, 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. 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 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 got all the stuff that, like, you wanted to check off on your achievement box, and then you're Sitting there, 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 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 JLB 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, prestige to try to feel something, but then it's never enough.

Yeah, I think that's. That's a big part of it, you know? 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. Like regain your hair and, like, lose weight and. But 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 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 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. So what we're seeing now, where people.

Just blow up their lives, they come get into divorce. I'm going after this.

So a lot of people will 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. We're the disaffected generation. In theory, we expected nothing. And it's just like, put your head down and do the work. The generations behind me, I hate to use generational terms because it's like. But the interesting thing is that millennials, even though millennials is not one generation, it's actually a wide range of people. 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 since your 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've gone really fast. Corporations have been grappling with this in a way, 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 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 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 that connectivity and technology, the expectation that you're always going to be on seven days a week, and if 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 physically transition from one place to another, the problem gets exacerbated in a really big way. So all these things, we were already sort of 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. It's not a natural phenomenon. Like, disruption and possibility are two sides of this 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. 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 disrupted in a way that, like, we've never imagined was possible. And at the same time, like, 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? You know, there's a lot of other domains that they've had to do that in health, in 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 wouldn't do anything remote.

You were doing Skype or.

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, 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 six years, we produce 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. You know, and in New York, we were the very early things. So New York was 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. 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 to and everything we produce and what we're known for is these in person, intimate things in the studio. And I'm like, well, 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 crushed 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 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 again. 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.

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, everyone's going to be in one of these two cities at some point. Well, if we're actually producing remotely and our team is distributed around the world from the post production side on a personal level, what kind of freedom does that give us? Well, we thought about living somewhere else, 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, you know, 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 or I've been living in Boulder, Colorado. You know, like we're pulled out entirely of New York, but we're also sort of like experimenting with different locations. 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 who's in and out of college. So there's this kind of magical possibility when you start to actively look for it 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. Sometimes takes a huge amount of energy to pull out of the feeling of trauma 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? Those are really long kind of range.

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? 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 I already talked about. Like, for me, it's like five things. It's meaningful, it's excitement, enthusiasm, it's expressed potential, its 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, 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 notice when I always do, when I. When I do this type of thing, I feel this type of way. I'm not talking about a job or 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 people the needle in people's lives, that's what I want to do. And that has literally been my devotion for years now, is identifying those and then helping people figure out, what is that thing.

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 tells you your spark type. How many sparks have?

9. 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 ten impulses, these ten 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 can be expressed in a really healthy way and also a really neurotic way. And it was amazing to see a larger archetype form around these. 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, 25 million data points, and gotten some really powerful validation from what started as an observation years ago.

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And so for me and the spark shapes, you basically break down to a profile. And there are three things that are part of that profile. So we can talk about 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. 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 a job you get paid for, or it could be just.

Like 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 the 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 ten 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 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. Shadow of the primary.

Okay.

And you can look at that one of two ways. Right. You can either say secondary. Well, 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 sparkle type, the one you don't like.

This is the work where, like, don't do this.

If you have to do it, it's just, it's emptying. You'll do everything you can do to not have to do this. When you do it, you know, it takes the greatest amount of recovery. And 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, 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 sparkotide 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 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 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. Yeah. You know, like everybody that you bump into, you just want to know. Right. 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 know, you're not off your sister's couch for that. Right. And you had, you had kind of said, okay, so kind of done with being a pro athlete. 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. And you became absolutely possessed 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 three months, maybe it was a year, maybe, you know, I did that with, 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 assessing 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, to show that makes a really big difference. And at the same time, at the end of the day, for you, 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 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. 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. It's like there's. 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 my primary. That is my main impulse. And that's all about making ideas manifest.

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 what you've also said is, like, they might be complementary, like 1, 2.

And they could kind of be like fairly close impulses. And they often work. 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 8 or 9 years old, where, you know, like, I would have my parents drive me to the town dump, we throw bike parts into the back of the old Chevy Blazer, and then I 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. 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 impulse for you.

Right. Right.

Now let's talk about your Anti Sparketype.

The Anti Sparketype is the essentialist.

Right. Okay, so you and I share an Anti Sparketype.

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. 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 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 attack, 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 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 that, I just want to cry.

Right, right.

Like Mike. Because my impulses run when I see that.

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 when you're not an essentialist, having to do the work of an essentialist is experienced generally as. That's not fun in a really big way. 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 well enough resourced to have the ability to hand it off or delegate it or contract it out, it's. 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. So why not have that person aligned with that work? 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.

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 because it's not what you're aligned to do. And it's also, it seems like it can be an assessment that you give to potential people that you want to bring on your team and say, is this person going to 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 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? The answer is actually no. 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 good, culture fit and figure out, okay, so how do we navigate what they're doing? How do we. 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 how can we support that? 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, 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 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. 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 a optimization of team.

I think so. And I think make sure you're aligned.

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@sparketype.com Sparkatype. Yeah.

E. Sparketype.com it's free. People can take this.

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 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. What about, what are the best ways you've learned how to maximize and multiply our time to being more effective, more efficient and our hobbies, our passions, our work? Like, yeah, this is the 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, what's the system at play here and how do we. Where's the lever? I'm always in search of levers, right. And to me, being able to discern what actually matters is the ultimate optimizer, because you can optimize all the different. There's all sorts of tools and apps and platforms that you could use or strategies that you can use to optimize what you're doing every day to make it more efficient, quicker, and those will make differences. But the bigger issue is what should I just not be doing at all?

What should 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 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 is the base way to multiply your time.

I've seen you do that over the years. You have a team. There are things that you're doing all my good jobs, and there are other people on your team. That doesn't mean things don't need to get done, but it doesn't necessarily mean you should be the one doing them and then optimizing to do them better. Yeah.

I was telling Matt this even last week. 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. So he was like, well, we don't need to do these two 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 focused 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 for me, which is like, more about organization, everything. And I'm like, that stresses me out. The essentialist stresses me out.

But that's what we're talking about, right? So rather than Matt saying, well, Louis, let's take a whiteboard, let's map out everything that you're doing, figure out what's the technology, what are the platforms, how can we do the this more efficiently? He was like, no, no, no, let's just talk about what you shouldn't be doing at all, because that's the biggest optimizer.

And I think the test for people is 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. Say, well, I'm going to check 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 gonna 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, 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 KS in it. That just means keep free, keep free, Keep free for whatever.

Maybe you're doing a meeting, maybe do a call, maybe you relax, maybe you're in nature.

And I'm like literally unscheduled. Like I'm hanging out here and I've been in LA and 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's the place where I touch stone. It's where I breathe. Everything exhales in me. And I'm realizing I'm like three days into a 10 day window here and I haven't seen the water yet. And I'm like, I have the ability to walk three blocks. Right. 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 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. Because I realize that matters to me.

Absolutely. Are you gonna move out here, you think? Be by the ocean, man. So Monica's calling your name or like Newport beach or Manhattan beach or something. 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 and if you happen to drop the e from the URL, we own the mistake.

Sparktype.com A lot of good stuff in here that I was explain all the different Sparka types 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 ten 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?

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I think what we need to know right now is that we are in this unique moment in our history, like as, 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. 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 Sparkotype stuff, whether it's your relationships, whatever it is, whatever domain of your life you're like 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 re examining some of the assumptions that got you here.

Yeah, I'm liking this, man. I'm liking this a lot. Couple final questions for you. Before I ask those questions, is there a specific link for the book website?

Everything is just@sparketype.com sparkatype.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 everywhere. Yeah.

Sparktype.com okay, cool. And you're gonna be getting back on YouTube soon, so Jonathan will have more videos. Finally.

We are, 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, we were inspired.

Me, we were all in. And I just felt, I fell in love with audio. Yeah, yeah, 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. It was 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 this 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 word 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 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 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, you know, and I struggle with it. You know, we've known each other for a long time, like you and I, like, I will tell you, Louis, 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? 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, you know, because I want to be that. I want to do it, and I want to remind myself to continually open to it.

Oh, that's a 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, something like that.

It's 2008. 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.

And that experience that we facilitated just impacted so many men and women who are 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 grateful for you and acknowledge you for the gifts you constantly bring to the world. This book included in 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, can I acknowledge you?

Sure.

Because I'm going to 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 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, 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 on the outside in. But being your friend and seeing your devotion to your own growth, to your 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. It'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, it's not a state we arrive at, it's. It's a path. And it is the ability to close that gap between felt and expressed potential.

My man, how's it feels? Appreciate you, brother. Love you too, brother.

Thank you so much for listening to this episode.

I hope you enjoyed it and if.

You did, make sure to share it.

Spread the message of greatness to a friend, post it on social media and if this is your first time here, thank the person that sent you here and subscribe. Subscribe to the School of Greatness over on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and also leave us a review of the part.

Of the episode that you enjoyed the.

Most or the biggest takeaway for you. And I want to remind you if no one's told you lately that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And I'm so grateful you took the time today to improve the quality of your life. And you know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great.

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