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

lot of us have a window that's opened up that says the world has been turned upside down everybody is revisiting their reason for being they're revisiting their lives their relationships their work their physical and mental well-being and there's this like window right now where there is a level of understanding and forbearance for change i think you gotta have a dream the school of greatness really yeah please welcome us i saw a stat in a recent report from indeed that found that employee burnout is on the rise and 52 percent of all workers are feeling burned out it's almost half the workforce is feeling burned out why do you think we're seeing this rise and 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 um 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 like the actual physical happening it's working hard right so people you know used to have a much easier time creating boundaries you know they're sort of like okay so i'm leaving the place where i do that thing called work even though the boundaries have been blurred a lot more in the recent years through technology there was still some level of boundary and now when it all exists in one space and most people they never learned how to create that boundary within the same space it's a whole different thing and then you pile on an existential crisis a global health crisis extreme stress and anxiety about well-being um 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 right 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 and i think there's an underlying issue and that is that the average person tends to wake up in the morning and go to do something that is not necessarily well aligned with a fundamental impulse for work that would nourish them in a deeper way and over time that level of misalignment turns into outright conflict um 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 a head and and it does all those things and those things matter to to everybody um but there's this has caused a level sort of existential crisis where people are saying you know like not only am i working way more hours with no boundaries 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 was that right yeah so i signed the lease for i signed a six year lease for florina building in hell's kitchen new york to open what i hope would become sort of like you know one of the premier yoga studios in the city the day before 9 11 right the day before the day before 9 11. you know i was married i had a three-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 along with their new people in the towers and then the next thing was you know what am i doing here why but was it was there a a point in your career as a lawyer before then where you were feeling burnout or there was a lot of integration of alignment and what you meant to do and your skill set and so you're like so you started to shift into asking yourself this question like what should i be doing with my life yeah i mean it's funny because you know um 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 um i was working as a lawyer in a very past life you know that and um and i was working insane hours um just like non-stop basically hundred hour weeks with very little breaks sometimes never going home for a couple days at a time a huge amount of stress because i was a securities lawyer at a big firm and the stakes were were you know massively high and you had to be perfect that's what we got paid for you know and i ended up doing that i ended up basically my immune system fell apart um a a large infection kind of exploded in the center of my body eating a hole through my intestine from the outside and sending me into emergency surgery wow so when you wash this yeah you felt burnt out 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 week a while this was late 90s okay you know so this is couple years before 9 11 or yeah yeah this is like 96 97. um 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 i think it's because i've been trying to trace it back recently i think the real original seeds for this work were planted 20-25 years ago yeah and i've never let go of that question do you think if someone's feeling a physical sickness or pain or like skin rash or whatever that they should be taking notice of those signs as part of like burnout or out of alignment with your relationship or your career like the physical manifestation of pain right okay so so first let's preface this by saying i am not a doctor don't play one anywhere um as an intuitive spiritual stupid so let me talk to you about my experience yeah personally yeah i when i um and i'm under psychological emotional physiological you might even call it spiritual stress existential stress my body takes the hit what i've learned over time is that as a multi-time entrepreneur and somebody who just works really hard i've trained my mind to a point where my mind can actually take a lot yeah but even when my mind is kind of like you know the world is spinning but my mind is relatively okay the tell for me is my body my physical body it manifests in illness and pain in all the stuff you just laid out inflammation right yeah and i've learned over the years that if i don't listen eventually it brings me to my knees you know because and and i and i don't think i'm alone with that i mean does it how does it show up for you i think you do a lot yeah it shows up i feel it in my chest i feel in my throat like it's 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 feel trapped in like my heart and my throat but then like i started to notice yeah i started to have like this eczema that came out at one point in the last couple years when i felt like things were unaligned 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 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 in my life because i felt like i'm supposed to be doing and i wasn't doing the thing i was supposed to do and that would man like my body was screaming at me stop yeah course correct well i mean it's so interesting that you bring it up right because i know we both spend a lot of time seeing like a lot of different types of like medical specialists wellness specialists done every test you can 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 you know point of view very often the first session with them is hours long and it's not just let's look at all of your labs tell me where it hurts tell me about your relationship like how are you feeling are you stressed out are you sleeping well like yeah right how many friends you have in your life how often do you like all this other stuff because there's definitely a growing acknowledging the fact that the way you live your life that the you know the appearance of stress the appearance of you know poor relationships it affects you in a really powerful way huge way yeah i remember dr lisa rankin yeah sure she talked about this where she was i think seven or eight medications and but she was 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 bed 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 gaining inflammation or feeling pain are signs what's the the analogy of like the frog that goes into like water and then it's like it starts to foil the story that i've heard it's like if you slowly turn up the heat slowly slowly so slowly it basically never leaves it doesn't jump out until it dies right by the way i i i've been told recently that that's an urban legend yeah you put a frog in water you jump around it's an awesome story 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 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 they and and they had nothing on so many different you know different domains of life and then found their way back um and i've asked so many people and i've asked great philosophers uh great spiritual teacher scientist you know um 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 uh realization we await reawakening and reclamation without that and i've probably spent a large part of my adult life trying to figure out what what are the insights what are the moments and experiences that we can create for people that would allow them a more easeful process of awakening but it's hard yeah it's hard and i've 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 then things are good because i meet so many people that are 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 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 you're you're the 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 a hundred percent 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 and it's like 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 languages yes of course you know like because what you just described to me is actually not not a good life worthy good life right to me that's the complacent life of sort of like baseline getting by right but but what i'm interested in is underneath that or whether we use the word great or good like underneath what i'm looking at the qualities of the life right 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 uh in all you know on a personal level on a potential level yes um 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 you're talking about greatness and i'm talking about good we're actually talking about the same underlying quality 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 so i thought you were going to go to a different place too really yeah because i i thought what you were going to say was um when for some people when everything's going well everything's going good um there's a different uh anxiety experience that very often crops up and there's a different set of fears which is all about loss aversion this is all going to go away right right which is like that right like the relationship the money the job the security the health all of this like things are so good that i think there's 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 the a genuinely good status quo without realizing that you're doing it by contracting and not no longer supporting or investing in it right not realizing that it's actually that contraction and like the you know everything starting to go away is a direct result how do we not sabotage when we are finally aligned and we set up like do we have the alignment with our mission or our career or our 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 i fall back in 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 um wisdom so like personal learning a commitment to growth right um inner practices yes you know whether and those are the practices that keep you physically emotionally cyclically spiritually um healthy and focused and present um and able to be resilient and respond rather than react um and also external scaffolding the circumstances in your life um and that might include relationships uh that might include your physical environment uh 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 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 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 want to be intentional but there's also a lot of things that we kind of put on autopilot that will help us basically take the decision or take the actions that we want to take by default without even having to think about them right right what about if we feel like we're in a rut um 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 and analyzing it is it through action you know i'm gonna give you like an answer you probably didn't expect um 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 the work she's great right i mean it's like is 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 um 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 problems 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 at every morning for over a decade now and i have both a breathing and a meditation practice that changes my physiology um but it also changes my state of mind 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 they can move through it and also relating back to being in a rut zoom the lens out a little bit take a little bit of 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 going to 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 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 um 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 they're 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 uh power stage status will it help build certain relationships and again it's not that any of those things are bad right but if all of those things are purely a proxy for meaningfulness and a sense of purpose and express potential and excitement and enthusiasm then you may find yourself super accomplished and utterly empty inside that's true you know you've climbed the ladder awesome you've got the money you've got the job you 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 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 whether 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 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 that's a big part of it you know um you know we're in this moment now um 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 yeah but you know and the thing 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 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 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 um and that can lead to um really dark places you know so what we're seeing now i mean where people just blow up their lives they can't be even divorced i'm going after this right 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 you know and they almost cause it themselves what we're seeing now is that people aren't raising their hand and saying okay it's time for my sort of like existential change you know the world has served this up at scale to everyone so a lot of folks have looked at generations and sort of like seen looked at their expectations for work yeah i'm gen x so like we're we're the disaffected generation in theory we expected nothing right um and and just like put your head down and do the work right you know the generations behind me i hate to use like generational terms because it's like but but the interesting thing is that like millennials even though millennials is not one generation it's actually like a wide range of people but like so you fall into that group right like an old millennial i think yeah right so so a lot of the corporate world for years has struggled because something happened in the generation behind me where the expectation for meeting the expectation for purpose beyond money beyond status um has gone up dramatically so corporations organizations that were built without assuming that that had to be something that was part of what they provided and then they have millions of new workers coming into the organizations expecting that yeah 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 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 um and this is this is something that um the world of work is is starting to grapple with right now it 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 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 the same time with interruptions at home um 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 complained about the commute is actually one of the best things whether it's ten minutes or maybe two hours is not 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 and like we had already seen a blurring that over the last decade because of connectivity and technology yeah you know the expectation that you're always going to be on seven days a week and if like your device is on then you should be responding um 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 a 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 um there is no such thing as disruption without possibility it doesn't exist it's not a natural phenomena 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 and industry may be reeling because all the assumptions that they've built everything on have been shattered but that moment that level of upheaval uncertainty and stakes cannot exist without equal and sometimes opposite possibility being birthed simultaneously so the question becomes when we're talking about like an individual at work is yeah like nobody saw well you can't say nobody saw the last couple of years coming but um what has happened has been profoundly disruptive in a way that like we've never imagined was possible um and at the same time like we're moving through a lot of pain and and a lot of people had to figure out 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 and relationships but in the context of work specifically and they've kind of a lot of folks have figured it out um 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 um the entirety of our show we we you know part of the 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 era 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 they were doing skype right could not conceive you were doing all video and everything yeah 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 and in new york we were the the very early things so new york was devastated and completely shut down um i still remember the last live interview that we actually produced was macy gray who came off the stage from the beacon theater um which was three blocks from the studio and like came in after performing and like that was it like she left the studio and we shut down wow right so immediately i'm reeling because i'm like are we done you know because this like essential part of what i'm about and everything we produce and what we're known for is these in-person intimate things in the studio and i'm like but we can't do that like it's just not an option anymore yes 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 trusted 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 is 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 and the virtual space how do we experiment with different platforms how do we change the way that i go about creating things and we started to realize okay so we're up and running again but doing everything virtually and then i'm realizing okay so i always believed you could never create safety and intimacy in a virtual space but what i'm seeing is that everybody is in their home right now so we don't have the cocoon effect that i love like you know the where we're like in this where we're casting a spell in the same space together yeah but what we do have is the safety and trust of somebody being in their own home and feeling comfortable in their own rights 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 l.a like everyone's going to be in one of these two cities at some point right well if we're actually producing remotely and our team is distributed around the world you know from the the post-production side on a personal level what kind of freedom does that give us well we've thought about living somewhere else right not 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 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 yeah you know i'm 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 he goes 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 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 it was a really long kind of range so again 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 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 nurses uh that makes us come alive um and when i say come alive i'm talking about those things i've already talked about like for me it's like five things it's meaningful it's excitement enthusiasm it's expressed potential um it's flow you become absorbed in the activity and lose a sense of time and sense of actually you being apart from uh the activity yeah um and it's a broader sense of purpose in life um so how do we find a new work that gives us that feeling like all five of those things weaving in and out of the way that we experience work and for me you know i 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 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 in me i was like oh i noticed 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 you know like so 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 impro 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 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 want to 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 uh you have this book called spark discover your unique imprint for work that makes you come alive and there's kind of a quiz that you can take online and i took the quiz and it kind of it tells you your spark type yeah how many sparks have nine so they're ten ten and i'll break it down for you right so um yeah one once i identified these imprints i also realized okay so so we found these ten impulses these ten imprints for work um it also became really clear that each one of these kind of comes with its own uh behaviors tendencies and preferences that are really common they're fairly universal for each one of them and you know it can be expressed in a really healthy way and also a really neurotic way yeah um and it was amazing to see like a larger archetype form around these so i call them sparkites just because it's fun it's the archetype that sparks you um 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 um and you know so for me my and and the structure you basically break down to a profile and there are three things that are part of that profile so we can talk about like yours if you want right so and at first i'll tell you what the three elements are then let's talk about what yours is i think it's really fascinating um so there's what i call the primary sparco type think of that as your strongest impulse for work that makes you come alive this is about work or this is about life in general it's more about work it's a really good question because when i use the word work i'm i'm including all of the ways that you could actually devote yourself to effort okay it could be that you get paid for it or it could be just it could be being a parent it could be being a volunteer it could be like the the art that you do on the side because you just can't not do it because of that 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 eight to ten hours a you know a day and get paid for that's awesome when you can do it right 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 sparca type 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 we've teased had 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 so when you don't like not this is the work we're like don't do this if you have to do it it's just it's emptying you're liberating 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 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 you there's a more forgiving emotion wrapped around it um so those are the three parts of any given person's sparco type profile okay so let's talk about you yeah so my my primary is the maven right so 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 in 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 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 you were not awesome you were not off your sister's couch for that right right yeah right and you had you had kind of said okay so kind of done with being a pro athlete yeah but that was sort of like the only thing that i knew i devoted my entire life to this so i'm going to look at this thing called linkedin at the time and i'm going to learn everything on the planet about it i'm going to know more about this platform than anyone and i'm going to just dive into it right and you became absolutely possessed yes with being like the one person who knew more than anything uh you know 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 public speaking with salsa dancing with you know i'm in spanish lessons now it's like all these different things broadcasting it's like whatever it's just like processing 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 so 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 uh assessment yeah it's like you know i think one of them was like do you want to do you want to learn for learning sake or do you want to learn to create something to like better something that'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 the maker for me is is my primary that is my 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 when i launch a book or a podcast so what you've also said is like they might be complementary like one two yeah yeah and they could they could kind of be like fairly close impulses um and they they often work they they kind of like tag team with each other because they serve each other in a really really powerful way you know so for me the maker showed up in my life i was the kid when i was like eight or nine years old where 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 franken bikes 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 you're 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 showing 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 second right so that's like the the high end of like that that's the like the strong impulses for you right right now let's talk about your antenna the anti-spark 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 um my my top end is i'm a maker of scientist so make a primary and scientific 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 and an actual scientist 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-sparca type right that's your your weakest impulse or the thing that empties you the most takes the greatest recovery so the essentialist the primary essentialists 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 movements 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 a given time wow i can't like i have when i look at at that i just want to cry right right like mike because my impulse is 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 um you know when you're not an essentialist having to do the work of an essentialist is experienced generally as not fun in a really big way like i when i think about that in any company i've built in the past that type of work before i really even understood this about myself it would always be the thing that if i had to do it i would do it for as long as i 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 um to have the ability to hand it off or delegate it or contract it out it's it would be the first thing yeah um and also because there are people where that impulse is primary they wake up in the morning and they're like let me add it you know so why not have that person aligned with that work absolutely because then they're going to show up wanting to do it they're doing it because of the feeling it gives them and the fact that actually if it's a full-time job and you can support yourself that's awesome but they're probably also doing things on the side on a volunteer basis or a free basis that are really similar just because of the feeling that it gives them yeah but for me and you not that no i'm gonna run from that stuff yeah it's almost like taking this could really help you discover like what i should do with my life and what meaningful work i should be doing or is maybe this is why i'm feeling like i'm in a rut or avoiding things or i feel like i'm resistant to doing certain work that i'm supposed to do no because it's not what you're allowing 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 going to be a good fit for this role you know it's interesting because i've been asked a lot we've started doing a fair amount of work um with this with this body of working 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 of other 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 and some insights that will help them really understand how to um contribute to their role to their work to the organization to their lives in a way which is going to be most nourishing for them and then within the context of the organization potentially say okay so like how can we support that like does it mean that you're doing this type of work are you job crafting or re-optimizing 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 um and allow you to access that sense of potential right that you know is there so you know one person who i know i've spoken with who runs two different companies um 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 right so it's not necessarily a hiring tool but that's more of a optimization of team i think so and i think make sure you're aligned what you're supposed to be doing here 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 you know 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 the more you're going to contribute to society and show up as your best which at this moment in time we really need you know more than ever absolutely what's the link to the assessment um it's you can just find it at sparkatype.com spark yeah it's free people can take this yeah and that was sort of like one of my commitments is um you know i wanted to make the the core tool that we created you know initially in no small part to test and validate the idea and now just to be available publicly as a tool um i feel like that needs to be accessible um so rather than um you know a lot of corporate style um things you know right now where they're behind some sort of gate um yeah 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 yeah and our hobbies our passions our work like yeah the same 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 um um you know like a little bit like our mutual friend tim ferriss in that way like i'm always really 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 um and to me um being able to discern what actually matters is the ultimate optimizer you know because you can optimize all the diff 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 it off right i should be eliminating right you know what do i actually need to pull out of the system what what is the thing where it's taking 40 of my time but you know it's only contributing 2 percent to whatever outcome that i genuinely care about in my life in the work you know or whatever's being measured yeah 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 like all the things that we do on a regular basis and say how do we optimize all of these like what's the technology zoom the lens out and like 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 it's the best way to multiply yourself i've seen you do that over the years yeah you know like you have a team like there are things that you're doing 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 i was telling mathis even last week uh matt on my team i was like what can i do to like eliminate more and more things just focus on the thing that i'm really good at and how do i double down on those things just to multiply what we're creating impact income all 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 two meetings every week like we can just do an email debrief for you and save an hour there yeah 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 for me yeah which is like more about organization everything i'm like that stresses me out you know the essentialist stresses 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 white board and let's map out everything that you're doing and figure out like what are the what's the technology what are the platforms how can we do this more efficiently he was like no no let's just talk about what you shouldn't be doing at all yeah you know because that's the biggest optimizer and i think the the test for people is like when they start to eliminate things and they see like they have more space in their calendar they tend to fill it with some other busy work somehow so i'm going to eject email or social media i'm going to be distracting myself but it's like really scheduling the things 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 a hundred percent 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 you look at my calendar right now like i keep a digital calendar and i have certain critical things in different colors but then there's also a block that you see all over my calendar with the letters kf in it that just means keep free keep free keep free for whatever maybe you're gonna do a meeting maybe do a call maybe relax maybe you're in nature and i'm like literally on schedule like i'm hanging out here you know and i've been in l.a 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 i'm a water kid i grew up on the water water is the place where i touch stone it's where i like i breathe everything exhales in me and i'm realizing i'm like three days into like a 10 day window here and i haven't seen the water yet and i'm like i have the ability to walk through the blocks right there's i can completely rearrange my schedule because this actually matters to me this nourishes me it makes me feel good i'm literally adjacent to this thing that gives me like a sense of life and i'm i'm just literally filling in busy work that's stopping me from doing 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 going to 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 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 spark a type spark e type yeah and if you happen to drop the e from the url yeah we own them right dot com um a lot of good stuff in here that'll explain all the different sparky types yeah and give you kind of like application on how to implement certain things how to remove certain things for each market type so uh we've shared four of the ten uh 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 will give you feedback again take the free test or the assessment get the book what else should we need to know about this um 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 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 on a way that it's never been normalized in our history in our living history right now but that window's going to close windows going to close uh it may be a year from now maybe 18 months from now and maybe 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 um or just a lot less comfortable for you and i always just invite folks whether it's a spark to type stuff whether it's your relationships whatever it is whatever domain of your life you're like examining right now to not let the opportunity the possibility the magic of this moment um go away don't let the window close without at least re-examining some of the assumptions that got you here yeah whoo i'm liking this man i'm liking this a lot um a couple final questions for you yep uh before i before i ask those questions is there a specific link for the book website um everything is just at sparkytype.com.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 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 a good life project all the way back into 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 inspired me we were all in um 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 videos yeah yeah there's a combination of both yeah maybe it's not all video it's part audio part video so make sure you subscribe to uh jonathan over on youtube as well apple podcast spotify everywhere for the good life project um 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 um meaningful to whom um and to me the 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 um 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 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 and i'm i struggle with it you know um we've known each other for a long time like you and i are like i will tell you louis i love you right you know and you'll tell that to me and and we're good with that but i'm not good with that with everyone else forever you know um yeah but as as a literally as a practice for that the the sig 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 you know because i want to be that i want to do it um and i want to remind myself to continually open to it oh that's okay man be do be open to love i love that um before i ask the final question i acknowledge you jonathan for being an incredible friend for many years 12 years i think now 13 2008 yeah something like that i think it's just 2008 you go back fall of 2008 i believe um maybe it's 2009 i can't remember but i acknowledge you for for showing up in many important moments of my life for again helping me facilitate an important conversation on my podcast about sexual abuse and that experience that we facilitated just impacted so many men and women who are listening and helping them heal so i acknowledge it for being an incredible friend showing up uh 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 uh with the awareness about themselves so i appreciate you and acknowledging 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 this stunning engine of impact they see the conversations you facilitate they see um 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 is it coming from service um and i want to acknowledge you for that because i think people see what you've created professionally when they outside in but being your friend and seeing your devotion to your own growth to the own expansion of your heart um has been beautiful appreciate it bro thank you man i appreciate that i receive i'm open to love thank you final question what's your definition of greatness greatness is the ability to close the gap between your felt and expressed potential what i mean by that is i feel like we all walk through life feeling like we're capable of more maybe it's more love more relationships more achievement more impact more work outcomes whatever it may be i think a lot of us we walk through life having this feeling like there's something in there there's a potential there's like a hidden reservoir we can't exactly identify what it is but we know it's there and we have no idea how to unlock it and to me greatness is it's not a state we arrive at it it's it's a path and it is the ability to close that gap between felt and expressed potential my mind yeah appreciate your brother thank you love you too let me know some of your biggest takeaways in the comments below and make sure to share this with someone you think needs to hear it and stick around for more inspiring content coming up right now the book you talk about three buckets to how to live with life what what are the buckets and connections community or connection is one of them yeah yeah so and and i want you to just like create there's so many it's funny like for me to write a book called how to live a good life you know except who am i sure you know it's like thousands of years of philosophers or great sages and thinkers so and uh what but what i realized is is that you know all i have are my stories and my lens and and and the question for me was if we've known everything there is to know for thousands of years why are we still not okay in the world are we hurting yeah so and and and i think a big part of it is because um it's the models it's the way that that what we know is conveyed it's not conveyed in a way which is like really simple straightforward you hear it once you remember and the other thing is it's so simple that it's it's almost impossible not to act upon it like it's got to be actionable in somebody's lives who's a grown up who's busy like you can't ask somebody just constantly blow up their lives and walk away from everything because your average person in the middle years isn't going to do that they would rather live the rest of their lives miserable then then suffer the pain of blowing it up and starting over you know and you can certainly debates on both sides of that but that's just the truth on the ground so i wanted to just create a really simple model where somebody would hear it once they're like yeah that makes sense and they would understand every day how to do a little something so that over time it wasn't about big disruptive moves it's like there's a little something i can do today and then tomorrow and then tomorrow then over a couple of weeks or months you're kind of like this stuff is actually better right and i didn't even really have to try it so the idea of the buckets was look life is fundamentally about filling three buckets connection we've talked about love and belonging to your relationship right between other people friends lovers family colleagues um source you know if that's something which is meaningful to you the natural environment or the physical setting you're in so that's connection is one bucket second bucket is vitality it's the state of your mind and body and to me to actually try and explain those as two different things is just ludicrous you know mind and body are 100 one universal feedback mechanism you can't work with one without affecting the other so it's optimizing around a lot of mind and body which you like you've kind of become a master at um and then third one is is what i call contribution and that's really about how are you bringing your gifts to the world you know are you are you moving into the world in a way where there's meaning and a sense of purpose where you feel lit up where you feel like you you know your strengths and your values and your beliefs and you are 100 stepping into them every day with what you do and when you lay your head on the pillow at night you're like yeah like that i feel good about how i spent my time on the planet meaningful work yeah yeah contributing and living in service you know one of uh i think tony robbins said that the key to fulfillment is growth and contribution yeah if you want to feel fulfilled you need to be doing one of those two things if not both of them you need to be growing learning you know in your own personal life then also serving other people it could be your family your community the world it could be anything but you got to be in service in some way yeah totally and i think you also like you need to feel like you're being fully utilized yeah you know there's we did a survey i want to say it's like a year or two back now and and it was it was kind of asking i can't remember the exact questions like um do you feel like you're leveraging like you you're actually accessing your full potential and we had a whole bunch of different things that were potential pain points for people and the number one pain point was a feeling of i know that i have so much more but i can't figure out how to close the gap between the potential that i'm leveraging every day and the potential that i know deep down i have like i can't figure out how to close that gap um and a lot of it has to do with with self-ignorance with just not knowing yourself well enough to understand what matters to you like what do you actually believe matters in this world you know because you can't be intentional you can't wake up in the morning and do what matters if you don't know yourself well enough to understand what matters to you you don't know yourself well enough to understand like what are your actual strengths like what do you believe in the world you know so how can you decide to do more of that if you don't actually know what it is so how do you find out what you believe and what if your beliefs change when you learn new things you're like oh what i thought i i lived in this religion my whole life when i realized like that stuff is not what i believe anymore you know my whole life's a lie now yeah whatever i don't know yeah and and it's it's they're they're sort of like this interesting split right there are certain things which you probably consider more like on the level of a trait it kind of is what it is you know it's like you know you're a tall dude you're going to be taller your whole life you know you've got a certain color rise um but they're also certain certain internal traits um and so things like strengths where there's been a ton of research and exploration around them increasingly a lot of people would now argue in the research world that you kind of have you know your strengths and there you can definitely help build strengths but they're relatively stable you know over the period of your life you know so it's really important to understand them and they're great short and fast assessments that you can use to actually figure that out these days and then say okay i want to leverage these as much as i can like when i'm out there doing my work in the world beliefs is the other thing those change right i mean you know i'm i my belief system now is profoundly different than was 10 years ago and 10 years before that like what i believe matters to me what i believe is you know about what's possible and what's not possible it's hugely different you can change belief you can snap beliefs you can change them in a heartbeat i think that's a good thing or a bad thing if our beliefs change every i think it's like 10 years or whatever i think it's an awesome thing i think i think the moment that you lock yourself into certainty about your beliefs is the moment that you stop growing is the moment where you milton glazer had this amazing conversation with who's one yet the most iconic living designer and at one point i mean he has designed some of the most incredible things in the planet you may not know his name but you know something that he's created and he said to me like certainty is the closing of the mind the moment you are certain the moment like you lock down the possibility that something might be different or you might believe differently in the future is the moment that you stop asking questions it's the moment where curiosity ends it's the moment where where on the uncertainty that's necessary for possibility to emerge in your life vanishes because if you're certain about something then you stop exploring anything beyond that right and and the moment you stop exploring there's no possibility in your life anymore your life starts going sideways man i don't know about you or like your listeners i'm pretty sure about you i'm pretty sure probably about your listeners too but i'm not here to go sideways yeah you know what if your beliefs are already pretty solid if you're like yeah you've got really solid beliefs yeah it's it's it's so part of what why change them you know if already you're living a good life with these beliefs well so but that's the second part of like what you were just saying is a really thing right so if you are indeed living a good life with your beliefs no reason to change them right but the question you gotta ask is like when somebody's like well this is what i believe i believe and i'm pretty sure i'm right and it's all good and it's given me the life that i have you know the next question is well how's that working for you right like are you actually sitting here living a good life you like do you have these beautiful deep and enduring relationships are you doing meaningful work where you feel like you're fully leveraging utilizing the world are you connected to source and people or is your body like are you vibrant like are you radiating health you know because if somebody says i'm locked into my beliefs and they're good they're viable solid beliefs and that's how i live my life according to those beliefs and you can point to major you know places in their lives that are relatively disastrous right something's got something's not working yeah you know so part of the process i think sometimes with if you have that conversation with somebody is literally ask them you know not from like an arrogant little house networking standpoint but just like how's that actually working for you like that's that's cool like if you have these beliefs and they've been with you for life and you feel like you're actually really living the life that you're you want to live and you're meant to live go for it keep them right but if you're not something's got to change yeah you know so i mean it's like i say in the book like i'm i'm not asking for anybody to buy into anything you know the only thing that i ask anybody for is to be open to the possibility that there might be another story another truth you know something else that they can do out there that might allow them to be better in the world yeah you know and then try it and i'm not a huge fan of just like leaning into what anybody tells you on pure faith run an experiment right you know let your personal experience tell you whether your belief is still valid or whether something's got to change right yeah um you talk about how to fill the buckets up right yeah you go through each chapter and how to fill them up what is how does someone fill up the connection and the community bucket right now with just this overwhelming amount of i need to generate more following on social media and constantly on their phones how does someone get away from that when it's the source of their business yeah digital connection you know yeah it's such an interesting question we're moving from just hanging out like this like we are now to always having a screen between us non-stop you know and on the one hand it's not a bad thing because a lot of really great relationships can start absolutely yeah for me too yeah yeah you know and but but the relationship never really happens to me on the level that it can happen until i'm in a room with somebody even if it continues almost entirely digitally after that it's different if i've actually spent some time face to face part of what happens when you put a screen in front of somebody is that there's really interesting research that's been done um sherry turkey out of mit and some other people is that um it removes empathy from the conversation you know and so we stop actually having empathy with somebody else you know it sort of it creates a level of not just anonymity but like um so a lot of conversation happens in the digital space and it's what they call asynchronous meaning it's not just like we're not just talking and like we can look at each other and the conversation happens in real time it's like you get a text or somebody snaps or whatever it is and you got to respond to it and you're thinking like you actually take a couple of seconds to think about how am i going to formulate like what should i say right and when you do that you're always going to present sort of cleaner better right version of yourself when you do that and the problem is it removes those moments of real-time vulnerability and like those like those just mini snapshots of vulnerability of like your dorkiness or geekiness or whatever it is that really makes you you when those leave the conversation that those are the most profound those are like those are the moments where where you connect on a level that blows apart like the shiny happy self that you tend to show other people when there's a screen in between them you know um what's kind of interesting about snapchat to me is that it's almost become a like a step back into that place of like being totally vulnerable i think maybe because a lot of people know it goes away right right so when i look at like the way that my daughter uses snapchat like her friends like they're you know like sharing all sorts of like crazy silly like dopey pictures like hyper vulnerable yeah all the time whatever yeah right and and that's kind of like become the ethos on that particular platform whereas but almost every other one it's all it's almost always exactly yeah exactly and that kind of kills your ability to connect on that deeper level where it's like i'm struggling today man or i'm a bit of a weirdo or i'm different than you in this way or like i just made a mistake you know those are the moments where the most profound relationships take root you know even on a personal level you know like one to one with a partner in life you know if the conversation always stays at the level it's like well tell me about the good stuff that happened to you today right you know and and tell me about the bad stuff too but tell me how you know tell me in a good way right don't i don't want any of the mess that's not a relationship you know so when you allow for that stuff to happen that's where the really juicy stuff happens and um and so much so often technology takes a lot of that away or just enough of it away that it strips away what's really awesome about the relationship and and there's an argument to me made also that it it deludes you into thinking that you actually are connecting with a lot of people and stops you from then going out and having those real face-to-face or deeper conversations that make a real difference um but so i'm not like anti-technology i mean we're sitting here right now and there's a lot of technology happening between us um but i think it has its place and very often its place is to find people who you think would be really well aligned with you start a conversation and then as soon as you can like take it real time yeah because that's where the magic really happens and and the flip side is also we talked about individual connection but also community you know building being part of something bigger than you where you feel like their shared values and beliefs and aspirations is really important to us um and how can people find that yeah through their hobbies through yeah i mean for like again this goes back to first you gotta do a little bit of work to know yourself right you know and that's why you know you have so many freshmen show up in college and they join everything in the planet right and they come home at the end of the freshman year and they're they feel alone and isolated right and it's not because they haven't tried they're not they're surrounded by people all day every day it's because they actually never just hit pause long enough to do a little bit of work to learn about themselves enough to actually know well this is what needs to be in place like i want to join a club where you know like everybody's you know like there's their their social wiring is a little bit quieter you know and they want to you know they're kind of into art and they really dig nature and um they have deep philosophical conversations rather than i want to join like a fraternity where it's all about partying people like really extroverted and social not that that's every fraternity but you know to know which of those things is right for you you got to know yourself first um and we just we don't do that work and it's actually not um to just get at least a baseline level of knowledge about like who we are what we care about doesn't take that much work right it just takes a willingness to go a little bit deeper into ourselves before we try and actually go out into the world and find like involve ourselves with relationships and communities that actually resonate with who we really are rather than the facade of who we think we should be how we find ourselves asking questions um you know they're they're a set of baseline assessments that we've used in different programs that we've run stuff like that like we've used for you know strengths for example yeah you know they're two big assessments one the strengths finder which a lot of people know it's probably a lesser known one called the via um strengths assessment and that that actually is really heavily researched and came out of the world of positive psychology and so both of these things generally they'll give you you take a question here it takes 20 minutes right and they'll give you a list of like 20 to 25 strengths and your top five are generally the ones which really are the heartbeat of the things and but they're different also like the via strengths is more about your your virtues you know and the word strengthsfinder would probably be more apt to describe than more along the lines of like your talents or your gifts but either way the idea is once you have a sense of these things can you move through your day in a way where you're leveraging them as much as you possibly can because when you build your life around your ability to leverage those things rather than spend all of your time trying to fix what's wrong a lot of what's wrong starts to drop away yeah and you feel like really empowered same thing when it comes to you know like your values and beliefs you start asking questions like the most fundamental question like the question you start with is what's important to me you know and then your first line answer is going to be something like well family or money or power or you know cars whatever it may be you know a lot of people stop there like let me just what are my top five there and that's going to give you really shallow answers which is going to give you really shallow life you know so then you ask the next question you essentially keep asking that question well of these things like why are they important you know and then why are they important you keep asking the why question until you get down to like a deeper emotional level of why these things matter so it's not hard but sometimes it's not fun yeah and that's why we don't do the work you know i know over the last few years and we've been friends for a while now you've gone deep real deep on a personal level you know like you to see what you've got like to see the depth that you've like learned yourself it's kind of stunning and so much of the of the shift that you've made in your professional life and your personal life over the last three years you know have been an outgrowth of just a deep process of self-discovery and really knowing yourself on a level that when we first met like your level of self-knowledge and the way you bring yourself to the world is so different you know it's like it's palpable and i think people feel that they respond to it yeah you know the funny thing is i feel like i'm just getting started you know yeah totally like oh man it's so much more to discover you know yeah i feel like i figured something out it's like no you haven't figured anything out right right you always hit that threshold you're like i think i have it dialed in like the next step is like i know nothing no it's the word completely ignorant it's good though to keep questioning your beliefs and values and make sure that you're doing what works for you and the world yeah and it's like it goes back to what we were talking about earlier you know like is is to be open you know and and i look at things like this as okay this is my snapshot this is a moment in time right now right this is what i think i know and understand about myself and about the world and the way that i that i move into it um but i'm going to keep asking questions i'm going to keep running experience i look at you know so my current company you know we've been around for four years now we're growing nicely but built into the name of the company is the word project you know because to me it's a series of experiments this is a project for me you know and and i wonder if we looked at building a good life as just a project with a series of experiments you know like that would give us so much more freedom to allow ourselves to be open to whatever the experiments yield rather than saying like this has to succeed now in this window of time it's like now i'm gonna run an experiment you know my my goal is to actually just learn you know and this may give me an answer that i really want which would be awesome yeah may give me an answer that i'm not all that comfortable with right but then the question is so what do i do with that right you know and then how do i actually run the next experiment and then the next i'm i'm such a huge fan of experiments or games whatever you want to call them for me i feel like that's the way i learn is by taking on a challenge okay for this week for this month i'm going to do something every single day to see what works what didn't work or what i learned from it and i feel like and i usually do it around things i'm most afraid of yeah things i'm most afraid of like what's an example of that what's a teenager is like i was terrified to talk to girls yeah so every day i was like anytime i get butterflies when i see a girl that i like i have to go up and talk to her like that's my challenge that's my game for the day and just say hello and see where the conversation goes it was like terrifying another one was public speaking i was terrified of speaking public so i said okay every week i'm going to go to a public speaking class for a year and i did that and i was able to see so much growth over the year it was terrifying it was horrible it was you know a lot of work a lot of pain and suffering but i see where i'm at now like eight nine years later from when i started that challenge like i'm able to really be in front of people and make an impact you know still a lot more to go still a lot farther to grow but if i didn't take on an experiment or that challenge of that project years ago then i wouldn't be here yeah and so i constantly take on challenges projects games whatever you want to call it and uh i feel like that's the juice it's like we learned that's like my master's program you know it's when we take on those projects yeah and it's like i mean the moment that you decide that you're done that you're good you got it all figured out to me is the moment that you start living and stop living you know because that's the moment that like we sent that's the moment that growth ends you know and at some point you'd love to be like i mean this is you know the quote that i throw around it's part of like our good life project living creed it's right towards the end which is a good life is not a place at which you arise it's a lens through what you see and create your world you know and so many of us are like like when i get there then i'm going to be living that right right it's like when i get this i'm going to be living that good life and like i just need this much money in the bank or this house or this relationship for this power job and and then they get there and they're like you know just a little bit more you know that's the answer is just there's actually really fascinating research around this that's been done where people you know they'll ask well how much do you need to feel like you know like you're you're good in life you know and they say well then a million dollars right and then they'll track people like you know like when they actually hit that number and then they're not good never literally never you know then the the amount is always a little bit further down the road why is that it's i think it's just the way that we're wired we're cons we're wired for more you know we're wired for discontent to a certain extent and it's really interesting um i think part of it is just societally you know like we're taught that these particular things matter like these there there's a set of metrics that that tell you when you've made it when you're actually living that good life you know and it's kind of predefined by culture you know so what's interesting is that if you actually look at the american culture or western culture in general it's pretty universal right it's a certain amount of money it's a job that makes a certain amount of money has a certain amount of prestige a certain amount of cars in the garage you know a house of a certain size or a department of a certain size you know like it's all these standardized things which basically are check points that say okay now you're living that good life but when you actually leave western culture you go into more eastern based cultures the metrics change pretty profoundly even western culture that's european versus american you know the emphasis on family family community in europe or south america central travel totally different you know it's so much less about what we have or how much we're making i mean if you go to ireland and you're like the first question out of your mouth is so what do you do for a living people you're like what's wrong with you right you know it's like they care about like who are you as a human they can't they're actually more interested in like you know who was your family um and so there's there's just become this really strong emphasis on what you have as the metric for living a good life in the u.s and even in western countries where it's not the us base it shifts pretty quickly to how deep your relationships how much time do you spend with people that you love that you can't get enough of then when you go even farther east it's how much stillness do you have in your life you know it's how at peace are you you do you lay your head down at the end of the day feeling like you've done meaningful work you've been of service and you're at peace you know so if we actually started to exalt those as metrics that really define a life well-lived man so many of us would then start to realize oh i could actually have that right now yeah i don't need to chase something yeah like i could be living this now it's just a matter of like i want to wear a different lens you know now and it's it relieves so much pain because we don't have to feel like we're just this is all about suffering until i quote make it it's like no you know like maybe circumstances aren't exactly as i need them to be now but there's a whole lot of good right now too and if i shift the metrics of what it means to actually be living that awesome life there's so much which i can either just see right right here now that i don't see or create in the moment you know because i have control over my choice like i can move from being massively reactive and maniacally busy doing things that are generally um not all that meaningful to me and set by somebody else's agenda right so i rest my head on my pillow at the end of the day being frazzled stressed no peace at all wiped out and when you ask me how my day was i'll tell you busy and you'll ask me ask well what did you do that mattered and you'd be like i really don't know versus saying okay i'm going to wake up in the morning and the first thing i'm going to do is just spend a few minutes in stillness to just like you know get into myself and then ask myself all right what's the single most meaningful thing that i the one single most meaningful thing that i could do today you're like let me do that everything anything else that happens beyond that awesome bonus yeah right right yeah yeah so check as many boxes you want after that you know and ask you know and you wake up in the morning and this is like a morning bucket check right really quick scan you know like how how full is my vitality bucket today you know it's zero to ten it's about a seven right how full is my connection bucket today yeah it's it's an eight like i feel like i'm i'm doing really good i've been loving relationships i've been talking to my friends and hanging out with them you know half full is my my contribution bucket i don't feel like i've been doing stuff that's really mattering to me or like my strengths i just don't feel like i'm really leveraging myself all that fully just kind of low right so i'm probably going to say okay so today i want to focus on doing a little something to fill that contribution bucket i want to really figure out okay what can i do today that's really going to make me feel like i'm standing in my strengths you know and you just like you don't have to make the whole day maniacally about this just like what's one little action i can take that'll fill that bucket a little bit and like you can rest your head at the pillow you're on your pill at the end of the day saying yeah like okay a i chose instead of just responding to other people's agendas so right away it's a win right you there's there's something i call reactive life syndrome right which is basically we go through life you're being dominated by other people's agendas and being maniacally busy with stuff that doesn't matter to us you like the minute you choose then that goes out the window because you move from being reactive to intentional right and that's where life really starts to light up where do you think our suffering comes from uh life i think so much of it comes from expectations expectations about about what we should have who we should be um what life is supposed to be like uh i think part of it is also so part of it is expectations that have us chasing things that we think really matter that don't um you know there's a and so part of it is that part of it is that we are also most of us are soft wired to seek security slash which is also just another word for certainty so there's there's only one thing in life that i am absolutely certain about and that is that we can never have certainty right so so there's literally no conceivable way there's nothing that we can do today or for the rest of our lives to lock down a certain future a certain minute certain moment right 9 11 for me was a huge wake-up call yeah you know um so by definition if we invest the vast majority of our waking hours in trying to pursue something that's impossible to attain for our entire lives that's suffering you know rather than saying listen i don't know what the future holds i i i'm going to lock it down as much as i can you know i'm going to have a vision i want to have some money in the bank so my family's taken care of yeah but fundamentally i'm also going to acknowledge the fact that to a large extent it's unlocked down the ball i'm going to work really hard to do great work and do good things in the world but at the same time i know at the end of the day life's uncertain yeah i think i learned that early on when i was 23 or 24 you know i had a dream to play in the nfl when i got injured and i was like my whole life was changed because there was no other option this was like this is happening i'm gonna make it happen but when i wasn't open to okay well things change or things are uncertain or things you know maybe there's a different path for me like i wasn't even open to it and so there was like this suffering and this pain and depression for a year and a half two years because i was just like what do i do now yeah what so i'm curious what yes it's interesting we've talked about this right probably a bunch of times i don't think i've ever asked you like what what snapped you out of it like what took you from a place of like laying on your sister's couch to back to a place of curiosity and possibility i think uh you know my my dad had gone through a really bad accident at the same time i had trauma he was in a coma for a few months and he wasn't able to really he's still alive but he hasn't been able to fully kind of recover to the dad that i knew uh emotionally spiritually he's just had a head trauma and uh it's you know so it's been hard for him to get back and i remember taking care of him we like had to teach him how to write and how to talk again and how to just do normal functional things remember certain things and i remember being like wow okay like i don't have my dad to like just have my back or to like go to mentor me to kind of lean back on he was always like my safety net yeah he was always like go live your dream and then come work for me you know go do your thing and then when you're ready when you're done with that like i've got a spot for you type of thing so i never had to like figure it out on my own he was always there to support me and after a couple years i'm on my sister's couch i was like oh my dad's not gonna be able to support me i'm not gonna be able to like have him anymore as a safety net i was like while i can either continue living like this and feel like a worthless piece of crap on my sister's couch adding no value to the world or i can figure out what i'm gonna do the rest of my life and that's when i started taking on these challenges i was like okay well i want to make an impact i need to learn how to speak and communicate because i was just a big dumb jock you know i mean i had a big heart and i could connect with people but i didn't know how to deliver and package my message in a way that people were able to receive it and so i started doing public speaking and then learning about online marketing because i was like i just need to make money and i was just like okay i'm discovery mode now and i'm going to try everything and um i think that's what it was i just made a decision after a couple years i was like okay i'm going to be something i'm going to i'm going to make something of my life i'm going to make an impact i'm going to make a difference you know i'm going to show people that i matter and um and do something with my life so that's just time and uh awareness and awakening yeah and i think that's what happens with so many people too it's sort of like you're like you're wallowing and wallowing and like you hit a point where you just like look sick and tired of being sick and tired right it's like if i don't make a different choice now this is going to be my life and i'm not liking the trajectory that this has taken it's sort of like this is this is one of the things that made me leave the law like way back in the day it's like i was i was coming up on 30 years old you know and i'm like if i don't do this now it's going to be another 20 years yeah before i make this decision and even though i wasn't comfortable doing it and because you're making good money yeah like i had the job that everybody wanted you know and i was like but if i don't do this now i literally it's going to be a couple of decades before i'm going to be back in this place where i'm going to be willing to actually extract myself from the pain that i'm feeling now um so i'm all i'm always so curious like what those inciting incidents are for people i think i also had nothing to lose i didn't have a job and have a family i didn't have these things was like let me just go see what i can create yeah since i'm already at the bottom you know um yeah it was interesting it was definitely an interesting time but yeah it's like we got to build momentum you know it's like we had nothing and i sort of build momentum it takes a while so so here i'm sorry i'm like i'm taking over the interview but i'm really curious because we've never talked about this so part part of the reason i wrote this like when it really comes down to it is because i i would love for this book to go into the world and be the inciting incident that that inspires somebody to say wait let me think about things differently like maybe like this is a moment where i don't have to blow things up right i can actually start i'm curious with school of greatness when you wrote the book was that in your mind at all too as like one of the reasons for the book to be like um to sort of like be this like thing that kind of like sparks somebody absolutely yeah i mean when i read four hour work week that was like the catalyst for me to start working and everything i was doing yeah eight years ago and i was like i want to create a piece of work that's opens people up to possibilities to what's possible in their life and to like start moving forward towards that life that they want and uh absolutely so that's great i mean i like also you have a thing about nature in here too yeah right i mean you have all these different challenges you know a 30-day challenge here about how to you know fill up your buckets which i think is extremely important because playing games having challenges having a project whatever you want to call it is something i think we should always be doing and i think you give some great examples of how to take it on so we don't have to think of our own challenge yeah and there was a whole idea i was like you know i could i i'm a writer fundamentally so i love i just the craft of writing i love i love actually like obsessing over sentences and stuff like that so i'm a weirdo like that um but finally also i wanted to write something that was you know i'm in the middle of my life mm-hmm i i'm i have my days are full yeah you know and and i have a lot of friends in the same position and i want to to create something that was actionable for somebody that already had a full life where they could just like they could there was something to do every day where they could just flip it open i mean literally you can you can read this not linearly you can pick a chapter it's a day say like this is something i'm gonna do today you know it's short it's sweet but it makes a difference a lot of the stuff is also all scientifically validated and there's there's research behind it um but that you brought up the tree thing which is which is something that i've known intuitively for for life is that like my reset is nature yeah it's either the woods or the beach um for me i grew up the beach was the end of my road so the water for me is really like where i touched stone but also i mean there's something about being in nature especially walking in the woods which is just like profoundly calming it's a major reset for me so i got really curious and turns out there's that see this there's a ton of research on how nature literally you know it changes our physiology um and our mindset and our you know the chemicals that are coursing through us um there there's actually there's a japanese word shinrin yoku which translates to forest bathing and there are shinrinyoku designated forests in japan where they literally designated where you can go into them and just walking in these forests it will literally change your life um but you know not all of us have forests right so the research also shows that simply being in an office or being at home during the day and being in a setting where you have a plant in view that you can see versus having no greenery at all even that tiny thing makes a really big difference interesting yeah so have plants that's crazy something in your office or in your house so it's like as simple as you like you can go out for a walk where they're you know you're around a whole bunch of water but even if you can and you're in your home or work setting put something green in it and it actually makes a difference like little things i believe that i mean just imagine yourself in a box all day you know with no life in there no it's hard to feel alive i guess when you're in the box constantly without life but when you put life in there then yeah you know you're connected in a different way yeah i mean there's there's studies done on hospital patients um ones where you're in a room where there's you can't see out the window with trees and others where there's actually a window with trees the recovery rates are faster they'll experience less pain and they're discharged more quickly from the hospital that's great you have a window where you can see like nature outside that's crazy amazing i think it's all i mean that's it seems i mean it seems true because it's like if you can see possibility of growth and you can see like yeah something that's alive you probably feel more inspired to get out i don't know but yeah as opposed to just seeing a brick wall yeah in new york city you know across the street from your windows right whatever it is it just it makes a difference yeah that's awesome amazing amazing what's missing in your life right now um space um two things space uh but that's a deliberate choice right now and working with my hands um so for me you know i've whenever you're bringing something to life which is a big project you worked on for years things get compressed and your days get get busy um and i hate that word busy but but it you know the saving grace for me and i think it's really important for anybody is that it's okay to fill your day with a lot of stuff but do it deliberately don't just take it by default don't let like other people's stuff pile into your data fill it up fill your day with stuff that you've chosen matters to you so right now like there's not a ton of space in my days because i'm bringing something that i care deeply about to the world so they're filled as i like bring it out there but i'm choosing you know this is so i'm choosing what i'm going to do i'm choosing what matters why it matters and i'm choosing to be in this place for a certain window of time where i know i'll then step back out of it yeah and at the same time i still have a daily practice you know which keeps me my mindset still and allows me to still optimize and fill my vitality buggy and if that starts to get messed up i'll pull back um the other thing is working with my hands there's something like that i don't know if you feel this way too but i grew up as a kid working with my hands and i was an artist also and then i built houses in the summers during college there's something about creating where like you're physically using your hands to make something and at the end of it you can step back and just like see it and touch it and be like i made that that's cool and i haven't been i've been creating a lot but in the digital space over the last couple years not the same and i'm feeling this itch to actually dive in and just work with my hands more what would you make a guitar for some reason i've been talking about this for years um and and and so part of it is like that's going to be actually kind of like probably one of my rewards after the book comes out yeah yeah exactly yeah i'm going to learn to actually do that you haven't done it before no i haven't you know you can you can go to these programs basically classes schools yeah dive into the friendship yeah yeah go for like a week or two and you like make a guitar yeah exactly but even just little things like working with my hands like i've started like i'll start painting a little bit again and just to feel like i'm making stuff with my hands um and making art yeah that's cool yeah i feel like i don't have that itch but i have the itch to create art through sports yeah to play like throw a ball and catch to like touch people like be messy on in sports and playing basketball it's like that's my itch yeah but um and maybe because i'm just not that talented at the artist stuff yet it's not even that it's it's that that is your artist right right you know your canvas is is athletics it's sports it's movement for me it's beautiful yeah it's you know i feel like i've seen you i've seen like footage of you in like various different settings i'm like that is massive that is artistry yeah yeah so um what are you grateful for in your life uh my family like i mean i'm grateful for so much my god there's like almost nothing that i could say i'm not grateful for but the thing that comes to me first and foremost my family i mean you know my wife is just one of the most amazing people on the planet and my kid is you know an awesome human being who's growing into a really just a you know a good person yeah who cares about the world and uh um yeah and and my wife is also my business partner too so we literally work together and live together and breathe together 24 7. um and we're married almost 20 years now wow how do you navigate that when you're married and working yeah it's so funny people like you guys should do some sort of program or workshop on like building a life and building a business together or like honestly we don't we we don't know how it works you know it just does we have different skills we i think a big part of it is we're really fortunate and over a period of a you know a long time together we've grown as individuals in a way where we're still deeply complementary to each other you know and sometimes honoring your own personal path has people growing away from um the way that they they need to be to stay together and and that's a tough thing but it's also an okay thing wait say that again honoring your own personal pathway you know i think so it's really important to to honor your own personal growth to grow into the person that you know like to become fully expressed as who you are as an individual in the world you know and when we're in relationship with other people whether it's a partner or friends or even business partners you know if each one of us are like doing what we need to do to become who we need to be individually we change we evolve and over a period of years or decades sometimes you change and evolve in a way where you're still deeply connected and complementary and the relationship still is profoundly beautiful you know sometimes you evolve in a way individually where you're not as complimentary anymore you know it doesn't mesh nearly as well anymore maybe it's a business partner it's time to you know grow apart maybe it's a partner in life um and so part of you know a part of it i think is work part of it is all the classic stuff relationships part of it is also you know honoring who we need to become individually and there's a certain amount of of just luck and that still being the person who's still deeply complimentary and you know like we're we're blessed and that we've both grown individually in a lot of ways in a way where we're both like just so profoundly still in love with each other um i love working together that's amazing you know and co-creating stuff together and building community and um we also just on a practical level like from a business standpoint we do different things yeah yeah and we have different mos and we're good at different things so it works it works both areas in the relationship not for everybody yeah that's crazy yeah yeah i mean we're growing so much i feel like so many people are growing apart in in relationships as well right marriages it's like more and more divorce do you think it's because people are growing into who they truly are more and more or do you think it's more of a cop out or they're just not working enough yeah um i don't know if i have an answer to that um yeah uh everyone's different huh yeah although here's a really interesting um bit of data and i i haven't validated this but i've sort of actually been told it recently uh is that arranged marriages actually have a higher success rate than what i would call sort of like a natural love-based marriage and i don't there's there may be all sorts of societal constructs that make that not healthy or healthier i don't really know but it's kind of like that when i heard that it stopped me i was like huh what's really going on there but um yeah i don't i don't have i don't have an answer to that but um i just it's crazy this life i'm not gonna win every day consider myself blessed that's grateful yeah that's great congrats on that um this is called the three truths three truths question so it's your last day many years from now all your work has been erased from time yeah and you have a piece of paper and a pen to write down three things you know to be true about everything you've created in your life that you would then pass on to your family friends in the world what would be our three truths lead with love meaning matters and embrace the unknown i like those they're solid uh two final questions uh but before i do wanna make sure everyone before i ask someone to make sure everyone gets the book how to live a good life by jonathan fields soulful stories surprising science and practical wisdom make sure to pick it up right now and in on amazon barnes noble there'll also be a link on the show notes on how to get this so go pick up a copy and let jonathan know what you think um before i ask the final question i want to acknowledge you for a moment jonathan for your incredible friendship to me and your incredible grace i look at you as such an incredible as a graceful human being thank you and that grace for me is like is like guidance you're like this guiding individual human being that really leads with soul and for me it's something that i really appreciate because you know you helped me with so many things and when i was going through a lot of discovery myself i turn to you for guidance and grace so i want to acknowledge you for what you've created in the world and how you've shown up for me to be willing to you know bear my soul to you and talk about things that that happened to me and really reveal it on the podcast a couple years ago and you know that that episode that we did together brought so much healing for not only me but so many people in the world so i want to acknowledge you for your continual showing up giving leading with love and um being so graceful uh thank you man i appreciate that of course yeah and the final question is what's your definition of greatness um um yeah it's like it's probably evolving for me um owning the doing the work to really understand who you are what matters to you in the world and how you need to express yourself and then um aligning the actions aligning the way that you live every day with the truth of who you are in a way where you close the gap between that person and the person you bring to the world shout out feels thanks man yeah appreciate it when you show your passion about something people are attracted to energy that is passionate that is grateful that is fun that is loving that is expressive that is creative that is expansive they're not attracted to people who are closed off and guarded

Channel: Lewis Howes

Views: 32,445

Rating: 4.7667022 out of 5

Keywords: Lewis Howes, Lewis Howes interview, school of greatness, self help, self improvement, self development, personal development, success habits, success, wealth, motivation, inspiration, inspirational video, motivational video, success principles, millionaire success habits, how to become successful, success motivation

Id: bvbP6QGx_1k

Length: 113min 14sec (6794 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 22 2021