Good Life Project is a podcast and video series for people navigating midlife with intention. Hosted by Jonathan Fields, each episode is a deep, honest conversation about what it actually takes to build a life that feels like yours, through the reinventions, reckonings, and reclamations that define your 40s, 50s, and beyond. Grounded in science, fueled by genuine curiosity, and always in service of the real work of living well. Often top-ranked, it’s been listened to and viewed more than 100 million times. New episodes weekly. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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Luck is not a personality trait you either have or you don't. It is something you build, and science tells us there are specific, learnable skills behind why some people consistently seem to be in the right place at the right time while others walk right past the same opportunities. Tina Seelig has spent over 25 years at Stanford teaching and studying exactly this. As Executive Director of the Knight-Hennessy Scholars program and a longtime faculty member at the Stanford d.school, she has watche...
There is a particular kind of loneliness that hits in the middle of a full life. Not because you are isolated. Because the relationships that used to hold you steady are all being renegotiated at once. Your kids have left. A parent has died. A marriage needs new terms. A friendship has frayed. And the cultural rituals that once helped people move through moments like this are mostly gone. Bruce Feiler has spent the last three years traveling to 26 countries, attending over 100 ceremonies, and in...
Here is something most of us have never been told: falling in love was never supposed to be easy, and the fact that it hasn't been isn't a character flaw. It's a design problem. Your biology may be working against you. Your cultural programming works against you. But, more than anything, the list you've been carrying around of what you want in a partner is almost certainly pointing you in the wrong direction. Bela Gandhi is a dating coach and the founder of Smart Dating Academy, where she has he...
Most of us reach our 40s and discover something unsettling: the ambitions we've been chasing weren't entirely ours. They came from parents, from culture, from the two or three careers we happened to see up close. Tom Rath calls this looking through a pinhole, and he thinks it explains more midlife restlessness than most of us are willing to admit. Tom is one of the most widely-read researchers on how careers shape health and wellbeing. His books, including the instant number one New York Times b...
Ever have something clearly wrong, and yet no expert can tell you what’s causing it? Or, worse, they DO tell you, but they’re wrong? Nearly everyone will experience at least one diagnostic error in their lifetime. Not a minor mix-up, but a missed, delayed, or wrong diagnosis that shapes how long you suffer, what treatment you receive, and whether anyone believes something is actually wrong with you. For people in midlife, when the body starts sending new signals and the stakes of getting it righ...
There is a conversation most of us are carrying right now. Not one we lack words for. We have plenty of those. One we keep finding reasons not to have. Not because we don't know what we'd say, but because we have become very skilled at building the case for staying quiet a little longer. Jonathan Fields has spent a lot of time in that particular waiting room. This solo episode starts with a story he describes as embarrassing in the specific way only true stories about your own behavior can be em...
There is a gap between where your life is and where you thought it would be. That gap has a name. It is grief. A kind of hidden, invisible grief. And most of us are walking around carrying it without ever calling it that, because we have been taught that grief belongs only to those who have lost someone to death. The rest of us are supposed to just get on with it. Dr. Lucy Hone is an adjunct senior fellow at the University of Canterbury, a leading resilience researcher, and one of the world's mo...
Somewhere in the last few years, a lot of us started asking a version of the same question: who am I now, and what am I actually here to do? The answers don't come from a quiz or a vision board. But they just might come from the one word that has been running your life all along, whether you knew it or not. Erin Weed is a speaker coach, keynote speaker, and the creator of the Dig, a purpose-excavation method she has used with over a thousand leaders, founders, and changemakers across every stage...
The voice telling you that you're not enough, that something is about to go wrong, that you should have done it differently, it sounds like you. That's exactly what makes it so hard to catch and so hard to stop. Emiliya Zhivotovskaya has spent decades inside the science and practice of mental wellbeing, training thousands of coaches worldwide through her Certification in Applied Positive Psychology program. Her own path into this work began with a personal reckoning. An eating disorder that star...
What if procrastination has been working exactly as intended? Not as a character flaw, not as laziness, but as a solution you invented for a problem you were more afraid of than the thing you kept putting off. That reframe changes everything about how you approach it. Jon Acuff has spent decades thinking about why people with real ability, real ideas, and real desire still find ways to delay the work that matters most. His newest book, Procrastination Proof , is the result of working with hundre...
The anxiety you carry, the way you go silent in conflict, the relentless drive that never quite feels like enough, these didn't start with you. They started much earlier, in relationships and environments your body learned to survive before you had words for any of it. And according to Dr. Nicole LePera, until you understand what your nervous system actually encoded in those years, you'll keep bumping into the same walls, the same patterns, the same exhaustion. Dr. Nicole LePera is a clinical ps...
Learn how to say what you think without blowing up your relationships. Most of us have been there. A conversation that starts completely normally and somehow ends with you lying awake at 2am wondering how it went so wrong, again. Whether it is a partner, a teenager, a colleague, or someone on the other side of a political divide, the cost of disagreement done badly is one of the quietest, most cumulative kinds of pain there is. Julia Minson is a behavioral scientist and professor at the Harvard ...
Before you ever say a word, you've already told the room everything it needs to know. Your posture, your eye contact, the angle of your body, the openness of your chest — all of it is speaking. And most of us have no idea what it's saying. Linda Clemons is a world-renowned body language and nonverbal communication expert who has spent more than three decades training Fortune 500 CEOs, sales teams, celebrities, and media leaders to master the silent signals that build trust, command respect, and ...
People who are genuinely engaged in spiritual practice live longer, experience 30% lower all-cause mortality, report more meaning, and suffer less depression. The data are remarkably clear. And yet, more people are leaving organized religion than at any point in modern history. So what happens when we walk away from the institutions but still carry the hunger for what they provided? David DeSteno is a professor of psychology at Northeastern University who has spent his career studying the mechan...
Elena Brower spent two decades as one of the most visible yoga and meditation teachers in the world, stages of thousands, a growing platform, the whole forward-facing life. Then she started doing the opposite. She got quieter. She trained as a chaplain. She began sitting with people in hospice, in silence, holding nothing but presence. Her new book, Hold Nothing , draws on that journey and on an ancient Chinese sutra that became her compass: Welcome nothing. Refuse nothing. Reflect everything. H...
It’s getting late, you know you “should” go to bed. But you just can't…or won’t. You tell yourself, just one more episode, or a few more minutes of scrolling, or a little more work to sneak in. It seems innocuous, but what if it was actually causing a world of harm? To your health, relationships, state of mind, performance at work, and more? Our guest is Vanessa Hill, PhD, a leading sleep scientist and Research Fellow at CQ University, who specializes in the science of bedtime procrastination. S...
Do you ever feel like you are just a reaction to other people's needs? Not just for days, or months, but years, maybe even…decades? It is easy to slip into a life where others take the wheel and leave you breathless, trying not to crumble. And you find yourself, in the middle years of life, wondering where you, the real you, went. The cycle of autopilot busyness can feel like an invisible cage that keeps you from the life you once dreamed of living. Today, we explore how to break free and move f...
The tiny moments you ignore may hold the key to it all. New research in neuroscience and attachment science reveals that your brain is constantly monitoring your relationships through small, everyday interactions, and the signals it picks up quietly shape everything from your self-esteem to your sense that life has meaning. Most of us pour energy into the big relationship gestures, the long conversations, the grand repairs. But the seemingly insignificant exchanges, a returned text, a warm nod, ...
Stop the cycle of chronic pain by fixing the signals in your brain. We’ve been told for decades that pain is purely a physical problem, born of bones and body parts. But the latest neuroscience proves that’s only one piece of the puzzle. Dr. Rachel Zoffness is a pain scientist, assistant clinical professor at UCSF, and author of the new book Tell Me Where It Hurts . She lectures at Stanford and is revolutionizing how we treat chronic suffering by moving beyond the outdated biomedical model. The ...
If you feel like the world is crashing down, you are not alone in that darkness. This moment of global contraction isn't necessarily the end of the story, but perhaps the beginning of a difficult birth. Today we sit down with Valarie Kaur, a renowned social justice leader, lawyer, and founder of the Revolutionary Love Project. A graduate of Harvard and Yale, she is the author of the book, Sage Warrior: Wake to Oneness, Practice Pleasure, Choose Courage, Become Victory . Together, we explore: The...
Most of us think oversharing is the problem. It's not. New research from Harvard reveals that the bigger threat to your relationships, your health, and your sense of belonging may be all the things you're choosing not to say. How many times today did something cross your mind that you chose to keep to yourself, a feeling you swallowed, a compliment you almost gave, a truth you pulled away from? That habit of holding back is doing far more damage than you realize, to your closest relationships, y...
Humor won't cure depression. But it might save your life. That's not a metaphor for Jenny Lawson. It's the hard-won truth of more than two decades of living with treatment-resistant depression, anxiety, and the kind of dark seasons that make getting out of bed feel impossible. Most of us hide when we're struggling. We perform wellness for the world and suffer in silence behind closed doors. Jenny took the opposite approach, writing about her darkest moments with such radical honesty and unexpect...
You’ve reached a point in life where you thought you’d feel different. You’ve checked a lot of the boxes of achievement, happiness, even success. And, still, something is missing. It is a quiet restlessness that age or achievement cannot seem to quiet. What you’re missing is meaning. Our guest today is Arthur Brooks. He is a Harvard professor and #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Meaning of Your Life: Finding Purpose in an Age of Emptiness . In this conversation, we explore: The myths ...
Stop blaming willpower and start building the skill of making change stick for good. Pretty much every person wants to change something, about themselves, their lives, or situation. But, so few ever succeed at creating change, let alone sustaining it. In this conversation, we explore why real transformation is a learnable process rather than a test of grit. We look at the emotional hurdles that stop us and how to navigate the "alphabet" of success. Our guest today is Eric Zimmer, the host of the...
Turns out, "good vibes only" might be making you feel worse. Today, we’re exploring why the "good vibes only, stay positive, look on the bright side," movement is often more harmful than helpful and how to build a deeper, more resilient form of optimism and hope that is truly capable of making your life better. Our guest, Dr. Deepika Chopra , is a clinical health psychologist known as The Optimism Doctor® and author of The Power of Real Optimism . With postdoctoral fellowships at UCLA and Cedars...
Want a deeper, more secure, fiercely connected relationship? Then, you’ll want to check out the power of relationship agreements. In this episode, we sit down with Krista and Dr. Will Van Derveer. Will is a psychiatrist and author of the book Psychedelic Therapy , and Krista is a Relational Leadership Educator who helps partnerships move from the "I Operating System" to a "We Operating System." We explore: How to craft your own sacred relationship agreements that keep bringing you back to love, ...
Being a super-communicator isn’t a gift, it’s a skill anyone can learn. Ever wish you were the person who could talk to anyone with ease? Like anyone you came in contact with became instant friends, confidantes, or trusted allies and collaborators. Turns out, this superpower is not something you’re born with, it's something you can learn. This episode shows you how. Our guest is Charles Duhigg, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter for The New York Times and the best-selling author of ...
Organizational behavior expert Anthony Klotz discusses "jolts," unexpected events that profoundly alter our relationship with work and life. He explores how the pandemic normalized major career shifts, the subtle power of small incidents, and different types of jolts. Klotz provides a framework for thoughtfully diagnosing problems, reframing "quiet quitting" as strategic rebalancing, and avoiding cognitive traps to make wise, intentional decisions.
Your mind is under siege. Every day, technology and noise fight to hijack your attention, leaving you feeling less present and more distracted than ever. In a word, unconscious. It’s time to stop the scroll and reclaim the most precious thing you own: your consciousness. Learn how to build "consciousness hygiene" and protect the privacy of your own mind. Today we are joined by legendary author Michael Pollan. Michael is a ten-time New York Times bestseller and one of Time’s 100 most influential ...
Your kids leaving isn’t an ending; it’s an open door to a more intentional version of you. Many of us spend decades organizing our entire identities around our children, only to feel a staggering sense of loss when the house goes quiet. In this conversation, we explore why the term "empty nest" is so limiting and how to navigate the "forced reckoning" of midlife transitions without losing your sense of purpose. My guest is Gretchen Rubin, one of the world's most influential observers of happines...
