How to Find Meaning and Live a Good Life with Jonathan Fields

don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how their people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Thanks for joining us.

Our guest on this episode is Jonathan Fields. Jonathan has been on before and in this episode, him and Eric just discuss a few topics they felt like talking about. Jonathan is an award winning author, global speaker, and host of the popular podcast The Good Life. His work has been featured widely in the media, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Oprah Magazine, and many others. He's also the author of the book Sparked How to Live a

Good Life, and others. I'm so excited to be doing this, you know, like we have been rolling in the podcast space together for years now, talking about similar things. We have these great conversations on the side. We're literally talking yesterday and we're like, we should have hit record on that. It would be exactly great conversation to air. And finally we found the time to sit down and just jam about some topics that we both cared deeply about. Yeah,

I'm excited to do this. It's fun to sort of do something that's a little bit different, where there's not one person who's interviewer and interviewee, but more of just a collaboration. Yeah, I love it. So we talked about a couple of different topics that have been s top of mind. I think things that have been coming up in our universes, ecosystems, probably questions that we've been getting asked about by a lot of people, and I thought it'd be fun to just share some thoughts and ideas

around these topics. Do you want to tee up the first one and we'll just kind of see where it goes. Sure, I think the first one that we talked about was the idea of how can people bring more meaning and get more enjoyment out of their nine to five jobs. You know, if they're not in a position where they're looking at like, well, I'm gonna quit this and you know, go off and chase my passion, but for a variety of reasons, they've done the calculus, and the calculus is, Hey,

I'm in a pretty good spot here right. This is my job. It may not be my deepest passion, but it pays the bills. I like it. You know, I can think back to myself where I was right and I've got a job. It's challenging. I like the people. There's there's lots of good here, and yet it does take a toll on me if I don't manage my mindset around it. Right, So I think we could just

talk a little bit about bringing more meaning to work. Yeah, And I think we both love this topic for a lot of different reasons, and no small part because for the typical person. You know, you mentioned nine to five the typical person these days, like that nine to five is starting to grow, especially in the world that we live in over the last couple of years, where boundaries

have kind of been annihilated. So many people are working from home or from cafes or from where it may be, which, on the one hand is fantastic, you know, a lot more freedom, a lot more flexibility. I know so many people that have literally gotten three hours back in their day because they're not commuting in our app each way. But at the same time, the destruction of boundaries, which is not used to setting up and working and being effective in that space, has almost taken all that time back.

So I wonder if before we even get into the notion of what are some of the things that we can think about shifting in the context of the work itself, have you been thinking about this notion of boundaries in any meaningful way and sort of like how that's sort of become this issue that I think in a lot of ways, it wasn't nearly a center before the last few years. You know, it's interesting if I think back on my career and I don't know if this was

just working in the software industry. I feel like that lack of boundaries started a long time ago. It was this badge of honor to be sending out emails at midnight, and that was always there. And so in the last few years for myself, I've actually gotten a little bit

more stringent with boundaries. And even though my work is my life in a way, right, I still have really realized I need to set some hard limits otherwise, like I can just carry it with me always, you know, I can always be like, wow, that's not really work. You know, for a long time, until the last couple of years, I didn't take weekends, right, I'd be like, yeah, but I'm only doing like a couple hours. But I

really realized, like I was never really getting away. And so over the last couple of years for me, I've suddenly become like, WHOA, this is really great. This ability to set some hard boundaries is really valuable. Not checking email, though at all hours, is still a challenge. It's so habitual. Both I do better with it for a while, and I sort of get it put in its box, and then it breaks loose again and I wrestle with it for a while, and I finally you know, shove it

back in the corner and completely agree with that. And the notion of you came out of you know, sort of a mainstream center job for many decades, much more recently than I did. I've sort of been bouncing around through my own endeavors for the better part of twenty years now, but it wasn't even a recently. It was a really interesting tell where this was a couple of years back, and for some reason it stayed in my mind.

You know, I was out doing something, I was buying something, and I was like, do I use the personal credit card? Do you use the business credit card? Because it's one big mash up. You know, the distinction started to become really hard for me, which in the one way is wonderful, it's amazing, but any other way, you know, like there are things outside of this thing called the Brook that I love and I need to create really intentional space war So for me, I've been trying to be much

more structured. You know, we're literally I bake into my calendar. Now you're like, similar to you, I'm really trying to respect the weekends at this point because it's become so easy to just sort of cloister myself in my own office studio for a ridiculous amount of hours. I have movement, Like I literally had this all calendared in so that I build everything around it. Even though I love what I do for the most part, there's always stuff I

don't love. But sure I don't have the ability if I don't build it in in advance to honor the fact that there are other things that are important in my life for some reason don't have that level of willpower. Absolutely, I've had to be really diligent about, like this is when work starts, you know, and here are the things I want to do before work, because otherwise, I mean I could just you know, pop on the computer real quick. Let me just hop on real quick and see what's

going on, you know, and then that's it. The morning's gone, which is normally you know, movement, meditation, you know a few different things that I like to squeeze in the morning. So yeah, respecting those boundaries and setting them is really important and it's funny to think about. I've shared this story before. I for essentially the last ten years of my corporate career. Some of that was as a consultant, some of it was as a full time person. I

had side projects. I built a solar energy company, I built this podcast, And what I learned during that period was really interesting because I had pretty demanding jobs and pretty demanding things on the side, and we have this sense that we have to always be on. What I found was that I got really really good at being focused in those other jobs on what was absolutely critical, because I wanted my time right. I didn't want to give fifty hours a week if I didn't have to.

So I became very focused on how can I have the maximal impact with the minimum amount of time, and so a lot of things that I used to be a lot more fastidious about, like I've got to reply to every email, I've got to be in every meeting. I stopped doing a lot of that, and it was interesting to see my effectiveness in the eyes of the people who employed me was not diminished at all, you know. And so I think a lot of times we feel

like we have to always be on. There are certainly cases where you've got an overbearing boss and you do. But I think it's something we can all ask ourselves again, do I really you know? Or is that just an assumption that I'm making or is that what other people are doing? Is that the only way to be good and effective at what I do? And if I gave myself a little bit more downtime, might I be more if in the time I'm on And that turned out to be the case for me. Yeah, completely, And I've

experienced that same thing. I have this weird shorthand for it. You know, I sort of asked myself off and you know, like, do I feel like the work that I'm doing at any given moment is time being served or time being of service. It's a subtle shift, but it's actually really really important, you know, because in one I feel like it's a haftu and the other it's like, oh, this is a gift. It may be hard, but you know, I'm doing it for a bigger reason and it's nourishing

on a whole different level. Let's kind of circle back to the question that you teat this off with, though, you know, because I think bounties are an issue. I think being really intentional about what we're doing, especially these days, as an issue, especially you've got those side projects, because you can get totally fragmented. But for those who actually

like show up and work that traditional mainstream job. As you were saying, there may be a lot that's right about it, and there's a lot of sort of popular mythology that says we'll just blow it up, and that has certainly become so much more normed over the last few years that more people are willing to do it.

My take is on the blowing up option also before we get into like how do we actually do that that nine to five time better, is that it's become so normalized actually that a lot of people are doing

it prematurely or without being fully informed. And we tend as human beings, overestimate the amount of joy that will feel when we free ourselves from the shackles of this thing, and dramatically underestimate the pain of the disruption that will come immediately after that as we're trying to figure out which way is up, and we overestimate how quickly we're going to get to the next thing, which is going to make us come live, which often doesn't. I'm curious

what your take is on that moment. Yeah, I'm closer to it, as you said, like, I'm four years out right, and so the four years that I did the podcast before I was able to do it full time. I mean I remember it was it was a camp GLP. The camp you put on was the first time I allowed myself to actually even say in my own head, I want to do this full time, that's my goal. Like up till then, I just did it as a hobby and I loved it, and and that was when I sort of imagined it. And from that moment on

it was very much like that. That's what I'm aiming at. And when I get there, I'm not saying that it's not better than it was. I'm doing work that's really meaningful to me. I'm in a really good place. But my happiness level did not go from like a six to a twenty when I switched, because there was some initial relief, but I traded for a new set of challenges. Right, all of a sudden, I don't have a steady paycheck, and that's a different animal to wrestle with, right, It's

a different type of worry. So yeah, I think again, I'm glad I did it. I feel very fortunate and very blessed. But it was not the panacea maybe that I thought it would be. It's still effort and there are still challenges, you know. I think often of artists who think, you know, if I could just do my

artful time, but that doesn't always work out, right. It puts a whole another set of pressures on you, and that whole other set of pressures can to corrupt the thing that you loved, right, I mean, one of the challenges for me has been how do I keep the love in what I'm doing when it also has to pay the bills and I have to stress a little bit about it paying the bills, Like it's not a foregone conclusion that it's going to pay the bills. What does that do to my relationship to this thing that

I loved? I don't think we think about that often enough. Yeah, I think we don't think about it until you're in it. And it's also the type of thing where I think very often you can't think your way to an answer. Um sometimes you actually just have to make the call and then realize there are all these different things coming up that I need to grapple with it. I didn't anticipate that I would really prefer not be the circumstance at the moment, And yet here we are totally now

and then you have to make the decision. Well, was it a good call and are these things resolvable? You know? Or was what I was doing actually better than I thought? Um? And I might want to sort of like move forward into something similar that build on that. It's been interesting. I've noticed that there will come a time periodically it

happens less. I've gotten better at being an entrepreneur. I think there's a skill set to managing the anxiety that comes around not getting a paycheck right that I've gotten better at. But I would notice I'm checking the help one it adds for you know, software development positions. You know what if I could just find a ten hours of consulting a week, you know, or I meet up with a friend who was you know now four years on?

Is you know that we were peers and their two levels up and I know what their salary is now, right, and that's where I would be. I know where they're at salary wise, And I think, look at that house, that would sure be nice, Like I made some sacrifices in order to make it happen, as I'm not like

poverty stricken. I don't want to paint that picture at all, but it is a different situation for sure, especially when you can look back at the career that you left behind and you kind of know there's a fairly well defined ladder of like status and prestige and income and like, so you can kind of say, well, like, that's where I would have been pretty much with a fair level

of confidence. It is fascinating and at the same time you have to kind of remind yourselves, but look at how much I've actually been able to create that wasn't there outside of money and status and whatever those other indicators are absolutely and I feel set I did the right thing. There's the very very little doubt in my mind. There's just occasional pangs of it, but that's partially because

I work to manage those. And it's interesting. I think you and I have talked about this before, because I had to work to manage my impression of my day job while I had it in order to do my best work outside of it. And I think this maybe transitions to what we're getting to also, which is how do you put more meaning into this other thing. I had this sense like maybe if I just really resent what I'm doing, it'll get me out faster, and that

turned out to be exactly wrong. I had to find a way to love what I was doing while I pursued something else, and that actually turned out to be the path that worked best. So even as I was like, this job, this career is not where I'm going to be long term, I still have to invest in it in a way, in a curious way, in order to keep my overall mental well being at a high enough level. Yeah, because effectively you're investing in yourself, not the job. It's a great way of thinking of it. Yeah, And I

completely agree. You know, I think if you do the work, that like, make the thing that you're at currently as good as it can possibly be before you make the decision, right, Because this is a pattern that I saw on myself and I've since seen it in so many other folks who have been fortunate to be in conversation with it, which is that once we start to feel like maybe this isn't quite the right thing for us, and I'll speak for myself, I would start to do like a

hundred tiny things that I wasn't realizing. We're sort of subconsciously sabotaging my ability to make it as good as possible,

to actually make it something I could enjoy. And my take is that, like my brain was kind of saying, if I make this as painful as humanly possible, then my rash brain has an easier time jettisoning, making the decision to walk away, and enduring whatever suffering comes from that, because I can tell the story of how horrible that old thing was without ever really saying, but I was complicit in that, you know, And and so the notion I love your idea of making it as good as

humanly possible because then we can have a more objective measure and maybe maybe we stay because we actually realize, well, if I'm actually working for myself rather than against myself in this context, it actually can be way better than I thought it would be. And I think that kind of brings us full circle to where we started, right, Like, how do we actually look at this thing and decide is it improvable? And how much of it is about circumstance and how much of it is actually about our

own state of mind, our own frame. Yeah, there are obvious times where we can look at it and be like, Okay, this is circumstance I'm in, I'm in an objectively awful place. You know, like I've got a terrible, terrible boss or I mean and and they're toxic and harmful situations where you just need to get your self out. For sure, that's right. But assuming that it's in a gray area, right, which is where it's going to fall for most people, all things being equal, if I don't have to blow

my life up, that's probably a good thing. So let me see. It's like if you're in a marriage, right, and it's well, it's not great, but you're not certain. You're like, well, it's not bad enough. I'm planning to walk out the door today. I'm uncertain, right, the wise thing to do, in my mind, would be to invest as much as you can in that marriage and find out because if it is savable and you can make it good, that is probably the best outcome, right, just

from collateral damage perspective, right. And so I think if we're uncertain, it makes sense to say, well, let me assume some of this is my state of mind, and

what happens if I start to change that? And I think it can be really helpful to give ourselves time periods to be like, you know what, six months for six months, I'm in here and I'm going to do everything I can to make this as good as I can in six months, and at the end of six months, I'll reevaluate Because to your point, when we're either thinking we're out the door or when we're on the fence, there's all these subtle ways that we don't either invest

in or we actively make things worse and completely subconsciously. It's not like we're intentionally trying to, of course, to sadvertize this thing, but I think our brain runs this script. That's if I'm leaning towards a decision, I need to contribute to the evidence for that decision, especially if your brain is kind of feeling like and it may cause pain, even though it may open me to possibility, there may

be pain along the way. I almost wonder if there's a social context to this also, in that I know that if I make a decision, they're going to be those around me who don't understand the decision and potentially judge me and judge the decision, And I need to point out how bad it was to basically be able

to still belong and justify what I did. And like you said, there will be moments and opportunities and jobs where the pain is legit, it's a present, real, it's toxic, it may be exploit if whatever it maybe get out, but that's not necessarily the majority of our situations. When you make this decision. Let's say it's like the six month window we're talking about you just outlined, right, So it's like the question becomes then for me, like what

do you do in that six month window? Like and you know, of course I've spent years now is really in this body of working around the sparkeet types and identifying the essential impulse for work it makes you come alive and trying to center that, And that's a part

of it in my mind right totally. Part of it is self a deeper commitment to self discovery, like really get to know yourself better, what fills you and what empties you sparket type is one thing, but there's a whole bunch of other things that are really important to understand about yourself and then to really sort of like say, well, what experiments could I run in that six month window that might somehow be able to better align the things that I do with who I know myself on a

deeper level, to be I mean, does that resonate with sort of how you would step into that moment or I'm curious with you have other ideas also, I have other ideas, But absolutely I think you're right. A lot of times we know are not satisfied, but we don't know what would satisfy us. And so to your point, you know, SPARKA type being a great one. It's a great framework for that. So yeah, knowing, okay, what does

satisfy me? You know, what do I enjoy doing? And you're closer to the work world is at job crafting, you sort of try and within the confines of your current job to find tasks and activities that more resonate with who you are and what you like to do. So SPARKA type other assessments looking at what parts of your job do you like? When do you feel good

for me? I think also really looking at the relationships around me was really valuable, Like who I am here, who I show up as today actually makes a difference in the world, right, So I want to go make a difference in the world in this bigger way. Maybe let's say you've got a passion, you want to go do this thing in a bigger way. But me showing

up and I work. Let's say I interact with fifteen people that day, Right, if I am a light in the fifteen people's lives, you know, within reason, Right, those fifteen people go home and they interact with other people. So there is meaning embedded. If nothing else, I found and can find great meaning in how do I interact with the people around me? Because there is meaning in that? That was one I really leaned on, you know, in those last few years in that job, was like, Okay,

who am I around? Who's on my team? You know, I've got people who are on my team and I'm investing in their careers. How do I make sure when I leave here they've got the best chance for the rest of their career. And it wasn't a little bit of a leadership role, but even just in meetings, how do how do I interact with people? I think it really matters and it ripples in ways we don't see. That's the hard part is we don't see the way it ripples, but it does. You know. Yeah, I love

that question. How can I be a light in other people's lives? I think sometimes we ask that question in the context of our personal lives or personal relationships, it may come more easily to people. The notion of asking that question in the context of work, to me is fascinating because each one, each relationship is an opportunity for you to make meaning by contributing to the betterment of

others around you. Um, and whether you're wired to just naturally do that or not, Like, we all experienced some sense of purpose and meaningfulness, you know, when we know that we have in some way like move the needle, even in the tiniest way in another person's life, even people who were not all that close to that's a really interesting take on how to take that time and can I make it more? Yes, the actual work that I'm doing matters, But what about the social context, the

relational container that I'm in. What opportunities do I have there to make meaning and to just feel yes, I'm going to have an impact on other people's lives, which is awesome, But also maybe that really changes the way that I experienced the nearly identical work, like the job

description hasn't changed. Yeah, I mean you read the stories in the work literature about like janitors who work in hospitals, right, and somehow I always think like these people are exceptional people, right, because they are connecting their work as a janitor to the higher purpose of healing. You know, you may not be able to do that in the same way with

your work. My last role was you know, I worked for the Gap, and the Gap was actually a good company, right, like their social values aligned with mine, a lot of really good things about it. I found it hard, although now when I think about, like when I'm expecting a package to arrive and it doesn't arrive, you know, I was in the fulfillment side of that business. You know, it might be hard to convince myself that shipping genes is all that meaningful in the grand scheme of things.

But again, I was able to find meaning in the people. And then I think there's also a chance to find meaning in doing the best work of which I am capable. There is an intrinsic factor that feels good when we do that. When I exercise, I feel good in two ways. Right. One is I feel good because I've moved my body and all that. But the second is I feel good because I did what I said I was going to do.

There's an internal alignment. And I think when we show up at work and we do our best, we really step into it and try there's an internal alignment that feels good, versus I kind of go in and phone it in all day, like no matter what I think, that causes an internal misalignment that just subtly doesn't feel good. So I think we can find meaning just in you know what, I'm contributing to the best of my ability in the place that I'm at forty fifty hours a week.

I think there's something that can be found in the intrinsic sense. In that way. I love that. It's sort of like having a sense of your capability is honoring your desire to actually show up as your best self and contribute at the highest level you feel capable of,

regardless of what the expectation is around you. Yeah. I mean literally, I've had friends at work in jobs where they went into a new culture and they loved they did, and they started just jamming and performing at a really high level, and people all around them who had been there, some of them for for decades, where like, uh, you need to like bring this down like a minute, because that's not how we do things here, you know, like we work at a slower pace, and were like, this

is the way that it works here in this shop, and my friends are just like devastated because they were alive. They were doing the thing that they really enjoy doing and at a pace and at a level of competence that really lit them up. And then the culture they stepped into was saying, like, you can do the exact same thing, but at a lower level and more constrained level, like you can't be fully yourself, and that alone can

be kind of brutalizing, you know. So it's interesting to have even run that experiment if you work in a culture where the expectations actually are set at a level where you would rather show up and exceed those expectations, to just show up and exceed those expectation aations and see what happens. You know. My guess is some folks will really take notice in a positive way, but there

may also be an interesting reaction, which is negative. I'd be fascinated, like, I wonder if there's research actually on dynamics like this in the workplace and how it affects people, like whether there would be enough rebound rejection of your wanting to show up and function at the highest possible level for no other reason that it makes you feel good. How culture would embrace that within where you are. I think it's a really interesting experiment to run in that

six month window you were talking about. You know, I don't want to be painting and overly unicorn picture. Right. The culture you're in really does matter. You know, it's hard if you're swimming way upstream. But again, I loved what you said, which is experiments in this six month window. I think that's a really great way to think about it. Well, what if I try this? What if I try that? What if I do this? You know what works, what doesn't work, what jives with the culture, what causes more?

You know, Oh I tried that and it actually made things worse. All right, Well let's abandon that, because now everybody's mad at me. I think you just try and then it's six months or three months. Maybe maybe six months is too long, but you've got a data point.

I just find it helpful to set an amount of time so that I can step off the fence for that amount of time because otherwise, you know, I've done this with spiritual paths, right, because you know, I mean the nature of our work right, every week, I'm like, oh wow, I how to be doing that, you know.

Oh God, I gotta try that, you know. And I just found I was like all over the place, so I would be like, all right, it is this teacher, and it is Zen and it is six months, and between now and the end of six month, I'm not going to be like, well, I wonder if that's a better Well, of course I will inside my brain and then I'll just go Nope, we're staying here. You know. I found various areas of my life where it's really helpful just to say, for this amount of time, I'm

stepping off the fence and I'm committing. I'm not ready to commit to this for the rest of my life, but I'm going to commit for a period of time because that allows me to actually invest and not have that mental energy of it'll be better somewhere else. I have a natural grass is greener brain. I think we all do. Yeah, yeah, I love it. Yeah, the six month window is interesting different in mind. Charlie Gilki I think you know also, um yeah with Charlie. Yeah, he's

a huge fan of running sort of like quarterly. He's like basically commit to everything for at least a quarter. But I think it's also a really interesting invitation that you're offering, which is said, think about how long it would realistically take for you to have enough experience with this thing to get a reasonable amount of data to make an intelligent decision with it. So, like a spiritual practice, three months is kind of a drop in the bucket.

So it was six months, Yeah, yeah, right, right, you know, six years is sort of like probably like more accurate, but in our modern day and a like, who's gonna wait anywhere near that long? It just doesn't happen in our lives. Yeah, yeah, And what was interested is when I got to six months, I was like, yes, another six months, and another six months, and you know, next thing, I know, it's several years I've been working in the same path and now I still am and I'm going

to be working with a different teacher. But that was beneficial for me. Same thing with like exercise, I'll just find like, all right, I'm gonna try and do this for the next you know, ninety days. Let me find out what it's like if I stay with it. Yeah.

I love that. I'm kind of feeling that this is leading us somewhat organically into one of the other topics that we were both really fascinated by, which is sort of the process of change, because that's part of what we're talking about here, right, like, and we've been talking about in the context of work, job, but more broadly, I feel like changes in the air, like to a certain extent, over the last couple of years, you could say, like the amount of forced change has been dramatically increased,

whether that's a good thing, a bad thing, or just a thing I think as a matter of perspective, and also whether we're equipped to handle that and how we sort of like step into it. And it's certainly not like change or groundlessness is something new, you know. This is the state of existence, is a state of alize, but it's been amplified and centered in a way that I feel like for many people it hasn't been until

fairly recently. And the question is like whether it's imposed from the outside in or we just like, you know what, there's something about me or my life, or my relationships or my health or whatever it is where I'm actually not satisfied. I'm not fulfilled. I want to make something different, whether it's an internal change or an external change, Like I am not okay with the way things are, and I want things to be different, which involves the process

of change. But like stepping into that, change can happen in a functional way, in a healthy way, in a constructive way, or a wildly dysfunctional, unhealthy and destructive way. And sometimes the difference between the two is more subtle than we'd like to think. Yeah, give me an example in your mind of like a destructive or dysfunctional way

of approaching change. I mean, if we take something that's sort of like a mass desire for change, like so many people want to get fit, right, and certainly after the last few years, like someone of us have been feel like we're sort of like locked in a cocoon and we lost the ability to go outside and do stuff, and we're not happy with their weight, We're not happy with our fitness, with our ability, with the health markers

that come from all these different things. So I think the impulse very often, like I'm raising my hand right here, is okay, I can't take this anymore, Like I'm a blob. I know things hurt that shouldn't be hurting, and I know, like I'm not able to do these different things. And granted I think this is my example that is relevant to a lot of different people, and of course everybody steps into this from a different place of ability, so

it's important to acknowledge that. But for me, physical fitness and physical ability to whatever extent my body allows it to happen, is important to me. It may can you feel a certain way, and I know it's important to me just for my well being moving forward and for my mental health. But there's a sweet spot, right Like so my impulse as being a little bit of a type a person, I like to will things into reality, and that has been my m O for my entire life.

It's been my m O. And entrepreneurship. It's like I have a vision for something and then I will just work myself to the bone to make it happen as fast as humanly possible. But with things like taking care of our physical body, there's a sweet spot where if you do it at a certain pace, with a certain amount of recovery built into it and a certain amount of intensity built into it in a way that honors your unique body, then it can be really constructive and

it can lead to lasting change. You know that's healthy and functional and is sustainable. Potentially for years of not decades in your whole life, but literally like a hot minute faster or like a touch more intense Kennon has sent me spiraling over the edge of in r and pain and soldering and debilitation. And the same thing is like, if I go outside of that sweet spot in the

other direction, nothing happens. If I decide to go for a walk once a week and eat a plant, you know, like every other week, like that is not going to get me to where I want to be. So I think there's this for a lot of things that where we're seeking change, you know, especially where we really feel like, Okay, there's been insighting incident that's made me really realize how un happy you're, uncomfortable or unsatisfying. I'm with the status quo.

I can't be here for a minute longer. That's a great energy to work off of to leverage, but like what you do with that can be largely determinative of whether the change we seek leads to the outcome we want and in a healthy way that's sustainable, or the exact opposite. When I think about my life, that's kind of the thing that comes most immediately into mind. Yeah, there's a lot of good stuff in there is somebody

who used to injure himself on a regular basis. I don't know if it's just age or wisdom or a combination. On the boat that I've actually gotten better at that. You hit an interesting point there about the sweet spot, right, because it's really interesting to think about what is motivating us and are we setting a direction? Are we setting a goal? Is this thing that we're looking at changing

a value? We know, for example, that setting a short term weight goal of like I'm going to lose thirty pounds in two weeks, it's probably a terrible idea that doesn't tend to work, or if it does, it doesn't last. And yet we also know that numbers and goals can be motivating, right, So I think it's knowing yourself and knowing what works, the things that have worked best for me with like, say, fitness is a value that says I value being physically fit. Why you know? Now I

can get into why that is right for me. At least for a while, it became very primarily about my mental health. As I've looked at my parents aging and I've gotten a close up view of what that's like that is filtered into like, Okay, I gotta work out for my health and the future. That future window is shrinking, you know, it's not as far away as it used to be. And my parents, both of them in their own way, it's like a preview of coming attractions and

I'm like, Okay, I'm gonna take this more seriously. So in that way then fitness becoming a value then is less likely to lead to doing too much. I'm just like, look, moving my body on a regular basis is like that's just what I'm going to do here on out. You know, it's it's a value. Also helps if a week goes by and I don't do it, you know, because then I'm not like, well I blew it. I was on the right track, I would you know, it's just like nope,

you just kind of get back on. So I think if it can become a value a direction that we want to move in, because we recognize broadly speaking as a direction being kinder, that is another value that points to a direction that we can move. But as we said, sometimes specificities really value well. So I think it kind

of depends where you are and how you're trying to change. Yeah, that's really interesting to position it as a value rather than sort of like a specific outcome or a program where you like, there are certain boxes that you have to follow, certain things you have to do every day, and if you don't check the box for too many days in a row, well then you know, like it's just over and you're completely done. You know, it's I

think of value and even a practice. And you know, if you look at the habit literature, right, you know, if you want to actually affect change and then have a sustain at some point, you very likely have to turn the behaviors that lead to the change into a habit, something that just starts to happen on autopilot where you're not thinking about it anymore. It's just part of who

you are. And that's what some of the identity or some of the habit literature talks about, is the shift from behavior to identity, like I'm the type of person who does X or who believes X, and then it's just a part of you and that's what allows you to sustain it. And I think you're right your idea of like thinking out of as a value makes it a more sustainable type of thing that it makes it easier to just kind of say like I wasn't feeling up to it. I had like a brutal week of

work where I just literally couldn't do it. But it's not about me having broken the program I was on. It's like no broad scheme, like I value this thing. There was a short window where it was practically just brutally hard to do, so I made a choice not to do it, whether it was buche allter intentional. But I am still that person and I still have that value. So I'm gonna wake up today and do the thing that I know it's going to make me feel the way I want to feel. And like that made mean

the chance happened slower, but it's still in process. Yeah. And at the same time, right, like I've become a Peloton sponsor show. They probably sponsored your show. At one point we were on the same network, right, and they sent me this bike to try out. I thought, all right, I'll get the bike, why not all ride it. Well, it turned out, for whatever reason, it was the right thing for me. It unlocked something in my fitness. I've been doing it for years now and it works for me,

and I will aasionally do these things. It's a type of training you can do on peloton known as power zone training, and there are groups outside of Peloton communities that form and they will do like a challenge, you know, forty five day power Zone challenge. Like I find those helpful, right, Even though fitness is a direction, it's a place I

want to go. I do find a program that gives me some specificity can be really helpful community accountability and support, and so I don't think it's either or again knowing ourselves and what works for ourselves, you know, I just know I respond to that sort of forty five day program knowing though that I know myself and my life well enough to know that most likely I'm not going to be in the same place for forty five days to do anything, right, So I just except that, like

two of those weeks, I'm not gonna be anywhere near a bike, so something else is going to have to happen. I interviewed a guy I don't remember his name, Stephen Guys maybe, but he talks about flexible habits. I think it's really interesting about like when do we need rigidity and specificity and when do we need flexibility and finding the right balance of those things is really kind of an art in some ways. As you were describing that, Like the word that kept pupping into my head is agile.

You know, like we need a certain agility so that we have a certain structure in place. It's intelligent, it's well thought out. It aligns with that underlying value of who we see ourselves are, who we see ourselves wanting to become, and what's important to us. And at the same time, it gives us behaviors to say yes to, like you were just talking about, like forty five day challenge or something that you're really drawn to that will help effect that change, being committed to it and yes,

yet also acknowledging your humanity. I remember years ago. It's funny, I'm Boulder, Colorado right now, but back then I was living in New York. We had flown out to Boulder to record a whole bunch of injurviews is when we were filming in the very early days. One of those people was Brad Feld, who's this sort of legendary founder and metric capitalists out here and also just like a

really d and guy. He was talking about how he had this really powerful value around wanting to have a deep, loving, connected relationship with his wife, and part of that was a commitment to certain rituals that they had, like on a morning basis, connecting every morning, and then once a month they would have these things called life dinners, where they would go out. They could go to a restaurant,

they get a bottle of wine. They would talk about the relationship, the good, like everything that needed to be talked about. They would exchange gifts. Sometimes they would laugh, sometimes they would cry, sometimes both. Sometimes it was just fine. But I bring it up because he knew that he wanted to like, he had this value around relationships. He knew that the way that he had been in relationships in the past wasn't the way that he wanted to be in them, so he wanted to affect chains. They

created these behaviors that really means bul blood. At the same time, he also knew that his life, especially then, he was on planes, trans and automobiles all the time. So they literally built in a tolerance to the life dinners of like. It was like eighteen point one percent of like life dinners on on a twelve month basis that he could miss and they would still look at it as this is a successful thing, Like we are both committed to this and it's working at it's honoring

our values. He literally looked at his life in events and said, I know that nature of my life, So let me acknowledge that and literally build a certain amount of flexibility and agility and forgiveness into the bigger process so I can still feel like I'm succeeding in my own life. If it's something I'm trying to do essentially, very very regularly. My tolerance is about ten percent. Now, I'm not measuring that tightly, but it gives me a

general sense. If my goal is to meditate every day and I missed three days a month, I don't think that's like, oh I missed three d is a month. I think like I'm nailing it right, Like that's winning. Knowing that percent is possible, and depending where you're coming from, right, that tolerance might need to be sevent eight percent. Right. You know, I've been doing some of these things long enough. I think that I've got my system down decently enough.

But knowing that perfection isn't going to happen is critical. Just like, Okay, what does success look like for me? If success is a I'm going to be disappointed. You know, unless you have a life that never changes and you're a robot, you know, expect some amount of deviance from the goal. Yeah, and I think building that in the beginning it's just really really smart, but we never do it.

I'm just thinking about so many different things where I kind of think to myself, Okay, I want to achieve this, or accomplish this, or change this. I go into research and find out what are all the different approaches to this, What's the one that makes the most sense to me. Where's the program that somebody else has built that proves that it works, like that gets you from where you are now to the outcome that you on and let

me follow that program. And I'm thinking to myself how many times I've done that, thinking I'm just locked in, like I'm ready to go like a habit's proven, like thousands of people have done this before me. And then I say yes to it, I put into my calendar and like nine days later and I'm like, Nope, not happening, because like I took something and I never actually said okay,

so how does this work with my life? Yes, I'm doing less of it now, but I did a lot, particularly as I left my job and moved into the podcasting, I did a lot of one on one coaching for a while around behavior, and so I got a lot of reps in and just really realizing, like, there are some principles that we can talk about, but people are different. You know, you've got to know yourself. There are some people that the direction we need to go is like, stop being so hard on yourself. We need to tone

that way down. There are other people where we need to turn the accountability dial up right, not knowing that that's just one example of many different variables. How busy are you? How chaotic is your life? You know? Are you solely responsible for childcare? So if a child gets sick it falls on you. What's the health of your parents? You know, I mean there's all these different factors that really means that there isn't a one size fits all

for people. And so really thinking about like you said, Okay, this program seems to make sense, it seems to be the right thing out there. How does this work for me? You know, where is it going to work? Where are the problems? When I would build a plan with somebody, then I would say Okay, what are the five things that are most likely to go wrong with this plan. I'm sure you're a master at that right in certain

areas of your life. So it's the same thing is you know, Okay, I've got this plan for making a change in my life. What's likely to go wrong? And the thing that goes wrong for a lot of people is unexpected things. Kids got sick, mom got sick, had to go out of town, I got sick. I mean any number of different things were rolling along and then

that interruption happen. And for people who are like I'm really good at starting things, but I can't stay with them, I've identified that thing as one of the main problems. You're going along and when things are routine, you got it. But the less routine your life might be, you've got

to really be able to roll with the punches. Yeah, it's like the small scale, day to day black swans, right, Geka at the capability to completely derail you, but you have no idea what they are until they are, you know, until they happen. I think it's a really interesting idea. I wonder what you think about this. I think it's an interesting exercise. Like you were saying to say, like, what are the five things that like you can conceive

how that might happen. But then even say, just given the nature of your life, your circumstance, like the context you're you're in, let's assume that they're going to be certain things that drop into your orbit. You have no idea, there's no way for you to actually know them right now, right and you build a tolerance just for unforeseen circumstances into whatever plan you have. So maybe it's ten percent

forgiveness or wager room. Either way, you really based on the fact that you know your life has hectic, you're maybe apparent, you maybe working two jobs, you may be like caretaking somebody else, and just to give yourself that leeway so that even if those things where you have no way to project that they might happen now happen, you can still say, and I can honor them, I can do what I need to do to take care of them, and still feel like I'm succeeding at this

path of growth and change along the way, rather than I gotta tap out, I've just failed. Yeah, And also what is a fallback behavior that I might be able to do? Tell me more Let's say my goal is it's a phrase I use a lot, which is that a little bit of something is better than a lot of nothing. So a lot of us. If it's like, all right, I'm supposed to go to the gym today for an hour. Let's say I was going to go from twelve to one and I've got a meeting that

goes till twelve twenty. Instead of going, all right, well, you know what, I've still got forty minutes. I'm not going to make it to the gym and back, but I'm gonna go walk outside for twenty minutes. We just bag the whole thing. So thinking about what do I do if I can't complete this behavior? Is there a smaller version of it that I can do? I remember this one for me. My goal is like I've got an exercise plan and my mom goes into the hospital, and now I am going to be at the hospital

for eight hours a day on top of working. Like exercise, It's gone right, except I'm like, well, you know what, I could just go walk the hospital halls for fifteen minutes. I could go up and down the stairs a few times. It's that little bit of something is better than nothing. A. I mean, it does give me some fitness benefit, but

be it kind of reaffirms my commitment. It sort of gets me away from like the hard stop, you know, where I feel like, Okay, I did the best I could, you know, And so I think just thinking about things like that. You know, I want to meditate every day, you know, and I do it in the morning for thirty minutes or whatever. But this morning my kid was not feeling well and etcetera, etcetera. But you know what, I've got five minutes I could sit quietly my desk,

you know. It Just is there something small that I can do? You know? And again we could say five minutes of meditation. Probably in the grand scheme of our lives, doesn't make much difference whether you do that five minutes or not. But in the context of continuing a behavior that you've committed to, it actually does matter a lot, yea.

And in reinforcing that identity level of value, it lets you keep saying I am still the person who does X and who says this thing matters to me because I figured out a way to do it in some way, shape or form, even though like I was knocked off, like what my original intention or what the plan was.

It's like it it reinforces that identity level of value um and that lets you keep saying I'm the person who does this, which then makes it much more likely that you will keep doing it over time, because it's not just a thing you do, it's who you are, you know. One of the things I think with change should be interesting to explore also is how do we look at change over the long term, How much might

we change? How much can we change? And also the issue of comparing ourselves to others, which I think is another really pernicious thing that can really get in the way of change. Those are really juicy questions. That last one especially, It's almost like what I hear when I hear you saying that is who are we actually changing for?

Are we doing this because we want to be accepted by other people based on their norms, their standards, just because we want to be loved or beloved or held by them, or is there something deeper inside of us? It just feels like just for me, even if nobody ever knows, even I haven't never tell anybody else, like there's a way that I want to be differently in my skin, in the world and my relationships. That's meaningful

to me and me alone. The whole question of like why we even want to change is interesting, um and maybe even determinative in our ability to affect change and sustain it. I mean you think it's like that central, Yes, I think our why is critically important. Why are we doing this? If we don't have good clarity on that, it's very difficult to maintain. Most real change is going to take a significant amount of time, both in investment time and calendar days, Like it just doesn't happen quickly

and so inevitably. Then there's going to be I think lots of times where you're like, wow, that seems like a good idea, But it sure doesn't seem like a good idea today. You know why am I doing this? And then also what are my expectations about what the nature of the change will be. This is an easy example.

It's a it's kind of a straw man. But if I think I'm gonna lose twenty pounds in ten days, I'm going to be very disappointed in that when I don't achieve that, And particularly if we start thinking about changes that aren't as easy to measure as something on a scale, you know, my changes to how reactive I am to my children, how much might I expect to change. I think it's interesting back to the idea of tolerance, like what's the tolerance that I have knowing that I'm

not going to be perfect at something like that. Yeah, And the idea of really understanding your it helps get you through all of the moments where you really want nothing to do with the behavior that will lead to change on any common day. It's having a flashback of in a very past life. When I left my career as a law lawyer, I was in the fitness industry and I started out I was a personal trainer, going to people's apartments in New York City, working with them.

I remember taking the elevator up to this floor in a really fancy building in New York City. I get off the elevator and I'm walking down a very long hallway to meet a new client, like my first consult with them. And as I'm like starting to walk towards the door, I hear yelling and screaming and I have

no idea, like it's coming from an apartment. I don't know what department it is, and I'm walking down the hall, and I'm getting closer to the yelling and getting closer to the yelling, and then I realized I'm at the end of the hall, like the doorway that I'm supposed to knock on is where the screaming is coming from.

So I just stopped for a minute and I listen, and it's a man yelling and effectively saying I never wanted to do this, you may you do this, You're forcing me to do this, and like, I want nothing to do with this. I can't believe you did this without my like, and I'm like, oh, dear, this is this is my soon to be right, which which I am a harder present. Sure I'm going to see for exactly sixty minutes and never see again for the rest

of my life, which is exactly what happened. It kind of doesn't matter how much other people want you to change you, like, there's got to be something inside of you that has to want it, especially if it's something it's gonna be hard and long and take effort. It's got to be more than just a superficial driver. Also, it has to be something deeper that's going to keep you in it and wake you up in the morning and say it's cold, it's raining or whatever it is,

But I still got to do the work. You know, maybe it's a relationship that you really want to repair where there's some wounding in the middle of that relationship. You know that maybe a month or years long process, and it may be hard, but you know, like why it doesn't matter so much to you to pair this, Like that's a big part of what's going to keep you in it. I wonder if oftentimes, even when we visit this question, we visit on a on a really surface level and we never actually get to like like

the five level. Why underneath that? Like why does that matter? You know? It's like why I want to lose twenty pounds, Like why does that matter? Because I've got a twenty year reunion coming up and I want to be able to look a certain way? And why does that matter to you? Well, because when I was in high school twenty years ago, I was bullied all the time. And why does it matter to you? Like I want to both respect myself and come from a place of dignity

and be respected and treated with dignity. Oh okay, now that's something that I think when it's really hard to do the work keep you going you've done so much more, or like individualized work and behavior chains, Like do you feel like that's something that you see fairly often where crearly people the initial response to why it's fairly surface

level and you really have to do some digging. Yeah, that your story made me laugh because as you were ellien it, I was thinking, this sounds a lot like when I used to go to adolescent drug and alcohol treatment centers, Like they're just not into it, Like you know, like we go there to give a talk and I'd be like, every once in a while you find a kid who gets it, but the vast majority of them simply are like I don't want to be here. My parents put me here. The minute I get out, I

am getting high. And that brought me back for a moment. Yeah, I think that what you said there is an important one, like ask why, and I think it's worth getting to the most emotional core of it that you can, because we are emotional beings. We are driven by emotion, and so the closer to that emotional core we can get,

probably the better off we are. You know. I think the other thing that's hard and why people change is even with all the research it's out there, all the literature that's out there, all the work I've done with people, it is still to me to some degree of mystery. If you can figure out why a lot of people don't get sober, you could solve that problem. Would be

a billionaire, right, But it's just not that easy. And so even with why, you know, like what I find really interesting and what's hard is your emotional Why one day feels very poignant and then three days later it just feels empty. That's hard, you know. I think that's part of the challenges. What do I do if my mood system is variable enough. I just talked to earlier today.

You've you've had him on your show, I think a couple of years ago for you, Diego Perez Young Pueblo, right, And we were talking about determination, you know, because I was like, well, where did you find the determination to do some of these things? Like you just are like, well, I'm going to meditate two hours a day, Like whoa, you know, you're pretty determined guy. He references being in

a low mood often and that's something I do. And we were talking about like dudes and don't for low moods right, and one of them was don't reevaluate your strategy in a low mood, you know. So when I'm in a low mood, I just try and be like what's on the calendar, Just just keep moving forward. Is not the day to debate whether you care about physical fitness. You're not in a place to have any sort of thing. Just try and move forward in the best way you can.

And so I think that's the thing. Sometimes for me, I've had to realize that, like my wife feels really poignant today, three days from now it feels completely empty. I have to trust that it does matter, even though I can't feel it in this moment. I have to trust that it still does matter to me. A better version of me is available and may not be available in this moment, but that better version of me exists

and it thinks this is important. I'm gonna try and just stick with that better version, even though the version

that's here today thinks who cares. That brings up something that I think is really interesting that in a way references back to a conversation about work and meaning will work and sort of like reimagining what you're doing to give you a lot more, which is that if we are exploring and saying yes to a process of personal change or a path of personal change, and we get in touch with it, why and we talk about all the different sort of ideas and strategies we've talked about

the same way that we were saying, before you leave a job, or even think about leaving a job for something else that you hope will be better, do all the work to make where you are as good as humanly possible. When we think about a process of personal change, when we think about saying yesterday, when we're setting ourselves up for it, it feels to me like a similar principle would be at work here, which is, can I get as happy with myself with my current circumstance, with

the state of my being, my body? How can I love as much as humanly possible the current state and not just revile it and use that negative energy to move away from it? But how can I love myself as much as I possibly can in the moment, in the state that I am right now and still at the same time, you learned to exist differently, because if you're just waiting to feel differently about yourself until you hit that moment where you're like, check the box changed Now,

I love me, I love my relationship. I feel like that is going to be an empty quest. Like I feel like a part of change, which is a little counterintuitive, is exploring ways to love or at least like a little bit more who you are in this moment in time, and trying to add to that in tiny little bits along the way, rather than just waiting until this moment down the road where I'd like checked the box, the change has happened, and now I can finally say yes

to me. I think that's extraordinarily well said and maybe a great exclamation point to put on the end of this, you know, is really that very idea of yes, I want to change, Yes I want things to be different. But if I exist only in things being different, I completely miss where I'm at now. I of that idea of I'm gonna inhabit my life as it is today. I'm going to inhabit myself. I'm going to inhabit my world as it is today, while I also look to

make some changes. And I think you said it really well there, So I think that's a great place for us to wrap up. Awesome sounds great. We got through two of our topics, so we'll have to do this again at some point. We're gonna have to come back for our around two and maybe me around three, because then we're going to keep adding to the topics over time, and so awesome to be in conversation in this way. Always, yes, thank you, Jonathan, I always enjoy it. Yeah, thank you too.

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