Jonathan Fields

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 other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good Wolf Welcome to the show. Before we start today's interview, we'd like to ask our listeners if they'd be interested in participating

in a new segment of this podcast. We had the idea of recording some shorter interpretations of The One You Feed parable instead of full interviews, and we thought a great place to start would be with some of our regular listeners If you're interested, please contact us through one you feed dot net and as always, a great way to support the show is to go to the iTunes

store and leave a review. So our guest today is Jonathan Fields, and award winning author, serial entrepreneur and host of The Good Life Project, which explores a life well lived with acclaimed entrepreneurs, artists and authors. His latest book is called Uncertainty, Turning fear and doubt into fuel for Brilliance. Here's the interview. Hi, Jonathan, welcome to the show. It's great to be with you. It's a real pleasure to

have you on. There's been a few pie casts out there, and and you've also got a video show that we're sort of a model for what we were trying to do in years is definitely one of them. So I love what you do with that. Thank you. I appreciate that. So our podcast is based on the parable of Two Wolves, where there's a grandfather who's talking with his grandson and he says, in life, there are two wolves inside of us.

What is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love and patience well stuck in traffic, and the other is a bad wolf? Which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and he thinks, and he says, well, grandfather, which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. For me, it's about choice, that you know.

The parable to me is that we wake up in the morning, we open our eyes, and between that time and the moment we close our eyes in the evening, we have we have a series of choices to make and um, and one of those choices includes our state, our state of being, our state of mind, our state of body, and uh, I think we default to believing that those are set by default, they just happen. To me. The parable is about owning the state that you bring to everything that you do as a choice, rather than

just saying this is happening to me exactly. I think that's that's very much on point with with a lot of what we talked about. And I think that choice is I made the joke in the opening about being stuck in traffic, and it's one of those where I recognize this is what's happening, and do I get upset or not get upset? And you know I do better sometimes than others. But I agree with you that I recognize at least that that is a choice that I can make versus a you know, I'm a victim of

this thing. Yeah, I mean I think it's about you know, you look at the world and there are circumstances within your control and circumstances outside of your control, and if you can control them, then control them if it makes sense too. But if you can't, then own the fact that you can't, and then on the fact that you

can control how you respond to them. I think it's one of the most profound things that we say, which is, you know, act on what you can control, what are How do you go about making that determination because there tends to be a gray area sometimes. Do you have any method that works for you? Yeah? There is. To me, there's actually an intermediate step, um, and that is actually

cultivating the awareness needed to understand what's actually happening. So, you know, one of the biggest things you have to figure out is you know, it is is this something I need to just deal with or is it something where I actually can change the real circumstances the fact, and and most people are so disconnected with a sense of present awareness or mindfulness that you can't even really

assess that. So to me, the immediate step actually is to to develop some sort of practice in your life that allows you a sense that allows you the capability to stop what you're doing. Um, zoom the lens out and kind of look down on the situation and say, what's really happening here? Um. I'm reminded of when I was a young lawyer, which is a really past life

ago I was. I was in a government room taking a deposition, and opposing counsel was a very famous, um, very famous author and lawyer, and uh, and I was green. I was like a couple of months out of law school, and I had no idea what I was doing. Um, And at one point I started, I started deposing his client, and a couple of minutes in he started getting really contankerous and says that completely irrelevant, there's no reason to ask that, And and my normal reaction would have been

to just kind of melt down. But like, oh my god, I'm an idiot, I'm new, I don't know what I'm doing. He realizes this, and he's going to destroy me for some reason. I'm not sure why, but I kind of just looked and I zoomed the lens out and and I can there's almost a thought bubble over my head that said, Okay, what's really happening here? And what I realized pretty quickly when I actually kind of took the meta view was that he was testing me. That he

wasn't actually angry. He was this was a test. We were a couple of minutes in. He was going to see if I was green, and he could and he could basically run what was about to happen. So I looked at him and said, off the record, I said, I get to choose what's relevant what's not. If you have a problem with that, here's a phone, let's call the judge. End of story. You know. So it's the ability to kind of to get the meta view and really look down on the facts and say, Okay, what's

really happening here? And that's the intermediate step that gives you the opportunity to them to make a choice. Stephen Covey said, you know, there's a space between stimulus and response, and I agree, mindfulness and meditation, there's different things, at least for me, have made that space just a little bit longer. It's not huge, but long enough that that I can start to do some of those things you described, which is to back up and and take a look again.

Sometimes I'm better, We're all better at it than others. But I definitely find that that's been really helpful to me over time. Yeah, now it's been a huge asset for me as well. You've got a list of of maxims or it's a creed excuse me, you've got a creed for the Good Life project, And I thought maybe

we just talked through a couple of those. So one of them that we were I think points a very closely to what we've just been talking about would be the one that says, a good life isn't a place at which you arrive, it's a lens with which you see through. Yeah, and it's really that actually to me, that one line is really it's the hard and soul of the entire you know, their thirties something lines, But

that's really what it's all about. And as soon as you I've had so many conversations and actually, let's just make this personal, right, So I've I've launched, grown, um, you know, successfully built certain ventures and then completely created I've done I've been through the process of creativity and creation many many times over and and been. You know, you get to this flash where like I just want to be there, like what you know, I just want to have made it already, Like what am I going

to be there? And and what you find is that even when you succeed with that something, you know, you get to that place where you thought I'd be like, Okay, now I've made it, And then what what clicks into your mind is just a little bit more, like how much is enough? Just a little bit more and just a little bit more and just a little bit more. And what you really start to discover is this idea that you know there there is no place, there's no there there, you know, there's the choice to just own

what's going on in front of you. And and it's really much more. You know, it's like putting on glasses rather than arriving at a place. It's like I choose to view the way I experience each day, and I relate to the people that I care deeply bad, the people I choose to serve, And what I'm making in the world with a certain lens, and I approach it with a certain sensibility of gratitude and all these different things, so that I don't have to wait until I achieved

some designated bench point, you know, a benchmark. Just start living my good life. I can open my eyes and start this moment. And it's a little bit of a mystical, metaphysical and kind of woo concept for a lot of people, but it's actually not at all. You know, there's there's just a great volume of research that's coming out of the world to positive psychology, which is kind of deconstructing a lot of this and making people realize, well, yeah,

that this is actually pretty legit. That always a little bit more thing I totally relate with. And it's what I finally recognized it is exactly. It's the it's the mindset that's the problem, because the mindset will there's no satisfaction. It never it never ceases. I mean, it's you know, in some ways, it could be considered sort of a bad wolf. It's always I need something more, and um one of the you know, we wrestle a lot. We talked on this show a lot about some sort of paradoxes.

And one of them that kind of comes up is the idea of being driven to make changes in your life and to strive for the best life you can and being happy with the life you have, and how those are how to do those two things at the same time, I think is the is the is the trick and it's it's it's so fascinating, cause I've looked at that a lot also, you know, I've I've taken a lot of time looking at Buddhism sort of thought.

And a good friend of mine is a is a long time UM teacher and dot and I actually asked her this once and I was I was talking to her about the context of the head of Shimbalba Buddhism sacomer in pochet Um is you know, very devout and

and follows all of these tennants. But at the same time he's a nine time marathon or an accomplished equestrian, and he will play a fear scheme of bad mitten against you if you issue a challenge, and so like, how is how do you hold this duality of striving yet um acceptance of your current reality at the same time, and you know, take not Han writes about this as well, where he says, you know, at a certain point he

can't just sit and accept that UM. He you know that he should accept a mass amount of suffering among people that he cares deeply about. Felt compelled to have you take some kind of action. And and I think it's this really interesting duality that you're holding at this At one time, you know, you want to appreciate what you have UM and at the same time be open to and take action towards the possibility that UM, you may be able to attain a state which is UM

more rewarding UM. And you know, in in a way and the answer would be, you know, from serving Eastern without perspective, is that you can. You know, there's a difference between desire and aspire and it has to do with attachment to the outcome that you can work hard and aspire to a certain end while simultaneously appreciating whatever

your current state is and UM. And so you know, the goal is to do the work and appreciate the now and UM and be open to the possibility that you may end up in a better place, but also know that if you don't UM, you're still okay. And and I'm not saying that that's uh at all an easy concept for me or for a Western mindset, but you know, when I think about it, that's kind of the way that I try and frame it. So that said, it feels feels sensible to me. I agree with that.

The thing I've been thinking about in regards to that is I I certainly in the earlier parts of my life it took pain to motivate me to change, um. And I've started to look at can can the motivation, the striving, the desire come from a different place. I think there was a link between. It's sort of the the old link between you know, some degree of pain and an artist, whether that be a writer or a musician or a painter, and and trying to wrap my head more around that it doesn't have to be a

painful thing. Um, a sense of dissatisfaction that drives that, but maybe simply the joy of doing, of striving for whatever that thing is, just the very enjoyment of doing it. Yeah, And you know, I think a lot of the pain of the artists pain and the creator's pain, the entrepreneurs pain is actually revolves around um. You know, the suffering is about trying to make certain the world that you live in. And the one thing that I know for certain is that there is no certainty. You know, I

can't lock down the future. Um, but we are wired to want to do that. I mean, our brains are literally softwire by the time we become adults too to respond um, really fiercely against actions and thoughts that move us into a state of uncertain to the challenge being.

You know, the definition of an artist or a creator in any realm is really bringing something to life that didn't exist before, which demands existing sometimes for really long windows of time in a state of uncertainty, in a state where you don't know how it's going to end, and and we don't like that, so we try and move towards certainty rapidly or eliminated. But at the same time, you know, we destroy the possibility of creating something really

astonishing along the way. So to me, a lot of the suffering, a lot of the pain of an artist or a maker or an entrepreneur actually comes from banging your head up against um, the reality of uncertainty and and the fact that it has to be a part of your process rather than just owning the fact that, Yeah, you know, for me to do the work I'm here to do, there's going to be large window of windows

of uncertainty. I can't control that, So let me see if instead I can actually cultivate a set of skills or practices that allow me, you know, the sort of a baseline level of equanimity and the face of that. In one of your blog posts recently, you talked about the question of of a legacy that a lot of people are thinking. It's a it's a thought that's on

everybody's mind. There's a lot of talk about leaving a legacy, and and you say that the the question when you start to think in those terms, those questions can become paralyzing rather than catalyzing, and that maybe the better way to approach your legacy is what you do today and sort of connecting the dots backwards as as Steve Jobs said, versus trying to think forward to where it all goes. Yeah.

I mean very people, um that I either know of or no who are towards the later parts of their lives who you feel like they've created some sort of substantial legacy, have been able to see what that legacy is with any any sort of like realistic detail, um, thirty years before it happened. You know. The ones that that tend to really create something extraordinary, I think are the ones that that aspired to do good work and serve on a certain level every single day and um

and wake up you know and do that. So yeah, that that whole conversation was really about. You know if, in my mind, probably the most powerful legacy that I could leave would be the collective output of a decision to wake up every day and spend as much of this day, um doing things that light me up, with people who light me up, for people I love to serve, and then waking up tomorrow and doing the same thing.

And I really feel like if I can do that, if I can make that my focus, then I have this innate sense that the long term legacy that I end up creating will be the best possible legacy I could have created. It'll take care of itself. In other words, Yeah, yeah, I think so. The other thing you read I read recently that sort of struck me, and I think these things are all kind of in a in a similar vein. But you say the path to becoming is littered with

the remains of those who missed the grace in being. Yeah, everybody wants to become their next better self and uh and I'm not against that, but it's about not um, not owning the grace that you have today. You know, it's about about completely striving, making your life, about striving for the next thing and forsaking whatever beauty you have in front of you. And yeah, and again I'm I have no issue with aspiring and pursuing evolution and change. Um.

I think it's fantastic. Um. I love to learn. I love, love, love to learn. Whenever I take a strength space test, it's always one of my top three strengths. I just I love to learn and to grow. Um. But I also you know, I love taking care of myself. I love being present in the lives of my daughter and my wife. I love, um just curling up on accounts and hanging out. And so there's you know, and when

you just when you forget about those moments. Funny I had, um, you know, in our project, I guess about a year and a half a guy, I had the occasion to sit down with Burnee Brown, and when I asked her what it meant for her to live a good life.

She started to cheer up and um, she kind of looked up and off to the side, and she said, I'll get it wrong, but some variation of it's the little moments that so many of us steamroll over in sir, of the big moments, And she said, like, that's what it is for her, you know, it's waiting online to pick up your kids at school. It's these little moments where we're just like, can we just get it done with already? Rather than saying, man, how blessed to be in in a in a state, and in a position

in a world where I actually get to do this. Um, and if it can, if it can be even better, that's awesome. I'm open to a possibility. But but don't just steamroll those current moments, you know, in in the hope that you'll find another moment that's bigger down the road that's better. You may, but what if you don't. And with that mindset, as we said earlier, even if you do get to that bigger moment, that it can

ring hollow if you always think it's somewhere else. I mean, that's been the biggest lesson for me maybe over my lifetime, is just is to learn to want what I have to some degree, I mean, with while balancing those other things, because I you know, the story I always tell is I when I was younger, I had been I'd been like eight years without a car, and I had lost

my drivers. It's a long, horrid story, but basically, I'd been like eight years without a car, and I finally was working and I got a brand new Dodge Neon, which you know, it's a Dodge Neon, right, but it was a brand new car after nothing for eight years. About the first two or three days, I was ecstatic. By about the fourth day, I was looking at other cars on the road going, well, it's not a bmw MM,

which is such a shitty way to live. Yeah, I mean, but it's also wired into us, which is why, you know, Jonathan Hyde wrote about this in the Happiness Hypothesis, and and there's a bunch of research around this, which is that we tend to for some reason, we're wired in a way where we tend to measure our success relative

to what the community people around us have. So you know, I live in New York City, um, so no matter how much money I make, there will always be a community of people in New York City that make, you know, as zillion times more than me, have bigger apartments and

all this stuff. So you know, but it's it's bizarre that we're actually kind of wired to be happier that way, where you know, their research done where somebody said, you know, would you rather have, uh, you know, make a hundred thousand dollars a year but be but know that the people around you, your neighbors, are making a hundred fifty or would you rather make seventy five thousand dollars a year and know that you're making more than all of

your neighbors. People chose to seventy five, I know, which is crazy, and it's it is a perspective. We had this conversation with Lewis House when we were out in l a And we were sitting in his He's got an apartment and I and you know, I think maybe you've been there, but looking down over go Hollywood's gorgeous, right, But we were talking about the fact that if you step out on his porch and you turn your head to the left right, there's houses up on the hill

from there that are even better. And and it seems like any place you find yourself at in life if you you can look up or you can look down. But I think the thing and I've been thinking about lately is neither of those things connect me to either

those people or my life. Yeah, totally agree. And yeah, it also kind of ties in with some of the work that Daniel gilbert Um shared in his books Done upon Happiness a number of years back, where he was looking at you know, when we project how we think will feel and when we hit a certain place for or they call that effective forecasting. Yeah, we think will

be pretty good. Well, you know, like if I've got a million dollars in the bank twenty years from now, then this is the life I'll be able to lead. And it turns out that if you ask a complete stranger who's, you know, twenty years senior to you and has that amount of money in the bank, their answer about how happy they are will be more accurate than your For your life, then your guess is about how you'll feel when you get there. Yeah, we tend to

not know what will make us happy. No, we really don't. I mean it's not it's kind of like there's a little bit of a cruel trick being played in the way that our brains are wired. And it's like, you know, part of our work on the planet, that guess, is to h to explore how to how to wire things a little bit differently, maybe to a certain extent. I

also think it's very culturally based. You know. This is that you know, we're having this conversation to English in the United States, but if you had a similar conversation you know, in parts of Asia, um, India, uh, you know, Europe, South America, this conversation would be radically different because the value said is radically different. Nearly everybody we talked to about how do you feed your good wolf? A part

of that is who's around you. And I think that's so much a part of what makes a life good or not good is who who were around because we are so even as individuals we like to think we are, we do tend to absorb a lot of what's around us. Yeah, and not completely great. It's funny people will often ask me what's the best thing about being entrepreneur and working with entrepreneurs, and uh, you know, is it the money?

Is it? The freedom? Is that the creativity? I'm like, oh, those are all nice, you know, all the you know, the truth is, in the early stages of entrepreneurship, you generally have none of those for it takes a while. Um, and that's if you succeed. I said, you know, the really cool thing about it, at least for me, is that you get to pick both the people you surround

yourself with and the culture that you build. And when you when you understand that and when you make that the big priority, it's a game changer because you you can wake up and your business can be having a tough time, you can be struggling, you can be in the start up stage and it's brutal. But if you've built a team, you know, family of people where every day you love being around them, and they share a set of values and beliefs and aspirations and and you know,

you together you've built this culture which is incredible. It's it makes everything. Okay, Yeah, that's well. That's why I picked my partner Chris Here to do the podcast with because it was somebody I wanted. He's going to Happy Sigence, somebody I wanted to be around. And I've I've had entrepreneurial truths before where I made decisions differently and when things got tough, it was it was really unpleasant. Yeah, I mean it's the same thing, and it's a huge focus.

We're as we were building a team for Good Life Project. Now you know that's we're like a family. Um. We just love being around each other, we love working together and it's uh, it's definitely one of the biggest blessings. I'll turn your question back on you. What does a good life mean to you? Um? There are a lot of different ways that I could answer that question, but I think the simplest way is, um. You know, to me,

there are three buckets. Uh. There's contribution, connection, vitality, and it's structuring your life in a way where you're constantly filling all three buckets. So you know, deeply connected with a sense of self and soul and service and community and people you care about, your your vital and healthy as as healthy as you can be and and pain

free and strong, and your mindset is sound and and calm. Um, and that you're contributing to the world on a level that fills your soul and also serves something bigger than you. And UM, you know the shorthand for that for me is to um, spend your time doing things that light you up, with people who light you up, for people you love to serve. You know, if I follow that as a guiding I think it's it's it's hard to

go wrong. Yep. Let me ask you, uh, let me come at that slightly different way, because the question I get from some of our listeners sometimes is what's easy for Jonathan Fields too to have a good life? Because he does choose some of those things. And but I've you know, my life circumstances are a little bit different. Maybe I'm not in a position where I think where I can create my own business that's going to feed my family and do all that. How do I build

a good life within that structure. It's kind of funny because people make assumptions and you look at me like that. Dudes living high in New York cities making a great living, got a great business, great family. Um Everybody gets into the habit of comparing their insides to other people's outsides, and the moment you do that, you lose. You know, it's because there's just you don't know what my reality is. You don't know what anybody else's real inner truth is.

You don't know what we're living with struggling with UM because nobody shares on that level of transparency. I certainly don't. You know, I'm not I'm not transparent or anywhere near it with the way that I live my life or the way that I shared publicly. UM. So you know, on the one hand, you tend to make yourself more miserable by comparing your your inner life with you know, the outer life of people you perceive as being you know, successful or having the thing that you want to have.

So number one, just stop, don't do it, UM. But the other thing is that it kind of goes back to what we were saying before there. You know, there are ways to um own the circumstances that you can uh that you can't control, and then figure out how to get some level of ease. You know, just sort of change why are your brain the way a little bit differently to be able to respond to UM the things that you can change in a way with a lot more equitimity and also really basic practices. You know,

it's not a good life happiness. UM. It's not about what you've got, you know, it's really it's about who you're with. It's about how well you are. UM. And it's about the level of meaning that it's in your life. You know, you look at um, you know, Victor frankel Man search for Meaning, and you read that book and you're just weeping to see what he went through in

the Holocaust. And you know, he makes a really really powerful point in that we become giddy, especially in this country, um at the thought of happiness as the defining thing to pursue. And he's like, you know, maybe that's a little bit overrated and even potentially seriously misguided. What about meaning? There's a lot around meaning, you know, and maybe the most fulfilled people are actually the ones with the greatest

meaning in life. And that meaning can come from doing the smallest tests and being of service and seeing like a child, Uh, flourish every day can come from so many different things, and very often, as Frankel shares and many other people share, it actually comes from sacrifice. It comes from what other people would consider outwardly to be suffering and pain, but the it yields a deep sense of meaning that leads to a deeply gratifying um life.

So you know, I wonder often whether you know people make that comment and they're focused on well she or he has things I don't have and I don't see how to get them. Rather than, um, how can I create more meaning with anything and everything I'm doing? If my job is making nine bucks an hour, you know, sweeping floors or in a factory, is there some way that I can actually show up at work and do that job and imbue it with with a deeper sense of meaning or pride or or gratitude. Um. And I don't.

I absolutely don't want to profess to you know, I don't have the arrogance to say that I have all the answers and that you know, people who are living in deep poverty you need to just pick themselves up by the bootstraps and it's you know, it's their choice. Look, this is a really really complex problem when you're talking about deep poverty, and I don't profess to have the answers, um all. I So I can't just sort of say

this is a sell for that. But what I can say is that increasingly you learn about people who have been through the most horrific experiences and circumstances and still found a way to feel like, you know, what this day, this moment, there's meaning of what I'm doing and that makes it okay. You know. It's was a comp that said, you know, you can endure almost anyhow if you have the right why. I think that really is powerful. Yeah. What I love about Victor Frankel also is he really says, look,

there isn't a universal meeting. You can't look out there for it. You make it. It's your it's it's up to you to make and find your own meaning. And that will be different for every person. And that's a very freeing Um. In some ways, I think there's some pressure with it, but it's a very freeing concept. Instead of trying to figure out the meaning of life, it's what what's my life mean? Yeah? And I also it's

it's an evolutionary process. You know. You'll there's a lot of focus in these days, especially in the pop psychology and the internet sellth help world and yeah, you've got to find your life's purpose. Um. I'm not so much a believer in that, you know. I think there are a small handful of people who touched down the planet and some you know, at the age of six, they know they want to be a vet, um, you know,

or a painter, and boom, that's it for life. Milton Glazer, who it's one of maybe the most iconic living designer in the world age six years old now, had an amazing opportunity to sit down with him last year and he knew what he wanted to do with his life

when he was five years old. But that is so rare most people, you know, you go out there and you just keep trying things, and you keep doing things, and you build data that at some point starts to say, these are the qualities of uh, you know, an experience on the planet that makes me feel good, that that made me feel happy and filled with meaning. Some people never get there, um and but most people who do get there connect the dots looking backwards. They don't take

a test and say, boom, this is it. You know, it's just And I think sometimes when you put pressure on people to have to do that and know it before they can actually build anything meaningful, it's more more it paralyzes people more than it frees them to act and experiment, right, which is right back to the thing we talked about earlier, of that if you if you imbue yourself with such heavy questions, those become paralyzing versus focusing on what you can do right now that that's positive.

Something you recently, Um. I don't know if it was a podcast or a blog post, but you talked out the idea of a guru and I so resonated with what you said because you talk about how you know, for a large portion of your life you were looking for that one person that would that would transform you

and give you sort of the direction for life. And that how every time you you've got involved with that, you'd get to a certain point with a person or a school of thinking, and there eventually come a point where it didn't it didn't fit you. And what you say is that you eventually realized that the person you were looking for was the person that you had to become. Yeah, and you know it's interesting when I shared that, then somebody offered in the comments which was really powerful and

very true. She said, you know, it's like dot dot dot or the person you already are. Yeah, And I was like, yeah, that's more what I mean. Um, but it's a peeling. You know, there's an interesting concept and uh in uh yoga, um, people say it's about trans formation. If you really actually drill down and you translate the sanscript um there's there's a phrase jievan mukti or jiva mukti um, which translates to liberated being. It's not transformed being,

it's liberated. And the idea is that it's in there already, you know. It's like it's like Michelangelo the David. It's like like I didn't create this, I just chipped away all the stuff so that you could see, you know, the David that was already inside this huge slab of stone. And the concept is that you know, it's all there inside of us. Now it's more about peeling away all the gunk that gets layered on through life and and just to get back down to your essence and realize

that you pretty much have everything that you need. And we've spend so much time out in the world looking for somebody to tell us it's going to be okay, rather than just doing the work to know exactly. And that's a I think, like some of the other things we've talked about, that's both a liberating and a and a scary concept at the at the same time. But it for me, I think I had the realization that you did that I kept I kept looking for this person that was who I was going to grow into.

And nobody's going to grow into that except me. There's nobody who's going to see the world the way that I do or have the experiences that I have. And as soon as somebody didn't do those things, I was like, Oh, they're not the one for me, versus taking what was useful from who they were and what they were learning and realizing though those those final few steps, I'm the

only one that's going to take them. Yeah. No, absolutely, And and also, you know, it's it's important to say that I don't discount at all the the importance and the beauty of having teachers. You know, I think it's wonderful. I think there's sometimes just a misplaced expectation that this is the person that will solve your life, right, and and that's that's not it's it's not useful for you. And it's also having oddly been placed, um, had those

expectations placed on me by other people. It's it's unsettling to be on the other side of that equations. And also, at least it was it has been for me on the times that's happened in the past. Because I don't hold myself out to be that person. Well, that's one of the things I think that people resonate with you about is that you don't you don't do that, and

you're fairly I get what you're saying. You're saying about not being totally transparent about every emotion, but there's a fair degree of of Um, I think openness there at least to not having it all figured out. I think there's there's a lot of questioning in your writing. Yeah, and it's it's very deliberate, you know. I love to

A lot of my writing is about starting conversations. Um. What's kind of fun also is that there are times where I actually I'll ask questions where I I kind of know the answer that I have to the question, but I really want to I want to hear from other people and I want to plant the seed where they can have a robust conversation that becomes very often the conversations you know on on the blog end up being way longer and to be honest, probably a lot

more interesting than the initial the initial post which was all often use just as a prompt to get people talking. Yep.

And I think that the the beauty of that a lot of times is it's it's a lot more authentic when you kind of come to those conclusions yourself by thinking through them versus having them handed to you on a plate, which I think, and we're nearing the end of time, but I'm gonna that ties to one last thing that I was struck by in some of your writing, and it was about how people will come and say, you know, I need help with whatever that thing is, and then not really be willing to accept that help

because the feeling is we have to have it all figured out. And that ability to say I don't know what's happening here and I will learn from someone else is so frightening for some people that they can never move beyond that. Yeah. Um, it's just we are We're so wired to run from vulnerability, and it's not even vulnerability,

it's public or vulnerability. Were so wired not to want to own the fact that we don't know which way is up in any kind of public way, whether it's with a partner, with you know, like people at work,

whether it's you know, completely publicly. Um. The in a um Steve Dobin or Levitt's Last Freaking Omics book, I can't remember exactly what's the name of the latest one was but they were talking about study where you know, they basically did all this research that showed that even you know, from a young age, people just they don't want to use the words I don't know because you just feel like it's wrong. You know, like you're somehow

lesser if you do that. So it's interesting to have been on the end of an equation where people would seek me out or people would seek out of consult it. I mean, it's funny when I wrote that post that actually didn't phrase it as me um. But you know, somebody will go to seek out help of a consultant or a master or you know somebody or a mentor, and then that mentor gives them exactly what what they're

looking for. Um. But for them to accept it, they have to admit that they completely had no idea which way was up and and they can't own that, so they reject everything that's being offered and say, well, like, you're not helping, you're not helping, not helping, You're like, no, it's some You've got to own the fact. You have to be open and people ask for help, but very often they're not actually open to what they know to what they are. They're asking for being given, and there

are two different things and two different practices. Yeah, I think you said asking is not the same as receiving. And I think that circles back around of the conversation about the blog about putting questions out there, because people can arrive at those conclusions and then they feel like it's their conclusion and it's easier to accept in that case. Yeah. Absolutely, And also, you know, I've got a great, great community and who you know, they're probably a hundred times smarter

than me when you put it all together collectively. So why wouldn't if I'm sort of really exploring something, Um, why wouldn't I just put it out and say, hey, listen, this is what I'm thinking. But what do you guys saying? Because maybe I'll learn something great from them. Well, thanks so much for taking the time. It's been a really enjoyable conversation, and like I said, I'm a big fan of the work that you're doing and looking forward to seeing what you continue to do. Thanks so much, it's

been my pleasure hanging out with you. Okay, thanks Cia right for more information on this podcast, and Jonathan Fields go to one you feed dot net slash fields