58: How to Live a Good Life

to have Jonathan Fields on the podcast. Jonathan is a dad, husband, serial entrepreneur, growth strategist, and award winning author. He runs the Good Life Project, where he and his team lead a global community in the quest to have a more meaningful, connected, and vital life. His latest book is How to Live a Good Life, Soulful Stories, Surprising Science and practical Wisdom. Thanks for chatting with me today, Talvian. Yeah, it's my pleasure. Thanks so much for inviting me. Oh man, I really

enjoyed your book. I read it and, like you know, one sitting cover to cover, it's just it flows really naturally. But I know the writing process. Probably writing it doesn't flow as nicely as the final product looks. Yeah, it's always an adventure and that I know you know that journey well yourself. And so two things. One, I'm so

glad you enjoyed it. It's you know, writing is always a really kind of interesting process, and too, knowing that you come from a background where you know, with really rigorous academic perspective on things that are legitimate and actionable, you know, it was a really interesting challenge because writing this was I wanted to take stuff where I knew that there was science behind so much of what I was trying to do, but deliver it in a way where it just it felt like it was easy, where

it felt like you didn't have to work to understand the ideas in the book. You know, you may have to do a bit of work to actually act on them, but I was really trying to create a way to share knowledge in a way that was just it went down really easily and was just really actionable. Yeah, and it clearly was. And you brought in a lot of positive psychology I saw, I did you know that we share that love? Yeah, I know, it's great and to be able to bring that from the scientific journal articles

to the everyday household there is no easy feat. Yeah. I love the fact that book resonated with you because what I was really trying to do was take some ideas that I knew were really worked and just to steal them and serve them up in a way where it went down easy, but easy enough for people to look at and say, well, I could do that, and knowing that it would really matter if they did. For sure, you must be in New York City because I hear fire engines and indeed, you know, first we had like

pis connection problems and this is validation. Then in fact I am in the Art of Manhattan. Well, you know, let's talk about let's I try to like turn lemons into lemonade here. So you talk about the different buckets that we have that we do as well to assess how empty they are for us and proactive steps to fill them. One of them is vitality. And in the Vitality book, I noticed that you include resiliency in there. Is that right, I do? Yeah, I thought that was

really cool. I mean, we're going through some resiliency right now to get through this interview. For our listeners who don't know what we're talking about, we've been having some connection issues. So tell me a little bit why you decided to group together these things that you did under the vitality bucketing. You also included optimism as well as

mindfulness and things like that. So yeah, yeah, you know, it was one of the earliest decisions I had to make, because when you look at almost everything that's written where people are trying to figure out how to sort of live an optimal life, generally they split out okay, you know, they sort of split out your body, and then they split out your mind or your mindset or your you know,

your affect. And you know, maybe ten, fifteen, twenty years ago, I could see how that would be a legitimate dichotomy, but you know, all the research now just shows that it is such a falsehood to actually try and speak to them as two separate things. You know. So when I think of vitality, what I think about is optimizing your state of mind and your state of body, because

they're one seamless feedback mechanism. I can't fathom how you could actually try and optimize your physical body without it having a profound effect on your psychological side of your existence. And how the same thing with you know, if you're really trying to optimize mindset, it has a profound effect on your body. So to speak about vitality as Okay, let's talk about your body and then let's talk about your mindset as two set things. It just seemed like

this complete and utter lie to me. So I said, you know, we have to we have to bring these all together because it's it's just one universal feedback mechanism. Sure, that makes a lot of sense. I mean, when we're feeling depressed or from feeling just like I don't want to get you know, like I don't want to do this day today, Like what's my reaction. It's to stay in bed all day. So that's a very physical reaction. Yeah.

So the inverse of that must be true too, when I'm like I'm excited for the day and then I want to be vital Yeah. I mean I look at the research that goes the other way now too, Like you've got like Amy Cuddi's work on how literally standing in a particular posture changes your state of mind or you know, if you're physically ill or physically in pain or physically injured, it is going to trickle back up

into your brain and into your psychology as well. Yeah. Absolutely, So let's talk about just a couple things people can do to fill their vitality bucket without giving away too much. Can I choose some? Yeah, sure, go for it. So how can people make exercise more fun than sex? Maybe the most provocative title in the whole, like you go for first? You know, it's really interesting. When we were kids, as a general rule, we exercise harder than your average

adult will ever exercise. We literally we got home from school, we ran around all day. We played, we were in the school yard, we did all sorts of things. We were moving our body literally until we just couldn't keep our eyes open and then we dropped. You know, but back then we called it play and we couldn't get

enough of it. And then you sort of zoom the lens up into you know, quote grown up exercise, and everybody sort of immediate responds, with the exception of a small number of people, is you know, this is something that I have to suffer through. It's something that I have to endure. I got really curious about why that is. You know, when did play turn into exercise? And when did something that we couldn't get enough of turn into

something that we dreaded? And how did that happen. And from what I've seen, and you know, I have a background in the fitness industry and the health and fitness industry as an entrepreneur as well, and what I saw really quickly is that what we've done is essentially we've taken play and as we've sort of you know, industrialized fitness, We've taken the novelty out of it, we've taken this socialization out of it, we've taken all the things that

would actually engage your mind in it, and we've kind of stripped it from it. So what we've left people with are monotonous, boring, repetitive motion movements that of course, you know, like we dread because if you put the average five year old on a treadmill and said, you know, like walk at four miles per hour for the next forty minutes, they're going to last you know, four seconds,

and as adults were no different. You know. So the answer sort of in industrial fitness is well, add in distraction and entertainment and then have people plug in, which then further isolates you from the community and basically strips all possibility of finding a sense of belonging and companionship

as well. And it's really kind of tragic because it's taking something that innately in it's sort of like most natural form we love and we can't get enough of, and it's fabulous for us, and it's basically taking all the things that make it wonderful and stripping it out

and then forcing us back into a paradigm that doesn't work. So, you know, then along come a couple of players in the world who are starting to add it back in now places like CrossFit, places like Tough Mutter and all these endurance sort of like Activity is a soul cycle who's sort of putting a different spin on indoor cycling and all their variations of that. And what they're realizing is they've got to bring the mind engagement part back into it. They have to bring the community back into it.

And then, you know, when you bring people into the mix, and then you bring the movement and the novelty, then you drop people into that, you know, like hyper present awareness state, and then you bring people into the mix and you've got communal movement and the oxytocin starts flowing. And that's how you make it more fun than steps.

And maybe it's not more fun, well not all sex is necessarily done, and not all of it right right, So, but at least you know what you're doing is you're bringing movement back into your day in a way that it becomes a source of engagement and joy rather than something that you just like completely dread having to do. How can you make it when when and get good

exercise from your sex? Well, there's some interesting resources that's been done on that which kind of showed that, you know, on a calories burned perspective, it's probably measured in it about moderate exercise, although the average bout when measured in the research is also probably so short that it's probably not a good idea to make that your primary source of exercise, although certainly you know, can be an enjoyable activity that you add into the mix. Okay, fair enough,

So yeah, I like that. Do you talk about this this body mind connection and also exercise. You know, these buckets that you talk about feed into each other, that can interact, and I guess ideally is integrating them in your life. So let's talk about gratitude because that's you know, Bob Emmons others in the philipod psychology have shown that's a big boon for well being. Yeah, it really is right, and there seems to be so much research that's gone

into it, although not always entirely reinforcing. You know, the different outcomes. You know, you had Seligman's who you know obviously you work with sort of earlier work and then around gratitude journaling. But what we know is that you know, in its various forms, done the way that works best for you, it is one of the most effective boosters of mood and mindset and affect that we have available

out there. And to build that into a regular practice can be something that is really powerful and sort of like filling your vitality bucket. I guess what's interesting to me is that there seem to be some conflicting data and I'm actually curious what your lens is on this. Maybe you actually have more recent information on this than I do, since you're sort of in the academic space

around it. But there seemed to be sort of a bit of a split in sort of the best way to do this or the frequency to do And I spoke to this a bit in my book, but I'm actually really curious what your latest thoughts are on this too. Oh well, I think the gratitude journal is still very helpful and you know, keeping a daily reflection of who do you have gratitude for in your life? And as well as like the three good things, it still holds up scientifically and you don't mention it as the three

good things. But you mentioned the exercise absolutely, and I loved how a lot of people miss out on the dual aspects of the three good things. It's not only what are the three good things happening, but also what are the things that were negative? And then how can you frame it like what could you learn in a positive way from them? And a lot of people don't get that element into it, but that seems to be

a really crucial part of it. Yeah, now I love that too, And I mean the other thing that I spoke to in the book, and I've actually seen so much less attention to this, maybe because it takes more effort, is the idea of the gratitude visit. You know, where you actually sit there and you write something to someone who's been meaningful to you, and then you make the time to actually be with them to share it with them. That,

from what I've seen, is can be really profound. But I guess My sense is people don't reference that nearly as much because it just takes a bit more effort to make it happen. I think so, yeah, but it still doesn't mean that you know, it's worth the effort, of course. Yeah. Yeah, so that research is still going strong.

You know, when you talked about that description of waking up and kind of in these two different paths, kind of you wake up the morning and you're just controlled by everything external, like the email and your mother and whatever. And I don't think you use the mother example. That's just my personal example. You know, verse is being fully alive. Now, I really would like to know on a personally do you it seems like such an ideal way of living.

How close do you personally get to that? I mean, it sounds delightful if you know, kind of being able to do that second scenario you described, And it's interesting because I certainly aspire to be that person. But of course I'm utterly human. I have a family, I have you know, deadlines and stuff that happens, so that's not

my one hundred percent reality. But what I will say is that I really do try and move through each day as intentionally as possible and I do wake up every morning and the first thing that I do is I have a morning ritual, and you know, the centerpiece of that morning ritual is a seated mindfulness practice and that really sets in motion the rest of the day for me to focus a lot more on being intentional

and less reactive. And in fact, I have a bit of a daily challenge every morning in that I use an app on my phone as the timer for my meditation practice, and the icon for the app sits immediately above of the icon for my email and right next

to the icon for you know, my Instagram. So and it's funny because logic would say, well, I should just put those things, those temptations in the furthest screen on my phone, and I haven't done that because I kind of feel like the first it's sort of like it sets me up so that even before I choose to sit and in my meditation, there is the slightest intentional app that precedes it, which is I have to look

at my phone. I have to see that I get to make a choice, and then I have to choose not to check my email or not to check Instagram or some other social app, and just to tap the button which says, Okay, it's time to sit and it's time to practice. And as much as you know, I sometimes get really tempted, I feel like it's actually important for me to just start my day with that single choice, because it sets things up a little bit differently. Do you do the mindful? Do you listen to the mindfulness

meditation that you recorded with your own voice? You know, it's funny. In the early days, I listened to me a little bit as that sounds. I listened to a bunch of other people. I happen to love hard word. Yeah, a little bit right. Tyr Brock has wonderful guided stuff, you know, like I've got guided meditations for other people. My friend Susan Piver has this beautiful weekly meditation that she guides people at the Open Heart Project. But for

years now I don't have it guided. You know, I've been meditating for long enough now so that I actually prefer to just sit and sort of let my inner wisdom guide me. I like that. How many minutes a day on average do you meditate for I generally do a minimum twenty five, so somewhere between twenty five and thirty. So the final chime goes off at twenty five, and I'll often sit for just a touch more than that.

So what's interesting. I've been doing this for years now, and it's amazing that I find it takes a good solid chunk of those twenty minutes for me to just kind of start to find some window of stillness and the practice, and you know, what you learn is that there's you know, that magical state where your mind just goes clear and you're able to let every thought go miraculously the moment and it happens, and come back to

this center to open an aware state. Maybe that happens if you devote your life to practice in a monastic setting, but in everyday life, you know, that doesn't really happen. So my commitment is really just to make sure that I'm sitting every day. That's great. I really appreciate that you're you know, you're very honest and human about that. You know, there's some people, well especially you know, monks and people who've been meanting for so long that it

can kind of seem very unattainable. You know, I know this one monk who was in the fMRI scanner and was able to be in there for like five hours then meditating, you know, maturo Card and it's like wow, you know, like I don't I mean being in an fMRI machine and meditating, you know, for that many You know, it's interesting though. I've actually had a couple of MRIs over the last few years, and the way and I

think one actually lasted closed to an hour. The way that I actually was okay in it was I didn't mindful this practice the entire time I was in it. And so these large or like banging, clunking, whirring, buzzing noises that happened, you know, while you're essentially in this tube where there's an inch of room all around you. It made it so that it was actually a weirdly

calm place to be. Yeah. I mean that's a good test if you can meditate in an fMRI machine, that I'm proud of you, that speak highly of your practice. So I want to talk about another thing to fill up your vitality bucket, which relates to your prior book,

and that's owning the Unknown. Yeah, this is a theme that you've been really interested in for a while, right I have, you know, and I think it's a very personal one for me because I've been an entrepreneur the better part of my life, and also an artist on some level, the better part of my life. What kind of art What kind of artists? Yeah, when I was a kid, I painted a ton with acrylics and oils, and then I built a lot of stuff, and then I started to leave it all behind, and you know,

my art main form of expression really became writing. And literally just this week I started to go back to the studio and do studio time for I'm learning watercolors right now, which is really frustrating because I've never worked with him before and it's not the easiest medium to just sort of like jump in and pick up. But what I learned along that is that, you know, you have to be able to exist in this place of not knowing and just continuing to work and do the

work and experimenting. And you do that for sometimes years, and then over time, even when you develop that sense of taste that Ira Glasses famously talked about, you know, very often it's still years longer than that until you develop also the skills and the abilities to be able to express in the world that thing that you see

in your mind. And it can be frustrating and you may not know exactly how to get there, and you have to try a whole bunch of different things and invest yourself and resources not knowing how it's going to

work out. And if you're not okay going to that space where you have to take action and make choices without complete information and not knowing how it's going to end, it can not only be pretty devastating psychologically, but it can also just be pretty stifling in terms of you ever getting to a place where you feel like you're fully expressed, you really can try to the world in the most meaningful way possible. Absolutely, So how does that

relate to owning the unknown or being comfortable with unpredictability? Yeah, well, I mean it's the best work that I found comes when you let go of certainty. So when you basically step out of that place and say, okay, I pretty much know how this is going to end. I know all the variables that's really safe for me, and then you create within that realm. You generally don't create stuff that's all that satisfying for you or all that meaningful

for anybody else. You know, the really creative stuff, the real form of innovation and expression and growth happens when you actually step out into the unknown where you don't know if you're going to succeed or fail. You don't know if you have the skills and abilities to make it happen or the resources. Yet you take action anyway, and you continue to sort of, you know, wade into the abyss, and the longer you're able to be in

that place. What I've seen, both through my own experience and through interviewing a lot of people over the years now is that if you the longer you're in that space where you can continue to ask the questions and continue to make choices and continue to take action in that space of uncertainty, the more likely it is that you keep going deeper and deeper and getting to better and better ideas and better and better solutions. We see this in brainstorming. You know, there's sort of a three

phase approach to brainstorming. You know. Phase one is you come up with all the obvious ideas, and that comes fairly quickly, and they're usually pretty mundane, it's not really the good stuff. And then some people will push through to phase two, and that's where it gets pretty hard and grueling. You feel like you have nothing left, and you don't know anymore, and you're you're on this really

fragile ground and you're exposed. And people hate being exposed because you don't know if you're going to be able to figure it out. But you start throwing out ideas and they're better because you're working harder, you're going deeper. But as a general le even those ideas aren't the

real sort of evolutionary innovative ones. And then a small number of people stay in this process as long enough, They stay in that place of uncertainty and unknown long enough, and they endure it to a point where that next wave, the third wave of truly extraordinary, riveting innovative ideas start to emerge. And that's the place where real magic take hold in art, in innovation, in business, and in life.

Yet most of us are so physically and psychologically uncomfortable staying in the process taking action in the face of absolutely not knowing how it's going to end, that we run from it or we shut it down. So for me, you know, developing the ability to be in that place long enough for your greatest work to emerge is something that I just think is so empowering for anybody who's willing to do that work. Absolutely, I love that. And if fear and anxiety is definitely one of the major

blockages to creativity. And this relates to your excellent ted X talk at my alma mater, Carnegie Mellon. Great talk, and the point of that, you know, a major point of that talk is you know how you can kind of reframe your anxiety in a way that it could be a fuel for action. And I thought you could talk a little bit more about that. Yeah, you know, and it's a really powerful and fairly straightforward technique. You know, in all sorts of different ways worlds, people call it reframing.

I guess more classically it would be called cognitive reappraisal on the therapeutic world. But it starts with the understanding that whatever the story is you're telling in your head is very likely the story you're telling in your head not the only story, and very likely also not the

real story. And rather than saying, you know, most people ask the question what if I fail, and then telling the failure story and painting this vivid doomsday scenario in their head and then hitting spin so that eventually they start to believe that's the only inevitable outcome, and that just that paralyzes you. It completely destroys the possibility of doing anything meaningful. So rather than doing that, it's I think it's important to ask that question. You know, you

should actually look at the failure scenario. But that's where most people stop, and to me, that's actually the starting point, you know. So what we do is we add a series of questions to that. So then you add to that, well, and how will I recover? And then you actually you plan this out, you know, and you paint this scenario. Okay, so if this happens, then here's time I'm actually going to recover and continue to move forward. And then you add to that two other questions and then one is

what if I do nothing? And for most people, this is actually the most terrifying story that they'll tell, because if they're not happy with the way their life is, their relationship, their career, whatever it may be, and they keep tracking that out, you know, in the sort of slow gradual decline over paired of years, it's a devastating scenario if you're really honest about the story that that tells. So I think it's really important to get real about

the inaction story as well. And then the final one is what if I succeed, you know, and paint an equally vivid and beautiful picture about that. And you know, it's kind of interesting. The Ted talk is a number of years old now, and this was just sort of stuff that came to me through my own work and talking to a lot of different people. I think looking back at that, those ideas are those questions, there's a really interesting overlay. It's funny, I actually didn't put this

together until we're just talking this out right now. This is a really interesting overlay with Gabrielle. How do you pronounce her last name? I just say odin odngin Gabrielle odingin sort of like whole whoop approach, you know, Yeah, lot that you talk about whoop in your book. Yeah, you know, because it's like, hey, listen, own the fact that stuff might get hard, and plan, you know, actually plan how you're going to respond to it in event, so that if it does, in fact happen, it's not

going to wipe you out for sure. So all these things that we just talked about will help you build up your vitality bucket. Let's move on to your connection buckets. So what is a social set point? What does that mean? Yeah, and you know, it's kind of interesting what I've experienced in my own life and a lot of people that sort of worked with, and it seems like this is sort of emerging a bit in some of the search. Is that we're all wired to a certain extent along

a scale of introversion, ambroversion, and extroversion. Where are you? I am very much towards the introversion side of the scale. I'm curious about you. Oh, I'm still trying to figure myself out. I you know, like I feel like you give me two cups of coffee and I'm an extrovert, but my default feels introvert. Yeah. No, I think my

default definitely is. But what's interesting to me is I didn't really understand the difference until I just spent some time with Susan Kaine, who we both know and who's written this wonderful book called Quiet, and when she really explained to me, like, the real easiest way to explain it, I think is that introverts are not anti It's not that you're antisocial. You may well love people, but the

way that you engage with them is different. So I love sort of smaller, more intimate individual or small group conversations, and it's not unusual for me if I'm around larger groups of people to be okay. But the big difference is that after that conversation, I'm generally left relatively empty, so I need to go step away from people in

order to sort of refuel my tank. Whereas I have friends, actually colleagues, like on our team, who are raging extroverts, and the thing that fills them up more than anything else is being around large numbers of people. So and this can be really if you understand this about yourself, you can actually construct your life and your work life in a way that ends up being much more filling

than emptying. So interesting example, we not too long ago, every year we run a summer camp for adults where, you know, the better part of four hundred people get on planes, trains and automobiles to go and live communally for close to four days together. So it's twenty four to seven people from all over the world, and it's this amazing, amazing experience. But at the same time, how

does somebody who's fairly introverted handle that? And so the way that way that we've kind of done it is that we've actually assembled the team fairly deliberately of pretty raging extroverts around us who like they kind of have two purposes. One is they serve as a bit of a buffer. But two is they go out and they are the happiest people in the world when they are the entertainers and they engage and they work with all

these different people. So we actually build our experiences and our faculty in a way where we understand the social set points of the different people on the team and the social needs, what fills and empties each person, and we design the experiences and our teams to sort of allow for the best blend of leaving everybody as full as possible. Well, the Quiet Revolution folks would have loved that idea. Yeah, that's wonderful that you take that into consideration.

It would be great if business, more businesses and schools took that into consideration. Yeah, and I guess that's what sort of Susan the whole Quiet Revolution gang is working on now. So for sure, I hope it gets the type of traction and attention that I really think it deserves. Yeah, me too. I love this other one. You talked about under that contribution nursary, under the connection bucket, finding your tribe, I would say, you know, but you say find your people,

So tell me why that's important. Yeah, you know, one of the most fundamental human needs is the need to belong and it's something that both isn't spoken about a whole lot these days. But a more concern to me is that the sort of traditional fastness of belonging, the things that provided this sense of belonging are either going away or they're just they're not providing the same thing anymore.

So what are those things? Well, traditionally it was faith based organizations, it was employers, it was local trade groups or leagues, and you know, local trade groups and leagues are largely vanishing these days. Employers generally, you know, there's such a short time span that the average person is at any one company that they're not all that invested

in building or delivering a sense of belonging. And the single fastest growing group of people when it comes to faith or religion, at least in the United States, or what they call the nuns, mean people who consider themselves spiritual but non affiliated with any particular faith, and they don't attend to congregation or any sort of community. So you know, we've got this need. We actually have a

physiological and a psychological need to belong. We literally wither on the vine when we don't have When you said that it was very profound. You had one line in that book where you're basically like, isolation, you wither and die. And I was like, oh my gosh. Yeah. And you know, it's fun because, especially as an introvert, sometimes I get a little commerdially I'm like, ah, I'm pretty good alone,

But the truth is I'm not. You know, the truth is I love time in solitude, but I also I have to have my time that's nourishing in my community where you know, I'm around people who are like minded, share a set of values and beliefs, share similar aspirations and a similar ethos about what matters in the world. And that's why a lot of what we do also we build community. We tended to build a lot of our programming so that even if it's a product, or even if it's a book, you like, we're building a

community around our entire company and around this book. Because to me, information isn't enough. Knowing what to do isn't it enough? Community and building that sense of belonging is such a profound gap that is growing in people's lives these days that I kind of feel like part of what we're here to do is help close that gap, is help you know, give people something to belong to.

And at the same time, I also feel like there's not really a lot of attention being given to this phenomenon of the profound need to belong and the solutions, you know, solving for belonging not really happening on the level that it used to anymore. And I think a lot of people are walking around feeling a sense of pain, feeling a sense of isolation, and not really understanding where

it's coming from. And a lot of it is coming from the fact that they no longer have a clear place to belong to, a clear community or a group of people, and it's really I think it can be really destructive in a lot of people's lives, you know. So I wouldn't be surprised if even there was a certain amount of you know, self medication through everything from materialism to other stuff literally because people have felt so isolated and removed from that sense of belonging community I

think it's a really great point. And I think you see that some of these when some of these I would call them needs are not being met, that they can play themselves out in other areas. So there's some people who really have a hard time connecting individually to people, but they will fill up their contribution bucket in a way that kind of fulfills that need because they feel like they're you know, they've created something that really helps a lot of people, and it kind of makes them

feel like more of a connection in that way. Right, Yeah, I think that can definitely be true, you know, I think, and it's funny. It's almost like, you know, when you look at two toddlers, they go through this early phase where they're kind of sitting next to each other on the floor and they know that they're there and they're both playing and they're both giggling, but they're not actually playing with each other, and they call it parallel play.

And to a certain extent, you know, I don't even know if you have to be interacting with each other, but just like knowing that you're there with others who sort of like art a similar point and sort of see the world similarly, and you're just kind of physically with them. I think that alone has a certain value as well. Absolutely so with the connection when you talk

about some other things that are just so important. And I want people to read your book, so I'm not going to put give it all away, but this one just resonate with me so much. Vanquishing the vampires in your life, I mean, I think a lot of people can really resonate with that. You know, sometimes I think we all kind of get stuck. It can feel like we're stuck with people in our lives that don't make us feel vital, right, So like the other buckets as

well are not, you know, happening. So what do you do about that? Yeah, you know, And I think that's one of the biggest challenges for so many people. And the truth is there's no easy answer. But I think there's a preliminary question that can be really helpful, which

is how critical are these people in your life? You know, they're sort of a popular or self help wisdom that says, just jettison to anyone from your life who doesn't automatically love you up and agree one hundred percent with everything that you want to do. And yeah, that's just The reality on the ground is, you know, once you reach a certain point in your life, especially you know, those people may be your close family, they may be your

close friends. They may just disagree with you, you know, although they may also be at a point where they're just lens on the world is so different from yours at being around them is very empty and not all that feelings. So I think part of it is understanding what's this person's role and value in your life, and do you want to keep them in your life because they're important to you or not even do you want to keep them but they are going to be in

your life or as long as you're both around. So then you know, if the answer to that question is yes, then it makes sense to actually say, hey, listen, you know, I'm sure you've sensed something here, but this is going well and I feel like when we're around each other, we're both essentially emptying each other out, you know, So before you just go say hey, listen like you need to be out of my life, really understand what's the deeper nature of this relationship and is it something where

actually it makes sense to have a more deliberate conversation before you just sort of like start jettisoning people out of there because there will be. And then if the answer is well, I can't do I can't remove this person from my life, but there still really, you know, there's a draining energy when I'm around them, Then the question becomes how can you create enough of a buffer in the way that you interact with them so that

it does the least amount of harm? And then how can you really really really focus heavily on your own self care so that it fills you as much as humanly possible to give you sort of the biggest possible

reserve to be able to respond to that person. And then there's a third thing also, which is a long term practice, which is really developing almost a loving kindness and a sort of a compassion based practice and really trying to understand what's making this person this way, and can I stand in their shoes and find a place of compassion for them rather than just sort of like judgment and a fierce desire to remove them from my existence. Yes,

there go again with your interaction between the buckets. Like you can imagine, the more vital you are, the more you can withstand vampires in your life. Because you've built up that inner reserve. Yeah, so mindful. Mind Yeah, mindful is huge because did we say that at the same time,

right we did. I think that's a great connection, right right, So totally tune in there, Yeah, because you know, if you're the more part of the mindfulness practice is the practice of dropping, you know, and it allows you to say, oh, wait a minute, like let me just drop that storyline,

let me just drop that if I'm really annoyed. You know, this is actually an internal process for me right now, I'm the one who's spinning it in my head even though this happened hours ago, and that mindfulness practice, it's sort of it trained you to be able to recognize that spin cycle and step out of it much more readily. Sounds good to me. So for the last part of this interview, just a couple more minutes here, I want to talk about the contribution bucket, and this is where

meeting and purpose comes into one's life. And you know a lot of people do have that thing where they say, I don't know what it is that I like, I want to be sparked. I want to have that spark, but I'm kind of missing it. What would you recommend

for people like that. Yeah, it's interesting. There's been a bit of a maniacal focus on like you have to find the thing that you're on the planet to do right your last chunk of years, no pressure, no pressure, right, this singular life purpose, that one passion that you're here to do, which I think can be so destructive for

so many people. It's been my experience. It's just a practical matter that on really rare occasion you do find people who really early in life, they just they stumble upon that one thing and that's the thing they do for life. My dad, interestingly, is probably one of those people.

He had one job for his entire life that he literally just retired from I think two years ago, and he actually researched human cognition and he ran a lab and that's what he did, and that was his mad passion and it still is even though he's retired from academic life. You know, but that's really unusual. Most people end up running a series of experiments to try and figure it out. So to me, a much better approach is to ask yourself, what can I do or what do I do that gives me a sense of passion

or a sense of purpose. You know, what sparks me is sort of the language that I use, and I've sort of found like these five different categories of sparks in my mind. There's a curiosity spark, which is really you know, it's like you're driven by a question, a fierce need to figure out the answer to a question.

You're deeply curious about something. There's a fascination spark, just you're completely and utterly fascinated by particularly very offhand it's the topic or an idea, and it's not necessarily about figuring out it an answer to a problem. You want to go deep into this topic or this area, this feel. There are immersion sparks that just drop you deep into a state where you love the feeling that you get

when you're exploring it. There are mastery sparks, where it's really about a deliberate quest to reach a state of mastery. And there are service sparks, and these are generally fueled by some sort of deep inner calling to be of service. Sometimes it's in general, other times it may be to a particular person or community. And of course, you know, there's some people that are strongly fueled by one of these, but there are also the people where there's all different

blends of it. So my lens tends to be more to strut to ask yourself these questions. You know, when I think about the things that have really lit me up in life, what generally have they or that are lighting me up? Now? You know, am I driven deeply to answer a particular question? This is your typical scientists,

you know, Am I driven by a topic? So and if you can find sort of the spark or the type of spark that really incites this sense of passion, this sense of purpose and just literally wake up and do more of that every day, you find yourself doing that for days and then months, and then years, and then looking back decades and you end up having lived a life pretty filled with purpose and passion and you never had to deal with that sort of I think false question of what is my you know, like what

is my passion or purpose? As a noun, You treat it much more as a verb and say, what do I do with passionate purpose? Dang? I want some of that? No, that sounds really great. So along this quest of getting your passionate purpose, you're going to have lots of distractions, right, Yeah, I think that's sort of critically important, and it kind of circles back to what we were talking about so much, circles back to mindfulness and awareness. The average person lives

a largely reactive life right now. You know, from the moment you open your eyes to the moment you go to bed, there will be people and entities and beings be their friends, you know, like colleagues, employers, family, all coming at you through technology, through interactions, face to face, through so many different ways, asking for bits of your time and bits of your energy. And that's how wonderful is it to have people who would like you involved

in what they're doing. You know. At the same time, very often, almost out of a sense of social obligation, we tend to just say yes, or out of an almost autopilot addiction to the intermittent reinforcement dopamine hits of technology. We end up actually just responding almost maniacally, without actually even thinking about it or being deliberate in any way, shape or form, And we end up spending our days literally almost entirely reactively reacting to the demands and agendas

and requests of other people. And we go to bed at night saying wow, you know, like wall to wall, I was really busy, but I didn't actually end up doing anything that mattered to me on a deep level. And I think we've lost the ability to say no. Part of it is technology induced, but part of it is also there is just culturally an expectation of yes

these days, instant and yes. That can be pretty compounding, and it's devastation because it stops you from actually preserving the band with needed to do the things that are deeply meaningful to you, the things that actually fill your buckets on a daily basis. So you know, literally being intentional and hitting pause and practicing saying no on a daily basis is a huge skill set that I don't

think we focus on enough. I've actually sent emails in response to people who requested time for me or help from me, where you know, I say, hey, listen, you know, like, thank you so much for the invitation to participate in this.

It sounds fantastic. Sadly, I'm already committed to things that are like deeply meaningful to me and that are taking you know, already one hundred and fifty percent of my time, So I have to decline your invitation and I've had people respond to me and say, you know one you know, of course I was kind of upset because I would have loved for this tour. But at the same time, I actually I really respect the fact that you're prioritizing things that really matter to you and you're actually making

me think about me maybe needing to do something similar. Yeah, which is really kind of cool to see when that happens. Living by example, it's great. Yeah. And you you refer to this as the loving no, Yeah, and I like that too. I mean it's yeah, because you know, it's all you got. I mean, for me, it's always about mindfulness and and you like understand people aren't just trying

to extract the world from you like that. Everyone is trying to do their good work here, and so kindness is really important in my mind, you know, no matter what scenario you're in, I love that. I just a one final question I want to ask you today. And you know, a lot of these things you talk about with filling up these buckets, why is it not directly you know, why not write a book on happiness or how to get more money? You know, why on a

good life? What's the difference? Yeah? And I think, you know, you certainly spend a chunk of time on this research too, And there have certainly been so many books on happiness over the last decade or so, and I think the topic has been extraordinarily well covered. But part of what the research is uncovering is that when you make actually attaining happiness as the primary end state, it's not unusual for you to actually end up less happy than where

you started. And you know, so part of it is the fact that this sort of maniacal pursuit of happiness can set up expectations for an end state that's not attainable and leave you kind of anxious and stress. Part of it is also that there's you know, at least the research that I've been exposed to shows that we're not one hundred percent in control of that thing called

quote happiness. That you know, there are certain things that we can do, but at the same time, there's a certain amount it's almost like a genetic set point for happiness that we tend to revert to, so to sort of say, okay, my happy should look like the happy of this person over here who's constantly bouncing off the walls and like wakes up smiling all the time and then never being able to reset because genetically you're just kind of wired a bit differently can set you up

to actually feel even worse about the whole thing. And then there's a third confounding variable here, which is that it's really hard to understand what anybody's actually talking about when we use the word happy, you know, the very and this is why in the research, you know, the nobody defines happiness. You know, nobody defines the state of happiness. You know, generally the questions are asking people have they laughed in the last twenty four hours or have they

been happy? But you can't give a universal objective description of it, so we end up with literature that's really fascinating. But at the same time, there is this big sort of gray, indefinable in the middle, which is what does it actually mean to be happy? So to me, you know, from what I've seen, the things that deliver people to this state that we call happy the most effectively are

pursuing relationships, pursuing connection, pursuing meaning. And what tends to happen to happen is that this state of happiness ensues more as a side effect or a byproduct of those other things, rather than trying to sort of pursue it as a direct outcome and then very often ending up less happy than when we started. Absolutely, I totally love that, Jonvian, and I really like your book and the work you're doing. Thanks for chatting with me today. It's been my pleasure.

Thanks so much for having me. Thanks for listening to The Psychology Podcast with Doctor Scott Barry Kaufman. I hope you found this episode just as thought provoking and interesting as I did. If you'd like to read the show notes for this episode or here past episodes, you can visit the Psychology Podcast dot com bu