Your Life in One Word? This Could Change Everything | Erin Weed

Somewhere in the last few years, a lot of us started asking a version of the same question: who am I now, and what am I actually here to do? The answers don't come from a quiz or a vision board. But they just might come from the one word that has been running your life all along, whether you knew it or not. Erin Weed is a speaker coach, keynote speaker, and the creator of the Dig, a purpose-excavation method she has used with over a thousand leaders, founders, and changemakers across every stage of life and reinvention. Her new book, Just One Word: The Surprisingly Simple Method to Discover Your Purpose and Unleash Your Power https://amzn.to/4wmmm23, is the culmination of that work. She also spent over a decade as head speaker coach for TEDxBoulder, helping people find the one true thing they need to say and the courage to say it. In this conversation, you get to watch the Dig happen in real time, because Jonathan sits down in the chair and lets Erin guide him through the full process. What you will explore: What the Dig is and why close to 100% of people who think they know their word are actually wrongHow your life story, all of it, from childhood to present day, contains a 10-word operating system that explains exactly how you tickWhy your deepest violations, the things that make you genuinely angry, point directly toward your core wordThe difference between the word you think defines you and the one that actually doesHow knowing your word changes the way you make decisions, support the people you love, and build the things that matter most to youWhat Jonathan's word turned out to be, and the moment in the conversation where it landed If you have ever felt like you were circling your purpose without quite landing on it, this conversation is for you. You can find Erin at: Website https://www.erinweed.com/ | Instagram https://www.instagram.com/erinweed | Episode Transcript https://www.goodlifeproject.com/podcast/purpose-excavation-one-word-method-life-story-purpose-erin-weed Next week, we're sharing our conversation with Dr. Lucy Hone to talk about something most of us are carrying without ever calling it what it is: the grief that comes without a funeral, the losses that do not count as real loss in our culture but may be driving more of our suffering than we know. Be sure to follow Good Life Project wherever you get your podcasts so you don’t miss any upcoming episodes! Check out our offerings & partners: Join My New Writing Project: Awake at the Wheel https://jonathanfields.substack.com/aboutVisit Our Sponsor Page For Great Resources & Discount Codes https://www.goodlifeproject.com/sponsors/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  The DIG is a method to unearth that one word that is your entire purpose. And I think of as a frequency. It's not so much of a descriptor word. It's more about a feeling, a way that we carry ourselves through the world. And also the thing that we're here to learn and also the thing we're here to teach. Usually people don't like their words. Usually when they like, when it starts to land, it's like, it's almost like it hits a little too close. So that's kind of part of the process.

• 0:27Jonathan Fields?

  So there's a version of you that you already know is real. You can feel it. You know, the way you want to spend your time, the, the kinds of problems that let you up. The moments when you look back and think, that was really me at my truest. And yet, and yet, most of us spend years, sometimes decades circling that person without being able to live that life, that truest self-life, let alone even name what's at the center of it. Well, what if you could distill that essence, your essence, into a single word that became kind of like the unlock key for your most authentic, real self in all parts of life? That's the provocative claim that today's guest is making.

• 1:09Jonathan Fields?

  And she's backing it up with a process she has developed, she calls the DIG, that she has conducted over many years with over a thousand people to help them figure out their defining word. And then build everything from their business to careers and relationships around it. And what really surprised me is also a second statement that she shared with me that a hundred percent of people who come into this process thinking they already know their word, they're wrong every single time in her experience. The real word, it lives kind of like one layer deeper. Erin Weed is a speaker coach and keynote speaker. She's a creator of something she calls the DIG, which is this provocative

• 1:50Jonathan Fields?

  kind of purpose excavation method that she has spent 13 years refining with founders and leaders and change makers across every stage of life. She has spent over a decade as a head speaker coach for TEDx Boulder, helping people distill enormous messages down to the single truest thing that they had to say. And her new book, Just One Word, The Surprisingly Simple Method to Discover Your Purpose and Unleash Your Power, walks you through the same process that she used in this conversation. But this conversation, today's episode, is very, very different. Because in this episode, Erin

• 2:30Jonathan Fields?

  Ran the full dig on me, live, from the beginning of my life story to the moment that my word landed towards the end of our conversation. You'll hear how themes surface, how clusters form, and what it feels like when, when one word that has been kind of running in the background for your entire life finally has a name. By the end of this hour, you'll have a clear picture of how to do this yourself, and you'll know what to look for in your own story. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project. And the place I want to start with, Erin, is the very beginning of how this method came to be. And if you're wondering what my word is, by the way, stay tuned. We'll jump in there right after this short break.

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• 4:49Jonathan Fields?

  So I am excited to dive into this thing that you call the dig. You and I have been talking about this for years. We go way back. And I've heard you've created this, you have done it with everyone from founders to neighbors to celebrities, and it's this process which has been just profoundly revealing. And it's now sort of like the focus of your new book, Just One Word. So what is the dig?

• 5:21Speaker 00

  The dig is a method to unearth that one word that is your entire purpose. And I think that's incredibly important because in a world that is just so busy and overwhelming, and we're always seeking, it's just so nice to be able to land on that one word, which I really think of as a frequency. It's not so much of a descriptor word, it's more about a feeling, a way that we carry ourselves through the world, and also the thing that we're here to learn, and also the thing we're here to teach.

• 5:47Jonathan Fields?

  So the idea is you distill it down to a single word?

• 5:50Speaker 00

  We do, and the way we do it is we go backwards in order to go forwards. So we look in your history to figure out your future.

• 5:57Jonathan Fields?

  Okay, I'm gonna ask you a lot more about the process in a moment, but why do we care? Why does it matter that we actually know this?

• 6:06Speaker 00

  I think purpose is incredibly important, and all the research shows that purpose is just a thing that affects your mental health, it affects your quality of life, it affects everything. And when we know that one word, we can start aligning with our purpose. We can align our actions, we can align our decisions, we can align our messages. So knowing that one word, I see it as like a, it's almost like a north star. It's something to guide us.

• 6:28Jonathan Fields?

  What happens if you don't know it?

• 6:30Speaker 00

  What happens if you don't know it? What a good question. Well, I think you still can live a great life, for starters. I just feel like it's a tool. It's just an extra tool to give us more clarity, because I find that when you're more clear, that you can feel more confident about the life you live. And when you feel more confident, you can start connecting with more people and be more connected to yourself.

• 6:48Jonathan Fields?

  Okay. So you have been developing this process for how long?

• 6:55Speaker 00

  Thirteen years, yeah.

• 6:57Jonathan Fields?

  What was the origin of it, actually?

• 6:59Speaker 00

  The origin was actually TEDx Boulder. And previously, I was a professional speaker. I owned a company called Girls Fight Back, which taught women's safety and self-defense classes at high schools and colleges across the world. They were more like big seminars and assemblies. And after I sold that company, I started working with TEDx Boulder to coach their speakers. And what I found was that people were so overwhelmed by these big messages they had. They had so much data, so many ideas. They were having a really difficult time distilling it all down. And so I would basically just tell people, "Tell me everything." And before long, I would just be sticky noting. The wall would be completely covered. And what I was looking for was those one-word themes. How does this all tie together? And so, once I found these one-word themes, I ultimately distilled it down to just one word for the entire message.

• 7:45Speaker 00

  And once the person got to it, they were like, "Yes, that's me." And then, surprise, surprise, those ended up being viral TED Talks. Because they felt so clear and confident in what they were putting out to the world.

• 7:56Jonathan Fields?

  So, I mean, it sounds like it's important, not just because it tells us more about like who we are and kind of like why we're here to a certain extent, but also in terms of communicating that to the world. It sounds like then you can use it as a foundation to really figure out like, "What is the story that I'm telling?" And that's whether it's a personal relationship, a job, like whatever it is in your life.

• 8:18Speaker 00

  Yeah. I mean, I love a good navel gaze and just like doing the deep personal development work. We both have that in common. And there's something so incredibly cathartic, but also an act of service to also share what we discover with the world. And so, for me, it feels a little incomplete to just find your word. I also want people to like, write about it, talk about it, share about it, build a business around it, build a brand around it.

• 8:41Jonathan Fields?

  Let's talk process. How does this actually work?

• 8:45Speaker 00

  The process is very simple. All you have to do is show up and be you and tell me your whole life story. And how many times has somebody said that?

• 8:50Jonathan Fields?

  That sounds easy.

• 8:52Speaker 00

  I mean, I hate to steal your job and everything.

• 8:54Jonathan Fields?

  It takes like a week.

• 8:56Speaker 00

  Surprisingly, I found that the average person's life story, when given no prompt to end, is about 90 minutes. People talk for about an hour and a half about their life story, and then at that point, they usually feel about complete. And so in that life story, I look for these one-word themes that keep coming up. When you're a child, when you're a young adult, when you're all the way up to present day. And as I find these one-word themes, they all come together to be an operating system, 10 words or less. That operating system is exactly how you tick. It is your operating manual for yourself. It's also your core message, if you're a person who is a speaker, an author. And so, um, within this operating system, there's one word that's in charge. So if you think of the operating system like a sports team of you, the dig word is the

• 9:41Speaker 00

  captain.

• 9:42Jonathan Fields?

  As long as we've known each other,

• 9:46Jonathan Fields?

  we have never sat down and actually, I don't know my word.

• 9:49Speaker 00

  Yeah. Well, maybe we should figure it out.

• 9:53Jonathan Fields?

  I'm gay.

• 9:53Speaker 00

  You're down?

• 9:54Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah.

• 9:54Speaker 00

  Well, you know, I never leave the house without, um, sticky notes and a Sharpie. So here we are.

• 10:00Jonathan Fields?

  Okay.

• 10:02Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 10:02Jonathan Fields?

  I'm nervous.

• 10:03Speaker 00

  So Jonathan Fields is letting me interview him. So like, let's just like allow that in for a moment. Well, first of all, thank you. Um, I always like to thank people that sit down in these chairs and are willing to share because that's, I just see it as a very sacred thing, you know, to share your past. And, um, could we begin from the beginning?

• 10:25Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah, I mean, I'm sweating already, so let's just, let's do it.

• 10:28Speaker 00

  Well, I'm actually curious, like, what is, what is the source of tension for you? Like, in this moment?

• 10:33Jonathan Fields?

  Um, I don't know where we're gonna go.

• 10:35Speaker 00

  Okay. Do you have a word in mind? Like, do you feel like, I know my word?

• 10:39Jonathan Fields?

  I feel like I probably do.

• 10:43Speaker 00

  Interesting.

• 10:44Jonathan Fields?

  But I kind of don't want to say it because I want to just see where this takes us.

• 10:49Speaker 00

  Okay, well, let's check in at the end.

• 10:50Jonathan Fields?

  Okay.

• 10:51Speaker 00

  I have actually found that a startling 100% of people

• 10:53Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah.

• 10:54Speaker 00

  who thought their word was one thing were wrong.

• 10:56Jonathan Fields?

  Interesting.

• 10:58Speaker 00

  And I don't need to be right or anything. So it's not about that, but it's just usually someone's dig word is actually on the other side of the word that they actually thought it was. It's like just the one layer deeper and that is the magic.

• 11:11Jonathan Fields?

  Okay. Okay, I'll keep it in the back of my mind.

• 11:14Speaker 00

  Okay, sound good.

• 11:15Jonathan Fields?

  And suspend judgment.

• 11:17Speaker 00

  Yeah, sound good, sounds good. Um, okay, well, I'm going to be sticky noting. I'm just going to be writing things down.

• 11:22Jonathan Fields?

  Cool.

• 11:24Speaker 00

  I'm going to be putting up some words that start popping up as we go along. So don't be distracted by them.

• 11:30Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah.

• 11:30Speaker 00

  And maybe even everybody who's listening or watching can be kind of thinking of words, too.

• 11:35Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah, sounds good.

• 11:36Speaker 00

  All right.

• 11:36Jonathan Fields?

  By the way, for anyone who is listening and not watching,

• 11:42Jonathan Fields?

  if Erin puts up sticky notes or anything like that that she references, we will take a couple of screenshots and, um, and, and create a little link that we can point you to so you can see whatever it is that we're talking about.

• 11:53Speaker 00

  Yeah, and I'll also say them out loud, too.

• 11:54Jonathan Fields?

  Cool.

• 11:55Speaker 00

  All right, great. So we begin at the beginning.

• 11:58Jonathan Fields?

  Okay.

• 11:58Speaker 00

  What's your birthday and where were you born?

• 12:01Jonathan Fields?

  Um, so born in New York City, um, in November 1965.

• 12:08Speaker 00

  Mm hmm. What was your family like?

• 12:11Jonathan Fields?

  Um, mom, dad, older sister by two years. And to the extent that I can really remember anything from that long ago, just very neighborhood-y.

• 12:20Speaker 00

  Like, what would be the words you'd use to describe it?

• 12:23Jonathan Fields?

  Close knit. I feel like we knew our neighbors in the building.

• 12:27Speaker 00

  Yeah. How do you think people would describe you growing up?

• 12:29Jonathan Fields?

  Always creative.

• 12:30Speaker 00

  Let's fast forward a bit. So you grow up. Did you stay in that same place?

• 12:34Jonathan Fields?

  No, we ended up moving out to Long Island and eventually to Port Washington, which is the, the town, actually, that was the real, um, East Egg from The Great Gatsby. It's actually based on a real town.

• 12:45Speaker 00

  Really?

• 12:45Jonathan Fields?

  A little peninsula, egg-shaped peninsula on Long Island, on the water. So I grew up basically, yeah, in a, in a small water town just outside of New York.

• 12:54Speaker 00

  How did that shift your life?

• 12:56Jonathan Fields?

  Um, I mean, I loved it.

• 12:58Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 12:59Jonathan Fields?

  Uh, I love water.

• 13:01Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 13:01Jonathan Fields?

  Which is one of my biggest sadnesses. Like, I don't have a lot of sadnesses, but like, living in Colorado.

• 13:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 13:06Jonathan Fields?

  Um, not being near large bodies of water. I feel it. Um, the end of my block was a bay.

• 13:13Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 13:13Jonathan Fields?

  And I would just ride my bike down there and kind of climb up on top of the lifeguard's house and sit. Um, that was my place.

• 13:20Speaker 00

  What does, what does water do for you?

• 13:22Jonathan Fields?

  It lets me, just lets my whole body exhale.

• 13:26Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 13:26Jonathan Fields?

  My mind exhale also.

• 13:28Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 13:29Jonathan Fields?

  It's like, makes everything as okay as it can be.

• 13:31Speaker 00

  Hmm. Do you find that you tend to hold your inhales a lot? And so that it's a good reminder to complete the process?

• 13:39Jonathan Fields?

  I think there were times in my life that I did. I don't feel like that's me now.

• 13:43Speaker 00

  Yeah. Does exhale to you mean like, release?

• 13:47Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah. It's like my whole nervous system down-regulates.

• 13:49Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 13:50Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah, like my heart rate slows, my mind stills, my body relaxes.

• 13:55Speaker 00

  Mm hmm. What did you want to be when you wanted, when you grew up?

• 13:59Jonathan Fields?

  Um, when I was younger, I wanted to be an architect, actually.

• 14:02Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 14:04Jonathan Fields?

  And, yeah, I just always had this impulse to build stuff.

• 14:09Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 14:09Jonathan Fields?

  Um, so the idea of building cool structures.

• 14:12Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 14:12Jonathan Fields?

  Was something that, um, I thought was really cool.

• 14:16Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 14:18Speaker 00

  Are there certain kind of structures that you were pulled to?

• 14:20Jonathan Fields?

  Houses.

• 14:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 14:21Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah, just like really cool houses.

• 14:24Speaker 00

  What about houses versus like, big skyscrapers or something?

• 14:27Jonathan Fields?

  Um, I don't know. There's something kind of, uh,

• 14:33Jonathan Fields?

  cool about, I think, just the scale of a house. And also, I think I associated skyscrapers with being sort of industrial and monolithic, whereas like, in a home, you could get really creative. And also talk to like, one person or two people. And really figure out like, what can we make that'll just make their eyes pop?

• 14:51Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 14:52Jonathan Fields?

  And make them walk into it and have the same feeling that I had when I was by water.

• 14:56Speaker 00

  Yeah. What is that feeling, if you had to put it in one word, that eyes pop?

• 15:01Jonathan Fields?

  Delight.

• 15:02Speaker 00

  Delight? Hmm. What does that word mean to you?

• 15:05Jonathan Fields?

  It means that you're surprised in a way that makes your entire system light up.

• 15:12Speaker 00

  Hmm. That is a great word.

• 15:15Jonathan Fields?

  It's a good word.

• 15:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 15:16Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah.

• 15:17Speaker 00

  Like, I feel like we-

• 15:18Jonathan Fields?

  Stephanie is sort of like the queen of that.

• 15:19Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 15:20Jonathan Fields?

  For those who don't know, Stephanie's my wife. She is-

• 15:22Speaker 00

  She's amazing.

• 15:22Jonathan Fields?

  Absolutely amazing at creating experiences of delight.

• 15:26Speaker 00

  Hmm, okay.

• 15:29Jonathan Fields?

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• 16:52Jonathan Fields?

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• 17:32Jonathan Fields?

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• 18:17Jonathan Fields?

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• 18:59Speaker 00

  So keep us going through your timeline here.

• 19:02Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah.

• 19:05Jonathan Fields?

  So that was me, like teens.

• 19:11Jonathan Fields?

  Probably.

• 19:14Jonathan Fields?

  Spent a lot of time exploring art when I was a kid also. Um, I was always doing something with my hands. I was always making stuff with my hands. Building stuff, drawing stuff, painting. Um, taught myself to paint when I was middle school or high school. And um, just painted on a really regular basis. My mom was also a potter when I was a kid. So the basement of our house was a studio. You know, with like three electric wheels and massive old kick wheel with like a 200 pound concrete flywheel in the corner. Kilns off property. She had like a giant, literally walk-in gas-fired kiln that would take a day to fire. Um, so I was around that energy all the time. Um, and I grabbed the

• 19:58Jonathan Fields?

  corner of that studio and just set up my own little, little mini improvised painting studio and I would just completely lose myself there.

• 20:05Speaker 00

  What is your criteria for making, building, creating? What does it have to be?

• 20:11Speaker 00

  Like, do you have, when you set out to make, build, or create, is there something you're striving for?

• 20:17Jonathan Fields?

  Hmm.

• 20:19Jonathan Fields?

  Honestly, I think it's less about being able, being able to say that I've done the thing and it's more about doing the thing.

• 20:27Speaker 00

  Hmm. So it's the process versus the result?

• 20:29Jonathan Fields?

  A hundred percent. You know, I get like, I mean, like later in life, I'm written a whole bunch of books and I'll get the box of books in the mail from the publisher. As you may have gotten recently yourself and I would just let it sit for weeks and Stephanie is like, what's wrong with you? Like, like you just got the book. Like it's here. It's hardcover. It's like, don't you want to see it? I'm like, yeah, sure. For me, it was a process of creating it. That was like where the magic was. And it's pretty much always, I mean, am I proud of the things that I've created when I can look back and say, I've been able to come close to closing the gap between taste and expression? Yeah, that makes me proud. But at the end of the day, it's not why I do it. That's just a signal that like I'm getting closer to actually doing what I came to do.

• 21:13Speaker 00

  Okay. So what did you end up going to college for?

• 21:22Jonathan Fields?

  Screwing around, majored in not attending classes. I was a horrible student.

• 21:31Jonathan Fields?

  But I was building stuff from the day that I was there. I started a business, sound lighting, mobile disc jockey, and we grew it into like one of the business businesses that was really sort of like the main player in that field, like at all the parties, all the concerts. And building that business and then being out and DJing at clubs until three, four in the morning was most of my life. In college, we had massive speaker stacks and equipment in like the house that I lived in. And I would just play with it all day long and then go out and get paid to play with it all night long. Which led me to my senior year where I didn't have enough credits to graduate. So I had to take 21 credits a semester.

• 22:15Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 22:16Jonathan Fields?

  And begged my way into a one-credit class on earthquakes just to be able to get out.

• 22:22Jonathan Fields?

  But I was building. Like I was in that case, like music has been a persistent passion of mine also from the earliest days. I played guitar really horribly for most of my life. But I just love any kind of good music.

• 22:34Speaker 00

  And you've even made guitars, right?

• 22:35Jonathan Fields?

  I have, yeah.

• 22:37Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 22:37Jonathan Fields?

  Yep.

• 22:39Speaker 00

  All right. So it feels like a lot of the words that you're talking about, they're very like in the moment. Like, have you ever struggled in your life of just like not being in the moment?

• 22:50Jonathan Fields?

  Constantly.

• 22:50Speaker 00

  Anxiety or just future thinking past stuff?

• 22:53Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah, less anxiety, but constantly future thinking.

• 22:56Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 22:56Jonathan Fields?

  I am perpetually living in the future. Not in a bad way. Like, I'm not spinning or fretting about it. I'm not weirdly wired, not so much in a doom and gloom way, but more in a possibility way.

• 23:10Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 23:10Jonathan Fields?

  So like, I live there because I'm constantly, I'm constantly exploring what I think is going to be coming. And seeing like how I might be able to play with that, to leverage it, to turn it into something. And to be, to a certain extent, ahead of the curve. And that has led me a number of times, actually, to be too far ahead of the curve. Where I would bring something to life that was a little bit before its time.

• 23:36Speaker 00

  Can you give me an example?

• 23:38Jonathan Fields?

  I mean, you could argue, actually, that the yoga business that we created in New York City was a bit ahead of its time.

• 23:46Jonathan Fields?

  We were trying to, I launched Yoga Studio, literally on the eve of nine eleven in New York City. And, but the ultimate goal was to build the first ever national roll-up business of franchise that was national chain.

• 24:00Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 24:02Jonathan Fields?

  And probably I, I just, I came to realize that it wasn't necessarily a business that I wanted to be in. It wasn't a business I wanted to build.

• 24:12Jonathan Fields?

  Somebody else did. And, um, but they did it differently. And it, it was a couple of years before yoga hit a sort of like a level of mass appeal and understanding and was embraced on a level where you didn't really have to convince people that there was something interesting here. You basically just had to open it where it didn't exist. And, um, so it was a different experience for me. I mean, I ended up selling that business seven years later.

• 24:42Jonathan Fields?

  But, yeah, and there are just probably a whole bunch of ideas that I've had over time where it's sort of like, world wasn't quite ready.

• 24:51Speaker 00

  Okay, but you didn't start off with this Yoga Studios, right? You had a bit of a life before that. Can you bring me?

• 24:56Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah. Yeah, so after college, um, sold the business. And then I went back to law school. Not necessarily because I had an interest in being a lawyer. But because I had screwed off so much in college that I was just really curious what I was truly intellectually capable of. I want to challenge myself and I want to challenge myself in a way where I thought whether I actually practiced or not, it would give me a set of skills that would be relevant to almost anything that I did. So I sold my car, did all the other things, moved into the city and spent three years in law school.

• 25:41Jonathan Fields?

  And thankfully, um, I was the kid who basically showed up and said, like, I'm, I'm here with a mission.

• 25:50Jonathan Fields?

  I wasn't there to just delay my life for three years, which a lot of people do with grad school. I was there because I wanted to actually challenge and see what I was capable of doing. I got really fortunate. I worked really hard and I graduated with a lot of credibility in my class and ended up then working for the federal government for three years, um, the SEC.

• 26:13Jonathan Fields?

  I also, working in a massive federal bureaucracy with crazy politics and crazy inefficiency, as somebody who likes to just get things done.

• 26:23Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 26:23Jonathan Fields?

  It was maddening. So I left and I went into a mega firm in New York then, switching sides. Incredible firm, all the prestige you could ever want, like the track that everybody would want coming out of law school. Incredible salary for like somebody who didn't know what he was doing. And I showed that every day that I was there. And I ended up in the hospital because we were on a deal where basically I barely went home for three weeks and my immune system shut down. A huge infection blossomed in the middle of my body and ate a hole through my intestines from the outside in.

• 26:59Speaker 00

  Oh, man.

• 27:00Jonathan Fields?

  So, yeah, hit the button on the deal, ignored the pain because that's what we do. And then pretty much went straight to the hospital. Thankfully, surgery was successful, but it really made me rethink, what am I doing with this one wild and precious life, as Mary Oliver would say? And it was clear that it wasn't going to be that. And that sent me slowly back into the world of entrepreneurship. And at that point, movement and fitness. Because I've always had a deep connection to just sort of like somatic expression to the connection between mind and body. And I wanted to learn that industry. I wanted to understand what was working and what wasn't working.

• 27:43Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 27:44Jonathan Fields?

  So, talked my way into a job as a personal trainer, making $12 an hour, which I was okay with because I was getting paid something just to learn an entirely new industry.

• 27:56Speaker 00

  After, like, that career, that had to be a wild experience.

• 28:00Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah, my biggest fear was that like, one of my clients or colleagues from Law Review and Law School would like see me with a client, like, stretching them out, like, you know, on the grass in Central Park, wearing tights and running shoes in the middle of the day, and be like, oh, what a shame, like, what a fall from grace.

• 28:20Speaker 00

  Mm.

• 28:22Jonathan Fields?

  But very quickly ended up building my own business. And within a couple of years, like those very people that whose judgment I was concerned about were the ones who were reaching out to me to find out how I did what I did.

• 28:35Speaker 00

  What do you think you figured out that other people didn't?

• 28:39Jonathan Fields?

  That everything's figure outable. It's like that there's, I see, like, I'm weirdly wired, and then I wake up in the morning and I see possibility.

• 28:47Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 28:48Jonathan Fields?

  You know, like, people see obstacles, people see reasons why not, and I see reasons why. And if, you know, if almost nobody is doing it, and most people assume that's because it's not doable, I look for the one or two who are as proof that it is possible and ask, like, what's my contribution? What's my flavor that's not being done? And it, yeah, I'm weirdly wired for possibility. I don't, yeah.

• 29:20Speaker 00

  So that wasn't something that you just decided? Positive thinking?

• 29:23Jonathan Fields?

  No.

• 29:24Speaker 00

  You had to talk yourself into it?

• 29:27Jonathan Fields?

  No, I mean, I've been, I've been around a lot of anxiety my whole life. It's, it doesn't, it's not my default. My default is really looking at uncertainty. I feel very uncomfortable with high stakes uncertainty. It affects me physically and psychologically, which is why I've studied a lot and built practices to be okay doing it, because I know I have to be in that space to do the thing I'm here to do. Like, to live in a place of possibility is also to live in a place of uncertainty.

• 30:00Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 30:01Jonathan Fields?

  You know, there's, there's no separating the two. And so, but, but being in that space is really deeply unsettling for most people, including me.

• 30:11Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 30:12Jonathan Fields?

  Especially as the stakes rise. So I've had to, to learn how to be okay there.

• 30:16Speaker 00

  What advice do you give people who are wildly uncomfortable with it?

• 30:23Jonathan Fields?

  People tend to have three reactions to it. One, as soon as they feel it, they'll either speed forward to try and get through whatever the moment is as quickly as possible so they can just stop feeling it. They'll backpedal to pull themselves out of it enough so that they stop feeling it. Or they'll sit in stasis, they'll become paralyzed. They just don't know what to do and they're afraid to go back. They're afraid to move forward, so they just sit and suffer. In my experience, that's probably most people. And they don't realize that's actually what's happening. And to me, it's like, one of percussive Buddhism, or one of the sort of core teachings is that life is suffering. And I always struggle with that. The way that my mind has come to interpret it is that

• 31:07Jonathan Fields?

  life is uncertain. That is the only certain thing in life, is that it is and will be perpetually uncertain. And a life where you allocate the vast majority of your waking hours to trying to lock down the future, to trying to make it certain, which is what almost all of us do, that is suffering. It will always be suffering because it is impossible to do or to have. So to me, I've stopped trying to do that. I've stopped trying to make life as certain as possible. And I've started to equip myself with the practices and skills to let me be as okay as I can in this space of uncertainty as stakes rise. That doesn't mean I always have.

• 31:52Jonathan Fields?

  But that's the shift in approach that I've taken. And again, because the other truth is that, like I said before, uncertainty and possibility, two sides of the same coin. So if I'm here, like if I just want to walk through the world and say yes to possibility, then I have to say yes to uncertainty at the same time. Like I can't just choose one or the other. So I have to teach myself how to be okay with it.

• 32:21Speaker 00

  It's big work.

• 32:22Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah, and it's a work that never ends. It's not like check the box and you're good.

• 32:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 32:28Jonathan Fields?

  It's a practice.

• 32:28Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 32:29Jonathan Fields?

  And as the stakes rise and change, and you get brought to your knees again, it's another practice.

• 32:35Speaker 00

  Yeah. Take me into podcasting and books and that whole area of your life.

• 32:40Jonathan Fields?

  So I was running a yoga studio in New York City. We were about six years in.

• 32:48Jonathan Fields?

  All the highs and lows of running a business in New York with a physical location, we were renting a floor in a building, the six-year lease and a personal guarantee. And yeah, signed the day before nine eleven. And yeah, it was, it was, there were high highs. I mean, the business was doing pretty well, but there were low lows and just profound uncertainty. And I also had developed a real interest in writing and creating in a different way. I mean, it's magical when you walk into a yoga studio and you're the teacher and you know, there are 50 bodies mat to mat and it's sweaty and for 90 minutes you create this sort of like ecstatic synchronicity between everybody in like their movement

• 33:33Jonathan Fields?

  and their breath. And you can like bring them down to shavasana on the end. And you feel everybody, the whole room exhale and you're just like, fuck, yes. It is magical to know that you've played even like some role in helping make an experience like that happen. And I loved it. And years of that wore on me, years of running the business at the same time and supporting it, especially because married and we had a three-month-old baby when we started that business. So it was a lot. So, and I had developed an interest in writing. And I'd been doing a bunch of writing on the marketing side of things, deep interest in just human psychology, what moves people to action? How do I motivate

• 34:16Jonathan Fields?

  a lot of people to actually have that same bent towards possibility and then take action towards it? This to me is what marketing is, you know? And I just got really curious in like,

• 34:30Jonathan Fields?

  Why people don't take more control over the future of their work lives. That led me to get curious about writing a book about it. And really fortunate, and I got an agent from a big publisher. And I got an agent out of the gate who took me cold and then got a deal. And that started my writing career and once that was begun, I actually, it was right around the time that Tim Ferriss had just come out with Four Hour Work Week. I literally called him and got him on the phone. I was like, so what like, how do you do, how do you like make books sell now? And he's basically, it's like, back then it was blogs, like blogs and like getting on a plane and talking to people at events. So I just started shifting gears into the online world and that led me into this whole

• 35:16Jonathan Fields?

  new world of like digital, like it wasn't called being creator back then. You know, this was a blogger and then it was digital content and then it was social media and this was, yeah. The days when you're at South by Southwest in 2007 or 2008 and Twitter has, you know, like it's itty bitty and it's crashing every three seconds because the servers can't hold. And it's, and that just over time led me to want to devote more time and energy to that world and to write more and to speak more. And that sort of like was my, my introduction to that whole space.

• 35:51Jonathan Fields?

  And then,

• 35:54Jonathan Fields?

  yeah, so, sold the book. The first book came out in January of 2009. I sold the studio at, towards the end of that, of 2008. Handed over the keys, December 31st, walked out the door, taught my last class. Most people did not know it was my last class until I brought them up from Shavasana, which is final relaxation for anyone who's never taken that class. And said, hey, listen,

• 36:20Jonathan Fields?

  there's something I need to share with you. And that was emotional.

• 36:23Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 36:25Jonathan Fields?

  But it felt right too. Like there was no looking back. I had done what I came to do. And that moved me into this world that I've been in for a long time since. 2012, we started Good Life Project, the podcast. 14 years later, it's become what it is now, which if had you asked me back then, I would have laughed out loud. Like there's no, there's no, A, there's no way it's going to become the size and reach so many people and B, there's no conceivable way I would be doing anything for 14 years.

• 36:54Speaker 00

  Yeah. What do you think the secret sauce is of Good Life Project?

• 37:01Jonathan Fields?

  I don't know. I think we started at a time where it was not nearly as crowded as it is now. And then if you just never stopped, which we didn't, you know, eventually you just slowly grow and slowly grow, slowly grow. There was no like magic, like hockey stick moment with us. It's 14 years of just never stopping. And also continuing to shift and change.

• 37:27Speaker 00

  Yeah. It's almost like evolving is kind of in the middle of possibility and uncertainty. It seems like they're all tied together somehow.

• 37:37Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah.

• 37:38Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 37:39Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah.

• 37:39Speaker 00

  Like, holding both the uncertainty and the possibility and like evolving through it. What is some of the best feedback that you've gotten from your listeners over the years? Like, something that just hits your heart. You're like, yes, we're doing it.

• 37:50Jonathan Fields?

  Probably just that something that we put out into the ether made a real difference for them. I mean, there've been like so many versions of that, that we created a moment where there was something that was said. Often, it's not something I've said, but just there was a moment that happened, or something that a guest has shared that's really awakened something in them. That's made a real difference. Like, they're struggling and it's really helped them through something. I think that's when they see themselves in somebody or some moment or some experience. The hands down, the thing that we've done that has been the most impactful is the adult summer camp that we ran for five years, Camp GLP. They came thinking

• 38:35Jonathan Fields?

  that they were there to learn a whole bunch of things. And what they realized when they got there is they were there to just reconnect with a part of themselves they'd left behind decades ago.

• 38:46Jonathan Fields?

  And we'll be right back after a word from our sponsors.

• 38:50Jonathan Fields?

  This message is brought to you by Apple Card. Ah, fall, that cozy season where we swapped the swimwear for sweaters and sunnies for scarves. But before the Halloween decorations are put away or Thanksgiving table has been set, there's already holly jelly music playing in the grocery store, reminding you that the year is coming to a close. Time to kick end of year into high gear. When you use Apple Card with Apple Pay, you earn 2% daily cash back on all purchases, including food, decorations, gifts, and more. Get a head start on your end of year purchases. Apply for your Apple Card in the Wallet app on your iPhone today and start using it right away with Apple Pay. Subject to credit approval. Apple Card is issued by Goldman Sachs Bank,

• 39:34Jonathan Fields?

  USA Salt Lake City Branch. Terms and more at applecard.com. Good Life Project is sponsored by TinCan. So if you grew up in the 70s or 80s, you probably still remember your best friend's phone number and stretching the kitchen phone cord around the corner for privacy. Our executive producer, Lindsay, wanted that same freedom for her kids, eight and 10. So in January, she got them a TinCan. Now, friends call the house to chat, make plans, and check in without borrowing her phone. They even keep a handwritten phone book next to it. I kind of love that. TinCan is the new school way for kids to talk with their friends. It's a secure landline that lets them call all their favorite people, but with parental controls to keep them protected.

• 40:18Jonathan Fields?

  No screens, no algorithms, no texting, just a phone being a phone. Kids can only call or be called by people on your approved list. Calls to other TinCans and 911 are always free. And there's even an answering machine for messages that are, I'm told, gloriously ridiculous. Go to tincan.com/goodlife to get $10 off your first order, exclusive for our listeners. That's tincan.com/goodlife for $10 off. And when you use our link, you're supporting our show. Tincan.com/goodlife.

• 40:52Speaker 02

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• 41:26Speaker 00

  What's interesting about you is, I mean, there's so many interesting things, but like you are such a logical, deep thinker. You have used the word magic or magical three or four times. And I'm just curious, what is your definition of magic?

• 41:40Jonathan Fields?

  I think there's a connection between the whole, between magic and possibility. You know, it's this, the belief that, it's tied to like the belief that things that people can't understand and say are impossible can actually happen. And that there are also just things that we can't often explain, but they are.

• 42:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 42:06Jonathan Fields?

  You know, there's been a tension, my whole adult life at least, where the rational side of my brain is always looking for the explanation for phenomena. The older I get, the less I feel the need to have that explanation, and the more I just accept the fact that this happened, it is, I have no explanation for it, it feels kind of mystical. And that's okay.

• 42:28Speaker 00

  Yeah. Bring us up to present day.

• 42:33Jonathan Fields?

  So, hanging out. Bowling Colorado was not planned. We didn't think we were moving. We just thought we were escaping the pandemic. And here we are, six years later.

• 42:48Jonathan Fields?

  Still doing the podcast, built and recently sold one other company along the way that was a deep dive into the intersection between meeting and work, focusing deeply on really looking back at Good Life Project right now and reimagining who we are, what we're about, and super excited about a lot of things that we're about to give birth to in the next couple of months and years, connected with this branding community.

• 43:21Jonathan Fields?

  Hanging out with friends here who I have probably more friends here in six years than I had in New York City in 30 years because it's just a shared value set. And I was also a bit of a weirdo in New York City. You know, I'm

• 43:38Speaker 00

  The best kind of weirdo.

• 43:39Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah, well, but not necessarily, you know, like there are people follow certain prescribed paths very often. And here, everyone's kind of weirdo.

• 43:47Speaker 00

  Mm hmm. Facts.

• 43:49Jonathan Fields?

  So it kind of makes it easier. And, you know, for 34 years, my wife has been my best friend. And for 25 years, like, we've had the blessing of having like, an incredible kid. And there's really nothing more important to me than those relationships.

• 44:16Speaker 00

  Yeah, they're pretty amazing.

• 44:18Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah, they are. Not gonna bite you on that.

• 44:21Speaker 00

  What would, what would they both say are your best superpowers and your biggest shadows?

• 44:29Jonathan Fields?

  Probably that I'm relentlessly possibility, I'm relentlessly oriented towards possibility. I'm a dreamer. I'm not a dreamer who basically just dreams. I'm a dreamer also like works really hard to make what I see real. That's the maker impulse in me, the builder. Like, for me, it's not just about like, what's possible. You know, that's fun. But the real fun is making it real. It's not enough to just like, see or dream. To me, that's, that's a little bit of like, wasting time. Like, I want to actually make it real.

• 45:06Speaker 00

  It's almost like the possibility is the prerequisite for you to be able to make the thing.

• 45:09Jonathan Fields?

  And I think it's a double edged sword because I see so many things that I can become really distracted and fragment my attention. And that becomes super frustrating for me.

• 45:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 45:20Jonathan Fields?

  And also, I, I may believe things are possible, that maybe aren't really all that possible. And allocate energy and resources to it and then realize, hmm, maybe not. So I think it's like, it's, it's, it's both the plus and the minus.

• 45:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 45:42Speaker 00

  Let's imagine that you've lived a long life. You're 150 years old. You're on your deathbed. All of your loved ones are around you and you're you have an opportunity to impart your final wisdom. What are you going to say to your loved ones?

• 45:56Jonathan Fields?

  The words that Debbie Millman shared with me like years ago, like just come right into my head. So these aren't my words.

• 46:05Jonathan Fields?

  Don't wait.

• 46:08Jonathan Fields?

  Don't wait. Don't wait to be the person that you know you are or share the person that you know you are. Don't wait to do the things that you want to do. Don't wait to show up in the way that you know makes you feel whole and seen.

• 46:25Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah, don't wait for permission.

• 46:27Speaker 00

  Interesting. I love that. There's like an urgency in it.

• 46:31Jonathan Fields?

  There is. And there's it's weird because a number of people have brought up at different points in my life, the word urgency. They're like, why are you pushing so hard, so fast? Like, why does this need to happen now? And I don't know the answer, but I think at least for the second half of my life, I think it's probably connected to 9/11.

• 46:54Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 46:55Jonathan Fields?

  Because I just like I saw people go to work that day and not come home. And like, you know, these are the people who are doing anything dangerous. These are the people where you'd be like, oh, well, they chose to do this thing. They're a rock climber, they're this, or they're they risky behavior. These are people living everyday lives, doing the thing they do. And they went to work in the morning and didn't go home at night. Made no promises. And it's the other thing that's constantly scrolling in my head. It's part of the don't wait thing. So I think there's a bit of a self-imposed urgency that I have. Because God willing, I do have a lot of time left. But I generally don't bank on that.

• 47:33Speaker 00

  It's a good way to move through the world.

• 47:35Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah.

• 47:35Speaker 00

  Especially when you have like uncertainty as a theme that comes up in your life.

• 47:40Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah. I mean, you know this viscerally.

• 47:42Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 47:42Jonathan Fields?

  Been through this with a lot of people in your life too, so.

• 47:44Speaker 00

  Yeah. The uncertainty and the possibility. Life falls somewhere in between all of that.

• 47:50Speaker 00

  Is there anything else that feels important about your story that might illuminate us in this next part?

• 47:57Jonathan Fields?

  I was gonna say I tend to see around corners, but it's not really that.

• 48:02Jonathan Fields?

  It's, I think I just tend to see things that sometimes, a little bit often to the left, that maybe get missed because they're not part of the instruction set.

• 48:17Jonathan Fields?

  The three words.

• 48:18Speaker 00

  I know, and I've really had to restrain myself. You know, we're working on a smaller surface area, but I've, um, but I, these are the words that are, are coming up. And for listeners, I just want to say some of these words. And what, part of this dig process is very intuitive, you know, we're, obviously this is pattern recognition that we're doing here, but it's also like a feeling. And I believe everybody has something called a resonance meter. And if you can almost imagine that it's like a speedometer in your car, there's zero, there's a hundred. And so where does this hit on your resonance meter? So maybe as you hear these words, you can just kind of drop in as you've heard Jonathan's story and just like, oh yeah, that feels, that feels pretty high on the resonance meter,

• 48:56Speaker 00

  right? Like 90. So words like create, know, breathe, build, delight, play, present, possible, curious, movement, contribute, uncertain or certainty, exhale, see, magic, moment, conscious. How does it feel when you see all those words?

• 49:18Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah, they pretty much all resonate. Pretty strongly. They're connected to me in a lot of different ways.

• 49:25Speaker 00

  Well, this is your process. I'm here just as a facilitator, but I always like to start off with just talking through what I intuitively was feeling as you were going through your story, because this is when the operating system starts to take shape and it actually takes a shape. Some people, it's like a circle or an equation or a rocket ship or a tree, and it has a different feel to it. And, um, You have some very interesting themes around time. Time and space, I would say. And just like how you dance with time and space. And even just like one of your very first stories, you're talking about, you're talking about breathing, exhale, which also is presence, right?

• 50:10Speaker 00

  So I think those are kind of clustered together. And then you also have this ability to, to play in what's possible. It always seems to have like, for the most part, a pretty positive lens on what's, what's possible there. And then you're just, you're a builder. You're actually doing things. You're building, you're contributing. There's like a movement. I think move or movement is critical. It's, it's like, it almost feels like it's like a fulcrum in your system because it's like there's out there. And then like what you see is possible. And then there's like the doing to make it so. And we've got to do it. You've got to do it now, right? You have to, you have to, don't wait to, and that goes back to the time themes.

• 50:54Speaker 00

  Um, this, this doesn't totally feel like it's in the operating system. That's uncertain. Um, I think that's just like a tension that you hold really well. Exhale almost feels like it's like in the middle of your operating system. Starting to sense maybe a circle is kind of part of you. Like it feels almost very, um, like amoeba-ish. It's like, it feels very active and curious.

• 51:14Jonathan Fields?

  It's funny, it's like one of the, and you know this because, um, this was my TED Talk, um, my TEDx. That you asked me earlier, like what is, is there a common like piece of feedback that we tend to get? And actually what I didn't say, but this is actually the single biggest theme in 14 years when we hear from listeners is, um, they listen because there's something about my voice that makes them feel okay. Like makes them feel calm. A lot of people actually listen because it helps them feel like things are going to be okay. And a solid chunk of people listen because it helps them fall asleep at night.

• 51:50Jonathan Fields?

  Which is real feedback.

• 51:51Speaker 00

  The ultimate compliment.

• 51:52Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah.

• 51:52Speaker 00

  You put me to sleep.

• 51:53Jonathan Fields?

  Always felt a little bit weird about that, but like grateful that I could be of service in some way.

• 51:58Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 51:59Jonathan Fields?

  So the exhale thing is interesting, too.

• 52:01Speaker 00

  I think it's, I will be honest, I have never seen that word pop up in a dig before, which is always very exciting for me because I've done over a thousand of these. But like, there's, there's like a movement to it. There's an in and an out, up and a down, back and a forth, an exchange. Um, a constant evolution to it, which is really fun.

• 52:20Speaker 00

  And I think what's also interesting about that, just even with your yoga studio and I'm being attracted to this, it's just like, it's like bringing people back to the present to breathe.

• 52:32Speaker 00

  Like we, you, you refer to as like a fuck yeah kind of moment, right? Like that final savasana and this like that magical moment that happens when you bring people here.

• 52:45Speaker 00

  And I think this is just part of it because you're such a builder, you're such a maker, you're such a contributor, you're such a giver.

• 52:55Speaker 00

  I also, I loved what you said about magic and I, I loved how you talked about magic as like, like an, from an actual magician perspective of like all the work that goes into making something magical. What you and Stephanie do, you know, at the camp and everything, so much work, like as your friend, I just knew like how hard you guys were working and just like, but those people show up and it just feels like magic, right? And so there's the doing that creates that. So there's, there's something to that and I think magic kind of drives you. I also loved when you said the word delight. I don't know, those almost feel a little similar. Sometimes in operating systems, we can kind of like swallow up one word with another and magical and delight almost feels a little similar. I don't know. Does it feel different for you?

• 53:40Jonathan Fields?

  I don't know if they feel different actually, to sort of like,

• 53:45Jonathan Fields?

  I think magic is sort of like a part of the feeling of delight, like this is, this is just magical.

• 53:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 53:51Jonathan Fields?

  For those listening and wondering what the sounds are going on right now.

• 53:55Speaker 00

  It's just like-

• 53:55Jonathan Fields?

  Aaron's moving a whole bunch of post-it notes around the background. Again, we'll take some screenshots of this.

• 54:00Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 54:00Jonathan Fields?

  And we'll show you what's actually going on and just drop it into the show notes and like.

• 54:04Speaker 00

  And the fun thing about this is like, there's no right or wrong answer, right? It's like, this is only determined by you, but it's an evolution and we feel into it. And we're able to kind of drop into these one-word frequencies and just see how they play out.

• 54:17Speaker 00

  As you're looking at these words, is there, is there one word that's like really tapping on your shoulder or is just being like, hey, I'm super, super important. Look at me.

• 54:24Jonathan Fields?

  Exhale, bill, possible. It's more possibility than possible, but I guess it's kind of the same thing.

• 54:34Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah, I love making something from nothing.

• 54:38Jonathan Fields?

  You know, you have to live in place of possibility in order to do that.

• 54:44Jonathan Fields?

  But also there is something around

• 54:49Jonathan Fields?

  creating this experience where

• 54:54Jonathan Fields?

  you just let people breathe again. Including me. I think that's part of my aspiration. You know? Is to try and work more of that in along the way. Cause I can sometimes move at a pace that's pretty breathless.

• 55:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 55:12Speaker 00

  What really pisses you off?

• 55:15Jonathan Fields?

  Manufactured drama.

• 55:19Jonathan Fields?

  We all have enough organic drama in our lives.

• 55:23Jonathan Fields?

  When I see or am put in a mode where there's drama, it's just clearly manufactured for the purpose of drama. I have no interest in that. I think disrespect, it's not even like me being disrespected. I I've kind of like learned how to deal with that.

• 55:46Jonathan Fields?

  I love this phrase, moral beauty, which is when we see an act being done, when we witness something being done that is just so beautiful, so graceful, so kind, so generous. It lands as like this experience of moral beauty that moves us so deeply. And I think like we can also witness immoral disrespect. And that lands in the exact opposite way.

• 56:11Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 56:12Jonathan Fields?

  I just like, I truly believe that every human being has value simply because of the fact of their birth.

• 56:21Speaker 00

  Let's go back to that manufactured drama thing for the moment. I always ask the question about what makes people mad because within that is a violation. You are violated by something and it's over the actual situation. So what about manufactured drama as a violation to who you are and what you believe?

• 56:36Jonathan Fields?

  It's probably a couple of things. One, it stops me from being able to exhale. Two, it puts roadblocks in front of my ability to create the things that I want to create because then I have to deal with a situation that's been fabricated rather than actually deal with the very real challenges of making something, which will often include drama, but it's not drama that exists simply for the purpose of drama. And also because it disfects my nervous system.

• 57:11Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 57:11Jonathan Fields?

  It's uncomfortable.

• 57:13Speaker 00

  Well, what I'm seeing is like, it almost feels like you have kind of core heartbeat to your operating system. The words movement, present, exhale and moment, they just all seem to be dancing together. And then it's almost like you have three clusters that are moving around it. You have play and possible, magic and delight, create and build. And I don't know, it almost reminds me of like the Jetsons, you know, cruising around on their little ships, but they're, they're around a nucleus of some sort. And yeah, how does that, how does that land on you when I say that?

• 57:44Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah, that feels pretty real.

• 57:46Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 57:47Jonathan Fields?

  It feels pretty real. I think like there's, there is this core of just deep grounding and maybe that's what, again, people have resonated with over many, many, many years. That's probably part of what people resonated with when I taught yoga, like in a classroom for seven years.

• 58:05Jonathan Fields?

  You know, I'm not even as a speaker, I'm not like when I do keynotes, I'm not a rah rah, like super up and down bouncing all over the stage motivational speaker, I'm a storyteller. Like I like to cast a spell, bring people into it and not break the spell until the moment is done. And that's getting them into the moment. You know, even in when we were doing, you know, for the first six years, eight years of the podcast, we had our own studio in New York and people would come in and we'd close the door and just like we're doing now. And then it wasn't unusual for people to open the door after and walk out and be like, what just happened there?

• 58:46Jonathan Fields?

  And I loved being able to like be a part of that, to help co-create experiences like that. And then to be able to actually have, you know, like listeners and viewers at scale around the world, be able to be a piece of that too.

• 59:00Speaker 00

  I know you identify as a maker from your spark type.

• 59:03Jonathan Fields?

  I do.

• 59:03Speaker 00

  It's almost like you're a moment maker.

• 59:06Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah. That's part of it. So the top of my website for years, it says, I make things that move people. Those can be moments, you know, an event, a keynote talk, a piece of media,

• 59:29Jonathan Fields?

  a class, a conversation. It can also be physical things, it can be objects. Yeah. So I think for Stephanie, it's actually a lot more moments. For me, I enjoy those, but also as, as an introvert,

• 59:48Jonathan Fields?

  me being present or centered in those moments can also be uncomfortable.

• 59:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 59:52Jonathan Fields?

  Because I don't need to be centered, I don't need to have credit for it. I would be thrilled to be invisible and have the work speak for itself. Like I don't need the ego to like get credit for it.

• 1:00:05Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's so true. Is there a word missing on here? Do you feel like we really?

• 1:00:11Jonathan Fields?

  Love.

• 1:00:12Speaker 00

  Love. What's your definition of love?

• 1:00:15Jonathan Fields?

  I don't know. Like asking a fish to divide in water.

• 1:00:19Speaker 00

  I know.

• 1:00:20Jonathan Fields?

  It just is.

• 1:00:22Speaker 00

  Is the expression of this operating system like how you love people?

• 1:00:26Jonathan Fields?

  Hmm. Interesting question.

• 1:00:31Jonathan Fields?

  Possibility in play, yes. Magic and delight, yes.

• 1:00:36Jonathan Fields?

  Create and build, yes.

• 1:00:40Jonathan Fields?

  Movement, being present, appreciating the moment, collectively exhaling, yes.

• 1:00:48Speaker 00

  If I had a dry erase board here, I would probably just take a marker and just put a big heart around this whole thing to like encapsulate it.

• 1:00:55Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:55Speaker 00

  You know?

• 1:00:56Jonathan Fields?

  I'm taking woodblock printing classes right now and the two designs that I've actually made, one is a spray can that says love on it. And the other is like a reinterpretation of this sort of like legendary Robert Indiana sort of like four square with what says love in it.

• 1:01:13Jonathan Fields?

  It's a recurring theme.

• 1:01:14Speaker 00

  Okay, okay. If you had to, if you had to like pick a captain of your sports team, assuming this all, this looks correct for you, this is your operating system, so you're welcome to move things or push back on anything, like, does this feel true on the resonance meter, does it score high?

• 1:01:37Jonathan Fields?

  Sort of like the collection of all these words?

• 1:01:39Speaker 00

  Yeah, just how they dance together, how they're grouped, what they are.

• 1:01:41Jonathan Fields?

  I think so.

• 1:01:42Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:01:43Jonathan Fields?

  No.

• 1:01:44Speaker 00

  Okay. Which one would you say is the captain of your team here? And usually, one of the reasons I ask that question of what makes you really mad is that I've found recently that usually like those violations is where our

• 1:02:03Jonathan Fields?

  It's like the opposite.

• 1:02:05Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's just the thing that gets like that reaction.

• 1:02:07Jonathan Fields?

  Right.

• 1:02:08Speaker 00

  And you know, a lot of your violations were around wasted time, slow processes, when you were talking about working with the government.

• 1:02:17Jonathan Fields?

  Using resources, time and energy for something other than.

• 1:02:20Speaker 00

  Right, just being distracted, your energy going places that maybe isn't the most efficient.

• 1:02:30Jonathan Fields?

  I don't know, possibility might be.

• 1:02:32Speaker 00

  Is there anything on the other side of possibility?

• 1:02:38Jonathan Fields?

  Impossibility?

• 1:02:39Speaker 00

  No.

• 1:02:41Speaker 00

  That's true.

• 1:02:44Speaker 00

  Because you said earlier, like, possibility itself is not the thing. It's about making the thing that you see possible. So it almost felt like when you said that, that it's kind of like your beacon for what you create. And I mean, I'm again, being pulled to these three little clusters on the outside of like, being like, what you do.

• 1:03:05Jonathan Fields?

  Well, I mean, if, so if I look at all of this, and I ask myself, where do I feel most myself? It would be create and build. You know, like when I'm making things, I drop into a state of possibility and play. When I'm making things, there's a sense of magic to it, especially when like, I start to see it taking the form and shape of what I see in my mind, which leads to delight. When I'm making things, everything in me exhales. I just completely get lost in this state of flow. I'm deeply present in the moment.

• 1:03:38Jonathan Fields?

  And I feel, I mean, movement, not in terms of physical movement, but in terms of like, from, I've started in one place and there's a momentum that's building as I move towards like, into deeper into a process of creation.

• 1:03:53Speaker 00

  Okay, that's really cool with moment and momentum. Like, it's almost like moment is the root of that. I didn't really think about that at all. There's a lot of movement in the moment. Well, I, I mean, ultimately, this is your process, but like, I think moment could be your word.

• 1:04:15Speaker 00

  I think, based on hearing your story, it just feels like this is what you're in service to. Whether you're using that moment to love, to connect, to create, to build, to serve, to contribute, to, to experience magic, it just feels like you. You want to just own this time that we all have, however long that might be.

• 1:04:36Jonathan Fields?

  I'm gonna sit with it.

• 1:04:38Speaker 00

  You should, yeah.

• 1:04:39Jonathan Fields?

  But.

• 1:04:40Speaker 00

  It's a beautiful, like, the whole thing is beautiful and there's no wrong answer, but I think what's important about knowing our words, and by the way, usually people don't like their words. Usually when they like, when it starts to land, it's like, ew, it's almost like it hits a little too close.

• 1:04:55Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:55Speaker 00

  So that's kind of part of the process.

• 1:04:58Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah. So you want to know what I came into it thinking it would be?

• 1:05:01Speaker 00

  What?

• 1:05:02Jonathan Fields?

  Um, make or create.

• 1:05:04Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:05:04Jonathan Fields?

  Or build.

• 1:05:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:05:05Jonathan Fields?

  Like those two. So they're on there and they're central to it. But I wonder if like part of that is like, I'm, I'm, what I'm thinking is like, how does that tie back to me both? Not just creating moment, a moment for others, but also me being able to inhabit like moments myself.

• 1:05:23Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 1:05:24Jonathan Fields?

  Um, which has always been my work because I live so much in the future.

• 1:05:28Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:05:29Jonathan Fields?

  So, um, and a lot of my work has been like bringing myself back into the moment.

• 1:05:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:05:35Jonathan Fields?

  And not just forsaking it in terms of what I see as possible in the future.

• 1:05:39Speaker 00

  Yeah. Well, even as you're talking about why you make things, it's for the process. It's for the moments that go into making them.

• 1:05:46Jonathan Fields?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:05:46Speaker 00

  Right?

• 1:05:46Jonathan Fields?

  No doubt.

• 1:05:48Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's really beautiful.

• 1:05:49Jonathan Fields?

  Wow. Okay, I'm complete now.

• 1:05:53Speaker 00

  Now you know your life.

• 1:05:53Jonathan Fields?

  I don't have to do any more growth, nothing. So, um, what do we do with this?

• 1:06:00Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:06:00Jonathan Fields?

  Like if somebody's following along, like they grab your book and they're gonna like, you're, you're basically walk people through like a self-guided version of this process in the book. So like, say somebody does this and like, wow, that this kind of rocked my world, but like, now what do we do with this?

• 1:06:16Speaker 00

  Yeah. Well, but the people I work with as a coach is just turning this into a message because right here is your core message. Um, and this, this could be a speech, this could be your next book. And by the way, it probably will be because I've noticed that like when people land on their word, it starts to show up in your life everywhere. It's so fun. But for those of you who aren't maybe into doing messages or sharing, it's, it's really all about just knowing yourself and aligning with it. You could use the word moment to make decisions with. How do I feel about something in the moment? And in the book, I give a bunch of tools for almost like, almost like double checking yourself when you're about to make a decision to be like, okay, but would my dig word be on board with this, you know?

• 1:06:57Speaker 00

  Is this a, is it, I try to stay away from black and white thinking with the grounding questions, I call them, but like, what does this moment feel like?

• 1:07:05Jonathan Fields?

  Hmm.

• 1:07:06Speaker 00

  You know, if I can imagine my path going down this way, what does the moment feel like?

• 1:07:12Jonathan Fields?

  Nah.

• 1:07:13Speaker 00

  And then you can answer and decide from that place. I also feel like it's a great superpower when you know how to dig and you can dig other people and you know the people in your space and they have their word. Like my partner's word is serve. I know if, if they're having a bad day, it's probably because they're not in a place of service.

• 1:07:32Jonathan Fields?

  And knowing them, like, yeah, that makes it, it's like boom, light bulb.

• 1:07:37Speaker 00

  Yeah. It's just like, now I know, you know, why are they upset? Why are they depressed? Why are they?

• 1:07:43Jonathan Fields?

  It's like how can we move barriers to be able to like show up in that way?

• 1:07:46Speaker 00

  Yeah. And what's going to make them happy too? And so, um, so it's really fun when you know other people's words, cause then I also like, I just fall in love with everybody I dig because I'm just like, yeah, it's your word.

• 1:07:56Jonathan Fields?

  So it's so interesting, like you could do this with like a partner or family. We had like similar thing with the spark types, like people would do it, like we get all these messages saying people would do it like, you know, with a partner or something like that. And like, it would just start a conversation or create a level of understanding that allowed you to just go deeper. And it's like same thing, it's like, you know, your person's word. And then like, and this whole, like the bigger sort of like operating system, right? And it just gives you insight.

• 1:08:20Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:08:21Jonathan Fields?

  Into how to support them, how to relate with, to them, how to, when you see them struggling, like maybe what might you look for?

• 1:08:28Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:08:29Jonathan Fields?

  That's underneath it, even if they can't put words to it.

• 1:08:31Speaker 00

  It really is never ending.

• 1:08:32Jonathan Fields?

  Nah.

• 1:08:32Speaker 00

  You just can keep pulling on the strings.

• 1:08:34Jonathan Fields?

  Hmm. This has been awesome.

• 1:08:37Speaker 00

  Thank you so much.

• 1:08:38Jonathan Fields?

  Thank you for trusting me with this.

• 1:08:39Speaker 00

  Thanks for trusting me.

• 1:08:40Jonathan Fields?

  I'm going to ask you the question that I ask everybody at the end of all of these conversations.

• 1:08:47Jonathan Fields?

  In this container of Good Life Project, if I offer up the phrase to live a good life, what comes up?

• 1:08:52Speaker 00

  To live a good life is to be true to oneself and to never stop seeking what that is.

• 1:09:00Jonathan Fields?

  Hmm, thank you. So the thing I'm sitting with from this conversation is that moment when Erin kind of looked at all the post-it notes on the wall and started pointing to clustered, I had not really consciously noticed because the word she landed on was not the word I came in expecting. I thought it would be something about making or building. It's related and those things are very real, they're in there, but they orbit something deeper. And that's kind of the whole point of the dig. Three things that I thought would be interesting to pull out from this. First, the operating system idea that your life story doesn't just produce a single word, it actually produces this kind of like a constellation of about 10 with one word

• 1:09:44Jonathan Fields?

  at the center that functions like the captain of all of the others. And together they form this operating system. I found that really useful to see it all just kind of teased out together. Second is this violation signal that she talked about. Erin's insight that whatever makes you genuinely angry or upset is almost always pointing towards your core word because the violation is on the other side of your deepest value. And the third, this idea that a hundred percent of people generally come into this process if they think they know their word, they're almost always wrong. Every person who thinks they already know their word, it just doesn't work out that way, which means the real word is always a layer deeper than wherever you start looking.

• 1:10:28Jonathan Fields?

  If there's one thing that you can do this week, sit with this question. What's the word that keeps showing up across the chapters of your life? Not the word you want it to be, the word that's actually there. And hey, before you leave, next week, we're sitting down with Dr. Lucy Hohn to talk about something most of us are carrying without ever calling it what it is. This invisible grief that comes without a funeral, just the losses that that often do not count as a real loss in our culture, but may be driving more of our suffering than we know. Lucy is a leading resilience researcher. Her TED Talk on resilience has been viewed more than nine million times and she's also someone who has lived through the kind of loss that changes everything. You do not want to miss this one.

• 1:11:11Jonathan Fields?

  Be sure to follow Good Life Project wherever you get your podcasts so you don't miss any upcoming episodes. And Do me a favor also, a seven second favor. Share this episode with just one person who you think maybe is circling or looking for their own word right now, their own sort of like center. This episode of Good Life Project was produced by executive producers Lindsay Fox and me, Jonathan Fields. Editing help by Troy Young, Chris Carter, crafted our theme music, and of course, if you have not already, follow us wherever you get your podcasts so you never miss a conversation. Until next time, I'm Jonathan Fields, signing off for Good Life Project.

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• 1:12:35Speaker 04

  Hey, we're Nick and Jack, hosts of The Best One Yet. Behind every episode, there's research, emails, spreadsheets, and our shared Google Doc, the Headline Hammer. With Google Workspace with Gemini, Google's AI is built right into the premium versions of tools we already use, like Gmail, Docs, and Sheets. No new tools or extra logins, just personalized AI for the way we work. That means less time on the work around the work and more time finding the stories worth talking about. Get AI tools for work. Upgrade to Google Workspace with Gemini at goo.gle/workspacewithGemini. That's goo.gle/workspacewithGemini.