Good Life Project - Dan Lerner: How to Succeed (in school and life).

Episode Date: April 10, 2017

To be amazing at any one thing, do you have to abandon everything and everyone else along the way? Or, is there a better way?That's the question that has obsessed with week's guest, Dan Lerner, for his entire adult life.The son of world-class classical musicians and an accomplished cellist himself at an early age, he was exposed to a world of devotion and mastery. He saw people in this community who'd figured out how to build a living around what they loved, become masters of their craft and also live rich, joyous, connected and full lives outside their careers. And, he assumed that's just "the way it was."TUntil he took a job as an agent representing many of the best musicians in the world, and learned the cold, hard truth. For so many, the quest to be the best came not with fulfillment, but with abandonment of relationships, health, self-care and any semblance of humanity. He believed there had to be a different way.This led Dan on a quest away from agenting and found him studying with legendary professors in the world of performance and positive psychology. He eventually pursued a Masters degree in positive psychology, became a strengths-based performance coach working with elite performing artists, athletes and executives and found himself teaching at NYU and University of Pennsylvania.He now co-teaches the most popular elective class at New York University, “The Science of Happiness,” and his new book, “U Thrive: How to Succeed in College (and Life), is a compelling deep-dive into how to not just excel in academics or work, but how to do it in a way that also let's you live a great life along the way.+++ Today's Sponsor: Bombas Socks +++Today's show is sponsored by Bombas socks. Why do we love them? It's not just because they're ridiculously yummy, or that they spent years re-engineering socks to create all sorts of crazy-cool features, like mid-arch support and special heel tabs that protect the backs of your ankles. It's also because when you buy a sock, they give a pair of socks to homeless shelters. Grab your first order today and get 20%-off. Go to BOMBAS.COM/GOODLIFE. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

And you'd see amazing talent that would vanish and no one would get to hear them because they had taken this path that was so painful that they just had to get the hell out. So I thought after 10 years in the business, I thought, okay, how can I help these people? How can I help people who are tremendously talented live lives that are as successful as the work that they're doing. So today's guest, Dan Lerner, is a longtime friend of mine, actually, who is a professor at NYU who co-teaches with a friend of his the largest elective class at NYU. It's about 475 students who beg, borrow, and steal their way into this class

called The Science of Happiness. And he's got a new book out now also called You Thrive. And I wanted to invite him in both to talk about some of the ideas in the book and also to deep dive into his journey because he has a really fascinating sort of personal story growing up in the home of professional musicians and going deep down that path himself, making some really major changes and eventually coming full circle to a place where he's doing his music, he's making his mark in the world, he's deeply expressing his art, but in a profoundly different way than where he started. The wisdom, his depth of knowledge on research, on academic, on science, of really performing in life at the highest levels and also just thriving is extraordinary.

And he's somebody who also goes outside of that and just lives. He tells a really powerful story with his life, and I want to share that with you guys today. Really excited to share Dan and his work. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun.

January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what's the difference between me and you? You're going to die. Don't shoot him. We need him. Y'all need a pilot.

Flight risk. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes.

The Apple Watch Series X. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS are later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. What does your t-shirt say? It says Mr.

Wright with a W. Oh. Yeah. Is that in honor of the book or somebody just bought you that? You know what? I got to say I bought it to inspire me early on in the process. Did it? It inspired me to wear t-shirts.

I actually saw a picture of right when I was in the throes of my Hamilton obsession. I saw a picture of Lin-Manuel Miranda wearing one from years ago, and I was like, I'm getting that T-shirt. So I did. I bought one, and I was like, this is it. So every once in a while, on it comes. I always wanted a Vote for Pedro T-shirt. Yeah, right?

So like the block letter T-shirts that are still classic in our, yeah. There's the Vote for Pedro T-shirt, and of course there's the John Belushi T-shirt that just has college on it, which is fun. It's like each one of those will age you for like a certain – Every decade has – So you're that old.

That's right. Why, yes, I am. All right. So we're hanging out. And I was trying to remember. So for those who don't know, which is all of you, Dan and I – Oh, is this thing on? Yes.

Okay. And you may have heard Dan and I sort of cycle through. There was a while we were testing out these roundtable episodes and he would chime in here and there. But we go back a long time and we have had monthly breakfasts for years and years now and sort of seen each other through a lot of different moments in life and career. But it's always kind of fun to sit down with somebody who I've known for a long time and go back in time a little bit and ask the questions that you normally never ask of somebody, you

know, just in sort of like normal conversation. So I know bits and pieces, but I want to fill in the gaps a little bit for me, but also for those listening. So as we sit here right now, professor, expert in positive psychology, excellence, teaching the most popular elective class at NYU undergrad with something like, what, 4 million people in the room at any given time. 4.5. 4.5. It's a big room. It's got to be a big ham. Really, really big. But you have a really interesting upbringing. So you're in Pittsburgh? Yeah. Born and raised in Pittsburgh, a city that I still ham. Really, really big. But you have a really interesting upbringing. So you're in Pittsburgh?

Yeah. Born and raised in Pittsburgh, a city that I still adore. Pittsburgh, what's up? I love that town. And I was there until I left for college. It was a really interesting, I think it was interesting. It was a lovely way to grow up. Lovely place.

My parents were both musicians. Right. Tell me what it's like to actually be growing up. Because they weren't, quote, just musicians. Your parents were professionals. I mean, you grew up in a household where it was immersive in music and the business, the study, the exploration, the culture. Well, my father was a flute player in the Pittsburgh Symphony for 45 years, second flute. And so I grew up hearing music all the time. Every Friday, I would go and fall asleep at

the symphony. But there was always someone practicing, a student there, my dad practicing, someone playing. And was still dark out. I remember that. I got up really early and saying, what the hell? And stopping and realizing there I was on the floor of my room with my little plastic Fisher Price record player. And he said, is that Bach? I said, yeah, it's the Brandenburg Concerto No. 4. And he goes, oh, okay, okay. Just turn it down a little bit, sweetheart. So music was always happening literally all times of day and night. And my mother, when I was young, she was getting her graduate degree in performance at Carnegie Mellon, voice. But she went on to a really wonderful career as an opera singer. So she came to New York here to sing at the Met, and she traveled around the world. And so she was always singing. And together, we were always often playing music. I grew up playing the cello. So the

three of us would be playing chamber music in the living room. And sometimes folks would come join us, friends, people from the symphony. So it was really a wonderful way to grow up. And there was music always, always. Yeah. I mean, what's interesting to me also is that when I think Pittsburgh, when I think of, you know, if I didn't know you, I think of, you know, like a kid growing up in Pittsburgh, I think of more rough and tumble. I think of, you know, like the, you know, steel town. I think of the steelers. I think of, there's an ethos that I think people have from the outside in of sort of like, you know, like that, that vibe and that time. And it's, it seems like you're like sort of your family and the culture immediately surrounding you. Was it very different from sort of like if you stepped outside of that

little bubble, the friends that you were hanging out with every day at school, you know, like the all the other stuff? Was it a really different experience inside your house? And with you know, like the players that would come over versus Okay, then the kids I'm hanging out with, and the families around me, you know, it's funny, I would say that my experience was probably different from most experiences, no matter where you go in the country because I have these two musicians. There is constant music there. But one of the wonderful things about Pittsburgh is it's a real blue-collar town. There's a real blue-collar ethos there.

My dad was from Chicago, immigrant, but another blue-collar, hardworking town. And I think that's what one of the wonderful things about Pittsburgh is, is that you have this blue-collar ethos there, but there's always been one of a culture. I mean, Pittsburgh Symphony has been one of the great symphonies in America and the world for 60, 70, 80 years. So you have this working man culture and you have the Steelers and you have the Steelworkers, but there's always been a real kindness. There's always been a real generosity in that city. There's always been, as I said, great culture, and it really comes together beautifully. So in my circle of friends, I think they were super diverse. Clearly, there were people who were interested in the arts as I was growing up, my friends through high school. But because my parents also taught at the universities, I had friends whose parents

were at universities. And then you go to high school, and my high school was a wonderful public high school and incredibly diverse culturally and racially and you name it. It was an incredibly diverse place and it had 1,400 students. So you get a really great taste of a really broad swath of folks. Even when I was in middle school, I went to a school for the arts, which was in one of the more challenging – one of the more dangerous neighborhoods in the city. So you had an amazing demographic of folks who were coming from that neighborhood, who were coming from other neighborhoods, and people were interested in performance in various ways, music, dance, theater. But I spent a lot of time in neighborhoods that I would not have spent time in otherwise. And then I'd go to the symphony and go to do that. And then I'd

go and catch a Steeler game. And then I'd go somewhere else. So it's a wonderfully diverse place. And I'd like to thank, I think in part because my immigrant background, that my parents always celebrated that kind of diversity, really welcomed it and encouraged it. So I was fortunate to have those experiences, all those experiences growing up. So what were, when you were thinking about performance early on, what was it, what were you actually doing? Personally, so I grew up playing the piano until I was about eight. And then I picked up the cello, or my father put the cello in my hands, rather. And I played that for 10 years. And so the

challenge for me is that I have trouble sitting still, which is a challenge if you're trying to play the cello. So I did my best to sit there. But it was really challenging to put the hours in that one needs to put in if they're going to go that route. And yet my freshman year in college, I went to Kenyon College, which I totally loved. My freshman year, I called my dad towards the end of the year and said, I think I may want to do this for a living. I'd like to maybe pursue the cello for a career. And he was thrilled.

My dad, this is exactly what he'd always wanted for me. Many parents would. Like, this is what made me happy. It's what made him happy, right, to be a musician. So clearly, I'd be happy too. And he said, great. He was so happy to say, we'll do for you what my parents did for me, which is you come home and we'll support you for a year.

And you practice every day in your room from nine to five, taking a lunch break. And at the end of the year, you go and audition for conservatories and music schools. And that's the path. And I thought, wow, that sounds awful. Sitting alone in a room. Here I'm at college, which I loved, writing for the paper, have a radio show. I'm playing sports. I have amazing friends, wonderful experiences. And there are girls at college and beer, but let's prioritize. And I knew that those things were not in my room at home and there's no way I was leaving. So I immediately thought, you know, I love music very, very much. Not enough to throw everything else to the side that I'm loving in school.

So I need to figure out a different path to explore this passion. So was that the end of cello? I kept playing through college. I kept playing through college and played in the symphony and I started a chamber music organization and we played concerts and played a lot, which was really fun. But did the thought to scroll through your head at any point, well, but that may be the path of my parents, but I can get there a different way. That's a really good question.

And I think having seen so many musicians, clearly my parents and knowing their path, knowing how passionate they were about specifically performance, and then seeing the students that they had and seeing the friends who was making it, who didn't make it. When I say make it, I mean professionally. There were lots of people who would play, but were clearly not destined for professional careers. And the difference for me became apparent pretty early, also because my parents were teaching. So I could see the arc, the track that people were taking. And I knew that if you're going to become a professional musician, it requires nine to five from a younger age, at least kind of commitment. Okay. So how does that square with, we're going to jump around a little bit with the research that you and I both have sort of stumbled into you in a much more deliberate way and gone much deeper

than I, you know, that I think a lot of the world really sort of first heard about through Malcolm Gladwell, and then went a little bit deeper and found K. Anders Ericsson, you know, on greatness, where when he actually went and he found these like musicians who had made it to the top of the top of the top, and he deconstructed their practice patterns, that it generally never came out to more than four or five hours a day in bouts of, you know, like an hour and a half or so. How do you square that with the sort of must practice all day, every day ethos that I think so many people, whether it's music or art or athletics are brought up with? Yeah. You know, that's a great point. And I just say that for Erickson, if I recall correctly, our cognitive capacity to grow from deliberate practice, which is a very, very intense practice, a very rigorous and specific way of practicing, cognitive capacity caps at about four to five hours.

You can keep practicing for another 15 hours if you want to. It's just according to the theory, there's a law of very rapidly diminishing returns after four or five hours. So the people who are practicing, I mean, people like pianists who are practicing eight, 10 hours at conservatories, they don't necessarily know that after four to five hours, the cognitive capacity is diminishing. They just know that the tradition demands that they practice all day long. It's almost like, and I'm not going to compare too closely, but it's like doctors who are trained to stay up for three days in a row and diagnose. Like we know very clearly that that kind of sleep deprivation severely hampers their ability to be effective and be safe.

But tradition says they should still do it. You know, I know that that practice is kind of being minimized in certain places. So when I think about Erickson, yeah, four to five hours max is where you can really do deliberate practice. You're setting small goals, you're getting feedback, you're focused on details rather than entire pieces. Let's say when you're practicing one bar at a time, just your tones rather than the speed of your fingering or vice versa. We didn't know. We just thought that the more you practice, the better you are. Yeah. Do you think that's changed at all? Or do you think there's still, the culture is still so

much, you got to go 10, 12 hours a day if you want to be best of the best of the best? Or do you think any of the sort of emerging research is advising the earlier sort of academic slash institutional experience? Well, you know, it's an interesting question. And I think there are a lot of elements to it, because traditionally, people are still going to practice, practice, practice. And then the question for me is kind of twofold. One, do we have the research to say, let's take a step back and analyze if this is really working? And who are the exemplars we're looking at? So if we look at exemplars constantly who say something like, all I did was eat, breathe,

and sleep, this work, like Steve Jobs, for example. You might want to use Kanye West, for example. You want to use maybe even someone like a Bob Knight in sports and many, many other people. All I did was this. If those are your exemplars, well, how can you argue against that? Clearly, it worked for them, right? Well, the challenge is starting to come into play. Well, I'm sorry. And then you have other exemplars like the Richard Bransons for Steve Jobs to say, I spend a lot of time with my family. It's really important. It's actually essential that I spend time with my family, that I do other things other than work that I'm passionate about because that helps keep me healthy. I think we can look at other folks in that realm as well. Ellen DeGeneres, for example,

right, who clearly has invested in her relationships and has invested in things that are healthy for her, happy for her, as well as developing her career and her expertise. So when we look at the exemplars, we can find them on both sides. And as we shine a spotlight on people who are living healthier lives and being that successful, we have people to look toward. From the research perspective, for me, one of the biggest areas of research has been into the field of passion. So Bob Valorand at the University of Montreal has looked at passion as a study, as a scientific study for the last 30 plus years. And he's really found that there are two very distinctive paths that one can follow when they follow their passion. To simplify it, one, which is called obsessive passion, is the kind of passion where you do practice 10 to 12 hours a day. When someone, if you're listening and you're at a conservatory right now, and someone

knocks on your door and asks you to go get a bite to eat and you say no, you never say yes, you never leave your practice room, that might be a sign that it's an obsessive passion, a passion that you pursue for reasons other than something that you love. You do it for, because your parents want you to do it, for the money, for the status, for the fame, whatever it might be, for the applause. But harmonious passions are those passions which we pursue because we love the very nature of what we do, not because someone else wants us to. And they don't control our lives. We make time not only for friends and family, but people with harmonious passions tend to have more than one of them. So they're harmoniously passionate about, let's say, cello. And let's say they do practice ample

hours every day. But when they walk away from the cello to go read a book or cook or garden or any other hobby or rock climb, whatever it is, rock climb, they don't feel guilty for leaving it. And I think that kind of research, that emerging research is showing us very distinctively these two paths are available to us and we can choose which to be on. And by the way, the bottom line for Valoran, for almost every study he's looked at is that obsessive or harmonious, both sides reach equal levels of excellence. Yeah, but at what cost? Exactly. That's excellence. But at what cost? Exactly. That's the question, at what cost?

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We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were gonna be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're gonna die.

Don't shoot him, we need him! Y'all need a pilot? Flight Risk. I had a recent conversation with Adam Alter, who also teaches down at NYU. And he's been studying behavioral addictions. And he brought up this same, you know, like harmonious and obsessive passion. And he was kind of referencing the obsessive passion as in its relationship to behavioral addiction in that it's something that sometimes you hit a point where you feel like you can't stop. And the distinction being

that there's a real negative effect in your life of doing this thing, whereas more on the harmonious side, it tends to be all positive. That's it. That's it. Obsessive, you have higher levels of negative emotions. Obsessive, you feel greater guilt. You feel less self-confident. You feel a whole host of things that you don't want around something that you hopefully began as something you really loved, and that's what's sad. Yeah. That's interesting to me also, because I'm thinking about certain fields where you do have this people trying to be fantastic at a particular craft or skill or place or space. When I think about writers, which is a world that I know, most writers that I know are actually really aware of the fact that after three,

four hours, you're cooked and they'll step away. And if you look in the literature, there's a lot of writers who write about writing and write about the writer's lives, almost always write about all of the life that happens around the writing and how much time they spend not writing. But it seems to be kind of a unique thing because most other fields, people write about how much time they spend in the activity and there's something about writers. And I wonder sometimes whether it's that a lot of those people actually don't necessarily come from sort of like an institutional path that's been proscribed and mentored and taught. Some do, some come out of great writers programs, but a lot actually kind of develop this thing in a much more independent way. And it's a much more solitary life. And I wonder if

that informs this sort of awakening to the fact that, you know, like, dude, half a day and I'm cooked. And I know this about me as a writer. You know, like, I'll write in a couple of short bursts and come a certain time of day, I'm just, I can put pen to paper or, you know, like, fingers to keyboard, but there's nothing intelligent coming out. Plus the fact that it's the type of thing where no matter how good you are at the craft, and I wonder if this applies to other fields, no matter how good I am at the craft of writing, if I haven't lived, the only thing that I can draw upon to write is whatever I conjure up in the mysterious, dark, bizarre caverns of my head. I think some people are really good at that. I've never been really good at that. Maybe it's just a skill. So I feel like I need to spend a lot of time not writing in order to have something to

write about. And I wonder if that's different across different domains of expertise. It's a great question. I would wonder, if we expanded it, I would wonder about creatives. Because I've heard similar ideas from artists, visual artists, and photographers who will say, I just got to get out of here for a couple of months. There are a couple, I'm not recalling their names, who will say, once a year, I take a month, I go somewhere where I don't have a camera,

I don't have anything, I don't think about it, I just be. And I come back and I'm like, bam, things have sprung to me. One of the reasons I imagine why so many artists live lives that we're interested in is because they're so committed to just experiencing things, life. They have more hours to be able to do that too, as opposed to a scientific pursuit where there's certainly creativity involved. But you know what the next step is. If I take this next step, take this next step, run this study, run this experiment, they know where that path will take them. Creatives don't necessarily know where the path is going to take them. They feel more comfortable.

I would certainly be curious, as with you, what about folks, Albert Einstein, took time to play the violin? Yeah, Richard Feynman. I mean, legendary. He's painting. Yeah, that's it. Ella Langer, right? Ella Langer, that's right.

So are they cultivating? It's almost like, I don't want to say that they were experiencing harmonious passion necessarily, but having other experience in their life allows them to think differently than other scientists. And that might be key to doing something that's really interesting, which is the ability to step away and not be in lockstep with everybody else. I wonder whether a lot of it has to do with the why behind the work. You know, so it's easier. My sense is that, you know, you can have a mastery quest and a curiosity quest

and sort of like parallel tracking. And the drivers are very different. If you're like, if you're a core driver, there's a quest, there's a burning question that I really, I got to answer. You're going to work differently than if there is a skill or a craft that I want to develop a level of mastery

over. I think the process is different. And the why, the driver, the motivation of like, why you're doing it and what you're trying to actually attain and the expectations attached with that change. I don't know, what do you think of that? You spend so much more time in these worlds than I have. Yeah. So the line that I use with my students every semester, and I always preface it by saying this is the cheesiest thing I'm going to say to you all semester long, and it is, I hope, is you are all beautiful little snowflakes in which they all moan, understandably. And I'd use that answer to address what you're saying, which is everyone's going to be very, very different in the way they pursue their different areas of interest, right? So how much of the burning question is there? Like to a certain extent, we're all going to have a question.

Some of it's going to be burning, like I have to understand this. For others, it's going to be, oh, I'm kind of curious about this, you know? And other people have this burning drive for mastery. And whether they know why or not, for some reason, they need to master whatever it is that they're pursuing. And then the question, and I'd add in one other factor, which is, I'm sure there are many others, but which is the question of what are you looking to achieve from all this? Is it solving an answer? Is it making a lot of money? Is it being famous? Or is it really something that gives you great pleasure to explore?

And for the most part, we're all going to be different in terms of how many drops of each we put in. So is it important to understand where we are in the mastery versus burning question versus – I'd say it is. But that first question one might volunteer is, why are you doing this in the first place? And then if it's for mastery, great. Understand that. You're fascinated by mastery. I'm fascinated by mastery. If it's because you have a question you really need to answer, fantastic. When we align ourselves with, and by the way, if it's because I want to make a gazillion dollars, well, at least you understand that. And it's a nice clue or cue to take a step back and say, well, so how does that jive with the rest of my life and how fulfilled

I'll feel in my life? So I think that understanding why you're doing anything can be really important. Yeah. No, I completely agree. I mean, it's funny as you're speaking, I was flashing back to my yoga teaching days and I got flack for doing something, which is that my initial assumption was, you know, when I owned a studio and I taught, and I didn't care why people came to the practice, I just knew that if they did, and then they turned it into a regular practice, that over time, it would affect them in a way that they may or may not have come to it for or sought, but that would be deeply meaningful and have a lasting effect that would be good for them as individuals and for culture as a whole. I was not averse to tapping overt consumer slash commercial hooks to attract people to the practice, knowing that you may come for this reason, and you may stick with it long enough for it to become a practice for that reason. And that as you do, that initial hook

may or may not fade, but something much deeper as your why, the thing that keeps you with it, is going to emerge. And so I would do that. And traditionalists sometimes didn't like that. But to me, there's a really interesting possibility to tap the conversation and the desire that's already existing in somebody to move them into an experience that requires practice, to get to a level where the feeling that they get just intrinsically from doing the thing becomes to become sort of like a new emergent higher level. Why? So I could not agree with you more. And the research would agree with you too. Oh, no kidding. Yeah. Glad to hear it. Nice. The research says no. No, the research

would agree with you. And I've just turned back to passions for a second to say a lot of people, A, when asked if they believe that passion is an essential part of a fulfilling life, 100% of respondents in a survey of over 500 college students said yes, it absolutely is. But more to the point, to your point, people overwhelmingly think that passions, and I'm going to apply the word passion to what you're talking about, something that you're passionate about, something that you're looking forward to doing, that you're eager to undertake. People tend to think you're talking about, something that you're passionate about, something that you're looking forward to doing, that you're eager to undertake. People tend to think they're thunderbolt moments. I walked into my first yoga studio,

took my first class and knew right then that the rest of my life, I would do yoga every day. I saw something horrible happen on the street and I knew I had to get involved in charitable organizations, right? And that has been my life. That is why I'm now the CEO of, right? Red Cross. But that's usually not how passions develop. What we find in the research is that passions take on average about three years to develop. And they tend to start with people doing things that they're just interested in. Like they catch their eye. Oh, that's interesting. I've always wanted to, I've been curious about French. So I'm going to take a French class. Not I'm going to move to France and live there for the rest of my life. But I'm going to take a French class. And then the next year, they might, I do gymnastics. And about three years after he started, I heard him describe himself to somebody saying, I'm a gymnast. It becomes a part of you. Yeah. So it shifts from do to identity.

Like I am Ella. That's right. But if someone would walk into your studio and say, oh, you know, this is interesting. It's not necessarily going to be an OMG, this is the rest of my life moment. It's going to be, this is interesting. And maybe I'll take two classes a week instead of one. And next year, maybe it's three classes. And the year after that, maybe they're thinking about getting their certification. But as they look back, it's just pursuing things that have been interesting for them. You know, and I think people put pressure on themselves to say, no, this is not big enough for me. College students certainly do. I can't figure it out. I can't, I'm a freshman. I can't figure out the rest of my life.

Dude, why are you trying to figure out the rest of your life? You're 18. And by the way, dude, you're 28. Why are you trying to, dude, you're 38 and you're 48. Why are you trying to figure it out? What are you interested in right now? If it's interesting for you, go check it out. Don't feel like you have to commit your entire life to it.

That's not how we develop harmonious passions. So you were spot on. Yeah. And that's been my experience. And I think we tend to shame ourselves because we look at that extremely rare outlier, you know, the kid who does turn six and it's like, and because I do think that there are those rare moments where there is a lightning bolt. Someone's like, boom, I know at the age of like six that I want to be a veterinarian. Like I want to devote my life to animals or whatever it may be. And we see those people, the news, like the media loves to tell the stories of those people because they are such

extreme outliers. And then we hold them up as the aspiration because, and we think, well, this is how it happens. And if I haven't had that experience, it can't be this for me rather than saying, wow, that's so awesome for that person. You know, and they are the extreme outlier. It rarely ever happens that way. And let me honor more sort of an experimental path of just following my interest to where it leads. You know, I always say Mark Zuckerberg and Taylor Swift, they ruin your life. Because, you know, hey, I'm a big fan of Facebook, don't get me wrong. And I love her music. But I know people tend to look at them and think child geniuses,

and they came out of nowhere, right? All of a sudden, you know, he goes from being a 17-year-old nobody to an 18-year-old billionaire creator. He was programming when he was a kid, and his dad was teaching him, and he was looking forward to it. He had been working really hard. She picked up a guitar when she was nine. So we always, we tend to think, oh, and she hit whatever it is, 16, 17, child, Wunderkind. No, she picked it up and she was playing for a long time. So they started early and it took a while. And look, let's talk about exemplars.

Talk about people who accomplished at a very, very high level. Alexander the Great didn't really get going until he was in his early 30s. Christy Wellington, the triathlete, she didn't run her first race until she was in, I think, her 30s or early 40s. So there are people who get started late, and they're very successful. In fact, I can't remember the exact stat, but those people who are particularly successful, the ages are going up, not down, right? It used to be early 40s. Now it's in – now it tends to be in the higher 40s as well. So we can – Nobel Prize winners, it doesn't happen until much later in life. So we do look, as you said, at that one idea because they fascinate us.

Or we look at what I call the performing monkeys, like the little six-year-old violin players who you're like, wow, clearly, you either got it or you don't. That's not how it works. You can start things later. And I'd almost go back to your point about creativity and taking time and needing space to do something that's really interesting. Doing things that are really interesting take time in life. There's no shortcut. Yeah.

And I think even if you have an early interest, my experience has been that for most people, passion follows proficiency. Because we all, again, with the exception of that rare sort of freakish outlier, we all suck at everything when we start, like on day one. Yeah. I was not very good at walking when I was little. Neither was anyone else out there. And so it's not all that much fun. Right. You know, and then we hit it. So I wonder in the back of my head, I'm like, I wonder if that three-year mark actually coincides with whatever it is you're trying to think. Like you've kind of hit the point of a level of proficiency that then starts to flip it

to, you know, like you're moving out of the suck range into a level where you're like, I'm good enough. It's coming easily enough. I feel accomplished enough. And I feel like I have a foundation to now really move into another space enough where my proficiency has now allowed me a level of sort of like intrinsic joy in just being able to be present rather than constantly being focused on improvement. Right. be present rather than constantly being focused on improvement that starts to add to a joy where you're like, ah, ah, yeah, this is doing something to me. I wonder if that's part of it. That makes a lot of sense. Just to piggyback on that, I'd say that if people put too much pressure on themselves early on, I've got to be great, I've got to be great, I've got to be great,

they quit because it sucks. Why would they do it? As opposed to, this is interesting. And the pace I'm going at seems comfortable and I'm falling down, but I'm still enjoying it. Right. And next thing you know, the proficiency has emerged. And it was never something they kicked themselves about, beat themselves up about, did for somebody else. But just, yeah, I'm pursuing something that's interesting for me. I'm just painting because I like to. No one's seeing it. I'm building something because I like to. No one's seeing it. I'm building something because I like to. No one's seeing it. I'm competing in a sport. Which kind of takes us back into your journey because we didn't come all the way yet. Oh, no, it's done. That's as far as we go.

So when you decided that you were actually not sort of down for the path of a professional musician, you didn't walk away from the world of music. No, not at all. Actually, the first question I asked after that conversation with my father that I asked of myself was, okay, so how are you going to be involved in music? Because clearly, it's something you love. So I would work every summer, every break period. So every summer, I spent working in the music business in some capacity. I would stage manage. I worked at the Newport Music Festival for a bunch of summers just to stage manage. I worked out at the Santa Fe Opera doing fundraising and other tasks that allowed me to get some insight into what else was going on in music. And one summer, the summer I was at Santa Fe, after my sophomore year, I ran into – I met a bunch of different agents, talent agents.

And I thought, wait a second. So your job is to find really talented young people and help them develop their lives and careers. That sounds amazing. Partially because I'd grown up with parents who were musicians and I knew how important it was to have people help on that side of the business. But also I had such a love for music that the ability to help people live their life in music, it was an impossibly perfect fit. So I went into that business directly after college. I packed up my car and drove to Pittsburgh, dropped my stuff off. Next day, came to New York and I had a job waiting for me at Columbia Artist Management, which was at that

point the largest talent agency in the world that represented classical musicians. And I could not have been happier. I was working, you know, 100-hour weeks, but I was working with these amazing performers. And all I was doing, my job was to, as far as I saw it, was to help them create their art without any distraction and help them get in front of the right audiences and help them develop their talents. And that was an amazing blessing. Now, my bosses might have thought differently. They might have thought, no, your job is to get them as many engagements possible to make a lot of money.

But that's not how I saw it. I saw it as helping them create their life. And that was a real pleasure. Yeah. What else did you see, though? Because it's an interesting world. Yeah. What else did you see though? Because that's, it's an interesting world. Yeah. Well, you know, it's funny.

As you and I have discussed, I grew up watching my parents and thinking, well, when you're successful, you're going to be happy, right? My parents were successful doing what they were doing. They were happy people. We had a happy home. Fantastic. And I got here and I figured if I can help people be successful, then they're going to be happy too.

What a great win-win, win-win-win, right? But as you said, I got a bit of a brutal surprise when I showed up because I saw some people were living the life very much like my parents. They were very successful on stage and they were very successful off stage. They had families who loved them. They had, in some cases, spiritual practices. They had hobbies. They had things they did. They were living their life. And music was a part of it. And that was wonderful. But I also saw another side. And that other side were people who were very successful on stage and not successful off stage. And that was eye-opening and very sad to see people who would call me at two in the morning crying from somewhere in Europe saying, I haven't seen my family in too long, or I don't have any family or friends, or I don't have anything else in my life. And those same people would call later on

that day during business hours and say, I need more work. And you're thinking, wow, this is a really challenging thing. I felt for these people. Not to mention those people would burn out. Whether you're in your running era, Pilates era, or yoga era, dive into Peloton workouts that work with you. From meditating at your kid's game to mastering a strength program, they've got everything you need to keep knocking down your goals. No pressure to be who you're not, just workouts and classes to strengthen who you are. So no matter your era, make it your best with Peloton. Find your push.

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generations, iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual results will vary. And you'd see amazing talent that would vanish and no one would get to hear them because they had taken this path that was so painful that they just had to get the hell out. So I thought after 10 years in the business, I thought, okay, how can I help these people? How can I help people who are tremendously talented live lives that are as successful as the work that they're doing? And that's why I left the business and went back to school. Yeah. Is that the point where you went back and really started focusing on positive psychology and expertise? So first it was performance psychology. I'd never heard of positive psychology before. I was just thinking, when I left school, I thought, how do I help people? And so I looked

into programs in psychology and psychiatry. I looked at the programs in coaching. And an old family friend and former client of mine, a wonderful, wonderful man named Stephen Wadsworth, who's now head of the opera program at Juilliard. He said, I think you should talk to my cousin. I said, great. I'd love to talk to your cousin. What does he do? Stephen said, I have no idea, but I still think you should talk to him. So I called him.

His name is Nate Zinser. Everyone calls him Doc Z. And Nate is one of the directors of what is called the Center for Enhanced Performance up at West Point Military Academy. I thought, we have military academy, like I have no idea how we're going to jive here. And he and I had like a four-hour conversation. Nate got his PhD in sports psychology. And I very quickly said, look, I am fascinated by what you do. I love sports. I've played sports. I love the psychology of performing at your peak. But I want to take this to a broader audience. I'm curious by what you do. I love sports. I've played sports. I love the psychology of performing at your peak.

But I want to take this to a broader audience. I'm curious about how this works for performers, for singers, for instrumentalists, for lawyers, for doctors. Like I want to know how it works for everyone who wants to perform. And Nate was amazing. He said, you know what? Come on up here. I'll put something together for you. Let's make this happen.

So I've been really blessed with amazing mentors throughout my life in music and then in performance psych. And I went up there and the books and the readings that I was discussing with him were like opening a new universe. How do you perform at your very best psychologically? And two of the books that were on that syllabus that he created introduced me to positive psychology. One was Flow, the book, the, you know, Cheek Send Me High, exactly. And the other one was Learned Optimism by Martin Seligman. And I thought, wait a second. So there is a way to both perform at your best and there's a place for well-being or fulfillment or happiness along that path, that's what I want to know about. So I followed the Seligman scent to University of Pennsylvania where there is a master's program

in applied positive psychology. I thought, okay, I've been learning about performance psych. This is positive psych. How do they come together? I was fortunate enough to be accepted into the program and that was really my focus is how do you achieve excellence, but also incorporate well-being on the path? Yeah. And since then, I mean, the year since then, you made another, well, you made a handful of really interesting shifts. I know you still love music. I know you're still passionate about the field, the people in it. And at the same time, it's been really interesting to sit where I sit and see you start to dip your toe in like you became a student. And then you became part of the faculty at Penn, assisting in students

and assisting professors. And then you had this opportunity to actually start teaching at NYU. So saying, hey, what would happen if we took these same ideas? And rather than me, because from the outside looking in, I kind of think that I know why you went in that direction. But I've probably never asked you directly. Why? What was the appeal of saying, hey, I can go to NYU and take undergrads and share this stuff with them? So I kind of want to know what you think first. In hindsight, there's a thread that's run throughout my life, I think.

And that thread has been helping people, helping people achieve their potential. I think that even in college, I was fascinated by people and how I could help them, what they were interested in when they were at their best. And then that happened. Then I did that for a living for 10 years in the music business. And then I studied it to say, how can you be your best and how can you be happy? Because before that, I would get teased all the time. Hey, Tony Robbins, when are you going to get up there and do the stadium thing? And I was like, I have no desire to do that in part because I don't want to just spout off on what I think about.

I need to bring some science to the game. But when I got the opportunity at NYU, when my colleague and very good friend Alan Schlechter and my co-author offered me that opportunity, I thought, this is a chance to help hundreds and now thousands of people get to address the challenge early. I was dealing with people who were professionals, late 20s through early 50s. These were people who were calling me because while they were successful on stage, they were really unhappy off stage. And I looked at the NYU opportunity as the chance to go in and say, I get you young. I get you early before you develop the habits that are going to have you calling me in 20 years going,

I'm really successful and I'm really miserable. So being able to bring both positive psychologies and a touch of performance psychology to this group of incredibly bright, eager young minds was extraordinary, right? That'd be number one. And number two, I've always really been interested in how we take science and make it accessible. And it doesn't happen often enough. Now, you mentioned Gladwell before. He's one of the greats when it comes to making science accessible in a responsible way. It's exactly what you do so often. And I think people come to that because there's this wonderful science that's hidden until someone like you or Gladwell or Dan Gilbert or Barry Schwartz, any number of these people, the Heath brothers, come out and say, this is really complex stuff. I'm going to make it simple and you'll be able to use it. And for me, I knew that I had the ability to translate it. I knew that I had the ability

to translate it in that format, get up in front of a class and say, let's talk about this. Let's have fun with this and let's have you walk out of here knowing more info and being able to apply more info right away, being able to change your life so that you can develop excellence and you can do it in a healthy way, that's really what came together at NYU. Context, information, audience, and the opportunity to really help these young people be their very best and set themselves up to be their very best both that day and into the future. Yeah, that's basically exactly what I would have said. But there's actually one other thing that I'm curious about.

So to me, like watching what you've done, it's definitely the ability to intervene in people's lives before they've built the structure around decisions that lead to sustained suffering. I think it's been a huge motivator, probably for both of us, but I see it with you when you sort of made this decision to say, hey, let me go into the undergrad teaching world. A curiosity of mine has been, do you feel when, because you now co-teach this huge class at NYU, when you step onto, quote, stage. Which it is. I mean.

Yeah. I mean, this is literally like you're performing in front of a theater essentially like it's filled with a similar number of people students you're walking out there right and like you know it's amphitheater seating and you're everyone is focused on you hopefully is it like you're playing music for and with them are you satisfying that same jones James Jones? That is a great question. Someone asked me a few months back what my creative pursuit was in life. I talk about creativity. I talk about people who are pursuing, whether it's writers or mathematicians, like how are we living our lives in a personal creative way? And I hadn't thought about it until that moment. I thought for me it's presentations. It's every single slide, every single image, every single word visually.

And then it's how do you present information in a way that's engaging, that's entertaining. But most of all, that is impactful. And yeah, I see each time I get up there in front of class or when I'm doing a keynote or any sort of talk as a piece of art that is there to engage and inform and change people at the same time. So when I walk down the street or when I go to sleep or when I have time just to ponder the world, stare at the ceiling, I know that for musicians, they might be thinking about music or a passage or a line. Artists might be seeing things visually. I think about my presentations and how they can really grab and inform people at the same time. Yeah, it's definitely creative pursuit. It's definitely a show. Every word matters. Every image matters. And I'm really lucky to be able to have that, to be able to perform, I guess. It's interesting. I guess when I think about musicians,

musicians who I love, a lot of it is interactive in a way. Like musicians will tell you, you have to read the crowd. You have to understand who's out there, who's listening that day, that afternoon, that night, whatever it might be, if you really want to give them a great show. In my position, if I don't hear from the class, I can't really give them what it is they want. So what it is that will be best for them in a way. So I got to ask, I got to start off each class with questions. I want to know what their experience has been, what matters to them. I want to know what's driving them, what they're passionate about and why. Because, well, there are two reasons. One, it allows me to then move that class toward what they're genuinely interested in.

But also, I think it allows them to feel linked to one another, right? When people are dancing during a concert, everyone feels linked. They're singing the same lyrics. Everyone feels like they're together. When we ask our students who here has felt stressed out in the past two weeks or in the past month, who here has felt really anxious in the past month, part of it's me wanting to know, like, oh, we have a lot of people in here. But most importantly, it's like the to know, like, oh, we have a lot of people in here. But most

importantly, it's like the people who sing and dance at a concert. One person raises their hand and then other people raise their hand and they start looking around thinking, I'm not alone. There are other people who feel anxious here, who are stressed out here, who are challenged here. There are other people who are passionate about something that is a little out of the ordinary. So I don't feel like I'm alone anymore. I think that brings them together like a great concert does. And it informs us as instructors to be able to say, all right, so we're going to kind of go down this path today to be able to address what people are experiencing. And that makes for a very special experience, I think. Yeah.

It's your symphony. Yeah. Yeah. That's right so you wrote a book with your co-teacher why a book yeah I asked myself that question a lot during the process of writing this book because well I'm curious to you and again maybe goes into like you know the multiple passion thing here right because if if in fact you know you're doing great work and you're lit up and you feel like your channel of creative expression is when you step in front of a room of 455 students saying, the air is filled with possibility and my job is to deliver on that.

A book is a really different process and pursuit. So, and I see you as sort of really rising up the channels and reaching this level of mastery and just like immersed and loving what you're doing on the teaching side of things. And I often see people who sort of rise up as teachers, feel like the logical next step is a book and then get into the process of the book. And they're like, huh. That was the clean version. The very clean version. And I'm raising my hand right here also. I'm one of them.

I'm basically reciting my experience. But to this day, as much as I speak, as much as we create experiences like this, I probably, if you really ask me what is my primary channel of creative expression, I'd probably still tell you it's writing. Yeah. How do you feel about writing as a channel of creative expression for you? What's your intention? What's your experience of it right now? So I think the idea behind writing it originally was how do we get this really important information

into the hands of all these people who need it, people who would thrive with it? And there's only so many, so much of us, Alan and myself, to go around, but constantly hear people saying, oh, your class is called the Science of Happiness. I totally need to come to that. I mean, I'm talking ages 18 to 88. I thought, well, how can we do it? You're welcome to come. I got a righteous scary letter. Come on in. Love to have you. But how can we get it out there so people can really get the information? That was the reason we got into it. Just as you said before that the teaching live and writing are vastly different, I would have agreed with you before I wrote the book, but I wouldn't have had any idea how much so. Now, I've written for a long time. I mean, I've always written for myself.

I've journaled. I've written about my own experiences. That's always been very much my own stuff. And I've really enjoyed that process. I think for me, I've written about my own experiences. That's always been very much my own stuff. And I've really enjoyed that process. I think for me, it's been incredibly healthy, especially to write about things that were hard in my life. My mother being ill for many, many years, my son being very, very sick when he was born. Even my grandparents, my grandfather was a Holocaust survivor. My grandparents were Holocaust survivors. So to write about those things allowed me to explore in a lot of ways.

So I had written. I still had no idea how challenging it would be to write a very different kind of book, structure it. And I'd basically, so I'd say, when it comes to writing and mastery, I've always taken on new challenges. And it's been really hard in many ways. I didn't have to leave the music business. I was doing great in the music business.

My future was set. People were really surprised when I left. I was having a very, very good, fast run up the ladder. But I realized that it was time to leave in part because it wasn't as challenging anymore. And I thought, I need something that's going to really keep my interest. And that means challenging myself. That was part of the education. Going to teach, when I first stepped out onto that stage, so to speak, I was nervous as hell.

Like I still get nervous. I mean, 300 plus classes in. I still get nervous. But I wanted that challenge. And I look forward to every day asking myself, how can I be better? How can I be better? So with the writing challenge, I knew it would be a challenge. Not this much of a challenge. But I knew it would be a challenge. But it's one that I welcomed to

say, okay, you're going to write a book now. You're going to look back in five years and you're going to go, man, what were you thinking when you're writing your second or third book? But I knew that it would be challenging and I took it on saying, this is a great way to learn. I've always dived into the deep end of the pool and done my very, very best. So in a way, I knew that I'd be suffering in the process, but I knew that I get great pleasure out of learning in that kind of context as well. And I did. I did. So let's come full circle. Name it, this is a good life project. So I've heard. This is So let's come full circle. Name me this is a good life project. So I've heard. This is still true, even after this.

So if I offer that phrase out to you to live a good life, what comes up? Okay. So here's the thing about living a good life from my perspective is that it's not simple. It's not easy. And there are some things that are integral to living a good life. I think everyone wants to be happy. There's no question about that. I'd say that everyone wants to do work that is deeply engaging for them, work they look forward to doing. It's important for many people to feel like they've accomplished something, not anything huge, but that they get things done on a regular basis. So I think happiness, engagement, and being able to accomplish something is incredibly important.

Two keys, I'd say one is doing it with other people. Relationships are absolutely key, whether it's mentoring relationships, peer relationships, people that you're mentoring, but doing it with other people is essential. But I'd say finally, if I had to give one key to it all, and we see this throughout the research, but I think it's something that many of us have been fortunate enough to feel.

And we know when it's absent. And that's knowing that what you're doing makes a difference in the world. Knowing that what you're doing helps other people and or helps make the world a better place. Just knowing that you've left the world a better place than when you arrived, I think, goes a long way when it comes to living a good life. That doesn't have to mean the end of your life, although it's nice, but maybe the end of your day is a more reasonable target to think that the world's better for what I've been doing. I think that's key.

Thank you. Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. If the stories and ideas in any way moved you, I would so appreciate if you would take just a few extra seconds for two quick things. One, if it's touched you in some way, if there's some idea or moment in the story or in the conversation that you really feel like you would share with somebody else, that it would make a difference in somebody else's life, take a moment and whatever app you're using, just share this episode with somebody who you think it'll make a difference for.

Email it if that's the easiest thing, whatever is easiest for you. And then, of course, if you're compelled, subscribe so that you can stay a part of this continuing experience. My greatest hope with this podcast is not just to produce moments and share stories and ideas that impact one person listening, but to let it create a conversation, to let it serve as a catalyst for the elevation of all of us together collectively, because that's how we rise. When stories and ideas become conversations that lead to action, that's when real change happens. And I would love to invite you to participate on that level. Thank you so much as always for your intention, for your attention, for your heart. And I wish you only the best.

I'm Jonathan Fields, signing off for Good Life Project. If you're at a point in life when you're ready to lead with purpose, we can get you there. The University of Victoria's MBA in Sustainable Innovation is not like other MBA programs. It's for true changemakers who want to think differently and solve the world's most pressing challenges. From healthcare and the environment to energy, government, and technology, it's your path to meaningful leadership in all sectors. For details, visit uvic.ca slash future MBA. That's uvic.ca slash future MBA. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist,

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