Good Life Project - Finding Home

Episode Date: April 20, 2017

Today, we're answering a powerful question from a listener who writes:"...how do you find a sense of place and home, when we live in an increasingly mobile world? This is a topic often discussed among people in the development community who move often. We all struggle with our sense of "home" and what that means. I also wonder if it is also a wider issue for entrepreneurs who do not need to necessarily be in "one place" to work. It has come up among your guests from time to time. I know this is of particular interest to my friends and colleagues- who all practice various forms "personal grounding" for want of a better word - whether that be meditation or other rituals."In this week's Riff, we explore a few key elements to finding and creating that sense of home, no matter where you are in the world. Hint: it's as much about people as it is about place.If you have questions you'd like answered in a future GLP Riff, be sure to let us know on facebook, instagram or twitter.+++ Today's Sponsor: Camp GLP +++Come spend 3 1/2 days with "your people," make amazing friendships, drop the facade, reignite your vitality and learn powerful strategies and breakthrough business ideas. Learn more now! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hey there, it's Jonathan with this week's Good Life Project. I hope you are super duper awesome this week. Enjoying myself hanging out in the studio. It's a late afternoon as I record this. We have one window and like 19 bazillion layers of glass on that particular window in the studio here. Trying, sometimes not all that well, to block out the sound from the city

streets. And so it's kind of a nice time to settle in and do a little bit of thinking out loud with you. And today's topic, it's all about the idea of home. What is home? What is a sense of home? And how do we create that? That's what we'll be diving into today. Right now, I want to share a little bit about today's sponsor with you. So when was the last time you just completely stepped outside of your everyday life, of the constraints, of the pace, of the physical setting, and stepped into an alternative reality, a place just surrounded by nature, where you could drop the facade, where you felt your heart rate just lower, where you knew that you were surrounded

by people, where they didn't care what you did. They just wanted to hang out with you and accept you for who you are. And you could spend three and a half days reconnecting with yourself, rejuvenating your spirit, your mind, your physical body, and having those amazing conversations that you thought you'd left behind, all while learning a ton about how to create an extraordinary life. Well, that's Camp GLP, and it happens at the end of August. Right now, when you grab your spot before the end of April 2017, you will be able to get a $200 discount off the final full price. So be sure to head on over goodlifeproject.com slash camp to get all the details and grab your spot and make sure

you do it before the end of April. On to our show. So I wanted to actually share today an email from one of our awesome listeners who asked this really interesting question about home. She asked, I'm going to read this to you so you have the full context here and then I'll share some thoughts. So she says, Jonathan, I've been listening to your podcast for over a year. And in that time, I have moved countries three times. I'm in international development work. I listen to your podcast as a breakfast ritual before I'm in international development work. I listen to your podcast as a breakfast ritual before I go to work each day, currently in the middle of madness in Hanoi.

I find it incredibly grounding, which leads me to a question about a potential topic that I would love to hear discussed. I think the topic is along the lines of how to find a sense of place and home when we live in an increasing mobile world. And this is a topic often discussed among people in the development community who move often. We all struggle with our sense of quote home and what that means. I also wonder if it's a wider issue for entrepreneurs who do not need to necessarily be in one place to work. It's come up among your guests from time to time. I know this is of particular interest to my friends and colleagues who all practice various forms of, quote, personal grounding, for want of a better word,

whether that be meditation or rituals. It's a really interesting question, and this is kind of funny. It's something that I've thought about on and off over the years. What is home? And how do you establish a sense of home? Like, I feel like a sense of homecoming, like I am at home, I'm at peace with where I am in the world. And, you know, part of it, I think, is geography. And that tends to be the thing that we think of most. But I think it goes beyond that, actually. So when we think about geography, generally, we think about it on two different levels.

One is the place that we are in the world. So on a macro level, you know, where are we in the world? Is it a country where culturally we feel good? Where just physically is the geography something that makes us feel a sense of ease? So what I look for when I think of, okay, is this home? The question I tend to ask myself is, do I feel at peace? Do I feel at peace? You know? Is there a sense of ease? Like I can just be. I don't have to work. It just is. So I think about the geography. Am I in a place in the world where

I get that sense? Then I zoom the lens in a little bit and I think about sort of ecosystems. What are the qualities of places where I feel at ease? Now for me, interestingly enough, I live in one of the largest cities in the world and I have for my entire adult life. And that's not the place where I feel a sense of home, a sense of ease and calm. And for me, that place is nature. And getting me out into trees, into woods is one great way to do it. Even better, somewhere where I'm near water. It's funny, pretty much any of the sort of hokey online tests where they, you know, like you fill out a couple of questions and they tell you what your sign is.

I'm a water sign. I grew up, as many of you have heard me say in various conversations over the years, the end of my block was the bay. So it's part of me. It's wired into me. So I tend to feel a sense of home when I'm around water. I don't have to be in it, but around it. So ask yourself, what are the qualities of this sort of the ecosystem, the general ecosystem, the physical environment that give you that sense of just,

I can exhale. This is good. I'm good. And then zoom the lens in a little bit more, which is that your immediate physical environment as you work. What are the qualities of that that make you feel that way? So for me, I like open, simple, earthy feeling spaces. Some people, and I like not a ton of noise, but oddly when I write, I sometimes like to surround myself in cafes with a lot of noise because I can kind of vanish into it. So for me, you know, that's the geographic and the sort of environmental type of thing that gives me that sense of home. So when I'm moving around the world and when I'm going somewhere, as I settle in, I look to create that. I look for places that have the environment that I want. And if I can't settle in, I look to create that. I look for places that have the environment that I want. And if I can't find it, I look to create it.

So if I'm somewhere where I'm in a city, I wonder if there's a way that I can get out into nature. And that is exactly the way that I'm able to sustain myself in the wild, high-speed, constant, frenetic energy of New York City. I live in a place in the city, you know, like my family is two blocks away from the beautiful Hudson River on one side and three blocks away from Central Park, which is a park that is the size of some small cities where I can vanish into the woods. And I do that nearly every day. And that's one of the ways that I feel a sense of home. The other thing, though, is that home is about connection. Home is about establishing a set of relationships with

people where you feel a sense of love, of friendship, and belonging. And that's kind of what I think part of this question was about also, is that one of the really cool things about technology these days is I do believe it's getting easier to create that when you're on the move. That we're more tied to our physical settings, even though we can kind of find ways to hedge that a bit. But one of the cool things is that my daughter sometimes says to me, she's like, Dad, you need to get more friends in New York. And what she means is not that I don't have friends. I have great friends. In fact, there are people that I talk to on a really regular basis all the time.

Challenges, many of those don't live in New York. In fact, a number of those don't even live in the United States. So I have a group of people who I know, love, trust, I feel a strong sense of belonging, adoration, companionship with. And many of them are actually distributed throughout the world, which is kind of cool because it allows me to drop into a lot of different places and kind of know that there's probably one or two people that I can dial up or ping and say, hey, can we grab a bite? And that really contributes to my sense of feeling like, okay, there's a sense of ease, right? It's that question that I go back to. Do I feel at peace? Am I at ease? Is there a sense of ease? And knowing that there are people who just get you and accept you and you've got established relationships with is really big.

And if you're dropping in somewhere where you don't have that, that is one of the first things that I think we strive to create. And that's why if you're settling into a new community, to find that sense of home, probably one of the most powerful things that I think you can do is to find a group, a community where people like you, people who get you, people who welcome you, people who see the world the way that you do, have already chosen to come together and participate in that. And that can be one of the things that allows you to get that sense of homecoming, that sense of being at peace, at ease, much more quickly. And second to that, the digital realm, while it's not the same thing as being in person with somebody, it has allowed me to carry those relationships,

to carry that sense of social ease with me in almost every place that I could travel in the world now. So I can touch down and know that I can be with other people, be supported by them, have conversations with them, no matter where I am, as long as I'm in some way digitally connected. And that, I think, is one of the things that can make a really profound difference also. Beyond that, I'm sure there are all sorts of practices. There are

grounding practices. There's the meditation that was mentioned. There is the physical stuff that just allows your body to kind of settle into a state of stillness, a state of calm, and be present and just appreciate and see what's around you. And all those things I think are great tools. But for me, the thing that really pops out when I think about how do I create a sense of home is the geographic and physical environment in some way connected to the types of environment where I feel immediately at peace. And do I have the relationships, the deep and meaningful relationships, both physically present and if not that, at least with relatively easy remote access that would allow me to feel socially at home, no matter where I am in the world. And from there,

we can kind of build a lot of things around that. So those are my thoughts. I'm really curious to know what your thoughts are about how you create a sense of home when you're moving around the world as well. Make it a conversation. Share this with somebody else and have a conversation around it. See what else you come up with. And as always, feel free to hit me up across any of my social channels and let me know what's on your mind. Let me know what you think. I'm Jonathan Fields, signing off for Good Life Project.