Good Life Project - Hack Your Best Self, Fly Your Freak Flag, Get Serious About Play

Episode Date: March 16, 2016

Today's Good Life Project Roundtable™ features guests-in-residence Emiliya Zhivotovskaya, MAPP and and Bob Gower.Emiliya is a leading voice in the world of positive psychology and the science of flourishing, and is the founder of the Certificate in Applied Positive Psychology program, which is the largest in the world. In a past life, she was a party entertainer and knows pretty much every group dance ever invented.Bob is a deep systems-thinker, author of Agile Business, organizational-dynamics consultant to some of the largest companies in the world. He's also an ex-cult member, and that comes out in interesting ways in the conversation. They'll be our guests-in-residence for the next two weeks, so buckle up.This is week two in their residency, to be followed by their third and final week next week.Our three topics in this episode:Making time for unadulterated joy and play.Is it getting easier to fly your freak flag without being rejected?How can you hack your "best self?"It's fast-paced, fun, utterly unscripted and at times a bit raw, but always good-natured and very real. Enjoy! And let us know if you like this format, over on social media. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Mayday, mayday. 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. This is Jonathan Fields with this week's Good Life Project Roundtable. So that's a format where I have guests in residence. And we go around the table and we each throw out one topic and jam until we're, well, pretty much done jamming. My guests in residence today and for actually for three weeks now are two dear friends of mine. We have Amelia Zivotovskaya, who is a scientist. She has a master's in applied positive psychology, runs the largest certification in applied positive psychology program in the

world. And it's just a stunningly brilliant mix of deep academic and scholarship and also a pretty soft metaphysical side. And she blends it in a way which just makes you think. Also joining as a guest in residence for today and for three weeks now is Bob Gower. Bob is a deep systems thinker with a strong background in philosophy and agile development for those in the sort of technology world. He's worked with teams at the highest level in some of the largest organizations and also startup entrepreneurs. He also has a background in cults

and in all sorts of worlds where people influence others to make decisions. And that comes out in a lot of really interesting ways in the conversations over the next couple of weeks. So really excited to share these conversations with you. I'm Jonathan Fields. This is Good Life Project. Hello, fabulous people. Back with this week's roundtable with my awesome guests, Amelia Zivotowskaya and Bob Gower. Round two, our guests in residence. So we're going to start out this week with Amelia. What are you thinking about? I am thinking about unadulterated joy and play.

And the reason that's on my mind is because I have reclaimed the reins of my vitality over the past few weeks and got back into a daily exercise routine, 6 a.m., up, movement, Monday through Friday, give myself off on Saturday and Sunday. And I have found myself being more playful again and more joyful and just reminding myself of like, oh my God, this feels so good. I feel like myself again. And then what happens when I get all stiff and stuck? And how do we keep ourselves playing, not getting so caught up in our brain? And what does our body have to do with all of it? And why don't we have more play dates? I like that.

That needs to be like a graphic. Why don't we have more play dates hashtag we really don't I mean what so what's that about is it just is it our maniacal obsession with filling every hour and being busy I mean so Amelia you work with a lot of mortals all day long who are struggling probably with with this very thing so it's interesting to hear you say that like okay well I'm the person who helps a lot of them, and I'm struggling with it also. But what do you see as sort of the underlying thing there? I think that part of it, we would say, well, maybe there are less opportunities to play in our life, the way that when we get older, there's just not as many containers being held.

Like one of the things I love to do is create learning experiences for people where I get to infuse play and joy. Like I just had a group of 30 students hula hooping this weekend as part of a hula hoop contest and a long day long training thing. And when we do it, we're like, ah, this is good.

This is what it means to be alive. So I think. This was not, this was not a day long hula hoop training. It was not a day long hula hoop. It was not a day. But um, so I think it's just a number of factors. I think a lot of it has to do with our environment. And how we do we get sucked up into the things that we should be doing. And I think part of it has to has to do with that thousands of years ago, we were wired, we're movement and skipping and running and expressing ourselves were such a part of our day. And we learned through movement,

and we were working with one another, and we were testing our own limits. And it was kind of like, you know, maybe a form of play or, or gaming, like gaming meant hunting back then and being together. I think it was just such a part of our world and now we have to actively introduce it and and for many of us it's like it's been so long that we completely forget how much we need it and we want it and how freeing it is until we actually start to do it again and when we spend all day sitting it's like the lethargic energy that comes from our body and that's why i was like i found myself finding my joy again just because my body is moving again and I have energy with which to move. Yeah.

What about you, Bob? Well, I was just thinking, so Alex, my wife, just got home from a long trip yesterday. And she was unpacking and she pulled out her podcast microphone because she was doing a podcast in L.A. with somebody. And her son picked it up and he said welcome to the adult podcast where we talk about coffee and other boring things and so i think there is like this is like being an adult is kind of like you know doing boring things right i got to go i went to a party on friday night i i rarely go to these anymore but i went to i had this burning man these burning friends, and they took me out to this dance party on Friday night.

And I found myself dancing all night long. And you know me, I'm not, I don't think of myself as much of a costume person or much of a dance person. an evening and be in an environment where if you if if you if i was my normal self talking about coffee and other boring things then i would have been i would have stood out and so my desire to fit into that world actually had me kind of let my guard down a little bit more and dance and i met some amazing people and yeah i think there's a really strong normalizing element to it also which is part of what you're getting at it's like when you're when everybody around you is in the place of you know kind of like semi-flat line and in a life where play just isn't valued or incorporated on a pretty regular basis then like your norm is that so for you to actually go and be the playful one is you're the freak in the room you know so you've actually got

to sustain you've not only got to rally the energy to do it but you've also you've kind of kind of like you know you're you're out of the community so there's almost like a fear of judgment type thing going on whereas if everybody's kind of in the same place you know and it's like years ago i went to a tony robbins um like day-long thing and it's funny because i was the curmudgeon in the back of the room and like i'm just going to go because you know i I speak in GM. I want to find out. This is research and development.

This is all just finding a stagecraft. I'm going to be taking notes the whole time, right? And, you know, like, so the first, like, three minutes, you know, he's like, everyone up, you know, like, hug your neighbor, chest bump, you know, like, shake hands, high fives. I'm like, well, all right. And then very quickly you realize, like, you know, if I'm in my seat while 4,999 people are all up and doing it, I'm the moron in the room. Like I'm the one who doesn't fit because he's created a norm of just like hyper engagement and energy and play. And so like within an astonishing short period of time, I'm that person too. Because I'm, you know, like because everybody else is.

So I have permission, not only permission to be that person, but I'm the weirdo if I'm that person too because everybody else is. So I have permission, not only permission to be that person, but I'm the weirdo if I'm not. So I think we surround ourselves in like a culture devoid of energy and play. And then it just, it makes it really harder because not only do we have to actually go and figure out how to be playful again, but we actually have to be willing to stand out

and be the weird person. I think it's part of what goes on with Burning Man is it normalizes it. With our camp, Camp GLP, at the end of the summer, 400-something adults would literally get on planes from Japan and Australia for three and a half days where they can just play because you just don't have a lot of opportunities to do that. And the people around you don't really support it in everyday life. And I think it then comes, interestingly, to this idea of energy. Like we all want more energy. And people talk about my energy is low or we drink coffee to keep ourselves awake. And we

know that energy is this thing that we want speaks to what we're talking about last episode. And we work so hard to generate it. But when we play and we rejuvenate ourselves or when we have energy, we naturally just want to keep expending. It's this broaden and build effect. So I think the reason I'm finding myself more joyful and more playful again is because I've been recharging my body battery. And I have more energy and I want to expend it. And I do things that help generate more of it as opposed to the downward spiral of not moving and feeling kind of crabby and then choosing sugary food to keep my energy going and then i crash and so it's it's i feel that we have to work a lot harder to artificially generate energy when it's not there but when we

have it and we're we want to keep it going and yeah i mean i feel like well you're a very naturally i think exuberant person at least that's how i experience you would you do you do you experience yourself in that way i do yeah zest and zest is it kind of yeah and for myself i don't like i have the same issue around like keeping my energy up paying attention to my diet and my exercise and meditation and kind of keeping all of that together but i think then there's another element that I require, which is I need to have like a boundary around the thing. Like going to this party gives me that permission in order to do that thing. And it also creates sort of a bounded environment.

You know, having hung out with kind of some of the Burning Man communities and people who can also kind of get, I don't want to just single out burning man here, but like people who can get lost in the exuberance and kind of forget the practicality, like their whole life, the rest of their life starts to fall apart. And they're not a, it reminds me of like the businessman in middle age who, you know,

destroys his whole family in order to marry the young secretary who somehow makes him feel alive where rather than just finding a way to make himself feel alive and keeping the rest of his life together, because that serves him as well. And I'm wondering, like, what's the difference between this? What's the toggle between stability and between exuberance? Like, how does that show up in your lives? I think it has to do with how much control you have over your energy if you don't have tools for managing your own energy then you are looking to external resources to be able to find it and i think that in it's i i love polarity modeling right because we can talk about uh energy to charge to discharge to recharge or having energy to having downtime.

And when you're vibrating well, then you're able to recharge your energy when you need it and then use it and then recharge it and then use it and then recharge it. But when you don't know how, you don't know how to take care of yourself then other influence you depend very much on other people for it so i think has a lot to do with self-care practices and isn't part of that also like choosing the people that you spend time with or choosing the environments that you enter and don't enter which we were talking about yeah i mean like our team here you know like we're if you look at our like you know our slack we're like a bunch of morons. We're just like complete goofballs. You'll see hashtags, like nerd faces, all sorts of bizarre spellings.

It's like we're 13 years old. But it's deliberate. We're all dorky. We would rather have a playful, dorky environment and culture than adults talking about coffee. Because that's what helps me stay alive. I want to spend my days interacting like that with people who get that, which is one of the reasons that I've been an entrepreneur for so long, because I get to choose the people and I get to create the culture. I mean, co-create it, but rather than step into somebody else's container where those people in that culture already exist.

Yeah. So, Bob, you want to roll that topic number? Sure. So, I don't know if you guys read this article in the Times a couple weeks ago about, and I lost my notes before I came in, so I'm just going to go off. I can't remember people's names. I really wanted to credit the right names. But it was a composer, a guy named George Haas, I think was his last name, and then his now wife, or they're now engaged.

And he came out as a kinky, dominant person, and he put an ad out. But they're very open about their relationship. So she's a submissive, he's a dominant, and they're writing about, and he's like probably one of the top 20 composers in the world right now. And they're writing about this in the New York Times. They're being profiled on the Times based on their Kingi relationship, which to me is like, I mean, Fifty Shades of Grey being what it is, you know, like it's like you can kind of see the progression you can kind of back up even you know like stonewall and like gay rights and like we've been we've been coming more and more comfortable as a culture with things we might call shadow or we might call just stuff we didn't talk about you know stuff your mom didn't talk about we're starting to talk about as a culture and i noticed that we're able to bring more and more of ourselves public it just seems like you know like seems like we're and it seems like it's kind of rapid like in the last 20 years it seems like there's been a lot of change in what people are willing to talk about publicly and bring forward publicly and i guess my i have two questions kind of around

this point maybe we'll when we come back around we'll do and maybe i'll bring this up another time but the first is really like like where is this all going like and and what does this mean for our culture for our businesses where have you noticed this showing up in your lives that, like, can you bring more of yourself present forward safely without social reprobation? What's the right word? I don't know the right word, but anyway, but without social consequence. I mean, not just social consequence, also, you know, like, career consequence. Career consequence, yeah. Yeah, there's, like, bigger implications Career consequences, yeah. Yeah, there's like bigger implications.

Yeah, this guy didn't get fired. This guy teaches students privately, like in colleges, and his supervisor is saying, well, maybe he just seems really authentic, and this is really great. And he doesn't bring that to his teaching. This is just part of, this is just who he is at home. Yeah. Yeah. It's funny, because for me, there's, I'm still, there's so much that I'm not transparent about. Not that there's, you know, like this big dark shadow side to me, but there's just.

Oh, we know the dark shadow. Is this your way of telling us that you're gone? Okay, there it is. I flip back and forth depending on the day. You know, for me, there's a desire. For me, and maybe it's a little bit different because there's a there's a side to me which is a public person yeah and but there's a side to me which very much does not want my family and my kid you know to be part of that public personage because it's sacred so part of it is me wanting to protect them and part of it is me wanting to protect the relationship that we have that sacred so there's a lot that I don't share that's not along the lines of kink or things like that that would be in some way expose me to judgment, but just I don't want it to be part of the conversation.

It's sacred. Yeah, and that's something I think about constantly is where my line in the sand is. But what's interesting is there's almost nothing that I think I would put out there that I don't, that it would be judged for, that I would have been judged for in the past. It's just, it's more just a desire to keep public and private separate, but it's not in my head. I'm not thinking, well, although that's not true, right? Because there's a level of snark to me. There is a level

of sarcasm that my close personal friends have seen and will see and continue to see. And there is a dry humor that sometimes slips out. And what's interesting is it slips out when I'm on stage way more often than when I'm on the mic or when I'm writing. And I often wonder what that's about, because when it comes out when I'm on stage where I'm literally just riffing and it comes out, pretty universally the response has been to me, people come up to me and they're like, where's that Jonathan Fields been?

Because you should let him out more. So for some reason I'm more comfortable doing it there. But when I'm actually sharing myself with the world in writing or in some recorded media, I still censor a lot. Yeah, it's kind of like how do you want to be – you want to be received, you want to be effective in a certain way. I don't know. To me, it's always a moving line. And, I mean, we've had conversations about this in the past.

And you encouraged me to write about, let's say, some other portions of my life, which I was hiding. And for listeners out there, I was in a cult for two years, and I've written publicly about this in the last year, largely because Jonathan encouraged me to kind of come out. But that took me bumping up against, because my work is about organizations, I realized that there was this very rich, because I'd had this like really interesting experience inside of a cult, there was this rich body of work or rich body of knowledge or experience that not everybody had and so in some ways i was hiding a differentiator for myself from a business perspective and i was also just hiding a source of richness for myself personally i wasn't able to talk about things in this sort of rich and nuanced way when i was working with organizations that i can not that everybody asks me about cults now but it's it's

large i mean something that people – it's gotten some interest. But the flip side is that it took you years to be able to process it to a point where you could share it in a way where you thought it wouldn't be negative in the context of the people who might eventually hire you. Yeah. And also, I think I had to get past my own shame about it. I had to get to a point where I think maybe it was just time. You know, you say this happened 10 years ago, and I feel like, okay, people judge it differently than if it was, you know, last year at this time. You know, like that's a very, very different equation for the listener. But I think it's also a very different equation for the teller, right?

Because I had had time to gestate and process it with with friends and and professionals frankly yeah i know that when i train my trainers one of the rules that i that not rules but working models that i offer is we do do a lot of personal sharing personal storytelling primarily to show that positive psychology is about putting it into practice and it's not about being perfect or happy all the time it's hey we use these tools on a day-to-day basis. But I usually say, don't share anything that you yourself have not yet processed. Because if you share something that makes people feel like they have to take care of you, it throws off the energetic balance. And that's a sacred space.

Like the people that I turn to for caring with me or caring for me are very different so i don't want you know i want to share to serve my students or even to share my to to serve my coaching clients i'll share something that might be a help for them but it's not about me if i share something i haven't processed yet then they have to try to take care of me and that throws off the balance a little bit yeah then you're a helper not a maker too right that's true yeah and then and what's funny too is that that's like sort of a classic thing when i speak you know one of the like classic openings to develop rapport with an audience is be vulnerable right away tell a story that shows your vulnerability but again i'm not looking to the audience to then step in and save me. It's just because I want to create a conversation where they're like, oh, he's not like preaching from like some place.

He's just one of us who's willing to go to that place. I'm going to totally butcher something. I was just talking to one of my positive psychology educators that I know. was talking about how with anti-bullying the huge emphasis that have been has been put out with acceptance and creating greater acceptance acceptance in the schools accepting everyone that blanking on exactly what he said but he was saying that they had gone so far to accepting everyone that people were also then the kids in particular were losing the smaller community of what differentiates us from one another that, you know, I am different than you. And I'm in the smaller group is like, Oh, accept everyone and be very accepting. So trying to find this balance, but I'm forgetting what the

other side of that polarity was. And my little wheels of my hamster are spinning, and it's not coming to mind. But when you ask, like, where are we going in this place of like are we going so far to acceptance that we then can find this balancing point where we accept and we're tolerant and we celebrate diversity and and also create it in a way that is really really balanced and and honors you guys know eo wilson's work the he's the ant biologist and he wrote last book was called The Social Conquest of Earth. And he looks at sort of our social behavior. He's talking about humans in this case, but also ants are sort of group adaptive, right? One ant by itself isn't very impressive, but you put them all together into a hive or a mound or whatever, and they become very functional.

And then also, you know, ants kind of hold the whole world together. Like if you remove ants from the ecosystem, the whole place falls apart. You remove humans from the ecosystem, you know, it kind of does a lot better probably. It probably thrives. But one of the things he points out is that religion is, in a shared creation myth is a really really powerful differentiator and it seems to have generated an awful lot of ability to cooperate among groups and you know so this so this tribalism which has between group has so many sort of negative connotations and even within group has so many negative connotations when you know public shaming

and and ostracizing and and you know the the clamping down of individual expression all the things that happen but evolutionarily it has a really powerful adaption and so he talks about eusociality or hyper social species of which humans are one of four on the planet we're the only hyper social primate meaning that we would we basically would care for the young of another as if it were our own we would you know sacrifice our own life walking out on the street you know like you our own life walking out on the street. You know, like you see a baby carriage going into the street. We would jump in front of that car. Most humans, non-psychopathic humans would do that.

Whereas other primates, that would be really weird behavior. And other species, that's really weird behavior. So we're eusocial. But I think there's this idea that I'm thinking about that where we've got, that's usually, that use sociality is often in group defined, right? It's defined by our tribe or our race. But more and more, especially in a multicultural place like New York City, right, we're just expanding and expanding. And we're always expanding what it means, you know, the definition of the word human. In some ways, it feels like we're all trying to encompass the entire human species. And many people are trying to encompass other species as

well. And it feels like this is this, there's this, like, where does it end? You know, and, and is it a good thing for us? Like, do we also lose our identity along the way? Like, I'm not advocating for racism here, people at home, but, but I am, you know, I am kind of in constant question about, you know, how does this process work how does this process work and where is it all going? Yeah, I don't have an answer to your constant question. Sorry, that was like a long lecture on one of my favorite geeky topics. No, but it is interesting, and I think there are no answers. But it does seem like a lot more people are exploring the questions and a lot more people are exploring them publicly.

And like you said, I do agree that it seems like a lot more people are willing to actually go to places and reveal parts of themselves. And it also seems like, well, actually, I don't know if this is true where you gave the example that led your question of, you know,

this guy who revealed that there was a kink side to him and everything seems to be fine. You know, we see stories in the media all the time of people who are quote discovered yeah you know doing so part of it i wonder is whether you get ahead of whether you're you lead the revelation or whether you get outed it's the cover-up that gets you not the transgression yeah so like if somebody like outed him and said this was going on would it have been profoundly different as he said this is this is me and i'm good with

it and let's talk about this this is awesome and i'm i'm as competent and safe as i've ever been and he's very aligned probably as well like he's not he's processed it already as emilio is saying and he's not you know saying i'm this here's the shameful part of myself which i'm going to expose to you it's like here's this part of myself that's it's part of me yeah and the role of self-acceptance and self-compassion i was listening to a psychologist once talk about how people who have to hide themselves the rate of depression and suicide suicide ideation when you feel like you not that you're choosing to hold parts of yourself but when you feel like you have to hide and there's shaming of things how that affects our own well-being and yeah i don't know where i was going there but it

just felt like you know like that clear it takes a toll on us when we feel like we can't just be transparent and so and many people don't have tools for processing what's going on and they just carry it and they weighs them down so it's interesting I was thinking about Baumeister's work around willpower right you know like decision fatigue right there's also like unprocessed shame fatigue right or hiding fatigue and that was like you know John Sarno's whole theory on back pain yeah right this is repressed rage or repressed shame it's like repressed profound emotion yeah you know and he was treating all these people who had come to him where like you know nothing else had worked and you basically like you know lie down on the floor and start to just scream or cry or and like i'm

completely butchering his you know modalities and interventions but fundamentally it's like to figure out a way to let the rage out and it's like oh i'm better that book changed my life did it actually amelia you worked with me when when i was in the midst of it too yeah it completely it's really funny too i that book was mentioned and there's a new show on showtime called billions i don't know if you guys have seen it yeah so and there's a there's a subplot about it's it's like there's a kinky subplot where a guy's white he and his wife are in the dominant submissive relationship he's the submissive she's the dominant and then that and then sarno was also mentioned to address his back pain in that book. I wonder if there's some undercurrent, something happening in the writer's room there.

He's like, yes. But it goes back to what we were talking about energy. It has to go somewhere. And so if you're constantly holding something down, it will deplete you. And just being able to work with the energy that it brings up, I think, is the key to having mastery. But I guess, and I think the thing, I think, is the key to having mastery. But I guess, and I think the thing, so I've lived a kind of alternative life, you know, and I think the thing I always sort of struggle with is like, well, when do I let that out and when do I not? And I often envy people who have, let's say, less extreme tastes than me because I'm like, oh, they can be more authentic. They don't struggle as much because of, and then I, you know, I have to think of, you know, friends that are homosexual and have been closeted just for the, for this very reason,

right? Like we all know the power of authenticity and leadership and in our lives and in business, but there's, it's undeniable that being authentic about certain things just because of the environment you find yourself in is unsafe or going to lead to negative outcomes. Right, exactly. Or, or it's going to put your family at risk or it's going to put your ability to support your family at risk. Yeah.

I mean, that's, thankfully it does seem like times are changing, but for some things, yes, for some things, no, maybe. And we're actually maybe in a political culture in our country and I don't want to go down that rabbit hole where there may be a reversal of that. So I think we're all kind of waiting and seeing. So my last topic for my topic to wrap this up, admitting to something shameful. So it's really interesting.

As a general rule, I record this podcast in person only. And there are a number of reasons for that. Number one, I just like being in a room with people. There are apparently now I'm learning that the original research on 75% to 90% of communication being nonverbal has been massively misinterpreted and butchered, and that's not actually what it says. But there are vibrations, there's a certain energy that happens, there's a transmission of ideas and just humanity that happens when you're in a room with a person where I can read social cues. I can see your body.

You can see mine. But the other reason is that when I'm in a room with somebody, I'm not off the hook. I have to stay engaged. I don't create notes. I genuinely do. I want to know about the person. I don't sit down with somebody unless I'm genuinely interested in them. And then let's have a real conversation.

So it's interesting. Every once in a long while, I can't get the person who I want to talk to in New York in a window where I need to make it happen. So we'll agree to literally ship microphones around because most people don't have the quality microphones that we need. And I did this recently. And we're in a conversation. And, you know, brilliant person. And towards the end of the conversation, I said, well, why don't let's talk about this. And there was a pause. And he's like, so you want me to talk about that again?

Do you want me to say what I said again, really? And I'm like, busted. And I was like, okay, this is why I don't like doing that. Because I know that I want to stay invested. Like it matters to me to really build rapport and conversation. And I want to learn. But like, even me coming from that place, when I'm sitting in in my studio, in a room with a screen there, and I'm kicking back, and there's a microphone, and there's somebody just talking into my ears, I'm just not there in the same way. And I keep testing this, and I keep realizing that I almost wish I was better

than that. I almost wish I didn't need mechanisms and tools and technologies to keep me here, but I'm getting more comfortable with the fact that I built this structure to be able to bring me to a place where I'm deeply engaged and present and learning and hopefully generous and giving at the same time because that's how I want to live my life.

And every time I back away from that, I realized that I guess going back to Baumeister's research, right, my self regulatory abilities is apparently not too good when somebody is not in a room with me. our ability to be our best selves when we really want to be that person. But we realize that it's really hard to do it 100% internally. I think it's a permission to be caveman moment. Your inner caveman used to only interact with people that you could see in front of you. And so while we've learned to circumvent our caveman and woman needs. They haven't gone away. We figured out ways to hack the system. And I think we can hack them in the short term.

And the more energy you have to use. The less depleted you are. Which means how well rested are you? When was the last time that you ate? Is it the end of the interview? Or is it the beginning? All of these things will affect us. For the record, it was late afternoon, so I was pretty low-budget.

Exactly. I find this fascinating. I say this all the time. We make a person problem out of a situational or environmental problem. And we blame ourselves and we think, if only I were more focused enough or if only I were more self-disciplined enough or if only I were good enough or smart enough. And half the time, it's just your animal body being like, you're asking a lot of me right now. You know that? Yeah.

Yeah. I really appreciate you talking about this because I'm, I think, the worst. Bob just spaced himself. No, I'm just kidding. I am. He's been spacing out. I'm kidding. Bob's like, i'm sorry what

but uh yeah and i've been doing more interviews i've been actually you know kind of doing these sort of trial i may be starting a podcast like starting you know trying doing these trial interviews and i was really like this was like my biggest fear because i'm doing them all on skype and i'm just you know and so um fortunately I have a standing desk and I've started to stand, I started to make it, put it at standing level and it, and it really like, I do that. And then I also just try to, I don't know, like sort of set in my mind that this person isn't like the most brilliant person imaginable and I'm going to hang on every word. And like, I have to kind of like beat that into my head and also do it at a time of day when i'm going to have some energy you know and not not not feeling blood sugar depleted but uh yeah no i i i'm i'm terrible

i check out all the time yeah i love the standing desk part of it actually when when i do i mean generally all my meetings are walking meetings outside but when we yeah it's cold out now in the middle of the winter i have i took this still this from the middle i had like the little mini stepper and i have a standing desk that I put extra high. And I was on Skype the other day with somebody. And before we, like I logged on, it was a video call. I said, I need to just tell you something beforehand. You're going to see me bopping up and down for our whole conversation because that's what I need to do.

Not just to pay attention to you, but because this is my commitment to just taking care of myself. But it also, it does, being upright and being moving profoundly changes my attention. I think we have to become hackers. I think that we just need to learn about what those evolutionary needs are and then make it happen. So it might be 20 minutes or 10-minute type of interviews to keep the attention span high. Or I'm hoping that maybe this tech inspiration can be translated to the people in your world, Bob, but I feel like we need to then make it videos that we're seeing people. And I think maybe we'll find technology coming out where as you're talking to the person,

the computer will spit out their pheromone cocktail and fill the room. So you think that you smell the person or virtual reality, three-dimensional figures. I think where we're going to end up going is just more and more attempts to hack the system to keep to that basic need because evolution takes a long time to change and it ain't going anywhere at the rate that our technology is growing. I just got my next business idea about that. The pheromone spritzer. No, dark chocolate IV drips.

That too. For late afternoon meetings. Yeah, so why don't we come full circle here. We've been hanging out for this week's roundtable. Second time our guests in residence have been Amelia Zivotowskaya and Bob Gower. And where can people find you, Amelia? You can find me at amelia.com, E-M-I-L-I-Y-A.com. And at bobgower.com, B-O-B-G-O-W-E-R.

I love that you just matched my cadence or I matched yours in that. You're in training. It's because we're all in the same room. Exactly. Smelling the pheromones. Thanks, guys. Hey, thanks so much for listening to today's episode. If you found something valuable, entertaining, engaging, or just plain fun, I'd be so appreciative if you take a couple extra seconds and share it. Maybe you want to email it to a friend. Maybe you want to share it around social media.

Or even be awesome if you head over to iTunes and just give us a rating. Every little bit helps get the word out, and it helps more people get in touch with the message. I'm Jonathan Fields, signing off for Good Life Project. We'll see 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. Find your power. Peloton. Visit Peloton at onepeloton.ca. 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.

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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 if we need him! Y'all need a pilot? Flight Risk.