Good Life Project - How Do You Know When to Take a Leap of Faith?

Episode Date: June 15, 2017

A lot of the decisions we make are about tiny tweaks that, in some way, make things better.But, on occasion, life hands us a seeming opportunity to "do something BIG!" Something that holds the potential to profoundly change our lives, the lives of others and maybe even bring into existence a new paradigm, profession, body of work or worldview.Thing about these moments, the always include giant leaps of faith.There is no way to know or prove you'll succeed at something big and new, before you actually do it.In fact, if you could prove it's success in advance, that tells you it's not actually big or new. Because, the only way to do that is if you've already done it before, or if someone else has. Then, it's no longer the revolution you'd hoped it might be.So, when you are faced with the decision to say yes or no, to allocate time, money, energy or resources to something potentially game-changing, where you don't know how it's going to end, how do you make THOSE decisions? On THAT level?Do you trust others? Do you look for data? Do you trust your intuition?That's what today's GLP Riff is all about.Rockstar sponsors & supporters: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 & grab your spot now. http://goodlifeproject.com/camp/90-day year - Check out the free online video masterclasses on hyper-productivity now and 90 Day Year program. https://www.90dayyear.com/p/?p=omcitykid&w=90dysp Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

So there's this really interesting thing that happens in our heads. We think we have a great idea, and then sometimes other people think it's a great idea, and sometimes they really don't think it's a great idea. The thing is, what do you do? What do you do when you're in that scenario? Do you go with you, or do you go with them? That's what I'm exploring in today's Good Life Project riff. It's a hitman. I knew you were going to 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 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,

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So I've had the great gift slash challenge of launching a lot of things in the world, everything from books to events to companies, and helping a lot of other people bring things into the world. And I've come up against this thing, which is that when you are launching or creating something or bringing something into the world, which is kind of, you know, it's an iteration of something that's out there. It's, you know, it's based on something that's proven, but doing it a bit differently or doing it a bit better, then there's not a whole lot of risk. There may not be a whole lot of potential joy and possibility either, but you know, we tend to feel pretty comfortable with stuff like that. And then there are these other moments in time, those moments where as an artist, as a creator, as somebody who's trying to build a

business, a life, relationships, we have to step out in a limb. We have to become leaders in whatever domain that is in our lives. And it scares us. So what do we do? We first, well, it actually kind of depends. Some of us are just like completely and utterly comfortable living and stepping into and taking action to support our own convictions with nothing more. That can sometimes be an act of great leadership. It can also be an act of profound delusion and bad decision making. So the question is, how do you know? How do you know which is which?

And it's a really tough question to answer. There's a famous story about Henry Ford. And I've heard that it's true. And I've also heard that it's not really true. But either way, the quote is great, which is when he was working on the first car, the Model T Ford, you know, he uttered the words, if I'd asked people what they had wanted, they would have told me a faster horse. And the idea there is that we can take something that's out there and spend all of our time trying to figure out how to make that thing better and better, better, faster, faster, faster, cheaper, cheaper, cheaper. But it is never going to get us the next big, profoundly different solution to a problem or delight-driven experience, you know, very often it brings us up to the point where we realize we can't do better, faster, cheaper with what we have.

And it drops us into the reality that there's something else out there, but it doesn't tell us what that something else is. We then have to go into this very often angst ridden place where we start just brainstorming and ideating and taking all these different data points from our lives and our world and our intuition and try and validate them. Then at some point, some of us don't want to hear anybody else's input. We just want to believe that this is the way it needs to be. And you know, we take on that that famous quote, if I asked anyone what they wanted, it would be faster horse and say, I know, we take on that famous quote, if I asked anyone what they

wanted, it would be faster horse and say, I know what's coming next. Steve Jobs is actually famous for, you know, supposedly having also said that, you know, he doesn't want to know from people what they want, he's going to tell them, he essentially is going to become a leader and a tastemaker. And we need tastemakers. We need leaders. We need people to push other people's buttons, to radically shift paradigms, to offer ideas nobody else saw coming. And at the same time, very often those same things crash and burn because they're not valid. They're actually not the next thing. They're just these fantastical delusions that exist in the heads of creators like me, like you, like people who want to do big things in the planet. So the other side is to seek data, to seek outside input, to test and validate along the way.

And I think that's a really important part of the process too, you know, to not just live and dwell and make the decisions in your own head, but also to try and seek input and try and seek outside validation. Talk to the people you're looking to serve and say if this existed. But at the same time, there comes this point where we still have to make a decision. And what we have to learn is that consensus is data. It is not leadership. So it's good to go out and seek data, get input, get opinions, do validated testing. But that also does not allow us to subvert our need to be leaders, to step out.

And it doesn't allow us to blame others or to blame other data when things don't work out. See, here's the thing. All input is data, including our own experience, our own ability to see patterns that nobody else sees, our own taste, which we've developed over a lifetime, and our own intuition as creators and leaders. And people are really good at telling us what they think will solve their problem better. But they're not good at telling us how something truly revolutionary that they've never experienced will affect them. We cannot rely on existing data to prove the validity of something that is a true shift in paradigm,

that is a true difference maker, because the definition of it being truly innovative is that it is not validatable beforehand. We can get pieces. we can get hints, we can get sort of glimpses of validation along the way and proof, but we can never be entirely comfortable that this is the thing. And that is where leadership comes into the picture. That is where creators become leaders, when you're willing to step out into that space of the unknown

and say, this is my idea. Now, I'm not saying that you should move something forward when you start out with an idea, and then you go out and you do all these things to see if you can validate the idea and you get all sorts of really great external data from experiments from prototypes from design sprints all this stuff and the data is crystal clear that you are in fact dead wrong with your with what you thought was right when When that happens, when the increasing volume of external data says,

no, no, no, no, listen to that data. I'm talking about the scenario where you start with a hunch with your own taste, pattern recognition, and then you go out and you run your experiments and you get your data and it's coming back ambivalent, legitimately basically saying, okay, it's really mixed. We can't validate, but we can neither invalidate. And that is very often what happens when you're exploring something which has the potential to be truly difference-making, game-changing, paradigm-shifting. Does that mean it's definitely going to work? No. But it means that we've gotten to a point where we have to make a choice. So if you are building something in your life, whether it's a career, business, a body of work,

you know, you could be an artist or a creator or a maker, whether it's a relationship, whatever it may be, know that there are stages. You can iterate on something until it's as good as you can get it. And then you will always hit a point where you know there's something else out there that is radically different that will create exponentially better outcomes, or at least you feel like there is. And you don't know what that looks like. So you start to come up with ideas. And then eventually, your internal pattern recognition tastes all this other stuff intuition, lets you gives you a hint at what it may be. The next step, of course, is you develop it in your head, and then you immediately start testing

and validating the outside world. And you may get data back that says, no, no, no, listen to that data. But if you get data back that says, we still don't know, that is when creation needs to also be joined by leadership and a willingness to say, consensus is data, it's not leadership. And it is now my time to stand in what I believe and either rise or fall with that. It's an unsettling sort of realization. But the fact is that true creative leadership is always an unsettling position to be in because you are in the business of unsettling whatever is existing before you. So something to think about and something that's always on my mind because I'm always pushing the envelope with what I'm creating in the world and always having to realize there are moments when I

need to be not just a creator but a leader. And it kind of terrifies me at times. And that is why I have a set of personal practices that help me not melt down. And I've talked about them on prior episodes, so I won't dive back into those again. That's what I'm thinking about on today's Good Life Project riff. I'm Jonathan Fields, signing off. See you next week. 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 or later required, charge time and actual results will vary.