Good Life Project - How to Do the Ultimate Year-End Review

Episode Date: December 13, 2021

We tend to take on one of 3 modes as we head into the end of the year:Rush To The Finish | Goal Striving ModeCheck Out | Vacation ModeReflect, Integrate & Assess | Review & Plan ModeThat last one is my approach. I love to use these final weeks to understand what happened over the last 12 months, in all parts of life, consider what went well and why, where I stumbled and why, and how I can learn and integrate all of it into setting up the year to come to rise higher.And, I thought I’d walk you through my process - it’s a very different take based on a model I developed a number of years ago around the key elements of living a good life I call the Good Life Buckets. Super excited to share this powerful process with you in today’s episode.You can find the 1-page worksheet HERE.My new book Sparked.-------------Have you discovered your Sparketype yet? Take the Sparketype Assessment™ now. IT’S FREE (https://sparketype.com/) and takes about 7-minutes to complete. At a minimum, it’ll open your eyes in a big way. It also just might change your life.If you enjoyed the show, please share it with a friend. Thank you to our super cool brand partners. If you like the show, please support them - they help make the podcast possible. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

So I got a bit of a loaded question for you, but also an important question. Actually, it's kind of three questions in one. The first, how are you feeling about the way this year went? The second one is, what was your role or part in how the year went. And the third piece is, is there anything about it that you would love to see unfold differently in the year to come? So we tend to take one of three modes as we head into the end of any given year. Rush to the finish, sort of goal striving mode. Let's put our heads down. We had big things we wanted to do in the beginning of the finish, you know, sort of goal striving mode. Let's put our heads down. We had big things we wanted to do in the beginning of the year, boxes to check, you know, like things

to accomplish. So I'm just going to rush to the finish and try and check as many boxes as humanly possible so I can sneak in as much accomplishment as I can before we turn the page. That's mode number one. Then there's mode number two, the checkout mode. And that's when you're like, you know what? This has been a year. Whatever happened, good, bad, indifferent, I'm done. I'm cooked. I am stepping away, taking a break and going on vacation. Vacation mode, equally valid. And then there's that third option. I call this reflect, integrate, and assess. This is when you say, you know, I got a couple weeks left in the year. I think I'm going to take this time to just get quiet, to reflect, to integrate and assess

how everything unfolded, and then maybe drop into review and plan mode. That's the third mode. And that last approach is my approach as a general rule. I love to use these final weeks to understand what happened over the last 12 months or so in really all parts of life, to consider what went well and why, where have I stumbled and why, and how can I learn and integrate all of it really into setting up the year to come so that I can feel better, rise higher, understand what got me here and be more awake, aware, and intentional in the choices that I make as I step into a new season. And I've developed a bit of a process around that over the years. So I thought I would take this episode to walk you through my process.

It's a very different year-end review process based on a model that I developed a number of years ago around the key elements of living a good life that I call the good life buckets. And I use them in a very particular way to review and digest my year. So I'm super excited to share this unusual and powerful and I hope informative and valuable approach to dropping into your end of the year and really not just walking away from it, but internalizing, understanding, integrating, and then setting yourself up to step into this next year from a place of intentionality and purpose so that you can really get the most out of it. So excited to share this process with you. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this

is Good Life Project. 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 10, 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.

Yeah, so this is the time of year where I get a little bit quiet. Especially after this year, I reflect on what unfolded, ask what went well, what could have gone better? What was my contribution to each of these things? How content am I in the different areas that really matter to me to a life well-lived? And what changes might I explore really committing to in the year to come? So this was a big year for a lot of us in a lot of ways. Some that we saw coming, a lot that we didn't see coming. Some we had control over, a lot we didn't have control over. And yet there was a lot that was on a table. And what I'd love to do is kind of walk you

through my year and my process. And I'll use what's unfolded in my life as a bit of a case study or an example, and then ask you to kind of follow along. So this year for me, I mean, this is a year where I wrote a book. I wrote and launched a book. This was a year where we're literally wrapping the 10th year of the Good Life Project. And a lot more is coming on that in January about how we're going to celebrate because I am honestly blown away by the fact that we are here and in the place that we are with a beautiful, brilliant global community. We moved to Colorado. We place that we are with a beautiful, brilliant, global community. We moved to Colorado. We have lived in something like a dozen homes over the last 15 months as we try and figure out where do we want to be?

What do we want this next season to look like? I've launched new ventures, brands, programs, experiences. It's been a year filled with a lot of accomplishment in a lot of ways. It's been a year that is driven by creation. It's also been a year with a lot of struggle. Struggle with state of mind. Struggle with the state of my body. Struggle with connectedness and relationships.

Struggle with work and focus and creativity and productivity. And yeah, things like burnout and overwhelm and anxiety, as I think we have all experienced in some form or shape, that sense of groundedness, like we are not entirely and sometimes even remotely in control. So for me, this is a time of year where I take this window to get quieter, especially after the year I've had where I've been pushing really hard the whole year. And even in the best of circumstances, it would have been a lot for me. And I've often felt that the year has been pushing back in some pretty substantial ways. And I know through conversations, through our

community, through colleagues, through family, through friends, that I'm not the only one who feels this way. So I do a year end review to really try to understand, well, what happened and why, and set myself up to have the best year to come possible. So funny enough, Good Life Project, this very podcast, the community, the endeavor, the venture that's been built around it, that has drawn together this incredible intentional community, it actually would not exist had I not begun to do a year-end review process a full decade ago. It started back then when I was primarily a writer and a blogger. And what I got into the habit of doing was at the end of the year, I would sit down and there was sort of like a small group of bloggers who would do something similar. And we would write

these really long year-end reflection posts, often two to 4,000 word deep digest, looking back over the year and really looking at our work, our relationships, our health, our life, and deconstructing it, analyzing what went well, what didn't. And I started doing that as I had done a number of years before on my blog. And I started writing and writing and writing and writing. And this two to 4,000 word blog post ended up growing into a 40 page designed published annual report on the state of my life. It reflected on work. It reflected on life.

It talked about a lot of the projects I had started, things that had flopped, things that had done well, how it affected me personally, what I was going through from a mindset standpoint, from a health standpoint. And I found it incredibly, incredibly valuable. And at the very end of that annual report, literally on the last page, I teased a little something that I was calling Good Life Project. Honestly, I had no idea what it was going to be back then, but I sensed that there was something big that was about to emerge under this idea. And I began by seeding it with a simple set of beliefs. I was very focused a decade ago on what I call conscious business. And that's still at the center of a lot of what I do, but it's more of just an underlying ethos rather than a leading ideal.

But I wanted to share my lens on how to step into and create a working life, a business, a vocation. So I published what I called my 10 commandments of epic business, which was all about my ideas of how to do things differently. And I shared that at the very end. And I said, these are my good life project commandments, and there's something really big coming. So keep an eye on this space. And people shared those 10 commandments all over the place. It kind of went semi-viral back in the day of blog viral. And that drew a ton of attention, which then in turn gave me the strength to feel like it was time to launch this thing, starting with

a video series that eventually ended up taking shape into an audio series and then a community and then a series of offerings and experiences that have been building and growing for 10 years. And since then, I keep going back to that year-end process because I have seen the power of really reflecting back over a year, pausing, letting it simmer, letting it sit, digesting, and then integrating all that insight and information into an intentional big next step or set of steps and the power that it gives you when you come from that place of truth and clarity. And over the years, I've evolved my process, my end of year process. I don't write a 40 page annual report anymore, but it started to develop a lot of the work that we've been doing with Good Life Project into a model of how to live a good life.

And in fact, in my book, How to Live a Good Life, I shared what I call the good life bucket model. And I've started to use that very same model to guide how I now do my year end review. Because it helps ensure that I address all of the important areas of life and not skip over anything and all of the unique contributors to the different areas of my life and that I get honest and real about it so that I have useful information and I can accept the state of the world, the state of my life, my contribution, and what I want to do moving forward.

And what I'm going to do today is walk you through that very same process. Now, using this model, you don't have to take notes. You can, if you want, and you may actually want to listen to this twice, and you may want to share it with a couple of other people and do this as a partner project. I think it's an incredible thing to do, especially between life partners or business partners or as a group project. I think it's an incredible exercise to do as a group as well. But I'm going to include a link in the show notes to a way to get the one page PDF that will literally just give you a visual guide to the

entire process, all the things I'm going to talk to you about, so that you'll be able to just download that after. It's a completely free thing. It's just a simple tool that I would love for you to have and use it to guide your own review. So again, you can take notes if you want. You may want to just listen all the way through this first time, just so you can get a feel for the process and for how I work through it. And then you can listen to it a little bit more slowly once you print out your one pager and kind of pause and do the work yourself as you go. So let's start with that simple model of the good life bucket so you can understand what I'm talking

about. And then we're going to dive right into how to use that model to do a super powerful year-end review. So think of your life as having three big buckets and I call those the vitality bucket, the connection bucket, and the contribution bucket. Now, these three elements, vitality, connection, and contribution are really the keys to a life well-lived. They're also the key to helping us understand how well or not well-lived our life is, both at any given moment in time and over a window or a season of time, like, oh, let's say, the last year. So we're going to use the buckets as a framework for our year-end review. For each bucket, we'll identify the key elements that fill

it. And then we'll take a look at each and note where each stands, both in the moment and over the course of the year, what our contribution has been to the current state and to the way that it's been over the last year or so. We'll ask, how content are we with what's been revealed to us through this process? And finally, for each one of those elements, we were going to say, well, what, if anything, might we want to change in the year to come? And I'll walk you through the entire process and share a bunch of my own reflections along the way so that you have sort of a, you know, discrete examples of how I would do this as I sort of drop into my own process, literally, as I'm recording this for you. But before we dive in, I also want to share one other thing.

So this is the first full-length episode that I'm sharing like this. We are super excited to be producing an incredible month-long series of focused, full-length episodes like learn something really powerful, powerful ideas and insights and strategies and tools, and we'll have worksheets for you. So if you have not yet followed or subscribed, however you like to do it, this podcast, please just take two seconds right now, tap the little button, follow or subscribe the icon on your podcast app now. You will absolutely not want to miss out on a single one of these special January episodes that are coming your way very shortly. Okay, so let's do it. Let's dive into our good life bucket year end review. And we're going to start with our vitality buckets.

Now the vitality bucket, it's all about the state of mind and body. We're going to talk about them a little bit separately, but it's also really important to note that your mind and your body are not two separate things. They used to be talked about that way. The research is crystal clear right now and common logic and experience tells us that our mind and body are one seamless feedback mechanism. When your mind is in a tough spot, it's going to very likely manifest in physical illness, disease, pain, dysfunction in your physical body, when your physical body is experiencing symptomology, illness, pain, disorder, dysregulation, dysfunction, that is going to cycle up into your state of mind and very likely lead to some levels of angst, anxiety,

frettedness, groundless, depression, all sorts of other things. You cannot talk about or affect one without the other. And yet there are specific contributors that are more relevant to your mind and to your physical body. So we're going to kind of split the exploration into these two, but remember everything affects everyone when it comes to the vitality bucket, right? We want to look at the key elements that affect our state of mind and body that either fill or empty our vitality buckets. And then we're going to ask for each what I call the five clarifying questions

that allow you to really see more clearly how full or empty your bucket is and what's making it so. For each element that would fill or empty your vitality bucket, and again, we'll do this for all three buckets, you're going to ask, what is the level at now? And as a general rule, just for ease, we'll rank that as a one out of 10, one being completely empty and 10 being completely full. Then you'll ask, where has it been over the last year? And you can sort of look at that as a meandering journey, but also a bit of an average. Like,

how has it looked? How full or empty has it been? What kind of a journey has it taken over the last year? The third clarifying question, what has been the main contributor to this level or what have been the main contributors, plural, to this level within my control and also not within my control? The fourth clarifying question, am I content with both the average for the year and where I am now as I sit and do this work? And finally, clarifying question number five, what, if anything, might I think about changing as I prepare to plan for the year to come? Those are the five clarifying questions. Now let's dive in and we're going to start out by applying these to the elements that fill our vitality bucket. We're going to start on the mindset side,

and then we're going to ask those clarifying questions, and then we're going to go to the body side. So on the mindset side, what are the really important things that we focus on when we think about optimal mindset to really optimize our vitality? Well, for me, there are five different elements here. I know the number five is coming up a lot, just happens to be a little bit random. So when I talk about the key contributors to an optimal state of mind, I'm talking about awareness, which is a capacity to see clearly what's truly happening at any given moment in time and not lead with delusion. I'm talking about equanimity, which in my mind is your ability to access ease or calm when desired. I'm talking about focus or attentiveness, which is the ability to direct and sustain attention in an intentional way.

I'm talking about resilience, which is your capacity to respond to adversity with constructive action. To know that something came and you didn't see coming or didn't want to happen, and yet here it is. And rather than being absolutely pummeled by it, you have developed the skills and the tools and the capacity to respond in a constructive way. And the fifth element that helps optimize our state of mind, which is a big part of that vitality bucket, is access to a sense of possibility and wonder. The ability to see what's good,

to see what's right and possible, to acknowledge what is wondrous and real and beauty in your life, even when things are hard, even when things aren't going your way, even when you feel like you don't have control over a lot. So those five elements, awareness, equanimity, focus or attentiveness, resilience, and access to possibility and wonder are key contributors to the mindset side of your vitality bucket. And for each one of those, we are going to ask the five clarifying questions, right? So let's start out with awareness and we'll use that as an example here. And then you can go through and ask this for all five for yourself. So awareness. And again, I define it as the capacity to see clearly what's truly happening.

I'm going to ask the first question. As I sit here doing this work right now, what's my level of awareness? How good do I feel about that? One out of 10. One being it's terrible, completely unaware, delusional, and I have no real touch with the reality of my life, my world, my inner, my outer sense. And 10 being phenomenal. I really, really see it clearly. So if I ask that question about my current awareness, I'm going to say it's probably at about an eight, eight and a half, which is pretty solid. And I feel pretty good about that. Could it be a 10? Sure. But given the fact that it's been a year, I'm pretty happy with the eight and a half. Now I'm going to move on to the second question in the context of awareness.

Where has it been over the period of the last year or so? Well, it's a pretty big question, right? Because it's a long window of time, but we want to just kind of like get a wandering beat on this. You know, has my average over the last year been eight and a half the whole year? I don't think so, honestly, because there have been moments of profound groundlessness, of fear, of anxiety. There've been moments where I've been spinning in my head, not a ton of them. And I tend to not stay there very long when it happens, but I've been spinning in my head, not a ton of them. And I tend to not

stay there very long when it happens, but they've been there. So I would say, honestly, given the year that I've had, and frankly, that most of us had, my sort of ambient level of awareness over the last year was probably closer to about a seven. Still not terrible, but I feel like I could probably do better. But it's important to be honest just about that. Now we get to the third question in the context of awareness. What have been the main contributors to this level within my control and not within my control? And this is where it gets really interesting, right?

Because now I need to take ownership of this outcome, or I need to identify the things that are not in my control and just acknowledge that they are there and do that sort of like classic serenity prayer, let go of the things that I cannot control, right? So I look at the awareness and I look at my current number eight and a half and my sort of ambient number over the last year or seven and say, what have been the main contributors to this level?

Where I think it's pretty good. So what the contributors to it being like on the good side, like pretty high, in my mind, it's crystal clear. There's one really big thing, which is I have had a daily mindfulness and breath practice that has been sacred to me for over a decade now. And that has woven itself into not just my sitting practice in the morning, but the way that I step into the world, the way that I enter relationships, the way that I see and allow myself to be seen, the way that I constantly question and say, is this true?

And have given myself the ability to grasp less onto what I want to be true and to simply be with what is. Now, I am not somebody who is monastic. I am not somebody who is, you know, on the level, a profoundly clear, still, you know, like blissed out meditator who has reached nirvana, but I'm okay. And I've developed a skillset that allows me to have a fairly okay level of ambient awareness and also current awareness. So when I think about the main contributors to this level on the upside, I think my morning practice, my daily practice is a huge, huge part of it. And then that fuels through my day where I'm sort of regularly just acknowledging and saying, is this true? But what about on the other side? What's keeping me from being higher? And my sense is that this year, a lot of what's been keeping me from

being higher are the things that are actually not within my control. The state of the world, the state of wellbeing, the state of isolation, the state of groundlessness, the state of absolutely stunning pace of change and the inability to understand how and when things may change and how they may end or end up, what they might give us or not give us. And that has complicated my ability to just really be calm and clear, as I think it has probably for pretty much all of us. So rather than judging myself for that, I just acknowledge, okay, so there are things that are in my control that have allowed me a certain amount of awareness, and there are things that are not within my control that have very likely had the effect

of clouding my judgment, clouding my level of awareness and clarity. And I'm going to just kind of acknowledge that instead of judge myself, say, this is just a process of review. The job here is not to judge. The job here is just to own the truth of what my current moment is and what this sort of last season has been. So that's the third

question in the context, again, of that single element awareness on the mindset side of a vitality bucket. 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. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised.

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getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series 10. Available for 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. Let's go to the fourth question. Am I content with both my sort of ambient average for the year when it comes to awareness and also where I am at this moment in time? And my answer to this is yes. I am pretty good with that.

Given the year that I've had, given the year we've all had, the fact that I've sort of been able to stay like fairly clear and aware at a seven out of 10 for much of the year. No doubt, by the way, it's cycled down to a three or four for moments, but I think the average has really cycled back up to around a seven out of 10 for much of the year. No doubt, by the way, it's cycled down to a three or four for moments, but I think the average has really cycled back up to around a seven. And I'm pretty good that I'm at about an eight and a half, I would say now. So yeah, I'm actually pretty content with that. And then the fifth clarifying question, when it comes to awareness, what, if anything, might I think about changing as I prepare to plan for the year to come?

And I think about this and I think, you know, how could I actually become even more clear in who I am and who and what my world truly looks like? And how can I become more honest? And I've been thinking about, you know, starting to integrate a practice of journaling into my morning routine as a way to add to the mindfulness and the breath practice in the name of, again, elevating my awareness game and being more honest and true and clear. So that's something that I'm thinking about integrating into my plan as I think about 2022. Now, that was a walkthrough of a single element on the mindset side of your vitality bucket. So as you can see, this process is going to take a little bit of time, which is why I literally allow a couple of weeks at the end of the year to do it, because I want to do a little bit here, and then I'm going to step away, and then I'm going to go to the next element,

equanimity. And I'm going to go through those same five clarifying questions, and I'm going to kind of sit with it, and then I'm going to go to focus and attentiveness and ask the five clarifying questions and then resilience and then possibility and wonder, right? And when I do that, I will have covered then half of the prompts for the vitality bucket alone, right? But remember, we also want to do the other side of vitality bucket, the physical body, right? So now we're going to add in more of the body focused elements of your vitality bucket. Again, you don't have to write this down. It's all going to be in your little

sheet. These are the elements that speak more to the state of your physical being. Again, there is no way to disconnect your physical being and your mental or mindset being. But just for ease of doing this exercise to think about them, we're going to split them into different contributors. So, and here, you know, I listed out five really critical mindset contributors that we want to ask the five clarifying questions about. And now on the physical body side, we're also going to ask about energy. How energized have we been? How nourished or completely depleted have we felt physically? Overall wellness, how has been our state of wellbeing, our state of optimal ability to function, to not feel ill, to not feel dysfunctional, to have our systems, our physiology working in the best way possible, to feel that we are as free from things like

inflammation and disease and illness and dysfunction. And again, all those clarifying questions are going to help us understand our contribution or other contributions to these states. There's no judgment with any of this. So energy, well-being, day-to-day optimal function. How much can I get through the day on any given day? Will my body function optimally on any given day? I like to break out one particular element here, which is my level of pain or lack of pain. And I think when you're younger, we tend never to think about this, but by the time a lot

of folks hit their middle years, they're experiencing whether they want to own it or not some level of intermittent and or chronic pain, whether that is migraines, headaches, joint aches, stiffness, whatever it may be. And rather than kind of blow it off and go year to year and just say, this is aging. No, I think actually we identify this one really important signal for our physical wellbeing. And we put it into the bucket that we examine, the physical body side of our vitality bucket. And we ask the five clarifying questions so that we can speak to this metric when we think about what's brought us to this place,

our role in it, and how we would like to move forward. And the last thing that I look at is fitness or performance capacity. For a lot of us, we'd love to feel that our body is able to do certain things. And again, we may have reached a point or a moment in life where based on our own physiology, based on injury,

based on history, based on all sorts of different things, we will have different sort of optimal levels of fitness expression and performance. And that is completely okay. I was a gymnast for the first 20 years or so of my life. And there are things that I have done to my body that have permanently deformed joints and things like this. There are things that I am capable of now. And there are things that I am not capable of. There's a model posture that I had when I was 14 that my body will never take on anymore. And that is actually completely okay. But rather than

ignoring it, let's just own how it affects my fitness and performance capacity. And then ask the five clarifying questions so that I can put this all into understanding how everything affects the current state of my vitality bucket. So these are the things that empty or fill my body aspect. We want to look at each and similarly ask those five same clarifying questions to get a feel for where they've been over the last year, where they are now, why, and what, if anything, we might want to do about it to potentially help raise the level, the overall level of our vitality as we move into the year to come and understand better how we landed at whatever the current level, how full or empty our overall mind and body of vitality bucket is as we settle into the end of

this year so that we can use that as a touchstone, a launching point to make better decisions as we move into the year to come? Those five clarifying questions again, and we can do it. We can start it in the reference of energy, right? If I take that first metric and say, I'm looking at my energy, what is my level at now? One to 10. I'm going to say right now, it's probably about a seven and a half, right? Second clarifying question, where has it been over the last year? And for me, that has ranged from

a three, two, and 11. I know 11 is above 10. There've been times where I've been super energized and filled and nourished. And there've been times where I've been really just kind of devoid of energy for, thankfully, I would say my average, my ambient score over the last year has probably been also somewhere around a seven and a half. So I feel really good about that, especially given the volume of change, the level of disruption that I've experienced over the last year and the groundlessness that's been all around me and how much I know that all the things that affected my state of mind also affect my physical body's energy. Now I ask that third clarifying question in the context of my energy. And again,

I'm just picking this first one as an example, but you're going to walk through all the different elements in your own process when you follow your own little printout. That third clarifying question, what have been the main contributors to this level, both within my control and not within my control? So when I think about my energy, well, it's related to all sorts of things, exercise, movement, sleep. What has been my commitment to these things? Well, I've been out in Colorado for the better part of the last year, and I've actually really developed a habit of taking a lot of time to get into the mountains, to go hiking. And that is very energizing to me. Simply being in the physical setting that I'm in is energizing to me. Almost on a daily basis, I'm hiking. And that has been incredible for me.

I don't hike quickly. I don't do anything super aggressive. I just get out into nature and I breathe and I move my body. And that is incredibly energizing. So that has been a huge contributor that is in my control. What about not within my control? Well, the state of the world, you know. Those are things that sometimes happen. But the other thing is that it's been a huge, huge year for me on the contribution side, and we'll talk about that shortly. That has meant that I've been also fiercely deadline-driven. When you're writing and launching a book, there are times where I have actually stumbled and walked away from that practice of moving my body and doing the things

to stay energized. And those are the things that have knocked me down, right? Now you could say those are within my control as well. And you're right. Those were conscious choices. I made a trade-off. And then there were times where I was just not feeling good or where I was injured or where my body was literally telling me, you need to stop and just chill, right? So that's a third clarifying question about the contributors. The fourth one, when it comes to energy, am I content with both the ambient score for the year and where I am now? And the answer is at a seven and a half.

Yeah, I'm actually pretty good with that, especially coming into the end of the year when I tend to be more chill and more reflective and kind of coming into the colder season now and everything dials down and gets quieter, I'm happy with it. I'm good with where I am. And that fifth clarifying question when it comes to my energy, what, if anything, might I think about changing as I prepare to plan the year to come? And here I think about, well, what might I do differently that might actually help with my energy levels, help fill the energy part of my vitality bucket a little bit more.

And I'm doing a lot of stuff, but I think doubling down on my commitment to be in the mountains, even when it gets colder, because that's a lot of the times where I sort of bailed, you know, colder rainy days or colder snowy days here. At elevation, the wind can sometimes get pretty brisk. And literally, I just went shopping to buy some colder weather clothes because last year, I would make excuses to not go out because I don't have the clothes. So I'm literally anticipating that now. I'm starting to plan how I will be able to continue to move my body in a way that keeps me better energized in the year to come. And I'll bake that into my plans as I start to think about the year to come. So you're going to go through, just like we did, all the different elements.

I just did a quick walkthrough by example of the energy category and the five clarifying questions when it comes to that. You're also going to talk about overall wellbeing. You're going to talk about day-to-day optimal function. You're going to talk about pain and then fitness performance capacity. Are there other things that you could fold into there? Sure. If you feel like talking about other things that are important to you and how you fill your vitality bucket, either on the mindset side or on the physical body side, by all means, add elements. This is just the way that I approach it. These are the things that I've thought about that are important to me, but I want you to own this. I want you to make this process yours. Make it as relevant and honest and true to you so that

it's really, really useful, right? We don't want to make this some generic exercise. We want to make this all about you. So take the time to do this. And again, this is why we're sharing this now. So you have a little bit of time between now and the end of the year to sit down, to start into it, to take a break, to go back, and you can reflect on it and just let things bubble up and adapt and change all of these categories as you see fit, not just in the Vitality Bucket, but in the other two buckets as well. So that's the general approach and a couple of examples from your Vitality Bucket.

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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. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot'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. So now let's talk a little bit about those remaining two buckets. We'll start with the connection bucket. So this is all about the depth, quality, and nature of our relationships. And it's critically important in our quest to live good lives.

One of the longest running studies on human flourishing, the Grant study, looked at about over 80 years, so many different factors in human flourishing. And the longest running curator of that study, George Fallon, was once asked, is there any one element that you believe is largely determinative or more determinative than any other one of a life well lived? When you look at this cross-section of people over decades of their lives, from their work to their relationships, to their wellbeing, to everything, and his answer was love, full stop. It's all about the depth and quality of the relationships. And in fact, that is stunningly true. And that is why one of the

three buckets is what I call the connection bucket. It is all about the depth, quality, and nature of our relationships. That is so critically important. When that bucket runs dry, it is brutalizing in our lives. When it is bubbling over, it is abundant with joy and connection and all the things that make life yummy. So what goes into this bucket? What are the things that fill your connection bucket? What are the major categories? Again, I'm going to invite you to think about how you would list out the things that would

go into your connection bucket. That would be the elements, the things that would fill or empty it. When I think about this off the top of my head, what I think about are friendships, deep and meaningful friendships, not lip service friendships and not connections, not the number of followers on your favorite social stream. I'm talking about genuine friendship. The other element that I look at is family or more broadly chosen family. I love the phrase chosen family. It's not mine, by the way.

I've heard it from a lot of other people because it acknowledges that for many of us, family is not just biological family. It may be mapped of a whole bunch of different people and ways and anyone who has moved in and out of your life who you feel so connected to, connected to on the level of family. So I like to use the word family or chosen family. I also look at community. Community is very often a group within which you feel a sense of belonging without feeling that you have to change who you are or how you enter the relationship to be fully embraced, seen, heard, and accepted. Think about yourself. What about your

relationship with yourself? So many of us are disconnected from a sense of really knowing and receiving and accepting our true authentic selves. I think about the environment or nature or your physical setting. Certainly the change that I've made from an entire life in New York to a mile high in the mountains right now has had a huge effect. My relationship with the environment around me,

especially the natural environment, is incredibly impactful on my connection bucket, on how connected I feel. And then finally, for those where you feel a sense of connection to something bigger, however you define it, maybe that's universe, maybe it's God, maybe it's Akashic field, whatever it is, that sense that maybe you participate in and are responsible to and benefit and receive from some larger sense of participating in something, that relationship, right? So it's the relationship in my experience between friends, chosen family, community, self, environment, and that larger thing.

Again, customize this to whatever feels right. Whatever the things that you feel are going to go into your connection bucket to fill it up, put those on your list. Now, just like we did before, we look at each one of these elements, where they are now, where they've been over the last year. And then we ask the five clarifying questions to both understand how full or empty our connection bucket is based on each one of these elements, how it's been, where it is now, and what, if anything, we might want to do in the year ahead. Write those five clarifying questions. What level is it at now? Where has it been over the last year? What has been the contributors to this level, both within and not within my control? And am I content with both the average for the year and where I am now? And finally, what, if anything, might I do

or think about changing as I prepare to plan for the year to come? And we do that with each one of those things. So just by way of example, again, like I did with vitality, why don't we start out with, let's see, I'll pick one off of my list here for us now on the connection to friends. And I think this has been a really big one for a lot of people over the last two years, because a lot of us have felt disconnected. So let's talk about friendship, right? We'll start with that element and ask the five clarifying questions. Well, how do I feel about the level of my friendship now? Am I connected regularly? Do I feel really deeply connected to friends who I care about, who are genuine friends, not acquaintances,

not followers, not, you know, hashtag people that I see online, but actual genuine friends. What is my level at now? I feel really good about this. It has not been easy. And certainly I've had to reimagine how I connect with friends. And a lot of it happens on the phone or outside walking, but I've gotten pretty creative and found ways to bring people who share a worldview and history and ideas and values with me into my life. And even though probably last year it was harder, I've done the work to make it work better this year. So my level now, I would say it's about an eight. I feel pretty good with my current level of connectedness to friends, to genuine friends. Second clarifying question, where has it been over the last year?

Well, this is where it gets a little dicey for me because as I shared earlier, I have been deep into some really major projects at different seasons throughout this year. And there have been times where when I have, I have been completely and utterly disconnected from so many of the friends who I love so dearly. So I would actually say that if I'm going to be really honest here, my ambient level of connection to true friends over the course of last year, I'm going to put it closer to a five, right? Am I happy about that? We'll get to that in a second. The third clarifying question, what have been the main contributors to this level,

both within my control and not within my control? Well, the contributors to the current level being pretty good has been coming much more intentional about regularly scheduling and outreaching and finding new ways to connect with my friends that go beyond the circumstances that may have made it harder over the last year. The things that have primarily taken me away are the fundamental nature of the world at this given moment in time, which seems to be throwing up roadblocks to me to be able to spend genuine time with the people I love, the friends that I love in person, face-to-face, hugging it out over conversation. So we have to change the way we do it to a certain

extent. And the other contributor is my commitment to really large scale creative endeavors over the last year that have meant that I've had to go kind of into my maker's cave and not be super connected or social. And now I feel like I'm making up for that as we head into the end of the year, because I realize that it matters to me. So the fourth clarifying question, am I content with both the sort of ambient average for the year and where I am now? My answer to this one is kind of. I wish I could actually sit here and say, yeah, I'm really, really happy about it, but I'm not entirely happy about it because I feel like even though I have had quote rational reasons and plenty of, you know, like things that have come my way in my control and not where I can point to and say, well, this happened and this happened in this

circumstance and that, and this commitment and that. And of course, I just didn't have time to really make, to spend with friends in a deep and meaningful way and in conversation. But if I'm really being honest, I'm really, really being honest, I could have. I could have made more effort. I could have reached out sooner. I could have been more effective and efficient in what I was doing to build and craft the space for friendship into my life because I know how nourishing and important it is to me. I know how much it helped me fill my connection bucket. I could have done it. And I didn't. And again, this is not the moment where I start judging myself. This is the moment where I say, huh, well, that's kind of interesting. What an interesting insight, right?

Whether I'm happy with that or not, that's where I am. So I acknowledge the fact that I'm actually not entirely content with both the ambient average over the course of the year. And even now, I feel like I'm getting better now, but I still feel like I could be in a more connected place as I sit here and share this with you. And then we go to that fifth clarifying question. What, if anything, might I think about changing as I prepare to plan for the year to come? And already my mind is spinning.

Now that I've actually owned the first four clarifying questions and my thoughts around it, now I immediately realize I do want to make some changes in the year to come. I also need to assume that the state of the world may not change to accommodate my level of connectedness or my desire to be connected more regularly, more deeply to friends in the way that's most nourishing to me. So I will have to start to noodle on ways to become more proactive about how I step into filling my connection bucket in the year to come. Am I going to come up with that answer right here, right now? Nope. That's actually not part of this exercise. If things just drop into

your mind, awesome. Write them down. But this is a planning exercise. This is about reviewing and acknowledging, getting real, and then planting the seeds so that your brain just starts to noodle on different ideas and come up with things. And then we'll get more intentional as we step into January about this and so much more. Right now, we're doing the debrief and planting the seeds. And that brings us to the final bucket, our contribution bucket, the way we choose to devote ourselves to effort or work in a substantial and sustained way. The elements that tend to be really important in understanding how full or empty your contribution bucket has been over the last year and now, Again, I map these things out, but you

can think about what are the things for you when you think about the work that you do, the way that you contribute to the world, your primary roles and devotions, right? What's important about those things? What are the qualities of those things? What are the states? What are the ways that you want it to make you feel that would have the effect of filling your contribution bucket? Because remember, if your contribution bucket runs low or dry, it becomes really hard to continue to feel in any meaningful way like you are living a good life, let alone an okay life.

Two of all three of these buckets. So when I think about the elements, the states, the way I want my primary devotion or effort or work to make me feel, there are five different states that I'm looking to get out of it. One is a sense of meaning. I want my work to actually feel like it's meaningful to me. It matters. One is access to flow. That state that has been beautifully researched and identified as becoming almost utterly absorbed in the activity where you lose a sense of you being separate from it, where

time fugues, where you're beyond emotion, where you're hyperproductive, hypergenerative, hypercreative, and it is this sort of magical space within which you exist. You blink. It feels like you've been working for 15 minutes and it turns out you've been working for 12 hours because it is that powerful. Energy and excitement is another really important state for me. I want to feel energized and excited by the way that I am exerting effort in a fierce and sustained way.

Even if I wake up and I know it's going to be really hard, and even if I know that it's going to be a lot of hours, I want to know that I feel energized and excited by that. That's going to be a byproduct of the work. A fourth piece of this is my ability to fully express my sense of identity and potential in what I'm doing. Like I'm not hiding, I'm not stifling. I don't somehow have some unidentified potential that I can't bring to whatever it is I'm doing or that who I am has to be tucked away. I want to know that I have the ability to fully express who I am and what I'm capable of in this endeavor. And then fifth,

a sense of purpose. And that tends to function on two levels, an immediate sense of purpose, like I'm working towards something that is deeply meaningful to me and well-identified with an endpoint. And also more broadly, zooming the lens out, I just have a really strong sense of purpose in life. Now, this bucket is different than the others. And for years, I had done my year-end review of the contribution bucket in a similar way as I was doing with the connection and vitality. I would go through each one of these contributors, like meaning, access to flow, energy and excitement, ability to fully express. And these changed over time also. But something has changed in a really major way over the last few years about the way

that I do my year-end review of this particular bucket. So this bucket has become an intense focus for me, especially now as I have been developing and researching a body of work around what I call the sparkotypes, which is a set of imprints or archetypes that help you identify the essential nature of work that when you do it, elicits all five of those feelings that I just listed out. And it makes you feel like you have come alive. I call the state being spark, thus the name sparkotypes, the archetypes for work that sparks you. So rather than kind of going through each one of these individual states, based now on the research that we have done with over 600,000 people generating over 30 million data

points that show actually very powerfully that the more you do the work of your sparkotype, the more people will tell you that they're experiencing all five of these states. Before we go deeper, if you've not yet taken the sparkotype assessment, which is freely available for everybody online, it will tell you your unique imprint, your sparkotype profile for work that makes you come alive. Please just take a little bit of time. And if you're not going to do it in this initial listen, then when you're done, before you do the sort of beat by beat, re-listen to this or read your sheet, we'll put a link to that on your one pager also.

Please take 10 minutes, 15 minutes, go complete the assessment. It's completely free. I've included a link in the show notes. You can do it right now if you want to put it on pause and then come back or listen through to the end. It's just a couple of minutes till we wrap and then do it and then do the slower walkthrough, start your year in review. It will help you understand exactly what to do in order to fill your contribution bucket to an entirely different level and with a level of intentionality and clarity and understanding that you have never likely had before. Put it another way, the more you've done the work of your sparkotype over the

last year and the more you're doing it now, the more likely you are to say you have felt and are currently feeling a ton of meaning and you are able to ease your way and access that flow state. You're feeling energy and excitement, express potential, and that sense of purpose we all so yearn for, especially now when we are in a moment where people are realizing the bargain that we made that got us here is not necessarily, especially in the context of our contribution and our work, the bargain that we want to keep making for the next season of our lives. So we're still going to look at those five elements and ask the five clarifying questions, but we now get to do it in a much more simplified way for this bucket

with a focus on the one thing that is a dominant contributor to your contribution bucket for all five elements. And that is how much you've said yes to the work of your sparkotype both over the last year and how much you're saying yes to it now. So when I look at my contribution bucket, I think first, well, what were the major projects or roles or devotions or endeavors that I allocated my effort to this year? Did they align well with my sparkotype? Because if they did, it's a safe bet. I will have experienced high levels of meaning, flow, energy, expression, and purpose. And if not, pretty safe bet, the opposite will be true. So again, by way of example, for me, what I'll tell you is that my primary spark type, and you'll learn yours when you take the assessment, my primary spark type, which means it's the

strongest impulse for work that makes me come alive, is what I call the maker. And the impulse for the maker is to make ideas manifest. It is all about the process of creation. It is a fiercely generative impulse. When I get to say yes to the process of creation, when I get to embrace and lose myself in the process of making ideas manifest, all those contributors to the contribution bucket that make me come alive, they get ignited. So if I'm looking at my year now,

we'll do the walkthrough for me, right? For me, what are the major projects or devotions that have occupied much of my time over the course of the year and are occupying my time right now? Well, I listed some out in the beginning, writing, designing, and launching a book. So I literally wrote 125,000 word manuscript, which then got cut down to 65,000 words, by the way. And thankfully my editor made that happen because it's such a better book. Sparked was the book that I launched. I wrote starting the year before I finished this year and then designed, I actually designed the cover of that book, which a lot of people don't know, and then launched it, which is literally like launching an entirely new company or brand or endeavor.

So I prepped, recorded, and produced over 100 conversations for this Good Life Project podcast. Developed and launched the Sparkotype Assessment 2.0 with new algorithms and assessments that are super cool. Designed and launched a new personal website, which funny enough, I have been so, so abundant with other projects this year. I haven't even announced it yet. I literally am just sharing this for the first time as I record this for you. I designed and launched a new Sparkotype website. And again, none of this alone, all of this with other amazing collaborators and co-creators scripted, filmed, and produced in the mountains at 12,000 feet in the snow, an eight-minute video mini doc called Work a Reclamation, and a whole bunch of other things.

As I'm sitting here right now, we have been deep in the instructional design lab for a certified Sparketype advisor program, which is fully enrolled and which we are literally about to share in the next few days with 50 people from around the world. We're developing new brands, new products, new media offerings. So my primary Sparketype, that maker, that generative, make ideas manifest impulse, has been literally stoking itself on an almost perpetual basis for the entire year. A huge amount of energy this year has been spent birthing and conceiving new things. So that spark type has been ignited. So I have been able to experience extraordinary high levels of sustained meaning and flow and energy and expression and purpose because of that. So from a contribution bucket standpoint, it's been a powerhouse year.

But here's an interesting thing. As I sit and speak this out now, I'm also realizing I've pushed really hard this year. In a year where the world has pushed back in a lot of ways and the state of the world has not necessarily said yes to my desire to make the ideas manifest in the way that I want to make them manifest at the pace and the rate that I want to make it all unfold. It's pushback. It's made it harder to get things done. It's taken a toll. If I'm being honest, I'm a little bit burned out right now. And I need to create some space for recovery.

So when I focus now on those five clarifying questions and I look at this moment, right? What is my level for contribution now, right? And if I'm focusing on the ability to be sparked or to do the work of my sparkotype, I would say right now, it's probably about a six and a half or seven. And I think part of that is because, you know, well, I'll come to that in a second, because that's actually the third clarifying question. Right now, we're just sort of like giving it a number. Where has it been over the last year?

Honestly, much of the year has been bouncing between an eight and 10, which is tremendous. It has been a tremendous year in terms of my acknowledging and honoring and tapping and aligning my effort with the work of my sparkotype. That third clarifying question, what have been the main contributors to the level, both ambient and now within and not within my control? And for me, a lot of the contributors are just a wellspring of excitement and enthusiasm to make ideas manifest. The magical thing that tends to happen when you do align the work that you do in the world with the work of your sparkotype is it ignites you. It allows you to function at such a higher level with so much more joy and purpose and devotion that it's almost like you become semi-unstoppable.

Not within my control though, is that I don't create in a vacuum. I don't create in a silo. I co-create almost everything that I do with other people, with other environments, with other resources, with other teams. And I have not had control over a lot of that over the course of this year. Some of it, yes. Some of it, no. Some of it has collaborated and we've worked in really good. Well, some has been more friction oriented. So my own process and my own systems and process and people on teams, because I'm generally a co-creator, not a solo creator, have definitely contributed to some levels of right now feeling a little bit burned out. And also, honestly, I think part of the contributor

for me in not, I think, doing the work of my Sparkotype is I have not invested in systems and process and resources and really figuring out structure to allow me to do the things that I do best and all the people on my teams and my collaborators to do the things they do best where we all function well. And that's an interesting thing to acknowledge. Again, this is not a judgment zone here. We all are just trying to get clear. The fourth clarifying question, am I content with both the average, ambient average for the year of my ability to actually do the work of my sparkotype and where I am now? For most of the year, yeah. Where I am now, as I said, I'm feeling like I could be a little

bit better. I could be a little bit more content. And I've started to really think about, you know, reflect on that clarifying question three, the contributors, and that's revealing a lot of the reasons why I may not feel as content with the current number as I do now, even though I've been really happy with the massive amount of energy that I've been able to devote and the things that I've been able to create by aligning my work with my sparkotype throughout the year. And that fifth clarifying question, what if anything might I think about changing as I prepare to plan for the year to come? And ooh, this is a goodie because I'm planning on changing a whole bunch of stuff. I'm already in the process of it.

People, process, teams, people, resources, allocation, gut checks to make sure that we're all aligned with the thing that nourishes and fills us up. Lots of ideas, lots of conversations that will be unfolding in the weeks to come. And there are going to be a handful of fairly substantial announcements about new, cool, big things in the first quarter of the year to come.

And that will require me to change the way that I go about expressing the work of my sparkotype in meaningful ways. So super excited to share more about that. A little bit of a tease just for this moment in time, because there's stuff that I actually cannot talk about quite yet, but I'm super excited to share it when I'm able to. So what this is all telling me is that I've accomplished a ton, but I also want to keep a close eye on how the other buckets are affecting my contribution bucket at any given time. Because also when I become less disconnected or less connected, and also when I do things where my

vitality bucket maybe takes a little bit of a hit, it is going to affect my contribution bucket. It is going to affect my ability to tap into the state of body, the state of mind, the feeling of connectedness that will allow me to devote myself more wholeheartedly to doing the work of my sparketype. And the thing here, this is a good place for us to come full circle in the good life bucket year and check and bring it home, is that we go through all three of these buckets. And again, I'm going to let you do this at your own pace. Once you're done with this, listen, just go grab the one pager. And then you can walk through this really slowly, one at a time, hit pause, do the work yourself, keep revisiting it over the next

week or two, right? But it's really important to know as we bring this home that all three buckets, all three buckets advise and inform and speak to each other. It's so important to do regular bucket checks, not just at the end of the year, to know what fills and empties each, to get a sense for where you are, how full or empty each one is, to get a sense for which one of the elements that fills and empties these buckets is doing really well, and which one is sort of like struggling a little bit, to understand what are the contributors to the current and ambient state of each bucket and how they are all connected. Because if your vitality bucket runs low, it's going to affect your relationships,

your ability to be connected, and your ability to contribute. If your connection bucket runs low, it's going to affect your vitality, your state of mind and body. And if you feel disconnected, it's also going to affect the way that you fill your contribution bucket. And if your contribution bucket runs low, if you feel like you're spending the vast majority of your days not devoting yourself, working hard, but not doing it in a way that lines with your spark type, not doing it in a way that gives you any sense of meaning or joy or expression or flow or express potential or purpose, that is going to negatively affect. It's going to serve as a drain on your vitality bucket and your connection bucket. It will start to affect your relationships. So these buckets all work together. And as we bring this

all home, as we think about the model of the good life buckets, the invitation is to now take a step back. Maybe go grab a cup of water, walk around the block, talk to somebody you love, do something that nourishes you, and then go print out your little sheet, which will show you the three buckets and the bullets, the numbers that I've sort of like thrown in there, the elements that I feel valuable, figure out if that works for you or you want to make your own custom version, and then ask the five clarifying questions about each. Take your time. Be honest.

Be gentle. Forgive your humanity along the way. It has been a year. It has been a few years. A lot has gone in directions and paths that we didn't see coming, that we didn't expect to happen, that we didn't want to happen. And at the same time, there is a new sense of possibility of openness, of spaciousness that people are starting to either receive or realizing

they can't wait until it just happens. They're starting to intentionally breathe life into. This has been a year where I think we are all getting to a point saying we cannot just wait for things to be different. We need to own where we are. We need to own what got us here without judgment to forgive our humanity, to forgive the state of things, but be honest, be open, be true, to reflect on the last year, to reflect on this current moment in time, to acknowledge the importance of our connection or vitality or contribution, and then think about what, if anything, would we want to change, knowing that everything affects everything in our quest to live our best lives, to be good human beings, to populate the planet in a constructive, intentional, loving, and spacious

way? These are the questions we want to ask. So this was my year-end review process. I hope you found it valuable, and I really hope that you actually work your way through it. And again, if you have not yet followed or subscribed to this podcast and you found this particular episode valuable, please, please, please, before you sign off of this episode, before you even download the one pager, just take a quick look at whatever app you're consuming this podcast in and hit the follow or subscribe button because in January, we have a powerhouse five-part weekly season coming your way that will build upon this year-end review foundation and literally walk you, take you by the hand through a whole bunch of incredible strategies, ideas, frameworks, tools that will serve the purpose of setting

up your entire year to feel and be in your world, in your life, and to create and make it what you want, maybe in a way and on a level that has seemed out of reach before, especially given the context of our recent history. Thank you so much for spending this time with me. So appreciate you, your humanity, your devotion, and share this with other people if it feels good to you. I'm Jonathan Fields, signing off for Good Life Project. subjects, you, and then show you how to tap these insights to reimagine and reinvent work as a source of meaning, purpose, and joy. You'll find a link in the show notes, or you can also find it at your favorite bookseller now. Until next time, I'm Jonathan Fields, signing off for Good Life Project. Thank you. 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. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. iPhone XS or later required. Charge time and actual results will vary.