Good Life Project - How to Feel More Alive | The 2022 Plan

Episode Date: January 10, 2022

These last few years have left so many of us feeling drained, stifled, without energy, excitement or well, happiness or joy. At least not consistently. And that’s understandable, it’s been a tough moment. But, what if access to feeling these things was more in your control, regardless of your immediate circumstance, than you thought? That feeling of being alive, of flourishing, of feeling positive and hopeful and connected, it’s so important to our ability to live a good life. And after all, that’s what GLP has been all about, for a decade now.So, today, we’re going to dive into a powerful, science-backed model that comes out of the world of positive psychology, that’ll help you understand how to reclaim those feelings of flourishing or aliveness that, for so many, seem to have gone missing over these last few years, no matter what life has delivered to your doorstep. And, along with each element, we’re including specific actions you can take to start feeling more like yourself, more alive and capable and connected than maybe you have in a long while. A quick reminder, I am not a mental health professional. While the ideas and the framework and specific exercises I’m about to share come from the world of research and clinical application, if appropriate for your unique needs and circumstances, please be sure to check in with friends, family, the many freely available mental health resources, and a qualified mental health professional. Okay, now, so excited to share today’s exploration of how to feel more alive in this new year.You can find the 1-page worksheet HERE.Find All Of The Episodes In This Series:How to Do the Ultimate Year-End ReviewHow to Accomplish Big Things | The 2022 PlanCheck out our offerings & partners: My New Book SparkedMy New Podcast SPARKED.Visit Our Sponsor Page For Great Resources & Discount Codes Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

So ever wonder what it would feel like to feel more alive, to be more alive? Well, that's kind of the fundamental question that we have been asking here on Good Life Project for a decade now. And I think now more than ever, it is super relevant. These last few years, they have left so many feeling drained or stifled or without energy and excitement or, well, happiness or joy, at least not consistently, not on a level that makes us feel good. And sure, that's understandable. It's been a tough moment. But what if I told you access to feeling these things was way more in your control, regardless

of your immediate circumstance than you thought. That the feeling of being alive, of flourishing, of feeling positive and hopeful and connected, it's so important to our ability to live a good life. And after all, that's what we've been exploring here for so many years. So today, in our second part of our month-long jumpstart series, we're going to dive into a powerful science-backed model that comes out of the world of positive psychology that will really help you understand how to reclaim those feelings that seem to have gone missing for so many over the last few years, no matter what life has delivered to your doorstep.

And along with each element, I'm going to share specific actions that you can take to start feeling more like yourself, more alive and capable and connected than maybe you have in a long time. And of course, a quick reminder, I am not a mental health professional. The ideas and the framework and the exercises that I'm going to share with you, well, they come from the world of research and clinical application. And if you are in genuine distress, please be sure to check with your friends, family, and the many freely available mental health resources and a qualified mental

health professional. Okay. Now it's time to dive into our exploration of how to feel more alive. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project. The Apple Watch Series X 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.

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 I want to take you back in time a little bit. The year is 1998 and the gathering is the

American Psychological Association. People from all over the world are coming together and sharing the latest ideas and thoughts and developments in the space. And the newly elected president, Martin Seligman, decides that he needs to send a different message to the gathering. He takes the stage in his address and basically says, we have looked at psychology in the history of the practice as the quest to take people who are in pain, who are sick, who are ill, who are, quote, potentially broken. I hate that word, but it's a word that's thrown around so often. And make them whole, bring them back to baseline, bring them back to the place where they don't feel that level of suffering anymore. But we're missing a whole side of the

human condition. What about the experience of life that goes from not being ill or not feeling ill to flourishing, to feeling alive, to actually enjoying immersing yourself in that side of life. Where is the guidance there? And he issues what essentially is a challenge to the body. And he says, we have a cake that is half baked in the world of psychology and it's time to bake the other half. The half that is not about illness to baseline,

but baseline to truly being alive. And this is a bit of a touchstone moment because growing from there over the last 25 years or so, the part of psychology that's become known as positive psychology, which is very different from pop psychology, by the way, this is a well-researched field within the broader area of psychology. It starts to evolve and all of a sudden people feel like they're given permission to dive into this because for generations, psychology really didn't value the part of the human condition that

was about that less tangible feeling of being connected and hopeful and possibility oriented and positive and alive, right? So there wasn't a lot of energy devoted to it. But now, two and a half decades later, there's been a huge amount of energy devoted to this question of what does it mean to feel alive? What does it mean to actually flourish as a human being? And that, as I've said, is central to the question that we've been asking here on Good Life Project for a decade now and sitting down with so many of the leading researchers and voices who've actually led this movement. And along the way, a particular model for human flourishing, for that feeling of not just waking up and getting through the day, but feeling alive, being alive within your life.

A model was developed and that model has actually evolved and changed over time. And what I want to do today is walk you through that fairly straightforward model and the different elements of it, and then share some very specific invitations for some kind of fun things to do actually that might help you in this particular moment, regardless of whatever your unique circumstance is, start to reconnect with that feeling of flourishing, that feeling of being more alive. So let's talk about that model. There's a shorthand for the model. And that shorthand is the phrase PERMA, P-E-R-M-A. And over time, actually, that has evolved to PERMA V. So P-E-R-M-A V. So there are five different components in the original and this sixth one, V, was added in.

And this is all about how to pursue these five different elements because the five elements and then the sixth one, V, so the six all together now, when we understand what they are and how important they are to our lives and to our ability to feel alive. We can then look at each one and figure out things to do to feel better in the moment. So what are those letters shorthanded for? Well, the P is a shorthand for positive emotion. The E is a shorthand for engagement. The R is relationships. The M represents meaning. The A is about accomplishments. And that V that was added a little bit later, that is vitality. So what I would love to do is actually take some time with you right now.

And we're going to walk through each one of those elements, talk a bit about what they are on a deeper level, and then share a handful of invitations and actions and activities that you can do. You can literally do many of these today, or just whenever you have a moment to do them, that will affect that particular element or component of this model of flourishing, and in turn affect the way that you feel about yourself, your life, the way you move through the day. So let's dive in. And we'll start out with that letter P, positive emotion. Now, when people hear positive emotion, sometimes there's a bit of a knee-jerk reaction. And that reaction is, oh, so you're just talking about being delusionally optimistic? And absolutely not.

We're talking about creating states that actually are going to have us feeling more positive about ourselves and our lives. And the immediate state that comes to mind for so many is happiness. Well, okay, so we got to be happy. Fascinatingly, a lot of research now shows that the direct pursuit of happiness very often makes us less happy than we were when we started. What we know about happiness is that when we pursue other things like meaning and purpose and all these other experiences,

that happiness tends to be the side effect that emerges through the pursuit of other things. And that is the best way to actually pursue it. But we're also not just talking about happiness. We're talking about emotions like joy. We're talking about things like love, hope, compassion, appreciative joy, laughter, gratitude, things like that, that literally change the way that you feel in the moment. So when we pursue these different things, when we open ourselves to the fact sometimes that they've always been there, but we have reached a place where we actually no longer can access them or see them. But when we actually open the door back to the fact

that so many of these have been around us all the time and we allow ourselves to feel them, then our internal state starts to change regardless of what's happening around us. We feel differently. And that is a powerful, powerful point because a lot of times we look at's happening around us, we feel differently. And that is a powerful, powerful point because a lot of times we look at the world around us and we say, the world around us determines our ability to feel alive or the opposite. And of course,

external circumstances affect us and they contribute to how we feel. And we've all seen that over the last few years. And at the same time, external circumstances are always only a part of the equation. They contribute to our ability to flourish or to feel alive, but they are very rarely wholly determinative. We get to actually do things proactively to change the way we feel, regardless of our external circumstance. And the PERMA-V model is all about, well, what are those things and how do we change them? And positive emotion is a really powerful example of that. So one of the other things that's also important to note is that when we talk about cultivating positive emotion, cultivating more joy, cultivating hope,

compassion, laughter, gratitude, there tends to be this other assumption, which is that, well, along with that, doesn't that also mean we have to eliminate negative emotion? We've got to stop feeling anything that's not good, not positive, right? Isn't that what it's all about?

Just completely cut that out of our lives. Don't ever go there. Don't think about that. If you catch yourself going to that place, that's a quote, bad thing. Eliminate negative emotions. That tends to be the thing that we hear in the world of pop psychology and often popular self-help. And in fact, the research shows the exact opposite is true, that we actually need a certain amount of negative emotion in the mix with positive. Now,

we need a lot more of the positive than the negative, for sure. There's even a sort of a golden ratio that we need to really flourish. But at the same time, the goal is actually not to eliminate negative emotion for two reasons. One, it's actually impossible to do. The human experience is going to deliver moments that are not what you want them to be, right? And we are going to react to them in a way where it's not going to feel good. And we may have control over that reaction, or it may just be our response. If something truly hurtful happens and we feel hurt, that is not a false response. And it is okay to feel that way. It's not about eliminating negative emotions. It's about allowing the appropriate negative

emotions to come into your experience, feeling them fully, and also having the skills to understand how to move through them so that that does not become our persistent stuck state. But we actually do need to feel some level of negative emotion because it provides contrast. That actually is one of the things that allows us to know when we are feeling and experiencing something positive, when we have the opposite. Experiencing the full spectrum of emotion is something that is termed emodiversity. And what the research tells us is that the people who feel most alive, the people who are flourishing, the people feel really good about their lives, they're not the people who are persistently happy or persistently unhappy or persistently filled with positive emotion.

They're the ones that have a full spectrum of emotional experience. So it's okay if you go to places that are challenging. It's okay if you experience things places that are challenging. It's okay if you experience things that are negative rather than purely positive. It's part of the human experience and you don't actually need to remove those from your experience of life in order to fully feel alive. In fact, they're an important part of that cake that we want to bake of being more alive. So positive emotions also can be cultivated. So when I listed out, you know, happiness and joy and love and hope and compassion, appreciative joy and laughter, gratitude, and there's a whole list beyond that

as well. You may have heard that and said, but I don't feel those right now. And certainly in the state that we've been in, it's understandable, right? There's no judgment here. There's no shame associated with if you're not feeling these in a particular moment. But here's the really cool thing. Research also tells us positive emotions can be cultivated so even if they don't come to you organically even if you're sort of genetic set point for positivity or for happiness or for these things is not on the super high side of the spectrum even if the last few years have affected you in a way where you're really struggling to access these feelings. They can be cultivated through proactive, intentional action. And that is an amazing piece of news because it says, if you're not feeling these things right now, you don't have to be

fatalistic about it. And you certainly never shame yourself for not feeling those, right? It's just part of being human. We're all doing the best we can on any given day. And there are things that we can do to cultivate these positive emotions. So I thought I would take a few minutes and share a couple of these exercises. And for each one of these different components, by the way, all the elements of PrimaVee, I'm going to share a little bit about what they are. And then I'm going to offer a few things that you can actually do to cultivate these. mastering a strength program. They've got everything you need to keep knocking down your goals. No pressure to be who you're not. Just workouts and classes to strengthen who you are. So no matter your era, make it your best with Peloton. Find your push. Find your power. Peloton.

Visit Peloton at onepeloton.ca. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what 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, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charest 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. So when we talk about ways to cultivate positive emotion, things like gratitude come to mind. And we've heard gratitude sort of thrown around, gratitude journaling, gratitude, make your gratitude list, you know, and the reason that we've heard that a lot in popular conversation over the last

decade is because it's actually something that comes out of scientific literature. Gratitude, cultivating gratitude is something that we can actually do. There are very specific things that we can do. And it's been shown to be highly effective at cultivating positive emotion and changing the way we feel about ourselves and our world. Even if the circumstances don't change at all, we can change on the inside. So gratitude tends to be a focus. And very often sort of the popular invitation is at the end of the day, create a gratitude. Let's sit down and literally journal three things that you're grateful for over the course of the day. And often you'll add in that I had some hand in making happen. So there's a

sense of agency attached to the gratitude rather than just, I kind of waited for it to happen. We want to actually create a sense of agency and autonomy in addition to gratitude. Like I played some role in something that happened that I'm really grateful for. But I want to take you one step further because there's a gratitude intervention. There's a gratitude activity that is even more powerful than that. And I'm going to offer two versions of this and it's called the gratitude visit. Now the gratitude visit, it takes a little bit more. So if you've only got, you know, three to five minutes, maybe at the end of the day, then by all means do the gratitude journal, the classic, you know, I'm going to write my three things down. And whether you do that

every day or a couple of times a week, the research is a little bit split on that. So just sort of experiment a little and see what works best for you. But there's another thing that you can try when you have a little bit more time that is astonishingly powerful in not only cultivating gratitude, but really profoundly changing your state of being. The gratitude visit goes like this. Think back in your past to a person who's made a meaningful difference in your life. Maybe they really changed something substantial. And for whatever reason,

you feel like you never really made the opportunity or had the opportunity to express your gratitude to them for the impact that they've made. Maybe you actually didn't even realize how much of a difference they made until much later in life. So think back to that person. Think about the moment or the experience.

And then take out a piece of paper. And this is where we're going to go old school analog here. Write a one page letter to that person talking about the moment, talking about the effect that it had on you and expressing your gratitude for them. Literally just write freehand a full page. And yes, you may actually have to find paper and you may have to find a pen or pencil because we're all so digital these days. But it's kind of important because your brain functions differently when we're, when we

are actually pouring this out in an analog fashion. And then here's what you want to do. Find that person, reach out to them and find a way. If you can do it in person, great. But these days, of course, we know that's harder and harder to do. The beautiful thing now is that most people have access to some form of video contact. So that's sort of like the evolution of the gratitude visit. Well, let's get them up on our video screen or on a computer and do it and then have them

sit down and then ask them if you can read the letter and then read the letter to this person. Literally read the letter to this person. Literally read the letter to this person. This has been documented as an astonishingly powerful experience, not just for that person, but for you, you as the reader, you as the person who is expressing gratitude, you get a really powerful, positive, emotional lift that tends to stay. It's not just in the moment, but it literally stays for a long time after. Now there's one variation of this that I also want to add, and it's called the virtual gratitude visit. And no, this is not virtual gratitude visit as in,

well, we're using virtual technology, like virtual conferences. Now you may, but this is different. You start the same way, but for some people, that person may no longer be available to you. Maybe you just don't know where they are. Maybe it's not easy to access them. Maybe they've actually passed on and you literally cannot read the letter to them. Or maybe you're actually writing a letter to some spiritual being. Maybe it's a letter to God. So how do you actually do the visit then? Well, Dan Tomasulo, who's an amazing guy and a positive psychologist who also has deep experience actually in the world of standout comedy and drama, he created a variation of the gratitude visit that blends positive psych and psychodrama

to handle this situation so powerfully. So what we do in this situation is you set up a room with two chairs, one for you and one for the person that you would be reading this to. And interestingly, you can position the chairs at a distance that sort of represents the level of closeness that you had to this person. If it's somebody who was really,

really personally close to you, maybe the chairs are right up against each other. Maybe if it's somebody that, you know, you kind of interacted with from afar, but you weren't that close to them, but they had a huge difference, maybe the chairs are further apart. You sit in your chair and you imagine them sitting in the other chair. And then just like you would do in person, you read the gratitude letter to the imagined version of that other person. Now, this sounds a little bit weird and it sounds like it wouldn't work, but in fact, it is astonishingly powerful, but we're not done. Once you are done

with that, you then walk over to the other chair, the chair of the receiver, and you sit in that chair. And you again, read the letter as if it was being read to you and you are that person and you are experiencing the gratitude being shown to you. You let it wash over you as if you were that person. And then you bring yourself back to the original chair. This is an astonishingly powerful variation. And it also, it makes the exercise more inclusive because for many people, that person will either not be there or be hard to find, or there's a hard way. It's not easy to access them. So really powerful version of the gratitude visit that is incredibly effective at cultivating positive emotion.

And there are so many other different exercises that you can explore that will cultivate joy and love and hope and compassion and all these other things. And laughter, laughter is a fantastic positive emotion. Laughter yoga is something that was kind of had a moment for a hot minute and then seems to not get a lot of buzz these days. But you can literally be in a virtual room these days with people who just start to laugh together and it will profoundly change your state. So start to play with different ways that you can cultivate these things. So let's move on to that letter E. The E in PermaV is engagement.

And Seligman sort of described this as being one with the music. Engagement in the corporate world tends to be one thing. It's got all these sort of like different components and being fiercely involved. But in a pure human experience way, we are talking about just being utterly absorbed in the moment, in the activity, in the thing that you're doing. You lose a sense of self-consciousness. The distinction between you and the thing that you're doing, it kind of goes away. And very often at the same time, you lose a sense of time and you feel like you have

the competence to do the things. You're not constantly needing to poke your head out and ask for help. You are just utterly in this thing. When I was a kid, I used to steal away in the corner of the basement in our house. My mom was a potter. So we had a basement that was set up as a pottery studio with rows of wheels and thousands of pounds of clay and boxes and rows of old industrial shelving with big mason jars with chemicals. And I put a whole bunch of clay boxes

in the corner and then laid an old door on top of them to make a desk and an old swing arm lamp. And I took my grandpa's old paint set out and I started painting and I would just lose hours and hours and hours and often days down in the corner of that basement under the light of the old swing arm lamp painting. I had no idea what I was doing, but there was something about it that called to me in a powerful way. And we'll talk about that more as well. But the defining thing about that experience was I literally lost a sense of me being separate from the activity that I was doing. And I lost a sense of time. I lost a sense of being conscious or self-conscious or judgmental of myself in the moment. I was utterly absorbed

in what I was doing. And in the work that we've been doing for years now in the context of work, in the context of often our jobs, we actually have seen this emerge. So the sparkotypes, which many of you have heard me talk about in the past, I'm actually about to go a lot deeper into it and some things that we can explore this year in the context of work in an upcoming episode this month. When we do work that sparks us, that aligns with our sparketype, whether it's hobbies or activities or our actual job, that one of the key components is we lose ourselves in that as well. And that's one of the things that makes it so astonishingly powerful.

We enter a state that has been described by researchers as flow. And the leading researcher on this, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who sadly recently passed, has really gone deep into the rabbit hole of what makes this so powerful. But what we know is that when you step into this place, the world around you gets better. Not just in the moment that you're in flow, but it has this lingering effect that continues to sort of follow you throughout the day. So engagement is finding ways to step into this state of flow, of being one with the music, the experience, the activity, the moment, of having that experience of losing self-consciousness and being fully absorbed. So when you think about, well, what activities could you do? Do you have access to now that would give you

that? And forget about your job, any activity, hobby, like a little momentary thing. One of the really powerful ways to identify them in your life is to ask a simple question. And that question is, what makes me lose time? What makes me lose time? Because when we do that, we start to think back and don't limit yourself to the last. We go all the way back. When I was a little kid, what made me lose time? When I was a teenager, what made me lose time? When I was in my 20s, 30s, 40s, however old you are, think about hobbies and activities. Think about adventures and experiences. Think about the work experiences that you've done. Think about roles or devotions. Think about jobs that you've done and ask the question, what makes me lose time? That is a really, really powerful hint.

And you'll start to probably have things bubble into your mind. And then you take out a piece of paper or here if you want, yes, you can use whatever device you want to use and just jot down ideas and notes, just brainstorm as you're thinking about what were the things I've done in the past where I've lost time. Start to write them down and keep that open and let that be something that sort of becomes a running inventory over time because this is going to tell you, here are things that I can do that will allow me to step into this space of flow, of engagement. And the more that I can actually do those things, the more it affects my ability to feel alive, not just in the moment that I'm doing them, which is an amazing experience,

but it has this afterburn effect, which is also super powerful. So do that activity. What makes me lose time? Open whatever you need to open to start to sort of brainstorm lists. Very likely two days from now, something's going to pop into your mind. So keep it open. Keep building on that because it becomes a growing list over time of things that you can return to or integrate into your day that will give you those feelings. And then here's an invitation for the next week. Pick one thing, even if it's something that literally only lasts 30 seconds or a minute, and do one thing that makes you lose time every day for

the next seven days. And then just note how you feel when you're doing it and also after you're doing it. So that's the E, engagement. And that moves us on to R, and this is positive relationships. So we know that one of the longest running studies on human flourishing, the Grant study, which I think longitudinally was run for about 80 years, looked at almost every variable in people's lives in the study to try and figure out what's affecting them positively and negatively. And the longest running curator of that study was once asked, well, is there any one thing that is largely determinative of a life well lived that you've seen? And his answer was love, full stop. What we know is that after a huge amount of research

into relationships is that positive relationships are incredibly powerful in our ability to actually feel like we're alive, to feel like we're flourishing, to live a good life. And that can show up in the form of partners in life. That can show up in the form of friends. That can show up in the form of family or what I prefer to call chosen family, right? Because sometimes our biological family or our legal family is actually not the family that we feel is the family that is truly representative of our quote family.

So we assemble people around us to form a sort of a chosen family and that is equally valid. So family or chosen family, acquaintances, people who just kind of know, who share experiences and community, right? These are really, really important in our ability to actually flourish. So we want to bring relationships into our lives that are truly meaningful to us. And when we think about, well, you know, how deep do we go with these relationships, you know, or how can we cultivate them in a way where they actually will be positive?

It's interesting. We think about friendships and we think about chosen family and acquaintances community as all different categories. But over time, I have really kind of seen them as just all being different channels for the same experience expressed in different ways. And that is, as George Valiant, the curator of that grant study shared, love, right? And it's interesting because when I say love

and you're talking about maybe people at work or maybe friends or people in a community or a club or an activity or a league, a lot of people say, I don't know if love is appropriate to describe that, but we actually love in a number of different ways. And there tend to be these four different ways of loving that are described.

One is romantic love. And that's what we associate with the word love very often. It is that romantic love where we, quote, fall in love with one other being. And that's the feeling that we generally associate. It's the feeling that is in all the movies and the rom-coms. And we think that that is quote love. And in fact, that is one expression of love. But there are also three other really powerful ways to love.

So we have romantic love, but then we also have companionate love. And this would be called the love that we have between friends and for friends, right? These are people where we connect with them on a deep level, where we're open and vulnerable with them and they know us and we know them. We're not quote in love with them. There's no romantic aspect to it, but it is for sure an expression of love, right? And we can feel this very often with family as well. We feel that sense of companionate love, like you are my family or chosen family. A third expression of love is what we call compassionate love. You may not know this other person at all, but you feel a sense of profound compassion for them, empathy with a

desire to actually act, and you feel their emotions. So compassionate love very often is love that we express to people that we're not very close to, or maybe may not even know at all, but we know their experience and we can feel something about their experience. And we feel in some way compelled and connected to them and often inspired and activated to help when they need help. And that's compassionate love. And that often can happen with acquaintances, with community members who you don't feel a strong personal connection or history with, and yet you can feel that compassionate love for them. And the fourth kind of love,

the way that it's expressed is attachment love. And that very often happens between people who have been in relationship for extended periods of time, where there's just a sense of history and ease and connection that endures through you and between you over a long period of time. And these are all expressions of love that tend to exist between partners, between friends, between family or chosen family, acquaintances, and even community. And we have the ability to cultivate these different states. And another way to actually sort of experience positive relationship is the feeling of belonging. Like you are accepted, you are seen, you are embraced, you are welcomed into a relationship or a community, not just for what you do, but simply for who you are as a human being without needing to change or quote,

do anything to fit in. Now, we've had to imagine how we connect with other people a whole lot over these last few years. But the point here more than anything else is that relationships matter. They may be the single most important thing because they can contribute to literally almost every element. Relationships are sort of a powerful potential contributor or linchpin to positive emotion. They can be a really powerful contributor to engagement and to the other letters or components we're about to walk through. So they can sort of be the heartbeat, the pulse of all of the other elements of this model of

feeling alive. So we want to know how do we cultivate these, especially now in a place where often we can't be in a room with somebody. And there are a number of really fun ways to do this, but I thought I would share one or two with you, just as I'm doing with each one of these elements. A bunch of years ago, I read a column in the New York Times. It was written, it was part of the Modern Love column, which is a fantastic regular column and also now a TV series and a podcast. And this particular one was written by Mandy Len. And I believe the title was To Fall in Love, Do This.

And it talked about an experience where she actually discovered the research of Professor Arthur Aaron, who was at Stony Brook University. And he researched human friendship and intimacy. And he created this series of 36 questions. And he would take two people who were total strangers beforehand. These were students, of course, because he was working in a university.

He would bring them into a lab setting. And he would basically give them 45 minutes to walk through a set of 36 questions in three triplets of nine questions each. And the questions were designed to take people from sort of a superficial, really easy conversation to going a little bit deeper and being a little bit more vulnerable and progressively revealing a little bit more about themselves. And in this conversation, you would sit across from the other person and each of you would read the question and then respond to it. And then you go to the next one and respond to it and the next one and respond to it.

And what he showed in his research was that after 45 minutes or so of doing this, when he asked the people after the experience, how connected they felt to the other person, so many of them responded that they literally felt like they were more connected to that other person than they had been to friends that they had known for years and sometimes even family. And in fact, there were, from what I remember, even a few marriages that down the road came out of that experience. So what that science showed us is that the act of setting aside time to be in conversation and then to actually literally ask each other questions that start easy superficial, but then require you to actually be a little bit more open, a little bit more vulnerable. That is kind of the magic in deepening into conversations

and friendships and creating those positive relationships. It's a blend of progressive revelation. I'm slowly revealing more about myself and opening yourself to be a little bit vulnerable. And of course you need to feel safe to do these things. So we've actually, in many of our programming over the years, taken those 36 questions and adapted them. So a fun exercise for you to do, maybe with somebody who you don't know all that well, or maybe with somebody who you do know well, but maybe haven't been in touch with, or maybe it's a really fun way to actually get on a video call with somebody and literally recreate this experience. Those 36 questions are available pretty much everywhere online. If you literally Google 36 questions or just the 36 questions, you'll probably find them. And then you can either move through all of them or pick and

choose some of them. And it's a really powerful exercise to either kindle new friendships or connections or relationships or rekindle a depth of relationship in somebody who maybe you haven't actually, you've fallen out of touch with, or you would like to actually go deeper with them. So I thought that was a fun sort of exercise to share with you in the context of positive relationships. There's one other thing that's super fast and easy that I'll do with you that you can actually do today and every day if you want. And this is what I call friendship text roulette. I will literally take out my phone and I'll open my chat app and I'll take my finger and I'll flick it as hard and fast as I can.

And I'll watch all the old texts go by and wherever it lands, it lands on a name. Sometimes it goes back months. Whoever pops up, maybe I haven't talked to them in a really long time. I will literally text that person, hey, just thinking of you, hope everything's well. And just some short note that says, hello. That simple act on a daily basis has led to so many rekindled conversations and just feel good emotions about people in my life. It's been really amazing. And it is super easy. You can literally hit pause right now and do that and listen to the rest of this if you want.

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The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest 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. 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. Which brings us to the next component, the letter M, which is shorthand for the word meaning.

So we know that meaning is astonishingly powerful in our ability to feel alive. When we don't have meaning, then it feels like everything is off. So the search for meaning is critical in what we do and the experience of feeling that what we are doing, that who we are in the world, there's a sense of meaningfulness attached to that, is really important to human flourishing. We have to feel like we matter. If we think about the typical, what people used to call a midlife crisis, which I believe honestly is now happening to almost everybody over the last two years. What this season has done to so many of us and for so many of us is if you were not the type of person where you sort of regularly ask the big questions about life, or if you were

not at a moment where typically, you know, post-college, you know, like kids going away to school or midlife, you know, big job changes where you kind of revisited, well, who am I? What am I doing? And is it meaningful? And do I matter? And does it matter? It's dropped us all into this space of asking the big existential questions. And we're all reconnecting from that place of wanting to know, how do I get more meaning in my life? Is what I'm doing meaningful? Do I feel like I'm contributing something

that is meaningful to the world? Do I feel like I matter? That is the question that we're constantly grappling with. When we cannot answer that question with some version of yes, then it really affects us and our ability to feel like we are flourishing as human beings. So it's important. So where does meaning come from then in our lives? And how can we invite more of it into our experience, especially if we're not feeling a whole lot of it at any given moment in time? Well, the good news is it can actually come from a lot of different places.

Now, most of us think about work when we think about meaning. And again, I'm going to dive deep into this in an upcoming episode this month, where we're really going to focus intensely on work and meaning as something that gets derived from work when you approach work in a very particular way. The truth is, sadly, most people actually don't feel a whole bunch of meaning from the work that they do, but that doesn't mean that you can't. You can. And I'm going to go deep into that in this upcoming episode with you. But work can be a powerful source of meaning if you actually engage it in a way that cultivates meaning. But it's also not the only source. A lot of people think, well, I derive meaning from the work that I do, and it can,

but that is not the end of the list. There are so many other ways that we can derive meaning in our lives and cultivate meaning. Relationships can be a powerful source of meaning. And that's why just a few minutes ago, I shared with you relationships are sort of, it's at the center of perma V and that R also ripples up and down through the whole model because it can be the source of all of the others. So relationships, investing in positive relationships can give you that sense of meaningfulness that you so yearn for. Being of service to others, whether it's one other person who you know dearly, whether it's a community of people, it doesn't even have to be people.

Being of service in a way that actually volunteers, being of service to other beings, to animals, being of service to a community, being of service or helping in some way an environment, an ecosystem, helping the planet, all of these different things, extending and investing your energy in something that benefits beyond you can and often is a profound source of meaning in our life. So where are those opportunities for you, can and often is a profound source of meaning in our life. So where are those opportunities for you, right? We actually call this the feeling that it gets, the giver's glow. And it's a documented phenomenon.

By giving of ourselves without expecting anything in return, we inadvertently get something in return, which is this bump in the way that we feel. Meaning can also come from belonging. Knowing that you are a part of a community or something bigger than yourself and you are embraced and seen and accepted for who you are can add to your feeling of meaningfulness. And then that if you then contribute to that community, it sort of doubles down on it. And even oddly enough, suffering. Many people have been in some mode of suffering, especially over the last few years. And it is a profoundly difficult place to be in. And at the same time, as Viktor Frankl has so powerfully written in his book, Man's Search for Meaning, which the original title,

by the way, is Nevertheless, I Endure. And then developing an entire field of therapy called logotherapy after that, which is really focused around understanding the notion that all of us suffer, some more than others. And a lot of us now have suffered in many different ways. But understanding that if we actually look at our suffering and we can assign a suffering in the name of, we can assign meaning to the suffering, that that alone can be a powerful source of meaning. And in being able to understand the meaning that we derive from it, it actually transmutes the way that we feel. It changes suffering or the circumstances that would lead to suffering into circumstances that lead to hardship, but also meaningfulness. And it generates positiveness in our lives. So these are some of the sources where meaning comes from. And we can also reframe

meaningless effort to inject meaning into it. Adam Grant shared this really fascinating study where he looked at people in call centers in a university raising money for scholarships and normally not experiences the most meaningful job in the world when you're in a call center, but he brought in recipients of the scholarships who were first-time attendees at college and had them share their story with the callers. And what happened was that all of a sudden the people who were making calls realized they weren't just randomly dialing for dollars and annoying people. What they were doing was making telephone calls that would literally change people's and family's lives for the rest of their lives, often rippling

through multiple generations. And that simple reframe, the ability to tell a meaning story rather than a meaningless story, profoundly changed the nature of the experience. So how do we build meaning into our own lives if we're not feeling it right now? Well, a couple of ideas here. Invest effort in something that is personally resonant to you, right? Do something that expresses your resonant to you, right? Do something that expresses your sparkotype. We'll talk a whole lot more about that, as I mentioned, in upcoming episode this month, because your sparkotype is your unique DNA, your impulse for effort that gives you that feeling of coming alive. And one component is meaning. Love someone and allow them to love you back, Even just a little bit. And remember

that love can show up not as romantic, but just as friendship, as compassion, as long-term support and commitment. Do something to lift someone else up, some other being up with zero expectation of recognition. So think about these different things and how you might bring them into your day. They don't have to be really big things. Also, you can make wholesale change over time that will bring a lot more meaning into the domain of work and love and relationships and service and belonging. And yes, even suffering. But oftentimes we have much more immediate access to momentary experiences of meaningfulness by making little changes and looking for opportunities to say yes to experiences that will bring more meaning into

our day. And that brings us to the letter A, which was originally the end of the PERMA model. But as we said, we now add V to it. So the letter A is all about accomplishment or achievement, mastery, competence. Here's what we know. We sometimes like to say, well, you know, good enough is good enough, or we should just be happy. You get what you get and you don't get upset or be present. Just be present in the moment, whether you get something or don't get something or whether you're working towards something or not, it really doesn't matter. It's all about the moment. And yes, there is wisdom in those invitations and instructions. But research also shows us that for some reason, we are wired to be goal-striving beings. We tend to flourish the most. We come most alive. We feel most alive when we are moving toward something and that something is deeply meaningful to us.

And that in fact, very often is the basis of having a sense of purpose, right? When we actually have something that is well-defined and that thing matters to us, it's meaningful to us. And then we're actually taking action that moves us towards it. We're accomplishing and achieving something. We're moving closer to something that truly matters to us. That gives us a sense of purpose. So the accomplishment is also kind of wrapped up in the notion of purpose. It is the movement towards something that allows us to

feel like we are alive, right? The feeling of progress and competence is incredibly powerful in the human experience. But notice, I also said, it can't be something that we don't care about. Accomplishing something that is sort of a checklist item, but that we actually don't genuinely care about at the end of the day. It's not our thing that's deeply meaningful to us. Maybe it's meaningful to someone else, but not to us. Progress towards that can give us a little bit of a hit of the feeling of feeling better. But at the end of the day, when we check the final box, we look back and we say, wow, I

accomplished that. But if there's another voice inside of us that says, but do I really care a whole lot about the fact that I accomplished this beyond the fact that I was able to just move from point A to point B? If the answer is no, then that hit that we get, that momentary elation, it kind of goes away pretty quickly and it's not nearly as effective. So what we're looking for is understanding why we are actually investing effort in something and looking for having a valid why for the outcome to move our feeling alive, our flourishing needle. We don't want to

just accomplish. We want to accomplish or achieve things that genuinely matter to us. It's not just about rising up any ladder. It's not just about checking boxes off of any agenda. It's about rising up your ladder. It's about checking boxes along a quest towards accomplishing something that you genuinely resonate with that is deeply meaningful to you, right? So that's really what we want to look for when we're talking about how do we set up goal achievement or accomplishment mechanisms. And this is why in my prior episode about how to accomplish big things, where I introduced the really powerful framework called success

scaffolding. And by the way, if you haven't listened to that, then go back. It's just an episode or two ago before, and be sure to listen to that because a key part of that accomplishment framework is going deep into making sure that you know what it is and why it's important to you. Because if you miss that thing, you can actually accomplish all of it and you're going to get there. And maybe it takes days, months, years, decades, and you'll look back and say, huh, I actually don't feel the way I thought it made me feel, even though I did everything I wanted to do. Accomplishment tied to a reason why is what we are looking for. Achieving intrinsic goals,

such as growth and connection, or giving external goals that are built around how you might interact with the world around you or achieve something externally, that can be deeply meaningful too. But you've got to actually ask the reason, why does this matter to me? Why is it meaningful to me? And if you can't answer that question, then it may be a checklist that you have to check off in terms of your work or just something that you've said yes to, but you want to bring something else into your experience of life that is accomplishment oriented towards something

you genuinely care about, because that is the type of accomplishment or achievement that will really change your state. So that is the A in PERMA. But remember, I said that was the early model, the P-E-R-M-A. But over time, people started kind of saying, we feel like there's something missing here. PERMA gets us a long way there, and PERMA is really powerful because we can look at these five different components, and there's a laundry list of things that we can do with each one of them that are accessible to nearly everybody on the planet, even if you cannot change your external circumstance in any meaningful way. But I feel like I'm missing something. And people start to say, you know,

the thing about PERMA is it functions largely from the head up, as it's all kind of about our thoughts and emotions, right? It's all about what happens in the brain. But what about the body? What about the actual physical body? And people start to realize that there's a seamless feedback mechanism between your state of mind and your state of physical being. And that if you do not also address that physical state of being in this model, that you are both missing out on a powerful source of human flourishing. And at the same time, you may be ignoring something that is serving as a perpetual drain on your ability to feel alive if you don't actually interact with that physical wellbeing side of the equation. So over time, the PERMA

had the letter V added to it, and that V stands for vitality. And that is an explicit reference to the fact that this is not just about the mind. It's also about the body because you cannot distinguish between the two, but they feed back between each other. And if you ignore any form of physical body in this model, it does a disservice to your ability to feel alive, to flourish as a human being. So when we talk about vitality, then we're talking about that feedback mechanism. We're talking about the way that the mind speaks to the body and the way that the body speaks to the mind. And specifically here, then we ask the question, okay, so what happens in the body? What can we do in the body that will really move the needle and make a big difference in our ability to feel more alive?

And it's kind of funny because over the years, people have looked at what's the technology? What are the apps? What are the very specific diets? And what are the foods? And what are the supplements? And what are all the different things? And where are the mechanisms and the wearable devices and all these different things? And I'm raising my hand. I have investigated all of these and I have experimented mercilessly at times for many, many, many years with all of these different things in my life. And the powerful lesson that I've learned over time. And I have sat down with primary researchers in all of these different domains for nearly 20 years, going deep into their methodology and their thought and their research.

And everything kind of keeps coming back. When we think about vitality, it comes back to simplicity, to simplicity. There are a small number of key contributors to your sort of physical well-being, which again, feeds back up into your psychological, emotional, and mental well-being, and then vice versa. And those are the things that we already know. So we like to say, well, give me the hot new thing.

What's the pill? What's the technology that will let me, quote, hack the vitality side of my life? And the truth is, those things are all tweaks, but it always comes back to the basics. What are those basics? Four simple things. Nutrition. Feeding ourselves, fueling our body in a way that is nourishing and appropriate for whatever our body needs. And that's not about saying there's one diet, like what's the diet that's best for everybody on the planet? There is none. If you look at all the latest research, what it basically says is that every single person is unique. And in fact, our nutritional needs will change sometimes in very meaningful ways over time. One person may

need to fuel themselves very differently over time. So this is not about recommending any one approach to fueling your body. But what it is saying is that when we look at the V in the model PERMA-V, one of the key elements is what we put into our bodies. That is nutrition. And it's really important to take some time and learn about your own nutritional needs, your own unique body, the way that it reacts to what you put into it, and spend time if you have the ability working with professionals or doing your own reading and research to figure out how to fuel yourself in the way that optimizes your physical well-being, knowing that is also going to refer up to your psychological wellbeing.

Second piece of the puzzle under V is movement. We are not built to be still. We never were. And yet most of us live in a world now where we spend the vast majority of our days doing exactly that, not moving, right? Maybe genetically over many, many, many, many, many more generations will evolve to a point where we can be healthy being more still,

but we are nowhere close to that. We have evolved up to now in environments where for us to be healthy and to feel healthy and for that feeling to ripple up into our state of mind and our state of vitality, we actually need to be moving our bodies. So we've learned this increasingly. And a lot of us over the last two years where we feel like we've had to completely reimagine how we live, have also had to completely reimagine how we move.

And we've seen that sometimes we don't actually move all that much when we haven't returned to the structures that used to let us move. And the cool thing is, yes, we can bring, quote, workouts back into our day and super important, but also there's an incredible opportunity to, quote, mobilize our workflow to change the way we work. So most of my meetings are walking meetings. They used to be in person, but now they're with a headset and I'm walking outside. I actually say no to video calls on a regular basis, unless there's an absolute need to show

me something on a screen. I always revert to a phone now, which a lot of people have moved away from because they felt like they needed to be on video for the last two years to keep the connection. And I'm going to plant a seed to invite you to move back to phone calls, to put on a headset and to start moving your body while you're talking to people, whether it's inside or walking outside, which I often do. The third element here is a mind-stilling practice. Now, for me, that's meditation. I have a longstanding mindfulness practice

that I do every day. And that has made a profound difference in the way that I access equanimity. I respond to stress in my life and that I can kind of find calm and stillness. And there's a mountain of research now that shows how that affects our level of vitality. And the final piece here, and I bet you can probably guess what this is, is sleep. Sleep is kind of the unlock key for everything else because sleep affects the chemistry and the psychology in your body that allows you to make better choices from a nutrition standpoint, that gives you the energy to move more regularly, and that actually allows your mind to more readily access a state of stilling when you start to adopt those practices. So again,

these are things to go into and to explore on your own time. But it was really important when the world added, in the world of positive psychology, added the V into this model, because it is critically important to the overall feeling of being alive. So that is the model, PERMA-V. And as you think about how you're feeling right now, as you think about the world you're living in right now, as you think about the invitation that you have to say, I don't know when the world is going to change. I don't know when my external circumstance will change or improve or not improve. There's a certain amount of control that I have, and there's a certain amount of control that I don't have.

It goes back to that serenity prayer, right? But what I do know is this, when we look at this model and the research around it, that regardless of whatever circumstance the world chooses to bring me, whatever control or lack of control I have over those circumstances, either globally or immediately, I do have some level of control over my internal world, my internal circumstances, each one of these different elements in perma-V, I have some level of agency over. I have some ability to say, I can do something, even if it's a tiny little thing today or tomorrow

or this week or next week, that will speak to one of these elements that will make a real difference in my ability to feel more alive, more immediately, regardless of what the world chooses to deliver to my doorstep. Knowing that is astonishingly powerful because it gives us autonomy and agency and control in a world where it feels like very often we don't have it. And that is sort of a powerful place to end. We have a model of how to feel more alive. And now we also know that no matter what happens, we have more ability than maybe we

thought we did to step into that feeling when we want to feel it. So take a little bit of time and think about this. You can review this also. And remember, we're including simple downloadable PDFs with each one of these January episodes. You'll find a link to a one-page overview of this model and some of the activities in the show notes. We're always going to do that this month. And you can just spend some time with it and then journal around it and start to figure out what are the activities that I can say yes to that will make me feel more alive.

Hope you found this useful and valuable and inspiring. I'm loving being able to share these deeper dive episodes throughout the month of January. As always, we have more coming throughout the entire rest of the month. This is a full month long series, a jumpstart series that we've designed just for you, just for this month. So you can really step into this year very differently. No matter what's happening on the outside, you can make choices to be in control and to actually bring more of what you need

into your world and into your life, not waiting for it to happen, but making it happen. So stay tuned. If you haven't subscribed already, be sure to follow and subscribe Good Life Project in your favorite app because you don't wanna miss any of these January episodes and of course, all of the other fantastic conversations that we're weaving into them. So excited to be with you next week. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project. Mayday, mayday.

We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were 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 going to die.

Don't shoot him. We need him. Y'all need a pilot. Flight risk. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping.

And it's the fastest charging Apple Watch, getting you'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.