Good Life Project - How to Take Action in Spite of Self-Doubt | Jonathan Fields

Episode Date: November 6, 2023

What if confidence was an illusion stopping you from an amazing life?Today we're unpacking how chasing confidence distracts us from meaningful growth and connection. Instead, cultivate awareness, bravery and conviction to take unconfident action. Learn to make decisions and live fully, even when uncertain. You’ll unlock growth and impact without needing magical confidence.Episode TranscriptIf you LOVED this episode be sure to check out other solo episodes with Jonathan, easily organized HERE as a Spotify playlist.Check out our offerings & partners: My New Book SparkedMy New Podcast SPARKEDVisit Our Sponsor Page For Great Resources & Discount Codes Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It's the moments that we are not confident, but we find a way to do it anyway that hold the greatest opportunity for growth, for connection, and for impact. So rather than having a conversation around confidence, I think the more valuable conversation is what are those deeper skills, the meta skills that we really want and need to cultivate? The ones that allow us to act even when we're not sure how things are going to end, even when we're not very confident either in ourselves or in the idea or in the possibility of what is spinning around in our head. What are the core skills that we can cultivate

that will allow us to continue to assess the moment and then to potentially make decisions and take actions that would move us forward even when we are not fully confident and we don't know how it's going to end. I've got a question for you. How long have you been waiting to feel confident enough to do the things you dream of doing? Maybe to go for that new project or job or approach

someone you're interested in dating or maybe start a new side hustle or business or start a podcast, write a book, make art, whatever it is, we keep telling ourselves, oh, I'm not confident enough to do that yet. But what if that was all an illusion? What if confidence was actually more fake than real and waiting for it to magically arrive was stopping us from living a truly amazing life? So sure, we hear a lot of talk about how to become more confident in relationships, at work, in the pursuit of big visions, goals, or dreams. But what if that confidence was really the wrong thing to be pursuing? What if, in fact, that magical state of confidence even arrived and it was actually not the asset or ally we thought it would be, but was rather a sign

of an unwillingness to grow, to take meaningful risks that could lead to a better life, better relationships, better work experiences, and more. What if, in fact, it was the very willingness to live, to make decisions, to take actions when you not only were not confident, but literally could not be confident given the circumstances that was the real power move in life? What if cultivating the skill of unconfident action was the unlocky for so much? And chasing confidence was really just this distraction that kept you from doing all the amazing things you dreamed of doing and creating and making all the awesomeness you'd love to bring into your life and even becoming who you deeply yearn to become.

Well, that's what we're talking about in today's special solo episode. How to stop waiting for the magical and elusive confidence to kick in and just learn to take decisive action that leads to powerful, even life-changing outcomes, even when you don't know how it's going to work out. So excited to share this deep dive on confidence with you today. 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 8 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 gonna 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 gonna 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 and tell you a story. This story actually

takes place more than two decades ago in Hell's Kitchen, New York City. A young dad with a three-month-old baby, a new home, married, living in the city that I'd known my entire adult life. And I get this idea in my head. I had left a big career in law to go back into the world of entrepreneurship and well-being and started out by actually building a gym that I exited after about two and a half years, sold my interest in that. And I was living in Hell's Kitchen and had this deep fascination with the world of yoga and the mind-body connection. And I wanted to deepen into that. And I saw an opportunity to potentially create what I hoped would become one of the premier yoga centers in New York City. So I kind of went all in, I was searching around, and I found not too far, just a couple of blocks from where we were living

in Hell's Kitchen, New York. And this is for those who don't know, this is a part of New York City, which is sort of like over on the west side, midtown, which back then on a block by block basis, you never entirely knew what you were going to meet up with. And it was a lot of adventure, a lot of fun, a huge amount of change happening in the neighborhood. And I found this space. It was a second floor space in a 115-year-old building. And I met the owner of the building there, actually. We walked upstairs and we opened the door and it was kind of like this 2,500 square foot open loft style space that was completely a wreck. It looked like somebody had been squatting in one part. It looked like the

walls were coming down in another part. It was a disaster. And I looked around and then I saw this beautiful, giant all glass picture window on the second floor, overlooking Ninth Avenue, facing West. So we would get late day sun straight into the practice room. And I saw it. I saw it clear as day. And I was so excited. I literally ran home to Stephanie and my wife.

And I said, you've got to see this space. We went back. She saw it. And she's normally my counter. When I'm a little bit of a visionary who just believes anything can happen, I'm deeply optimistic. She's a grounding force and we're a great balance in that way. And she looked at this space and she said, yeah, I can see this too. So we're both on the same page. So we went home that day and had some back and forth with the building owner. And I found myself a couple of days later, signing a lease for a floor in a building, a six month lease for a floor in a building in Hell's Kitchen, New York with a three-old baby, a new home, married, living in New York City. I went home that night terrified, nervous, excited, all of the things

that you feel when you're about to start a new business. And starting new businesses is not a new thing for me. I've literally been doing it since I was a kid. I know the feeling of it. I know the anxiety of it. I know the uncertainty of it. I know the uncertainty of it. I've done well and crashed and burned enough times to know that I can find my way through. But it was still all the feels, all the nerves. And a lot of that was because there was no guarantee this was going to work. There is never any guarantee that something like that is going to work. In fact, it was a huge risk. Something like 95% of all new businesses fail within the first five years.

So if anything, the odds were against me, especially given the fact that I was planning to launch a yoga studio, having very little experience in the world of yoga, but I believed I could figure it out. Even though there was no rational basis for me to be confident, there was just something in me that says, I don't know if I'm the right person for this. I don't know if it's going to work out. But what's on the line and the sense of possibility and potential impact was enough to drive me to keep doing it. So I went to bed that evening with all of the feels. I woke up the next day, turned on the news, and learned that a plane had hit one of the towers.

You see, I signed a six-year lease for a Florida building as a new dad owning a home, married, the day before 9-11 in New York City. So all those feels and anxiety and sense of uncertainty, and I don't know how it's going to work out, that I had felt the day before, I now look up to the realization that my city, the city that I had known my entire adult life and loved and lived in, was now going through something terrifying and profound. And as the towers fell, so did my heart, so did my soul. Everything was just crushed. And of course, two things started spinning in my head.

One is, who did I know? Because pretty much anyone who had lived in New York City for any amount of time knew somebody who was at least down there. And in fact, we did know people who never came home that day. The second thing was, what am I doing? I literally just signed a six year lease for a floor in a building, which is very risky to start what I hoped would be this great new venture. And now I pile on top of that the fact that my city is in a state of profound loss and grief and mourning. And so much of it was, I mean, literally shut down. The entire South part of Manhattan was effectively a zone that was taken over and so much business was shutting down. There was fear that went far beyond New York City. The entire country, in fact, parts of the entire world just pulled back

because they didn't know what was coming next. The level of uncertainty was ratcheted to a place that probably until the last few years I had never experienced before. And I had to make a decision. Do I continue to push forward with this dream, with this vision, with this endeavor to open a place of joy and community and breathing and possibility and peace and equanimity and movement and collective effervescence? Do I move forward with the dream to create that, given the circumstance that I was now faced with? And later that afternoon, my wife and I took our daughter, put her in a car seat, drove up to the home. Our friend who was then the youngest partner in a financial firm that was at the very top of one of those towers,

to sort of like sit vigil and just be with his wife, who was also a friend of ours, and hope and wait and pray. None of that would be answered in a positive way. But as we drove home that evening, we were the last ones to leave. Everyone slowly filtered out. And Stephanie and our friend went upstairs to read a nine-month-old kid just some books and stories and put him to sleep. And they asked if I would go and sit next to the two-and-a-half-year-old and read him a bedtime story. And I'm walking up the steps.

And I remember opening the door and just seeing him sitting there with a little picture book on his lap and sat down and read, knowing that I had no idea if his dad was ever coming home again. And it was such a tough moment, not just for me, for everybody there. I was literally just playing a supporting role. And as we drove home that evening, in partly silence and also partly just having a conversation saying, how do we navigate this moment? There is profound uncertainty. I have no rational basis for confidence that moving forward with a business endeavor in the heart of New York City in this moment in time is the sound decision, or that I can make it work. And yet, the very fact that we knew somebody who at that point in time we started to realize was increasingly likely would never be home again, brought me to the truth of my own

mortality, the truth of the fact that we were promised nothing, not another minute, another hour, another day, week, month, or year. And to the extent that I wanted to act in this moment, to do the thing that both terrified me, but also had on the other side, the potential for expression and joy and grace and impact, we decided that we couldn't not say yes to that. And to also potentially creating a place of community and healing and solace at a time where the city that we love so much needed it more than ever. Was I confident it would work?

Anything but. Yet I knew inside of me that I still needed to move forward. And we did. We had all of these plans that just, I had experience in the fitness world, so I knew how to launch a gym. Then we were going to launch it in this big, fancy new way and the way that the yoga world had never seen before with celebrations. Of course, all that went out the window. We had to change everything we were doing to really meet the moment and meet the soberness of the moment in a healing and respectful way.

And as we opened, I remember to the date, it was November 19th, 2001. We signed the lease on September 10th, the day before 9-11, made the decision to continue to move forward with it. Went in there and with my own hands and the woman who would eventually become partner in the business rebuilt the entire space from the ground up to be something beautiful. And we opened on November 19th and people came. Not only did they show up, but they showed up in waves and droves. And we had this just stunning place of community. And I remember teaching during that time every night at 6.30

class in a thousand square foot practice room, literally mat to mat with these 115 year old cast iron radiators clinking and clanging. And the entire picture window in the front as the sun set, set early back then because we were heading towards winter, and the entire window just being fogged with the breath and the humanity and the expression of everybody in that room, 50 bodies moving in synchrony and harmony, often just lying on the mat and weeping, because that's what the moment brought out of them and us and me. And that grew over time to be a place not just where people got to exercise and do yoga and move their bodies and get fit and strong and flexible, but a place of community and healing and solace and a place where we ended up

training hundreds of teachers from around the world, even in different languages, where tens of thousands of students would eventually come and become a part of the community and practice. And over the years, it grew into just this incredible experience. And that was all not because I was confident in moving forward in the beginning, but because I had developed the skills to actually say yes to move forward when I was completely not confident. But there was something underneath it that drove me to still make decisions and take actions that led to an experience that has touched and changed my life. and I know touched the lives of tens of thousands over a period of decades now. I was able to exit that when eventually my interests

started to focus more on writing and doing all sorts of other things in 2008 after seven years. And that community remains stewarded for decades and to this day remains a place where people can connect and practice. And I share that story because it relates to the conversation around confidence and the idea that it's really not about having or waiting for the confidence to take root, to do the thing that you dream of doing in real life. We don't need to be confident. In fact, I would even argue that the only way to be 100% confident, which is what so many of us wait for, the only way to be 100% confident about anything is if you've already

done it or someone else has already done the thing you dream of doing. And at that point, the stakes are so low, it just doesn't matter to you or to anyone else anymore. It's the moments that we are not confident, but we find a way to do it anyway, that hold the greatest opportunity for growth, for connection, and for impact. So rather than having a conversation around confidence, I think the more valuable conversation is what are those deeper skills, the meta skills that we really want and need to cultivate, the ones that allow us to act even when we're not sure how things are going to end, even when we're not very confident either in ourselves

or in the idea or in the possibility of what is spinning around in our head. What are the core skills that we can cultivate that will allow us to continue to assess the moment and then to potentially make decisions and take actions that would move us forward even when we are not fully confident and we don't know how it's going to end. And when I think about these skills, a really short and sweet framework that comes to my mind, and I call it the ABCs of unconfident action. And the A here is awareness and ease. It's our ability to see clearly and to find groundless peace. The B represents bravery, a willingness to act when you don't know if it will work. And the C is all about conviction. And this is why it matters so much.

So I want to dive into these three different things because I think they're really important for us to explore and figure out how do we actually cultivate that awareness and ease, that bravery and that conviction so that we can actually meet these moments of profound opportunity where we don't know how things are going to end, but we can still say yes to them and open the door to just incredible experiences and a vastly expanded and abundant life. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were gonna 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 gonna 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 8 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 are later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. How do you get these ABCs? Well, let's kind of start from the bottom up here, and that's with the C, with conviction. Conviction isn't the type of thing where you have to be 100% convicted or behind this, but you have to have a sense of conviction around whatever it is that you're thinking of doing, even just a little bit. And what I found is that that sense of conviction

that this is possible, maybe not a hundred percent possible, but this may be possible. And I am deeply invested in this. That's what I mean by conviction, is that I am vested and invested in this. And I find that the power move in cultivating conviction, when we're looking to actually step into doing something, is to ask the why question or sometimes the why questions. And the big one is, why is this important to me? Why does it matter so much? The reason this is so important is because anything that you say yes to that is genuinely worth saying yes to, that holds the potential to change you in some way, to grow you in some way, to connect you both to yourself on a deeper level and to others in a meaningful way, there is going to involve

uncertainty. There's going to involve unknowns and you are going to face adversity and challenges along the way. It's just the nature of anything genuinely worth doing. The illusion of a straight, easy path to whatever it is that you seek to achieve or become. It's just a myth. It's mythology. So let's accept the fact that adversity and challenge are going to come our way. The thing that allows you to move through this adversity and challenge often, one of the biggest things is understanding, having absolute clarity around why you said yes in the first place. Why was it and why is it so important to me? Why does it matter so much? And I find often that there's an exercise that people describe in various different ways. I describe it as the five whys. It can be incredibly powerful in these moments to help you get to your why on a level that is

deeply embodied and visceral. Because what tends to happen when we ask the why question, like, why is this important to me? Why does it matter so much? The first answer that we give is kind of superficial. So when I go back using the example of opening a yoga studio in Hell's Kitchen, and if I answered the first question, like, why is this important to me? Well, on the top, well, I'm an entrepreneur. I'd love to start businesses. This would be a really cool business to have. I could see myself enjoying this. Okay, surface level, why? Is that going to get me past the fact that I woke up the next morning and it was 9-11? Is it going to get me past all of the struggles and the challenges and the managing cashflow?

And then when people would show up and then when they wouldn't show up and personnel and managing a physical space and all that goes wrong with it, is that going to get me through? Is that level of conviction, that surface level why going to help get me through all of that adversity? Not a chance. You need to go deeper. Well, cool. What's the second why? So I asked the why question again, what's underneath that? Well, if I think about it, it would be amazing to have a space where I could bring people together and actually have them form a community because community is something that is getting really lost in the human condition. And wouldn't it be cool if I could build a business that would both support me and allow me to create a sense of community for people that maybe didn't have it? Okay, so that's a deeper level why. Interesting.

Why is that all so important to me? Now I'm going to my third level. Why here? And I'm getting closer to a level of understanding why this matters so much to me, why it's so deeply meaningful that will give me the conviction that will help me whether adversity that I know will come. So why, why does that matter so much to me in this context using the example we're using? Why does it? And these were questions that I was asking myself regularly back then and asked myself for years.

And what I started to realize was that this was both a place, not only a community, but a place where I could step into it and find a sense of belonging, but also a place where I could start to become the next version of myself, where I could actually deepen into the study of Eastern philosophy, Eastern traditions, to learn Sanskrit, to study the Bhagavad Gita and the sutras and all of these things that I had wanted to learn because it was a deep fascination of mine. And I wanted the insights and the depth, and I wanted to be able to study it and share it with other people. So this was a profound learning experience for me as well. Well, okay, now we're getting closer to the core. Because if I lost that, that would also be a very personal loss for me. The opportunity for growth on a very

deep and embodied level. Why is that so important to me? Huh. So I had to think about this. I'm at the fourth level of why there. And I realized that part of the reason that I was an entrepreneur was because I loved to make things that moved people. And that also allowed me to feel like I was fully expressing the essence of who I was. And this particular vehicle would allow me to do that, to literally get closer to the bone of who I was on the most essential level as a human being. If it worked out, again, and there are no guarantees,

but if it worked out the way that I saw it in my head, this would allow me to be more closely in the world to who I really was at heart in my essence. And that really mattered to me. And I think especially then because I was moving through a season of reimagining and rediscovery and trying to ask myself, who am I really? What matters to me? And how might I show up? And that actually got me close enough. I didn't even need to get to the

fifth why. That got me close enough to understanding why this was so important to me, why it matters so much. It mattered to me as a human being looking to go deeper into my identity and feel fully expressed and alive. It mattered to my deep desire to build a community where I could step into and be part of it filled with love and dignity and respect and healing and openness and spaciousness and abundance and acceptance. It mattered to me because I love building businesses. And this was a business that had so much soul and emotion and support to it.

It mattered to me because I also wanted the opportunity to create something that would have a big impact on a lot of other people. And at the same time, support me and my family in New York City, especially at a time of profound uncertainty. So all these levels of why stacked up, and that gave me a level of conviction where when I looked at the deeply uncertain circumstances that I was facing, it allowed me to continue to say, yes, I'm still going to move forward with this. Yes, I realize that there's a lot of risk here. I don't know

how it's going to end and the stakes are very high, but it's the thing that I can't not do right now. And it allowed me as adversity came and it came over and over and over, sometimes in ripple, sometimes in what felt like tsunamis. It allowed me to keep going back to that deep understanding of why this mattered, to anchor in that sense of profound embodied conviction and keep saying yes to moving forward. So that's the C, the conviction. Remember, we have sort of three elements of the framework, conviction, bravery, and awareness and ease. So let's move up to the B, the bravery part. And those who are familiar with Brene Brown's work, who I love and who has been a past guest here on the podcast, may remember her at one point saying a phrase, which I won't get exactly right, but she basically

says, don't be confident, be brave, or don't be courageous, or whatever it is. But bravery is at the center of so much of what we do. It's about being brave and taking action even when we don't know how it's going to end. When something genuinely matters, we are rarely able to have certainty or perfect information before committing and acting. And that's where the bravery part comes in. And we stack this on top of the why, the deep embodied understanding

of why this matters so much. And then it's a matter of saying, how do we be brave? How do we actually make decisions and take consistent action that will move us forward when there are very high levels of uncertainty, and especially when the stakes are high? And when the stakes are not high, it just doesn't matter. So none of this really matters and comes into play. But when the stakes are not in some way meaningful to you, if you never actually put yourself in a position where you have to take action, where you get to choose to take action and make decisions, where the stakes are meaningful to you, if you never put yourself in that situation, you are effectively foreclosing any opportunity of growth, of connection, of impact and expression and stopping yourself from living a good life.

So we have to put ourselves in these moments. And what we know is that when we put ourselves in these moments, we actually have not just a psychological, often revulsion or sense of like repelling from it, but we have a physiological rejection of these moments. It activates the amygdala, the sort of the fear center in our brain, triggers the fight or flight or what's been expanded to be fight, flight or freeze,

or sometimes even people call it fight, flight, freeze, or fawn reaction in our body. And that floods our body with a cascade of chemistry. The endocrine system kicks in, floods our body with a cascade of chemistry, including cortisol, the stress hormones in our body that make us feel physically uncomfortable sometimes to the point of being physically ill. Now, when that happens, that is a reaction that is good and that is natural in our body. It's a reaction to danger. But when it's triggered on a persistent basis or in reaction to actually things which are just high stakes

and uncertainty or meaningful stakes and uncertainty, yet they're also the gateway to possibility that stops us, that physiological and psychological feelings stop us from moving forward because we don't know how to handle it. We just feel psychologically filled with anxiety and fear and physiologically filled with a sense of, I just want to be over this, almost a sense of embodied dread. So what do we do with that? What do we do with that? Instead of backing away from all of these opportunities, possibilities where it's uncertain and there are meaningful stakes, but on the other side of that, if we say yes is incredibleness, how do we be brave in those moments and say yes to it? There are a couple of techniques that I found really helpful. One is what is often called

chunking. And when we talk about this, we're talking about chunking both the stakes and the uncertainty. So we know that we respond to two things here. One is the level of uncertainty. If there's just a low level of uncertainty, we tend to react much less viscerally. We're kind of like, okay, it's uncertain, but probably only about 5% or 10% uncertain. I can handle that. That's fine. But when it's 20% uncertain or 30 or 40 or 50% or 60 or 70% uncertain, then we start to freak out a little bit. Same thing with stakes. When the stakes are low, it really doesn't matter to us. So we don't really care. Sure, I'll give it a shot.

I'll try it, even if I have no confidence if it'll work or not, because it's just not meaningful. So we don't really care. But when the stakes start to get higher, when they start to really involve our sense of self, when they make us have to put ourselves out there and risk being judged or ostracized or not accepted, especially, or we're losing status or whatever it may be. When those stakes start to rise, that's when we start to pull back. So one of the really effective tools here is to chunk both the stakes and the uncertainty into tinier and tinier pieces. So you look at that big thing that you're thinking about doing at the end, right? And you say, okay, what are all of the little steps that it would take to actually get to that place? And instead of saying, okay, so yes to this big thing and focusing

on that big thing, which is highly uncertain and highly, you know, like the stakes are sky high. Instead, we look at those hundred tiny steps. We chunk it down to 100 tiny steps where now the level of uncertainty about that first baby step is much smaller. And the stakes associated with that first baby step are much smaller. And we say, you know what? I can deal with that. If I'm just saying yes to that, if I hold the vision of the big thing out here in my mind, but today all I need to do is say yes to this first baby step where,

okay, like the uncertainty is there, but I can deal with the low level of uncertainty and the stakes are so tiny in this one baby step, the first of a hundred, that it resets our psychology so that we're much more comfortable saying yes to that. And then what happens is we say yes to that and we devote a little bit of effort to it. We devote a little bit of time or energy or resources to it. And we're like, wow,

that actually worked out. And now we move to that second out of hundred steps that would get us to the really big vision. And we're just a touch more brave now because we saw that we said yes to the first one and it worked out. We're like, huh, well, if the first one worked out, maybe the second one will work out. Cool. And then we take the second. So what we're doing is we're slowly saying yes, not to the big giant thing, but to just tiny little steps along the way that chunk the level of uncertainty and chunk the stakes down to the tiniest little elements that our brain is much more comfortable saying yes. And every time the step before it proves out, it makes us more comfortable continuing to say yes to the next one. Now, this affects every different level of our lives.

We could talk about it in the context of big business things. We could talk about it in the context of personal life. We could talk about it in the context of relationships and dating. You see somebody who you're like, wow, this person seems amazing. I wonder if they would be potentially a great person for me to be in a relationship with, maybe even long-term partner with. Maybe they're my life partner. They just seem incredible.

But we're also really scared. What if we get rejected? What if it doesn't work out? What if we invest all this time and years of our lives and then it doesn't work out and we just spin in our heads like the uncertainty and the stakes get higher and higher and higher? We turn them into life and death, right? Rather than just saying, well, what if we just chunk this, right? What if we said, what are all the steps between me sitting here saying, that person's kind of interesting to me and them being a life partner for the rest of our lives? Well, what's the first

baby step here? Maybe the first baby step is just to say hi. Maybe the first baby step isn't even that. It's just to DM them on an app or get a text intro or go out with a group of people where you just know that they're going to be there and you can have a casual zero pressure conversation. And maybe the next thing after that, it's like, oh wow, that was actually kind of a cool conversation. And it seems like we both clicked. And then maybe you start to message each other, maybe. So what we're doing effectively without even realizing it, and so often we do this in starting new relationships, whether it's a personal one, an intimate one, a romantic one,

or even a business partnership, is the way that we feel more comfortable stepping into it, even though we have very low confidence it's actually going to work out in a really big long-term way, is we chunk the uncertainty and the stakes into little things. And that technique of chunking helps make us brave in small incremental bite-sized pieces until eventually we get to the bigger, longer-term ones. And by then we've built our sense of bravery and we look back on a body of evidence, a body of proof that these things can in fact work out for us. And it helps us keep to take that action. Even when at the end of the day,

we are never promised that anything is going to work out or sustain long-term, even when it does. So that's the whole idea of chunking stakes and uncertainty. between me and you, I'm 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 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.

There are a couple of other techniques that I found can be really helpful in being brave, taking action and making decisions when we don't know how things are going to work out, when we have to step into a space of uncertainty, of the unknown. And this is something that I actually wrote about in my book, which is literally titled Uncertainty, which is all about turning moments of possibility and opportunity, where there's fear and anxiety almost organically and naturally associated with them into just incredible outcomes where we have to say yes to uncertainty and live in the space of the unknown sometimes for longer windows of time.

And I started scanning and examining and interviewing a lot of different people in different domains who literally did this for a living, from entrepreneurs to artists to founders to writers, all different people. And what I found was a pattern that was fascinating to me. And that was that a lot of these people would go into that space of the unknown. They would constantly say, I'm going to say yes to projects and ideas or things that would have social risks and financial risks and resource risks associated with them. And they're highly uncertain. I don't know if I'm good enough. I don't know if the idea is good enough. Their job was to say yes to that in the moment of time. As an artist with a blank canvas, I don't know if I'm going to be able to create something. I don't know if I'm going to create something that other people will like

or value enough to allow me to sustain myself as an artist. And yet I have to, that is my job to actually go to that space on a regular basis to create in that way. And what I found was that this pattern that was so common across all of these people, and I realized that it's actually a pattern in my life too, was that they would basically create these completely systematized automated things in their lives where they knew it was going to happen in the same way every single day. And I call those certainty anchors. And those experiences or moments, that regular thing literally allowed them to touch into a level of certainty outside

of the work, of the space where they knew it was their job to live in the space of the unknown. They would automate and create certainty around all of the other things, often tiny little consequential things, sometimes dozens, in ways that would allow them to then touch into these certainty anchors on a regular basis and get enough of a sensation of grounding and certainty that allowed them to be baseline psychologically okay, and then know that they would have that normal, see, that certainty outside of that container where they would have to normal, see, that certainty outside of that container where they would have to go and float in a groundless state. But they would always be able to touch down into dozens of other moments of uncertainty, these certainty anchors.

And these were things as simple as wearing the exact same clothes or outfit every single day, or having a rotation where you literally had a week of outfits and you always knew exactly what was coming next. Eating the same foods for literally every meal of the day. Working out at the exact same time in the exact same place, sometimes with the exact same person every day. These are examples of certainty anchors that many of us create. We don't realize that part of the reason that we've created them is because it's giving us these anchors, these tethers to certainty and to the known. And that creates enough of a sense of grounding that allows us to float more freely in those spaces where we have to be brave.

And that is an incredible pattern that I've seen. And in fact, I do it often in my own life, as I mentioned. I am very happy eating the exact same thing for breakfast and lunch every day and not having to think about it, knowing it's just going to be certain and happen in the same way all the time. I would very easily and willingly wear the same jeans and the same t-shirt every single day. You look at famous inventors and innovators like Steve Jobs, literally wore the same mock black turtle neck shirt and jeans and sneakers every single day. You see this pattern in so many ways. So experiment with that. And that brings us to the third element of bravery that I found can be incredibly helpful

in our ability to do the brave thing on a regular basis. And that's what I call normalizing unconfident action taking. And this most often happens in groups. And the idea is when you're the only one who's facing a situation where it's highly uncertain, where the stakes are really meaningful to you, and you're the only one doing it, that makes it so much harder because you both view yourself and you may be viewed by others as sort of like the oddball, the risk taker, the one who's always out there doing that thing. And it's just quote, not justifiable. But when you surround yourself, when you surround yourself with others who are also co-strivers, now they may be working with you on the same project. Maybe you're in a startup

or a company or a project or a team where you're all striving to do something cool and new and different and innovative, and you're all working together. So all of those others around you in that same container with you, maybe the folks who help normalize the fact that you're not the only one saying yes to uncertainty, saying yes to the unknown when the stakes are genuinely meaningful, they're all in it together. So you're not the oddball anymore. That has a normalizing effect that allows us to actually feel much more comfortable with the notion of taking action and making decisions in the face of the unknown. But it also doesn't have to be a team. We can actively bring together people in community to help us have that normalizing experience that allows us to be more consistently brave. And I've done that in many different ways

in my own life. So for example, I have a couple of different groups of people and we meet on a regular basis, literally every month. In fact, funny enough, as I am sitting here thinking through this and recording, I know that tomorrow I have one of my regular calls with a group of people. And we've been doing this once a month for years now. And we're all entrepreneurs and founders and putting ourselves out there on a regular basis. And knowing that I am consistently held in that container of people who are co-strivers, not working with me on the same team or project, but we're all doing similar things with similar levels of uncertainty and the unknown and meaningful stakes, it helps to normalize the experience for me.

Artists do this on a regular basis by working in community or working in shared workshops or studios where everyone is facing the blank canvas or the blank piece of wood. Or writers do this in writer's rooms where everyone's just kind of starting from the same place. So when you either find yourself on a group or team where you're all working together towards that same thing, that can help normalize the experience. But we don't have to rely only on that. We can bring together our own people who are co-strivers with similar experiences, exploring similar moments and windows

and seasons of the need to be brave. Or we can find those that have already been created and then step into those. So those three things, chunking, uncertainty, and stakes, finding certainty anchors or creating certainty anchors in our day and all the different places that we can, often in the places where we're not actually being invited to say yes and step into the space of the unknown. And then normalizing unconfident action-taking often by surrounding ourselves with people who are taking similar actions. Those three things can be incredibly helpful in cultivating the bravery needed to say consistently yes to things that really matter, but we just don't know how it's going to turn out. And that brings us to the final, the A,

part of the ABCs. And that is awareness and ease. So I kind of cheated a little bit here by sneaking in ease after awareness. There are maybe two different things here. But awareness is the ability to see as much as you can the truth of the situation, to become aware of what's happening both outside of you and within you. And the ease part is the capacity to cultivate ease or equanimity or peace or grace, whatever word you want to use, when you are in these moments of elevated uncertainty and stakes, again, all in the name of possibility and connection and impact. The ability to create ease in those moments is incredibly important and powerful so that just we as human beings who yearn to actually have some level of equanimity and peace so that we can move through these moments. And instead of recoiling and being filled with fear and anxiety, we have the tools and the mechanisms

to both become aware of what's happening outside of us and inside of us with clarity and truth and honesty, and the skills to then say, even if I can't change this or make it more certain and the stakes are deeply meaningful to me and I don't know how it's going to end, I have the skills to be able to actually find peace and equanimity in this moment. I cannot change the circumstances, but I can change my psychological and physiological

response to this moment. And that gives me a sense of agency and control, even when the circumstances outside of me are not entirely within my control. So the awareness piece here, how do we actually become more honest and aware of what's happening outside and also what's happening within us? So there are a couple of different tools that we can look at. Many people actually turn to journaling for this. For many, a daily journal is incredibly powerful at helping them really ask questions.

And one of the questions is, how do I actually truly feel? What's happening inside of me right now? Am I calm? Am I at peace? Am I freaking out? Am I telling stories that are true or not true? And journaling can also help us look at our external circumstances and be more honest about it and say, the great journaling problem is what's really happening here? What is the truth of what's happening here? What is the story that I'm telling about it? Is it true? And what is the evidence of it? And these are sort of

like variations of Byron Katie's fantastic body of work, literally called The Work. A great way to actually gain awareness is to journal. For me, I tend to take a different approach. As much as I have said for years, I want to start journaling. There's something in me that just, I haven't done it because maybe so much of my writing tends to be in different ways and different venues and outlets. But for me, a mindfulness practice, literally a daily morning mindfulness practice, has been stunningly powerful as a tool to deepen awareness and at the same time, give me access to ease. So I love my mindfulness practice because it gives me this sort of like double hit of awareness and access to ease. And part of that

is because the mindfulness practice is different from other meditation practices in that it gives you the skills to notice where your mind is at any given moment in time to increase your awareness. Am I drifting off somewhere else? Am I telling some story about something? Or am I genuinely present? Am I observing the truth of what's happening both outside of me? Am I aware of what's in me? So it teaches you how to train your awareness. It also teaches you how to notice what you're paying attention to in any given moment. Have I spun out?

Am I lost in what Tyra Brock calls trance? In my thoughts, in my anxiety, in my stories? Or am I here and present and aware in the moment? Have I spun out? Am I lost in what Tyra Brock calls trance, in my thoughts, in my anxiety, in my stories, or am I here and present and aware in the moment? And then it allows you to choose to drop whatever it is that's taking you away from the present moment, that is taking you away from truth, away from reality, and just bring yourself back to what is happening in the moment. And I found that this actually is an incredible practice to be able to both become more aware of what's really happening, the reality of what's happening both outside and inside of you, and be able to keep touching back to a place of ease. But I want to add one more practice here

that is incredibly powerful for me on the ease side. And a lot of folks will think about meditation or mindfulness and think, well, I've heard about it. I've tried it. It's not for me. I can't do it, blah, blah, blah, all this stuff. And by the way, I thought the exact same thing for many years, including if I'm being honest, some of the time where I was literally teaching yoga and meditation, I struggled so much with the meditation side. I used to find a lot of my meditation in movement, and I still do. But I always struggle with a daily seated practice until eventually I was brought to my knees about a dozen years ago and came to it. And now it has been a devoted daily practice for me for that entire window of time.

That is a story for another time that I will probably share right here on the podcast at a later date. But this practice has changed me in such profound ways, largely because it has made me really present. But part of what I've added into that practice on a daily basis is breathing practices. And what I found is that whether you feel mindfulness or any form of meditation practice is or is not accessible to you, breathing is. We all breathe all day, every day without thinking about it. What we know is that we can actually consciously harness and change the patterns of our breath. And that has a very direct connection to our nervous system. It helps to down-regulate or

up-regulate our state. And what we know is that short, shallow, fast breaths upregulate our nervous system. It triggers us into that fight or flight anxiety, high energized state that is very uncomfortable for most of us. The opposite is also true. Slow, gentle, especially extended exhales tend to downregulate our nervous system system and in turn our endocrine system and the chemistry that flows through us, sending us into a rest and recovery mode, a calm, peaceful, at ease mode. So we can actually think about intentionally working with our breath to manage our emotional and physiological state. And if part of what we're trying to do here, when we're putting ourselves into moments

where we don't know what's going to happen, we don't know what the end is gonna be, the stakes are deeply meaningful to us, we're being brave and taking action and making decisions, and it's making us kind of uncomfortable as it does for most human beings, right? The awareness lets us tune into how we're actually feeling. And then the breathing allows us to change our state almost immediately, literally in a matter of seconds. So if we're feeling anxious or tight, what we can do is slowly just slowly sit and close

your eyes if you want and slow your breath intentionally. Box breathing is something that a lot of people talk about as being very effective here. And that's effectively just thinking to yourself, there are four elements of breath. There's the inhale, there's the pause after the inhale, there's the exhale, and there's the pause after the exhale. So breathing isn't actually just the inhale and outhale. There are the four elements. Box breathing invites you to basically make each of those slow and equal. That's why it's called box breathing. So like four equal sides of a box in your breath. So if you think about, well, let me actually take my breath and try as an experiment.

What if I inhaled for a three count, pause for a three count with an open throat and no pressure against the glottis, exhale for a three, and just pause gently with an open throat and no pressure against the glottis. Exhale for a three. And just pause gently with an open throat and no pressure for three. So that would kind of feel or sound like inhale, two, three. Pause, two, three. Exhale, two, three. Pause, two, three. And that can be incredibly effective in a lot of ways for a lot of people. And the final way that we actually think about doing this is bringing it all together.

So those are the really big tools that I like to think about in the context of taking unconfident action where we want to be brave because there's tremendous possibility and opportunity on the other side, but we're not confident. And instead, invite yourself to learn, to cultivate the skills of the ABCs, awareness and ease, bravery and conviction. That will allow you to then say yes to these moments of profound possibility without waiting for the magical fairy dust of confidence to drop into your lap, which for so many of us will never happen. So I hope you found that valuable and interesting and you use and cultivate these ideas and these skills to start saying yes to these amazing possibilities in your life.

So I hope you found this useful and interesting. As always, I enjoy going deep into topics on these solo episodes. If you like this, if you want more, let us know. We're happy to explore different topics. And if there's a topic you want me to dive into, let us know that too. And of course, if you haven't already done so, please go ahead and follow Good Life Project in your favorite listening app. And if you found this conversation interesting or inspiring or valuable, and chances are you did since you're still listening here,

would you do me a personal favor, a seven second favor and share it? Maybe on social or by text or by email, even just with one person. Just copy the link from the app you're using and tell those you know, those you love, those you want to help navigate

this thing called life a little better so we can all do it better together with more ease and more joy. Tell them to listen. Then even invite them to talk about what you've both discovered because when podcasts become conversations and conversations become action, that's how we all come alive together. Until next time, I'm Jonathan Fields, signing off for 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 8 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. 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.. Tell me how to fly this thing. 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.