Good Life Project - Michael Port: Inside the Mind of a Public Speaking Phenom

Episode Date: September 23, 2015

The thing most people fear more than spiders and death is the very thing this week's guest, Michael Port, loves with every fiber of his being.What am I talking about?Public speaking.Port began his career as an actor, featured often on screens of all sizes, before jumping into the fitness world and then creating the Book Yourself Solid business development juggernaut and a string of bestselling books.He built an empire and, along the way, became a master not just of the screen, but of the speaking stage. There, he found his true home and built an astonishing career as an international speaker.With the launch of a provocative new book, Steal the Show and a new speaker training venture, he's on a mission to transform the world's #1 fear into an experience of awe, joy and impact.We go deep into the "real" backstory and his deeper "why" in this week's conversation. We talk about the tension between "performing" and being "authentic," and whether the two can really coexist. We talk about what trips us up when we think about taking stages of all sizes, from the dinner table (should that even be a stage or is that too sacred) to the boardroom, theaters and stadiums.We also get into why he believes nearly everyone should script and memorize their talks, even if you believe yourself to be a "natural" speaker, and why it's not memorization that kills a great talk, but rather preparation.We bust a lot of myths about the difference between persuasion, manipulation and whether either is good, bad or maybe even...massively desirable. And, we talk about what any and all of this has to do with building good relationships and living a good life.We also get personal and explore why, after so much success, Michael decided to shift gears in a major way, where he's headed with his life and how his lens on living a good life has changed since I last sat down with him.If you've been "public speaking curious," but you've struggled with fear or anxiety around it, this is a don't miss an episode. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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charge time and actual results will vary. Because what the performer does is they walk on stage, being prepared, and then they throw everything away. Complete blank slate. And what happens performer does is they walk on stage being prepared and then they throw everything away. Complete blank slate. And what happens on stage is that what they prepared comes to them in the moment authentically as if it's the first time it's ever occurred. Interesting fact. The one thing that terrifies most people makes this week's guest salivate with joy. So what am I talking about?

I'm talking about actually public speaking. I'm talking about taking a stage. And that can be anywhere from a one-to-one conversation to a meeting with business associates to standing in front of hundreds or even thousands of people and being in the position where you radiate light, where you communicate joyfully and powerfully and you're embraced and your ideas are embraced. So Michael Port is this week's guest and he became known in the early days as an actor on stage and screen and then moved into the world of business building, wrote a giant bestselling book called Book Yourself Solid. And he's moving into sort of a new season in his life,

bringing it all together right now. And he's kind of obsessed with a curiosity around what does it take to actually what he would call steal the show, which is also the topic in the name of a new book of his. But it's really built around a focus. You know, how do we actually step into these moments that terrify most people? Public speaking is very often listed as the number one fear. So how do we step into that arena and own that arena and feel incredible and do what we're there to do? That's the subject of this week's conversation with my guest, Michael Port. I'm Jonathan Fields. This is Good Life Project. One of the things that I wrote in Steal the Show was

the baby doesn't care so much about what lullaby the mom is singing. The baby cares that his mom is singing it. Meaning, how many moms sing the same lullaby? But the baby wants to hear her mom's voice. And so I don't think you need to be different to make a difference. And if you have a voice, then what you're doing will come across as different to the people you're meant to serve. Right. Otherwise, it's an idea of difference. I mean, it's interesting. I want to explore this a little bit more.

So part of Good Life Project, one of the things I did a couple years ago was I kind of just started jotting down my beliefs, and it turned into what I call the living creed. Yeah. And the first thing in there is basically one belief, which I think is similar to what you're saying, which is you don't need to try to be different. You simply need to own the fact that you already are and just discover what that thing is and step into it basically. And I'm a hundred percent with you and not even worry about whether you're different or not. Because worrying about whether we're different or not, either from a personal perspective or from a professional perspective, gets us very self-absorbed. We start to think about ourselves all the time. And often, I think what makes us different is how we treat others.

So people are most affected by the way we make them feel. So this we know. This is not a deep intellectual concept. But they're very affected by the way we make them feel. So this we know. This is not a deep intellectual concept. But they're very affected by the way we make them feel. And as a result, we seem different to them because most people don't make them feel that good about themselves. So you ever had that experience where you go to maybe a hotel and they do some basic things really well and you're completely blown away? And like, why am I blown away by this? It's because the bar is actually not that high. So in public speaking, for example, the bar is not that high.

I know. It's really not. And so one of the things that, you know, that I'm trying to get across is that you don't actually need to do that much to shine when the spotlight's on you in comparison to what you think you might need to do. And so you ever had that experience where you know you need to work on something, but the work just seems so enormous that you just don't want to do it. Yeah, we all said that. Yeah. And I think people look at public speaking like that.

Because you have a speech. It seems like a huge endeavor to create a speech. And then rehearse a speech. And then to be remarkably good at it. It just seems so far away. And as a result, we don't really do anything. So we get this idea in our head. We put a result, we don't really do anything. So we get this idea, you know, in our head, we put a couple slides together, and then we go through it a couple times in our head

the morning before we do it. And then we get onto stage and we just sort of riff off the slides that we created as if they're our notes, because that feels a lot safer than doing the work and not knowing whether or not the work is going to pay off because we've never done it before. And then there's also the opposite side or sort of side of the spectrum of people who just believe that they're so astonishingly good innately that nothing applies to them. And they step on stage. And maybe it's not a stage. Maybe it's, you know, we're just talking about sort of like day-to-day life. It's really interesting, right? And we've kind of just like dived right in here with any backstory.

Like we're old friends. You've been a guest on this show before. And you're in this, you know, as we sit down here, you, you came out of this background in acting, you went into the fitness industry, and then you kind of like made this ginormous splash in I want to call it business development. My guess is you probably have a different name. But it was it was essentially, you know, like you had this, you built this just giant global brand around, you know, book yourself solid. And you invested a huge amount of your personal life, your professional life, like everything that you did was building this machine, for lack of better

word, phenomenally successful at it. What I find so fascinating, and I want to get into what you're doing right now, but I think there's a more interesting conversation we need to have first, which is you're at a point in your life where you're not a kid. Yeah. You've built something substantial and something that the outside world looks at and is like, holy crap, this dude is successful. And from where I'm sitting, you're functionally blowing it up.

Mm-hmm. Because, and you're like creating an entire new, like this is the new, expanded, improved Michael Port. And this is where I'm going to be focusing all of my energy for the next X years, whatever it is. Can you talk to me a little bit about this? Yes. I don't want to blow it up. That's really important to me. Because, well, first of all, the whole Book Yourself Solid side of the business has a team, it runs, you know, We license the intellectual property. We have our coaches.

There is still attention paid to it. Okay. Absolutely. Of course, there's less attention paid to it by me now because I'm building this other side of the business. I have to be very careful not to blow it up because sometimes when we want to get into something new, we rebel against what we were doing. And so we just say, well, I'm not going to do that anymore. That's it. I'm done. Scratch. Boom. And I'm going to do the new thing. But what I'm attempting to do instead of doing that is reconfigure what I have built to turn it into something new that might be even better. So it's not

one or the other, but they both exist. They serve similar audiences. And I don't think I could have built the public speaking side of the business so quickly if I hadn't been able to take that message to the people that I've already been serving. And if I look at, and I, this idea, I started thinking about this idea of reconfiguring what you have to turn into what you want early on in the business, because when I look back at my life, I didn't do that. I realized that I would just leave the thing that I was either done with or wasn't working that well and then just start something new completely. So you referenced that I had a history in the theater and TV and film, and I have a master's from NYU in acting. Then I went out and worked professionally. And after about four years, I decided I don't want to be in this business because I have to ask other people to give me work, which that doesn't work for me.

I wouldn't be able to make something myself. And, of course, this entire business is about asking other people to help. You know, I've got a book coming out. Can you help? I've got this. Can you help? So you're always asking for help. And I said, that's it.

I'm done. I'm just done. I'm going to go into the fitness industry because I like fitness. I'll go on the business side of the industry because I didn't want to be on the fitness side of the industry. But I just left it entirely. And it took years for me to consider bringing that part of my world back because I think that I loved it so much that just doing a little bit of it would hurt too much. The theater part of it or all of it? Being associated with that whole world would be too hard.

I just had to make a clean break. And now, with the work I'm doing, I'm able to call on all of my training, all of my experience, what I have always been passionate about, and do something with it. So, you know, finally, my student loans actually are going to be well worth all the money that was paid back. But I think that it's really very freeing. So I don't think that what I was doing was somehow not me. I think it was just part of the path that led me to where I am today. And if I look back at the things that I did well, all of my experience as a performer is what allowed me to create the curriculum, the experiences, the programs, all of that kind of stuff.

I really do think that my background in the theater and creating experiences is what really allowed me to come into that industry and create something a little bit different for the time because it was a long time ago. It was 2003 that I started, which in our world is ancient history. Yeah. Right?

It's like dog years are seven years, I think, rightly. Exactly right. Online and media and information. That's exactly right. 20 years for every one year or something like that. That's exactly right. It's really interesting to me because in a way, and thank you for sort of reframing my using the word blow up, and you're kind of saying, well, no, actually, interestingly, you did kind of blow it up around it so that it still serves a powerful purpose and it's a viable business. But I still want to go back to your personal evolution within that because for you, like what is it that's driving you now to say this thing still has value?

It needs to continue because it's serving a lot of people. But on a personal level, my head's not in it anymore or there's something that's pulling me from ahead that's far more engaging, more intense. What's the internal dialogue with you that's making you say, it's time for me to let this stay. It has its own life. But to fill me up, product maker fit, not just product marker fit, looking forward for the next decade or whatever it is.

What's the thing that's driving this evolution in you? When I do this kind of work, when I'm working with performers, speakers, I call anybody that is attempting to do anything in a big way a performer. And it's really important for me to make that distinction because sometimes people think when I say performer, I mean an actor or a dancer. But you're a performer. You are a performer. And most of the people who are listening in are performers because we perform all the time. So a job interview is a performance. A negotiation is a performance.

A first date is a performance. Hopefully it's authentic. If it's not, you might not get a second one. Your wedding ceremony, when you give your vows, that's a performance. And hopefully they're all authentic. But so many of us need to perform. And when I'm working with people on performance, it's the thing that I feel most connected to. It's the easiest thing in the world for me. I don't think, I don't have to think. I don't question myself. It doesn't mean that I'm always right.

Meaning when I'm working with a speaker and I give them some direction and it doesn't work, I don't question that I don't know what I'm doing. Wait a minute, you give direction that doesn't work? It happens once in a while. Oh, my God. Once in a while. But that's the thing. It's like I've never in my entire life felt so connected to the work itself. Historically, because I'm decently clever, I still can't spell to save my life,

I can figure out how to do most things. And if I put my mind to it, I can figure out how to do it pretty well. But when you do that, and you're doing something that you're not really meant to do long term in the big picture, in the back of your head, you always have this question like, am I legitimate? Am I the one who should be talking about this? If I get questioned, will I be able to, you know, stand up under the weight of those, of those questions? And with this work, I have absolutely no doubt. I've never felt anything like that in my life. That's a great feeling. So that's the feeling that I want to continue to explore over

the years, because it, it makes work worthwhile. And that's really important. Yeah. Use two words in the same sentence that a lot of people struggle with. Performance, authentic. I know you've had this conversation with a lot of people and I've had this conversation with a lot of people and I haven't had a great answer.

And I'm guessing you probably do have better answers to this, which is that people really feel that there's this split. Well, if I'm performing, then doesn't that imply that in fact it's a show, which means that if it's a show, it's fake, it's not real. There's, you know, like, you know, there is a, an innate difference between authenticity and performance. It's like, it's just in the words. Like, and know, there is an innate difference between authenticity and performance. It's like it's just in the words. I think a lot of people struggle with that and feel like, well, if I call it a performance and then do whatever work I need to do to actually be good at performing, almost by definition, that means that I'm walking away from the authentic, the essence of what makes it real, of what really connects with people. Talk me through this. That's a question that many people have. And I've been asked that many times.

To me, the greatest performers are the most authentic performers. So let's take a look at actors, for example. If we think about some of our favorite actors, the ones that people resonate with the most, Daniel Day-Lewis, Tom Hanks, Meryl Streep, the reason that you connect with them so strongly is because they're so honest in their performances. So, for example, if Tom Hanks is doing a movie where he's playing a soldier in World War II, he knows he's wearing a costume, he knows he's on a set, and he knows that he's being filmed. He's not delusional. He doesn't think he's that person. But when you see him going through something emotionally, he is actually going through that. He's not pretending to cry. He's

actually crying. And that's why you resonate with him, because he's telling you the truth, that particular character's truth in that moment. So the film is made up, even if it's about a piece of history, it's still made up. It used to be on celluloid. Now it's just digital. But you connect with it because it's real, because it's honest. Let's take a situation with our kids. We both have kids and sometimes they drive us crazy. And you are at that point where you feel like I'm going to get really angry and I'm going to blow up and I don't want to do that. So I'm just going to take it easy and I'm going to talk really calmly and really work toward solving this problem or redirecting whatever it is. So are you faking or are you authentic? And somebody say, well, I'm faking that I'm not angry. Really? Okay. So does that mean you're

lying to your children? No, of course not. You're playing a role that is the authentic role that's going to help you achieve that result. It doesn't mean you pretend when you're talking to your friend, I never get angry. I don't. I'm always in control. I'm completely calm. That's just sort of making up a world that doesn't exist. We need to adjust our way of being and our styles of behavior constantly, all day long, with each person that we meet. So if I'm spending time with you, you have a different energy than if I spend time with another friend. And so the way that I interact with you is going to naturally be different because you're going to have an influence on the way that I talk, the way that I think, the rhythms, the pacing.

Okay. So here's where, because I've had really similar conversations with people and I happen to agree with you, but the thing that always, there's a trigger that comes up so often when we hit this part of the conversation, which is like, so you're telling me that you basically change who you are depending on what you want to get out of the person across from you. And isn't that manipulation? Absolutely. And absolutely, absolutely, absolutely, absolutely. I'm going to say this. When I won't, and when I talk to people this, I'm strident about it because I don't want to back away from this idea. I want to really embrace this idea.

So let's take a chameleon, for example. A chameleon, when it's on a green leaf, turns green. And when it's on a red leaf, it turns red. But it's not pretending to turn green. It's actually turning green. It's not pretending to turn red. It's actually turning red. So is that chameleon inauthentic? Because it's showing different colors at different times

based on what it needs to survive? Of course not. It's absolutely authentic. If a zebra comes along and tries to paint himself so he looks like a horse, paints him brown, well, maybe he's pretending to be something other than he is. Or he's a very artistically inclined zebra is the other possible explanation. This is the other part. You're absolutely right. I should have thought of that. Happens in New York on occasion.

This is true. So I think what we're doing is we're recognizing that we have so many different facets to our personality, that we are not only one thing, that we can amplify different parts of who we are so that we are either more comfortable in a particular situation or fit in better in a situation that we may not be normally comfortable in, or so that we make other people feel comfortable with us, around us. But the opposite, the alternative is imagining that you are only one thing, that you are such a true-to-self person that you cannot change, that you are only one thing. I mean, think about that concept of only being one thing, only having one style of behavior, only being able to speak in one way, think in one way, communicate in one way. And I think we have much more at our fingertips,

much more available to us. And I do think that it is good to have an objective and to go after that objective. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. We do this all the time. Most people have an agenda when they are living, period. Yeah, well, and I don't disagree with that. We open our eyes in the morning

and you have to make decisions. You're interacting with the day all day long and there's a give and take with almost every engagement that you have throughout the day. So we do it. Let's just do it intentionally and let's do it authentically in service of our goals, in service of the things we want to make happen. Yeah. I think there's also, you know, part of the conversation that doesn't get talked about a lot is the role of empathy in the whole process, which is that if you want to be,

and I know somebody, you know, you're somebody who talks a lot about being in service of, and you can't be in service of unless you understand who you're serving and how to best serve them. And you can't actually get to that place until you are able to sort of dial down what you project into an interaction enough to allow the space for you to actually see and experience what they need, who they are, how they need to interact. And then create the dynamic that allows them to express who they are, what they need, how they need to be seen. And allow them to sort of like offer out how they need to be seen, and allow them to offer out how you can best serve them, help them. So it's interesting because on the one hand, you don't want to subjugate yourself. You don't want to feel like you're manipulating and imposing your will on somebody regardless

of their need or not. That's right. And you want to feel like you're fully expressed, like you don't have to be somebody fake. But at the same time, I think it's an interesting dance. The whole idea of staying authentic, staying true to who you feel you really genuinely are, but at the same time, allowing for enough fluidity in how you express those parts of yourself to create this experience, which is just optimal outcomes for everybody there. And if we look back on our life, we feel like we're different now than we did 10 years ago, I imagine.

Oh my God, yeah. Or 20 years ago. So if we are so true to our one idea of ourself today, might we in 10 years realize, oh, I actually feel like a different person now. But we're still the same person just on a trajectory. So why can't we explore that right now, in this moment, that we are so much more than one thing? And it's this balance. You hit the nail on the head. Self-expression is a wonderful experience.

But self-expression can also simply be a form of emoting, of expressing your views on the world without consideration of other views. And that's very different than self-understanding. Self-understanding, I think, is what leads to a very authentic ability to express yourself and knowing when your particular view of the world at that moment is relevant to the people around you and when it's not. So we're having this conversation. And part of my job in this conversation is to express my views on the world. And they're not right. And they're not wrong. They're just my particular views on the world. And for some people that go, yeah, that really makes sense to me. That

resonates with me. And other people that go, that doesn't really resonate with me. And maybe it never will. And maybe in a year they go, ah, I see what he was talking about. Now it resonates with me. But it's not, I don't have the right to project these views to everyone wherever I go. And also, look, I take a lot of my, you know, I learned a lot training in the theater, but both my parents are therapists. So I learned a lot from them about appreciating individualism. And the individual is what's so interesting to me. And I also love the idea that we can be an individual without constraining ourselves. So you've heard, you know, I'm sure most people have heard when an actor, this, the joke that the actor says where they say,

well, my character wouldn't do that. And you'll rarely ever hear an experienced actor say that because what you're doing is you're constraining the development of this person. And the same thing I think is true for life. There, there are lots of things that I don't think I would do, but I should consider doing them and, and cutting off all these different opportunities that come into my world. And look, we live in such a, often we want to put our world in a black and white, you know, picture, liberal, conservative, or, you know, a businessman or artist, you know, we are always creating these very extreme pictures of the world. And some might describe it as, you know, we actually live in a very multicolored world. There's lots of different ways of looking at things. But we also live in a very multi-colored world there's lots of different ways of looking at

things but we also live in a very gray world meaning we don't really know all the answers and and i think that this is why i love the idea of looking at the world as an opportunity to perform we have no problem with books about performance in the workplace right we have no problem about that but all of a sudden we start to talk about it from a personal perspective and people like oh well no um performing means i'm fake well does that mean when you're trying to do a really good job at work that means you're fake even though maybe you'd like to not be there that day you know what it is i think um because i think about this a lot i think about it writing i think about it speaking i think about it you know. I think about it in speaking.

I think about it in sort of like creating stuff, is that when you are stepping into a medium where you believe the expectation is that you're going to be like your true self and you're going to tell a story that if somehow in that unique setting where like your job is to stand up and to create a moment, to create an experience, where it's like it's a container which is supposed to be like sacred a sacred moment of communication where like you're bringing you know that the best of yourself the true self to a group of people whatever the media is that that at that moment you know it's just supposed to be 100% raw and real.

And I think there's something else that goes on here. And I'm curious. I'm sure you butted up against this also, which is the idea of a natural. I think of it in terms of people say, well, there are natural writers. There are natural speakers. There are natural actors. And it's almost like if you take that person, they're so gorgeous at what they do, quote, naturally, that if you then put them through

a process of schooling, and if you teach them how to perform, you're actually going to kill what makes them so amazing at what they do. Sure. There's definitely that school of thought out there. And I think that school of thought is usually driven by people who have not studied. So often, I'll hear someone say, well, I don't want to rehearse. I don't want to work on the speech before I give the speech. Because if I do, then I'll be stiff. And it may be in part because they've tried to rehearse before. And they only rehearsed a little bit so that when they actually gave the speech, they were very stiff. Because what they were doing during the speech is trying to remember what they rehearsed. I'm guilty of that.

Yeah, sure. Most of us are. Yeah. The fact of the matter is, to give a really brilliant presentation, it needs a lot of that. Yeah, sure. You know, most of us are. The fact of the matter is to give a really brilliant presentation, it needs a lot of rehearsal. So how long does it take you to write a book? A year. Yeah, a year. But most people will give a presentation that is an hour of just them speaking and they worked on it for a few hours that week. And they had their designer make some slides. How are the two things so different?

I'm laughing because I'm right now simultaneously writing my next book. And I just gave two keynotes last week. And I like literally, you know, like it was the night people. I've done it enough times. That's why I feel pretty confident pretty confident but still you're completely right I look at a book and I think it's because when I think about writing a book I'm like okay this is going to be something that

it's in print there are tens of thousands of copies out there this is one document that needs to stand the test of time whereas when I think about speaking as just sort of like you think it's not going to be there but now it is actually because now it is everybody films it. I had somebody periscoping both of these keynotes from the front row,

live streaming these online, which freaked me out a little bit, but yeah, I guess you're right. You know, the world is changing. And to me, I have, I have so much reverence for the stage and I have so much reverence for the audience. To me, the only thing that matters is the moment. That's what matters. And people can be profoundly affected through communication, verbal communication. And this is not just from a stage. This is in all aspects of our life. Our relationships hinge on our ability to communicate with each other. And a difficult conversation with a spouse has elements of

performance in it because you are thinking about how you're going to present a particular idea that may be difficult for them to hear, that may be difficult for you to say. You want to make sure you say it properly and you want to make sure you say it honestly. This is what's going through our mind and this is the same thing that we consider when we're on stage. And you've never had a significant other tell you like in the heat of a conversation, dude, stop performing and just like be real. Never. Ever. Interesting. Ever. Because if we're really honest, we would admit that we are thinking about the outcome of conversations that we're having when we're having that conversation.

Or we're just completely lost and we're just spewing our feelings all over the place and we're not actually focusing on trying to achieve something with the other person on the other end of that conversation. I think it's like this. It's the same thing in sales. People say, I don't know about sales. I feel like if I do sales, then I'm going to be really cheesy and slimy.

And so I always ask, are you cheesy and slimy? And they say, no, of course not. I say, well, then you don't have to worry about it. You're not going to be cheesy and slimy. If you operate in a world where you think you can just take and you can't give, then you'll come across as a little bit slimy, for lack of a better word. But our objective is very important in this particular situation. I want to go back to the rehearsal, the performance, the planning,

because I want to talk about it as it relates to the stage, but I also want to talk about it as it relates to different types of situations that we're in, like, for example, a conversation that we need to have with a partner that's difficult or a parent or a child, because it does help to be prepared. People often ask, well, what's the easiest way that I can stop being so nervous before I go on stage? Like, how do I overcome stage fright? And the answer is a little bit cheeky, but it's very honest, which is you need to be prepared. Because the better prepared you are, the less nervous you are because you know you're ready to do the thing you need to do. But if you're not prepared, then you're very nervous often.

So back to this concept of feeling like you're stiff if you prepare. If you do the preparation, and when you give a speech, you don't have to memorize a speech. You can certainly have it outlined and you know what your key points are and you can move through it. Generally, your stories should be pretty well solidified because it's not as easy to tell a story on stage as one might think it is. I know that. And if you know it cold, then you can be honest. If you don't know it cold, you can't. Because what the performer does is they walk on stage being prepared, and then they throw everything away,

complete blank slate. And what happens on stage is that what they prepared comes to them in the moment authentically, as if it's the first time it's ever occurred. And that's respectful of the audience. To me, disrespectful of the audience is going out there and going, no, no, I'm not going to prepare because that wouldn't be fair to the audience. I'm going to make it really natural and really honest for them. But I think if for people, especially people who have done a fair amount of speaking, if they were really, really honest about that, I think they would say, you know what, that's an excuse, this idea that if I'm not prepared, then I'm more honest.

And this is one of the things that I'm trying to do in the speaking industry, sort of push all of us who speak to work more, to prepare more, to, you know, to consider the audience even more than we might otherwise. And I also think that performers care deeply about the people they serve, deeply. You know, the show must go on. That's the expression that people live by in the theater. So if you, Amy, my fiance, she had food poisoning one show, fever of 104. She was throwing up in between every costume change,

but she was still out there performing and then taken to the hospital afterwards. Because that's how much you care about the commitment you've made to your audience. That's what I call authentic. That's not pretending. That's deep sense of caring. And I would love to apply that to the work that we do as speakers and as human beings in all aspects of our life. So when we're having

a conversation with a partner or a parent or a child, and it's a difficult conversation, don't we generally go into it with some preparation? Like, okay, this is what I need to address in this conversation. And here's what I want to achieve. And if we don't have that, then the conversation usually blows up. It usually gets, you know, fills up with conflict. But if we go in there and we know we want to achieve, and then we can honestly try to reach that goal, taking the feelings and needs of the other person into account as well. Otherwise, you're a sociopath. And that's, of course, the ultimate form of dishonesty. But you avoid a lot of conflict and a lot of stress if you don't get yourself wrapped up in the emotional aspects of either

not getting what you want or hearing things you don't like to hear. Instead, you're focusing on your goal. So we have two things. We have results and we have approval. We can go after either one. And if we go after approval, to me, that would be inauthentic, at least for me personally,

if I was just trying to go after approval all the time. Because then I am manipulating. Then I'm manufacturing. Then I'm going, what can I do to make people like me? What can I do so that everybody thinks I'm really smart? What can I do so everybody thinks I'm really cool? But if I'm focusing on the results that I'm trying to achieve for me, for my family, for my friends, for the world around me, then I can be thoughtful, strategic, tactical. And if you are somebody who has integrity, you don't have to

worry about not having integrity. You don't have to worry about being dishonest when you're performing. If you feel that you're honest, you'll be honest. It's as simple as that. Yeah. So many different things that I could jump off from that. I'm trying to figure out where to dive in. Within the conversation also, and this is interesting because it's whether you're sitting down having a fierce conversation with a partner, a loved one, friend, whoever it may be, whether you're speaking from a stage, whatever, you know, there's your, there's the outcome that you want to create. There's the need to feel like you've said what you need to say and expressed it in a way that you feel like, you know, you feel whole. You feel like at the same time, you know, like you've done the work, you've served adequately on the other side of the table. There's the interesting thing for me is that, you know, you can prepare really, really,

really well. But in the early days, at least, and this is like starting a business because it's the same thing, you know, like the first time you ever do a talk, it's like a stand-up comic, workshopping microlines. But the first time before you ever go out and do a full set, you don't know if you actually are respecting anybody. You don't know if you've got a doubt. You don't know how the audience is going to be responding. And you don't know if you're doing them right or doing you right. So it's kind of like along the way, when you're developing the conversation, whether I'm sitting across from you and I'm like, dude, we need to talk about something.

It's serious. And I think I know what outcome I want. And I think I know what I have to say. And I think I know what you're going to respond and what your desired outcome is going to be. But if I come into this, and then I stay doggedly committed to that and only that, and during the course of the performance slash conversation, I'm open enough that I start to realize I was wrong about certain things. I came in with certain information and certain assumptions. And through the performance or the conversation, I realized I was off about some stuff. Like part of my job becomes leaving the script behind in the name of

doing the right thing. Yes, that is exactly right. And I love that you use the word doggedly. We rehearse so we're prepared to be off book, so to speak, because life is a series of improvisations. But how intentional do we want to be about our life? There's the, well, I'll just hop on trains and sort of see where the wind takes me approach to life. Or there's the, here's what I think I'd like to create. Now, let me see how I can create that. And let me take what the world gives me and let me adjust based on that. So when the comedian goes out there

and they're working on some material and they think the material is going to work and it's not working, they do their best in that moment to make it work. And they might throw away, you know, what they were attempting to do because it's not working, they do their best in that moment to make it work. And they might throw away, you know, what they were attempting to do because it's not working. And then you find something that might work better and then go back and work on that other material some more. So the key is the balance between those two things. It's this ability to be unconsciously competent so that you can be improvisational in the moment. So you can take

it wherever it's going to go. Now, that doesn't mean it's always going to work. It doesn't mean that even if I'm prepared for an interview, it doesn't mean that if I have to improv, it's always going to work. It doesn't mean that every answer is always going to be right. We cannot expect that that will work. Meryl Streep doesn't always give the most dialed-in performance of her life. Each one's a little bit different. But she keeps working toward improving. So, Idina Menzel, among other things, she sung the theme song from Frozen, which is probably the most popular song. Burned into a lot of people's heads. Especially parents, right? And she was asked to sing that song on New Year's Eve in New York City when the ball dropped.

And it was about 28 degrees. So it was actually Frozen. That's not an easy song to sing in that weather. And she said, absolutely, I'll do it. Because she says, yes. That's what the performer does. Yes, and whatever happens, happens. So she prepares.

She's worked on that. She goes up there. She does a great job. And she's a little off on her final note. It's a big note. Big, big note. And it's what one might call like a note. It's a big note, big, big note. And it's what one might call like a, she pushed it is the theatrical term.

And it was a little bit off. Okay, this is one note. The internet blew up. The internet went nuts. Twitter, Facebook. Screaming about what a hack she is. and how dare her miss that note. Now, mind you, this is a woman who has created numerous roles on Broadway, is one of the most respected performers, hardest working performers in the world. And has like a well-documented, astonishing voice. Astonishing

voice. So she just pointed the critics to something she had said a few months prior in an interview. I'll paraphrase it. She said that in a musical, there are roughly three and a half million notes. If I can hit 75% of them,

I feel like I'm doing a good job. I won't always hit all of them, but my job is to then go back the next night and try to hit more of them. And she said, finally, and this was beautiful, I am more than the notes I hit. So here is arguably one of the top talents, best trained singers in the world. And she hit 75% of her notes. Now, of course, the internet blew up again. Said, well, I, you know, if I only was successful 75% of the time that at work, you know, whatever, you know, it was, I sort of cracked my head. The same thing happened to Bruno Mars when he was chosen to sing at the Superbowl. it blew up because he wasn't Beyonce or Mick or Bruce.

It was a lightweight. And he said, listen, it's my job to inspire the people. That's my job, whether it's at the Super Bowl or at a bar mitzvah. I go out there to inspire the people. That's it. And he left it at that. I thought, that's brilliant, because he has such a keen desire to be in service of the audience that he's not worried about the critics. And the critical nature of art, and that's what we're talking about here.

Life, of course, is art, but speaking, writing, this is all art. The critical nature of it is very scary. When you go onto a stage, there are going to be people in that audience questioning you. There are going to be people in that audience who don't look at you as a person. They will look at you as somebody that they can judge. That's just the nature of it. So that makes it all the more scary. And there are two types of critics. There are internal critics and external critics. There's the voices in our head, and then there's the people in the cheap seats. And those people in the cheap seats, they sound very, very loud when the voices in our head are very loud. But if we

can silence the voices in our head, they get quieter. And you notice what these two performers did. At their level, they cannot spend their time trying to get approval. They have to focus on results. Because if they try to get approval, they will never last in the business. And so many of us, whether we're starting our own business or we're trying to move up in the work that we do, we are so scared of the criticism that we're going to get for trying something different, for trying to be a performer, that we won't do it.

And we'll find a million reasons why we shouldn't do it. Well, it's because performing is fake or blah. I mean, do you think Bruno Mars is faking it when he's out there singing? No, he's giving everything that he has. The same thing with Indina. So what are we going to do to try to silence these voices of judgment? That's the question.

And that's why I point to focusing on results and trying to get away from approval. Yeah. I think preparation is really, it's interesting as you were talking, I was singing about moments where I've been on stage where I felt like, okay, when have I been on stage where I feel like I'm at my best? And it's always when I know, I know what I'm there to do. I know my content. I know everything that I have to do so deeply that, that I don't have to think about it

and I can let go and just relinquish. Yes. And be utterly in the moment. You give up control. I get playful. I get goofy. I get stupid and funny. I interact with the crowd.

I've had people come up to me afterward and literally say to me, where's that Jonathan Fields in your other stuff? Because I don't see that person. I'm like, huh. It's really interesting feedback. I think even further back, I taught yoga for seven years. And when I started out, I studied all the best teachers intensely. I mapped out everything they taught because it's like an artist. Generally what you do is you find the best in the world

and you basically become them for a window of time. Sure. And then eventually you develop your own chops and your own content and your own voice and your own stories and you master your own stuff. But what I found was the real magic came teaching when basically I hit a point as a teacher where I knew what I was there to do.

I had a really strong library that I could draw from, and I knew all of the core elements that I needed to actually move through to have people come in in point A and leave them at point B. And the vast majority from that point, you could say in a way, was improvisation, but it was really improvisation based on a really thoroughly practiced library of proven things that I knew had to flow in a certain sequence. I could switch, you know, like sequence B, I had 25 variations of that, but I knew each one of them were phenomenal. So I could dance between those. That's right. So there's a difference between improvisation

and ad-libbing. Yeah. And let's look at life in that way. Improving life versus ad-libbing life. Ad-libbing life, to me, is completely just making it up as we go. Improving life is having really clear intention about where we're going and then doing everything in our power to try to get to that place honestly. And if we want to make a turn and go somewhere else, we can do that too, but we're doing it reflectively and thoughtfully. That's why when you look at improvisational theater, improvisational theater looks mind-boggling. How are these people

so funny? How are they doing this. How are these people so funny? How are they doing this? How are they coming up with this? Because they're working within structures. Right. And their rule, the process of improv is a craft with rules. That's right. Which may not be apparent to the outside because it looks so fluid.

Right. If you're doing it well to the masters, right? Right. But there really are. There are real rules and there's a real craft to the process. Yeah, and that's what you're talking about. You're talking about craft. You're talking about mastery.

And if you poll the greatest public speakers of all time, they will tell you that they worked on their craft. Winston Churchill worked on his craft. Bill Clinton works on his craft. They were maybe born with the ability to connect in very unique ways, but they didn't rely on that. And there are very few, it's like this, it's like this. You take some of the most extraordinary stage actors and you can put them in films and they'll do great. You can take some of the stars from films and you put them on stage and they have a hard time because they've never been trained. So what I am interested in is being able to perform in

lots of different mediums. And I think most people want that. So if they have the skills and the performer's principles really driven into their core, you know, so it becomes part of who they are, then they're comfortable in all these different situations. So they know how to say yes as opposed to no. So I would never hire somebody who is the devil's advocate, not interested in the devil in the room. I like people who see the holes, but I'm much more interested in people who will see them and figure out how to plug them. So many of us will operate from this perspective of no, but the performer says yes, and how

about this? Yes, that's interesting, and maybe I'll try this performer says yes, and how about this? Yes, that's interesting, and maybe I'll try this too. Yes, and what about this? So we are always focused on trying to make the world a better place, period. We're also very, very good at acting as if. We use our imagination. So when I first started writing books, I didn't see myself as an author. I hated writing when I was a kid. It's the last thing I wanted to do. But I had to imagine that I was an author.

I had to act as if I could do this thing. So I started to think, well, how would one behave if they wrote books? Well, they would probably organize their life in such a way that they had time to write. Okay, great. There's the first step. Now, what else would they do? They would probably write every day so that they stayed fresh. Okay, let me try that. It's these imaginative processes. But if we can't see ourselves, it's like I imagine when you first started in this business, did you look and like maybe someone was speaking or you read a book and you looked at them and go, you know what? I can do that.

I can see myself as if, as if I'm the one up there. I do that with these conversations. Yeah. I mean, this is part of the, you know, like I'm doing this for years now. And part of my curiosity is like, what are the pieces of like the elements of wisdom and life or the way that different people that I get the opportunity to sit down with are living where I could see myself conversation and saying to myself, I could see myself living as if I were them almost in entirety. Like that's the life. That's like if I close my eyes, I'm like, this is my career for the next 25 years.

Boom. And it struck me because I wasn't expecting to sort of like to ask that question and to find myself stepping into that as much. But you're definitely right. Even starting out writing and speaking, it was almost like, who do I want to be? Let's go back to what you said before. You were talking about when you started teaching yoga. Right. And at first, you look at the great yoga teachers and you copy their style, the movement.

You're following a particular methodology. And then eventually over time, you start to find your own voice. So most of us learn by copying. That's what we do. So is that inauthentic? See, that's what's – and I don't think it is. I think it is absolutely the way we learn as human beings. Yeah, I kind of think it is, but I think it's necessary.

I think it's necessary. There's like a window of necessary inauthenticity. So there were times where I would step onto the floor and one day I'm Shiva Ray, one day I'm Baron Bet-Piets, one day I'm Rodney, and I know I'm actually teaching their sequences. And I can hear their words channeling through my brain and out my mouth into the floor. And what was funny was when I reached a point where I became a solid teacher and we started training a lot of our own teachers.

And we would put teachers out into the world. And I would hear them teaching. And they're channeling me. And it freaked me out. Right. So here's the thing. This idea of, it becomes inauthentic when you know you're doing it and you don't care and you don't attribute your learning, then it becomes inauthentic. Then you're trying to be somebody else.

That's very different. But you're on a path to finding your own voice. Agreed. I think it's like a necessary part of the evolutionary growth, as long as you don't get trapped there, which I think a lot of people do. That's right. That's exactly right. We just don't get trapped there. It's very easy to get stuck there. And that's what we want to try to avoid. And, you know, it takes some effort to climb out of our sort of disclosive space that we've been living in, this smaller space, where we hear all these other voices in our head and try to find our own. But this is how we learn. So this is how the baby learns. Is the baby inauthentic when they're copying the parents

trying to walk? Of course not. But I think there's so much fear, right? Because if I'm teaching, but I know in the back of my mind, you know, like I'm sharing this story from this person, or like I'm using these words or these phrasing from somebody else or this sequence, and somebody judges that, I can kind of say to myself internally, but they're not really judging me. Sure. They're judging the person I stole from. That's right.

Or quote, learn from. Yeah, yeah. But the moment I go out there and I'm like, this is my words. These are my stories. That's the performance paradox. This is my presence, right? Yep, that's the performance paradox. All of a sudden, if they hate it, if they're like, that sucked, it's entirely on me.

And most people don't want to expose themselves to that level of judgment. But not understanding that if you don't, you destroy all the possibility that goes along with it. That's exactly right. That is the performance paradox right there. So sometimes when we want something so badly, we pretend we don't want it. Yeah, no doubt. Because if we admit how much we want it, we don't get it,

then it hurts way too much. So if you're in the learning process, just make sure you tell other people where you got your stuff from. That's all there is to it. And don't stay in it. Well, stay in the learning process, but don't stay in the sort of like...

The imitation process. I mean, you create content. I create content. Very often, you'll see people who don't have the legal right to use your content, using your content if it's their own content. That's just the nature of the world, unfortunately. I was giving – I gave a speech, and then I sat on a panel afterwards, and one of the other gentlemen on the panel offered a quote to the audience. And that's a great quote. So afterwards, I said to him, so that's a really interesting thing you said.

Where did you hear that? He's like, oh, I don't know. Maybe I don't know. Maybe I just made it up. I don't know. I think I probably just made it up. Oh, because actually, you should look at page 32 in and book yourself solid in 2000, but it wasn't him. He heard it from someone else who didn't. And that's just the way it is. Exactly. But so, so I think one of the,

we feel often like a fraud. Most people do. Even the most successful people in the world often feel like a fraud. You say, who am I to be here? Who am I to say this? Isn't it already been said before? Other people know more than me. These are the things that often go through our heads. And if we don't recognize that it's okay to learn from other people and to share what other people have taught us, attribute it to them, we won't look stupid. It won't look like, oh, we don't know anything because we're sharing attributed ideas. But we will feel like a fraud if we are not attributing it. And we will do things to sabotage ourselves. When we're hiding something and we feel like a fraud, and that's different than this sort of made-up idea that we're a fraud, you know, when we're really not, but we're just concerned, we're not confident.

Yeah, we don't want to be judged. But actually, we know we're hiding something that, you know, could bring down the castle kind of thing, then that's a tough place because eventually the castle will crumble. Yeah, especially in this day and age. Yeah. We could go on on this a whole lot on so many different levels. I could turn this into a personal speaking therapy session for a couple more hours too if I wanted to. That'd be great.

Let's do it. Why did you need... So a lot of what we're talking about, pieces of this conversation, pieces of the big ideas are all boiled into this new book that you're out with. It's called Steal the Show. Great wisdom in there. Why did you feel

the need to write this? I mean, you're doing great work without writing a book. You've got a tremendous brand. People are coming to you. This is my last one. I remember like four years ago, sitting across in a booth in a restaurant from Benet Brown in Portland, Oregon. I was like, dude, last book. Meanwhile, like two books later. Totally. I've been saying that for the last three, but I hope it is because I really would like to focus on this for some time. I wanted to write this for two reasons.

I serve two different audiences here. I serve people who are newer to the idea of performance and also to people who are experienced. The book is broken up into three parts, but you can look at it like two different parts. The second half is a tour de force on public speaking technique in and of itself. So you take all of the public speaking technique, all of the actor's technique, and put that together, and that is essentially a handbook on public speaking. The first half of the book is on mindset and principles. Because if we just try to paste on technique on the outside, but we don't see ourselves as a performer, we're probably going to fall short of what's possible

for us, our actual potential. And that's why I focus first on the mindset. So you find your voice, make sure that you can crush your fears and silence your critics, and then play the right role in any situation that's important to you. Then you start to move into the principle. So how does a performer behave? Then what does a performer do to be successful? And for me, I really resisted writing again. I really did. I abhor the book marketing process. I cannot stand it. It is exhausting. It is, it's just such a shame

that it has to be like that, but it is the job. It is what we have to do. It is part of our job. So I would love to not have to do that again. It's, it's, It takes a lot of time. It's very expensive, etc. But I had to write this. I had to write it. It was like driven by some sort of demon, because I care so deeply about each individual's ability to perform. I think that we play ourselves so small. I think that we see ourselves as a spectator primarily rather than a performer or a competitor or an athlete or somebody that is trying to make things happen. So it's the difference between critics and performers. I don't really think you can be both. I think you can be a performer or you can be a critic. You spend a lot of your time criticizing. That's what you do, critic, critic, critic, critic. It's hard to make stuff and put it out into the world because you

know what's going to come right back at you. So I was talking to Amy about this earlier today. I think it'd be really interesting to do a poll and find out from people who make stuff, people who write, who perform, who create products, who engineer, who create vaccines, etc., who are actively every single day trying to create something that will be in some way service to the world, if they spend a lot of time writing reviews, I'm going to guess no. I'm going to guess most of the time, people that are being critical, now reviews can be positive too, but most of the times when people are being critical, I don't think they're making a lot of stuff. That's just my guess. Because you just don't have time for it. And things resonate with you or they don't resonate with you.

But you're focused on what you're trying to make. And that's, what's most important. So, yeah. So I say, you know, let's not worry about this. Let's get stopped. Let's stop being critics. Let's stop judging so much. Let's stop leaving every situation that we're in or every conversation that we're in or every book that we read or every, and, and look for what we can be critical about and start focusing on trying to make something and recognize that lots of good people are trying to make good things too. And, and when we are judging because, well, that's already been said before, or, you know, uh, I don't really think that they're a hundred percent right, you know, whatever it is, uh, then I think we just slow ourselves up. So for me, this was, you know, a labor of love to get people who really care about being in service of others performing in a way that's a lot bigger and stop being critical and stop

caring about the critics and getting to a space where they can accomplish a lot more than they think they could. Yeah. You know what I found? I want to actually, I want to say something about that, the conversation around the critic, but, but I also want to, um, you mentioned that one of the challenges of writing something like this, you've got two audiences, you've got the newbies and you've got people who are really experienced, who are just looking to, you know, like really master what they

do on a different level. And it was interesting because when, like you said, you know, the early part of what you offer is around mindset and you might inclined, if you've been doing this for a while, to kind of say, I'm going to skip to the real tactical stuff. Forgetting the fact that, you know what, we forget the basic mindset stuff. We're like, oh, I got that dialed in. And it's really good, I think, no matter how far you are into whatever it is that you're exploring, to always keep the beginner's mind and to step back and go into the fundamentals. Go back to the mindset stuff and go back to the character building side of it because that's where it comes from fundamentally. To me, that's like 80% of it.

And all the strategy and the tactic and the technique is the stuff that takes you from like 80 to 100. Well, you said it, character building. Yeah. So an actor creates a character to tell a story to an audience. Ah, busted. I circled myself right into that. You see? And what are we doing as performers?

We're trying to improve our character so that we can create an experience for the people around us that has meaning. Yeah, I'm with you. One other thought on what you said about the process of creation versus the process of criticizing. And you see this in business. You see it in brainstorming and ideation. When those things happen simultaneously, it's a disaster. It doesn't work.

You know there's convergent and divergent, which is the same thing. And they kind of have to happen sequentially, not simultaneously or else you just end up with like chaos. And, but I do think you're right. I agree with you. I think, cause I was, as you're, you were saying, you know, like there's the critic, and then there's the person who's in the arena, like Teddy Roosevelt's famous quote. And it's, it's almost like they're, they're, they're two very different mindsets, but it's almost like to a certain extent that gets wired into almost like a predominant lens on the world.

That I think when you live in that place for too long, you have a lot of trouble breaking out of it. And you just, you play the role in life as the critic and you feel like you are making stuff, but what you're making is criticism. Rather than playing the role of the creator, the maker, where you're there, you feel like you're actually bringing new things to life. And I think that when you play the role of the critic and you live from the lens of the critic, your job is to say, but. And that destroys your ability to see possibility yes and so it's like you can't turn around and become a pure maker at that point because your mindset doesn't even allow you to consider the possibility of possibility and i actually think that's really tragic yeah and as indina menzel said 75 of her notes are are. It's rare that you will look at anything that's created and feel like it's absolutely perfect. Or even close.

Or even close. Like a baseball. Best players in the game miss like 7 out of 10 times. Exactly right, which I always find just extraordinary. So you read a book, and if even 50% of it really connects with you, that's a huge win. So I would, I wrote, I look at that and said, that was a great book. So half of it, you know, either didn't really resonate with me or wasn't for me or just wasn't applicable to me. Who cares? Half was. So that's what, I think it's this, the most of the performers

are looking at what works for them as opposed to what doesn't work for them. That's part of the mindset. This is what works for me. Okay, let me do some more of that. This is what works for me. Let me do some more of that. We're always looking at what works

so that we can then create something for ourselves, for our families, for our friends, for people all around us. So we've done this once before, but I'm going to circle back to my regular question to wrap up this conversation. The name of this is Good Life Project. Offer that term out to you.

Sitting where you're sitting now. A couple years after we had a similar conversation, how do you answer that question? What does it mean to you to live a good life? I remember when you asked it to me the first time, my answer was peace. That's what I was looking for, peace. And, of course, the same thing is true.

I would say I want to feel peaceful. I'm at a point now, and we were talking about it before, that we change over time. We don't play one role. I want to have fun. I want to have a lot of fun. I want to have fun with my soon-to-be wife, with our kids. I want us to have a house that is fun. You know, we're good at getting things done.

We're good at taking care of each other. We're good at taking care of other people. And I think it would be really nice to focus on fun as well because it's not all about work. I sometimes say that all work and no play make big thoughts go away. So I want to have fun. Awesome. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. Thanks so much for joining in this week's conversation. You know, if you've actually stayed till this point in the conversation, I'm guessing there's a pretty good bet that you've gotten something out of this episode, some nugget, some idea.

If that is right and you feel like sharing, then by all means, go ahead. We love when you share these conversations and get the word out. And if you wouldn't mind, I would so appreciate if you would just take a few seconds, jump onto iTunes or use your app and just give us a quick rating or review. When you do that, it helps get the word out, helps let more people know about the conversations we're hosting here, and it gives us all the ability to spread the word and make a bigger difference in more people's lives. As always, thank you so much for your kindness, your wisdom, and your attention.

Wishing you a fantastic rest of the week. I'm Jonathan Field, signing off for Good Life Project. We'll see you next time. 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. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever,

making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone Xs are later required. Charge time and actual results will vary.