Good Life Project - Reimagining Work | A Path to Meaning & Joy

Episode Date: January 16, 2020

What if your work could make you come alive? What if it could fill you with meaning, purpose, and excitement like you're fully accessing and expressing all parts of yourself and stepping into your fullest potential? Like you're doing the thing you're here to do. We call this state being "sparked." The first step isn't about big, painful or disruptive change. It's about knowing yourself better, discovering your unique imprint for work that makes you come alive - your Sparketype®.In today's episode, we're taking you deep into the world of the Sparketypes and exploring how to discover yours, then tap it to reimagine and redesign the way you contribute to the world, whether it's the thing you get paid for, the thing you do because you're called to it, the thing you do on the side or some blend, on a quest to get as close as you can, or at least a lot closer than you are now, to this feeling of aliveness.Also - today is the third and final installment in our 3-episode Good Life Launch Pack. The first one - To Succeed at Anything, Do This (Jan 2 episode) - focused on accomplishing big things. The second - How to Live a Good Life (Jan 9 episode) - well that's kinda self-explanatory. And, today, it's all about sparking your work. Be sure to download them and listen to all three, they work together in a sort of force-multiplier way to help set up this year as your best ever. After this week, we’ll deliver you back into our twice-weekly conversations with awesome humans.-------------Have you discovered your Sparketype yet? Take the Sparketype Assessment™ now. IT’S FREE (https://sparketype.com/) and takes about 7-minutes to complete. At a minimum, it’ll open your eyes in a big way. It also just might change your life.If you enjoyed the show, please share it with a friend. Thank you to our super cool brand partners. If you like the show, please support them - they help make the podcast possible. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

So remember when you were a kid and you had the time and the freedom to do things, whether it was playing with friends, escaping into worlds, making art or music, playing sports, running around outside, vanishing into the woods, or really any other activity or experience where time seemed to just kind of vanish. You were fiercely focused, maybe even working diligently, but it kind of felt like it was effortless, like play. And you just felt utterly alive and in the moment, like nothing else existed and you never wanted it to end. When was the last time you felt that way? And here's another question. What if your work, the thing you spent most of your waking adult hours doing, what if that could make you feel

that same way you felt in those moments as a kid. Sounds like a total fantasy, right? Especially at a time where most people have completely abandoned that possibility and work has become kind of something that you more just suffer through or you endure or you see as something that you just kind of have to do and it gives you certain benefits like covering your expenses and allowing you to do certain things, but you really don't look to it or even expect any level of true enduring joy, satisfaction, bliss, meaning, purpose, expression. But what if it actually didn't have to be that way? What if there was a way to reimagine the way that we contribute to the world and maybe earn our living

also so that it dropped us into that near transcendent state of hyper-present, full contact joy? And what if your work could make you come alive? That question, it's been kind of a near obsession for much of my adult life. And over the last few years, I've gone deep into the good life lab and discovered some things that completely surprised me about the way most of us pursue work and build our livelihoods that is both massively destructive to our state of mind and inevitably to our lives. And I also discovered some really powerful and unexpected answers and antidotes, ones I never saw coming. And truthfully, if you had asked me a decade ago, I would have said weren't possible. In fact, I would of a source code level driver of work

that makes us come more fully alive. This is something that I would have never actually expected or bought into and maybe even argued against. But through a lot of work, a lot of research, a lot of experimentation, I lot of research, a lot of experimentation, I've come completely full circle. I spent a lot of time over the last chunk of years identifying these things. I actually call these imprints sparkotypes. What I've learned about them and the power they contain to reclaim work is where we're going in today's episode of Good Life Project. Now, if you haven't listened

to the last two Thursday episodes, I'll let you know that today is the third and final installment in my three episode, call it a sort of a new year, new you starter pack that focuses on accomplishing big things. That was the first one, living a good life. That was the second one. Living a good life. That was the second one last week.

And today it's all about reclaiming and re-imagining work in a way that allows you to come more fully alive. After this week, we will deliver you back into our twice weekly conversation with awesome human beings. And if you haven't yet listened to the last two starter pack episodes from those first two Thursdays of the year, be sure to download them and listen to them after this one. You don't have to do it beforehand. You can listen to this and then go back. That's fine. The three really work together in a sort of force multiplier way to help

set up this year as hopefully your best ever. I'm really excited to share this with you. I'm Jonathan compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die.

Don't shoot him, we need him. Y'all need a pilot? Flight risk. 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. Okay, so this word work, when most people hear it, the idea of, oh, yay, fun, awesome, cannot wait to do this thing. This is like the thing that I wake up in the morning yearning to do. It calls me to it. I love it. I wish I could do more of it and build my life around it. That is not the experience. That is not the association that most of us have with the word work. Even though when we were little, we worked fiercely doing things that took tremendous effort

and we did love it and we did yearn to do more of it. And we had to be called by our parents to step away from it. The question is what changed? What changed along the way? Because a lot of us think that the part of work that really repels us is the effort side of it. But I'm here to tell you that has nothing to do with it. Working really hard can be deeply rewarding and even yearned for if it's done in a different way. But right now, when you look at how most people feel about their work, their job, what we see is some pretty scary ideas, some pretty scary reports from people. We see people saying that they're flatlined, they're overwhelmed, disengaged, unexcited.

There's no sense of meaning or feeling like what you do matters, no excitement or enthusiasm. Kind of feel like you're capable of so much more, but can't figure out how to access and perform at your fullest potential. Since that work has become a bit of a grind. And along with that, for a lot of people, are reports of anxiety and depression, malaise, complacency, lack of purpose, and a feeling of being stifled. That the essence of who you are and what you're capable of are kind of being shut down. 66% of workers are disengaged. A significant percentage of those are actively disengaged,

meaning they are fiercely hating what they're doing. Some 53-ish percent are just straight up unhappy at work. Interestingly, in a report on meaning and purpose at work, which came out last year in 2018, actually, so a little over a year ago now, nine out of 10 people said they felt so unfulfilled by their work that they would take a 23% cut in salary for life in exchange for doing work that was actually meaningful to them. That is astonishing. Most people would literally give up a quarter of their salary for life if they could show up and know that the work they were doing mattered.

That is quite a statement about how we've come to experience work. The thing is, it actually doesn't have to be that way. This is the way that most of us has sort of built our careers and the way that we have accepted the role of work as an obligation that is not there to provide us with nourishment and fulfillment and meaning and joy and purpose and expression. And if we do stumble upon some of those, we're just like, well, that was dumb luck. But it doesn't have to be that way.

I mean, what if the way you contributed to the world could be a source of not only support, but could also make you truly come alive, could fill you with meaning and purpose and flow and excitement and just fully tap your potential. I'm relatively fortunate to drop into that place on a fairly regular way

with the way that I built my living. Not all the time. And there are some really bad days and seasons and months, but on the whole, this has been a big part of the experience of the way that I do my work, the way that I show up and both contribute to the world, make meaning and earn a living. When I think about actually one of the most powerful times that I experienced this recently, it was something that I did not too long ago. So I live

in New York City. And for a really long time, I also play guitar really badly, by the way. You don't probably want to be around when I'm playing. But I have had this lifelong love affair with the form of a guitar. And I am very much a maker. I love to create things, to go from idea to thing is one of the things that makes me come alive. And I have wanted to make a guitar, but never really had the time. And I decided that it was time. So I found a luthier out in Amish country, Pennsylvania, about two and a half, three hours outside of New York City, and convinced a buddy of mine to kind of come along for the ride and convinced the luthier to essentially rework the way that he was both making guitars, but also teaching other people to make guitars. And we spent the better part of a month driving out of New York City, leaving all

the buildings and everything behind, going to this tiny little town in the middle of farms in Amish country, Pennsylvania, where this luthier had a roadhouse that was basically, he had purchased and was slowly converting it over to his living space and this sort of restaurant slash bar area where used to be, he had converted into a guitar building workshop. A luthier, by the way, is a guitar builder. And one of his passions wasn't just building guitars, but really he developed a love for teaching other people how to do this. So I went out and spent the better part of a month working 13-hour days, starting from raw wood, and just with my hands, one step at a time, painstakingly building a guitar, an acoustic

guitar. I was completely beat up by the end of every day. We would literally wake up and start working at eight in the morning. And very often, we would end at 9 p.m. at night. We'd take maybe a single half an hour, 30, 40 minute break for lunch. Oftentimes, we would completely forget to take any other breaks. And not because we had to, but because I became so completely and utterly absorbed in the work that I was doing. It was like working a 13 hour day with physical labor and time felt like I had worked an hour. At the end of it, my body felt like it had worked 13 hours.

I was completely beat up, but it was this near mystical experience of me working physically harder than I probably have since I was a kid in college, working on a construction crew, building houses. And yet, this was the thing I could not get enough of. I was immersed in the process of doing the thing I'm here to do, making something and using my hands, which I love to do and haven't done literally in this way, in this level of intensity for decades.

And it filled me with this feeling of exhaustion on one hand and bliss on the other hand. So here's the interesting thing, right? I left with an acoustic guitar that sure I'm proud of, but if I'm really being honest, for what I actually paid the luthier for the opportunity to spend a month driving out to the Roadhouse Turned Workshop in Pennsylvania to build this thing completely with my own hands, I could very likely have purchased a beautiful custom guitar that was built exponentially better and sounded way more beautiful. But I paid for the opportunity to actually work and make this happen because it was the expression of something that I just couldn't not do. And it was amazing. And in fact, here's a kind of funny full circle thing. The guitar that

you hear as our music now on the podcast is a dear friend of mine, Christopher Carter playing that very guitar noodling one day in the workshop. And then us just deciding that sounds like it needs to be a part of the show. So why do I tell you this? Because this was one of those moments where I really stepped into the essence of who I was. I was working harder than I have worked in a really long time. And it felt like absolute heaven. And I was really thinking to myself, I'm like, man, what if every day, what if every day, what if my work could feel like this every day? And what if everyone's work could kind of feel that way every day? And I started to really think also, I've been trying to deconstruct this feeling, this feeling of aliveness that I get

from doing things like that for a really long time. And I would ask, what is that feeling? Is it purpose? Well, yes. There's a sense of purpose there, but that's only part of it. In fact, purpose is such a loaded word these days. I started to really wonder more broadly, what are the ingredients to this feeling of being alive that is being generated by work, right? Of working really hard, but feeling relatively effortless. It's just coming because it's the thing I'm here to do, of just not wanting it to end because I'm doing it and would in truth even pay to do it, just like I did the opportunity to work to make

this guitar. What I realized when I started to deconstruct it is that there are actually five key components of this feeling that I've come to believe go into it and are critically important. So one of them is flow, right? And that has been called all sorts of different things over the years. Athletes call it being in the zone or musicians call it that same thing. Flow is a word that was coined by social scientists and psychologists. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, a number of years ago, even wrote a book about it, where he researched and found the state where you completely lose yourself in the experience. You lose a sense of time. You become absorbed with the thing.

And you're working towards something where it's hard, it's challenging, but you have the capabilities to be able to bring it to fruition. And it's a state where it's almost like otherworldly. Some people call that bliss or in the bliss zone as well. A second component is meaning. It's this feeling that what you are doing matters, right? Even if you can't explain why, it just does. And it's a knowing, right? It may matter to you on a deep,

intrinsic level. It may be the sense that it matters more broadly to other people, to society, to culture, to the universe. But there's a knowing that what you're doing in this given moment, it's meaningful. It matters. The third element is this sense of innate enthusiasm and excitement. You wake up in the morning and you don't dread doing it. Even though you know you're going to work really hard, you wake up in the morning and you're really looking forward to doing it. You yearn to do it. You yearn to start and you have to be pulled away and not want it to end.

Even when there's a substantial amount of effort that you're putting into it, even when it doesn't come easy, you still cannot wait to do more of it. The fourth element is this sense of fully tapped and expressed potential. That everything that you have to give, every element, every essence of who you are is being leveraged and brought to bear to its fullest extent. And you feel like there's nothing being left. There's no gap between who you are and what you're capable of and what you are bringing to this particular endeavor.

And the last element is a broader sense of purpose. This deep sense of purpose, like you're doing the thing that you're here to do and you're working on it and moving, it's moving you closer to that state of feeling that way. And when your work, when you think that you wake up in the morning and you do most days, it integrates all five of those elements. You begin to come alive or what I call, you become sparked this feeling that you're doing the thing you're here to do and you're completely lit up the more I thought about it I started to wonder you know these to me are the components so when I talk about the state of feeling alive or sparked and I look at the work that we're doing

and how work can make you feel that way, those are the five components that in my mind go into that state. And I started to think more broadly, well, what about everybody else? How do people come alive? And rather than sort of like having millions of unique sort of surface level expressions,

is there a deeper, is there a deeper, more universal set of imprints or archetypes or drivers of work that make you come alive as sort of a source code level answer that crosses geography and culture and history, where it would represent the vast majority of people and also serve as a sort of a distilled body of knowledge, set of tools that would help us much more quickly understand how to get to that state in our own lives. And I began to dive into my years of study, my own experimentation, my own experience working with and teaching thousands of people

over the years, everything from conscious careership and entrepreneurship and foundership to mindfulness, to meditation, to movement, to every aspect of trying to really dial in how to live your best life. I poured over a mountain of academic research and really reflected on and started to deconstruct the years of conversations that I've been able to have with so many people who are sort of leading voices and primary researchers. And that began to distill as I kept asking myself when I would come up with a broad set of potential imprints or archetypes. And I kept asking myself, and what's driving that? And what's driving that? And what's driving that? And it kept distilling down to a smaller and smaller

set until finally we landed at 10 archetypes, 10 universal archetypes, source code level drivers of work that make you come alive. And I call these sparketypes. Why? Because they're the archetypes that spark you. And unlike sort of generalized archetypes, which very often speak to all elements of your personality and your relationships and how you are in the world, this is hyper-focused. This is different than anything else. This is all about work. These are all about how you invest and exert effort or work and how that makes you feel and how you might be able to build your work around those things. Once I got to that place, I spent the vast majority then in 2018 working to develop a tool, a simple tool. This became the online sparkotype assessment

to allow anybody to spend a relatively short amount of time, answer a set of prompts, and then discover your own sparkotype. So rather than having to sort of wander in the dark and fumble and stumble and spend maybe years experimenting, trying to figure it out, this can really help shortcut the process in a powerful way. At least that was my hope and expectation. We began to move larger and larger groups of beta testers into the assessment until we found that the results that we're giving were really strong, really relevant, and really robust. And then we released it to the world just about a year ago. And in that relatively short period of time, more than 300,000 people have now completed it, generating more than 15 million data points. And the stories and insights and awakenings that have been shared

over that same window have been kind of breathtaking, not just from individuals. We're also hearing from companies and foundations, schools, professors, coaches, and leaders who have shared the sparkotypes within their organizations. And it's leading to amazing conversations and connections and awakenings and change. People are actually leaning on these ideas to help make better decisions. And that is fundamentally what it's about. We also did a phase two follow-up study that demonstrated a 92% accuracy rate and really strong correlations between doing the work of your sparkotype and those five markers of coming alive that I mentioned above. Right? So flow, meaning,

enthusiasm, potential, and purpose. And we are still so early in this journey, but it is incredibly exciting. There's a lot more work to do. There's a lot more validation. There's a lot more deeper levels of research that we still need to go into to keep exploring and developing things. And if you've already taken the Sparketype assessment, that's amazing. It's free. It's online. This will be a great refresher and deeper dive into the power of these imprints to both come more fully alive at work and also better understand those around you, what fills and empties them and why they may be drawn deeply to certain tasks and projects and repelled by others, no matter how much you try and motivate them to do that. And for leaders, by the way,

it'll help you understand both how to tap your own sparkotype to be a better leader by leading from a place of intrinsic sort of aliveness, and also understand how to build better teams and assign roles and projects in a way that leads people to be way more intrinsically motivated to do their best work. So let's dive into these 10 different sparkotypes. I'm going to share a bit about each and then a few insights about how to tap these in order to come more fully alive in your work, whether that means changing the way you go about your current work, which by the way, is always the preferred way to go, is to understand how to shift either your mindset or make subtle changes in circumstance

that lead to a really big shift in the way you experience it. Or if that doesn't get you where you need to go, then there's the exploration of creating bigger shifts along the way. Before I dive in, if you are one of those folks who have not yet completed your Sparkotype assessment, it's simple. You can find it at sparkotype.com. That's S-P-A-R-K-E-T-Y-P-E.com. Complete it. You can either do it now or you can come back afterwards and do yours once you sort of have this primer. So let's dive into the 10 types. And I'm going to share them with you actually in a very specific order. And I will share a bit more about why I'm sharing them in this order when I'm done. So the first sparkotype is what I call the maven, the maven.

The work of the maven is all about knowledge acquisition. The maven wakes up in the morning and all you want to do is learn. You are the happiest person in the world if you actually just get the opportunity to go and pour yourself into the process of discovery, the process of learning. It's largely driven by fascination, right? So this often operates in one of, or sometimes both, two different levels. You latch onto a particular idea or topic or domain, and you just want to devour it. You want to know everything about it. This wisdom may have no obvious relevance to something outside of it. You may not even be able to explain why. You just want to learn so much more about it,

but there's something that is pulling you in to this topic or area or field or domain, and you just cannot get enough of mastering the body of knowledge that is available about this one particular thing. So that is where the Maven side of things operates in a very sort of defined way. The other way it tends to operate operates in a very sort of defined way. The other way it tends to operate is in a very broad way, which is you just want to learn everything about everything and everyone. You're the person who drops into a cab and all you want to do is learn the entire life story of your driver.

You're the person who's chatting up everybody because you just want to know more about the way humanity and the world work. Now, sometimes these two ways to express your mavenness exist in the same human being and sometimes not. And that is completely okay. But fundamentally, the maven, the work of the maven is knowledge acquisition. You are driven to learn. And when you are in the process, when you open up your ability to learn and you remove the obstacles to doing state, lost, you lose a sense of time. There's a sense of meaning, like you're doing this because it's just, it's deeply meaningful to you. Even if you can't explain why it is, you just know it is. You're excited and enthusiastic about it. You're fully tapping who you are and you have that deeper sense of, yeah, I'm doing what I'm here to do. Now, the maven is challenged

by anything that gets in the way of learning. And that means if you don't have total control over the process of discovery, the process of learning, access to information and wisdom and insight, that becomes really frustrating. The maven also has a unique challenge, which is that a lot of people say, yeah, this is me.

In fact, what I will share is now that we have this giant data set and it's growing at lightning speed, we kind of know the representation of the different sparkotypes across population. And we know that the maven is the most represented sparketype out of all 10. And one of the challenges is because so much of this is about learning, people ask, well, but what do I do with that? Because nobody's going to pay me to just sit there and learn. And one of the things that we have discovered is that the maven very often turns this into a living

by working in some sort of collaborative or team environment where they are the source of profound wisdom at the table that they can then share and other people will access. Maven also very often finds the ability to earn a living doing this by accessing what we call your shadow sparketype. So here's the thing. I don't want to wait to tell you this because it's easier to explain in the context of specific sparketypes. None of us are just one thing, right?

So there are 10 different sparketypes. And what we've seen is we're all a combination. But we've also seen that as a general rule, one or two tend to really strongly predominate in guide. And the strongest one we call your primary sparketype, that's the work that you feel like you're here to do. It drops you into that state of feeling alive. But then we've also identified this thing that we call your shadow sparketype. Now your shadow is not sort of like the thing that we call your shadow sparkotype. Now, your shadow is not sort of like the thing that's your dark side.

When we say shadow in this context, we mean it's in the shadow of the primary. And the shadow is largely the thing that you do. You're probably pretty good at it and you probably enjoy it also. And you may do it for a significant amount of time, but if you're really being honest about it, you do it largely, at least for most people, you do it largely in service of doing the work of your primary better. So what we find is that when you have a maven, it's primarily driven to learn. Very often it is the shadow sparketype that they turn to that may be more sort of externally service focused that becomes the way that they actually earn a living if in fact it's something that they want to earn a living doing.

So it's the blend that gives them the access to that potential. In just a moment, I shall share a specific example of that. Mavens also very often show up really early in life because people just become, they dive into sources of knowledge, whether it's the internet, whether it's books, whether it is whatever it may be, right? So that is the first spark of day, the maven. Second is the maker. Now I kind of hinted at this earlier. I am a maker. The work of a maker is fundamentally the process of creation. It is to make ideas manifest. There is nothing that I love more. There's nothing that makes me feel more alive than when I'm given the opportunity or when I create my own opportunity, which I have done for most of my adult life now, to actually come up with ideas and then make them manifest in the world.

That has shown up in the form of literally painting album covers on jean jackets as a kid. I was an artist building, building, renovating homes, building actual physical structures. I was constantly building stuff. Even as a little kid, I would go down to the local junkyard in the town that I grew up in. We would throw together parts of bicycles in the back of our old truck, bring them home. And I would whip out the duct tape and just start taping stuff together and bolting stuff together to make these Franken bikes. And then I would ride them around the neighborhood

until they inevitably fell apart and left me a little bit banged up. But I was the happiest kid in the world when I could just make stuff. It almost didn't matter. That now has continued to be a central part of my life and it's expanded. So not only do I make physical things, but I make companies. So part of the reason that I founded a number of companies over a period of years is because it's the process of creation. It is the maker process in me that I really love about doing that. In fact, when things become kind of stagnant and

process oriented, that's when I'm no longer fully alive in the process. And we usually bring in people to step in and take over some of those roles. It becomes physical things. So I've written books. Again, the process of going from idea to thing is what absolutely nurses me. Experiences, right? We've created trainings and courses and programs, live events. We created an adult summer camp for some 425 or 30 people would come from all over the world and celebrate for nearly four days together every year. It was the process of going from idea to thing, right? That actually made me feel alive. So makers are all about the process of making stuff, of creation. We are challenged similar to the maven when we can't do that, when somehow there

are obstacles that are put in our way that stop us from doing it. And here's where things get a little bit interesting, right? And I'm going to share the third sparkotype, and then I'm going to share how that actually relates to me. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were gonna be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing.

Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're gonna die. Don't shoot if 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 or later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. So the third sparkotype is the scientist. The scientist. The work of the scientist is all about solving problems, right? It's not so much about a body of knowledge. It is a specific question or problem or puzzle. And you don't stop until you figure it out. This could be a really simple one. You

could be obsessed with crossword puzzles, or it could be a big, complex one that takes years or decades to figure out. Maybe you're a scientist in the world of medicine, and you've latched onto trying to figure out a better treatment for a particular disease or illness or cancer or something. And the thing for you is that you may know well that the outcome of your energies as a scientist may well have profound impact on other people. And you love that. That is amazing. That is fantastic, right? Because that is validation that what you're doing is truly meaningful, not just to you, but to broader society. And that will help potentially millions of people. But at the same time, if you're being really, really, really honest, the thing that wakes you up in the morning, the real deeper reason that you're doing it is because for some reason you have gravitated to this particular

problem or question or puzzle and all you want to do is solve it, is figure it out. The more complex, very often, the better. You are not scared by hard questions. You are inspired to just embrace them and not give up until you figured it out. So the scientist is all about doing that. Now here's where I want to sort of reflect back. I shared with you that I'm a maker. A maker is my primary sparkotype. Scientist is my personal shadow sparkotype, right? So we express that by saying I am a maker scientist. Now here's how I know this shows up in my life, because I've seen this so many times, where I'm in the process of making something complex, and it's taking time, and I'm sitting there, and then somehow I hit a moment in time where I hit a roadblock, an obstacle, and there is some puzzle or problem or something that has to be figured out, right?

And it may be part of a much bigger, more complex thing. But right now I just need to figure out one particular thing. So I flip into my scientist mode. I'm like, okay, what do I need to do to solve this particular problem? And then as soon as I solve that problem, as soon as I figured out an answer,

as soon as the puzzle master side of me has figured out what it needs, not to completely solve this thing or go deeper into it or take it to the fullest, most fleshed out level. But as soon as I have just enough to allow me to drop back into my maker mode, my process of creation mode, I abandon the scientist side of me and I just go back into the generative I make stuff side, right? So the scientist in me is in service of doing the work of the maker in me better. And that's the way that it works with me, right? So that is the scientist. So right now we've covered the maven, the maker, and the scientist. Next up, we have someone called the essentialist. So the fourth sparkotype is the essentialist. So the essentialist's work is to create order from chaos, to create order from chaos. So you are the person who looks at things

that are disorganized or messy or out of order. And your instinct is to take those and to step up and to go to work, to create order, to create process, to create systems, to create organization from mayhem. Now, what's interesting is the essentialist very often expresses itself in a public way in the earliest parts of life. Somebody on our team actually is an essentialist and also just happens to have lined up her stuffed animals in height and color

order from the time she was a little kid. And that is not unusual for an essentialist. An essentialist very often just looks at the world as an opportunity to create order from chaos. Now, here's what's kind of fascinating about essentialists and people who are not essentialists. And that is most people who are not essentialists cannot imagine that essentialists exist because most people who are not essentialists very often experience this same work as being the absolute worst thing that they could ever do, right? So if you put somebody in front of, you know, like a mass amount of data who's not essentialist and says, create a really beautiful set of spreadsheets or performas, like organize this in the most linear, logical, essential way,

hives, fear, sweats. Or if you did that with a physical room or a place where there's just mass disorder. And most people who are not essentialists cannot even imagine that there are people who wake up in the morning looking at something like this and just want to get at it. They love doing it. The coolest thing in the world is the process of creating order from chaos. And essentialists very often just think that everybody else should be driven by this very same thing and struggle. And this is one of the challenges of essentialists often and struggle to work with people who do not exalt order on the same level that they do.

And that can become a bit of a point of conflict, especially when you're working with other people. So the essentialist, the work of the essentialist is to create order from chaos. Sparketype number five, the performer. So the performer, you kind of think, well, okay, so the performer is a person who's on stage, the person who is in the performing arts. And in fact, the work of the performer is to take a moment and experience a body of knowledge,

wisdom, whatever it may be, and to illuminate it, to make it a demonstrative experience so that there is a level of animation and energy and understanding around it so that other people can immediately get it and interact with it more readily. It is to evoke understanding and emotion and animate a particular thing, experience,

a bit of information, wisdom, moment, whatever it may be. Now, very often this does show up, in fact, by people entering the performing arts. But the interesting thing is it actually doesn't have to. And what we've seen is that the performer is very likely of all 10 sparketypes, it is the most suppressed one. Why would that be? Or repressed is probably a more accurate description. Why would that be? Well, very often because the work of the performer

puts them in front of other people in a way that sometimes culturally people see as, oh, it's the front and center person. It's the ego driven one. And culturally you're told at a young age, you shouldn't be that person. Some entire cultures and societies have phrases for this. Like in Australia, it's tall poppy syndrome. Don't be a tall poppy. But also in families, because there is an association between the work of the performer and the performing arts.

And then there is an association with most parents between the performing arts and not being able to earn a sustainable living, that there's fear that's often passed down from parents to their kids when they see a tendency towards the work of the performer expressing itself. They believe the only viable outlet for that is the performing arts. They freak out that their kid, if they go down that route, is not going to be able to sustain themselves. And they try and stifle it and say,

do something else, do it on the side. Now, you may be completely fine doing the performing art side on the side. But the thing is, this is incredibly limiting because the work of the performer is incredibly valuable in so many other domains outside of the performing arts, outside of theater and stage and movies and film. It is so powerful in the world of business, in the context of sales, right? In the context of business development, in the context of being in a room anytime an idea needs to be animated, illustrated, given energy so that it really lands with other people.

This can be in the form of leadership. It shows up and you can actually be a performer in so many different domains outside of the classical performing arts. And it is so incredibly valued. And what I will tell you is from the big data set that we have now, what we've seen is that the performer is one of the smallest representations population-wide of all 10 Sparketypes. So if you have this wiring, this internal source code, you're also incredibly unique. And if you step up and figure out how to integrate it into the work that you're doing, it can really be a driver of power and impact and growth and also you coming more fully alive. But that sometimes means getting over the cultural or familial limitations or constraints that have been sort of ingrained in you along the way. That moves us to the sixth sparkotype, the warrior.

The work of the warrior is to lead, to organize and to lead. Now the warrior, now a lot of people say, well, but I've always heard that everybody can become a leader. You know, there aren't natural born leaders and everybody can gain the skills to become a leader. And aren't natural born leaders and everybody can gain the skills to become a leader. And this is a really good sparkotype to bring that argument up because

it comes up a lot in the world of business too. And here's what I want to say about that. Yes, a hundred percent. Everybody can learn the skills and the abilities to become a much better warrior or leader. But this is not about skills and abilities. Everybody can learn the skills or abilities to become better at all 10 sparkotypes. What we're talking about here is an internal sort of wiring, regardless of where you believe it came from, where for some reason we are

intrinsically drawn to a very particular type of work, to effort that fills us with this feeling of being sparked, of coming alive. That's what we're talking about. So a warrior isn't about gaining the skills to be good at it. It's about something internal that makes you want to do it and yearn to do it from the earliest days. And this also very often shows up in a public way early in life. Maybe you were the kid who would go outside of your door and you're like, okay, everybody, come on. This is what we're up to today. We're going on an adventure where you did it in your class or you brought together a group of people. This is about somebody who just somehow loves the process of bringing people together. And very often, the warrior as the word, you are one of those people. You're not just leading from

the outside, but usually you're one of the group. But you take a role which says, let's go on this journey together. We're starting here and we're going to end there. And one of the other sort of big misnomers about the warrior is that you have to do it in a very sort of masculine energy identified way. Because a lot of times the legends that we read about or that we hear about have very masculine identified traits that they embody. And what I'll tell you is this is completely and utterly wrong. Many of the greatest warriors, the people who've led and organized of our times,

do it in ways that are entirely not identified with any sort of gendered type of traits. And the reality is these days in the world, gender identified traits, that whole notion is kind of being obliterated anyway. But things like, regardless of whether they're gender identified or not, but when you think about a warrior or leader being somebody who is aggressive and hard-nosed and out front and physically pushing hard and loud, that can be the way that you do the work of the warrior, but it doesn't have to be. You can be quiet, you can be gentle, you can be nuanced, you can be loving, you can be understanding,

a profound listener, right? You can do it in a way which embodies whatever energy comes most naturally to you and be incredibly effective and powerful in doing the work of this particular sparketype. So that brings us to number seven, the sage. The work of the sage is to teach, to share wisdom, to transfer knowledge, right? So we see the sage not infrequently bundled with the maven as a sparkotype profile. I have seen many times somebody who is a maven primary and a sage shadow, right? So a maven primary and a sage shadow, right? So a maven sage. And that actually tends to work really, really well because the maven devours knowledge. And that is the side, which

is really the consuming side. And then the sage turns around and taps that fierce depth of knowledge and teaches it to other people. And that sage part, that's where I was referencing earlier, the shadow in this particular combination very often is the one where if you want to tap your profile to earn a living, that's the side that it very often comes from, right? So the sage actually goes out and the thing that makes you come alive is to be in front of people.

Very often it's more than one person, right? A group of people and to share what you know in a way that allows you to actually see the transfer of knowledge and the light bulbs go on in the heads and the minds of the people that you are sharing wisdom with. The sage is all about teaching and you're most fulfilled when you actually see that what you have shared has been integrated, understood, and that that has been a really successful process. So the sage can be an incredibly valuable person in nearly any part of work and life. One of the challenges of the stage, by the way, is when you're trying to actually engage in this process

within a culture or paradigm or system where there are huge constraints in what you're allowed to do, in the level of resources. And we see this very often in school systems where people enter because they have, from the time they were young, been in love with the process of teaching, with the actual, you know, the tasks and the tools

and the topics. They just love it. And they've been doing it in ways non-professionally for their entire lives because they wake up in the morning and just, this is the thing that makes them come alive. And then they enter a paradigm or system, like very often a public school system, which we've all seen as very often incredibly under-resourced and then constrained by policy that may war very strongly with the way that a sage actually wants to truly see wisdom be transferred and embodied and learned. And that can become a huge point of frustration. That's why we see a lot of people with this particular sparkotype functioning within bigger systems like this, but then

eventually starting to do it differently or sometimes work on the side or go into a different context. You can be a sage in a completely different setting and do the thing that you want to do with far fewer constraints. And we're seeing a fair amount of that these days as people move into different ways to actually embrace their sageness. Okay. So our eighth sparkotype is the advisor, the advisor. So the work of the advisor is to mentor or coach. And you're really nourished, not so much by telling somebody what to do or what you know or transferring wisdom, not by organizing groups of people

to go from one place to another, but by working, by coaching, mentoring, advising in a very, very often hands-on intimate way, one person or small group of people along the quest to go through a process, right? Whether that's a process of discovery, a process of accomplishment, whether they're building a company, moving through school, trying to get better at work, whatever it may be, the advisor really comes alive. Their work is mentoring, coaching, advising in a hands-on intimate way where you start with somebody or a small group and you work with them alongside them,

advising them, giving them advice, giving them insight from the outside, looking in on how to more effectively move through this process. And the relationship that you develop with people over time with this process is a big part of the reward. So your reward tends to be twofold. One is the depth and quality and the nature of the relationship that you have. And also seeing this person or group of people move from a starting place to a point of completion where they succeed at the process,

at the quest that you've been advising them along. Different, it's related. All of these things are related, of course. Different from a warrior, because very often the thing that makes you come alive about this is you're actually not one of these people. You're not within the group, you're outside of the group.

And it's not about us doing this thing together. It's about you mentoring and coaching and advising from the outside and developing that relationship. While you're also very likely doing this with a number of others along different processes. It is about applying a depth of wisdom and a process of advising growth or movement or progress that really makes you come alive, come most fully

alive. And of course, the advisor often lands professionally in jobs where they're literally called an advisor or a coach or a mentor or any different sort of like number of names for this. But this is the nature of the work, the work that absolutely makes you come alive. Sometimes advisors and sages kind of stumble upon, they get close, an advisor may end up teaching, and then they realize that it's not so much the knowledge transfer that makes them come alive. It is the hands-on intimate process of mentoring through a process of change or growth that makes them come alive in a much more intimate way. And sages sometimes will discover the same thing. So we've seen a lot of stories of people discovering

that they were doing one and it wasn't quite feeling right. And once they realized, they took the SPARCA type assessment and realized, oh, actually, my primary is this other one. It explained everything to them. And when they slightly shifted

what they were doing, it made a huge difference in the way they experienced their work. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. the experience that work. 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,

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The ninth sparkotype is the advocate. Kind of sounds like, or it is what it sounds like, the work of the advocate is to give voice to the voiceless. Now, here's the interesting thing about the advocate. Most people think about this person as somebody who advocates on behalf of another individual or group. And what we've seen is that it's actually much broader than that. So yes, you can be the activist. You can be the person who says, I see a person or a group of people or a community who are disenfranchised. They're not represented. They don't have a voice. It's not fair. I feel that as an injustice and I am here to give voice to the voiceless.

As a general rule, the advocate walks around and they're constantly seeing opportunities. They're seeing opportunities to give voice to the voiceless. This is the work of the advocate. But here's the slightly more nuanced answer to this. And that is that it doesn't have to be people that you're giving voice to. You can be somebody who champions other beings, animals, right? Animal rights activists. You can be somebody who is giving voice to trees. You can be someone who's giving voice to the planet. And we're seeing this in a really big way unfold, right? With a lot of people these days. You can be somebody who gives voice

in so many different ways. And here's an even more nuanced take on this. You can be the one who gives voice to a voiceless idea. So there are concepts that you believe are just profoundly important and nobody is recognizing them as important or championing them. And you become the one to advocate for an idea or a solution, right? So the advocate is the one who gives voice to the voiceless. And that is sometimes people,

it's sometimes beings, it's sometimes much broader things and concepts. And that all falls under the work where you feel like you are here to give representation, to give voice. And very often this type of work shows up very early in a public way too, because the nature of it is actually to make known what is not known or seen or heard. And that brings us to the 10th sparkotype. That is the nurturer, the nurturer. So the work of the nurturer is to give care. And this is maybe the most service-oriented one and the most intimate sparkotype. You see suffering. Not unusual for you to feel people's suffering in a very personal way. And it becomes so, so real for you that you are compelled to relieve it, to give care to others. And you probably felt this from the time that you were young. In fact, many people who identify as empaths

probably also identify or would say, yes, I feel most alive when I'm given the opportunity to step into a place where somebody is in need of care, of love, of tenderness, of whatever it may be to make them feel better, to relieve suffering. And I have the opportunity to then give it. Now, of course, one of the big challenges for somebody who is the nurturer

is that you may end up being so called to give care to others that you take improper care of yourself and you find yourself empty. You find yourself gutted because you have improper care of yourself and you find yourself empty. You find yourself gutted because you have given all of yourself and not done the work and taken the time to refuel your own tanks. And in fact, you may even see that as a selfish pursuit because there are so many others who are in need of being taken care of. And the work of the nurturer very often is to find ways to actually make themselves okay so that their wells don't run dry. So that is our 10 sparkotypes, maven,

maker, scientist, essentialist, performer, warrior, sage advisor, advocate, and nurturer. And again, just hearing these very basic descriptions, you may well have a feeling for which one you are, but if you haven't taken the online sparkotype assessment yet, then be sure to go and do that. It's free. You'll get a sort of a basic overview. That's even a little bit more detailed in some ways than what I shared with you, although I've shared with you some more nuanced things here as well from what we've seen over time. And you'll also learn your primary and your shadow sparkotype. And as I said, we're all a blend of multiple sparkotypes, but in our experience, and the data is really confirming this,

one or two really tend to be your dominant drivers. And the work you feel most called to that makes you come most fully alive, that's your primary spark type. And the work that you enjoy, and you're probably skilled at, but in reality, for most people at least, helps you do the work of your primary better.

Well, that is what we call your shadow sparkotype. Now, where do we go from here? What do we do with all of this? Well, for a lot of you, once you know yours, you kind of instantly start to realize where things have gone right, where things have gone wrong, why you have been completely fulfilled and alive and things have just worked so much better and you have progressed and felt amazing at doing certain things and why you've been kind of gutted and emptied by different things. Simply knowing your sparkotype and your profile can make a huge difference in both analyzing sort of like the past decisions and actions that you've taken and also understanding what to say yes or no to moving forward. We're going to talk just a touch more

about that. I want to talk about two other things and then we'll dive into a quick invitation of something to do. So the first thing is something I call the gratification spectrum. Now I mentioned that I shared all 10 sparkotypes in a particular order. And I did that because all 10 are on a spectrum. And that is based on whether they're gratified, meaning fulfilled, satisfied. You feel like you are getting what you need to get your fully expressed, your inflow. And they're based on whether that happens mostly internally or externally, meaning like whether it happens simply because of work that where the output is internally a feeling that you get, or in some way becomes external and affects other people. So the Maven was the one I started with. And the reason is because that is the most internally

satisfied or gratified of all the sparkotypes, right? So Maven could literally cloister themselves in a library for weeks, days, years, and just go deep, deep, deep into a topic or a world of fascination and devour everything that they can devour. And simply the process of becoming more knowledgeable, more completely immersed in all of the wisdom about a particular thing, that, which is almost entirely an internal experience, that's all you need. You're completely satisfied. If you could literally figure out a way to do that and just that,

you would do it, right? On the other end of the spectrum is the nurturer. The nurturer is almost entirely externally gratified. So the thing that makes you utterly fulfilled and satisfied and alive is seeing the effect that your work is having on other people. Seeing the effect that your work is having on other people, feeling the effect that your work is having on other people, knowing that it is in fact making a difference in the lives of other people. And this is important to know that we sort of have this spectrum because we have been told by a lot of people and sages and there's sort of like this popular wisdom that says, in order to do the thing you're here to do, in order to feel a valid purpose in life and come alive, your work must be in service of something bigger than

yourself. The most important thing that you can do is make your life about serving others. And if it doesn't, well, then you're judged as being selfish or self-serving or never being able to actually fully tap a sense of purpose or aliveness, and your work is just assumed not to be up to where it could be, or it quote, should be, to stand in a place of true meaning and purpose and expression. And the thing is, for naturally externally gratified sparketypes,

like the nurture or the sage, where it's all about teaching other people, the advisor, where a part of what you're doing is bestowing benefit on other people. Well, yeah, that's true, right? Because that work automatically, it affects other people and you do get that sense of purpose by seeing how it affects other people. But newsflash on the other end of the spectrum, on the end where you just do the work and simply doing the work, whether it ever affects another person or not, is fiercely satisfying, then you get judged.

You get judged because you're not actually leading with wanting to make a difference in another person's lives. And yes, it is amazing to be able to do something that makes a difference in other people's lives, that affects others, to be in service of something bigger than yourself. And at the same time, very often the work of the sparkotypes that are on that

internally gratified side of the spectrum does affect other people. Second behind the maven was the maker. And very often the maker makes stuff because they just love the process of creation. And that is the primary thing that makes you come alive. And at the same time, the things they make often go out into the world and affect other people.

And that is awesome. But it's also, if you're really being honest, not the primary reason you do it. And that's okay. But if you admit that, you're shunned. And that's not okay. So understanding this and understanding your wiring, especially if you're on that internally satisfied side of the spectrum, gives you a bit of forgiveness to say, you know what? It's okay. I can do my work and still know that I'm fully expressed and alive

and have a sense of purpose and meaning by simply being me. So the second thing I wanted to speak to is that pretty much every sparkotype can be expressed in pretty much every job or industry once you truly understand what your imprint is. And then you understand how to do your work in a manner that harnesses so much of what lights you up. So here's an example. Let's say you're a doctor. Could all 10 sparkotypes be expressed in the practice of medicine, right? Because most people would probably say, well, if you're a doctor, doesn't that mean you're probably a nurturer, right?

Because you want to get, don't you go into that field because you just want to give care to others, you want to relieve suffering. Like, so shouldn't most doctors be nurturers? And the answer is some, but literally every sparkotype can be fully expressed in the field of medicine.

So how might a maven be expressed in the field of medicine? Well, you could be encyclopedic. You could dive deep into every bit of knowledge around a particular disease or illness or symptomology. You could be the person who becomes the absolute go-to person to figure out when somebody needs to talk to somebody who knows everything, who can bring together knowledge about eight different things to be able to identify where they all cross over. You are the maven. You practice medicine because you love, love, love to go deep into the process of learning.

What about being a maker? A maker can show up in a lot of different ways in the world of medicine, right? You could end up an orthopedic or a plastic surgeon and people will think, well, you're like saving people in so many different ways. At the same time, you could be the one who would like the part of the process that you love more than anything is the fact that you get to be an artist.

You get to be a builder. You're making something. You know, you're changing and making, you're physically making something new. You could be somebody who actually makes all sorts of devices and new procedures, right? And expressing the maker side. What about a scientist, right? So the work of the scientist is solving problems, complex puzzles. Maybe the thing that you love about the practice of medicine is the diagnostic side of things. So that allows you to fiercely express the scientist in you, or maybe you're the essentialist. And what you're

looking for is the most orderly, effective, efficient, fastest way to a particular outcome. And that is the part of figuring that out is what jazzes you about the practice of medicine. Maybe you're a performer. And one of the things that makes you come alive more than anything else is when you're sitting in the room with either other people who are coming up in the practice or patients, and you have the ability to actually transfer what's going on, share wisdom, insight, information in a way that truly animates the particular idea or allows that to be shared, or maybe brings it so to life that a patient actually goes out and changes their behavior and then changes their health outcome. Maybe you're a warrior who brings people together

within a paradigm and leads them because you see that something within the field needs change. Or a sage who spends time rounding with all of your young docs who are learning and growing and your favorite part of the profession is actually teaching them how to become better at what they're doing or an advisor who's working alongside a group of people

within that profession, or maybe it's even a patient or a family to advise them through a process of working towards a better particular outcome, right? Or maybe you're an advocate who looks at so many of the things that need to be changed within medicine and you become a voice for that change. And then of course, a nurturer who simply loves to work with patients in an intimate, hands-on way who are suffering and tap your knowledge to help relieve the suffering.

So this is just one example of how nearly every sparkotype can be expressed in a single job or profession. And you could literally go through almost every other one and figure out, okay, so what is the way that I do the work of my sparkotype in the thing that I'm here to do? I think we've reached a point now where it's time to reclaim work and how we define work. The way most of us work, it leaves us somewhere between flatline, disillusioned, gutted. If you're lucky, maybe you found pieces of joy, but never really understood what's underneath that or how to harness it more consistently to make choices to do more of what makes you come alive. And the sparkotypes, well, they're a really powerful starting point. They

give you the power to do just that. And while some might feel they need to entirely change jobs or companies or industries to make it happen, I'm actually a huge advocate for gentler, less disruptive first steps. And I hope what I just showed you in terms of every sparkotype having the ability to be expressed in nearly any job industry, even organization, it shows you that you can actually do so much by simply making small tweaks to circumstances or even the lens or the mindset that you bring to what you're doing. So sometimes, yeah, you do have to blow things up and get a fresh start, but that level of change causes a lot of pain for most people. And from what I've seen, way too many people do it prematurely without ever realizing they can approach what they're already doing in a way

that may well give them what they need without suffering the stress and the pain of a bigger, more disruptive change. And we all tend to really underestimate how much that is going to be. So if you're feeling the compulsion to say, well, now I know, now I really understand what makes me come alive. I need to just go out and kind of, and it's not this, it's not what I'm doing. I need to just go out and kind of, and it's not this, it's not what I'm doing. Before you go and try and blow things up, realize that you may well actually be able

to keep what you're doing, but change the way you're doing it. Start by looking at the thing that is front and center in your world of work today. Maybe it's your job, the thing you get paid to do, or maybe it's the thing you've committed to doing, but it's actually not your living, like being a parent or a caretaker.

Either way, look at the tasks, the topics, and the tools that it entails and ask yourself, is there a way to do this differently that will allow me to bring more of the work of my sparkotype into what I'm doing? Can I do less of the tasks that don't align and more of the ones that do? And if there are things that would help me do more of the work of my sparkotype, but maybe they don't fall squarely within my job description, well, what might happen if I actually endeavored to do more of those things anyway,

even if it's not the thing that is squarely within what I'm getting paid to do? If I expanded or shifted what I do, not so much because I want to get paid to do those things or earn more money, but because doing them will help flip the switch that will allow me to come back to life without blowing everything up or going and making a big disruptive change and having to start over again. So start thinking about that on the side of the tasks, the things that you actually do. Break it down on a day-to-day basis. Are there little things, right? When I look at the job description, all the things that includes, are there things that I could do? Same question about tools. Are there tools of the trade I can spend more time working with that would allow me to come more fully alive? And topics,

are there topics or areas or fascinations I can deepen into that might let me step more fully into the work of my sparkotype. Many people find that this more sort of granular step-by-step approach, it allows you to reimagine, to redefine, and reclaim a sense of agency and power and expression and meaning and potential that you never even knew was hiding in plain view the whole time. Yes, it takes initiative. And sometimes it means actually doing more than you signed up to do in the beginning in the name of coming more fully alive on a day-to-day basis. And that is just the thing that we do, right? Even in jobs where you cannot change the circumstances and there seems no hope of feeling more alive, simply knowing your sparkotype and

shifting your lens or intention can make a big difference in how you experience the same tasks that you're doing. There was actually a fascinating study that was done on the support staff in hospitals that looked at this very question because some people will say, and rightfully so, look, I have a particular job and a particular lifestyle and particular limitations. I can't really change what I'm doing.

So everything that you're saying sounds amazing, but it's just not accessible. It's not available to me. And the study was fascinating because it kind of showed that that for most people, if you really, really, really look at it differently, even if you can't change your circumstance, changing your lens can allow you to experience and doing things in a slightly nuanced, different way. Can you allow you to feel like you're doing the work of your spark type much more fully? So this one particular study looked at the janitorial staff in hospitals, which very often is not looked at as the type of job where you feel alive and expressed, right? But they

noticed that a certain group of people did have this feeling. Like they absolutely loved what they were doing. They were fully alive and engaged in their work and they couldn't imagine doing something else. What they realized was those people saw their work as being different, right? They actually experienced themselves not just as being the person who cleans up rooms or halls or bathrooms, but being a part of a care team

that makes the lives of the families and the patients and those around them in some way better. So if you're a nurturer and you find yourself in that job, right? And you look at it as my job is to clean. This is awful because completely misaligned with my sparkotype. Well, then you're going to experience it one way. But if you take a mental reframe and say, okay, so what if my job was actually, and I don't even have to tell anyone this, but I'm going to look at my job as being a part of the care team that makes things better, that gives care, that helps to relieve suffering. What they found was that very often also, those people would make very small, almost unconscious changes in the way they were doing it.

So they weren't going about sort of like the basic task of their jobs, but they'd also smile and have short conversations with the people, allowing them to feel better and less alone. And we've seen this also in a number of different settings. The same job gives you a strong sense of purpose and joy and excitement simply because you realize what makes you come alive and you go about doing it differently. And when you start to explore what this might look like in your own work, in your own life, it really becomes profoundly freeing and empowering because it tells you that you may have the ability to come alive without making a lot of big changes in a way that you never even imagined you did, even if you feel really limited and constrained at any

given time. Is it going to give you 100% of what you need? Maybe, maybe not. Might you reach a point where you've sort of tweaked and changed and expanded and crafted what you're doing a little bit differently, and it's still not getting you to a place where you're pulling yourself out of that sort of flatlined place, well then, yeah, you may end up looking and saying,

I need to do something bigger and more disruptive. But what I always suggest is try and do the more granular adjustments first, right? Because if you can get what you need without blowing everything up, life will be exponentially easier for you. So I hope you found this all useful. What I've shared here is kind of the tip of the sparkotype iceberg, even though it sounds like it's, we've done a bit of a deep dive here. And we have been having so much fun gathering so many more

insights as we work with the sparkotypes and and deepen into them and and sort of devouring and finding so many more bits of wisdom um and developing more expanded tools and programming around them some of which we've been sharing both with individuals and larger organizations too the impact is really it's been beautiful beautiful to see. For me as a maker scientist, I get to just constantly be in a mode of creation and problem solving. And the fact that the output of my creation and problem solving efforts, along with a team of people who are in there, just creating incredible stuff that's going out into the world and making meaning and inspiring conversation and change and impact. It's pretty awesome to see. And my intention here has really been to share what I can, enough to get you started, to help you first discover your primary and shadow sparkotypes, then to learn a bit more and to start to take steps, little steps to reclaim your work and transform it from a source that often empties

into something that fuels, that makes you come alive without overwhelming you with a lot of stuff to do. Start with simple explorations, the ones I just offered above. First, start with identifying, know your sparkotype. Think about how that is reflected in the choices and the actions you've taken in the past and how it might inform what you say yes or no to moving forward. And if for some reason you still haven't completed the

assessment, by the way, just go do it. You can find it at sparkotype.com or we'll drop a link in the show notes. You can just click the link in the show notes as well and start to take those baby steps to explore how might I be able to remap, to reimagine, to redefine what I'm doing in tiny little ways that will allow me to do a little bit more of the work of my sparkotype in my day-to-day work, even if that's not the way that the original thing that I signed up to do was described. What we've seen is that when people start to do that, not only do they come more alive, but people around them take note.

And when people around them take note, that actually starts to show up in changes in relationships and possibility and opportunity, which is amazing to see. So no matter what, remember, we are not condemned to work. Sure, there may be elements of work that are not beautiful or deeply aligned expressions of our essence, but more than you ever thought possible. And what seems like even the more basic core service oriented

or what is perceived as mundane jobs, when we understand what sparks us, we can start looking for, finding, and creating ways to bring more of that, more of us, more of our essence, more of who we are and what needs to get out into our work and along the way reclaim that joyful state of feeling alive, feeling sparked. So before I sign off and kind of deliver you back into our

regular twice a week conversations, if you haven't yet listened to the first two deep dives from the last two weeks, where I go deep into action taking and what I call success scaffolding, which is a really powerful framework to support you actually making big things happen, and also how to live a good life, a broad framework I call the good life buckets, then be sure to download those episodes and give them a listen as soon as you can. Because together with this particular episode, it's kind of a three-pack that can really make a difference in the year that's about to unfold and how you step into a place of agency

and intentionality and action-taking and feel empowered to not just have the year happen to you, but to make the year happen the way you need it to be and the way you want it to unfold. So excited to be able to share this time with you and excited also to hear how all of these different things have, get brought to life in the way that you're planning

and then acting upon this year to come. And really excited also to deliver you back into all of our awesome conversations. We have such an incredible lineup that I cannot wait to share with you. Thank you so much for all the time. And I am really excited to continue on with you as we head into 2020. And so incredibly grateful for our new listeners. So grateful and welcome into our community. And for our longtime listeners, just also so incredibly grateful and appreciative

for you being part of our listening community. Thanks so much. I'm Jonathan Fields, signing off for Good Life Project. Thank you so much for listening. And thanks also to our fantastic sponsors who help make this show possible. You can check them out in the links we have included in today's show notes. And while you're at it, if you've ever asked yourself,

what should I do with my life? We have created a really cool online assessment that will help you discover the source code for the work that you're here to do. You can find it at sparkotype.com. That's S-P-A-R-K-E-T-Y-P-E.com. Or just click the link in the show notes. And of course, if you haven't already done so, be sure to click on the subscribe button in your listening app so you never miss an episode. And then share, share the love. If there's something that you've heard in this episode that you would love to turn into a conversation, share it with people and have

that conversation. Because when ideas become conversations that lead to action, that's when real change takes hold. See you next time. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. We'll be right back. 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 are later required.

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