Good Life Project - The Creative Cave Myth | Rainy Days and Pain

Episode Date: December 21, 2017

What if you could just spend all your time being creative?Making amazing things, and not worry about building your social media profiles, your relationships, platforms and all the other yadda, yadda, yadda that comes with being not just a creative person, but also an enterprise.Is that even possible any more? And, if so, what would it look like? That's what we're exploring in today's Good Life Project Riff.Good Life Science: In our Good Life Science segment, we're diving into some fascinating new research on an age-old myth, the notion that you can "feel the weather in your bones." More, specifically, does rainy weather make your joints aches or make old injuries more painful? In today's Good Life Science Update, we explore a new study that harnessed big data to arrive at a surprising answer. And, as always, for those who want to go to the source, here's a link to the full study.+--------------------------+Our Podcast Partners: ShipStation: Manage and ship your orders. FREE for 30 days, plus a bonus. Visit ShipStation.com, click on the microphone at the top of the homepage and type in GOODLIFE.Tunein: Catch all-new episodes of some of your favorite podcasts early with TuneIn First Play? Download the free TuneIn app now.Videoblocks:  Go to videoblocks.com/goodlife to get all the stock video, audio, and images you can imagine for just $149. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

As always, excited to be hanging out with you this week as we dive into today's Good Life update. We got two segments coming your way, a riff on something I call the difference between vanishing, creating, and enterprise building. And in our science segment, we're looking at an age-old claim that the weather can be felt in your body, especially in terms of old injuries, aches, and pains. Some interesting research on whether, in fact, that is true or whether it's myth. Stay tuned to the answer for that question. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project. The Apple Watch Series X is here.

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

Charge time and actual results will vary. So in today's Good Life riff, I'm kind of grappling with a question. Something I've been thinking about on and off for a long time. But I think as we head into the end of the year, it's on my mind a little bit more. And that is this. Is it possible to succeed anymore by basically ignoring social media platforms and enterprise building and just creating work on a level you'd never be able to create if you were simultaneously splitting your energy and tension between fiercely creative work and being public and enterprise building. So what would the potential impact be of going so deep into your

own well of ability that the work speaks to others on a profoundly different level. And upon its release, it just generates a ripple of awesomeness that not only overcomes the limitation of having been maybe publicly absent for a chunk of time, but even leapfrogs what would have been possible, releasing a sort of an ongoing stream of pretty decent creative work or ideas or output into the community while simultaneously sort of straddling that gap of being public at the same time. When you look back in history, it used to be the great artists would very often vanish. They would go deep into their cave to create extraordinary work and then emerge to release a show, an album, a canvas, a collection, a body of work, a massive creation that would take years to actually make.

And they needed the privacy and the focus of the cave in order to create on the highest level to really tap their fullest potential. And pretty much the only people they interacted with during this intense window of creation was their close family and their friends, if it made sense, a very small group of creators or co-creators or trusted advisors. And then they'd share what they created and go from the cave to the public eye. And then they would embark on the hustle to get the work quote out there for a limited window. And artists would show their work, authors would publish, performers would take to the stage and trust that the revelation and power of the work would start the conversation, spread the word, and then

people would resonate on a level that would make this a success. With rare exception, that approach has all but gone out the window these days. Instead of the cave, creators tend more often to exist in a state of perpetual split attention and intention and effort. We'd love nothing more very often to just vanish into the work, to go so deep that levels of synergy and synthesis, pattern recognition, revelation, emotion, and devotion, they swirl together to create the genius that we kind of know, we feel deep inside of us is there, yearns to get out, but needs, you know, 186% of everything we have to get there. But we can't, at least we're told that we can't do that anymore. Instead, we've got to spend part of our emotional and cognitive and creative bandwidth

subsisting at a shallower depth in the cave, while the other part goes toward building our enterprise, our quote enterprise, our platform, our relationships, our brand. And we build community on Instagram and Facebook and Snapchat, Twitter, websites, email lists, groups, LinkedIn, wherever else may be beneficial in eventually turning around and then launching our creative work, our output. When we emerge from this semi-cave, which we're no longer allowed to fully dwell in, with something worthy of the world's attention. And as a creator and also a business builder,

I do this very thing very often. I spent a lot of time, a lot of years in this split place. As a teacher, I've taught many people, probably over the years, to explore the same way of splitting time. And it can work beautifully. I've seen this time and time again, but deep down, I sometimes wonder what the effect of living in blended artist enterprise mode is on my own ability to create the quote work at its deepest level. And I wonder if it really has to be that way

to succeed in today's world. I sometimes wonder if all my time spent enterprise building is actually spent not in the quest to amass a certain amount of control over the success of my work, but is really time spent in fear. Fear of what might happen if I went truly into my cave, did the work I felt represented the fullest and truest expression of my potential, shared it with the world, and saw it land not with a splendid pop or explosion, but with a silent soul-crushing thud. Maybe that's just delusion talking. Maybe the truth about the life of the so-called creative who yearns to make a family worthy living these days, it's grounded in the practicality of split attention. It's certainly

the more practical approach, the one that allows you to build a certain amount of sustainable control over your future. And I'm a realist. I'm a family man that matters to me profoundly. I hold dear the value of creating whatever grasping illusion of security and financial ease for my wife and daughter I can create. And yet, at the same time, I hold onto the sacred quest to walk through life fully expressed, knowing that I have emptied the reservoir of my potential. And these two values, man, they are two pieces that sometimes don't fit all that easily into the same puzzle. So much as I devote time and money and attention to building my reach and relationships, platforms and profiles, I sometimes also just vanish away and walk along the Hudson and pull

back and wonder at what cost enterprise. Am I good enough to be that rare outlier, the one who could vanish into the cave for months or maybe even years and create a work of such rare depth that it then tumbles into the world with such a rapacious sweep of ferocity and impact that any success limiting effect caused by my absence from the conversation during its period of creation would be dwarfed by the expansive ripple created by the release of a level of work that in all likelihood would never have been close to possible when creating from a place of more divided effort? Is that even possible in this day and age to be an outlier on that level? I don't know.

You know, but there are examples. One that pops to mind actually is Adele. Adele's last album, it's really Exhibit One. I'm sure there's so many others, but for me, that's the thing that jumps into my mind. She exploded onto the scene selling more than 30 million copies of her prior album, 21. And then she largely vanished from the public eye for nearly four years. And part of that time was to become a mom and live her life. And as she actually shared in a piece in the New York Times a little while back, this is her quote. She said, everyone thinks I

just disappeared and I didn't. I just went back to real life because I had to write an album about real life, because otherwise, how can you be relatable? If I wrote about being famous, that's, and insert expletive here, boring. But the other part of that time away was set aside, not just for audience building, but for craft. It was devoted to allowing whatever additional time she had towards creating at that deeper level and letting it take the time it needed to take. Beyond sporadic social media updates, nearly always by her team rather than by her. She was largely gone from any form of public life, rarely ever interacting with fans or enterprise building. And yes, she had people doing the quote maintenance doses of these things. But even then, it was far less than what the claimed minimum effective dose might be considered these days. And after four years away, it was time

and the first single off that album, Hello. And that was the album 25. It hit in October of 2015. It was a stunning piece of work. And one month after the video went live on YouTube, it ends up racking up 450 million views. The pre-orders for the album have it tracking to break one week sales record set 15 years earlier before digital music destroyed the numbers for album sales. And no doubt Adele is the extreme outlier. She is proof that the notion of the cave, along with enough life to generate the experience needed to live the stories that become the raw data for creation, is possible. But possible is not the same as likely. Adele is also a uniquely gifted human being. It's not just the cave and the stories that fuel it,

that makes her work what it is. It is her. It's her effort, her lens, her soaring, gorgeous, extraordinarily rare voice, her gift. Just because she could, this is what my self-talk and my brain tells me, just because she could doesn't mean I could or you could or for that matter, the fantasy is a legitimate path for anyone.

The rarity of what Adele has done is testament to that. The truth is, living under the semi-charmed delusion that I too can be that outlier. Even if it's someday manifest, that quest can be kind of brutal. It can and often does take its very own very long time and it can lead along the way to a certain amount of deep and sustained suffering and even wounded relationships and taking a big hit health-wise and mental health-wise and kind of very often follows the arc of the classic hero's journey, which by the way, everyone focuses on the hero emerging fantastically with the elixir. And they indicate the fact that the hero had to be absolutely annihilated along the way, often for a long time. We all want to return home the hero with the elixir. But remember, before that moment comes,

deep pain, suffering, struggle, the complete destruction of your current reality and resurrection of a new one is part of that journey. It's what clears the path and plants the seeds for revelation and creation on a new level. And that pain is endured not only by us, but by those who look to us to co-create some semblance of stability and ease in life. By those we love and who love us back. By those we seek to protect, hold safe, and create a sense of joy and grace and ease. And I don't know about you, but that matters to me. Even the illusion of it, it matters to me. So for now, I do the dance, as do most of us. And for the most part, most of the time, I'm pretty good with that,

at peace with a more blended path to meaning and expression, deriving what I need not only from doing the work to create on whatever level I can, but also from the knowledge that I am honoring an equally sacred commitment to do what's necessary to sustain myself and to create some semblance of consistency and to keep those I love okay, including myself. But as I look towards the year to come, I'm also planning some new experiments because I think we need to constantly test these bring to life a new round of ideas and inventions and art that have been incubating in my head now for years. And you guys will start to see that emerge over the course of 2018. And I'm excited to see where I go as I spend more time in the cave and what I'm able to bring to others. Some of you have actually picked up on

the fact that I've been a bit less, quote, functional or interactive across social media for a while now, because I've been really mulling these things over and spending more time in that space of solitude and ideation and the incubatory part of creation. So I can't tell you which approach is right for you, being fiercely social and enterprise-oriented, fiercely engaged in ideation and creation or some blend. But as we move into the year ahead, it feels like a really good time to plant the seed, to invite you to explore,

maybe to invite us all to explore together how much time we want to spend living in these two necessary yet sometimes contrary modes and to understand what's truly at stake as we exist in each one of these states in the fierceness of the creation cave, and then the hyper-exposed ferocity of enterprise building, and to make your choices and run your experiments from a place of awareness and awakeness and intention as you look at what you're hoping to create in the year to come. That's what I'm thinking about. I start to put a bit of a bow on this interesting, challenging year that we call 2017. And I look

forward to the year to come and what I hope to create and how I hope to be in this time ahead. As always, I hope it's useful. And that's my invitation. Join me in this exploration. I can't wait to share some really fascinating research on how weather may or may not affect what you feel in your body. We'll be talking about that in just a moment. The Apple Watch Series X is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping.

And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone Xs are later required. Charge time and actual results will vary.

Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were gonna be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him. We need him.

Y'all need a pilot. Flight risk. And we're back and we're diving into today's Good Life Science update. As always, if it's your first time listening, these are short little updates where I kind of share my science geekery with you. I am a science geek in that I love devouring research, constantly searching ideas, papers, explorations, data, publications that in some way touch on our ability to live better lives and diving into the science.

As always, for those who want to go deeper into the actual study, we will include a link to the research in the show notes. You can click on that link and actually see the hard data. But today we're talking about kind of an interesting thing. So I, as I sit here thinking about this with you, I'm 52 years old, which means that I have been alive long enough to feel some pain, psychological, emotional, but also physical. I have been injured numerous times. I have a twice reconstructed shoulder. I have different things that happen in my body. And one of the things you may have heard from people as you move into life is that when you have some kind of injury, even if it's completely healed,

years old, that when the weather changes, and very often this is the claim that's been made, is that when it gets colder or even more often, you may have heard, when it gets humid, when it rains outside, when it's stormy, that people will feel it as achiness or pain or tenderness, either in their joints or in an old injury. It's kind of fascinating because this is a claim that is made pretty widely. So some researchers got curious about the truth. Can you actually validate this or invalidate it? Does a change in the weather actually change your health, change your pain? So here's what happened. Researchers at Harvard Medical School's Department of Healthcare Policy decided to dive into

this. A lead researcher, Anupam Jena, took a big data approach to trying to actually figure out the answer to this question. And they did it by taking mass, mass data sets. And they looked at millions of insurance claims from healthcare providers. And then they looked at mass data sets that showed them the rainfall totals from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. And they cross-correlated all of these things to try and answer the question, when it rains, is there any valid data that actually supports the fact that humidity or rain creates pain in the body. And here's what they found. They looked at over 11 million visits

to primary care offices, and this was over a four-year window. So this is a massive, massive data set. It's not just a small data set. And what they were looking at was whether patients sought care for either back pain or joint pain around the time when it rained or following periods of time when it was rainy outside. And did the patients go to doctors? Did they seek help for it? fact that overall the percentage of help sought for pain. whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum.

Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were gonna be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. changed almost not at all on rainy days versus dry days. So the research, the big data-based research tells us that there is not a connection between rainy days, humid weather, and pain in the body. Now, lead researcher also said, Jenna said, and I'm quoting now, it's hard to prove a negative, but in this flood of data, if there was a clinically significant

increase in pain, we would have expected to find at least some small but significant sign of the effect. And we didn't. So does that mean there's completely no possible way that this correlation is real? No, it doesn't mean that. But what it does mean is something kind of fascinating. The actual data doesn't show a correlation here. But if this has become such a sort of popular myth, you have to wonder whether there could be a bit of a placebo effect

that says that if other people are telling us that they feel pain when it rains and we have old injuries, then maybe there's an association that we should be feeling and that tells us to feel something. So it gets a little bit muddy when you get to that level. But what is interesting is if you want to have a little bit of a debate with friends about the weather and pain, you can whip out this interesting fact and tell them that a research from Harvard Medical School shows that having studied 11 million primary care office visits and detailed patterns of rainy weather among that group, there is no correlation. Kind of interesting. I think we can consider this

myth largely busted, but maybe with a little bit of nuance around this idea of the placebo effect and the social effect of pain, storytelling and pain. So I hope you find that interesting. As always, a link to the study will appear in our show notes. Thank you so much for hanging out with me on today's Good Life Update. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project. Hey, thanks 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've included in today's show notes. And while you're at it, be sure to click on the subscribe button in your listening app. So you never miss an episode and then share the good life project love with friends.

Because when ideas become conversations that lead to action, that's when real change takes hold. See you next time. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes.

The Apple Watch Series X, available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday, we've been compromised. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman.

I knew you were gonna be fun. 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 him, we need him! Y'all need a pilot? Flight Risk.