Good Life Project - The Experimental Life

Episode Date: March 9, 2017

There’s this mythology. Go all in. Don’t dabble. Don’t play. Don’t make it a hobby, make it your “one thing.” From the very beginning. Even if you have no idea if you’ll like it, how it���ll make you feel and whether it can ever really be what you’ve told yourself and the world you’re going […]The post The Experimental Life appeared first on Good LifeProject. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

So one of the things that we've learned over the years is that a pretty sizable percentage of our listenership, our community, are what we call conscious business founders, people who are creating something, whether it's a social venture, nonprofit or for profit, but with a real mission built around it, the desire to serve something or someone bigger. One of the other things that I've learned along the way, being an entrepreneur myself and also working with and supporting hundreds of others over a period of years,

is that it can be a profoundly lonely pursuit. It's the type of thing where even if you have a team and a substantial company, very often you need somebody else to turn to, people who are sort of parallel playing along the way with you. So we've created something for you. It's called the 108. And it's a conscious business collective of similar founders capped at no more than 108 people, where we're all in. It's a safe, protected space, a place where you can get true, confidential, uplifting advice, wisdom, input, and no longer travel this road alone.

So if that sounds interesting to you, check out the details at goodlifeproject.com slash the 108. That's T-H-E and then the number 108. You can also just click the link in the show notes. And just a super quick heads up that we're down to about the final 25 spots. So if you've been thinking about this and listening for a while, probably a good idea not to wait a whole lot longer. On to our show. Hey there, it's Jonathan with this week's short and sweet Good Life Project riff. I know, sometimes, some of the recent ones, actually, I was just thinking have gotten a little bit longer. So the idea was to see if we can keep these a little bit shorter and sweeter

so you can kind of drop in, listen, get a nugget of something that makes you think a little bit, and then move on, go about your day, and have fun. We may be experimenting with our format, and then move on, go about your day and have fun. We may be experimenting with our format like we usually do, generally around once a year or so. We kind of revisit what's going on and play a little bit. So keep your ears open for some potential interesting shifts in the future. So today's riff is something I was thinking about recently, and that's what I call the experimental life.

And a couple years back, I guess it was a summer, maybe two years ago, I was out in Portland, Oregon, which is an awesome place if you haven't been there, by the way. I love Portland, especially in the summer. It's a different place in different times of the year, but it's stunning. And I was up on a little cafe about a block off, I think it was Northwest 23rd Street. And we were sitting on an outside patio having some super yummy lunch. And a friend of mine swung by and he grabbed a seat. We were just kind of sitting, talking for a little while and asked him what was up in his life. And this is somebody who, you know, from the outside looking in, you say, wow, it was really successful.

And there was something underneath what he was saying that wasn't sitting quite right. So, you know, I probed a little bit more, and it was kind of starting to reveal that he felt like he just kept failing at stuff, that he had tried and built a number of things and they had done, you know, quote, okay, but nowhere near the level of the potential he thought they had. And along the way, he also started to feel like it just, it wasn't filling him up. It wasn't

nourishing him in a meaningful way beyond, um, you know, making a buck here and there. And he was bumming a little bit because he viewed these as failures and wondered when he was going to be, quote, there, when he was actually going to succeed and looking for that big moment. And I kind of listened quietly, and I realized that I'd had this conversation many times with many folks over the years, and truth told, many times with myself, there's been an internal dialogue that ran pretty similarly in my head.

Whether I was an employee somewhere, whether I was working on my own venture. And it's not just about the way I earn my living. It's about a lot of things that are meaningful in my life. And so I offered a bit of a reframe to him, which I found helpful earn my living. It's about a lot of things that are meaningful in my life. So I offered a bit of a reframe to him, which I found helpful in my life, and maybe you'll find helpful in your life. We tend to look at something and say, okay, here's what I'm about to do. I'm starting this new job. I'm starting a new company. I'm starting a new nonprofit. I'm starting a new hobby. And I'm going all in. And I'm going to build this. I'm going to be ultra successful at it. I've got my three-year vision, and this is exactly what I'm going to do. We're told to, hey, look a year out, look three years out, look five years out, and create a very clear picture of exactly what it is. We want to create, how are we going to feel when we get there?

And we do that. And then we start to go down the road a little bit, and we start to realize, hmm, this isn't working the way I thought it was. And we get a couple months in, or we get a year in, or we get that three years in, and we realize that we don't feel the way we hoped we'd feel, even if the outside picture looks exactly as we painted it early on, or we don't feel the way we hope we feel. And the outside picture is not working. We're not enjoying the work. We're not enjoying the job.

We're not enjoying the business. We're not enjoying the body of work. And it's also, it's not succeeding. We painted this picture of massive success. Our goal was, I'm committing to this. And my metric is that this will succeed by financial, by impact means. And that's the only win. That's how I define winning for me, is that this thing will succeed by sort of the common metrics of money, power, prestige, impact. And if it doesn't do that, then it's time wasted. And it's, you know, I'm a failure,

it's a failure. And here's the reframe that I'd love to offer. And I'd love to offer two things. One is a reframe. And two is a refrain. One is reframe with an M and the second is refrain with an N. So the reframe is when you start something, instead of saying, I'm going to go all in on this new thing and make it succeed, what you're doing there is you're saying the primary metric here is success by money, power, prestige, whatever you define it as. And instead, what if you said to yourself, you know what, I'm early in this. And I'm honestly, I think it sounds really cool. And I hope that it feels the way that I want it to feel inside of me. And it has the possibility of success that I believe that it has, and that I can see and envision that it has. But for now, because there are a lot of leaps of faith that I'm taking and there are a lot of assumptions that I'm making,

what if instead of saying my goal here is ultimate external success, what if you actually reframed and said my goal is data? Like my metric here is learning. And instead of saying this is the thing that I'm going all in on, this is my new career, this is my new company, this is my new venture, whatever it is, say to yourself, this is my current experiment. This is my current project. now in existence and growing for more than five years. The name of the company itself, it telegraphs the fact that from day one, I've entered this and said, you know what, this is my project. It is always going to evolve. And I'm always going to learn. And there are a bunch of guesses I made in the beginning. Much of that has now been replaced by actual data. Some of it has validated what I thought would be awesome, and some of it has not.

And we've had to change many times over the years to sort of allow it to become what it is becoming. So what if you actually created a reframe and said, my goal here is not that this must succeed. My goal here is to treat this as an experiment and as a current project and say, huh, my primary metric is what can I learn from this? And then run it in a way that allows you to test your assumptions as quickly as possible in the name of validating or invalidating them, rather than trying to make your assumptions true because they are necessary if you want to achieve the success you have envisioned in your mind, even if that's not really possible, even if it's not really what's capable, even if it's not really what you want. So the reframe is, instead of I'm going all in on this big thing,

it's, hey, I'm committing to running this first experiment and viewing it as a project. And let's see what the data tells me about whether it's going in the right direction, whether it's as viable as I think it is, and how it makes me feel. And once I get information, then I can run a second experiment and how it makes me feel. And once I get information, then I can run

a second experiment and a third and a fourth. And if I end up approaching, you know, almost everything that way, that's actually okay. Because then every little thing that I do has the capacity to succeed. I can win at everything as long as I'm getting information, as long as I'm learning. That's the reframe with an M like Mary. The refrain with the letter N is the refrain from having to tell yourself that this is the singular thing that I'm going all in on, and it must succeed. The only definition of success is long-term. So reframe and refrain.

Think of things not as this must succeed in the early days when you actually don't have enough data to know if you even want it to succeed or it's capable of succeeding. Think of it as a short-term project. And then do what you can to test your assumptions as quickly as possible. Don't look to prove them right. Simply look to understand whether they are right or wrong. Come to it with a more neutral position. And then you'll find yourself much more open to being adaptive and responsive to the truth as it presents itself to you.

And then making better decisions about what the next experiment it presents itself to you, and then making better decisions about what the next experiment you're going to run is going to be. And when you zoom the metal lens out here, the really awesome thing is, no matter what happens, when you come to it from this lens, everything you do is a success, as long as along the way, you are gathering more data and you're learning. So something to think about in life, in business, even relationships, as you sort of plot your course forward. I hope you found that useful. As always, thank you so much for hanging out with me today. I'm Jonathan Fields, signing off for Good Life Project.

Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. If the stories and ideas in any way moved you, I would so appreciate if you would take just a few extra seconds for two quick things. One, if it's touched you in some way, if there's some idea or moment in the story or in the conversation that you really feel like you would share with somebody else, that it would make a difference in somebody else's life. Take a moment and whatever app you're using, just share this episode with somebody who you think it'll make a difference for. Email it if that's the easiest thing, whatever is easiest for you. And then of course, if you're compelled, subscribe so that you can stay a part of this continuing experience. My greatest hope with this podcast is not just to produce moments and share stories and ideas that impact one person listening, but to let it create a conversation, to let it serve as a catalyst for the elevation of all of us together collectively, because that's how we rise. When

stories and ideas become conversations that lead to action, that's when real change happens. And I would love to invite you to participate on that level. Thank you so much as always for your intention, for your attention, for your heart. And I wish you only the best. I'm Jonathan Fields, signing off for Good Life Project.