Good Life Project - To Succeed at Anything, Do This. (2018)

Episode Date: January 1, 2018

Success is not just about knowing what to do. It's about doing it. Information, plans and goals will not get you where you want to go. Success is about something bigger. To succeed at anything worth doing, you must make key shifts in your environment, mindset and community that "turn on" the actions needed for game-changing results.I call this "Success Scaffolding." It applies to everything, from weight loss to business, and relationships to careers. In today's episode, instead of our traditional guest conversation, I'm sharing what I call the "7P Success Scaffolding™" framework. Every element, every step, nothing held back. Why? Because it is that time of year when millions commit to big, new, deeply-meaningful goals, only to walk away or fail by the time we hit February. Not because we don't want it badly enough. Not because we're not smart enough. But, because we do not have our Success Scaffolding in place. This is my New Year's offering. I shared it for the first time in 2017, and it feels like time for a refresher as we enter 2018. It is about helping you make this year different, bridging the gap between hope and reality.You can find the 1-page worksheet HERE.Mentioned in this Episode:Gretchen Rubin's Quiz: The Four TendenciesMy Good Life Project JournalSnapshot360™ Online QuizJoin our Good Life Project CommunityJonathan's new book, How to Live a Good LifeSign up for our Weekly Insider Updates to get Jonathan's mind map of The Seven P's.We first aired this conversation in January 2017. I'm so excited to share this "Best Of" episode with you now.-------------Check out our offerings & partners: My New Book SparkedMy New Podcast SPARKED: We’re looking for special guest “wisdom-seekers” to share the moment you’re in, then pose questions to Jonathan and the Sparked Braintrust to be answered, “on air.” To submit your “moment & question” for consideration to be on the show go to sparketype.com/submit. Visit Our Sponsor Page For Great Resources & Discount Codes Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to the year 2018. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project. So today's a bit of a special episode. Normally on a Monday, we have a long-form conversation with a guest, and we will be back to that next week. But I wanted to start the year a little bit differently this time. So this is not your normal conversation. This is a time of year where so many people hit pause and reflect on the year that's behind them and then really do some planning. And they say, okay, this is what I want to happen in the year

to come. And they pick goals. Sometimes we call them resolutions. Sometimes we just call them goals. Sad fact is the vast majority of it, no matter what you call it, ends up pretty much out the window within a matter of the first few weeks of the year. And within about a month and a half, almost all goals and resolutions, big and small, have failed in some way or been abandoned. And the thing is, it doesn't have to be that way. In fact, something like 85% of all New Year's resolutions are the same ones that have been made in prior years. So the question is why? Why do we fail at achieving things that we say? We really proclaim after thinking about it that this is really important to me. So what happens there? And a big part of the problem is that information and even a plan, that's actually not enough. That is not

what is going to get you from here to where you want to be. And the bigger the goal, the bigger the achievement, the bigger the quote resolution, if in fact that's what you label it, the more likely it is that you're going to fail if you don't actually add in a number of other things. So to succeed at anything large or small, especially large, you need something that I call success scaffolding. And that is something beyond the information, beyond, you know, sort of knowing what to do and even having a plan about what to do. And I spent a lot of years deconstructing this. And I've started to share the details of this thing I call success scaffolding with a couple different people. And it's been kind of mind-boggling to see the lights go on.

And I figured, you know what, this would actually be, this would be maybe a great way to start the year with our Good Life Project community is to take this Monday episode and deconstruct it for you. So I am going to lay out the entirety, the end-to-end process of success scaffolding for you. And it's something that I call the seven Ps, as in the letter P. And that's what we're all going to be up to today. So ready yourself. You may want to take a pen as well and be ready to take notes because it's going to be granular. It's going to be massively actionable. And if you actually build this scaffolding into the way you live your life, into the way that you actually strive to achieve things, you may find some pretty major changes in your success rates. So there's, by the way, there's nothing to sell. There's no program that

there's no sort of productivity or goal setting program attached to this. This is just a complete give and I'd love to. I want this year to be a in new listeners in the last few weeks. So welcome, welcome, welcome. We're so excited to start the year with you. And as I mentioned, normally on a Monday, we have long form conversations and we will be back to that next week. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. January 24th. Tell me how to fly this 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-nest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X, available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone Xs are later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. Okay, on to our show, Success Scaffolding. To succeed at anything, it's not just about information, as I mentioned. It's about action. I love this quote from Derek Sivers. In fact, I love it so much that it's in my latest book, How to Live a Good Life. And I'm not going to get it exactly right because I actually don't have it in front of me right now.

But essentially, he says that if information was the answer, we would all be millionaires and have six-pack abs. And, you know, the implication is there's something much more going on. There is a vast sea of information on how to do almost anything you could ever imagine you'd want to do in the world. All you have to do is jump online and click onto the Googles or whatever other search engine you want to use, and you will find pretty much all of the information you want. In fact, if it's, you know, everything from starting a business to a relationship to weight loss, to strength training, to pretty much anything that you want to do, you will find an incredible amount of volume of information almost anywhere. So with tremendous access to information, why do we still fail so often? Why are we so kind of miser that over time generates the success that we all strive for. Problem is not a whole lot of people teach this. There's a lot of pop psychology around it,

a lot of mythology around it, and sometimes a lot of metaphysics and that may benefit some and sometimes it doesn't. So what I wanted to do is kind of take a little bit more of a really fundamental nuts and bolts approach to building this success scaffolding so that as you move into the year, your likelihood of actually achieving whatever it is that you strive to achieve this year goes up pretty dramatically. And my version, you know, the success scaffolding that I have seen and created as I've worked with many people in many different domains over the years. It's made up of these things I call the seven P's. And I'm going to walk you

through each one of them, one at a time, deconstruct them, and show you how to actually set them up in your own life. I have developed this approach over a period of a few decades now, both in trying to build my own life, my own lifestyle, my own companies, and working with many, many, many, many students, clients in so many different domains from everything from fitness to lifestyle change, to yoga, to meditation, to large corporate endeavors, to entrepreneurs and founders. So the nice thing about this is it is what I would call domain agnostic. This scaffolding, the seven Ps is not just about weight loss, it's not just about careers, not just about relationships, it applies to pretty much anything you would ever want to do. So it's a really powerful framework to be able to bring to, well, anything you want to do.

So let's dive in. The first P in our 7P success scaffolding is what I call the pledge. Pledge. Now, what is that about? So there's a really interesting psychological phenomenon. And I first learned about it in what's commonly known as the Bible of Persuasion. So there's a book called Influence, which was written by Robert Cialdini. I think it's about 32, 33 years old at this point.

But the fascinating thing is human nature is still human nature. It hasn't changed in the last 33 years. The hidden drivers that make us do things or not are fundamentally wired into us and have been wired into us for hundreds, if not thousands of years. So Cialdini identified this thing that he called the consistency principle. And he's a researcher. So everything that he talks about is actually built upon published academic research. Now, the consistency principle is really interesting, because it's this funky quirk of the way that our brain works and the way that we actually behave. What he realized is that when we say or do something, from that

moment forward, our brains become primed to want to continue to say things or to take actions that are consistent with that first statement or action. An example is if you walked up to somebody, and this is an example that he talks about, and knock on the door in political season and say, hey, can I put a 10 foot by 10 foot billboard on your front lawn that says, I support this candidate. Most people will laugh at you and throw you off the lawn. But if you walk up to that same person and say, hey, listen, can I put a little six-inch paper flag on a tiny little piece of wire at the edge of your lawn saying I support this candidate? A lot of people say yes, because it's a really,

really low threshold ask. There's almost no risk to it. There's no effort that needs to be involved in it. So if you do that, and somebody says yes, and then you come back a week later and say, hey, listen, remember we talked last week and you had this flag out front. That's awesome. Are you cool if I actually just really quick swap that out and I replace it with a flag that's just slightly bigger? Maybe it's still just a little paper thing, but maybe it's 12 inches by 12 inches. They are far more likely to say yes to that than they would have been had you had that ask the first time out. Because now they've already said yes to something smaller and their brain is primed to want

to be seen as somebody who is consistent. They want to act consistently with what they've said and done before. So then if you keep coming back week after week and saying, hey, can I put it with something bigger, something bigger, the likelihood of you getting somebody to, you know, like a giant billboard in the front of their lawn is dramatically higher than had you just asked up front. So the idea is we can actually use this impulse

when we're trying to actually prime our brains to want to take action that would get us to our goal. And the way that we do that is that we create some form of pledge, written pledge, spoken pledge, and think of it as a contract, not a legal contract, but basically a document or a statement that says, this is what I believe, and this is what I'm committed to doing. And to the extent that you're actually making this some form of public declaration, or at least making it known to one or one other person or a group of other people who will hold you accountable to that pledge, that becomes much more effective. Once we do that, we then become much more likely to continue to take action consistent with that initial pledge.

So I have a background in the fitness industry and the health industry. I've been a brick and mortar entrepreneur in that space and opened and built and sold a few different companies. And back in the day, sort of in the fitness side of things, I owned a high-end private training facility. And one of the things that we would sometimes do with somebody when they came in is we take them through a full assessment. And then we would sit down and say, okay, now what you came here and now we have information that says this is where you are, where would you like to be? And we'd write down where they'd like to be. So that's kind of the goal. Here's what I want to achieve, right? And then we would say, okay, so for us to go from where you are now to where you want to be, and let's say over the next 12 weeks, this is what it's going to take. am committing to doing this level of effort this many times for this many weeks, and then sign your name at the bottom.

And what's really fascinating is there this simple process of making a pledge or signing this sort of personal agreement makes it much more likely that you will then turn around and act consistently with that statement because of the consistency principle. So it's a really simple thing that you can do to make progress towards your goals. Create an agreement, make it personal, and commit to a course of action that will get you there. Don't just commit to the outcome, commit to a course of action that will get you there. And then bring somebody else into it. So make the pledge not just to yourself, but to others. A fun way to do this, if you want, is choose whatever social platform that you're most comfortable with

or where you have community and where you trust people to keep tabs on you and write it out there and post it publicly and say, this is my pledge. So that's the first P, pledge. Mayday, mayday, we've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were gonna be fun. January 24th. Pledge. 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.

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The second P is people. Here's the thing. Nobody succeeds alone. It just doesn't happen. Even the people that we like to point to as the biggest icons and the biggest solitary performers from athletes to musicians to artists to founders. We say, well, they did it. And this was a solitary pursuit. It's complete fiction. Nobody succeeds at any sort of high level when you're trying to do it alone. We all need people because the only way to actually succeed at something substantial is consistent action over time. And to take consistent action over time, we need people. And we need people on multiple levels. So let me share the different sort of roles that we need when I talk about people. First, we need what I call co-strivers or parallel playmates. These are people who are actually doing something similar to you.

So maybe you want to lose five pounds in the next month, right? So these are other folks who would also like to have a similar goal, right? And they're kind of doing it alongside of you. So you each have your own individual goal, but they're similar, and you're doing it side by side. So they're kind of going along the journey with you, but they're there for themselves as much as for you. The second role when I talk about people is what I call champions. These are folks who are going to be honest with you. They're folks who know what your pledge is, know what your commitment is to action, and they and true to you and not sugarcoat, not denigrate, but also be truthful about when they see you doing great work and also when they see you needing help. They are the people

who help you rise. They also help hold you up when you stumble. The third role that we want when we talk about having people is mentors or teachers or guides. These are folks who in some way have either achieved what you're looking to achieve or attained a certain amount of knowledge or information or status or expertise, wisdom in whatever the domain is, and they're willing to turn around and help you. They can help you by looking at whatever you're doing and offering wisdom, offering ways to tailor whatever you want to do so that it works better for you and to help you correct course and to help guide you so that you can actually stumble less and get to where you want to be with greater ease. The fourth role that we want under people are accountability partners. Now, this can be in the form of a group, or it can be the form of individuals or one or two partners. I'll share a funny story with you. Way back in the day, before I even owned my first fitness facility, I have a very past life actually as a large firm lawyer in New York City. And my first jump out of that was actually to be a personal trainer. And I worked in a facility for a chunk of time and then broke off and started my own business. But before I opened my first facility, I was actually training

private clients and I would meet them outside. And I'm in New York City, so I love to meet them in Central Park. And there was this one client who I used to meet on the corner of 72nd and 5th Avenue, right on the corner of Central Park. And I would meet him at about 6 a.m. every day. And we would go running or rollerblading or working out and doing all sorts of different things. And I remember one morning I got there, and it was a couple minutes early, and I see him come running up. It's huffing and puffing.

And he starts to crack up, and he's laughing. And I'm like, what are you laughing about? What's going on here? And he's like, you know, I have to be honest with you. He said, you could literally go home right now. And he said, the truth is, you know, once I'm here, I'm going to go run. I'm going to go do my pushups. I'm going to go do what I need to do. But I need you to know, I need you, like your primary role to me is that I know I'm paying somebody to make sure that I show up here at 6am on the dot, you know, three times a week. And that accountability is actually the single most important to me. He's like, once I'm dressed, once I'm out of my apartment, once I'm moving, I'm totally fine rocking and rolling with it. But I need the accountability just to show up.

And so it's kind of funny. He's like, literally, you could go home now if you wanted to, which I didn't, of course. But it's an example of the fact that accountability, depending on your wiring, is something that we need internally and externally on varying levels. A friend of mine, Gretchen Rubin, who's written The Happiness Project, Happier at Home, Better Than Before, has really gone deep into what she calls the four tendencies. And these are sort of the tendencies that we have around accountability and commitment. And she actually has a great quiz that you can take, which will tell you which one of the what she calls the four tendencies you are.

And it's massively helpful at understanding what type of accountability you need to really stay committed to to your expectations and to your statements and to your pledge. And for a lot of people, they need that external accountability. They need some kind of person or group. So the final role, the fifth role under people is community. And this is sort of a broader cross section. We need people who are where we can show up and we feel like we belong, where there's a sense of belonging, where we are bound together, where there's a sense of safety. We feel that we can be ourselves. We don't have to fake. We don't have to have a facade.

We can be our cranky, our happy, our grumpy, our sad, our frustrated, frazzled, delighted, joyful selves. We can just show up and know that we'll be held, we'll be held up, not held up, you know, in terms of, you know what I'm talking about, and that we'll be accepted, that we'll be embraced. And, you know, so finding that sense of belonging, find that sense of community, it's really, really critical. It's one of the things that I also I write about in how to live a good life is, are the elements of that really have to be there in order for you to find that sense of community. And it's that would actually be an entirely different conversation. But just know now that that the fifth role that's really important people wise is that you have a sense of community that you feel safe and that you feel you genuinely belong to. Which brings us to the third P in our success

scaffolding. And that is possibility. So you could have a pledge. You can deconstruct all the things that will help get you from where you are to where you want to be. You can have all the people in the world. You can have all the things that I'm about to talk about after this, all the plans and everything. But there's one absolute point of failure. If you do not believe, even the smallest amount. You don't have to have blind faith. But if you do not believe in even the slightest possibility that what you strive to achieve is attainable, is possible, it doesn't matter what else you try and do. You will not be able to sustain the action needed or even start the action needed to make it happen. So, so many times,

you know, we say, well, you know, I want to lose 100 pounds, I want to do this. I want to run a company, I want to, you know, be the most popular person in my grade, I want to become this. I want to run a company. I want to be the most popular person in my grade. I want to become whatever it may be. And we see all sorts of other people doing it. We see people rising up from nowhere and achieving all of these things. And we say we want that. But if we don't have an intrinsic belief that that thing in the context of who we are in our life is possible, we don't have to believe it's 100% possible. But even 1%, 2%, if we don't believe that the door to possibility is even the slightest bit cracked open. It's game over. Nothing else matters because we will not do the work to make it possible. We will not ever do the sustained things to open the door from 1% to 2% and then 5% and then 10% and then 30% and 50% and then 100% when we actually achieve it. So possibility, belief that whatever it is that you want to attain is possible, is a

gateway to action. Possibility is the gateway to action. If you don't have even a sliver of a sense of possibility, you will not act. And if you do not act, everything fails. Which brings us to number four. And it's the answer to the question that may be lingering. How do you, quote, get possibility? So if you look at all these things, and you're saying to yourself, well, yeah, yeah, yeah. I get that if I don't believe something is possible, there's no way I'm going to take action and no way I'm actually going to make it happen.

Yeah, I get that. It makes complete sense to me, right? But I don't believe it's possible. Even though it may be possible for others, there's some sort of belief system that exists in me that's wiring me to say, I don't believe that I'm different. I'm the exception, but not the exception in terms of the one person who can make it happen. I'm the exception in that I can't make it happen. It's not possible. So is there a way? Is there a way to bridge the gap between non-belief and belief in possibility? And the answer is yes. There are actually many different ways. What I want to focus on here is what I call the fourth P, and that is proof. We need proof of possibility. Some people are more open to faith. Some people are more open to just believing and saying,

you know, there's no rational basis for this, but I'm a complete optimist, and I'm going to go all in. I believe. And that can actually lead to delusional optimism, to the point where people invest massive amounts of effort, time, money, energy, in things which they absolutely should not believe is possible. But the flip side is, it can lead to the opposite, that we can have disbelief and possibility when something, in fact, is very possible, but for the fact that we don't believe it to be so. And the unlock key is for those people who are not inclined to be open to faith or blind faith is proof, the fourth P, proof. And proof on three levels. There are actually a whole bunch of different levels, but I want to talk about three primary levels of proof. So first, one way to prove to yourself that there is a possibility is to, if you see the success stories of other people who you perceive to be like you in some way, shape, or form, right?

This is the basis behind pretty much all testimonials. So if you look at any infomercial, if you look at almost any advertisement, if you look at the vast majority of websites where somebody is selling a product or service, very often, and especially if they're good at telling their story and convincing you that what you want to do is possible with their help, they will have these things called testimonials. And what are testimonials? Testimonials are simply stories of other people who are in some way similar enough to you so that you can find someone, transfer into their story, see yourself as them. And then experience their lens on possibility and potentially their successful outcome as yours. And when you do that enough, when you actually see others like you and see them succeed, see them crack the window open to possibility, that becomes a form of proof that in fact,

you're similar enough to them, that it may be possible for you, if it was possible for them. So hearing the stories of others like you, similar enough to you in some way, is one really powerful potential form of proof. A second form is having the endorsement or the input of people that you trust. Now, these could be different sorts of people. These could be family members who you trust their opinion, you trust their wisdom, you trust their knowledge. These could be experts in whatever domain you're looking to achieve something. So you know, they're very smart, they're very wise. They have a full understanding of what it takes to actually succeed in this domain. And they're looking at you and saying, this is possible, you can do this. So trust in somebody who has domain expertise and you perceive in some way to be an expert,

a credible expert, right? So that can be super powerful. There's another level of trust in other people telling you that it's possible, which for some reason we tend to take as valid proof, even though in my mind, it's probably the least valid form of proof. And that is celebrity endorsements. If we see a celebrity say, this is the thing that allows me to get to this particular place. And we want to be in that same place. For some reason, we are wired to almost suspend judgment when it comes to celebrity endorsements and want to believe them. Some of the deeper

psychology around that is sometimes that we want to be with them. We want to feel a sense of association with those celebrities. So by sort of adopting their lens and their belief system, we can kind of feel that like we're going along with them or one of them. In my mind is probably the least valid because they are very likely the least like us. But those are three really interesting and often effective ways to cultivate this sense of proof in possibility. So quick recap before we jam into the final three P's in our success scaffolding. We started out with a pledge, which leverages the consistency principle. We talked about the critical importance of having the right people to keep you rolling along, and the five levels of people, co-strivers, champions, mentors, accountability partners,

and community. We talked about the critical importance of belief in possibility, not blind faith, but at least 1% belief that something is possible. The door has to be cracked the slightest bit open. And then through your actions, you can open it further and further and further until you walk through it. And number four, how do we get that possibility? For some people, they're okay with blind faith. That's not a lot of people, though. Most people need some form of proof, which is the fourth P. And we talked about the three different levels. So let's now move into number five. And that is what I call the picture. You're probably gathering at this point that we're a little bit weird. We're all wired strangely.

And to a certain extent, we're wired for failure. Some people are wired more so, but others not so much. But even on average, most of us come into adulthood and our brains are wired for something not for objectivity, but to be very subjective and understandable, right? Because it's very hard, as my friend Charlie Gilkey says, it's very hard to read the label when you're inside the jar, to be objective when you're living your own subjective experience of life, right? And there's another sort of compounding variable here. And that is that given the opportunity to default to belief in possibility or default to belief in failure and doom and gloom, the average bear is more inclined to default known as the negativity bias. And in fact, it's so pervasive that there's been a lot of research done on it.

And what we now know is that we are so inclined on average, again, there will be outliers, of course, and you may be one if you're nodding your head or shaking your head saying, no, that's not me. Maybe you're the outlier, but understand you are not sort of the mainstream then. The average person defaults to negativity and spins not the positive outcome or the possible outcome, but the negative outcome, the failure outcome, until that eventually becomes their belief as the only outcome, and it destroys action taking, which destroys the possibility of success. So what we need to do is in some way counter this negativity bias. And there are a whole bunch of different ways to do that. There are a lot of really powerful practices to make that happen.

A positive psychologist and professor and bestselling author Barbara Fredrickson has spoken and written and researched in detail about this effect and about you from basically ignoring the stuff that's going right, ignoring the successes and only focusing on what's not being done, what's not going right and the failures. One of the most powerful ways I found to snap you out of that is to create some sort of mechanism to regularly take a picture of where you are. And when you do that regularly, that becomes a bit more of an objective process. So we see this in the weight loss world, right? We know that actually people are much more successful at maintaining weight loss over a

longer window of time if they're actually using some sort of regular measure to establish that. Now, whether that's weighing yourself, whether that's trying on a certain clothing, whatever it may be, the closest we can get to some kind of more objective measure, rather than looking in the mirror and saying, well, I feel fat today, or I feel thin today, or I feel this today, because that's not objective.

We want to have some sort of measure that is as objective as we can get it. We want to be able to take a picture as objectively as we can and do it on a regular basis. Now, depending on whatever it is you may want to be doing, daily may make sense, weekly may make sense, monthly may make sense. There's probably very little that doesn't warrant something less frequent than monthly. We have, in the work that I do with Good Life Project, in my most recent book, How to Live a Good Life, I have a tool I've created called a snapshot. And you can take that on a daily basis in this really quick and easy version. And what we're doing in that is we're looking at these things called the good life buckets. And I call these your vitality

bucket, your contribution bucket, and your connection bucket. And every morning, really fast, we do a very quick visual snapshot to determine on a level of zero to 10, how full is each one of those buckets. And that helps guide our behavior. But then once a week, we do a more detailed snapshot. And we take one page, and we have this in the actually companion journals to that book. There is a page where you answer in a more granular form, what your weekly snapshot looks like. And this starts to you to make the process more objective, right? So it starts to force you to acknowledge and own and assess not only the happy things, or not only the misses or the failures or the things that you didn't want to happen, but also the stuff that went right, and the successes and the wins. even more granular snapshot process in a snapshot tool that we've actually built called Snapshot 360, which is an online assessment. And I suggest doing that, you know, sort of on a month, once a month basis. What's amazing is we've seen in the Good Life Project, the online community,

it was really cool. Actually, recently, I saw somebody who started, bought the book, did 30 days, and he did the online Snapshot 360, got very granular numbers for each one of the three buckets, and then basically did the entire book, which is amazing. I love this. He took all 30 days and did the book, and then took his Snapshot 360 assessment again. And that showed really marked changes in the levels of his buckets, tremendous improvements. And what's so cool is had he not done this before and a month out, it's very likely that because of the negativity bias, he would have focused more on what he didn't accomplish or what didn't happen that he wanted or his stumbles or his failures. But because he had a way to take a picture that was fairly objective, and he did it on a regular basis, it was able to sort of snap him out of to basically look at hard proof as a way to contradict the negativity bias. It's very

hard to hang on to that negativity bias when you have actual proof in the form of as objective a picture as you can get, staring you back in the face and saying, no, in fact, there have been a lot of wins here. So that number five in your success scaffolding is to take a picture. That is the fifth P, the picture. And that leads us, we're heading into the final stretch here. That leads us to number six, and that is a practical process. Okay, so I kind of cheated there. There are two Ps here. We'll call that P squared if you want for number six, right? And the idea here is that we need a process. 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. Charge time and actual results will vary.

Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. 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. You know, we need a methodology. So if you're looking to train for a marathon and you go online and you look up training for a marathon, what you'll find is a fairly systemized. Last time, I think it's about a 16-week marathon training program that has become pretty much the norm for millions and millions and millions of people who have decided that they want to run a marathon and they have no idea to train. So they look this up online, and there's a protocol. Now, I may be a little old on this. There may be a new 14-week or 18-week, or maybe there's a new way to do it. But the point is that there's a

process where you start where you are. And it basically tells you, here's what you need to do to go from where you are today, to the place where you should be able to accomplish your stated goal, or objective or resolution. Here's the thing about that process, though, you know, in business, it gets more complex, because it's more nuanced. In business, it gets more complex because it's more nuanced. In relationships, it can be more complicated, but there are general principles and there are activities and exercise that we can all do. In nutrition, you want a process that survives. But it's not just a process, right?

You need a model that survives interaction with real life. And that's why this isn't just process for number six. It's P squared. It is a practical process. And here's where a lot of people go horribly wrong. in a show or they watch something in TV and they're like, hey, that process that I read about or saw or learned about, wow, that is mind-blowing, creating mind-blowing results. It's tremendous. Problem is, we don't necessarily ask whether that process will survive the light of day or the famous quote, I think it was from Mike Tyson. What was it now? No plan survives the first punch. It's kind of like that with practical processes. The average plan needs to actually be able to survive interaction with your life, with the intricacies, the demands, the realities, the sometimes maniacal busyness, the demands of other people.

It needs to be able to survive with that, to interact with that. It needs to be practical, not generically, but in the context of your own life. So if you look on TV and you see, what's the show, The Biggest Loser or something like that, and you're like, oh my gosh, every week these people are losing astonishing amounts of weight. And you look at their process and then you realize they're exercising six hours a day and they have, you know, a completely controlled nutritional intake. They're being analyzed by a medical team on a regular basis and they're living and breathing communally 24-7 in a completely artificial environment and under the guidance of a team of experts. And you're like, okay, so that is a process that clearly works for those people

during that window of time. But is it a practical process for you in your life? Absolutely not. If you tried to commit to the same thing, it would very likely be a disaster because you don't have that same reality. That's not your reality on the ground. And in fact, at least according to some of the stuff that I've read about a number of people who have left years later, once you leave the sort of altered reality of that scenario, the outcomes tend to shift back pretty quickly.

So our goal here is that we want a really, we want a practical process. So whatever it is that you're thinking of doing, if you're saying to yourself, well, I want to train for a 10k. And, you know, the smartest way to do it would be for me to, you know, I looked online, and there's a standard six week program, which lets me train for 10k. And that means that I'm going to have to run 90 minutes a day for, you know, four days a week for the next six weeks, but you are a parent of a toddler

and a newborn and you work full time and you have a relationship and you have friends and you're trying to take care of your own self-care, that particular plan is probably not going to survive the reality of your life. It is not practical in the context of your reality. So the process is not going to survive, which means that even if in a laboratory, even if in a perfect environment, a perfect circumstance, it's proven to work, it is not going to work in your life. So the goal is not to just take some generic thing, which is proven to work in perfect scenarios, but to actually find a process that is designed to adapt to the realities of your life and let you succeed at doing whatever it is you want to do and adapt on an adaptive basis where it is practical in the context of you and your reality. This is one of the reasons why my approach to living a good life is not a formula.

It's what I call a framework. This is one of the reasons why when I think about process, I don't ever think about generic sort of standardized formulas. I always think about frameworks. The difference is a formula is a one-size-fits-all thing that takes somebody and says do exactly this, and does not accommodate the realities of their life. It's not adaptive.

A framework is basically a decision-making tool. It's a simple model that says, apply this to your life, and it adapts to the realities of your life. So an example of this is what I would call my good life buckets. And that's a framework that I briefly mentioned before, which is in my mind living a good life is about perpetually filling your vitality, your connection, your contribution bucket. So it's about cultivating deep and meaningful relationships.

That's connection. It's about optimizing your state of mind and body. That's vitality. And it's about optimizing your state of mind and body, that's vitality. And it's about contributing to the world. Very often we call this your work, whether it's paid or not, in a way that is fiercely aligned with your values, your sparks, your character strengths, skills and abilities, your beliefs, and allows you to feel like you are leveraging all of the potential that you have inside of you and that you are

rising up and fully alive and lit up by how you're contributing to the world, right? So you take that framework on any given day. There are so many different ways to adapt your behavior to do a little something to fill the bucket that's in need of most filling. So the idea is, you know, we want a tool that allows you to make decisions rather than a generic process that is not practical in your life. And that brings us almost all the way full circle here.

Thank you so much for hanging out with me as we come to the final P, our seventh P in my success scaffolding, and that is practice. But I'm not talking about practice in terms of the old quote, practice, practice, practice. What I'm talking about is taking everything that you do and turning it into a daily practice

to basically take something and build it into your life and construct it so that it is a seamless part of your day, so that it becomes something that instead of being forced and you're constantly trying to look for ways to honor your commitment, to honor your pledge, to not have to show up for your people and say, oh, sorry, I stumbled, to maintain your belief in possibility and to know that the next time you take a picture and a snapshot, it's going to show great progress and that you can stick to this practical process. To bake that into your day in such a seamless way that it becomes over time ritual and then habit. It becomes an automatic part of your day. It becomes a daily practice. It becomes

not something you do as much as just a part of who you are and how you exist on the planet. When you make that transition, when you move from something that you have to keep thinking about doing to something that is just a part of who you are and how you live. That is where we see the difference between not only achieving astonishing outcomes, but maintaining and building upon those outcomes over a long period of time, months, years, decades, life. And that's the ultimate goal is to take these behaviors and instead of creating, you know, starting where it's a changing behavior, literally make them so that it becomes part of your DNA. Turn them into a ritual and into a practice.

This is, in fact, why we actually ended up creating a companion practice journal for my book. Because we said, okay, so the book has 30 days of really cool stuff to do. But at the same time, that's awesome because it will really give you a taste of all of these first six P's. But at the end of the day, what I really want is for you to build whatever behaviors you're, you know, are adding to your life and letting you live on the planet and achieve what you want to achieve. I want you to turn that into a daily practice, morning practice, something that you do throughout the day and an evening practice. It doesn't have to be big. It doesn't have to be complex. In fact, it cannot be big and complex or else you think about it anymore. It's just automatic, like brushing your teeth. Some of it you want to become ritual.

And the difference between habit and ritual is that they both happen on the same regular basis. But a habit becomes automatic. Whereas a ritual is always a conscious and intentional act. Even if it's baked into what you do on a regular basis. So you are aware and intentional in the process. So you don't necessarily have to be aware and intentional to get the most out of brushing your teeth, right? But if you want to do something else, if you decide that you want to become great at drawing faces, rather than just committing to 10 minutes a day of sitting down with a pad

and drawing faces and just on an automated basis copying something, you want to actually have 10 minutes of sitting down and being conscious, having your ritual where you pick up the pen, you sharpen it just the right way. Everything is intentional and aware. You put pen to paper, you hear the sound of it, you feel the subtle vibrations as the graphite draws across the paper, you really pay attention to what you're doing. And you want a blend of habit, which makes it easier for your brain to process and take some of the cognitive demand off of it, and ritual, which happens on a daily basis. But at the same time, it stays intentional. And it stays intentional because that is one of the things that gives us access to grace over time. And together, we build these things into a practice, just a regular part of not just what we do,

but who we are and how we live. So those, my friends, are the seven Ps, the what I call success scaffolding. Pledge, people, possibility, proof, picture, practical process, and practice. Remember, to succeed in anything, it's not just about information. It's not just about knowing something. It is about consistent daily action over time. It is about starting where you are and then reaching a place where you adopt these new behaviors. Those behaviors lead to changes, lead to outcomes, and eventually become a part of your daily practice. And that's how you get from where you are to where you would love to be. And I hope you found this helpful.

When I think about so many people moving into the year ahead and having so many dreams, so many visions, so many things that we want to achieve. We've turned the page on a year, which for many people has been really challenging for so many different reasons. And we're at a moment in time where we get to sit down, we get to write a new chapter, we get to start something fresh. And so many of us do that by saying, this is what I want to happen, and then hoping and praying that it will. And some of us take the next step and we get information that helps us understand how to plan it out. But even with that, we're very likely destined to fail because we need something more.

We need our success scaffolding. We need to understand how to make the changes in environment, in mindset, and in culture that will allow us to sustain the action long enough to create really profound and lasting outcomes. So I hope you found this really successful, really successful, valuable. I love being able to share it with you I'm actually you know I'm just thinking out loud here

I'm going to do something kind of cool and create something for you guys I'm going to because I realize there's many of you are probably listening to this on the go and you may not have had the opportunity to take notes on this so why don't I I'm going to take this and create a bit of a mind.

I'm going to create a one-page mind map for this, sort of just a PDF. And if you head over to goodlifeproject.com, there's a link in the show notes as well, just to make it super easy. Subscribe to our daily updates, and I'll make sure that in whatever the next dispatch is, I will include a link so that you can download one page or a PDF with the success scaffolding, the seven Ps,

all laid out in detail on it so that you can look at what you want to accomplish in the year to come and create the scaffolding that you need to succeed along the way. And again,

that's just goodlifeproject.com. You'll be able to jump onto the email update list and you can then in probably the next dispatch, and we just send out emails weekly, you'll be able to download that and start rocking and rolling in the year to come. Wishing you so much success, so much connection, so much love, joy, grace, and ease, meaning, and possibility as we move into this renewed time, a new space to make something astonishing in our lives, to make our lives good, and to own the fact that simply

by the nature of the fact that you are here listening to this, there is already good in your life. And never forsake the grace in being because you want to become. Own them both. Own them both. I can't wait to be back with you next time. I'm Jonathan Fields, signing off for 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 are later required. Charge time and actual results will vary.