Good Life Project - To Succeed at Anything, Do This. (2020)

Episode Date: January 2, 2020

Success is not just about knowing what to do. It's about doing it. Information, plans and goals, alone, will not get you where you want to go. Nor will willpower. Success at anything truly meaningful is about something bigger. Today’s show and, in fact, the first three Thursday episodes of the year are going to be very different. Instead of deep-dive conversations with guests, it’s just going to be Jonathan, going deep into three key topics.Today’s immersion is all about how to find success accomplishing big, meaningful things. There’ll be a ton of myth-busting and you'll learn something called Success Scaffolding™, a unique approach to making big things happen, especially things you’ve tried and failed at many times before. We’ve shared Success Scaffolding before, but over the years, we keep refining it and making it better and better. So, you’ll want to give this episode a listen with fresh ears even if you've listened to past episodes about it, because there are a bunch of new insights, changes and additions. You may also want to open your "notes" app to take notes. Or, if you'd like a detailed, one-page PDF mind-map of the entire updated 2020 version of the Success Scaffolding framework, be sure to sign up for our Weekly Insider Updates. we'll include a link to a free downloadable PDF in our next dispatch.Check out our offerings & partners: How to Live a Good Life is a practical and provocative modern-day manual for a life well-lived. Drawn from the intersection of science, spirituality, and Jonathan Fields' years-long quest to learn at the feet of world-renowned masters from nearly every tradition, this book offers a simple, yet stunningly powerful tool for life.-------------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.

Hey there. So today's show, and in fact, the first three Thursday episodes of the year are going to be very different. Instead of deep dive conversations with guests, it's just going to be me going deep, sharing a series of ideas and tools and tips specifically developed to help you accomplish things you never thought possible, to live a truly better, more connected and vital life, and to kind of reimagine the way you contribute to the world, the way you work in a way that makes you come more fully alive. And after that, we'll drop you back into our usual twice weekly conversations.

I just really want to do something special to help you turn this year into something incredibly powerful. So today's immersion is all about how to accomplish big, meaningful things. Very often things that you have maybe even tried many times in the past and not been

able to actually make happen. There will be a ton of myth busting, specific examples, action steps, and I'm going to introduce you to something that I call success scaffolding. It's a really unique approach to making big things happen, especially things you've tried and failed at before. I have shared my success scaffolding before. Over the years, I keep refining it and making necessary updates. So even if you've heard me talk about success scaffolding before, you will want to give this episode a listen with fresh ears because there are a bunch of new insights, a bunch of changes and additions and some deletions. And I'll also tell you how to download a detailed one-page mind map that illustrates every critical element that I'll

share. So be sure to turn off any other distractions, grab a pencil, a pen, open your favorite notes app, and settle in. We are about to set you up to succeed this year in a very different and powerful way. I'm Jonathan Fields. 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. So I'm sitting here in the studio. It is a beautiful Sunday, late afternoon at the end of the year, cruising into the final few days of the year. The streets in New York are teeming with humanity right now. A lot of locals enjoying the sunshine and a bit of warm weather, a ton of visitors coming to spend time in our amazing city and really enjoying the holiday vibes. And you probably can't hear this. I can just kind of barely make it out, but because we have four layers of acoustic

glass on the one window in the studio, but there is the faint, faint sound of a guy playing saxophone down on the street as people walk by, which is kind of fun. Puts you in that right sort of contemplative, joyful mode and mood this time of year. So I've been reflecting on the year and mapping out what I want to make happen in 2020. It has been a really powerful and amazing 18 months for me, for our entire team. I have struggled to create a sense of ease. I have tested so many ideas and failed so many times. I've made so many mistakes,

sometimes driven by just completely wrong decision-making. Sometimes we start something and then the world tells us they're not ready or it's not needed or it's different. It drives my team a little bit nuts sometimes because I like to create things. But along the way, we've also had some really major wins and accomplishments. We have produced over a hundred podcast conversations, developed an entire new body of work, built and launched a powerful new assessment called the Sparketypes that has been completed now by well over 300,000

people, created programming around that, launched a whole new company to support it. I've spoken to thousands of people, written a book proposal. Yes, I'm actually going to be working on the next book next year. Written more than 50 essays, published privately to my email community, begun development on a second podcast, and there may be even more spinning around in my head. And I've gotten concepts ready for books three to five beyond what I'm working on now. And we also spent about 25 days in Colorado

outside of New York, launched a kid into college. And I've done my best to really be present for my family and friends, be a good dad, husband, student, leader. And plans for 2020 are, I think, maybe even bigger. And our motto at the same time is more human. So moving into the next year, it's all about doing big things while figuring out how to make it more human along the way and reveling in the process. So why would I share all of this with you? Is it sort of like a humble brag thing? Nope. Trust me, like I said, I have failed so many times. I have stumbled and banged myself up so

many times, way more than I've succeeded. But at the same time, I found that over the years that for some reason, there's some wiring that has allowed me to sort of like keep my head down and accomplish things that are really hard where their stakes are high. And I don't know if there's even a path to success along the way. And I've sort of been asked to deconstruct that by a lot of people. When I share what I'm up to, when I'm catching up with new friends or colleagues or new acquaintances, the most common question that I actually get asked is, how do you do that? And in the beginning, it was a lot of pain and brute force. But over the years, I've really sort of figured out an approach, more of a linear approach to making big, meaningful things,

even ones that are really hard, where the stakes are high and the probability is low, to making them happen. And I realized that it goes so far beyond what anyone else has ever taught me about goal setting or achievement or potential or grit or anything else. And actually, we'll talk a little bit about grit later on. And what I've learned is that most people fail, not because they're destined to, or because something is hard, or even because they had a bad vision or plan. There's something bigger going on. One, that the mythical vision needs to actually be done right. And so does the plan. And most people completely miss the mark with both of these really important pieces

of the success equation. But also there are a whole bunch of other success critical elements that have to be in place if you want to accomplish anything truly big and meaningful to you. And again, you decide what's meaningful. This is not an outside-in type of thing. And I call all of these elements success scaffolding.

And there are eight pieces of this puzzle. There are eight pieces of the success scaffolding framework. And it's kind of a step-by-step approach to setting yourself up for success in nearly any endeavor on a level that is, at least in my experience, either near impossible or one that makes the process brutal and gutting when you try and approach things differently. So I call these eight elements the eight Ps. So there are eight Ps in success scaffolding in part, because it's just kind of fun to figure out how to name them all Ps, but also because it makes sense. And I just want to see if I can share some ideas and tools that will help you maybe make this year different and

open some doors, not just to inspiration and hope, but to actiontaking and actually bringing these big things into reality. Be sure to stay till the end also, because I'm going to tell you how to download a one-page mind map of the entire success scaffolding process. It won't make any sense until you have listened, so don't bother skipping ahead now. But once we've walked through the whole thing together, that one-page mind map may well become an

unlock key for big things for you. And remember, next week, I will be taking you deeper into some major learnings and models and action steps designed to help you live your best life on a broader way. And then the week after, that'll be the third one of these sort of immersions with me. We're going to focus in on how to make your work a source fuel for coming alive. So be sure to tune in. If you haven't subscribed yet, definitely go hit subscribe so you don't miss those special episodes. In addition to the amazing weekly conversations that will be companions to these first three immersion episodes with me. Really excited to share success scaffolding. So let's dive in together now.

The first P is what I call the picture, right? People call this a vision. People call it creating a goal. Like what is it that you want to happen? So if I look forward to my 2020, there are a number of big things that are sort of on my future cast. One is writing my next book. So I know that I'm gonna step into the year with a book proposal and an outline.

And I need to, at some point in the middle of the year-ish, very likely, have a manuscript, a 60 to 80,000 word manuscript done for a book. We're looking at developing additional podcasts, which I am so excited to share some of the stuff we're working on with you, probably later in the spring.

So that is something, and they're sort of like very specific, but maybe you have a completely different idea of what your picture is. What is the picture of the thing that is deeply meaningful that you really would love to make happen either in the next few weeks, the next few months, or in the year to come? Maybe you're looking to run a 10K. Maybe you're looking to learn to paint. Maybe you're looking to do something really powerful physically or artistically or relationally. Whatever it is, we start out by defining it,

by defining it. We need to have a sense of the endpoint because the endpoint lets us reverse engineer a lot of the different things that we're going to need to be practical about getting there rather than just hope that it happens. But it also does something else. When you have a really clearly defined endpoint, it does something to your brain. Neuroscientist, psychiatrist, Ernie Pillay has talked about this in the past,

kind of calls it like setting a GPS in your brain. When you create a really clear, well-defined outcome that you want to work towards, you will spend some conscious effort to make it happen, but your brain will invest infinitely more more less than conscious energy in mapping out and sort of like taking little steps and making little shifts in your neural processing that will allow this thing to unfold. But part of that process means planting the seed in a very defined way. So when we think about the picture, we wanna say, okay, not only this is the thing

that I'm identifying that I would want to make happen, but we wanna think about two things, specificity and sensory, right? So we want it to be specific. So instead of saying, you know, like I want to become a runner, how can we actually make that more specific? Well, we can say, I want to become a runner, how can we actually make that more specific? Well, we can say, I want to become a runner by August 1st. Well, that's better. How can we make it even

more specific? I want to run my first 10K by August 1st. Great. I want to run my first 10K at less than an 11 minute mile average by August 1st. Great. So the more specific we can make it, right, the more clarity we have, and the better we can understand how to figure out what are the actions that I need to take to commit to between now and then to actually make this happen. And we'll talk a lot more of that when we talk about the plan. For right now, make it specific.

So create the picture, define it, make it specific. Now, one last thing, make it sensory. Make it sensory. The reason is because the more we can actually add sensory input to this, the more real it becomes to us, the more real it becomes to our conscious and less unconscious brain. And the more we actually start to believe in the possibility of this happening and the more clear we can actually be about it happening. The other thing is to do this.

When you make it really sensory, when you can see it, when you can hear it, when you can feel it, when you can taste it, those things begin to trigger something beyond a purely intellectual understanding of what you want to do and accomplish. And it allows you access to a slightly shifted and sometimes deeply shifted emotional state. So if you imagine not only what does it look like, what does it taste like, what does it smell like, but what does it feel like? If you put yourself out to that future date as if you have accomplished this thing and then really map it out in a sensory way and then ask yourself, what does it feel like? How do I feel in that state? That embodied sort of version of your picture of where you want to be,

what you want to accomplish is so much more powerful that it becomes a much more effective tool to then fuel the consistent conscious action-taking and decision-making that you'll need to get there. And also your brain's less than conscious circuitry that will process it without you even realizing and figure out steps and things to do and get you moving in a way that wouldn't happen if you really did not have a lot of clarity, specificity, and a sensory experience of this thing that you want to accomplish. So that is element number one, picture, right? That's the first P. Let's move on to element number two. Element number two,

the second P is purpose. Now, am I talking about your quote life purpose here? No, I'm not entirely sure I even have any idea what that phrase means, if it means anything, and if there is any universal sense of how that gets described to anybody. I'll have a lot more to say about that, by the way, when we get to the future immersion episode about your work. But for now, this word purpose is really about your reason why for this one very specific thing. So the picture you just painted of where you want to be or what you want to accomplish in a specific and sensory way, the question is, why do you care? Why do you care? Why does it matter to you? What is the purpose of this thing, right? So if I want to run a 10K by August 1st, why does it matter?

And the thing is, it's important to define because even though a thousand other people may have the identically defined outcome, they all may want to do the same thing. A thousand other people are going to show up on that day of running your 10K and they all want to finish, right? A thousand other people may plan on launching a podcast by a particular date this year. A thousand other people may all be setting a goal to write a book by a particular date and have X number of pages done by this particular date. But the reason why each one of those thousand people wants to do that is going to be radically different.

You'll have a thousand different purposes doing it. And that reason why is so critically important because it tells you why you're saying no to other things. It tells you why you're saying no to other things. It tells you why you're actually investing your effort and your energy and your work and sometimes suffering along the way to actually make this thing happen, right? At some point, you are going to experience adversity.

It may be literally the moment you take your first step, you may be cruising along like, wow, this is amazing. I'm just like checking boxes. I'm taking action. The universe is rising up to support me. Everything is going the way it's supposed to be going. And then you will crash and you will burn and you will run up against obstacles and adversity

and things that do not go your way. And we're going to talk in a moment about something specific you can do in your plan to help with that. But establishing a clear sense of purpose, a clear reason why in advance, not during, but in advance is one of the most effective counters or antidotes to adversity, especially adversity that you didn't see coming on the planet, right? Because when you bump up against something

that you didn't see coming or you did, but it's just really hard. And all of a sudden the thing that was, you know, really easy and cruising along really just knocks you for a loop, right? If you don't have a really clear understanding of why this matters to you, then as soon as you feel pressure, resistance, adversity, you will walk away. You will absolutely just say, well, you know what?

I guess I'm not meant for this. Maybe I'm not good enough. Maybe I'm not strong enough. Maybe I'm not smart enough. Maybe the universe not strong enough. Maybe I'm not smart enough. Maybe the universe doesn't want me to do it. Maybe it was a bad idea in the beginning. Maybe I didn't really want it, right? Maybe it was too aggressive.

Now, we will address some of those things with the future elements. But what you need to know is that when you hit those moments of adversity, being able to quickly identify your reason why, the deeper purpose for wanting this to happen will become a powerful source of energy to not just walk away, to not just give up, but to continue to invest energy and to keep pushing and working to make this thing happen. Because you will understand why you said yes in the first place. You will

understand why it still is worth the effort, even when things get hard. And you will understand why you're continuing to say no to other things and yes to this until you get through to another point of ease and flow, which generally always happens, right? If you don't do the work of really saying, well, why is this important to me beforehand? Then you're very likely gonna walk away or fail or implode the moment you hit any real level of adversity.

So here's the thing though, ask, why is this important to me? Or why does it matter to me? Whatever language you want to use, ask it once, give your answer, but now ask that five more times. You may have heard this before. Some people call it the three whys or the five whys, but the idea is, so if I want to write a new book, let's say, right? Well, what's my reason why? Because that is a huge amount of energy and effort that I'm taking away from other people, other things, other efforts, other opportunities, right? So what's my reason why? Why is this important to me? Well, my first answer could be, well, it's important because there's some information and insight in my head that I just really want to get out into the world. Okay. So why is that important to me? Because the information and

insights that are in my head that I want to get out into the world. I feel it can make a real difference in the lives of other people. And also I'm just, I'm a maker. I am a creator. And the process of creation allows me to go from idea to thing. And that's really, really important to me. So it effectively allows me to do the thing that I'm here to do. Well, okay. So why is that important to me? Because I want to live a life where the thing that I'm doing, the effort that I'm investing in and that I feel will be of service to other people in some way,

shape, or form, those things allow me to feel alive and like I'm doing the thing I'm here to do and invested in a way that is deeply meaningful to me. And I want to live a meaningful life. So you see sort of like the purpose there that when you start saying, I need to identify purpose and let me understand the reason why, why does this matter? Why is it so important? And then ask a handful of times deeper. And when you get to that place, you will then have a much more visceral, emotional, embodied understanding of the purpose behind the picture. And when you bump against adversity, this will be so important in allowing you to stay the course. Great. So let's move on to the third P.

That is plan, right? And as I've said, if you have heard me talk about success scaffolding before, you may notice that things have moved around a little bit. In fact, picture was not a part of the original thing. And I realized that I just assumed it into existence. And also there were different important things to say. Plan is another thing where things have been moved around, optimized and changed a bit, right? So this is also one of the areas where most people struggle with and make some of the biggest mistakes. So as a general rule, when somebody wants to accomplish something big, they say, okay, this is what it is.

They don't usually make it specific enough or sensory enough, right? But then the next thing they do, and they very rarely actually identify the driving purpose underneath it. Most people do then say, okay, so what's my plan? How am I going to make this happen? Right? Sometimes there are fairly clear, straightforward plans. If you want to run a marathon, for example, you can Google training program for marathon or search on whatever place you want to search.

And there is a pretty standard, I think it's a 14 or 16 week training program where if you already have a base in running, millions and millions of people have done this exact same thing. So the basic nuts and bolts, the daily or weekly actions that would be in your plan to accomplish a specific goal, that is usually what people focus on, right? How do I reverse engineer the pieces of the puzzle and then just do them? And that is actually important. But when you stop there, when you make that the entirety of your plan, you actually miss three critically important pieces of the puzzle and will very likely be

guaranteed to fail unless you somehow randomly just kind of assume those other pieces into existence where you get kind of lucky and realize that they're important or you've done them before and you know how important they are. So let's move beyond just the granular pieces. So I call those smaller pieces. If I say there's a marathon and I need to understand for the next six months, what exactly is it that I'm going to do to train for this? And then let me break it into weeks and break it into days, right?

We call those the chunks, the chunks, right? And they're the small micro steps, hourly, weekly, daily, monthly, that when you add them up will actually get you to the place of being able to say, yes, I have done this thing that is deeply meaningful. So the first part is identifying the chunks. And for certain things, it's pretty straightforward. If I want to write a 60,000 word book in six months, right? Or let's call it in 200 days, like I can simply do math and divide, you know, well, 60,000 words by 200 days.

And that will give me how many words I need to write on any given day. And then my job is to hit those words. And that is where most people stop, right? So the chunks are important. We want to make small steps that are additive that will move us a little bit closer each time, but let's go beyond just identifying the chunks, right? The next thing we also need to add to our chunks are benchmarks, right? And for a number of different reasons. One, we need to understand how we are

succeeding, not just when we get to the end, but along the way, right? And this is about identifying and feeling progress. Some really powerful work done by Professor Teresa Amabile about one of the most effective motivators for people being tiny bits of recognition, daily progress, right? Feeling and experiencing in tiny little ways, progress on a regular basis is an incredibly powerful driver of sustained action taking. So if you wanna keep doing the chunks on a daily basis, right, we need to actually experience progress along the way. And we do that by tracking, by identifying the little benchmarks. So when I hit a week, this is going to be a benchmark. When I hit a month, months, this will be a benchmark. So we can actually identify and feel

these small bits of progress, these hits of micro success along the way. And we do that by first identifying them, make it specific, and then tracking them. Now you can choose how to track your benchmarks. Some people may do it in an app. Some people may do it in a physical planner or a journal. Whatever it is, do it in a place where it is truly memorialized, where you're not just saying to yourself, okay, cool, I'm high-fiving myself. I did that today. You actually want to create a record of it. You want to track it and create the things that you have done so that you can reflect back on them and actually see a history of progress over time. This is important because as Maboulai's work shows, it actually is a really effective motivator

for sustained action taking, but also because our brains are a little bit weird. We have this thing called the negativity bias. What is that? Well, it is our brains sort of bias that defaults for most people to negativity rather than positivity, right? So if we are, you know, like thinking about the last month, right. And most people are going to end up focusing on the things that they forgot to do, the things that they weren't able to do, the things that they missed out on, the failures, the all of the things where they're sort of like you're beating yourself up for doing it, rather than all of the things that you actually have done well, the things you have to be grateful for, the experiences, the relationships, the moments, right? So because we have a natural negativity bias, and this is sort of a generalized state for most people. Yes, there are some people who are just genetically wired to be much less negative, but broadly speaking,

most people are actually wired more towards negativity than positivity. Our brains default to the negative. They default to the what's wrong. They default to the what I didn't do, what didn't happen, rather than what's right, what I did do, what did happen, and all the good things, right? So benchmarks, finding a way to actually set benchmarks

that demonstrate progress, use a way to track them so you can actually check boxes and note and look back over time and see, oh, wait, there actually has been a lot of really good stuff happening. It's a really powerful way to counter your negativity bias. So when you feel yourself getting to the end of a day or a week or a month, and you're like,

man, I'm just so upset. I'm not where I thought I would be. I haven't done anything. I'm not, you know, like, then you can actually look back and see, oh, wait a minute. Like all this stuff actually happened. All this action taking happened. When I look at where I was when I started the month compared to where I am now, I'm actually in a different place. Like I can objectively see the progress I've made. That's really powerful to get you out of that negativity bias and get back into a positive

action taking stance, right? So we've talked about chunks, right? We've talked about benchmarks now, two other things I want to focus on. So the third thing in your plan is what I call workarounds, workarounds. And this is a little bit related to the idea of purpose and your reason why, but we're gonna get more granular here. There is a bit of mythology around goal achievement,

especially when we step into the world of the metaphysical spaces. Now, I am a bit of a woo-woo person, but also fairly heavily driven by science. And there's a word that a lot of people use, and that word is manifestation, which is essentially just a different way of saying making big, meaningful goals happen, right? And in the world where that word is often bandied about, there are a lot of good things that are recommended to do, but there's also one really big bit of mythology.

And that is that you should, when you're trying to quote manifest something, or let's use the word achieve something big, make something big and meaningful happen, you should only focus on it actually happening and never, ever, ever think about or focus the obstacles that might come into your way. Because when you do that, you will manifest those obstacles. You will make your brain make those things happen. And we don't ever want to do that. So don't ever focus on the obstacles, the things that can go wrong, the challenges that

will drop into your space because you'll make it happen. And then you'll never get what you want. So all fine and good, except there's science around this, except this specific idea has actually been tested and proven wrong. So Professor Gabrielle Udenkin developed a whole body of work around this. And she was sort of testing this concept of if you're trying to make something happen to achieve a goal, to achieve an outcome, right? Is it more effective to stay sort of maniacally positive and never think about negative things or obstacles? Or is it more effective to actually try to identify the most likely biggest obstacles that might come into

your path along the way, and then actually develop a plan for how you would respond to those in advance if and when it happened. And she tracked these two different states. And then she actually put people through a series of sort of a goal achievement quests. And she wanted to see who was going to be more effective at actually achieving these goals or quote, manifesting these things, right? What she found was clear as day

that the people who actually did think about the big obstacles, and very often those are internal obstacles, by the way, it's your own inner demons popping up, and then said, okay, so this may happen along the way. If it does, what is my plan? How do I make a plan to identify those so that if and when it happens, I will actually not have to figure it out then, but I know what I'm going to do. And then they do it. Those people were way more effective at actually achieving the thing they wanted to achieve than the people who simply pretended that only positive things will come my way. And I am only going to focus maniacally on the thing actually happening. So we actually know scientifically validated that thinking about the big likely obstacles

beforehand and developing your workarounds, your plans, is a really important part of your master plan, right? So it's not just about the chunking, the things you're gonna do on a daily basis and the benchmarking, how you're gonna track progress, but also identifying potential things that might drop down and stop you. Inner things, your mindset things, your demons,

or big external things, make a plan beforehand so you know how you'll handle it if and when that happens. And here's an interesting sort of added note to this. One of the sort of theories around why doing this is actually way more effective is that when you think about this big thing you want to happen and you not only plan the things you want to do and think about what it is, right? But you identify the potential obstacles that that actually lets you make a commitment to allocating your time, energy, money, resources, effort to this thing, knowing and accepting the possibility of major things going wrong beforehand. And it stops some people from even going in because once they

realize how hard something might be, they realize they're actually not down for it. And that gives them the opportunity to reallocate their energy to something else that they are much more potentially down for. So Utengin developed the whole methodology around this. She shorthands it with the acronym WOOP, W-O-O-P, which stands for Wish Outcome Obstacle Plan, which is sort of effectively part of what we're talking about here. And it's all about identifying the big things

that might happen in advance, making a plan for it. This is your workaround. So that is element number three. So in your plan, we have chunks, benchmarks, and workarounds. We've got one more element here, and this is so important. And this again, is where so many of us drop the ball, and that is integration. Integration. What do I mean by that? Two things, bandwidth and ability, right? So we need a plan that is not just effective in the laboratory or in the shiny, happy influencer lives of somebody online who seems to have everything going for them, unlimited time, unlimited resources.

We actually need a plan that is integratable into the reality of our day-to-day lives, our constraints, our abilities, our limitations. So when we think about it, let's go back to that plan to run a marathon. Let's say you've committed to a 16-week plan. And it says, it tells you exactly what to be doing every day for 16 weeks, right? And then you're like, this is it. I wanna do it. I'm completely down with this. And then you realize, hmm,

I'm actually going through a really, really rough time in a relationship right now. Or maybe you're dealing with an illness or an injury or chronic pain, or maybe you're dealing with an extremely tough moment in the work that you're doing or the relationships that you have. Maybe you are a brand new parent and a single parent, and you're the primary caretaker, and you're barely sleeping, and the prospect of sleep is just not going to be there for months. And that's just the way it is. And you're barely sleeping and the prospect of sleep is just not gonna be there for months.

And that's just the way it is. And you're cool with that. But at the same time, your ability to then embrace sort of like a standard universal plan that might work in a shiny, happy, perfect world or might work in a laboratory is going to be blown up. And if you look at that and you say,

okay, so this is a plan that everybody uses. Like it's been proven to work, proven with all these different people. If you do it, it will work. And that's what I'm gonna do. And you don't take a bit of a moment of time and ask yourself, do I have the bandwidth in my own life?

So like the availability, the available mental resources, physical resources, financial resources, and straight up time, right? To make this happen in the reality of my day-to-day life at this moment in time, regardless of how many other people have executed a similar plan in their lives, right? In the context of my life, can this actually work? If you don't do that analysis, and it's generally a pretty fast one, you're pretty

much guaranteed to fail unless you just get really, really, really lucky and your life constraints and possibilities just happen to mesh with that particular plan, right? So this is the integration piece. It's the final piece. And the question is, do I have the bandwidth and the current ability to integrate this plan into the reality of my day-to-day life, the way that it looks and feels and exists at this moment in time.

Super, super important to do that final step. If the answer is yes, great, do it. Now, if the answer is no, well, that's when things get interesting because then it allows us to say, okay, now that I know, I know the chunks, I know what it's actually going to take to go from where I am now to this place that I want to be. I know how I'm going to benchmark it. I know my workarounds, but I realize I do not have the ability to actually do this now.

Now, this actually gives you the freedom to act more intentionally and to shortcut an inevitable failure and say, well, let me readjust the plan then. Let me readjust the picture so that I can do this in a way that would actually work. It lets you make changes to these things before you actually commit to them and then inevitably fail and feel like it's a failure. Okay, so we have talked about your picture. We've talked about purpose.

We have talked about a plan, time for P, number four, possibility, possibility. So simple fact, you cannot succeed at anything that you do not believe is possible. Now, before you're like, oh, wait, wait a minute, not so fast, because there's a lot of things that I never thought I could do or believed was possible

and I ended up doing. Right, what I'm saying is if you have 100% disbelief that something is possible, think about that. If you 100% do not believe something is possible, then how are you going to actually justify taking a single action, allocating a single dollar, a single minute, second, hour, or weeks or months of your time to try and make it happen. If you 100% do not believe it is possible, your brain will not allow you to take action or allocate resources to making it happen. So what does that mean?

Does that mean that then you need to somehow figure out a way to 100% believe it is possible? Short answer is no. But what I have found is super important is what I call the 3% possibility rule. We don't have to 100% believe it's possible. We don't even have to believe it's more likely than not. We can in fact believe that it is possible, but it's still pretty slim,

but it is possible. There's something in us that says, yeah, maybe it's not likely. Maybe it's going to be really hard. Maybe not a lot of people before me have done it, but it is possible. It is technically possible. I call this a 3% possibility rule because I feel like if you're sort of, if you can get yourself to feeling it's 3% possible instead of 0%, but not even one or 2%, but okay, 3%, that is just enough of the door of possibility cracking open for your brain to start to even

enter the conversation about being willing to allocate action and resources to making it happen. Right? So it doesn't have to be 100 or either 50 or either 25 or either 10. In my experience, even the slightest hint where your brain has just enough to say, huh, maybe, maybe, that is where we need to get ourselves in order to take the very first action. And we're going to talk in a minute with the fifth P about how we go from there and get much further. But for now, we're talking about taking the first step in. And here's something else that I have learned. And it's going to sound contrarian, but I'm going to explain it in just a second,

is that belief precedes action. Now, that sounds kind of weird because you may have heard different places. No, action precedes belief, right? The thing that makes you believe is that you take action. And then when you see that you're succeeding, well, then your brain starts to say, huh, okay, so this is possible. And then you act more and then you see it's more success and you're building your own track record. And in fact, we will talk about that more and that works. But talking about the first step in, and that assumption is in a world where we feel like there's no opportunity cost for every new thing you commit to. That world is not reality. Every time you say yes to something and you say yes to allocating your energy, your love, your time,

your energy, your money, your resource to something, you are effectively saying no to something else, right? If you happen to live in a life, in a world where you've got completely, you have got endless resources, endless time, and just, so you can say yes to everything you want, well, that's awesome. Then this rule doesn't apply. And just, so you can say yes to everything you want. Well, that's awesome.

Then this rule doesn't apply. I have yet to meet that person on the planet earth. I don't know about you, but I wake up in the morning and pretty much every day, no matter how well I plan things and how much I accomplish, there's a lot of feeling of, wow, I would love to have an extra hour in this day. I would love to have an extra 10 hours in the week.

I would love to have an extra week or two or three or four or five in the year, right? The reality is for most people that we are so sort of abundant with things to do, whether it's good things or bad things or intentional things or not, that is a whole different conversation. But the average person's life is so stacked with things to do that they are already feeling like they're saying no to so many things they wanna do and they can't get done even the things they've committed to. So every time you say yes to something new,

there is an opportunity cost. You were saying no to something else that you want as well, right? And when we are in that place, it's very hard to keep saying no to having that opportunity cost when in fact you have zero belief that the thing you're saying yes to is possible. So that's why I say for the very first step in, when you're looking at limited resources, limited time, already feeling overburdened, you very likely will not take even the first tiny action if you have zero belief that the thing you want to do

is possible and it will take resources and time and energy away from something else that you do have at least the tiniest belief that is possible. So that's the idea behind possibility and the relationship to belief and the idea that we're not looking for a hundred percent. It's the 3% possibility rule. I 3% believe this thing is possible. Then we can take it from there. And that possibility leads pretty seamlessly to the idea of proof. How do we then take that first step, right? How do we go from the 3% possibility rule to really believing and convincing ourselves

that this thing is possible on the level that will fuel the sustained action taking that will get us this thing that we want that will get us to the place we want to be, that will make a reality out of this vision that we have, the picture that we started with. Well, their brain looks to certain things to serve as proof for us, proof that this thing is possible, right? So one of them is facts, data, demonstrations, right?

So we look at facts. Well, like eight out of 10 people say that this is true. All of these studies say that it is possible. So our brain loves to see sort of facts and data to actually convince us that this thing we wanna do is possible. So one proof point is facts, data, and then demos. What else do we look to as proof that

this thing may be possible? Well, similar others. We look to people who are like us, who've tried to do something really similar to this particular thing that we're picturing ourselves doing, and we want to see if they've been able to do it. This is the magic behind the famed testimonials that we see in marketing all over the place and the reason they work so well. It's because when we see other people like us succeeding at the thing that we are looking to do, our brain says, huh, this just might be doable. And it fuels action taking in a way that wouldn't be possible had we not have that proof that the thing we're looking to do is possible. So facts, data, and demos, similar others.

Third one, people you trust, right? So these may be people who are radically different than you. They may be celebrities or authorities or very often misinformed in a misinformed way, celebs. But it's people who, for some reason, you trust to be credible and they tell you it's possible or they've done it in their lives, even though their lives and their abilities and their resources are profoundly different from you.

For some reason, you look to them and you trust them. You have a sense of authority around them and them saying it's possible, whether they've done it in their own lives or just telling you it's possible, whether they've done it in their own lives or just telling you it's possible, allows your brain to say, huh, this is a person I trust. Maybe it's a person I admire. I believe they're credible.

And my brain will say, okay, so then maybe it's possible. And that again becomes fuel for action taking. So we have facts, data, and demos, similar others, people you trust, right? And then really it's micro-tests of progress, right? And when we're looking for those sort of like small steps that we're going to take ourselves, as a general rule, it's those chunked things that we mapped out on our plan that lead to progress, very often have low stakes, especially in the beginning, that allow us to taste it. Our own taste of progress makes a really big difference. Those add up to proof that the thing we want to do is possible, right? And that

helps fuel action taking, but we're still not there. We've got three more Ps and we're about to get into really, really different and critical ones. And this is also very often where nobody wanders, or if they do, they do it in a very haphazard or incomplete way. So let's move into our sixth one, and that is people. That is people. Now, we need people to succeed at anything meaningful and challenging. Very, very, very hard to do something that will take a lot of effort, that will require a lot of saying no to other things, and maybe take a lot of time to make happen. Very hard to do that when we don't have people on our side. And here's the thing. We have six roles that we want to have people play while we're working towards this big, awesome thing that we're trying to make happen, right? Do you need to have all

six roles filled? Some are more important than others. Do they need to be from six different people? Not necessarily. Some people can play multiple roles. So the six different roles are what I call co-drivers, champions, accountants, mentors, community, and challengers. Your co-drivers are people who are similar to you and they're doing something similar. So they're kind of working alongside of you. So maybe if you're looking to run that 10K, right?

You get a group of people who are all looking to run a 10K. Maybe it's not even the same one, but they're all looking to do something similar and you're all meeting and you're all kind of going through it with each other, right? You don't even have to be working on the same thing. You can be more parallel playmates. Maybe you have six people who are all looking to start a new company, right? So they each have their own idea and their own company, but they're all moving through this kind of brutally hard startup process and going through a lot of the same struggles. And because of that, they can share a lot of the same shared experiences and emotions. Those are your co-drivers or your parallel playmates. The energy of the coast drivers, funny enough,

is commiseration. We love to go through hard things with other people. And that way we get to sort of like commiserate with them. Hey, we understand and we are understood. And to be able to go through people who are doing something similar, that commiserative energy is actually really helpful. It makes us feel like we're not alone. What about that second role, champions?

Champions are the people who will pick you up when you're down and they will be your cheerleaders. These are the people who are there and their primary energy of champions is cheering you. Basically, you can do it. Every time you fall to get back up, these are the people who are always behind you. Basically, you can do it. Every time you fall to get back up, these are the people who are always behind you. They're the people who will look at you

when you're really bumming out, when you're crying, when you think it's not possible and say, you can do this. You're committed to it. They'll walk you through why you did it, why you said yes in the beginning. They'll remind you of your purpose and they will keep helping you move along. They're cheering you on.

Your accountants are your accountability people. This can be one other person. It can be a group of people, but they are the people who know you. They know your picture. They know your purpose, and they have an idea of your plan. They know the steps that you're committing to taking, and they are willing to then play the role of holding you accountable to action taking at least long enough for all of your own micro tastes of progress, like we talked about before, to become so self-reinforcing that you don't need it nearly as much. Your accountants, especially in the early days, are super critical people to have on board. And question for you,

do you think that your champions and your accountants can be the same person? In my experience, the answer is yes, but rarely. As a general rule, the people who are awesome at picking you up, at championing you, who are making you feel you can do anything, are not the same person as the one who's going to hold you accountable to doing the things when you're struggling, you're sad, you're tired, you're achy, you're burned out to saying, do this thing. You said it matters. Here's why it matters. Now make it happen. Kind of two different energies. Maybe you get that rare person who's good at both,

but very often I found that this is better having two different people play those two different roles. That brings us to mentors. Mentors are people who either have had a substantial amount of time guiding or advising others who are looking to do the thing that you're looking to do, that they really have a deep set of wisdom and embodied knowledge on how to do this, on the obstacles that will come up on how to get through them and pass them, or they have done it themselves. And they're then willing to work with you and drawing upon their own experience, share wisdom.

So the guiding energy of the mentors is wisdom, is wisdom. And that whole thing is about helping you be able to sort of make leapfrogs through moments very often of adversity and understand when things can be working better. So mentors can play a really important role here. Two left, community. Community is all about people who see you and accept you as you are, where you can have a sense of belonging along the way. So even if you're not where you want to be,

even if you're striving for something different or something changed, these are the people who will embrace you and accept you and love you and support you. And you have a sense of, I am a part, I have a sense of belonging and acceptance no matter what along the way. These can be the same people as certain others. Your co-strivers can very often become powerful sources

of community and your champions, right? So this can be part of a shared role of somebody else. And finally, and this is a new addition, you're challengers. And this is something that I've been trying to put my finger on and whether it was really a distinct role or not. And then not too long ago, I heard researcher and well-known author and professor Adam Grant talk about this idea of challengers and, and challengers are people who are there largely to, to challenge you. And the energy of the challenger is optimization. Why on earth would you want a challenger? Why would you want somebody who's going to sit there

and try and shoot down your ideas and this and that? The answer is because you want people who know you, know your picture, know your purpose, know your plan, and at the same time are really smart and informed and are willing to actually inquire into whether it makes the most sense, right? So these are people who are willing to challenge your assumptions. And the reason that you want that

is because you never see everything clearly. We are subjective beings and we have internal biases. We have internal dreams. We have assumptions that we just assume into existence that aren't true, right? And if we're trying to really be objective about the thing we want to happen, the way it's going to make us feel, the reason why, the steps it's going to take to get there and to make the whole, not just the outcome as good as it can possibly be,

but the plan and the journey and the path as sensible and optimized and efficient as it can possibly be, we have a lot of trouble seeing all the ways that that could happen from being what my friend Charlie Gilkey calls inside the jar and trying to read the label, which is impossible. So we need people on the outside, not just to support us and champion us and hold us accountable and mentor us and give us a sense of community, but also smart people who are willing to challenge us, not in the name of cutting us down or stopping us, but of making the quest and the outcome better and getting to those places of improved outcomes and improved process as soon as humanly possible

so that if we need to make changes or adaptations or get agile along the way, we can learn that as soon as humanly possible so that if we need to make changes or adaptations or get agile along the way, we can learn that as soon as possible and shift on the fly and keep optimizing and making the process and the outcome better and better and better along the way, rather than coming up with something we think is solid, being afraid to have anybody else test it and help show where the weak points are and make it better. And then we just run with it, invest a ton of time, energy, and money and realize down the road that it's nowhere near as good as it could have been. It's not what we thought it would be. And the process it took to get there could have been so much better, faster,

easier, and more rewarding. So the idea of having challengers, I found was a really powerful addition to the team of people that you would want to have access to in order to achieve your big, meaningful outcome. Adam described doing this. I heard him in conversation with his book. So when he has an idea for a book, he actually has a group of grad students and he will sort of hand them off a chapter at a time from the manuscript as he's

writing. And their charge is then they'll have a meeting to try and destroy the ideas. And he wants this because he wants to know where the problems are, where the logic flaws are, where things might not be right, because knowing that sooner allows him to then do the work to really either defend it or show how he's right and they're wrong, or say, huh, well, yeah, there's a better way to go about this or different ideas here, different way to say it or tell it or different research or different, whatever it may be, right? So it gets the final output way better, way faster, and it becomes a really valuable role to have. Now, again, for this particular person and this particular role, you want to

have part of the agreement be that this is not about trying to destroy or stop somebody from doing the thing. It's about offering invitations to rethink process and outcome in a way that will make them both potentially better. Cool. So we're wrapping around to our final two in success scaffolding right now. And thank you so much for hanging with me. I know we've been at this for about an hour, but we're getting really, really, really close. And this will be so, so helpful as you look at the year ahead and then start to actually map out, right? You start with your picture and then you identify your purpose. And then you put together the four elements of your plan, your chunks, benchmarks, workarounds

and integration. You open the door to possibility 3%. And then you go into the world of proof through facts and data and demos and similar others and people you trust and micro tastes of progress to let your brain become increasingly wired to believe that thing is possible and to take action more and more and more aggressively and with more certainty.

And then you round up your team of people, the six different roles to support you in all the different ways that your mindset needs to be supported in order to take action. And then we come to the final two things here. So the seventh P is what I call practices. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever,

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Y'all need a pilot. Flight risk. Practices is all about mindset. This is all about accepting the fact that when you say yes to doing something where you deeply want it, it's something big, it's something meaningful. The stakes are real.

And by the way, the stakes should be real because if they're not, it just doesn't matter. You might as well actually do something with real stakes, right? So when you commit to doing something like that, it can be scary. It can be anxiety producing. It can be upsetting. It can really mess with your mood and your state of mind, with your sleep, your level of agitation, your relationships, right? So committing to doing something, and I have launched companies, I've launched bodies of works, I've launched books, media experiences, events, trainings, a lot of different things. Anytime that you are trying to do something big and meaningful with meaningful stakes,

you will experience not just the amazingness of the journey and so many moments of success and relation and collaboration and joy and love along the way, but also your mind is going to be pushed into potential dark caverns. And that will affect both your ability to stay calm and be resilient. It will affect your ability to be focused and attuned to what matters and to be discerning,

to be able to make decisions about what to say yes and no to in a way that is truly intelligent. These three things need to be as sort of in a healthier place as possible along the way. So we need to develop practices that allow us to actually keep our minds calm. So have a peace of mind rather than spinning in anxiety, to be resilient when adversity comes our way. We need practices that allow us to focus and attune our attention to the things that truly matter so that we're not just spinning and wasting so much of our energy on the things that just won't move the needle forward at all. And we need sort of the cognitive bandwidth to be able to make good decisions, to be intentional, to discern what to say yes and no to.

And I found that adopting a set of simple daily practices can be incredibly helpful in cultivating the state of mind that allows us to remain calm and resilient, focused and attuned and discerning, right? So that is going to be different. Those practices will be different for every person. I'll share what my daily practices are. So every day I wake up in the first thing in the morning, I have a meditation practice.

And meditation for me means rolling out of bed, sitting for 25 minutes in what a mindfulness practice is sort of my special sauce flavor of mindfulness practice mixed with breathing exercises that come from my background in studying of yoga and breathing and sort of Eastern and Western body and putting them together in a way that allows my mind to sort of start the day in a very calm, focused,

resilient way. And it sets it up so that even if things don't go my way throughout the day, I respond to them in a much more intentional way. And I'm able to continue to focus my energy on what really matters rather than spinning off into all sorts of distractions. Now, is this me every day? No, of course not. I'm a human being. There are days where I'm maniacally out spinning out into different things or days where I'm exhausted. But the fact that I have this as a daily practice, and I have for years now, has created a sort of a baseline level of equanimity and focus and discernment that tends to sort of sustain me even on days where they're more challenging or I'm

struggling more to focus, to be here, to be calm and not anxious, to respond to adversity. I just know I have an inner knowing that I'm responding with a greater sense of ease than had I not had these practices. For other people, exercise, and exercise is a part of my practice as well, but maybe that becomes the central thing for you. We know that meditation affects your brain in a very powerful way that directly influences anxiety, calm, resilience, focus, and decision-making. We also know that exercise does nearly the exact same thing. So if your jam is much more going for a run or swimming or yoga or whatever it may be, that can get you to a very similar place. But the idea is to build this into a daily or regular practice so that it becomes just

a fiber of sort of like who you are and what you're doing. So one other thing to consider integrating into this practice, this daily practice, is some form of visualization or what researchers often call mental simulation. I know, kind of a fancy word. I used to do this as a gymnast when I was a kid. I was competitive for the first 18 years or so of my life and I used to train a lot. And I would visualize myself doing the perfect routine over and over and over. And a lot of people do this. A lot of athletes do this. A lot of musicians do this. They visualize themselves having achieved the goal as a part of a daily practice. And while I asked you to do something really similar, when I introduced the idea of creating a detailed picture of the outcome

that you want to create in the beginning when we're talking about the picture, right? That second P. When it comes to a daily practice, turns out there is actually a better approach. So the approach to visualization or mental simulation that most of us have been taught, it asks you to create a picture of this thing all the way out in the future as if it already happened. Maybe it's crossing the finish line at a race, owning your dream house, toppling a government, getting an A on an exam, or doing a dream job for a living, whatever it may be. Outcome simulation like this,

where it's focused on you already being in that place of having achieved the outcome, great for vision setting, but it can be an effective tool, especially when helping define that deeply desired picture in the beginning and letting your brain begin to sort of less than consciously map it. But for many people,

outcome simulation is not the most powerful tool in the visualization arsenal. In fact, there's a different approach to visualizing that has been shown in a number of published studies to be significantly more powerful when it comes to integrating it into a daily practice. And that is called process simulation or visualization. And true to its name, it focuses on visualizing or picturing not the outcome or the goal, but the steps and actions needed to get there. I wrote about this quite a while ago now in my book, Career Renegade. So in 1998, researchers divided a group of college students into three groups, and they would do a certain visualization for five minutes a day.

Students in the process simulation group, they visualize the actions and steps needed to complete a specified project. And at the same time, students in the outcome simulation group visualize themselves having already successfully completed it. So one group is visualizing them doing the steps. The other group is just visualizing themselves having been done. They've completed the project. And then there was a control group, people who didn't do anything. The results were pretty eye-opening compared to that control group, the slacker group who just sat there and didn't visualize anything. No judgments there. Students in both the visualization groups were more likely to begin the project on time, right? So both outcome and process

simulation, it gets people acting earlier than if you don't do any kind of visualization or simulation. The students who visualize themselves having successfully completed the project. So they didn't think about the steps. They just saw themselves as being there every day. Well, they were significantly more likely to complete it on time, but here's the deal. The students who pictured themselves taking the steps needed to complete the project every day were way more likely than both groups to finish on time. And they generally considered the assignment easier than the students in the other groups. So they're more likely to reach the goal on time,

and it felt more effortless along the way, which is pretty cool. In a series of additional studies, those same researchers, Baum and Taylor, looked at undergraduate students. And what they saw was that students who engaged in daily process simulation, right, picturing the steps, not the end. In anticipation of an exam, they started studying earlier than those who simply visualized getting an A. And not surprisingly, with more study, because they started earlier, that process simulation group, they scored an average of eight points better on the exam than the ones who just visualize themselves getting an A. So when you're considering what ingredients you might integrate into your daily practice, be it meditation or mindfulness or breathing or movement, whatever it is that feels right to you

to help really prime your brain to be able to sustain effort over a long period of time, maybe also explore adding a bit of process simulation. Visualize or picture yourself not just having achieved the outcome, but actually taking the steps and doing the actions needed to get you there. Think about the steps you'll need to take that day or week, visualize yourself doing them, and it primes your brain to make it more likely that you actually will do them even when things get in your way. And that helps ensure that you will actually make this thing happen. All of these different practices tend to have two elements in them. There is an automatic element and there is an intentional element. The automatic element happens when we don't necessarily want something to be a

conscious process. We just kind of want to know that it's happening and we want the benefit of it. You know, so it's the type of thing that we repeat in the back of our minds. It's when you have driven, you know, like the exact same eight blocks to go pick up the exact same thing at the store thousands of times, very often you don't even remember doing the drive when you do it because your brain has so looped that into a habit that it moves into a much more automatic, less unconscious part of your brain, which is also really important because that type of process actually consumes far less energy in your brain and gives you more energy for more intentional,

emotional, and cognitive demands. And you will need those along the way. So we wanna look at sort of like the daily practice and say, how much of this can we make automatic? How much of it does not matter? And then the other part is how much of it can we make and should we make intentional? It's the difference between habit and ritual.

So habit is the behaviors that we become, we make automatic and we want to make them automatic. So they take less bandwidth and happen automatically. Ritual are the behaviors that we do on a similar repeated daily basis that we want to keep intentional because there is a certain amount of the benefit that comes from making them intentional and not automatic. So if I use, for example, my daily morning meditation practice, right, that is a blend of automatic habit and intentional ritual, right? When I actually get into the, all of the steps that, that, that moved me from opening my eyes to sitting in a particular position, turning on

the app that I used as my timer, that stuff, right? I want that to take as little bandwidth as possible. That's automatic. I don't think about doing that anymore. I've been doing it for years. It just happens. And that's a really good thing. I don't need to pay attention to that. Once I sit, once the chime lets me know that my actual sitting meditation has begun, then I actually do want to do the work of drawing my mind persistently back to the breath. It is intentional. It is focused. I am exerting effort to be in this state. And there's a ritual built around this where it is not automatic or habitual. And that's a good thing because it is that very sort of attentiveness to the practice that allows the effect of it to

become deeper. So when you think about your need to do something, to develop a practice or a series of practices on a daily or semi, like three, four or five times a week type of thing that will give you access to a state of ease, resilience, to focused attention, attuned awareness, and discerning decision-making. Think about the things that you might do. And rather than me just telling you what to do, I could tell you do breathing, I could tell you do exercises, I could tell you do meditation, or these four different types of things. It's really important for you to think about in your experience, what tends to work best on your mind, and then build your practices around that.

And remember, a certain amount of it, as much as you can, you want to happen automatically. So it just becomes habit so that you know, I want the fact that I'm doing it every single day at a particular time, sitting in a particular way and using a particular app. I don't want to have to think about that. I just want it to happen.

And then when I'm doing the thing, I want it to be intentional and that to become the ritual part of it. And that becomes a really, really powerful element of emotional and psychological scaffolding that allows me to actually be psychologically and spiritually okay as I am investing a lot of energy and effort in working to accomplish something big and powerful. And that, I know you're saying finally, brings us to our final P. And this is kind of a fun one that wraps this all up. We've identified our picture, made clear our purpose, have a plan that we are confident works and will work in our life, open the door to possibility and started to actually understand what it will take to build

the possibility that leads to action taking. We've lined up the people that we know will hold us to making this happen and identify the practice or practices that will allow us the state of mind and the state of being to really flourish through this. And we wrap it all up with what we call a pledge. And this is a simple thing. It's literally a sentence or two or a couple of sentences. You can do it written. You can do it by audio. You can do it video. You can paint it or crayon it. Don't really care. Whatever's your jam. But you create a pledge before you start this, where you identify what it is that you're committing to doing,

both in terms of the outcome and the actions, why it's so important to you. You identify the stakes. So what is at stake here? And if you can't identify any meaningful stakes, by the way, create them, add them to it, figure out what stakes could you add to this, whether it's monetary or time-wise or service-wise, that would actually make you more invested in making this happen, right?

So the what, the why, the actions, the stakes, and one final piece, right? We put this into a thing saying like, I so-and-so am committing to working to make this outcome happen. This is why it matters so much to me. Here are the actions that I'm committing to taking. And here's what's at stake, right? And I am signing on this dotted line that I'm committing to do all of this, right?

And then we do one other thing. That is we share that. Whether it's audio, video, a piece of paper where we've just written a couple of sentences or a paragraph, we share that. Now, how you share that is kind of up to you. Sensibly, I would share it with at least some, if not all, of the six different roles of people

that we talked about earlier, right? These are the people where if you share it with one or two or three or four or five or all six, they're the people who can really help reinforce the commitment that you've just made, the pledge that you have just made. If you wanna do it even beyond that, some people may share this publicly. You may share it on social media. You may put it on your fridge, whatever it is that moves it beyond

just an internal commitment and somehow makes known to others what you are raising your hand to commit to doing. Why is this important? Is this just like some dopey tool? Well, it sounds kind of like it, but actually it's been shown to be effective in the world of health and wellness behavior change. And one of the reasons is because it's based on a psychological phenomenon known as the consistency principle. This was identified more than 30 years ago by social scientist, Robert Cialdini, who's been one of the leading voices on influence for decades in the academic and then practical community. And he identified six different factors that are super powerful in influence. And one of those is when we say or take an action, and then we make that known to others,

there's something in our brain, which makes us want to be seen as being consistent human beings. We want to be known both to ourselves and others as someone who acts consistently with something that we have said and done before, right? So if we say we're going to do something, then we want to tell ourselves we're the type of person who actually does what we said we're going to do. And then we're the type of person who keeps taking action that reinforces what we said we're going to do, that is consistent with what we said we're going to do. And we want to tell that to ourselves because that's part of where we get our self-worth, but we also want that to be known to others. And when we sort of like take our internal commitments

and we turn them into a simple pledge and then we make that known to others, we are now leveraging that primal psychological impulse, not just to sort of tell ourselves that we are consistent human beings, but knowing that we want to be seen in the community of others as being a person who is consistent with what they've said and done, who actually takes action on what they have stated matters to them.

So that is sort of like the final flag in the sand before you then start to say, okay, now it is time for action. 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 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. Okay, so that is the eight Ps. Picture, purpose, plan, possibility, proof, people, practices, and pledge. Do you need to have every one of these 100% in place if you have any chance of succeeding at something big and meaningful? Short answer, probably not. But the more nuanced answer is the more that you do have in place, the higher your chances of actually doing the thing that you have potentially wanted to do or make happen or become maybe for months

or years your reality, even if it has never happened in the past after having tried many times. So why not put as much of this in place as you possibly can? Most of this isn't about money. It's not about buying or investing or anything. This is just about you sitting down, going through all these different things and actually doing some writing and talking to human beings and figuring out, doing the internal work and the outreach before you actually make the commitment to do it. That will help ensure that you are capable of doing something that maybe you never thought you could do and you never have been able to do in the past. This can change everything. That's why my feeling is the more you can do, the better. And at a minimum, make sure that you really at least focus on the first six. Picture purpose, plan, possibility, proof, and people, right?

Because those are more sort of fundamental. They're foundational in what we're talking about here. So I know this has been a lot, but I also mentioned that I was gonna give you access to a tool, a one-page mind map, everything that I've just shared with you, the entire thing, success scaffold you, the entire thing, success scaffolding, the eight Ps, all the sub elements that are important for each one of these

things is all mapped out for you on a one-page visual mind map so that you can then take that, then take out your favorite app, your favorite journal, your favorite whatever it is, and literally just go through the eight Ps, writing down, planning, doing your outreach to get in place everything that you can get in place beforehand. The way that you get that, many of you are probably on our email list already. I write a weekly dispatch. On the next one, just keep your eye open because we will have a link to the revised 2020 success scaffolding. And that, as I mentioned earlier, is different than older versions because you've done some work and upgraded it. If you're not on the email list, by the way, if you just go to

goodlifeproject.com and sign up for email list, the welcome email you will get will have a link to the mind map and you can download it and just check it out and use it any way you want to use it to really fire up your year. So I am super excited. I'm super excited to look at the year ahead. I'm super excited for what we have on top, a good life project individually with our team, with so many of the different big things and meaningful things with big stakes that we're looking at making happen. And I'm super excited to be able to play even the smallest role in maybe helping give you

some tools and ideas and processes that might help you for the first time, unlock a sense of possibility and directionality and very specific actions to take so that you can step into this year and look at it not as sort of another year where it's more of the same, but another year where something you deeply want to happen actually happens. And you have an understanding of the process and the actions to take to make it real in your life and in the world, that would be incredible. And my greatest hope is that you move beyond just listening to this and actually start to engage in taking action. We will be back

with the next podcast with one of our regularly scheduled conversations. Super excited to share. We have so many incredible guests lined up for you. I'm so excited to share. And as I mentioned, keep your eye out because for the next two weeks after this as well, we have two more deep dive immersions just with me. The next one is all about the broader conversation of living a good life and some very specific ideas, a model and actions to take. We're going to look at vitality, mind, body, relationships, and work. And then the final one after that will be a much more focused deep dive into what I call the contribution bucket. And I'm going to share a lot more about the sparkotypes and a whole bunch of inside intel that we have seen unfold over the last year since they

have been live in the world and some powerful new insights and applications. Super excited to share all of this with you and hopefully help you get this new year off to a really powerful, liberating, transformational, if that's what you're looking for, experience. And more than anything else, just a year that allows you to step into or continue to live just a truly good life. Thanks so much for tuning in. I'm Jonathan Fields. Talk to you next time.

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. Thank you. 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. 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.

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.