Good Life Project - What Should I Do With My Life? First, Do This.

Episode Date: October 23, 2018

Question for you...“How do you figure out what kind of work will fill you with a sense of purpose and meaning, let you fully express yourself, your gifts, passions and skills, and drop you into that transcendent state of flow where you just know, deep down, you’re doing the work you were put on the planet to do?”Here’s what I’ve come to believe…We’re all born with a certain “imprint” for work that makes us come alive. Work that lets us wake up in the morning and know, deep down, we’re doing what we’re here to do. Work that sets us ablaze with purpose and, fully-expressed in a healthy way, becomes a mainline to meaning, a pathway to that transcendent state of flow, and a gateway to connection and joy. Put another way, work that “sparks” us.You may find thousands of satisfying outward expressions of this deeper imprint. I believe this is much of what people talk about when they use the word passion, and why any one person can have many equally satisfying outlets for this deeper driver.But, much to my amazement, every time I’d keep drilling down in search of the deeper root, the essence, the DNA-level “source-code,” I come back not to millions of unique answers, but to the same, remarkably simple set of 10 core imprints or archetypes for meaning and work.I call these Sparketypes™ (http://sparketype.com/). The archetypes for work that sparks you.This is not a “woowoo” thing. It’s actually incredibly practical, easily-validated through your own experience, and all about application in the real world. It’s about giving you tools to reveal, then live into a deep sense of purpose, potential and possibility.And today, I’ve recorded a very special hour-long podcast that takes you deep into the world of the Sparketypes, introduces you to all 10 of them, explains how each becomes expressed in your life, and how we can tap this wisdom to cultivate purpose, meaning, joy and, ultimately, freedom and flow.And, there’s one other thing. THIS. IS. REALLY. BIG.Many of you will get a “sense” of your Sparketype simply from what I share about each on the podcast. But, you don’t have to settle for that.Over the last year, we’ve been working fiercely behind the scenes to develop, test and optimize a proprietary Sparketype Assessment™ that will reveal your Sparketype (actually two of them) in a matter of minutes.The Sparketype Assessment™ is now available for YOU to take! (http://sparketype.com/)It is 100% free. It takes about 7-10 minutes to complete. At a minimum, it’ll open your eyes in a big way. And, it also just might change your life.So, listen to the podcast. Take the Sparketype Assessment.Then, share the podcast, your personal Sparketype and the Sparketype Assessment with anyone you know who needs a little help figuring out the work they’re here to do.-------------------------Thank you to our super cool brand partners. If you like the show, please support them - they help make the podcast possible. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

So I have a question for you. What if you could discover the work you're here to do and then spend the rest of your life doing it? This is a bit of an unusual episode of Good Life Project. Instead of our normal deep dive conversation with a guest, we're going to go deep into this question, just you and me. Because if you've ever found yourself asking, what am I actually doing with my life?

Turns out you're not alone. A lot of our listeners have that same question and they've shared it with me over the years. The further we get into life, the more we start asking the big questions. Usually it's because we've got no strong sense of what truly matters to us or maybe what what we're currently doing, and whether it's the thing we're getting paid to do or not, isn't leaving us with what we need. It's leaving us empty, maybe stressed, overwhelmed, exhausted, anxious how to step into it. Sometimes it's all the above all the time. And you'd think this gets better the further we get into life. But truth is, unless we do something to make it better, nothing ever changes. We can bang our head against the work wall only for so long before we start to ask if there is a better way to build a living and a life, to make meaning and feel lit up along

the way. Well, it turns out there is a better way to build a living and a life, to make meaning and feel lit up along the way. Well, it turns out there is a better way. It starts with understanding what really drives us. And that is where we're headed in today's special deep dive episode. I'll be sharing some kind of pretty unusual ideas and a powerful tool to understand maybe for the first time exactly what you're here to do. I'm Jonathan Fields 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 X, available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone Xs are later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. So I have so much to share with you today, but first I kind of want to tell you a story and then I'm going to take you into my laboratory and reveal some insights, a pretty major body of

work I've been working on really for years now, a very specific power tool that I have been developing that will help you understand what you're here to do, how you might contribute to the world on a pretty deep level. I had my own reawakening to the answer to this earlier this year, actually. Here's what happened. I did something kind of weird in March. Okay, so I do something kind of weird all the time, but in March, I did something that was particularly unusual for me. Now, long-time listeners know I live in New York City. You figure we have pretty much everything you would ever need within a few-minute walk. But every Wednesday in March, after a full day's work, I pack a bag, I take a subway downtown,

I get out on Chamber Street, and a block away, on the corner, an old friend of mine is waiting in his car. I jump in and we navigate the rush hour traffic to get through the Holland Tunnel and start heading west. And we drive for about two hours or so. And as we're driving, we leave the city behind first for the suburbs. Then we leave big towns behind for smaller ones and lots of trees. And then small towns become open fields. And we start to find ourselves out in rural Pennsylvania, in Amish country, actually. And we wind around to this tiny little hamlet, I guess you'd call it, of Bernville, PA. Population, 965 people.

Bernville, it turns out, is actually a stone's throw from Redding, Pennsylvania, which you may know as one of the four train stations in the game Monopoly. Yes, it really does exist. It was actually a real railroad that moved coal from the Pennsylvania coal regions all over the East Coast. But that is a story for another day. Now, we've never actually seen the town of Byrneville, so we're not actually sure there is one. But when we get to the address we've been given, we pull into an old gravel parking lot. And this used to be the lot for what we think was the local roadhouse. Looking out past the lot, all you can see, seemingly for miles, is fields and cows and random sprigs of trees. And the roadhouse itself is where we'd be working and living.

And it had been kind of abandoned and taken over recently by a guy named Eric. And that's who we were coming to see. So we settle in and we get ready for an early call in the morning. And for the rest of the week, we become essentially manual laborers, tradesmen and craftsmen. We wake up first thing in the morning real early and we start laboring. And we work without a single break until we take lunch at around 1 o'clock. 40 minutes just to let our bodies recover a little bit. And then not a single break again until about 9 o'clock in the evening.

So we're working about 13 hour days and we finished working, our bodies, our dog tired, our hands ache. We kind of crawl ourselves up this old industrial fire exit stairs in the back to settle into very simple but clean rooms that are up above the not yet renovated roadhouse. And we hang out, we stuff our faces with pretty much whatever we can. And we drag our bodies into bed. We can't even keep our eyes open by then because we're just so exhausted. And then we wake up the next morning and we do it again. And at the end of the week, we amble back into the car and we begin to drive

back, leaving the fields to fade into towns and then suburbs and eventually drive back in through the Holland Tunnel into New York City. Not much talking is happening. We're pretty beat, but also remarkably content. We say see you later. And then on Wednesday of the following week, we do the exact same thing again for an entire month. And by the end of our month, we're just physically beat up. Our fingers are cracked and bleeding, our joints ache, sweating sawdust and wood glue. Literally, like I could tell what kind of wood I was working with on any given day because when it would blow my nose, that color was in the tissue. Every nook and cranny is just filled as we're working. And as

we bring the month to a close, we're completely and utterly cooked. So why would we do this? Well, maybe it was a good job. Maybe we're getting paid well to do it. I mean, manual labor like that, working really, really hard with our bodies, 13 hours a day with a single 40-minute break.

Someone had to have been paying us decent money, right? No. In fact, we paid thousands of dollars for the privilege of doing this. Well, something must be wrong with us then, right? Because we weren't doing anything for anybody but us, to be honest. It wasn't like we were working for Habitat for Humanity or building something grand and big that was of service to others. This was almost entirely self- to others. This was almost

entirely self-serving. This was scratching our own itch. So why would we do something like that? What's wrong with us? And trust me, we kind of wondered that as we headed out there on a Wednesday night and get back into the car to make the trek back out to the work site. And here's the answer. Here's why. The reason we were going out there is because we're both following a dream to reconnect with something that we have been missing on the level of soul, level of DNA, and to make something we've both come to love. I had had a years-long dream of learning how to build a guitar. Now, I play guitar pretty badly, but there's something about the form of it that has always mystified and drawn me. And I wanted to learn how to make one by hand,

not from a kid. I wanted to actually start with raw wood, with something I could touch and feel and then labor with it. Eric was actually a young luthier or guitar builder who'd found a passion for teaching others how to do what he does. And he'd purchased the old roadhouse and been in the process of renovating it. One part to be a home, the other became his workshop. And we were traveling to his workshop in the quest to learn how to transform raw wood into a finished instrument. How to bend, shape, cut, glue, sand, hammer, chisel,

rasp and finish until something resembling the look and feel of an acoustic guitar somehow emerged. This process was really hard. More than either of us thought. There was one day where we literally took a 10-inch long sanding block

with a 12-degree curve in it and pushed it back and forth atop a strip of ebony that would become the fretboard for the better part of eight straight hours. So was that fun? Not entirely. In fact, it was probably just a bit evil, both physically and psychologically. Could we have just bought a finished version online? Sure. But that would defeat the very reason we were there. It was the very fact that we didn't take shortcuts that made the process so fiercely rewarding. We did it because I was

building something with my hands, turning raw material into something real and beautiful. Something I could run my hand over and feel the grain of my sweat and labor and love. Something I could show to friends and be fiercely proud of. Something I could play and know that not just the sound, but the body originated from a place of pure devotion. In fact, before closing up the guitar, I actually took a marker and on the small wooden brace underneath the place where the strings would emerge from the bridge of the guitar, I wrote the lines of a loving-kindness meditation. Nobody will ever see this, but I'll know that with every strum, the strings will resonate with this energy. Now, a normal person who plays guitar will generally go

to a guitar store and they'll check out a whole bunch of guitars and they then pay hundreds or even thousands of dollars for a finished instrument that somebody else has made for them. They literally pay not to have to make it themselves. And yet here we are, paying thousands of dollars to make a guitar that quite possibly won't sound nearly as good as the one you could buy and might well spontaneously combust the first time I play it. So why would I do that? Why was I waiting years to commit to actually doing this? Why did the dream never leave me? And why was that month hard as it was?

And it came at probably the worst time in the last five years for me to take a half a month to do this because I had massive amounts of, quote, real work to do and huge deadlines to hit? Why was it the single most nourishing thing that I have done for myself in years, if not decades? The reason is this. Because what I was really doing was creating time, setting aside the time to reconnect with my essential nature.

I am a maker. I make ideas manifest. That is what I do. It is what I have always done. If you ask my mom, she'll tell you from the time I was a kid, that is what I've always done. I was the kid who would beg my parents to take me to the local junkyard so I could find the pieces to assemble into Frankenbikes that I would ride around the neighborhood until I'd jump over the big rock around the corner and the forks would implode upon impact. Note to self, by the way, don't use duct tape on forks.

I was the kid who lost days painting album covers on jean jackets on a desk made of an old door stacked on top of boxes of raw clay in a dimly lit corner of my basement. I was the kid who built and painted and renovated houses in my summers during college. But somewhere along the line, I lost touch with this part of myself. So sure, I still create. I still make.

I write. I produce. I design. I build companies, experiences, books, media, and programs. And that is awesome. It scratches a very definite part of my itch. But at least for me, another really big part of the way I love to make, it's about the physical process, working with materials I can touch and feel and work,

not just think and see and hear. And I was missing not just making, but physical making with my hands. The process of working and laboring to create something from nothing. And this reclamation, it changed me profoundly. It made me remember who I am and what I'm about. It made me remember why I'm here. And it made me more importantly, remember how I feel when I actually contribute from that place. It made me remember how important it is to go there as often as I can. And what I really started to realize is that this isn't just me. I am a maker.

That is my unique imprint. That is my reason for being. But we all have our own unique drivers of contribution. We all have something unique that is within us and very likely has been with us since we were little kids, very often that we've tuned out over the years. So over a pretty long window of time now, likely decades, as I have worked with, been blessed to work with thousands of people from all walks of life and companies and organizations

and gone deep into the questions of meaning and purpose, especially in the context of work, I've wondered what are all of these sort of primal level imprints, these drivers of contribution that we all seem to have? Are they as unique as the number of people on the planet? that we have that many billion unique imprints and the essential nature of each person, the most basic, the source code, the DNA of how we are here to contribute to the world, is that varied?

That there are billions of variations? And I became pretty curious because that's what we're often told. And that's the thing that you better find. And I started asking people, do you know what yours is? Do you know what yours is? Do you know what yours is? And I got some interesting answers when I did this. Things like I help refugees find safety. I help actors find their voice. I help animals who've been abandoned find homes. And I thought to myself, wow, that's really powerful.

But what if you lost the ability to do that? What if he lost the ability to do that? If we define ourselves, if we define our reason for being based on some sort of current context and time dependent, very granular expression, then when that ends, and it always will as we grow, as we move, as we age, as we learn, as we evolve, we find ourselves feeling like we are completely and utterly lost because we have pinned our ability to contribute from a place of deep and profound purpose onto something that is very surface level expression of something deeper. And we've never done the work to figure out what is that deeper thing. And what I start to realize is that of all the billions of expressions that are so unique to who we are and where we are in our lives and what

we want to do and all the things that we fall in love with and find passions for, that there is something underneath that. There is a deeper imprint. And when you keep looking at those things, when you ask somebody, why do you find safety for freshman days? Why do you devote so much time to helping families in crisis? Why do you spend years in a studio throwing clays into urn? And then you start to ask them, and what's driving that? You start to get a very different set of answers. And then we keep asking over and over, and what's driving that? And then you ask, and what's driving that? And again, deepening into what's driving that? You find that stunningly, you go to a vast sea of answers to a very, very, very small set of unique drivers with astonishing

speed. 10 of them, to be exact, at least from what I've been able to discover. These universal imprints, we're not talking about the granular expressions anymore. We all have our own unique things, but that one single essential nature is what I'm so curious about. That imprint which is distinct in all of us. There are a very simple and small set of drivers on the level of DNA when you actually do the work to get there. Your unique source code for the work that you're here to do. And when you find that and then express it in thousands of different ways over a lifetime, it's a beautiful thing. The French call this your raison d'etre. In Japan, it's called ikigai, which translates very roughly to the reason you jump out of bed in the morning.

Dan Buettner, in his groundbreaking book, Blue Zones, identified this sense of sustained intrinsic purpose as a key commonality in the world's populations who tend to live the longest and maintain vibrant health well into the 80s, 90s, and even 100 years old. And interestingly, while the concept of ikigai in Japanese culture is built more around general work contribution and simply how you live your life on a daily basis, as the concept actually hinted at the internet, it found itself a bit corrupted through a more Western lens. I've seen so many variations of images popularizing the concept into a viral meme in the form of a Venn diagram that adds the requirement that your one true thing, that your ikigai, must also be the thing you get paid to do and the thing that there is consumer demand

for in order for it to qualify as, quote, legit icky guy, your legit reason for being, which is a huge shame because it leads you to invalidate your reason for being simply because it doesn't pass some false, arbitrary, and unnecessary filter for commercial viability. Whether that thing ever becomes your job or simply remains a devotion to which you allocate great effort. Because it's the thing that you're here to do, it still qualifies. In fact, the amazing octogenarians of Okinawa and Sardinia who Buechner refers to, they don't wake up every morning and engage in hours of physical effort because they're being paid a wage to do it. They do it because it's the thing that fills them with a sense of purpose, meaning, and connection.

And when healthfully expressed, leads to that transcendent experience of flow, connection, and joy. And the thing is, we all kind of knew what this source code was for us at one point. Though far fewer of us remember it now because we very often abandon it for any number of reasons in the name of being a quote responsible adult. But when we reconnect with it, when we go to that place, when we start to align the way that we bring ourselves to the world, the way that we contribute, the way that we do our work in the world with this essential imprint, when we do it, we start to feel a sense of purpose, of meaning that fills us, like it illuminates every cell in our body. We feel a sense of pure expression, not partial expression, not kind of expression, but full body, nothing left hidden, this is me expression, like you are doing the thing that you are here to do. Your identity is being completely

unleashed into the world, your skills, your abilities, your lens, your capacity. There is no potential in you that remains untapped and unshown. It's all being let out. And when you go to that place, when we find it so much easier to drop into this magical state of flow, where the world vanishes away, where we lose time, where we're completely and utterly absorbed in this thing, where we lose the distinction between what we're doing and our own unique identity. We also begin to carry ourselves differently. We behave differently in a thousand tiny ways and often experience the sensation of the world rising up to meet us when what's really happening is that we're simply different in ways that may not even be noticed by us, but they are

noticed by those around us. We begin to radiate a certain energy of purpose-guided, unfiltered expression that is so rare in this world right now that when people see it, when they feel it, when they experience it, they want more. They want to be around it and around us, around you, and participate in whatever it is that you are creating. And when you feel that, you feel fueled by purpose and possibility expressed and deep in joy and flow, I call this state being sparked. It's not magic. It's not metaphysical. It's simply about knowing the

essential nature, the source code of the work you're here to do, then doing it. This profoundly changes your physical and emotional state and your behavior. Creates a stimulus response impact ripple that not only allows you to glow brighter, but also has a certain gravitational force to it. It leaves you sparked. So I'm wondering actually,

I mean, have you ever felt this in yourself? Because we know it when we're around somebody who is tapped in on this level. And many of us have probably felt passing glimpses of it in ourselves. But we've never understood what's really happening, what's driving this experience on a deeper level, one that might allow us to make it our persistent state rather than a passing glimpse that we feel like we are perpetually trying to reclaim and never quite getting. So over the last few years, distilling, defining, and mapping all of these universal imprints became kind of more of a central focus of mine. You might even call it an obsession. And I have been looking at and studying the intersection between

purpose, a DNA level purpose expression, meaning the full unencumbered expression of your identity, skills, gifts, and essence and flow. The ability to drop into that otherworldly state where the world drops away, you become utterly absorbed and immersed in the thing you're doing. Time seems to slow and you feel like you're doing the thing you were put here to do. And I have now had the opportunity to spend years really deconstructing this, learning from hundreds of the world's greatest thinkers, many of whom I've been incredibly fortunate to have co-created conversations right here on the Good Life Project podcast with. And during that same window of time, I have also examined a lot, years and years of my own experimentation, experimentation with so many others I've worked with, and examined

a metric ton of academic research on data. My goal has been not just to identify these universal drivers of meaning, purpose, expression, flow, but also to create simplicity and actionable tools that might allow anyone to figure out what theirs is, and then begin the work of living it. And quietly, but fiercely, behind the scenes, that's exactly what I've been doing. And it turns out in my work to date, I have discovered 10 of these imprints that can easily be represented by archetypes. And I call these sparkotypes. So your sparkotype reveals the source code or essential nature of the work you're here to do, the work that sparks you. There may be thousands of unique granular outward expressions of any given sparkotype, but when you drill down to the level of source code,

the sparkotype, we find ourselves at only 10. And I'd like to share all 10 with you now. And then be absolutely sure to listen to the end, by the way, because I'm also going to share a super simple yet incredibly powerful online assessment that we have built that will reveal to you your sparkotype. And just to let you know in advance, that assessment is available to anyone and everyone, and it is entirely free. 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. 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, let's dive into this. So I already shared the first prototype without actually telling you what it was. The first one is mine, and that is the maker. The essential nature, the essential drive, my DNA as a maker is to make ideas manifest. That is what I'm here to do. The fact that these ideas may serve a beautiful purpose and move people and affect people, that's awesome to me. I love it. I love it. I love it. I feel blessed if I can create something with amazing people that has that effect. And underneath it all, I'm still driven first and foremost by the making process. So I went out to this tiny little place

in the middle of nowhere in Pennsylvania and spent 13 hours a day doing this thing and paid for the privilege to do it because that let me reconnect with who I am on the most fundamental level. It let me step back into and fully express my universal urge, my primal imprint to make ideas manifest. The maker. That is who I am. Maybe it's who you are. The second one is the scientist.

The scientist. So who is a scientist? Well, a scientist is somebody with a unique, it's an imprint where you wake up in the morning and you're thinking, is there a puzzle somewhere I can solve? Is there a burning question I can quest after? Is there a need to find a solution?

It almost doesn't matter what you're solving. The fact that it may cure hunger or do all these incredible things or solve these big societal issues that would help so many people, that is amazing to you. You love that part of it. It's validation that the work you're doing is meaningful, not just to you, but you do it if you're really being honest, because you're driven by these

burning questions. You are driven by this need to solve problems and figure out puzzles. This is the thing that moves you. And when you exhaust a particular question or topic or body of work or field, you will very likely move on to a different one because that process is what you wake up in the morning to do. the third one, the third sparkotype is the maven, the maven. This is all about fascination. It's all about love of learning. So you literally, the way I paid for the privilege of working 13 hours a day to make something, you will go out of your way. You will commit yourself to be able to actually go deep into something that you're fascinated by. It could be a field, a topic.

You may explore an academic, entire academic area. You may decide that history is the thing that you cannot get enough of. And by the way, if you have like nine or 10 different degrees or certifications and you are perpetually enrolling in other courses, it's probably a pretty safe bet that you're a maven. So this is all about somebody who looks at the world and says, look,

I may use everything that I'm learning on a daily basis to make me better at X or Y job, or I may never use anything that I'm learning in a practical applied way. And I don't really care because it's freaking awesome just learning it. And that is okay. And sometimes we're shunned as those people because if you're like, well, what are you going to do with that? And your answer is, well, I don't really know and I don't really care. It's just awesome. And there are expressions and uses for all of these things. People just don't understand that. And it is because this fierce, fierce fascination and love of learning is simply the full expression of your sparkotype. So let's move on to the fourth one. The fourth one is the essentialist. And the

essentialist creates order from chaos. This, by the way, is so the opposite of me. I am known as, if anything, creating a whole lot of chaos from order. I am really good at large data sets and really good at pattern recognition, but that is not the thing that lights me up. I am not the person who looks out and sees huge, huge amounts of vast information or experiences or things and immediately streamlines and distills them. So this is actually why we have somebody on our team who is in the lead operational role who is an essentialist. Now, if you were, say, a young child, and at the age of four or five, every day you made your bed, lined up your stuffed animals before you went to school, maybe you take all of the books in your bookshelf and you put them in order by height or by color or by genre or by topic. And anytime something is out of order, it really bugs

you. Maybe you look at something in the office and if it is not organized, if it's not logical and sensible, if you haven't distilled something into systemic, wise, orderly experiences and information that just makes sense and there's an ease of use around it, it's a pretty safe bet that you have this as your main sparkotype. If you love spreadsheets and pivot tables, pretty safe bet too. That's kind of the grown-up version of lining up the stuffed animals on your bed. So the fifth sparkotype is the performer. The performer is driven to bring any relational experience to life through performance, through elevating the energy and dynamic and the activity of it and the interactivity of it, making it demonstrative, animating the mundane to help provoke faster,

deeper, better understanding, emotion, and illumination. And this very often we think about the performer as kind of being on stage, the person who's up there, quote, performing with a capital P. And this can in fact be one way that the performer fully expresses their sparkotype. But to say that this is both incredibly limiting and also very often false. You could be in the boardroom, you could be a parent, you could be tending bar, you could be teaching kids, you can be anyone and bring this element to what you do as a way to enliven any interaction, to give it life and meaning and expand the force of expression and impact no matter the job, industry, or setting. And one thing we've also learned about the performer, even in our early research, is

that it is also very likely often a repressed sparkotype. In fact, it may well be the most repressed sparkotype, meaning people kind of know this to be the essential driver underneath them, but they consciously or sometimes subconsciously repress it. They step away from it. They don't let it out. And we've been trying to figure out what is behind this. And there are two kind of more obvious reasons for this that seem to keep coming up. One is that the performer urge is often seen as a wanting to stand out. And as a child in many settings, cultures, and societies, this seems as something to be curbed.

And two, many parents associate this imprint with an industry where it is admittedly brutally hard to succeed financially. And never realizing the power of this sparkotype when expressed in any number of other domains. So they direct kids away from it because they want them to choose another path that they perceive as being more grown-up, responsible, and secure. The sixth sparkotype is the warrior. The warrior is driven to lead, to organize, and lead people. It is the person who says there's something that needs to happen. There are a group of people who are here or maybe need to be organized, need to be brought together, and they want to go there.

And I'm probably one of them. So I'm going to say, hey, I can get you there. I'm going to bring you together. Come, follow me. They're the ones who step out, outside of their comfort zone in the name of bringing people on a journey and creating a different, better outcome. If you were the little kid,

the kind of kid who ran out the door every day, rallied your friends together, and you're like, hey guys, let's do something awesome, which almost always was getting into trouble, but yeah, it was awesome. Sorry. For any parents who angst over that with a child, that is a pretty significant signpost

that you have a bit of warrior, if not that as your sort of main sparkotype in you. It's a big part of your essential nature. And if you keep doing that, if you keep organizing and leading, no matter where you go, no matter the setting, the context, no matter what you're doing, professionally or personally, it's a really good chance that your essential nature, your

sparkotype, is that of the warrior. But here's a bit of a more nuanced thing to know about warriors. Not all warriors embody or express themselves the way that society often paints, quote, warriors or leaders as. Not all are bold, loud, forward-facing, decisive, and extroverted. You can, in fact, be an incredibly powerful and effective warrior and express this drive in a gentle, thoughtful, quieter, even more vulnerable and nuanced way, leading from within or beside those you seek to gather from the heart as much as the head is an entirely valid expression of the warrior sparkotype. In fact, there's evenotype is the sage. The sage is driven

to teach. The sage is driven to share wisdom. So they may not have, or they may have a bit of a maven tendency in them because you may actually want to acquire a huge amount of knowledge, but for the sage, it isn't acquiring the knowledge just because they want to acquire the knowledge. The sage does this because in no small part, it lets them be a better teacher. The thing that makes the sage feel truly fully expressed is the ability to convey wisdom in a way they know it will lead to awakening and understanding without the constraints of a system that imposes artificial outcomes or mandates or constraints. And the thing that lets them know they're meeting this desire

is when they witness the emergence of understanding in others and know they played a role in transferring the gift of wisdom. So interestingly, sometimes mavens fool themselves into thinking they're sages and vice versa. So if you wake up in the morning, you're like, I know something, who can I tell? And you've been that way since you were little, pretty safe bet you're on the road to being a sage. And you probably find yourself, even if you're not called a teacher or a professor, if you're playing that role in whatever you do, that's a really safe bet too. If you find yourself waiting in line at the checkout counter or for coffee, and all you want to do is turn to the person next to you and share

this amazing thing that you've discovered, that can be yet another signal. So let's move on to the eighth. The eighth sparkotype is the advocate. The advocate's primary role is to give voice to those who are often unseen and unheard. To advocate for ideas, for beings that can be people, that can be animals, that can be the planet, but there's something in you that looks at inequity and says, nah, not on my watch, not in my life. Oh no, this can't be like this. But then you go one step further because a lot of people say that, but the advocate is the one who then steps up and says, hey, this isn't okay. We need to do something about it. If you find yourself consistently being the person in a company, in your family, in your life, it's a really safe bet that if you keep stepping into that role, that's your heart. That's your essential nature. That is your sparkotype. While advocates often do find their expression in full-time occupations, they're also often drawn to give voice to other beings or ideas in a way that doesn't lead to an easier,

natural full-time living. And that's fine. You can advocate for powerful ideas at work, but you can also find yourself drawn to give animals a voice in shelters or plants a voice in environmental concerns. So oftentimes, advocates find themselves playing this role not just professionally, but also through a blend of both professional and personal expression. So the ninth, the ninth sparkotype, this is the advisor. The advisor is driven to advise. So it's working very often with individuals or small groups of

people in a very intimate hands-on way to help advise or guide them through a process, through an experience, through a moment. So you're not so much leading them. You're not saying, hey, follow me. I'm going to blaze the trail. An advisor is standing next to you and walking with you and having conversations about what's going on and helping you process, see more clearly,

find better questions so that you can discover better answers and share whatever wisdom they have accumulated along the way to help you be the leader in your own life, whatever it may be. If you're the one everybody turned to as the sixth grade therapist, if you're the person who has always been the voice of inquiry and advice and illumination in the room, the de facto coach or mentor or figure outer, it's a little bit of a tell that might be you. If you're the person who has always been the voice of inquiry and advice and illumination in the room, the de facto coach or mentor or figure-outer, it's a little bit of a tell that might be you. And finally, number 10. The 10th sparkotype is the nurturer.

The nurturer lives and breathes to give care, to relieve suffering the most hands-on, direct way possible. You feel others' pain. You are very likely highly empathetic, if not profoundly so, and you cannot help helping others feel better. It's what you're here to do. You wake up in the morning and you're just like, who can I help feel better? You almost don't care. You may be connected to certain groups of people or beings over time. You may want to serve women in need or animals or pets or plants or men who can dress themselves. Not that there are any of those on the planet, wink, wink, as I sit here in schleppy jeans and a t-shirt. But fundamentally, the deeper driver, that is the outer expression. The deeper drive is that you are wired in some way to see and feel unease and suffering and pain and to give care to help

lessen it. And you do this in a very personal, hands-on, interactive way. So these 10 sparkotypes, these are really powerful imprints. The sparkotypes, when you start to identify them, when you understand them, and then you start to align how you move into the world around yours, when you start to align how you contribute, how you do your work with your essential imprint, your sparkotype, everything changes in a really profound way. You are different in the world. The world is different to you. And because of that profound sense of alignment, people respond to you differently. They see you differently. They rise up to help you differently. And you exist in a thousand little ways differently. The world

sees, acknowledges, and feels that. And when somebody exists in that state, when they offer, when they work and they contribute in that place, it's so rare. The energy that's associated with it is so rare. When you are truly sparked, we know it when we're in that zone and so do others. And the thing is, we often cycle in and out of this, but we don't know why we cycle in and out. And understanding this deeper nature, the sparkotype, it's sort of like unlocking the understanding of what it is that you need to do to get into it and then sustain it and let the world respond to that. 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,

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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. Now I mentioned that there's a really powerful tool, an assessment that we have developed that will help you figure this out for yourself. And I want to share that with you, and I'll share a link for you very shortly. But there are two other really important things to

know about this idea of your essential imprints, your sparkotype. And I want to share those with you right now. So once I'm done, I will link you right to the assessment so you can go check it out and figure this out for yourself. But one of these two ideas, think about all 10 sparkotypes. They exist along a spectrum. And I call this the creation elevation spectrum. So what does it actually mean and why do you care? Well, if you lined up all the sparkotypes left to right on one side of the spectrum are sparkotypes that are driven and fully expressed by kind of a more inward facing generative and often somewhat solitary process.

Creation, problem solving, learning, more self-directed growth is what makes them come alive. The maker sparkotype, which is me, tends to be the purest expression of this orientation. If what they create through their work helps someone, it's amazing. It's incredible. They enjoy knowing this. It satisfies the basic empathetic and compassionate instinct that exists on some level in all of us. But at the same time, if we're really being honest, it's also not the central reason they do what they do. If they're being really truthful, the depth of the human pro-social impact is more of a measuring stick for their level of skill and mastery, not their reason for being. They create, learn, solve, make, and more because that is the

work that really breathes them on a deeper level. Now, the other side of this spectrum is increasingly about elevation, impacting and helping others rise. The purest probably expression of this orientation is that 10th sparkotype, the nurturer. This is the person who is wired to serve, generally give care and relieve suffering in the highly personal, empathic, and give-oriented and individualized way. It almost doesn't matter who or what is the subject of this energy. The simple knowledge that they have been of service, that is what they live for, to elevate others. Knowing that you've lifted another being in some way lights you up more than anything else will. And each sparkotype is a stop along the creation elevation spectrum, from creation in its purest form to elevation in its purest form. And here's where it actually gets

even more interesting and maybe even a bit judgy. So we're often told that to live a good life, to be happy, to find meaning and purpose, you have to work or you have to focus your work entirely on the elevation side of the spectrum. Serve others, give care, help them rise, stop making it about yourself. That's the good life. The more you serve, the more you help others rise, the higher you rise and the better you feel. In fact, for many, this is true. In part, because a solid percentage of us do have the innate call to serve on some level to make a difference on a scale that extends beyond yourself. If your sparkotype falls squarely on the elevation side of things, this call in fact is a central part of your reason for being. Your full

expression in the world is all about, in some way, being of service to others. But also on a more practical level, when you become other-focused, regardless of your sparkotype. It helps break the cycle of neurosis and the anxiety that often consumes us and that has become a global epidemic over the last few years. It's hard to maintain the spin of self-defeating and often self-flagellating self-talk when you force your focus towards others. Plus oftentimes those you'd help elevate are on some level in more need than you and finding yourself confronted with this reality in a very human face-to-face way can bring you back to an often much ignored and very needed state of gratitude. So helping others,

being of service, it's a really good thing. Something that generates impact and also helps us feel better for many psychological reasons. But here's where it gets a really good thing, something that generates impact and also helps us feel better for many psychological reasons. But here's where it gets a bit challenging. Over the years, I have met and worked with so many people, from artists and performers to entrepreneurs, scientists, volunteers, and parents who find a deep sense of joy, full expression, and fulfillment by doing things that are much more purely on the creation side of the spectrum. Sometimes those things end up moving others, being of service, and that's awesome. But that's not actually why they do it, and it's the lesser part of what lights them up.

They do it because they are most alive when they're doing the work that is sparkotype aligned, and for them, it's about something different. It's driven by some blend of making, solving, learning, distilling, animating, or creating. I've known stunningly gifted artisans and crafters who spend most of their waking hours on their craft and being completely sparked, nourished, fulfilled simply through the process of fully expressing their lens, their capabilities, their point of view, regardless of whether another person ever sees, let alone interact with or buys their work. I've known scientists who've made discoveries that changed the health paradigm or invented breakthrough

materials or technology, enjoying the social impact of their work, but getting the greater part of their satisfaction from the ability to absorb themselves in the pursuit of a burning question. I've known history fanatics who pursue encyclopedic knowledge on a topic of interest for decades, then turn around and earn a living teaching it. But for them, the pursuit of knowledge, the self-satisfying pursuit of the full expression of this quest, this drive, this sparkotype, that is what sparks them. Sharing what they've learned is simply their way to let it out and very often on a practical level to pay the bills. When your sparkotype lies more on the creation

side of the spectrum, the human impact of the work that you do is enjoyable and awesome and potentially deeply beneficial to others as well as to you for the reasons that I mentioned, but is also very often more of a measuring stick of your capabilities and not the purest expression of your reason for being and doing. Yes, you may feel better by operating in a more other-focused way, but a solid chunk of that may also be about the short-circuiting effect it has on neurotic tendencies and exposure to circumstances that reconnect you to gratitude than it is about being, quote, wired to serve.

So rather than shaming anyone for the way that they may be oriented, maybe it's time to just acknowledge that we all derive meaning and purpose and experience passion and joy from different things and in different ways. And that's okay, especially since those who are fueled more by creation than elevation very often still end up breathing life into things and ideas and solutions and experiences that have the net effect of helping others.

On an individual level, they're still fully expressed, lit up, in flow. And on a societal level, their work ends up making differences in the lives of others. Translation, they rise, we rise. Do we really need to pass moral judgment just because the elevation was more side effect than primary driver? I'd hope not. Okay, so that was the creation elevation spectrum. But there's a second really, really important thing for you to know about the sparkotypes, in particular, your sparkotype. And it's so important because it reveals how your sparkotype is also your path to freedom once you understand how to express it. And here's one other really cool thing about this.

And that is when you know your sparkotype, jobs, titles, companies, and industries become largely irrelevant to you. Because nearly every sparkotype can be expressed in nearly every job, every title, every company, every industry. And instead of you saying, I'm in pain, I need to blow up my career, I need to leave my job, I need to leave my company to get out of pain, but not really understanding where the pain is coming from. And then all too often blowing it up and going over here and to a different place and being like, sweet, this is

awesome. I blew it up. Now I get to recreate everything and finding that you end up recreating the exact same painful circumstance that you end up recreating the exact same painful circumstance that you thought you were leaving behind. Except now, when you make decisions from a place of knowing deeply your sparkotype and how to express that, you have the ability to own your future and you have the ability to actually express it in nearly any job, any place that you might want to. So the awesome thing about starting to understand this deeper nature is that you can look at what you're doing and not blow it up. You can look at what you're doing and say, I can do it in a way that will allow me to fully express my sparkotype, even though it may

take some thought and intention to make it happen. So let's look at an example like this, instead of just keeping it abstract. Let's get really granular here. And we'll use this as an example. Let's say you're a doctor, a physician, but we could really apply this to anyone. You could be a teacher, you could be a designer, whatever it may be. So can a doctor be a maker?

Sure, maybe I'm a plastic surgeon. The thing that I love about my practice of medicine is actually creating beauty on somebody's face or body, restoring people after traumatic injury. That is the expression of my maker sparkotype. Or maybe a doctor is a scientist. And the thing that lights me up more than anything else is the diagnostic part of what I do. So I can reorient what I do to make myself the world's best diagnostician and do as much of that as I can as much of the time that I'm practicing. So maybe if I'm a doctor, I'm a maven. And the thing that the most fun for me to do is just to dive deep, deep, deep into

the research and be the most fluent in the research that I can possibly be, to be encyclopedic on this one particular thing. Maybe I'm an essentialist and my thing as a doctor is that I can possibly be, to be encyclopedic on this one particular thing. Maybe I'm an essentialist, and my thing as a doctor is that I make procedures more efficient and safe. That's what I do. That's the thing that lights me up, even though I still have the same title. Maybe it's the performance aspect. And some people are like, well, how can that be expressed as a doctor? Well, maybe I'm in the OR and we're like, here we go, ta-da, everybody sing and dance. No, that's not how it happens. But maybe when I sit down with a patient and I need to talk to them and they need to understand how to create a moment that is

appropriate to whatever may be happening. Maybe it's bringing some sort of element of fun or playful element to kids who are going through tough times. Maybe when I understand how to create a deep connection with somebody the way a true performer would, I can change the dynamic of how what I'm trying to convey lands. I can change the relationship and unlock something powerful in those that I'm working with and being in service of. Maybe it's about understanding how to create the calm, gravitas, needed to convey tough information, along with the confidence that plants the seeds of hope and belief. So maybe I'm a warrior as a doctor, and I want to lead change in the field of medicine. I want to go out there and make a big difference because things aren't working right.

I see a paradigm shift that is needed, and I am willing to be the one that organizes people and lead the charge to make it happen. Or maybe I'm a doctor and I'm a sage. And the favorite thing that I do is training interns or even patients. Maybe before a patient walks out the door from me, I ask them, are you clear on what we talked about and what you need to do? Let me make sure. Let me teach you so that you're fully informed yourself and fully reliant on yourself and not me. Maybe I'm a doctor and I'm an advocate. I see issues that are being ignored, unseen, or even deliberately avoided, or patients who need to be given voice, and I choose to help be that voice and advocate for care. Maybe I'm also the person who's an advisor and I'm counseling these people who are making really hard choices. And

that dynamic, that is what lights me up. That's the thing that I'm here to do under this exact same title as a doctor. Or maybe I'm that 10th sparketype. I'm a nurturer. Maybe the thing that I'm just here to do is that when people are going through hard things and they need help and they're in pain and they're suffering, I want to sit next to them. I want to offer my wisdom and I want to make them feel better on a very individualized, personal, hands-on way. No matter what, I'm still a doctor. I don't have to leave the profession or the job or the title to express the essential nature of who I am to fully express my sparkotype. What I need to do is understand who I am and then reorient how I practice so that I

can be fully expressed. So does that make sense to you? I hope so. What gives this approach, what gives us, what gives this approach is it's all about freedom. That's where the power lies. Freedom not to have to go on some journey. Freedom not to have to suffer all sorts of disruption. Freedom not to struggle with confusion

and have to try and figure out why things are working and why things aren't working, freedom to know that when we understand, when we're dialed into, when we discover our essential nature or our sparkotype, we then have the ability to look out into the world of opportunity and possibility and create the lives and the work that we want to create through a path of minimal disruption. We can do it on our terms. We very likely don't have to blow things up or make big dramatic changes that we thought we maybe needed to. We can change the way we want to, in the way that gives us the most control. It gives us the freedom to build the way we contribute to the world around not only what the world needs, but what we need from it to be alive, to come alive, to be sparked.

Okay, so I think it's probably time for us to come full circle. By now, just through this conversation and examples, you may actually have a pretty strong sense for what your sparkotype is but here's the thing you don't have to guess the big question how do i discover my sparkotype well a rare few people stumble upon it early in life most often by chance and very often even when they do they don't validate it so they don't own it. A handful of others will sometimes discover it through some sort of committed or guided experimentation, but that often takes decades and still reveals almost the more superficial, granular, outward expressions of it rather than what I'm really interested in, the deeper driver.

Because when we get the deeper driver, we then gain the ability to take that and tap it and express that across all domains and contexts as our life changes and evolves. We can change the granular expression in a way that allows us to stay true to it, no matter what happens to us and where life takes us. So what about the rest of us? The truth is, most people never figure it out. They just kind of surrender their working lives to a sense of meaningless or being unengaged, disengaged, and not really on purpose. And that really never felt okay to me. So for a long time now, I've wondered, well, what if there was a way to kind of just know? Not someday, not through some long arduous process, but in a really short amount of time, maybe even a matter of minutes.

And I started to set to work to try and create a tool, an assessment that would allow anyone to get to that place. What I discovered is that for most of us, we can't. So I've been working on this solution, on this assessment and a whole body of work around it in various ways. If I'm really being honest and looking back at the through line of my work for nearly two decades, a lot of the conversations here, if you're now thinking about this, you can start to thread the needle and see a lot of this work weaving through my questions, the people who I bring in, the teachers, and drawing on that as well as the fields of positive psychology, behavioral economics, social science, demography, philosophy, all sorts of ancient wisdom traditions, instructional design, and a lot, a lot, a lot of experimentation optimization, kind of come up with something that's pretty cool.

And we've been beta testing this with larger and larger groups of people, and the outcomes have been pretty stunning. So we integrated it into a, I would probably call it deceptively simple and constantly improving assessment that reveals your unique sparkotype, the essential nature of the work that you're here to do. And it's really short and fast to actually do it. Surprisingly so. In fact, so short and fast that it actually sometimes throws people. But others have been moved to tears by what they have discovered from it. So and because, as always, we're sort of driven first and foremost to spread these ideas and to give people a way to step into a place of power and freedom and to be sparked, the Sparketype assessment, which is what I call it, is 100% free.

And here's even cooler. You won't just learn your Sparkotype. You'll actually learn even more stuff. You'll learn your primary Sparkotype and your shadow Sparkotype. So your primary Sparkotype, think of it as your life's work DNA. It's the source code for work that makes you feel like you're doing the thing you were put on the planet to do, fueled by purpose, infused with meaning, fully expressed and absorbed in that kind of otherworldly transcendent state of flow. Your shadow sparkotype, it's not

actually a dark or nebulous thing. This reveals the essential nature of the work that you may well enjoy and you may have also become really highly skilled at. But on a deeper level, if you're really being honest, you almost always do it in service of doing the work of your primary sparkotype better. Think of it as your primary sparkotype amplifier. So, but at this point, you're probably like, dude, just tell me where to go. I want to learn mine. So really simple. You can visit sparkotype.com.

That's S-P-A-R-K-E-T-Y-P-E.com. Or just click the link in the show notes. It is completely free. My greatest hope in sharing this entire conversation and sharing this idea in developing this tool and the body of work that I'm so excited to continue to develop around it is to be able to continue to refine it and extract realizations about each one of these unique imprints that will help more people rediscover who they truly are, what really drives them, what they're here to do, and how to come alive, how to be sparked. And then most importantly, once you know, you've got to begin the process of making it real in your life, of living it,

breathing it, sharing it, becoming sparked, and letting the persistent glow serve as a beacon to others to come alive in their own lives as well. Because right now, right now in this world, we really need that. So I hope you found this helpful. I hope you found it interesting. Go discover your sparkotype now and then do something with it. Remember, you can find it at sparkotype.com, S-P-A-R-K-E-T-Y-P-E.com

or just click the link in the show notes. Until next time, I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project. Thank you so much for listening to this episode, and thanks also to our fantastic sponsors who help make the show possible. You can check them out in the links that we have 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. When ideas become conversations that lead to action, that is when real change takes

hold. See you next time. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just

15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X, available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. January 24th. time and actual results will vary.