Good Life Project - What Would I Tell My 20-something Self?

Episode Date: May 18, 2017

Short answer: chill out.Slightly longer answer: Change the way you measure success, and run experiments.For the next handful of years or, who knows, maybe even the next decade, use a different metric. Instead of money, power, prestige, rank, relative wealth or any of those things, elevate self-discovery as your primary measure of success. Because if you don't do it now, you'll find yourself yearning to do it 20-30 years down the road and wondering if it's too late.That's what today's Good Life Project Riff is all about. In today's short and sweet jam, we offer three critical self-discovery questions, ones to ask yourself and use to guide what you say yes or no to. Ones that may take a lot of experimentation and a solid chunk of time to answer, but once answered will set up the entire rest of your life to "succeed" on a profoundly different and far more meaningful level.Now, on to the three questions...JFP.S. Mistakes are OK.Rockstar sponsors:Today's show is supported Camp GLP. Come spend 3 1/2 days with "your people," make amazing friendships, drop the facade, reignite your vitality and learn powerful strategies and breakthrough business ideas. Learn more now. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It's kind of funny. I am now in my early 50s, which surprises and shocks certain people when they hear that. And increasingly over the years, I've been asked sort of a variation of the same question, which is, what would you tell your 20-something self about life, about work, about love, about play, all these different things. And over that same amount of time, I've sort of developed maybe a bit of a different lens on how to best use that window of your life, that season, sort of your 20s. So I figured I would share some ideas

and a bit of a set of very basic inquiries and hope that maybe it helps people navigate that time and tap it in a way that allows them to set up the entire rest of their life to live profoundly differently. I'm Jonathan Fields. This is Good Life Project. The Apple Watch Series X is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist,

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

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Y'all need a pilot? Flight Risk. So what would you tell your 20-something self about what really matters in life? What piece of advice or pieces of advice would you give that version of yourself? This is actually a question that I've been asked a whole lot over my time, especially in the last decade or so. And I figured that's what I want to focus on today. So as I sit here and record this, I'm actually 51 years old and I've learned a lot. I've tried a lot. I've done a lot. And I've had an amazing opportunity to work with and to mentor a lot of people over

the last few years who are in their 20s. And I've been thinking, what am I actually telling them a lot? And how would I have changed what I did? So in my mid to early 20s, I'd gotten out of college. I took a couple of years off to travel and to do, I was literally selling long distance telephone service door to door. Wow, that was a tough job. And then I went to law school. Then I was practicing law by the time I was in my late 20s. And I thought I had to figure it all out. I had to focus in, figure out my thing and just totally dial it in and then spend my whole life building that. So what would I tell my 20-something self about the way that I would build my career, that I would contribute to the world in some meaningful way? This is going to sound a little

bit odd, but I think I would tell myself, don't focus. Don't make that one thing your focus. Don't think of it as, let me just get into something and become really good, make a lot of money, whatever it is. Answer three questions and do it by not committing to one thing, but to deliberately run a series of experiments where your goal in any experiment is not to succeed. Your goal is entirely getting data, getting information. And it's designed to answer three questions. One, who am I?

Two, what matters to me? And three, what am I good at or capable of getting good at? So if I spent my 20s diving deep, deep, deep into these questions, then it's almost like I run a series of experiments that start to fill in chunks of a puzzle so that by the time I roll into my late 20s, I have a pretty solid sense of who I am and what I care about, what I'm good at or capable of becoming really good at. Now that's going to start to set me up so that I have a very, very powerful foundation where from my late 20s to 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s and beyond, I've got 50 or 60 working years of my life after my 20s. If I love what I do and I do with most of

what I do, I can't really conceive of stopping working. So I have a lot of bandwidth left in me to work. So if I kind of look at my 20s and tell my 20-something self, look at this window in your life as a way to run a series of experiments to collect information and gather data that tells me more about who I am, what I care about, and what I'm good at. Then by the time I sort of roll through my 20s, I know so much about myself, I know so much about what I care about, I know so much about my values, and my strengths, and my orientations, and I know what I'm good at, I know what I'm capable of getting good at, that I very likely at that point will start to have all sorts of opportunities to come my way that I would have no idea were even on the radar

had I just picked one thing and stayed with it throughout my 20s or picked another thing and hoped that that would tell me what I want to do and learn. So they do in my mind if I'm looking back, and I have no regrets. I mean, I really don't. About law school, about practicing law, I've had a great point contributing in a way that I find engaging and meaningful and with an amazing family who is the light of my life,

they're everything to me. I would nothing to change any of that. So if my path led me here, that's awesome. And when I look back, if I could have gone to certain places in terms of understanding what I want to bring to the world, what I want to draw from the world, I would run experiments. Think about the three questions and say, what can I do? So when I get a job, the job for me is not necessarily about how successful

can I become in this job? How much money can I make in this job? How big a reputation can I make in this job? This job is, huh, what can this teach me about who I am, what I value, my strengths, my core beliefs? What can it teach me about what matters most to me in life? And what can it teach me in terms of skills and abilities and capabilities about what I like and what I'm good at and what I can get good at. And as long as I'm running experiments like that, and those are my metrics, so it's not success in one particular job or field, it's not money, it's not power, it's not prestige, but it's self-knowledge and self-mastery. If I'm running experiments with those as my metrics for success, I win no matter what. And I set myself up really early in life to be able to have such a deep sense

of who I am, what matters, and where I want to go, and what I'm good at, that I can apply that now for decades and build anything extraordinary that I want. I think one of the biggest tragedies that happens to a lot of people's lives is you hit middle age with no sense of who you are, what matters to you, and what you're good at. And then you just start this exploration then. Now, better late than never, but if you can, why not start a few decades earlier? So that's my advice to my 20-something self. Maybe you'll find it interesting, maybe not. Hopefully so.

I'm Jonathan Fields. This is Good Life Project. We'll see you're not. Just workouts and classes to strengthen who you are. So no matter your era, make it your best with Peloton. Find your push. Find your power. Peloton. Visit Peloton at onepeloton.ca. 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.