Good Life Project - Work as an Act of Devotion and Expression (and, gulp, love).

Episode Date: September 1, 2016

How does someone spend over five decades of their life fundamentally doing the same thing and still be so madly devoted and passionate and in love with what their doing that they show up and rock it out? I’m talking about Bruce Springsteen. The man. The myth. The legend. What drives that astonishing experience? What leads […]The post Work as an Act of Devotion and Expression (and, gulp, love). appeared first on Good LifeProject. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hey, so you may have heard this, you may have not heard it, if it's the first time listening and tuning in. This is Jonathan. I am your host. I'm not just a podcast host. It's like, it sounds like an infomercial, right? I'm not just a host. Yeah, I'm also an author.

I'm passionate about writing, about exploring human potential, the human condition, and digesting what I've learned and writing about it and sharing stories, ideas. And I've been working for a number of years now on a new book, and that book is hitting the streets now. You can actually pre-order it. It's called How to Live a Good Life, Soulful Stories, Surprising Science, and Practical Wisdom. And this has been very much a labor of love. And I really can't wait to bring it to you. People do all sorts of interesting things when they're bringing books to the world these days. And the pre-order, the classic pre-order campaign with all sorts of stuff is one of those big things. I'm trying to do it a little bit differently, actually. So we've done

something kind of unique with our quote pre-order campaign. We've actually teamed with a really cool foundation and we're on a mission not just to offer what I hope will be a book that really makes a difference to you, but to plant 10,000 trees to literally plant a good life forest. And each one of your pre-orders will make a huge difference in our ability to do that. So if you're interested in finding out more, learning more about the book, and also potentially becoming an ambassador to help us get the word out, which would be super awesome, you can learn all about it. You can pre-order your book if you like, which I'd be just immensely grateful for over at goodlifeproject.com book. Or if you like, you can just click on the link in the show notes right now.

On to our show. Hey, it's Jonathan Fields back with A Good Life Project Riff. So as I sit here and record this, it's about 9 in the morning, sitting in my living room in New York City as we are in between studios and looking forward to moving in a couple of weeks. And I have not slept a whole lot because I got home at about two in the morning last night. The reason for that is that a dear friend of mine invited me to go see a Bruce Springsteen concert in the MetLife Stadium just on the other side of the Hudson

River in New York. And when somebody says, hey, come see Bruce, and they've got awesome seats, and they're an awesome human too. As a general, I don't say no. And here's the awesome thing. I don't know if you've ever seen Springsteen perform before. He is a phenomenon. You know, he's been doing this for many decades now. He's, I think, I believe he's 66 years old. And he performed close to a four and a half hour set without a single break. And we didn't wrap up until after midnight. And I was astonished. I mean, I was astonished at the depth of his catalog of work. And it seemed like there were just, you know, we were literally standing up and dancing and singing the entire time because it's like almost every song was a song that had this deep association with at some

point in your life, and you knew all the words and the whole audience was like that it's this you know like massive outdoor arena and there were I don't even know how many people fit in that place but I really got to thinking just about Springsteen and his contribution the way he contributes to the world the way he brings himself to the world and it's like, he is there absolutely 100%. What I was asking myself sometimes is, and probably what I'm asking myself more this morning, because last night I was just completely in it, but reflecting on it, what I'm thinking to myself is, how do you spend probably over five decades at this point of your life doing fundamentally the same thing and still be so madly devoted and passionate and in love with what you're doing that you show up

on a stage and you rock it out. You give absolutely, I mean, you give absolutely everything physically, emotionally, spiritually that you have for more than four and a half hours performing, which is an astonishing feat for anybody at any point in their career. But what drives that? And I can only, I can only believe that a sense of deep, deep passion for what you do and a deep sense of alignment that somehow I ended up with an opportunity, blessed with an opportunity to do the thing that I'm here to do, to create music with people that I can't get enough of.

He has, the street band has been with him for decades too. And with the exception of the sad loss of Clarence Clemon, who was on sax for many of those decades. So my sense is that the thing that allows somebody to do such devout, beautiful, passionate work for so many decades and still perform at such an extraordinary level, you know, some five plus decades into that, is that it's a deep, deep sense of a passionate devotion to the work, to playing music, and also at the same time, doing it with people that you absolutely love. Bruce's wife, actually, Patty Scafas, and the band with him, and she is a tremendous contributor and musician in her own right. And every member of the band is not just somebody playing an instrument, but it really seems like

their family. So when they're on there, it's like they're having fun. It's like they don't want to stop, almost in part because they want to just blow people away. They want to delight them on an almost spiritual level. But it seems like they're having so much fun on stage that they just don't want to go home. They don't want, it's almost like, you know, you can hear the parent in the background, like yelling, you know, time to come home. And they background, like, yelling, you know, like, time to come home. And they're like, no way. We're going to just stay out and play until we can't stand up anymore. And that's the feeling that you get at a Bruce Springsteen concert is that we're all in this together.

And if I bring myself there, then he's going to bring himself and the entire band is going to bring themselves. And they're going to do everything in their power to make this an astonishing experience. And they do. I've seen them a couple of times now. And it's always been the exact same thing. And it just really got me thinking, what does it take?

And how can I, how can we, how can we bring ourselves to the world, bring our gifts to the world in a way where we're contributing on a similar level? Maybe we're not filling stadiums with people, but maybe we're serving individuals one at a time in an intimate way. Maybe we're serving small groups. Maybe we're writing or creating or making art in a way that somehow lands and touches people. The question in my mind is, how do we

tap into the essence of who we are, the deepest part of who we are, and then turn around and align our actions in the world so that the way that we're contributing is so fiercely aligned with the essence of who we are, that we can't help but bring the entirety of ourselves to the experience, to contribute on a level where the gap between who we are and the potential we know we have seems to close down to almost nothing. And we just feel completely and utterly sparked, entirely lit up. That's, I think, a quest of mine. And my invitation is to make it a

quest of yours too. And it starts with self-discovery. It starts with actually knowing yourself well enough to know who you are, what your gifts are, what your strengths are, what your deep interests and sparks are, and what your values are. And then turn around and ask yourself this question every single day. Am I bringing them to the world? Am I fully leveraging, tapping into them? And if not, what small step can I take today to bring a little bit more of that person, that lit up human to the world? Because you need that and the world needs that too. Something to think about. As I wrap up this Good Life Project riff, I'm Jonathan Fields, signing off for Good Life Project.