The Rich Roll Podcast - Leveraging Mindfulness to Change Your Life

Episode Date: March 3, 2014

Jonathan Fields is a super popular guy. There is a good reason for that, which I'm going to get into in a minute. Before I do, I wanted to check in with you in a bit about what we do over here at the RRP. I have the feeling that Jonathan's appeal will attract some cool new people to the audience (welcome!), so I wanted to take a quick moment to recap the mission. Yes, I am a plant-based endurance athlete. And yes, I do have many plant-based enthusiasts on this show. But this is hardly a narrowly defined “fitness” or “vegan” themed podcast. It's far more about inspiration. I cast a very broad net. When thinking about guests, my litmus test is finding fascinating people and personalities that span a variety of disciplines. People who push boundaries. Live extraordinary lives. Think different. Blaze their own path. Question the status quo. And live large and on their own terms – in service not just to themselves, but in devotion to others, catalyzing life changing improvement in the quality of people's lives, and overall simply raising the bar on what is possible. I deliver these conversations with the sole intention of providing you with a stocked tool-box of education, information, motivation and inspiration to help you take the quality of your life to the next level. The goal? To assist in helping you unlock and unleash your best most authentic self. That's it. Pure and simple. Last week I published an article entitled, “Why You Should Stop Lifehacking and Invest in the Journey” (also up on Medium ). I wrote it because I have been thinking a lot lately about self-improvement. More specifically our shortcutting, lifehacking, biohacking obsessed culture. This meme-fueled drive to circumvent process and expedite results. In and of itself fine. I’m all about efficiencies. But there is something that really bothers me about this trend because on a certain some level it downgrades the inherent value of process. Disrespect for the journey. And the blood, sweat, tears and joy from simply showing up and suiting up for the full commitment. To me, the journey is everything. That is where the value lies. It’s a sentiment that was echoed in last weeks podcast episode with Casey Neistat – a guy who overcame tremendous obstacles with nothing but faith, will, belief and total commitment to process. And it's an ethos that really captures what today’s guest is all about. All in all, a guy who understands the long-term value of the journey over the temporary thrill of the #lifehack. Jonathan Fields. Dad. Husband, serial-entrepreneur, award-winning, bestselling author, speaker, A-list blogger, web-show host, and mindful innovation strategist who has been profiled in pretty much every prestigious publication there is, including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, FastCompany, and Forbes. A guy I have been following with great enthusiasm to my tremendous benefit for years. On a personal level, Jonathan is guy I can deeply relate to – a guy (like me) who decided to leave the gilded protective hallways of the corporate law firm existence and risk everything in search of a life path of greater meaning for himself and others. Well Jonathan found it — in spades. His mission? To humanize and empower the process of creation. To help people and organizations conceive and build better, more conscious businesses, art, and lives in less time, with more joy and less effort. What gives Jonathan's particular brand of entrepreneurship such resonance with me personally is his inherent focus on process over results. Enjoy! Rich

Welcome to Episode 74 of the Rich Roll Podcast with Jonathan Fields. The Rich Roll Podcast. Hey, everybody. Welcome to the show. I'm Rich Roll. I am your host. Welcome to the podcast, or the RRP, as I like to call it. Each week, I bring to you the best, most forward-thinking, paradigm-busting minds in health, fitness, wellness, diet, nutrition, spirituality, creativity, entrepreneurship. And when thinking about my guests, my primary focus is on people and personalities who are pushing boundaries, people that are living extraordinary lives, people that are thinking different, blazing their own path, questioning authority, living large, people that are living on their own terms in service, not just to themselves, but really devoted to something greater than themselves, outside themselves, devoted to

helping other people, to inspiring people and putting out a message on how to raise the bar on what is possible in your own life. And I deliver these conversations with the intention of providing you with a toolbox of information and motivation and inspiration to help you take your life to the next level. And the goal is pure and simple. It's just to help you discover, unlock, and unleash your best, most authentic self. That's it. That's the goal. And before we get into today's amazing guest, I wanted to talk about one little thing. It's not an ad, so please don't fast forward through this. No ads up front today, or maybe ever. I might be done with that. Anyway, I want to thank everybody

who took a moment to read a blog post article that I posted on my site the other day. And it was called, Why You Should Stop Life Hacking and Invest in the Journey. And I have to say, wow, you know, that one really struck a chord. Within 24 hours of posting that piece, it became the most read piece of writing I've ever published on my site. And thank you, you guys, who took a moment to read it and for all the great comments. And if you haven't seen it yet, just go to my site, richroll.com, and you canimprovement and how to be your best self. And after interviewing Casey Neistat the other week, thanks everybody who listened to that one. That was a great episode. People seemed to really enjoy it. There was a lot of discussion about the journey over the destination, about the hard work and the toil and the total commitment that goes into actualizing something that's important in your life. And Casey kind of ended the interview with a very astute, compelling statement.

It was his guarantee for life success. And he basically said, here's my guarantee for success. Commit everything that you are, your entire being, to that one thing that you're passionate about. Commit everything, and one of two outcomes will occur. Either you will succeed, or you will die trying. And that in and of itself is its own form of success. And I've been thinking a lot about that lately. And then I started thinking about kind of what's going on culturally right now. And this really kind of meme-fueled movement that is oriented around hacking your life, this hack-obsessed culture, biohacking, life hacking, fit hack, all this sort of thing. And that's really, you know, I mean, if you haven't,

if you're not familiar with this term, you know, just Google any derivation of it, and I think you'll be quite amazed at what comes up. There's whole conferences oriented around this. And I think in and of itself, in isolation, this is a really good thing. I mean, the idea really is to figure out and implement these time-saving tools. They're ways for streamlining your life so that you can free up time. They're ways for streamlining your life so that you can free up time. And I think the intention is that you then use that free time to devote yourself more fully to something that's important to you personally or something that is more about building your legacy or living more passionately in your life. But I think somewhere along the line, we kind of lost the thread.

along the line, we kind of lost the thread. And what's happened is that the hack has become the goal in and of itself rather than the tool to something else. And that kind of really bothers me. And on some level, I suppose it bothers me because it seems to inherently devalue and downgrade the gratification that comes with just plain hard work and devotion and dedication and commitment to a path. It's very easy to hashtag a hack, but it's not as sexy to just say it takes hard work. And to me, inherently, that's kind of the truth. I'm all about suiting up and showing up for the long play, the hard-fought path, and there's a lot of value in that. And I feel like this meme obsessed, hack obsessed culture sort of disrespects that on some level.

You know, the destination, the goal, the result is nothing, but the journey is everything. And that's where the value lies. It's a sentiment, again, that was echoed in last week's episode with Casey, who is a guy who overcame tremendous obstacles with nothing but faith and will and total commitment and belief in himself and this sort of inherent total devotion to process. And that's also the ethos that really captures what today's guest is all about. So Jonathan Fields. Jonathan's a guy who I've been following with great enthusiasm for a number of years right now.

And in many ways, he's a guy I can really relate to. He's a guy who decided to leave the kind of gilded protective hallways of the corporate law firm life and really risked everything in search of a life path of greater personal meaning for himself and for other people as well. He's a guy who is really on a mission to humanize and empower the process of creation, to help individuals and organizations leverage disruption to conceive and build better solutions, better businesses, better art and lives with more joy and less effort. Like me, he's a dad, he's a husband, he's a serial entrepreneur, he's an award-winning author, he's an in-demand speaker and an A-list blogger. You should definitely go to his website, jonathanfields.com, and read some

of his writings. They always improve my day. And he's really a mindful innovator and a strategist. And mindfulness is really the touchstone. And that's what we're going to talk about today. And this is a guy who, he's all over the place. I mean, he's been profiled in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, Entrepreneur, Forbes. And it's because he has a message that is powerful and really, really resonates. His latest book is called Uncertainty Turning Fear and Doubt into Fuel for Brilliance. And it was one of the top personal development books of 2011. And his first book was called Career Renegade. It came out a number of years ago.

And that book was really instrumental in empowering me to change my life when I was at a crossroads many years ago. It was one of the top ten small business books and a bestseller and is and kind of flip the notions of what a traditional career is and embrace the idea that there are new and better ways of doing things that might be more in alignment with who you are as a person. He also has a web series, a video web series called Good Life Project. And I absolutely love this program that he puts out. It's a series of very high-quality video interviews that are interview-style, kind of on the Charlie Rose tip, where he sits down with a wide array of really inspirational people and kind of taps their brain about what makes them work. And he also puts that up on iTunes as an audio podcast. But I would urge you to check out the video. It's really cool. And I was lucky enough that he sat down with me. I got to be a

guest on that show last year, and that was really super fun and cool. So Jonathan was kind enough to sit down with me when I was in New York a couple weeks ago. And he's a guy who really understands the value of the journey over the life hack. And that's why I think it was important to post this interview this week to kind of create a consistent thread with what I'm writing on my site and the kind of interviews that I'm offering you. So anyway, without further ado, I'm really proud and excited to share this amazing conversation with somebody who has been very personally inspiring to me with you today. So without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, Jonathan Fields.

We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment and experience that I had that quite literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment. And with that, I know all too well just how confusing and how overwhelming and how challenging it can be to find the right place and the right level of care, especially because unfortunately, not all treatment resources adhere to ethical practices. It's a real problem. A problem I'm now happy and proud to share has been solved by the people at recovery.com who created an online support portal designed to guide, to support, and empower you to find the ideal level of care tailored to your personal needs. They've partnered with the best global behavioral health providers to cover

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the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment, an experience that I had that quite literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment. And with that, I know all too well just how confusing and how overwhelming and how challenging it can be to find the right place and the right level of care, especially because, unfortunately, not all treatment resources adhere to ethical practices. It's a real problem. A problem I'm now happy and proud to share has been solved by the people at recovery.com who created an online support portal designed to guide, to support, and empower you to find the ideal level of care tailored to your personal needs.

They've partnered with the best global behavioral health providers to cover the full spectrum of behavioral health disorders, including substance use disorders, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, gambling addictions, and more. depression, anxiety, eating disorders, gambling addictions, and more. Navigating their site is simple. Search by insurance coverage, location, treatment type, you name it. Plus, you can read reviews from former patients to help you decide. Whether you're a busy exec, a parent of a struggling teen, or battling addiction yourself, I feel you.

I empathize with you. I really do. And they have treatment options for you. Life in recovery is wonderful and recovery.com is your partner in starting that journey. When you or a loved one need help, go to recovery.com and take the first step towards recovery. To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. And I was trying to think of how to approach speaking to you and kind of thinking of what comes to mind when I think of who you are and what you do and the kind of recurring theme, if I had to encapsulate it in one word, I think would be mindfulness. It seems to be the, uh, the undercurrent of everything that you do and are about. Is that fair to say? Yeah. I mean, that's actually, um, it's really fair to

say. It hasn't always been that way, though. But, yeah, it's become a huge focus of mine. It's funny. It's such a hot word now. I know. It's very zeitgeist. It's like the cover of every magazine. And it's become, you know, like, what exactly do you mean by that? Is it the practice?

Is it just being that way? Actually, for me, it's literally a formal sitting practice, but it's also just the way you approach your interaction with the world from the moment you open your eyes to the moment you close your eyes at night. So what does that look like for you? For me, my sitting practice, every day for me starts at about 6.40, and I don't wake up with an alarm clock. My buyers, I'm wired to just,

no matter where I am in the world, no matter how little sleep I've had, it's like, boom, I'm up. Or your daughter is your alarm clock, I would imagine. For a while it was, but now she's at an age where it's like reversed now because she's like 12 years old.

So now I have to go and shake. But no, I just, I kind of wander into, I have a go and shake. But no, I just I kind of wander into I have a home office and, you know, a little area where I sit and meditate for 25 minutes, just a very simple breath oriented mindfulness practice. And, and the dirty little secret behind that is that I had, you know, you know, I owned a large yoga studio in Manhattan for years and taught meditation and yoga and all this stuff. And I had so much trouble sitting, developing a sitting. But I always meditated through movement, which I think is a little bit similar to you. But I could never just sit.

And I didn't really develop a sitting practice until about three or four years ago, um, in response to some health stuff that literally brought me to my knees. And this was the gateway out of it. And so what is the experience been of actually really implementing that and focusing on that? I mean, it's, it's tremendous. Um, but in, in ways, you know, it's weird. It's like, um, if you're in pain for a long period of time, you know, and the pain goes away, it's weird it's like um if you're in pain for a long period of time you know and the pain goes away it's it's what's not there anymore that sometimes you don't really think about that but that becomes the most transformative element of an experience so um you know it's the response that's not there anymore to stressors or it's not that it's not there but to stressors. Or it's not that it's not there, but it's that

you process it so much differently. So I'm an entrepreneur. I'm a creative person. I'm constantly creating new stuff, which means that I have to spend, I live largely in Joseph Campbell's abyss. Because that's the place you have to go if you want to bring anything to life. And you have to stay there long enough for that first wave of crap to pass, for the second wave of pretty good ideas to kind of like go. And then through sort of a bit of the struggle and the deeper uncertainty until the really good stuff starts to drop and you can build around that and that's really uncomfortable. And I've still done that my whole life, but there's been a lot of blood in the water along the way. And one of the most powerful things about the mindfulness practice for me has been that I get to go to that place and there's a greater sense of ease while I'm there.

I still feel it. It's still visceral for me. But there's just a much deeper sense of equanimity, um, as I move through. That's interesting. I mean, it's particularly informative, inspiring for me because as you mentioned, you know, sort of the active meditation or the moving meditation that I experienced when I'm out on a trail run or riding my bike or what have you, I will, there is certainly a mindfulness to that and there is a meditative benefit to that. But I think that it's still not the same thing as that discipline of sitting first when you wake up in the morning. And that

is something I'm very far from mastering and need more in my life. And I have fits and starts with it. And when I do it, my life is better and I'm not reacting. Isn't it so weird? And then why can't I continue to do this? Why? And it's not like, I mean, it's, it's, it takes much more effort to go on a long trail run than it does to just sit still. And yet I resist. Wait, but that's the mythology. It doesn't. Well, it's the story that I tell myself. Right. Because for you, the thing that comes easy is the physicality. You know, that's like it's baked into your soul.

From the time you were a kid, you were this elite endurance athlete. You know, there were times in your life where we know that, you know, that kind of got blown up. But that's the, like for you, that's the thing where like that's your anchor. That's where you touch stone. You know, so, and that's the thing where when you pick it up, it up, even when you're coming back from a dark part of your life, that's the stuff that comes back fairly quickly for you. And we expect training our mind from zero to have that same pickup where you're returning to something that you've done for years. And it's like wired into you even if you've been away from it for a long period of time. Attention training for most people, which is fundamentally like mindfulness is this interesting blend of training your attention and training your mind to drop attention simultaneously.

So it's like, you know, just being a screen where the breeze blows through where you feel the sensation, but you just let it blow through. You know, and we don't train that nobody ever trains that in in um what is to be gained from that jonathan only everything salvation enlightenment sense uh you know and but the funny thing is we expect ourselves to go from zero to Zen master, or at least to be able to be like, what do you mean? I'm a grown-up. I've accomplished everything in my life. It takes work, but I can do it.

There's nothing that hasn't really hit me back that hard. Are you telling me that I can't sit and focus my attention or just let things go for five minutes or ten minutes? We set an expectation, you know, but if you go back to the very early stages of your physicality, you didn't learn to walk from zero to walk in a day or two days or a month or three months or five months, you know. And essentially, it's doing the same thing because it's like, you know, our attention is almost an infantile level. And you might even argue that with the way that we're being trained through

technology now we're whatever attention with that we were trained in to read as a kid progressively wrote it right now we're being trained in shorter and shorter windows of attention so now to actually sit there and say okay I'm gonna train that focus for a longer period of time we're that our starting point is really close to zero. And also, I think we have this idea of perfection that we hold on to that is an impediment. You know, I can't meditate because I don't know how to do it. Or the minute I start doing it, my mind wanders.

So forget that. You know, whether it's the diet that you're trying to stick to or the fitness program or whatever it is, we don't give ourselves permission to fail and to embrace that aspect of growth. Yeah. And which is actually one of the fundamental parts of mindfulness practice is that you, in theory, fail thousands of times in a sitting practice. You know, every time a thought comes in and you kind of latch onto it and then you find yourself, you're like, oh, well, I'm thinking, all right, let me just come back. You know, so you could label that a failure or you could just say, it's part of the process. Right.

You know, but you've got to allow, and that's one of the other, the secondary benefits beyond sort of allowing you to move through uncertainty and scary places with more ease. As a creator, whether you're an artist or an entrepreneur, just anybody who has this Jones to build something from nothing, we get wrapped up in the stories in our heads. Like, I'm not worthy. It's not worthy. You know?

And a lot of it is just, can I curse on this show? Right. You can say whatever you want. What's a podcast worth if we can't curse? That's what I love about this. So a lot of it is total bullshit, right? And we know that. And deep down we know it.

But we hang on to all these storylines that we tell us a lot of times out of fear. Because when we hang on to those storylines, we don't have to take action. That makes us feel better being inactive. So what the practice does is every time I sit and a thought comes into me and I notice that thought, A, it trains me to notice when I have a particular thought or storyline. B, it trains me in the process of dropping it. So I'll literally say to myself, I'll label it thinking. And with the next exhale, I'll just let it go, come back to my breath. So now you take that skill that you practice thousands of times a year in your sitting practice, and it starts to become more and more of a skill that you can draw on every day.

And then when you're in your endeavors, whether you're preparing for a race or whether you're writing a book or building a company or a body of work, when those voices come into your mind saying, you suck, this body of work sucks, this thing that you're building sucks, you gain a much better ability to, A, recognize that's a storyline, it's not the truth, and then B, just label it and let it go. Or just something as simple as having an interaction that is going left on you, and somebody says something to you that incites you, and instead of just impulsively reacting,

being able to intuit what's happening, take a breath, pause, and then respond in a mindful way that might be more productive to whatever outcome it is that you're seeking. Yeah, totally. I mean, much more deliberate in the way that you respond to the world around you, which is it. Talk about, I mean, if you want an edge in business or in life, if you can train yourself to wait that extra heartbeat and actually say, okay, what's going on? It's funny. This was long before I was actually meditating in a very past life as a lawyer. I know. We're going to get into that.

It's something we share in common. I was working as a G-man. I was at the SEC, and I was in Chicago in a brutal winter taking depositions. And, um, and I found myself in a tiny cinder block room, um, deposing a witness and witnesses counsel was say somebody who's very famous. Um, and I was green, you know, like, I mean, you're out of, out of law school and I'm going against this legend. Right. And, um, so I said that, you know, like, I mean, you're out of law school, and I'm going against this legend. And so I said that, you know, like, on the record, I start asking questions 10 minutes in. He's like, what are you talking about? This is completely irrelevant.

This doesn't matter. And my first reaction is freak out. You know, like, I'm a newbie. I'm an idiot. I just totally screwed up, and this guy is, you know, like a titan in the industry. And then I don't know why I did this. But for a moment, I just kind of like my mind said, okay, hit pause, zoom the lens out. What's really happening here? Is he really angry? And what I realized in that heartbeat was that he was testing me. That's all that was going on.

was that he was testing me. That's all that was going on. And this was a moment where I could either respond by freaking out or just cave to what he wanted, or I could say, okay, this is a test. How I handle this will determine how the entire rest of this day goes. So somehow I drew on the fortitude. I don't know where this came from. He basically like, you know, I represent represent the sec i determine what's relevant if you've got a problem with that here's the phone let's call the judge he sat down deposition continues right

so now he knows he he threw that test at you if you had caved or freaked out then he's like i got that guy yeah so it's like the practice and mindfulness practice allows you to tap into that so much more easily. Right. And this was years before, you know, you've embarked on what you're doing now. And so that kernel was in there the whole time that that little seed just needed to be fertilized a little bit further to flower now. So to bring it back to Joseph Campbell and the power of story and the hero's journey, let's take it back. So you're a young man with big dreams and go to law school and find yourself at basically a very powerful white shoe law firm practicing securities law. And the world is your oyster yes so what what happens and what what was it about that experience that made you sort of you know rethink how you were

living your life or what was going on well it was a a pretty traumatic entrance into that experience actually that kicked things off so like i said i started at the SEC. And then when my tour was over, I went over to this place. And within the first few days, I was put on a deal. And the deal was we had something like 18 days to do a public offering in a foreign country, which is what you do in these firms. That's why they get hired. So the whole team goes to work and we're barely, nobody's sleeping. And we're all working to file these documents. And three or four days before everything's due, I start to feel something in the middle of my body. It doesn't feel good. I just feel off. And I'm like, well, it's because I'm not sleeping. I'm

like eating garbage. I'm just stressed out of my mind. Everybody's like that on the team. And it gets progressively worse. Every hour it gets worse and worse and worse. I'm having trouble standing. There's this deep stabbing pain in the center of my body. And, um, and finally I'm doubled over. We're at the printers is back in the days of the printer, right? Yeah. Right. I remember line checking and all this stuff all night. I was in Chinese food and chocolate. And you're like, I went to law school for this. Right, exactly. You're basically a really overpaid proofreader. That's incredible. So we hit the button on the deal. We meet our deadline, and I'm doubled over.

And I take car service home. And it literally gets fuzzy after this. I pass out for a few hours. I wake up. I realize there's something really wrong. Were you married at this time? Or were you living alone? I'm dating my wife at the time, but I wasn't married.

And actually, we were living together then too. But my wife wasn't home. She was working full time. So I jump in the cab over to my doctor. He takes a look at me. He does a quick exam. He goes kind of white. And he's like, look, you were in for a physical a couple of months ago, and you were cool.

Now there's a large mass inside of you. And he's like, I, you were in for a physical a couple of months ago and you were cool. Now there's a large mass inside of you. And he's like, I don't know what it is. So he grabs me by the hand, walks me down the hall to infectious disease guy. By the end of the day, I'm checked into the hospital and being prepped for surgery. And I had a huge abscess lodged sort of like in the middle of my abdomen, like a pelvic abscess. And I had apparently perforated an intestine from the outside in. And it was very likely that essentially I had nothing left in my immune system. I was just on empty and had a small infection that just exploded and took over. So, you know, knock on wood, they wheel me into surgery, everything goes well. I go home, but that's a huge wake up call

for me. You know, it's like when your career, when your body rejects your career, there's something going on. Right. You are, you are literally a square peg trying to jam into a round hole. Right. And, and had I had this, you know, crazy Jones to practice law or be a partner, I've been like, all right, let me figure this out. Let me figure out like the humane way for me to actually continue on this path. I didn't have that. You know, I looked at the partners in the firm and this was a noble firm, really smart people doing good work. I had no desire to be them. And so those sort of like that awakening and this experience led me to really realize that, what am I working for? So I literally went back and I stayed at the firm for another,

probably the better part of a year. But from that moment on, I pretty much knew I was on my way out and I was just figuring out my next steps. And the prospect of stepping outside of that protective cocoon is terrifying, especially when you've spent so many years training to be that and you've created an identity around it and it's very secure and safe it has the imprimatur of social approval upon it you know your parents and your extended family can share at the cocktail party what you do and it's all very good nice jewish boy from long island this is my son, the lawyer. Yeah, exactly. And the idea of stepping outside of that into a complete unknown is terrifying. And that gets into the subject of fear that I really want to explore with you because I think you have an amazing take on it. Yeah, I mean, it was definitely terrifying.

Although what's interesting for me when I really look back is that to me, practicing law was the aberration. Because I was a lifelong artist and entrepreneur before that. And I was a kid. I had my first business that I sold in college. When I was in high school, I tried being a stock boy for a short period of time. It was a disaster. And I just had my own businesses. And I was in high school, I tried being a stock boy for a short period of time. It was a disaster, and I just had my own businesses. And I was an artist.

I was painting. I was selling art to make money in high school. So why did you go to law school to begin with? It's a really good question. I've racked my brain trying to figure this out. There are a couple of funny experiences. So almost at the last minute, there was, it was really close between physical therapy school and law school,

because I'm also, I've always been fascinated with the way the body works. And, and I just, I was really trying to figure out what to do. And part of the decision was that, because I was so involved in my own venture during college, I basically didn't ever go to class. And I didn't do that well in college. How I got into law school I got into, I have no idea. And I was really curious what I was capable of on an intellectual level. And I knew that law school, even if I didn't practice, would prepare me with a set of skills. At least I thought it would give me a way to think and a way to speak and a way to sort of like move in the business world. Well, I think it does that.

It does. Yeah, it totally does. In a way that where like no matter what I did, it would be useful to me. And so I kind of went on a mission, you know, like my goal was to do really well in school and knock on wood. I was fortunate I did. And but it was a big aberration for me and I figured maybe I'll practice law

and I did because I was like, well, let me see what this is about but it was never for me about like, I feel it in my bones, I want to be a lawyer, I'm called to do this and it's funny because I came out of, I had two grandparents that were noble lawyers,

both grandfathers were full, long careers. Courtroom lawyers, trial lawyers. And I was just not wired for it. And the business side of the practice also, there's a huge amount of waste and a huge amount of posturing and a huge amount of argument and a huge amount of posturing and a huge amount of argument that goes into the practice. And that it's not a it's not a, an industry that thrives on efficiency.

It's not when you're billing by the hour, right? And there's this massive disincentive there, right? And you're like, you're never going to go out and say, like, people are deliberately defrauding clients or anything like that. But you just, there's a culture that I think grew up over decades, you know, where there's just, and that changed profoundly in the last 10 years. It's not the same anymore, but which I think it's a good thing that that's changed. There's a lot more accountability. There's a lot more like, what are you actually doing? But, and I don't knock the profession at all. I mean, like I said, there are plenty of lawyers doing incredible work in the world and operating ethically and really rising to an incredible standard and serving. But what I found was that I wanted to create more directly.

I also saw my clients. I was a hedge fund lawyer and a securities lawyer. So I represented the people who were out there raising other people's money and then doing big stuff. And increasingly, I wanted to be my client. Right. I can understand that. And yet at the same time, despite having this sort of burgeoning awareness, it took a health crisis to really trigger you into actually doing something about that. I mean, had that not happened, maybe you would have, I mean, you would have inevitably probably found your way out of it, but it might have taken a long, long time. Yeah.

I mean, either that or maybe, you know, it's interesting. I sometimes, every once in a while, I'll go back and be like, if I had found, if I had found a mentor in that firm, or if I had gone into a different part of the firm that was maybe more creative and constructive on some level, in a way that just resonated with the way that I like to create and construct. Maybe I'd still be a lawyer. But so much of the fundamental part is that you're standing in the shoes of your client and arguing on their behalf. And I didn't want to be a proxy for someone else. Your entire life is premised upon being a proxy. Yeah. And I want to be a proxy for someone else. Right. Your entire life is premised upon being a proxy. Yeah. And I want to be the principal.

It's almost like a shadow artist capacity in a Julia Cameron kind of way. Yeah. And some people love that and they're built for it. And, you know, like if that's you, rock on. It just wasn't me. so you make the break and the first step is uh is physical physical trainer right yeah the first step is um six figures and armani suits to 12 bucks an hour tights and running shoes um yeah well it actually was first it was a little studio on the upper east side because i wanted to learn the business so there was this one studio that

charged an ungodly amount of money just to say you belonged and you know right our clients were celebrities and socialites and captains of industry and but i wanted to learn this was a model that i knew was working phenomenally well as a business, and I wanted to learn the industry from the bottom up. So I could have gone and found my job as a manager somewhere. I want to know the social dynamic at the most basic level of service so I can understand what's wrong with it and then figure out how to build it better. So you're already thinking like an entrepreneur. Yeah, I can't not think like that. I look around.

It's so funny. People say to me, they're like, oh, you know, there's nothing that I'm passionate about. There's no, like, I can't figure out what to do. And I'm just like, oh, man. I can't. Open your eyes. Right. You know, it's like if you literally just sit and observe, you know, there is so much possibility everywhere that you look. Even the deepest of the doldrums, 2008, 2009, 2010, there were millions of people in pain in this country, and I get that.

But there were millions of other people salivating at the possibility that was being unlocked with that mess. I mean, there's no such thing as disruption without possibility. It doesn't exist. I mean, there's no such thing as disruption without possibility. It doesn't exist. So if you find yourself in a state of disruption, your job becomes, how do I find the possibility? Because it is always there. So from personal training to yoga studio.

Yeah. So I stayed there for about six months and then opened my own facility after that, which was the one out in New Jersey. And we built that and grew pretty quickly. And I had a partner in that. And then after about two and a half years, I was really yearning to be back in the city and do something a little bit different. So I sold my interest in that company. And I was living in Hell's Kitchen, married, three-month-old baby, and just walked by a place where I just saw, I mean, this was like

a second story, 115-year-old building on Ninth Avenue in Hell's Kitchen. And there was a picture window, like the whole front of the building was just glass. And I looked up, I'm like, oh, I wonder if that's as cool inside as it is outside. There's a for rent sign. So I go upstairs, check it out. And it's like a burned out crack den inside. It's horrible, but it's got good bones. So, um, so my wife comes, we take a look at it. I'm like, huh. And I had been exploring yoga as a business around then too, because, um, I sort of started to develop my own practice a bit. And, um, again,

I saw this, I saw a gap. It's like some people, it's a movie, I see dead people, I see gaps. I see needs that aren't filled everywhere I look. And what I saw was that people coming out of my background from that world, you know, 30, 40, 50 something year old, unfit, sedentary, walking into one of the other studios that was around New York City back then, terrifying. Terrifying. Most people feel that way in big box gyms too, but in a yoga studio, it's amped to another level because it's dark, there's weird music, there's incense, you're barefoot, you're unstretchy. Yeah, it's not accessible for the average dude especially.

It's way better now. It's a little, yeah, it's different now. the average dude, especially. Yeah, it's way better now. Yeah, it's different now. But like back... This was 2001. Right, right. I mean, that's around the time when I started exploring it, too. And I would go primarily initially because there were more beautiful women in a small square footage space than anywhere else. And maybe, you know, a couple of gay guys and like maybe one other straight guy. And I was like, this is a good, you know, like I was able to overcome that

barrier and do it. But I would notice like there's no guys here and I would feel so great and I would tell my friends, but it's a leap, you know, for most people. Yeah. And it's intimidating. So the question in my head was, can I create a solution here that preserves all the power of the practice but lowers barriers to participation? So in the beginning, we actually stripped a lot of the spirituality out of it. And we stripped a lot of the setting type of thing. So we didn't burn incense. setting type of thing. So we didn't burn incense. Why didn't I burn incense? Because I know that 80% of the women, the people back then at least were female and that women have a much higher likelihood of migraines and that a lot of women have scent triggered migraines. And so that there were a, you know, a segment of women who were avoiding yoga studios because of the incense. So I wanted this to be a haven. We stripped out chanting in the beginning

because a lot of people were terrified of that. They had no... It's like, what is this, a cult? Of course it is a cult. We know that now. So it was a very sanitized version in the beginning. What's funny is over time, we actually kind of reclaimed a lot of that as we moved our community back into it. But when we started out, it was very modern, kind of like, you know, like a Japanese simple style place, but nicely designed. And the day we opened, or the week we opened, there was an article about us and the Village Voice was back then was, you know, like the cool, hot newspaper in New York. And the headline on the article, I still remember this, was Yuppie Yoga Comes in New York. And the headline on the article, I still remember this was, um,

yuppie yoga comes to New York. And I'm like, Oh man, yuppie yoga. That night the door flies open and there's like a dozen women like, is this a yuppie yoga place? And I'm like, well, yes, yes, it is. It's like that scene in Wolf of Wall Street when Jordan Belfort's so upset about the Forbes piece and then about being sort of maligned. And then the next day, everybody wants a job. Right. And it's like it validated everything. We were busy really fast. Which is interesting because the backdrop here that I didn't share was that I signed the lease on a Florida building in Hell's Kitchen the day before 9-11 in New York City.

And so the fact that I actually went through with this and actually built it out and opened it like eight weeks later, it was touch and go from the beginning. And I was sitting there. I'm married. I own a home. I have a three-month-old baby. I own a home. I have a three-month-old baby. I sign a six-year lease for a Florida building in New York, and the lower third of Manhattan is bombed out.

Right. And I'm just sitting there saying, what the hell am I doing? Am I putting my family at risk? How can I justify this? Everything is crashing and burning. Business in New York City was a disaster. And yet you could make the argument that a yoga studio is a safe Haven for healing that, you know, people can go to and start to piece together how they feel about what's transpired. Yeah. And that's exactly what I came around to. And, um, and that became a

huge driver. So initially, you know, I had planned on launching this thing like a gym and doing like a big all system and scrap all that stuff because the mood in New York was radically different. But we were actually located two avenue blocks away from the pier where a lot of the relief workers were being staged. So we just sent people down there saying, look, just come. Like, don't pay. Like, we're not looking. Just come. Right.

It's free yoga. Yeah. Everyone was just wandering around the city looking for a place to be and looking for some way to serve and looking for just something to do. So we just opened up the doors and we said, like, this is just the right thing. This is what we need to do. This is how we need to serve now. And people came, you know, and people responded and people came regularly. And there was, you know, a lot of new friendships. regularly. And there was, you know, a lot

of new friendships, there's a lot of crying, there's a lot of moving and breathing. But yeah, I realized really quickly that the city never needed this more than at that moment, which led to another interesting thing, which is the first time, which was a major story in the New York Times, the front cover of the job section in the New York Times, the front cover of the job section of the New York Times, where the story was about businesses that had inadvertently taken a bump because of 9-11. Because of the Sunport scene. Right.

And we were featured in that story. So I was like, you know, goodness, badness. Hey, Mom, I'm in the New York Times. But it felt really weird about that is a weird yeah that's story because i don't want it emotions right because it's like i don't want this sense of like i'm predatory i designed it this way it's just you know um so it was it was interesting um thankfully a year later they did a like a third page profile in the business section i kind of wiped that one clean but at the time, really, your vision was to kind of expand Sonic Yoga and be kind of a yoga

entrepreneur, like a YogaWorks model, right? So where did you start to change your mind about that direction? So we actually went through the entire franchise process. And I hired a franchise lawyer and filed, which is an incredibly complicated and expensive process, by the way. And the goal was to see if we could actually roll out the first national kind of like very standardized yoga franchise. And we actually, we did two test franchises, kind of like friends and family, to kind of see how it would work and also see how I felt about scaling this model in this way. And what I realized pretty quickly was that I didn't like doing it.

It's not the easiest model to scale. I mean, the only one who I know who's done it really, really, really effectively and really well is Core Power Yoga out of Colorado. And it's very, very systematic. I mean, everything is dialed in and systematized and on a very high level. Right, just plug and play. Yeah, and then there's Bikram, which is interesting in its own. That's a whole other sticky wicket.

Right. A whole other sticky wicket. Right. And then there are big beasts like Yoga Works, which, you know, like, and I knew those guys started two years after or a year or two after us, actually. And their plan was very different. It was let's just let's buy up a whole bunch of preexisting studios and see if we can roll them up into a single brand. And they really struggled a lot in the beginning. And they really struggled a lot in the beginning. It's only like a lot more recently that they've actually started to, at least from my knowledge, dial in the model better with sort of like the bigger box thing.

Yeah. I mean, I only know just, I mean, living in Los Angeles, they just suddenly, all the yoga studios were owned by YogaWorks. Right. Like almost overnight. Yeah. I mean, the original yoga. And they kind of standardized it. But they, I mean, that was started by the two guys who started the SG search engine. Right.

And they went back and they got something like $10 million in VC from the original guys who funded them with a quest to do that. But within, it was like a year or two, they were out. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I mean, because it is for the amount of work in that space, you know, the multiples on a venture backed business, it's brutally hard to actually recoup that or sell, you know, because if you're venture backed, at some point, the assumption is you're exiting. Right. You know, and you're hopefully exiting at a very large multiple. Yoga business doesn't really work that way. So they got out soon. And so you're starting to have this realization. And I think like, you know, at the same time that I said,

you know, you have this sort of intuitive mindfulness aspect to your nature, there's this natural born educator or teacher, or, you know, somebody who wants to extend the hand and help guide people, which I think is yoga is, is about, you know, at its core. And maybe that's what drew you to some aspect of being in that business. But the franchise, that aspect of the business is very divorced from that, right? It is. Yeah. So eventually we, I ended up just folding that whole thing. I learned a lot of lessons. I lost a lot of money. People never talk about their failures. That was a big freaking failure. But it was a failure in that it didn't work the

way that I hoped it would work. And I lost a chunk of money and it took us a couple of years to build back up to where we were. But it was also a tremendous growth experience for me. I mean, I learned about systemization and all these different things on a whole different, I learned about the franchise system. I learned, I did a deep analysis of who else was out there. And I learned, I knew this, but it smacked me back to the importance of focusing on your core business and not sacrificing that in the name of rapid growth or scaling. And that is one of the single biggest mistakes that I see entrepreneurs making across the board now.

Just leaping too soon, trying to expand too quickly. Yeah, or trying to expand something that really shouldn't be expanded. And so where does that leave you in terms of what you're going to be doing next? So from there, I came back to the core business, and we kind of doubled down, and we started to grow again and did really nicely but um my my entrepreneurial add eventually takes me in different directions back up yeah you know we had we started a media division that kept me interested for a while we're putting up dvds and stuff like that and how that got started is a whole nother story but um that i won't go there actually because we have limited time.

We'll go as long as you want. All right, quick funny story. That's up to you. So we weren't supposed to have a media division. I was looking to bring some attention to the business, and I wanted national attention. So I figured, well, what can I tie this to? Can I tie yoga to weight loss? I looked around.

There were a whole bunch of claims, but there was no research. So I approached the head of Adelphi University's human performance lab. I said, hey, you want to run a study on how many calories, the metabolic cost of vinyasa yoga? He kind of laughed at me. So I convinced him to do a pilot study just on me. So I go in there. They wire me up with, you know, like I've got a mask and bite plates

and tubes coming out of me, and they're measuring my breath every six seconds. You know this process well. But instead of on a treadmill, like I'm doing a yoga sequence with this. They're like guys on either side of me wrangling the tubes out of my way and like getting knocked over. And at the end of 15 minutes, like, you know, everyone's standing there saying, holy crap, this is yoga. Oh, wow. So the God is coming back in your favor yeah so they're like how quickly can we get a study together so i brought you know so we got

the whole thing together i brought a whole bunch of people out to the university ran them through the study and then we did full graded maximal exercise tests and lactic blood stuff everything um and then they presented at the acsm um annual meeting the following year. So a legit study that showed how much. But as soon as they said yes, I reached out to the fitness editors of the top fitness magazines who were all in New York and said, who wants an exclusive? So one said yes, and she actually convinced me and the study lead to be in the study. She was a subject. So the results come out great. to be in the study.

She was a subject. So the results come out great. And I get a call from her like in the beginning of the summer and she's like, hey, listen, we're going to run a little thing on this. It's too bad you guys,

you're a small local studio. We've got like 5 million readers. This was for Self Magazine. And I was like, funny you mentioned that. She's like, what? I said, well, we got a video

and it's in post-production. She's like, what's it called? Vinyasa Heat Live. I said, well, how much, we got a video. And it's in post-production. She's like, what's it called? Like Vinyasa Heat Live. I said, well, how much? 1995. Like where can you get it? On our website.

She's like, great. We'll put it in. So I hang up the phone and I look at the studio manager. I'm like, we got to make a video. You just came up with that on the spot. Totally. Totally. Did not exist.

Right. I'm like, I can't let this opportunity go. No. Yeah, yeah, yeah. How hard can it be to make a video, right? We'll figure it out. This is your sales funnel. Right.

Exactly. So we're like just hustling and pulling together people. And lo and behold, like a pallet of videos drops in front of the studio in New York City and Hell's Kitchen like a week before the magazine hits. Wow. We blow them out. And like we just started. And that starts our media division. Interesting. We like a week before the magazine hits. Wow. We blow them out and like we just start, you know, and that starts our media division. Interesting.

We release a whole bunch of additional things. Uh-huh. So, yeah, so you're experiencing this, I mean, a new way of affecting people in a viral way through the video. Yeah, and it lets us go beyond our immediate community. You know, that said, and operating a lot in the online world these days days too, I still have such a strong orientation towards face-to-face service because digital just doesn't get you there. It gets you there if you're stuck somewhere in the middle of the country or somewhere else in the world where you just can't get face-to-face.

Awesome. That's the next best thing. Let's go digital. But if you've got any way to access people face to face in a room, you know, look somebody in the eye to breathe, hug, move, whatever it is, nothing that beats that. It's a lot of the reason why we do what we do with Good Life Project, I guess. Right. Yeah, we're gonna get to that. Anyway, seven years into this journey at Sonic Yoga, I'm restless enough. I've started to really

reconnect with the love of writing. And so my first book. So and've started to really, um, reconnect with love of writing and, uh, so my first book. Um, so, and I want to really just take some time and start to focus on that and focus on the next adventure. So, um, so I sell the, uh, yoga center and, um, and move into the sort of like the next big phase, which is writing in the online world. And as a result of writing this book, which was, it's called Turning Fear and Doubt into Fuel for Brilliance, right? That was, was that the first book or that's the second one? What was the first one? First one was Career Renegade.

Career Renegade. Okay. And that's really kind of your story of accessing this more authentic version of yourself and breaking out of this system. Yeah. And building a career around something that's more meaningful. And as a result of that, you learn all this stuff about the publishing world, right? And how this works and some of these things I've learned as a result. And then you write the second book. And so you're picking up all of these experiences. And along the

way, I think you're really tapping into this idea of being of service. You know, I think it's sort of that goes hand in hand with the mindfulness with you. It's like, how can I be of service? And everything is about, you know, here's a need that people have. And here's how I can serve that. Right. Yeah. I mean, I think it's funny. The original name for my blog before I just decided to do it with any other name was Awake at the Wheel.

And I think a common thread with almost everything that I do is that I like to create opportunities for people to wake up. And that probably includes me too. You know, I don't hold myself out as a guru or a saint or anything like that. I'm along the path with everybody else, stumbling and fumbling and sometimes doing better, sometimes not. But I was a DJ in college, and I got my first taste of the ability to take 500 people on a dance floor in a club

for five hours and bring them on a transcendent journey where they enter in state A and they leave in state B. And that has never left me. It's what I did in a yoga class. I mean, when I taught yoga, my goal was somebody comes in, in state A, I have 90 minutes to deliver them into state B and allow them to leave in a different place. You know, so how can I create opportunities for people to do that in the short term? How can I create them on a You know, so how can I create opportunities for people to do that in a short term? How can I create them on a sustained basis? And how can I create opportunities for people to be able to do that for themselves and not have to rely on me or anyone else

to bring that into their lives every single day. So the mindfulness plays into that because it's like, the more mindful you are of what's going on in your world, the more dialed into sort of like the reality of possibility you are. And so where does the teaching start to creep in? Like where does this sort of advocacy, whether it's through your website, your blog posts, your books, like where does that start to creep in as being kind of a mission for you? I mean, I guess you could probably say it actually really started to creep in, um, in the yoga world. You know, when we started the studio, there were two of us. I wasn't really supposed to be a teacher. I had no business being a teacher. So, but there were two of us and we got busy fast. Right. So all of a sudden. Do it all,

clean the bathroom and everything. I literally, you know, I had a lot of fitness world experience and I had been teaching the fitness world. So I kind of, but, but, um, so I literally went to, um, I went to Amazon and I, and I bought the top 10 selling yoga, uh, videos and memorized all the routines. Is that what you, that was your own self-styled teacher training? So, so for the first six months until I actually like went and got trained and like really, you know, I was doing one day on Barron Baptiste, one day on Rodney, one day on this, and rotating. And people are like, wow, you're really good.

The way you sequence is just – and I'm like, why, thank you. But yeah, there's something about being in a room of people. And to me, figuring out stuff that's hard to figure out is really cool, but probably turning around and if I can some way share that with other people and serve as some sort of partial unlock key for them, I think that's more fun for me. Yeah. Well, I would say you're a student of the problem and a student of the solution. And then you have this aptitude for translating that into tools that people can use. Man, I would probably agree with that. Is that agreeable? No.

I'm down with that. All right, cool. So let's get into Good Life Project. I love Good Life Project. You've done such an amazing job with it. And for people that are listening, uh, job with it. Um, and for, you know, people that are listening, uh, you should definitely check it out. I mean, how many episodes do you have now? I think we're around, uh, it's hard for me to keep track actually. Cause we film about three

or four months ahead. So I know what we have in the can versus public. Um, I think public we're about, uh, closing in on two years of episodes. So we're probably like 70-something. 70-something, right. Six seasons now. They're all videos with a very high production quality. And now, more recently,

you've been putting up on iTunes just in the audio format, right? So you can find it as a podcast. But I'd strongly urge everybody to watch the video versions of that just to see the interaction. And they're really wonderful. And what I love is the kind of wide variety of guests, you know, people coming in with all different kinds of experiences that, you know, seemingly are unrelated, and yet there's a common through line. And if you could sort of articulate what that through line is, I mean, how would you describe that?

Yeah, it's really funny you ask because it's something I've been trying to really think about. Like, what is this? And very recently we just aired this montage, like a mashup video that somebody actually, a viewer made for me as a gift. He went through like the first year of episodes and pulled out everybody's answer to a particular question and edited into this really beautiful four minute thing and um and when he presented that to me i was i was kind of floored because i i sat there for the first time like holy crap this is this is real you know this is like turning into a body of work and i never really looked at it like big, sort of like bigger picture like that. And, and I start to really kind of say like, well,

like, what is this? What am I actually doing here? And I think there are two things going on. One is there's a really strong focus on telling the stories of ordinary people doing extraordinary things, hero's journey, like the ordinary person's hero's journey. And that's one of the reasons why I don't just select one type of person from one industry. I want to show local moms. I want to show artists and illustrators and captains of industry and athletes. Because there's a commonality in the stories of ordinary people struggling with very real demons

and then finding a way through. And that's really, really, really powerful, which leads to the second realization of what this show actually is. And it's becoming a body of evidence. So you have so many people that walk through life saying, well, I can't do that. You know, and because nobody around, maybe they surround themselves with a whole bunch of people just like them. Where everyone's kind of like trapped themselves in a box that very often they've built.

Or their families have built and they've never decided to build their own. Or their friends, whatever it may be, or their local society. And their life is defined by I can't. And they never test those assumptions. So part of what I'm realizing is this thing that we're building is it's a body of evidence where we have enough of a cross-section of people in this growing library of humanity where anybody can show up now and probably find five variations of themselves with similar or harder struggles.

And these people have figured out how to do really extraordinary things with their lives. And it makes it increasingly difficult for them, you to go back and say, I can't. Yeah, that story starts to erode. And I think that, excuse me, I have a frog in my throat. That there is nothing more powerful than the average person sharing openly and authentically and allowing themselves to be vulnerable. The inherent power of that to communicate to another person and transform their lives is it's inestimable. You know, you cannot put a quantum value on that. And it's different from saying, do these five things. Here's your list, you know, of this. It's just share from the heart.

You know, tell us what happened. Where did you go wrong? What did you do right? And that's, I think, what's really resonating with people. And I think it begs a bigger question of media in general and what we've kind of grown accustomed to as a society of the soundbite and the sort of unreliable news story and this TMZ culture and this deep yearning and desire that's almost primal in a Joseph Campbell kind of way for that real human story, that connection. Yeah. I mean, I think a lot of people have, um, have walked away from the possibility of, of being the hero in their own lives or in the lives of other people. Yeah. And, and hero, we don't like, we're not talking about superhero thing.

We're talking about ordinary person leaning into that thing that calls them deeply but scares them most. And, you know, like Joseph Campbell said, you know, like, you know, wherever your abyss is, there lies your treasure. And we walk away from that because we're terrified. We don't have the tools to handle it. But also we just don't believe that the possibility really exists on the other side. So we surround ourselves with people who believe that too because it makes us feel comfortable about not acting.

Right, and you create a firmament around that story. Yeah, and it's ordinary people. Like you said, that's the stuff that matters most. We have some higher profile people, but I want to tell relatable stories. Yeah, on my podcast, I mean, the most popular episodes have been the ones that nobody's heard of. It's just a guy who, you know, sort of decided to course correct in a certain way. And I think that strikes an emotional chord with people that allows them to tap in and relate and find strength in that. Um, but you know, behind all of this, when we're talking about, um, the power of story for better or worse, the way that we can

create a firmament around our lives using a story that doesn't necessarily serve us. Um, we're in this fascinating time where we've never had more access to amazing information. You know, the good life project is two keystrokes away from everybody at any given moment, and they can tap into that. And yet, we've never been more kind of in a more fear-based culture in terms of mainstream media and the messaging that we're just inundated with throughout the day. It's like fear, fear, fear, be very afraid. Here's what's happening around the world. You know, lock yourself in your house and, you know, you're going to lose all your money or whatever it is, the implicit sort of, whether it's through Madison Avenue or elsewhere or the

people that you surround yourself with, it's very easy to become entrapped. I think that you have some really great wisdom to impart when it comes to how we approach fear or rethinking how we imagine fear and how and the role that that plays in our life yeah i mean it's sort of like a couple of parts to it you know one is um is the fear legit or not or are you reacting to a circumstance that's real or not you know and can you change that circumstance um and even if you could change it, should you? You know, we tend to, we recoil, we have a physical response to stimuli in our environment that would create fear, you know, so we react to it. So the fear is not the actual circumstance. It's our response to it, you know, and it's conditioned.

It's not a voluntary response we don't be like oh i choose fear right yeah it's like i'm under it's i choose fear yeah it's the lizard brain right you know it's literally it's wired into us at this point you know the problem being that a lot of the um a lot of that wiring was was has been passed down through generations, generations, generations, and was originally wired in response to real threats to life and limb. But that same exact response now tends to pop up in response to all sorts of things all day long in a fairly safe world that just challenge us to step out of that very narrowly defined box that we call comfort. So as soon as we take a step out and we don't know how something's going to end, we have a fear response and that's wired into us. And there's some interesting data.

I mean, there's fMRI studies that show that when you make a decision that moves you closer to a place of the unknown, uncertainty, the amygdala in the brain lights up and causes this fight or flight response, courses like signals and chemicals through us and make us feel physically uneasy. We don't want to feel that way. So we do what we need to do to not feel that way anymore. And that's generally one of two things. We either race so fast through something to just get it done with that we ignore incredible opportunities along the way, or we backpedal.

We become paralyzed or we just completely back out of something until we don't feel that anymore. What we do when we do that is we shut down the possibility in our lives rather than saying, okay, here's a circumstance. What does this actually mean to me? You know, like what's, is there a possibility if I move through this on the other side that would move me from point A to point B where point B is profoundly better. You know, more connected to people, more connected to service, more connected to nature, to world, to source, whatever it may be for you. You know, and because if you can answer, yes, there's a possibility of that if I stay in this place. Then the question becomes, how do I equip myself to be here long enough to see if I can make that happen?

And we don't do that. Nobody trains that skill. We just assume that you either have it. The great entrepreneurs, the great business builders, the great artists, people just assume that you're wired somehow in a way that allows you to be in that place. They have the genes. To a certain extent, some people may have that, but most of the greatest creators of our times don't. You know, there are all sorts of things

that they build into their lives that allow them to be in that place with enough baseline equanimity to be okay. They may not be, and you're like, la-di-da, everything's roses, but enough to be okay in that place and to process, to turn it, you could turn it, turning fear into fuel, you know, rather than into paralysis or destruction. Yeah. It's not the removal of fear. It's your response to the fear. It's whether that's going

to create a paralysis or whether you, you're going to have the wherewithal to walk through it nonetheless without knowing the result. And I think that, yeah, when you see people doing that, we make this assumption that they're not afraid. Maybe they're afraid. They're just doing it anyway. They're giving themselves permission to fail. They're not allowing that to be a barrier to action. And I think one thing that helps me is to, it goes back to the story and the stories that we tell ourselves.

We tell ourselves, this is really scary, and if I go through this, all these bad things might happen, right? But to also, on the flip side of that, look at the things that we think are secure in our life. Oh, this job is secure, or my marriage is secure, or all these sorts of things. And to realize those things are as impermanent as anything else. And that story about security revolving around that is just as illusory as the story you're telling yourself about the fear. And, you know, something like 9-11 can put that into perspective or, you know, sometimes it takes a jarring event for that. But to be able to walk through your day and realize it's all a story, it's all, it only has the power that you allow it to have. no i mean and and that is a huge

realization you know people ask the what if i fail question non-stop and that allows them the luxury of not doing anything of not taking action because if you keep telling that story then you get to rationalize in action you know but what if you ask two more questions you know what if i do nothing and if you're in like like a sideways slide and you extend that out 5, 10, 15 years, the what if I do nothing scenario realistically painted is almost always the most horrifying possible outcome. Right? People don't ask that. You know, it's like what if I'm putting on two pounds a year? What if I'm getting less and less healthy?

What if I'm getting more estranged from my kids? What if I'm less and less connected to the work that I'm doing in the world now? And what if I extend that five years and 10 years? And there is no neutral. There's no sideways. You're only going up or down. There's no sideways in life. And if you don't apply energy to go up, you're going down. So what if you take that and it just gets worse and worse and worse 10, 15 years later? Everything's going to suck. That's a horrible scenario if you're going down. You know, so what if you take that and it just gets worse and worse and worse 10, 15 years later, you know, everything's going to suck. There's a horrible scenario if you're at a point where things aren't going well and you don't do anything to change your trajectory, you know, and then you've got to ask, but it's the devil, you know, right. And that's what keeps people stuck. Exactly. And the other thing is that, that they don't put equal

emphasis on a third question, which is what if I succeed? That's the one that gets me. That's the one I'm, I think if I'm honest, that's the one that scares me the most. It scares a lot of people. And I think it doesn't get enough discussion. No, I totally agree. And I think about that on a regular basis because I have this dual, I have like a split personality where I want to do really deeply meaningful work and be hyper-present in the lives of my wife and daughter.

At the same time, I want to do something big that changes a lot of lives. And so one of my big questions, so the question becomes, how will, can I succeed on that level without it blowing up the things that I claim to hold dear in my life right now? And so I'm asking the question, what if I succeed on a positive way? What will this potentially add to my life or to other people's lives? But also, I'm also looking at that scenario and saying, can I actually build something on that scale and keep what I say I hold dear?

And it's an important question to ask. But a lot of times people create doom and gloom scenarios around that too that shut them down. Like, you know, most people associate the doom and gloom scenario with the what if I fail. But there are other people that go to the other extreme also and say, if I succeed, you know, all the comfort that I love and all this, it's going to go away. And people will hate me and attack me because I'm so popular now and I'm so successful. These things may all be true, but you have to frame it in the bigger context of, well, okay,

the same way when you ask the what if I fail question, you paint that scenario and then you say, how will I recover? You ask the what if I succeed question. And then if there are negatives, potential negatives attached to that, well, then how will I work to resolve those? And that's like, you got to go deeper into all of those questions. Yeah. And I think in terms of going deeper, all of these, this entire decision tree about whether you're going to walk through fear and whether you're going to be a career renegade or all of these things really have to begin and end with that inside inquiry. You know, because you have to be in a place spiritually, mentally, emotionally, where you can trust your instincts to be guiding you in a proper, healthy direction for yourself. to be guiding you in a proper healthy direction for yourself. And if you're not, then you very well may be spending a lot of energy

doing the wrong thing for yourself. So it goes back to mindfulness. It goes back to developing a practice of getting to know who you are and asking those hard questions and spending the time. You cannot shortcut that aspect of the journey i don't think because if you do it's all gonna it all could potentially be a fool's errand right yeah no doubt i mean self-knowledge is one of the it's funny you know like in this world yeah you use the the phrase personal development or self-help and people like that shenanigans you know that's

people trying to take my money and sell me books and courses. And for some, they're probably right. But the concept of self-knowledge, no matter how you get there, the fundamental concept of do I know myself, you know, that's an inquiry that very few people in Western society explore, but a lot of people in Eastern society explore. And the thing is, how can you align your actions with your essence if you have no idea what your essence is? And I think most people don't. Yeah, I agree. You know? And so for somebody who's listening out there who maybe, maybe there's somebody listening who's in that place. I mean, what, what are some initial things that somebody could do to begin that process to create some inertia and energy around that? Yeah. Well, I mean, what are some initial things that somebody could do to begin that process,

to create some inertia and energy around that? Yeah. Well, I mean, I think one of the initial things is actually some form of meditation practice or mindfulness practice, because a big part of it is just if you still the water is enough, a lot of big stuff just bubbles through it. And you all of a sudden start to just become aware. But also really starting to ask yourself, what matters to me? You're like really asking yourself, who matters to me? What matters to me? Who do I want to serve in this world and how?

And big question is for me, a big sort of inquiry for me these days has become the question what lights me up you know and I'm constantly thinking about that what is it you know and when I get a visceral hit you know when I get an intuitive hit that says yeah like you're responding to something

what is it about it and is it just that activity or can I kind of identify what are the qualities of what's going on here? Because if I can identify those underlying qualities, then I can transpose them into all sorts of different situations. And I can get that same hit in 50, 100 different things. I'm not locked into this one thing. And that's where a lot of my work has been. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Interesting. I mean, I feel like you almost, for me, I have to get, I have to protect that child inside of me. I have to get into a childlike state because it was, it was before all of, you know, it was before this social construct was imposed upon me, you know, where you, you have that joy and that, that sort of unedited, um, kind of sense of yourself that over time gets eroded or repressed just by nature of growing up. And I have to tap back into that in order to access that part of me, you know, that I forgot, or that has gone by the wayside. Because I think we know a lot of this when we're like, you know, that's the thing. Right, exactly. We walk away from it. Yeah. And so one of the questions I

always ask people is, well, what did you like to do when you were a little kid? What did you naturally gravitate towards that maybe somebody at some point said enough of that, right? Yeah, no doubt. How can we find more of that for you now? And then you can take it a level deeper and say, what was it about it that lit you up? You know, but we don't go there. But we don't go there. And I think part of it also has to do with the fact that society generally defines success as money, power, and stuff.

Rather than connection and vitality. Vision and contribution. Those are the things that matter. Yeah, I know that those are the things that give my life meaning and happiness and fulfillment, not in like happiness in a greeting card kind of way, but a sense of purpose and direction and groundedness. So. Yeah.

No, me too. Yeah. I'm not entirely there yet. Like I said in the beginning, I'm very much a work of process. I'm not standing on any pedestal here with any of this on any given day you'll find me somewhere in that spectrum

yeah no it's uh it's a journey and uh the journey is in many ways i i go i have to go three steps backward and one step forward and that's my experience. And the work is in to give yourself permission to do that and to keep yourself in the game. Yeah. Right? Absolutely. Like you were saying before we went on, like, think long game. Long game, right. So what is your long game?

Be happy. To do meaningful work. To spend as much time as possible doing things that light me up with people I can't get enough of. I think you're already doing that. Large chunks of the time, I know. But like I said, it's still a work in progress. Right. We all are.

Yeah. Well, I think that's a good place to end it. Awesome. Thanks so much for doing that. Yeah, it's been my pleasure. Right. We all are. Yeah. Well, I think that's a good place to end it. Awesome. Thanks so much for doing that. Yeah, it's been my pleasure. Thanks for having me on. Very cool. So if people want to connect with Jonathan, the best way to do that is your website's

JonathanFields.com. They can go to GoodLifeProject.com. You're on Twitter at Jonathan Fields. Pretty much just my name everywhere. Yeah, anywhere. Those are fine. Just Google him, people. You'll find him.

It's impossible not to. And I urge all you guys to check him out. He's been a great source of knowledge and inspiration in my life and in my wife's life. She says to say hello. Hi. Yeah, she's been getting a lot out of the program, Revolution U, so thank you for that.

And thanks for your time, man. Yeah, my pleasure. Thanks for having me on. Peace. Blance. All right, everybody, that's our show. I hope you enjoyed it. I don't know about you, but to me, there's something about that guy,

something about Jonathan that just makes you want to sit down and hang out with him and just listen to what he has to say. And it's so cool for me that the podcast opens up the door so that I get to sit down with some of these incredible people that have been so helpful and instrumental to me in my own path and my own journey, and then share them with you. So before we close it out, a quick announcement. On a future episode, I'm going to give away five personally signed, inscribed paperbacks of Finding Ultra, my book, Finding Ultra.

How do you get one? How can you win this personally signed book? It's simple. All you have to do is send me a question that you would like answered on the podcast. I get a lot of emails. I do my best to try to keep up with them, but there's just too many. I just can't. So what I wanted to do is have you guys send me questions via the website email only.

Don't do it on Facebook or Twitter so that I can keep track of everything. And I'm going to pick five questions from those submitted, and I'm going to read them and answer them in a future podcast episode. And the ones that I read and pick will win a copy of the book, signed book by me, personally inscribed, however you want it. Okay, so check that out. That episode will probably not be for a couple weeks. So I'll have some time to kind of collect and collate and go through all of the inquiries and figure out what would be best and appropriate for the show. So you can do that. A couple appearances coming up for me if you want to come and see me speak. April 1st, I'm going to

be at Colorado College in Colorado Springs. There's no website up for that right now. That's TBD. But if you're in that area, mark April 1st. You can come out and see me. It's open to the public. April 30th, I'm going to be in Burlington, Ontario, speaking at the Burlington Performing Arts Center. That's April 30th.

I'll put a link on richroll.com on the page for this episode with more information if you're in that area and want to check that out. May 2nd, the Holistic Health Diary Retreat in London, Ontario. We're going to be in the Toronto area for like a week. So this is what we're doing. That's going to be Julie and I. It's going to be a half-day event, all sorts of awesome stuff going on. And again, there's a link to more information about that on my site. And then May 4th, I'm going to be speaking in Toronto. I'm not sure of the details of that yet, other than I do know that it's going to be open to the public. And as soon as there's like a splash page up or a web page up with more information, I will put that up on the site and I'll tweet it and share

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And people seem to be really enjoying it. So you can check that out, whether you're a longtime plant-based person or somebody who's just plant curious and trying to figure out how you're going to sort of embark on this new journey and do it in a sustainable way. That's where I would send you. And a lot of the questions that I get asked online are answered in that program. So you can check that out. Also, you can go to richworld.com for all your plant power revolution provisions. We got awesome t-shirts up there. We got a couple of nutritional supplement products,

and we're going to be building out our garment line and we're going to be offering some new products, some new nutritional supplement products and some garments. We're working on a cycling kit. We got all kinds of good stuff in the pipeline, but for now we got a couple of cool t-shirts up there and some other good stuff. So check that out. And as always, you can like me on Facebook. I'm on Twitter at atrichroll. I'm on Instagram, which I love, at atrichroll, YouTube, richroll66. And again, just tell a friend. That's it. All right. So that's it. I'm going to be on a boat next week. I'm speaking on the holistic holiday. What is it? The vegan cruise, the holistic holiday at sea. So I'm going to be sailing around the Caribbean. Hopefully there's

Wi-Fi. I think there is. So I can stay connected with all of the Caribbean. Hopefully there's Wi-Fi. I think there is. So I can stay connected with all of you guys. But have a great week, everybody. And I'll be back next week with another awesome guest for you. So I'm out of here. Thanks, you guys. Peace.

Thanks. Thank you.