Meaning is, in fact, a stronger determinant of a life well-lived than happiness.
Meaning is the feeling that who you are, how you show up in the world, and how the world
responds to you matters.
Like, there's a reason you're here.
So, we're going to do something a little bit different in today's episode.
Something I'd actually never done before, but I'm pretty excited to share it with you.
Back in April, I launched a new public writing project called Awake at the Wheel.
The name is actually a nod to the blog that I wrote back in 2008 to about 2012 or so.
And while I do write books every few years, I hadn't been writing regularly and publicly
in a really long time, and I was aching to return to that form, to write more personally
and deeply about things that were on my mind.
So I created Awake at the Wheel as a place for me to keep deepening into the craft, and
also really to share what felt most alive for me in this moment today.
Every week over there, I offer an essay, along with an invitation to explore a question that
I call my weekly wake-up call.
So now about maybe three months or so into the project.
I thought it might be fun to share some of my favorite pieces here with you in the form
of spoken word.
So in today's episode, we're shaking up the format a bit.
I'll be sharing five essays.
One is on the truth about exercise and creativity.
The next, it asks the question, what can I do most beautifully?
The third explores what's worth wanting.
The fourth is about a revelation that I had about what I call the less line.
The final one is this pretty juicy piece on the truth about happiness.
So if you're moved by what you hear and would love to spend maybe more time with them,
you can read these essays, along with the wake-up call prompts over at Awake at the Wheel.
The find a link in the show notes.
I am so excited to dive into these with you today.
I'm Jonathan Fields and this is Good Life Project.
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Hey there and welcome back.
So we're going to kick it off right away by starting out with a little piece that I
call the truth about exercise and creativity.
For more than 40 years, Haruki Murakami has just dazzled the world with his beautifully
crafted words, most often in the form of novels and short stories.
But honestly, it was his book, what I talk about when I talk about running, that opens
a rare window into his life and process, revealing an obsession with running and how it
fuels his creative process.
In excerpt from a 2004 interview with Murakami in the Paris Review, really brings home the
connection between physical strength and creating just extraordinary work.
When I'm in writing mode for a novel, I get up at 4 a.m. and work for 5 to 6 hours.
In the afternoon, I run for 10 kilometers or swim for 1500 meters or do both.
Then I read a bit and listen to some music.
I go to bed at 9 p.m.
I keep this routine every day without variation.
The repetition itself becomes the important thing.
It's a form of mesmerism.
I mesmerize myself to reach a deeper state of mind.
But to hold such repetition for so long, six months to a year requires a good amount of
mental and physical strength.
In that sense, writing a long novel is like survival training.
Physical strength is as necessary as artistic sensitivity.
Now Murakami is guided by what the great scholars and writers and thinkers and creators of
ancient Greece knew yet so many modern day creators have just completely abandoned the physical
state of our bodies.
And our willingness to routinely move them through space to the extent that we're able can
either serve or subvert the quest to create.
Now we all know this intuitively, but with rare exceptions, because our lives seems to value
output over the humanity of the process and the ability to sustain genius, attention
to health, fitness, movement, and exercise, they almost always take a back seat.
And that is just tragic.
Choosing art over well-being rather than art fueled by the same, it adds unnecessary
suffering to the process.
It potentially diminishes the depth and quality of our creative expression.
As Dr. John Raiding noted in his seminar work Spark, the revolutionary new science of
exercise in the brain, exercise isn't just about physical health and appearance.
It also has a profound effect on your brain chemistry, your physiology and neuroplasticity,
and that's the ability of the brain to literally rewire itself.
Brain effects not only your ability to think, create, and solve, but your mood and ability
to lean into uncertainty, risk, judgment, and anxiety in a substantial, measurable way,
even though until very recently it's been consistently cast out from lists of commonly
accepted treatments for anxiety and depression.
In 2004, the New England Journal of Medicine published a review of treatments for generalized
anxiety disorder that noted 13 pharmaceuticals, each with a laundry list of side effects.
But nothing about exercise.
In response, they then published a letter by renowned cardiologist Richard Melani and Carl
Lavy, who had written more than 70 papers on the effect of exercise on the heart, 11
of them focused on anxiety.
That letter criticizes the original article for omitting exercise, which the writer's
note has been shown to lead to reductions of more than 50% in the prevalence of the symptoms
of anxiety.
This supports exercise training as an additional method to reduce chronic anxiety.
Now really details many data points on the connection between exercise and mindset, among
them the following.
A 2004 study led by Joshua Bromand folks of the University of Southern Mississippi that
showed students who walked at 50% of their maximum heart rates or ran on treadmills at
60 to 90% of their maximum heart rates, reduced their sensitivity to anxiety, and that rigorous
exercise worked even better.
Only the high intensity group felt less afraid of the physical symptoms of anxiety and
the state and the distinction it started to show up after just seconds into the exercise
session.
A 2006 Dutch study of 19,288 twins and their families demonstrated that those who exercised
were less anxious, less depressed, less neurotic, and also more socially outgoing.
A 99 finished study of over 3,000 people revealed that those who exercised 2-3 times a week
experienced significantly less depression, anger, stress, and cynical distrust.
That last finding about movement and cynical distrust actually landed deeply in the context
of making things for me.
There is room for skepticism in the creative process.
It's a form of discernment, which is necessary and valued.
In this process, it collapses the mental possibility upon which creativity sits.
Synthesis is death to the quest to make something from nothing.
Rady points to a number of proven chemical pathways, along with the brain's neuroplastic
abilities, as the basis for these changes, arguing that exercise changes the expression
of fear and anxiety as well as the way that the brain processes them from the inside
out.
Rady's now proved that aerobic exercise both increases the size of the prefrontal cortex
and facilitates interaction between that and the amygdala.
This is vitally important to creators because the prefrontal cortex, as we discussed earlier,
is the part of the brain that helps tamp down the amygdala's fear and anxiety signals.
So I recently had the opportunity to sit down with Dr. Jennifer Hyes, author of Move the
Body Heal the Mind for a conversation on this very podcast about this topic.
And she shares deeply compelling insights and updated research about the intimate connection
between movement and anxiety depression, working memory, inhibitory control, mental flexibility
and creativity.
For artists, for entrepreneurs, for any other driven creators, movement is a powerful tool.
And the quest to help transform the persistent uncertainty, fear and anxiety that accompanies
the quest to create from a source of suffering into something less toxic and then potentially
even into fuel.
This is not to suggest that anyone suffering from a generalized or trait that is long-term
anxiety disorder avoids professional help and self-treat with exercise alone.
People who suffer from anxiety should not hesitate to seek out the guidance of a qualified
mental health care professional.
The point is to apply the lessons from a growing body of research on the therapeutic effect
of exercise, an anxiety mood and fear to the often sustained anxiety that rides organically
along with the uncertainty of creation.
Anyone involved in a creative endeavor might consider movement to the extent it is accessible
to them.
There's a potent of lecture to help transform the uncomfortable sensation of anxiety from
a source of pain and creative stagnation into something not only manageable but harnessable.
Exercise is an incredibly powerful tool in the quest to alchemize fear, uncertainty and
anxiety into unbridled creative potential.
At the same time, circling back to more account means words.
Writing a long novel is like survival training.
Mental strength is as necessary as artistic sensitivity.
The creative process, especially in the context of a larger work, is an endurance event.
I know this.
We need to not only train in the craft but also do what we can to equip ourselves to
flourish on a human level along the way and cultivate the energetic capacity, meet it
to give our brains what they require to function long enough and at a high enough level to
have even a shot at closing the gap between taste and expression.
Mason Curry's fantastic book, Daily Richels, it brings the point home, speaking more
to the value of movement on the process of ideation.
Of the 161 iconic creators whose daily routines he documented, from writers to artists, composers
to philosophers, many took daily long walks, often intense ones.
He writes in a piece in slate.
The majority of the composers in my Daily Richels book, most of them required a long and
sometimes very long daily walk to keep the ideas flowing.
Beethoven went for a vigorous walk after lunch and he always carried a pencil and a couple
of sheets of paper in his pocket to record chance musical thoughts.
Gustav Moller followed much the same routine.
He would take a three or four hour walk after lunch, stopping to jot down ideas in his
notebook.
Benjamin Britain said that his afternoon walks were, quote, where I plan out what I'm going
to write in the next period at my desk.
Working outside of Paris in 1971, Morton Feldman described his routine.
I get up at six in the morning, I compose until 11, then my day is over, I go out, I walk
tirelessly for hours.
So living on the front range of the Rocky Mountains in Boulder, Colorado, I'm just incredibly
blessed with access to nature.
Three to four days a week I find myself hiking, often alone in the woods for an hour or
two.
And I often avoid listening to podcasts or music and try not to take calls.
Instead, I just allow my mom to wander and to savor.
Without fail, the blend of nature and effortful movement ignites my brain and I find myself
pulling out my phone not to consume anything, but rather to capture the cascade of ideas
that tumble from the ether.
Still a large number of artists, creators, makers, entrepreneurs resist regular committed
movement as a key element in their ability to do what they most want to do.
Make cool stuff that fully expresses a creative vision and speaks to a lot of people.
I often wonder if that resistance is more of a cultural chasm where jocks were jocks,
artists were artists, nerds were nerds and never the twain would meet.
For more sedentary solo creators, historical assumptions about who exercises and who doesn't
can impose some very real limits on a behavior that could to whatever extent is available.
Be very beneficial on so many levels.
On the entrepreneur side, again, something that I know well, the excuse I've heard over
and over is I'm launching a company, a brand, a product I don't have time to work out.
Makers on deadline often default to a similar refrain.
I've got to get the manuscript in for the publication.
The collection delivered for the show, the tracks in for the album, there are not enough
hours in the day.
I have uttered these very lines, time and time again, and paid the price.
Both in lost humanity and creative output that I knew deep down wasn't what it could
have been.
Truth is, to whatever extent movement is accessible to us.
The more we elevate it to the domain of a non-negotiable, the better our minds, bodies,
lives, and creative expression fare.
And it just makes us so much happier, grounded, and better at the art of creation along the
way.
So my wake up call, invitation, is to consider how you might bring more movement into your
days, especially if you have said yes to some sort of creative endeavor that is consuming
a lot of your mind space, your heart space, your time, your resources, your energy, and
you feel like there's just no room to actually move your body.
Rethink that a little bit.
Ask if there is a way, a space, a place for you to say yes.
To bring that into the process, and I think you'll find that to the extent that it's accessible
to you, it will not only make you feel better, it may well also transform the nature and
the level of creation that you're able to say yes to.
I'll see you back here in essay number two.
And we'll be right back after word from our sponsors.
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So the second ass I want to share with you is called what can I do most beautifully?
The question was first posed in a conversation with James Patterson.
We were maybe half an hour into it talking about his career.
I was curious about his long ago pivot from running one of the world's premier ad firms
to writing fiction and the following tunneled out by time here is short.
He said, what can I do most beautifully?
Now he made clear the quote wasn't his, but he couldn't recall to whom it should be attributed.
So I began to dig and eventually found the source yet another legend.
George Saunders who of course writes the fantastic story, love with George Saunders on substack,
but also so many books that are fantastic.
George was being interviewed by Mike Ericko from Mike's book Music, lyrics and life.
A field guide for the advancing songwriter.
Mike says to George, you were almost a professional musician.
So George replies, it was my first artistic love for sure.
But I'm not much of a songwriter as it turns out, which was a big deal to realize.
Whatever distinct, which is a good songwriter from a so so one, I didn't have that.
Now I was floored to learn that Saunders actually tried to make his bones as a musician, but
he did that voice that said it wasn't his path.
Meandering down toward the end of this conversation with Ericko, George drops this question.
Along with an insight.
One I think so many who find themselves tug between different paths and expressive
media struggle with.
Mike says, knowing that songwriting was your first artistic love, how did you decide that
prose was the better medium for you?
George responds.
The kind of big principle that I believe in is that let's say there's 20 things that
you do in your life.
Just general categories of things that you do.
We might think we want to be things six, but if we're doing 20 things, the thing 18 is
the one that really likes us up.
It's a real moment of maturation to say, my time here is short.
What can I do the most beautifully?
I think that's a lesson in prose, but also in life.
If you think you're a composer of string quartets, and when you play your string quartets,
everyone goes to sleep.
In consolation, you pick up your accordion, start playing a polka, and everybody dances.
There it is.
And Mike asks, and to what degree do you think we make that choice?
George responds, I think zero.
Mike says zero.
George, I think Mike says agreed.
Now, the question itself is powerful.
What can we do most beautifully?
It's a fascinating way to explore the sweet spot between the urge to bring forth both creation
and beauty.
It reminded me of another conversation.
I had more than a decade ago here on Good Life Project with the iconic designer Milton
Glazer.
So even if you don't know his name, you know his work from the most ripped off logo in
history, iHeart and Y to the thousands of illustrations, magazine covers, and brands
that have been woven in culture.
And Glazer added context around the impulse to make and the call to create beauty.
In response to a question I asked about where the impulse to create an astonishing body
of work came from.
He replied, I have no idea where it comes from.
Only thing that I do know is that after a while you begin to realize a how little you know
about everything and to how vast the brain is and how it encompasses everything you can
imagine.
But more than that, everything you can't imagine supplementary to the desire to make things
is the desire to create beauty, which is a different but analogous activity.
So the urge to make things, he says, probably a survival device.
The urge to create beauty is something else, but only apparently something else because
as you know, there are no unrelated events in human experience.
Beauty, the creation of it, is a survival mechanism.
There's something about making things beautiful and we sometimes call that art.
That has something to do with creating a commonality between human beings so that they don't
kill each other and whatever that impulse is and wherever it comes from, it certainly
is contained within every human being I've ever met.
Sometimes the opportunity to articulate what glazer and sonders and ericgo shared, sometimes
the opportunity to articulate it occurs sometimes it remains dormant for a lifetime.
You just don't get the shot at it.
All three agree though, the urge to create beauty is alive in all beings.
So the opportunity to actualize it is more complicated.
And that last bit between ericgo and sonders, as well as the final few lines from glazer
seem to, acknowledge a certain lack of control over the arrival and expression of the muse.
If we're fortunate enough to stumble upon our thing, then recognize it.
We have a certain agency and intentionality in how we tend to and eventually share it.
Where the impulse to make a particular kind of art in a particular kind of way comes from,
that remains largely a mystery.
I agree with Mike George a millen, it's largely outside our control.
Some things just are what they are.
The work in the early days that may last decades by the way is to say yes to an ever-expanding
ripple of possibilities.
Enough to evoke a sense of discovery from the stumbling process.
Then listen when the universe winks.
When a heart flickers on and those who experience what we create are moved in a meaningful way,
not because we found the best way to serve a market, but because the purness of our gift,
emboldened by the depth of our presence and the fruits of our practice, have found their
most direct path to the collective unfolding of our souls.
For me, while I spent my entire life in MakerMode, fumbling through the creation of books,
brands, businesses and beyond, writing seems to have taken the current post-position.
So whether it ever becomes something I can do beautifully or not, and the jury is probably
still out there.
Interestingly though, that's not as they say in Game Show Parlients, my final answer.
I might keep the till thing toward a decidedly non-career oriented response.
When I ask myself what I can do most beautifully, what comes to mind without hesitation, has nothing
to do with work.
The answer isn't thought so much as it is felt.
It's to be a dad as beautifully as I can, to be a husband as beautifully as I can,
to be an adult child to age in parents and a loving brother as beautifully as I can,
to be a friend as beautifully as I can, to be not just here, but present as beautifully
as I can.
So I don't know if the way I show up in anyone's lives will ever rise to that level, but the
aspiration, it's alive and well in me.
And hey, if I could one day write a sentence that evokes something deep and primal and
real in others, I wouldn't complain about that either.
And that brings us to today's wake up call prompt.
But if we answered that question posed by George, my time here is short.
What can I do most beautifully?
It may come in a moment or take time to emerge, either way plant the seeds now.
And as always, if you're inclined, share it with those who you'd love to know.
I'll see you in our next essay.
So in this essay, we're asking the question, what's worth wanting?
So I spend a lot of time noodling on what I want from this thing called life.
In my work, my marriage, being a dad, a friend, a maker, a member of the community, and
a person who inhabits and meets you, I'm trying to keep staining along.
A few years back, a conversation with the incredible Parker Palmer, it found me complimenting
that question with another.
What does my life want from me?
I just keep revisiting it.
But it was a deep dive conversation on Good Life project right around a year ago with
Matthew Kroesman, Associate Research Scholar and Director of the Life Worth Living Program
at the Yale Center for Faith and Culture that introduced me to what I see as the question
beneath those questions.
What's worth wanting?
It adds an element of practicality to the inquiry.
To know what's worth wanting, I have to ask, why do I want it?
What's the benefit of seeking it?
Is that benefit real or imagined?
And how can I know?
What about the benefit of getting it?
Is that benefit real or imagined?
And how can I know?
What about the cost of seeking it?
Is that cost real or imagined?
And how can I know?
And what about the cost of getting it?
Is that cost real or imagined?
And how can I know?
These questions, they matter.
Maybe as much if not more than the answers.
All too often, we set our minds to achieving or acquiring or creating or investing in something.
A new home, relationship, job, car, health, quest, athletic goal or learning pursuit.
We know we want it, at least we think we know, but never truly understand what's at stake.
Six years ago, I was actually looking at getting my masters and applied positive psychology
at a pretty fancy university.
I was ready, I wanted it, sent to my application, was grateful to be accepted, and then this
weird thing happened.
I flinched.
I hesitated long enough for me to drop into Krosman's seminal inquiry.
Though back then, I didn't have his language for it.
Why did I want it?
Was it worth it?
Uncomfortable truths began to emerge.
I'd been working, making and serving in the space of human potential for more than 20
years.
Created media that allowed me to share ideas with millions, top thousands, trained hundreds
of teachers, written books, won awards, all the blah, blah.
Arguably made a smidge of a dent in the universe.
Still, there was this voice inside of me that said, if you want to be taken seriously,
you need that degree.
It was an uneasy voice and no small part because it wasn't mine.
Five plus decades into my life, I was still living into someone else's implicit proclamation
of what it takes to become wise enough to offer value, to lead to garnered respect.
Even though I knew it wasn't true.
What it was and will always be, a more winning hand than pedigree.
What about the applied knowledge?
Maybe that's what I wanted.
That's worth it, right?
Well, for better or worse, I realized that I don't really care about ideas, and less than
until I can see a path for them to manifest in the form of things, a voc emotion or
creed impact, preferably all three.
And I assume this education would give me that.
Then I started asking questions and quickly realized it was actually largely theoretical.
The applied part would have to come from me as it has been for my entire life, which
is fine.
But worth wanting, given the sacrifice, at least for me at that time, what about access
to world class professors?
Was that worth wanting?
Well, yes, but it turns out there were better, faster, easier and less encumbered ways
to get it.
I'd always craved access to luminaries in the field of positive psychology, behavioral
economics, conscious business, and the broader social sciences.
Through this degree program, I hooked to learn from the many primary researchers who would
swoop in and teach the intensive weekends.
But I realized I wasn't a weird yet opportune position.
I already devoured the research papers the moment they're published.
And through the vehicle of this podcast, Good Light Project, for a dozen years now, I
have had the incredible good fortune to have direct access to most, if not all of those
incredible hearts and minds.
But in a more intimate, conversational container, all to myself to ask anything and everything
I want to know.
Then there was the cost.
The degree would devour a year out of my already kind of on the verge of crashing out
life.
I was seven years into running one company and had just launched another, I know, I know
madness of my own making, it would have been a giant investment of time and money, a
major reallocation of cognitive bandwidth, taking me away from both businesses and family,
I had no idea how I'd pull it off.
I kept coming back to the question, why did I want it so bad?
Would it be worth it?
It didn't take long for me to realize, at least for me.
And for that moment in time, pursuing my master's degree, it wasn't actually worth wanting.
It wouldn't give me what I yearned for, at least in the way I wanted.
Nor made me feel the way I hoped to feel.
And the potential cost to my relationships, businesses, physical and mental health and
bank account would have been substantial.
So in the end, I walked away.
It wasn't easy because it also meant walking away from scripts about worth, value, dignity
and respect that had been running in my head since I was a kid.
So when Matthew Kroesman floated this powerful question years later, it hit me hard, but
in the best of ways.
And I have kept that question at the center of nearly every query, quest or craving since.
What's worth wanting?
It's not enough to know what you want or even why.
We've got to dig deeper to try to understand if the thing we're striving after is truly
worth wanting.
That brings us to our wake up call.
If you're inclined, here's the invitation.
Bring to mind something you've been wanting.
Maybe it's a tangible thing.
Maybe an achievement or goal.
Maybe it involves work or relationship, hobby, passion or pursuit.
Now ask yourself, isn't really worth wanting?
To help tease the answer out, play with these additional questions.
Why do I want it?
What's the benefit of seeking it?
Is that real or imagined and how can I know?
What about the benefit of getting it?
Is that real or imagined and how can I know?
What is the cost of seeking it?
Is that cost real or imagined and how can I know?
And finally, what about the cost of getting it?
Is that cost real or imagined and how can I know?
And if you feel inclined, think about this, journal about it, write about it and share
your answers with people who you would love to explore it with.
I'll see you back here for our next essay.
Hey, we're diving into an essay that I call The Less Line.
I've sometimes wondered why data consistently shows that older people are happier than the
other ones.
And of course, every individual is different, but on the whole, this is what the average
number share.
Therefore, fortunate enough to season into life.
At some point, our bodies won't quite hum along the way they used to.
They'll settle into a gentle or pays, hurt a bit more or a lot more, raising my hand
here and there.
Given enough time, even the most genetically blessed and thoughtful caretakers of body
mind will become less able and agile.
Our brains will process a beat slower and forget a bit more quickly, energy will sometimes
wane.
It's not an overnight thing, but rather a gentle evolution over many decades if we're lucky.
And yet on the whole, for more people than less, life is reported as being better.
We're generally happier when we're kids than it slumps through midlife and returns
again later.
Again, not everyone, your mileage may vary, but on average.
It's a phenomenon often referred to as the happiness you curve.
So researchers have been exploring the basis for this for quite some time.
With age, we tend to feel more settled, less driven to prove our worth to others or be
concerned about their opinions.
We tend to be better at managing emotions, focusing on positive experiences, and dealing
with challenges and setbacks.
Meaning becomes a bigger focus, comparison, seeds to acceptance.
And you're more at peace with the state of things, less in fight mode.
Again, your mileage may vary, but broad data backs these up.
So I can see all of that.
Still I wonder if there's something else.
A shift that in no small way, cake starts the journey up the right side of that happiness
you curve.
In my experience, there's this ethereal line that often exists in nearly every person's
life.
You can't see it or touch it.
Most don't even know it exists.
Let alone if and when they've crossed it until sometime later.
Some traverse it earlier in life, others just outright fight it and never traverse it.
I call it the less line.
It's that moment where you decide, even if not consciously, that life is less about
more and more about less.
Much of our early and middle lives is about money, status, and stuff.
Enough never is.
Because we measure success, not by what feels right and good to us, but rather what places
us ahead of others.
This causes a whole lot of suffering, but it's also just human nature, nearly impossible
to fight against, at least early on, we are wired for social comparison.
And bundled with a range of other influences and expectations, it tends to lead to a life
of profound striving, which is not innately bad, but it also tends to see isolation, self
estrangement, and complexity were constantly in chase mode, often shedding allegedly deeply
held values and formerly closely held humans.
Managing the twister of pursuit, it invites compounding swarms of complexity.
And for all but a few who are just preternaturally wired to thrive in this frenetic state, that
translates into one big word, stress.
Not a good kind that leads to growth, but the bad kind that leads to overwhelm, burnout,
anxiety, depression, dysregulation, and all that other fun stuff.
We tend to surrender to this as just the way life is, especially if the quest for money,
status, and stuff bears fruit.
Keep on keeping on.
We've now got a bounty to point to is justification for the slow demise of our health and happiness.
And sometimes if the spoils are built around a continued and thoughtful process of evaluation
in, course correction, integration, it can actually work. You can have all this stuff
and be ill-inzidimately pretty good with life.
But oftentimes I'd argue more often than not. There's a certain ambient undercurrent
of brutality that accompanies life on these terms, delivering more and more moments into
the gray fuselage of exhaustion, complacency, and futility.
Until we get old enough, or something happens, that walks us to the edge of the less line.
The one that should we choose to cross it nudges us down the path to simplicity, connection,
and peace. Not delusion or utopia, we still got to live in the world, but just enough
ease to let us weave the fabric of our daily lives into a more present and peaceful repose.
It's not that the less line is unavailable to us earlier in life. It's that the younger
we are, the less open we tend to be to crossing it. It's not that we don't believe in it,
it's that in doing so we risk becoming the weirdos, outcast, outliers. Everyone around
us is still in pursuit, accumulation, and complexity mode. Few will get your decision to choose
something else. You'll be the odd one out. Which can translate to pain. There's no
shame here. Everything is a trade-off. Age though is the great leveler. Not an equalizer
by the way. That never happens. But it tends to level us in all the worst and thankfully
best ways, individually and relationally. We've seen the cost of living on the other side
of the less line. We felt it viscerally, even if it's given us much of what we've
spied towards. We know the toil and feel less of a need to keep the bargain we made that
got us here. We've also likely known friends and family who are no longer here to make
that choice. Plus, stepping into less mode has become normalized. We don't risk getting
kicked out of the friend club, at least not nearly as often. We begin a process of simplifying,
sometimes shedding, giving away more of not only our stuff, but our cells. That doesn't
necessarily mean we become minimalist. It's more of a state of mind that may or may not
be accompanied by excising things. Pursuit seeds to allowing. Aggression to acceptance,
accumulation to spaciousness and ease, status and isolation, to connection and savoring.
It's not about giving up or complacency, relinquishing yourself to the modacity of
co-confine. It's about shifting the metrics by which we measure what looks like a good
life. Reorienting around a simpler sensibility, the depth and quality of genuine relationships,
the ability to feel safe and secure, access to good care and opportunities to lose ourselves
and joy. Which brings us back to that happiness you curve. So often, we spend our adult lives
in the mad pursuit of the way we felt in the best moments of our childhood when less
was truly more. And that brings us to our wake-up call for this particular thought. Think
about the less line in your life. Do you know where it is? Do you see it coming? Have
you crossed it? And are you open to exploring an evolution of accumulation and complexity
to less and ease? And if you feel inclined, write about it, journal about it, think about
it, and share it with those that you care about to start a great conversation. I'll see
you back here for our final essay in this unique episode. And we'll be right back after
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And we're going to wrap up this episode with essay number five, the truth about happiness.
So what if the mad dash to be perpetually happy was making us sad? Who doesn't want to be happy?
It's a wonderful state deserving of a powerful seat at the good life table.
Happiness has become a hot subject of study over the last three decades, along with the explosion of the
field of positive psychology. This near mystical state comes with mirrored benefits beyond well,
just being happy. Happy people tend to have more friends or healthier, have better immune systems,
or more active contributor society get more done at work. The list of happy related youngness is
long, but what exactly is happiness? And how do we get it? And is happiness really a must for a good
life? Let's take these questions one at a time. First, what is happiness? This is such a loaded
question and it's devoid of a universal answer. Ask the average person on the street and the answer
is usually state-based. It's an emotion of feeling kind of like joy upbeat positive, you know,
happy. Drill down a bit and the answers begin to expand out into the life conditions that lead to
this state. One person's happiness is being in the arms of love. Another is coating a complex
algorithm. Yet another finds it in the reduction of chronic pain from extreme to moderate still
suffering, yet less. Someone else might describe it as the feeling of besting competitors are
finding justice after a long fight. In parts of the world where extreme poverty, starvation,
violence and suffering are part of daily existence, it might be described as a day with water or
food or temporary love and violence. Ask a positive psychology research and you'll get a different
set of answers. In her book The How of Happiness, a clean researcher, Sonia Lubermersky describes
it as the experience of joy, contentment, or positive well-being combined with a sense that one's
life is good, meaningful, and worthwhile. Happiness researchers in fact cannot offer any universal
agreed-upon definition to their research subjects when conducting experiments. It makes it challenging
to draw broad conclusions. How do we know that across different labs, cohorts and experiments,
we're all even talking about the same thing? Truth is, we don't, and they aren't. Most rely on
some variations of standard questions and a survey like, looking at your life as a whole,
are you quote, one very happy, two quite happy, three not very happy or four not happy at all?
Subjects are asked to rate their happiness, but are never offered a definition because they cannot be,
it's just too subjective. So we're left with pieces of appausal that often come down to, we just
know when we feel it and it's different for everyone. This is a part of the challenge when trying to
make robust claims about happiness. We're never quite sure if we know if we're talking the same
language or truly describing the same thing, which brings us to that second question. How do we get
happy? Something interesting and a bit ironic happens when we pursue happiness as a primary goal,
a mandatory prerequisite to a life well lived. The all-consuming quest to make ourselves happy can
in fact lead to misery. As Victor Frankl offered in Man's Search for Meaning, happiness is not
pursued, instead it must ensue. In part because we rapidly habituate to the big quick sources we most
often pursue, we're happier for a hot minute or month, but the feeling fades and we eventually revert
back to our previous happiness mean. But also, and more subtly, 100% uptime happiness is actually
just not a realistic aspect. But also, more subtly, 100% uptime happiness is just not a realistic
aspiration, nor despite popular lore should it be. Happiness is a bit like fitness. You can train
and orient your life to cultivate a solid base and keep relatively fit on a regular basis, but
you cannot sustain peak condition for more than a short, certain window of time. Your body and
mind need to cycle in and out. Peaks and valleys are natural and necessary. Expecting only peaks
is just setting yourself up for frustration and futility. Beyond the fact that we are all wired
on some level to cycle in and out of the land of Giggle's lies as start realization. One,
we often don't want to hear actually, but is critical to not only our happiness, but our ability
to live good lives. We need the valleys as much as the peaks. Not necessarily depression or deep
lows, but simply the chance to cycle back to baseline. Things are good or even wow, that tastes
sucked to provide the contrast necessary to know when we are happy. It's this very contrast that
gives us the ability to know what happiness is. It gives us something to compare it to,
along with the context needed to see and embrace gratitude. We know when things are good because
we've experienced when they are not. Research in fact shows that the full spectrum of experiences
and emotions, what's become known as emo diversity, a phrase that I love, and not a state of
just perpetual joeveality is what leads to the experience of a generally good and happy life.
Our state of body and mind both improve when we feel not just joy, gratitude, and love,
but also sadness, anger, and fear among many others. Human flourishing over long
home has to allow for unhappiness as well as happiness. Another thing, when it comes to happiness,
we're not entirely in control. This is so important to know. Some 50% of our happiness is determined
by our genes. Another 40% or so comes from behavior and choice, and the final 10% is likely from
environment. So the good news is we do have a significance in how happy we can become.
But so does our biology. If our genetic set point is more towards the melancholy, just chill
side of the spectrum, we hold ourselves to the standard of rapidly happening. It's all the time.
We end up worrying with our biology and setting ourselves up for failure and then frustration,
and then blame and shame and misery. If we accept the reality of the set point, though, then do what
we can to influence the 50% or so that is within our control, then know that some moments will cycle
up and others will cycle down, and that's okay. We let ourselves off the unrealistic happiness
expectation hook. We acknowledge that we have partial control over our happiness and accept our
agency and responsibility to do what we can to optimize what we can impact. Both in the context
of our internal systems and choices and our external circumstances. And we also create the space
for happiness cycling, honor the role of biology and genetics in the process, and forgive ourselves.
When we don't hit what may be for us an unattainable goal, the futile pursuit of which does more harm
than good. It brings us to that final question. Do we actually need to be happy to live a good life?
Honestly, no. Well, it's lovely to have happiness in your life. I want to be happy and I want
everyone else to experience the same. It does improve all those markers we started off talking about.
It may be a life entirely divided, it might be challenging to call good, but it turns out
a good life is not entirely about happiness. In fact, it's likely not even the core emotion of a life
well lived. And it's not the only kind of experience I can deliver so many of the physiological and
psychological benefits that we crave. That's actually a good thing because it means that we can still
live good lives even when happiness seems impossible to access. Meaning is in fact a stronger determinant
of a life well lived than happiness. Meaning is the feeling that who you are, how you show up in the
world and how the world responds to you matters. Like there's a reason you're here. You may find
yourself in a world of struggle and pain and suffering. Maybe it's of your own creation or imposed
by others in the world around you. Maybe you played no role in its creation, yet it's there. Or some
blend. Happiness seems a far away notion. But if you can find meaning in it, maybe in whole-hearted
service to something bigger than yourself. You can often look at your life and say, I wasn't happy
today or this week. Maybe in this month, it was hard. But if you ask me is my life good, my answer
still will be yes. I did good work. I was a good person. I helped someone I love. It mattered.
I mattered. Strained together enough of those days, even without a whole lot of, quote, happiness
mixed in. And you'll likely find yourself feeling like even though sometimes hard, your time on
this spinning blue marble has been worth it. Think of it this way. Happiness is one of many
snapshots. Meaning is the movie. Happiness is a moment in time. Meaning is the narrative arc that
unfolds over time. The story that pieces all the different snapshots together. Sure, you want
plenty of happy pictures, but you also want the life of contrast and texture. You want the full
spectrum of emotion. You want the life of interest. Meaning purposefulness, contribution,
engaging relationships. The work is to be aware and intentional along the way. To choose the
experiences and create the pictures with as much agency and possibility as possible. To say yes
to happiness and ease, but also to hard things that invite growth and love and belonging and
meaning and mattering and purpose. Much as we often say we just want to be happy. And we want
the same for those we love. What we really want is for the movie of our lives to be good.
And that contains scenes of happiness, but it need not be the dominant emotion or experience
for the story we tell with our lives to be truly good. And that brings us to our final wake-up call
prompt. So what's your take care? Have there been times in your life where happiness seemed
out of reach or you were going through something hard, but somehow still felt like on the whole
of your life was good. Or maybe even the hardship was no small way a source of fuel or meaning that
gave you a sense of purpose. How do you find your access happiness in your life? And what about
meaning? What brings it to you? Think about it for a little bit, journal about it, write about it,
and share it with others to build a conversation around.
Matt wraps up our very special and unique episode where I just wanted to share five essays that
have been a part of my new writing project Awake at the Wheel. Along with the prompts that I tend
to accompany with them, to get you thinking a little bit more. I so appreciate you joining in
and listening in. If this is meaningful to you, feel free to share this episode around and
use these essays, use these prompts as ways to start conversations with those you would love to
actually go deeper with. And if you're inclined, go ahead and share this episode with friends,
and leave a comment or a review. We so appreciate it. And as I share in the beginning,
if you'd like to actually take your time and read these essays and then see the prompts in writing
and all the different questions so you can actually take your time and respond to them,
we'll share a link in the show notes so you can click on over to my Awake at the Wheel project
and take your time just browsing through them. And if you love this episode,
SafeBet you'll also love the written essays from this episode. All five of them, you can find them
at Awake at the Wheel and we'll include it link in the show notes so you can go check them out now.
Thanks so much. I'll see you here next time. This episode of Good Life Project was produced by
Executive Producers Lindsey Fox and me Jonathan Fields, editing help by Alejandro Ramirez,
Christopher Carter, Crafted Our Theme Music. And of course, if you haven't already done so please
go ahead and follow Good Life Project in your favorite listening app. Until next time, I'm Jonathan Fields
signing off for Good Life Project.
