Jonathan Fields – Good Life Project

In today’s episode, we have invited Jonathan Fields to the show. Jonathan is the Founder/CEO of Spark Endeavors and the lead architect behind the Sparketypes. An arch typing system and set of tools used by over 500,000 people and organizations to identify, nurture, and cultivate work that brings people alive and equips organizations and leaders to more effectively unlocking potential, motivation, impact, and joy. He is also an author and has been featured everywhere from New York Times, Wall Street Journal Fast Company, Inc, The Guardian Vogue, and more. Tune in to this episode; you are going to love it!

[2:39] Why should we listen to you?

Don’t listen to me. If I start speaking to you, it’s probably going to be to invite you to start listening to yourself, to your heart, to the whisper that lies deep inside of you that you’ve probably been ignoring for a long time. When I start talking, it’s usually to ask questions or make an invitation that doesn’t have to do with you listening to me but you tuning into yourself.

[5:01] Navigating people to listen to themselves

We’ve become so disembodied and not trained to pay attention to what’s going on within ourselves because it’s an uncomfortable exploration. The bigger thing is not necessarily that there’s some deeper trauma, but we’re just taught that there is an ideal that we’re expected to live into. 

[6:55] Nobody ever gave us a process or set of tools that would help us navigate it. So we’re left unaware and unequipped. And so we follow the path that seems like it’s all laid out for us. 

[7:37] Human’s desire to be part of a tribe and not be solo

The research around belonging, a very clear, well-defined physiological and psychological need, is one of the primal needs we all have to belong to. Not the avatar of who we project ourselves to be but the actual essence of who we are. We need that to belong. We have this really deep, deep need for people around us to see us, know us, and be accepted. A lot of folks say that it’s probably primarily grounded in survival. 

[11:06] We as human beings, there’s something weird in our brain that says, if we make a statement or take even the tiniest action. This is what I believe where I support this particular thing, we want to be seen, we want to see ourselves, and we want to be perceived as up by others as being consistent with that initial thing. But we want to be seen as consistent within the group or community of people taking similar actions and making similar decisions because we were terrified of being cast out.

[15:37] How would somebody leave that bubble of being that limbo of it’s just me, and build into that new kind of group, a new community, new tribe?

It would be cool if we were emotionally equipped to step into the best as the next move, rather than step into the next community. My sense is the way it normally happens is somebody finds a much better-aligned group of people and then rather than stepping into the best of let me figure this out, and then go in search of another group. They don’t leave the current group until they find the next one. And in no small part, I sometimes think the reason for that is because they don’t realize how poorly aligned they are with a group or community until they see a different group of human beings.

[30:19] Thoughts on how to get a person who is aspiring to something and it needs to be something they can almost do unconsciously

The question for me is, why are they not doing it in the first place? Is it not their vision? Imagine every step, every action you’re going to have to take, every hour you’re going to have to devote to getting to that place, reverse engineer, and map the whole thing out in detail. Because if you don’t, and you can’t find a way to want it, and state the end state isn’t yours to own, it’s better to make peace with that and find an end state that is yours to own. Where you are willing to see all the effort to get there rather than diluting yourself and saying this is the thing that I want, this is the thing that I meant to be, but never actually owning the fact that you will never do the things needed to get to be or accomplish it.

[36:40] Opportunities

My fundamental impulse or effort is to make ideas manifest. I love the process of creation. But part of that is I’m constantly teased by seeing all these different things to create. As part of my work this year in 2022, I’m asking myself, what steps do I need to take? What are the resources that I need to harness? Who are the people that I need to bring into my orbit to allow me to earn myself back to this place of fewer things better? I sort of have the year as like I’m building a plan to map myself back into this place where I get to know that there is the beautiful impact that’s being created by the media that we’re producing on one company and the tools and assessments that we’re producing at another company.

[45:37] I make this decision much more intentionally than just defaulting into it. I realize I’m about to do a whole bunch of work necessary for me to move forward with a bigger vision that I care deeply about and that I care about the outcome.

[49:20] What promise did God make to the world when he created you?

I’m in two ways. I don’t necessarily experience God in the form of a gendered being but rather more of a generalized energetic experience. The second is this. I would probably see as more of what invitation rather than what promise and the invitation is to live into my truest self, and in doing so maybe serve as an example for others to accept that same invitation. 

Key Quotes:

[28:18-28:22] “All we can do is keep doing our best and then keep holding ourselves open to growing.”

[35:19-35:33] “Moment in time distracts us from the level of certainty from the need to go narrow and deep to accomplish competence and mastery in any one given domain that gives us this feeling of a deep sense of accomplishment.“

Learn more about Jonathan Fields on:

Website: https://sparketype.com/ 

               https://www.jonathanfields.com/ 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/iamjonathanfields/ 

Twitter: https://twitter.com/jonathanfields