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Jonathan Fields on Warren Macdonald's Solution Revolution
Warren McDonald: Warren McDonald back with you, again, for another episode of the Solution
Revolution. I've got to tell you this time I'm super psyched because I've got Jonathan
Fields here with me. Welcome Jonathan.
Jonathan Fields: Great to be here.
Warren McDonald: Thank you. You've got to love the technology that we can connect in
this way. The reason that we're here, Jonathan and I were both involved with a project called
the Bad *** Project and it kind of was the trigger for me to reach out to get Jonathan
to share some of his thoughts here with us now. Part of my quick intro is that I first
became aware of you, Jonathan, through Career Renegade and, I'm not sure if you can tell
here, but...
Jonathan Fields: Some little tags over there, huh?
Warren McDonald: We've got a few tags here. The interesting, I wasn't looking to break
out of any kind of career or to create a career. The reason I was attracted to the book was
because, to me, it was all about growth and creating, and if there's one thing that I've
become about, it's this process of creating, of not accepting the life that we're dealt
out and creating something out of it, and that just reached out to me. I really connected
with it. So, welcome and maybe we should get you to kind of give us a quick snapshot on
who Jonathan Fields is and then we can kind of get into it from there.
Jonathan Fields: Sure. I live in New York City and I,m first and foremost a dad and
a husband. You know, if you're going to look for anything outside of me that helps define
what I'm about, that's it. Beyond that, I'm a creator. I love to bring things to life
in the world and I love to figure out ways to help and inspire other people to bring
things to life in the world. And that's taken many different forms. You know, former big
firm lawyer, SCC lawyer, ended up starting a couple of companies and small businesses
and then selling them, written a couple of books, and I've done a couple of online ventures,
painting, I write music, so it's sort of just that there are a whole bunch of different
creative outlets for the ability to just bring things that come into my head to life in the
real world. And that just takes a whole bunch of different formats and I've been fortunate
in that I've spent a lot of time figuring out how to get people to pay me to do that.
Somehow, I've made a living doing it at the some time. Can't argue with that.
Warren McDonald: The rubber has to hit the road somewhere in the way the checks have
to come in.
Jonathan Fields: Yeah, I live in New York City and I have a family to support so I'm
not at a point in my life where I'm going to just say hey, I'll live hand to mouth.
It's important to me to be able to do something that allows me to come alive and conserve
our community, but, at the same time, I need to earn a decent living, live well in the
world, and also be able to give well.
Warren McDonald: You touched on something I want to get back to. Talking about earning
a living, you mentioned that you're a former hedgefund lawyer?
Jonathan Fields: Ya.
Warren McDonald: I just picked up Uncertainty... not Uncertainty, I can't really flash the
cover because I've got it on the Kindle there. I've picked up Career Renegade again this
morning, just kind of before the interview, and was reminded that your story is of basically
hitting burn out as a lawyer and maybe you can kind of recap that.
Jonathan Fields: Ya. I wasn't even that far into my career, but what I started to realize
is that I was working insane hours under huge amounts of pressure. And doing something that,
on one level I had no desire to...I had no interest in the carrot that was being dangled
in front of me, so when you're in a large law firm, the carrot is partnership. I looked
ahead, five, six, seven years and I'm thinking, I don't want to be there. I'm looking at the
people that are there and I'm thinking, that's not what I want my life to be like. Meanwhile,
you're working, 80, 100 hours a week, all in the name of trying to make this. At the
same time, I ended up in the hospital, after working a number of days. My immune system
essentially shut down, perforated the intestine, my body, and developed a huge infection. It
was a bit of a wake-up call. I took a step back once I recovered from that, started making
a list of the things that I thought would be cool to do with my life if I could figure
out how to earn a decent living doing that, and saved up a whole bunch of money because
I knew most of the things on that list made very little money and I'd have to figure out
how to make a lot more money, and then made the leap.
Warren McDonald: The leap of faith.
Jonathan Fields: Ya.
Warren McDonald: Do you look back now, at that…because, one of the interesting questions
that comes to me is…I had to go through a major experience to kind of push me, to
kind of open that world up and get creative on what I wanted to do. So you went through
that experience. What would have happened if you hadn't got pushed to the point where
your health broke down? I mean, would be having this conversation now? I suppose the bigger
question is, do you feel that people have to hit that crisis point to change?
Jonathan Fields: I don't feel that. I'm pretty comfortable that I would have come to that
same awakening relatively quickly. The same thing that ended up shutting my body down
was also making me emotionally miserable, and there were time where I would sit in my
office with my door closed, just crying. Essentially not knowing why, but I was just so utterly
exhausted that I couldn't figure out which way was up. I think, at some point, you need
to create a little bit of time to pull back, to get enough clarity and be able to look
down in to the experience of your life, almost like you're an observer, and say, "Okay, is
this what I'm here to do? How happy am I, really? And, what am I leaving that I'm not
doing, that I really am interested in doing? How can I serve in a way that helps the world,
that lights a fire inside of me, and allows me to live well?" I'm confident that I would
have come to that awakening, but I totally agree, I think a lot of people, the deeper
into your career you get, the older you get, The further into your lifecycle you get, the
more responsibilities you have, you have a family to support, mortgages, school tuitions,
and you build all of that around a certain income level and a certain structure of work.
It becomes, in the legal world we call it "golden handcuffs". You feel like nobody's
going to give you sympathy because you're making a serious income and you've got power,
toys and prestige, but at the same time you're empty inside, and you'd kill to unlock those
handcuffs because it's killing you inside. I think it's harder to do the further you
get into life, without some sort of major event that shakes you into the reality and
also allows those around you to take a step back and say "Whoa, I didn't realize he's
in such a bad place, that the work is actually doing this", to him or to her, whoever it
may be. Part of what I was trying to do in Career Renegade, and a little bit in Uncertainty
too, and a lot of the work I do and I’m sure the work that you do as well, is create
the precipitating event without having somebody to actually have to suffer the physical demise
of it.
Warren McDonald: It's part of the way that I've started to see it now, and I'm sharing
this concept with people, is this idea that if we don't creat some kind of crisis for
ourselves, the universe will create it for us. So. it's almost making these preemptive
strikes, if you like. People kind of get freaked out when I say, "Hey, create a crisis", but
it can be just something that makes you uncomfortable, is the way I look at it. There was a line
that, where did I see it? I might have seen it in Career Renegade or on the website, or
actually, I think it was somebody's testimonial for Uncertainty, but it made a reference to
the line: "You better get comfortable with being uncomfortable." Which is something I've
kind of been saying for a long time.
Jonathan Fields: The books that I write tend to be my quest to find pieces of the puzzle.
Partly for myself and partly because, then I like to share it. Like I said, one of the
cool things about being an author, is that you get to... One of my signature strengths
as I've taken the various inventories, is I have a love of learning curiosity. So that's
one of the things that fills me up, that makes me come alive. Writing books is this really
cool thing because it allows me to completely devote a huge amount of energy to that and
then, turn around, and frame it and synthesize everything I'm learning in a way which illuminates
in some way the human condition and hopefully connects with people.
But you're right, I wrote about this in Uncertainty, our brains are largely hardwired to experience
having to make decisions or take actions in the face of uncertainty as pain, as unease,
as discomfort. It's an age-old reaction. It triggers the Amygdala, the fear center in
our brain to want to say "Ahh!, Run!", which, in prehistoric times was a really good thing
because it kept us alive and it kept us in the group. These days, not so much. It will
keep us alive in the life-threatening scenarios, but what about all those other scenarios,
all day long, where you have opportunities that present themselves that require you to
go into that place where you don't know how it's going to end, but, potential opportunity
and the gift on the other side of those when you succeed, is so life-affirming, and most
people back away from that because they're unequipped to effectively handle living in
an uncertain place.
Warren McDonald: But, as you pointed out, uncertianty's is where the magic happens,
I paraphrased that, uncertainty's that space where we get to step in and create something,
if we can get out of that state of paralysis.
Jonathan Fields: Absolutely. Think about this, what's the only way to be absolutely certain
of an outcome before you start? There are only two ways. One is if you've done it already
or if somebody else has done it already. At which point, you're no longer creating, you're
no longer adding something new to the ecology of human experience, you're just replicating,
you're duplicating what's been done before, so why bother? Who cares at that point? So
what, you made another widget that happens to be just like the one that somebody else
did, but you're selling it for two cents less. I don't know about you, I don't know about
other people, but I'm not here to do that. I know about you, you're not here to do that,
none of us is here to do that, but we get so scared of being in that place where we
don't know how it's going to end. There is a small slice of humanity, what I found through
the research is, very likely it is a very small slice of individuals who do touch down,
where their brains are wired in a way that allows them to experience that place with
a bit more equanimity, and they can go to the place more regularly and create great
art, great businesses, great experiences, and they don't suffer as much as the average
person. But the average person does suffer because the brain, like I said, lights up
and literally sends electrical and chemical signals to the body that make us uncomfortable.
The question really is, if you're not one of those few people that touch down with some
genetic orientation towards it, being more comfortable in that place, can you train it?
Can you figure out ways to do it. And, indeed, you can. There are many things that you can
do with your environment, the people around you, with your workflow, that will shift the
psychology process. It will never completely eliminate that sense that, 'well, this is
new ground', but it can deliver enough baseline calms that you feel comfortable taking action.
And, consistently taking act... you notice, everybody notices deep down, there's no magic
to success in any field. It's consistent action over time, but when you're terrified to take
consistent action, it never happens.
Warren McDonald: So this is something that you've had to work on and learn?
Jonathan Fields: Ya. I've suffered my whole life. I'm somebody who touched down with insatiable
jones to create everything, but I'm not somebody who was well equipped to be able to handle
the anxiety and psychology of that process.
Warren McDonald: Which is good to point out because I think sometimes people will make
the mistake of, they see somebody out there, they see a New York Times bestselling author,
and think that all of these magical pieces fell into place to make that happen, but what
I want to make clear is that, sure there are pieces that can fall into place that can set
us up to not be...I'm sure if we were all born, if either of us was born in a small
village in Africa, for example, in Uganda, things would be entirely different, so there's
pieces that fall into place, but I kind of wanted to make it clear that it's up to us
then to equip ourselves and start to work on putting the pieces together in a way that
makes us more successful.
Jonathan Fields: I totally agree. One of the big awakenings for me is that being okay in
the space of uncertainty, where you have to go to do great things in the world, is a trainable
thing. So, for me, I wake up every morning, I roll out of bed with my eyes half-closed,
the first thing I do is, I work out of a home office and there's one corner of my office
which is my mediation area, and nobody's up in the house yet, I get up early. I sit on
my cushion and I do a mindfulness meditation, every single morning. And when I don't do
it, I feel it. That is one of the central practices that I do to really be able to create
on a high level consistently and not feel like I'm constantly on edge and constantly
anxious and constantly suffering. The amazing thing is, I've given presentations to global
Fortune 100 companies about this. Twenty years ago, if I had tried to that, I would have
been laughed out of the room. But now, I guided a room full of over 100 leaders from around
the world in one of the largest companies in the world in a guided mindfulness mediation
and they were totally loving it and open to it. The beautiful thing is, there's now so
much research, academic, peer review, published research behind practices like this that show
that it works very powerfully to reduce anxiety and stress and elevate mood, but also to unlock
cognitive function, decision-making, creativity, that it's a very easy conversation to have
these days, convince people to at least try it. A lot of these practices came out of some
deep ideological backgrounds or dogma or religion, but you don't need to buy into any of that
to actually practice these things these days. There are very stripped down, benign, non-ideological,
just fundamental practices that are very straight-forward that can make a huge difference.
Warren McDonald: So they shouldn't be confronting for somebody on the realm of worrying about
being reprogrammed by some outside force. I think that thing that any one of these fools
is going to be concerned about meditation, that they should be aware of in advance, it's
the stuff that's going to come up from inside, if anything's going to freak you out.
Jonathan Fields: No doubt. Once you create a little bit of stillness, the stuff that
bubbles up is sometimes a little bit scary, but the ideas and the solutions that come
up when you're just sitting is mind-blowing. Like, if you're trying to figure out a really
tough business problem, and you just can't get there, if you pull yourself completely
away from the problem, you just create time for stillness in your day, doesn't even have
to be mediation. Go for a walk in the woods. Completely remove yourself, and there's again,
great research on this that, your brain works in a way that the great solutions generally
come when you remove yourself from the process of trying to find them, and you create enough
of a pause for them to just sort of effervesce from the ether of your brain.
Warren McDonald: I'm glad to hear you say that, in a way I knew you were going to stay
that anyway because I remember you talking about that on the Bad *** Project. I kind
of call it creating these quiet spaces. I'm sure you're in the same boat. I've never figured
it out, any answer to any big problems sitting in front of the computer, it always happens
when I'm out, especially outside.
Jonathan Fields: Absolutely. A couple blocks for me is just, I live along the Hudson River,
and there's a preserve where it's just woods along the river and there's a little dirt
trail and I just, in the afternoons when it's nicer out, that's where you'll find me. It's
funny, people say 'that's where I take a break from work', that's where my best work happens.
When I'm not trying and I'm just out there in the space.
Warren McDonald: I'm the same, I'll be out skiing later this morning, and I always carry
the IPhone with me to record ideas. It's interesting because, in a lot of way, I think part of
the reason that I call this the Solution Revolution is I want people to get solution focused,
I know, and again, part of it is my own propensity, you talked about it in why you write, I created
this project because I knew it would allow me to start to pull things apart and that
it would help me, just through the nature of creating this. So, being solution focused,
but I think, a lot of the time, people think there are these big things or these things
that nobody's ever thought of that they need to do, but, a couple of take-aways that I'm
getting from you already is, one, that meditation, how important that is and how much that can
help us, and two, another thing that I know about you that you kind of just touched on,
is exercise and how exercise punches way above its weight in terms of return that we get
for output. So, in a lot of ways, these things are simple. And I, threw the revolution part
in because I fully believe, and I can see through the work that you're doing, that if
we all did this work, the world would pretty much change overnight.
Jonathan Fields: Yeah. I mean, there's no doubt. There are a lot of fairly fundamental
basic practices that will make a profound difference on an individual level and if you
get mass numbers of individuals doing these things, then it starts to make a difference
on a societal level. The thing is, like when I write, there are a ton of other practices
and strategies and ideas that I share in the last book and they're all great and they all
work, but people ask me, what are the one or two things that you can do that will make
a massive difference? I tell them meditation and movement. Those are, together, the biggest
force multipliers for changing shift and mindset on the planet. And, a lot of people don't
want to hear it, they're like, 'No. But, what else can we do'.
Warren McDonald: Exactly.
Jonathan Fields: You're like, "Nooo!" It really is that simple. And people are like, 'Well,
I don't have time', and I'm like, 'Actually, you do have time' because the research is
very clear that, when you do these things, you operate on a level of innovation, creativity,
problem-solving and productivity that so far exceeds the level you operate on when you
don't do them, that you literally have time to do these things, plus a bunch of additional
free time to go play.
Warren McDonald: Right. So, there's a key takeaway for people watching, it's like, get
over it, you have got time. You've got to create that space. And, what opens up in front
of that and what comes out of it can be huge.
Jonathan Fields: Yeah. The only reason you don't have time now is because you're not
doing it yet. It creates its own space.
Warren McDonald: Totally. So, one of the things I like to ask people, and you kind of just
hit on it, is that what can people do? I think to leave people with that - it really is as
simple as that - don't overwhelm yourself because it's the danger of leading into that
state of paralysis, but just pick one or two things, maybe even just pick one.
Jonathan Fields: Pick one, actually. Our brain does not allow us to adopt new habits at the
same time. It's got to be sequential. If you try to do multiple things at once, you're
going to fail at all of them, I can pretty much guarantee that. To replace a habit loop,
which means you have to take an existing habit or routine and build a new habit on top of
that, that's stronger than the existing one, because there's actually no such thing as
eliminating a habit, it can't be done, you can only build neuro-processes that are stronger.
It's almost impossible for us to focus on doing that with multiple different routines
and habits at the same time. So, pick one, a single one and spend a month or two on just
on that until it's really ingrained. And then, once you're comfortable at that, start to
move to the next one.
Warren McDonald: Start on something else. And, I think a key part of this that I should
throw in, one of the things that I see people struggling with, and why they say they haven't
got time, they just gotten overwhelmed with distractions. Say there were two tasks. One
was to add something, say meditation or exercise, and the other one, I would say, is get rid
of something, to kind of create that space. I've been a big advocate of throwing away
your T.V. for a long time and, it's funny, people used to laugh at that when I first
started putting it out there and I think it's starting to gain some traction.
Jonathan Fields: I think people are really starting feel the effect of screen-time on
their state of mind. Whether it's computer screen time, and now because we're screen-shifting,
everywhere we go we're on a screen. There's never any break anymore. You're at home you're
on your computer or on your T.V. The moment you walk out the door, you're checking every
social outlet on your smartphone. And then, when you go to a restaurant or work, everywhere
you go there's a screen. And, I totally agree, I think taking stuff away. You get the shakes
a little bit in the beginning, because we have literally developed an addiction, it's
like classic intermittent reinforcement when you become a checker. And when you try to
pull one of those things out of the loop, it's hard, but it opens up a lot of spiritual
and cognitive space when you do.
Warren McDonald: Yeah. Addiction, that's a whole other track.