How Safety Sometimes Stops Us From Living (and what to do about it) | Chase Jarvis

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Jonathan Fields: [00:00:13] So, so much of our lives is governed by this innate desire to feel safe. I totally get this. The world can feel like an unstable, scary place, feeling physically and psychologically safe. It matters to our mental health, to our physical health. But does there come a point where playing it too safe actually causes us harm? Where it makes our world, our relationships, our experiences and lives smaller, less good rather than better? Feeling like deep down you know that there's more to life than just existing within the confines of a box that sure might feel safe, but also keeps you and your life so much more narrow and limited than it could otherwise be, and all too often, the confines of that box that alleged safety have been drawn by someone else's expectations. So my guest today is Chase Jarvis and his new book, Never Play It Safe A Practical Guide to Freedom, creativity, and a Life You Love. It serves as an inspiring clarion call to challenge the notion of safety as an excuse for complacency. An award winning artist, serial entrepreneur and one of the most influential photographers of the past decade, Chase has created campaigns for iconic brands like Apple, Nike, and Red bull. He's also the co-founder and former CEO of Creativelive, an online education platform that has helped over 50 million students unlock their creative potential. So in our conversation, Chase shares his really personal journey of shedding the shackles of playing it safe to fully embrace his authentic path.

Jonathan Fields: [00:01:53] And along the way, he had to kind of blow up the expectations of a lot of other people around him. He offers this refreshingly candid perspective on the innate tools that we all possess to more courageously step beyond our comfort zones and craft a life overflowing with freedom and creativity and fulfillment. So if you're ready to trade in the treadmill of supposed to for the trail of what if? Then this boundary pushing conversation is for you. So excited to share it with you. I'm Jonathan Fields and this is SPARKED. Hey, and before we dive into today's episode, a quick share. So if you're a coach, a consultant or a leader, and you would just love to stand out more in 2024 and beyond with a powerful new credential and a set of results driven superpowers, we have got something for you. With nearly a million people now discovering their profiles, the Sparketypes have become a global phenomenon. People want their work to light them up, and oftentimes they would love some help along the way, which is why we developed our certified Sparketype advisor training. As a certified advisor, you will discover cutting edge tools that spark profound work life client transformations. Stand out with a highly unique credential and skill set in a crowded market. Find ease and flexibility with templated engagement flows.

Jonathan Fields: [00:03:18] You'll become a part of a global network of change makers, and you'll rack up 40 ICF continuing education credits. Our fall cohort is enrolling now with visionaries just like you, and we would love to invite you to uplevel your capabilities as a coach or consultant or leader by becoming a certified Sparketype advisor. To learn more about the fall training and see if it's right for you, just click the link in the show notes now or visit sparketype.com. Slash pros. I want to dive into never played safe. Interesting phrase. And it's sort of this invitation to live boldly and authentically. And in fact, you use that language really early on in the intro when you're teeing this up and you're basically saying to everybody, there is a way to step into life. Here is my question for you. When you use phrases or words like live boldly, live authentically, here's my honest reaction. My eyes start to roll. I'm like, I have seen this all over the internet. It's on every meme. It's all over the place. This feels like the type of thing where I don't understand what it means anymore. So when you use words like that, when you use phrases like that, what does that even mean to you? And what are you trying to convey to people? That's not sort of like the generic stuff that you see all over the place.

Chase Jarvis: [00:04:41] The book opens up pretty earnestly around the concept of safety, and the first line is safety is an illusion. It does not exist in nature. Why then do we seek it? If you put a slightly nuanced lens on your interesting question that you're opening our conversation with here, it's not just about living boldly, but my belief is that when I look back on all of the best stuff in my life and I did that for any number of reasons, we can talk a little bit about it. Like why I just was at a particular part of my point in my life where I sort of like taking stock, and I was like, wait a minute, all of the best things, best relationships, my best experiences were on the other side of my discomfort, on the other side of fear, on the other side of risk. And I was like, wait a minute, if that's where the best stuff is, why are we conditioned to not go there? And how can we change our conditioning so that that is a place that we can constructively seek and seek with some sort of reliable blueprint way of getting there, because it's we're biologically wired to not do that stuff. We're biologically wired to stay comfortable. And to be clear, I'm not. When I say safety, I'm not talking about seatbelts or sunscreen.

Chase Jarvis: [00:05:59] I'm not talking about emotional or physical safety. All those things are very important. I'm mostly talking about the experience. And then you say, well, I love the experience of actually just being really comfortable sitting next to the one I love. It's like, yeah, but how did you find the one that you love? You had to first probably ask them on a date, or there was some sort of early interaction where you had to be uncomfortable, you had to push through some fear and some risk. And so whether we're talking about relationships or career or personal experiences or adventures or even going, you know, inside where most of this stuff is, is there's a repeatable set of tools that I feel like we can use reliably to go there and to program our experience like this is, I know this feeling, it's familiar, it's discomfort, and the world is going to try and tell me to be one way or to be this way, and I know that I need to, because of evidence from my past, push on, around or through over these feelings. Because reliably I have proof that on the other side is something that's more interesting, richer, more human, more connected, more authentic, more me. That's the framing.

Jonathan Fields: [00:07:12] Yeah. I mean, you write early on, playing it safe is about fear, and fear is only optimized for survival, not creativity, happiness or fulfillment, which is really what we're we're talking about here. Yeah. I'm curious, when this touched down in your life so late, the notion of not playing it safe, because I remember you telling me stories all the way back early in life, like you're in your early 20s. I guess it was like the whole you're planning on going into, like, a world of medicine. Your grandpa dies, your grandpa passes, and you discover basically his camera, and there's something inside of you, even at that young age. It says that this path that I've been working towards hasn't been like everything has been set up for me. I'm like committed to this path, like blows up in almost a heartbeat and you're like, there's something else profoundly unsafe. Not again, not from a physical safety standpoint, from from everything you've taught about how you're supposed to live your life. And yet you take this left turn, which is completely counterculture, to almost everything you've been doing up until that moment. What was happening inside that made it actually feel like. And yet I still have to do this.

Chase Jarvis: [00:08:17] I think it was the realization that prior to that moment, there had been a thousand tiny betrayals and that, wait a minute, this whole life, I mean, like I chronicled this in the opening of the book when back going back to second grade, Miss Kelly, I had a magic show. I had a stand up comedy act. Now, I was doing all this really great. I'd just done my first film. I'm talking second grade, and Miss Kelly, my second grade teacher, shut it all down. She said, you can't sell your comic strip. No more magic shows, no more whatever. Because this is a business. And frankly speaking, this stuff doesn't mean anything. It's not real. So throw it away. And I was like, okay, great. And in an instant, I mean, like, man, who is this Miss Kelly woman? She's vicious. And yet we all had a miss Kelly in our lives and probably lots of them. And as a kid, I did not say Miss Kelly was awful. I was like, oh, the adults in my life are telling me what to do. And they. I like Miss Kelly and she likes me. I should probably pay attention. And that sort of starts the betrayals where we give up on our dreams largely by being talked out of them from people who've given up on theirs. And I looked in my life, and then I realized that I didn't actually want to be a doctor, I liked it. How did I start pursuing medical school? Well, my uncle told me that smart, talented, hardworking people, they're either doctors or lawyers or engineers or, you know, or whatever.

Chase Jarvis: [00:09:39] And I was like, oh, okay. So I started pursuing those subjects in school, and I started So that moment that you talk about in the book where I realized this, I take that 90 degree turn, just decide not to go into medicine, was because I had already basically spent a lot of money. I was in debt, student debt, pursuing things that everybody else wanted for me. I had given up on so many things, you know, the creative side of myself that I was sharing with you earlier that Miss Kelly talked to me. I realized that I'd betrayed myself enough times and that, you know what? Enough is enough. When you're faced with sort of death in your family and the reckoning of, oh my gosh, there's I'm going to die at some point. I'm Rafferty, the stoic principle. It's like, let's try something different. Let's run a tiny experiment feels radical. It's not a door that if I walk through it, I can't walk back through it. Let's see what it feels like to go through this door. And this is that comfort zone that I'm talking about. And as soon as I step through that, or went beyond my comfort zone, took the risk of disappointing people who thought I should be off to medical school. Oh my God, I felt so alive. I felt so connected. I felt so autonomous. And simultaneously, I found a whole world of people who were like me that I actually felt more connected to and felt like, wow, this is actually a thing that I could do.

Chase Jarvis: [00:11:02] And look how curious and fun and interesting these are my people. So I think it's important to again, in answering your question, what made me do that? It wasn't the first time I had, you know, it wasn't like I had always not been brave and then became brave. It was realizing that man I'd given up on myself so many times, and I'm tired of it. I kind of was more of a put your foot down moment, which is really important to me in the context of this book, that people don't feel like I'm if you. If you're listening to this right now and it's like, I don't want to, you think that I had it all figured out. This was the series of so many tiny betrayals, but that's actually the system working, right? So wherever you are right now, if you're listening to this like. Mm, that's kind of interesting. Doesn't matter how you got there. Doesn't even matter where you are. What matters is that if you did take stock and decided that I might want to get comfortable getting uncomfortable, maybe there is something to this. It's never too late to pursue the person that we are or want to be. Maybe now is a good time to start. Like, that's really what I'm asking the reader. And in this case, the listener to do is ask yourself those questions. And do you want to have any regrets at the end, or are you willing to maybe take a chance now?

Jonathan Fields: [00:12:09] Yeah. I mean, it's such an interesting point about the, you know, the thousand tiny betrayals leading up to this moment. I think so many of us have felt some version of that, and also this notion that when finally this switch flips inside of you and you're just like, this is the last one, that doesn't necessarily mean that you then know what the path is from that moment forward. You know, it's sort of like you're flipping in from a thousand tiny betrayals to you uncomfortably saying yes to potentially a thousand micro trials of like, is this me? Is this me? Is this me? Is this me? And I wonder if one of the things that that stops people is because they feel like they have to be clear on that before they'll close one door. Like they have to really understand what is next. Like, how is it going to tee up? How is it going to position me so that both I feel okay stepping into it, and those whose approval I seek will not just completely decimate me with their glares? And wouldn't it be nice if the world works that way? But it really doesn't.

Chase Jarvis: [00:13:13] Yeah. You've described a very tidy box that it would be fantastic if that's the way it was, but on two different vectors on the first vector of, you know, disappointing others. One of my favorite experiences is a friend of mine, Brené Brown. Probably know her. You know her work, I know that, and your listeners hopefully do. She's amazing. I had her I've had her on my show, my podcast many times. She came out to Seattle. We had an in-studio audience and I was asking her about. It was around when she was doing The Gifts of Imperfection, and she had popularized at the time her Ted talk was just going viral. It was like 2010 or something super long time ago. And she said, you know, how do you decide who who do you who are you willing to disappoint in being sort of vulnerable or being authentically you? And she said, hey, can you grab my purse? So the P.A. ran, grabbed her purse, this is all on camera, and sets it up on the couch. And she opens the purse, pulls out her wallet, opens her wallet, and she pulls out a little piece of paper in her wallet. And on this piece of paper is a one inch by one inch square. And she says she holds it up. She says, on this piece of paper, I have written the names of the people who I actually truly care in my heart of hearts if I disappoint a couple interesting things there. One is that there's not that many. Not that much room for many names, right? It's it's on a one inch by one inch piece of paper.

Chase Jarvis: [00:14:33] So they're very, very few people. And that's not to say that she's not going to disappoint people, but these are the people whose opinion of her actually matters to her at the end of her days. So to me, that vector on who you're going to disappoint, it's interesting in all sorts of ways, and we ought to have our own little one inch by one inch square. And then there's that bigger piece of the pie. You know, when you're talking about who you disappoint. And then does it need to be perfect? You have have to have everything lined up. I just asked the question, what if you didn't? What if you thought of all of these things, these questions that you had about what you could be or what you could do or where you could go next, or, you know, aside from who you're going to disappoint, what's the tiniest experiment that you could run in the direction of your dreams? To me, that's a really interesting question. So those two things together, okay, let's talk about I might disappoint my career counselor or my friend's brother's cousin or my neighbor Bob, but it's not on the list. And of course, it seems like I have to have it all figured out and make perfect move X or Y, and we try and do this stuff from the couch. Right. But what if we didn't? What if he did it in a sort of a clumsy, small, lightweight, experimental way? What would that look like? To me, the answers to those questions provide much more interesting places for us to explore. Yeah.

Jonathan Fields: [00:15:48] And it's so interesting. Right? You know, as we have this conversation, I'm 58 years old. I'm still running experiments.

Chase Jarvis: [00:15:53] Absolutely.

Jonathan Fields: [00:15:54] And surely some of those experiments have borne fruit. Some of them have turned into bodies of work or companies or offerings or whatever it may be. Many more than that have just completely proven themselves not worthy of pursuing along the way, because I think one of the questions that people hear then, oh, okay, so maybe I'm okay, like spending this window of time, like running these experiments, but like at some point I'm going to lock it down and then I'm just going to be on that path. Right. And maybe for some people that actually does happen. Maybe you find out, like there is this one thing that I fall in love with that I really want to devote myself to, and it sustains you indefinitely. And this is that's an amazing thing. In my experience, that's more of the outlier story, even though that is the mythology that we're told to aspire to. I'm curious what your take is on that.

Chase Jarvis: [00:16:37] Absolutely aligned with you. I think it's it's a mythology and whether it's sort of like an interesting way that I think about it, I'm as I'm answering that, I'm trying to be really honest, which if you are doing a good job of listening, going inside, like that's the secret to this. You know, one of the things my favorite thing about this book is that it's an inside job. I think that's what Seth Godin told me. He's like, this book could also be called The Inside Job because all the best stuff. We have to actually go inside and think about what it is that we actually really want in order to actually go out in the world and get it, or do or become the people or do the things that we want to do. So to me, that's simultaneously fascinating in that the answers are in here, not out there. So if we do a little in here, but it's also cool because it's once you get it, it is truly right there. There's no gap between if you can hear, you start to pay attention to this stuff now. So let's just say that you start to get good at that, and you do decide what it is that you really want. And as you talked about, we're like, we're going to run some experiments. The better you are at listening to what you want, it doesn't mean that you're not going to fail experiments, but the experiments, they are all generally more interesting to you. You're more engaged with them because they're on this path, right? They're in line with our they're just aligned with who we are as our core.

Chase Jarvis: [00:18:01] The funny thing is, the better we know who we are and what we want, the experiments, even if the ones that don't work, they're like, oh, well, that was kind of cool. I figured I learned something, and it's just the essence of, you don't have to see the entire staircase before you make a move in order for it to feel good or like you're willing to make a move. You're like, I just have to see a couple stairs. I'm going to go a couple of stairs. And if I go up there and it's not what I like, great. Then I'm gonna come around and go back down, because even those few steps were in the direction of my dreams, and I knew that because I had a real heartfelt conversation with myself and I figured it was worth exploring. Just imagine if you could, wherever you are right now, do more of that and less of the to do list that everybody else piles on us and that we pile on ourselves, right? What if we could do a little bit more in the direction of our dreams every day, without feeling like everything had to turn out perfect and a little bit less of the to do lists that culture and our parents and our career counselors, and frankly, most other people in our lives will pile on us. It's not there's no evil overlord, but it's just about getting 1% better in the direction of our dreams. And it's very doable.

Jonathan Fields: [00:19:14] Yeah, and there is an evil overlord. But but they they lie within. Not without.

Chase Jarvis: [00:19:20] Like it's.True.

Jonathan Fields: [00:19:21] Like that. That is the inside game also. But it's interesting because you bring up another thing which has been mummified endlessly, which is this notion of like, you don't need to see the whole path. Take the first step and the rest of the path will follow. Or not. You know, like the truth is, you may get five steps in and you're like, dude, no, like, this actually is completely not okay. There is no other path like that's now appearing before me because there shouldn't be one. And yes, now I need to actually go back to where I was, or just start from where I am now and figure out how do I make like a hard left or a hard right, but like part of what you're bringing up here also, and this is one of the things that you speak to, is this notion of, of trusting yourself like the art of trusting yourself. Intuition, which I feel is, is such an important part of us sussing out like, okay, so as I'm running these experiments and trying to figure things out, um, sure, I'm going to rely on some external data if it's available to me, but there's this whole thing, like there is a set of data that bubbles up inside of us, that so many of us are just profoundly disconnected to, don't even know that it exists, let alone understand how to surface it and trust it.

Chase Jarvis: [00:20:28] Yeah, I believe that our intuition is the most powerful thing that we know the least about. And you know, when I was writing the book, there's a whole chapter on intuition. And it was fascinating because I liked some of the science behind it, and it is really leaning in the direction that rational thought is, you know, is thought to be the pinnacle. And sure, it made us, you know, it gave us tools which helped us evolve and all of those things. Yeah. Awesome. And it's also sort of slow and bumbling and prone to error and intuition, which is an actual kind of knowledge. It's very unclear where it comes from, but it's usually at a cellular level. It's more of a body. And the cells, they actually all they're always changing and regenerating. But there's memories kept in there in different formats. It's still data, it's just different types of data. It's like, man, if we could start to actually pay attention to that. And intuition, actually there's signals that that appear that Intuition actually takes rational thought into account as well. Versus rational thought doesn't take into consideration intuition. You know, you start to think, wow, this is actually kind of an interesting skill. And the, you know, the follow up question, the natural question is like, well, okay, how can you train it and trust it? And the answer is pretty simple. It's just like any other muscle when you feel it in your body. And we all have this. No one that I know has ever told me, like I don't have a gut feeling.

Chase Jarvis: [00:21:53] So well, what if you paid attention to that and you could do it in small, lightweight ways? What do you want for dinner tonight? What if you just said it as opposed to jammed it down? What if you gave yourself an intuition Saturday where you wake up? What do I want to do? Well, I want to watch cartoons. And then I want to go have peanut butter and chocolate chip pancakes at the waffle House. And then I want to. You know what? If you just did that for a while, how does that feel? At the end of the day? It's like, cool. I don't want to do that every day. But it felt good to just know that I have answers in here, and maybe that's an example of doing that one day. But there's certainly a way to build that muscle through repetition and through learning to listen. I mean, even acknowledging that there's a voice in there that's at a gut level to me, it's one step ahead of where most people are, and yet it's right there below the surface if you're willing to look and to listen. And I will say feel. That's one of the exercises in the book, is like, you can feel this stuff. This is a body scan, right? You know what it feels like to have a gut feeling about a person or a place or a thing. Why don't we decide that we're going to lean into that?

Jonathan Fields: [00:23:04] I mean, it's really interesting, right? Because if you look at the world of behavioral economics, their version of intuition, and this is really popularized by Daniel Kahneman, you know, this notion of we have two thinking systems, like we make decisions in two ways. We have system one, system two, system two is this slow burn, analytical rational system where we analyze all the data. System one is this sort of like in the moment, just like we feel it like there's we can't actually it's insight based. We can't actually tell you why we made the decision. But it feels right. And we bounce back and forth between the two. So like that system one is like the equivalent of sort of the way that you're describing intuition. The big difference that I'm sussing out, though, is that in that world where it's all about science, it's about heady stuff. And there's experiments that are run. Those systems largely exist in your brain, you know, and what you're adding to the conversation is. And a lot of the behavioral economists like, they would kind of they equate those fast paced, those intuitive decisions to what's really happening here is that as you get older, your brain is taking in massive amounts of data you're not even aware of, and it's building a pattern recognition machine. And the more data that you have, the more easily and readily you can actually, like recognize patterns. And that shows up as intuition because you just give so much data. You see the pattern and you just kind of know.

Chase Jarvis: [00:24:25] We take in billions of data points every second minute, and you can't possibly be your rational cognitive mind can't process that stuff. So you got to put it in a different place. Exactly what you're talking about.

Jonathan Fields: [00:24:36] Right. So you don't know that's what's happening. That's one of the theories around this in that world. But what you're adding, which I so agree with, is this notion is and yes, there's an embodied part of this, like part of this is a feeling, a sensation that happens from the neck down. That's really important. But we are so disembodied these days that even though our bodies are often screaming to us, but, you know, like, listen, please listen, we're just kind of like somebody saying something.

Chase Jarvis: [00:25:07] Right? Like screaming at the top of the lungs, that part of our body. And to me, it's important to say that that my approach on intuition is not mysticism. You know, it's as you said, it's grounded in science. And we certainly are taking in billions of data points. We know that. And we certainly know that our cognitive mind is sort of like our Ram. Right? We we only have so much memory that we can work with. So there's other stuff happening. And boy, let's just start to turn onto that tune into that a little bit. This is not we don't have to be, you know, just throw everything into the wind. And yet if you started this is sort of like the decision. You start paying attention to that. What's the cost to that? The cost is zero. You know, he's like, okay, I'm going to look for this. Interesting my body to start telling me what it feels like, my gut. Oh well, just start trusting it. Just start first of all, paying attention to it. Oh I'm aware. There it is. Oh, yeah. Maybe that's what they're talking about. Okay, cool. Oh, yeah. I really like this person. This person is cool. Uh, I'm not sure I like that restaurant. That doesn't feel right to me. Whatever. Just start paying attention to it. Acknowledging it when you start leaning into that. What I find is most people like. That's actually pretty important. Interesting. Curious, profound. I want to do more. And it's in the doing more that you start to build the muscle.

Chase Jarvis: [00:26:22] And this is it's very clear from a sports perspective. For example, sports psychologist says the famous psychologist named Bob Rotella, it talks a lot. It's just a lot about the unconscious mind, the ability to perform at a very high level, not in the thinking, like, okay, I'm going to move my you know, Michael Jordan doesn't say, I'm going to put my elbow right here and I'm going to cut my wrist at 32 degrees, and then I'm going to hold the ball. You know, it's basically all those things come together in a millisecond. This is essentially what I'm prescribing for life. Like these. All of those systems are absolutely applicable to day to day life. Let's try and leverage them in this way. It doesn't. Again, you don't have to move to France. Get a new set of friends. I'm not asking you to dress a different way. It's just like, just start paying attention. And when you do, not dissimilar to the world's top athletes, you'll notice things. And those things are interesting. And if you start leaning into those? Wow. This is another system. I like the system one. System two that you use. It's like wow. Super powerful. It tells me things. I'd like to learn to listen to that better. And then what I find, and as I've deconstructed my own experiences and the experiences of hundreds of the world's top performers and ordinary people who've done extraordinary things, is that this is one of the tools that they really tune into.

Jonathan Fields: [00:27:40] That also brings into the conversation the notion of attention or attentiveness. Like, what are we actually attuning ourselves to? And this is one of the things that you also dive deep into an interesting line that you share. Getting attention is everything in this life. But what if I told you that nearly everything you've been taught about attention is wrong?

Chase Jarvis: [00:27:59] That's a little wordplay in that chapter, because the chapter opens up with, hey, look! Look at a baby! A baby coos and is cute and all these things, because if a baby doesn't get attention, a baby literally dies. If you do not hold a the human baby. There is the studies that were done in the the orphanages in Romania where just the deaths, literally deaths, they were healthy babies, but in all measure. But they weren't held because there were too many of them. They couldn't go around and hold them. There's a lot of really interesting studies that that's a fact. Like if you don't get attention, if a baby is not held, they die. And from an early on, we're taught that getting attention matters. It's like to be cool or stand out or be popular, or get a date, or a mate or a new job or whatever. You have to stand out. You have to get attention. And yet, you know that little twist that I shared there? What if I told you everything is wrong? It's really the people who are capable of directing their attention, of paying attention that get what they want in life. And they don't just get what they want because they can direct their attention, as in, like, I'm focused on the right thing here. I'm climbing the right mountain. It's also in when you pay attention to other people. The feeling of being of having somebody else paying attention to you is such a rare experience that that is true human connection. My wife, she has many gifts. She's a meditation and mindfulness teacher and coach. She's one of the most present people I know, and her ability to pay attention, like when she's just talking to anyone.

Chase Jarvis: [00:29:37] Nobody walks away from a conversation with Kate and just said that that woman wasn't really present. She's just like, that's one of her superpowers. And I'm telling you, it is such an absolute gift. So, you know, the twist in that chapter is it seems like we're told to get attention. But what if you really were an expert at paying attention? Or the phrase I like to use is learning to direct your attention. It turns out that this is what thousands of years of meditation training or mindfulness or awareness practice like focus, what you choose to focus on Son literally dictates your experience of life, right? You're creating meaning and through what you pay attention to in this particular environment. It's very stoic, right? It's like it's not what happens to you. It's the attitude that you bring to what happens to you that matters. So what I advocate for is, boy, seems like if what we pay attention to literally describes the experience that we have of being alive, doesn't it make sense that if we we should learn to direct our attention? It seems like it's a really powerful and valuable skill. Let's do more of that. And it turns out it's difficult in some capacities or in some sense of the word. But there's a handful of very basic things journaling, meditating, just some basic, fundamental stuff. That boy, when you do that, you are at a massive advantage for the experience that you want to have of life. Let's do more of that.

Jonathan Fields: [00:31:07] Yeah. I mean, obviously this resonates deeply with me and sort of like the way I look at the world as well. You know, this notion of you said your attention dictates effectively, you know, like the experiences of your life. I would even go a step further and say, your attention is your life. Yep. Because basically, whatever you are attuned to in any given moment in time is the nature of your experience, you know? So like, there could be five other things happening around you. But if your brain isn't paying attention to them, for all intents and purposes, they literally don't exist in your experience of life. They could be surrounding you, but they're actually not present in your mind, which means they're not present in your life. And that goes for people. It goes for experiences. I've talked about, like on and off over the years. I have have tinnitus. So there's a sound that, like in theory, my brain generates, it exists inside of my head and nowhere else, and it can be screaming loud and high pitched. And yet over the years, I've trained my brain in ways using some of the tools that you've talked about, so that for all intents and purposes, until and unless I go searching for it, it doesn't exist. It's not that I don't hear it, which is how I kind of understood it in the early days. I've taught myself not to hear it anymore. What I began to realize is because it only exists in my brain when my attention is not actually attuned to it. It's not that I don't hear it anymore. It literally doesn't exist in my life, and it took a lot of work to get there and a lot of suffering along the way. But I was motivated by pain and my desire to get out of it. And sadly, that's what it takes for a lot of people.

Chase Jarvis: [00:32:45] Yeah, but many of us are in pain.

Jonathan Fields: [00:32:47] Talk to me more about Take Me There more. I'd be on.

Chase Jarvis: [00:32:49] Board with exactly what you said. And I think your example is so prescient and so real. It's like when I'm listening to people in my community creators, entrepreneurs, people who are trying to build a living or a life that they love. You know, there's so many the list of things that is wrong or difficult or whatever is very it's long and multifaceted and we pay a lot of attention to it. And it's not to say that it doesn't exist or or just how real is that list. Like as you just indicated, with your tinnitus, tinnitus, tinnitus, tinnitus.

Jonathan Fields: [00:33:22] Either way.

Chase Jarvis: [00:33:23] Ringing in your ears. Uh, it's like by learning to direct your attention, that can bring it in and out of focus. I think it there are moments where you're like, I know it wasn't present at all in my experience, therefore it didn't exist. But I find this so many of us, and this is part of the when I went inside and decided, what am I writing this book about? It was, wow. If I realized that I can control so much of my own experience by what I direct my attention towards, let's get. Why is it that we are not taught how to better direct our attention, especially in a world that is, you know, we see 20,000 advertisements a day. So part of it is certainly learning to weed out distractions. But it's also there's a quietness that's like this goes back to the what I really want. And this exercise, I'll challenge people. If you know that the trick here, then bear with me for 10s. And if you don't, then enjoy. So wherever you are right now, again, if you can focus on something besides the road, if you're driving, look around and see everything in your field of view. I'm going to give you 10s to do this. Everything in your field of view that is red. Count the number of things that are in your field of view that are red. Go in 1001 234.

Chase Jarvis: [00:34:35] We're going to go on to. Let's call that good. So that's seven seconds. How many blue things did you see. And you're like wait a minute. You told me to count red. And I'm like, exactly. So how many blue things did you see? And then you get the point, right? The trick is that you see what you're looking for. And by extension, if we apply this to our conversation around attention, whatever the thing that's dominant in your mind right now, you're going to unless you can remain open and aware and present, all of those things are just going. You're going to see what you're looking for, you know, versus being able to be open and present. This is one of the reasons that the concept of presence or awareness, or an Eckhart Tolle like being present in the now is so powerful because you see things more like what they are rather than like what you are. And to me that is is very powerful. And so by learning to direct our attention, we get to create, as you said, our experience. It's not like we get to, you know, you had a better twist on it, but it was like, this is the experience. Your attention is the experience. So where are you going to place it? Let's choose. Rather than feeling like a cork in the tide, that's something that's chosen for us.

Jonathan Fields: [00:35:51] I love that simple experiment. I've seen so many different versions of it. Yeah.

Chase Jarvis: [00:35:55] There's a quietness that I believe is true, and when we get honest with ourselves, we start to be able to hear what it is that we truly want. And in my world, if we do pay attention to these seven tools that reside naturally within us, that we will get better at doing the things at living, that when we get to our deathbed, we will look back. None of us will have no regrets, but that we can have fewer regrets for a life well lived. To me, that is a doable thing. I don't love the hedonistic like everything I want, when I want it, with who I want it. Because to me there's a little bit of that. We have had to have listened first in order to do that, and I don't want to ignore that part of it. I think it's a really important part. So being quiet enough, smart enough, wise enough to know what you want, and then realizing that you have all of the tools within you to tap into it.

Jonathan Fields: [00:36:50] Mm.Thank you. And remember, if you're at a moment of exploration, looking to find and do or even create work that makes you come more fully alive, that brings more meaning and purpose and joy into your life. Take the time to discover your own personal Sparketype for free at sparketype.com. It will open your eyes to a deeper understanding of yourself and open the door to possibility like never before. And hey, if you're finding value in these conversations, please just take an extra second right now to follow and rate SPARKED in your favorite podcast app. This is so helpful in helping others find the show and growing our community so that we can all come alive and work in life together. This episode of SPARKED was produced by executive producers Lindsey Fox and Me, Jonathan Fields. Production and editing by Sarah Harney. Special thanks to Shelley Adelle for her research on this episode. Until next time. I'm Jonathan Fields and this is SPARKED.