The Confidence Trap: Why You DON'T Need it to Do Big Things

Jonathan Fields (00:00:12) - So have you ever looked at someone else, someone you admire who's maybe accomplished a lot and just assumed they must be wildly confident and always winning at everything? Well, you're not alone. But the truth is, it turns out it's much more complicated. So many of those seeming luminaries are not, in fact, wildly or even remotely confident, and especially not all the time. And if they are behind the scenes, they are going through cycles of profound change, self-doubt, struggle. And when they learn to harness these experiences, revelation and even reinvention often becomes what we see on the outside. But there's a lot more going on on the inside and how they navigate that and how we might navigate that and still show up and provide value. That's where we're headed in today's deeply personal and powerfully vulnerable sparked Heartache episode with Spark Braintrust member Jenny Blake. So Jenny is a career and business strategist, podcaster and award-winning author of three books, Life After College The Groundbreaking Pivot for Navigating What's Next, and her recently published Free Time for Optimizing What's Now.

Jonathan Fields (00:01:24) - And if you've ever struggled to create or try new things due to a lack of confidence, you're not alone. From the outside looking in. So many folks have built thriving careers and are just perpetually confident and showing up that way. And yet so many of us wrestle with this inner contradiction. And in fact and in fact, that overlay of confidence that we tend to place on others is often a bit of a delusion. So in this conversation, Jenny shares her deeply personal and timely example of her own journey through seasons of confidence, struggle and renewal. And along the way, we explore the realities of sometimes having to take action and find ways to keep showing up and offering value. Even when we're feeling like we're in the thick of our own questioning. And we explore a different lens also on what it means to offer value to others. That is, maybe that is maybe a bit less prescriptive and more deeply rooted in belonging and validation and simply letting others know they're not alone. And in an unexpected and deeply moving moment.

Jonathan Fields (00:02:29) - Jenny shares a spark exclusive, revealing that she actually began almost covertly writing a secret substack from the mess in the hopes of helping others feel less alone in their struggles as she's navigating her own. And she wonders, can sharing our human flaws and uncertainties actually complement our expertise and advice rather than taking away from them providing value in its own way? So tune in for this conversation, for an honest discussion of how confidence waxes and wanes and how to still show up and provide value even when you're not feeling it. And maybe even questioning your own path and ability to serve. So excited to share this conversation with you, and I hope it supports you next time you're having a similar experience. I'm Jonathan Fields and this is sparked. Jenny Lake It is always fantastic to be hanging out with you and talking about things, work and life. And today is one of our smart hot topic episodes where we pick a very particular topic that is top of mind that a lot of people are experiencing these days that are often talking to one or both of us about on a really regular basis and sometimes struggling mightily with.

Jonathan Fields (00:03:55) - And today is an interesting one. I know it's a topic that has come up with you with a bunch of your clients recently, and it's also something that you've been sort of navigating on a very personal level. And I have in no small part also. So why don't you tee up this mystery topic for us?

Jenny Blake (00:04:12) - The mystery topic du jour is around confidence, but not in the way you might think, specifically the fact that the people you see putting things out there, I think sometimes it looks as if other people have confidence in what they're doing, especially creative pursuits. Whether or not it's part of your full time career. And what I want to say and what I would love to chat with you about. JF is how truly insecure I feel most of the time, but never more so than when I'm doing something new. And I think what sometimes looks courageous or bold from the outside, I wish people could know on the inside that so often I, at least for me personally, I'll speak for myself.

Jenny Blake (00:04:52) - Some people might feel really confident in themselves and their abilities and their ideas. I feel constantly insecure in a world where we basically have the ability to compare ourselves to 8 billion other people, and yet I always try to just keep going. So that's this theme that's been coming up over and over is how do you press ahead even when you're not confident? And how can we even release the expectation to be confident at all and yet still take these bold steps to put ourselves out there and ideally to express our highest and best selves in the world?

Jonathan Fields (00:05:25) - Yeah, and it's such a powerful topic and something that I know so many people experience. And I think one of the surprising things before we even dive into this or like the details of it, is that and you kind of tease this a little bit is the notion of who feels this, because a lot of times we would assume that this abject lack of confidence rising to the level sometimes of paralytic fear. Well, that's for the newbies. That's for people who are younger.

Jonathan Fields (00:05:51) - That's for people who haven't gone out there and earn their chops and or have a checklist of things that they've accomplished and done where like in a certain amount of status and confidence and competence and and and over time, that'll fade away. That goes away. And it's replaced by this just persistent state of like, I'm totally cool. I'm 100% confident. I've achieved a lot. I can look back and objectively see the evidence of the fact that I'm competent and that should give me confidence. And so I'm just good. And what you're saying is that's not the experience of a lot of people, maybe even most. Yes.

Jenny Blake (00:06:25) - I'll give you an example of this. I've been podcasting for eight and a half years, and at least 500 episodes, and I recently attended a conference in April and I did a daily diary. So every day in my hotel room I had this little funny furball audition for my iPhone and I would just record a little diary. I had never done this before. Most of the time it was about coffee.

Jenny Blake (00:06:47) - How soon can I get coffee? Am I having a coffee? I'm on my way to the conference center to get my coffee. And I was also talking about how shy I felt. I can be quite introverted, but then I muster the will to be outgoing. Okay, Long story short, I recorded five of these, one for every day of the conference, came home, stitched them together, and I thought, this is either the worst podcast I have ever created. Like, this is the diary you're not supposed to share. There's nothing here. All I am is obsessed with coffee and then talking about how I get Jomo for the mornings and I don't like to stay out late at night and how I fall off the cliff of energy being able to talk to people. So I was sharing some of my conference going neuroses and also some of my strategies, but it was not an advice episode. I had already done that with my friend on a different episode, like ten conference relationship building strategies, and it was really tactical.

Jenny Blake (00:07:38) - This one was a genuine experiment and I deep down in my heart of hearts, I had no clue if it was the worst thing I've ever released. And I it was a huge mistake to publish or not. Go figure. As it happens so often, this was the episode almost more than any other in eight years that people came out of the woodwork to say, Oh, I loved that one. They commented, they emailed, they text messaged me. I could not believe it. I couldn't believe it. And and yet I had no discernment. I was too close to it. I had no clue if it was just a horrible, boring diary drivel or something genuinely interesting until I put it out there and got the feedback.

Jonathan Fields (00:08:15) - Yeah, I mean that's, that's such a common and I've had that experience so many times as well. And this is a little bit of a tangent, but I think this brings up something which is really interesting to me also, which is a lot of times we think that we derive confidence.

Jonathan Fields (00:08:31) - By our ability to consistently provide things that other people value over time. Right? And and they start reflecting back to us that you're good, you're valuable, what you're creating is valuable. And then we're like, Yeah, this rocks. We're confidence. But the way that we frame value is sometimes a fallacy, because what you did in that situation, like you said, you did the pose, which was tactical, which was strategic, which is like, here's the here's what I think is like pure value, like ten tips to do X, Y, and Z to feel better to accomplish an outcome which I want to accomplish. And that's the way that we normally look at providing value, the way that so many of us don't look at providing value and in turn building confidence. And in fact, oftentimes we look at this experience as potentially diminishing our confidence. And and the way that people view us is by offering something to the world that simply lets other people know they are not alone in their current experience.

Jonathan Fields (00:09:29) - And that experience may be suffering. It may be loss, it may be grief, it may be, you know, like something that they just think is a little bit off the wall that nobody would relate to it. Maybe a bizarre, strange way that they look at the world or something that they do that nobody else knows about. But it's really healing for them. But everyone would raise an eyebrow. But the simple act of putting something into the world that that has the effect of letting other people know that they are not alone. We often diminish the value of that in other people's eyes, but it is astonishingly powerful. I know people who have built fantastic careers doing that and only that and massive, massive followings, you know, on social media. And what's interesting is you would think that this is counter to exactly what you would need to do to build your own confidence, because you're saying, well, why would I actually just share that on wallowing and struggle? Like that's basically saying like I'm sharing with everyone else and I'm not confident and I'm just going to be judged and piled on.

Jonathan Fields (00:10:33) - And in fact, oftentimes it opens a two way door that does exact opposite.

Jenny Blake (00:10:38) - Yes. I mean, to go meta for a moment every time before we have one of these sparked conversations, I worry a little bit, do I have good enough ideas? Am I going to say the right things? Is it going to be at the bar that I would want to have for myself? For Jonathan, for those of you who are here listening, and then every single time that I hang up, I almost am like smacking my forehead. What I could have done differently, what I could have said. Maybe I messed it up. Maybe this conversation, this one episode is going to be the one that gets me kicked off the team of your team of sparked guides. And I genuinely think that after every single one, like, Oh, this is the one where I'm going to get the boot because I didn't show up well enough. And it's a surprise to me that I think this is our 10th recording together.

Jenny Blake (00:11:21) - And so there is a small part of me and I and I think sometimes humility is good and we have to have some confidence to even just show up at all and hit record. But those feelings don't really go away for me. They're always around, they're always hovering, and I just try not to let it stop me from doing the thing, even though I have a vulnerability hangover all the time. It's like all the time when I'm doing something that's even the slightest bit edgy and I'm curious if you have an example. Do you have an example of something that you genuinely were afraid to put out? You didn't know if it'd be worth it, and then it happened to get the best feedback?

Jonathan Fields (00:11:58) - Oh, there's probably so many examples of that. I mean, stuff that I've written over the years, like essays or posts that were in some way really deeply personal where or where I was just trying something entirely new. I remember years ago when I was like more I consider myself more a blogger than anything else.

Jonathan Fields (00:12:17) - So this is quite a while ago. I wrote this long form thing and it was a dialogue between two fictional characters one playing the role of sort of like an old sage and the other playing in the role of somebody who was coming to this person seeking advice. And I did it. I did this whole long thing as a as a conversation like as a fictional conversation that I put out, almost like a parable, like a mini parable making a point that I thought was just really, really important. And because the format was really new to me and the topic was kind of vulnerable and I was writing in a way that I'd never publicly written before, I was very, very, very nervous putting that out. Like I remember hitting publish, I'm like, This could be a really big mistake. And similar to what you said, the feedback was phenomenal. Or like if this is the direction that you're heading, we want more now. But at the same time, I also don't want to sugarcoat this because you will sometimes do that and it will completely like fall flat.

Jonathan Fields (00:13:14) - It'll be a complete bust and all of your fears will be realized and you still have to figure out how do I wake up tomorrow and move forward? You have an interesting rule that helps you sort of like move forward, like this ratio like. The 5149 is almost like a golden ratio with confidence and fear that helps you navigate these moments. So drop us into that a bit.

Jenny Blake (00:13:39) - This has just come up for me in the last few months because people were writing and I was doing the most personal writing that I've been doing since my early blogging days, probably since the last 15 years. So people are commenting about it. Almost surprised. Where is this coming from? How are you doing that? And so I just keep saying I have 49% nausea, fear, overwhelm and insecurity and then followed by vulnerability after something goes live. And yet I just try to have 51%. That gets me to press the schedule button. And I will tell you, with this project, I got to a point where I scheduled writing to go live maybe two weeks out into the future.

Jenny Blake (00:14:22) - I had picked what day I wanted something to go live, and then I had to do the work of scheduling it. So I got the courage to schedule it. I bought myself some time so that the default action I would have needed to take would be to put the brakes on rather than to get over the hump of press and go and pressing forward. And so 5149 is, listen, if you're like me, you're going to have at least 49% of all the nauseating things. But can you find it within you to tip the scales ever so slightly to every day, take one small step that puts it forward? Or for anyone listening, maybe we all have different forms of creative expression, and it's really important to me that this be regardless of your day job, regardless of how you get paid or not, this is about having just 51 over 49% confidence to record your thoughts, to write them down to. Ideally, yes. Like let them breathe a little bit. Put them out there even if it's just for close friends to start.

Jenny Blake (00:15:22) - But how can you not prevent yourself from moving forward because you're waiting for some level of confidence that may never arrive and I think the piece that you said, Jeff, I'm curious about, there's almost an intuition because like you said, sometimes you might have the confidence and you put something out there. Do you have an intuitive sense of when it is worth it, like when what your 51% is where you will hit schedule or publish, even if you have no clue how it's going to land versus maybe there is a genuine intuitive hit saying, wait, wait, put the brakes on. You know, like this is not fit for public consumption.

Jonathan Fields (00:15:58) - Yeah, for me, it's actually a physical response. So it's not a cognitive, it's not even emotional. My body will literally start to like, I'll almost get like a fight or flight response within my body to the point of the fact will almost shake. And it's to me that's like telling me this is so close to the bone, this is so true and real that it needs to be put out.

Jonathan Fields (00:16:23) - But I'm also terrified of putting it out because if it's rejected, then it's so close to me that it's like I can't just say, Well, it was a bad piece. I literally have to say, like I'm personally being rejected. There's no way around that. There's no sugarcoating it. It's literally such a deeply and direct extension of me that I know it'll hurt and then know that people will see something about me that they'll be rejecting. And that's terrifying. One of the approaches that I love, the 5149 rule, and I think that's that's super helpful for a lot of people. One of the other approaches that I tend to take to these scenarios is before I do something that may potentially build a lot of confidence or take a lot of confidence, but there's a lot of fear behind it. What I find is that, like, the real driver of all of this is stakes. If the stakes are low, like, I really don't care, you know, like there's no there's no fear that's really there when the stakes are really low.

Jonathan Fields (00:17:28) - Because who cares if it falls flat? And there's also no great opportunity to build your confidence or to need confidence in order to actually let this out, because it just doesn't matter all that much. It's when the stakes start to rise that all of this becomes an issue. So what I will sometimes do is I'll ask myself, how can I chunk the stakes so that I can slowly habituate to the level of stakes as they rise and like do this dance of like building my confidence along the way to release the big thing. So like, how do I how do you test ideas before you go big? You know, in the world of business, there's a lot of ways to do what I call dirty testing, creating MVP's minimum viable products instead of the big thing and putting out there to like people, Hey, listen, this actually isn't the thing. This is the smallest, most basic, most janky, like largely embarrassing version of what the thing could be. And I'm just putting it out because I want your input on how to make it better.

Jonathan Fields (00:18:32) - And that lowers the stakes and it lowers the expectations. So even if people reject it, I feel like they're no longer rejecting me. They're basically saying the thing isn't what it needs to be or could be now, and here's some information to help you make it better. That's the way it works generally in a business mode, in a creative mode for a lot of creators. You know, to me, there are a lot of really interesting ways to test stuff. Like a lot of times I used to do this a lot more than I do now, but I used to use social media as an idea testing place, and that was largely to chunk the stakes. I would just put out like little quips with little one liners, little things here and there, just to see how people responded if it fell flat, no biggie. Like, you know, it's another tweet. It's just like everything else. The stakes were really low. If people respond really powerfully, then I'll be like, okay, so how can I actually build something around this that's more substantial, invest more energy in it, and potentially draw more eyeballs where the stakes start to rise there? But, you know, like before I would create something substantial like a course or an event or a program or something like that, I'd probably just write, you know, a post about it or something like that and see how that lands.

Jonathan Fields (00:19:44) - So I'm slowly raising the stakes, but I'm also keeping fear in check. And with every positive response that I get, even if it's not entirely positive. But there's enough, there's enough feedback that helps me understand what it needs to be that builds my confidence along the way at the same time. So it allows me to sort of like do this step ladder of your 5149 rule slowly over time, so that by the time I get up to like the really high stakes big thing, you know, I'm not freaking out as much as I would be had I just tried that as the first move out of the gate. Does that make sense?

Jenny Blake (00:20:24) - Oh, yeah. I love that. I love the idea of stakes and kind of modulating. And with software where it is now, we have so many ways to do that because that's what I've been doing too. Like, for example. So my it's a secret substack because we've never announced it publicly or anything. First I wrote for myself and I just captured I was going through a really tough time.

Jenny Blake (00:20:44) - This is actually one of the hardest years in my business. I'm 12 years in and it's right up there with my hardest ever year. This is it's up there. And first I wrote for myself. For me personally, I also sort of completes my life when I am able to share something challenging with others. And as you said at the start, help them feel less alone. So I wrote for myself with no need to publish anywhere. But then I felt the call like, actually, I do think that other people might be relieved to just know that they're not alone if they're still going through a tough time. Years into this whole wild ride of the pandemic or post pandemic, wherever we are now. And then I decided this is going to be a paid substack because because the stakes were too high. If it would be if these really personal updates and thoughts were public. Google searchable on social media, which I'm not on in general, partly for this reason. And so within Substack you can then within a post, put certain content below the paywall and Substack now lets you would just insert that line of where the paywall goes.

Jenny Blake (00:21:45) - So the really vulnerable stuff that as you said, didn't feel safe to share, it just went below that line. And then in addition to all this, the only two groups I told about it, at least so far at the time of this. Ah, my private community. We've been going eight and a half years, some of them. So I'm really close with this group and it tiny group of friends because I don't yet have the courage to have strangers weighing in on my life. And yet something feels important to share the shadow sides of running a business. The things that are really tough that nobody wants to talk about because a lot of people, if you're running your own business, you only really want to put the good stuff because you don't want to become a self-fulfilling prophecy of turning off future clients. Oh, Jenny's a wreck. Let me not hire her. And it makes the problem worse. So I feel like there's not a lot out there saying what it really feels like to be in the wringer.

Jenny Blake (00:22:35) - But I'm very. There's so many gates, as you can hear me saying. There's so many. Well, why am I calling it a secret? Because it is a secret. And anyone who's listened to this far into this conversation, you're welcome into the inner circle. But beyond that, I'm not shouting anything from the mountaintops. Nothing's Google searchable. And that way I also feel more comfortable that potential future paying clients aren't necessarily diving into my innermost thoughts and feelings. I mean, if they want to join the substack, that's fine. But those are some of my ways, technically speaking, how I'm modulating the stakes until the ball is rolling enough. And who knows? Like those days of releasing it more. Someone told me this could be a book. It's like, Well, it might and that day might never come. We'll see.

Jonathan Fields (00:23:20) - Okay, so now I have to invite you to share what that substack is, because I feel like that's like a next step in the threshold.

Jenny Blake (00:23:29) - Oh, my gosh.

Jenny Blake (00:23:30) - Sparked exclusive, messy. Oh, my gosh. And then now my stomach just did a flip. Oh, it reminds me when you climb the roller coaster and it's like all the way almost to the top and then your stomach flips because you know what's about to come. Okay, I will share. This is now a really creating suspense. I will share and I want to put a pin. I wanted to ask you if you had ever post something very personal that did, in fact, fall flat or if that was just a fear. So don't forget about that. Okay? Okay. So do you want me to share the actual name of the substack and the premise? Oh, my gosh. Okay. This is genuinely a sparked exclusive.

Jonathan Fields (00:24:11) - This. This is what it's about to, like walk the walk. We're talking about a topic which everybody feels. So if you're open, let's go there.

Jenny Blake (00:24:19) - Yeah, okay. You got me. You shared a lot on when we were talking about free time on your podcast, so I'll meet you there.

Jenny Blake (00:24:27) - The Substack is called Well, it started because I lost my biggest, most favorite client in my business. And two days later another potential client got back to me about a really big proposal that had been out for almost a year. So in the same week, a minimum of 150 K got just instantly zapped off the balance sheet and wiped off the table. And this is money. I'm the breadwinner for our family. So this is money that I was nervous about. I mean, we started this year, 2023, with banks collapsing and layoffs at major tech companies wasn't looking good. Let me just say that. So I had had anxiety building already for months in anticipation of these decisions. And of course, when the news came and they happened to be two days apart, I just felt like I had been absolutely punched in the gut and a lot of fear around not just how to back pay for the life of why I had already been living, how to cover anything. And I still have other income streams in my business.

Jenny Blake (00:25:22) - But this was like losing a job. If I had two jobs, this was losing one of them. I mean, thank goodness for the other, but the other wasn't nearly as revenue generating, let's say, because it's more many small streams. So it reminded me it had a very similar energetic fingerprint to when I left Google, which was my most recent corporate job. That was 12 years ago. But just how much fear I had about what was going to happen on the other side, even who am I without these corporate clients? I even felt in the week that this happened, I felt a lot of embarrassment that my peers would no longer respect me. It's hard to talk about. You got me in the Oprah chair that my peers would lose respect for me, that the thing that I had, that that I could come to connect with other business owners was kind of gone. And did I ever know anything at all? Or did I just look into all of it? You can see that it's fresh.

Jenny Blake (00:26:19) - Like it really it it brought up a lot. So there was a lot to process. And I and I realized as well that I've written three books now. Every single one was preceded by what I affectionately call an apocalypse year, where it actually felt like my life completely fell apart, where I had no clue which end was up, where I didn't know how to pay the rent. For some reason, my life, I do see myself as a messenger and I always want to be helpful. Somehow. My life gives me these messages and very, very dramatic ways. I somehow sort my way through it, and then I systematize, simplify and share it back. Trying to share it in nice bows so other people don't have to go through quite as much tumult. So the week that this happened, I just started writing. I didn't know what else to do. And by the way, it was the same time that there were Canadian wildfires. So the the sky was dark. I would emerge from the podcast studio where I am right now in midtown Manhattan, and the sky was dark and it was covered in smoke.

Jenny Blake (00:27:16) - And that week I just that's how I felt like the outside world reflected my mood. And that Sunday I had brunch with a friend who I hadn't seen in years. I didn't we don't even know each other that well, but I was telling her what happened and she had brought me before I told her anything at all. She brought this little keychain that she made called an effort bucket, but it has the whole word. And I said, What perfect timing. I have a lot to add into this bucket today. And then we started brainstorming and I was telling her I had substack FOMO because I love software. I just try not to always be chasing shiny new things. And so I wanted to how do I talk about being a breadwinner and the compounding pressure of being a breadwinner and a business owner? There's so much pressure, so much uncertainty, so much heaviness sometimes. But on the contrary, there's also a tremendous amount of freedom, joy, creativity, impact. And so the breadwinner, the bread metaphor, we both got out, chat on our phones, started looking for breadwinner related puns, and ChatGPT came up with rolling in dough and she said, Why don't you call it Rolling in Dough donate? And then later I was brainstorming with my husband and we replaced the O in dough with a face palm emoji.

Jenny Blake (00:28:26) - So the new Substack is called Rolling in dough, partly because I do want to cultivate the abundance of rolling in dough, like actually rolling in dough know. And then the subtitle is Divine Disaster Diaries from a Breadwinning Business Owner Living in New York City. And there's a tiny shift that I made. At first it was Divine Disaster diaries for breadwinning business owners. And later I realized that's not what I want to do here. This is not for anyone. This is from me. This is from a breadwinning business owner living in New York City so I can weave in all my fun serendipity stories. But I realized that in so much of my career, I try to show up positively, optimistically, as an expert. I'm never trying to fake things. I'm always transparent as I can be. I'm always honest even on my own podcast. Like I really try to be direct and clear and truthful, but I feel so tired from trying to be an expert, you know? So I think the substack for me, it's a big permission slip to write from the mess, actually, just so that anyone else in the mess feels less alone, Exactly as you said.

Jenny Blake (00:29:33) - So that's a long reveal, the long storytelling. So I'll pause there.

Jonathan Fields (00:29:37) - Yeah, No, but it's really powerful. And I and I think of so many people are going to relate to your story because it's so real. And that one change of a word from or versus for was the change of value proposition of like, here's what you're going to learn to. You're not alone. Like that simple change was really, really powerful. And I think zooming the lens out a bit as we start to think about closing this conversation, I think one of the big messages here is that you can still show up in the world, you can still provide extraordinary value and you can be struggling or suffering personally. At the same time, they're not mutually exclusive. And in fact, I would venture to say that if not most, then a lot of people do that on a regular basis. Stuff happens. The world like sometimes collapses in ways that we have no control over. Sometimes there are things that we do have control over that contribute to it, but we're all living with what's over the great called like some level of the full catastrophe.

Jonathan Fields (00:30:48) - Nobody gets out alone, especially the further you get into life. That doesn't mean that you lose the ability to offer value along the way and the opportunity to be thanked and compensated for that value. Even if, you know behind the scenes, you're still struggling at the very same time. And like that doesn't mean that you show up with 100% confidence. That means like, like you just said, you got the 5149 going. And I would venture to say that that is the state that most people are a lot closer to rather than the sort of social media delusion of the everything is awesome expert all the time and I know everything which is just largely a fiction for most people. But when that is the aspiration of confidence in whether that's the aspiration of like how lives get lived, I just feel like it often is more destructive than helpful and getting into the reality of how we show up and knowing that you can be profoundly competent and. And confident enough and still have stuff going on. And that's okay to show up that way, that it doesn't diminish the ability or the value that you have for other people.

Jonathan Fields (00:32:08) - And sometimes there's a complementary value that can be created by sharing the fact that, like others, are not alone. I feel like it opens a lot of doors for folks. At least I would hope it would.

Jenny Blake (00:32:21) - I appreciate you saying that and it has. Like the feedback has been magical. Magical, just unexpectedly so because I feel I guess I got to a point where I felt like it was no longer truthful to pretend everything's okay after these last few years. And even if I'm pretty private, I'm not on social media at all. But I feel like I have two podcasts and three books where I am, you know, competent and I share what I've learned. This is not that like for my own, my own creative spark, my own aliveness. This is what's calling me. Like, you know, when enough doors slam in your face, you can take a hint. And then maybe that's happening for other people too. And I just want to offer I have a post will be. Maybe it'll be out by the time this goes live.

Jenny Blake (00:33:09) - But I was very inspired. I was couldn't sleep one night and I heard music coming through. I tried to go to bed listening to a podcast and they had played a song by Jelly Roll called Save Me and this song, it was almost hauntingly beautiful, soulful, woke me out of my sleep. I replayed it. I started sobbing. Turns out Jelly rolled as a now viral artist. Now, maybe everyone's heard of him. He posted to his channel and he said, This is acoustic. It's not like what I normally do. Let me know what y'all think. It's an experiment. He literally did what we're talking about and said, I have no clue how this is going to land. It is one of the most exquisite songs. Maybe other people will have different taste, but he's so soulful. He's singing from the mess, like from his history of prison as a teenager and addiction. And he's still in it. He's still in it, but it's so beautiful. And instantly it went viral.

Jenny Blake (00:34:04) - There's 70,000 comments and counting. It has 170 million views. Like now there's a Hulu documentary called Save Me, and I encourage you to watch the version on YouTube, not even the one you'd find in Spotify that's made it to the album. And he's now sung at awards shows. He's gotten standing ovations. He goes into addiction and rehab centers all around the country, and he says, I'm still in it. I still struggle every day. But if I can share my story and it can help you, and when I saw that it was right the same week my stuff was going down, I just thought if Jelly Roll, if he can share in this exquisite way and it touches me so deeply, this is a call to rise. This is a call for all of us to just show up. And we need each other to do that. And there's so many, so much bloviating on YouTube, just like you said, so much business bloviating about people trying to become billionaires. That's great. Good for you.

Jenny Blake (00:34:54) - I clearly don't have it in me like right now. You know, more chips are falling. I'm not like, oh, let me share how successful I am. That's off the table for me right now. It's just not my reality. So for the people who can share that and have the secrets to earning seven and eight figures, great. This just happens to not be my life and what I can offer. So I also feel a little more empowered. Michael's calling me his little pirate because I've burned all the boats. The boats behind me are burning whether I like it or not. And he said, you know, you you have seemed more alive since this happened. And from people I'm talking to, I think that's the idea of divine disasters is we would never wish these things upon ourselves. But a lot of people I talk to and I love hearing the stories of and yet because this happened, I did this or I now feel alive or it launched a new thing where I shared my story or some result that wouldn't have happened otherwise.

Jonathan Fields (00:35:48) - Yeah, it's so powerful and I feel like that is a good place for us to wrap up today. Thank you for. Thank you. Your wisdom. Thank you for your openness and your vulnerability. I know. I think it's going to help a lot of people. And for all of our listeners, inviting you to really explore like the fullness of your human experience, like this show is largely focused on work, but work is a part of life, and they're seamlessly interwoven and each part affects the other and create space for your humanity to seep into all of it. Thanks, everybody.

Jenny Blake (00:36:23) - Thanks so much, everybody.

Jonathan Fields (00:36:24) - We will see you all again. Thanks, Jeff. Next week. Take care. Hey, so I hope you enjoyed that conversation, learned a little something about your own quest to come alive and work in life and maybe feel a little bit less alone along this journey to find and do what sparks you. And if you'd love to share your own moment and question with us, we would love to hear from you.

Jonathan Fields (00:36:46) - Just go ahead and click on the submissions link in the show notes to get the details on how to do that. 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 live, that brings more meaning and purpose and joy into your life, take the time to discover your own personal spark. A type for free at Spark Type. It'll 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. Until next time. I'm Jonathan Fields. And this is sparked.