Well, let's kind of start from the bottom up here. And that's with the C with conviction. Conviction isn't the type of thing where you have to be 100% convicted or behind this. But you have to have a sense of conviction around whatever it is that you're thinking of doing, even just a little bit. And what I found is that that sense of conviction that this is possible, maybe not 100% possible, but this may be possible. And I am deeply invested in this. That's what I mean by conviction is that I am vested and invested in this. And I find that the power move in cultivating conviction, where we're looking to actually step into doing something is to ask the why question. Or sometimes the why questions. And the big one is, why is this important to me? Why does it matter so much? The reason this is so important is because anything that you say yes to that is genuinely worth saying yes to that holds the potential to change you in some way to grow you in some way to connect you both to your cell phone at a deeper level and to others in a meaningful way. There is going to involve uncertainty. There's going to involve unknowns. And you are going to face adversity and challenges along the way. It's just the nature of anything genuinely worth doing. The illusion of a straight, easy path to whatever it is that you seek to achieve or become. It's just a myth, it's mythology. So let's accept the fact that adversity and challenge are going to come our way. The thing that allows you to move through this adversity and challenge often one of the biggest things is understanding, having absolute clarity around why you said yes in the first place. Why was it and why is it so important to me? Why does it matter so much? And I find often that there's an exercise that people describe in various different ways. I describe it as the five wise can be incredibly powerful in these moments to help you get to your why on a level that is deeply embodied and visceral. Because what tends to happen when we ask the why question? Why is this important to me? Why does it matter so much? The first answer that we give is kind of superficial. So when I go back using the example of opening a yoga studio in Hell's Kitchen, and if I answered the first question, why is this important to me? Well, on the top, well, I'm an entrepreneur. I'd love to start businesses. This would be a really cool business to have. I could see myself enjoying this surface level. Why? Is that going to get me past the fact that I woke up the next morning and it was 9 11? Is it going to get me past all of the struggles and the challenges and the managing cash flow? And then when people would show up and then when they wouldn't show up and personnel and managing a physical space and all that goes wrong with it, the second to get me through is that level of conviction that surface level why going to help get me through all of that adversity, not a chance. You need to go deeper. Well, cool. What's the second why? So I asked the why question again. What's underneath that? Well, if I think about it, it would be amazing to have a space where I could bring people together and actually have them form a community because community is something that is getting really lost in the human condition and wouldn't it be cool if I could build a business that would both support me and allow me to create a sense of community for people that maybe didn't have it. Okay, so that's a deeper level. Why interesting? Why is that all so important to me? Now I'm going to my third level. Why here? And I'm getting closer to a level of understanding why this matters so much to me. Why it's so deeply meaningful that will give me the conviction that will help me whether adversity that I know will come. So why does that matter so much to me in this context using the example we're using? Hmm. Why does it? And these are questions that I was asking myself regularly back then and ask myself for years. And what I start to realize was that this was both a place not only a community, but a place where I could step into it and find a sense of belonging, but also a place where I could start to become the next version of myself where I could be able to do it. And I could be able to do it myself where I could actually deepen into the study of Eastern philosophy, Eastern traditions to learn Sanskrit to study the Bhagavad Gita and the sutras and all of these things that I had wanted to learn because it was a deep fascination of mine. I wanted the insights and the depth and I wanted to be able to study it and share it with other people. So this was a profound learning experience for me as well. Well, okay, now we're getting closer to the core because if I lost that, that would also be a very personal loss for me. The opportunity for growth on a very deep and a body level. Why is that so important to me? Huh. So I had to think about this. I'm at the fourth level of why there. And I realized that part of the reason that I was an entrepreneur was because I loved to make things that moved people and that also allowed me to feel like I was fully expressing the essence of who I was. And this particular vehicle would allow me to do that to literally get closer to the bone of who I was on the most essential level as a human being. If it worked out again, and there are no guarantees, but if it worked out the way that I saw it in my head, this would allow me to be more closely in the world to who I really was at heart in my essence. And that really mattered to me. And I think especially then because I was moving through a season of re-imagining and rediscovery and trying to ask myself, who am I really? What matters to me? And how might I show up? And that actually got me close enough. I didn't even need to get to the fifth why. That got me close enough to understanding why this was so important to me, why it matters so much. To me as a human being, looking to go deeper into my identity and feel fully expressed and alive, it mattered to my deep desire to build a community where I could step into it and be a part of it filled with love and dignity and respect and healing and openness and spaciousness and abundance and acceptance. It mattered to me because I love building businesses and this was a business that had so much soul and emotion and support to it. It mattered to me because I also wanted the opportunity to create something that would have a big impact on a lot of other people and at the same time support me and my family in New York City, especially at a time of profound uncertainty. So all these levels of why stacked up and that gave me a level of conviction where when I looked at the deeply uncertain circumstances that I was facing, it allowed me to continue to say, yes, I'm still going to move forward with this. Yes, I realize that there's a lot of risk here. I don't know how it's going to end and the stakes are very high, but it's the thing that I cannot do right now. And it allowed me as adversity came and it came over and over and over. Sometimes in Ripple, sometimes in what felt like tsunamis, it allowed me to keep going back to that deep understanding of why this mattered, to anchor in that sense of profound embodied conviction and keep saying yes to moving forward. So that's the C, the conviction. Remember, we had three elements of the framework, conviction, bravery, and awareness and ease. So let's move up to the B, the bravery part. And those who are familiar with Brene Brown's work, who I love and who had been a past guest here on the podcast, maybe remember her at one point saying a phrase which was, I won't get exactly right, but she basically says, don't be confident, be brave, or don't be courageous, you know, or whatever it is. But bravery is at the center of so much of what we do. It's about being brave and taking action, even when we don't know how to go and end. When something genuinely matters, we are rarely able to have certainty or perfect information before committing and acting. And that's where the bravery part comes in. And we stack this on top of the why, the deep embodied understanding of why this matters so much. And then it's a matter of saying like, how do we be brave? How do we actually make decisions and take consistent action that will move us forward when there are very high levels of uncertainty, and especially when the stakes are high. And when the stakes are not high, it just doesn't matter. So none of this really matters and comes into play. But when the stakes are not in some way meaningful to you, if you never actually put yourself in a position where you have to take action, where you get to choose to take action and make decisions where the stakes are meaningful to you. If you never put yourself in that situation, you are effectively foreclosing any opportunity of growth, of connection, of impact and expression and stopping yourself from living a good life. So we have to put ourselves in these moments. And what we know is that when we put ourselves in these moments, we actually have not just a psychological, often revulsion or sense of like repelling from it. But we have a physiological rejection of these moments. It activates the amygdala, the sort of the fear center in our brain triggers the fight or flight or what's been expanded to be fight or freeze or sometimes even people call it fight, fight freeze or fawn reaction in our body. And that floods our body with a cascade of chemistry, the endocrine system kicks in, floods our body with a cascade of chemistry, including cortisol, the stress hormones in our body. That make us feel physically uncomfortable sometimes to the point of being physically ill. Now, when that happens, that is a reaction that is good and that is natural in our body. It's a reaction to danger. But when it's triggered on a persistent basis or in reaction to actually things which are just high stakes and uncertainty or meaningful stakes and uncertainty, yet they're also the gateway to possibility that stops us, that physiological and psychological feeling stop us from moving forward because we don't know how to handle it. We just feel psychologically filled with anxiety and fear and physiologically filled with a sense of, I just want to be over this, almost a sense of embodied dread. So what do we do with that? What do we do with that? Instead of backing away from all of these opportunities, possibilities where it's uncertain and they're meaningful stakes, but on the other side of that, if we say yes, is this incredibleness? How do we be brave in those moments and say yes to it? There are a couple of techniques that I've found really helpful. One is what is often called chunking. And when we talk about this, we're talking about chunking both the stakes and the uncertainty. So we know that we respond to two things here. One is the level of uncertainty. If there's just a low level of uncertainty, we tend to react much less viscerally. We're kind of like, okay, it's uncertain, but probably only about 5% or 10% uncertain. I can handle that. That's fine. But when it's 20% uncertain, or 30% or 40% or 50% or 60% or 70% uncertain, then we start to freak out a little bit. Same thing with stakes. When the stakes are low, it really doesn't matter to us. So we don't really care. Sure, I'll give it a shot. I'll try it. Even if I have no confidence, if it worked or not, because it's just not meaningful. So we don't really care. But when the stakes start to get higher, when they start to really involve our sense of self, when they make us have to put ourselves out there and risk being judged or ostracized or not accepted, especially. Or we're losing status or whatever it may be. When those stakes start to rise, that's when we start to pull back. So one of the really effective tools here is to chunk both the stakes and the uncertainty into tinier and tinier pieces. So you look at that big thing that you're thinking about doing at the end, right? And you say, okay, what are all of the little steps that it would take to actually get to that place? And instead of saying, okay, so yes to this big thing and focusing on that big thing, which is highly uncertain and highly, you know, like the stakes are sky high, instead, we look at those hundred tiny steps. We chunk it down to a hundred tiny steps where now the level of uncertainty about like that first baby step is much smaller and the stakes associated with that first baby step are much smaller. And we say, you know what, I can deal with that. If I'm just saying yes to that, if I hold the vision of the big thing out here in my mind, but today, all I need to do is say yes to this first baby step where, okay, like the uncertainty is there, but I can deal with the low level of uncertainty and the stakes are so tiny in this one baby step, the first of a hundred, that it resets our psychology so that we're much more comfortable saying yes to that. And then what happens is we say yes to that and we devote a little bit of effort to it. We devote a little bit of time or energy or resources to it. And we're like, wow, that actually worked out. And now we move to that second out of a hundred steps that would get us to the really big vision. And we're just a touch more brave now because we saw that we said yes to the first one. And it worked out. We're like, huh, well, if the first one worked out, maybe the second one will work out. Cool. And then we take the second. So what we're doing is we're slowly saying yes, not to the big giant thing, but to just tiny little steps along the way that chunk the level of uncertainty and chunk the stakes down to the tiniest little elements that our brain is much more comfortable saying yes. And every time the step before it proves out, it makes us more comfortable continuing to say yes to the next one. Now, this affects every different level of our lives. You could talk about it in the context of big business things. We could talk about in the context of personal life. We could talk about in the context of relationships and dating. You see somebody here like, wow, this person seems amazing. Like, I wonder if they would be potentially a great person for me to be in a relationship with. Maybe even long-term partner with. Maybe they're my life partner. They just seem incredible. But we're also really scared. What if we get rejected? What if it doesn't work out? What if we invest all this time and years of our lives and then it doesn't work out and we just spin in our heads? Like the uncertainty and the stakes get higher and higher and higher. We turn them into life and death. Right? Rather than just saying, well, what if we chunked this, right? What if we said, like, what are all the steps between me sitting here saying that person is kind of interesting to me and them being a life partner for the rest of our lives? Well, what's the first baby step here? Maybe the first baby step is just to say hi. Maybe the first baby step isn't even that. It's just to DM them on an app or get a text intro or go out with a group of people where you just know that they're going to be there and you can have a casual zero-pressure conversation. And maybe the next thing after that is like, oh, wow, that was actually kind of a cool conversation. It seems like we both clicked. And then maybe you start to message each other. Maybe. So what we're doing effectively without even realizing it. And so often we do this in starting new relationships, whether it's a personal one, an intimate one, a romantic one, or even a business partnership is the way that we feel more comfortable stepping into it. Even though we have very low confidence, it's actually going to work out in a really big long term way is we chunk the uncertainty and the stakes into little things. And those that technique of chunking helps make us brave in small incremental bite-sized pieces until eventually we get to the bigger longer term ones. And by then we've built our sense of bravery and we look back on a body of evidence, a body of proof that these things can in fact work out for us. And it helps us keep to take that action. Even when at the end of the day, we are never promised that anything is going to work out or sustain long term, even when it does. So that's the whole idea of chunking stakes and uncertainty. There are a couple of other techniques that I found can be really helpful in being brave, taking action and making decisions when we don't know how things are going to work out, when we have to step into a space of uncertainty of the unknown. And this is something that I actually wrote about in my book, which is literally titled Uncertainty, which is all about turning moments of possibility and opportunity, where there's fear and anxiety almost organically and naturally associated with them into just incredible outcomes, where we have to say yes to uncertainty and live in the space of the unknown, sometimes for longer windows of time. And I started scanning and examining and interviewing a lot of different people in different domains who literally did this for a living, from entrepreneurs to artists to founders to writers, all different people. And what I found was a pattern that was fascinating to me. And that was that a lot of these people would go into that space of the unknown. They would constantly say, I'm going to say yes to projects and ideas or things that would have social risks and financial risks and resource risks associated with them. And they're highly uncertain. I don't know if I'm good enough. I don't know if the idea is good enough. Their job was to say yes to that in the moment of time. As an artist with a blank canvas, I don't know if I'm going to be able to create something. I don't know if I'm going to create something that other people will like or value enough to allow me to sustain myself as an artist. And yet I have to, that is my job to actually go to that space on a regular basis to create in that way. And what I found was that this pattern that was so common across all of these people, and I realized that it's actually a pattern in my life, too, was that they would basically create these completely systematized automated things in their lives where they knew it was going to happen in the same way every single day. And I call those certainty anchors. And those experiences are moments. That regular thing literally allowed them to touch into a level of certainty outside of the work of the space where they knew it was their job to live in the space of the unknown. They would automate and create certainty around all of the other things, often tiny little consequential things, sometimes dozens in ways that would allow them to then touch into these certainty anchors on a regular basis and get enough of a sensation of grounding and certainty that allowed them to be baseline psychologically okay, and then know that they would have that normal, see that certainty outside of that container where they would have to go and float in a ground list date, but they would always be able to touch down into dozens of other moments of uncertainty, these certainty anchors. And these were things as simple as wearing the exact same clothes or outfit every single day, or having a rotation where you literally had a week of outfits and you always knew exactly what was coming next, eating the same foods for literally every meal of the day, working out at the exact same time in the exact same place, sometimes with the exact same person every day. These are examples of certainty anchors that many of us create, we don't realize that part of the reason that we've created them is because it's giving us these anchors, these tethers to certainty and to the known, and that creates enough of a sense of grounding that allows us to float more freely in those spaces where we have to be brave. And that is an incredible pattern that I've seen, and in fact I do it often in my own life, as I mentioned, I am very happy eating the exact same thing from breakfast and lunch every day and not having to think about it, knowing it's just going to be certain and happening the same way all the time. I would very easily and willingly wear the same jeans and the same t-shirt every single day. You look at famous inventors and innovators like Steve Jobs literally wore the same mock black turtleneck and jeans and stickers every single day. You see this pattern in so many ways, so experiment with that. And that brings us to the third element of bravery that I found can be incredibly helpful in our ability to do the brave thing on a regular basis. And that's what I call normalizing, unconfident action-taking. And this most often happens in groups. And the idea is when you're the only one who's facing a situation where it's highly uncertain, where the stakes are really meaningful to you, and you're the only one doing it, that makes it so much harder because you both view yourself and you may be viewed by others as sort of like the oddball, the risk taker, the one who's always out there doing that thing and it's just quote, not justifiable. But when you surround yourself, when you surround yourself with others who are also coast drivers, now they may be working with you on the same project. Maybe you're in a startup or a company or project or team where you're all striving to do something cool and new and different and innovative and you're all working together. So all of those others around you in that same container with you may be the folks who help normalize about that. You're not the only one saying yes to uncertainty, saying yes to the unknown. When the stakes are genuinely meaningful, they're all in it together. So you're not the oddball anymore that has a normalizing effect that allows us to actually feel much more comfortable with the notion of taking action and making decisions in the face of the unknown. But it also doesn't have to be a team. We can actively bring together people in community to help us have that normalizing experience that allows us to be more consistently brave. And I've done that in many different ways in my own life. So for example, I have a couple of different groups of people and we meet on a regular basis literally every month. In fact, funny enough, as I am sitting here thinking through this and recording, I know that tomorrow I have one of my regular calls with a group of people. And we've been doing this once a month for years now. And we are all entrepreneurs and founders and putting ourselves out there on a regular basis. And knowing that I am consistently held in that container of people who are coast drivers, not working with me on the same team or project, but we're all doing similar things with similar levels of uncertainty. And the unknown and meaningful stakes. It helps to normalize the experience for me. Artists do this on a regular basis by working in community or working in shared workshops or studios where everyone is facing the blank canvas or the blank piece of wood or writers do this in writers rooms where everyone is just kind of starting from the same place. So when you either find yourself on a group or team where you're all working together towards that same thing, that can help normalize the experience. But we don't have to rely only on that. We can bring together our own people who are coast drivers with similar experiences, exploring similar moments and windows and seasons of the need to be brave. Or we can find those that have already been created and then step into those. So those three things, chunking uncertainty and stakes, finding certainty anchors or creating certainty anchors in our day and all the different places that we can, often in the places where we're not actually being invited to say yes and step into the space of the unknown. And then normalizing on confident action taking often by surrounding ourselves with people who are taking similar actions. Those three things can be incredibly helpful in cultivating the bravery needed to say consistently yes to things that really matter, but we just don't know how it's going to turn out. And that brings us to the final, the A part of the ABCs. And that is awareness in you. So I kind of cheated a little bit here by sneaking in ease after awareness or maybe two different things here. But awareness is the ability to see as much as you can the truth of the situation to become aware of what's happening both outside of you and within you. And the ease part is the capacity to cultivate ease or equanimity or peace or grace, whatever word you want to use when you are in these moments of elevated uncertainty and stakes. Again, all in the name of possibility and connection and impact. The ability to create ease in those moments is incredibly important and powerful so that just we as human beings who yearn to actually have some level of equanimity and peace so that we can move through these moments. And instead of recoiling and being filled with fear and anxiety, we have the tools and the mechanisms to both become aware of what's happening outside of us and inside of us with clarity and truth and honesty. And the skills to then say, even if I can't change this or make it more certain and the stakes are deeply meaningful to me and I don't know how it's going to end. I have the skills to be able to actually find peace and equanimity in this moment. I cannot change the circumstances, but I can change my psychological and physiological response to this moment. And that gives me a sense of agency and control even when the circumstances outside of me are not entirely within my control. So the awareness piece here, how do we actually become more honest and aware of what's happening outside and also what's happening within us? So there are a couple of different tools that we can look at. Many people actually turn to journaling for this. For many, a daily journal is incredibly powerful at helping them really ask questions. And one of the questions is, how do I actually truly feel? What's happening inside of me right now? Am I calm? Am I a peace? Am I freaking out? Am I telling stories that are true or not true? And journaling can also help us look at our external circumstances and be more honest about it and say, the great journaling prop is what's really happening here? What is the truth of what's happening here? What is the story that I'm telling about it? Is it true? And what is the evidence of it? And these are sort of like variations of Byron Katie's fantastic body of work literally called The Work. A great way to actually gain awareness is to journal. For me, I tend to take a different approach. As much as I have said for years, I want to start journaling. There's something in me that just, I haven't done it. Because maybe so much of my writing tends to be in different ways and different venues and outlets. But for me, a mindfulness practice, literally a daily morning mindfulness practice has been stunningly powerful as a tool to deepen awareness and at the same time give me access to ease. So I love my mindfulness practice because it gives me this sort of like double hit of awareness and access to ease. And part of that is because the mindfulness practice is different from other meditation practices in that it gives you the skills to notice where your mind is at any given moment in time to increase your awareness. Am I drifting off somewhere else? Am I telling some story about something? Or am I genuinely present? Am I observing the truth of what's happening both outside of me? Am I aware of what's in me? So it teaches you how to train your awareness. It also teaches you how to notice what you're paying attention to in any given moment. Have I spun out? Am I lost in what Tara Brock calls trans? In my thoughts, in my anxiety, in my stories, or am I here and present and aware in the moment? And then it allows you to choose to drop whatever it is that's taking away from the present moment that is taking away from truth away from theality and just bring yourself back. To what is happening in the moment. And I found that this actually is an incredible practice to be able to both become more aware of what's really happening. The reality of what's happening both outside and inside of you. And be able to keep touching back to a place of ease. But I want to add one more practice here that is incredibly powerful for me on the ease side. And a lot of folks will think about meditation and mindfulness and think, well, I've heard about it. I've tried it. It's not for me. I can't do it. Blah, blah, blah, blah, all this stuff. And by the way, I thought the exact same thing for many years, including, if I'm being honest, some of the time where I was literally teaching yoga and meditation. I struggled so much with the meditation side. I used to find a lot of my meditation in movement. And I still do. But I always struggle with a daily seated practice until eventually I was brought to my knees about a dozen years ago. And came to it. And now it has been a devoted daily practice for me for that entire window of time. That is a story for another time that I will probably share right here on the podcast at later date. But this practice has changed me in such profound ways largely because it has made me really present. But part of what I've added into that practice on daily basis is breathing practices. And what I found is that whether you feel mindfulness or any form of meditation practice is or is not accessible to you, breathing is, we all breathe all day, every day without thinking about it. What we know is that we can actually consciously harness and change the patterns of our breath. And that has a very direct connection to our nervous system. It helps to down regulate or up regulate our state. And what we know is that short shallow, fast breaths up regulate our nervous system. It triggers us into that fight or flight anxiety, high energized state that is very uncomfortable for most of us. The opposite is also true.

Slow, gentle,

especially extended exhales tend to down regulate our nervous system and in turn our our endocrine system and the chemistry that flows through us sending us into a rest and recovery mode, a calm, peaceful at ease mode. So we can actually think about intentionally working with our breath to manage our emotional and physiological state. And if part of what we're trying to do here, when we're putting ourselves into moments where we don't know what's going to happen, we don't know what the end is going to be. The stakes are deeply meaningful to us. We're being brave and taking action and making decisions and it's making us kind of uncomfortable as it does for most human beings. Right? The awareness lets us tune into how we're actually feeling. And then the breathing allows us to change our state almost immediately, literally in a matter of seconds. So if we're feeling anxious or tight, what we can do is slowly just just literally sit and close your eyes if you want and slow your breath intentionally. Box breathing is something that a lot of people talk about as being very effective here and that's effectively just thinking to yourself, there are four elements of breath. There's the inhale, there's the pause after the inhale, there's the exhale, and there's the pause after the exhale. So breathing isn't actually just the inhale and the inhale. There are the four elements. Box breathing invites you to basically make each of those slow and equal. That's what it's called. Box breathing. So like four equal sides of a box in your breath. So if you think about, well, let me actually take my breath and try as an experiment. What if I inhale for a three count pause for a three count with an open throat and no pressure against the glottus? Exhale for a three and just pause gently with an open throat and no pressure for three. So that would kind of feel or sound like inhale, two, three, pause, two, three. Exhale, two, three, pause, two, three. And that can be incredibly effective in a lot of ways for a lot of people. And the final way that we actually think about doing this is bringing it all together. So those are the really big tools that I like to think about in the context of taking an confident action where we want to be brave because there's tremendous possibility and opportunity on the other side, but we're not confident. And instead invite yourself to learn to cultivate the skills of the ABCs, awareness and ease, bravery and conviction. That will allow you to then say yes to these moments of profound possibility without waiting for the magical fairy dust of confidence to drop into your lap, which for so many of us will never happen. So I hope you found that valuable and interesting and you use and cultivate these ideas and these skills to start saying yes to these amazing possibilities in your life. So I hope you found this useful and interesting. As always, I enjoy going deep into topics on these solo episodes. If you like this, if you want more, let us know. We're happy to explore different topics. And if there's a topic you want me to dive into, let us know that too. And of course, if you haven't already done so, please go ahead and follow Good Life Project in your favorite listening app. And if you found this conversation interesting or inspiring or valuable and chances are you did since you're still listening here, would you do me a personal favor, a seven second favor and share it? Maybe on social or by text or by email, even just with one person. Just copy the link from the app you're using and tell those you know, those you love, those you want to help navigate this thing called life a little better so we can all do it better together with more ease and more joy. Tell them to listen. Then even invite them to talk about what you've both discovered because when podcasts become conversations and conversations become action, that's how we all come alive together. Until next time, I'm Jonathan Fields,

signing off for Good Life Project.