Ep 63: A Maker’s Journey to a Good Life with Jonathan Fields

06/13/19 • 49 min

I’m so thrilled to bring you this full circle, Father’s Day special with someone whose podcast, community, programs, and even summer camp, have impacted me deeply, Jonathan Fields of the Good Life Project.

Each Father’s Day, I interview one or two men for a change for the Mother’s Quest Podcast. So, I recently asked on Facebook which father, in their wildest dreams, my community members would most like to hear from.

Jonathan’s name came up again and again... alongside Dax Shepard and Obama!

Jonathan is dad, husband, award-winning author, and the executive-producer/host of the top-ranked Good Life Project® podcast, hailed by The Wall Street Journal as one of the top self-development podcasts and featured recently by Apple on-stage during its legendary annual event. The podcast is beloved by listeners world-wide, including myself, who appreciate the intimacy and depth of his interviews, with inspiring guests that in recent weeks alone have included Elizabeth Gilbert, Stedman Graham and Abby Wambach.

An innovator in the field of human potential, Jonathan is also the chief architect behind the world’s first “purpose archetypes”–what he calls the SparketypesTM–tapped by tens-of-thousands of individuals, companies and institutions, along with some Mother’s Quest members, seeking to amplify purpose, expression, performance, and flow.

In this conversation, Jonathan and I went to all the deep, reflective places across each E.P.I.C. guidepost, talking about everything from our Sparktypes to the influence of his mother, a “maker” like himself, how he really feels about the hero’s journey and living a good life, lessons we’ve learned about letting go of expectations with our children, and how to be creators but not to be defined by the things we create.

I’m so excited to bring you this conversation and Jonathan’s beautiful, powerful challenge for all of us, which he shares at the end. The whole interview, for me, felt like one amazing “epic snapshot moment” with a generous guide on a similar quest for meaning and connection. I hope you receive as much as I did.

Much appreciation,

This Episode is Dedicated by: Sara Brannin-Mooser

Sara is a Mind + Body Connector, a Soulful Adventurer, a Constant Learner, an Athlete, Mom, Partner, and Friend. She is the Chief Stillness + Strength Officer at Stoking Radiance and Director of Integrated Strength at Smash Gyms.

She ignites men and women to build strength and stillness to minimize anxiety and navigate loss on their road to radiance. She provides tools to strengthen the body and mind: full body strength training tied together with meditation and celebration.

www.saramooser.com www.smashmountainview.com

Connect with her on Linkedin

In This Episode We Talk About:

Jonathan’s upbringing in the town of the Great Gatsby, influenced by the maker energy of his mother and the elements of water
Critical thoughts about the hero’s journey, the reasons Jonathan doesn’t think it’s for everyone, and his current metric for a life well lived
How Jonathan is approaching the last summer home with his daughter before college and why we can’t try to short-cut our children’s journey to happiness by installing it
The Sparketypes Assessment and the way that learning about my own Sparketype solved a piece of the puzzle for me
Why Jonathan set aside Revolution U and the importance sometimes of letting go of the things that we create
How Jonathan invests in himself through his daily practice
The lessons learned from taking a weekly journey to an Amishcommunity where he made a guitar with his own hands
What Jonathan said when I asked him to share a conversation on his podcast that deeply transformed him
Jonathan’s perspective about building community and his own evolution to bringing guests on his podcast with not only shared values but also with diverse backgrounds and life experiences

Resources and Topics Mentioned:

The Good Life Project
The Sparketypes Assessment
The Good Life Project Episode with Milton Glaser: Certainty Is A Closing Of The Mind
Ep 00: Planting Seeds for Mother’s Quest – An Introduction
A Mother’s Quest Pod...

Jonathan’s name came up again and again... alongside Dax Shepard and Obama!

Much appreciation,

This Episode is Dedicated by: Sara Brannin-Mooser

www.saramooser.com www.smashmountainview.com

Connect with her on Linkedin

In This Episode We Talk About:

Jonathan’s upbringing in the town of the Great Gatsby, influenced by the maker energy of his mother and the elements of water
Critical thoughts about the hero’s journey, the reasons Jonathan doesn’t think it’s for everyone, and his current metric for a life well lived
How Jonathan is approaching the last summer home with his daughter before college and why we can’t try to short-cut our children’s journey to happiness by installing it
The Sparketypes Assessment and the way that learning about my own Sparketype solved a piece of the puzzle for me
Why Jonathan set aside Revolution U and the importance sometimes of letting go of the things that we create
How Jonathan invests in himself through his daily practice
The lessons learned from taking a weekly journey to an Amishcommunity where he made a guitar with his own hands
What Jonathan said when I asked him to share a conversation on his podcast that deeply transformed him
Jonathan’s perspective about building community and his own evolution to bringing guests on his podcast with not only shared values but also with diverse backgrounds and life experiences

Resources and Topics Mentioned:

The Good Life Project
The Sparketypes Assessment
The Good Life Project Episode with Milton Glaser: Certainty Is A Closing Of The Mind
Ep 00: Planting Seeds for Mother’s Quest – An Introduction
A Mother’s Quest Pod...

Previous Episode

Encore: Living Out Loud with Jenjii Hysten

I’m honored to bring you a final episode in a weekly series I’ve released this May in honor of Mother’s Day and the Mother’s Quest Manifesto Challenge I facilitated in the private group. The other morning, as I searched my intuition for what episode to end the month with, in a flash I thought about this conversation with my friend Jenjii Hysten. At the 40 minute mark, the discussion, real and vulnerable, in which we talk about not only our differences as women of different races and religions, but also our common humanity as mothers of sons, still stands out as one of the most powerful moments in now over 60 conversations I’ve recorded. So much has changed since we released that episode. Trump, recently elected at the time of recording, of course has now been President for several years and his administration has only deepened the divides and injustices that were already with us. My son Ryan did decide to visit Jenjii and Franklin’s ministry, an experience that profoundly touched him and impacted the speech he shared at his bar mitzvah, a beautiful event that Jenjii and Franklin attended with their two sons. All our boys are now years older, and all deepened their own social awareness in ways both painful and empowering. And Jenjii and I have each stepped into our own activism in different ways, each committing to powerful conversations to build bridges of awareness, understanding and transformation. Ones that I’ve recorded with Mothers Against Police Brutality co-founder Sara Mokuria and with Trayvon Martin’s mother, Sybrina Fulton are linked here. Jenjii says that she is still committed to Living out Loud, the guiding theme you’ll hear her talk about. But now she has a much clearer sense of what that really means. She is currently writing a book, and though she and her husband decided to close their ministry, their consulting business is thriving, they’ve joined another church where they preach, and she says she has learned that her life is her ministry. When we spoke today to catch up, I told Jenjii that sounded to me like one powerful Manifesto and possibly the title of her book. Whether you heard it once before, or its new to you, I hope you enjoy this episode. And that these reflections and the conversation that follows may spark you to claim your own manifesto, to reach out to build your own bridges of awareness and connection, and to live your own Life Out Loud. Much appreciation,

P.S. Know someone who would love this conversation? Click forward now to pay this forward to a friend who may be interested.

Living Out Loud with Jenjii Hysten

I am honored to bring you this intimate, inspired conversation with Jenjii Hysten, a mother, coach, and community leader who I deeply admire.

I have known Jenjii for almost a decade now, through my connection with her husband Franklin. But in recent months, Jenjii’s raw and vulnerable sharing about what it is like to be the mother of two black boys and fear for their safety, caused me to move past my worry of saying or doing the wrong thing and reach out to her in a whole different way.

Our honest conversation about the ways in which we’ve stepped out of our comfort zones to live out loud and forge connections with one another based on our common humanity, as mothers of sons, was one of the most powerful moments I have had yet on the Mother’s Quest Podcast.

Jenjii is an advocate, teacher, student, facilitator and a voice for the voiceless. She was born in Los Angeles but says that Oakland raised her. She studied Interdisciplinary-Studies with an emphasis on Urban/Economic Development at UC Berkeley, holds a CompassPoint Executive Director certificate and is an ordained minister.

In her early 20s, she worked with the Children’s Defense Fund for a program called Freedom School and says it saved her life. This is where she learned the beauty of Servant Leadership, which is one of her core values. As the Founder of SOS, Saving Our Sisters Saving our Selves, over the course of 10 years, she served hundreds of girls throughout the Bay Area. In her 20+ years working, Jenjii has served as a Program Director, Executive Director, Dean of Students, Curriculum Designer, started New Life Ministries with her husband Franklin, and is currently the Co-founder and CEO of Hysten Consulting, LLC.

I hope you enjoy this episode as much as I did. I was struck by the concept of rhythm, and how it can manifest in our lives, our children, our bodies, our communities, and perhaps most importantly, our collective humanity. I hope you will leave the conversation, as I did, inspired to think about the ways in which you can find your rhythm and live out loud in your own E.P.I.C. life.

In This Episode We Talk About:

Being on a quest to “live out ...

Next Episode

Ep 64: Fatherhood, Forgiveness and Redemption with Poet Will Little

What you think is what you say. What you say is what you do. What you do becomes a habit. What becomes your habit becomes your character. And your character is what determines your future.

(taken from Will Latif’s TEDx Talk: How to Become the Best Version of Yourself)

As June comes to a close, a month with a focus on Father’s Day and Gun Violence Awareness, I’m honored to bring you an important conversation that touches on both themes with poet, speaker, advocate and father Will Latif Little. As you’ll learn in this episode, Will has a profound story to tell, one that began with an upbringing in a single family parent home with his four sisters in Philadelphia, PA. Without his father or a father figure, and impacted by his environment, Will began to venture away from the ideals he was shaped by in church, dropping out of high school in the 10th grade, and becoming involved in the Philadelphia drug trade and a shooting that resulted in the death of a young man. This ultimately landed Will in prison for a 10-20 year sentence on a murder conviction at the age of 19.

Fatherhood was a seminal experience for Will. It was the knowledge of becoming a father, during the time of his incarceration, that became a catalyst for Will to turn his life around, motivating him to get his GED and educate himself through reading books that enlightened him. Through that process, Will says that what he thought was passing the time actually helped him become a man.

After ten long years, rehabilitated and reformed, Will was released from prison to start a new life, as a free man but challenged by the difficulty of gaining steady employment due to his criminal record. Not wanting to go back to a life of drug dealing and gun carrying, Will decided to invest in a career as a barber. In his spare time, Will developed a program calledPoetree N Motion that would show young and older people how to overcome obstacles in life. And he began to share his story far and wide, taking the stage at a TEDx event, at public meetings where he advocates for education and emotional intelligence trainings, mentoring in the Philadelphia Prison System, and revealing his experience in a new award-winning documentary called Behind the Bullet.

It was important to me that this not be an interview solely about Will’stransgressions but about his whole life, his full humanity and his wisdom across all the E.P.I.C. guideposts. I learned so much from my time with Will...about the power of resilience, a strength passed from his own mother, the enduring possibility of forgiveness and redemption, the power of mindset, and about pushing through our discomfort, something Will challenged me to explore through the metaphor of running. Ultimately, this episode is about hope and transformation...And I hope you’ll be forever changed, as I have been, by your connection to Will and his story.

Much appreciation,

Additional Reflections:

With this special episode today, I close a series of conversations I set out to record on the intersectional impact of gun violence for the Women Podcasters in Solidarity Initiative. This one differs from the others in that it is a deeply personal redemption story. A story of a man who took the life of another human being through gun violence and has come out the other side committed to educating others so they don’t make the same mistakes that he did. It’s important to note that Will’s perspective and journey is uniquely his own, that he takes a tremendous amount of personal responsibility, and focuses his change efforts on building emotional intelligence. Will also shares that there is systemic racism, a justice system that is not always just, and environmental conditions that contribute to the issue of gun violence. After listening to this conversation and exploring the links to Will’s work, I hope you’ll also spend some time with some of the other episodes I’ve recorded and with links I’ve included in the show notes to understand the big picture context beneath this deeply personal story. And to find your own path and commitment to dismantling systemic racism and gun violence. There is so much work to do.

This Episode is Dedicated by: Vince from the While Black Podcast

Vince has always displayed an entrepreneurial and activist spirit. Since his youth, he has dedicated his time to those around him in hopes of bettering them while he better himself. It began by volunteering as a camp counselor from middle school through high school, and grew via mentorship and tutoring in college all the way to his membership role in the 100 Black Men and as an advocate for African Americans through his work on the While Black Podcast. Vince believes wholeheartedly the James Baldwin quote “To be Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be a rage almost all the time”. However, he chooses to channel that rage into a place that allows him to change the narra...