At a dinner gathering, Friday night…

New friend: I watch Good Life Project, it’s amazing.

Me: Thanks, I just ask questions, the guests make it what it is. They’re incredible people.

New Friend: That’s not really true. You ask great questions, that’s a big part of if and that’s not easy to do.

Me: Questions are easy. Listening is hard.

New Friend:  Hmmm…

When you listen deeply, the right questions come naturally. Hearts open. Stories tumble. Conversations soar. Magic happens.

The reason behind this is a bit sad. People are so rarely seen and heard these days—on a true-nature level—that when you give them the gift of sustained attention, it’s like removing a source of deep pain. The world outside ceases to exist.

Next-level ideas, needs, insights, stories and revelations come out. And, if you’re paying attention, it’s impossible to not want to know more. So you ask questions out of a genuine sense of curiosity. And the conversation goes places that’d never have been visited had you stayed “on-script.”

This is as true in a business or sales setting as it is in life. I began to cultivate this skill taking depositions in a past life as a newbie S.E.C. enforcement attorney.

The few times I’ve felt interviews go off the rails, it’s because I’ve lost focus. I’m no longer there, stuck in “I need to look good so I’m gonna pretend to listen while actually fabricating my next blockbuster question” land.

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Work-life balance…BAH!

Confession – I don’t believe in work-life balance. And neither does my guest on this week’s episode of Good Life Project, Mitch Joel.

But, not for the reason you think…

Living completely out of whack with your priorities, allocating your energy in a way that destroys your health, relationships and ability to live well and give well is, well, just plain dumb.

Whoah, wait a minute? How can I not believe in work-life balance and still make that statement?

Simple, because work-life “balance” works on an assumption I fundamentally disagree with. That work is and should be something outside life.

That you work not out of a sense of joy, meaning, purpose, contribution, flow, drive, love and passion. Not within a culture populated by people you love, who are deeply connected by shared values, ideas, visions and energies. But because your work gives you the money to spend the few remaining hours of your “real” life, you know, the one outside work, finally pursuing those all those same things. Often unsuccessfully.

Um, no.

When you start with that assumption, you automatically lose. You assume that work must be so in conflict with life that it’s something that needs to be “balanced AGAINST life.”

You surrender the possibility that you can be so fulfilled and called by the work you do and the people you do it with, that the way you contribute to the world becomes a joyous, integral element of life.

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Interesting thing happened here on the blog last week…

I posted a video deconstructing the design, copy and strategies employed on Chris Guillebeau’s new landing page for Adventure Capital.

At the end of that post, I said “hey, go check it out yourself.” Then I gave everyone two ways to visit Chris’ page.

• Option 1 was an affiliate link - If the program also happened to be a match and you enrolled, I’d get a commission.
• Option 2 was a plain link - Clicking that one would eliminate the possibility of a commission.

And I made it clear which was which.

I then tracked the percentage of people who clicked on each link.

Wanna know the result?

In a second. Before we get there, I also got a number of messages, from comments to emails, asking why in the world I would do something like that? And why I even care about disclosing affiliate links on the rare occasion when I use them. One e-mail asked:

Hi Jonathan,

I’ve been reading you off and on for years and always wondered why you stepped so far out of the way to call out affiliate (or non-affiliate) links.

The most recent example being at the bottom of: http://www.jonathanfields.com/blog/adventure-capital/

Have you found that it increases the trust factor that much that it outweighs the annoyance or confusion of the average reader? Or do you have other related data to support the practice?

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I love it when impact-driven entrepreneurs, savvy marketers and good friends like Chris Guillebeau launch things.

It’s fun to watch on a few levels…

• One – he’s always pushing the envelope and trying new things. Always different designs, flows, funnels, products, solutions, calls-to-action and copy than anyone else. Proving you can honor your own style and voice, stand in integrity and still serve people and be extraordinarily successful along the way.
• Two – he shows how to bring a product to market, generate a lot of buzz and sales…without resorting to hype. When you see his design ethic and read his copy, you automatically feel you can trust him. Like he’s there to make things easier for you. To serve. And for good reason.
• Three – he generally undercharges and over-delivers. Which gives me a chance to razz him about the need to give people the opportunity give back to him by paying him what he’s really worth (which will likely never happen, lol).

This time, I’m talking about Chris’ new Adventure Capital program…

I figured I’d turn his launch into an opportunity for you to learn. Especially because he’s using an innovative landing page design, crafted by the ever-talented Tsilli Pines.

So, I’ve actually made a quick screen-capture video to walk you through some cool things he’s doing with the design and launch “funnel” that might give you some ideas for your own projects and ventures. Enjoy!

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I’ve seen this happen so many times.

Entrepreneurs breath life into a business because (1) they see an opportunity and (2) they’ve got mad skills or knowledge in the area of need.

The business grows mightily, then one day, the entrepreneur wakes up and says, “what the hell am I doing? And why don’t I want to go to work anymore?”

Just because you brought it into the world and spent all your time, money and energy getting it to where it is, doesn’t mean you should keep investing in keeping it alive. At least, not under your watch.

You change over time. What you thought your business would be evolves to what the market will sustain.

Sometimes this remains well-aligned with who you are, how you want to live your life and what you want to build. Other times, not.

There’s no shame in saying “things have changed,” then taking the actions necessary to allow you the space to redirect your energy toward something better aligned with who you are, what you want out of life, and how you wish to contribute to the world.

The last brick and mortar company I founded was a flourishing yoga center and teacher training institute in New York City. We had a vibrant community with thousands of students from all over the world. We were strongly profitable and I had a great management staff that allowed me to work only about 5-10 hours a week.

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It’s one of the questions I’m asked most often…

What if I choose wrong?

People are so freaked out about making the wrong choice.

Traveling down the wrong road.

“Wasting” time, money, energy on the wrong thing.

Newsflash. With rare exception. The only bad decision is indecision, followed by inaction.

It doesn’t matter whether you choose right. There is no wrong. No such thing as wasted time, money or energy…IF:

(1) you commit to being present and engaged in whatever you’re doing, and

(2) you approach everything with curiosity and openness, always a student.

So maybe you took the “wrong” job?! What can you LEARN from the experience of living in a place of misaligned action? What skills, resources, relationships can you cultivate doing the “wrong” thing that’ll advise and accelerate your quest to get closer to the “right” thing?

What is your “serendipitous detour” teaching you about what you do want, don’t want, excel at, suck at, love, hate, yearn for or abhor?

The only way the time, money and energy you put into something that’s not quite right is wasted is if you choose not to see and build upon what you’ve gained along the way.

In the end, the only bad decision is indecision, because it leads to inaction. And without action, there’s no data. No experience of life. No information to serve as fuel for evolution, connection, joy, progress. No growth. Just gray.

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Today’s guest contributor is writer, coach, violinist, filmmaker, law school graduate, and web designer, Emilie Wapnick. Emilie works with multipotentialites to help them build lives and businesses around ALL of their interests and she’s the troublemaker behind Puttylike.com.

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“I moved to Portland to find community, a home… To settle down,” I spoke softly.

She looked at me with big eyes.

“Now I have to choose between Portland, and the thing that Portland represented, which is what I actually wanted.”

Like many 20-somethings of my generation, I have consciously designed most facets of my life. I chose self-employment to provide me with freedom and a sense of contribution, I chose a broad theme for my business over a niche in order to express my multipotentiality, I gave real thought to the friends in my life, to how I wanted my day to look, to how I wanted to feel, and to where I wanted to live.

How lucky we are to live in a time and place where this is possible, and to be privileged enough to enjoy this freedom.

I’ve been very deliberate about designing my life ever since realizing that I could. But what happens when the universe that you trust, that has been so good to you, decides to impose some of its own conditions? Do you stick with your original plan or do you shift, maybe giving up some of that autonomy you hold so dear? (In this case, moving to a new city with the person you love.)

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Last summer, I launched Good Life Project TV, – a broadcast-quality web-series that explores the journeys of world-class artists, entrepreneurs, makers and world-shakers.

I had no idea if anyone would watch. Or care.

But it was the thing I couldn’t not do…

Got my answer nearly immediately. Good Life Project TV™ took off. It’s now been watched in more than 135 countries.

I’ve written 800+ blog posts, articles in national magazines and two books. But, none of them has generated the response created by Good Life Project. Humbled. Grateful. Awed.

But, there was a bit of an ish…

The show is about 45-minutes long. That format let’s me go really deep with guests and avoid all the sound-bitey B.S.

But not everyone has 45 minutes to watch the show on a screen. So, shortly after launching, we began posting mp3 audio versions to a subscriber-only vault area. Better, now people could take the show on the road and listen.

Still, downloading it, then transferring it onto your phone or other listening device was a bit, well, cumbersome.

Which is why I’m sooooo excited to share with you today that…

Good Life Project™ Is Now Available
as a Podcast on iTunes!!!

We’ve just launched today with the first 20 episodes already posted. I’ll be accelerating delivery of the rest until we’re all caught up over the next few weeks. Then we’ll stick to a weekly schedule that mirrors the live web-series.

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Lissa Rankin’s new book, Mind Over Medicine, is creating quite a stir.

Rankin is an M.D. who walked away from her practice of mainstream medicine after a highly-successful career. She was frustrated, angry and looking for answers that traditional guidelines didn’t seem to support.

She discovered that in her practice, patients in one of the healthiest towns in the country still weren’t healing. For certain conditions mainstream medicine worked well. And, in fact, Rankin doesn’t cry for the end of it. But, for others, there was something deeper that was going on. And no matter how often mainstream medicine soothed the symptoms, the real challenge, the deeper pains, kept resurfacing new and old symptoms over and over.

What Rankin argues is that mainstream medicine does not represent the universe of potentially valuable treatment protocols or modalities. That state of mind, emotion, human circumstance, human interaction and belief not only play a role, but have the ability to effectively turn on or off the body’s innate ability to heal itself. To keep disease and pain ever-present, or serve as a foundation for sustained recovery.

Rankin knew this argument would potentially position her as a major target, a quack preaching pseudo-science. Even though her pedigree in medicine is reasonably bullet-proof. And, interestingly, while she’s looking to convince patients, the real demographic she seeks to make her case to is…doctors.

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Today’s guest contributor is Jennifer Boykin, the Creative Visionary and Chief Rabble Rouser behind the midlife reinvention movement Life After Tampons. She also speaks, teaches, and writes about adversity, triumph, and Women Who Rise and is the author of Breakthrough:  How to Get on With It When You Can’t Get Over It (download it free, btw).

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I make trouble for a living, and while I love my job very much, I don’t think I was supposed to be so impossibly good at it.  In fact, I was raised to be the “good one.”  My brother had the opposite role nailed down.

But then, life had its way with me.  A bunch of “unfair” stuff happened, including the death of my first child, and all my goody, goody-ness evaporated in a flash.  All of a sudden, I was introduced to my beautiful ROAR.

I have a very scary ROAR, as it turns out, and, at first, I didn’t know how to use my roar rightly.  I had been the “good one” for too long.  I had no ability at all to finesse my new skill.

Here are two horrible examples:

Once, shortly after my daughter died, I was pushing my grocery cart up to the checkout line, and this other lady cut in front of me.  I just glared at her and told her she’d better “watch out” because “I was the mother of a dead baby and I wasn’t in very good humor.”

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