Ever set an exciting goal that seemed life-changing, only to watch it fade away weeks later? In this episode, I share my proven ‘Success Scaffolding’ frameworkβa system I developed after diving deep into research on goal achievement and social psychology. This approach has helped me succeed in writing multiple books, launching companies, transforming my health, and achieving numerous other goals over decades.
Built around seven key principles (down from eight last year), Success Scaffolding provides the structure and support needed to accomplish meaningful goals. Building on last week’s Build your Good Life Roadmap | New Beginnings Pt 1 episode, today we’ll focus on choosing and achieving one transformative goal for 2025. I’ll guide you through creating your personalized scaffolding, showing you how to align your goal with one of the three good life buckets: vitality, connection, or contribution.
Download the free cheat sheet in the show notes to help implement these strategies and build lasting support structures for your ambitions. Join me, as we explore how to turn your biggest goals into reality on this episode of Good Life Project.
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Episode Transcript:
Jonathan Fields: [00:00:02] So have you ever set a goal that felt exciting, maybe even life-changing, only to watch it fizzle out after a few weeks or so? It’s not because you didn’t want it badly enough or weren’t capable. It’s often because you didn’t have the structure and the support to make it happen. This kept happening to me over and over, until I took a step back and did a deep dive into the research on everything from goal achievement to social psychology, excellence and success. And I ended up developing my own framework basically to succeed at anything big, anything worth doing. And I called it Success Scaffolding because it is the framework that provides the scaffolding that I needed to succeed at pretty much anything I set my mind to. And it’s the approach that has helped me accomplish so many things over a period of really decades at this point, from writing a bunch of books to launching companies media Transforming health. Even things like doubling my daily steps and so much more. Every year I fold new learnings into my success. Scaffolding I updated, I refine it and really just tweak and optimize it with what I have discovered. And this year is no different. And this revised success scaffolding framework, it’s what I want to share with you today in part two of our special January series on the Good Life Project. New Beginnings Redesigning Your Life in 2025. So last week we built a roadmap for the year ahead. If you haven’t had a chance to listen, I highly recommend starting there.
Jonathan Fields: [00:01:37] It’s the perfect foundation for what we’re doing today, but if you don’t have time, that’s okay too. You can just dive in and we’ll talk about how to really achieve big things. Today we’re zooming in to focus on one big, bold goal, something that could potentially transform your life this year. And I will guide you through success. Scaffolding. It’s a flexible, human-centered approach to setting and achieving meaningful goals built around what I call the seven P’s, which I will walk you through. And by the way, if you have heard me talk about this before, you may notice that actually one less P than it was a year ago. And I’ll share what I took out and why I did that along the way. And by the end of this episode, you will have chosen a meaningful goal, something you really want to achieve that is aligned also with one of your three good life buckets your vitality, connection or contribution bucket, and build your personalized scaffolding to support it step by step. And just like each of the five episodes in this month’s New Beginning series, you can download a free cheat sheet for today’s episode that kind of helps you remember all the key elements of success. Scaffolding. You’ll find a link for that in the show notes. So excited to share this with you on Jonathan Fields. And this is Good Life Project.
Jonathan Fields: [00:03:03] Hey, so here we go. We’re diving into success scaffolding. Now, before we even really get to the, uh, the seven P’s of Success scaffolding, the first thing that we want to think about doing is really choosing a goal. And not just any goal, but something that really matters to you. Now we’re looking for something that is a bold goal that stretches you outside of your comfort zone while still feeling achievable. Something that is ambitious enough to inspire you, but also grounded enough to feel like, yeah, like this may be challenging. I’ve wanted to do it for a while before. I still haven’t been able to figure that out, but I think it’s doable and think of it as the kind of goal that, if achieved, would create a genuine, lasting ripple effect in your life. So how do you choose one that would truly matter like that? The great starting point, I found is to reflect on your three good life buckets vitality, connection, and contribution and ask yourself for each bucket. Is there maybe one thing that I would just love to make happen that is really calling me? Something that feels challenging, something that likely be a major bucket filler, and potentially even a life changer if you could make it happen. Here’s an example. Maybe you’re thinking about your vitality bucket, and you’re thinking, how cool would it be if I was able to complete a 10-K race in November? Not just because of the feeling of crossing the finish line, which would be pretty cool, but also because of the changes that committing to it and training for it would have on your vitality, your health, your well-being, your state of mind, and your life.
Jonathan Fields: [00:04:44] That’s bold. If you’ve ever run more than a mile, but it’s achievable with the right plan. Maybe you’re focused on your contribution budget and you think, wow, it would be pretty amazing if I was able to launch a side business or change jobs, or maybe write my first book. Maybe you want to focus on your connection bucket and deepen the relationship with a family member who maybe you’ve become distant to, or repair it, or make one truly new, deeply connected friend. Maybe you want to find romance or reconnect in a deeply meaningful way to nature. So what I want you to do is think about each of the three buckets and do a little bit of brainstorming here. Just jot down a few ideas for each bucket. Just let it flow. Now, some of this may come to you pretty quickly and readily. You may have one bucket where you’re just you’ve immediately got three or 4 or 5 or more ideas. You may look at another bucket and have bogus nothing and really struggle. And that may also be a sign that you can just kind of take a step back and maybe just let it Incubate in your brain a little bit. Don’t beat yourself up if nothing immediate comes to you.
Jonathan Fields: [00:05:55] Come back after a few hours, maybe even a few days, and then revisit the list. Add to it over time. You might even want to give yourself, like, the better part of a week to just see what bubbles up. And then we will actually look at this and say, okay, let’s pick one of them. So we’ll reflect. We’ll look back at our 2025 roadmap from the last episode, by the way, and ask yourself these questions. Well, what goal most deeply aligns with the bucket that I feel I most want to focus on filling right now, or maybe in the year to come. Which one of these excites me and even maybe scares me a little bit? And which one of these, if achieved, would make the biggest difference in my life this year? Now, there’s no right or wrong here. These are all things that you’ve written down that are deeply meaningful to you, and they will fill one of your buckets. And what we know about the good life buckets It’s if you cannot fill one bucket without also simultaneously having a ripple effect on the other two. So if you focus on contribution and you make that amazing thing happen, it’s also going to help with your connection and vitality. And all the other ones are the same. So take a bead and just really see what comes up here and choose one thing. Now notice I didn’t say one big goal for each bucket. And the reason for that is our brains don’t really function well that way.
Jonathan Fields: [00:07:22] We kind of have the bandwidth, especially in a really busy, active life, to do a whole bunch of little things, maybe at one time. But very rarely can we accomplish one big thing, one substantial thing, one thing that is meaningful enough to us that it can make a big change in our lives. So for now, we’re not saying no to the other ones on your list, but we’re saying not quite yet. We’re going to just choose one and focus on that. So take a beat and see which one bubbles up to the starter, one that you want to say yes to. As we step into this new year together, now you have your goal in mind. Let’s start doing the work to step into success scaffolding and build the scaffolding needed to make it happen. So success scaffolding is about creating the structure and the support that is incredibly helpful in you achieving your goal. It’s built on these seven P’s and P because they start with the letter P, and each of the seven P’s adds a layer of I don’t know, I guess you could call it reinforcement psychological, physical, environmental, structural to help keep you aligned and focused and resilient. So let’s walk through them together. We’re going to start out. We’re just going to go through each one of the bees in order and help you figure out how to work with them. So we start out with the first one.
Jonathan Fields: [00:08:52] And the first P stands for picture. That is about creating or crafting a clear vision of success, right? This is about creating a clear, vivid vision of what success looks and feels like. When you can see it clearly, it becomes easier to work towards. It’s really hard to figure out how to actually accomplish something that you cannot in some way meaningfully see. But here’s the deal. That is what a lot of sort of pop psychology self-help tells us. It’s not always super helpful in day to day practice, because we tend to have two types of visions of potential goals that we want to achieve now. One is what I call the clear as day vision. And this is where you really know all the things that go into it when you are just starting out? So an example would be that completing a 10-K race, right. Maybe it’s I want to knit a very specific sweater that has a complicated pattern on it. Right. Maybe on a health goal, I want to increase my lean body mass by 4%. These are things where before you even take the first step towards them, you have a very clear picture. You can easily identify the qualities, the traits, the specifics of what this thing will look and feel and taste and smell like when you actually achieve it. I call these the clear as day pictures, right? Some types of goals are sort of like easily definable into that category.
Jonathan Fields: [00:10:33] But here’s the thing, and here’s the thing that a lot of people don’t talk about. There’s a second type of picture of what we want to achieve or goal. And I call these along the way goals write. And these are the ones where you have a sense for what it would look or feel like. You have a sense for what the qualities of it would be when you’re starting out some of the general parameters, but you don’t know enough to create a very clear, specific, precise sensory depiction of what that will be on day one. It just doesn’t happen that way. So an example of this might be, well, I want to write a novel like 2025 will be like my my goal will be to write a novel. Right. So I can tell you that I want to write a book. It’s going to be fiction. It’s probably going to be about 300 pages. I hope. You know, it has paper and and boards on the ends and like a nice jacket design. But can I tell you what the story is? No. Can I tell you who the characters are? No. The world is no. Might have a general sense of the genre, or maybe a vague idea of the story or sort of like some some key highlights or just kind of cool things. I want to work into it, sure. But the details, the precise details of what that thing will actually look like will and can only unfold as I start taking action towards it.
Jonathan Fields: [00:12:01] So for these, we want to create a little bit of spaciousness and forgiveness and say, okay, so we don’t necessarily have to have all of the things I’m not a failure if I can’t create a clearly defined, highly precise sensory picture of this thing on day one. So get clear is the thing that I’m looking to achieve a clear as day goal or an along the way goal. Now, this is a new distinction that I’m offering in this year’s success scaffolding, by the way. Once you get clear on that, if it’s clear as day, then we can actually create a lot more definition in the beginning, which can be helpful if it’s along the way. Then we forgive ourselves the fact that we can create some definition and know that the rest of it will become clear to us along the way. And that’s okay. And that brings us to sort of part two of this particular picture element. And that is we want to create what I call your eidetic picture. So we want to write or record or video whatever medium is most accessible to you. But note your goal as if it has already been achieved. And you can use prompts like, well, what does it look like? What does it feel like? What does it sound like? Include as many sensory details as you can. The five different senses. Um, you can even go deeper into that and use more of like an intuitional sense to actually see.
Jonathan Fields: [00:13:28] Right? And again, as I described, if you have a clear as day goal, you’ll probably be able to list this out in very specific, precise way if you have it along the way. Goal! Just list out as much as you can about what this is going to look like. Feel like, taste like, smell like, sound like all these things as much as you can. Knowing that you want to get pretty granular about the big picture parameters. At least you want to be able to say, you know, I am, I have and this is remember the I did it picture. So it’s as if it’s already happened. I wrote a novel. It was a 300 pages and it was a story about. And if you have some general sense good enough, right. Whereas if you have that other type of goal to clear as day, you’re going to say, um, I completed a 10-K race, I crossed the finish line, um, in whatever mode of movement is accessible to you right now. Here’s the thing, though. Either way, you can add in sensory descriptions of what that will feel like. So even on the along the way, one of I’m writing a novel, right? I don’t know the details of what’s going to be in it, but I can say, like, I completed it, I wrote a book, I wrote the last line, here’s how I feel.
Jonathan Fields: [00:14:46] I close my eyes. I knew it was done. I had a sense it was good. Like, what does it feel like to actually have finished? Like, what is that moment like for you? We want to get clear on that. So painting a picture gives us something as clear as we can to work towards. It’s like we’re setting a coordinate in the GPS of our brain, and our brain will actually start to do a whole lot of subtle, less and conscious work to help us navigate towards that coordinate over a period of time that we are not even aware of. That brings us to our second P in success scaffolding. And the second, P is purpose, right? We want to discover our deeper why when things get tough and they will. The thing that often keeps you in your goal is having a deeper sense of meaning and purpose around why you’re committing to it in the first place. This is where we get tripped up a lot because we say, well, we want to do this thing right? But we focus on just the surface level thing, and we never really ask ourselves, why does this matter to me? And then if we do ask ourselves, why does this matter to me? We ask it once, right? And we get some sort of superficial response. So what we want to do is some version of, I’m sure you’ve heard a variation of what people often call the three wise or the five wise, but we want to ask ourselves, why does this matter to me? Why is it important to me? Why do I think it will be effective at helping to fill my contribution bucket, my connection bucket, or my vitality bucket? Right? Whatever comes to mind first? That’s completely fine.
Jonathan Fields: [00:16:33] That’s sort of like your top level answer. We don’t stop there because it’s rarely the true answer. It’s rarely the answer that gives you a strong enough sense of purpose and meaning, so that when adversity comes along the way, when you stumble and fumble and challenge and you will, if this is deeply meaningful enough, it’s not going to be easy all the time. So we need to go deeper because it’s that deeper sense of meaning and purpose that keeps us going when things get hard. So what are the five whys look like? Simple exercise. Basically, instead of just saying why does this matter? At one time we keep asking that question and then we pose the answer before as the focus of the why. So let’s take that 10-K thing again as a potential example here. Right. We say I want to run a 10-K or I want to complete a 10-K, whatever mode is available to me, right? We say, okay, so why does this matter to me? Why is it important? Well, you know, because I just think it would be really cool to be able to say that it completed a 10-K.
Jonathan Fields: [00:17:44] Okay. Why do you think it would be really cool to be able to say you completed 10-K? Huh? Um, well, because, you know, I’ve never done anything like that, and I think it would just really help with my confidence. Huh. Okay, cool. Um, why do you think it would help with your confidence? Huh? Well, because I think I’ve probably just become so sedentary for so long that I’m not feeling great about my physical health or my ability the way I did when I was younger anymore. And this would be a sign, like an objective sign to me, that I was really making a difference in my health. Huh. Okay, so why is it important to you to have some sort of objective sign that you’re really making a difference in improving your health? Hmm? You know, because I’m getting a little bit older, and I’m scared, honestly. Um. Um. Concerned about what? The way that I’m living my life is doing to me. And I want a way to be able to reclaim my health and my well-being and as much of my fitness and ability as I can, because I want to be able to move and to do all the things that I want to do and also be well for as long as I can. Okay. So now we’re getting deeper, but we’re still at just four levels. So what if I ask you one more time, even you know, why does that matter to you? Why is that important to you?
Jonathan Fields: [00:19:28] Huh? Well.
Jonathan Fields: [00:19:31] Maybe the answer would be if, you know, if I’m really being honest. Um, I’ve got people looking to me. I’ve got people who need me to be there for them, and people whose lives I want to be there in. I want to be able to to love and be loved and to play and and play with, you know, my, my kids, my family, my friends, maybe my grandkids, whatever it may be. And, um, I’m concerned that the direction that things are going in health wise, I won’t be able to. And and this would really be a sign that I’ve changed direction. Okay. Okay. Now, when things get hard, when you’re training for that ten K, if you can drop down into that level of meaning and purpose. Now you have something that is powerful enough to keep you rising up and dancing with adversity and not just giving up and walking away, right? So we do that check, but we want to do one more check underneath the P of purpose. And that’s what I call an embodiment check. And again this is kind of new to this year’s version of success scaffolding. As you’re seeing it, I keep optimizing and tweaking this every year to make it work better. And the question we ask here is, does this purpose resonate emotionally and physically? Does this purpose resonate emotionally and physically? Do I feel it in my bones when I give that answer? When I’m answering that final why question, am I just kind of making something up? Am I answering it because I’m like, oh, I’m supposed to do five whys deep and let me just see if I can figure out something else.
Jonathan Fields: [00:21:13] Is it cognitive? Are you thinking your way to an answer? Or do you feel this for me? I know that I’m not actually there until I literally feel it in my body and where I have an almost and sometimes just straight up outright emotional response to what I’m saying. See if you can bring yourself to that place and embodied. Check to the level of purpose that you are able to associate with the thing that you want to make happen. Now that brings us to our third P. The third P is plan. This is about taking that big goal and breaking it into manageable steps that fit into your life, so that you can actually do the things necessary to make it happen. Here’s the thing. The plan is often where people start when they have a goal. They’re like, here’s the thing I want to do. And now what I have to do is make the plan. And they skip the picture step, and they skip the purpose step, and they skip all the other P’s, and they just go straight to the plan and they do nothing else. And they’re like, okay, time to go do the plan without building all the rest of the scaffolding around it.
Jonathan Fields: [00:22:22] We don’t have the psychological, the environmental, the structural, the social support. You actually stick with the plan, which is why so often a well thought out plan, a plan that objectively would and should and could work for most people falls flat because it’s not just about the plan. So we do all the work of building the scaffolding around it, because there is more work to be done if you really want to make this thing happen. And even when we focus in on the details of the plan, oftentimes we don’t quite get it right. So let’s talk about those details. We’re going to go through a number of different sort of like um, guidelines here for how we want to think about drafting a plan for our particular outcome. And we’ll be right back after a word from our sponsors. So number one, we can start out by researching existing plans. So look for plans that are tailored to your goal, especially those created for people with similar lifestyles, resources, abilities, limitations, or challenges. So example, if you’ve been largely sedentary and all of a sudden you’re your big thing is I want to complete a 10-K. You could just say, you know, well, let me go search for 10-K training programs, right. But you don’t know if that’s a 10-K training program for somebody who’s already, you know, like active and fit. So you might even do something like, well, let me find a couch to 10-K program if you’re a beginner.
Jonathan Fields: [00:23:56] So really think, you know, like are there plans that are really tailored to who I am, where I’m at, where I’m starting from, my lifestyles and my challenges? Right. Search online, consult books. I’ve actually found that when we’re doing this now, it can be incredibly effective to use AI, right? So you can come up with a basic prompt. We actually have a, um, we’re actually developing a much fuller program around success scaffolding, where we have a very detailed prompt, but you can use a basic prompt, something like, you know, um, create a detailed step by step plan for training for a 10-K race as a working parent with limited time, and check it out. Go to your favorite. I like whatever that may be. You may use a bunch of different ones and type that in. And oftentimes you’ll get something that’s really interesting and has a lot of good, valuable insight and maybe step by step things. Now this is a draft and this is not the final plan for you. This is just one starting point, right. This is something to sort of like research. If there are existing plans, see if there’s something that feels like it’s tailorable to who you are and what you want to accomplish. If you can’t find that easily, explore using AI to try and find that sort of like rough draft of something that might work for you.
Jonathan Fields: [00:25:18] Then we want to analyze the plan and ensure that the plan is realistic and aligned with your available time and energy and resources. Right? And then we highlight areas that are in need of adaptation. And that brings us to the second thing that we want to do here. And that is start with that draft plan and now customize it. Right. We want to tailor the generic plan to fit your unique circumstances. So think about access to your resources. Think about time. Identify free blocks in your weekly schedule. Think about energy planning for activities during your peak energy times. Think about support you know, identifying childcare, financial resources, or others you might, uh, need help from or seek help from. And when we do this, we want to then say, okay, so we’re going to start with the generic plan. And now the goal is let’s adapt this to our lives. Right. So an example for that 10-K. Training program. Right. Maybe the original was run for 30 minutes every morning. Great generic plan if you’re training for a 10-K right. Maybe though every morning you’re getting the kids out the door and you’re the notion of actually waking up at 430 in the morning to go and do this. And maybe you’re a single parent so you can’t leave your kids alone. Okay, so maybe the generic plan says run every morning for 30 minutes, but practically in your life, not a chance.
Jonathan Fields: [00:26:45] Not going to work. What is the adaptation? So maybe now we’re going to say, okay, I’m going to run for 20 minutes after dinner three times a week to suit my schedule. Or maybe I’m going to run for 20 minutes as soon as I get the kids home, because I have a babysitter that’s there for the afternoons, or as soon as, um, I have a babysitter who picks them up from school, and maybe they stay until an extra 20 minutes before they leave so that I can actually do this. So the idea is we start with the generic plan, but then we really have to customize it to the realities of our lives. Third thing that we want to think about when developing our plan. That’s what I call chunking or breaking down the plan. This is about dividing the goal into smaller, manageable milestones. So yes, we start with the big goal, right? Maybe it’s writing that book or completing the 10-K race in 12 weeks, but that’s too big. When we tend to think about things like that, we freak out. So what we need to do and what we need to make sure that our plan does and a really intelligent way, is break that big goal into micro milestones. So examples, you know, like for the completing a 10-K one maybe week one, you know, we’re going to walk for a half a mile three times in a week, maybe week two.
Jonathan Fields: [00:28:13] We alternate walking and jogging or whatever mobility mechanism is accessible to you for a mile, three times a week, and then maybe during week three, that bumps up to a little bit more. So what we’re doing is we’re chunking this down into the tiniest steps that we know will, over time, build to the ultimate goal we want. Maybe going back to that writing a book thing, right? You know, maybe it’s week one is about let me just spend 20 minutes a day at a particular time thinking through, um, the idea that sort of like mapping out the beats of the story that I want to write. Maybe you’re going to read a whole bunch. Maybe they’re three or 4 or 5 books that you need to read or want to read on the structure of writing fiction or novels. So maybe the first month of it is just going to be setting aside time for reading, you know? And then the next month is going to be setting aside time to just doing really basic, basic brainstorming about the fundamental ideas and sort of like narrative arc of the story. So we want to break it into the tiniest, doable steps, right? And then we break it into action steps like really granular action steps. So if we go back to that ten K example, maybe it’s, you know, like for week one action by running shoes on day two or equip myself with whatever I need to actually train on day two.
Jonathan Fields: [00:29:38] Right. Maybe planning routes on day three. Maybe I’m going out and mobilizing my body for one mile on Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday at this time. So you want to get really granular maybe when we’re doing you know, I’m going to use that writing the novel one again. I’ll keep going back to that. Maybe it is. I’m going to buy one book on the structure of fiction, and I’m going to read 20 pages a day for the first two weeks so I can finish it. Right. Then I’m going to go chapter by chapter and start outlining and you’ll do little pieces like that. So we really distill it down into specific actions. Then we get into prioritization. And this is focusing on high impact milestones that really move the needle along the way. So we want to identify what those key milestones are which milestones are essential to achieving my goal. Right. So example if we’re using that 10-K one again being able to do a consistent two miles by week number four um, we would probably say maybe it is critical to being able to complete a 10-K in 16 weeks from now and then maybe being able to consistently feel comfortable doing three miles by week number five and then five miles by week number eight. So we want to actually see what are sort of like the key milestones that are really big signals to us, that we’re not just making tiny progress forward, but we’re really hitting the big milestones that signal, yeah, this is possible.
Jonathan Fields: [00:31:19] This is going to happen, which is going to be really important for what we’re heading into as our next P, by the way, right. So we want to organize and prioritize our efforts to work towards those key milestones. So again we’re not just working towards that final big milestone. We figure out what are the key milestones along the way that are strong signals that we’re making progress. So if I’m going to look at writing fiction and by the way, I keep going to this because in the back of my mind, I’ve actually secretly been starting to explore fiction after writing nonfiction for so many years now. So I’ve actually been deep into figuring this out myself. Um, so maybe now, you know, I understand the overarching structure of the type of fiction that I want to write, or at least an opening, um, attempt, whether that ever sees the light of day or not. I’m not entirely sure, but I did the research, I read the books, and now I know the key milestones are to be able to say, you know, there’s this particular structure, and one big key milestone is having mapped out that structure in a fair amount of detail. And then literally each key milestone after that could be, you know, um, okay, I finished this one particular scene, or I finished one particular beat and I’m moving closer and closer to the way that the story needs to unfold.
Jonathan Fields: [00:32:39] So we look to those as signals that we can build into our plan to give us really strong indicators that we’re making meaningful progress. We’re not done yet with the plan, right. Because what we’ve got to talk about now are obstacles and workarounds. This is one huge, huge failure point for so many folks working towards things. They only focus on the good. Right. And there’s there’s a lot of lore around this whole thing of manifestation out there in the world, which functionally is really just, um, kind of like a metaphysical, um, overlay on goal achievement or making things happen that you really want to happen. Right? Um, I tend to focus more on the science side of it and the grounded, practical side, because there is a real research on what works here. One of the things we know is that if we anticipate and identify the potential and even likely obstacles that will come up or might come up as we work towards this thing, and then we say, if then if this happens, then I will and we actually build a workaround in advance, then if that in fact does happen, we are much more likely to be able to move forward, to bounce back from it, to be resilient and to not just get completely derailed and give up and walk away.
Jonathan Fields: [00:34:02] Um, so we want to actually think about this in advance. So as much as some manifestation, ideology and philosophy says, only think about the positive. Don’t think about the negative because you’re literally going to bring that into your world. The research is actually crystal clear and it shows that, no, that is actually wrong, that when you think about the likely things that will stop you from getting that and then pre address what you will do if and when they happen. So you have a plan already, you are actually far more likely to be able to work through them if and when they do happen. So we look at this internally and externally. What are the external obstacles or adversity that might come up? What are the internal ones. External might be you know, well, you know, there’s circumstances outside of my control that are making it really hard to do this thing. The internal might just be I’m kind of exhausted. I’m starting to really become filled with like some level of self-doubt or I’m anxious, or maybe I’m just struggling with my mental health right now, or overwhelm or burnout from a whole bunch of other things. Right. We can figure these things out, and we can have plans for what we’ll do if and when these happen. And and having this plan means that we are much more likely to actually go to the plan and then execute it and move through this moment with much more ease and stay on track or retrack, or adjust course if needed, but actually be more likely to go ahead and achieve the thing that we really want to achieve.
Jonathan Fields: [00:35:29] And then the final couple of things here we want to do a final integration check is what I call it, to ensure that our plan fits with our real life circumstances. Right. Does it fit with my current commitments? If I am, I overcommitting in a way that could maybe lead to overwhelm or fatigue or burnout. And we want to revise the plan. We want to adjust the steps, adjust the pacing or the milestones as needed to align with the realities of our life. We want to make sure that it can fully and easily integrate with and adapt to the changing dynamics and the current reality of whatever our life circumstance is. That brings us to the final element of the plan. I know we’re going deep into and spending a lot more time on the plan, because I think a lot of times we we just kind of just we take a generic plan and we throw it in there and we say, like, this is the plan somebody else has figured out. It works. I’m going to commit to it and boom, I’m going to do it and it’s going to work because it’s worked for other people. And then it blows up and it doesn’t work for us.
Jonathan Fields: [00:36:35] And we wonder why. And the reason why is because we haven’t gone through this detailed process to make sure a generic plan will actually work with us and our lives. And that brings us to that final piece, which is we want to be able to track progress. So we want to create a system for monitoring progress and staying on track. Defining benchmarks. Examples. End of week four. Maybe we’ll be able to complete for the 10-K Three miles without stopping. At the end of week eight, maybe we’ll be able to complete five miles consistently. If I am working on that book, maybe it is. Um, you know, I am, uh, completing one scene every month or writing 1500 words every day. That would be pretty. That’d be pretty aggressive word output for some people. Um, but we want to choose a tracking method that actually works for us. Now, there are all sorts of apps and mechanisms that will do this automatically for us out there. You can kind of play around and see what mechanism works for you, but I would suggest having something where you can do at least a weekly evaluation to reflect on what is working and what isn’t. And it’s really important not only to signal progress or a lack of progress, but also to be able to let us know when things are going off the rails more quickly so that we can make adjustments to change our steps, our milestones, our actions, if necessary, to get us back on track.
Jonathan Fields: [00:38:09] Great. So that was the third P plan. There’s a lot that goes into that. And that brings us to the fourth P possibility. And the plan actually sets up a lot of possibility. So the fourth P is possibility because you need to believe your goal is achievable, at least enough to take the first step. Right. That you may have heard. Well, you don’t have to believe anything actually. Like you just take the step and then your own actions and the response to it, the results that come from it will serve as proof of possibility to you. And that, in fact, is it’s not entirely wrong. It’s also not entirely right. It’s it’s workable once you’re in action. But in the very beginning, when you’re not doing anything right and you have to take that very first step and maybe the second or third, right. If you don’t, in your mind, at least a tiny bit believe that the thing that you want to achieve is possible and not just possible, but possible by you, then you will never actually take the first step or the second step, or the third step. It takes a little bit of time to build that possibility momentum. And the reason is because our lives are so abundant with things, and activities are so busy already that everything we say yes to, everything we decide to invest energy or effort into has an opportunity cost.
Jonathan Fields: [00:39:40] And by saying yes to this new thing, we are actively saying no to something that is already on our plate or something else we’re continuing or considering putting on our plate, right? So our brains are constantly doing this cost benefit analysis. And if we don’t believe at least a bit that this thing that we want to achieve is possible and possible doable by us, as much as we say we want to do the thing. As much as we talk about the dream of how amazing it would feel if we were able to accomplish it, our brains will literally stop us from taking action, from taking the first step or couple of steps, because the opportunity cost of it is just too much. It’s going to be too burdensome, too overwhelming, uh, and it’s going to take us away from other things that we already know are in our lives. So we’ve got to crack the door open to belief and possibility in the very beginning. And this, by the way, this four number four element possibility relates to the thing that used to come after it in success scaffolding, which was um, another P, which was proof. And what I realized was that proof and possibility really are not two separate things, because the proof is, how do we prove to ourselves that this thing we say we want to do actually is possible and possible for us? Should the really kind of part of the same thing, it falls under possibility.
Jonathan Fields: [00:41:09] But this is the question we have to ask ourselves, right? How do we build belief that the goal is actually achievable, that it’s possible? So four things that I want to think to you or share with you. And you can think of these as four different forms of proof of possibility. One is demonstrations, right. Research stories or examples of people similar to you who have achieved similar goals. Right. So maybe you maybe are a busy parent, or you can find an example or a story about a busy parent who trained for a 10-K while managing a full time job, or maybe two full time jobs and raising kids on their own. Right? That seems so hard. And it is like that is a big, big challenge. And your brain is kind of saying, this is just this would be so amazing if I could do this, but come on with my life. There’s just no way this is possible. But what if you could find 1 or 2, or a group of people who are also really busy single parents raising kids who sometimes somehow found this way to train for and then complete a 10-K? Not only would you help to start to believe that maybe it’s possible for you too, but you might also be able to then go to them, or find them, or deconstruct or find out, well, how have they actually done that and learn from them when you’re developing their plan, which is another benefit.
Jonathan Fields: [00:42:34] So one is finding demonstrations of people who are similar to you achieving similar goals. The second one is the good old testimonial, right? And even if you can’t find those stories or talk to the people, um, hearing about the testimony of people who are similar to you, who have done a similar thing, can be, um, compelling proof in your mind. Make sure they’re real. Make sure that whatever it is that you’re, um, they’re, you know, the testimony is about is similar enough to you, and you want to get a beat on whether the people actually have similar lives or circumstances to you and then sharing what they wanted to do, and that the fact that they were able to figure out how to do it, and maybe even using this particular plan, which you’re considering, um, working with as your generic plan and then customizing. So we’ve got demonstrations. We’ve got you’re literally you see it demonstrated that it can be done. You’ve got testimonials or testimony, other people’s stories about the fact that they’ve been able to do it. Third form of proof often comes in the form of expert opinions. And this is the insight, the advice, the wisdom, the opinion of people who are expert in the area of the particular thing that you want to accomplish. Who basically say yes. You know, this type of thing is in fact, very doable and doable by folks who have a lot of similarities to you.
Jonathan Fields: [00:44:01] I have worked with in the past, people like that and help them achieve it. I have seen it done too many times. I’ve done research. Um, so when you have an expert, you know, if you’re, you know, looking to a, um, a coach who coaches people in completing ten CS, right? And they have coached 100 people, 500 people, a thousand people, from being sedentary to finishing ten CS. And a subset of those people are people who are similar circumstances to you. And they say, no, this is actually doable. Then maybe that person has the credibility for your brain to say, oh yeah, it’s kind of hard to argue against it because I’m just guessing. And they actually know from experience. That brings us to the fourth form of proof of possibility. And that’s just straight up data, in fact. Is there research that shows that this thing that you want to accomplish. Is doable, is possible? Is it feasible? Are there studies showing that it’s possible? Are there studies showing the mechanism or the plan that actually made it happen to. Which can validate both a plan of action and the fact that it’s possible. So four different forms of proof of possibility. Demonstrations. You literally like see it done by other people similar to you. Testimonials. You hear about their stories of it.
Jonathan Fields: [00:45:18] Expert opinions, people who are credible enough and experience enough to be believable when they tell you this is possible, and straight up data in fact, showing you objectively and research and science and studies this is doable. The more we can again, we don’t have to 100% believe that this is possible. We don’t. It literally can be like 3%. It’s enough just for us to take the first couple of steps for our brain to say, I will allocate some energy to taking some initial steps to make this happen, because when we do, then the fifth form of proof of possibility becomes the driving form of proof of possibility. And that is our own lived experience. When we start to take the actions right, then we start to see, oh, okay, so I’m starting to progress towards this. In the beginning I was walking for five minutes a day. Now I’m walking for ten minutes a day, and then three weeks later I’m kind of switching between walking and jogging a little bit, and then I’m coming back and then I’m measuring not just minutes, but miles. And four weeks in, I’m like, wait, uh, I’m actually on my way to doing this. Your own lived experience becomes a powerful, fifth and deeply compelling form of proof of possibility, but you have got to find those earlier forms of proof that will get you from inaction to action before your own lived experience can validate your own ability to do the thing that you want to do.
Jonathan Fields: [00:47:02] And that’s where the first four forms of proof are really important. And we’ll be right back after a word from our sponsors. That brings us to the fifth P. That is people. It’s really helpful to have a village to help you do this thing. It is so much easier when we’re not doing something alone. Support not just support structures, but support. People can help us accomplish this thing that we see is deeply important to us. And I’ve seen sort of what I call six different roles of support or of people that can be incredibly helpful when we’re trying to do something that is challenging, really challenging, and potentially life changing. So let me walk you through those six different roles now. I’ll tell you up front, you don’t have to have all six roles in place in order to succeed, right? But the more that you do have in place, the higher the likelihood that no matter what comes your way, you’ll actually keep going and be able to accomplish that thing. And as just like a side thing, there’ll probably be a lot more enjoyable because you’re sharing it with a whole bunch of different people and turning it into something which is solitary, um, and transforming that into a social experience which as social human beings, which is what we are, just makes almost everything more enjoyable. Yes, even for those introverts and highly sensitive people and hermits.
Jonathan Fields: [00:48:32] And I’m kind of raising my hand for that, that category, by the way. Not the hermit so much, but the introvert and more sensitive, you know, like, I still love being surrounded by the right people, doing the right thing, supporting in the right way. When I’m working towards something really hard, it just makes the whole thing so much more fun and better. So what are those six roles? I’ll walk you through them. One cost drivers. These are basically your training buddies. These are people who are doing something really similar, maybe the exact same thing, but not necessarily working on it together. But you’re working on it. It’s almost like you’re parallel playing, right? So maybe you’re wanting to complete a 10-K and you’ve got 1 or 2 other people who, you know, like you’ve been just hanging out with and you’re like, wouldn’t it be cool if we all did this? So you’re all working towards it, right? You’re not really helping each other completely, not contributing to like three people contributing to one thing that gets accomplished. You’re each trying to accomplish the same thing, but side by side. These are your cost drivers. The energy there is often funny enough commiseration when it gets challenging or like hard, and you’re all in it together, and you’re all going to go through those windows in moments to be able to just share that struggle, that commiseration is actually really valuable and in hindsight can be kind of fun.
Jonathan Fields: [00:49:50] Um, the next role is what I call champions. These are your cheerleaders, the people who are cheering you on. The people who are saying, it’s really hard. I know, but I know why you said you’re doing this. I know you’re deeper sense of purpose. Why this matters to you. I’m going to cheer you on. You can do this. I know you can do this. And here’s why you say it matters. The third role is what I call accountants. These are not people who work with spreadsheets and numbers, although they may be in their day job. Who knows? These are the people who the role is, the ones who check in on you on a regular basis and hold you accountable to the actions that you say you are going to do in order to achieve the thing you want to achieve. Again, they know what the end point is. You have shared with them what the plan is, what the regular actions are, what the benchmarks are and why it’s so important, and they’re the ones who are willing to check in on you and say, hey, listen, you’re like, this is what you said you were going to do. This is why you wanted to do it. This is why it matters so much to you. And these are sort of like the regular things. I noticed that you’re you kind of haven’t been doing them in the last few days or maybe a week, and I want to check in on you and make sure.
Jonathan Fields: [00:50:56] Are you okay? Is everything working right? Do we need to make some adjustments? And so you know that they’re going to always be checking in and holding you, providing a bit of external accountability. And that can just be incredibly helpful and important. That brings us to the fourth role and that is mentors. These are often people who have done what you are striving to do, or they’re just really experienced and well versed in helping others do it. So they have a lot of wisdom to offer you. Maybe they’re an experienced person who has done a ton of encase, or a coach who has coached a lot of people through them, and they can help you when you are struggling or when you’re challenged, or just to resolve things or just to keep you going. These are people with wisdom to share about their very specific outcome that you are working towards. The fifth role is community. And this is when we get together with people who, um, provide a sense of belonging. So in that ten K setting, maybe you’re a part of a community of people who are running or aspiring to complete different types of races or distances in whatever form of movement or mobility is available to them. And maybe it’s all different things. Maybe it’s an adventure race, or a 10-K or a marathon or something different, but everyone’s kind of got a similar mindset, similar orientation.
Jonathan Fields: [00:52:10] They they have shared experiences and values and you feel a sense of belonging. And that is sort of like the driving energy of community is that sense of belonging. Like, we see you, we got you, and we’re all going to be here to support each other. That brings us to the final of the six roles, and that is challengers. Learn the word first from Adam Grand, actually, who shared that when he’s working on a book, once he gets into it, he has a small number of people, often his postdocs, where he shares pieces of the book to and says basically have at it. And he wants them to actually challenge him and challenge his ideas and challenge the way he’s expressing them so that he can make them better. He sees flaws in them. He really understands how to optimize and improve what he is working on before he puts it out to the world. And oftentimes these folks can be really helpful for us too, especially when we’re developing our plans. They can kind of look at it and say, like, this is really work with the life that you’re living or with, like the way your job is or with, you know, not because they’re trying to stop you from doing it. They actually want you to do it. They’re like, all for you. They want you to succeed.
Jonathan Fields: [00:53:14] The challenges are there simply because they want to help you optimize and refine and adjust and adapt so that what you’re saying yes to, and the way you’re saying yes to it is as likely as anything to make it actually happen. So this is not challengers in the form of like trying to stop you or take you down. This is benevolent challengers who want to help you. They just want to help make sure that you’re doing it in the best possible way. Right. So these are the six different roles of people who we want to sort of explore. So one of the things you want to think about is who are the people in my life that I might be able to actually ask to play one of those six roles co-drivers, champions, accountants, mentors, community challengers. Maybe you have some people who play multiple roles. Maybe you don’t have people who do this. And then the question becomes, are there groups that are already organized? Are there clubs? Are there? Um, um, circles? Are there any places, online remote groups or meetups where I can go and actually find places where these folks have already gathered and I can kind of step into them already and gain a lot of benefits. So even if you don’t have folks local to you, oftentimes when you get creative and then you go virtual, you will find so many of these folks and really flatten the world around you.
Jonathan Fields: [00:54:36] That brings us to our sixth P and that is practices. We’re getting close here everyone. Β£0.06 that is practices. And this is about it’s not just practice as in practice makes perfect. It’s practice as in creating practices, personal practices that will help support your mindset as you strive towards whatever it is that you’re working towards to help sustain focus and resilience and peace and calm and drive. Right. So there are three practices that I find incredibly helpful for me. Your mileage may vary with all one of these, but the invitation here is to think to yourself whenever I’m working towards something that is deeply meaningful and also challenging, even if I think it’s doable, we know adversity will happen. Change is going to happen. Challenge is going to happen. We have all the rest of our scaffolding in place, but developing our own mindset. Practices can be a powerful, powerful internal resource to help us move through this with focus and agility and ease and resilience. So three different practices that I find are super helpful for me. One meditation. I’m a long time mindfulness meditator, and this has been transformative for me and for anyone who feels like, well, that’s just not accessible to me. I challenge you to rethink that in a super powerful way, because, you know, there are so many free resources now. There are so many apps with thousands of different people teaching meditation from anywhere from a minute to hours long.
Jonathan Fields: [00:56:14] You know, it is so easy now to find free resources, free guided meditation of almost any type of meditation. You can listen to the style, to the approach to the voices. Just play around, see what resonates with you. And then just start to make it a regular practice, whether it’s 2 or 3 times a week or daily. For me, it’s a daily practice of about 25 to 30 minutes. The impact that it will have, not in the moment, but when you make it a practice over time, is astonishingly powerful. When you meet resistance in your life, and oftentimes when that resistance is internal, when it’s your own chatter and self speak and doubt. The second practice that has been incredibly powerful for me is breathing exercises. Breathing is one of the most effective and rapid ways to upregulate or downregulate your nervous system response to either make you energized and active, or bring you down and make you calm and relaxed and spacious. So exploring the world of breathing as a way to rapidly impact your psychological and physiological state is a powerful tool to have in your toolbox. The third thing, and this may actually be a part of the thing that you’re trying to do is movement, a movement practice. So maybe, you know, if your goal is to write something or start to produce three videos a week for your social media, right? Well, that may not involve a whole lot of moving your body.
Jonathan Fields: [00:57:43] Maybe the videos do, but, you know, let’s assume that it doesn’t, right? Um, you still want to do something that allows you to move your body in whatever way is accessible to you. Because what we know is that the impact of regular daily movement on not just your physical being, but your psychological well-being is profound. So this is kind of the trifecta in my mind when it comes to personal practices. Some form of meditation, some form of breathing, some form of movement astonishingly powerful in helping to support whatever it is that you’re doing on that sort of like deeper scaffolding level. And that, my friends, brings us to the seventh P in success scaffolding. And that is pledge. The seventh P is pledge. A pledge is a statement of commitment to yourself and potentially to others. The idea here is to commit to your goal in a tangible way. We can do this by writing or recording your pledge. And the pledge can be you can phrase it really in a lot of different ways. It can be some example of, you know, like I state your name, I pledge to complete a ten K by, you know, like an ad in the date. This matters because it will improve my health and confidence, and allow me to be more well and present in the lives of the people that I love. I will follow my training plan, adapt as needed, and celebrate small wins.
Jonathan Fields: [00:59:15] And here are my core commitments, right? So really simple and really straightforward. But when we do that, it’s like we’re making a contract in our brain, and then what we know is through something called the consistency principle, identified by Robert Cialdini. We love to see ourselves as being consistent with statements and actions that we have taken and made prior. So if we actually create this detailed and specific pledge, we then want to see ourselves as a person who has the identity of being consistent with what we have said and done. And that means that this prior statement, this prior commitment will have this like will set in motion an internal impulse to want to then act consistently with it. And it helps us commit to what we’re doing. Now you can go the extra step if you feel comfortable and take that pledge. Whether it’s video, whether it’s audio, whether it’s printed or written, and then one place it somewhere where you can see it on a regular basis, you can literally put it on your desk or put it on your fridge, put it in your cubicle wall, wherever it may be, so that you’re reminded of it on a daily basis. And your brain keeps saying, oh, right, this is who I am. This is what I have committed to. And if you feel comfortable, you can share it. Share it with whoever feels right.
Jonathan Fields: [01:00:38] From the six roles of your support team, your people, so that they all have that as well. Some people have asked, is that okay to share it on social media? Can I just sort of like blast it out to the world? You know, it really depends how you feel about that. A lot of people are going to feel very exposed if they share it that publicly. Some people may feel great about it. They’ll want that level of public support just broad and vast. But also we know that so often there are a lot of people that are out there who are not actually there with your best, um, best benefit and with the best intentions for you in mind. So just be really intentional about who you share it with and how you share it. Those are the seven PS of success scaffolding. So with your scaffolding in place, it really empowers you with a structure, with a framework, with the scaffolding that you need to do amazing things, things you thought weren’t possible, things that you have wanted to do for years, maybe even made resolutions years and years and years in a row and never felt that you were able to do because you were missing key elements of success. Scaffolding. Now you have it. So how does this feel to you? Take a moment and reflect. How does this success scaffolding and all the elements. How does it feel to you? How does the goal that you’ve chosen feel to you? Is it exciting? Is it realistic? Is it doable? If not, just keep making adjustments to some of the things in your success scaffolding until it feels like, yeah, this is big.
Jonathan Fields: [01:02:10] This is meaningful. Um, this is challenging. But I feel like with this framework, I now finally understand how to make it happen. And I feel resourced and supported in a way where I can this week take the first step. If you feel comfortable, identify that thing that you want to make happen and start to put together your success scaffolding and figure out what is the first step in to begin the path. Bold goals. The really cheap one step at a time and with your success scaffolding in place, let’s just make amazing things happen together this year. I hope you’ve enjoyed this. Found it useful. As I mentioned earlier, there will be a free cheat sheet or downloadable with all the key elements in it. You can access that. We’ll have a link in the show notes to be able to download that. And as always, I hope you’ve enjoyed this part two of our New Beginnings series. Next week in part three, we’re talking about confidence, but in a pretty counterintuitive and maybe contrarian way, especially compared to a lot of stuff you’ve heard about competence out there on the interwebs. But what we know is that the ability to develop, to cultivate competence in different areas of your life can be pretty important, but also pretty elusive. And there’s a lot of misinformation about what does and doesn’t work. So we’ll dive into that in our next episode. Be sure to follow the show so that you do not miss an episode of this powerful series. I’ll see you next time.
[01:03:48] This episode of Good Life Project. was produced by executive producers, Lindsey Fox and me, Jonathan Fields. Editing help By Alejandro Ramirez. Kristoffer Carter crafted our theme music and special thanks to Shelley Adelle Bliss for her research on this episode. 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.