Your Life in One Word? This Could Change Everything | Erin Weed

0:00The dig is a method to unearth that one word that is your entire purpose. And I think of as a frequency. It's not so much of a descriptor word. It's more about a feeling, a way that we carry ourselves through the world. And also the thing that we're here to learn. And also the thing we're here to teach. Usually people don't like their words. Usually when they like it, when it starts to land, it's like, it's almost like it hits a little too close. So that's kind of part of the process. So there's a version of you that you already know is real. You can feel it, you know, the way you want to spend your time, the kinds of problems that let you up, the moments when you look back and think, that was really me at my truest.

0:39And yet, and yet, most of us spend years, sometimes decades, circling that person without being able to live that life, that truest self-life, let alone even name what's at the center of it. Well, what if you could distill that essence, your essence, into a single word that became kind of like the unlock key for your most authentic real self in all parts of life? That's the provocative claim that today's guest is making. And she's backing it up with a process she has developed she calls the dig that she has conducted over many years with over a thousand people to help them figure out their defining word.

1:20and then build everything from their business to careers and relationships around it. And what really surprised me, she shared that. Let me do that. And what really surprised me is also a second statement that she shared with me that 100 % of people who come into this process thinking they already know their word, they're wrong. Every single time in her experience, the real world, the real word, it lives kind of like one layer deeper. Erin Weed is a speaker coach and keynote speaker. She's a creator of something she calls The Dig, which is this provocative kind of purpose excavation method that she has spent 13 years refining with founders and leaders and change makers across every stage of life.

2:09She has spent over a decade as a head speaker coach for TEDx Boulder, helping people distill enormous messages down to the single truest thing that they had to say. And her new book, Just One Word, The Surprisingly Simple Method to Discover Your Purpose and Unleash Your Power, walks you through the same process that she used in this conversation. But this conversation, today's episode, is very, very different. Because in this episode, Aaron ran the full dig on me live from the beginning of my life story to the moment that my word landed towards the end of our conversation. You'll hear how themes surface, how clusters form, and what it feels like when one word that has been kind of running in the background for your entire life finally has a name.

2:59By the end of this hour, you'll have a clear picture of how to do this yourself and you'll know what to look for in your own story. I'm Jonathan Fields and this is Good Life Project. And the place I want to start with Erin is the very beginning of how this method came to be. And if you're wondering what my word is, by the way, stay tuned. We'll jump in there right after this short break.

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4:05Erin Weed: Yeah, but I'm not itching to go downtown and tell a receptionist I'm here to talk about my downtown Some things you'd rather type than say out loud There's no question too embarrassing for Amazon Health AI Chat your symptoms and get virtual care 24-7 Healthcare just got less painful

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4:56Erin Weed: so I am excited to dive into this thing that you call the dig um you and I have been talking about this for years we go way back and I've heard you've created this you have done it with everyone from founders to neighbors to celebrities and it's this process which has been just like profoundly revealing. And it's now sort of like the focus of your new book, Just One Word. So what is The Dig? The Dig is a method to unearth that one word that is your entire purpose. And I think that's incredibly important because in a world that is just so busy and overwhelming and we're always seeking, it's just so nice to be able to land on that one word, which I really think of as a frequency.

5:46It's not so much of a descriptor word. It's more about a feeling, a way that we carry ourselves through the world, and also the thing that we're here to learn, and also the thing we're here to teach.

5:55Erin Weed: So the idea is you distill it down to a single word. We do. And the way we do it is we go backwards in order to go forwards. So we look in your history to figure out your future. Okay. I'm going to ask you a lot more about the process in a moment, but why do we care? Why does it matter that we actually know this? I think purpose is incredibly important. And all the research shows that purpose is just a thing that affects your mental health, that affects your quality of life, that affects everything. And when we know that one word, we can start aligning with our purpose. We can align our actions, we can align our decisions, we can align our messages.

6:30So knowing that one word, I see it as almost like a North Star. It's something to guide us.

6:36Erin Weed: What happens if you don't know it? What happens if you don't know it? What a good question. Well, I think you still can live a great life for starters. I just feel like it's a tool. It's just an extra tool to give us more clarity because I find that when you're more clear that you can feel more confident about the life you live. When you feel more confident, you can start connecting with more people and be more connected to yourself. Okay. So you have been developing this process for how long? 13 years. Yeah. What was the origin of it actually? The origin was actually TEDxBoulder. And previously, I was a professional speaker.

7:13I owned a company called Girls Fight Back, which taught women's safety and self-defense classes at high schools and colleges across the world. They were more like big seminars and assemblies. And after I sold that company, I started working with TEDxBoulder to coach their speakers. And what I found was that people were so overwhelmed by these big messages they had. They had so much data, so many ideas. They were having a really difficult time distilling it all down. And so I would basically just tell people, tell me everything. And before long, I would just be sticky noting, the wall would be completely covered.

7:43And what I was looking for was those one word themes. How does this all tie together? And so once I found these one word themes, I ultimately distilled it down to just one word for the entire message. And once the person got to it, they were like, yes, that's me. And then surprise, surprise, those ended up being viral TED Talks, because they felt so clear and confident in what they were putting out to the world.

8:04Erin Weed: So, I mean, it sounds like it's important not just because it tells us more about who we are and kind of why we're here to a certain extent, but also in terms of communicating that to the world. It sounds like then you can use it as a foundation to really figure out what is the story that I'm telling. And that's whether it's a personal relationship, a job, whatever it is in your life. Yeah. I mean, I love a good navel gaze and just doing the deep personal development work. We both have that in common. And there's something so incredibly cathartic, but also an act of service to also share what we discover with the world.

8:41And so for me, it feels a little incomplete to just find your word. I also want people to like write about it, talk about it, share about it, build a business around it, build a brand around it.

8:49Erin Weed: Let's talk process. How does this actually work? The process is very simple. All you have to do is show up and be you and tell me your whole life story. And how many times has somebody said that? That sounds easy. I mean, I hate to steal your job and everything. It takes like a week. Surprisingly, I found that the average person's life story, when given no prompt to end, is about 90 minutes. People talk for about an hour and a half about their life story. And then at that point, they usually feel about complete. And so in that life story, I look for these one-word themes that keep coming up. When you're a child, when you're a young adult, when you're all the way up to present day.

9:26And as I find these one-word themes, they all come together to be an operating system, 10 words or less. That operating system is exactly how you tick. It is your operating manual for yourself. It's also your core message if you're a person who is a speaker, an author. And so within this operating system, there's one word that's in charge. So if you think of the operating system like a sports team of you, the dig word is the captain. As long as we've known each other, we have never sat down and actually, I don't know my word. Yeah. Well, maybe we should figure it out.

10:01Erin Weed: I'm game. You're down? Yeah. Okay. Well, you know, I never leave the house without sticky notes and a Sharpie. So here we are. Okay. Okay. I'm nervous. So Jonathan Fields is letting me view him. So like, let's just like allow that in for a moment. Well, first of all, thank you. I always like to thank people that sit down in these chairs and are willing to share because that's, I just see it as a very sacred thing, you know, to share your past. and could we begin from the beginning? Yeah, I mean, I'm sweating already, so let's just do it. Well, I'm actually curious, like what is the source of tension for you, like in this moment?

10:41Erin Weed: I don't know where we're going to go. Okay. Do you have a word in mind? Like, do you feel like, I know my word. I feel like I probably do. But I kind of don't want to say it because I want to just see where this takes us. Okay, well, let's check in at the end. I have actually found that a startling 100 % of people who thought their word was one thing were wrong. And I don't need to be right or anything. So it's not about that. But it's just usually someone's dig word is actually on the other side of the word that they actually thought it was. It's like just the one layer deeper. And that is the magic.

11:20Erin Weed: Okay. I'm game. I'll keep it in the back of my mind. Okay. Sound good. And suspend judgment. Yeah. Sounds good. Sounds good. Okay, well, I'm going to be sticky noting. I'm just going to be writing things down. I'm going to be putting up some words that start popping up as we go along. So don't be distracted by them. And maybe even everybody who's listening or watching can be kind of thinking of words, too. Yeah, sounds good. By the way, for anyone who is listening and not watching, if Erin puts up sticky notes or anything like that that she references, is we will take a couple of screenshots and create a little link that we can point you to so you can see whatever it is that we're talking about.

12:01Yeah. And I'll also say them out loud, too. Cool. All right. Great. So we begin at the beginning.

12:06Erin Weed: Okay. What's your birthday and where were you born? So born in New York City in November 1965.

12:17What was your family like? Mom, dad, older sister by two years.

12:24Erin Weed: and to the extent that I can really remember anything from that long ago, just very neighborhood-y. Like what would be the words you'd use to describe it? Close-knit. I feel like we knew our neighbors in the building. Yeah. How do you think people would describe you growing up? Always creative. Let's fast forward a bit. So you grow up. Did you stay in that same place? No, we ended up moving out to Long Island and eventually to Port Washington, which is the town actually that was the real East Egg from the Great Gatsby. It's actually based on real towns. Really? Little peninsula, egg-shaped peninsula on Long Island on the water.

12:58So I grew up basically in a small water town just outside of New York. How did that shift your life?

13:05Erin Weed: I mean, I loved it. I love water, which is one of my biggest sadnesses. I don't have a lot of sadnesses, but living in Colorado, Yeah, not getting that. Not being near large bodies of water, I feel it. The end of my block was a bay, and I would just ride my bike down there and kind of climb up on top of the lifeguard's house and sit. That was my place. What does water do for you? It lets me, just lets my whole body exhale. My mind exhale also. Yeah. It makes everything as okay as it can be. hmm do you find that you tend to hold your inhales a lot and so that it's a good reminder to complete the process i think there were times in my life that i did i don't feel like that's me now yeah does exhale to you mean like release yeah it's like my whole nervous system down regulates okay yeah like my heart rate slows my mind stills my body relaxes What did you want to be when you grew up?

14:08Erin Weed: When I was younger, I wanted to be an architect, actually. And yeah, I just always had this impulse to build stuff. So the idea of building cool structures was something that I thought was really cool. Are there certain kind of structures that you were pulled to? Houses. Yeah. Yeah, just like really cool houses. What about houses versus like big skyscrapers or something? I don't know. There's something kind of cool about, I think, just the scale of a house. And also I think I associated skyscrapers with being sort of industrial monolithic, whereas like in a home you could get really creative and also talk to like one person or two people and really figure out like what can we make that will just make their eyes pop.

15:00and make them walk into it and have the same feeling that I had when I was by water. Yeah. What is that feeling if you had to put it in one word, that eyes pop?

15:09Erin Weed: Delight. Delight. What does that word mean to you? It means that you are surprised in a way that makes your entire system light up. That is a great word. It's a good word. Yeah. Yeah. Like I feel like... Stephanie is sort of like the queen of that. Yes. For those who don't know, Stephanie's my wife. She is. She's amazing. Absolutely amazing. And I'm creating experiences of delight. Hmm. Okay. And we'll be right back after a word from our sponsors. Good Life Project is brought to you by Peloton. So I spend a lot of my day in my head building things, solving problems, creating. And one of the most reliable ways I found to move from stuck to clear is to just move, not think about moving, not plan the perfect workout, just go.

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18:23So keep us going through your timeline here.

18:26Erin Weed: Yeah. So that was me, like teens.

18:36Erin Weed: Probably spent a lot of time exploring art when I was a kid also. I was always doing something with my hands. I was always making stuff with my hands, building stuff, drawing stuff, painting. Taught myself to paint when I was middle school or high school and just painted on a really regular basis. My mom was also a potter when I was a kid. So the basement of our house was a studio, you know, with like three electric wheels, a massive old kick wheel with like a 200-pound concrete flywheel in the corner, kilns off property. She had like a giant, literally walking gas-fired kiln that would take a day to fire.

19:16So I was around that energy all the time. And I grabbed the corner of that studio and just set up my own little mini improvised painting studio. And I would just completely lose myself there. What is your criteria for making, building, creating? What does it have to be? Like do you have, when you set out to make, build, or create, is there something you're striving for?

19:42Erin Weed: honestly I think it's less about being about being being able to say that I've done the thing and it's more about doing the thing so it's the process versus the result 100 you know I get like I mean you know like later in life I've written a whole bunch of books and I'll get the box of books in the mail from the publisher um as you may have gotten recently yourself and I would just let it sit for weeks and Stephanie was like what's wrong with you Like, you just got the book. Like, it's here. It's hardcover. It's like, don't you want to see it? I'm like, yeah, sure. For me, it was a process of creating it.

20:17That was like where the magic was. And it's pretty much always, am I proud of the things that I've created? When I can look back and say, I've been able to come close to closing the gap between taste and expression. Yeah, that makes me proud. But at the end of the day, it's not why I do it. That's just a signal that I'm getting closer to actually doing what I came to do. Okay. So what did you end up going to college for?

20:45Erin Weed: Screwing around, majored in, not attending classes. I was a horrible student. But I was building stuff from the day that I was there. I started a business, sound lighting, mobile disc jockey and we grew it into like one of the business businesses that was really sort of like the main player in that field like at all the parties all the concerts um and building that business and then being out and djing at clubs until three four in the morning was most of my life in college we had massive speaker stacks and equipment in like the house that i lived in and i would just play with it all day long and then go out and get paid to play with it all night long which led me to my senior year where I didn't have enough credits to graduate so I had to take 21 credits a semester oh and begged my way into a one-credit class on earthquakes just to be able to get out but I was building like I was been in that case and like music has been a persistent passion of mine also from the earliest days I played guitar really horribly for most of my life but I just love any kind of good music and you've even made guitars right I have yeah okay yeah All right.

22:03So it feels like a lot of the words that you're talking about, they're very like in the moment. Like, have you ever struggled in your life of just like not being in the moment? Constantly. Anxiety or just future thinking past stuff? Yeah, less anxiety, but constantly future thinking. Okay. I am perpetually living in the future. Not in a bad way. Like, I'm not spinning or fretting about it. I'm not weirdly wired, not so much in a doom and gloom way, but more in a possibility way. So I live there because I'm constantly exploring what I think is going to be coming and seeing how I might be able to play with that, to leverage it, to turn it into something, and to be, to a certain extent, ahead of the curve.

22:52And that has led me a number of times, actually, to be too far ahead of the curve, where I would bring something to life that was a little bit before its time. Can you give me an example? I mean, you could argue actually that the yoga business that we created in New York City was a bit ahead of its time. We were trying to, I launched Yoga Studio literally on the eve of 9-11 in New York City. But the ultimate goal was to build the first ever national roll-up business of a franchise that was National Chain. and probably I came to realize that it wasn't necessarily a business that I wanted to be in it wasn't a business I want to build somebody else did and but they did it differently and it was a couple of years before yoga hit sort of like a level of mass appeal and understanding and was embraced on a level where you didn't really have to convince people that there was something interesting here.

23:53You basically just had to open it where it didn't exist.

23:56Erin Weed: And so it was a different experience for me. I mean, I ended up selling that business seven years later. But yeah, and they're just probably a whole bunch of ideas that I've had over time where it's sort of like, world wasn't quite ready. Okay, but you didn't start off with this yoga studios, right? you had a bit of a life before that can you yeah um yeah so after college um sold the business and then I went back to law school um not necessarily because I had an interest in being a lawyer um but because I had screwed off so much in college that I was just really curious what I was truly intellectually capable of I want to challenge myself and I want to challenge myself in a way where I thought whether I actually practiced or not, it would give me a set of skills that would be relevant to almost anything that I did.

24:58So I sold my car, did all the other

25:01Erin Weed: things, moved into the city, and spent three years in law school. And thankfully, I was the kid who basically showed up and said, like, I'm here with a mission. I wasn't there to just delay my life for three years, which a lot of people do with grad school. I was there because I wanted to actually challenge and see what I was capable of doing. I got really fortunate. I worked really hard. And I graduated with a lot of credibility in my class and ended up then working for the federal government for three years, the SEC. I also working in a massive federal bureaucracy with crazy politics and crazy inefficiency as somebody who likes to just get things done.

25:46Erin Weed: It was maddening. So I left and I went into a mega firm in New York then, switching sides. Incredible firm, all the prestige you could ever want, like the track that everybody would want coming out of law school. Incredible salary for somebody who didn't know what he was doing. And I showed that every day that I was there. and I ended up in the hospital because we were on a deal where basically I barely went home for three weeks and my immune system shut down. A huge infection blossomed in the middle of my body and ate a hole through my intestines from the outside in. So yeah, hit the button on the deal, ignored the pain because that's what we do and then pretty much went straight to the hospital.

26:33Erin Weed: Thankfully, surgery was successful. but it really made me rethink what am I doing with this one wild and precious life as Mary Oliver would say and it was clear that it wasn't going to be that and that sent me slowly back into the world of entrepreneurship and at that point movement and fitness because I've always had a deep connection to just sort of like somatic expression too the connection between mind and body and I wanted to learn that industry I wanted to understand what was working and what wasn't working. So talked my way into a job as a personal trainer, making$12 an hour, which I was okay with because I was getting paid something just to learn an entirely new industry.

27:20After that career, that had to be a wild experience. Yeah, my biggest fear was that one of my clients or colleagues from law review and law school would see me with a client, like stretching them out like you know on the grass in Central Park wearing tights and running shoes the middle of the day and be like oh what a shame like what a fall from grace um but very quickly I ended up building my own business and within a couple years like those very people that whose judgment I was concerned about were the ones who were reaching out to me to find out how I did what I did so what do you think you figured out that other people didn't that everything's

28:04Erin Weed: figureoutable. It's like that there's, I see, like, I'm weirdly wired, and then I wake up in the morning, and I see possibility. You know, like, people see obstacles, people see reasons why not, and I see reasons why. And if, you know, if almost nobody is doing it, and most people assume that's because it's not doable, I look for the one or two who are as proof that it is possible and ask, like, what's my contribution? What's my flavor that's not being done?

28:36And, yeah, I'm weirdly wired for possibility. I don't, yeah. So that wasn't something that you just decided. Positive thinking. No.

28:48Erin Weed: You had to talk yourself into it. No, I mean, I've been around a lot of anxiety my whole life. It's not my default. My default is really looking at uncertainty. I feel very uncomfortable with high-stakes uncertainty. It affects me physically and psychologically, which is why I've studied a lot and built practices to be okay doing it because I know I have to be in that space to do the thing I'm here to do. To live in a place of possibility is also to live in a place of uncertainty. There's no separating the two. and so but but being in that space is really deeply unsettling for most people including me yeah um especially as the stakes rise so i've had to to learn how to be okay there what advice do you give people who are wildly uncomfortable with it

29:47Erin Weed: people tend to have three reactions to it one as soon as they feel it they'll either speed forward to try and get through whatever the moment is as quickly as possible so they can just stop feeling it they'll backpedal to pull themselves out of it enough so that they stop feeling it or they'll um sit in stasis they'll become paralyzed um they just don't know what to do and they're afraid to go back they're afraid to move forward so they just sit and suffer um in my experience that's probably most people and they don't realize that's actually what's happening and to me it's like one approach to buddhism or one of the sort of core teachings is that life is suffering.

30:24And I always struggle with that. The way that my mind has come to interpret it is that life is uncertain. That is the only certain thing in life is that it is and will be perpetually uncertain. And a life where you allocate the vast majority of your waking hours to trying to lock down the future, to trying to make it certain, which is what almost all of us do, that is suffering. It will always be suffering.

30:53Erin Weed: because it is impossible to do or to have. So to me, I've stopped trying to do that. I've stopped trying to make life as certain as possible. And I've started to equip myself with the practices and skills to let me be as okay as I can in the space of uncertainty as stakes rise. That doesn't mean I always have. But that's the shift in approach that I've taken. And again, because the other truth is that, like I said before, uncertainty and possibility, two sides are the same coin. So if I'm here, like if I just want to walk through the world and say yes to possibility, then I have to say yes to uncertainty at the same time.

31:37Like I can't just choose one or the other. So I have to teach myself how to be okay with it. It's big work. Yeah. And it's a work that never ends. It's not like check the box and you're good. It's a practice.

31:53Erin Weed: And it's a stake for eyes and change. And you get brought to your knees again. It's another practice. Take me to podcasting and books and that whole area of your life. So I was running a yoga studio in New York City. We were about six years in. All the highs and lows of running a business in New York with a physical location. We were renting a floor in a building. the six-year lease and a personal guarantee and um yeah signed the day before 9-11 and um yeah it was it was there were high highs i mean the business was doing pretty well but there were low lows and just profound uncertainty and i also had developed a real interest in writing and creating in a different way um i mean it's magical when you walk into a yoga studio and you're the teacher and you know they're 50 bodies mat to mat and it's sweaty and for 90 minutes you create this sort of like ecstatic ecstatic synchronicity um between everybody in like their movement and their breath and you can like bring them down to shavasana on the end and you feel everybody the whole room exhale and you're just like fuck yes it is magical to to know that you've played even like some role in helping make an experience like that happen and i loved it and years of that um war on me years of running the business um at the same time and supporting it especially because married and we had a three-month-old baby when she started that business so it was a lot um so and i had developed an interest in writing and i'd been doing a bunch of writing um on the marketing side of things deep interest in just human psychology what moves people to action how do I motivate a lot of people to actually have that same bent towards possibility and then take action towards it this to me is what marketing is you know um and I just got really curious in like um why people don't take more control over the future of their work lives um that led me to get curious about writing a book about it and I'm really fortunate and And I got an agent from a big publisher.

34:07I got an agent out of the gate who took me cold and then got a deal. And that started my writing career. And once that was begun, I actually, it was right around the time that Tim Ferriss had just come out with a four-hour work week. I literally called him and got him on the phone. I was like, so what, like, how do you do, how do you, like, make books sell now? And he's basically, he's like, back then it was blogs. You know, like, blogs and, like, getting on a plane and talking to people at events. So I just started shifting gears into the online world. And that led me into this whole new world of digital.

34:41It wasn't called being creator back then. This was a blogger, and then it was digital content, and then it was social media. And this was the days when you're at South by Southwest in 2007 or 2008. And Twitter has itty-bitty, and it's crashing every three seconds because the servers can't hold. And that just over time led me to want to devote more time and energy to that world and to write more and to speak more. And that sort of like was my introduction to that whole space. And then, yeah, so sold the book. The first book came out in January of 2009. I sold the studio towards the end of that of 2008.

35:29handed over the keys December 31st walked out the door taught my last class most people did not know it was my last class until I brought them up from Shavasana which is final relaxation for anyone

35:39Erin Weed: who's never taken that class and said hey listen um there's something I need to share with you wow and that was emotional yeah um but it felt right too like there was no looking back I had done what I came to do yeah and that moved me into this world that I've been in for a long time since 2012 we started good life project the podcast 14 years later it's become what it is now which if had you asked me back then i would have laughed out loud like there's no there's no a there's no way it's going to become the size and reach so many people and b there's no conceivable way i would be doing anything for 14 years yeah what do you think the secret sauce is of good life project

36:24I don't know. I think we started at a time where it was not nearly as crowded as it is now. And then if you just never stopped, which we didn't, eventually you just slowly grow and slowly grow, slowly grow. There was no magic hockey stick moment with us. It's 14 years of just never stopping.

36:48Erin Weed: And also continuing to shift and change. Yeah. It's almost like evolving is kind of in the middle of possibility and uncertainty. It seems like they're all tied together somehow. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like holding both the uncertainty and the possibility and like evolving through it. What is some of the best feedback that you've gotten from your listeners over the years? Like something that just hits your heart? You're like, yes, we're doing it. Probably just that something that we put out into the ether made a real difference for them. I mean, there have been so many versions of that, that we created a moment or there was something that was said.

37:25Often it's not something I've said, but just there was a moment that happened or something that a guest has shared that's really awakened something in them. That's made a real difference. Like they're struggling and it's really helped them through something. I think that's when they see themselves in somebody or some moment or some experience. The hands down, the thing that we've done that has been the most impactful is the adult summer camp that we ran for five years, Camp GLP. They came thinking that they were there to learn a whole bunch of things. And what they realized when they got there is they were there to just reconnect with a part of themselves they'd left behind decades ago.

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41:11What's interesting about you is, I mean, there's so many interesting things, but like you are such a logical, deep thinker. You have used the word magic or magical three or four times. and I'm just curious what is your definition of magic? I think there's a connection between magic and possibility. You know it's this belief that it's tied to like the belief that things that people can't understand and say are impossible can actually happen and that there are also just things that we can't often explain but they are.

41:50Erin Weed: Yeah. You know, there's been a tension my whole adult life, at least, where the rational side of my brain is always looking for the explanation for phenomena. The older I get, the less I feel the need to have that explanation. And the more I just accept the fact that this happened, it is. I have no explanation for it. It feels kind of mystical. And that's okay. Yeah. Bring us up to present day. So, hanging out. Boiler, Colorado was not planned. We didn't think we were moving. We just thought we were escaping the pandemic, and here we are six years later.

42:33Still doing the podcast. Built and recently sold one other company along the way that was a deep dive into the intersection between meaning and work. Focusing deeply on really looking back at Good Life Project right now, and reimagining who we are, what we're about, and super excited about a lot of things that we're about to give birth to in the next couple of months and years, connected with this brand and community. Hanging out with friends here who, I have probably more friends here in six years than I had in New York City in 30 years, because it's just a shared value set. and I was also a bit of a weirdo in New York City.

43:23The best kind of weirdo. Yeah, but not necessarily.

43:26Erin Weed: People follow certain prescribed paths very often and here everyone's kind of a weirdo. Facts. So it kind of makes it easier. And for 34 years, my wife has been my best friend. And for 25 years, like we've had the blessing of having like an incredible kid. And there's really nothing more important to me than those relationships. Yeah. They're pretty amazing. Yeah, they are. Not going to bite you on that. What would they both say are your best superpowers and your biggest shadows? probably that i'm relentlessly possibility i'm relentlessly oriented towards possibility i'm a dreamer um i'm not a dreamer who basically just dreams i'm a dreamer also like works really hard to make what i see real um that's the maker impulse in me the builder like for me it's not just about like what's possible you know like that's fun but the real fun is making it real yeah it's not enough to just like see or dream to me that's that's a little bit of like wasting time like i want to actually make it real it's almost like the possibility is the prerequisite for you to be able to make the thing and i think it's a double-edged sword because i see so many things that i can become really distracted and fragment my attention and that becomes super frustrating for me yeah um and also i i may believe things are possible that maybe aren't really all that possible and allocate energy and resources to it and then realize, maybe not.

45:20So I think it's both the plus and the minus. Yeah. Let's imagine that you've lived a long life. You're 150 years old. You're on your deathbed. All of your loved ones are around you. And you have an opportunity to impart your final wisdom What are you going to say to your loved ones? The words that Debbie Millman shared with me like years ago just come right into my head. So these aren't my words. Don't wait. Don't wait. Don't wait to be the person that you know you are or to share the person that you know you are. Don't wait to do the things that you want to do. Don't wait to show up in the way that you know makes you feel whole and seen.

46:10yeah don't wait for permission interesting i love that there's like an urgency in it there is and there's it's it's weird because a number of people brought up at different points in my life the word urgency they're like why are you pushing so hard so fast like why does this

46:26Erin Weed: need to happen now and um i don't know the answer but i think at least for the second half of my life, I think it's probably connected to 9-11. Because I just, like, I saw people go to work that day and not come home. And, like, you know, these weren't people who were doing anything dangerous. These weren't people where you'd be like, oh, well, they chose to do this thing. They're a rock climber. They're this. Or they're risky behavior. These are people living everyday lives doing the thing they do. And they went to work in the morning and didn't come home at night. Made no promises. and it's the other thing that's constantly scrolling in my head.

47:06It's part of the don't wait thing. So I think there's a bit of a self-imposed urgency that I have. Because, God willing, I do have a lot of time left. But I generally don't bank on that. It's a good way to move through the world. Yeah. Especially when you have uncertainty as a theme that comes up in your life.

47:25Erin Weed: Yeah. I mean, you know this viscerally. Yeah. Been through this with a lot of people in your life too. Yeah. The uncertainty and the possibility. life falls somewhere in between all of that. Is there anything else that feels important about your story that might illuminate us in this next part? I was going to say I tend to see around corners, but it's not really that. I think I just tend to see things that sometimes, a little bit often to the left, that maybe get missed because they're not part of the instruction set.

48:02I know. And I've really had to restrain myself. You know, we're working on a smaller surface area here, but these are the words that are coming up. And for listeners, I just want to say some of these words. And part of this DIG process is very intuitive. You know, obviously this is pattern recognition that we're doing here, but it's also like a feeling. And I believe everybody has something called a resonance meter. and if you can almost imagine that it's like a speedometer in your car there's zero there's a hundred and so where does this hit on your resonance meter so maybe as you hear these words you can just kind of drop in as you've heard jonathan's story and it's like oh yeah that feels that feels pretty high in the resonance meter right like 90 so words like create know breathe build delight play present possible curious movement contribute uncertain or certainty exhale, see, magic, moment, conscious.

49:00How does it feel when you see all those words? Yeah, they pretty much all resonate pretty strongly.

49:09Erin Weed: They're connected to me in a lot of different ways. Well, this is your process. I'm here just as a facilitator, but I always like to start off with just talking through what I intuitively was feeling as you were going through your story, because this is when the operating system starts to take shape and actually takes a shape. Some people, it's like a circle or an equation or a rocket ship or a tree, and it has a different feel to it. And you have some very interesting themes around time, time and space, I would say, and just like how you dance with time and space. And even just like one of your very first stories, you're talking about, you're talking about breathing, exhale, which also is presence, right?

49:55So I think those are kind of clustered together. And then you also have this ability to play in what's possible. It always seems to have, for the most part, a pretty positive lens on what's possible there. And then you're a builder. You're actually doing things. You're building. You're contributing. There's like a movement. I think move or movement is critical. It's like, it almost feels like it's like a fulcrum in your system because it's like there's out there and then like what you see is possible. And then there's like the doing to make it so. And you've got to do it. You've got to do it now, right?

50:35You have to, you have to don't wait to, and that goes back to the time themes. This doesn't totally feel like it's in the operating system. That's uncertain. I think that's just like a tension that you hold really well, exhale almost feels like it's like in the middle of your operating system. I'm starting to sense maybe a circle is kind of part of you. Like it feels almost very like amoeba-ish. It's like it feels very active and curious.

50:59Erin Weed: It's funny. It's like one of the, and you know this because this was in my TEDx, that you asked me earlier, is there a common piece of feedback that we tend to get? And actually what I didn't say, but this is actually the single biggest theme in 14 years when we hear from listeners is they listen because there's something about my voice that makes them feel okay, like makes them feel calm. A lot of people actually listen because helps them feel like things are going to be okay. And a solid chunk of people listen because it helps them fall asleep at night, which is real feedback. The ultimate compliment.

51:37Yeah. You put me to sleep. Always felt a little bit weird about that, but like grateful that I could be of service in some way yeah um so the exhale thing is interesting too i think it's i i will be honest i have never seen that word pop up in a dig before which is always very exciting for me because i've done over a thousand of these but like there's there's like a movement to it there's an in and out up and down back and forth an exchange um a constant evolution to it which is really fun um and i think what's also interesting about that just even with your yoga studio and i'm being attracted to this It's just like, it's like bringing people back to the present to breathe.

52:17Like you referred to as like a fuck yeah kind of moment, right? It's like that final sarasana and it's like that magical moment that happens when you bring people here. And I think this is just part of it because you're such a builder. You're such a maker. You're such a contributor. You're such a giver. um i also i loved what you said about magic and i i loved how you talked about magic as like um like an from an actual magician perspective of like all the work that goes into making something magical what you and stephanie do you know at the camp and everything so much work like as your friend i just knew like how hard you guys were working and just like but those people show up It just feels like magic, right?

53:03And so there's the doing that creates that. So there's something to that. And I think magic kind of drives you. I also loved when you said the word delight. I don't know. Those almost feel a little similar. Sometimes in operating systems, we can kind of like swallow up one word with another. And magical and delight almost feels a little similar. I don't know. Does it feel different for you?

53:26Erin Weed: I don't know if they feel different, actually. I think magic is sort of like a part of the feeling of delight. This is just magical. For those listening and wondering what the sounds are going on right now, Erin's moving a whole bunch of Post-it notes around the background. Again, we'll take some screenshots of this, and we'll show you what's actually going on and just drop it into the show notes in the link. And the fun thing about this is there's no right or wrong answer. It's like this is only determined by you, but it's an evolution, and we feel into it. And we're able to kind of drop into these one word frequencies and just see how they play out.

54:02As you're looking at these words, is there one word that's like really tapping on your shoulder? It's just being like, hey, I'm super, super important. Look at me.

54:10Erin Weed: Exhale, build, possible. It's more possibility than possible. I guess it's kind of the same thing.

54:19Erin Weed: Yeah, I love making something from nothing. you know you have to live in place of possibility in order to do that but also there is something around

54:34creating this experience where

54:40you just let people breathe again including me I think that's part of my aspiration you know is to try and work more of that in along the way. Because I can sometimes move at a pace that's pretty breathless. Yeah. What really pisses you off? Manufactured drama. We all have enough organic drama in our lives. When I see or am put in a mode where there's drama that's just clearly manufactured for the purpose of drama, I have no interest in that. I think disrespect. It's not even like me being disrespected. I've kind of learned how to deal with that. I love this phrase, moral beauty, which is when we see an act being done, when we witness something being done that is just so beautiful, so graceful, so kind, so generous.

55:43it lands as like this experience of moral beauty that moves us so deeply. And I think like we can also witness immoral disrespect and that lands in the exact opposite way. I just like I truly believe that every human being has value simply because of the fact of their birth. Let's go back to that manufactured drama thing for the moment. I always ask the question about what makes people mad because within that is a violation. You are violated by something and it's over the actual situation. So what about manufactured drama is a violation to who you are and what you believe?

56:22Erin Weed: There's probably a couple of things. One, it stops me from being able to exhale.

56:29Two, it puts roadblocks in front of my ability to create the things that I want to create because then I have to deal with a situation that's been fabricated rather than actually deal with the very real challenges of making something, which will often include drama, but it's not drama that exists simply for the purpose of drama. And also because it disaffects my nervous system.

56:56Erin Weed: It's uncomfortable. Well, what I'm seeing is like, it almost feels like you have kind of core heartbeat to your operating system. The words movement, present, exhale, and moment, They just all seem to be dancing together. And then it's almost like you have three clusters that are moving around it. You have play and possible, magic and delight, create and build. And I don't know, it almost reminds me of like the Jetsons, you know, cruising around on their little ships. But they're around a nucleus of some sort. And how does that land on you when I say that? Yeah, that feels pretty real. Yeah. It feels pretty real.

57:33Erin Weed: I think there is this core of just deep grounding, and maybe that's what, again, people have resonated with over many, many, many years. That's probably part of what people resonated with when I taught yoga, like in a classroom for seven years.

57:51Erin Weed: I'm not, even as a speaker, I'm not like when I do keynotes, I'm not a rah-rah, like super up and down, bouncing all over the stage motivational speaker. I'm a storyteller. yeah like i i like to cast a spell bring people into it um and and not break the spell until the moment is is done um and that's getting them into the moment you know even in when we were doing you know for the first six years eight years of the podcast we had our own studio in new york and people would come in and we close the door and just like we're doing now and then it wasn't unusual for people to open the door after and walk out and be like what just happened there yeah um and i loved being able to like be a part of that to help co-create experiences like that and then to be able to actually have you know like listeners and viewers like at scale around the world be able to be a piece of that too i know you identify as a maker from your sparkotype i do it's almost like you're a moment maker yeah that's part of it so the top of my website for years has said I make things that move people those can be moments an event, a keynote talk a piece of media a class, a conversation it can also be physical things, it can be objects you know so i think for stephanie it's actually a lot more moments um for me i enjoy those but also as as an introvert um me being present or centered in those moments can also be uncomfortable yeah because i don't need to be centered i don't need to have credit for it um i would be thrilled to be invisible and have the work speak for itself like i don't need the ego to like get credit for it yeah that's so true is there a word missing on here do you feel like we really love love what's your definition of love i don't know like asking a fish to define water i know it just is is the expression of this operating system like how you love people interesting question um possibility and play yes magic and delight yes create and build yes movement being present appreciating the moment collectively exhaling yes if i had a dry erase board here i would probably just take a marker and just put a big heart around this whole thing to like encapsulate it yeah you know i'm taking woodblock um printing classes right now and um the two designs that i've actually made one is a spray can that says love on it and the other is like a reinterpretation of this or like legendary robert indiana sort of like four square with um what says love in it um it's a recurring theme okay okay if you had to um if you had to like pick a captain of your sports team assuming this all this looks correct for you this is your operating system so you're welcome to move things or push back on anything like does this feel true on the resonance meter does it score high to the collection of all these words yeah just how they dance together how they're grouped what they are i think so yeah okay which one um would you say is the captain of your uh

1:01:38and usually one of the reasons i ask that question of what makes you really mad is that i've found recently that usually like those violations is where our it's like the opposite yeah it's just the thing that gets like that reaction right and you know a lot of your violations were around wasted time um slow processes when you were talking about working

1:02:00Erin Weed: it with the government. Using resources, time, and energy for something other than... Right. Just being distracted, your energy going places that maybe isn't the most efficient. I don't know. Possibility might be. Is there anything on the other side of possibility?

1:02:24Erin Weed: Impossibility? No. That's true. because you said earlier like possibility itself is not the thing it's it's about making the thing that you see possible so it almost felt like when you said that that it's kind of like your beacon for what you create and i mean i'm again being pulled to these three little clusters on the outside of like being like what you do well i mean if so if i look at all of this and I ask myself where do I feel most myself it would be create and build you know like when I'm making things um I drop into a state of possibility and play when I'm making things um there's a sense of magic to it especially when like I start to see it taking the form and shape of what I see in my mind which leads to delight when I'm making things everything in me exhales I just completely get lost in a state of flow i'm deeply present in the moment um and i feel i mean movement not in terms of physical movement but in terms of like from i've started in one place and there's a momentum that's building as i move towards like into deeper into a process of creation okay that's really cool with moment and momentum like it's almost like moment is the root of that i didn't really think about that at all there's a lot of movement in the moment well i i mean ultimately this this is your process but like i think moment could be your word i think based on hearing your story it just feels like this is what you're in service to whether you're using that moment to love to connect to create to build to serve to contribute to to experience magic it just feels like you you want to just own this time that we all have however long that might be i'm gonna sit with it you should yeah but it's a beautiful like the whole thing is beautiful and there's no wrong answer but i think what's important about knowing our words and by the way usually people don't like their words usually when they like it when it starts to land it's like it's almost like it hits a little too close yeah so that's kind of part of the process yeah so you want to know what i came into it thinking it would be what um make or create yeah or build like yeah like those two so they're on there and they're central to it but i wonder if like part of that is like i'm what i'm thinking is like how does that tie back to me both not just creating moment a moment for others but but also me being able to inhabit like moments myself, which has always been my work because I live so much in the future.

1:05:14So, and a lot of my work has been like bringing myself back into the moment and not just forsaking it in terms of what I see as possible in the future. Yeah. Well, even as you're talking about why you make things, it's for the process. It's for the moments that go into making them.

1:05:31Erin Weed: Right. No doubt. Yeah. That's really beautiful. Wow. Okay, I'm complete now. Now you know your life purpose. Congratulations. I don't have to do any more growth, nothing. So what do I do with this? Yeah. Like if somebody's following along, like they grab your book and they're going to, like, you basically walk people through, like, a self-guided version of this process in the books. Like, say somebody does this and like, wow, this kind of rocked my world. But like, now what do we do with this? Yeah, well, with the people I work with as a coach is just turning this into a message, because right here is your core message.

1:06:08And this could be a speech, this could be your next book. And by the way, it probably will be because I've noticed that like when people land on their word, it starts to show up in your life everywhere. It's so fun. But for those of you who aren't maybe into doing messages or sharing, it's really all about just knowing yourself and aligning with it. You could use the word moment to make decisions with. How do I feel about something in the moment? And in the book, I give a bunch of tools for almost like double checking yourself when you're about to make a decision to be like, okay, but would my dig word be on board with this?

1:06:42You know, is this a, I try to stay away from black and white thinking with the grounding questions I call them, but like, what does this moment feel like? You know, if I can imagine my path going down this way, what does the moment feel like? And then you can answer and decide from that place. I also feel like it's a great superpower when you know how to dig and you can dig other people and you know the people in your space and they have their word. like my partner's uh word is serve i know if if they're having a bad day it's probably because

1:07:16Erin Weed: they're not in a place of service and knowing them like yeah that makes it's like boom light bulb yeah it's just like now i know you know why are they upset why are they depressed why are they it's like how can we move barriers to be able to like show up in that way yeah and what's going to make them happy too and so um so it's really fun when you know other people's words because then I also like, I just fall in love with everybody I dig because I'm just like, yeah, it's your word. So it's so interesting. Like you could do this with like a partner or family. We had like similar thing with the sparkotypes.

1:07:47Like people would do it. Like we get all these messages saying people would do it like, you know, with a partner or something like that. And like, it would just start a conversation or create a level of understanding that allowed you to just go deeper. And it's like, same thing. It's like, you know, your person's word. And then like, and this whole, like the bigger sort of like operating system. Right. Right. And it just gives you insight into how to support them, how to relate to them. When you see them struggling, maybe what might you look for that's underneath it, even if they can't put words to it.

1:08:16It really is never ending. You just can keep pulling on the strings.

1:08:21Erin Weed: This has been awesome. Thank you so much. Thank you for trusting me with this. Thanks for trusting me. I'm going to ask you the question that I ask everybody at the end of all these conversations in this container of Good Life Project. If I offer up the phrase to live a good life, what comes up? To live a good life is to be true to oneself and to never stop seeking what that is. Thank you. So the thing I'm sitting with from this conversation is that moment when Erin kind of looked at all the post-it notes on the wall and started pointing to Clustered. I had not really consciously noticed because the word she landed on was not the word I came in expecting.

1:09:02I thought it would be something about making or building. It's related. And those things are very real. They're in there, but they orbit something deeper. And that's kind of the whole point of the dig. Three things that I thought would be interesting to pull out from this. First, the operating system idea that your life story doesn't just produce a single word. It actually produces this kind of like a constellation of about 10 with one word at the center that functions like the captain of all of the others. And together they form this operating system. I found that really useful to see it all just kind of teased out together.

1:09:40Second is this violation signal that she talked about. Erin's insight that whatever makes you genuinely angry or upset is almost always pointing towards your core word because the violation is on the other side of your deepest value. And the third, this idea that a hundred percent of people generally come into this process, if they think they know their word, they're almost always wrong. Every person who thinks they already know their word, it just doesn't work out that way, which means the real word is always a layer deeper than wherever you start looking. If there's one thing that you can do this week, sit with this question.

1:10:17What's the word that keeps showing up across the chapters of your life? Not the word you want it to be, the word that's actually there. And hey, before you leave next week, we're sitting down with Dr. Lucy Hone to talk about something most of us are carrying without ever calling it what it is. This invisible grief that comes without a funeral, just the losses that often do not count as real loss in our culture, but may be driving more of our suffering than we know. Lucy is a leading resilience researcher. Her TED Talk on resilience has been viewed more than 9 million times. And she's also someone who has lived through the kind of loss that changes everything.

1:10:55You do not want to miss this one. Be sure to follow Good Life Project wherever you get your podcasts so you don't miss any upcoming episodes. And do me a favor also, a seven second favor. Share this episode with just one person who you think maybe is circling are looking for their own word right now, their own sort of like center. This episode of Good Life Project was produced by executive producers Lindsay Fox and me, Jonathan Fields. Editing help by Troy Young, Chris Carter crafted our theme music. And of course, if you have not already, follow us wherever you get your podcasts so you never miss a conversation.

1:11:31Until next time, I'm Jonathan Fields signing off for Good Life Project.

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1:14:52And instead of spiraling, I just ordered everything I needed and got it that day. Snacks, drinks, even like random hosting things I absolutely didn't need. but emotionally I did. And suddenly it went from maybe next time to yes, tonight. That's what I love. Prime's same-day delivery makes it so you can say yes before the moment slips away. Because let's be real, the only thing worse than a bad plan is a plan you never make happen. Same-day delivery, it's on Prime. Available in select areas, terms apply. So if you're trying to be more spontaneous or just less chaotic, go to amazon.com slash prime to find millions of items delivered fast.