Core Idea: The Deep Life

00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)

00:00:02.580 | This morning, I wanna put some energy

00:00:07.120 | into doing yet another core idea video.

00:00:12.120 | Again, we've been racking these up,

00:00:15.320 | 10 to 15 minute videos where I'm touching on the big ideas

00:00:18.920 | I come back to again and again.

00:00:20.080 | So you have something to reference,

00:00:21.760 | to save and to share when you're interested in these ideas.

00:00:24.920 | So I wanted to do another one of those today.

00:00:28.680 | This is a core idea on a topic that actually

00:00:32.600 | was almost born on this podcast.

00:00:34.440 | It was born as roughly the same time as this podcast,

00:00:37.120 | and that is the deep life.

00:00:39.680 | So let's go deep about what we mean

00:00:43.800 | when we talk about the deep life.

00:00:46.020 | Now, I wanna start with the background.

00:00:49.840 | Where did this come from, this terminology come from?

00:00:53.360 | It's all about the beginning of the pandemic.

00:00:55.800 | It's all about spring of 2020.

00:01:00.140 | This is when I began first on my email newsletter,

00:01:04.720 | and then soon after on this podcast,

00:01:06.700 | coining the term, the deep life and talking about it.

00:01:11.700 | Now, what was it about that period

00:01:13.280 | that made this general type of topic really relevant?

00:01:15.440 | There's three things that went on.

00:01:17.680 | So when the pandemic hit,

00:01:19.500 | and there was those stay at home orders,

00:01:21.960 | there was definite disruption in people's routines,

00:01:24.080 | which is important when you're in a routine,

00:01:25.760 | when you're used to going from this to this to this,

00:01:27.600 | I'm in this job, I wanna get this promotion,

00:01:29.800 | where do we wanna move?

00:01:31.280 | What's my next vacation gonna be?

00:01:32.640 | It's very difficult to get some distance

00:01:34.640 | for critical self-reflection

00:01:36.360 | when you're just rolling all systems go.

00:01:39.240 | So a lot of people, myself included,

00:01:42.040 | got interested in notions like the deep life

00:01:43.920 | when those routines were disrupted.

00:01:46.400 | I think the early pandemic also did a good job

00:01:49.160 | for a lot of people of highlighting both the negative

00:01:51.840 | and the potential positive of their lives.

00:01:55.680 | It helped highlight, well, what is it that I don't really

00:01:58.560 | like, but I've been avoiding?

00:02:00.960 | I don't really like this condo I live in,

00:02:03.600 | in this sort of annoying neighborhood in this city,

00:02:06.600 | and when I'm forced to have to spend all my time here.

00:02:10.120 | And I didn't have the normal escapes of,

00:02:12.160 | let me go to the movies and a bar and weekend trips.

00:02:15.040 | It really made it clear, I don't really like where I live.

00:02:17.360 | Or having to spend all this time on Zoom

00:02:19.680 | with your colleagues, you're realizing,

00:02:21.360 | there's excitement about commuting

00:02:23.020 | into my nice building downtown,

00:02:24.880 | but I don't really like these people.

00:02:26.360 | So there's negatives that were highlighted

00:02:28.080 | by the disruption of the pandemic.

00:02:29.280 | There was also positives.

00:02:31.240 | Being home a lot, being around your family more,

00:02:33.240 | being outside more, getting separation

00:02:36.120 | from having to drive into your office.

00:02:37.560 | So people also saw positives they weren't used to before.

00:02:40.720 | And I think most importantly, things got very disrupted,

00:02:44.920 | especially in the coastal places where we had mitigations

00:02:48.000 | that lasted for a very long time.

00:02:49.900 | Schools were closed,

00:02:51.440 | jobs had completely different configurations,

00:02:53.660 | people moved to completely different locations temporarily.

00:02:56.800 | Like, let me go live with my parents in Colorado

00:02:59.520 | instead of being in suburban DC.

00:03:02.000 | And it showed a lot of people

00:03:03.320 | that actually really different stuff is possible.

00:03:06.540 | You can do something different than what you have been doing

00:03:08.500 | and it's not gonna fall apart.

00:03:10.360 | It's not as risky or scary as you once thought.

00:03:12.120 | So we had these forces come together

00:03:13.720 | and people were stepping back and saying,

00:03:15.120 | I don't know, I wanna rethink my life.

00:03:16.760 | I don't know that I wanna just get back

00:03:19.200 | to what I was doing before as quickly as possible,

00:03:21.200 | and let's just keep rolling.

00:03:22.480 | So that was the context in which we began talking

00:03:24.720 | about the deep life.

00:03:26.740 | Now, the issue was, once we started talking about it,

00:03:30.200 | is that this is a timeless topic and one that is universal.

00:03:35.200 | Many, many people have these reflections

00:03:37.960 | on what a life well-lived is like

00:03:39.920 | and what they want out of their life.

00:03:40.880 | It's one of the oldest, most cliched topics that we have.

00:03:43.880 | But it's a difficult topic

00:03:46.240 | to actually get good pragmatic advice on.

00:03:48.920 | This is what we quickly realized

00:03:50.560 | as we scanned the landscape of pragmatic

00:03:53.400 | or aspirational literature on this topic,

00:03:55.160 | is that there's three things you would come across.

00:03:57.240 | One, purely inspirational information.

00:04:00.240 | Like, here is a story of a person who did something

00:04:03.120 | and just something about what they did hits me like,

00:04:04.960 | ah, that's cool, I wanna do that.

00:04:06.600 | You read Will Finnegan's "Barbarian Days",

00:04:10.680 | you're like, man, there's just something

00:04:12.200 | about him roaming the world, surfing,

00:04:15.120 | and just something about that feels interesting and resonant.

00:04:17.480 | We don't know what it is, it's just generic inspiration.

00:04:20.840 | The other type of literature that was common

00:04:22.400 | addressing this topic would be hyper-focused

00:04:24.840 | on one aspect of your life.

00:04:27.120 | So we've all seen this,

00:04:28.040 | you hyper-focus in on one aspect of your life.

00:04:30.680 | It's gonna be self-acceptance,

00:04:34.480 | or it's gonna be intense fitness health routine,

00:04:38.360 | or it's gonna be a job,

00:04:40.960 | I'm gonna get out of this job and run a company

00:04:42.960 | and I want advice specifically about doing it.

00:04:44.880 | So there's a lot of very specific advice,

00:04:46.220 | but it just shoots like a laser beam on just one topic.

00:04:49.960 | Or we get that genre of book where you have someone

00:04:54.960 | who says, okay, I'm gonna try to improve my life

00:04:57.400 | and write about it.

00:04:58.360 | And it's self-deprecating, right?

00:05:02.160 | And typically in the genre of books,

00:05:03.760 | the person has a child or a wife

00:05:07.380 | that's rolling their eyes at his efforts

00:05:09.400 | and is kind of bumbling.

00:05:10.440 | And in the end, he learned some good lessons

00:05:12.360 | and makes some small changes,

00:05:13.400 | but it's basically back to a same normal life

00:05:15.240 | he had before.

00:05:16.080 | So there's that genre too,

00:05:17.000 | like I'm gonna go out there and change my life

00:05:19.000 | and they try all these things,

00:05:20.160 | it's kind of kooky and they meet kooky characters

00:05:22.280 | and the main character's wife rolls their eyes

00:05:25.520 | at the bumbling guy.

00:05:26.400 | And in the end, they're like, well, I have a better,

00:05:28.320 | in the end, I'm now doing some meditation and I'm a vegan.

00:05:32.480 | It's like some changes have been made,

00:05:33.960 | but they're basically back to where they were before

00:05:35.920 | because you don't wanna stick your head out too much

00:05:37.560 | 'cause people might push back.

00:05:39.240 | So we didn't have a lot to draw on.

00:05:42.440 | And so the thought I had at this point early in the pandemic

00:05:46.280 | is let's get specific.

00:05:48.720 | Let's give this aspiration a name,

00:05:50.640 | let's give it a definition,

00:05:51.900 | let's come up with specific steps you can do

00:05:54.000 | to try to achieve it.

00:05:55.400 | Let's be super specific.

00:05:56.600 | Let's not just be vaguely inspirational.

00:05:58.560 | Let's not just hyper-focus on one aspect of your life

00:06:00.880 | and let's not do this sort of weak sauce,

00:06:02.480 | self-deprecating memoir type thing.

00:06:04.320 | Let's just get after it.

00:06:05.400 | Now, of course, this is quixotic.

00:06:06.880 | There's nothing more complex and ambiguous

00:06:09.040 | in trying to build a life of meeting philosophers

00:06:11.420 | and theology have tried to tackle this for centuries.

00:06:13.640 | So of course, what we're going to do

00:06:16.700 | is not gonna be comprehensive,

00:06:18.160 | but I have found that's often useful

00:06:20.880 | to put a stake in the ground.

00:06:22.300 | Let's put a stake in the ground and get specific,

00:06:23.920 | something you can go towards,

00:06:25.960 | see what works, see what doesn't,

00:06:27.440 | and let that be a starting point

00:06:28.900 | for trying to get where you wanna go.

00:06:31.000 | Specificity is useful even when it's not comprehensive.

00:06:35.440 | That is one of the big guiding lights of my advice.

00:06:37.900 | So we introduced this term, the deep life.

00:06:40.400 | Let's give a name to this generic aspiration

00:06:43.960 | a lot of people felt,

00:06:44.880 | especially during those early months of the pandemic.

00:06:48.240 | Then we gave it a definition.

00:06:49.280 | So what do we mean by the deep life?

00:06:51.200 | How about this for a definition?

00:06:53.000 | It is a life lived in radical alignment with your values.

00:06:58.000 | Let's be specific about it.

00:07:01.920 | Radical alignment with your values.

00:07:03.800 | All of the parts of this definition matter.

00:07:06.920 | So alignment with your values

00:07:09.960 | means you're focusing on things

00:07:11.220 | that are very important to you

00:07:12.600 | and not wasting too much time on things that aren't.

00:07:15.200 | Radical means in at least some of these areas,

00:07:18.720 | you have made really big head-turning shifts

00:07:22.960 | or transformation in your life to pursue those values.

00:07:24.860 | So not just small, but big.

00:07:26.280 | You have to have both parts of those

00:07:28.240 | if you wanna capture that thing

00:07:29.620 | that we intuitively are attracted to,

00:07:31.360 | that intuitive notion of the deep life

00:07:32.880 | that we know it when we see it.

00:07:34.440 | If you just do the alignment with the values part

00:07:39.340 | without the radical, what do you end up with?

00:07:41.820 | Nothing bad, but also nothing phenomenal.

00:07:44.160 | What you end up with is,

00:07:45.000 | you know, hey, I tuned up parts of my life.

00:07:47.460 | It's like the character at the end

00:07:49.440 | of those sort of weak sauce nonfiction memoirs.

00:07:52.200 | You have like slightly better health habits

00:07:54.100 | and you've joined a reading group

00:07:56.320 | and you're trying to walk more regularly and you meditate.

00:07:59.720 | And it's good, right?

00:08:00.560 | Like you've added things in your life

00:08:03.120 | to be more in alignment with your values.

00:08:05.000 | If you're not doing that as bad,

00:08:06.240 | it's better than doing nothing.

00:08:08.520 | But you're not going to watch a documentary

00:08:10.800 | about someone who has taken up a meditation habit

00:08:13.240 | and tries to walk more and be like,

00:08:14.480 | man, that's what I want.

00:08:16.720 | That guy's got it all figured out, right?

00:08:18.400 | It's not touching you deep.

00:08:20.240 | The radical piece is important too,

00:08:22.060 | because if you just do the radical

00:08:23.960 | without thinking about all the things that are important

00:08:27.840 | to you and aligning with things that are important to you,

00:08:29.780 | you get this burst of satisfaction

00:08:33.120 | because just making disruptive changes

00:08:35.200 | is exciting in itself and then it dies off.

00:08:38.880 | Years ago, I read this book that had a great example of that.

00:08:42.040 | It was a book that was called "Made by Hand."

00:08:45.920 | The author was Mark Frohenfelder.

00:08:48.680 | Now, Mark Frohenfelder went on to become the editor

00:08:51.680 | or co-editor of "Make" magazine.

00:08:54.380 | So he became a big player in the DIY makerspace movement.

00:08:59.380 | But he wrote this memoir.

00:09:00.900 | And I remember reading it years ago.

00:09:02.120 | And for some reason,

00:09:02.960 | I remember being at San Francisco in the airport.

00:09:05.400 | So I don't know what trip this was.

00:09:07.520 | But they opened that book with him and his wife,

00:09:09.760 | and they had some young kids at the time,

00:09:11.640 | doing radical without the alignment of values.

00:09:14.160 | Like, we just need to do something different, right?

00:09:15.840 | We feel this urge to live a deep life.

00:09:17.720 | And what they did was they moved to an island

00:09:19.980 | in the South Pacific, just in the middle of nowhere.

00:09:23.600 | I think it was like Rotonga or somewhere like this.

00:09:26.460 | 'Cause they're like, let's just be bold

00:09:29.040 | and do something completely new.

00:09:31.440 | It was miserable.

00:09:33.040 | Like, it turns out you can't school your kids.

00:09:36.120 | There's all sorts of insects and things

00:09:38.760 | that are stinging you.

00:09:39.600 | There's very bad medical care.

00:09:41.080 | And they felt really weird and guilty

00:09:42.520 | about being there year round

00:09:43.880 | because it's an impoverished place.

00:09:45.320 | And why were you guys coming here from San Francisco?

00:09:48.200 | And they just hated it.

00:09:49.500 | And they moved back.

00:09:51.560 | That was a radical change

00:09:53.080 | that wasn't built upon a very clear understanding

00:09:55.480 | of promoting things that are very valuable to you.

00:09:59.120 | So you gotta have both the radical

00:10:00.540 | and the alignment with values.

00:10:02.240 | You do those two things,

00:10:04.360 | together you get something like the deep life.

00:10:06.660 | So let me give a concrete case study.

00:10:08.920 | This is someone I know.

00:10:10.580 | I didn't ask him if I could use them as an example.

00:10:12.960 | So I'm gonna try to be a little bit vague about details.

00:10:15.640 | And I'm actually changing a few of the details here.

00:10:18.580 | But this is roughly a true story,

00:10:20.500 | someone I actually know.

00:10:22.280 | All right, so I have a friend, longtime friends,

00:10:25.220 | who until recently,

00:10:27.600 | they were living in suburban DC out in Virginia,

00:10:31.520 | sort of suburbs of DC outside of the Beltway, right?

00:10:34.600 | So kind of relatively far out suburbs.

00:10:38.500 | Now, it's a husband and wife with two kids,

00:10:41.400 | and they had a third kid around this time.

00:10:43.760 | He did video production for hire

00:10:46.600 | and some of his own projects,

00:10:48.480 | and would do some freelance copywriting.

00:10:51.040 | He's a sort of overly educated guy, good writer,

00:10:53.400 | would do freelance copywriting

00:10:54.600 | for corporate public relations firms.

00:10:58.060 | So writing press releases and stuff like that.

00:11:00.440 | And then she had a wellness business online,

00:11:05.280 | a pretty time consuming.

00:11:06.280 | This wasn't like goop,

00:11:07.400 | like it wasn't gonna be a hundred million dollar whatever,

00:11:10.560 | but it brought in good money,

00:11:11.960 | but it was also complicated and time consuming.

00:11:13.680 | And they lived in the suburb out in Virginia

00:11:16.400 | where it was like very expensive.

00:11:18.080 | They did not particularly like their neighbors,

00:11:21.000 | they didn't mind them,

00:11:22.980 | but these like creative type people,

00:11:25.360 | and the neighbors were all just

00:11:26.400 | dual income government employees

00:11:27.780 | who were living in that neighborhood

00:11:28.820 | because it clipped like a good school district.

00:11:31.520 | And just striving,

00:11:32.360 | like we just want our kids to like get good grades.

00:11:34.040 | And just a commuter suburb,

00:11:36.720 | everyone's commuting in and out.

00:11:38.280 | It wasn't that inspiring.

00:11:40.520 | He had a WeWork to do his film production.

00:11:43.440 | All you could afford was like a WeWork space

00:11:45.360 | that was shared and you'd kind of drive

00:11:46.760 | into the city to do it.

00:11:47.600 | Like this was their situation.

00:11:49.880 | And they were living in the suburb

00:11:50.960 | because one of their big interests

00:11:52.940 | was alternative education,

00:11:55.280 | and there was a particular alternative school

00:11:57.200 | that was kind of around there.

00:11:58.840 | So they could send their daughter there

00:12:00.240 | and he needed to be near a city.

00:12:02.240 | And so they were kind of trying to figure this all out.

00:12:04.400 | Okay, pandemic hits, third kid comes along,

00:12:07.160 | they're like, all right, enough of this.

00:12:08.320 | We want the deep life.

00:12:09.160 | Like if not now, when?

00:12:11.600 | And here's what they did.

00:12:13.620 | They moved to a plot of land,

00:12:17.520 | it was 20 plus acres,

00:12:19.720 | near the James River outside of Richmond, Virginia.

00:12:23.640 | So they bought land, has fields, forest, and riverfront.

00:12:28.640 | Not nice land, right?

00:12:30.800 | This is not nice mansions or giant second homes,

00:12:34.520 | but there's a modest home there,

00:12:36.440 | fields, forest on the river,

00:12:38.680 | but also close to Richmond, 20 minute drive.

00:12:41.000 | Okay, so they go out there, they buy that land.

00:12:43.360 | It's cheap relative to anything in DC.

00:12:47.160 | It's cheaper than the starting house

00:12:48.860 | they could buy anywhere in DC,

00:12:49.940 | which they were also looking at.

00:12:50.900 | So this is not, oh, we have a lot of money.

00:12:52.480 | This is actually much cheaper to buy land

00:12:54.080 | outside of Virginia than to buy a house in the DC area.

00:12:57.640 | They just had their third kid.

00:12:59.240 | He stopped doing the copywriting.

00:13:00.920 | She put that company on hold

00:13:03.400 | because it was causing a lot of headaches.

00:13:05.560 | They're gonna put their energy into their kids.

00:13:06.920 | They're gonna homeschool their kids.

00:13:08.400 | 'Cause again, they're really interested

00:13:09.680 | in alternative education.

00:13:10.760 | And they built this whole curriculum surrounding their land.

00:13:13.760 | And a lot of their kids' experience

00:13:15.200 | was gonna be helping to clear this land

00:13:17.120 | and they're building these sort of cool

00:13:19.960 | yurt style buildings on the land.

00:13:22.480 | And she got very involved

00:13:24.600 | in starting up a homeschooling cooperative.

00:13:26.280 | So there's these other families

00:13:27.400 | that the kids would be doing things with.

00:13:30.120 | And so they were going all in

00:13:31.800 | on being able to build that lifestyle.

00:13:33.600 | And he rented, because everything's cheap in Richmond

00:13:36.440 | compared to DC, this really nice office space

00:13:39.000 | in downtown Richmond in the arts district.

00:13:42.040 | It has like a balcony.

00:13:43.100 | And he brought someone with him from DC.

00:13:44.760 | And now he sort of can work

00:13:47.000 | in this new up and coming district of the city.

00:13:49.080 | And he does his video production

00:13:50.400 | and they live much cheaper here in Richmond.

00:13:52.160 | So they can kind of afford to not bring as much money.

00:13:54.400 | And they built this whole different life.

00:13:55.800 | That's very intentional and it's deep.

00:13:57.540 | There's a radical component to it.

00:13:58.960 | They're living in the woods on land

00:14:01.360 | and homeschooling their kids.

00:14:03.240 | But it's all coming from alignment with things

00:14:05.680 | that are really important to them.

00:14:06.880 | Slowing down, alternative education,

00:14:09.000 | being around their family,

00:14:10.640 | outside of like normal rat race, suburban type of living.

00:14:13.160 | But also connection to arts and the cities and creativity,

00:14:16.120 | which he has with what he's doing.

00:14:18.900 | In the arts district, they shifted towards a deep life.

00:14:21.520 | That is that definition in action.

00:14:24.180 | So how do you do this yourself?

00:14:26.640 | Well, over the months,

00:14:27.720 | we worked out some specific strategies you could try.

00:14:31.400 | And most of the strategies that I talk about

00:14:33.280 | with the deep life start with,

00:14:35.840 | identify the different areas of your life

00:14:39.240 | that are important to you.

00:14:40.560 | The deep life does not work

00:14:44.440 | if you neglect parts of your own existence

00:14:47.800 | that are important.

00:14:48.640 | You get too myopic.

00:14:49.700 | It's all about my work.

00:14:52.380 | It's all about my religion.

00:14:54.280 | It's all about my family.

00:14:56.980 | You get too myopic, it doesn't work.

00:14:58.820 | So you have to identify,

00:14:59.660 | let's start with just listing out

00:15:00.900 | what the different areas are.

00:15:02.460 | For whatever reason,

00:15:04.320 | when we began talking about this on the podcast,

00:15:06.660 | we began to use the terminology buckets

00:15:08.740 | to describe these areas.

00:15:09.880 | We say, what are the deep life buckets?

00:15:11.520 | What are the areas of your life that are important to you?

00:15:14.320 | This list should be personalized.

00:15:17.160 | But as a starting point,

00:15:18.760 | we often talk about, for sake of example,

00:15:21.840 | we'll talk about craft being one of these buckets.

00:15:24.220 | So that's the things you produce, so your work,

00:15:26.500 | but also other types of high quality leisure type activities

00:15:29.800 | where you literally create things in the world.

00:15:31.560 | Community, it's your family, that's your friends,

00:15:33.640 | and that's the people that live around you.

00:15:35.920 | Dedication to that.

00:15:37.060 | Constitution, that's your health, that's your fitness.

00:15:39.240 | Contemplation, that's philosophy, ethics, and theology.

00:15:42.000 | So the part of that Aristotelian deep thinking

00:15:45.900 | about what makes humans humans and the life well lived,

00:15:48.080 | that's a key part for most people.

00:15:50.400 | We sometimes add a fifth bucket in these discussions,

00:15:52.640 | which we, to be alliterative, would call celebration,

00:15:56.080 | which is that commitment to, with presence and gratitude,

00:15:58.900 | just enjoying things about the world.

00:16:01.140 | You're really into craft beer

00:16:03.760 | and being able to be at that craft brewery,

00:16:07.500 | overlooking the valley, enjoying a new brew

00:16:09.960 | that you really understand why it's really good,

00:16:12.200 | and just having deep appreciation of that.

00:16:14.160 | You're really into music and being at that show

00:16:17.000 | and really just being able to appreciate that artist.

00:16:19.860 | So celebration is a big part of it

00:16:21.540 | for a lot of people as well.

00:16:22.460 | So you have your buckets, whatever they are.

00:16:25.080 | You have these different buckets,

00:16:25.920 | and the deep life has to respect all of them.

00:16:27.640 | That's step one.

00:16:29.300 | Step two, as part of our deep life strategy,

00:16:32.980 | is let's warm up by developing a keystone habit

00:16:37.980 | in each of the buckets.

00:16:40.400 | So something you do every day

00:16:41.780 | and you write down that you did it,

00:16:44.540 | that is relevant to that bucket and signals to yourself,

00:16:47.540 | I take this part of my life seriously,

00:16:49.220 | and I am willing to do non-required activity

00:16:53.860 | on a daily basis to support this piece of my life.

00:16:57.220 | These should not be completely onerous or complicated

00:17:00.620 | because you won't do them,

00:17:01.460 | but they should also not be trivial.

00:17:02.720 | You have to walk that line.

00:17:04.580 | It's tractable, but meaningful.

00:17:06.740 | They're simple, but you do them every day.

00:17:09.860 | Now, this warmup is about teaching yourself

00:17:13.300 | that you care about different parts of your life,

00:17:17.340 | teaching yourself that you are the type of person

00:17:19.460 | who does optional activity on a regular basis

00:17:23.980 | in pursuit of a greater good in your life.

00:17:26.700 | A lot of people need that warmup,

00:17:27.940 | and it's something I think that is missed

00:17:29.140 | in a lot of self-help or advice type writing,

00:17:31.220 | that we jump right in to just do this, this, and this.

00:17:33.260 | Most people don't even have the practice yet

00:17:35.660 | with what does it feel like to say,

00:17:36.740 | "Shoot, I gotta go do this, and it's kind of a pain,

00:17:39.940 | "but then I get the satisfaction

00:17:41.040 | "knowing that I did this thing anyways,

00:17:42.520 | "even though it was a pain."

00:17:43.360 | And you say, "Wow, I'm willing to do things

00:17:44.440 | "that are a pain if I think they're important to me."

00:17:46.060 | And I think that's a key first step.

00:17:48.260 | Next, once you have all those keystone habits going,

00:17:51.300 | pump is primed, you dedicate four to six weeks

00:17:54.660 | to each of your buckets.

00:17:55.860 | And when it's the turn of a particular bucket,

00:17:58.940 | you spend that time saying,

00:17:59.900 | "Now let me do a more significant overhaul

00:18:01.800 | "of that part of my life."

00:18:03.000 | And this is an alignment overhaul.

00:18:04.380 | So what you're trying to do is clear out of your life

00:18:06.980 | stuff that's not that valuable, that's related to that topic

00:18:09.420 | or that actively gets in the way

00:18:11.420 | of the things you care about in that topic

00:18:13.100 | while adding in place more things,

00:18:15.500 | a small number of things that are very important

00:18:17.260 | or valuable related to that.

00:18:18.980 | So when it comes to constitution,

00:18:20.480 | you're going through and really overhauling how you eat,

00:18:24.300 | integrating a fitness habit deeply into your daily routine.

00:18:27.900 | Maybe you start training for something.

00:18:29.340 | So you take each element.

00:18:31.580 | So I'm gonna do a real overhaul there.

00:18:32.860 | Clear out the distraction,

00:18:34.820 | pump up the thing that creates the value,

00:18:36.580 | pump up the things that creates the value.

00:18:38.560 | Do this for each of the buckets.

00:18:40.180 | Now, at this point, you're really humming

00:18:43.980 | because two things have happened.

00:18:45.380 | One, you do really think about yourself

00:18:48.340 | as someone who can take optional action

00:18:51.500 | towards things that are important.

00:18:54.060 | And two, you've been doing non-trivial action

00:18:56.320 | towards all of these areas of your life that matter.

00:18:58.180 | And it is in that action that you get the real self insight.

00:19:00.860 | It's in the fact that you spent a month

00:19:03.980 | focusing on just this part of your life.

00:19:05.740 | And now I've lived the next four months

00:19:07.380 | with that part of your life being emphasized

00:19:09.180 | that you begin to gain real insight

00:19:10.520 | about what's important to you and what's not in that area.

00:19:13.740 | What matters, what doesn't,

00:19:14.700 | what opportunities out there are lurking.

00:19:16.220 | You're not just staring blindly at,

00:19:18.220 | I don't know, maybe I should live on a farm.

00:19:20.220 | Maybe I should move to Rotonga.

00:19:21.620 | You're starting to figure out what really matters.

00:19:23.900 | You get this nuanced understanding of yourself.

00:19:26.200 | Now we're ready for the final step

00:19:30.200 | of the transformation towards the deep life,

00:19:32.740 | which is engaging the radical.

00:19:34.780 | Now let's make some radical changes.

00:19:37.180 | We're leaving that suburb of DC

00:19:39.100 | and moving to the James River in Richmond.

00:19:41.100 | Now you're primed for that.

00:19:42.500 | If you start with that, you end up on the island

00:19:45.020 | in the South Pacific, picking lice out of your kid's hair,

00:19:48.600 | worried about there being no doctors

00:19:50.300 | and say we made a big mistake.

00:19:52.220 | But you do the keystone followed by the overhauls.

00:19:54.820 | Now you're coming from a place of confidence

00:19:58.140 | and self-awareness.

00:19:59.780 | And now you say, okay,

00:20:01.380 | what can we do that would be a radical shift

00:20:03.380 | that would further align us with these values

00:20:05.300 | I now much better understand?

00:20:07.000 | And here the best way to do it is lifestyle-centric,

00:20:10.420 | work backwards from various visions.

00:20:12.620 | You have to iterate through these various visions

00:20:14.660 | of a lifestyle.

00:20:15.700 | Lifestyles that are radically changed

00:20:18.540 | from where you are now.

00:20:19.980 | And you have to evaluate these potential new lifestyles

00:20:22.780 | in terms of their impact on all of the buckets.

00:20:24.620 | What you're looking for is a lifestyle

00:20:26.020 | that has some sort of radical change that gets you there,

00:20:28.340 | but it enhances all of your buckets.

00:20:30.660 | Not just we're going to an island in the South Pacific

00:20:34.860 | 'cause it seems big,

00:20:36.220 | but what's it gonna do to community?

00:20:37.320 | What's it gonna do to constitution?

00:20:38.580 | What's it gonna do to contemplation?

00:20:40.540 | What's it gonna do to celebration?

00:20:41.500 | You think about this whole new lifestyle

00:20:44.060 | and you try to find one that, okay, this is tractable,

00:20:46.700 | we can afford this.

00:20:48.220 | And if we do this right,

00:20:49.560 | this change is going to pump up some of these things

00:20:52.060 | we really care about very clearly into a big level.

00:20:54.300 | And it's not gonna get in the way of the other things.

00:20:55.960 | It's not gonna take one of these away.

00:20:58.240 | It's not when we move to the South Pacific,

00:20:59.740 | mean we never see our friends, we never see our family,

00:21:01.820 | we have no connection to our community.

00:21:03.020 | It's not gonna get in the way of any of these.

00:21:05.460 | And that is how you make the decision

00:21:07.220 | about doing something radical.

00:21:08.660 | So it's after a lot of work and practice and training,

00:21:11.360 | then you try to make that shift.

00:21:14.800 | And then you repeat,

00:21:16.540 | and then you do these overhauls again.

00:21:18.340 | This is an annual thing, probably.

00:21:19.900 | You go through your buckets.

00:21:20.760 | How's it going?

00:21:21.600 | What do we need to tune up?

00:21:22.500 | Every few years, you might step back and say,

00:21:24.460 | do we need another type of radical shift here?

00:21:26.260 | You're not afraid of it

00:21:27.100 | because now you're not doing it randomly.

00:21:29.500 | Now the radical is not reactionary.

00:21:31.900 | It comes from a place of informed self-awareness.

00:21:35.300 | It comes from a place of confidence and practice.

00:21:37.760 | And so that is my attempt to make this vague,

00:21:41.620 | but deeply aspirational idea that I want the type of life

00:21:44.400 | that when someone sees it, they say, whoa, I want that.

00:21:48.060 | I want that in my life,

00:21:49.180 | and I wanna get there in a way that's systematic.

00:21:50.820 | And this is the best strategy that at least on this podcast,

00:21:54.240 | we've been able to come up with so far.

00:21:56.540 | Fix the word, fix the definition,

00:21:59.180 | fix the areas of your life,

00:22:00.260 | Keystone Habit Overhaul, lifestyle-centric,

00:22:03.540 | evaluation of different radical shifts

00:22:06.880 | to find one that might work,

00:22:07.960 | and then take that radical shift.

00:22:09.180 | That's how you get to the deep life.

00:22:10.460 | It doesn't happen tomorrow, but it doesn't take two years.

00:22:13.020 | So if you are feeling that yearning,

00:22:15.420 | at least consider setting down this particular path.

00:22:18.800 | All right, and that's what we have for today's core idea.

00:22:26.980 | (upbeat music)

00:22:29.560 | [MUSIC]

Core Idea: The Deep Life

Chapters