Come play with me

Jonathan Fields, author of The Good Life Project and the podcaster responsible for hundreds of interviews with fascinating and inspiring people, ends every podcast with this question for his guest: “so, what does it mean to you to live a good life?”

The answers are as varied as his guests, but with one underlying commonality: there’s this urgent but impassioned attitude that living life to its fullest potential might be one of the most important things that we, as humans, do. This necessarily takes different forms for different people, but finding those things that spark and light you up are the difference between merely being and truly living.

And to address this desire to live the best life possible, Fields wrote a book chock full of lessons and ideas to inspire. A little about the book:

How to Live a Good Life is a practical and provocative modern-day manual for a life well-lived. Drawn from the intersection of science, spirituality, and Jonathan Fields’ years-long quest to learn at the feet of world-renowned masters from nearly every tradition, this book offers a simple, yet stunningly powerful tool for life, the “Good Life Buckets.”

It then walks you through 30-days of fun, yet powerful mini-challenges, designed to rekindle deep, loving, and compassionate relationships; cultivate vitality, radiance, and graceful ease; and leave you feeling lit up by the way you contribute to the world. No need for blind faith or surrender of intelligence; everything you’ll discover is immediately actionable and subject to validation through your own experience.

How to Live a Good Life is not just a book to be read; it’s a path to possibility, to be walked, then lived.

I became a student of Fields awhile ago, taking in his podcasts in big gulps and still wanted more. When he announced his book, I knew I wanted to be along for the ride — I opted to become a Good Life Ambassador and spread the Good Life love. One of the perks? I have a case of 10 books that I want to give away (admit it, I just became your favorite person, didn’t I?).

So, how would you like to spend the next few months hanging out with me and other like-minded folks, exploring the book, becoming each other’s accountability partners and amping up your life while you’re at it? I want to start an action-oriented book club where we read the book together, covering the challenges and discussing them in a private Facebook group. Once past the initial few chapters that explain Fields’ Good Life Buckets theory, each challenge is only a few pages of reading and then some amount of doing — sometimes requiring a few minutes, sometimes more, but always worth the time spent.

I’ve got that case of books to give away and will be happy to send one out to the first 10 people who say that they’re interested — the only thing I ask is in return that you commit to being an involved member of our group while we work our way through the 30 days of challenges.

Of course, anyone who’d like to be involved is more than welcome — the more the merrier! So, go ahead and share this post, invite your friends and the first 10 get the book for free! What more could you ask for? A free book AND a group of awesome people to talk about it with. Life doesn’t really get better than that, does it?

I plan on starting this the first full week in December and hitting maybe 2-3 challenges a week, giving everyone plenty of time. Of course, nothing is set in stone and we have all the flexibility in the world to change things up to make it work better for everyone. If you’re interested, comment either here or on the Facebook post and I’ll get in touch with you to get an address to send the book to.

If you’re looking for more information before you commit…

Here’s a link to the first chapter of the book — you can read it without even having to provide an email. Go to the website, scroll down a bit and then just click the button and it’ll appear on your screen.

Here’s one of my favorite episodes of his Good Life podcast, with guest Elizabeth Gilbert.

And here are some of Jonathan Field’s essays to enjoy, if you’re still, for some weird reason, not convinced that this book club will be the most awesome thing you’ll ever join.