Speaker 1: Pushkin, what's your life purpose? That is a very big
Speaker 1: sounding question, which honestly is why most of us shy
Speaker 1: away from talking about it. Your life's purpose feels like
Speaker 1: it needs to be important, Curing a disease, saving an
Speaker 1: endangered species, or founding a billion dollar company. It's supposed
Speaker 1: to be something big, right wrong, Because, as we'll hear
Speaker 1: in this episode, purpose can be found in something as
Speaker 1: simple as collecting baseball cards and hanging out with others
Speaker 1: who share your passion. That's an example taken directly from
Speaker 1: the life of my guest for this episode.
Speaker 2: Hi, I'm Jordan Grummitt. I am a hospice physician, personal
Speaker 2: finance podcaster, an author of the book With the Purpose Code.
Speaker 1: Jordan's career has taken many detours. At times, he's found
Speaker 1: himself facing some big dead ends and his lifelong quest
Speaker 1: for purpose, But today he's pretty happy where things ended up,
Speaker 1: which makes him an excellent guide for this concluding episode
Speaker 1: of our how To season, where we'll discuss how to
Speaker 1: find your purpose. Jordan began yearning for purpose at a
Speaker 1: particularly young age, but set off to find it in
Speaker 1: a direction that he later realized was a mistake. It
Speaker 1: all began with an unexpected bereavement.
Speaker 2: It pretty much affected everything. I was seven years old
Speaker 2: and my father was this prominent oncologist, this cancer doctor
Speaker 2: that everyone looked up to, and he had a brain aneurysm,
Speaker 2: which meant he was literally rounding at the hospital, got
Speaker 2: a severe headache, collapsed, went into a coma, and died
Speaker 2: within a day or two. Back then, you know, there
Speaker 2: was no talk of these extraordinary measures. The neurosurgeon came
Speaker 2: in and said, look, he's pretty much brain dead, and
Speaker 2: they removed life support. And I was seven years old,
Speaker 2: and as most seven year olds are, I looked at
Speaker 2: the world through a very self centered lens. I told
Speaker 2: myself that there was something wrong with me. I wasn't enough,
Speaker 2: I wasn't good enough. I didn't do things well enough,
Speaker 2: I wasn't lovable and and so at some point I
Speaker 2: developed the narrative in my own head that I could
Speaker 2: cosmically fix the world if I became a doctor like him,
Speaker 2: if I just stepped into his footsteps, if I walked
Speaker 2: his path, everything would be okay. And that narrative served
Speaker 2: me for quite a long time. In fact, I had
Speaker 2: a learning disability I got over that made my way
Speaker 2: through college and medical school. This was a joyful version
Speaker 2: of purpose and identity. At the time. I wasn't interested
Speaker 2: in money or career or any of those things. I
Speaker 2: just wanted to be like my dad, and it served
Speaker 2: me until it didn't.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about the part where it didn't. What
Speaker 1: happened in your medical career that, you know, what started
Speaker 1: out as kind of this important purpose kind of wound
Speaker 1: up becoming something else.
Speaker 2: Well, what pretty much happened is burnout. And what I
Speaker 2: eventually realized is this version of purpose, this audacious version
Speaker 2: of purpose, like I can cosmically save this fact that
Speaker 2: my father died by just becoming a doctor like him,
Speaker 2: wasn't actually reachable. And so I became a doctor and
Speaker 2: it didn't solve any of the problems. I still didn't
Speaker 2: feel good about this sentinel thing that happened in my life.
Speaker 2: And yet I was spending my days doing things that
Speaker 2: I didn't love and I didn't enjoy, and that weren't
Speaker 2: filling me up. And so I wasn't reaching that big
Speaker 2: audacious goal I had. But I also wasn't enjoying the
Speaker 2: process either, and that is the perfect setup to burn out.
Speaker 1: So what were some of your symptoms when you were
Speaker 1: going through burnout as a doctor, Like, how did it manifest?
Speaker 2: It's the Sunday scaries. Right Sunday night, You're like, I
Speaker 2: don't want to go to work. It's the waking up
Speaker 2: in the morning and instead of being energized, being stressed.
Speaker 2: I contrast that to my life today, where I spend
Speaker 2: a lot more time doing things that I enjoy the
Speaker 2: process of doing, regardless of the goal. And I kind
Speaker 2: of jump out of bed at four thirty five in
Speaker 2: the morning every morning because I'm so excited to jump in,
Speaker 2: whereas I might have still gotten up at four thirty
Speaker 2: or five in the morn, but it was more I
Speaker 2: was so anxious that there were all these things on
Speaker 2: the table that seemed impossible that I had to get through.
Speaker 2: And so it really manifests itself very differently. There's a
Speaker 2: certain amount of optimism and a joy in which I
Speaker 2: leap into activities now that I just didn't have them.
Speaker 1: So how did you break out of this? It must
Speaker 1: be really hard to kind of train your whole career
Speaker 1: to become a doctor. You're feeling burned out. What was
Speaker 1: the next time? It was kind of a happy accident.
Speaker 1: And I think this happens to a lot of people.
Speaker 1: When they take on big, audacious purpose that doesn't suit them,
Speaker 1: they actually often try to fit these things in that
Speaker 1: are more joyful, that suit them better around the sides,
Speaker 1: like when they're not busy doing other things. So I
Speaker 1: love writing, I love communicating, I love public speaking, and
Speaker 1: so I was trying to integrate that into my life.
Speaker 1: And I told myself, well, you can't really do that
Speaker 1: for a living, Like writing is a hobby, it's something
Speaker 1: you do for fun. So I was fitting it in
Speaker 1: during my lunch hour or at night when my wife
Speaker 1: and kids were sleeping, and so fortuitously, in two thousand
Speaker 1: and fourteen, I was writing a blog about medicine, what
Speaker 1: it felt like to be a doctor, and this guy
Speaker 1: named Jim Dolly, the White Coat Investor, sent me his book.
Speaker 1: And he had written a book about physician personal finance,
Speaker 1: and he wanted me to review it from my blog.
Speaker 1: And I had always had modeled for me beautiful, wonderful
Speaker 1: financial behavior, but I never had the words to understand
Speaker 1: what that meant. And so he sent me his book
Speaker 1: and had described this concept of financial independence, this idea
Speaker 1: of having enough money so that you didn't have to
Speaker 1: spend your days doing things you didn't want to do.
Speaker 1: And within a few hours of reading this, I realized
Speaker 1: I was doing fine financially, like I didn't have to
Speaker 1: continue doing this thing that wasn't filling me up just
Speaker 1: because I needed a paycheck, which was amazing and exhilarating
Speaker 1: for all of about a minute.
Speaker 2: And then I had a major panic attack because I
Speaker 2: realized this only thing that I had ever identified myself as,
Speaker 2: this only version of purpose I really knew outside of,
Speaker 2: you know, the basic pedestrian stuff of having a family
Speaker 2: and kids and that kind of stuff, but my only
Speaker 2: real sense of purpose was tied to something I realized
Speaker 2: didn't suit me anymore. And not only that, but it
Speaker 2: was that singular connection I still had to my father,
Speaker 2: and I was talking about walking away, and I knew
Speaker 2: I had to walk away at least on some level,
Speaker 2: because of the burnout and the anxiety and the stress.
Speaker 2: On the other hand, if I was going to walk
Speaker 2: away from this only thing that had ever defined me,
Speaker 2: who would I be? And so that started a process
Speaker 2: which took years of trying to figure out how to
Speaker 2: develop and pursue a life of purpose. And I wasn't
Speaker 2: ready to throw the baby out with the bathwater. So
Speaker 2: I couldn't just walk away from medicine, because I probably
Speaker 2: could have at that moment said I'm done, I quit,
Speaker 2: I'm out, but I didn't have the emotional fortitude. So
Speaker 2: actually I started with something much more simpler. I use
Speaker 2: what I call the artist's attraction. I started getting rid
Speaker 2: of what I didn't like in my job. I didn't
Speaker 2: love owning my own practice. I got rid of that.
Speaker 2: I eventually got rid of the working in the nursing
Speaker 2: home and the nights and the weekends. What I was
Speaker 2: left with was doing hospice work, taking care of the
Speaker 2: terminally ill, and strangely enough, I realized I would do
Speaker 2: that even if I wasn't being paid for it. That
Speaker 2: was an anchor for me. I'm like, Okay, this job
Speaker 2: no longer feels purposeful. I don't identify by it, but
Speaker 2: there's this little piece being a hospice doctor, which was
Speaker 2: an anchor of joy and purpose for me. So I
Speaker 2: could stick with that. But that of course opened up
Speaker 2: a huge amount of space because I was doing that
Speaker 2: about ten or fifteen hours a week. So the question
Speaker 2: was what type of life did I want? To lead
Speaker 2: in all that open space, and that's where I came
Speaker 2: back to those joys that i'd always submerged, things like
Speaker 2: writing in public speaking and expressing myself. And since I
Speaker 2: got there through learning about personal finance, it was a
Speaker 2: natural place for me to start writing and podcasting about it.
Speaker 1: Also, seems like your switched to spending more time with
Speaker 1: those in pallity of care sort of tell you something
Speaker 1: else about purpose?
Speaker 2: What was that? Well, interestingly enough, my life had taken
Speaker 2: two tracks right. One track was becoming a personal finance expert,
Speaker 2: doing a blog on that and eventually a podcast. But
Speaker 2: the other track was I was still taking care of
Speaker 2: the terminally ill. And after doing this for ten fifteen
Speaker 2: years and sitting at people's bedside, I realized that when
Speaker 2: I was talking to financial people, they're really good at
Speaker 2: telling me how to make money or how to invest,
Speaker 2: but often if I ask them questions like well, what
Speaker 2: does enough look like in your life or what is
Speaker 2: this serving? I got a lot of blank stairs. On
Speaker 2: the other hand, then I go see my hospice patients
Speaker 2: who would know that the end was coming, and all
Speaker 2: they wanted to do was talk about what was important
Speaker 2: in their life and specifically about regrets. What did they
Speaker 2: regret never having the energy, courage, or time to do?
Speaker 2: And I started thinking about what if all my financial
Speaker 2: people had this knowledge, What if they could put themselves
Speaker 2: in the shoes of someone who is dying and just
Speaker 2: for a brief period of time, think about those really
Speaker 2: important things that they hadn't accomplished, and what if we
Speaker 2: could then flip those around and turn them into anchors
Speaker 2: of purpose, Like, Okay, this is a beckoning, this is
Speaker 2: an inkling, This is this big important thing to me.
Speaker 2: If I do nothing for the rest of my life,
Speaker 2: if I keep on saying I don't have enough time,
Speaker 2: I don't have enough money, I don't have enough energy,
Speaker 2: or I'm afraid I'm gonna fail, one day a doctor
Speaker 2: like me will walk into your room and you'll realize
Speaker 2: it's too late. And so what I wanted to do
Speaker 2: was take that feeling, that knowledge and give it to
Speaker 2: all these younger people who trying to figure out their life.
Speaker 2: How do we win the game? How do we die
Speaker 2: without regrets? So regrets became purpose anchors, something we have
Speaker 2: to build a life of purpose around. And I always
Speaker 2: say this, you don't find purpose. Everyone's like I'm waiting
Speaker 2: for it. It's either going to fall on my head.
Speaker 2: I'm going to be successful and happy and in the
Speaker 2: world's going to be great, or I'm going to miss
Speaker 2: it and everything's going to be horrible. The truth of
Speaker 2: the matter is we have these whisperings, but then we
Speaker 2: have to do the hard work, which is building a
Speaker 2: life of purpose around it. And I think the dying
Speaker 2: they have that message to give us, don't wait until
Speaker 2: it's too late.
Speaker 1: So it seems like to find purpose we have to
Speaker 1: start by knowing what it is. What is purpose? And
Speaker 1: as we think about finding it, what are some of
Speaker 1: the benefits that can come from it psychologically?
Speaker 2: So this is my favorite question because I think colloquially
Speaker 2: we talk about purpose as being our why, and I
Speaker 2: think that's problematic. I think the better way to look
Speaker 2: at it is purpose are the actions we take in
Speaker 2: the present and future that light us up. That's it, simple, straightforward.
Speaker 2: Why don't like looking at it as our why is
Speaker 2: because then it becomes high stakes and we're back to this.
Speaker 2: I either don't figure it out in all this loss,
Speaker 2: or I figure it out and I live blissfully happy.
Speaker 2: And we all know that's not how it works, and
Speaker 2: so I think it's a much simpler definition. Why is
Speaker 2: it important, Well, the studies are clear. I mean, there
Speaker 2: are a million studies out there that look at having
Speaker 2: a purpose in life and what that means. And we
Speaker 2: know from various studies that it leads to increased health, longevity,
Speaker 2: and happiness, and so it's really important. If we had
Speaker 2: a pill, if the doctor could give you this pill
Speaker 2: and say you're going to live ten or twenty percent longer,
Speaker 2: you're going to be happier and healthier, of course we
Speaker 2: would take it. And yet people get so confused about
Speaker 2: purpose because it seems ephemeral and hard to reach, that
Speaker 2: they give up on it. And in fact, other studies
Speaker 2: which seem to contradict those first studies, show that up
Speaker 2: to ninety one percent of people at some point in
Speaker 2: their life have what's called purpose anxiety. This idea of
Speaker 2: finding their purpose actually frustrates them, cause them depression anxiety.
Speaker 2: And so the question is how can it be both
Speaker 2: how can purpose be like the most important thing but
Speaker 2: also so anxiety written? And I think part of the
Speaker 2: reason is because we get this idea of purpose wrong,
Speaker 2: We've been stuck in that purpose is our why for
Speaker 2: so long that we make these big audacious dreams, often
Speaker 2: ones we don't have the agency to achieve, and it
Speaker 2: leaves us frustrated as opposed to focusing on action in
Speaker 2: the present and future and doing these little things that
Speaker 2: just light us up, which I think is much more
Speaker 2: associated with all those good things we see the study show.
Speaker 1: And so you've made this distinction that I find really
Speaker 1: important between you know, what you seem to be calling
Speaker 1: is that of this big P purpose, the kind of big,
Speaker 1: high falutine, kind of scary, anxiety inducing purpose, and what
Speaker 1: you've termed little P purpose. What's the little pea purpose?
Speaker 1: What are we missing?
Speaker 2: So little P purpose is process oriented instead of goal oriented,
Speaker 2: and so the idea is doing things that light you up.
Speaker 2: And why this is good is it's impossible to fail.
Speaker 2: I say, big P purposes all or nothing. You either
Speaker 2: success even this really big audacious thing or you don't.
Speaker 2: Little P purposes all or all, and so it tends
Speaker 2: to be very very abundant. Think about this, What are
Speaker 2: the million different things we could do that we would enjoy? Conversely,
Speaker 2: big purpose is much more goal oriented, and usually we
Speaker 2: don't love the process of doing the things we do
Speaker 2: just to get to this goal. And that's problematic for
Speaker 2: a few reasons. One is we often say things in
Speaker 2: America like if you can think it, you can build it,
Speaker 2: and so we don't just think of purpose. But it's
Speaker 2: always like this big outsize I'm gonna be a billionaire,
Speaker 2: I'm going to run for president, I'm gonna have an
Speaker 2: eight figure business, And a lot of times we're sold
Speaker 2: this by social media and society, and so a lot
Speaker 2: of people like, I don't know what my purpose is.
Speaker 2: I can't find it, and so what do they do.
Speaker 2: They go right to their phones and they look at
Speaker 2: Instagram and TikTok and what are they seeing. They're seeing
Speaker 2: six pack abs and eight figure businesses and wearing the
Speaker 2: nicest clothes and traveling to every country in the world.
Speaker 2: And the problem is a lot of the people putting
Speaker 2: out those images, whether it's in social media or in
Speaker 2: marketing or trying to sell you something. But we co
Speaker 2: opt this version of purpose because we don't know what
Speaker 2: feels purposeful and we've been told that it's supposed to
Speaker 2: be big and impactful and important, but a lot of
Speaker 2: us don't have agency to actually have six pack ads
Speaker 2: or run the figure business. We're not the right person
Speaker 2: at the right time, saying the right things, with the
Speaker 2: right genetics and a whole lot of luck, and so
Speaker 2: a lot of the times we fail, which makes us
Speaker 2: feel just lost and anxious, or God forbid, we succeed
Speaker 2: and we realize that we don't still feel filled up,
Speaker 2: and so we have to double down and then pick
Speaker 2: the biggest, better thing. So now I've an any figure business,
Speaker 2: but I want to be a multiple billionaire. I want
Speaker 2: to be in the list of top fifty billionaires or
Speaker 2: what have you. We know that we tend to habituate
Speaker 2: back down to a baseline, especially with this goal oriented
Speaker 2: purpose fu good.
Speaker 1: We need to look at other examples, not the kind
Speaker 1: of folks on social media or the billionaires. Like when
Speaker 1: we're looking for people who achieve little py purpose, it's
Speaker 1: not necessarily the people we expect. You shared the story
Speaker 1: of someone that you grew up with, this kind of
Speaker 1: baseball card guy that worked in your neighborhood. He share
Speaker 1: his story, and why was it so powerful for gaining
Speaker 1: little pe purpose?
Speaker 2: So Roman changed my life and he never ever meant to,
Speaker 2: but he did anyway. And this is I think the
Speaker 2: importance of little pea purpose because not only is it
Speaker 2: reachable in something we all can do, but it actually
Speaker 2: can lead to really big impact and legacy. And so
Speaker 2: Roman was a baseball player in high school. He blew
Speaker 2: out his knee, kind of gave up on that dream,
Speaker 2: decided not to go to college and took over his
Speaker 2: father's antique shop because he was good at redoing furniture. Right,
Speaker 2: they would bring him armoires and things and he would
Speaker 2: fix them up, restain them, and sell them. And so
Speaker 2: he was busy in this life running the antique store,
Speaker 2: and a gentleman dropped off an armoir, and he saw
Speaker 2: that he could make an easy profit, so he bought it.
Speaker 2: He was in the back starting to fix it up
Speaker 2: at his antique store and noticed a box at baseball
Speaker 2: cards in one of the drawers. So he called the
Speaker 2: guy up and said, Hey, I got your baseball cards.
Speaker 2: You want to come pick them up? The guy said, nat,
Speaker 2: don't worry about it. So Roman knew nothing about baseball cards,
Speaker 2: so we took him, put him on the counter, didn't
Speaker 2: even think about them. A few days later, a woman
Speaker 2: came in with her snarky teenager, looking bored as can
Speaker 2: be at being brought into this antique store, and then
Speaker 2: he noticed the box of baseball cards and starts flipping
Speaker 2: through them, and he looks up at Roman says, hey,
Speaker 2: how much for the baseball cards? Now Roman had no idea,
Speaker 2: this was just something extra, so he's like, huh, ten bucks,
Speaker 2: that'll be fine. So the kid plops down ten dollars,
Speaker 2: and as snarky teenagers do, he spread them out on
Speaker 2: the table and said this one, this one, and this one.
Speaker 2: Three of the hundred of cards. He said, these together
Speaker 2: worth one hundred dollars on their own. Now, Roman could
Speaker 2: have been angry, but he wasn't. But instead he found
Speaker 2: himself in thrall. The part of his brain lit up
Speaker 2: that he wasn't expecting, and I don't know why. I
Speaker 2: don't think he knew why. Maybe it was that he
Speaker 2: used to remember putting baseball cards in the spokes of
Speaker 2: his bike, or that he remembered going to Wrigleyfield with
Speaker 2: his dad and sitting in the bleachers when he was
Speaker 2: a little kid. I'm not sure what it was, and
Speaker 2: I don't think Roman could have told you, but he
Speaker 2: felt a spark and that became a purpose anchor for him.
Speaker 2: Now this again is the big distinction. It's not that
Speaker 2: he found purpose, although this one day something lit up
Speaker 2: in his brain. He actually had to build a life
Speaker 2: of purpose around that. So he decided, I'm going to
Speaker 2: sell baseball cards in my antique store. He wasn't trying
Speaker 2: to make millions of dollars. He already had a successful
Speaker 2: antique store. He just said, boy, this sounds fun and interesting.
Speaker 2: So he hired the snarky teenager right away. He started
Speaker 2: studying the baseball card market. He started buying inventory, and
Speaker 2: a few years later I walked into that antique store.
Speaker 2: You see, I was a eight, nine, ten year old.
Speaker 2: My father had died, I had had a learning disability.
Speaker 2: I had almost no friends. I was the typical geek
Speaker 2: or nerd. I had no community. But I loved baseball cards,
Speaker 2: and so I go to that antique shop and Roman
Speaker 2: became a mentor. When I had a bad day, he
Speaker 2: would counsel me. He'd give me a free pack of
Speaker 2: baseball cards. We'd open it up and eat the god
Speaker 2: awful gum that came in the middle. And it wasn't
Speaker 2: just me, but it was dozens and dozens of other
Speaker 2: kids who found community and connections and a sense of
Speaker 2: confidence all from Roman's little pea purpose. Sadly, Roman eventually
Speaker 2: got cancer, he had to close the antique shop, and
Speaker 2: he died. That was like thirty or forty years ago.
Speaker 2: But think about all those kids who left that little
Speaker 2: community that he built, who became doctors and lawyers, and
Speaker 2: maybe they bought and sold things like Roman, but walked
Speaker 2: in the world with a huge amount of confidence and
Speaker 2: a feeling like they belonged. Thirty years later, those kids
Speaker 2: are still changing the world and having their own kids
Speaker 2: and passing down maybe even the love of baseball cards.
Speaker 2: And I like to contrast that to Mickey Mantle, because
Speaker 2: when I was a little kid collecting baseball cards, all
Speaker 2: we wanted was Mickey Mantle cards. Now, if I, or
Speaker 2: even Roman for that matter, had decided to look at
Speaker 2: Mickey Mantle and develop a sense of purpose around him,
Speaker 2: like maybe we want to be major League baseball players
Speaker 2: and break all sorts of records like him, that's kind
Speaker 2: of big audacious purpose. Well, Roman, couldn't he blew out
Speaker 2: his knee and me, I just didn't have the talent,
Speaker 2: the skills, the mentors. I didn't have anything in place
Speaker 2: to do that. So if that had been our version
Speaker 2: of purpose, we probably both would have ended up miserable
Speaker 2: when we failed. But instead the guy remembers Roman, this
Speaker 2: guy who did something that lit him up, and a
Speaker 2: happy accident of that was that he changed the world
Speaker 2: and he still exists. His effect, his impact are still
Speaker 2: there all these decades later.
Speaker 1: So how can we follow Roman's example and find our
Speaker 1: own little pea purpose? We'll hear Jordan's tips right after
Speaker 1: the break. People who get hopelessly lost in the blazing
Speaker 1: desert sometimes reports seeing what looks like life giving water
Speaker 1: just over the horizon, but no matter how far they
Speaker 1: walk towards that shimmering lake, they never reach it. Doctor
Speaker 1: and podcaster Jordan Grammit says those of us thirsting for
Speaker 1: purpose often fall for the same thing we chase after
Speaker 1: visions that turn out to be what he calls purpose mirages.
Speaker 2: Purpose mirages are basically big pea purpose that masquerades as
Speaker 2: being good for us. And so, whether this is some
Speaker 2: net worth, like I want to get to that million
Speaker 2: dollars or billion dollars or whatever it is, whether it's
Speaker 2: some career achievement, whatever it is, it's something that you
Speaker 2: convince yourself that you will be happy and everything will
Speaker 2: be perfect once you reach it, even if you don't
Speaker 2: basically feel yourself lit up by the process of doing
Speaker 2: these things you have to do to get there. And
Speaker 2: so I'll give you a perfect example. I see this
Speaker 2: all the time in podcasting, because I love podcasting, and
Speaker 2: for me, podcasting is little p purpose, something I deeply
Speaker 2: enjoy the process of doing. Once I get in front
Speaker 2: of that microphone to interview someone, it doesn't matter what
Speaker 2: comes of it other than I have a really joyful
Speaker 2: hour of conversation. I could turn that into a mirage.
Speaker 2: I could kind of say, well, that's fine, but I
Speaker 2: also want to get a million downloads a month. And
Speaker 2: so all of a sudden, this changes from something I
Speaker 2: enjoy the process of doing to more of a goal oriented,
Speaker 2: goal centered process, and maybe I realized to get there,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna have to do some things I really we
Speaker 2: don't want to do. Like I don't love social media,
Speaker 2: I don't love making TikTok videos. Those are things I
Speaker 2: agonize over and find that I when I do them,
Speaker 2: I'm generally not happy at the end of the day.
Speaker 2: But if I really want to get to that million downloads,
Speaker 2: maybe that's something I need to do, and so what
Speaker 2: happens is we set ourselves up to not enjoy what
Speaker 2: we're doing for most of the time, whether we get
Speaker 2: to that goal or not.
Speaker 1: And I think this is so important because I've seen
Speaker 1: not just in my own life, but especially with my
Speaker 1: Yale students right where this idea of kind of going
Speaker 1: after these mirages, whether it's money or accomplishments or grades
Speaker 1: or whatever, it winds up crowding out the little p
Speaker 1: purpose that they could have had. You love your sport
Speaker 1: and you're sort of maybe you're a track athlete because
Speaker 1: of that, but then it's then it's the wins and
Speaker 1: the monies, and then you start hating it because now
Speaker 1: you're sort of chasing after these other things. So we
Speaker 1: can get in these situations where like the part that
Speaker 1: we hate going after the wrong thing can like literally
Speaker 1: get rid of the joy that we were getting from
Speaker 1: something else before.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think happiness contentment is really a marathon,
Speaker 2: not a sprint. Again, we set ourselves up for burnout
Speaker 2: because we are doing things we innately don't love to
Speaker 2: get to this thing we think we will love. But
Speaker 2: the problem is you spend so much time in the process,
Speaker 2: and so little time in actually achieving the goal. And again,
Speaker 2: we're really good as human beings at habituating back down
Speaker 2: to a certain level of happiness. So even if you
Speaker 2: think that goal is going to really light you up
Speaker 2: and you're going to be happy the rest of your
Speaker 2: life because of it, we all know that it's fleeting,
Speaker 2: it's transitory. So it makes much more sense to invest
Speaker 2: in those things we enjoy the process of doing, because
Speaker 2: that's going to actually take up most of our time.
Speaker 2: And you know the secret is, time passes no matter
Speaker 2: what you do. It can't be commoditized. You can't buy,
Speaker 2: you can't sell it, you can't trade it. The only
Speaker 2: thing you can do is control what activities you're involved
Speaker 2: with as time passes. And so winning the game, in
Speaker 2: my opinion, is filling up that time with as much
Speaker 2: purposeful activity you love the process of doing and getting
Speaker 2: rid of as many things that you loathe as possible.
Speaker 2: And especially with young people, I love to say it
Speaker 2: behooves you to start looking at your calendar today and
Speaker 2: start working towards improving that calendar every week, every month,
Speaker 2: because time is finite and we have no idea how
Speaker 2: much we have, and so I want you all to
Speaker 2: win the game. So I really want you to continuously
Speaker 2: look at the calendar and build in things you love
Speaker 2: little P purpose and get rid of things you loathe
Speaker 2: and just wash, rinse, and repeat over and over again.
Speaker 1: And that gets to your second tip for kind of
Speaker 1: finding better little P Purpose right, which is that when
Speaker 1: we kind of look through our calendar, we have to
Speaker 1: pay attention to what's going on internally. Tip number two
Speaker 1: is that you can't look for your purpose externally. You
Speaker 1: need to find it yourself. This is one that I
Speaker 1: really love because, especially when thinking about my students, I
Speaker 1: think it's so easy for them and for all of
Speaker 1: us to just get caught up in other people's ideas
Speaker 1: of what you know our purpose should be. We can
Speaker 1: kind of co opt what other people seem to like
Speaker 1: in ways they sort of really run us astray. How
Speaker 1: do we fix this? How do we find our purpose internally?
Speaker 2: There are some great ways to really connect with your
Speaker 2: sense of purpose, but it is true the first thing
Speaker 2: you have to realize is society marketing social media. Everyone
Speaker 2: has a version of purpose for you that probably fulfills
Speaker 2: their needs. So when we think of society marketing, it's
Speaker 2: obvious they want to make money on you, but also
Speaker 2: your parents and your family. They have a version of
Speaker 2: purpose for you, and often if fulfills their needs, maybe
Speaker 2: you can make up for the thing they could do,
Speaker 2: or maybe they're worried about your stability, and so they
Speaker 2: create this version of purpose for you too, which might
Speaker 2: not align with who you actually are. And so the
Speaker 2: idea is to let go of other people's version of
Speaker 2: purpose and get more in touch with yours. And so
Speaker 2: I often say we don't find our purpose, we create
Speaker 2: or build it. But it is true that we need
Speaker 2: these purpose anchors, which are inklings or beckonings of things
Speaker 2: that light us up, which we can then build a
Speaker 2: life of purpose around. And so the best way is
Speaker 2: to think about a number of exercises we actually can
Speaker 2: do that help us get way more in touch with
Speaker 2: what these purpose anchors are you and I talked about
Speaker 2: one of them in the beginning, which is the regrets
Speaker 2: of the Dying. I think regret is a wonderful way
Speaker 2: to start thinking about purpose. Again. People are dying, only
Speaker 2: have a short period of time left, they don't have
Speaker 2: a lot of energy, and so unfortunately regret is really
Speaker 2: really disappointing because they don't have agency to do anything
Speaker 2: about that. But if we can put you in that
Speaker 2: mindset of what would you regret at the end of
Speaker 2: your life if that was to be in the next
Speaker 2: week or month, and so thinking what if I never
Speaker 2: had the energy, courage, or time to do we can
Speaker 2: then turn that into a purpose anchor. That's the easy
Speaker 2: part is realizing what's important to us. The hard part
Speaker 2: is then you've got to do the work. You've got
Speaker 2: to actually build a life of purpose around it. So
Speaker 2: I think regrets are a great way. Another one is
Speaker 2: joys of childhood. So I always tell people kids are
Speaker 2: extremely purposeful, right They haven't co opted to anyone else's
Speaker 2: version of purpose yet, especially when they're very young. So
Speaker 2: they go out and they play, they do whatever they
Speaker 2: want to do. They lose track of time. They enter
Speaker 2: what we call right this flow state where they're so
Speaker 2: lost they forget to come home for dinner and they're
Speaker 2: just enjoying the moment. Kids don't worry about some big,
Speaker 2: audacious goal. Most of the time, they just want to
Speaker 2: do what they want to do. They love the process
Speaker 2: of doing it. We let go of those versions of
Speaker 2: purposes we get older when we start thinking about career
Speaker 2: and school and all those other things. So I often
Speaker 2: tell people, you know, look around to your bedroom, think
Speaker 2: back to what decorated your bedroom. What were the posters,
Speaker 2: what were the trophies, what were the drawings. Often those
Speaker 2: can be those beckonings that we can then build a
Speaker 2: life purpose around. Hey, for me, I'm busy, right, I
Speaker 2: have a lot of things going on. I have a
Speaker 2: lot of purpose anchors. But if I ever run out
Speaker 2: of them. I loved baseball cards when I was little,
Speaker 2: and so every time a scrolling through Facebook or looking
Speaker 2: in the newspaper and I see something about baseball or
Speaker 2: baseball cards, especially like with the old time photos, my
Speaker 2: brain lights up. I feel it. I feel it in
Speaker 2: my chest, I feel it in my brain. I'm like,
Speaker 2: I get really excited. So I know that's a joy
Speaker 2: of childhood. It could be a purpose anchor. And if
Speaker 2: I find that I really am like boy, life doesn't
Speaker 2: feel very purposeful and I have free time, I can
Speaker 2: start pursuing that.
Speaker 1: It seems like what you're doing there is for of
Speaker 1: getting to what your tip number three is right, which
Speaker 1: is that we need to notice the process, not the goal.
Speaker 1: We need to kind of pay attention to these so
Speaker 1: called purpose anchors, the stuff that lights us up. You've
Speaker 1: mentioned purpose anchors before, but I wanted you to kind
Speaker 1: of give me a quick definition. You know, what are
Speaker 1: these sorts of things?
Speaker 2: So purpose anchors are just the inklings. They are the
Speaker 2: beckonings of things that you could find joy in. And
Speaker 2: so the question is what seems joyful out of the box.
Speaker 2: And again a lot of people are like, well, I
Speaker 2: don't know what that is, but a lot of us
Speaker 2: do know that they're whisperings in our life. Like I
Speaker 2: knew when I was training to be a doctor that
Speaker 2: I also wanted to be a writer. There was just
Speaker 2: something about it, and that's why I was trying to
Speaker 2: fit it into these little bits of time when I
Speaker 2: wasn't busy with other things. We all know that many
Speaker 2: of us are trying to fall asleep at night, and
Speaker 2: sometimes we have these crazy ideas and we get so
Speaker 2: excited we stay up all night, we can't fall asleep,
Speaker 2: and then the next day you are so exhausted you
Speaker 2: figure it was crazy. You move on, you go to work,
Speaker 2: and never think about it again. But sometimes those are
Speaker 2: the whisperings, like what keeps you up and night? What
Speaker 2: excites you. What do your friends and family tell you
Speaker 2: when you do this thing you are most lit up?
Speaker 2: Those are those anchors. They're just things that cause you
Speaker 2: immediate joy. There doesn't need to be an explanation, but
Speaker 2: it's a great place to start that active process of
Speaker 2: creating action in the present in future building what I
Speaker 2: call these climbs, these purposeful activities. It's just a great
Speaker 2: starting place and they should be abundant. Most people, when
Speaker 2: they do the work, realize that there are actually lots
Speaker 2: of little things out there that excite them. And when
Speaker 2: they let go of this idea that has to be
Speaker 2: this big important thing or something other people want to do,
Speaker 2: or it has to lead to some kind of wealth
Speaker 2: or fame. When they drop all that and just say, well,
Speaker 2: what are the things I love to do? It becomes
Speaker 2: much easier and much more abundant, which is something that
Speaker 2: people never They never use that term abundant when they
Speaker 2: talk about purpose. It always seems like it's something totally scarce.
Speaker 2: And so that's why I want to kind of flip
Speaker 2: that switch.
Speaker 1: It's time for a quick break. But when we return,
Speaker 1: Jordan will share a lesson he learned from patients in
Speaker 1: their final days of life. The Happiness Lab will be
Speaker 1: right back. Doctor Jordan Gramit says he was wrong to
Speaker 1: think that practicing medicine would give his life purpose, but
Speaker 1: he did find one part of his profession that was
Speaker 1: deeply fulfilling, his work with people at the end of
Speaker 1: their lives. Working in palliative care taught him another great
Speaker 1: way to identify that little p purpose by conducting what's
Speaker 1: called a life review.
Speaker 2: So I first heard of a life review as a
Speaker 2: hospice medical director. And so I started hospice work because
Speaker 2: I was working with a lot of elderly and I
Speaker 2: was taking care of them at the end of life.
Speaker 2: And a hospicner said, hey, you're really good at this,
Speaker 2: maybe you should work with us. There's not a huge
Speaker 2: number of hospice doctors. I started working with them, and
Speaker 2: a lot of times you learn on your feet, especially
Speaker 2: doing things like this. And I would go to our
Speaker 2: weekly meetings and the social workers would keep on talking about, Okay,
Speaker 2: we performed a life review, etc. You know, the first
Speaker 2: time or two I've heard it, I didn't think much
Speaker 2: about it. But then I started asking questions, what is
Speaker 2: this life review and why do we do it? And
Speaker 2: so in hospice, we have a few main goals. It's
Speaker 2: not to prolong life. What it is is to make
Speaker 2: people comfortable, cover their pain, their nausea, make sure they're
Speaker 2: dying where they want to die, whether that's home, in
Speaker 2: a nursing home or justs of living. But another piece
Speaker 2: of that is helping them come to terms and their
Speaker 2: family for that matter, come to terms with this idea
Speaker 2: that their life is ending. And one thing that social workers, chaplains, doctors,
Speaker 2: nurses can do with a patient of their family is
Speaker 2: called a life review. It's a series of structured questions
Speaker 2: that ask people to really review the important moments in
Speaker 2: their lives. What were their most important moments, what were
Speaker 2: their biggest triumphs, what were their biggest failures, Which relationships
Speaker 2: meant the most to them? And a big part of
Speaker 2: that too, we often ask is what are their regrets?
Speaker 2: And so this life review I found so beneficial in
Speaker 2: the dying and it helps people find this sense of peace.
Speaker 2: But I also realized when working with hospice, you know
Speaker 2: a lot of people ask me how do you have
Speaker 2: a good deaby, And so I often say, well, the
Speaker 2: best way to have a good death is to have
Speaker 2: a good life because we tend to die the way
Speaker 2: we lived, and so then the question becomes how to
Speaker 2: have a good life. And I was seeing so much
Speaker 2: benefit with this life review while people were dying. Why
Speaker 2: not start doing that earlier? Why aren't we doing this
Speaker 2: on a yearly basis? Why aren't we doing these life
Speaker 2: reviews and asking ourselves those big questions? And again, I
Speaker 2: especially like the regret question because I think it's a
Speaker 2: great place to start working on those purpose anchors.
Speaker 1: And so that's sort of tip number four. This idea
Speaker 1: of a life review. Tip number five is something we
Speaker 1: mentioned a little bit before, but I want to dig
Speaker 1: into a bit now, which is this idea of going
Speaker 1: back to childhood, like literally going back to your childhood room.
Speaker 1: When you go back to your childhood room, what do
Speaker 1: you see and what did it tell you about your
Speaker 1: little pea purpose?
Speaker 2: Oh my god. There was a mess of baseball cards
Speaker 2: in every way, shape or form. There were sports posters,
Speaker 2: There were trophies from Little League. There is probably a
Speaker 2: few notebooks of papers and pens because I started writing
Speaker 2: poetry when I was little. There were school books everywhere.
Speaker 2: Funny enough, there were the hints of what I would
Speaker 2: eventually become as an adult. I just didn't know it
Speaker 2: at the time. What there wasn't There wasn't pictures of
Speaker 2: famous doctors. There wasn't toy stethoscopes, Gray's Anatomy, that famous
Speaker 2: book was not on my bookshelf. Interestingly enough, there was
Speaker 2: almost nothing that reflected an interest in medicine, and so
Speaker 2: many things that suggested an interest in certain types of sports,
Speaker 2: in collecting and writing and communicating all of that. Was
Speaker 2: there just nothing about being a doctor.
Speaker 1: So you had baseball cards, piles of stuff, evidence of
Speaker 1: your writing, Noah's deethoscopes. What kind of hint is that
Speaker 1: giving you about your purpose?
Speaker 2: I was trying to co opt someone else's version of purpose,
Speaker 2: my father's, and because I had gone through this really
Speaker 2: traumatic thing and I needed as a kid to grasp
Speaker 2: on to something that made sense so I couldn't move forward.
Speaker 2: And so it really made sense that if I became
Speaker 2: a doctor like him, I would fix everything. But co
Speaker 2: opting his version of purpose didn't fit with who I was,
Speaker 2: And so all you had to do was look around
Speaker 2: that room to see who I was. But I really
Speaker 2: built a life around this purpose that wasn't mine, and
Speaker 2: I would submit that most of us do exactly that.
Speaker 2: Most of us grab onto some version of purpose that
Speaker 2: is suggested to us. There are a few really lucky
Speaker 2: people who don't, who realize what lights them up and
Speaker 2: pursue that path, but most of us pivot to becoming adults.
Speaker 2: We're told, okay, playtime is over. You were a kid then,
Speaker 2: but now you're becoming a young adult and it's time
Speaker 2: to get serious about school. It's time to pick one
Speaker 2: of those main careers that suggest success, that's going to
Speaker 2: provide for you economically. And I think all of us
Speaker 2: do that.
Speaker 1: We just jump in and just forget all the stuff
Speaker 1: that was on our floor. And you've argued that if
Speaker 1: you look at your childhood room and there's lots of
Speaker 1: stuff all over the floor, then that's okay too. That
Speaker 1: gets us to tip number six, which is what you've
Speaker 1: called the spaghetti meth. What's the spaghetti method and why
Speaker 1: is it okay if lots of stuff comes up when
Speaker 1: you start looking for these small purposes.
Speaker 2: Well, here's the thing. When discussing a little peep purpose,
Speaker 2: I still get people resilient. They'll say, look, I've thought
Speaker 2: about regrets in the life review. That's not helping me.
Speaker 2: I've thought about the joys of childhood that's not helping me.
Speaker 2: I've looked at my job and there's nothing there that
Speaker 2: I love that's not helping me. And so if you
Speaker 2: are one of those people, if you were kind of
Speaker 2: resilient to finding these anchors, I think it behooves you
Speaker 2: to find the spaghetti method, which is you throw a
Speaker 2: bunch of things against the wall and see what sticks.
Speaker 2: You say yes to things you normally don't say yes to,
Speaker 2: You talk to people you normally don't talk to. You
Speaker 2: do things that maybe make you feel a little anxious
Speaker 2: or uncomfortable, and at the end of the day, you
Speaker 2: evaluate and say did that light me up? Yes or no?
Speaker 2: And if the answer is hey, I did find some
Speaker 2: joy in that, that might be the beginning of a
Speaker 2: purpose anchor.
Speaker 1: And so you kind of do use the spaghetti method
Speaker 1: and find all these possible purpose anchors by trying these
Speaker 1: new things. But you've also argued the flip side, which
Speaker 1: is like, we can't have little pea purpose in everything,
Speaker 1: especially if we are busy with all this stuff that's
Speaker 1: not giving us purpose. And that's what gets us to
Speaker 1: your final tip tip number seven, which might be a
Speaker 1: hard one for a lot of us. We need to
Speaker 1: embrace the art of subtraction. What's that?
Speaker 2: So I often talk about the workplace because this is
Speaker 2: a question I get all the time. They're like, look,
Speaker 2: I've got to do my nine to five. I don't
Speaker 2: love it, but I need to make money. You're saying,
Speaker 2: find your purpose. I feel stuck, like this is something
Speaker 2: that's not purposeful for me, but I've got to do it,
Speaker 2: and it is what it is. And so what I
Speaker 2: always tell people is do exactly what I did with
Speaker 2: being a doctor. I want you to list out the
Speaker 2: twenty things that are roles and responsibilities of your job,
Speaker 2: and I want you to take a sharp pencil and
Speaker 2: start scratching out everyone you don't like, everything you loathe,
Speaker 2: everything that's boring, et cetera. Most people when they do
Speaker 2: that will have one or two things left over. For me,
Speaker 2: it was hospice, medicine. And so the goal then is
Speaker 2: remember we said winning the game right is doing as
Speaker 2: much little peopleurpose possible and getting rid of as many
Speaker 2: things you loath as possible, washroots, repeat. So the goal
Speaker 2: then is I'm not going to get out of this job,
Speaker 2: but what levers are available to maybe do more than
Speaker 2: stuff I love in the job and do less of
Speaker 2: stuff I don't love. And so let me give you
Speaker 2: another example. I think about it this way. Let's say
Speaker 2: you work at a restaurant and you don't like working
Speaker 2: up front at the counter, and you spend ninety percent
Speaker 2: of your time doing that, But the one thing you
Speaker 2: do love is every Thursday morning you get to stock
Speaker 2: the stock room. It takes about two hours. You love
Speaker 2: writing things down, you love organizing, you love ordering. That's it. Well,
Speaker 2: maybe the person owns your restaurant owns four restaurants, and
Speaker 2: there's an employee who has to stock for each of
Speaker 2: those restaurants. And maybe so you go to your boss
Speaker 2: and say, you know what, I don't really love my
Speaker 2: time at the counter helping customers. Maybe you allow me
Speaker 2: to go to all of our different restaurants every day
Speaker 2: and I'll stock and do the stock room in each
Speaker 2: one of them. And therefore, what I've done is I've
Speaker 2: increased the time I'm doing something I like and decreased
Speaker 2: the time of doing something I don't like. And so
Speaker 2: you're starting to improve things. You're starting to improve that calendar,
Speaker 2: you're starting to win the game just a little bit.
Speaker 2: So if we can think about that month to month,
Speaker 2: year to year, how much change can we bring in
Speaker 2: and how many things can we subtract? How many joyful
Speaker 2: things can we add, and how can we improve those numbers?
Speaker 2: So ultimately, as we get older and older, we're doing
Speaker 2: more and more things that we love and less and
Speaker 2: less things that we loathe.
Speaker 1: So how's following these tips really helped your life? I mean,
Speaker 1: we started this story with you being a very burned
Speaker 1: out doctor and you tried some new things. Where's your
Speaker 1: sense of purpose now?
Speaker 2: I mean I learned that I could walk away from
Speaker 2: medicine twenty fourteen. It took me twenty eighteen to subtract
Speaker 2: out enough to be left with only hospice work and
Speaker 2: jump into other things. And I find myself a lot happier.
Speaker 2: And I'll tell you why. I mean, it really comes
Speaker 2: down to this. When I open the calendar app on
Speaker 2: my phone, almost everything on that app, everything in that
Speaker 2: calendar is something that I put there and I can
Speaker 2: get rid of at the drop of a dime. I
Speaker 2: spend a lot of time podcasting, and sometimes I edit
Speaker 2: my own podcast. Okay, that can be painful, But if
Speaker 2: I decided I didn't want to do it, I could
Speaker 2: get rid of it and just not put an episode out.
Speaker 2: I have complete control and the agency autonomy. These things
Speaker 2: allow me to feel in control, and that increases my
Speaker 2: happiness quite a bit. I've found that I've been able
Speaker 2: to improve that calculus of my schedule over the years,
Speaker 2: over and over again, and so most of the things
Speaker 2: I do are things I want to do and that
Speaker 2: feels deeply fulfilling. And what's really beautiful about that is
Speaker 2: not only do I really like doing these things, I
Speaker 2: found that I connect to other people more. Because when
Speaker 2: I was a doctor, I didn't love being a doctor,
Speaker 2: so I kind of didn't like hanging out with doctor people.
Speaker 2: I didn't tell people I was a doctor. When I'd
Speaker 2: go to a party, I wouldn't tell anyone what I
Speaker 2: did for a living because I was embarrassed. And so
Speaker 2: I knew doctors for decades, but never connected with them
Speaker 2: on a deeper level. When I started doing things that
Speaker 2: lit me up that I loved, not only did I
Speaker 2: connect with people within minutes, but I also started collaborating
Speaker 2: with them, having them on my podcast, and then they
Speaker 2: would have me on their podcast, and then I was
Speaker 2: writing a book and they'd say, hey, I've got this agent.
Speaker 2: They helped me. Why don't you meet my agent? And
Speaker 2: so what happened is I ended up building communities around
Speaker 2: these activities and that has really led to happy not
Speaker 2: just doing what I want to do, but connecting with people, collaborating,
Speaker 2: building and being part of communities of people who I
Speaker 2: love doing things that I find deeply interesting.
Speaker 1: And it seems like you are in a very lucky place,
Speaker 1: right you'd had this time as a doctor. You are
Speaker 1: sort of financially successful enough that you can move certain
Speaker 1: things around in a way that not everybody could. But
Speaker 1: it sounds like your message is that this isn't just
Speaker 1: something for privileged folks who are starting out with the
Speaker 1: right finances to switch things around. This is something that
Speaker 1: everybody can do.
Speaker 2: It is and so what I often remind people, and
Speaker 2: this is really the privileged conversation. People look at me
Speaker 2: and say, well, you were a doctor and you found
Speaker 2: out that you understood your finances and everything was great. Well,
Speaker 2: lucky for you, but that's not me. Like, I'm twenty two,
Speaker 2: I'm working fifty sixty hours a week. I don't have
Speaker 2: time to do the things I love and I don't
Speaker 2: love my job either. Well, there are a few things. Really.
Speaker 2: Time and money are always the biggest reasons why people
Speaker 2: say they can't do this. So time, let's talk about
Speaker 2: that really quickly. First, the Bureau Labor Statistics does the
Speaker 2: American Time Survey on a regular basis. They've generally found
Speaker 2: that most Americans have about five hours of free time
Speaker 2: at day, and actually those in lower socioeconomic classes probably
Speaker 2: have a little bit more. And so it's probably not time.
Speaker 2: So then it's money. And I like to say money
Speaker 2: is a really important tool to living a life of purpose,
Speaker 2: but it's only one of many tools, and so often
Speaker 2: we forget to use our passions, our youth, our energy,
Speaker 2: our connections, our skills, our communities. All of these things
Speaker 2: are tools also, And so I like to say, Hey,
Speaker 2: you're twenty two and you're working fifty hours a week
Speaker 2: and you don't like your job. Can you use the
Speaker 2: artist's attraction to do more of what you do like
Speaker 2: within the job, or can you use the joy of addition?
Speaker 2: Maybe you have a lot of energy and you have
Speaker 2: more free time on the weekends because you don't have
Speaker 2: a family and you don't have a mortgage. You don't
Speaker 2: have kids yet, and so you can start doing a purposeful,
Speaker 2: joyful activity. Maybe you turn it into a side hustle
Speaker 2: that eventually leads to some economic margin. But even if
Speaker 2: it doesn't, you've used the joy of addition to add
Speaker 2: in some purpose into your life, even if you haven't
Speaker 2: gotten rid of something you don't love. We have all
Speaker 2: these other levers that people generally don't think of. If
Speaker 2: I'm twenty two and I live in the same city
Speaker 2: as my parents, maybe I go live in their base
Speaker 2: and don't have to pay rent. Maybe that gives me
Speaker 2: a little economic margin, so I can work four days
Speaker 2: a week at this job I don't like instead of
Speaker 2: five days a week. Maybe I can fill that other
Speaker 2: day with purpose or some money making activity and start
Speaker 2: controlling things, start improving that schedule. I think it's easy
Speaker 2: to say this is an argument of privilege, but we
Speaker 2: know that there are some tools and some levers that
Speaker 2: we can use to start bringing purpose into our life. Now,
Speaker 2: even if that's fifteen minutes of me scrolling through Facebook
Speaker 2: and joining baseball card or baseball fan pages, those fifteen
Speaker 2: minutes are still adding in something joyful, and that's that
Speaker 2: little beginning that we start building off of.
Speaker 1: And I think one of the things we know from
Speaker 1: the purpose research is that once you open up to
Speaker 1: that little beginning, once you try a little bit, you
Speaker 1: wind up feeling more energized, You wind up getting more community,
Speaker 1: you wind up getting more opportunities to do this. So
Speaker 1: in some says, you grow your purpose PI over time
Speaker 1: just by trying this out in little ways.
Speaker 2: It's momentum. The hardest thing is the hardest thing, and
Speaker 2: again we get back to purpose is action and present
Speaker 2: in the future. The hardest thing is building the momentum
Speaker 2: for that first action. But once you start taking these actions,
Speaker 2: the momentum builds, and so again autonomy agency this idea
Speaker 2: that I can actually control what's happening in my life.
Speaker 2: Once you start feeling that, it almost becomes addictive. You
Speaker 2: don't want to stop.
Speaker 1: You might not want to stop adding purpose to your life.
Speaker 1: But some good things have to come to an end,
Speaker 1: like this episode. But let's quickly recap Jordan's tips for
Speaker 1: finding purpose. Tip number one is to avoid those purpose
Speaker 1: mirages getting rich, becoming famous, winning a Grammy. These aren't
Speaker 1: realistic goals that are really going to transform your life. Instead,
Speaker 1: look for little p purpose and things you can do
Speaker 1: right away. Tip number two, your purpose has to be
Speaker 1: yours and yours alone. Don't do things just to impress
Speaker 1: your parents, friends, or peers. The third tip is to
Speaker 1: stop thinking of purpose as a goal you've got to reach,
Speaker 1: instead as a process and engage in joyful activities whenever
Speaker 1: they present themselves. Tip four is to conduct a life review.
Speaker 1: Ask yourself about your regrets and if there's anything you
Speaker 1: can do about them before it's too late. Children are
Speaker 1: great at finding purpose, so tip number five is to
Speaker 1: look back at your childhood passions. Are there any clues
Speaker 1: to the things that might bring you joy as an adult?
Speaker 1: And if you draw a blank, Tip number six recommends
Speaker 1: the spaghetti method. Just experiment and try out lots of
Speaker 1: stuff that might give you more purpose. And the final tip,
Speaker 1: Tip seven isn't about adding more, it's about subtraction. Remove
Speaker 1: as many of the bad and boring parts of your
Speaker 1: life as possible. We've reached the end of Jordan's tips,
Speaker 1: the end of this episode and the end of our
Speaker 1: how To season. But not to worry is we'll have
Speaker 1: lots more in store for you over the coming weeks,
Speaker 1: so be sure to return soon for the next episode
Speaker 1: of The Happiness Lab with me doctor Laurie Santo's