recognize if you are not currently living your purpose. So, Joe, a lot of people are, including me, are searching for this thing that we call purpose. Um, what does it look like when someone is living their purpose? And how might someone watching or listening to this know that whether they're doing it or whether they're not doing it? — It looks like this. My wife and I were at the end of this week-long retreat. And it's a hardcore retreat. You've been to it. It was starts at 7:30 in the morning and it ends at like 10 o'clock at night. We're working all the time, seven days straight. Big emotions, lots of people having big issues, getting breakthroughs and everything like that. Exhausting. And we're at the last day. We're sitting in the hot tub recovering. And I looked at my wife and I said to her, you know, there was this thing, this transaction we could have made that would have made us like $70 million. And I was thinking about it and I'm really glad that didn't happen. and she said, "Oh, what would make that the case? " And I said, "Oh, um, because if we would have done that, we might not be doing this. If we had $70 million, we not might not have started this business. We might not have like done this because we did it because we needed to. " And she said, "Oh, yeah. " And then I looked at her and I said, "If somebody offered you a billion dollars for this business right now, would just sell it. And our company's worth nothing close to a billion dollars, right? " And but the only thing is you couldn't compete. So, you couldn't do any of this work again? And we both went, "No, no, we didn't. No, we wouldn't. We wouldn't sell it for a billion dollars. " If you have an idea that you want to pursue and you can't be bought off, then you're living your purpose. — This billion dollar thing, I'm not going to lie, I feel a bit weird about it because it's like, how many people realistically are there in the world that would that wouldn't like sell what they're doing for work for like a billion dollars? I I've met some of them over the years who have used this question to be like, "Oh yeah, I really feel like I'm living my purpose because like, you know, I there's no amount of money you'd be able to pay me to stop me from doing the thing. " And I've always been a bit like skeptical. I'm like, "Really? " Like, "Really? If someone paid you like 100 million or like a billion dollars, you wouldn't you wouldn't stop doing a podcast or a YouTube channel or like working in this specific thing or like doing this specific thing? " And they're like, "Yeah. " And I'm like, "Damn, that's a level of living purpose that I'm just like, man, I can only aspire to. " So, for this one personally, I don't take it too literally. I don't imagine it like literally a billion dollars. I I treat this more as like a general feeling of like, am I doing it for the money or not for the money? Cuz if you're doing something primarily for the money, then it's kind of unlikely that thing is going to be you living your true purpose. — Okay. So, people might be hearing that and thinking, I mean, that sounds great. I'd love to be, you know, I'd love for my work to be the thing that I wouldn't that I I would say no to a billion dollars to stop doing. But if I think of like — 99% of people who might be watching this video, um — yes, — including me, uh there are either like, you know, if someone offered to buy my business for a billion dollars, there are aspects of it that I would uh sell off and wouldn't. Um, and I imagine for people that I speak to in our audience, maybe it's like 95% 100% of the work they would totally just stop doing if they had a billion dollars or if they were offered it or if they won the lottery. So like, right, — how do we go from this starting point of like the work I'm doing is absolutely not the work that I, you know, that you couldn't buy me off for to get to this point where you and your wife are chilling in a hot tub and like, yeah, you know, I'm glad we didn't sell for 70 million because we actually we enjoy doing this. — Yeah. Uh, so the first thing is you have to recognize that you're not living your purpose. And so that's easy for most people. I think most people can say, "Yep, I'm probably not living my purpose. " But admitting that to yourself and then taking the risk to take the step to live your purpose is something. But for some people, they don't even recognize it, right? They've just been in the idea is that you're gonna do high school and then when you're done with high school, you're supposed to do college and when you're done with college, you're supposed to get a job and it's supposed to be in a good career and then get married and then get a promotion and that that's what you're supposed to do to be happy. And they've been told that and they think that they're doing the thing that's supposed to be happy. And but what they don't realize it's life is far more like a great piece of music. And you're not just like trying to get to the crescendo of the song. You're not just trying to get to the end of the song. You're actually enjoying listening to the music. And so one of the greatest ways to tell that you're not living your purpose is that somehow or another you're living for a reward in the future. Something in the future is going to pay off and tell you, "Oh, then now it's worth it. " But if you're living your purpose, life is like a song. dream come true that you never thought was possible, never even thought of because you couldn't even imagine it's as good as this. And so that's the recognition to be able to recognize that. If you're doing things like saying you should do things or have to do things, it's a great sign that you're not living your purpose. If you're telling yourself, I'm doing it because it's the safe thing, that's also probably a great sign that you're not doing your purpose. you know, you're not living on your purpose or living in your passion. And so, so those are all great signs. And then the first step is actually recognize that that's happening that you're living for the crescendo. You're not living for the music that's playing right now. — And so that is step number one, conducting a purpose audit is to ask yourself whether or not you're actually living your purpose. And we can ask ourselves these questions to get a feel for is that true for us or not. Firstly, would you sell what you're doing for a billion dollars? If yes, then you're probably not living your purpose to some degree. But if not, then you probably are living your purpose to some degree. Secondly, are you living for some sort of reward in the future? Is that the basis of the work that you're doing? And thirdly, do you feel like you should do something or is there a lot of pressure from your family or society more broadly to do a certain thing? If you're feeling the should behind doing something, that thing is unlikely to be your purpose. Broadly, when we're doing a purpose audit as well, like we do have a felt sense. Like right now, if I were to ask you, are you currently living your purpose in terms of what you do for work? for example, you probably have like a gut response to that. Um, back when I was working as a doctor, I felt the gut response every Sunday evening when I would have the Sunday scaries and every Monday morning when I wake up like a I don't want to go to work. It's like h it's just supposed to be noble and like help people and all that kind of stuff, but I just had that feeling of like h associated with it. And so that was probably a reasonable sign that I wasn't living my purpose. Whereas for me, when I was teaching medical students, like I had a teaching day or I had to run a physiology supervision or it was like a little course that I was running, I would never have that feeling of like uh I would always have a feeling of like ooh this is going to be fun. I'm looking forward to this teaching thing. And so that kind of told me that my own purpose is more found in teaching than it was in practicing medicine. 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So thank you notion for sponsoring this video and for powering our business for the last like six plus years. Let's get back to the video. Okay, so now we come to step two
where we have to address the elephant in the room, which is the money problem. What if someone's like, "Hey, I'm not really passionate about my job in accounting, but you know, I'm passionate about the money that it gets me at the end of the month, and then I can use that money to do fun things and like support my family and stuff. " Where does that mode of operation sit in this conversation about purpose and passion? Yeah, it's a great question. Um, first of all, there's nothing wrong with not living your purpose. You know, you're not going to be able to find that kind of happiness or or passion or zest for life. But the it's really important that people don't beat themselves up just because they're not living their purpose because that's not going to get them to living their purpose any faster. So, that's one thing. So, we're not calling some people good and some people bad for living their purpose or not. I think the question to answer your question specifically, I'm passionate about the money. Money is right now I'm looking at a computer. 500 different companies made money to make that computer. These lights, the YouTube, you're making money. I'm making money. YouTube is making money. The advertisers are making money. There is infinite amount of ways to make money. You can't look out your window unless you're in nature. and not see thousands of ways that people have made money. So if you're passionate about making money and then you say I have to do it in this one way, then you're then there's at least zero creativity, but at most you're delusional because there's literally infinite amount of ways to make money in this world. And so saying I'm not going to live my passion and my purpose because of money is it doesn't make any sense. But Joe, like you know, you've got no idea how hard the job market is these days. You know, my degree is in think X and like AI and the recession and stuff. And yes, maybe there's like thousands of ways to make money, but like all I've been trained for and all I know is this one way of making money and well, I got to kind of need it to pay the bills, man. — Yeah. So, do it to pay the bills as you find out another way to make money. So, one of the things that you'll learn in your about the way that your mind works is that if you are doing binary thinking, if you say it's either this way or that way, it's either keep my job or quit my job or I either stay an accountant or I leave being an accountant, that means your mind is in fear. Binary thinking says that you're making decisions out of fear. And so, that's what I would say is if you're not in fear, there's a thousand different ways. And by the way, ways to make money in accounting. just in accounting alone, the company that you work at and how you do accounting for one company, how you do the accounting. Are you finding ways for AI to do the accounting for you? Are you innovating in accounting? Are you accounting for a drug dealer or are you doing accounting for a company that's trying to save the world? Are you accounting for Ali Abdal? How close is the team that you love? Or do you hate them? all of these things apparently have to happen because you need money. And so to me there's just infinite possibility. And when you start thinking black or white, then you know that you're thinking out of fear. And so fear is not going to get you to your passion. — I scared myself into living my passion. I've never heard that. So it's really requires you to at least be open to the concept that life can change. And if you're not open to that concept, look around you because there's no part of life that's not changing. — And so that is step number two to think creatively about the money problem. It's very easy for us to get fixated on, oh, but I need to make money from the thing and have this very blinkhood view of what that actually needs to look like and then use that as a reason as to why we're not living on purpose cuz I just got to make the money. But what I really like about what Joe says is that if we think a little creatively about this, like there are ways to make money following your purpose almost regardless of what your purpose is. — Side question that's a little bit of a tangent here is uh how are we defining our terms? Like what is passion and what is purpose? Is it the same thing? Is there an overlap? — I think there's lots of definitions for passion. Um but if we're talking about if you're passionate about what you do, then you're definitely living your purpose. And if you're living your purpose, you're definitely passionate about what you do. And so living your purpose is a felt sense. It's not a there's no way to like have a checklist and say, "Okay, I'm doing X, Y, and Z, and now I'm living my purpose. " As a matter of fact, I've seen people try to do that. They make a checklist and they say, "Okay, if I'm living my purpose, then, you know, I will be helping people and I'll be making X amount of money and I'll, you know, have this kind of a this size of a team and, etc., etc. " And a couple of them because they've been incredibly smart CEOs have done it and then found out no that's not living their purpose because purpose is a felt sense. You know when you're doing it and you don't have to do it in the future or in the past. As a matter of fact, you can't. The only place you can actually feel if you're living on purpose is in this moment. You can't find it in the future. It's just right here because it's a feeling and that's when the feeling happens. And so, yes, you feel passionate about it. Yes, you feel like this is what I'm meant to be doing right now. doing. — And that's the crazy thing about purpose is that right now we're having a conversation and you can be doing it on your purpose with passion or you can not be doing it. You could be doing it not on your purpose. And so, and you can feel into that right now in this moment and that's the best way to find what your purpose is. — All right. So, we've got step one, which is to conduct a purpose audit. We've got
step two, which is to think creatively about the money problem. Let's now talk about step three. And so, at this point, maybe you've recognized that maybe you are not living your purpose. But the next action step is not to try and just like quit your job and go and find that like elusive purpose thing because there is one really important major thing that you can do before you suddenly like blow up your life. — Yeah. So, there's a couple of things that you want to just check out for a minute. And so one of the things that I see when people are burnt out on their job and they feel like they're not living their passion. Sometimes they it's just more of the way that they're doing it and less of what they're doing. And so there's been too much pressure that's been built up or they've stopped being themselves enough where they've lost touch with the passion and they have this dream that oh if I go over there and do something else I'll be able to be myself. And often times that just like that not being themselves chases them. So before you leave the thing that you're doing, one of the most effective things to do is to say what happens if I am unadulteratedly if I am completely 100% authentic and me in this environment and let's see what happens. That's a really good first step. And so the other way to say this is to say, what if I I know I'm acting from my purpose for the next 30 days at work. Every meeting, every moment, I'm reminding myself like if I'm being in purpose, what is it that I would do? How would it how would I listen? How would I say the thing? How would I interact? How would I program? How would I be a doctor? Whatever it is, that question is really important because it is one of the best ways to start understanding what is important to you. What what is your purpose? And it lets you see how people change when you act that way. So what I mean to say is that often times when I talk to somebody and they do that, what they find out is, oh, I have been living my purpose. I just wasn't being myself. And so, and I had a whole bunch of pressure on me that was all in my head and I just made my purpose into, you know, a horrible thing that I didn't want anything to do with. And you can find this all the time with like rock and rollers or artists where they just struggle for 20 years to be the artist and then they like finally get to be the paid artist or the paid rock and roller and then they're like, "Oh I gotta go play rock and roll. " Because it went from a release to an obligation. and they went from being themselves to being something for somebody else. And so it just like all that passion evaporated. And so one of the first things that you do is you say, "Hey, if I'm going to be authentically myself and I'm going to do it the way that I want to do it, let's see what happens. " And that the and the second thing that teaches you is that you'll find out 80% of the time the world will start rearranging to support how you want to do it. Your mind will never think that that's true. Your mind will be like, "No way will they support me if I say what I really think or if I do the thing I really care about or if I do it in the way that I care about. " But you'll see the world start bending and that'll be this lesson. So even if you don't stick with what you're doing, you go off and try something new. What happens is you've learned this lesson that oh the most important thing is being in my purpose in the moment because that's what makes the world provide the thing, right? And I don't mean it provided in a magical thinking way. I just mean if I am really into drumming and I like drum in my neighborhood every day, the person who's really interested in guitar is going to hear me and they're going to say, "Oh, wait. Hey, you're drumming. What's going on? I play guitar. " I just mean that the people who like what you're doing will come towards you and the people who don't like will leave. The opportunities will come towards you. And so you have to be living that purpose for the world to rearrange itself to to help you out. — And so that is step number three to experiment with authenticity. This is not about like hey I'm going to quit my job and travel the world and find myself. It's about saying that look within the context and the confines of my current situation. Let me try a little experiment where I act as if I'm living my purpose fully authentically within what I'm currently doing. like what would it look like if I was showing up as my most authentic self in the context of my corporate accounting job or law medicine you know whatever the thing might be let's try showing up authentically let's try it out and let's treat it as an experiment — and it and the most important part of that experiment is every moment that you're doing your job what is it for me to do this o on my from my purpose on purpose like h how do I do that right because most of the time we're doing our job like a coma in a automatic pilot it. Okay, this is just the thing that I do and now I do the thing and I I'm not learning and I'm not growing and I'm not saying the thing that I want to say. So it's that question is constantly in okay right now if I'm in my purpose and you can like at any moment right now anybody can feel what is it in this moment to not be living in purpose and what is it in this exact moment to be living your purpose like what changes in your body and the way that you look at the world and so that's the most important part of the experiment but yeah that's the experiment yeah and then go to India there's this great timer there's plenty of them on web. We use the one called Yap. And so you can put it on your phone and it'll make a ding seven, eight, nine times a day. And you put it on your phone and you have it remind you to just say, "How how do you live on purpose right now? " And you just and in that moment, just take 20 seconds and do it. Yeah. It doesn't matter even if it lasts for like a minute or two. Just right there, right now. This isn't a search in the future. It's a search that you find in yourself in the moment. And if you do that for two, three, four weeks, your search for purpose will completely flip on its head and be far have a lot more elacrity. — Are there any stories that come to mind of any anyone you've coached who was in this sort of situation like sort of when they did this experiment, what happened? — Yeah, absolutely. There was a great experiment. Uh so there was a person who wanted to quit um her job. She had she is a brilliant engineer and a brilliant leader of engineers and she's in the autonomy space which is vehicles that move on their own. And she was in a job that she didn't like and she absolutely 100% was just like I'm going to be myself in this job. And simultaneously her boss wanted her fired if I recall correctly and her boss's boss wanted to promote her into her boss's position. And at the same time somebody from out like another big famous outside firm heard about what was happening and they went in and recruited her. And so she could have stayed could have replaced the boss and but could have left. So she got all these opportunities simultaneously. And the funny thing is, as soon as she got this opportunity in this new place, she was offered, you can have this really high position or you can have the position right below it. And the way she describes it in the p and like now, she goes, at that moment, I wasn't in my purpose and I made the wrong choice. Like I had learned it in this place where I didn't care anymore cuz I was like, I'm leaving. it doesn't matter. I'll just be myself. And it started working. And then I went into this place where I did care and all of a sudden I compromised on my purpose. And that one mistake early on of not living in her purpose had a consequences for years afterwards because it put her in a position where she couldn't actually do the thing that she wanted to do for a couple of years. M — so it was a totally you know fascinating example of how important it is to really be in that moment being true to yourself passionate doing the thing that your passion is leading you towards despite the fear despite the consequences and that's the most acute one and it was so cool to watch her you know two years later be able to look at the whole thing and can see oh there I was living it. I could feel it. There I got scared. There I was living — So it's sort of like in if you're like dating someone whether you're being authentically yourself versus like putting on an act. And something about like when you it's when you sort of care too much about the outcome. That's like uhoh. The subconscious or conscious thing starts where you start acting like someone who's not you because you care about the outcome. But then that ends up being counterproductive because like well they're gonna fall in love with someone that you're you actually are not kind of — correct. That's exactly it. It's just not with a woman. It's with the world. — Right. It's you are instead of oh I'm going to abandon myself for a woman and then she's going to love me but it's not going to be me. It's I'm going to abandon myself for the world and then they're going to value me but they're not going to value me. But if you don't abandon yourself for the world, then they're going to value you and they're going to value what you do and what's uniquely awesome about you. — Yeah. — And then that is a person living their purpose. — Like, okay, so if someone if someone's in the situation where they're like they're about they're thinking, you know what, I'm like x minutes into this video, you know, I think this might be a good experiment to try where I try and be authentically myself. But their mind will immediately come up with a long list of reasons as to why that is a terrible idea. Um, — correct. Oh, yes. I won't be safe. People will get mad at me. I I'll lose my job. Oh, yeah. They're infinite. That's right. — So, what do you do about that? — I Well, the first thing I do, I point out that you've created a world that you can't be yourself. Like that get out of the world. You have two choices. is if that's the case, if the first case is that if I'm myself, there's a whole bunch of bad consequences. It means you're in a world that's not suited for you. So, leave or say, you know what, it's okay. I am happy to live the rest of my life in a world that is not suited for me, that does not accept me, does not see me, does not understand who I am. And convince yourself that you have to do it for X, Y, and Z reasons. And it's okay. Like I like there's no bad guy in that. There's just that that's the choice. You don't get life doesn't give you a third choice. Be a fa like do the things that are scary and trust or see if the world will start providing the people who actually like you for who you are. Be yourself. see if the world will provide the people who like you for who you are or continue to not be yourself and live in a compromise. And it's a hard choice, but that that's a choice. Well, it's a hard choice until you do about three experiments and then it gets really easy because you start realizing, holy crap, this works. — I asked myself this question about 6 months ago. I was like, okay, if I wanted to get more fulfillment from what I'm doing, what would I be doing? And I was like, oh, easy. I would just do more events in person because there's just more vibes when you're doing stuff in person. — Yeah. And so we were just like, "All right, let's just run some events here in Hong Kong. " And we just like booked a room, got 100 people together, and the events themselves didn't make any money. Um, and I there was part of me that felt a bit bad. I was like, "Wait a minute. " We're like, — we actually lost about £100 on that because actually we ordered some more food, whatever, whatever. And but then pretty quickly I was like, "Yeah, but like the vibes and the fulfillment that I got from that and the ideas and the energy I got from that, it's like totally worth it. " And now sort of the next phase of our business has sort of stemmed from the fact that we did these events that on paper didn't seem to make sense but totally made sense from the perspective of like — this is actually just way more fun for me so I'm just going to do the thing regardless of whether it like breaks even or like lose even loses a bit of money. — Yeah. So critical that's such a beautifully critical piece. So um I'll give you two examples of this. I work with a lot of famous AI engineers and one of the things that I noticed all the time is if they start burning out, it's because they're not actually doing the core research that they love doing. They're not doing the IC individual contributor work that they love doing that they fell in love with at the beginning. And so oftent times my advice is make sure how much time do you need? 30% of your time is doing that. Make sure We can figure out how to help you manage people more efficiently. All that other stuff. There's lots of ways of telling everybody to like manage that. Make sure you get that thing that that fuels your passion. It's why I still coach one-on-one, right? I don't need to coach anybody one-on-one. They it doesn't it's not as lucrative as all of the business and the teaching and all the people that are coming for the courses. But it's like I get passion watching people's life change in like in a in with like real life closeness not just by somebody who comes and goes in a course. I get to live with these people over years and I get to watch them blossom and it's oh I need that. So I will do that because that's in my passion and it and every time I learn something in a coaching session it turns into a teaching. it turns into something I can share with everybody. And so that's the most important thing is to constantly be in that question of how do I live in my purpose right now? And when I have done this work with people, I just did this work to this morning. We had a whole bunch of people and somebody was asking about living their purpose and I said right now act it from your purpose and you saw the whole transformation in their face and they like settled down and then they went wait but and you could see it. It was like oh there was a a deep fear of oh if I'm going to be myself I'm going to be rejected. And so that's one of the things that prevents us from doing it is what we see is, okay, I'm going to be myself. I feel good inside of myself, but if I get rejected, that's going to feel really bad. So I'm going to try to figure out how not to get rejected. And now I'm out of myself again. And so the practice of learning, okay, how am I going to live my purpose right now is the training ground — for actually having a job, having a career that serves your purpose. Because like my friend that I was telling you about or client who was doing their purpose got the new job and then you know didn't do the thing and then it's they suffered for 2 years because they didn't accept the higher position like you have once you're living your purpose you actually have to be there doing that all the time for you to be successful in it. All the time is a little strong but you have to do that a lot of the time to be successful in it. You have to continue what you're doing, saying that doesn't feel right. Even if my sponsors want it, I'm going to do the thing that actually feels right. That I'm not going to do that even though we're going to I'm lose a little money because I know that that's where I have to go. That's I can feel that pull. calling. You have to make those choices or it doesn't last. It all falls apart. And so you need to have that deep practice of being living your purpose from moment to moment because that's what's going to be required of you to actually make the thing that you want to do work. I' I've had a few conversations with people about this sort of thing. Um, and one objection that sometimes comes up is something like, "Yeah, but who's to say that I should even trust my feelings? Am I not just being ridiculous for having the audacity to want a job that allows me to be myself? Like, isn't that just such a ridiculous way of thinking about things because like, you know, I'm not some like special snowflake. Feelings are not facts. Like, just because I have a feeling that like, oh, I want to be myself, you know? That's just not how the workplace works. Like, I got to be realistic. Dot dot. — So, the first there's two parts to that. The first part is who am I to trust my feelings? They're ridiculous. Yes, they are ridiculous. And the things that you want right now that you think you want will not be the things that you want 6 months from now. That won't be the things that you want a year from now. And out of all people, you know this, like there's a whole bunch of things you wanted and then you end up living where your dreams used to be in your dreams and you're like, "Oh, check that out. I got everything that I wanted. " But yeah, like no, now I want something different. That's how the world works. And so absolutely. Who are you and your feelings are ridiculous? Yes, absolutely. But the way that the human system works is we want something like walking and then running being the fastest person on the planet or we want to like beat our friend in a race. The thing that we want that's right in front of us is our evolutionary call. Little kids that go from zero to eight years old, they only do is they follow their wants and they evolve quicker than any other eight years that we exist. Then we start thinking stuff and it gets in the way. We have but they're just like this is what I want. Those wants actually fulfill our calling. There's a secondary step to this is like sometimes we have wants that actually don't serve us, but they're actually not our true wants. And there's a really easy way to move through that. So, I'll give you an example. Let's say I want something like to eat a gallon of ice cream. All I have to do is say, okay, what's the need behind that want? It's like, oh, I want to feel satiated. And then I go, oh, what's the need behind that want? Oh, I it's because I want to feel like calm. Okay. And what's the need behind that want? Oh, I want to feel safe. So, you really You don't really want to eat the gallon of ice cream. If I could just make you feel safe, the feeling of wanting the gallon of ice cream would go away. And so, there maybe you need to take a look and really dive down and say, "What's what's the want really trying to get? " Because the first want is just a strategy and the second want, third want, fourth want is actually the real want. But all of those wants are pulling us in a very particular direction towards understanding ourselves better towards the next want. So that's one part of your question. The second part of your question is I'm not a special snowflake. So that's not the work the way the workplace works because I'm not like I'm not some diva where I have so much talent that people have to love me. So the my answer there would be you don't know what the workplace is like. You know what your workplace is like. So most of the times I hear people say that it's because they've experienced one type of workplace. So they're yeah that's not how accounting works. But they have not been an accountant for you know uh Wavy Gravy's uh ranch who had an accountant right and they have not been an accountant for cir like they don't know they just know this is there's a particular kind of accounting that they've done in a particular environment and so they're saying they know the way the world works because they actually haven't seen very much of the world. you know, they I think the comment is they run in circles so small they think they've seen it all. And so that's one of the issues. And then the other thing that I would say is if what you're doing you're not actually that special at, you're not a snowflake, then you're not living your purpose. Because if you're living your purpose and you're so passionate about it, you are one of those people who is who has found the thing that like dovetales with them so well that they are a special talent at it. — And so to summarize step number three for finding your life's purpose before you quit your job or make drastic changes to your life, try being completely authentic in how you approach whatever you're doing for the next 30 days. Ask yourself, if I were living my purpose in this work, what would it look like? How would I show up? How would I listen? How would I speak? How would I approach my work? And the key thing behind this experiment is that it helps you figure out like is the problem here what you're doing or is the problem, shall we say, how you're doing it. And generally, people find that when you do show up authentically, the world does genuinely start to somewhat rearrange itself around you in that the right people and the right opportunities come your way and the wrong people and the wrong opportunities start to fall away. Okay, so that was step number three. We are now moving on to step number four. But like when I think of purpose, I
life's purpose. Purpose isn't found in the future. Purpose is found right now. You live your purpose in this moment. And so even if you are searching for your purpose, do it as if you're living your purpose. be on in your purpose as you're doing it in the way being yourself authentically being you doing your thing in your way knowing like being fully centered in yourself in it that's more important than going and finding it and then the third thing that's critical is that it's a series of experimentations Steve Jobs is famously you know talks about this about how he was just I was really into calligraphy and this meditation practice and then this is how all those things that became the calligraphy became the fonts and this design process that I was interested in became the colors of the Mac or whatever he had he talked about all of his wanderings and then he talked about how all those wanderings ended up in his products and so it's the same with me you know here I am doing this thing but I can tell you how all my venture capital background affected this and how my music background and how my movie making background, all the things that I've done in my life that I wandered around doing, I found parts of myself. I found things I wanted to do and and now looking back, I can be living my purpose in all of those things. All of them are telling stories. waking up the mind. All of them are different ways in which I can live my purpose. I don't I the purpose isn't the one thing I'm doing. It's how I'm doing it. It's what I'm doing in a general sense, but it's not what I'm doing specifically like I'm an accountant. You know, it's it there's if my purpose is say helping people understand, be financially um abundant or financially sane. And if that's my purpose, man, there's 73 different ways I can think of right away that I could do that. So, it's really not about finding the thing. It's about experimenting and living and growing and wandering and then everything shows up. And my personal story on this was I think it was interesting. So, I was I was doing international stock lending and I was I had three promotions and three raises inside of 18 months. I was 24 years old. I was making more money than any of my friends by a long shot. And like in retrospect, I'm had no idea how much money I was making. And so I was making all this money and I was miserable. And in my mind, I said, I know what I want to do. I want to be creative. I want to play music, write movies, and make movies. That's what I wanted to do. And so, for seven years, I worked my butt off to get to a place where I could be doing this movie thing, television show. I'm in this television show. I'm the observing director to become the director of the next show or something, your show down the road. and I'm sitting there observing and I look around and I'm like, "Oh crap, this is international stock lending. It's exactly the same thing. There's one person with the power. There's a whole bunch of people who want to be doing their job, but they actually a different job. There's people who come to work telling me that a part of their soul has been taken out of them by having to come and do this work. They're working long hours. Nobody's happy. Everybody is like physically not taking care of themselves. And I for seven years ran after the thing that I thought I wanted only to find out I was running towards the thing I was running away from. And at that moment I said, you know what? I'm just going to say yes to anything that sounds good in the moment. Any work that comes to me any way. And I did crazy things. cuz I like helped with a welder and I remade cars and I did drywall and I did uh big loan modifications for large buildings and I helped somebody start a venture business and I did all these crazy things and next thing I know there was more opportunities coming towards me than I could say yes to. So I just started saying yes to the things that were most exciting and it just kept on growing. That's how all of a sudden I became a venture capitalist. and so and a lot of luck. But the luck happened because I was sitting there living in my passion dayto day. And what happens when you're living in your passion dayto day is people want to work with you. It's hard to get a job because you don't want to be doing it. You want to get a job like do the thing you want to do and everybody wants to work with you. That's very true. Like if I think of all the people I know who are like, "Oh man, I applied to 200 jobs and I got 200 rejections. " It's like now that I've seen what it's like to hire people, I'm like, "Bro, let's just honestly pick like the two or three that you really really want to go for. " — Yeah. — And then just like go like put in 100x the effort that anyone else would. Like take the hiring manager out to coffee or their direct reports. Just like find a way to get in there. Like there's just so many ways. It's like if someone wanted to with me, there's an infinite number of ways they could get it, — right? — But none of them would involve applying on some generic job board or like autofill the LinkedIn jobs application and just like spam and pray and all that stuff, — right? — All of them would require you to be passionate about it. You would only do those hundred things if you were passionate, if you have, if you were on your purpose. And that's why those people succeed. Whereas a person who's like but you know that job market today — you don't really want to do it anyway. — So then is the thing to quote follow your passion because that also like you know there's a pro follow your passion camp then there's an anti-f like where do you stand in the — you should passion — I think that the question of following your passion is is um it's a false dichotomy. There's no follow your passion don't follow your passion. it assumes that there is a passion. So the place where it gets wonky is that somebody's like my passion is being an artist and then they have this very fixed way in which they want to be an artist and it's like I I want to do black and white charcoal only it at large scale and if you are deeply passionate about that absolutely go ahead and do the thing. But most people when they do that, what they're actually setting up is a rejection. They're like, "See, the world won't accept me if I'm living in my passion. " Because what I notic is people who are deeply living in their passion, they're passionate about something broad and they're okay with the thousands of ways to get there. There's a thousand ways to get to the broad thing that you're after. You said your sister or somebody wants to contribute to the happiness of all beings. I can think of a dozen ways to do that. So, most of the time when people are thinking about live your passion or don't live your passion camps, they're thinking about somebody saying,"I want to be the charcoal black and white artist and I'm going to do that thing and well, you're not going to make any money. How are you going to live? You're going to have this miserable life. " But if you're broadly saying, "I want to have an impact and I want to be have a creative life and I want people to see beautiful things and I want it to affect them. " Do you know how many hundreds of ways you can do that and make money doing that? Tons. So to me, yes, live your passion, but not in the narrow way that most people define it. And there's lots of little nooks and crannies in our ecosystem of people, oh wow, this person happens to be deeply passionate about, you know, a very specific arbitrage of insurance, you know, and it makes a ton of money. is a friend of mine and D makes a ton of money and he's really passionate about but he's not passionate about that. He's passionate about numbers. He's passionate about winning games. He's passionate about solving problems. He's passionate about um about taking his finances and giving it away to his particular charities that he cares about and like taking money from one place and putting it towards another. And that's what he's p he's passionate about the arbitrage but he loves his job. But I there's 10 other jobs he could work in a hedge fund that would all do the same thing for him. — Yeah, that's a really nice way of looking at it. Um I've recently we've got this um lifestyle business academy thing where we're helping people start businesses and people always ask this like you know how do I figure out what my niche is based on like passions and things. And one way I found myself explaining it is being like it's not in your interest to narrowly define your passion. It's like what is a business? So business is like you know a set of people with a particular problem and then you offer them the solution. So you could be passionate about any of the characteristics of the set of people. problem. You could be passionate about any of the characteristics of the solution. You could be passionate about is it like a software thing. So you could be passionate about building software. Suddenly you've got a zillion jobs available to you. You could be passionate about coaching. teaching. You could be passionate about creative. Like there's all these different permutations of things. And I agree like when someone feels like oh it's it's sort of like this idea of I have this one passion and I and that passion equates to a like uh point by point a weekly agenda of what I will be doing. Now we're just defining passion so narrowly that yeah maybe in that context you might not be able to make much money doing that one specific instantiation of that calendar but I love this idea of sort of broad broadening it up. The other thing I notice is that the people who do achieve that very narrow this exact thing I want to do, they are often the people that once it becomes a job and an obligation, they lose all passion for — because it wasn't really that specific thing they were passionate about. Passion was actually something a little broader, but they were defining it so narrowly that like they missed the forest from the trees as it were. — Or they their passion was really kind of being rebellious. What they were really doing was re being rebellious and saying see I won't be accepted for X Y and Z and then they are accepted and then it loses all the pull. the pull. — Yeah. Okay. So — it's not always the case. There are some people you know great movie makers who just know that they're going to do that their whole life and they just totally dedicate to it. — So this is step number five to find purpose in the present. So this final step is about understanding that purpose isn't something necessarily that you find in the future, it's something that you are living right now in this moment. And so instead of it being about trying to find one specific job or one specific career path that you're like, man, this is my purpose now. Instead of that, it's much more about experimenting and wondering and trying to be authentically yourself in whatever you're doing. And one of my key takeaways from this conversation with Joe is that your purpose is expressed in how you do things, not necessarily in what you are specifically doing. Like Steve Jobs didn't know that like taking a class in calligraphy would lead to the fonts on the Mac like 30 years later. He just followed his natural interest. He followed his curiosity and he said yes to the stuff that excited him. And there's no reason why we can't operate in that same way. I've seen this work in my own life over the years like ever since I was in secondary school. There was like the thing that I was supposed to be doing which was like the academic stuff and then there was the thing that I was curious about which was initially web design and web development and learning coding and learning like graphic design and illustration and stuff. And all of those things then came in handy when I got to med school and started my first business. And again, even in med school, it was like there was the thing I was supposed to be doing, which was like getting through med school. But then I was on the side doing these side quests, exploring various interests. And there's no way I could have possibly predicted where I would end up. But I feel like today I'm living my purpose way more than I was back when I was following a sort of the yellow brick road of medical school and then being a doctor. But that didn't come because I was like sitting around trying to be like, how do I find my purpose? It's cuz I was actively exploring my curiosity and experimenting with things and saying yes to stuff that seemed exciting. And so when you explore these things that energize you, you end up sort of crafting your life's purpose without really being conscious that you are in the process of crafting your life's purpose. So I hope you got some value from the video. You should definitely check out more of Joe Hudson stuff if you like his style of coaching. And if you enjoyed this video, then you'll probably really like this one. And this is a video where I take you with me on a little journey through a day spent in Hong Kong and showing you how I personally use this thing called the think day method to figure out what I want to do in my life. And the idea is that within about 4 hours and a bunch of different journaling prompts and stuff, you can actually drastically change the trajectory of your life. So that'll be linked in this video right over here. Thank you so much for watching and I'll see you hopefully next time.
