The Art of Manliness - #296： How to Find Your Life's Purpose

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast there's been a lot

00:00:18.940 of ink spilt in the past decade about young adults quote-unquote failure to launch wherein

00:00:22.740 20-somethings who should be progressing into independent adulthood end up spending that

00:00:26.680 decade of their life in a sort of extended adolescence several reasons have been given

00:00:30.000 for this phenomenon from the economy to helicopter parenting after conducting a landmark 25-year

00:00:34.800 study my guest today argues that a major factor in young adults failure to launch is actually rooted

00:00:40.260 in their difficulty in finding a purpose for their life his name is william damon he's a professor of

00:00:44.520 education at stanford university and today on the show we discuss the results of his study and the

00:00:48.720 importance of having an overarching aim in life these are themes of his book the path to purpose

00:00:53.280 begin our conversation discussing the criteria of a good life's purpose and why fewer young people

00:00:57.440 have one today we then discuss why more young people are prioritizing fame and fortune over

00:01:01.800 public service compared to their peers a half century ago the new places many young people are 0.70

00:01:06.060 finding purpose today and why that's led to a decrease in civic engagement and the benefits that

00:01:10.420 come from having a clear purpose in life we end by talking about how a young person even those longer

00:01:14.500 in the tooth who still feel adrift can find a life's purpose and what parents can do to help their

00:01:18.580 children find theirs after the show's over check out the show notes at aom.is slash path to purpose

00:01:23.780 professor william damon welcome to the show thank you so you wrote a book called the path to purpose

00:01:36.840 and it was the capstone of this 25-year study that you did on how young people find fulfilling

00:01:45.320 purposes in their life i'm curious what was the impetus behind that 25-year study why did you think

00:01:50.800 it had to be done when i realized that the studies that i'd been doing on young people's identity and

00:02:01.440 their values and how they succeed in life and the kind of commitments they make that the real master

00:02:09.260 concept that i was groping towards at the time and not really understanding what was bringing all this

00:02:17.280 together that that master concept really was the kinds of goals long-term goals that some young

00:02:27.880 people develop uh and when they do they get a sense of direction that brings them through the hard times

00:02:36.320 the uncertainties especially in adolescence and early adulthood when you don't really know what your

00:02:43.060 future is going to be and i had a realization that what was really driving the successful young people

00:02:53.600 was that they had found something that they could dedicate their lives to something that they believed in

00:02:59.300 that was beyond the self that was something larger than their own immediate short-term desires to get

00:03:07.800 into a good college or get a job or have fun or any of the kinds of things that normally drive young

00:03:14.600 people and all those things are fine and they're part of growing up but what really made a difference

00:03:21.020 for the young people that seemed to have a great sense of certainty and satisfaction and fulfillment about

00:03:27.360 their lives was that they had found something to commit themselves to and that concept was purpose and

00:03:34.480 i think that some of the things that i read at the time i was reading for example victor frankl's

00:03:40.260 wonderful book about man's search for meaning and his own struggles and trials and how he found

00:03:46.500 purpose and that got him through a terrible time when he was imprisoned in germany i read some theology

00:03:54.920 uh rick warren's book on the purpose-driven life which of course was a religious book that was very

00:04:03.000 inspiring to me and a number of other sources that i realized finally that this was the idea that pulled

00:04:12.360 together all of the insights that i'd had previously about identity and goal directedness and moral

00:04:21.080 commitment and all of the all of the many related things that i've been interested in purpose brought

00:04:27.780 it all together i think you've kind of alluded to the definition of purpose through that answer you

00:04:32.220 just gave so first it's it's something outside of yourself but how else what are the other factors

00:04:36.920 that you found that make for a purpose in life right and this is a really good question because

00:04:42.420 of course people use purpose in the common language in a million different ways

00:04:46.520 and sometimes they use it as if it's synonymous with words like passion for example or meaning

00:04:54.620 and all of these other words are related in some way but purpose has its own particular meaning if it

00:05:03.780 didn't you wouldn't even need the word what my group did my research team did for it actually took

00:05:10.380 about a year uh was to do a an examination of how philosophers and theologians and other people

00:05:18.780 had been using the word in a particular way and so we came up with a definition that i think is now

00:05:25.820 being used in a lot of scientific studies beyond our own which relies on a number of criteria that are

00:05:31.860 and they're all important and one of the important aspects of purpose is that it is a long-term goal

00:05:40.900 it's a long-term intention it's not a short it's not going to town and trying to find a parking place

00:05:46.900 or trying to go to a good movie or get a date on saturday night or earn some money or or get into a

00:05:54.280 college it's it's not a finite short-term goal it's a long-term future horizon kind of perspective

00:06:01.160 and it's enduring so that's number one number two it's something that is meaningful that's an

00:06:07.820 important part of it so nobody can give you your purpose and say you've got to do it that's not a

00:06:13.960 purpose if you're just carrying out somebody's orders it's something that you own yourself that

00:06:19.160 you buy into that you believe in so it has to be meaningful to you and then third and this is an

00:06:25.460 important distinction between other things that are meaningful to you is that it's something beyond

00:06:30.880 the self it's not just all about me all about my own interests my own development my own protection

00:06:39.720 and again there's nothing wrong with being concerned about meaningfulness to yourself but

00:06:47.380 this purpose is something more than that it's a desire to have consequence on the world beyond the

00:06:53.560 self in some way it could be something altruistic contributing to the welfare of others it could be

00:07:00.840 something aesthetic creating something beautiful or something interesting lasting in the world it could be

00:07:07.480 scientific learning or discovering something about the world there are lots of forms of going beyond the

00:07:13.560 self but it's not all about my own fulfillment my own satisfaction my own happiness it's something that

00:07:22.560 engages you in the broader universe so when you put all of these criteria together that gives you the

00:07:32.240 unique definition of the word purpose and it's consistent as i said with the way a lot of previous

00:07:40.800 philosophers and other scholars and other people have written about it but we wanted to make it really

00:07:46.160 clear because we do scientific work and when you do scientific work every word has to be defined in a way that

00:07:52.900 distinguishes it from other terms obviously

00:07:55.840 so in this 25 year study that you did did you follow like the same cohort of individuals or were you

00:08:02.400 interviewing lots of people different people within that 25 years well we do not have a 25 year study of any one

00:08:10.160 cohort we've we have actually it's a program of research it's a 25 year program of research which consists of

00:08:17.200 a number of different studies we have one longitudinal data set that we began in the early 2000s which would

00:08:26.560 be about 15 years ago and we've been following those young people i think remembering right our most recent

00:08:34.480 follow-up was maybe 2010 and we have plans to go back if we can but generally we do longitudinal work and we

00:08:43.520 follow young people or for a few years and as long as we have an opportunity to do that i will say that we have

00:08:53.040 a study now of people at midlife begins when people are 50 or above and we're very interested in purpose as

00:09:01.680 as folks age and as they even retire from their initial job or their children leave home and they

00:09:13.840 have to search for new purposes in life what we call encore purposes and so we're very interested in

00:09:20.320 purpose as a lifelong capacity that is important all through life not just when you're a young adult but

00:09:26.960 when when you're in midlife and when you're an older person this research you've done on young

00:09:31.520 people did you find that a lot of young people didn't have a purpose in life or didn't have a

00:09:36.320 clear purpose they were aiming for we found a um a number of different groups of young people in our

00:09:44.640 initial study only about one in five of the young people between the ages of 12 and 22 had really clear

00:09:54.000 strong purposes already developed which leaves 80 percent that did not but of those 80 percent about

00:10:02.160 two-thirds or three-quarters of those young folks had begun to search for purpose had initial

00:10:11.440 leanings or ideas or inclinations or interests that would lead them to purpose

00:10:16.720 and there were a number a small number 20 to 25 percent of the total population that had not even begun their

00:10:24.240 search and we're still drifting so we found a lot of heterogeneity in that population but but it's a

00:10:33.920 moving target and as they grow a lot of the young people that had not found purpose began or moved

00:10:40.960 ahead or or began to find commitments that they that they could really care about within your research were

00:10:47.200 you able to find any any changes in generations what was it like maybe 50 years ago with baby

00:10:53.760 boomers when they were young do you have any comparison between that well not not research

00:10:58.160 wise because of course i wasn't doing that i'm a baby boomer myself and uh i wasn't doing research

00:11:03.600 50 years ago i was being a young person myself and nobody was doing this kind of work so we don't

00:11:09.920 really have anything like a a solid scientific comparison with the same measures i will say that

00:11:18.000 in reading history about previous generations it does seem to me that there are periods in every

00:11:25.200 society where there is a strong sense of national purpose for example in reading about the lives of

00:11:33.600 young people during the great depression which the sociologist glenn elder has written about in

00:11:40.080 a book called children of the great depression it was pretty clear that a lot of the young people

00:11:45.120 growing up in families that did not have very much and the the dad was out of work and everyone was

00:11:52.640 scrambling around to survive economically these young people really pulled together and shoulder a

00:11:58.960 lot of the family burdens and had a ready-made purpose that they could devote themselves to which

00:12:04.880 is helping their families get through these hard times so and that generation according to the

00:12:11.680 previous sociological research looked very good in their uh in their further development in fact

00:12:18.560 that was the generation that later became called the greatest generation by i think it was tom brokaw who

00:12:23.840 wrote that book and i think there's some point to that there are times in history when there are national

00:12:30.880 purposes of course world war ii was another example where the whole society really bought into it that was the

00:12:37.760 same generation when it was when it was a bit older and i think it is kind of a ready-made purpose that

00:12:43.520 does make it a bit easier for young people to find commitments that they can devote themselves to

00:12:49.200 commitments that are beyond the self and i think in our time things are a bit confusing for young people

00:12:56.320 because the world has so many options and especially with globalization and technology and even the world of work

00:13:04.880 is changing so that fewer and fewer people are going into a corporation and expecting to stay there for

00:13:12.000 40 or 50 years and be a loyal member of that company that's that that's becoming more and more rare

00:13:20.240 people aren't living in the same communities anymore they're moving all over the place the age of

00:13:25.440 marriage and family formation has gone has gone has become much older even less common so all of these

00:13:35.280 big purposes in life are becoming more elusive for this generation so i i think that it is it it's a

00:13:43.040 challenge right now for a young person to find a purpose but young people are there are plenty of

00:13:48.640 young people that are uh successful in this i guess the other challenge too with technology you mentioned

00:13:53.760 that is a lot of the technology is very individualistic it's very self-referential

00:13:58.480 right like social media yes that's exactly right and the whole sense of community is elusive these days

00:14:06.000 and all the research that we look at shows increasing amounts of social isolation at all ages and

00:14:14.480 interestingly it's at the youngest ages that you find the most increase in social isolation in the data

00:14:21.120 that i've seen so not having a community of actual real life people that you can meet with face to

00:14:27.760 face beyond the social media kind of interactions that again removes one great source of purpose from

00:14:37.680 young people's lives and you mentioned a study that was done where they compared and contrast you

00:14:42.880 know what college students priorities in life were say 50 years ago to what they are today and i think it

00:14:48.400 was 50 years ago the top priority was to you know do meaningful work or something like that and now

00:14:53.760 it's for a lot of young people it's to be rich and famous is that is that my reference in the right study

00:14:59.600 yes that came out of ucla a group in ucla that has studied everything from uh goals to spirituality

00:15:07.920 in life and and that is what they found that at least when they did that research now that research is

00:15:13.680 not totally current i believe it's about 20 years old at this point but sandy astin is the person who

00:15:20.880 did that work but at least at that point that's right there were a strong trend towards more material

00:15:28.800 and uh career oriented goals rather than that that are that were not personally meaningful

00:15:34.400 i can't say for sure if if that trend is continued or not because as i said earlier it's a very

00:15:42.320 heterogeneous population and we find lots of distinctions between how young people are approaching

00:15:48.800 their futures there certainly is a thriving number of young people who are very idealistic that that hasn't

00:15:55.840 gone away it's it's more that i think when they confront the world of work and the necessity to

00:16:04.080 kind of get out there and compete in the in the economy they're getting messages that tend to orient

00:16:11.120 them to more materialistic kinds of goals one manifestation of that you go into detail about

00:16:16.400 the book is that fewer young people are even have an interest of in doing public service or running for

00:16:22.720 political office nowadays the lowest number of young people the smallest percentage of purposeful aims

00:16:33.440 of all the different sources of purpose was the idea of civic leadership of some kind

00:16:39.360 the sources of purpose that were popular uh in in our studies included family the idea of forming a

00:16:47.040 family of supporting a family vocation which of course is always a big source of purpose for young people

00:16:55.760 faith other kinds of community goals like charity and that kind of thing service but the idea of getting

00:17:02.160 involved in leadership in your community such as running for mayor of your town or joining the school board or

00:17:10.000 being on city council that was not high on the uh on the list of many young people that was the smallest

00:17:17.440 portion of young people that had his goals and i know that must have changed uh from at least when i was

00:17:23.360 young because i remember a lot of my schoolmates in my classes in high school i had definitely had civic

00:17:31.040 aspirations so i think that even though we weren't doing research back then i think it's fair to say that this

00:17:37.760 has been a decrease over the years were you able to get any insights as to why young people were less

00:17:42.880 interested in civic leadership and did they give reasons why they had no interest in that whatsoever

00:17:47.280 it's hard to generalize about that i i think i mean part of it is that the other sources of purpose have

00:17:56.320 become so attractive to young people for example family to give you one example um and family is a great

00:18:03.680 source of purpose i don't want to disparage it at all but i will note that this is a very family

00:18:09.920 oriented cohort of young people uh which is different than when i was young when i was young

00:18:16.320 there was a much bigger um emphasis on autonomy of breaking away from the family those are the days of

00:18:23.200 what was called the generation gap the idea that gee i'm going to devote my life to to supporting a

00:18:29.280 family or or being connected with my extended family taking care of my mom and dad i mean these

00:18:36.800 are wonderful aspirations but they they were not high on the radar screen family now is a very laudatory

00:18:44.160 and admirable goal that young people have and the same thing for work i think young people really

00:18:50.560 are concerned about having a good career and there is almost a sense of insecurity among young people

00:18:57.200 that gee am i going to find something that is going to be both interesting and rewarding

00:19:01.840 and i think that when i was younger there was a much stronger sense of security that the economy would

00:19:07.520 somehow take care of us and it might have been a it might have been a time of more affluence uh

00:19:13.600 generally i think there's been a lot written about how the economy has gotten so hard for so many

00:19:20.000 groups of people so i think that it's probably a case that these other sources of purpose are now so

00:19:25.760 compelling that they pulled young people away from the public sphere in ways that were not the case

00:19:32.640 generation or two ago that could help the individual but that could have effects for us

00:19:37.200 as a society with fewer people engaged in civic life certainly and it's it's an important part of

00:19:45.280 becoming a mature adult to to care about the society at large to become a good citizen uh to contribute

00:19:54.080 and of course a lot of this i mean you remember the work that we had done in this area is really

00:19:59.760 focused on young people in adolescent and early adult period between the ages of say 12 and 25 or 26 or

00:20:09.440 something like that they're going to keep developing they're going to keep growing and so a lot of these

00:20:14.640 concerns could well be in their future and i always say it's very important that development

00:20:21.200 does not stop uh at the end of high school or at the end of college or even at the end of young

00:20:27.840 adulthood as long as the brain is alive people keep learning and growing all through life so a lot of the

00:20:34.560 things that we're looking at that are not yet complete are very likely to happen for at least

00:20:41.760 a lot of the young people that we've been looking at so let's talk about the benefits of having a life

00:20:46.880 purpose in your research what are some of the benefits you and your team found that come with

00:20:51.760 having a clearly defined purpose well certainly motivation energy resilience if you have something

00:21:00.240 beyond the self that you're dedicated to it helps you get through all of the tough times that inevitably

00:21:08.080 all of us have you bounce back failure does not discourage you because you don't take it personally

00:21:14.080 it's not all about you you're not your main source of concern you care about the cause that you're

00:21:20.400 dedicating yourself to or the goals that you have what you're trying to accomplish so you keep going

00:21:26.640 so all of the motivational benefits of purpose are really clear and then of course when you're highly

00:21:33.200 motivated with something and you're really engaged and working hard to get it accomplished there is

00:21:40.320 there is a sense of satisfaction to that there's a sense of that life flows that you are brought out

00:21:48.080 of yourself into something that that you really care about i also think that a lot of people have talked

00:21:53.840 about emotional states like joy and passion and i think that often these do accompany purpose but they're

00:22:02.720 not the same thing and i do want to point out because i think it's a mistake that people make is that

00:22:08.800 purpose is not always accomplished every minute by a sense of joy or a sense of passion a lot of times

00:22:16.400 it's uh it's a uh story of drudgery and just uh diligence and grit and keeping things going even when

00:22:25.760 it's not very much fun and that's what commitment is it's it's sticking with things but in the long run it brings

00:22:33.360 you a lot of satisfaction it doesn't mean that every moment you're full of flow and passion and joy and

00:22:38.960 all of those positive emotions but in the long run it's a very satisfying fulfilling sense that you you

00:22:46.560 have really worked to accomplish something and you care about it and you've made some progress on it so i

00:22:53.360 think it is a a strength in life it's something that it's a capacity that brings a lot of personal

00:22:59.760 rewards those rewards include often a sense of joy but more importantly they include a sense of

00:23:07.840 great satisfaction and as i said resilience and energy and motivation and i will say one other

00:23:14.080 thing that there have been studies in gerontology i mentioned that we are doing some work at the upper

00:23:19.840 end of the age span and there's work in gerontology that seems to indicate that purpose is connected with

00:23:26.880 health and a decrease in both morbidity and mortality we haven't done that work ourselves but the field

00:23:34.560 of gerontology has reported that kind of finding how do people go about finding a purpose in life and

00:23:40.080 what did you guys see is it something you sit down at a journal and you you know you answer some

00:23:44.960 questions and you boom you have a purpose or is it much more fluid and organic it's more organic and it

00:23:52.880 starts small like everything in life it begins with having interests that you pursue there are some

00:23:59.600 conditions that promote it for example having someone in your life that you admire somebody that

00:24:07.040 is like a mentor or that demonstrates to you what a life of purpose can look like it could be a parent

00:24:13.840 it could be a teacher it could be somebody that you work for that's a big help having what you do in life

00:24:20.720 matters that it makes a difference taking what you do seriously there are two great realizations that

00:24:26.880 every young person or every person who we've seen who has developed purpose

00:24:34.320 has at some point uh and one one revelation is that what i do in this world matters i can make a

00:24:40.560 difference and the other revelation is that the world needs something that there is some way that

00:24:47.200 what i do can improve or help either help other people or add something to the world that's

00:24:53.840 valuable and it can be something very consequential it could be something very consequential like the

00:25:00.000 young people that want to go into medicine and cure cancer or something like that very serious

00:25:05.760 kinds of goals or it could be something that is not a response to something a problem in life but

00:25:13.120 just something that adds to the world like one young person that we studied felt that scales the

00:25:19.840 musical scales used in jazz music had gotten boring so he was dedicating himself to writing new scales

00:25:27.520 and trying them out with new kinds of music so it could be something ordinary like raising a family it could

00:25:33.520 be something heroic like wanting to be an astronaut there's always the sense that i can do something that

00:25:40.160 matters and it matters to the world and beyond that the world actually needs this the world can uh

00:25:46.880 there's a deficit there's something that is missing that i can add to and when those two insights are

00:25:54.960 combined and then the person devotes some time to learning how to do this to learning how to develop the

00:26:03.280 skills that will enable the person to make the contribution that's when purpose really starts

00:26:09.040 moving that's when the capacity really begins to develop and i thought it was an interesting

00:26:12.640 point that your research found that you know parents can be a source sort of a mentor but you

00:26:16.800 found that it's often non-familial or non-parental mentors who have the most impact on a on a young

00:26:23.200 person yeah that's great i'm really glad you said that and put it that way because that's that's exactly

00:26:28.800 right and it's something that a lot of parents don't realize i think i think some parents or even a lot

00:26:35.120 of parents feel that it's their obligation to help write the script of life for their child and of

00:26:41.840 course parents have a lot to offer and they certainly can provide a lot of wisdom and information that's

00:26:49.200 hugely helpful for young people but you cannot write the script of life for your child and we usually

00:26:56.400 found in most of the cases we looked at that the purpose that the young person had discovered was not

00:27:04.080 given to them by their parent we did not find many cases of for example a father saying well our

00:27:12.960 family has had three generations of lawyers in it we have this great law firm or this great family

00:27:19.760 business and now your purpose is going to be to carry on and uh and be a be a lawyer just like i was

00:27:28.080 uh or an engineer like i've been we find that the young person has to bring himself or herself to

00:27:36.160 that and if that doesn't happen the purpose will not take it will not endure what parents can do is

00:27:44.320 introduce their children to possibilities they can listen hard to hear what the interests are that

00:27:52.480 their children have developed on their own they can provide resources and support and encouragement

00:27:59.360 for the child's interests but they cannot give the child a purpose and say okay this is your purpose

00:28:05.760 now go do it that doesn't work it it we've never seen a case where that works so parents are are really

00:28:13.840 really important they're uh uh in fact most of the young people with purpose uh had parents who had

00:28:22.560 encouraged them in some way and had added a lot to their lives but it wasn't introducing the purpose

00:28:28.960 or defining it for the child it was uh something much more indirect so besides introducing them to

00:28:35.840 opportunities possibilities listening to your child would another way that parents can help facilitate

00:28:41.520 their children finding a purpose in life is maybe sharing their story of how they found their purpose

00:28:47.600 in life exactly that that's exactly right and again i'm glad you said that because i was i was going

00:28:53.440 to uh i was remembering that that was the one thing i had not gotten around to mentioning and again this is

00:28:59.520 amazingly uncommon we find when we interview young people sometimes we'll ask them what their parents are

00:29:07.520 doing for their living uh with what mom or dad does and the young person will say something like well you

00:29:15.200 know my dad uh works on a computer all day uh you know he types a bunch of stuff in i don't know what

00:29:20.560 i don't know what it it's for but uh he works very hard or or you know mom goes out and goes to the office

00:29:28.080 and comes back and they don't really know that maybe what uh what their dad has done on the computer all day

00:29:34.640 has eventuated in a truckload of sardines uh going to tennessee or texas or that in other words it has

00:29:43.600 some value to the world that something is happening that would not have happened if mom hadn't gone to

00:29:49.600 the office or if dad hadn't typed on the computer all day and what's really valuable for young people is

00:29:57.120 when their parents actually talk about what it is that they are accomplishing in life why it is

00:30:04.160 meaningful to them and what problems they might have had what what do they have to overcome what

00:30:10.000 are their frustrations what kind of resilience have they had to muster in order to done what they want to

00:30:18.080 get done and other adults too have the same opportunities one of the things i always tell teachers is that

00:30:26.720 you have a great opportunity to tell your students why you find teaching meaningful why is that your

00:30:34.480 calling in life and again i'm surprised at how few teachers ever do this it's it's not the point isn't

00:30:41.840 to convince students to become teachers themselves that's not the point at all the point is to show

00:30:49.440 young people what it is like for a grown-up to have a sense of purpose and if the young people see that

00:30:58.880 they'll make their own meaning out of it and they will find their own way to to have their own kind of

00:31:06.160 calling but it is enormously helpful for them to hear mom and dad or a teacher or some other adult

00:31:13.440 uh explain to them why it is that the work that they do the grown-ups do is meaningful and important

00:31:23.360 and purposeful professor damu i know we have a lot of listeners who are you know in their early 20s mid

00:31:28.320 20s and they're in that point in their life where they're trying to figure out what their purpose is

00:31:31.920 do you have any advice or insights based on your research and what they can start doing to to lock down on

00:31:37.440 that purpose yeah uh and let me say as a background don't worry too much or or get too impatient purpose

00:31:48.400 just as purpose is a long-term goal it takes a while to develop the capacity for purpose and to find

00:31:54.320 purposes that actually do match your interests and your beliefs and your abilities and there's a lot of

00:32:03.040 back and forth experimentation that happens especially these days when there are so many options out

00:32:09.520 there so don't don't worry too much if it doesn't happen right away and periods of trial and error are

00:32:16.640 fine as long as there is some sense of forward movement that you've learned from your experiments

00:32:25.200 you've learned from trying out this job or or doing this kind of activity it can take quite a while

00:32:32.000 i mean a lot of the young people we've looked at by age 30 have had 14 15 different jobs already so

00:32:38.640 vocationally they have not yet gotten there where they've really settled in i think one of the

00:32:43.440 important things that does help is to try to honestly and frankly identify what your skills are what

00:32:52.720 you're particularly uh able to do and in an honest way because i mean to give you an extreme example you

00:33:00.000 might love basketball but you're not going to be a professional basketball player if you're five

00:33:04.800 feet five inches tall so you know you have to be honest about and maybe if you love basketball then

00:33:11.120 you could go into basketball education or ad or or basketball marketing or something like that but you

00:33:16.960 wouldn't want to try out for the golden state warriors or something like that so that's an analogy that

00:33:23.680 applies to everything and every kind of career i mean there are lots of young people that want to be uh

00:33:28.560 going to go into the film industry or be script writers or film directors and or actors and actresses

00:33:35.280 and a few of them have those kind of talents uh most will not and you need to honestly assess what

00:33:42.640 you're able to do and listen to other people when they give you feedback about that that's number one

00:33:47.600 number two you have to honestly look at what the world needs you know you're not when i was a child

00:33:54.480 when i was eight years old my big dream in life was to become a whaler because i grew up in the part of

00:34:00.800 in the section of new england where there were back in the 1800s they used to send whaling ships out all

00:34:06.080 over the world and it was a tremendous romantic fantasy that you could actually go and do something

00:34:10.880 like that and it didn't take me long to realize that guess what the world doesn't need people going out

00:34:16.880 uh catching whales anymore so that was not a good choice for an occupation and again that's an extreme

00:34:23.840 analogy but the point is that you do have to make an honest assessment of what the world needs what's

00:34:28.480 the market like and the combination of it's really three things that you have to define for yourself

00:34:34.960 what you're good at doing what you're capable of in other words what the world needs and what you

00:34:41.120 believe in what you're interested in what what you can imagine enjoying for decades of your life and

00:34:47.600 when you can pull these three things together and combine them into one commitment that that you uh

00:34:55.280 pursue uh that's when you are on the road to purpose uh and as i said it can take a long time

00:35:03.040 there's nothing wrong with that especially these days where the economy is changing it's very complicated

00:35:10.080 there's new industries growing up all the time there aren't ready-made niches for you to go in

00:35:17.120 you can take your time but always try to move forward and learn and learn about those three

00:35:22.720 things learn about what you're good at doing learn about what the world needs and learn about what you

00:35:28.160 believe in and what you're interested in and what you can imagine getting a lot of satisfaction out of

00:35:33.600 committing yourself to yeah i love that idea of moving forward and particularly the analogy you gave in

00:35:38.640 the book the equilibration you had that psychologist you know what's the best way to stay afloat in

00:35:43.600 water and it's not to float that's actually really hard to do if you've done that if you're a grown

00:35:48.720 man it's you're heavy you start sinking but it's just to swim forward right right it's again it's a

00:35:53.600 little counterintuitive yeah being static is is not a good way to get balance in life it turns out

00:35:59.680 it's moving forward it's developing it's growing it's changing that's how you actually balance

00:36:05.840 yourself in the world not just by standing still and uh and as i said you you kind of know in life

00:36:14.080 when you're learning something and you and remember you learn through your failures as well as your

00:36:18.640 successes so that's why i always when i write i always urge people at all ages to don't don't be impatient

00:36:26.640 and don't get discouraged uh just keep moving forward and things will uh you you will learn

00:36:33.520 as long as the brain is alive and and uh you're open to experience you will learn and grow well

00:36:40.560 professor damien is there some place people can go to learn more about your work we have a website on

00:36:45.840 my center at stanford i'm a professor at stanford university and we have a center at stanford that i

00:36:54.000 direct called the center on adolescence it's stanford coa it's the website and on that website we

00:37:01.120 constantly post all of the research the journal articles that my students do that my colleagues do

00:37:08.960 i write when i write something it goes up there so that's the best way to keep current about uh about

00:37:15.440 the research on on the development of purpose that we're doing and as i say we have projects going at

00:37:20.320 all ages now uh from early adulthood up through old age the stanford center on adolescence website

00:37:27.360 even though it's called center on adolescence we actually most of our research now is done on

00:37:32.400 early adulthood mid mid life and older age and we connect it back of course to what happens early

00:37:39.920 in life fantastic well professor damon thank you so much for your time it's been a pleasure for me too

00:37:43.760 i appreciate and and thank you for your good insights too into uh into what we've been doing

00:37:48.560 my guest today was william damon he's a professor of education at stanford university he's also the

00:37:52.240 author of the book path to purpose it's available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere you can

00:37:56.160 also find out more information about his work at williamdamon.com also check out our show notes at

00:38:00.480 aom.is slash path to purpose all one word where you can find links to resources where you can delve

00:38:05.120 deeper into this topic well that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast for

00:38:11.760 more manly tips and advice make sure to check out the art of manliness website at

00:38:14.960 artofmanliness.com if you enjoy the show the podcast and have gotten something out of it over

00:38:18.880 the years i'd appreciate it if you take a minute or two to give us a review on itunes or stitcher

00:38:22.320 that helps us get the word out about the show as always thank you for your continued support and

00:38:26.080 until next time this is brad mckay telling you to stay manly

The Art of Manliness - April 18, 2017

#296： How to Find Your Life's Purpose

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