The Art of Manliness - August 04, 2026


Big P vs. Little P Purposeļ¼š Why You Don't Need to Find Your One True Calling


Episode Stats


Length

57 minutes

Words per minute

213.57

Word count

12,243

Sentence count

729


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
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00:02:09.820 see website for more details. Brett McKay here, and welcome to another edition of the AOM Podcast,
00:02:15.980 which since 2008 has featured conversations with the world's best authors, thinkers, and leaders
00:02:20.660 that glean their edifying, life-improving insights without the fluff and filler.
00:02:25.100 The AOM Podcast is just one part of the McKay mission to help individuals practice timeless
00:02:28.980 virtues through thought, word, and deed.
00:02:31.620 Also, be sure to explore our articles in ArtOfManliness.com, read the deeper dives we do in our sub-stack
00:02:36.160 newsletter at DyingBreed.net, and turn our content into real-world action by joining
00:02:40.340 the Strenuous Life program at StrenuousLife.com.
00:02:43.000 Now on to the show.
00:02:50.660 people are told their whole lives how important it is to find their purpose but many find the
00:02:56.620 search frustrating they feel there's one true calling or one grand goal they're supposed to
00:03:00.600 be pursuing but they can't seem to discern what it is my guest jordan grumet author of the purpose
00:03:05.840 code says that the search for what he calls big p purpose can be fruitless and even harmful and
00:03:10.800 that a better path is to embrace the life of little p purposes today in the show jordan explains the
00:03:15.500 difference between big p and little p purposes and argues that the former can lead to anxiety
00:03:19.260 while embracing the latter can be the path to meaning,
00:03:22.060 satisfaction, connection,
00:03:23.780 and even the legacy you're looking for in the first place.
00:03:26.320 We discuss how Jordan found his way to this philosophy
00:03:28.280 after burning out as a doctor,
00:03:30.020 practical ways to discover your own little P purposes,
00:03:32.620 what he thinks we get wrong in making family our purpose,
00:03:35.080 and what his work in hospice has taught him
00:03:36.880 about living a life without regret.
00:03:39.100 After the show's over,
00:03:39.800 check out our show notes at aom.is slash purpose code.
00:03:49.260 All right, Jordan Grumet, welcome to the show.
00:03:57.160 Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited for the conversation.
00:03:59.400 So you've got an interesting background. You started your career off as a doctor,
00:04:04.100 but now you spend your time writing about money, finances, purpose, and meaning. So how does a
00:04:11.320 doctor end up being a personal finance and purpose writer? The story actually begins when I was seven
00:04:18.560 years old. My father was a physician. I looked up to him quite a bit. He went to work one morning,
00:04:23.760 got a severe headache. He collapsed and died. He had a brain aneurysm. And being a seven-year-old,
00:04:28.740 I thought everything in the world happened because of me. So he must've died because I wasn't enough,
00:04:33.540 wasn't smart enough, lovable enough, whatever it may be. And I eventually came to the conclusion
00:04:38.520 that the way to make up for this horrible tragedy was I was going to become a doctor just like him.
00:04:42.640 I would save lives. I'd walk in his footsteps. It would fix everything.
00:04:46.300 many years later, I did just that, but it didn't bring them back. And in fact, I found that you
00:04:52.260 couldn't save every life. It was a little bit more complicated than that. And I very quickly
00:04:57.100 burned out. Being a doctor was exhausting. There were parts of it that were wonderful,
00:05:01.220 but I started looking for a way out and I never realized I could do anything else with my life.
00:05:06.940 So the answer was make lots of money and use that money to fund your life. So you never have
00:05:12.180 to work again. Now I tried that for quite a while and asked for all sorts of advice. And between my
00:05:17.480 financial advisor and my accountant, I basically was told, Hey, you don't have enough money. So
00:05:21.680 don't even think about that yet. But eventually I was writing a medical blog about what it felt
00:05:26.780 like to be a doctor. And a guy called my office. His name was Jim Dolly, the white coat investor.
00:05:31.820 He had just written a book about personal finances for physicians. And he wanted me to review it
00:05:35.500 for my blog. And I read his book and it changed my life. It introduced me to this idea of financial
00:05:40.120 independence, I realized it was probably already there that I could leave my job whenever I wanted
00:05:44.900 to, which was incredibly exciting for about a moment. And then I had a panic attack and went
00:05:50.040 into really a depressive period of my life, which lasted about six months. Eventually I realized I
00:05:54.540 couldn't leave medicine, but I certainly could get rid of the things I liked the least. I got rid of
00:05:58.980 my medical practice. I got rid of nights and weekends. I got rid of my nursing homework. And
00:06:02.640 the one thing that was left over, I was a general internal medicine doctor. The one thing I kept
00:06:06.920 wanting to do was to do my work with hospice. So I was acting as a hospice medical director,
00:06:12.560 maybe 10 to 15 hours a week, no nights, no weekends, no call. And as I realized I didn't
00:06:17.700 need to do anything else, I concentrated just on that. But because now I had a bunch of free time,
00:06:22.780 I started to pursue the things that got me out of my burnout. And that was personal finance.
00:06:27.820 So I started a personal finance blog, eventually a podcast. And I was talking to all these brilliant
00:06:32.260 people who are podcasters and authors and ran these big, hugely successful businesses.
00:06:38.360 And at some point I'd ask them something like, and so what is all this in service of?
00:06:42.320 Or how do you know when you have enough?
00:06:44.820 And I get a lot of blank stares.
00:06:47.160 And after this happening a number of times, I started to think about it and I realized
00:06:50.320 I already had the answers to those kinds of questions because I got them from my hospice
00:06:54.000 patients.
00:06:54.680 When I sat at the bedside with people who were dying, they often talked about regrets
00:06:58.180 and things they wished they had and hadn't done.
00:07:00.680 And so that really led me to write a book called taking stock what the dying can teach us about money in life
00:07:06.500 And a big point of that was that we should be putting purpose first before we got to our financial framework
00:07:11.460 But then of course I got lots of people asking me
00:07:14.020 Well, what is purpose and how do I pursue purpose and actually i've been searching for purpose my whole life?
00:07:19.320 And it's got me really frustrated
00:07:20.480 Will you please stop telling people to find their purpose and that led me down the rabbit hole of purpose and
00:07:25.600 Basically how we get purpose wrong and how we can get it better, right?
00:07:30.460 Yeah, well, that's a fantastic summation of how you got where you're at.
00:07:33.420 So you kind of did the fire thing, financial independence, retire early.
00:07:37.200 But then you got depressed because you realized you didn't know how to fill your free time.
00:07:42.300 And you realized you did want to work a little, you know, just doing that work you actually found fulfilling in hospice.
00:07:48.880 But then you also got into writing and podcasting.
00:07:51.440 And that kind of thing seems to happen to a lot of people.
00:07:54.280 You know, they put off finding their purpose until some future day when they think they'll have, you know, time to think more about it.
00:08:01.680 But when they get that time, whether, you know, because they retire or they sell their business, they find that they don't know what to do with themselves.
00:08:09.660 So that's something you have to work on wherever you are in life.
00:08:12.880 The thing about it, Brad, I think is, and I'll correlate this with financial independence.
00:08:17.800 Before you understand financial independence, you think it's the most complicated thing in the world.
00:08:22.440 Like, how could I ever possibly get there?
00:08:24.280 how do I invest? There's so many stocks and bonds and gold and all these other things. And
00:08:29.120 you really almost look at it as if it's this impossible thing. And for me, it was getting
00:08:33.880 this book, The White Coat Investor, but you may learn it through a blog or podcast or whatever.
00:08:37.800 And all of a sudden you realize, oh, it's pretty straightforward. Like I can figure out this
00:08:42.080 financial thing. It may not be easy, right? I might have to work really hard. I might have to
00:08:46.060 save. I might have to be frugal. All that can feel difficult, but it's pretty straightforward.
00:08:50.400 forward, we're kind of in the same place with purpose. There's this idea that purpose is this
00:08:56.280 big audacious thing and it's like a needle in the haystack and it's really, really hard to find.
00:09:01.860 And so it feels like this black box. It feels very, very ephemeral. My goal, why I wrote the
00:09:08.260 purpose code and why I really started thinking deeply about this is because like financial
00:09:12.020 independence, I actually started to realize, you know, what purpose actually is also very
00:09:15.460 straightforward. But you need someone to help you realize how you start to build that purpose in
00:09:21.740 your life. And I think that's why, you know, people are so surprised when they retire that
00:09:26.140 it's not that straightforward, that all of a sudden they have to figure out what to do with
00:09:28.780 their life. A lot of the times we put purpose off because it's scary, it's difficult, it's
00:09:33.520 complicated. We don't even know what that really looks like in our life. And so it's really easy
00:09:37.860 to decide you don't have enough energy, you don't have enough time, you don't have enough money,
00:09:41.280 You're too busy working at that job or building your family or whatever you're doing, but
00:09:45.800 it becomes a little bit of a mirage.
00:09:48.160 And so if you get to this point where you're getting rid of that mirage, you're like, I
00:09:52.300 don't want to work anymore.
00:09:53.360 This doesn't work for me.
00:09:54.940 The problem with that is then you have to see life as it is.
00:09:58.180 And that can be difficult and painful because now for the first time, there is no excuse.
00:10:03.100 You can't say you don't have enough time.
00:10:04.580 Most likely you can't say you don't have enough money.
00:10:07.240 What it actually comes down to is courage.
00:10:09.400 and you'd be amazed at how much we do
00:10:12.080 to avoid acting courageously.
00:10:14.940 I think we use our finances sometimes to do exactly that.
00:10:17.800 We make the excuse that,
00:10:18.760 well, we're not where we need to be, right?
00:10:20.660 So we're not gonna live that purposeful life.
00:10:22.260 And this is part of the reason why I always tell people,
00:10:24.340 like, I made a mistake.
00:10:25.520 I thought I had to be financially independent
00:10:27.440 to live a life of purpose.
00:10:28.820 What I'm actually trying to argue
00:10:30.040 is that you can live a life of purpose
00:10:31.780 regardless of what your finances are.
00:10:34.420 But now that we kind of understand
00:10:36.060 what purpose looks like in our life,
00:10:37.280 let's build a financial framework around it. But to do that, you've really got to start thinking
00:10:41.220 about, well, what does purpose look like in my life? You mentioned that when you started talking
00:10:45.960 about people finding their purpose, you'd get people who felt frustrated and were like,
00:10:51.140 stop talking about finding your purpose. And then you also found that when you give talks about
00:10:55.980 purpose, sometimes people will come up to you afterwards and are actually angry with you.
00:11:00.800 On the face of it, that seems kind of odd. What was it about hearing about purpose that made
00:11:06.560 people feel frustrated or upset? Well, I think it becomes clear when we start trying to define
00:11:13.300 purpose, right? Because believe it or not, a lot of people don't agree with what actually is
00:11:17.860 purpose. When I meet these frustrated people, they define purpose as their why. And let's just think
00:11:25.240 about that. If you start defining purpose as your why, what you're really saying is there's like
00:11:28.980 this one big important thing that I was supposed to accomplish in life. And it is like a needle
00:11:35.940 in the haystack. Like there's all these million things I could do. I could be a million different
00:11:39.540 people, but there's one that's more perfect than the rest. And I've got to divine what that is
00:11:45.480 and then be really, really good at it and build a life around that. The problem is that's a really
00:11:51.380 high stakes game. And most people don't know what they're good at and they don't know what that
00:11:56.620 quote unquote one thing should be. And so they root around, they try a bunch of things. None of
00:12:02.620 them feels important enough, right? Maybe there are some things they like, like I like to go play
00:12:07.100 pickleball with my friends, but that's not really important enough, right? That's not the one thing
00:12:10.760 I was meant to do with my life. So they discard the stuff they like because it seems too small,
00:12:15.300 but they can't find the one big earth shattering thing. And so it makes us anxious. And indeed,
00:12:20.260 there is something called purpose anxiety. Larissa Rainey, she's a researcher. She studied
00:12:25.420 people and found that up to 91% of people at some point in their life feel this purpose anxiety.
00:12:30.260 It's depression, fear, anxiety about finding their purpose.
00:12:35.980 And I found it to be very, very common.
00:12:38.620 Like every time I would give this talk and say, hey, think about purpose first and let's
00:12:42.100 build a financial framework around it.
00:12:44.120 Almost always I'd get at least one person in the crowd who would be seething, literally
00:12:48.360 angry that I was suggesting.
00:12:51.060 And it's almost like a purpose nihilism.
00:12:53.380 It's almost like there is no purpose because I can't find it and I'm not sure how to build
00:12:57.860 it.
00:12:58.080 And so we become a little bit nihilistic and, you know, the studies are out there. It's really,
00:13:02.660 really clear. Having a sense of purpose in life is associated with health, happiness,
00:13:05.680 and longevity. There are really enduring studies that show this. And so I'm a doctor, right? If I
00:13:11.720 had a pill that could make you live 30% longer or make you 30% happier, have you be 30% healthier,
00:13:18.080 I would be giving that pill to every single patient I saw. I think purpose does actually
00:13:24.100 lots of those things. So, okay, most lay people have this idea of purpose, like this one big
00:13:28.900 thing that they have to accomplish or pursue in their life. When the researchers, you know,
00:13:35.600 these studies you referenced where people who have a sense of purpose do better in all these
00:13:39.560 different facets of life, how are they defining purpose? Like when they say like someone has a
00:13:44.640 purpose in life, how are they figuring out this person has a purpose in life? Well, so here's the
00:13:48.880 thing, and this is why it's a dichotomy. Like when you look at the researchers, they're really just
00:13:53.200 looking for some sense of direction and some sense of goals. And so here's the thing, and I think
00:14:00.060 where everyone gets caught up, remember when I said we define purpose as our why? That's what I
00:14:04.760 call big, audacious purpose. This is the idea that it's this really big, goal-oriented, change the
00:14:11.200 world, if you can dream it, you can build it type of purpose. And a lot of times that purpose is
00:14:16.460 really, really hard to attain, and most people just don't get there, right? But researchers say
00:14:21.100 things like goals and a sense of direction, when they study people, especially they study people
00:14:25.620 as they get older, they realize that their sense of direction, their goals are much smaller, what
00:14:29.460 I call little p purpose. This is the idea of instead of goal oriented purpose, you're really
00:14:34.380 talking about doing things you like the process of doing. Or if you have goals, you enjoy doing
00:14:40.220 them enough that it doesn't really matter if you make it to that goal or not. And so when they're
00:14:45.680 doing questionnaires with older people, it's not, am I curing cancer? It's, you know, are you playing
00:14:50.960 backgammon with a bunch of friends and having coffee? And does it seem exciting to you? And
00:14:55.840 are you excited to wake up each morning? So we've lost sight of this idea that instead of defining
00:15:01.060 it as our why or our big audacious goals, that probably purpose more is finding things we love
00:15:07.700 to do. And we like the process of doing whether we reach the goal or not. So I always say purpose
00:15:13.480 is not your why. Purpose is your what. It is the actions you take in the present and future that
00:15:19.840 light you up. That's it. It's simple. It's straightforward. Just like financial independence
00:15:23.240 is straightforward. Now, building a life of purpose is a little harder, right? Because
00:15:27.100 then you've got to actually decide what lights you up and start building a life around that.
00:15:32.020 But the concept of purpose, I think, is very simple. It is what you do in the present and
00:15:36.260 future, and it's action-oriented. Okay. So you make a distinction between
00:15:40.140 big P purpose and little p purpose, and you think the big P purpose can be problematic.
00:15:45.360 Would you say your experience of burnout as a doctor,
00:15:49.600 was that the result of you trying to pursue Big P purpose?
00:15:53.480 For sure.
00:15:54.440 So if you go back to my story,
00:15:56.120 remember when my father died, I thought I was responsible.
00:16:00.260 And so my big audacious goal was to make up for his death,
00:16:03.740 to relieve me of being responsible for his death.
00:16:06.700 And oh, by the way, on top of that,
00:16:07.900 I was gonna save everybody's lives.
00:16:09.600 And so it was very easy for me to become burned out
00:16:11.860 because guess what?
00:16:12.680 I became a doctor and it didn't bring my father back.
00:16:16.440 It didn't even make me feel less culpable.
00:16:19.300 And also, by the way, most patients you can't fix, right?
00:16:23.560 If you're a doctor practicing out in the real world, lots of people die.
00:16:27.720 Everyone eventually dies.
00:16:29.320 And so burnout often happens when people pursue Big P purpose relentlessly.
00:16:35.260 One reason that burnout happens when you pursue Big P purpose is most likely most people just
00:16:39.780 don't ever get there, right?
00:16:41.020 If your goal is to be Elon Musk or Babe Ruth, most likely you're just not going to be that
00:16:45.500 successful.
00:16:46.340 So it's easy to burn out because you fail.
00:16:48.240 Also, it's easy to burn out because you end up doing things you don't enjoy the process
00:16:51.880 of doing.
00:16:52.460 So I didn't nearly enjoy being a doctor as much as I enjoy being a writer or podcaster,
00:16:57.820 things that I'm probably a lot more suited to do.
00:17:00.520 And so if you don't enjoy the process of what you're doing and you're going after big audacious
00:17:04.160 goals, it means you're going to spend 90 to 95% of your time doing things you don't love.
00:17:08.400 And guess what?
00:17:09.080 if you happen to be lucky enough to get there, like I was lucky enough to become a doctor,
00:17:13.160 you feel that joy briefly, but then usually it's back to, well, what next? Like now that I've done
00:17:20.980 this and I felt good for five minutes, feeling good usually fades away. And then you start
00:17:25.720 thinking, well, how can I double down? What's the next thing I can do? Or, you know, you get
00:17:30.040 afraid that you're going to lose all that you gained. It's like, well, I'm a doctor now, but
00:17:33.640 you know, what if I'm not good at it? What if I get sued? What if I get fired from my job? And so
00:17:40.060 that's loss aversion. So the point is, it's really easy to get burned out when you're going after big
00:17:44.620 audacious goals, whether you reach them or not. And then little p purpose, it's the what it's
00:17:49.820 like the actions that you can take now that give you direction and joy. Yeah. And the difference
00:17:55.660 between little p purpose and big p purpose reminds me of a distinction that a podcast guest of ours
00:18:01.900 made. Kieran Setia is a philosopher who wrote a book about midlife between TELIC and ATELIC
00:18:07.100 pursuits. So big P purposes are TELIC, you know, they have an aim, a telos, and I think it can be
00:18:13.280 useful to have sort of an overarching telos that guides your life and decisions. But then little
00:18:18.540 P purpose is ATELIC. There's no end goal you're trying to achieve. You just do the thing because
00:18:23.720 you like doing the thing and you would do it even if you never achieved greatness at it.
00:18:29.100 You know, I like to compare it to podcasting to really help people understand the difference
00:18:33.000 between big P, little P and the role of goals.
00:18:36.340 I love to talk about podcasting.
00:18:37.700 I love podcasting.
00:18:38.960 When I get on the mic and interview someone, that hour is just magical to me.
00:18:44.980 And even if I forgot to hit record and that recording disappears and I can't even put
00:18:49.540 it on my podcast, it was still well worth that hour.
00:18:53.420 So to me, that's little P purpose.
00:18:55.000 Now, I can thoroughly enjoy podcasting and it can be my little P purpose and I can decide, you know what, I'd really love to get a million downloads a month on my podcast. That is a goal. In fact, in some ways, that's a big audacious goal. So the question is, did I turn my little P purpose into big P purpose by having a big audacious goal?
00:19:14.100 Well, it depends. If I start looking around and saying, well, the, you know, all the people who
00:19:20.420 get a million downloads a month, they spend a lot of time on TikTok and Instagram, and they're
00:19:25.920 making all sorts of reels and they're making all this content. And guess what? I really don't like
00:19:30.800 doing that. Like I don't enjoy that at all. I don't enjoy the process of doing that. So if I
00:19:35.640 decide to meet my big audacious goal, I'm going to start doing those things that I don't enjoy
00:19:40.660 the process of doing and spend all my time engaged in such activities, then I've really
00:19:46.640 turned my little P purpose, my joy, my love, the thing I enjoy the process of and turned it into
00:19:51.660 big P purpose. On the other hand, if I say, boy, I'd love to get a million downloads a month and
00:19:56.680 I don't really want to do TikTok or Instagram because I don't enjoy that. But boy, I really
00:20:01.480 love listening to Terry Gross on NPR. So I'm going to start listening to more of her interviews
00:20:06.860 because I really like her interview style
00:20:08.520 and I could become a better interviewer.
00:20:10.700 And you know what?
00:20:11.400 I think I'm gonna go to Toastmasters
00:20:12.720 because I've always really wanted to learn
00:20:14.360 how to public speak better.
00:20:15.840 And when I'm on the stage,
00:20:16.980 I feel this magical feeling like I'm affecting people.
00:20:20.740 And so I'm gonna go ahead and sign up for Toastmasters.
00:20:23.540 I'm gonna listen to Terry Gross.
00:20:24.740 Maybe I'll study a little bit or take some classes
00:20:26.560 on how to be a more effective communicator.
00:20:29.020 As long as I enjoy the process of doing those things,
00:20:32.100 then that's still little p-purpose.
00:20:33.400 And if I hit my million downloads a month, great.
00:20:35.960 but if I don't also great because I loved what I was doing this whole time I enjoyed the process
00:20:42.420 yeah I'm similar to you I mean I've been doing this podcast thing for and close to 18 17 years
00:20:48.600 now and I don't do the tiktok short form video stuff in fact I used to have a youtube channel
00:20:54.440 that got really big it was like 1.4 million subscribers where you make videos this is about
00:20:59.420 10 years ago and I stopped making it because I just did not like doing it like I did not like
00:21:04.420 it at all. And so I stopped and people were like, why did you stop? That's crazy. Why would you do
00:21:08.260 that? But it filled me with dread when it was like video day. I like to write. I like to do
00:21:13.300 podcasts. And so that's what I do. It's a perfect recipe for burnout. And again, this gets back to
00:21:18.820 exactly what we said. You could have kept pushing YouTube. You could have tried to build it and grow
00:21:24.400 it. And you could have said, well, I don't love doing it, but it kind of meets my overall goal
00:21:28.600 of getting my word out to people or having a bigger brand. But you probably eventually would
00:21:33.120 have burnt out. And then maybe you would have completely quit. And actually that is the
00:21:38.480 explanation of what happened to me in medicine. I mean, I still practice hospice medicine,
00:21:41.480 but I was a doctor who was working 50, 60 hours a week. And now I work 10 to 15.
00:21:46.460 It's a market difference because I burnt out because I didn't understand that difference
00:21:51.060 between process and goal. As you're describing little p purpose for these small things that
00:21:56.260 you pursue that are action oriented and you just do it because you enjoy it. I was thinking about
00:22:00.820 my grandfather when he retired from the Forest Service. He had a good pension, so he didn't have
00:22:06.980 to work. But I was always impressed by him, how he stayed busy well into his 90s. He found all
00:22:14.260 these different things he did. He took on this one thing. He took on this cause of helping this
00:22:19.880 squirrel in this certain part of Utah and Arizona, the Kayabab tasseled ear squirrel. It was like
00:22:26.740 this little species, but he just loved this squirrel and he wanted to be on the endangered
00:22:30.200 species list and he started a foundation and he started like advocating for the squirrel he started
00:22:34.400 taking up repairing old phonograph players he'd buy these junker things and he'd fix them up and
00:22:40.620 then he would sell them that was another little p purpose that he had he did meals on wheels
00:22:45.220 in his 80s even in his 90s the guy was still driving in his 90s i remember he drove from
00:22:50.120 new mexico to my wedding in tulsa oklahoma and he was like 90 something wow but he did meals on
00:22:56.520 wheels because he just liked chatting and visiting other older people who couldn't get out of the
00:23:01.560 house. And it was like this really altruistic thing. I think he did it because, you know,
00:23:04.780 he thought it was a good thing to do, but I think he just genuinely enjoyed talking to people.
00:23:09.460 And this is what I love about that story. You know, one of the biggest arguments I get
00:23:13.520 against this dichotomy, the little P purpose and the big P purpose. And I say big P purpose is
00:23:17.500 always bad and little P purpose is always good. And people say, but, but Jordan, I want a legacy.
00:23:23.660 Like, I want to change the world.
00:23:26.220 And at first, people think that pursuing big P-Purpose
00:23:29.540 is the way you're going to have a legacy
00:23:31.040 and the way you change the world.
00:23:32.620 But I love to bring up people like your grandfather.
00:23:35.760 You see, when you do things
00:23:37.840 that are a little P-Purpose for you
00:23:39.860 and they light you up and they excite you,
00:23:42.100 like a moth to the flame, other people take notice.
00:23:45.320 And if they have similar interests,
00:23:46.900 they want to be around you.
00:23:48.880 They want to collaborate with you.
00:23:50.360 If they have something to teach you,
00:23:51.440 they want to teach you.
00:23:52.020 And if they have something to learn from you, they want you to be their teacher.
00:23:55.280 This is where you start getting community and connections.
00:23:57.980 And this is where I actually think you really build your legacy.
00:24:00.820 I would bet, without you having told me the story before, that your grandfather probably
00:24:05.660 interacted with lots of interesting people.
00:24:07.760 He probably had some interesting collaborations.
00:24:10.140 And he probably left a mark on this world with all the people he met and knew and connected
00:24:16.640 with during the time he did these passionate things for him that, believe it or not, it
00:24:21.240 probably created quite a nice legacy. Yeah, it's an amazing legacy. I mean, even after he retired
00:24:27.220 from the Forest Service, he was still involved in conservation. He would go to range society
00:24:32.720 meetings where they talked about, I guess it's like for the farmers or the ranchers who graze
00:24:37.640 on Forest Service lands. And he wants the land to be useful, but he's also interested in conserving
00:24:42.440 it so that future generations could take part. And he went to these meetings in his 70s and 80s
00:24:48.240 and nineties. And he would contribute things. I mean, he rubbed shoulders with senators,
00:24:52.100 both on the national and state level. Yeah. I mean, he definitely, definitely left the legacy.
00:24:58.300 And here's, what's also cool. We always talk about generational trauma. What is generational
00:25:02.880 trauma? It's when your ancestors go through trauma, they develop poor coping mechanisms
00:25:08.720 to deal with it. And then they hand those poor mechanisms down to generation after generation,
00:25:13.600 after generation. It's a bad thing. We know it's a bad thing. We think it even may affect your
00:25:18.000 genes. They call it epigenetic changes. But we rarely talk about the exact opposite. When people
00:25:22.960 like your grandfather pursue little p-purpose, it lights them up. They model behavior for the
00:25:28.500 next generations. People like you who grew up seeing this, and that might've given you permission
00:25:34.520 to pursue your little p-purpose. Like why did you avoid doing YouTube something you didn't like,
00:25:39.560 even though it was very successful? Because you had the courage to go and do something that lit
00:25:46.440 you up and you had the courage to say, well, that might be wonderful, but I'm not enjoying
00:25:50.580 the process of doing that. So I'm not going to do that anymore. You probably learned that
00:25:55.000 from generational growth, the opposite of generational trauma. And that's also part
00:25:59.700 of the legacy we rarely talk about is that other people model your behavior and you just literally
00:26:06.260 change the people around you when you pursue little B purpose. We're going to take a quick
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00:30:51.080 And now back to the show.
00:30:52.760 I love that point you made about little p purpose because that first blush you look at it and people
00:30:58.380 are like oh backgammon what's going on there that's that's just selfish or I mean you talk
00:31:04.200 about this one guy who got really into baseball cards this older guy who worked in an antique
00:31:09.320 store you know like that's just that's not doing anything but as you said eventually those things
00:31:14.480 can build a community on the ground level that can affect a lot of people's lives in in important
00:31:20.040 ways, even though it's not like huge and very visible, you can have an impact. It sort of
00:31:24.660 causes ripples that can eventually lead to a big P purpose. Like you didn't intend for that to
00:31:29.960 happen, but by pursuing your little P purpose, you can get to big P purpose unintentionally.
00:31:34.700 Yeah. And again, I prefer not to use the term big P purpose because I really do always feel
00:31:38.320 it's bad because it's so goal oriented, but what you get to is impact and legacy.
00:31:42.980 Yeah. Okay. And that's what the example I talk about in my book, the guy who owned the antique
00:31:48.620 store and sold baseball cards. You know, the short story is that there are a bunch of little
00:31:53.300 kids who went to that antique store, including me, who are kind of the geeks and the misfits
00:31:58.000 and the ones without friends. And that became our community. And this guy's love of baseball cards
00:32:03.040 turned into a community of kids who bonded together, who had that extra bit of confidence
00:32:09.220 and who probably went out into the world and became doctors and lawyers and merchants and
00:32:14.220 carpenters and pursued their lives because they had that extra little piece of confidence and
00:32:20.080 connection and community because this guy existed and he loved baseball cards. And so again, this
00:32:26.300 idea that when you do things that light you up, you connect to other people and those connections
00:32:32.000 like we've done and looked at tons of studies about happiness and I'm in the personal finance
00:32:36.580 world. So they're always talking about, you know, does money make you happy? And there've been a
00:32:41.220 bunch of actually what I think of as lousy studies that suggest it does to a point, but maybe it
00:32:45.700 doesn't after that point, but then maybe it does after that point. But when you really look at the
00:32:50.840 best studies about what causes people to be happy, like the Harvard adult health study, after studying
00:32:56.540 people for like 80, 90 years, they found that it really wasn't money and it wasn't your job and it
00:33:01.920 wasn't your career. And none of that was what made people happy. It was the connections. It was the
00:33:06.260 people. People make you happy. And I just, you know, my argument in the book is little P is a
00:33:10.840 great conduit to connecting to other people. Like when they see you at your best, you can't help
00:33:16.760 like connect to other people. I always challenge people. I say, do something that lights you up
00:33:20.940 and get in a flow state. I promise you, no matter how hard you try not to, you will end up connecting
00:33:27.200 to other people. That's true. I've seen that. I'd say a little P purpose that I have in my life
00:33:31.880 has been barbell training. I've been doing it for like 15 years now. And I mean, I work out alone
00:33:38.340 in my garage mostly, but I have met up with other people who are also passionate about this. And I've
00:33:42.900 made some good friends who I still stay in touch with, even though they've moved to different
00:33:46.660 places. And then also it's been interesting to see, I am a leader at my church congregation for
00:33:53.060 the teenage boys. Lately, I've had this one kid that I worked with. He's in college now. I think
00:33:59.100 he's in medical school or he's going to medical school, but he got into powerlifting and he just
00:34:02.800 reached out to me randomly. He's like, Hey, I know you're really into this. I'm getting into it.
00:34:07.200 Can you take a look at my form? So he sent me a video. I'm like, Oh yeah. And I love talking
00:34:10.920 about barbell training and helping people with it. They got questions and it was cool. I got to
00:34:14.740 connect with this kid again that I hadn't talked to in probably five or six years.
00:34:19.740 Yeah. And those connections matter. I mean, we talk about what's the key to happiness and you
00:34:24.300 start realizing the key to happiness is do a bunch of cool stuff and connect to the people
00:34:28.340 that you're going to connect to while you're doing it.
00:34:30.720 And I really believe, stop worrying about legacy.
00:34:33.960 Stop worrying about the future.
00:34:36.140 It'll happen.
00:34:37.180 Just do the stuff you love.
00:34:38.700 And I think that's the best formula
00:34:40.580 for happiness out there.
00:34:42.200 Yeah, because it gives you a sense of direction.
00:34:44.580 It's action-oriented.
00:34:46.340 Yeah, and if you're healthy about it,
00:34:47.780 you build in some goals.
00:34:48.980 You don't get too caught up on them,
00:34:50.600 but you build in some goals.
00:34:52.840 And whether you mean to or not, you change the world.
00:34:55.140 Yeah, I love that.
00:34:56.140 Well, let's talk about how we can figure out
00:34:57.900 what our little P purposes are. I think when people talk about purpose, they always talk about
00:35:03.500 finding your purpose. I got to find my purpose. But you argue that purpose isn't found, it's
00:35:07.740 created. So how do we go about creating a purpose for ourselves? I think that's the biggest point
00:35:14.240 of anxiety is trying to find your purpose. And again, I think that gives way too much credit
00:35:23.060 to, you know, the ether and the world and way too little credit to you and your own agency.
00:35:29.760 I don't think you find your sense of purpose. I think you build or create it, but it is true.
00:35:35.060 You have to kind of understand what those inklings, those beckonings, those whisperings are
00:35:40.440 that light you up. But when you think of it that way, you start realizing, well, that's kind of
00:35:44.820 easy. I call those purpose anchors, right? They're things we anchor our purposeful activities in.
00:35:49.280 And so the question becomes really, how do I encounter or how do I figure out what my purpose anchors are? And really, there's some very easy solutions and some very easy exercises to that.
00:36:00.000 And so the first that I always mention is as a hospice doctor, we did something called
00:36:05.260 the life review.
00:36:06.140 And I often call kind of the short form of this a regret audit.
00:36:09.820 But if you can sit there and imagine that you are lying on your desk bed, knowing you
00:36:14.380 only have days to live, what would you regret never having the energy, courage, or time
00:36:19.080 to do?
00:36:20.160 And if you can start thinking about what the answer to that would be, you can turn that
00:36:23.440 around into a purpose anchor.
00:36:24.880 And so I'm a great example of that.
00:36:26.600 About 10 years ago, I asked myself that very same question.
00:36:29.620 And the answer was, I would really regret if I hadn't traditionally published a book.
00:36:34.920 Like that was something that was always deeply important to me.
00:36:36.920 I love writing and I wanted to traditionally publish a book.
00:36:40.200 So that became the purpose anchor.
00:36:42.020 That was really easy, right?
00:36:43.440 Deciding what to build a life and purpose around was really easy.
00:36:46.400 The hard part became next because then I had to take action.
00:36:49.600 I had to find an agent.
00:36:51.520 I had to build a brand.
00:36:53.000 I had to decide what I wanted to write about.
00:36:55.520 I had to eventually find a publisher.
00:36:56.880 All those were difficult activities, but I enjoyed the process of doing them and I was
00:37:03.020 very excited about it.
00:37:04.640 And so the question is, how do you figure out your purpose anchors?
00:37:09.300 Regret audit is a great way.
00:37:10.680 And if you'd like to, we can talk about some other easy exercises you can do to start thinking
00:37:14.420 about what are some of the things that light me up?
00:37:17.220 Because once you figure what those are, it becomes really much, much easier to start
00:37:21.740 building a life of purpose around them.
00:37:23.320 One thing you really have to do is let go of this idea that purpose has to be very specific.
00:37:28.640 Like your purpose could be big or small.
00:37:30.780 You could have one or many.
00:37:32.300 Your purpose could last you a week or it could last a lifetime.
00:37:35.320 You can have one overarching purpose in your life or something that feels purposeful, or
00:37:39.500 you could have a million different ones.
00:37:41.480 And you certainly can quit one version of purpose and leap on to another.
00:37:45.340 So once we kind of let go of all those rules, everything becomes much easier.
00:37:50.000 And what are some other exercises you do besides the regret audit?
00:37:52.820 So regret audit is the first.
00:37:55.200 The next one I love to talk about are the joys of childhood.
00:37:57.900 So you heard me or we talked about that story of the guy who sold baseball cards and I used
00:38:02.680 to go to his shop.
00:38:04.100 I loved baseball cards as a kid.
00:38:06.200 And most of us have something we really love as a kid.
00:38:08.460 And what happens?
00:38:09.640 You get older, you go to school, you start thinking about how you're going to make a
00:38:13.300 living.
00:38:13.560 You get really serious.
00:38:14.560 And a lot of times you drop that thing you love, not because you don't love it anymore,
00:38:19.000 but because life moves on and you're getting older and you're getting more mature and life
00:38:23.820 changes. So one of the easy things to do is to go back to your childhood room and think about what
00:38:28.620 were the trophies and what were the posters and what were the drawings? Like what lit you up as
00:38:33.700 a kid? I realized I'm on Facebook all the time and I see stuff about baseball or baseball cards
00:38:39.740 and it lights my brain up. And so I know there's a purpose anchor. I had a joy of childhood. And
00:38:44.720 if I ever was really hurting and saying, boy, you don't have enough purposeful stuff in your life.
00:38:49.000 I could go and get more involved in baseball cards.
00:38:51.300 And that might look like collecting.
00:38:53.120 That might look like buying and selling.
00:38:55.820 That might look like going to baseball card shows.
00:38:57.980 That might look like becoming the head
00:39:00.800 of the Cubs fan club.
00:39:02.760 I mean, that could look like many, many different things.
00:39:04.660 There's lots of different options there.
00:39:06.460 But at least then I now have an anchor
00:39:08.420 that I can start building purpose around.
00:39:11.380 Now, I love that.
00:39:11.760 I think I did that.
00:39:13.220 That's how I got into barbell training
00:39:15.160 because I played football in high school
00:39:17.560 and I loved, we did barbell training.
00:39:19.960 You did squats, you did deadlift, you did bench press.
00:39:21.960 I loved that way of working out.
00:39:23.640 And then when I finished my football career in high school,
00:39:26.540 I figured, well, I got to do other types of workouts
00:39:28.700 because I'm not a football player.
00:39:29.800 I don't need to hoist big weight anymore.
00:39:31.580 So I tried different workout programs like P90X
00:39:34.000 and I would try Body for Life
00:39:36.140 and these different bodybuilding type things.
00:39:38.700 But I'd always see myself getting drawn back in
00:39:41.440 to the barbell.
00:39:42.540 Like, I really like this.
00:39:43.740 And I just followed it and eventually I hooked up
00:39:45.720 with, you know, this company or group called starting strength that teaches the barbell
00:39:50.260 lifts and has a program for it. And it was off to the races. Like I've been doing it,
00:39:54.280 but I think I had that anchor and child or like you can call it childhood teenagehood
00:39:58.800 with barbell training. And I even see like what I do now for my living, you know, growing up,
00:40:03.120 I love to read books. I love to present ideas that I, I had, or I got from these books to other
00:40:09.900 people and how to improve your life. I love doing that. Like it lights me up and that's what I do
00:40:14.260 for a living now. I get to read interesting books and show people how to do cool things that can
00:40:19.780 improve their life in big and small ways. Yeah. I mean, I'd argue anyone listening right now,
00:40:24.900 who's listening to you and I are hearing two people talk passionately about the things they
00:40:30.280 love to do. And so I would say that probably if you're listening to this from the outside,
00:40:34.820 you're going, wow, those two guys sound like fairly happy people. We're people who pursue
00:40:40.500 little p purpose. No one probably taught us that. We just kind of naturally did it. What I've
00:40:46.220 realized is that most people aren't like you and I, like most people actually struggle to figure
00:40:51.220 out what they're supposed to do. They don't look at the world as a menu of exciting things.
00:40:57.020 They look at purpose as something scarce and hard to find. I think the difference is just kind of
00:41:02.660 investing in doing some of these exercises, finding out what your purpose anchors are,
00:41:05.960 and then building a life of little p purpose. Brett, you sound like you do that naturally.
00:41:10.000 And I think I've been lucky enough
00:41:11.340 that I probably did that naturally in my life too.
00:41:14.260 I just realized just like you can be naturally frugal
00:41:16.980 or you can learn to be frugal,
00:41:18.840 a lot of people are not naturally practitioners
00:41:21.420 of little p-purpose.
00:41:22.640 And so my goal is to teach those who are interested.
00:41:25.640 So, okay, so you got the regret audit.
00:41:27.240 You can do the look at your childhood,
00:41:29.160 what lit you up in childhood.
00:41:30.140 Any other exercise to figure out
00:41:31.240 what could be potential little p-purposes
00:41:33.060 or purpose anchors?
00:41:34.800 Yeah, so there are two other great exercises
00:41:37.220 to figure out purpose anchors.
00:41:38.680 There are many, but two others I like to talk about.
00:41:41.180 The first is the art of subtraction.
00:41:43.320 What I tell people is go ahead and think about what you do at your job right now.
00:41:46.620 And most people, you know, have some joy in their job, but don't love their jobs.
00:41:50.880 And so I say, write down every role and responsibility of your job,
00:41:54.560 and then take a pencil and start scratching out everything that you don't feel excited about.
00:41:58.860 And usually people write down 10, 15, 20 things, and they'll scratch out almost all of them.
00:42:03.720 But occasionally there's something left over.
00:42:05.980 And what I call that is the art of subtraction.
00:42:07.520 they've subtracted all they don't like, and they've realized, boy, there's a kernel of
00:42:10.940 something I do like there. And maybe either at work or outside of work, I can start building
00:42:16.400 some sense of purpose around that. Again, I'm a perfect example. When I realized I could walk
00:42:21.800 away from my job as a physician, it was such a part of my identity and purpose at the time.
00:42:27.180 I didn't know I could walk away from the whole thing, but I did start subtracting out everything
00:42:31.120 I didn't like. And as I got rid of my office practice and the nursing homes and the nights
00:42:34.840 and the weekends, there was one thing I would do even if you didn't pay me for it. And that was
00:42:39.160 doing my hospice work. And so through subtraction, I realized that I didn't want to walk away from
00:42:43.720 being a physician totally. I just wanted to concentrate on that one thing I really liked
00:42:47.420 doing, which is hospice work. So then I kind of built a life where I could do that hospice work
00:42:51.940 to the point where it brought me joy and was fulfilling for me, but not so much that it
00:42:56.960 stressed me out or took up too much of my time from doing other things. And so the art of
00:43:00.940 subtraction is a great way to start thinking about how can I find the things I like that I already do
00:43:06.620 and then start maximizing them. And then last but not least is what I call the spaghetti method. So
00:43:10.860 you know, if the regret audit and the joys of childhood and the art of subtraction, if none
00:43:16.620 of that works, like you can't think of anything that lights you up, then you have to try the
00:43:21.080 spaghetti method, which is try a bunch of things, throw a bunch of spaghetti against the wall and
00:43:24.740 see what sticks. That usually means saying yes to people you normally don't say yes to, doing things
00:43:28.860 you normally don't do, maybe doing an activity where you feel a little uncomfortable in the
00:43:32.600 beginning. And you do a bunch of those things and you see how you feel at the end of the day.
00:43:36.500 And if there's some joy or excitement, or if you hit a flow state while doing something,
00:43:40.660 that's a pretty good sign that maybe that's a purpose anchor and you can start building some
00:43:44.080 purpose around it. All right. So if you do the spaghetti thing, it could be, I'm going to sign
00:43:48.280 up for like an introductory jujitsu class at that place in my neighborhood. I don't know if I like
00:43:53.940 jujitsu, but I'm going to try it. And what's, you're going to lose what an hour of your, your
00:43:57.860 time. Big whoop. Yeah. I mean, and you know, that's the great thing is you might do jujitsu
00:44:03.740 and you may love it for the first two weeks. And then the third week you might be like, oh,
00:44:07.340 this is no fun anymore. Then you just quit. You just go do something else. You find something
00:44:11.640 else you enjoy the process of doing. It's very, very low stakes. And I think once people start
00:44:17.280 realizing it, they're like, okay, I can try something. We'll see what happens. And how many
00:44:21.280 of us. I know lots of people. And for me too, like I thought I wouldn't like something and
00:44:25.200 then I tried it and I'm like, Oh, I like this, but you don't know till you try.
00:44:29.860 Yeah. Just try stuff. You might like, you don't know if you're going to like it or not.
00:44:32.680 All right. Let's say you have a purpose anchor. You got a hunch that, okay, this, I think this
00:44:37.580 could be the thing for me, my little P purpose. You have a process that you can do to kind of
00:44:42.340 see it through to really embrace it as your little P purpose. You call it the climb.
00:44:47.460 What is the climb?
00:44:49.100 The climb is literally the actions you build
00:44:52.120 around your purpose anchor.
00:44:53.760 And so I do a lot of purpose coaching.
00:44:55.520 And so we take them through those exercises
00:44:57.260 and believe it or not,
00:44:58.680 and I've done this with, let's say 50 people.
00:45:01.500 By the time I'm done with my four purpose anchor exercises,
00:45:04.360 I usually have at least 30 to 40 purpose anchors
00:45:07.840 for everyone.
00:45:08.900 I've never ever found anyone
00:45:10.080 where we don't find purpose anchors.
00:45:12.160 But then you can take each purpose anchor out
00:45:14.380 and you can start deciding how you want to build these climbs.
00:45:18.280 And so again, for me, you know, let's start with the first one.
00:45:22.080 My regret audit showed me that I wanted to traditionally write a book.
00:45:25.580 Well, you could say, duh, your climb is going to be writing that book.
00:45:29.000 But not necessarily.
00:45:30.060 Like there's lots of book writing adjacent activities
00:45:33.020 that now presented themselves
00:45:34.520 because I wanted to traditionally publish a book.
00:45:36.560 So I started a blog, right?
00:45:38.580 Or you could start a substack.
00:45:40.160 Or you could start going to a writing group.
00:45:42.700 You know, a lot of people go to writing groups where they take their pieces of writing and
00:45:46.200 they discuss it with a group and then they work on it and they improve it.
00:45:49.780 You can start going to author events or meeting your favorite author, right?
00:45:53.500 Authors have book signings and readings all over the place.
00:45:56.400 And so you could say, well, you know, these are the four authors who I really think write
00:46:00.360 the kind of book I want to write.
00:46:01.980 Find out when they're coming to your city, go meet them.
00:46:04.020 Maybe you have a conversation.
00:46:04.960 Maybe you take them out for coffee.
00:46:06.240 Believe it or not, occasionally that actually happens.
00:46:08.540 Maybe you just write them on the internet and say, hey, I really admire your writing
00:46:12.100 and I'm looking to start doing the same thing,
00:46:14.420 you might get ignored 95% of the time,
00:46:16.720 but 5% of the time people respond.
00:46:18.500 So it's a real simple process.
00:46:21.160 Don't worry about being perfect.
00:46:23.040 Take these purpose anchors and start thinking,
00:46:25.580 what types of things could I enjoy
00:46:27.460 and what should I do with this?
00:46:29.620 And so, you know, I know lots of people
00:46:32.420 who wanted to be, let's say, basketball players, right?
00:46:34.880 And they were in high school and they were in college
00:46:36.760 and they got an injury or they quit
00:46:38.400 or it just never happened, they didn't have enough talent.
00:46:40.240 And they're like, well, I can never go back
00:46:41.800 and be a basketball player now, I'll never be in the NBA.
00:46:44.400 But I think when you start thinking about that way,
00:46:46.060 you're getting back to big audacious goals.
00:46:47.760 If you love basketball,
00:46:49.060 maybe you could work for the organization.
00:46:51.020 Maybe you could start a fan club.
00:46:52.840 Maybe you could just start going to the games
00:46:54.460 on a regular basis.
00:46:55.540 Maybe you could start a pickup basketball game
00:46:57.420 in your neighborhood.
00:46:58.280 Like there's so many different climbs out there.
00:47:01.280 It's really becomes a question of courage.
00:47:03.240 Do you have the courage to test out this purpose anchor
00:47:06.180 to maybe face failure, maybe face your own inabilities,
00:47:10.300 put yourself out there, right? Put yourself out there to scrutiny or being embarrassed or who
00:47:14.820 knows what. Like, do you have the courage to now build something that could be really exciting
00:47:19.560 based on that purpose anchor? And I really, you know, I don't explicitly talk about it or write
00:47:24.880 about it as much, but I think our real goal is to hit flow, right? That state where you're so
00:47:29.300 excited and busy doing something that you like that you lose track of time and you stop worrying
00:47:35.720 about goals and just start having fun. Remember when we were kids and you could go out and you'd
00:47:40.080 get on your bike and you'd start, you know, chasing around with your friends and you'd forget time and
00:47:45.540 you'd forget to eat. And you didn't even know why you were chasing them. You guys were just hiding
00:47:49.240 and laughing and having fun. Like kids know how to hit a flow state and something happens to us
00:47:54.360 as we get older, we get less and less good at it. The whole purpose of the climb is to build more
00:47:59.560 flow into your life. Because I truly believe, you know, when we define happiness as this idea of
00:48:05.040 having purpose in your life, you know, I think the actionable part of that is doing things that
00:48:11.280 put you in a little bit of a flow state. And again, Brett, going back to your life,
00:48:14.560 my bet is when you go down to work out and you start lifting and your endorphins are kicking,
00:48:21.020 you kind of lose track of time and get excited. And you're like in that flow state. And yeah,
00:48:25.820 we want more of that in our lives. Yeah. It's usually about my lifting. I've talked about
00:48:29.160 this before on the podcast. There was a period where it was very goal oriented. I was trying
00:48:32.660 to hit PRs. And it was fun for a while, but then I just kind of got burnt out and beat up because
00:48:37.780 it does put a lot of stress in your body to go for this heavy weight. And so I had to make a shift
00:48:43.220 and now I just lift because I enjoy it. I haven't pursued a PR probably in three or four years,
00:48:49.320 but I still enjoy lifting. I'm still going down there, just doing the thing. And I like it a lot.
00:48:54.080 So yeah. And you have these rules of the climb. You've kind of been mentioning some of them
00:48:57.700 throughout what you just said. The climb should never be goal-oriented. The climb must bring
00:49:02.580 you joy, a guy to make you happy, or just gives you that flow state. You cannot fail your climb.
00:49:08.560 Climbs can incorporate incremental gain, and the monogamy is optional when it comes to purpose.
00:49:13.240 You don't just have to have one purpose. You can have a whole bunch. Like my grandfather,
00:49:16.840 he had a whole bunch of different little purposes. I think it's much simpler than we make it out to
00:49:21.040 be, right? It's just give yourself some space, find what you enjoy doing, and don't think too
00:49:27.540 much about it. Just do it. Yeah. And you also talk about how people make excuses about not
00:49:32.460 having time or money to pursue their little P purposes, but they really don't hold up because
00:49:37.320 you can find creative ways to pursue little P purposes in a frugal way. And everyone's got
00:49:42.640 a little time every day. You just sub it in for some of the phone scrolling or TV watching you're
00:49:48.260 doing. Something else you talk about is that while you're big on community and you think pursuing
00:49:54.960 little P purposes can indirectly bring you community, you actually argue that people
00:50:00.140 shouldn't be your purpose. And I feel like a lot of people would disagree with that. There's
00:50:04.900 probably a lot of dads listening to this who would say, my purpose is my family. So what's wrong with
00:50:10.500 making your family and the people you love your purpose? I think there are two main problems.
00:50:16.420 And let's focus on kids because I think it's easier. So why as a parent should you not make
00:50:19.920 your kids your purpose? Well, first and foremost, and we see this all the time, your kids are going
00:50:24.320 to grow up and leave you. And at some point, they're not going to be around anymore. They're
00:50:28.980 going to have their own lives. They may not even live in the same city. And so to make them your
00:50:32.980 purpose means that you're setting yourself up at some point for them to fly away, which you want
00:50:38.040 them to do because they're growing up and becoming independent and you're going to be left with
00:50:42.740 nothing. But I'd even like to dive into an even more important and deeper argument. Here's the
00:50:49.540 thing. And we remember we talked about generational trauma versus generational growth. What do we hand
00:50:54.480 down to our children. Well, when you make your children your purpose, you are modeling for them
00:50:59.680 that exact behavior. And so your kids will grow up and they will see the model you've presented
00:51:05.760 and they will think that their kids should be their purpose. But there can be problems with
00:51:10.960 that. Maybe they'll never find a partner and never have kids. Maybe biologically they can't
00:51:15.340 have kids. Maybe they decide they don't want to have kids or fall in love with someone who doesn't
00:51:19.400 want to have kids. What will life then feel to them when all the modeling they've grown up with
00:51:26.420 their whole life tells them that something is important, but they can't do it. What you actually
00:51:31.640 want to do, what I think is most healthy is you want to have things that just light you up, that
00:51:35.120 excite you, that are yours and only yours. And you want to model that behavior for your children
00:51:40.160 because when they grow up, you want them to pursue things that light them up. You want them to pursue
00:51:45.720 things that are exciting and purposeful and joyful for them. But how are they ever going to know how
00:51:50.740 to do that if you haven't modeled that behavior for them? We want generational growth. We want
00:51:55.680 to give them permission to do really cool things that they love. And the way you do that is you
00:52:02.180 have your own version of little p purpose. You demonstrate it for them. That's the way you get
00:52:07.060 your kids there. I think if your kid's happiness is something you worry a lot about, demonstrating
00:52:11.920 your own sense of happiness, little p-purpose, joy and flow in an activity is probably one of
00:52:17.600 the best gifts you can give them. All right. So are you saying that kids can't be your big
00:52:22.080 p-purpose or are you also saying they can't be your little p-purpose either? Because it's true
00:52:26.860 that, you know, the time you have with your kids at home, it's temporary, but a lot of purposes
00:52:30.940 are temporary. So, I mean, couldn't you say that, you know, for the time that your kids are with you,
00:52:37.160 that's going to be your little p-purpose? I mean, even, you know, when your kids leave the house
00:52:41.220 and you're older, I mean, you could still think of your kids as part of your purpose. Like, you
00:52:46.220 know, right now my kids are at home. I think they're one of my purposes. I have other purposes
00:52:51.620 that I'm pursuing, but you know, they're a big one for me. Yeah. And I think that the key is
00:52:56.580 to differentiate. It's not that your kids or your wife or your family can't be purposeful or even be
00:53:01.320 a version of little P purpose, but they can't be your only version of little P purpose. They can't
00:53:05.640 be everything. Like you still need to have other versions of purpose. I mean, look, I have two
00:53:11.540 kids. I love my wife. I love my kids. I spend lots of time with them. I spend lots of time with my
00:53:16.300 parents. Like there's no question that those parts of your life are very important to remember. We
00:53:21.500 said community and connections is what makes people happy. And those are a big part of your
00:53:25.060 community and connections. But I want to make sure people pursue other versions of little p
00:53:29.480 purpose. I think that's really important. I want to talk about regret just a little bit
00:53:33.160 because you end the book with this.
00:53:35.320 So you've worked as a hospice doctor,
00:53:36.620 and so you've got to see and talk to people
00:53:40.120 who are at death's door.
00:53:42.560 When you talk to these individuals,
00:53:45.160 what were their typical regrets that they had?
00:53:48.200 So everyone is a little bit different.
00:53:50.120 So the answer was never exactly the same,
00:53:52.060 but it does boil down to that regret audit question.
00:53:56.020 You know, what did you never have the energy,
00:53:58.100 courage, or time to do?
00:53:59.640 So for some people, that's writing a book.
00:54:01.260 For other people, it's pursuing that sport or pursuing that hobby.
00:54:04.560 For some people, it is not reconnecting with that person that was important to them.
00:54:09.200 But for each person, it's different.
00:54:10.760 And that's why we have to ask that question.
00:54:13.280 But it all does come down, in a sense, to courage.
00:54:15.840 It's that I didn't have courage to be a better version of myself.
00:54:17.980 If you've ever read Bronnie Ware's Five Regrets of the Dying, she makes the point she gives
00:54:22.300 five regrets in her experience as a palliative care nurse.
00:54:25.180 But one of them is regretting not being a truer version of yourself or not having the
00:54:29.040 courage to be yourself.
00:54:30.000 And most of it comes down to that.
00:54:31.900 Like there was this thing that was deeply important to me
00:54:33.880 and I didn't have the courage to pursue it.
00:54:36.420 All right, so yeah, the thing about regrets
00:54:38.620 and what you might regret at your deathbed,
00:54:40.280 that could be a spur to Little P-Purpose.
00:54:42.480 Like what would be that thing if I were about to die
00:54:44.440 that I regret that I didn't do?
00:54:46.160 We'll start doing it today.
00:54:47.740 You talked about it.
00:54:48.640 This really stuck with me about a patient
00:54:50.420 who his Little P-Purpose was painting.
00:54:53.620 He just wanted to paint.
00:54:55.000 And he wasn't like a great painter.
00:54:57.100 Like he wasn't known.
00:54:57.900 He wasn't making a living from painting.
00:55:00.000 but the guy died and there's all these paintings in his room and even unfinished ones that he was
00:55:05.800 still working on. And this is one of those cases. It's funny. Remember, I always kind of said
00:55:10.280 this idea that I challenge you to follow your little P purpose and see if it won't connect
00:55:16.160 you to people. You know, there are occasions where people really do love doing something
00:55:20.340 solitary and it doesn't lead to a greater community and it doesn't lead to more connections,
00:55:25.280 but clearly in this case, it led to joy and excitement and interest and a reason to get up
00:55:30.660 in the day. And so, yeah, I think when we carry out with intention, things that are purposeful
00:55:37.440 and joyful to us, we create, we build, whether it's a podcast or a painting or whatever it is
00:55:44.280 that you are excited about, you create and make change. Well, Jordan, this has been a great
00:55:49.760 conversation. Where can people go to learn more about the book and your work?
00:55:52.560 so the easiest way to find me is go to jordangrummet.com that's j-o-r-d-a-n-g-r-u-m-e-t
00:55:58.560 there you can find all three of my books taking stock is the first the purpose code is the second
00:56:03.720 and just recently i wrote about our healthcare system called the healthcare heist as well as
00:56:08.680 you can find the places that create content that you earn and invest podcast as well as the purpose
00:56:12.680 code substack you can get all of it at jordangrummet.com you're everywhere except for
00:56:17.180 tiktok and instagram it sounds like yeah i just don't enjoy i tried tiktok for a while uh i do
00:56:22.760 have an instagram account and there are easy ways to post your episodes on instagram without it
00:56:27.960 taking much time but yeah i don't spend a lot of time there that's fine well hey jordan grumet
00:56:31.980 thanks for time it's been a pleasure thank you so much for having me i appreciate it
00:56:35.120 my guest here is jordan grumet he's the author of the book the purpose code it's available on
00:56:39.640 amazon.com you can learn more information about his work at his website jordangrumet.com
00:56:44.740 Also check out our show notes
00:56:45.660 at awim.is slash purpose code,
00:56:47.520 where you find links to resources
00:56:48.560 when we delve deeper into this topic.
00:56:57.460 Well, that wraps up another edition
00:56:59.100 of the AWIM podcast.
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00:57:12.540 As always,
00:57:13.120 thank you for the continued support. Until next time, it's Brett McKay reminding you to
00:57:16.520 not listen to anyone podcast, but put what you've heard into action.