The Art of Manliness - The Power of a Purpose-Driven Life

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00:02:03.320 Brett McKay here, and welcome to another edition of the AOM podcast,

00:02:06.760 which since 2008 has featured conversations with the world's best authors, thinkers, and leaders

00:02:11.420 that glean their edifying, life-improving insights without the fluff and filler.

00:02:15.420 The AOM podcast is just one part of the McKay mission to help individuals practice timeless virtues

00:02:20.080 through thought, word, and deed.

00:02:22.380 Also, be sure to explore our articles in artofmanliness.com,

00:02:25.220 read the deeper dives we do in our Substack newsletter at dyingbreed.net,

00:02:28.720 and turn our content into real-world action by joining the Strenuous Life program at strenuouslife.com.

00:02:33.980 Now on to the show.

00:02:35.100 When it comes to building a happy and meaningful life, most of us rely on a grab bag of strategies,

00:02:47.660 habits and goals around work, relationships, and health.

00:02:50.820 But my guest today would argue that in the quest for true flourishing,

00:02:53.560 there's a deeper element that not only ties together those efforts,

00:02:56.140 but organizes and energizes them.

00:02:58.360 Purpose.

00:02:59.220 Vic Strecker is a professor of public health, a behavioral scientist, and the author of

00:03:03.120 Life on Purpose, How Living for What Matters Most Changes Everything.

00:03:07.080 We begin our conversation with Vic's powerful story of how losing his 19-year-old daughter

00:03:10.620 led him to discover how purpose can fundamentally reshape your life.

00:03:14.280 Vic then unpacks the dramatic impact purpose has on our physical and mental health.

00:03:17.600 He shares some guideposts on finding your own purpose,

00:03:19.740 what kinds of aims foster the most fulfillment,

00:03:21.960 why finding purpose isn't a one-or-done process,

00:03:24.320 and why becoming purposeful can make life feel less like a tug-of-war

00:03:26.920 and more like stepping into a strong current that carries you forward.

00:03:30.400 After the show's over, check out our show notes at aom.is slash purpose.

00:03:44.020 All right.

00:03:44.900 Vic Strecker, welcome to the show.

00:03:47.140 Thank you so much, Brett.

00:03:48.420 So you are a professor of public health,

00:03:50.580 and you have spent a lot of time researching and writing about the role purpose plays

00:03:57.420 in our overall health and well-being.

00:03:59.600 How did that happen?

00:04:01.960 Well, I am a behavioral scientist.

00:04:04.900 I think for my whole career, I've been trying to understand root causes of why we do the things we do.

00:04:13.140 And in public health, of course, we may be helping people quit smoking or manage their stress or their weight.

00:04:20.580 Or get a mammogram or, you know, so many different things.

00:04:25.200 So, you know, often we end up scaring people, saying,

00:04:29.080 if you don't do this, bad things will happen.

00:04:31.020 If you don't quit smoking, you'll die.

00:04:32.560 If you don't manage your diabetes, you could lose your legs, blah, blah, blah.

00:04:36.520 And the more I approached behavior in that way,

00:04:41.020 the more I realized that people's defensive shields just kind of pop up.

00:04:45.740 And naturally, I do the same thing.

00:04:47.920 Somebody tries to scare me.

00:04:49.120 I say, well, that's not like me.

00:04:50.820 That'll never happen to me.

00:04:52.340 And I start even discounting the person saying it.

00:04:55.320 So I started really thinking more about root causes.

00:04:58.940 And this is through a lot of experience.

00:05:01.040 You know, a person may come into a smoking clinic I'm running and say,

00:05:04.600 I don't need this clinic.

00:05:05.820 I don't need this fancy cognitive behavioral program you're running.

00:05:08.900 Because my kids just stopped me while I was driving them to school and said,

00:05:13.520 Dad, you're smoking bothers me so much.

00:05:16.480 And I realized, what am I doing?

00:05:18.460 I'm a dad.

00:05:19.320 I'm a father.

00:05:20.600 And so I don't need your program anymore.

00:05:23.040 And I used to say something like, well, of course you need it.

00:05:26.060 Because, you know, one little simple motivational event isn't going to change you.

00:05:30.780 Well, I found that those people change.

00:05:32.780 And they change for life.

00:05:34.180 So some deeper root cause, some identity shift or understanding who they really are,

00:05:42.160 understanding and appealing to one's core values, that turns out to be really, really important.

00:05:49.100 And I guess in my own life, I went through a difficult experience that kind of caused me to

00:05:56.360 take a dramatic shift in my own behaviors as well.

00:06:01.100 Well, tell us about that.

00:06:01.680 You start off the book talking about your daughter, Julia.

00:06:04.960 Can you tell us that story?

00:06:06.320 Sure.

00:06:07.080 Well, my daughter, Julia, was born healthy in 1990.

00:06:11.360 She used to like to say I was a 10 out of 10.

00:06:15.160 And then six months into her life, when she was a little baby, my wife and our older daughter

00:06:21.200 and Julia were in the Netherlands.

00:06:23.680 I was on a research sabbatical there.

00:06:26.440 And so doing intense research with people.

00:06:28.560 But at the same time, our daughter, Julia, started losing weight.

00:06:33.040 And you're not supposed to be losing weight when you're six months old.

00:06:35.620 You're supposed to be gaining weight.

00:06:37.660 And so eventually, after seeing a doctor, then another doctor, finally, she ended up in the

00:06:42.680 hospital.

00:06:43.840 A cardiologist walked by after her being in the hospital for a few days and just thought,

00:06:49.640 she doesn't look right.

00:06:50.540 They did an echocardiogram on her just to see what her heart was like.

00:06:56.200 And it turned out that her heart was completely ruined.

00:06:59.300 She had gotten a chickenpox virus out of the blue, like most of us do.

00:07:03.880 And it causes a fever and a rash usually for a day or two.

00:07:07.860 But this chickenpox virus attacked her heart and it destroyed it.

00:07:12.220 And we were told that she was going to die within a month.

00:07:17.180 So we literally took her out of the hospital in the Netherlands.

00:07:21.040 And the next morning, we flew home.

00:07:24.360 And the people at home, we went to a medical center where I was a professor at the time.

00:07:30.400 And they said, you know, she may actually be eligible for a heart transplant. 0.96

00:07:36.600 And of course, I was an assistant professor.

00:07:39.260 What did I know?

00:07:40.420 You know, I was living a comfortable assistant professor life, trying to get tenure, writing

00:07:44.820 grants, publishing articles, you know, the standard stuff.

00:07:48.760 And didn't really take my life terribly seriously, Brent, just to be honest.

00:07:54.320 I was in my early 30s.

00:07:56.520 And I just thought, this is pretty easy.

00:07:58.200 And I'm enjoying it.

00:07:59.600 And, you know, this is going to be a nice, easy go of it as a life is concerned, I guess.

00:08:05.900 And suddenly, everything shifted.

00:08:08.560 I started realizing that our lives are all finite.

00:08:13.120 And we don't know how long any of us are going to live.

00:08:16.160 But also, I had to take her life very seriously.

00:08:19.180 So we, as a family, decided to list her for a heart transplant.

00:08:23.460 And she became one of the early children to get a heart.

00:08:26.840 But looking at the research data, which I'm a researcher, so I look at the data, and there

00:08:32.620 wasn't a lot of data.

00:08:33.660 But what did exist showed that kids who are waiting for a heart, only about 50% of them

00:08:39.960 ended up getting a heart.

00:08:41.100 They died before getting one, half of them.

00:08:43.780 And then if you did get one, if you're that lucky half, then half of those kids ended up

00:08:49.260 dying within five years.

00:08:50.620 So I thought her chances of becoming even six years old are about one in four.

00:08:57.840 So in deciding to list her for a new heart, we had to decide what kind of life should we

00:09:04.300 give her? 0.92

00:09:05.420 And it became an existential question for our family.

00:09:09.700 Like, how do you live a life?

00:09:10.960 And so I started thinking about it then.

00:09:14.520 And we started, you know, she did get a heart, a new heart.

00:09:19.380 And it was almost like she got a brain transplant because she had more energy.

00:09:22.800 She just turned alive suddenly, as opposed to just shrinking.

00:09:28.400 And we, as a family, I'm sorry, I get a little emotional thinking about this.

00:09:34.280 But as a family, we started saying to ourselves, look, we don't know when she's going to pass

00:09:42.040 away, but then we don't know any of us, when any of us are going to pass away.

00:09:47.060 So let's live our life as if this may be our last day or our last week.

00:09:51.920 Let's live every moment, make every moment we can filled with gratitude and filled with

00:09:58.200 caring for what we care about.

00:09:59.780 And so we started living very differently.

00:10:03.420 And suddenly, all of our lives, not just Julia's life, but all of our lives started turning

00:10:08.600 technicolor as opposed to simply being black and white.

00:10:12.420 And I think I lived a black and white life before then, quite honestly.

00:10:16.020 You know, things were pretty easy.

00:10:18.020 And suddenly, when they became very difficult and challenging, that's when life became really

00:10:24.040 interesting, quite honestly.

00:10:25.560 She ended up needing a second heart transplant when she was nine.

00:10:30.340 But when she was 19, well, she wanted to be a nurse.

00:10:35.720 She wanted to give back.

00:10:37.200 She'd been in the hospital a lot.

00:10:39.280 Just getting a heart transplant doesn't mean you're fully, you know, able to do anything

00:10:44.360 that others are able to do.

00:10:46.880 She was in the hospital a lot.

00:10:48.380 She had headaches a lot.

00:10:49.900 She had issues that, you know, she was immune suppressed.

00:10:52.340 So any illness would really be difficult for her.

00:10:57.900 And my wife took a major caregiving role then.

00:11:01.940 But she wanted to be a nurse and give back. 1.00

00:11:04.360 She got into nursing school at the University of Michigan.

00:11:07.840 And her first semester was pretty tough.

00:11:10.960 And she was 19 at the time.

00:11:14.700 We decided to go down to the Caribbean just to like, so that she could warm up.

00:11:20.220 We live in Michigan.

00:11:20.940 It's pretty cold up here.

00:11:22.340 So we went to the Caribbean.

00:11:23.680 We took our older daughter as well.

00:11:26.520 We were all out on the beach having dinner and being grateful for where we were, quite

00:11:33.060 honestly.

00:11:34.200 And when we were all going back, we were just very close.

00:11:38.800 And her last words were, I am so happy that I could die now.

00:11:44.600 And she went back to her room.

00:11:48.140 And those were her last words, it turns out.

00:11:52.260 And so when that happened, when she died, we, you know, I went through a deep grieving process,

00:11:59.080 as you might expect.

00:12:00.240 And I almost thought she had some significant future, that she was kind of a miracle child in a way.

00:12:07.500 And my bubble was burst, obviously.

00:12:10.560 And I went through a deep depression.

00:12:13.740 I went up to northern Michigan.

00:12:16.080 We have a cabin up in northern Michigan, right on Lake Michigan, if you're familiar with that.

00:12:22.040 And Lake Michigan is almost like the ocean.

00:12:24.340 If you've never seen it before, it usually has great big waves.

00:12:27.620 And this is a few months after she had died.

00:12:32.340 And I'd been by myself for about a month, just figuring things out, frankly.

00:12:37.400 But I wasn't really figuring things out.

00:12:39.200 I was just eating and drinking myself to death.

00:12:42.360 And I was, you know, falling asleep in front of the TV. 1.00

00:12:46.440 I started just watching things, you know, that were stupid, just any dumb TV. 0.99

00:12:52.480 I started trying to figure out what Kim Kardashian was doing. 1.00

00:12:56.360 And to me, I thought, wow, that's a sure sign that you're getting ready to die.

00:13:01.440 You know, when that's all you care about, what Kim Kardashian is doing, 0.91

00:13:05.420 or what influencers are doing, or what's on television all the time,

00:13:10.000 or, you know, the latest sporting event.

00:13:12.080 Not that they're not important, and I'm sure Kim Kardashian is a nice person.

00:13:15.940 It's just, I don't, why do I care about these things?

00:13:20.000 And I went to bed, and I had been really drunk.

00:13:26.360 The night before, I just went to bed.

00:13:28.480 I had this huge dream early in the morning.

00:13:31.300 And I dreamt that my daughter was with me, and she was only nine.

00:13:36.660 And we were in the Netherlands, in this little town called Maastricht, where I was working.

00:13:41.120 And it's a beautiful medieval town.

00:13:42.880 And we're on rollerblades, and we're rollerblading around the town.

00:13:47.560 And we saw this beautiful, huge, huge building.

00:13:52.620 And it looked like a church.

00:13:54.280 It could have been a mosque.

00:13:55.420 It could have been a synagogue.

00:13:56.980 But it was beautiful.

00:13:58.140 It was beautiful white marble, and it was glowing.

00:14:03.120 And Julia said, we need to go there.

00:14:06.060 And I said, great.

00:14:07.000 It's beautiful.

00:14:07.580 Let's go.

00:14:08.820 And we were rollerblading there.

00:14:10.500 And then we went into the entrance, and there is this circular staircase in my dream that went down and down and down infinitely, it seemed like.

00:14:19.040 And Julia said, let's go.

00:14:21.540 And I said, we're on rollerblades, Julia.

00:14:23.320 We can't just pop down.

00:14:25.400 She said, don't worry.

00:14:26.500 And we started floating down.

00:14:28.340 And we went into this, at the bottom of the staircase was this huge room.

00:14:35.160 And my daughter, who was rollerblading with me, you know, she had passed away when she was 19, but she was nine in my dream.

00:14:43.580 And she looked up and just looked at me.

00:14:46.400 And then I looked out, and there were these three beautiful women, and they're all wearing these beautiful purple dresses. 0.96

00:14:54.880 And they, all three approached.

00:14:57.620 And suddenly I turned to my daughter, and she wasn't nine anymore.

00:15:00.460 She was 19.

00:15:02.200 And she was wearing the same dress as they were.

00:15:05.080 And she turned to me and said, I've got to go.

00:15:07.820 And I said, no, don't.

00:15:09.760 And she went with these three women, and they disappeared.

00:15:12.180 I woke up in the morning, and my pillow was soaked in tears.

00:15:17.340 I was trying to get back to sleep, thinking, I've got to get back to sleep.

00:15:20.640 I've got to, you know, see her again.

00:15:23.380 I don't know if you've ever, Brett, had a hyper-vivid dream where it's so vivid that you could swear it was real.

00:15:30.280 Yeah.

00:15:30.420 And this was very real to me.

00:15:34.480 It turned out to be about 5 o'clock in the morning.

00:15:37.180 And I looked out, and it was still dark outside.

00:15:40.060 I could hear Lake Michigan a little bit.

00:15:42.400 And I just hopped out of bed.

00:15:43.940 I was just in my boxers and T-shirt and jumped into my kayak, which is out on the beach.

00:15:49.680 And I didn't bother with any sort of life preservation equipment, which is really stupid, because it was still springtime. 0.86

00:15:58.780 And you're a public health professor. 0.90

00:16:00.520 And I'm a public health professor, Brett.

00:16:02.760 Right. 0.99

00:16:03.060 This is as dumb as it gets. 0.99

00:16:04.800 And I don't know why I went out there, honestly. 0.99

00:16:09.080 But I just hopped in my kayak.

00:16:10.960 And it was beautiful, unlike the way it's often, you know, where it's like an ocean.

00:16:16.500 It was perfectly smooth, but it was still dark, and it was foggy, and the water was like a slurper.

00:16:22.980 You could still even feel ice crystals in it.

00:16:26.200 And again, just in my boxers and T-shirt, I jumped in my kayak, and I just started paddling like crazy, like a mad person, which I was, I think, straight out, straight heading toward Wisconsin.

00:16:39.700 And I found myself, I'm guessing, around two miles out when the sun came up.

00:16:44.440 And I was paddling and paddling.

00:16:46.420 And then when the sun just came up, all of the water started glowing, just these flecks of light everywhere.

00:16:53.600 It was magical.

00:16:54.740 And I stopped my kayak, and I turned, and I just looked at the sun coming up.

00:16:59.320 And actually, my thinking before the sun came up was to continue kayaking to Wisconsin, which is 84 more miles.

00:17:09.960 Of course, I never would have made it.

00:17:11.860 And like you said, I'm a public health person, but I, you know, that's where I was in my head.

00:17:16.800 And I saw the sun come up, and I don't know how to express this other than to say, Julia was in me.

00:17:25.120 And she was telling me, you have to get over this.

00:17:28.960 You have to get over this, Dad.

00:17:30.600 And it wasn't like, you have to get over this.

00:17:32.740 It was like, you have to get over yourself.

00:17:35.160 You have to get over your ego.

00:17:36.340 And at that very moment, I had this epiphany that I really had a choice.

00:17:43.180 It's almost like if some street sign lifted up right out of the water, which is hundreds of feet deep already, you know, and said, death or life, that's what was happening to me.

00:17:54.760 I could choose either one.

00:17:56.300 And actually, it was kind of freeing to be able to choose what I wanted to do.

00:18:01.080 Before then, I felt like I wasn't choosing anything. 0.98

00:18:04.040 And I was just kind of heading toward my death, whether it was drinking myself to death and watching stupid television or actively dying by kayaking to Wisconsin. 0.86

00:18:17.340 But, of course, I'm here talking to you, Brett, and I decided to turn back. 0.99

00:18:23.240 And I got back, and I was kind of dripping.

00:18:26.080 I didn't feel any cold.

00:18:27.480 I just sat down at the kitchen table.

00:18:29.540 Again, I'd been by myself.

00:18:31.280 I almost felt like I was looking down from the ceiling of our kitchen and telling myself, I started just saying, Vic, you're in some deep trouble right now.

00:18:44.500 You're in really deep trouble.

00:18:46.780 And you're going to die if you continue on this path.

00:18:50.520 You have to fix yourself.

00:18:52.000 You're a behavioral scientist.

00:18:53.160 If you can't fix yourself, what good are you anyway?

00:18:55.780 And I almost looked at my therapist self and said, Vic, you're right.

00:19:01.260 So I'm going to pull out a sheet of paper, which I did.

00:19:04.300 I started writing just very quickly the things that mattered most to me.

00:19:09.400 And I don't know why I did that.

00:19:10.840 I hadn't been thinking in that way.

00:19:12.320 I just started writing them down.

00:19:13.740 I wrote my family, my wife, Jerry, our older daughter, Rachel.

00:19:18.220 I started writing my friends' names down.

00:19:21.060 I started writing about what mattered to me at work, like my students matter, my work matters.

00:19:29.600 And I decided to, for some reason, I circled my students.

00:19:34.700 And the university had given me a break.

00:19:37.660 They said, you don't have to teach this semester.

00:19:40.200 And you don't even have to teach next semester if you can't do it.

00:19:43.120 I mean, you've just gone through one of the worst things a person can go through.

00:19:47.800 But I started thinking about my students.

00:19:50.380 And I called the university that morning then and called my department and said, look, it's

00:19:56.720 so kind that you gave me the semester off, but actually it's not the advice that I need.

00:20:02.420 What I need to do now is teach.

00:20:04.600 And I want to teach every one of my students as if they're my own child.

00:20:08.660 And I got back.

00:20:10.540 I went back.

00:20:11.040 I started teaching my students as if every single student was Julia.

00:20:15.920 Looking out at them, I even would take a couple big, deep breaths.

00:20:19.500 And I would look at them and just see my daughter's face in all of them and just tell myself, you're

00:20:26.440 going to be teaching today as if all of these people have their own needs, their own lives,

00:20:33.560 their own concerns.

00:20:35.360 And when I did that, my teaching changed and my life changed.

00:20:39.580 I was nominated to become the professor of the year, for example, at Michigan.

00:20:46.000 All these things that I didn't expect, didn't think I really deserved.

00:20:49.860 Suddenly, all these things happened because I started caring so much about my students.

00:20:55.080 I also started taking care of myself because I have hundreds of students and that's just grown.

00:20:59.720 So, I realized I needed energy for my purpose.

00:21:03.480 So, I started sleeping better.

00:21:05.800 I started trying to eat better.

00:21:07.460 I meditate every day.

00:21:09.120 I started doing things that would hopefully give me more energy.

00:21:13.980 I'd walk to work every day.

00:21:15.760 I needed energy because I had a big purpose.

00:21:18.520 And I realized, wow, I'm actually changing my health behaviors because I have a purpose.

00:21:24.980 And I started doing research on this.

00:21:27.660 You know, have other people found this?

00:21:29.120 And sure enough, it turns out the purpose is this, if it were a drug, it would be a miracle

00:21:35.280 drug.

00:21:35.940 It helps so many different things.

00:21:38.440 So, I started treating it as a research topic.

00:21:42.580 And luckily, there was a person in the psychology department who was looking for a mentor for

00:21:48.060 his dissertation.

00:21:49.480 He asked me if I would do this.

00:21:51.580 And I said, of course, I'd be happy to.

00:21:54.460 And with him, I started learning so much more about purpose.

00:21:58.540 And since then, and that was a long time ago, it was about 15 years ago, I've just simply

00:22:03.640 devoted my life to helping people find greater purpose.

00:22:07.400 And metaphorically, getting out on the dance floor of life.

00:22:11.560 Well, thank you for sharing that story.

00:22:13.520 That was really, really touching.

00:22:16.340 And like you said, I think the takeaway from that, you're a behavioral scientist.

00:22:20.160 And typically, when you read articles from behavioral scientists, they always offer these

00:22:24.240 tips on how you can change your behavior.

00:22:26.880 Use reframing or use implementation intentions.

00:22:30.860 Oh, wow.

00:22:31.920 Yes, you know all of these things.

00:22:34.080 Yes.

00:22:34.580 Acceptance and commitment therapy.

00:22:36.160 Yes.

00:22:36.800 Exactly.

00:22:37.400 But what you learned from your own experience with your daughter, Julia, twice, that first

00:22:42.420 time when she got her heart transplant, is that if you have this purpose, it's this lever

00:22:48.080 you can pull that just causes you to change.

00:22:51.080 And then you learn that again a second time with her passing, that if you have this overarching

00:22:56.180 purpose, that's going to do more for you than all these little cognitive behavioral therapy

00:23:02.680 hacks. 0.51

00:23:03.060 It's pretty amazing to me.

00:23:05.800 It truly feels like somebody recently asked me, what's it like to feel purposeful?

00:23:13.300 And I thought, what a great question.

00:23:15.520 I hadn't really thought about that.

00:23:17.600 And I thought for just a few seconds and said, it's like jumping into a river that has a strong

00:23:22.600 current.

00:23:23.120 And that current is moving forward and as you're moving forward in this, things become easier.

00:23:29.800 You're not fighting against things and you're choosing clarity.

00:23:33.800 So suddenly the world becomes much clearer and there's less conflict in your life.

00:23:40.620 You're not wondering, what should I do here?

00:23:42.220 Should I play with the kids or should I have that old fashioned?

00:23:45.300 You know, it depends on what your purpose is.

00:23:47.920 Maybe your purpose is to be an alcoholic, in which case you pick the old fashioned.

00:23:51.440 But typically it's not.

00:23:53.180 Typically it's, I'm going to play with those kids.

00:23:55.020 And so you put off that old fashioned and you also start thinking, how can I be a better dad? 0.87

00:24:00.940 Which I think is incredibly important.

00:24:02.880 And then from that river, you may find streams that move off of that river and you say, that

00:24:07.860 stream looks really interesting.

00:24:10.100 I think I may jump into that stream.

00:24:12.800 And that's been my life for 15 years now, since I found a very strong purpose or set of

00:24:19.700 purposes in my life, I've found my life incredibly joyful, quite honestly, and very happy.

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00:26:46.140 And now back to the show.

00:26:48.460 How do you define purpose personally, but also with your research?

00:26:53.340 What does it mean to have a purpose?

00:26:55.500 Great question.

00:26:56.540 Thanks for asking that too.

00:26:57.860 So having a purpose is being value-driven, first of all.

00:27:03.960 And what psychologists or other people who study purpose real carefully,

00:27:08.560 they like these academic definitions often,

00:27:11.460 and they might say it's a values-driven, self-organizing framework

00:27:16.980 for determining goals and channeling your energy.

00:27:21.200 So working through that, values-driven, meaning this is led by our core values,

00:27:27.940 and I'd love to talk about that a bit more.

00:27:30.300 It's self-organizing, meaning it's not other organizing.

00:27:33.700 Somebody else is not telling you what you should be doing.

00:27:37.260 And you referred to Friedrich Nietzsche.

00:27:39.300 Nietzsche was all about you creating your own purpose in your life.

00:27:45.280 You're a camel first, and you say, 0.99

00:27:47.000 educate me of all the joys and the sorrows of the world.

00:27:50.420 And then that camel metamorphosizes into a lion,

00:27:53.720 goes into the wilderness, and finds this dragon that says,

00:27:56.520 thou shalt on every scale.

00:27:58.640 The lion defeats the dragon, basically saying,

00:28:02.220 I'm going to create my own purpose.

00:28:04.560 I'm not going to listen to what everybody else says.

00:28:07.220 And sure enough, I tell my students in the first day of class,

00:28:10.680 many of whom are freshmen, say a lot of you come in here

00:28:14.140 essentially with your resume that's been written by your parents

00:28:17.580 in your back pocket.

00:28:18.560 You know, you're going to be a doctor.

00:28:20.900 You're going to be this.

00:28:21.640 You're going to be that.

00:28:22.720 I want you to pull that resume out,

00:28:24.500 and I want you to tear it up.

00:28:26.140 Because if you're going to be a doctor,

00:28:27.680 you need to decide to be a doctor.

00:28:29.420 If you're going to be a business person,

00:28:30.860 if you're going to be a lawyer,

00:28:31.860 if you're going to be whatever,

00:28:33.500 you're going to be an artist.

00:28:35.540 Whatever you're going to be,

00:28:36.580 you're going to decide.

00:28:37.780 And that's what's essential.

00:28:38.880 Or you won't be happy.

00:28:40.140 You won't be successful.

00:28:41.900 You need to create your own purpose in your life.

00:28:44.620 So that's what's meant by self-organizing.

00:28:48.000 And then purpose helps you organize your goals.

00:28:50.340 It gives you clarity.

00:28:51.680 In this morass, everyone's trying to get you to set a certain goal,

00:28:56.560 usually around their own thing,

00:28:59.180 their own cause,

00:29:00.340 their own, you know, thing they're trying to sell.

00:29:04.120 Create your own goals.

00:29:05.760 But those goals come from your values and from your purpose.

00:29:09.020 And that's where you start channeling this most precious resource that you have,

00:29:13.360 which is your energy and vitality.

00:29:16.080 And you start moving your energy into that.

00:29:19.100 But it becomes easier because, you know,

00:29:21.460 sorry for all the metaphors,

00:29:22.840 but you're in this river with a very strong current

00:29:25.540 and you're not fighting it.

00:29:26.960 So it becomes easier.

00:29:29.780 Yeah, I'd like to return to how people can figure out their purpose.

00:29:33.260 And it involves figuring out values, figuring out goals.

00:29:35.880 But before we do that,

00:29:37.640 let's talk about the research you've done on purpose

00:29:39.560 because you highlight some really interesting research

00:29:42.860 that shows how purpose affects different facets of our health.

00:29:48.100 And you wouldn't think,

00:29:49.040 well, why would purpose influence my mental...

00:29:52.040 I mean, people would understand how it influenced your mental health,

00:29:54.300 but like my cholesterol, my heart disease.

00:29:57.620 So tell us about that.

00:29:58.320 How does having a purpose affect our health?

00:30:00.600 What does the research say?

00:30:02.720 Wonderful question.

00:30:03.880 Thank you.

00:30:04.300 So first of all, as I was alluding to before,

00:30:08.200 if you have a strong purpose, you start taking care of yourself more.

00:30:11.700 So we find in many, many, many surveys

00:30:14.820 that if you have a strong purpose,

00:30:17.260 you're less likely to engage in unhealthy behaviors

00:30:20.860 and you're more likely to adopt healthier behaviors.

00:30:23.440 You're more likely to get screened for cancer, for example.

00:30:28.940 For example, getting a colorectal cancer screen.

00:30:31.500 You're much more likely to get that.

00:30:32.760 You actually then spend fewer days in the hospital because you get sick less.

00:30:37.000 Well, that's not bad.

00:30:38.260 So we know those things happen.

00:30:40.600 Also, I'm so lucky to know some amazing neuroscientists.

00:30:44.280 One in particular, Emily Falk, who just wrote a great book on...

00:30:48.620 It's entitled What We Value.

00:30:50.720 But she's a neuroscientist who studies people's core values.

00:30:54.900 And we've put people into MRI and have them think about their most purposeful core values.

00:31:00.380 And there's a part of the brain that lights up that's very modern.

00:31:03.940 It's right in the front of our prefrontal cortex.

00:31:06.880 And it's a part of the brain that relates to executive functioning,

00:31:11.020 meaning executive decisions, high-level decisions that we make.

00:31:16.140 It also relates to the self.

00:31:18.300 Who am I?

00:31:19.280 What am I all about?

00:31:20.280 It relates to our core values.

00:31:22.040 Also, when this part of the brain becomes more active and we're challenged,

00:31:27.820 usually when we're scared by something, there's a part of the brain that's very ancient,

00:31:32.500 very old.

00:31:33.200 It's called the amygdala.

00:31:34.340 This is our fear center.

00:31:35.960 And that fear center gets very active.

00:31:38.300 And it can hijack our brain. 0.92

00:31:40.040 When you think about your purpose, this prefrontal cortex gets active,

00:31:44.080 and it actually governs down our amygdala.

00:31:47.260 It governs down our fear.

00:31:48.940 If I think about James Bond, for example, in a Bond movie,

00:31:52.740 maybe he's being lowered into a vat of boiling oatmeal or whatever's happening.

00:31:57.140 And he's going at first, oh, God, this is going to be terrible.

00:32:01.180 And that's what the audience is thinking.

00:32:03.020 But then he finds some way out of it.

00:32:05.680 So first his amygdala is going, but in this Bond-like, heroic sequence,

00:32:12.040 his prefrontal cortex starts lighting up.

00:32:14.360 He's going, I don't have to be afraid of this.

00:32:16.220 In fact, I have a solution to it.

00:32:17.760 But that's what happens when you're purposeful.

00:32:20.720 So we know even what goes on in the brain.

00:32:23.700 We also know that purposeful people have less activation in a part of the brain,

00:32:28.300 a region of the brain that relates to conflict.

00:32:30.980 So they're less conflicted.

00:32:32.640 They know what to do, as I was saying before.

00:32:35.420 There's other research that we've done looking at longevity.

00:32:38.980 And we've looked at longevity a little differently.

00:32:41.240 Now, there are literally almost a dozen studies that have shown that people who have purpose

00:32:47.760 live longer, significantly longer.

00:32:50.800 And this is after statistically adjusting for age and gender and income and education

00:32:56.840 and all sorts of things.

00:32:58.620 You can't make it go away.

00:33:00.040 But we wanted to look at people's biological clocks, what are called in scientific terms,

00:33:05.500 epigenetic clocks.

00:33:07.240 And these clocks are looking at how our proteins are expressed by our DNA.

00:33:12.840 And we find that if you have a strong purpose, your proteins, more healthy proteins, are being

00:33:18.900 expressed.

00:33:20.020 And unhealthy proteins are less likely to be expressed.

00:33:23.120 And that can all be put together and form what we would call a biological clock.

00:33:29.740 And sure enough, people with stronger purpose have longer biological clocks.

00:33:35.000 This is really exciting for us because parts of our epigenome may even be inheritable to our

00:33:42.320 children.

00:33:43.240 So this is so valuable.

00:33:45.340 I've continued to think all along as we do this kind of research, if this were a pill, it

00:33:51.180 would be a, you know, gosh, it'd be a multi-billion dollar drug. 0.86

00:33:55.460 It would be a magic pill.

00:33:58.560 No, and you also highlight research that purpose is also associated with a increase in HDL cholesterol,

00:34:05.540 which is the good cholesterol.

00:34:07.180 And it seems to have something to do with the reduction in inflammatory cell production.

00:34:12.480 Yes.

00:34:12.780 So we find that, and this is other people's research too, not just our own, but other people

00:34:18.540 have found that people with a strong purpose in their lives have fewer pro-inflammatory cells

00:34:25.340 and proteins produced.

00:34:27.100 Very important because while we want some inflammation, it's good, you know, if you get

00:34:31.780 a cut or something, you want that to inflame and close the cut, right?

00:34:35.700 Close the wound.

00:34:36.420 But if we have too much inflammation or chronic inflammation, we start getting everything from

00:34:41.580 arthritis to heart disease, some cancers, and certainly all sorts of other problems.

00:34:48.820 We know, as I said before, that people who have strong purpose take better care of themselves.

00:34:53.740 They eat better, which also may contribute to this higher rate of the good cholesterol

00:34:59.460 that's in our bloodstream.

00:35:01.880 I'm just going to highlight some other things you highlight in the book.

00:35:04.220 So I thought it was really interesting.

00:35:05.140 People who have low purpose in life were 2.4 times more likely to develop Alzheimer's disease

00:35:10.660 than those with a high purpose in life.

00:35:12.320 Yes, and there are now eight studies showing this.

00:35:15.680 There are analyses, there are studies where they combine all the studies, put them all together

00:35:19.900 because they say, well, one study may be nice, but it's not going to convince the scientific

00:35:25.180 community, especially something that's as strange as, well, people with stronger purpose

00:35:30.020 are half as likely to develop Alzheimer's.

00:35:32.700 That seems crazy.

00:35:33.760 How does that work?

00:35:34.580 Now there are eight studies of it, and they've been all put together, and they find that people

00:35:39.360 with a strong purpose are far less likely to develop Alzheimer's.

00:35:44.100 And they've even autopsied people's brains after this and found that people with strong

00:35:49.440 purpose have fewer lesions, lesions that cause dementia and Alzheimer's.

00:35:55.760 And in addition, there's a new study that came out very recently in middle-aged men.

00:36:01.760 So this is an important study for you and other middle-aged men listening to this, because

00:36:07.520 in middle age, very often, that's when dementia and Alzheimer's starts to form.

00:36:12.840 Purposeful people have much stronger connectivity within their brain, between different brain

00:36:19.320 regions, far more.

00:36:21.060 If you have a low purpose in your life, you tend not to have the connectivity needed.

00:36:27.720 It's hard to get the right metaphor, but maybe if you consider it kind of like pipelines moving

00:36:33.660 from one region of the brain to another, or circuitry moving from one region to another,

00:36:39.640 we want that.

00:36:40.780 We want our brains, different regions to be talking to one another.

00:36:44.440 People with strong purpose have that much more.

00:36:48.520 So, boy, I'll give you one final set of findings.

00:36:52.800 And this is with a good friend of mine, Ethan Cross, who wrote a really amazing book recently

00:36:58.640 that's out called Shift.

00:37:00.180 And I think you even interviewed Ethan Cross.

00:37:02.420 We did, yeah.

00:37:03.560 Yeah.

00:37:04.080 So he's a good friend and colleague.

00:37:06.300 We did some research together.

00:37:07.640 I said, Ethan, you do all this work on different coping strategies, and you have this cocktail

00:37:13.080 of about 16 different coping strategies that a person could pick from.

00:37:18.260 So we decided to look at those coping strategies, knowing some are not great for you, like I'm

00:37:23.000 going to drink alcohol when I'm stressed out, just think about my own past, or maybe really

00:37:30.440 good ones, like I know this won't last forever.

00:37:32.940 I'm going to take a walk in nature.

00:37:34.480 I'm going to engage in a family or religious ritual.

00:37:37.620 I'm going to see a big picture.

00:37:39.420 It turns out that those positive coping strategies are strongly associated with having a strong

00:37:45.920 sense of purpose in your life, whereas negative coping strategies, like I'm going to drink

00:37:51.400 too much or eat too much or vent, things like that, those are negatively associated with

00:37:56.680 having a sense of purpose.

00:37:59.100 So you see the different things that it does.

00:38:02.120 You know, I was talking to a person who's writing a new book related to purpose, and

00:38:08.060 she said, I really think that having a purpose reduces entropy.

00:38:13.280 You know, the second law of thermodynamics, this, you know, entropic law that says everything

00:38:19.640 gradually dissolves and gets less and less organized.

00:38:23.660 You know, we see a dead deer on the side of the road.

00:38:26.220 You know, the next week we pass that same deer, if it's not gone, it's looking a lot worse,

00:38:30.680 right?

00:38:31.020 It's more and more disorganized.

00:38:33.040 That's entropy.

00:38:34.460 What purpose does is it's almost an entropy rebel.

00:38:38.620 It almost reverses entropy.

00:38:40.960 So I really think purpose is just that important, and we can build it.

00:38:45.540 We can enhance it.

00:38:46.700 Yeah.

00:38:47.060 So, I mean, in addition to all those health benefits, it can make you more resilient.

00:38:50.300 There's some of that research you did with Ethan Cross.

00:38:51.900 It can help you cope better.

00:38:53.220 Yeah.

00:38:53.400 And you saw that in your own life.

00:38:54.580 So it sounds like what purpose does, the reason why it provides all these benefits,

00:38:59.020 it sounds like there's two things going on.

00:39:00.460 One is having a purpose causes you to take better care of yourself.

00:39:04.560 So you're going to eat right, exercise, sleep, not drink, not smoke.

00:39:09.140 But then also there are some physiological changes going on in your body that-

00:39:14.240 It sure seems like it.

00:39:15.360 Yep.

00:39:16.100 Yep.

00:39:16.480 There's really good data showing that.

00:39:18.420 That's amazing.

00:39:19.300 Well, let's talk about like, how do we develop a purpose?

00:39:22.480 What does that look like?

00:39:24.620 Well, one of the ways to find purpose is to do just what I did when I was coming back on

00:39:30.460 my kayak and pulled it in, ran up to my cabin, and pulled out a sheet of paper and started

00:39:37.480 writing down the things that mattered most in my life.

00:39:41.120 And that's a great way to start.

00:39:43.840 If you start writing down the things that matter to you, what do you care about?

00:39:48.660 Philosophers like to talk about caring about what you care about.

00:39:53.020 So start by figuring out, what do you care about?

00:39:56.140 And if you want the easiest way to do that, maybe you even look on your smartphone wallpaper.

00:40:00.500 When you open up your smartphone, how many times do we do that?

00:40:03.280 On average, it's over 60 to 80 times.

00:40:06.940 So for me, when I open mine, I see my granddaughter, Madeline Julia, from our older daughter.

00:40:13.920 And she's just amazing.

00:40:15.620 And so I look at her every single day, about 60 times at least a day.

00:40:20.400 So that's affirming who I am.

00:40:22.100 It's affirming who I value.

00:40:24.500 It's affirming who I care about and what I want to be alive for and active for and devote

00:40:31.260 my energy to and my goals to.

00:40:33.400 So, you know, I teach a lot of physicians.

00:40:37.620 And when I train physicians, I ask, what do you do with a diabetic who's newly diagnosed?

00:40:42.300 How do you get them to start doing the things they need to do?

00:40:45.540 Because, you know, they need to manage their weight very often or work out more, eat better,

00:40:50.020 blah, blah, blah.

00:40:50.920 Take their medications.

00:40:51.920 And a lot of them say, well, we tell them they might lose their legs if they continue

00:40:57.060 on the path they're taking, or they, you know, they'll die early.

00:41:00.840 Well, what does that do?

00:41:02.320 It sets up this defensive wall.

00:41:04.600 What if you just simply said, what's on your smartphone?

00:41:07.240 Open it up, if you don't mind.

00:41:08.980 Tell me, show me what's on your smartphone.

00:41:11.340 Chances are it's something that matters to them.

00:41:14.220 And then you just sit back and say, so what do you want to do about that?

00:41:18.600 But suddenly, it's a totally different reframing of the issue.

00:41:23.500 So that's one thing to do.

00:41:25.180 Write down what matters most.

00:41:27.280 Let's say you write down 10 things.

00:41:28.960 Maybe drop it down to five.

00:41:30.940 And then from the five, maybe drop it to three.

00:41:33.780 And you say, I'm here for these people.

00:41:36.940 Usually, the things that matter most are not things.

00:41:39.280 They're people.

00:41:40.360 But it may be a cause that you care about.

00:41:42.640 Whatever it is, you may say, those are the things that I live for.

00:41:46.600 And I am going to start building a purpose around those things.

00:41:51.640 I'm here to be on this planet to do this.

00:41:55.320 And now, how are you going to end up doing those things?

00:41:57.640 And you start working that through.

00:41:59.300 You start setting goals around those things.

00:42:02.340 So that's one way to think about finding your purpose, what we call values affirmation.

00:42:09.160 You know, it's a part of, you've mentioned different theories and approaches.

00:42:12.180 It's part of what's called acceptance and commitment therapy, where you are accepting

00:42:17.480 the fact that bad things happen to everybody.

00:42:20.580 I'm, by the way, nothing special.

00:42:22.660 When I talk about things that have happened to me, things have happened to everybody.

00:42:27.060 All you have to do is live a life.

00:42:28.540 And you go through adversity and difficult times.

00:42:31.000 But if you let those hijack you, you know, you can do that. 0.99

00:42:35.980 You can choose to do that.

00:42:37.400 Or you can say, what am I committed to?

00:42:40.040 And suddenly, these things become less relevant to your commitment to things that are most important

00:42:49.380 to you.

00:42:49.760 It's almost like swimming in quicksand.

00:42:51.360 The more you try to get out, the more you sink.

00:42:53.640 So it's important to not let the stressors in life every day.

00:42:59.180 And we all know we have a lot of stressors in life right now, you know, from everything,

00:43:04.160 from politics to media, all sorts of things happening in our lives right now.

00:43:09.260 If you say, okay, those are important.

00:43:11.660 I understand them.

00:43:12.540 But I have a purpose.

00:43:14.060 And that purpose may be multifaceted.

00:43:16.960 You may have a purpose around your family.

00:43:19.180 If you have a family, maybe around your work, maybe around your community.

00:43:23.640 All sorts of domains you could build purpose around or purposes.

00:43:28.060 And then you devote your life, literally your life, to those causes, to those purposes.

00:43:35.700 Then suddenly, these stressors don't seem quite so stressful.

00:43:39.180 I think this is helpful because I think a lot of people, when they think about finding

00:43:42.300 their purpose, they think they kind of have to pull it out of thin air.

00:43:45.260 But it sounds like finding your purpose is often a matter of looking at what you already

00:43:49.860 do and finding ways to lean into it and be more intentional about it.

00:43:54.120 So maybe you already have this friendship that's important to you.

00:43:57.060 How can you lean into it?

00:43:58.300 How can you be a better support for your friend?

00:44:00.460 Maybe you're already a dad.

00:44:02.160 How can you be more intentional about creating a family culture?

00:44:06.160 What can you do to raise the most excellent possible humans?

00:44:09.800 In your job, you can find ways to see a real mission in it.

00:44:13.240 So if you're a doctor, you can find ways to treat your patients so they feel seen and not

00:44:19.480 like a number.

00:44:20.840 You talked about how you started taking teaching more seriously, treating each student like

00:44:26.620 they were your daughter.

00:44:27.560 If you volunteer in a church youth group, how can you lean into that more and make it the

00:44:32.320 best possible group and create the texture of these kids' childhood and faith?

00:44:36.900 So yeah, it's really caring about what you care about.

00:44:39.760 And going along with this, you also talk about what can make purpose more powerful and lead

00:44:44.280 to eudaimonia or flourishing is finding purposes that are self-transcendent.

00:44:49.580 They move beyond the self.

00:44:51.060 Yeah, yeah.

00:44:52.060 There's a big discussion about that in the research community.

00:44:56.140 And there are a few people who say, well, it doesn't really matter if your purpose is

00:45:01.300 very hedonic or very transcending.

00:45:05.140 A purpose is a purpose and it's good.

00:45:07.140 Maybe to some extent that's true, but there's enough data showing me anyway, very clearly

00:45:14.420 that having a transcending purpose, a purpose that's bigger than yourself, actually makes

00:45:21.380 you much happier.

00:45:22.700 So the more you seek happiness through, you know, things, I'm going to sit on the beach

00:45:27.140 for the next two weeks and, you know, maybe that's great.

00:45:30.080 Maybe you need a break.

00:45:31.220 Maybe you need to recharge the batteries, whatever.

00:45:33.440 But if that's all you're seeking, then the next vacation may be a little less fun.

00:45:39.520 Kind of like if you eat a great meal every single night.

00:45:43.120 What if you had a gourmet meal every night?

00:45:45.500 After a while, you'd start complaining more.

00:45:48.160 I don't know about that.

00:45:49.520 I think the chef could have done a better job or, you know, for golfers out there, you

00:45:54.360 know, if you play golf every single day after a while, it becomes less interesting, probably.

00:45:59.120 That's my guess.

00:45:59.840 So, yeah, just focusing on things that are focused on you and your own hedonic goals,

00:46:07.600 I don't think helps as much.

00:46:09.860 You know, Aristotle talked about two forms of happiness.

00:46:13.360 One he called hedonia, and this, of course, is pleasure.

00:46:17.960 So he was talking about good food, good wine, good sex, good, all of those things.

00:46:23.300 And those are fine.

00:46:24.440 And Aristotle said, no problem.

00:46:26.300 It's good that we enjoy those things, but if that's all we care about, then we are like,

00:46:32.160 and I'm quoting him from his Nicomachean Ethics.

00:46:35.740 He said, then we're like grazing animals.

00:46:38.380 He said, we need to be in touch with this inner God, this true self that's inside of us,

00:46:44.080 almost this angel that then communicates with these higher order Greek gods.

00:46:50.080 And he called this angel the daemon.

00:46:53.940 And the daemon in Greek, so it's this true self, this godlike self.

00:46:59.240 So eudaimonia or eudaimonia, depending on how you want to pronounce it,

00:47:04.600 is being in touch with that true self, that godlike self, that angel self that the Greeks believe was born with you.

00:47:14.120 It's part of you since your birth.

00:47:15.940 By the way, Hindus believe this as well.

00:47:18.540 Hindus and Buddhists believe that they're born with this inner Atman, which is this god, this eternal godlike self that lives in you.

00:47:27.360 I love that idea that we're born with this godlike self and we're born good and we have to keep society from kind of beating it out of us.

00:47:38.680 So the idea here is, in being eudaimonic, is we care more about things that transcend ourselves, our own egos.

00:47:51.420 We transcend just pure, simple pleasures.

00:47:54.840 While we enjoy pleasurable things, that's fine, we also strive for things that are bigger than ourselves.

00:48:02.080 Things like volunteering, working on causes, helping other people, taking care of other people.

00:48:08.840 Those things are eudaimonic.

00:48:12.260 And I think, and research has suggested, that those things, those kinds of purposes, eudaimonic purposes, tend to be much better for you than hedonic purposes.

00:48:24.620 So just to recap here, purpose is, you start with your values, the things that are most important to you.

00:48:31.080 Ideally, those values are self-transcendent.

00:48:33.900 They're not just, okay, I want to just lay on the beach and whatever.

00:48:38.460 You ask yourself, are all my values equally valuable or are some valuables more valuable?

00:48:43.920 Right.

00:48:44.020 Yeah.

00:48:44.540 Well, you quote Kierkegaard, Soren Kierkegaard, one of my favorite philosophers.

00:48:47.440 He says, the thing is to find a truth which is true for me, to find the idea for which I can live and die.

00:48:53.140 Anyway, so I think that's a good rubric to use.

00:48:55.700 This value is something I could live and die for, like just expend all my life for it.

00:49:00.340 And so once you establish those values, start setting goals for yourself on how to realize those.

00:49:05.000 And again, it has to be self-directed.

00:49:07.100 Very much.

00:49:08.400 It's self-organizing framework, self-directed.

00:49:11.660 And this is what Friedrich Nietzsche talked a lot about.

00:49:14.180 And of course, both Soren Kierkegaard and Nietzsche were proto-existentialists, meaning, you know, they were really framing the existential movement of the early 1900s.

00:49:26.420 Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Albert Camus, all of those people were influenced by Nietzsche and Kierkegaard.

00:49:34.220 And then later, the classic example is Viktor Frankl, who went through three concentration camps.

00:49:41.060 But throughout his books, he talks a lot about, with great reverence for Friedrich Nietzsche and the importance of finding this bigger purpose that you find and are self-directed.

00:49:53.020 We had Viktor Frankl's grandson on the podcast.

00:49:56.680 Oh, my goodness.

00:49:57.420 That was a great conversation.

00:49:58.380 So you talk about purpose isn't just this one-and-done thing that you hash out, you know, in a cabin after you get out of the kayak.

00:50:08.080 Purpose is a dynamic activity.

00:50:10.320 Yeah.

00:50:10.800 And it's something you have to live out, and you're constantly refining it.

00:50:15.000 And getting...

00:50:15.980 Maybe, can I add to that just a second, Brett?

00:50:18.320 Sure.

00:50:18.660 I would say that having a purpose is great.

00:50:21.560 Now, your purpose may well change over time, very much like the rings of a tree.

00:50:26.480 And just think about if you graduate from college, if you get married or not get married, if you get a divorce, if you lose a loved one, if you get sick, if you find a new job, if you retire.

00:50:38.220 All those times may be times you want to rethink and repurpose your life.

00:50:44.500 But what is really ongoing is being purposeful.

00:50:48.940 So you don't just find a purpose, write it down, put it in your office, tack it up, and go, okay, great.

00:50:54.460 That's all I need now.

00:50:55.480 You need to think about applying your resources, your energy, to goals that fit with your purpose.

00:51:04.760 Then you become purposeful.

00:51:06.460 And that's what's really life-changing.

00:51:08.860 It's not just simply having a sense of purpose.

00:51:11.400 It's literally becoming purposeful.

00:51:14.560 What do you tell people, because I've experienced this, people who have a clear sense of purpose,

00:51:19.880 but they have those moments where they're just like, I don't have the energy or the mojo or the juice, whatever you want to call it, to keep striving.

00:51:28.220 Even if they're doing things like taking care of their sleep, eating right, exercising.

00:51:32.520 But I feel like I have those moments where it's like, I just can't do this anymore, where you're having repeated setbacks or there's just periods.

00:51:39.480 Happens to all of us.

00:51:40.440 Yeah, periods of stagnation when you're trying to pursue your purpose.

00:51:43.320 How do you get the mojo back during these periods?

00:51:46.460 You know, if I'm in this river that has a strong current in it, in other words, I'm really feeling very purposeful.

00:51:53.160 Well, I'd mentioned this earlier, that if you find a stream that's moving alongside of that purpose, you may want to pop into that stream.

00:52:02.340 You may want to find some new way of still maintaining your sense of purpose and becoming purposeful in just a slightly different domain.

00:52:12.400 You may take up a hobby.

00:52:13.500 You may start to volunteer for something.

00:52:15.720 You may try something that you may even fail in.

00:52:20.260 Purposeful people, by the way, tend to have a more growth mindset.

00:52:24.100 They're willing to fail.

00:52:25.340 They're willing to try new things.

00:52:27.680 So going out and challenging yourself, I think, is really important.

00:52:32.140 When we retire, so often we miss challenging ourselves.

00:52:37.100 So in retirement, very often you need to repurpose your life and provide new, fresh challenges.

00:52:43.640 Even if you don't succeed in those or even if your body is saying, wait a second, I'm breaking down.

00:52:49.060 I can't do this as well.

00:52:50.420 Well, you accept that, but you also say, I'm going to continue to challenge myself and continue to maybe risk failure.

00:52:58.520 It's really essential.

00:53:00.120 That's a simple answer to it, and I don't mean to be Pollyannish about it.

00:53:04.420 People who stagnate, that's a tough time.

00:53:06.980 But trying to seek new ways, new purposes, new streams that move off of this river may be an important thing for you to do and consider.

00:53:17.480 So change the purpose, but keep being purposeful.

00:53:20.400 And one thing, I'm actually working on a new book around purpose.

00:53:26.100 I've been asked to write a book that's almost like a workbook around finding purpose.

00:53:31.680 Listen, one way that's worked very well for people, especially as you tend to get older, is creating a life narrative.

00:53:39.380 And this is seeing your life as chapters of a book, literally naming the chapters of your book.

00:53:45.520 Like maybe one chapter is finding my way.

00:53:48.500 Maybe another one is starting over again.

00:53:50.380 Whatever those things are, they won't be yours, but, you know, those might be chapters.

00:53:54.920 Then identifying turning points in your life as if it's a book.

00:53:59.040 Then trying to learn about the tough times without minimizing the tough times, learn what the toughest times did to create turning points, finding themes in this book that you have written about yourself, maybe even name a new chapter.

00:54:16.820 You know, when I wrote my book for HarperCollins, the editor gave me very good advice.

00:54:21.840 He said, before you write this book, write your book review.

00:54:26.000 I said, I haven't even written the book.

00:54:27.580 How do I write a book review?

00:54:29.040 He said, write the book review because then you'll know what you want people to think and feel about your book.

00:54:35.740 What if you wrote a book review of your life?

00:54:37.860 In other words, you almost wrote your own memorial service.

00:54:41.540 You wrote what's on your headstone.

00:54:43.640 It may give you certain new ways of thinking about your life to develop a new approach, a new way of thinking about purpose so it doesn't stagnate.

00:54:53.480 Well, Vic, this has been a great conversation.

00:54:56.340 Where can people go to learn more about the book and your work?

00:54:59.280 Oh, I appreciate that.

00:55:01.060 Thank you.

00:55:01.480 Well, my book is entitled Life on Purpose, How Living for What Matters Most Changes Everything.

00:55:07.040 I've also spent the last 10 years now developing an application called Purposeful.

00:55:13.320 And you can find this at Purposeful.io.

00:55:18.420 And this is an app that really covers just about everything we've been talking about.

00:55:23.400 It helps you not only find a purpose and it uses AI to help you find purpose, but then importantly, it helps you become purposeful.

00:55:30.860 And we have real guardrails on this to keep the AI from hallucinating, from going off on its own.

00:55:38.360 We didn't want AI to go into the internet and find things and make stuff up.

00:55:43.020 So everything we put into this is very what we call evidence-based, very research-based, very carefully done.

00:55:49.580 And we've built a framework around helping you become more purposeful, as we've done in my book as well.

00:55:56.220 So those are two places that I might recommend.

00:55:59.720 And both of them, I've devoted a lot of time thinking about not just, you know, making stuff up, but really making sure there's a research underlying it.

00:56:10.460 And I just appreciate people like you who have been thinking about these deep thoughts and helping the public think about these deep thoughts as well.

00:56:20.900 I really appreciate this interviewer.

00:56:22.660 You're a wonderful and very careful interviewer, and I appreciate you.

00:56:26.680 Well, Vic, thanks so much. It's been a pleasure.

00:56:28.540 Thank you.

00:56:30.240 My guest today was Vic Strecker. He's the author of the book, Life on Purpose. It's available on Amazon.com.

00:56:34.860 And check out the Purposeful app at purposeful.io and check out our show notes at aom.is slash purpose.

00:56:39.900 You can find links to resources. We delve deeper into this topic.

00:56:49.720 Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM Podcast.

00:56:52.500 Kate and I spend many, many hours searching far and wide for the very best guest and shaping the interviews into episodes that are always worth listening to.

00:57:00.180 If you've gotten something out of the show, consider helping more people discover it by leaving a review on iTunes or Spotify or sharing it with a friend.

00:57:06.560 As always, thank you for the continued support.

00:57:08.640 And until next time, it's Brett McKay.

00:57:10.360 Mind on the list of the AOM Podcast, but put what you've heard into action.

00:57:13.480 We'll see you next time.

00:57:43.480 And crafting habits that help you move forward with less drag.

00:57:46.400 You can find it at aom.is slash effortless.

00:57:49.340 That's aom.is slash effortless.

00:57:51.500 A lot of great actionable insights in this episode.

00:57:53.380 Check it out today.

The Art of Manliness - March 03, 2026

The Power of a Purpose-Driven Life

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