Speaker 2 (00:00.11)
probably we get purpose wrong. It's probably not one thing, but two things. And one of them is associated with anxiety and the other is associated with the health, happiness and longevity. The distinction which you mentioned is the difference between big P purpose and little P purpose. big. Welcome to the physician family financial advisors podcast where physician moms and dads like you can turn today's worries about taxes and investing into all the money you need for retirement in college.
Hello physician moms and dads, I'm Nate Renneke, Certified Financial Planner and Primary Advisor here at Physician Family Financial Advisors.
And I'm Ben Utley, certified financial planner and service team leader here at Physician Family. Boys and girls, today we have a special guest. It's Jordan Grummet, also known as Doc G, also known as the podcast who behind the Earn and Embed Fest podcast. And he is a two-time author. Today we're here to talk about his latest and greatest book, The Purpose Code.
It's so great to see you both. I'm really excited for this conversation.
Yeah, us too.
Speaker 3 (01:06.484)
So Jordan, your first book was titled Taking Stock. Is that right? stock, okay. And today we're talking about your second book, The Purpose Code, but the creative spark for this book seems to come from some events in your early childhood. So would you mind sharing your origin story? Like, go ahead.
That's correct.
Speaker 2 (01:29.678)
Sure. So basically when I was seven years old, my father was 40. He was an oncologist, a cancer doctor, and he died suddenly at a brain aneurysm. Literally went to round at the hospital, got a severe headache, collapsed and died. I was seven years old. Being a seven year old, I thought that I was responsible for all that happened in the world. I was a very selfish lens as most seven year olds. And so I figured I wasn't enough. There was something wrong with me.
And so the way I was going to cosmically fix this is if I became a doctor like my dad and walked his path, that would make the world right. And that became my version of purpose and identity for all of my childhood and young adulthood. And it felt great. Became a doctor, started practicing and realize it didn't fill me up. I burnt out just like a lot of people do in medicine. At some point, I came to the conclusion that I was co-opting my father's version of purpose and I thought I was going to fix the fact that he died and
I became a doctor and it still didn't happen. Lucky enough, I was making enough money at the time. This guy, Jim Dolly, the white coat investor actually called me and asked me if I would review his book for my medical blog. Cause I was writing medicine about medicine at the time. I reviewed his book, realized I was financially independent. I probably could walk away from medicine if I wanted to, but it was the only purpose and identity I had ever known. So I slowly walked away from medicine over four years.
stuck with the one thing that really did light me up, which was being a hospice physician and then started doing other things that excited me, forming a new sense of purpose around things like writing and teaching and blogging and podcasting. And I liked the personal finance world. So I went down that rabbit hole and I started a podcast and had these conversations with financial experts. And we would talk about how to build wealth and they were great at that. But then I'd ask, well, what does enough look like?
or why are you building this wealth? And I'd get blank stares. And strangely enough, the people who could actually answer these kinds of questions for me were my dying patients in hospice. A lot of them basically would say, hey, I really regret and tell me about their lives. And I realized that that kind of knowledge would be so helpful to all my financial people. So I wrote a book called Taking Stock, which was all about what the dying could teach us about money and life. And the main premise was that we should put our purpose, identity and connections first.
Speaker 2 (03:47.916)
before we built the financial framework around it. Little did I know when I went to market that book and went to conferences, large and small to talk about it. get people angry at me. They come up to me after the conference and say, you keep telling me to find my purpose. have no idea what that is. In fact, I've been searching forever and I don't think there is a purpose. Please stop telling me to find my purpose, which eventually led to me writing the purpose code.
And I think we just get purpose wrong. We think of it as one thing and it's probably something else completely. And the consequences are great because there's tons of studies out there that show that people who have a real good sense of purpose in life live longer, are healthier and are happier. And that's what I want everyone to be. So I wrote this book.
That's great. I'm curious because when I when I talk to physicians and they're feeling burnt out, or maybe you can just I could just tell it's coming through the phone, that they don't have a purpose, or they don't feel excited about work. What age did you figure this out at? Because a lot of times I'm hearing this early on, I'd love for people to catch it a lot sooner.
So I started recognizing this actually in residency. can tell you the day when I was left in the ICU alone as a second year resident, we had a patient that crumbled and I didn't have enough support and they died. And then I had this horrendous next day after not sleeping all night where half the patient's family knew, but the other half didn't. And they called and I had to tell them one after another, especially his three daughters that he had died because they were all out of town and weren't communicating with everyone else. And it was this very traumatic feeling.
And I knew that was the beginning of burnout, but what happens with so many physicians is we think being a doctor is going to be something what society has sold to us is this beautiful, brilliant thing. And so we co-opt this version of purpose that someone else's, maybe it's our parents, cause they want us to be successful. Maybe it's just society in general. And then what we find is the day to day is not nearly as gratifying as the dream. And that is the recipe for burnout.
Speaker 2 (05:48.28)
When we start doing things, we don't like doing it. Of course, when you become a doctor, you get really, really busy. So if you don't enjoy what you're doing all to fulfill the sense of purpose that maybe wasn't yours in the first place, but what one that was sold to you and you didn't even know what it was, that's when people feel disconnected. Now the answer isn't walk away from medicine. For a lot of people, the answer is actually, well, are there parts of this job that light me up even if the whole thing doesn't? it took me till I was in my forties to really realize
this wasn't the right thing for me. By then I had enough money I could walk away. But if I had realized this in my 20s, or had been more thoughtful about purpose, I might have started building on the one thing that I really did enjoy in medicine, which was hospice work. So I still do hospice work now because it lights me up and I do it even if people weren't paying me for it. If I had realized that in my 20s, I might have been able to build a career around that. And so I wouldn't have made as much money. I might not have even become financially independent as quick.
but my career longevity and enjoyment would have been so much greater. Which gets back to this point, if we want to avoid burnout, we really have to decide what's purposeful to us and then build that financial framework around it. And sometimes you might find that you're in a job that doesn't suit you and you might not be able to leave that job, but could you slowly start bringing in those things that you love in order to make it much more palatable and much more purposeful?
That's great. Tell me, so throughout your book you discuss the difference between the big P purpose and the little P purpose. Can you define these for us and kind of tell us what the difference is?
So what I found when I did this deep dive into purpose, because people were getting angry at me at my conferences, is that the studies show two things that seem to contradict each other. The first is if you look up purpose in life, that's what the researchers call it, there are tons of studies which show that it leads to health, longevity, and happiness. Tons of studies. On the other hand, there's a whole nother set of studies that show that up to 91 % of people at some point in their life
Speaker 2 (07:51.554)
get what's called purpose anxiety, this idea that searching for purpose makes them frustrated, depressed, sad. And so the question is, how could it be both? It's a paradox. What I realized through my research and my coaching and book writing and hospice patients is that probably we get purpose wrong. It's probably not one thing, but two things. And one of them is associated with anxiety and the other is associated with the health, happiness and longevity.
The distinction which you mentioned is the difference between big P-purpose and little P-purpose. So big P-purpose, probably causes more anxiety.
is goal associated purpose. So basically what we're talking about is purpose that really relates to these big audacious goals, right? In America, we say, if you can think it, you can build it. And so we make these huge goals like becoming a billionaire, becoming president. And a lot of these are all or nothing goals and they're really easy to fail. And most of us don't really have agency to do them. We're not the right person.
at the right time saying the right things with the right genetics and a bunch of luck. So instead we go about doing these things. We don't like the process of what we're doing. We're just shooting for these goals. feels very scarce and most of us don't get there. Let's compare that to little P purpose. So little P purpose basically is process associated purpose. So instead of looking at big goals, what we're really doing is saying, what could I do that lights me up that I really enjoy?
So as opposed to being scarce, this is really abundant. Like there are many, many, many things we could do that we would enjoy. And it's really hard to fail instead of being all or nothing. It's all or all. And so this idea is let's pivot from this idea of purpose being this all or nothing thing that we might get lucky and find, but if we don't, everything is lost. And let's move it to this idea that it's just the things we do every day that light us up. And there could be a million things out there that feel like purpose.
Speaker 1 (09:48.696)
So I'm going to raise my hand here real quick and jump in. I, you know, of course I read your book thoroughly. I loved it. It's very well researched. The stories are great. They're real life. And I can tell that you have walked and lived all of these things. It's just, it's really, geez, I probably read 50 self-help books over the last several years. And this is one I pulled a few quotes from and added to some of my, to my thinking.
Our listeners may not know this, but I had an experience with retirement slash semi-retirement last year where I decided I was going to back away. And I tried that for probably a period of four or five months. And it was terrible. I hated it. Because the thing I realized is that my little P purpose is this work. And I was part of the fire community way, way on when fire was a brand new thing. I've been walking the fire path for years and years. And I've always had this.
headlights on retire early. And so was like, okay, I'm going to try to retire early. So I tried that and it just wasn't for me. And then the thing I realized is that, you know, I, am doing my little P purpose. I stepped back from semi retirement and now I'm working 60 hours a week and I love it. It's just, you know, I don't check my own email anymore. And that was one of the things that was getting me down.
Yeah, you know, it's funny because a lot of people think that work is anathema. And I'm here to tell you that work is really important. Yeah. The difference is, and what the fire community occasionally gets wrong is it thinks that the purpose of work is the big audacious goal of becoming financially independent. So you can leave that job. And I would turn that around and say, well, if you're doing things for the goal,
and you don't enjoy the process, that better be fairly short term because you don't want to build a life around that because otherwise you're to be spending most of your time doing things you don't like. But the reverse is also true. If you love work and you do it because you enjoy the process, regardless of you make millions of dollars, regardless of you get that next big promotion, regardless of if it's another achievement or another check mark, but you just love doing it, then why ever would you stop? I mean,
Speaker 2 (11:58.272)
Winning the game is filling up your time with things you love. And so you, my friend, if you happen to have been smart enough and lucky enough to pick a job that you also happen to love the process of doing, I mean, you should be doing that forever until something better comes along that you enjoy more.
Yeah, the way I like to say it is I have a retirement plan, but I don't have any plans to retire.
Yeah, and I love it. And, you know, you might change something might happen. One day you may be hanging out with friends. And when your friends says, you know what, I love woodworking. Why don't you come over with me the shop? We'll hang out the day we'll drink a beer, we'll do some woodworking. You might go do that. And you might be like, wow, this is the greatest. And you might say, you know what, I don't want to work 60 hours a week anymore. I want to work 40 hours a week. And I'm gonna spend that extra 20 in the you know, shop with my friend doing woodworking and you might pivot, but you might not.
And that's the wonderful thing, it doesn't matter.
It's funny that you mentioned that I serve a surgeon, general surgeon, and woodworking is his passion. And I'm going through the process of retirement with him, walking him through this. We saw how his dad retired. He was a surgeon. His dad slowed down his practice and began teaching. And teaching was the thing that brought him a lot of purpose. But his son loves surgery, but also loves woodworking. And he has something to retire to. And I think when we talk about retirement and retiring to something,
Speaker 1 (13:18.104)
We're really talking about little P purpose vis-a-vis cracking the purpose code.
And here's the thing, and this is why this is fantastic. When you leave your job, you often leave a community, right? So this is someone who's leaving standing, right? They're known as the surgeon. They're very successful. Everyone looks up to them. When you retire to something, a version of Little P-Purpose, what successful people tend to do is eventually build communities around that Little P-Purpose. So he likes woodworking, but maybe he'll start making things for people or he'll start...
watching YouTube's or reading blogs about woodworking or he'll join a local woodworking community and he'll find people who love what he loves and because it's lighting him up, he'll be very attractive to those people. They're going to want to collaborate with him. They're going to want to teach him if they have something to teach and they're going to want to learn from him if they have something to learn. And before you know it, he's going to form a rich community of people who get excited by the things he does. And that's where the happiness really comes in. That's where the health really comes in.
A lot of people think it's the purpose itself, but I always believe it's just a great conduit to what we know causes happiness, which is interpersonal connections and communities. And I think that's where we really get that growth from these versions of Little P purpose that we not find, but we build or create that guy still has to build his shop. He still has to seek out people who are interested in these things. He still has to go out there and learn about it. This is not something that's falling on his head. He is actively.
building this life for himself, and I think it's what we all need to do.
Speaker 3 (14:53.376)
So listening to both of you talk about this, it makes me feel like our listeners, undoubtedly some of our listeners are having some purpose anxiety. How do you know if you're experiencing this purpose anxiety?
Well, it usually comes in one of a few forms. The obvious one is feeling like you're missing what purpose should be in your life and you've been trying to find it and you can't find it. And either you find this thing that's going to totally revolutionize your life and you're happy or you miss it and it's gone. So this idea that you have to find purpose and that it's one or nothing. Those two things are very much big signs of purpose anxiety. Sometimes I just notice when I start talking about purpose, the people who start getting anxious and looking away and changing the subject.
That's a big sign of purpose anxiety. But believe it or not, a lot of people show signs of purpose anxiety and don't even realize it. Job hopping is a great one. In fact, I was talking to someone today who was saying, you know, I first was this profession and I didn't love it. And then I jumped to this next one. I didn't love it. And I jumped to this next one. We got down to it. You know, this person just didn't feel like their roles were purposeful. And so they felt great anxiety. And so they kept on moving from job to job.
Another common one is imposter syndrome, right? When you're in a job and it doesn't fulfill your sense of purpose, and so you feel like a fake, you feel like you're not talented enough or you're not doing it right, whereas actually it just doesn't light you up or fill you up, and so it causes anxiety. So I think we see this in lots of different ways out there in the world, but just mainly this belief that I'm like missing this important thing and if I could just find it, I'd be okay.
Jordan Jordan you have kids right? Yes. How old are your kids?
Speaker 2 (16:36.856)
So my son is 20 and my daughter is 17.
Okay, good. So we're on the same page. I have two daughters that are in their very early twenties and I am witnessing the symptoms of purpose anxiety in one of my daughters and it goes like this comes home for the holidays. People say, so what are you doing in college? Well, I'm studying this. I'm studying that. what are you going to do when you get out? It's always like kind of what do want to be when you grow up? Which strikes me as big P purpose and she has purpose anxiety over this. So
We have a lot of parents that are listeners to the show. We almost exclusively serve physicians with children. So what would you say to your 20 something when they're like, know, dad, I went to school and I want to study psychology. but there's a guy who was an engineer who's a studying engineering guest who came up to me and was like, you're just going to be a psych. I'm going to be an engineer. I'm going be a coder. You know, I'm to be a doctor. I'm going to change the world. Like, what would you say to your, to your child that would make
them feel okay about just pursuing their little P-Permis.
So I tell them a few things. First and foremost, I talked to the parent before I talked to the kid. So I'm talking to you directly here, Even though you're at this transition point where there's some anxiety, you're actually doing the right thing already, which is you are demonstrating a little P purpose in your life, which is going to give your kids permission and modeling that ultimately they will use. And so when they see you lit up, not by making a million dollars, not by being the greatest financial advisor in all the world,
Speaker 2 (18:13.506)
But by doing something that you innately enjoy, you are giving them permission to do the same thing. So we can't expect that they're not going to go through hardship. They're going to face some anxiety, but ultimately they have really, really good models.
Hold up this, just a second. So I agree with you. I agree with you totally that what they see me do is as long as it's healthy, it's going to be good for them. And I know there's some listeners out there who are not comfortable. hate their job or mom and dad told them to become doctors and they don't want to become doctors. And some of them are conflicted about continuing and they they're thinking about staying in this career, even though it's not good for them. And maybe they need to kind of chip off a little bit and go a different direction, but
But what you've told me is my kids are witnessing what I do. So conceivably, those people's children are watching what they do. They're seeing mom and dad are miserable and miserable too, right?
That's why they need to change. Well, not necessarily their job, but here's the thing. And I tell this to people all the time. So winning the game is filling up as much of your time with this little P purpose, this purposeful stuff that lights you up and getting rid of things you loathe. And so we have some levers. And so what you're talking about is like, go from a job I don't like to a job I do like. That's the art of subtraction. Subtract out something you don't like.
But there's also the joy of addition, which means add in purposeful activity to your day. So if you are not filled up by your job, but you need that paycheck, what are you doing on nights and weekends? I mean, the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows with the American Time Survey that most people have five hours of free time a day and people in lower socioeconomic classes even have a slight bit more. And so if you aren't modeling that in your workspace, you better be modeling it on your nights and weekends in your hobbies, in your joys, in the other things you do. Here's the problem.
Speaker 2 (20:00.982)
We know what generational trauma is. Generational trauma is when generations subsequently hand down these behaviors, which don't serve the next generation. So I would tell you, if you are living a miserable life and you hate your job and you're not finding little P purpose anywhere else, you are handling down the model of generational trauma and your kids are going to do exactly what you do, which is say, I have to get this job. I hate because I have to pay the bills.
On the other hand, what we want to hand down is generational growth. The exact opposite. We want to give them these growth scripts. So even if you hate your job, it behooves you to go out and start doing some things that light you up because that's going to be the model and the growth you want to give to your kids. So if you can do it at your job, great. If you can't do it at your job, do it outside of your job, but you better start thinking about how you're going to show your kids this type of behavior. Cause if you don't, they're going to be a lot less likely to pursue it. They're going to have to break the generational trauma. We know, we know that's hard, not possible.
But breaking generational trauma is hard. Why give them that extra step? I want to go back though to the kid too, because I said, well, this is what I'd say to the parent. So let's talk about the kid. Look, there are so many different people trying to tell you who to be and kids right now, it's really tough because they have TikTok and Instagram and they're being taught that they should have six pack abs, travel the world, wear the nicest clothes and have an eight figure business. But what I always tell
young people, these people are trying to get you to co-opt a version of purpose that doesn't necessarily fit you because they want you to buy something. They want you to buy their product. They want you to follow them. If it's not social media influencers, it's marketing, it's the commercials. They're all creating all these images to tell you who to be because they see there's a vacuum and if they tell you what purpose looks like in your life and you co-opt it, then they can convince you to the buy the thing. And your parents in society get you to co-opt the version of purpose too.
because you can make up for all their mistakes. So right as parents, we made mistakes and we don't want our kids to make the same mistakes. So we basically foist them on the kids or we tell them you have to be a professional. We have the doctor, a lawyer, a CPA, all of these are societal messages. The truth of the matter is at some point, what's really going to light you up and not burn you out is when you stop co-opting someone else's version of purpose and start really questioning and saying what lights you up. So if you are studying psychology,
Speaker 2 (22:23.894)
And it lights you up. will promise you that you will have more impact, change the world in more ways and connect to more people by doing that thing that lights you up than becoming an engineer, which sounds better, but doing something you don't like that doesn't light you up. Because when you're an engineer and it doesn't light you up, people aren't going to want to collaborate with you because you're not lit up. They're not going to be attracted to you. They're not going to want to be your teacher or your student. They're not going to want to build a business with you.
You might as well do something that maybe on the outside looks a little bit less successful, but you feel connected to it because that's where you are going to build that life you want to live. And when you do that, you will naturally build communities. And we already know this, right? Happiness relates to interpersonal connections. Great studies that show that even outside of purpose. And so we want you to connect with other people. Don't worry about that person who's being an engineer. Hopefully it lights them up. And if it doesn't,
They're chasing a mirage, a false deity, and it's not going to make them happy in the end.
You know, Jordan, when we talk to prospective clients, a lot of times when we ask them what their goals are with money and in life, they all say something like they want to increase their wealth. Yeah. But, we really believe kind of the goal to end all goals is to increase happiness. So in your opinion, why do so many doctors focus on increasing wealth and miss the point about happiness? I will go as far to say is when I say that,
They look at me like I'm really weird.
Speaker 2 (24:00.846)
I always tell people you don't want to increase wealth, you want to increase life. And you know who really knows this? The dying. They have no care about increasing their wealth, but they want to increase their life as much as they can. And if you take an 80 year old like Warren Buffett or a 90 year old and you tell him, I'm going to give you a magic elixir and you're going to be 50 again, but to do it, you're going to have to give up all your wealth.
Warren Buffett would give up all his billions to be 50 again. You can't get that time back. And so if you want to really make wealth be the end all be all, and especially if you want to do things that you are not in love with to get there, you're really missing the boat because time is passing and we get so precious little of it. You really want to do activities during that time that fill you up. And so why do people do this?
because it's easy. When we talk about purpose, gets difficult and hard to grasp and ephemeral. But you know what? People like you make money really understandable. You say, here's how you earn. Here's how you invest. Here's how you save. Here's how your money multiplies. In fact, that was the whole reason I wrote the purpose code, because I want to make it so simple for you.
that it no longer is so much easier to concentrate on money because you can look at purpose and realize that it is straightforward as building wealth, not necessarily easy, but straightforward. There are actually steps. You can define what little P purpose looks like in your life, and then you can build a life of purpose around it. I think up to this point, a lot of people can figure out how to get wealthy. Like I said, not easy, but knowable. People feel purpose isn't knowable. I'm here to tell you that it is just as knowable.
And the truth of the matter is money is a tool. It's not a goal. You really want to use it as a tool to live a life of purpose, to free up some of your time, to take away some of the things you hate doing. That's what money does for you. Other than that, we all know it's just either pieces of paper or digital bits on our computer. It doesn't really mean anything other than what it buys you.
Speaker 1 (26:15.63)
Jordan, was struck by how actionable the content of your book is. know, at the end of every, every chapter, there's an exercise, the book's broken down into three parts. So it's easy to conceptualize, but I was struck by how actionable it is because, know, Bill Gates is like, your passion and everybody struggles to do that. Exactly. What the hell does that mean? I've told my daughters for years, follow your energy, you know, find out the things that suck.
What the hell does that mean?
Speaker 1 (26:43.854)
and see if you can stop doing, find out the things that light you up, like you say, try to do more of those things, right? Follow your energy. But your book gives some really concrete steps about what people can do to follow their energy. can you just give us like, imagine that you're a physician and you're edging on burnout, you're, maybe you're in your early forties and like, what is one concrete step that our listeners could take that would move them a little bit away from big P
and a little bit more toward little p and away from the sucker.
So first, before I even get there, I just love this fact that you used energy, because really in a sense, you're talking about little P purpose. And it really relates to this thing called flow, right? You've heard this term flow. When you get in a state where you're not even worried about goals, you're just in the moment and time passes and you don't even recognize it. We want to spend more time in our energy, in our flow, in our little P purpose. So I love it because they're really all talking about the same thing.
So what do we do, right? We're in the midst of the suck. We feel like we've built our life on big P purpose. We're finally recognizing it. We're realizing that it's very goal oriented, not making us happy. Where do we start? Well, here's the deal. You don't find your purpose, you create it or build it, but it is true. You have to figure out some inklings, some beckoning, some things that light you up to start building a life of purpose around. the first step.
is to get in touch with what I call purpose anchors. These are these ideas which will then build a life of purpose around. So there are about three or four ways concretely I talk about in the book to do it, but I wanna talk about one right now specifically, because I think it's a great way. So if you're like, don't know what my purpose anchors are, I hear you, I need to start building a life of purpose around them. I love talking about regret. One of the favorite things I talk about with my dying patients is what they regret never having the energy, courage or time to do.
Speaker 2 (28:36.812)
We talk about this in what's called the life review and we review with our patients as they're dying, kind of those big life moments and what they meant. And so I like the regret question because when you're dying, regret really sucks. It's very disappointing because you don't have the energy or time to fix it. You don't have agency, but here's the big message. When you're not dying, you actually have time and energy and maybe even some money. Regret is a
rate purpose anchor if we just turn it around. So I ask everyone, if you don't know what's meaningful to you, what could be purpose, what could be a purpose anchor? say, look, put yourself in the shoes of a dying patient. You've just been told that you're going to die next week. What would you always regret never having the energy, courage, or time to do? And let's turn that into a purpose anchor. For me, five years ago, that would have been not traditionally publishing a book.
I gave myself every reason not to do it. I've been writing since I was a kid. I've been blogging. I wrote poetry. I've been writing forever, but I was afraid of failure and I was always too busy being a doctor and I gave myself every excuse. And then at some point I realized if I got a terminal diagnosis and never pursued this thing, if I never put myself in the arena to fight the valiant fight, that would have been a regret of the dying.
That would have been me, not one of my patients saying how sad I was that I didn't pursue something that was deeply important to me. And so I turned it around and I had to build a life of purpose around that, which means I needed to talk to people who had done this. And luckily I had a podcast, so I knew a bunch of authors. I needed to be introduced to agents. I needed to study a little bit how you write a book. I didn't meet editors, all these kinds of things that once I turned my regret into a purpose anchor, I could then build a life of purpose around.
And so that's a really great way to start for those people who just feel lost.
Speaker 3 (30:33.698)
Wow, well, I have one more question for you Jordan. So I'm curious about you say that happiness is the sum of meaning and purpose, but that there's a twist. So you say the goal is not happiness. So what is the goal?
I think happiness is the goal. I sometimes say the twist actually is that purpose is not the goal. And people get confused by this because I'm talking all about purposes. This is a book about purpose, but really I think happiness, which is our goal is meaning and purpose. So a lot of people look at me and they're like, well, aren't they the same thing? And so what I often tell people is meaning and purpose are very different. Meaning is how we cognitively think about our past. It's the stories we tell ourselves.
about ourselves and happy people tend to tell themselves heroic stories. Like I was younger, I went through this trauma, these bad things happened to me, but I was enough and so I overcame them and that's why I am where I am today. This is a journey of enough and if you get there and tell yourself a heroic story, you tend to think that in the present and the future, you'll also be enough. Now unhappy people tend to tell themselves a story of a meaning that's more about a victim story.
They see the past and the traumas and they say I was victimized and therefore thwarted and they feel like they were never enough. And so they feel thwarted today and they assume that in the present, the future, they will continue to be thwarted. That's meaning it's a journey to enough. Now purpose is something completely different. Purpose is about the present and future and it's not about thoughts, it's about actions. And so meaning is about our past and thoughts. Purpose is about our present and future and about actions and you need both.
A lot of times people think they have a purpose problem, meaning I don't know what lights me up. And when I really talk to them, they actually know plenty of what lights them up. They actually have a meaning problem, which means they never got past some of those narratives of childhood and don't feel enough on the inside. And so what they then do is they try to push forward into purpose to prove that they're enough. They're like, if I just achieve this thing, or if I have this big audacious purpose, it's going to prove I'm enough and I'm going to be happy. This happened to me when my dad died.
Speaker 2 (32:48.32)
I somehow thought it was my fault and my big audacious purpose was to become a doctor because I thought it would fix my dad dying. And guess what? I got there and it didn't. I had to realize that it wasn't my fault, that I was enough. And once I did that and released myself, I could move joyfully into the present and future and not have to prove anything anymore. I didn't have to prove that I was good enough. I didn't have to prove that I was worthy. So you can't purpose your way to enough. We see this all the time and really, really successful people. Steve Jobs, one of the most successful people ever, had more money than most.
created some of the coolest stuff. But most of the time when you saw him in real life, he didn't look particularly happy. Probably because he didn't have the greatest sense of meaning, like he was adopted, maybe didn't feel loved by his original parents, and et cetera, et cetera. His solution shouldn't have been to achieve more, although we're very thankfully achieved all these things because we love our iPhones. But if he truly wanted to be happy, he probably had to have a better sense of meaning, which means to go back and retell himself some of those stories of childhood.
Asserting that he was a good person and his parents were the ones who had problems and that's why they gave him up I think that's the big difference and so ultimately we want to have a good sense of meaning so we feel enough and then we can Joyfully go into the present and future with our sense of purpose and when you put those together You get someone like Ben who works 60 hours a week because he loves what he does period Ben's not worried about having enough money. He's fine
Ben's not worried about being famous and having his name in the headlines because he doesn't need that to prove who he is. Ben wants to do little P purpose and he wants to spend as much time possible doing that for the benefit of him and his kids and his wife and his family and his clients. And that is the life I think we all should be living.
Fantastic. On that note, Nate is okay if I take us out.
Speaker 3 (34:37.302)
Yes, just let Jordan plug his podcast because it's good.
Yeah. Okay. So, tell us a little bit about your podcast and then, and then I'll tell people about your book.
Speaker 1 (35:10.574)
Yeah, good. And that's where we met. I was a guest on your earn and invest. One of my closely held personal values is enough, knowing how much money is enough, how much work is enough, how much studying is enough if I'm talking to my daughters. I will, I want to plug your book here because, you know, this is heartfelt. I read a whole bunch of books every year. This was a great book. I think that it has the power to transform the lives of a
bunch of physicians, even physicians that are happy with what they're doing. So listen, folks, it took me four hours to read the book. Four hours. That's it. So if you're edging on burnout, you're not quite sure, you know, how things are going to go. You don't necessarily feel good about your day at the end of the day, or your spouse is nagging you because you're not available and you're ruminating about stuff that's happening at work that's tough. This book is really for you.
I mean, even if you're not a reader, sit down, get the audio book version, spend four hours listening to it. There's some stuff in there that will change your life. And if you're not willing to pick up Jordan's book, The Purpose Code, but you'd rather work with a financial advisor who gets this, who understands how much is enough that can constantly remind you about that and keep you on path. We are your choice. We love working with doctors, particularly those who have kids. Everyone on my team shares these values and this sense of purpose in our work for you.
So reach out to us. You can find us at PhysicianFamily.com. If you're there and you like us, click on the Get Started button. Until next time, folks, remember, you're not just making a living, you're making a life.
Speaker 1 (36:52.803)
deserve.
