Fulfillment Over FIRE w/ Dr. Jordan Grumet #929

more of the latter. We are joined by our friend, doctor Jordan Grummitt to talk less about the what and the how behind personal finance and more about the why and how our money is one of the many tools that will allow us to achieve our end visual sense of purpose. In his new book, The Purpose Code, it delves into these more amorphous topics in a way that allows readers to have a sense of clarity and understanding, even like a to do list, as Jordan prescribes different

actions to take in his book. And so we're excited to talk about all of that and more. Jordan aka dot G, thank you so much for joining us today on the podcast.

The Purpose taking Stock. But the problem was when I went to market it, and I'd go and do speeches and go to conferences, people would come up to me after my talks and they'd be kind of angry. And the first time this happened, I thought, well, it's a one off, no big deal. But it happened over and over again, and they'd all say the same thing. They'd say, Look, you keep on telling me I need to find my purpose.

I have no idea what my purpose is. It's making me really anxious and in fact, I don't think there is a purpose. Stop telling me to find my purpose. And of course this sent me down a huge rabbit hole. I'm like, Okay, I know purpose is super important, but I also know people get really anxious. And I looked at the data. And when you go down there and you look at all the data, you find that having a sense of purpose in life is clearly associated with health, longevity,

and happiness. There are tons and tons of studies. On the other hand, there are other studies that show that up to ninety one percent of people, at some point in their life get purpose anxiety. This idea of purpose actually makes them frustrated or anxious. So the question is, how could it be both. It's a paradox, and that's why I wrote this book to help resolve this paradox. Help you find more of that health, happiness, and longevity and stay away from the anxiety.

feel like I've lived many lives in one lifetime. I don't necessarily know that I have one overarching purpose, but I've had different ones over time, and I think when we talk about purpose, a lot of people assume that their job or their career is supposed to be kind of that essential, that fulcrum of their purpose. But then that can it's depending on what your job is too,

can maybe leave a lot to be desired. What are your thoughts about how your career fits into your purpose and how people think about that.

these things that light us up. What I call little p purposes is process oriented activities that light us up, and we want to get rid of as many things as we loathe. Now, a lot of us have been programmed to believe that purpose has to be big and audacious.

It has to be killing it at work or making lots of money, or traveling or having six pack abs, whatever, we were taught, but a lot of times we carry this with us and we build these careers thinking we're going to find some type of version of purpose that's going to make us happy. But because it's not internal, it's more external what society tells us we want, a

lot of times we find ourselves burnt out. So the goal is a lot of times we are in these jobs and they make us money, and maybe it doesn't light us up, but how can we start bringing some things into that work time that feel purposeful? And so this happened to me. I was working as a doctor. I felt burnt out. I had kind of co opted my dad's version of purpose, which was being a doctor,

and he died when I was seven years old. I thought I could fix the world by becoming a doctor like him, and I co opted his version of purpose. But eventually I realized I didn't like the day to day activities and I started to burn out. But here was what was exciting. When I started really looking at my job, I realized I didn't like a lot of it, but there was one piece of it I did like, which was being a hospice doctor. And I was doing that.

Let's say five or ten percent of my time when I figured this out, Now, if I was stuck in a job and I needed the income and I had no other choices, I now had a way forward. I could increase the amount of time I was doing hospice and decrease the amount of time I was doing other things like my private practice. And so I think we don't necessarily have to quit our jobs when we realize that it's not our passion or that it doesn't feel purposeful.

But the idea is, over time, how to build in a little more purpose into that job, and if you can't do that, build in a little more purpose into your life outside the job, because we want, over time to feel like the amount of purpose in our lives is increasing and the amount of things we don't like doing is decreasing. And that's kind of the goal over long periods of time.

those kind of scenarios. And so for those individuals, do you think it's about them changing their mindset and like, so they're not changing like their actual physical environment or what it is that they're doing. Is it looking at the work that they're doing through a new lens or do you think in more cases it's them, like you said, finding some of that purpose outside of that actual job.

I guess what I'm trying to drill down on is should folks be looking for maybe more of that purpose within their work or say, you know what, I'm actually not going to find that purpose here within this sort of framework of a nine to five job, and instead I should be pouring my efforts into something else.

activity and that can feel like a benefit. But then We can also use another lever called the art of subtraction, which is getting rid of things we don't like. And specifically we can look at our work lives and see how we can shift things around. Right. Can we change bosses so we like our boss more even if we don't like the job. Can we change the activities we

do in the workplace. So a great example I always use is, let's say you work in a restaurant and you hate working upfront, but you love doing the stock in the stock room. Well, maybe you need to go to your boss and say, hey, I want to spend more of my time in the stock room and less time upfront. You still have the same job, you still have parts of it that you don't love, but the idea is over time, you're trying to maximize the things you like and get rid of the things you don't like.

So we can use these levers, and I think both are important. So definitely add in purposeful activity to your life, whether that's at the job or off the job, and then subtract out the things you don't like, especially at work. See if you can make sure the time that you're required to be there, Because we all need a paycheck, but at least maybe you're enjoying it more.

How much of it is like Matt's kind of referring to the mindset thing, Well, maybe it seems like subtracting something would be would be the most beneficial thing to you. But then you subtract that thing and you realize, actually it's not as green as I thought it was. This grass is kind of yellow. I don't know, Like, how how do you think about that part of purpose too? That maybe some of it is idealism and hopes for things that are maybe too lofty.

what are we gonna do. We're gonna look at the internet, right, We're gonna look at TikTok, Instagram, We're gonna look at marketing, which the focus of that campaign is to sell us something. And so if you look at TikTok or Instagram, everyone either has six pack abs, they have an eight figure business, or they're wearing the nicest clothes, or they're traveling to

the most beautiful countries. And so it's really easy for us to co opt a version of purpose that isn't ours from people who are trying to sell us something, whether it's their influence or whether it's their product. And so, yes, I think it's very easy to think of the grasses greener on the other side, especially when we go after

the wrong kind of purpose. Remember I mentioned this idea that there was a type of perse that's more associated with anxiety and probably one that's more associated with health, longevity, and happiness. What I call those are big P purpose and little P purpose. Little P purpose is process oriented, meaning doing things that you love doing that light you up. It's very abundant, and it's kind of individualized, right, I might like one thing that you don't like, and you

might like one thing that I don't like. When I was little, I loved baseball cards. So a version of little P purpose for me is collecting baseball cards, trading them, buying them, maybe reading blogs about baseball cards, or going to conferences like that's unique to me. There might be some other people who have that, but in general it's much more individualized. The kind of purpose most of a shoot for is what's called big P purpose. It's big and audacious. This gets back to the six pack abs

and the eight figure businesses. The problem with that is usually that someone else's version of purpose that they're trying to sell to us, it usually doesn't light us up. And in fact, a lot of times to get to that big audacious purpose to be successful, we have to do things we don't enjoy the process of doing, and it burns us out, and a lot of times we

don't even reach it right. Because you got to be the right person at the right time, saying the right things, having the right genetics and a bunch of luck to become for instance, a billionaire, but if we look at TikTok and Instagram, that's what they're telling us to do. So of course we feel lost. Of course the grass doesn't feel greener on the other side, because we're jumping from something we don't like, like our job, and trying to co opt someone else's version of purpose that they're

trying to sell to us for nefarious reasons. And so I think we have to start searching deeper of what lights us up on the inside. What are those inklings are beckonings, I call them purpose anchors that basically get us excited, and then we have to build a life of purpose around that. And this is where I think most of us make our mistake.

and the things that we give our money to. But like, on one hand, I think that could be good though, because I think about the fact that there are a lot of products or organizations or movements that you may not even be aware of, and the fact that they're out there being broadcasted, people are talking about it on the Internet. It can open your eyes and so there

is a sense of discovery there. I think what you're getting at, though, is that if we do that without at all questioning whether or not that is moving the needle for us, that could, I don't know, leave us feeling pretty pretty empty inside. But you're talking about the

pursuing the things that light us up individually. Somewhere in your buckyard, you talked about how like we're calling some of our childhood interests, that's actually one of the steps that can actually lead you to some of that I don't know, some of that more fulfilling purpose in our lives. Is that right?

really know what my purpose anchors are. And that's where we get into a deeper discussion of what are some of the exercises that anyone can do to start discovering these purpose anchors. The Joys of Childhood is a perfect example. Think back to what your childhood room look like. What were the posters, what were the drawings, what were the trophies. A lot of times kids pursue purpose before they've been told who they're supposed to be, and a lot of

times it's process oriented. Person's purpose, right they want to go out and play tennis all day, or cops and robbers or build a fort, and a lot of times it doesn't even matter if they accomplish their goal. They get so lost in it they forget time and come home late for dinner. That's really purposeful. But then they get older and they get told what they have to do for a living, and they get interested in academics,

and they kind of drop all that stuff. So if you're trying to figure out what are your purpose anchors to build a life of purpose around, a great place to start is the Joys of Childhood. Again, going back to me, I loved baseball cards when I was little. I actually just don't have enough time. I have plenty of parts anchors, But if I was searching to build some purposeful activity in my life, I could use that as a purpose anchor and start building a life of

purpose around it. And I think we all can do that if we're in that searching phase where we feel like we don't really know what feels like purposeful in our life.

have a massive impact on our on our purpose. I think that feels truer of me the older I get that the people I spend time with, or that I'm closest to their purposes in good ways have rubbed off on me. Like sometimes it's fun to hang out with people who like different things than I like, but occasionally I'll start to like one of the things that they like, and it's kind of fun to have that overlap. What

is Yeah, how does that work? And how do we know whether we're maybe stealing somebody else's purpose that doesn't really resonate with us us or if we're actually just adopting something in that we do enjoy or that yeah, it does kind of light us up.

really intentional to you, it attracts other like minded people. So, like a moth to a flame, other people are going to be connected attracted to you, and they're going to want to collaborate from you, or if they don't know as much as you, they're going to want to learn from you, or if they know more than you, they're going to want to teach you. But the same works

for you. When you go out into the world and see someone doing something that lights them up, yes, it's very attractive, and especially if it's something that you like. So here's what happens. You interact with them, Maybe you collaborate, maybe you try to learn from them, and then you have to assess, well, does that same thing light me up? And if the answer is yes, it lights me up. The process of doing this, not the riches these people have made, not the fame they have, but doing the

activity they do really lights you up. Then it probably is a version of little people perpose and it was probably the reason you were attracted to them in the first place. And so I think that's all really really positive. And as long as you're able to engage with this person try on that identity that they have. If you decide you don't like that identity and you don't like

those activities, it's fine to just walk away. You can still be their friend, but you're probably not going to engage with them on as deep of a level.

I don't know. There's probably some some purposeful purpose experimentation that has to be done too.

and see what happens. And if you find it resonates with you or you feel some joy doing it, that could be a great purpose anchor. And then the hard part comes. You have to build the life of purpose around it. Now again, we're high stakes people, so I say build a life of purpose, and you are all of a sudden having these big, audacious ideas and plans of these crazy things you're going to have to do.

But it's not like that at all. If you go swimming with a friend and you hate swimming, or you thought you hated swimming, but you said yes to them because you tried the spaghetti method and you enjoyed it, building a life of little pea purpose might be once a week going and swimming and hanging out with the same people and going to happy hour after with them, And it could be as simple as that. That's the beginning of purpose and community and doing things that light

you up, that connect you with other people. It doesn't have to be so big and crazy and all fulfilling. It can just be something simple you like doing. And you have room in your life for multiple purpose anchors. So one of those purpose anchors could be working as a researcher on cancer and trying to help the world. If you enjoy the process of doing that, regardless if you succeed or not, that could be a deeper, enduring

form of little pea purpose. For you. But you compare that with some of these seasonal or short term versions of little pea purpose too, and they all can go together.

literally not even a label for it. It's almost like, oh, this is something I just it's this dumb little thing I do on TVA as most where I get with my buddy, but then all of a sudden it turns into this other thing. And I guess what I want to ask you now is that it seems like that there needs to be a level of openness that someone needs to have in order to discover some of these

different little pea purposes. Do you see this being more difficult for folks maybe who is just part of their personality that they are actually less open, Like do you see certain types of people being able to find their purpose more easily than others?

the world. And so there is a certain amount of openness that you need to say, I'm just gonna do this thing because I enjoy it. I'm gonna let go of the goals. I'm gonna let go of this kind of big audacious plan and just do things that light you up. Now, that doesn't mean that it won't change the world. It just means that you stop using that as the driver and start using the driver of things that you really love.

tend to tell themselves heroic stories. They look at their past, they look at their trauma, they look whatever happened to them, and they say, I was enough and I made it through that, and so that's why I am where I am today, and I'll probably continue to be enough in the present and future. Unhappy people tend to tell themselves a victim story. I wasn't enough all the way back then. These traumas happen to me. They thwarted me. I'm continuing to be thwarted today and most likely it'll happen in

the present in future too. They don't feel enough. Here's the difference between meaning and purpose. While meaning is about cognition in the past and is really a journey to enough. Purpose is about the present and future, and it's all about actions. It's simply doing the things that light you up. Why is this important. It's important because there are a lot of people who actually don't have the greatest sense of meaning. They don't tell themselves heroic stories, and so

they don't feel like they're enough. So the way to deal with that is to go back and rewrite those stories. But instead they think they can purpose their way to enough. What I mean is they're like, if I just do these big, audacious things, it'll prove that I'm good enough, and life will be good and I'll be happy. And we know, of course that just doesn't work. If you question whether it works or not, look at someone like Steve Jobs. Before he died, he was one of the

most successful guys ever. He had some of the most money than other entrepreneurs. He's very wealthy, and yet he never looked particularly happy. You could say the same thing about Elon Musk. They have all these wonderful things and achievements, but until they kind of go back and rewrite those stories of their childhood and deal with their traumas. They're going to continuously try to prove their enoughness by doing bigger and better and more audacious things, and it just

doesn't work. You cannot purpose your way to enough, You can't purpose your way to happiness. You need both meaning and purpose to truly get there.

personal finance. You're a personal finance nerd. I would say, allah, Matt, and I but like, what's the intersection of money and purpose here? And how big of an influence should our income or our ability to make financial progress, How much influence should that have on kind of the purpose that we have for our lives.

There are tons of studies about money and happiness. Condom and Deeton, I think it was twenty ten Matt Killing's Worth twenty sixteen. Both of them did studies about money and happiness. Condom and a Deeton used data that was gathered for something else and retrospectively analyzed it. Killingsworth prospectively meaning he started with his hypothesis and gathered data, but the kind of data he gathered was like texting people multiple times a day for a number of months and

collecting their responses. And both of them tried to decide whether money was related to happiness, and they both came to the conclusion that at least up to a point for sure. Condom In and Deeton talked about seventy thousand dollars back in twenty ten. If you you know, money increased happiness up to making about seventy thousand dollars a year, and then after it it didn't have as much of

an effect. Killingsworth said, well, not exactly. There are some people who are making more money does make them more happy, but maybe it's not to the same extent that the first seventy thousand does. I want to compare those studies to the Harvard Adult DEVELOPMENTTAL Health Study, which I think is a bigger, more important study. One of the reasons I think it's bigger and more important is because it went on for eighty years. So it started back in

the early nineteen hundreds. They grabbed Harvard students and started doing questionnaires every two years. Eventually they brought in their family members. Eventually they then added in thousands of controls from the Boston area. They basically study these people for

eighty years. They started by doing questionnaires, Eventually they did blood tests, MRIs EEGs, They looked at their income at various times in their life, and when they finished, their conclusion is there was one thing that was clearly and obviously positively correlated with happiness. And it wasn't money. It wasn't career, it wasn't achievements, believe it or not, it wasn't even purpose. It was interpersonal connections. Interpersonal connections is

what makes people happy. Now you just heard me say it wasn't purpose. But what about all that data that show that purpose is associated with health, longevity, and happiness. Well, here's my belief. If you practice little P purpose, well it becomes a conduit to building communities and connections. It's all interpersonal relationships, and I think the way we get there is little P purpose. I think that's that connection

to happiness. Money is great, and if you are trying to build the life you want to live, having enough money, for instance, to pay someone to clean your house, or to work four days a week instead of five, or to get rid of as many things you can as possible that you loathe. If you can get rid of all those things with money, it becomes an incredible tool. But of course most of us don't have tons of money,

especially if you're at the beginning of your career. So I want to remind people that money is just one of the tools. We also have a bunch of other ones, like our relationships, our youth, our energy, our passions, our skills. Those are all tools and we can use those two to also pursue a life of purpose. So Money's great, but it's not the only way to get there.

the cars that you own. It means you can potentially say no to a five day work week and have the four day work week so that you can pursue hobbies that you love with a community you care about more deeply, Like, instead of funneling, potentially tell me your thoughts on this more money towards bigger purchases that maybe we think are going to put a smile on our face, we should be thinking about it in kind of an inverted way.

less purposeful activity. So winning the game is basically looking at your calendar and breaking that calendar down into time segments, whether we're talking about days, months, or years and filling as many of them as possible with things you love, little p purpose and getting rid of things you loathe. And so we have a bunch of tools to do that.

And like we said, money is a great one. So the smarter you are with your money, the more you're a valuist, the more you spend money on what's important to you and don't spend it on what's not important to you, the more you're going to have left over to use as a tool to live a more purposeful life. But again, I want to make sure people who don't have money realize that you have other tools and it

behooves you to start using them today. So, for instance, if you are twenty five years old and you don't love your job and you feel like you can't pursue purpose, but if you had a little extra time, maybe you could start doing more purposeful things. Well, maybe you can use one of your other tools. Maybe you have family that lives in the area and you can stop renting apartments, start living with them and save enough each month to

work four days out a week instead of five. You're still twenty five years old, you're still a little bit strapped for your finances, but now you've been able to change the game using a tool other than money, in this case your connections, your family to live a better life. And with that extra day a week you now have, you can fill it with something purposeful, and that's winning the game. We use the joy of addition ad in

purposeful activities. We use the art of subtraction get rid of things we loathe, and we do it over and over again, wash, rinse, repeat, every week, month or year until our schedule looks more like things we love and very little like things we don't want to do.

unquote crazy thing out there. And like, oftentimes, I think there are just so many distractions that are lives that keep us from sort of doing some of that self examination. Like I'm even thinking about technology you know, how much blame do you think lies there that has potentially prevented us, maybe from self examining even more as to what it is us bringing about purpose and happiness in our lives.

be fed what other people want to feed you. And you have to be really clear about these decisions, especially if you don't have a lot of that tool of money. You got to be really clear about these decisions if you want to start improving that calculus of your schedule and doing more things you love and less things you loathe. But here's the magic and the excitement. Once you understand it, you start realizing there are millions of things you could do.

What else could you do? Well? You know, if your company lets you go virtual, you could move to another country, a country that costs less, and yet you're still making your salary from the US and boom, before you know it, your expenses are down fifty percent, but you're still making the same money. You now have more of that tool of money. You could do a bunch of different things, and I could go on and on their abundant ways

to build purpose in your life. But we've been sold this bill of goods that purpose is difficult and big and painful and hard to find until we accept the fact that it's actually abundant and obvious, and all we have to do is start building around it. Once we start accepting that, it gets a lot easier.

He's now an adult and feeling like his life is not as purposeful as he wanted to be. He knows a purpose anchor for him as basketball. What could be a number of climes he could build around that, depending on what his interests are and where they lie. Well, Joel could play basketball. He could join a basketball league every week of people like him, professionals. Maybe he could find a podcasting basketball league. I mean, as crazy as that sounds, that could be a climb for him, and

that could feel really purposeful. It could connect him to other people, it could increase the enjoyment in his life. But you're saying Joel doesn't like playing anymore and his knees hurt. Well, maybe Joel could start writing a blog about basketball. Maybe he could do a basketball podcast. Maybe he could start the Chicago Bulls fan club because we

know he loves Chicago, and who else would you ceer on? So, I mean, there are so many different things he could do related to basketball, and those are all different climbs. And here's the magic. All he has to do is start building a life around that purpose anchor. And if he doesn't enjoy the climb, jump off the mountain and start a new one. That's it.

Grummitt and Jordan. Before the break, we're talking about how like a lack of money, or first of all money generally speaking, you were presenting it essentially as a tool when it comes to pursuing our purpose there are multi like, we've got a whole tool belt full of tools, and the one tool that Joel and I talked the most

about is money. That's out of money. But I feel like there might be some younger folks out there who are thinking, Okay, yeah, you can say that you guys and your y'all are middle aged men, you've had a successful career quote unquote successful. I don't know how successfully I would call myself, but it kind of sounds like an old man's game, and I guess I want to put a little pin in a criticism that might get lobbed our way where it's like, sure, you can afford

to have these kind of conversations later in life. You've got money invested in the market. Oh great, Yeah, the market's up thirty percent. I'm glad you're able to enjoy that after having invested for twenty years. I'm not in that kind of position. Do you think that at the stage of life that we are in, that we are over indexing some of those other tools like youth, energy skills, things like that, because the fact is you can do a lot with the right amount of money at a pretty early age.

talk about this guy in my book. Hates his job but has to make enough money to put food on the table, and feels lost like he's a victim of this life and there's no way he has time or energy to pursue purpose. First and foremost, let's just talk about time real quick. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics does the Time Survey every bunch of years and basically shows your average American has five hours of free time a day, and in fact, the lower socioeconomic classes have

slightly more. So I don't think time is really the reason. So let's talk about money. Well, as a twenty two year old, this person I talk about my book doesn't have some of the things that I have, Like I'm fifty one, i have kids, i have a mortgage, i'm married. But at twenty two you have some of these tools of your youth and your energy. You might not have a lot you have to do on a sadder or

a Sunday. So this person went and they started thinking about their purpose anchors, like what's important to me, what excites me. They use this exercise of looking at their joys of childhood and realized that they loved bike racing. It was something they did in high school and because they didn't have much money then either, they became really a droit at fixing their own bike. So what does this person do well, they say, well, I can use the joy of edition and I'm working sixty hours a

week and that's not making me happy. But I can add in something joyful on Sunday because I'm young and I have some energy, and I don't have a family, so I'm going to go to the local bike track and I'm going to offer to fix people's bikes for pay, something I love doing and I love being at the racetrack and I love hanging out with those people. And let's say that person does that for six months. One

of two things happens. Either they make no money at it, but they're still winning the game because now all of a sudden, they're spending three or four hours on Sunday doing something more purposeful than they were. So they use the joy of addition to add purposeful activity in the And remember when we talk about that calculus of your schedule, over many, many, many years, you are bringing in more

purposeful activity in your life. But let's say the other thing happens in he does start making some money, and let's say that money gives him a little margin that he can start working four days a week instead of five, or maybe eight hours a day instead of ten. Basically, then you're using the art of subtraction to get rid of something you don't enjoy, which is work. So joy of addition to add in purposeful activity, art of subtraction to get rid of activity you loathe, and you're winning

the game. And if a twenty two year old can do that. Think about over the weeks and months and years of our career, how we can continuously improve things so that we are doing less we loathe and more we love. And so that's the power and the magic of understanding what your purpose anchors are and starting to build these climbs around them is it makes you super adaptable,

and it improves your life. And just imagine if you practice this threat right your twenties, how good in your thirties and forties you're going to be at this And in the meantime, if they listen to your podcast and start spending wisely and saving and investing in all the things you guys are talking about, they're not going to only be crafty with all these other tools in their tool about, but they're also going to have plenty of money, and then it becomes super powerful.

of my life. How does purpose change and morph over time? And how do we know maybe when to kind of like subtract or add something in that maybe isn't kind of hitting that same sweet spot that it used to be.

other ones. And there'll be times when you have different purpose anchors in your life and you build climes around them, and you'll find one climb becomes more dominant than the others, and in fact, you stop doing some of those other climes because this one is filling you up and lighting you up more. Here's the thing that's all totally okay. There are no rules other than fill your time with

more stuff you love and less stuff you loathe. So you're going to continuously being the joy of addition and the art of subtraction and substitution the rest of your life, and that's totally fine. You can't go wrong here. There's almost no way to fail once you look at it this way.

it like anchor hopping to borrow your terminology. But as they're going from one thing to the next, only giving it maybe a couple of years before maybe moving on or even finding themselves that they're drawn to something else. I'm curious to get your thoughts there.

it stops filling you up. If you stick with that thing that isn't filling you up for some kind of larger goal, it goes from being little pea purpose the really healthy kind of big p purpose, and you're gonna burn out and it's not gonna light you up anymore, and you're not going to impact people as much, and it's not going to feel as meaningful. And so I think it just depends on who you are as a person.

There is no virtue in sticking with something that's lost its thrill just in service of some type of big, audacious goal, because ultimately you'll leave. And that's the same thing. I could have said the same thing about medicine. Maybe I should have stuck with medicine because my ability to help people and change the world was greater, But the longer I tried to do that. The more I burned out. When I started doing things I loved, like podcasting and

public speaking and blogging, something strange happened. I might affect a thousand patients a year at most, but when I started blogging and podcasting and public speaking, I started affecting thousands and thousands and thousands of people more because I was doing something that lit me up. That was never my plan, that was never my goal, but I ended up attracting detracting people because like a moth to a flame, and they saw me lit up and they wanted to

be involved. And that's what led to all these collaborations and to all these guests on my podcast and eventually getting an agent and books and all of that came from doing things that lit me up, and I ended up having more of an impact than being a doctor. But I would have never known that at the start.

to become a doctor. So I co opted his version of purpose, thinking that would make me happy. Now, I'll tell you, there was a lot of joy in this idea of becoming a doctor and the excitement about it. And I loved studying and all those things. So it wasn't that it didn't fill me up in a way.

realize something's wrong here. And I knew because you know, I didn't have a lot of doctor friends, like I wasn't building the community and connections because this identity, the sense of purpose, wasn't fitting me. I didn't like hanging out with doctors. I didn't like telling people that I

was a doctor. I was almost embarrassed, strangely enough, when I started pursuing what really felt like little purpose py purpose to me because I knew I liked writing and blogging and podcasting, and when I started doing that stuff, I started to connecting to people like you guys, and I was like, I found my people, because after ten or fifteen minutes of talking to fellow bloggers and podcasters, I felt like I knew them more than I do.

Doctors I had known for decades, and so I wouldn't say that the beginning of my life was purpose less. I think I was pursuing a version of purpose that ultimately wasn't going to make me happy, and that's why I had to pivot.

all this bounty that came from it. I wasn't thwarted, I wasn't a victim. I lived a magical life, and that life has brought me here where I get to do these things which are amazing and exciting. My sense of meaning. The story I tell myself about myself is a heroic journey, and so I can't imagine looking at it and saying, boy, that was a waste all.

There's a big trade off that comes from working extra, banking extra, and maybe missing out on things that would provide fulfillment. So how do you think about that?

making a trade off. You're saying, I'm going to spend a lot of time not doing things that are important to me to make money so that one day I can stop working at making money and then live this life of purpose and activities that I love doing and things that light me up. So you're making this intentional decision, which is wonderful if you are for sure going to live to eighty or ninety and for sure are going to succeed, and for sure don't mind putting off some

of your life. Like you know it so happens when you're in your twenties. A lot of time that's the first time you meet your spouse, right, so it's a season of your life that doesn't come back that honeymoon phase and like you cannot go on awesome vacations and you can spend weekends and nights in the office instead of spending time with that spouse. But once that time is gone, for instance, once you have children, that time

of being newlyweds or together without children is gone. Do you want to miss that season of your life because you've decided that building this tool of money is more

important than living life. Now to be really intentional about that decision, I think grinding it out is okay on some level, especially if you're very intentional, but if you take it to an extreme, you miss out on all the good stuff, and sometimes those seasons pass and you can't get it back, or God forbid, you're like my dad and you die when you're forty and never really get to use that tool of wealth to live the

life you want to live. So I want to empower people to feel like they can start building purpose in their life now, whether they have enough money or not, but also build a financial framework around it so that they can begin now today when they're twenty two or twenty five or thirty, but then they can continue improving the calculus of that calendar, building up enough money to use it as a powerful tool to get rid of things you loathe, to build in more things you like.

It's all an iterative process. But I wouldn't want people to just give up on purpose early in life because they think they got to grind it out and reach fire first, because you just don't know what the future is going to bring or even if you'll live to that vaunted time that you reach financial independence. And some people never make it to financial independence, and I don't want that to preclude them from living a good life today.

the biggest impact in our lives and our families, lives and our community, all of the above. But Jordan, we really appreciate you taking the time to talk with us today. We will certainly make sure to link to your book, which came out yesterday actually, and so we'll link to that in the show notes. Anywhere else you want folks to go to learn more about you and what's going on.

our life agreed. And when he talks about community and connections, I think that's spot on, right, because even if you get into something a new athletic endeavor or a new hobby, like, the connections you can make inside of that world are typically the most fulfill part of it. Like, yeah, do you like pickleball?

my wealth is in relationships. I like the idea of growing monetary wealth, obviously because of the podcast we do, but I think that's not a bad motto to have for your life, is for your relational connections to be pre eminent, because I think that that will influence purpose. And I think that, you know, Jordan boiled down to that as being one of the foremost reasons for happiness. So sure, and I think this time of year too, purpose over goals That's why we wanted to have Jordan on.

And at some point he was talking about going with how it is that you feel when it comes to identifying these things, which kind of raise their red flagma mic because I'm just like Van, what do we know about feelings? They are fickle and like one day you might love something, the next day you might hate it, but ultimately you might find yourself over analyzing it, and I think what instead, what you need to do is focus on the things that bring you enjoyment, like over

the long haul. Like think about it like the stock market. We're not talking about what is it that is going up into the right just in one day, but zoom out like zoom out over a week, over a month, over a year, even over decades, and what is the activity or the purpose anchor that pretty much is going to constantly lead to you going up into the right. Another analogy is makes me think about like a tattoo.

I don't have any tattoos, but if I were to get a tattoo, and I've even said this to Kate before, it would need to be something that I'm never going to change my mind on because I don't want to have to go back in and get it like laser removed.

getting overly analytical about it? And I think by taking small baby steps like the example he gave at the beginning, like this, the whole swimming example, it's like, Okay, you don't have to get a like iron Man triathlon tattoo

because now you're a hardcore swimmer. No, how about you just start by going one day a week with your buddy and going to swim, and maybe it turns into this other thing, but you haven't over committed to something like that, and don't be a f I guess maybe I'm speaking out of my own from my own perspective, but I would be afraid of like over committing to something and being like, well, I don't know if that's who I am, And it's like, well, doesn't have to

be who you are. Just take some of these small baby steps in that direction, and then just see how whether or not that lights you up or not.

you kind of got the white fluff around. This is something to kind of like slip in there without being noticed in the background, next to some cottages or something like that. But she sent this our way, and.

I'll be honest, more than I was expecting. When I first I was just like, oh man, I'm not totally sure about this, but I would one hundred percent totally drink this, enjoy some of this coffee roasted coffee flavors without the hang up of maybe staying up too late due to the caffeine intake.