Unlock Purpose and Happiness with Dr. Jordan Grumet | The Purpose Code Explained

Aloha Inspired Money Makers. I'm so great that you can be here with us. Happy New Year. We are streaming this episode on January 3, 2025 and it's a really great time of year to self reflect to set goals. So today we're going to explore meaning and purpose in our lives. Finding your purpose in life is no easy feat, especially when it demands or especially because of the demands of a busy

schedule. There just isn't a lot of time to self reflect and many people feel like self reflection is a luxury that we can't afford yet. Purpose is what brings depth to our days and clarity to our decisions. That's why I'm thrilled to bring back Jordan Grumet, a hospice doctor, financial expert and author, to talk about his brand new book, the Purpose how to Unlock Meaning, Maximize Happiness and Leave a Lasting Legacy.

Jordan's work makes finding purpose a practical exercise by breaking it down into actionable steps while also helping us define what meaning and purpose truly are. Today we're going to explore how to approach this search with very realistic goals and a fresh perspective. But before we dive in, this episode is brought to you by my financial advisory firm, Runnymede Capital Management. We are a fee only registered investment advisor and I want to invite

you to take advantage of our 3 minute financial plan. It's free and only takes 3 minutes. Go to InspiredMoney.fm/GetPlan, answer a few questions and you'll get a personalized snapshot to help kickstart your financial journey. If you have questions, I'm happy to schedule a quick call and review it with you. Now let's bring in our guest, Jordan Doc G. Grumet. As I mentioned, he's a hospice doctor, author of Taking Stock in the Purpose Code, and host of the award winning Earn and Invest

podcast. Through his work, he bridges medicine, finance and helps others to navigate the intersection of wealth, purpose and living a regret free life. Welcome back Doc G. Andy, thank you. So much for having me. I'm excited for the conversation. I'm thrilled to have you back again. I'm a fan of your work through the years, your blog, your Earn and Invest podcast, of course your books, and I'm grateful that you've been a recurring guest here on Inspired Money.

I feel lucky to be part of the show. I noticed that you've been doing the rounds already promoting the new book. You say that the Purpose Code is ultimately a journey toward happiness. I think that's what we're all looking for, right? We are all trying to find what is the magic formula to getting to happiness. In fact, a lot of people don't even agree what happiness is. Is it self actualization? Is it contentedness?

Some people think it's a chemical phenomenon that comes and goes, and other people think it's the Holy Grail. What I think it is is a mixture of two things, Meaning and purpose. And when you get both right, you're living a happy life. Yeah, it's a. It's a nuanced and complicated five letter word. Like, for you, happiness. Is that the transformation from an unhappy doctor to a happy writer and podcaster? I would make it even more simple. For me, this is what. What I

call winning the game. Because I don't even like talking about happiness anymore, because it really confuses people. So I say, what is winning the game? Winning the game is when I look at my schedule every week, almost everything on that schedule is something I put there and almost everything I can get rid of at any time. And almost all of it is things that light me up. And so that's what looks like happiness to me. Does it mean that everything always goes well? No. I mean, all sorts of bad

things happen. You know, my father in law just passed away. My son was having some trouble in school. Like, of course I can't stop life from happening, but the things I have agency and control over, I tend to fill and populate my life with most of those things. And so that's what happiness feels like. I love the simplicity. My condolences to you and your family about your father in law and I really look forward to having this conversation with you to better understand. How do we

control the things that we can control? How do we kind of let go or allow things that are outside of our control to happen? And how do we navigate that? So let's jump right into segment one and get started. It became overwhelmingly clear that most people struggle to find their sense of purpose and struggle even harder to integrate this vision into anything they would call happiness.

Curious, I dug into the data. It turns out that even though having a sense of purpose can increase lifespan, health, and happiness, it is also associated with anxiety in over 91% of people at some point in their lives. I was dumbfounded. How can we explain this paradox? I began to realize that even those who have been able to see past the mirage of wealth and start searching for what really is important in life find themselves facing a larger and even more frightening

obstacle. They know that happiness and purpose are intimately tied together, but they can't quite explain how they understand the term purpose, but have no idea how to take action to discover what it means in their lives. For most people, purpose has become a kind of indecipherable code sealing away true fulfillment and lasting happiness.

So these segments are quotes from your book Doc G. Can we start with what's your definition of purpose and why is it so difficult for people to align their lives with it? So my definition of purpose is actually different than the common definition of purpose. So the common definition is why we do the things we do. My definition of purpose actually is about action and present and future. Purpose is the actions we take in the present and future that light us

up. And that's all it is. No more, no less. Why do I prefer my definition? Well, the problem of thinking about purpose as our why is it becomes this really high stakes game of there's this one big important thing that I either find and I have the greatest life ever, or I miss it and all is lost. And this high stakes game of purpose usually leaves people frustrated and anxious because most people have no clue what purpose looks like in their life. All they know is it's supposed to be big

and important and so they can't find it. And so they almost start to feel that there is no such a thing as purpose. Which would be fine if all the studies didn't show that purpose was associated with all these great things like health, happiness and longevity. The high stakes nature of it does tend to make us shy away. It's like do I want to think about that big thing over there or do I just want to get my to do list done over here? And remember, society sells us high stakes. What I

call big P purpose. It sells us this big audacious version of purpose. In America we say if you think it, you can build it. And so if you get on TikTok or Instagram or Facebook or you're watching TV and see advertisements, they're all going to try to sell you a version of big P purpose. Goal oriented, audacious purpose. Like having six pack abs and wearing the nicest clothes and traveling to all the countries in the world and having a seven

figure business. The world is trying to sell us these things. They want us to co opt this version of purpose. So we buy their thing or we follow them on Instagram. But usually that big type of purpose leaves us frustrated because unless you're the right person at the right time saying the right things, with the right genetics and a whole lot of luck, you're most likely not going to have six pack abs or become a billionaire or travel to all the countries in

the world. So we're setting ourselves up for failure. And a lot of times we're taking cues from people who don't actually have our best interests at heart. I'm talking about social media influencers, I'm talking about marketers, I'm even talking about our parents who sometimes want us to make up for their own failures by giving us a sense of purpose that would fulfill their needs and not ours. Society does that too with this idea that we need to be a doctor, a lawyer, a cpa. Everyone is

telling us what purpose should look like in our life. And it's usually a big, audacious, goal oriented version of purpose that's really easy to fail. And so it's very likely that you are going to feel that purpose is something very difficult, big and unreachable and it's likely to make you feel frustrated. I'm still trying to find my six pack abs and this is not the season. I'm getting further and further away. Plus age, you know. Yeah. I mean, not everyone can have six

pack abs. And more importantly, do you really want to spend your time getting there? So do you want to spend your time exercising and watching what you eat closely and doing all the things that people who really want six pack abs have to do? Because unless you're enjoying all those activities, unless you're enjoying the process, you're wasting a lot of your time doing things you don't want to do in order to reach this goal which you

might or may not achieve. So here's a quote from your book as a follow up to what you've been saying about the, you know, big audacious purpose versus a smaller purpose. And I love this. Not in the big and audacious, but in the small and intentional activities that fill your day with. That's where purpose is hiding. So basically it's this difference between big P purpose, big audacious, goal oriented purpose that's easy to fail and feels very scarce. Right. That's why we all have

trouble finding it. Versus little P purpose, which is abundant and is process oriented. Not goal oriented, process oriented. What are the things that could fill you up while you're doing them? This is really abundant because there could be a million things you love to do and they're pretty hard to fail because if you're doing it and you're not enjoying it, just do something else.

You have kids, do you find the resistance? I mean, I know in this book you also mentioned that people in your community in Promoting your previous book, Taking Stock. Lots of people gave you some pushback on I don't, I don't want to find my purpose or in talking to our kids. We're trying to prepare them. Like, this is when I feel like oftentimes we have these conversations about purpose with our kids. It's like, what, what is it that you want to study in school?

What lights you up? What do you have interest in? And as parents are trying to figure out, well, hopefully our kids can find something that it's a path where they're going to find happiness and fulfillment and hopefully they're going to be able to find a career too. Isn't this backwards though? Take a little kid, take a five year old and leave them alone for a day and don't give

them any directions and see what they do. A lot of them will find an activity that they really find joy in and they'll become so busy they won't even know what to do with themselves. Maybe it's playing basketball, maybe it's playing cops and robbers with the neighbors, maybe it's building a fort. Little kids don't have a problem with purpose. Adults do. Little kids get lost in the activities and they forget it's time to eat and they come home late. Like little

kids actually understand purpose. It's when we start getting tracked into what society tells us we're supposed to do. It's like, okay, you were a kid so you could do all these things that lit you up back then, but now you have to get serious and go to school and think about what you're going to do for a living. And that's when you start doing things you don't necessarily enjoy the activity of doing in order to serve a goal. And so I think the easiest way to help our kids pursue purpose is let

them alone. Let them do what they want to do. That's part of it. Don't tell them they have to do this prescribed thing so they get to this prescribed goal. But the other thing is to have your kids see you doing things that

light you up. So, Andy, when you're and my kids see us podcasting, they probably see us doing something that's deeply joyful and we're creating a model for them that says it's okay when you get older to not just do things that society tells you have to do, like become a doctor, a lawyer, or cpa, but you can also just do things that light you up, that you enjoy the process of doing. And so that's that kind of modeling that we want to give them. It's not always about the big bucks. Is. Isn't. And

the truth of the matter is, what's the point of the big bucks? Money is a tool, and we use money in order to live a better life. So why are we going to put off living a good life now in order to make money? It makes no sense. Money is the tool, not the goal. And so if you give up the destination because you're so excited or busy or concerned with the drive, what's the sense of spending all your day in the drive if it doesn't light you up? Like we're putting the cart

before the horse or it's the other way around. Yeah, we're putting the cart before the horse. We really should use money as a tool. We shouldn't make it our goal. Docti. Your dad passed away tragically early when you were young, and that put you down a path of wanting to follow in his footsteps, to become a physician, to. To help others that you also struggled with. Yeah. You didn't associate. You didn't feel comfortable saying I'm a doctor in identifying yourself as a doctor. Any clues

into your, I guess, childhood of things? Oh, yeah. I mean, so becoming a doctor became my big p purpose. You see, when I was seven years old, my father died. He was an oncologist and he died suddenly while rounding at the hospital. He had a brain aneurysm that burst. Now, being a seven year old, I saw everything through a very selfish lens. So seven year olds generally feel like the world happens because of them. So when my father died, I figured, well, I must have done something

wrong. I wasn't enough, it was my fault. Now, the way I was going to solve this huge problem of his, you know, the cosmic problem of his death, was if I became a doctor and walked in his footsteps, I could fix the whole thing. And so my big p purpose was to become a doctor, to save lives, to fix the fact that he died. And guess what? I became a doctor. And it didn't fix the problem. My dad had still died. My big audacious purpose, the big goal was unreachable. And so it wasn't

making me happy. In fact, I eventually became burned out because I was spending 60 hours a week doing something in service of a goal that was impossible to meet. And I was doing things that weren't filling me up. I wasn't enjoying the process. And so I had to pivot and start looking at, well, this isn't filling you up, and you're certainly not solving the problem of your father's death. How can you find things that do actually light you up? Activities that feel like

little p. Purpose. That was one piece. The other piece is I needed to go back and think about my childhood. And this has to do with meaning and not purpose. I told myself a story, a narrative about my father's death and which I was at fault, and I had to make up for it. So I had to have ascribe a better sense of meaning to my past and go back and rewrite that story and realize I was just a good,

innocent kid who had a bad thing happen to him. But I wasn't a bad kid, and I could relieve myself of being on the hook for my father's death. So I had to do two things, really, to move forward. I had to have a better sense of meaning. Meaning being the cognitive stories we tell ourselves about our past. And then I had to develop activities that lit me up, which is all about

purpose and present and future. It's about actions. And so I had to deal with both of those issues to deal with my father dying. It's good to know that you can rewrite how you see the past. You definitely can. In fact, that is the journey of meaning. So I often tell people happiness is made up of two things, its meaning and purpose. Meaning, as I was saying, is all about how we cognitively think about the past, and it's a journey to feeling enough. While

purpose is about the present and future and is all about actions. A lot of people think they can just avoid the meaning stage, right? So they were young, they went through these traumas instead of telling a hero story in which they overcame them and were enough. They tell themselves a victim story in which they were thwarted and never became enough. And they feel like, well, I can prove I'm enough by skipping to purpose and just

achieving these big audacious things. But it never works. Even if they do achieve the big audacious things, it doesn't help them feel enough. In order to feel enough, they have to go back to meaning and rewrite the narrative and tell themselves a better story in which they were always enough, even in the beginning, that they weren't the cause of their trauma and that they were generally good people and some bad things happened and they got past it. I'd

like to go to segment two. We're going to talk about purpose. Anxiety. My discovery of financial independence, and the epiphany that I had enough money to leave my job forever were exciting at first. I daydreamed about simply Walking away from work. Yet before long, my feelings of joy were replaced with a crushing weight of anxiety. Purpose anxiety, to be more exact. I had spent my whole childhood and young adulthood building a life centered on being a doctor. My big, audacious goal was to save

lives, heal the world, and make a difference. Years into practicing, sometimes I felt like I was able to achieve that goal. To step away from medicine was to abandon what felt so near and dear, to step away from my purpose. What would fill the enormous void left behind? How would I create a new identity that avoided all that I had come to hate about medicine and yet feel every bit as important? My mind went blank and my mouth went dry. The truth is that I had no clue.

So, Doc G, that segment, that's really you first person. That was your personal experience. Can you talk about what is purpose anxiety? Why is it so prevalent today? Purpose anxiety is this idea that when you start thinking about purpose, you don't know what that looks like in your life. So it makes you stressed out and frustrated and depressed. And studies show that up to 91% of people at some point in their life have this purpose anxiety. So I was a great

example. I had spent my whole life following a version of purpose that was big P purpose. Solving my father's death, becoming a doctor, saving people's lives. And when I finally realized it didn't align with me and I had enough money to leave medicine, I could step away from medicine. I actually had a panic attack because I had no idea what purpose truly looked like in my life. And I was about to step away from the only thing that felt like purpose, even though it was no longer filling me

up. So purpose anxiety is very, very common. And it gets even more common nowadays because we figure that purpose has to be this big, audacious, huge thing, and that we have this one purpose in our lives, and we either find it and live a great life, or we miss it and all is lost. So it again becomes very all or nothing. And this makes us just feel anxious. Was it

especially daunting for you, Doctee? Because stepping away from medicine, that was abandoning something that was so significant in your life. And not only was it abandoning my trade, right, the thing I'd spent so much time investing in, but it was abandoning the one little connection I still had to my father. On the other hand, it wasn't filling me up, and so I was burning out because I was pursuing a sense of purpose that didn't fill me up.

And working all these hard hours and never really solving the problem. I was trying to solve. I was never getting to that goal. And so I was feeling more and more and more exhausted. And so I didn't have a lot of choice. How do you know when to give yourself permission to change your purpose? Does it require a panic attack? No. In fact, I think our purpose can change all the time. See, we have all these rules for purpose and they don't work for us. So purpose

can be large or small. It can be short term or long term. You can have one enduring purpose your whole life or many. You can pursue a purpose for days, weeks, years, or a lifetime. None of that matters. The only thing that matters is it has to be process oriented. It has to light you up, and it has to be really hard to fail. And if that version of purpose works for you, nothing else matters. And so you can constantly be changing your sense of purpose. If it fills you up, it doesn't

matter. We can be promiscuous when it comes to purpose. There's no reason to have fidelity. The key is you need to involve yourself in things that deeply light you up. And for some people, they're going to be 10 or 15 of them. And for other people it's going to be one enduring thing that takes up most of their time. Doesn't matter. So you're advocating for an open relationship with purpose? Very much. You keep it around when it serves you, and when it stops serving you, you

find another version. There's other fish in the sea, but. It'S not easy, right? Like there are ups and downs. I know that the search for purpose, it can be riddled with anxiety and loss as well as joy and happiness. For example, you had an epiphany of discovering financial independence, and then it was followed by fear and purpose anxiety. I think that you not only experience this yourself personally, but you've seen this pattern shared by many people. Can you talk about that relationship of

excitement and fear? Well, it's always painful and fearful to walk away. Something you either invested a lot of time and money in or that society has told you is your role in life. But both of those are really hard to walk away from. So you know, if you want a different result, you've got to do something differently. And when you do something differently, you are automatically stepping out of your zone of comfort and stepping into the discomfort. And so change

is always going to be uncomfortable. But if you are totally happy with your life and you're getting the result you want, then there's no reason to change. But the truth of the matter is a Lot of people aren't getting the result they want. They are finding that they are not fulfilled. They're finding that they're getting to a place where they want to be financially and they're climbing the ladder in their corporate business. But they don't

feel like they're doing what they're supposed to be doing. Something is missing. So they can keep doing the same things, but then they're going to get the same result. If they want something different, you got to do something different. And that is always going to be uncomfortable. There's always going to be some anxiety there. So you mentioned this idea of going down a path toward

things that you cannot fail. So can you talk a little bit maybe about practical strategies that someone can use to overcome the fear of redefining their purpose and doing it the correct way? So first and foremost, I always tell people, you don't find your purpose, you create or build it. Right? So it's a very active process. But I do say that you have to figure out the inklings or the beckonings, the things that you're excited about, which I call purpose anchors to build a life of

purpose around. So really, if we want to decrease the anxiety, a big part of the decreasing the anxiety is connecting with our purpose anchors, because that's really what people get anxious about, is I'm not going to find the thing. And so connecting to your purpose anchors is really the first step in decreasing your anxiety. And in the book I talk about a bunch of ways to do

that, right? There's regret. Like, think about if you found out you're going to die tomorrow, what you would regret never having the energy, courage or time to pursue and turn that around. Because since you're not dying next week, you actually have some agency and some time to start pursuing those things. So regret can be a purpose anchor. The joys of childhood can be a purpose anchor. To think back about what you loved as a kid. I used to love baseball

cards. I've gotten so busy in life I don't pursue that anymore. But if I ever wanted to find a purpose anchor, I still get lit up every time I see an article about baseball cards or on Facebook see something about old time baseball players. You can also look at the art of subtraction. Like, what do you not like at work? Make a list of all your roles and responsibilities at work. Cut out everything you don't like and what's left over. I did this in my job when I got rid of everything I didn't

like about being a doctor. There was one thing left over, which was hospice and palliative care. What I do now, I do that even if you weren't paying me for it. So I knew by the art of subtraction that there was a purpose anchor there. Last but not least, there's a spaghetti method. Throw a bunch of spaghetti against the wall and see what sticks. Try a bunch of new things and see if you like any of them. When we start connecting with our purpose anchors, we decrease the natural anxiety of

trying to, quote, unquote, find our purpose. But the hard part is the next part. You actually then have to take action. Once you identify these purpose anchors, you have to build a life of purpose around them. You love baseball cards. Are you going to start collecting again? Are you going to start selling baseball cards? Are you going to write a baseball card blog? Start a baseball card podcast? Are you going to organize or attend a baseball card conference? Are you going to start an autograph

collection? Like, all of these are purposeful activities that you could build around that purpose anchor, but you're going to have to do the work. But these are the activities that are going to decrease the anxiety. Talk a little bit about Roman, since you're talking about baseball cards as somebody that, as a kid impacted you, but as. As you wrote the book, really became a person that was a good example of finding one's purpose. Here's the thing. When I talk to people about little

p Purpose, they often say, that's selfish. Like, I want to have impact and legacy. I want to help the world. If I just do things I love to do, that light me up, how am I going to change the world? And I always talk to them about Roman. You see, Roman owned an antique store. He was like a baseball player in high school, Blew out his knee, decided not to go to college, took over his dad's antique shop, spent most of his days refinishing old furniture and selling it.

And one day this kid walked in. I'm sorry. One day, someone sold him an armoire, and he was in the middle of refinishing it and found a stack of baseball cards in one of the drawers. So he called the guy and said, hey, I got your baseball cards. Do you want them? The guy said, no. Roman didn't even think about it. He put him on the counter and went back to refinishing this armoire. A few days later, a woman came in with her teenage son, and the teenage son saw the baseball cards

on the counter. He said, hey, how much for these cards? Roman had no idea, but he's like, hey, I have nothing to lose. I got them for free. How about 10 bucks? So kid looks through him and says, Great, here's your 10 bucks, and then puts three of the hundred cards out and says, these three by themselves are worth $100. Now, Roman was enthralled. He could have been angry, but he wasn't. And there was this inkling, this beckoning. He was like, I find this fascinating, and this looks joyful, and

I'd love to do this. So that was a purpose anchor for him, too, baseball cards. But then he had to build a life of purpose around it. So he hired the teenager. He started researching baseball cards. He eventually started selling baseball cards as an antique store. And over a few years, he actually sold more baseball cards than he did antiques. But more importantly, he created a community for local school kids. I was one of them. My father had died when I was 7. I had a

learning disability. I had very few friends, and I felt like a geek, a nerd. I had no connections, but I loved baseball cards. I went to his antique shop. I became part of a community. And we all had our mentor, Roman, who, if we had a bad day, he would open up a pack of baseball cards and give it to us for free. Over the years, that meant everything. And a bunch of little kids came out of that shop, came out of that community with a sense of belonging and

confidence that they never would have had. And those kids went out into the world and became doctors like me and lawyers. And I'm sure some of them ended up buying and selling things like Romans. But those kids ended up changing the world because they had the confidence from that community. Sadly enough, Roman died a few years after I met him. He got cancer, struggled with it, eventually had to close the shop,

and he died. But 30 years later, I'm still talking about him because he had a profound influence on my life. You know who didn't have a profound influence on my life? Mickey Mantle. You see, Mickey Mantle is one of the baseball players whose baseball cards I collected. And although he was this guy who achieved this big purpose of being one of the best baseball players ever, he did nothing for my life. The guy who

really did a lot for me was Roman. Not because he meant to change the world, because he pursued his little p. Purpose baseball cards, and it connected him to a community, and he changed our lives. And that's why little p Purpose actually connects us to other people and could possibly give you a much bigger impact and legacy than trying to do these big, audacious things that you may or may not succeed at love that contrast. Between Roman and Mickey

Mantle. Let's go to segment three and then we can continue discussing discovering activities that really light us up. Okay. Up to this point, I have given far more examples of what I consider to be the wrong kind of purpose to pursue. Only Roman, the antiques dealer from the introduction who changed the world by selling baseball cards, has exhibited anything like the little p purpose that we are going to talk about now. This has been intentional. The toxic type of purpose

is just so much more relatable. It is in fact, the easiest purpose to decide to pursue it means meeting society's expectations and following in the footsteps of the herd. The harder decision by far is to do the internal work, to find what really lights you up, to discover what can be the basis of a life of true fulfillment. And then you have to find a way to pursue it in the world. This all takes effort, but will prove more than worth it.

Doctor, I love some of the strategies that you talked about, the art of subtraction, taking a look at your job and removing all the things about it that you don't like, and then seeing what's left that you do like. You did that and found that hospice and palliative care remained. And then you could pursue that, being a doctor and enjoying it more on a day to day basis. How did you take action, like to go a step beyond, like take the next step? I did it

really slowly. So when I realized I was financially independent, I was very lucky. My parents had modeled great behavior. I was investing, I owned real estate. I looked at my numbers. I'm like, oh, you have enough money, you don't have to be a doctor anymore. But I was not ready to throw the baby out with the bathwater. I didn't know how to just walk away from this identity totally. So I started subtracting little by little.

So the first thing I realized is I didn't like owning my own practice. So I got rid of that. Then after a year or two, I realized I didn't love doing the nursing homework. So I got rid of that. Eventually I realized I didn't like the nights and weekends and got rid of those. When I slowly got rid of those things that I didn't love, what was left was hospice medicine. I eventually even decreased that to being just five or ten hours a week. But

it was an incremental process. And so what I tell people is if you are stuck in a job you don't love, in a life you don't love, and you're not sure where to go next. Let's look at what you do on a daily basis at work. And is there an inkling of something you enjoy? So I often give the example of, let's say you work at a restaurant and you don't like being at the counter helping people. But when you do the art of subtraction, you realize there is one two hour period during your week you love,

you love stocking the stockroom. They have you do it every Thursday, you do it for two hours and it's the one thing you like. You like the organization, you like not interacting with other people, whatever. It's something you like doing. If you start becoming aware of those things, maybe you can go to your boss and say, you know what? You, you know, do the stockroom three times a week and I do it every Thursday, but someone else does it Monday and Friday.

What if Nancy works at the counter because she loves working at the counter and I take over her stock time? And before you know it, you're slowly building in more things that feel purposeful that you like and slowly getting rid of things you don't like. So the answer is you do it slowly and incrementally. What joyful things can you add to your life? What loathsome things can you get rid of? When can you substitute? When you can't add or subtract?

These are the ways you're going to slowly and incrementally build a life that's full of more joy and less pain. As you wrote the book and you're trying to guide people through this process, do you find that frequently people are returning to hobbies and interests that they had as a kid, or talking about things like, oh, I always wanted to do X, but I never did it. Yes, and I'll turn it around. When people are dying, that's all they want

to talk about, especially if they didn't do those things. And so when we give permission to people today, when they're not dying, but when we give them permission to look at life through that lens, that if you had a limited amount of time left, what would you do? When we give them that permission? Yes. They talk about

those secret dreams that light them up. They talk about those childhood hobbies, they talk about those things that they're too embarrassed to discuss with other people, those things that they always wanted to do and then society told them they couldn't. All of that comes up. It's interesting. I think it's worth mentioning that in your book throughout you have prescriptions, you take people through kind of a step by step process of discovering their purpose or doing a social

media audit to see how they're spending their time. One of my, one of the things that you have them do is to list out, I guess, take a look at the calendar and what were your activities over the past week? Which, which, which activities were big P items, which were small P items? And then are you surprised by how much time you're

spending on big P versus little P? Yeah, I mean, how much time are you spending doing things that don't fill you up or things that you're anxiously trying to achieve but not enjoying the process of doing? We want at the end of the day to win the game, and the way you win the game is by filling your calendar with things that deeply light you up. Most people aren't doing that in their daily life.

And so it's supposed to be like a, you know, cool splash of water on your face to look at that calendar and realize, I'm doing lots of stuff either for a big goal that I don't enjoy doing or things I just don't like in general and seeing how much time you spend doing those things. So it makes sense to me, if you're being more thoughtful about what activities actually bring you enjoyment, bring you happiness, you're going to end up being a happier person. Inevitably.

If you're spending your time on things that light you up and bring you more enjoyment, are you going to figure out like, oh, maybe I can monetize this and enjoy myself? I think it depends where you are in life. I think when you do things that light you up, you connect to other people and the chances to monetize go up exponentially. I think it just is what it is because people are seeing you as your best self and you tend to become more expert at or learn more

mastery of things you love. And so you end up having a skill set or a knowledge or an ability that other people don't. And so I think the possibilities of monetizing are there, but it doesn't have to work that way. You can still do your 9 to 5 and feel like it's okay and then spend the rest of your time doing these things you love. But over time, most likely those things you love will eventually creep into your job or they will turn into a job themselves, which could be a really

joyful thing if you keep loving doing them. What advice do you have for somebody who is afraid to leave behind perhaps a conventional path to pursue something more meaningful? Well, you know, a lot of times I say don't do it all at once. I couldn't do it all at once. I had to do it incrementally. Slowly subtract what you don't like and slowly add in what you do again. Maybe that looks like starting a side hustle on

the weekends and keeping your 9 to 5. That might be how you run it for the first six months or a year or two years until you see about its viability. Do I really love doing this? Is it worth my time? Does it make enough money? Like, there's no reason that it has to be black and white, all or nothing. You can start slowly and experiment. Okay, so it's a process, and it doesn't have to be all or nothing. Correct. All right, let's move to the next segment.

You are doing it wrong if you think the act of making a lot of money today excuses you from pursuing purpose. At the same time, we are really good at putting off those things that challenge us. While building a fiscal fortune isn't easy, it is eminently knowable. We know or can learn fairly easily how to save and invest, how to get a good job and earn a promotion. Investing and building businesses can be learned. Finding purpose, however, is a

lot more difficult to define. This difficulty often tempts us to put off this important work until tomorrow. We wait until we have more time, more energy, more money. We wait until it's too late, until we are lying on our deathbed lamenting to our hospice doctor that we never did the things that were truly important to us. Don't let this be you. Doctor. I've been spending a lot of time on LinkedIn over the last 12 months, and sometimes I get pushback because I'm trying to provide, you know, some

personal finance advice. And I get some pushback from people saying, I, I don't have time because I'm working too hard to even address these issues. And I think whether it's money or purpose, they have a parallel or they share that. Some people are just going to say, I don't have time for purpose. I'm just trying to pay my bills. Yeah. I mean, so the biggest reasons people don't pursue purpose are money and time.

Well, let's look at this. So the Bureau of Labor Statistics does the American Time survey every few years and shows that your average American has five hours of free time a day. Five hours of free time a day. And they actually show that people in lower socioeconomic classes probably have slightly more. So if you're going to make the argument you don't have time. That certainly isn't what the studies show. The other thing is they don't say they have. They say

they don't have enough money. But like I kind of said before, money is a tool, but it's only one of many tools. You also have your youth, your energy, your skills, your community, your joys. Those are also tools. And so there are a lot of people who don't have a lot of that tool of money, but can use some of those other tools to start pursuing purpose. For instance, when you're 22 years old, you might not have a lot of money. You might be in a 9 to 5 or an 8 to 6 that you

don't enjoy. But you also probably aren't married, you probably don't have a mortgage yet, you probably don't have kids. So you could pursue some purposeful, exciting activities on the weekend. Whereas me at 51, I have all these other concerns. And on the weekend I might have to clean my house or take my kids to their sporting events or whatever I have to do because I don't have as much time and energy

as you do at the age of 22. So that is using the tool of your youth and your energy, not your time, in order to pursue purposeful activities. So I just want to remind people that time and money, they're not really good excuses. I think that you have the benefit of observing many people who were on their deathbeds and seeing some of the common

regrets among your community. Since you have your Earn and Invest podcast, how does it make you feel when you can help people to address some of these potential regrets before it's too late and they can actually do something about it? So I always tell people I do this because this is my little p purpose. It deeply lights me up. I don't do it because I'm hoping to have this huge impact on people. I do it because these things are deeply important to me

and I like the process of doing them. But this is what I'd always tell everybody. Do things that light you up, and whether you mean to or not, you will impact other people. So because this is important to me, because I care about things like purpose, I do a lot of deep thinking about it. And because I do this deep thinking about it and I like communicating, I'm going to create podcasts and blog posts and books. But the happy side effect is those things can help people.

And so that's what happens is do things that light you up and it'll impact other people. So it's deeply gratifying for me that I can create this content that helps people. That was not the reason I did it, but it is a happy side effect. And I think the more you pursue little p purpose, the more happy side effects you're going to have in your life. This is highly individualistic. Right. It's, it's not a one size fits all. People have to really sit down, take the time,

do a little homework. Yeah. I mean this is work. This is not easy. You are going to have to take action. Purpose is all about action in the present and future. It's not enough to think the thoughts. It's not enough to define your purpose anchors. You are then going to have to build purposeful, joyful activities around those purpose anchors and it's going to take you out of your comfort zone because you've

never done this before. And that's all expected. But the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow is you could end up spending more time in a fulfilling manner that probably creates a better impact and legacy than all those other things you were doing already anyway. That's a perfect segue. Let's bring it home and go to our last segment. The Harvard study of adult development started in 1938 and followed 724 men from various economic and social backgrounds from their teenage years

onwards. Researchers asked the participants to fill out questionnaires every two years on the subject of emotional and mental well being. They even interviewed family members and loved ones. The results of this very long term study were shocking. When it came to happiness, it was not money, achievement, career choice, exercise or a healthy diet that made respondents happy. It turned out after 85 years of studying that one and only one thing was a

strong predictor of overall happiness. Positive social relationships. Those who felt more connected to others lived longer and happier, period. It's interesting because you mentioned the word legacy and I think too often when we hear the word legacy we think about, well, I need to be a millionaire, I need to be a billionaire to have a legacy. But from what you're saying in that segment, what you've written, listeners can think about legacy in ways that

transcend wealth and material success. Can you, can you explain more? Yeah, I mean, look at Roman. We talked about him before, the antique store owner who sold baseball cards. He's impacting me 30 years after his death. He's having more of an impact on me than Mickey Mantle who is arguably what of the best baseball players ever. He impacted me because he pursued little p purpose. It lit him up. He attracted like minded people to

him, like me, we created a community. And him doing what he did provided a positive model for me, which allowed me to become the person I was to become. There are so many examples of this in the world. We talk about generational trauma all the time, right? We talk about how our parents go through trauma and hand that trauma down to us by creating an unhealthy model, and then we go ahead and we live out that generational trauma. What we don't talk about is the exact opposite,

generational growth. In other words, our parents can hand down these really healthy scripts or our friends or neighbors or mentors can hand down these really healthy scripts of living a life of little p purpose. And we can learn from that model, that behavior and their impact and legacy can

go on and on and on. Roman is still very much alive today in my heart, in probably the hearts of many kids out there who are now adults, who are giving their own kids a sense of value and acceptance, who are maybe teaching their own kids about baseball cards and sitting in some basement somewhere opening up a pack and eating the God awful gum that may still, may or may not still come in the baseball card packs. His life had value. He didn't have to do something big and

important. He didn't have to be a billionaire or set any records. He didn't have to be in the history books. He just had to pursue purpose in an authentic way and it changed the world. Do we have to think about actively or consciously deepening relationships to build a meaningful legacy? Or is that a byproduct of just doing the right small p purpose things? I dare you to do things that light you up and

not connect to other people. It's almost impossible. Like I could imagine a world where you love painting and painted in your apartment with no one else and never showed anyone your paintings. Fine. But if you're like everyone else, you love painting and you're gonna put your paintings out on the Internet and show them to people and you're gonna meet up with other PA painters and you're going to join the painters guild and you're going to

go to the galleries in the area and decide who you like or not. You might read a few painting blogs. And the truth of the matter is, if it really lights you up, you are very likely to connect to other people. And that's where all the goodness happens, right? The Harvard Adult Developmental Health Study didn't say purpose causes people to be happy. It says interpersonal connections. I just think little P purpose is the greatest way, the greatest

conduit. To building community and connections. When you do things that light you up like a moth to a flame, other people are going to be attracted. If they have something to teach you, they're going to want to be your teacher. If they have something to learn from you, they're going to want to be your student, they're going to want to collaborate with you. This is how we connect to people. Contrast your personal experience in terms of those relationships and even legacy as a physician versus

a podcaster. Yeah, I mean, look, I was a physician for two decades, and I had almost no physician friends. I hated hanging out with physicians in the physicians lounge, and I didn't even want to tell people I was a physician when I was in social situations. So I didn't connect to physician people. I took care of my patients. And so Maybe I helped 500 or 1,000 people a year. Contrast that to when I moved from that version of big P purpose to little P purpose.

And I started concentrating on personal finance and blogging and podcasting and writing books. I went to conferences and met people that I felt more connected to in five minutes than doctors I had known for decades. And I created a podcast and I wrote books and I did blog posts, and those things connect to thousands and thousands and thousands of people a year. Maybe hundreds of thousands of people. Whereas as a doctor, I might be connected with 500 or 1,000 patients a year. So already

my impact and legacy have exponentially grown. My enjoyment in my daily activities has exponentially grown. But I didn't plan any of that. I just did things that lit me up. But I have better friends than ever. I have bigger projects than ever, and I affect more people. And none of that was planned. It was all a happy side effect. It's an amazing side effect to have community and connection, because to have that in your life does make it a more purposeful life. Yeah, I mean, it's. It's a virtuous

cycle. You do things that light you up. It connects you to more people. You're happier. Those people introduce all sorts of new and exciting things. You do more things that light you up. You might meet more people, and it just keeps going and going and going. But you got to jump onto that virtuous cycle. Right? You got to start running through it, or you never get all those great benefits. It reminds me a little bit about Derek Sivers, who's been a guest on the show before.

He has a blog post talking about hell yes, hell no. Sometimes it's F yes, f no. Do you approach like Every perspective, activity or question, someone calls you, a friend calls and says, hey Doc G, you want to do this? Do you think about it needs to be a hell yes versus a hell no. Not for me, because I don't think it's all or nothing. Like it can be a maybe and I can do it. And then it either lights me up and I say hell yes the next time or it doesn't light me up and I say hell

no the next time. But you're not going to know until you do those things. So I approach most with curiosity, right? So the first thing is if someone approaches me to do something new, the first question is, is my life so full right now that I'm not taking on new things? Right. Maybe I have lots of little p purpose in my life and I don't have time or energy for more. But if I do have time and energy for more, I'm more curious. It's like, well, I don't know if that thing's going to be

good or not. Why don't I try it and see? But after I try it then I can make some conclusions and so I'm not so strictly like it has to be a hell yes right away, but it has to be a hell yes to keep going. I love it. I think it's a good, healthy mindset to have and it can result the outcome can be significantly different by the end of your life. Yep. Yep. And the point again is you're stacking this little p purpose into your life and you're getting rid of things you loathe and that's

winning the game. You just want to do that every week, every year. You want your calendar to be filled with more things you love and less you loathe. That's the goal. I think we're going to leave it there. I mean, wow, what an insightful and thought provoking conversation. Thank you, Jordan. You shared so much wisdom about aligning our lives with purpose, how to overcome purpose, anxiety, and finding fulfillment in the

things that truly matter. One big takeaway from me is that purpose doesn't have to be grandiose or monumental. It can be found in small and meaningful actions that bring joy and alignment with your values. The key is to be intentional about how we spend our time and energy. So I'm going to leave a call to action with our viewers and listeners today. Inspired by your book, Jordan. Set aside one one. Oh no. Set aside two one hour blocks in

the next seven days. Make sure to turn off all distractions and find a quiet place and pull out your calendar and look at the past week. Reflect on how you spend your time. Review your calendar activities over the last week. For each entry over the last seven days, assign a broad category that describes the purpose behind the activity. So that can be hobbies, work, family, fun, and try to limit yourself to five or six categories so you can categorize

each item. And don't worry if one activity kind of overlaps into a couple of them. But consider whether it aligns with your big P purpose or your little P purpose or neither. And then take stock tabulate what percentage of your time is being taken up by big P purpose and which are taken up by little P purpose. Is the balance lopsided or not? Is it one side or the other? And is your time reflecting the life that you want to live? I think that that's where things get really interesting and

then try to make one change. Identify a small shift you can make this week to better align your time more closely with your values and purpose. And remember that the smallest step can create a ripple effect toward a more meaningful and fulfilling life. Thank you again Doc G Jordan Grumet. You can find and follow Jordan at jordangrumet.com, is that right? Right, jordangrumet.com J-O-R-D-A-N-G-R-U-M-E-T dot com. You can also find Jordan at earnandinvest.com. Make sure to get his book the "Purpose