The Purpose Code, with Jordan Grumet

years old, I saw the world through a very selfish lens. I figured if he died, it must be something I did wrong or I wasn't good enough, and so I single handedly decided that I could solve this tragic loss by just becoming a doctor like he did, and that became my sole version of purpose, a big, audacious version of purpose in which not only did I save the world by helping people, but I could somehow undo this bad thing that happened to me when I was a kid. So originally, I

found a lot of fulfillment in it. This idea that I had something that I was supposed to do really engaged me, and so I worked really hard. I had a learning disability when I was a kid, and I got over that, and I went to high school and college, and I was the kid who was always studying while everyone else was out having fun. It was my sole version of purpose and identity for many years, and it did serve me until I started practicing medicine and realized there was a lot I didn't like about it. I

didn't like the hours, I didn't like the paperwork. I so often felt like I wasn't helping people as much as I wanted to. And at some point, I had that epiphany that no matter how good a doctor I was, A, I wasn't going to save everyone, and B, I wasn't going to undo the tragedy. My dad wasn't back. I

had become a doctor. I had done this big, audacious thing. I was supposed to be feeling good, and I realized that I kind of CO opted his version of purpose, because I thought it would save everything and fix everything, but I wasn't very connected to the work like I found a bunch of his notebooks one day as an adult, we were cleaning out my mom's addict and I was looking at his notebooks and seeing the loving notes he had taken on all the biological pathways, And I could just tell by these notes

how much he loved it, and I had none of that like I didn't enjoy it nearly as much. It didn't light me up. And so it was really epiphany to realize that even though it felt like a real sense of purpose and did fill me up for some point, when I actually got there, it didn't.

I loved, which was doing hospice work. About five years into my career, I was taking care of a dying patient. We called hospice. They came saw the dying patient. I had kind of done everything they needed to have done before they even got there. So they looked at me and they said, you're really good at this. Why don't you come work for us? So I started almost what I call a medical side hustle, where I worked very part time

for a hospice as a medical director. I got a little stipend for doing it, and so I had already incorporated that into my work life. And as I started subtracting out all I didn't like it was the one thing I realized I would do, even if someone wasn't paying me for it. And that's how I kind of knew that there was this kernel of purpose in that, and that even if I decided I didn't want to be a doctor anymore, I still wanted to do that.

patient, there's nothing you can do. We're done. And then I get to walk in and say, whoa, wait, there's tons of things we can do. We can help control your symptoms. We can help you die in the place you want to die. We can help you see each day as a gift up into the moment you die. And so that feels very empowering. So the mistake most people think is, when you're

given a terminal diagnosis, that life ends. But what I've found is that even the dying wake up every morning with a plan for the day and with the right type of care and hospice care and those kind of things, we can help you experience those kind of things you want to experience. You can hopefully see some of those people you want to see. You can talk to those other people. You can do some things that are really nurturing and growth oriented, even in your last days. And so.

Think that's where the mistake most people make is they think the moment you get the diagnosis, life ends. And I say, No, no, you're kind of living until the moment you die. And so we try to make that life as good as possible for however much time you have left.

probably is more associated with anxiety. In fact, studies show that up to 91% of people at some point in their life have what's called purpose anxiety. They get stressed and anxious and frustrated at this idea of, quote, unquote, finding their purpose so big P purpose is audacious. It's goal oriented, and it's usually really hard to achieve, because in America, we say, if you think it, you can do it. So think about becoming a billionaire, having a seven figure business, traveling to

all sorts of great countries, wearing the nice clothes. All those kind of things are kind of big P purpose. Little P purpose, on the other hand, isn't goal oriented. It's process oriented. So it's very abundant. It's like doing what lights you up. And so if you think about it, there are a million things you could do that you really love to do, and there's no way to fail. You start doing something you don't like doing it, just do something else. So why are we having a purpose crisis in America?

Because every influence out there is trying to tell us to grasp on to big purpose. What do I mean by that? Well, if you go onto Tiktok or Instagram, what you're seeing is people who are, you know, billionaires and traveling to every country and wearing the nice clothes and having the six pack abs, or if you look at things like television and marketing, they're showing us images of what the good life looks like,

and often those things are really hard to achieve. Like, not everyone can have six pack abs, not everyone can become a billionaire. In fact, most people can't. In fact, you have to be the right person at the right time, saying the right things, with the right genetics and a bunch of luck to get there. And so what happens to most people who go after big P purpose? They fail. And so the world is trying to get us to co opt that version of purpose. Why? Because influencers want to

sell things, and they want you to follow them. Advertisers want you to buy their products. So if they can just sell you this big, audacious version of purpose, they can get you to buy their thing. But that version of purpose is making us feel horrible, and that's why there's a crisis, because everybody is telling us what to be, and usually those things aren't particularly healthy for us, and they don't particularly make us happy. Big P purpose is always bad because it's goal oriented.

And so here's the problem with big P purpose, we make these huge, big, audacious goals, and often it causes us to do things we don't enjoy the process of doing. Let me talk about podcasting. I love podcasting. I'm a podcaster. When I podcast, it is little P purpose for me, which means I love doing it. I get in front of the mic and I interview someone, and that hour is the best time of my life, even if no one ever hears that episode. It was so worth it because I enjoyed the process of

doing it. But I could decide that I want a million downloads a month, and that could be my big audacious goal. But here's the problem, in order to get there, I'm going to have to do some work, and part of that work is going to be things I really hate doing, like I don't like making Tiktok reels, I don't like being on Instagram, but if I really want to get those

million views, I'm going to have to do that. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to spend all my time doing things I don't like 85 90% of my time so that I can reach that goal, which I'm happy with for about 5% of the time. And then I habituate back to my regular level of happiness. And then I gotta double down and go after 2 million and then I'm back to doing things I don't like doing. You can have big, audacious goals, but when you

pursue little P purpose, you are goal agnostic. What does that mean? So I can love podcasting, and I can decide that a million downloads a month is my big, audacious goal, but it's still little P purpose, because guess what? If I get there, great. If I don't get there, great, because I'm still doing something I love doing. It only becomes big P purpose when you start changing what you're doing to things you don't enjoy the process of doing, and that's where we go wrong.

has to do with the difference between meaning and purpose. And so I think happiness is meaning and purpose. You need both. A lot of people look at me and go, well. Are crazy. Meaning and purpose are the same thing. Here's where I think they're different and why it's important. Meaning is about our past and it's all about our thoughts. It's the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves, and it's generally a journey to enough. What I mean is happy people tend to tell themselves

heroic stories about their past. They see the past, they realize there was hardship and trauma and difficulty, but they were able to get through it, and that's why they are where they are today. And then they look at the present future and say, Well, I was able to get through in the past, so I'm going to do well in the present future. They feel like they're enough on the inside, and so they'll continue to be enough. Unhappy. People

tend to tell themselves a victim story about the past. The story they tell about their past is, I had these traumas, I had these problems, and I was thwarted, and so when you get to the present, they still feel thwarted, and they feel they'll be thwarted in the present and future. So they never feel like they made it to enough. Purpose is very different from meaning. It's not about your thoughts and it's not about your past. It's about your present and future, and it's all about actions. It's

doing the things that light us up. Here's where people go wrong. They go wrong when they don't have a good sense of meaning and they don't feel enough. And so instead of going back and dealing with that not feeling enough, they try to purpose their way to enough, or purpose their way to happiness. How do they do that? They set a bunch of big, audacious goals, and they convince themselves, if they just reach those goals, they're going to be happy. I call this the achievement

treadmill. It's those people who keep on running on the treadmill, getting achievement after achievement, and they still think they're going to make them happy, and they don't, and they have to go to the next big, audacious goal to get there. Steve Jobs and Elon Musk. These are two people who've achieved almost everything. They've made almost all the money there is to make in the world, and both of them have looked mostly miserable most of their lives. The reason is, I

believe, is they have an issue of meaning. Steve Jobs was adopted, and it's been well documented that he never came to terms with this idea, that he never felt he was enough through his adoption issues, and he kept on trying to prove himself through creating all this amazing stuff. Elon Musk suffered issues with his dad and got teased as a kid. I think a lot of this is a meaning problem. So what's wrong with the big, audacious goals and pushing ourselves to achieve

more? I think we're trying to prove our enoughness, and you could be as successful as Elon Musk and Steve Jobs, and it still won't make you actually happy. It'll just make you double down and want to reach the next thing. And so that's my problem, being two achievement and big P purpose oriented is a lot of people are trying to prove their enoughness with it, and it just doesn't work. The way you prove you're enough is to go back and deal with meaning, not necessarily. Can't

purpose your way there. And so I think you set yourself up to be a little bit unhappy as long as you're enjoying what you're doing, that's fine.

you do have to decide what to build purpose around. And most of us, because of social media, because of society, we're trying to build purpose around these really big, goal oriented, difficult things to pursue. And so we feel lots of anxiety, because a lot of times we set the goal so high we can't reach it, and a lot of times we find ourselves doing things we don't

of purpose in your life. And there are tons of studies that show this, but then there are other other studies that show so that's why there's so much purpose anxiety, is because a that up to 91% of people have purpose anxieties. The question is, how can it be like both the most nourishing thing that gives lot of times, really, all these forces are pushing us to do us the health, happiness and longevity, but also the most

frustrating thing that gives us all the anxiety? What I believe stuff that probably doesn't light us up, that probably isn't is we get purpose wrong. We think it's only one thing, but it's actually two things, and one of those things is healthy unique to us, but it's some version of either what society for you, and one of them isn't. That's that differentiation. Little P purpose is probably what's associated with all those is trying to tell us or what society is trying to sell us.

good things, and big P purpose is probably what's more associated with the anxiety and stress.

legacy. That's just a financial plan. I'm looking at leaving a part of yourself that exists even after you've left this world. So I always give the example, actually, of my maternal grandfather. My maternal grandfather was born and lived throughout the mid 1900s he, in fact, died in the 1960s so I was born in 1973 I never even met him, but he had a version of purpose that was very much little P purpose. He loved math, not because he could make a living at it, not because it

was going to change the world. He loved it, because he just loved it. So back in the 1950s when my mom was a little girl, she'd sit on his lab and he would show her all his spreadsheets where he was writing in all the numbers in the boxes, and he was lit up and excited about this. So my mom did what kids do is she tried on that identity. She's like, Well, my dad loves this. Maybe this fits me. She found it did, and she eventually became a CPA just like him. Here's where the magic

comes in. When I was a little kid, I had a learning disability and couldn't read. And in fact, while all my friends were on their basic readers, I was pretty much coloring with a crayon in a drawing book. Basically, I wasn't making any headway. I would have thought I was lost, except I was really good at math. In fact, I was at the top of my class at math, because, like my mother, I had taken on some of that identity because I saw that she loved it. It was her purpose. I thought

this is something I could do too. I eventually got over my learning disability. I became a doctor, and in my early days as a doctor, I had a patient who came into the hospital, a young guy who kept on getting admitted almost near death with dehydration. Because I loved math, I happened to notice a connection between two of his lab results, and we diagnosed him with a rare disease. That rare disease we treated with a

simple medicine. And guess what happened? He was a pastor at a church, and he took in homeless kids and would give them shelter, connect them to social services, all those kind of things. So let's think about this, my maternal grandfather, who died in the 1960s because of his love of math, like a pebble dropped in the ocean, it displaced a touch of water, and that water formed waves that added to other waves at times to become big and mighty and got smaller at other times and

dissipated. But over 60 years, it's still landing on beaches hundreds of miles away. His life had impact. It had legacy. Part of him still exists because of what he loved, and I think that's a lot more attainable for people than to worry about all these big, audacious things they're gonna do, which they may or may not succeed at.

to do their own things. But we see this all the time, like in a grandchild or a great grandchild, someone who has a love of music that their great grandparent had, someone who walks or has the mannerisms that their grandfather had. These are parts of our legacy. It's the part of us that we pass along. And the beautiful thing about that is your money will disappear, and even the fantastic achievements you did will probably disappear, but won't. What won't disappear

those pieces of yourself that you pass on. And so I think that's legacy.

me today. I took care of a patient who back when he was in his 20s, he had this dream, and the dream was to hike Mount Everest. He wanted to climb Mount Everest, and he was in the middle of a corporate career, and he was doing really, really well, and he was moving up. And he decided in his early 20s to take a year off, which everyone told him he shouldn't do, to train and then to go climb Mount Everest. And so he did that. He trained. He went to climb Mount Everest. They made it past base

camp. The weather change. First. He eventually had to come back down. They never made it to the top. He ran out of time. He went back to working. I met him in his 40s when he was dying of leukemia, and all he wanted to talk about was his time on Mount Everest. All he wanted to talk about was what it felt like to be out there trying to climb this fantastic mountain. He didn't complain that he failed, right? He ultimately didn't make

it. But what he really regaled us with was this idea that he had the courage to do this thing that was deeply important to him and that really had an impact on me. Doesn't matter if you succeed or fail, but one day, you're going to die and you're going to look back and say, did I do those things that were deeply important to me, or did I put them off? So he failed the big, audacious goal of getting to the top, but he loved the

process, and that's all that mattered, right, right? And so he could have, back in his 20s, he could have said, You know what, everyone's right, I should stick to my career. I'm gonna keep moving up. I'll get to it later. Well, the poor guy died in his 40s. There never may have been a later.

their biggest successes, what were their biggest failures? And the one I specifically want to focus on is, what are their regrets? And so this is an attempt to help reconcile their life, even though they don't have the agency to change things anymore, right? They're not going to go back and climb Mount Everest if they didn't do it, they didn't do it. But here's where the magic comes in. What if we take that knowledge and bring it to young people and other people who aren't dying?

What if we ask them that big question, if you found out you were going to die next week, what would you regret that you never had the energy, courage or time to do? And once you figure out what those regrets are, let's turn those into what I call purpose anchors. Those are inklings of something that could be purposeful. And then let's build a life of purpose around

them. Let me give you a great example. I came to the conclusion about 10 years ago that if I didn't traditionally publish a book and I died, I would always regret that I never tried. And so for me, that was something I could turn from a regret into a purpose anchor. And so I started building a life of purpose around that, and eventually wrote my first book, taking stock. And so I think this idea of using regrets to our benefit is something that we all should be doing. Take a

lesson from the dying. Let's start thinking about it a lot earlier, though.

anchors, to start building a life of purpose around. So it is true, there's some ways to start thinking about purpose anchors. We just talked about one, which is the life review and the regret question, that's a great way to start think about what you'd regret if you were dying. And let's turn that into a purpose anchor, another easy way. I won't go through all of them, but another easy way to start thinking about purpose anchors. Think about your joys of childhood like, what did you

love when you were a kid? A lot of times, as we get older, we start focusing on school and we drop all those things that feel purposeful to us. So what were the posters? What were the drawings? What were the metals you had in your childhood room? Could those be some purpose anchors last but not least, and I described this with my career. If you subtracted everything you didn't like about your career, what would be left when I subtracted everything I didn't like about being a doctor, I

found a purpose anchor, which was hospice work. And so those are some real constructive ways to start building purpose anchors so that you can then start creating the life you want to live full of purpose.

are doing all the difficult, hands on care. So the legacy through hospice is to pretty much say, Look, everyone asks me, how do I have a good death? I mean, I get that all the time, especially young people, like you're a hospice doctor, you know, how do I assure that I have a good death? And I always tell people, you tend to die the way you live. And so if you lived a good, happy life, you're gonna have a good, happy death. And if you lived an anxiety filled unhappy life, you're

probably gonna have an unhappy death. So the way to have a good death is to have a good life. And so the way to have. A good life is to start thinking about these really important things now, and that gets back to purpose. The legacy for the kids is much easier, right? So for my kids, my legacy is to model a deeply engaged adult who's pursuing really purposeful activities, because I want them to have that model so they can go and pursue their own purposeful, light filled life.

And so that's really the legacy I want for them. Is I want them to see me so deeply engaged in my life that they build a life exactly the same for themselves, so they feel all that kind of same joy and fulfillment that I've spent, you know, a good 50 years trying to get to.