Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hey everyone, it's Jay Sheddy and I'm thrilled to announce
my podcast tour. For the first time ever, you can
experience on Purpose in person. Join me in a city
near you for meaningful, insightful conversations with surprise guests. It
could be a celebrity, top wellness expert, or a CEO
or business leader. We'll dive into experiences designed to experience growth,
(00:25):
spark learning, and build real connections. I can't wait to
meet you. There are a limited number of VIP experiences
for a private Q and a intimate meditation and a
meet and greet with photos. Tickets are on sale now.
Head to Jaysheddy dot me forward slash Tour and get
yours today. Hey everyone, welcome back to On Purpose. I'm
(00:49):
so grateful you're here and I can't wait to dive
into today's episode because we're talking about something that affects
all of us. It's trending right now, it's buzzy right now. Now.
The thing that we all think about longevity. Can we
live a longer, healthier, more meaningful, more energetic life. Longevity
(01:10):
isn't just about having more years, It's about having more
life in your years. I recently had the incredible opportunity
to speak at the Longevity Summit, where I shared insights
on how mindset, habits, and purpose play a crucial role
in how we age. In this episode, I'm breaking down
the science backed habits, mindset shifts, and daily routines that
(01:35):
can help us not only extend our years, but make
those truly the best years of our life. So, whether
you're in your twenties, forties, or beyond, this episode is
for you. It's never too early and it's never too
late to start making changes that can transform your future.
I can't wait for you to hear this keynote. Let's
(01:57):
get into it. The number one health and Well the
podcast Jay Sheidy, Jay Sheddy See ones the only Jay Sheddy.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
We all know that purpose is one of the keys
to longevity. There's a fifteen percent reduction and all causes
immortality if you have purpose. Jay is the expert on purpose.
He is the host of one of the top health
of all this podcasts in the world, On Purpose. If
you don't listen to this, you have to download it.
(02:27):
He's an entrepreneur, a best selling author, proud to call
you my friend, and I start every morning with the
five minute Daily Jay and the call Map, and we
are so lucky to have them do this live for
us today to kick us off, And he told me
everything we're hearing today is brand new content. No one
(02:48):
else has really heard this ever before. So with that, Shay, thank.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
You, thank you saying that good morning everyone. It's wonderful.
It's always relieving when your doctor introduces you on stage.
It's a new experience for me. But thank you Darshan
for being a dear friend and an incredible doctor to
me personally. I'd like to start off, as Darshan said,
(03:14):
with a grounding meditation to get us all in this space.
How many of you have been traveling lately. Maybe you've
got travel plans this summer and you're thinking to yourself,
I really hope that I can capture these memories with
my loved ones and family that you want to keep
them inside of You want to take a mental picture.
So what I'm going to guide you through today is
(03:36):
a practice that I love to share that we can
use to take a mental picture wherever we are in
the world. So when you're with your children, when you're
with your partner, when you're with your friends and loved ones,
how can you take that experience with you everywhere for
the rest of your life. So what I'd love to
do is, I'd love for you to keep your feet
(03:56):
firmly grounded in case you have them crossed over. I'd
love you to put your phones away, it's not that
kind of a meditation. And I'd love you to release
anything from your hands, whether it's pens, notebooks, whatever else
it may be, so that you can truly be free.
And I'd like you all to take a moment to
(04:19):
just look around this space and bring your awareness to
five things that you can see, and I want you
to observe them a bit more deeply than you ordinarily would.
The colors, the shades, the shapes. Bring your awareness to
(04:50):
five different objects in this room, looking at them closer
than usual. And when you found your five, taking a
(05:11):
deep breath and gently and softly close your eyes. What
are four things that you can touch? Maybe the clothes
that you're wearing, the seat beneath you, the texture of
(05:36):
the floor. Notice the temperature of the four things that
you can touch. Is it cold or warm? Is it
harsh or soft? Bringing your wears to four things you
(06:01):
can touch, Taking a deep breath and out, what are
three things that you can hear? The sound of your breath,
(06:28):
something in the background. No sound is a distraction, only
a point of focus. Taking a deep breath and out.
(06:59):
What are two things you can smell? A fragrance, a
scent cleanly washed clothes, breathing that scent becoming present through smell.
(07:29):
Taking a deep breath and out, what's one thing you
can taste? Maybe some breakfast morning coffee become present through taste.
(08:03):
And now repeat after me. I am where my feet are.
I am present in this moment. I am here right
now with the five things you could see, the four
(08:32):
things you could touch, the three things you could hear,
the two things you could smile, and the one thing
you could taste. You're now truly in this moment. And
when you're ready, in your own time, at your own pace,
(08:52):
you can gentle in softly, open your eyes and just
experience the moment. Does that feel good? Yeah? Thank you
so much for taking part. Thank you for holding that
space for each other, and thank you for holding onto
your coughs. I know it can be hard, some of
(09:16):
you've ruined it a little bit, but for the rest
of you, thank you so much. So as Darshan said,
today we're talking about searching for purpose, and it's a
really interesting quest that we're on searching for purpose. And
(09:36):
as I was putting this together, I was often thinking
about what else do we search for? Often? And I
was thinking about how much time we spend searching for
what to watch? Every night? My wife and I did
this yesterday evening and we sat there and watched roughly
two minutes and twenty nine seconds of seven different shows,
(10:00):
and then gave up and went to bed. And so
I googled it this morning, saying how much time do
we spend every morning, or every day or every year
searching for what to watch? And the answer is forty
five hours, forty five hours a year are spent deciding
what to watch. And I was thinking, what if we
(10:22):
put that forty five hours into searching for purpose? Right?
All of us? We were busy people. We don't have time.
It's very hard to find that five minutes we just
did a five minute meditation. It can be very challenging,
but we spend about seven minutes a day wasted on
deciding what to watch, forty five hours a year and
that time just disappears. What if we were able to
(10:42):
redirect that. Now, what's really interesting about the word purpose?
And Darsha and I were just talking about this. I
think so many of us know what it feels like
to chase success. It felt very tangible, it felt very obvious.
There were clear minds, there were clear things to measure.
There was clear data, the promotion, the company, the exit right,
(11:07):
there were clear points. There were clear milestones as to
how we get there. And I think we know that
we understand that we were trained since we were young
people to be successful. It was part of our DNA,
it was part of the college. You went to the parents,
you had the people you were around. And then at
one point everyone started to talk about happiness, and that
(11:30):
was completely the opposite. There were no milestones, there was
no data, there were no metrics, and it was kind
of confusing. And then we started to realize that happiness
wasn't as tangible and holdable, and it was a feeling.
And maybe happiness was a hard thing to look for
in difficult times. Maybe you went through the loss of
a loved one, maybe you went through a really uncomfortable
(11:54):
process giving birth to a child. Maybe there was just
loads of discomfort and difficulty in happiness just feels like
a very far off, distant thing to even understand. And
I think purpose and what I aim to do today
is to start helping define the measurable, the milestones, the
(12:16):
formula of what it could be, what it might be.
It's not perfect yet. We're not there yet. We don't
have the level of clarity because it's new. We're still
figuring it out. The research is new, but we do
know that it helps reduce stress. We do know that
it has positive markers when it comes to inflammation. We
do know that people who have purpose in life live longer.
(12:40):
So how can we start to understand what purpose is
tangibly in a physical way that we can feel it,
Not in a woo woo way right, not in a
way that's like, oh yeah, one day it'll be nice
in it, but no, what does it actually mean? I
want to start off by sharing with you a story
that I was often told in the mind, and it's
a story that the Buddha would tell. And the Buddha
(13:03):
often shared this story about an individual who was on
a journey, an individual just like you and me. This
person on their journey came across their first obstacle. Now
their first obstacle was not millennials. Their first obstacle was
(13:26):
not annoying board members, and their first obstacle was not
how to get investments. This person's first obstacle was a
fast flowing river and the person had to cross to
the other side to continue their journey. Now this person
didn't know what to do, but he knew that the
river was fast, so he decided to build a raft.
(13:50):
So he got bamboo. He laid it out, put down
two rows, tied it up with some rope in the corners.
He even managed to make himself an awe. He got
on top, and he paddled and paddled and paddled as
fast as he could with all his energy and all
his strength and all his money. Finally made it to
the other side, and he thought to himself, this raft
(14:13):
saved my life. I'm going to take it with me
everywhere I go for the rest of time. I'm sure
you can think of things in your life that feel
that way. So he strapped the raft to his back,
and he decided to walk with this raft on his
back forever because this raft saved his life. And just
(14:35):
like us, he came to another challenge. Now his second
challenge was not an ipo. His second challenge was a
tall wooded forest with trees dotted at every step, And
as he walked in with his raft, the raft.
Speaker 3 (14:54):
Just kept getting stuck, and he was trying to maneuver,
and he was trying to get through, and he was
trying to figure it out, and the raft just get
knocking and chipping and breaking and falling apart.
Speaker 1 (15:05):
And the Buddha says that in this moment, this person
had a really interesting dilemma and an important decision to make.
The question the person had to answer was do they
hold on to this raft that saved their life and
try and make their way through, knowing that not only
(15:28):
will it be harder, but the raft may even break,
or do they leave it on the floor and walk
through freely. The Buddha told this story naturally as a
metaphor for our lives. All of us may have had
so many mindsets, so many habits, so many practices that
(15:48):
got us to where we are today, and they saved
our life. There's no doubt about it. They were brilliant.
The mindsets you've developed, the habits you've developed, the patterns,
they have been fulfilling and amazing and I think this
is a mistake that successful people often make, is that
we judge the skills and habits that got us to
(16:10):
where we are. And what that creates is this critical
culture inside of our minds and our hearts where we
hate what we became in order to get to where
we are. And then we're in an uncomfortable place because
now we're trying to grow from a place of hate.
We're now trying to move forward from a place of pain,
(16:30):
rather than saying, actually, what got me here is beautiful.
This raft is fantastic, it's brilliant. It's just not necessary anymore.
And there's a beautiful Zen proverb that says that letting
go is hard, but holding on is harder. And so
as I walk you through this today, I ask you
to reflect on what are you holding on to? What
(16:53):
is something that you know doesn't work anymore? But because
of habit, because of pattern, because of routine, because of systems,
whatever it may be for you, you've held onto it
for maybe six months too long, maybe three months too long,
maybe two years too long. There's something in your life
(17:15):
that isn't letting you move forward because you're holding onto it,
not because there's something in front of you, but because
there's something behind you that you're stuck to and attached to.
So before we define what purpose is, I want to
define what purpose isn't. Your purpose does not have to
be your job. I think over the last few years,
we've seen a lot of research and studies that makes
(17:37):
it feel like if you can make money from something
and you're good at it, that becomes your purpose. And
I found that to be extremely limiting when I started
to look at the research behind purpose. I also found
it extremely limiting when I started to think about the
number of people in the world who may never be
able to achieve that it was an idea that actually
felt outdated and useless. It wouldn't be scalable, it wouldn't
(18:01):
be possible for multiple people to experience purpose that way.
Your purpose does not have to be big. I think
a lot of the times there's this pressure, especially if
you've already been successful, that the next thing you do
has to be bigger, The next thing you do has
to be better, the next thing you do has to
be bolder. And I've seen that waste people's money, time, energy, effort,
(18:23):
and life away because the mismanaged resources of wanting to
do bigger, better, more leads us down a different path.
Your purpose does not have to make you money. Your
purpose does not have to make you famous, And your
purpose is not a person. This one's the hardest one
to stomach, and this one I only learned when I
(18:46):
was writing my last book, Eight Rules of Love. I
sat down with couples who'd been together for thirty or
forty years, and one of the clearest things I heard was,
at one point, someone is the relationship prioritized the kids
as their purpose. But then thirty years on, when the
(19:09):
kids had moved out, gone to college, started their own lives,
felt like they didn't know what their purpose was anymore
because their identity was wrapped around a person. And that's
the hardest one. Because a person can become our purpose
very easily. It becomes really easy to get fixated and
wrapped up in an individual. Maybe you've even done it
(19:30):
in a toxic partnership where the person became your project,
and because you see them as a project, you can
see it as a purpose. But a person can't be
your purpose. So as we dive into this and we
started defining what purpose is, this study stood out to
me the most, and I'm going to go through this
(19:51):
with you because this research showed who found the most
meaning and purpose in life. The first was people who
strongly agreed, which I think will be very easy in
this room. People who strongly agreed that hard work is
(20:11):
the reward hard work in and of itself. Now, I
don't think I need to explain that to anyone in
this room. I feel everyone in this room feels very
comfortable with that. So you can see that the percentage
of people who strongly agree their life has meaning, they
strongly agreed hard work was in itself the reward. The
second one, again very easy in this room. Strong belief
(20:32):
in personal agency, that your behaviors and your actions actually
make a difference, That you know that what you decide
to do, what you choose to do, what you invest in,
has value. Again, I feel a sense of contentment in
this room on those two. Am I right? Give me
a show of hands. If you agree that the first
two feel like wins, put your hands up. If the
(20:54):
first two do not feel like wins, and put your
hand up. If you don't, put your hand up, no
matter what I say, thank you for the honest, one
honest person in this room, Thank you so much first
who were pretty clear on third one again highly emphasizes
personal responsibility, a sense of personal responsibility, And the reason
(21:15):
why I'm sharing these with you is because for those
of you who have children or have young people in
your lives, I think these three are often what so
many Gen Z and millennials are struggling with, the feeling
that personal agency exists, the feeling that responsibility matters, the
feeling that hard work can be the reward. You may
have mastered it, but the people around you may actually
(21:36):
be struggling with this, and our desire to coddle in
society maybe losing that effect. So those three may be
for people in your life, may not for you. The
last three are my three favorites for this room. The
last three are the ones I want you to bring
your attention to. High compassion. People who had more meat
(22:00):
and purpose in their life were highly compassionate. That's a
really fascinating one, and I'll break down what I mean
by that. Often what we find is when how many
of you have done hard things in your life, raise
your hands if you believe you've done hard things right,
What often happens is when we do hard things we
(22:23):
become more hard hearted as we do harder things, is
we break boundaries as we define limits. What often happens
is we create a sense of a feeling that we've
done hard things and other people should be able to
do them too. That often that what we've done, somewhere subtly, subconsciously,
(22:46):
there's a belief system that other people need to step
up and get their act together. And it may not
be as harsh or extreme as that, but there's a
subtle feeling of how doing hard things makes us a
slight hard hearted. But actually, what we realize is that
the people that are happier and have meaning and purpose
(23:06):
in life, they've found that doing hard things made them
more soft hearted. Why because they realized how hard it is.
They actually recognize how difficult it is to be disciplined,
to be focused, to be organized, to be dedicated, to
be committed, to be loyal. That is so challenging that
(23:30):
when you meet someone who's struggling with those things, you
actually feel compassionate because you realize you take a moment
to honor how hard it was for you to do it.
And this is a really intricate, subtle point. The challenge
we have with being compassionate to others as high performers
is because we struggle with compassion with ourselves. How many
(23:54):
of you know that showing yourself a little more grace
and kindness would be a useful asset in your life.
How many of you have said something really critical to
yourself in the last twenty four hours? Wow? Right, so
fascinating to me. As high performers, you are really confident
(24:17):
and really critical. Right, It's like this crazy in between
that you experience. If you can walk into the room
and you can know you can own it, and when
you walk out of the room, you're criticizing yourself of
how you didn't own it. Right. That's what it means
to be a high performing individuals. That's how it works.
But the challenge becomes that we lose our compassion with
ourselves and meaning in purpose. Are far more tied to
(24:39):
compassion than criticism. They're far more tied to collaboration than competition.
They're far more tied to care and kindness than they
are to competing with someone else or comparing ourselves to
someone else. So high compassion where and I leave this
with you for this section of think about over the
(25:01):
next twenty four hours where you can show some compassion
to yourself, and where you can show some compassion to
anyone else. Try for the next twenty four hours when
someone shares their story with you, and in your head
you're thinking, come on, get over it. Come on, it's
not that bad. Come on, it's not that bad. I'll
(25:21):
tell you a story, right and I'm sure you have
legitimate stories. Take a moment to see where in your
own heart you've locked some compassion for yourself. This one
is my favorite point of all of them. The fifth
point on this list people who had a strong sense
(25:42):
of meaning and purpose in their life. Low envy. Envy
was extremely low. Right now, I can't wait for a
Durshan and next self to invent a envy marker. Right
I'm waiting for a Dushan. You gotta find a way
to measure this envy marker inside all of us and
give yourself a score. But it's what we need because
(26:05):
you know this better than I do, and you know
I'm sure you know people. We know people who've achieved
everything you could possibly want to achieve and still feel envious.
I remember sitting down with a client who was the
number one person in his industry at the time, and
I remember sitting down for my first meeting with him,
(26:26):
and when I'm doing my purpose analysis, kind of like
what you do with your doctor's analysis and your bloods
and everything else. I did my analysis and I often
asked the question who are you envious of? So I
don't ask who's your competition? I ask who are you
envious of? And this person who is number one in
their field, global icon, well known, one of the you know,
(26:49):
most well known people in the entire planet, named another
person who's number one in their industry in a completely
different industry, not in their field, in a completely different field.
And I was sitting there completely confused, and I was thinking, why,
how like you have everything that that person has, like
whether it's finances, whether it's physical appeal, whether it's attracting
(27:15):
you know, a partner, whatever it is, you have all
those same superpowers that I see in that individual. And
I asked them, why are you envious with that person?
And they said, because I feel that that person is
loved fully, that that person is fully loved. And I said, well,
you haven't checked Reddit or Twitter for a while, right, Like,
(27:37):
there's no one who is loved fully in the world.
That's just not true. There's no one. And it was
just a really fascinating thing for me about how no
matter how high you go high envy is a cancer
that will destroy everything. It will eat up all all
the goodness in your life, whether it's a beautiful partner, family, job,
(27:59):
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Not only is a tough one because the challenges, we
automatically look at it as negative and that belief that
we have again we go into that hypercritical mindset. We
judge ourselves for being enviers. We get critical, oh gosh,
they've got so much endy inside of me, right, and
(29:48):
that mindset that guilt blocks growth. I think this is
a really important point that guilt blocks growth. Shame blocks growth.
Guilt and shame are not great incentivizes long term in
order for us to experience transformation. So what do we
do with our env with our envy, we lean into it.
(30:12):
What are we genuinely envious of? Let's actually study our
env let's actually take note of it. Is it a signal?
Is it a sign? What is it showing us? What
are we specifically envious about that person? Right? My client
going back to them, they were envious with this person
because they believed that they were fully loved. As soon
(30:32):
as I started showing them how they weren't, all of
a sudden, their envy started to break because they'd built
up an imagination and a visual and a concept of
who this person was. Beyond the truth. It was an
illusion version of who this person was and what they'd achieved.
It wasn't real. What's the illusion that you need to
(30:52):
burst to burst your envy? We always talk about that, right,
We always say that people on Instagram it's just their
highlight reels, it's not their real life. We hear again
and again and again. But internalizing that with the person
that we admire, what is it about them that we
truly envy? What does that show us about what we
want to pursue in our life? Because maybe there's something
(31:13):
for us to learn and gain and study, and that
leads us onto the last one, which is common people
with high meaning and purpose admire high achievers. Sixty three
percent of those people who felt meaning and purpose in
their life admire higher achievers. What can our envy teach us?
What is your envy exposing as a potential goal for you,
(31:35):
as a potential focus for you, as a potential pathway
for you that you're actually blocking yourself off from because
we're judging ourselves for being enviers. So notice these are
the shifts. And I think anytime you're not feeling meaning
or purpose in life, this is a great mark ro
a metric to come back down to. Am I feeling
(31:56):
higher low envy? Is there a place I can improve
my compassion and inca is my compassion? How can I
study the person I might be envious off? Where is
that going to come from? Where am I going to
learn that from rather than putting it aside? So what
I want to share with you is I looked at this,
I looked at some more research, and I came up
(32:16):
with five checking systems that each and every one of
us can do in our lives. You can do this
with your family and friends without asking someone what's your envy? Level,
which may be a bit intimidating language that may be
a bit more palatable and easy to do. And I'm
going to give you five markers that you can check,
(32:37):
check in with yourself, checking with others to see if
they're going. And I've been working with people to figure
out how many of the five that they have in
order to feel a three to sixty degree level of
purpose in their life. Now I want to start off
with belonging. So the first is belonging. All the people
that had purpose in their life had a deep sense
(32:58):
of belonging. Now, belonging is something we often turn to
our families for, but that's because we become more and
more isolated from community living. We know that right many,
many years ago, we would have been surrounded by bigger families,
supportive families, would have helped each other out with the kids,
would have helped each other out with cooking. There was
far more. Now we're getting more and more isolated. I
(33:19):
live a ten hour flight away from my mom and
a twenty hour flight away from my dad. Right I'm
in a city. I lived in New York for two years.
I've lived in la for six years. I don't have
any family in either of these places, I'm isolated. No.
We have friends, of course, but there was a sense
of we've moved away. So belonging on a family level
(33:44):
isn't enough. When we're looking at the term belonging for purpose,
belonging was do I feel a part of something bigger?
Do you feel like you're a part of something bigger?
Ypo is a place of belonging, right, This is a
place of belonging. That's why you're here. And I encourage
you to make it a deeper place of belonging by
(34:07):
encouraging vulnerable conversation. I recently went on a retreat with
around sixteen people, mix of industries, athletes, artists, musicians to Bhutan.
There's an amazing trip, really really special. If you've not
been to Bhutan, I highly recommend it. It's famously known
for measuring GNH gross National Happiness not GDP. We got
(34:32):
to meet the King and understand his vision, got to
meet the former Prime Minister to understand how they've maintained
a country that really feels like you're going back in time,
but it's held on to its cultural values. You're not
allowed to you're not allowed to ski on the peaks
or try and climb them. They'll always make sure that
the ratio of trees on land is seventy percent. They
(34:54):
won't cut below that because they believe that the trees
and the mountains are say, there's a really special culture
there that they've been able to hold on to. Remember,
Bhutan is landlocked between India and China, right in between
a tiny little country, you know, surrounded by these two
big powerhouses, and they've really held on to this culture.
(35:15):
And I was asked to lead a session there to
help people be more vulnerable. And I leave this with
you to do throughout the rest of the day with
people you're getting closer to, but to increase belonging. I
encourage you to answer this one question with maybe the
person sitting next to you afterwards, or maybe someone at
lunch or whatever it may be. This I promise you
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will drop the walls, escalate vulnerability and closeness and belonging
like no other question. The question is what is the
number one thing in the world that you're scared of
being judged for? What is the number one thing in
the world that you fear judgment of? The person you've
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revealed that too now has a secret weapon so be
careful you share it with. But it's a really powerful thought.
There's an amazing author named Charles Horton Crooley who wrote
this in the nineteen hundreds. He said, the challenge today
is I'm not what I think I am. I'm not
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what you think I am. I am what I think
you think I am. Let that blow your mind for
a moment. He said, The challenge today is I'm not
what I think I am. I'm not what you think
I am. I am what I think you think I am.
Let me break that down, which means we live in
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a perception of a perception of ourselves. If I think
you think I'm smart, I feel smart. But if I
think you think I'm weak, then I feel weak. We
allow what we think others think of us to define
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how we think about ourselves, and we live in what
he called the looking glass self. We live in this
kind of perception matrix for our whole lives, never really
bursting the bubble and breaking out of it. So belonging
can only exist when it's not based on fitting in.
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Belonging can only exist when we're actually our truer selves.
Belonging can only exist if we are truly open and vulnerable,
because otherwise all you have is a culture of people pleasing.
So belonging for a lot of us has ended up
in people pleasing because we say the right thing, we
do the right thing, we wear the right thing so
that we can fit in, We say the right thing
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so that we can fit in. But we don't feel
belonging because we don't feel seen, heard and understood because
we've never shared that part of ourselves. Being belonging is
feeling a part of something bigger and being a part
of something bigger. Why Peter is a great place to
actually experience that and to develop that and to invest
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in that. And what's really interesting is a few probably
about ten years ago, I was reading something that was
talking about how what was important in society was defined
by the height of a building. So back in the day,
a few decades back, the tallest building in a town
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or a city was the church or a temple or
a place of worship, and that was considered a place
of belonging in community, right, no matter our views on religion,
that was the hope, or at least that was the goal.
That then changed to being the government building, right, the
capitol building, that became the tallest building in town. That
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became the thing that we looked towards for direction. Again,
less belonging, bit more private. And then now the tallest
building is the businesses, the skyscrapers, no belonging whatsoever. So
you can see how society, just by what we've built
as the tallest building, is switched in our priority of
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belonging in community through to business and commerce and exchange
and transaction. And so in our own lives we have
to ask ourselves, where is my belonging? Where is that
tallest building in my life? What is the tallest building
in my life? Belonging is feeling a part of something bigger,
being a part of something bigger, a place where we
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can really be ourselves. So that's metric number one. Give
yourself a point or zero points up to you. Second one,
learning this one. We've heard time and time again, but
it's a core part of it. Those who reported a
strong sense of purpose in recent spent a significant amount
of time cultivating their passions in everything from biology to art. Further,
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they did not want for their passions to simply appear
one day. They weren't hoping to stumble on something. They
were willing to invest and grow and see how something evolved. Now,
who in this room is a brilliant reader of graphs
and charts? Raise your hands? Wow, No one could tell.
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Everyone's very scared in the room about what's coming next.
That's good because I asked this a couple of weeks
ago and everyone put their hands up, and then they
didn't like what I asked next. So we realized that
everyone in this room is terrible at reading charts and graphs. Great,
apart from two people. Where were those two people? Actually? Yes?
One and okay two? What are your names, sir? Both
of you Tristan and Capill. Okay, we're relying on Tristan
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and Capill because we have no hope for the rest
of the room. Okay, great, So I'm going to show
you this I want I'm going to ask you is
I want to ask you? This is an analysis is
by MIT of two employees Twitter networks. At the time,
they expanded this out to networks in general. And the
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question I have for you a couple in Tristans specifically,
is who is more innovative, creative and impactful inside the organization?
Employee A or employee B. Okay, So if you think
it's employee B, raise your hands, make some noise. Okay,
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And if you think it's employee A, make some noise,
raise your hands. And now I'm looking at Tristan and Copple.
Tristan and Copple, what do you believe B and couple
B as well? Okay, great, you're all wrong. B is
not the right answer A. Who said he? There were
a few people who said A. Well down, all of
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you said A. You're really good at reading graphs and charts.
You can now use that. Employee A is more innovative,
create and impactful. And now I'll tell you why. And
my TA found that everyone in employee bees Twitter networks
they know people who know people who know them back,
so their network is closed. So if you have a
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new idea and you reach out to the same three
friends every time and ask them what do you think
on a WhatsApp thread, on an email chain, or an
SMS thread, whatever it may be, and you get answers back,
it's you know people who know people who know you.
That leads to echo chambers. And that's what you see
an employee bee. It's full of mini echo chambers where
you just have lots and lots of tight spaces of
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the same people with the same experiences. Everyone's kids go
to the same school, everyone goes to the same college.
Everyone had the same life experience. Everyone went on the
same summer vacation this year. Everyone wears the same sneakers. Right.
It's that kind of culture, and it's very easy to
get locked into that, especially as you're growing in your
careers and the more successful you get, it get smaller
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and smaller and smaller, and everyone's doing the exact same thing.
So that was employee. Employee A knows people who don't
know each other. The randomness and the openness of the
employee A is the strength in the learning space. So
the question I have for you is which one of
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your friends is getting uninvited to dinner? Right? The one
that looks like you, talks like you, sounds like you.
They need to get out of your life, right, they're
out there? Are they could be your best friend? I
don't care now I'm joking, But the question is if
you looked. We've always heard the old adage of you're
defined by the five people you spend the most time with.
Genuinely do that for a second, right, We've heard that
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so many times, I've rarely met people who've actually sat
down and done an audit of the five people they
spend the most time with and actually looked at how
many of them bring random ideas, how many of them
bring opposing thoughts, how many of them question, challenge and
check us on our ideas, and how many of them
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are exposing us to come completely new horizons. So this
friend that I recently met who took me to Bhutan
was one of those friends that I'd never been to
this country. I'd always wanted to go, didn't really have
any other friends who'd want to go to something like that,
but thankfully he took me, and it was one of
those experiences that I'll never forget because I learned about
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a new culture, a new history, and new it's a
new monastic tradition to the one that I lived in,
So I got to study a fully different set of
monasteries and with monk teachers that I'd never come across before.
It was a really beautiful experience and one that expands
my ability to learn and see what's fascinating to me.
So I really want you to think about that, who
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is it that you can expand in your network. Who
is it that's missing? Who is it that you haven't
come across yet? How can you make connections that are surprising,
maybe even uncomfortable in the beginning, or maybe even awkward
in the beginning. Where can they come from? So that's
learning individuality. This one's huge, and I feel everyone in
this room may have strong sense of professional individuality, and
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the question is do you get to be your personal
individual self as well? Our sense of self is an
essential ingredient to our success as a species. But what
I mean by that professional versus personal is you may
have had to become so many things in order to
be successful at work, but are those the things you
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want to be outside of work? Are those the same
skills and patterns that you want to emulate in the
personal part of your life? Because personal individuality is as important,
if not more than that professional individuality. Professional individuality has
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solved our self worth professionally, but our self esteem personally
can often conflict with that. I remember a client that
I worked with who is an athlete. His coach would
always tell him his athletic coach, not me. His athletic
coach would always tell him, you fight how you train,
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you fight, how you train, and so he used to
think of all moments as times of training. So if
he was working with if he was with his family
at a social event, but they were playing a pool game,
he would compete, because you fight how you train. So
everything became training. His professional expertise spilled over into his
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personal life, where everything was competitive because that's what it
took to win it all times, even if that meant
beating his nine year old son in a game of
chess or whatever it may have been. Where is that
professional individuality he's spilling over into personal individuality and not
allowing us to grow that personal sense of expression and
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individuality that we possess. Two more points. This one's really
fascinating and it's probably one of my favorite ones. Significance.
I was on a walk on a hike with my
wife around two months ago, maybe six weeks ago, and
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she had her first ever cookbook launching. So she wrote
this beautiful cookbook and it was coming out around six
weeks to two months ago now, and we were on
a hike just around that time, and I said that,
I said, we've been together for eleven years, married for
eight And I said that, I said, you know, we've
celebrated so many things over these last eleven years, but
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you've never written a cookbook. So I don't know how
to celebrate this moment for you, like I want to celebrate.
You've poured three years of your life into this, put
so much energy and heart and effort into this. I've
seen you like for hours, just pour every part of
your being in soul into this book. How do I
celebrate this? I don't know? And I'd love to know
what you'd like A gift? Is it? What is it? Right? Like?
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I don't know? And she said to me, she said, oh,
we just celebrated it last night. I was like what.
I wasn't invited. I was like, what do you mean?
We said? I was trying to think. I was like,
what did we do last night? That was like a celebration.
I was like, what do we do? And she goes
so I said what do we do? Like? What are
you talking about? And she said, well, last night our
friends came over. I cooked my favorite dishes from my
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book and they loved it. They really enjoyed it. That
felt like a celebration. To me, that felt like the
perfect way to celebrate, to cook what I love for
the people that I love, and I was like, wow,
thank you. I was relieved. I was like, I was
going to go and throw a big party, like if
I everyone over. I'm like, this is easy. Next time,
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I got it. But it was a really interesting point
for me for how my wife likes to be made
to feel significant. I've been with her for eleven years
and I thought I had a pretty good sense of it,
and I realized I didn't at all. I was actually
pretty far from me. I would never have said that
if you asked me to make a plan of how
to celebrate her book. So the question I want to
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leave you with is, with the people you love in
your life, do you know how they like to experience significance?
And for you, do you know how you like to
experience significance? Because most of us are that person that says, oh, no,
I don't need anything, don't worry about my birthday, It's okay,
and then on the day of your birthday you're like, wait,
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why is no one doing anything? Wait, like you know
what's going on. A lot of us have created this
modesty around celebration. As we get older, we're scared to
ask for what we want. We're scared to be open
about how we want to be made to feel significant
for ourselves by others and to others. But a big
part of purpose and meaning is knowing how to make
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people we love significant. That creates meaning in our lives
when we know what's meaningful to them, And how do
we make ourselves feel significant? What is it that we
truly need to feel a sense of significance in our lives?
Don't be shy to at least explore that on your own,
At least explore that internally. I know so many people
who after the biggest win of their life, didn't know
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how to celebrate it right the day after the biggest
win of their life, didn't have any clue as to
what to do, and they just moved on to the next,
and moved on to the next, and moved on to
the next. And we all do that. I've done that too,
And I started to realize at one point that nothing
would ever feel like I wanted it to because I
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didn't know how to experience my own significance and the
significance of the people I love. And the final one
is service. There's a beautiful study by Amy vers new
Ski and the team at the Yale School of Management.
I don't know if I'm not allowed to say Yale
in this building, but I just did. Her team in
twenty nineteen went out to research what they believed was
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the most difficult job in the world. Have a guess
an he guesses most difficult job in the world twenty
nineteen parent. They were looking for a paid, full time job,
so not parent, although I agree. Teacher, hospice closer, uber, driver, nurse, closer, president, note,
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social worker, all very close, all in the right so
healthcare is the right direction. So the answer is hospital cleaners.
They believed that the most difficult job in the world
was to be a hospital cleaner. Remember this was twenty
nineteen pre pandemic, so you can only imagine how difficult
it was post pandemic during the pandemic. So they went
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and interviewed hospital cleaners and they sat down with them
and asked them, what do you do? And the hospital
cleaner said, we clean beds, we cleaned toilets, we cleaned plates,
we clean up after people. You these things, and we
clean up after people pass away. It's an intense job.
But they described themselves as low skilled labor. In their
own words, they didn't want an interviewed more cleaners. But
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these cleaners use different words. These cleaners describe themselves as healers,
as careers, as servers. These cleaners or healers should I say,
got paid the exact same amount as the cleaners. They
worked the same hours in the same hospitals and had
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the same shifts. But somehow they saw themselves as healers
when the others saw themselves as cleaners. So they asked
the healers, why why do you call yourself healers? And
they said, because we believe that keeping the hospital clean
is integral to the healing journey of the patient. We
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believe that if the toilets are clean and the beds
are clean, people feel a sense of dignity and difficult
times in their life. We believe that if the hospital
rooms are clean, that people's families will spend more time
with them in their difficult time. We believe that if
the spaces are clean, then overall it boosts a person
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morale and confidence in their healing. I think we'd all
agree they weren't the same jobs. They had the same money,
they had the same vacations, everything was the same. Amy
Versnuski in our team coined a word called job crafting,
where they realized that it wasn't what we did, it's
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how we felt about what we did. And this is
the biggest key to meaning and purpose. How do we
feel our work is improving and benefiting the lives of others?
And how closely are we connected to that story in
a genuine way when you look up from your phones
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and look beyond your spreadsheets, and look beyond our laptops,
and look beyond our flight schedules and everything else, when
we really reflect on how is our life having a
positive impact on the lives of others? How is it
creating opportunities for others? Let me really internalize that. Let
it not be a statement on the website or a
check I write at the end of the year. How
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is that the core compass of how I navigate my
entire world? And so I leave you with this, I
call it the Bliss formula for purpose. Joseph Campbell famously said,
follow your bliss. I've always been struggling to figure out
exactly what that meant. That he pointed us in the
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right direction, and I feel a bit closer now. Belonging learning, individuality,
significance and service. Thank you so much. If this year
you're trying to live longer, live happier, live healthier, go
and check out my conversation with the world's biggest longevity doctor,
Peter Attia on how to slow down aging and why
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your emotional health is directly impacting your physical health. Acknowledge
that there is surprisingly little known about the relationship between
nutrition and health and people are going to be shocked
to hear that, because I think most people think the
exact opposite.