Finding Your Purpose, Fear, Money & Failure | Power Theory 001

What are you going to do with your life that's going to be fulfilling to you? If it's just money and by the way, for a lot of people, that's a great goal for them and that makes them very happy. Today, we're going to talk about actually finding your purpose. I often get questions about purpose. Here is one: "I've been struggling with finding my purpose in my leadership role lately. What advice do you have for someone who's feeling a bit lost in their career journey?"

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Dr. Russ Ouellette is a recognized expert in high-performance coaching, executive leadership, and organizational development. He brings a vast background of industry and functional diversity, a Doctorate in Management, and a certificate in Coaching from the Coaches Training Institute. Currently, Russ manages Sojourn Partners, an executive coaching firm in New Hampshire. Russ’s consulting centers on executive performance, firm motivation, planning, and organizational change.

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Transcript

What are you going to do with your life that's going to be fulfilling to you if it's just money? And by the way, a lot of people, that's a great goal for them, and that makes them very happy. Then I think that you know what you need to do. If your purpose is to be happy, then that's okay. And there's no judgment on either one of those things.

But money will be an obstacle, and you do have to compromise. I think sometimes we put too much emphasis on finding our purpose and knowing what that purpose is, and we have to have it scripted out. It's not going to be scripted. It's like the adversity is the good thing. It's the fire. It's the motivation.

Welcome back to Power Theory. I'm Russ Ouellette. I've been an executive coach for 20 years and have been studying organizational development for a very long time, and it is totally my purpose and my passion. This podcast series is going to be about helping people find their purpose, find their personal power, their confidence, and create great, confident leaders for the future.

Today, we're going to talk about actually finding your purpose. Often get questions about purpose. And so I have one here. I've been struggling with finding my purpose in my leadership role lately. What advice do you have for someone who's feeling a bit lost in their career journey? First of all, I wouldn't think of it as a career journey.

I think you have to think of it as your life journey. Career is part of life. It's not something that's extra or something on the side. So, I mean, I know that's a hard concept for most people because mostly we try to separate our personal lives from our professional lives. But really, it's one life. And that's just one balance and one part of it.

If we think of it as a life purpose rather than a  It's going to inform us a lot more and it's probably going to provide us a lot more happiness. You always hear it in the frame of, I want to find my purpose. I don't think you find your purpose. I think what happens is your purpose finds you.  In order to find that purpose, or in order for the purpose to find you, you need to go on a journey. 

I think that sometimes, you know, I know young people that'll say, Geez, I'm just, you know, I'm graduating from high school and I'm going to college and I don't really know what I want to do. But all my friends seem to know they're going to be doctors, lawyers, and accountants.  And what I tell that young person is, None of those people are going to be doing those things in 10 years.

They're going to be doing something totally different. They might get a degree in law. And then find themselves doing something totally different. That's pretty normal. You know, it's, it's like going on the journey in the direction of law.  As you go through that, that experience, it's going to change and it's going to morph and go in a different direction.

If we get too hung up on, I have to find my purpose, like right now, so I know exactly what I'm going to do. You know, it might work and it probably works for a lot of people. And people, a lot of people don't think about it too much. But if we are thinking about it, I almost want you to let go of it. I almost want you just to kind of, you know, dig into what direction and what journey I'm going to make.

Let me give you a kind of a metaphor here. I recently took a,  a drift boat raft with some friends and we went down the Saco river up in, up in New Hampshire. And you know, we, we're not experienced at this. We knew that we wanted to practice drift boat fishing and we knew we wanted to explore some rivers, but we're really sure exactly how to do it.

You know, I, I read some books. I looked at some YouTube videos on how to, how to do it. Uh, I'd researched what rivers I wanted to do. And the Saco seemed like a, a really good place to go. In my estimation, it would have been a three hour. You know, drift down the river with some, with some spots to fish. And maybe it's four hours.

So my, my, my friends go up there. We don't really know exactly what we're doing. We know that we're interested in rafting. We know we're interested in exploring these rivers. We're not really sure exactly the application of how to apply it, but we're interested in it. So we go in that direction, we get to the river and we realize, Oh my God, it's, it says it's four, four hours long, between four and five hours.

You know, to get down the river. So, okay, well maybe there's some places we can take out a little earlier so we don't have to spend so much time. So we put the raft in the water and we start going down. We don't know what to expect. We've checked the water levels. We know what the, so we've done our homework.

We kind of know generally what to expect, but we get in there and we find, we don't know what to expect going in. I wasn't very confident about rowing this drift boat. And, uh, one of my passengers was an expert at it. So he sat behind me and he kind of. You know, coached me as I was doing it. Well, we found ourselves getting into situations that were difficult for me to do, and his instructions weren't good enough to help me.

And I finally had to take control of myself. I needed to say, okay, stop with the advice. Cause I can't follow your instructions and I'm going to do it the way that I learned how to do it. And I started doing it my own way. And I noticed I was having some success with that. And then when we get about. We got about two and a half hours into this and I'm like, okay, well, we've had enough.

We've practiced enough. It's this boat's not meant to drift for seven hours. It's really meant to go someplace and fish. So let's try to find a place to get out.  We couldn't find a place to get out and it's hot and the sun's beating down on us. And all of a sudden I'm saying to people, make sure you drink water, make sure you drink water.

Long story short, it took us seven hours to get And I looked back and the last part of the river was so slow and there was A lot of tourists that happened to be there. So there's people all over the place and it really wasn't that enjoyable. And we found ourselves just kind of rushing to get up the river.

And we, you know, afterwards we're sitting around having a beer and we said, well, that was a, that was a rough day. You know, we didn't plan that very well. We failed at this, that, and the other thing. But after we had a beer, we reflected and we said it was actually a very successful trip.  Well, first of all, I did find my purpose with the raft.

I understand what the raft's for now. I understand what I want to do with it. It might not be, you know, it's rated for Class 3 Rapids, but I don't, I'm not interested in Class 3 Rapids. It is a fishing boat. I'm interested in fishing. I'm interested in taking it someplace and fishing with it. I, I discovered that.

I understood how to do homework. I understood how to, I practiced on how to row through some rapids. I learned so much from that experience. And I found my purpose when it comes to using this, this equipment and doing this style of, of fishing. This is what, this is almost like a metaphor for what your career life should be.

You go into it, you, you know, you, you become a,  you become a lawyer.  And you, you make a contract that says you're going to, you know, you think you want to be a lawyer, you think you want to study law, and then you get to a law firm and you realize, well, geez, it's, it's really not what I thought because in law, I really have to find clients.

Finding clients is really, what's going to help me grow this practice and, and be a big, bigger contributor to the firm. And, and you don't like that. So you didn't know that going in, but you discovered it as you went. And then you take a job as a corporate counsel. You know, at a, at a company and you begin, you know, now you're working with contracts and you, and the work kind of comes to you and you're part of this bigger team and you find out you like that, but then you realize you have some leadership skills.

Next thing you know, you're considering becoming  an executive at a hospital.  Right? Well, how can, you know, you wouldn't have predicted that you'd be an executive at a hospital when you went to law school. You, you're not going to be able to predict that. But what you did is you went on that journey. You, you, you went in, and it does take some tenacity.

It's not like you just, you know, you don't just go and quit after a year. You go and you And you learn, and at some point you need to know when to stop and when to go in a different direction. Especially if you're stressed out or you're feeling fear or there's bad things going on. But, you know, but you still need to have a little bit of tenacity, a little bit of grit.

You need to muscle through certain things. I had no choice in the river. I needed to muscle through. I think sometimes we put too much emphasis on Finding our purpose and knowing what that purpose is, and we have to have it scripted out. It's not going to be scripted. I guarantee that when you, when you go work for a corporation, you might take a job, you know, in accounting, find yourself really interested in accounting, but you really find yourself more interested in contracts, and then you find yourself more interested in doing negotiations of contracts, and then you find, then you get promoted to running the whole contracts department, and then you're so skilled that someone asks you to be a vice president at one of the divisions, and then, and this is how it goes.

I know people that worked for Anheuser Busch, who's the president of Anheuser Busch, who started sweeping floors at the plant.  Now imagine that. From sweeping floors in high school to the plant and becoming the president. And probably did it all within, within 25 years. Right? Pretty impressive. That's not unusual.

But it wasn't because it was scripted. He went on a journey and that journey stuck. I know people that got degrees in marketing that ended up transitioning into, into what I do in organizational development. I know people that barely get out of college. Barely get out of college with C's.  To turn out to be chief of staff of a fortune 100 company. 

Right. That's not an unusual story and what made these things happen is that they, their, their possibilities are opened up by allowing the journey to unfold and take place. So if, if you find yourself struggling to find your purpose in your leadership role, I think sometimes also we've got to think about what, what, what's defining the purpose.

Is my purpose to become supervisor of a department, to become president of a company, is my job? I mean, those are, those are great goals, but that's not necessarily the purpose, right? Is my purpose to work with people? Is my purpose to be creative? You see what I'm saying? Like, the, the differences don't have to be so tangible.

They can be more personal and emotional, right? What are the things that are going to fulfill us? And, and how do we find the things that are going to fulfill us? So some of the, some of the reasons why you might be feeling Uh, that you have to, you know, know that purpose right now, or you need to find, you know, you feel hurried to find it.

There are a few things. One is lack of awareness of, of kind of like Not knowing is kind of scary. If we know, if, you know, we think we can script it out and we can kind of follow that script.  And as much as we should follow some kind of goal structure or some kind of a path, we have to be able and willing to deviate from that path.

There's pressure of expectations. So listen, you know, if you need to make a certain amount of money, then you need to, you know, you have certain responsibilities, you know, my value system is you need to take care of those responsibilities. So sometimes you can't, you know, quit your job and become a photographer.

Sometimes you have to maybe. You know, wait for that time, but it doesn't mean that you can't practice photography, get into communities of photography, maybe take some side gigs regarding that, and you can't kind of evolve until you build the confidence to do that, but there are expectations. There are expectations for the people around us.

I remember when I. I was in finance for a long time and I had a very good career in finance and I remember I was starting to teach college courses and the dean or the president of the college came to me and said, Hey, you know, took me to lunch and said, you know, why don't you go to graduate school and become a doctor?

And I said, Oh, well, I don't want to do that. And I, and I, how, how can I possibly do that? I mean, I have children at home. I have Responsibilities. And, you know, I'm going to quit, quit school and go, I mean, quit work and go do that full time. And so she suggested some, some resources and I went and looked at it and I got very excited about it.

So I ended up, I ended up transitioning into coaching and there was a financial problem for that. That was difficult for me to do, but I had the support. I had the support from my family, but there were members of my family that actually stopped talking to me. And, and what's interesting is you ask her, why would that happen?

And by the way, the school I went to, the counselors told me that was going to happen. Why are people going to stop talking to me because I'm pursuing a doctorate degree and I'm going into this other direction?  It's because they, they feared for me. They were afraid for me. I mean, it was bad enough that I was afraid myself, but the people that loved me were afraid for me.

There were certain expectations that I had to fulfill. You know, I remember, you know, my dad said to me, you know, Russ, you have a family, you have two children to take care of. I mean, you need to save for your retirement. You know, how can you go off and do this? Right? Well,  I know I need to do that. I need to go in that direction.

And after some research, I decided to kind of. You know, directly go in that direction, but there are expectations of me that were, that were resistant and we see this all the time and I've seen successful people talk about this all the time. I mean, the expectation on them to do certain things, behave certain ways, and then we have also like societal expectations.

You know, when I transitioned into organizational development, it wasn't even a thing at the time. It was like, you know, it might've been used out, you know, out in Europe and South America, California, but in the Northeast coaching as a, as a, as a career was really kind of out there, right?  There was social expectations.

How are people going to perceive me? Am I going to lose credibility? You know, these for a long time, I couldn't even say I was a coach. I used to say I was a organizational consultant or something like that. It'd be all the time because I was worried about what the expectations were from other people. So there are 10 things that people encounter when attempting to find their purpose or actually execute on their purpose.

There's a lack of self awareness about what they want to do, which we kind of just talked about. This pressure of expectations, this fear of failure. Limited exposure, changing interests, lack of clarity, external pressures, culture, and societal norms.  Lack of support and overemphasis on money. Let's kind of talk about some of these things.

So I just talked about self awareness and I just talked about, you know, expect pressure of expectations.  The fear of failure is like critically important, right? All of us are living with a certain challenge in our confidence and failure is taught. You know, it's not rewarded. Uh, at least, at least it's not in school.

If failure, we know to be a very, very big value. It's a very, very big, important thing where we're going to learn the most and grow the most. But the fear of failure is something that, you know, is paralyzing to a lot of us.  And we have to learn to take risks. We have to learn to develop a certain courage.

This is the exercise I'd have people think about. What was something that they failed at before?  And most, a lot of people will, will kind of struggle to try to find something. And then they'll say something that, you know, like, well, I, you know, this happened and this happened and this, this, and you know, I failed.

And then I said, well, what'd you learn from that? Oh, they say, oh, then they, then they brighten up and they say, well, that made me learn this and did this. And then I did this other thing, right? That's how you have to embrace that. So I don't want you to, you know, do something, lose all your money, lose your house, lose your family.

You're not going to do something like that, that that's drastic, but think really put in perspective what these fears are. I'm afraid to teach that college course. Am I afraid to? You know, start taking side things, you know, on photography. I recently had someone say to me, who's in real estate and real estate's not doing that great.

Now, you know, he's so afraid to switch out of real estate because he's so invested in it. Right. And he's, and then when I asked him about doing other things. He comes up with an excuse for every one of them, and I can link that right back to, to fear of failing, or fear of being exposed, or fear of his ego, or if there's, there's a lot of things in there that, you know, people struggle with.

We really need to put that fear in perspective, right?  Limited exposure. How do we get exposed to these things? So if I want to go in a different direction, so like, so the hospital executive who was originally a lawyer, how did he get exposed to those things? Well, he probably did some networking. He probably sat on boards.

He probably exposed himself to other people, or people saw him work, and then went to him and said, you know, I think that you're really good at this, would like you to think about something else, and, and, and things evolve. Right. Someone that's been working in a company for 20 years that started out as an executive assistant, you know, slowly got exposed to other areas of the company over time until eventually she had, you know, a working awareness of all kinds of things and could actually start kind of.

Kind of strategizing and going to the things that were interesting her the most.  And for, and for the, in this particular situation, this person's really interested in finance. She's found really talented finance. And now she's pursuing being the CFO for that company. Right? Someone that was once an executive assistant.

So, you know, we have to, we get exposed by other people, and how to get to other people is to, is to get involved. I think, you know,  volunteer for something. I know it sounds silly. Get on a board. Just go volunteer. Just do something. Get engaged. Just think of it as beginning the journey. Right?  Interest change.

So, one of the hardest things in coaching when people come to me and they say, I don't know what I want to do. I don't know what my purpose is. I don't know what I want to focus my time on. It's the hardest thing in coaching because we can't pick it for you. There's not, there's not enough dialogue that I can have with you that's, you know, let's try this, let's do an interest test, let's see what things that you're good at, let's look at your values.

We can do all that work and that kind of, you know, gets people  to a certain place. But eventually, like they're looking to try to figure out exactly what it is, so now 100 percent in that and feel confident that they're going in that direction. That's not going to happen. You have to. I think changing interests is a positive thing.

You know, there was one time when I was interested in photography. So I went out and bought a camera and took pictures and quickly realized I didn't want to. Once I was interested in motorcycling, I thought I was going to do that. I really love work with heavy equipment. I was trying that. I was thinking about.

You know,  buying, I was thinking about buying a piece of an excavator and, you know, maybe in my retirement, I'd go around and dig holes for people. My wife pointed out that you won't want to do that. I rented an excavator for a week and after three days I realized, no, I don't want to do that. So it's okay to test and try different things.

You know, sometimes again, sometimes you have to have a certain grit to that. And, and like, like I, I was forced on the river to stay on the river that you got to kind of, kind of stay in that direction for a while and really learn, you know, what you like and what you don't like, but, uh, your interests will change and I think that's completely okay.

So I don't, you know, I think that that kind of feeds into really finding a purpose. And again, we talked about external pressures, right? I mean, money is a big thing, right? One of the first questions I asked when someone says, you know, I really like to, uh, think about, you know, Taking a chance on something or I want to shift into another department or something like that.

I say to them Well, you know, what's the what's the money pressure and they'll say things like oh, yeah. Well, I need to make so much money  Right. Well, that's you so that that's limiting in some extent, right? If  you're I can tell people how to make money  I mean I can tell if I can give them I can give them the number to somebody they can go to and they Can make money if you want to you know, if you wanted to make a lot of money Ten years ago, right?

I give you the number to a mortgage broker. Those people make a lot of money. Who wants to be a mortgage broker? Well, I don't want to be a mortgage broker. Well, then, then really what is it? Right? It's, it's almost like you have to be able to, you're gonna have to be able to,  you know,  mitigate that in some way.

But money is, you know, if it's overemphasized, if money is the only goal, then that's your purpose.  Figure out a way to make a lot of money. There's lots of things you can do to make money. I'm reading this as there is sacrifices or compromises that you'll need to make. Yeah, right. If I, if I'm coaching somebody and I say to them, you know, you know, what are your, what are your future, what's your future goals? 

And they'll say to me, I want a house on the beach. Awesome. That's a great goal. So.  That means do whatever you have to do. It doesn't matter what your purpose is, do whatever you have to do just to have the house on the, that's the goal. But that's not what we're talking about.  You know, what is going to, what are you going to do with your life that's going to be fulfilling to you, help you grow, help you explore, help you feel, build confidence, and get you a place that you're comfortable at some point.

If it's just money, and by the way, a lot of people that's, that's, that's a great goal for them and that makes them very happy, then I think that you know what you need to do. Right? That becomes your purpose. If your purpose is to be happy and, and do something that's interesting, then that's okay. And there's no judgment on either one of those things, right?

But money will, will be an obstacle. And you do have to compromise. One client I had I feel like this is a larger conversation about values, right?  Yeah. Right. Money is really just one value of many. Yeah, it is. And that's a, that's a great point. Yeah, you know, so when, when you're trying to figure out one of the exercises that you could do is really kind of explore your values.

So I'll ask questions like, what's the favorite part of your day?  And the person, this is a true story. A person says, well, it's coming home and seeing my dog. And I said, well, what is it about the dog? And she says, well, first of all, he's always happy. He, he appreciates me. He's, there's a certain amount of connection that I have with him.

He's, you know, it's like all my stress goes away when, when we spend time together. I have, I, I, I'm sending him to training. We're doing some training. We're doing training, you know, field training. And we're learning how to, you know, retrieve game. And he's learning how to do certain things. And that, that provides like a ton of value to me. 

So hearing that story, what do I hear? I hear all the values. I hear connection. I hear commitment. I hear, you know, helping other people grow or other, other, this other being grow, kind of being positive, right? So these, these values are different than I'm going to make a lot of money and so on and so on and so forth, right?

They're different. You have to assess what your values are and there's certain tools you can use to do that. But if you ask yourself a couple of questions, you know, you know, what do you want people to say about you when you, when you retire or, you know, what are the, what are your favorite things to do in life and you don't just write those things down, but you write down the parts of those things.

That are important, right? That tells you  that that kind of defines your value system.  Now, every time your value, your part of your value system is filled,  you're going to be happy. You're going to connect to that. That's going to be important.  Every time those values are stepped on.  So, for example, this person, you know, one of the values is connecting with people, right?

If connecting with people is something that this function or this career or this direction or this task isn't going to allow you to do, it's, it's, it'll be fun for a little while, then it's going to get old. It's not going to be fulfilling.  Me working in an excavator all day, right, it doesn't allow me the connection that I need to be able to do, that I need in my, you know, in my, in my life.

So therefore, it'll be fun for a little while, but it's not going to be lasting. So yeah, values are important. If money's a value, then you need to, you need to dig into and go in that direction. But if it's not, it's not, you know, one of the questions people say is, well, how can I run my.  You know, if I'm a leader,  or I'm an employee working for a leader,  do our values need to be the same?

I would tell you from experience that most of the human beings in the, in the professional world, or in the working world that I work with, and we do a lot of values analysis. Uh, values are pretty much the same, you know, it comes down to, you know, being productive, having respect, you know, feeling appreciated, you know, it comes down to a, a bunch of kind of common values.

Now the priority of those values might be different. Right? And then each person has another whole set of values that are different from everybody else's. So the fact is, is that your values are never gonna 100 percent match all your employees. It's just not gonna happen. There will be some common ones.

Those common ones are usually found in the, you know, when companies write Um, cultural values or they write out, you know, they make a list of the values of the company. Those are pretty, those are expectations that are pretty common to most people. But if my value is, I want to win, I want to win that contract and that might not be, you know, another person's value.

That's okay. Cause I'm going to take care of that and they're going to take care of the other thing. So I don't think the values have to match completely, but I think common, modern, kind, you know,  common values are going to be pretty much the same across the spectrum. And if people. Don't want to, you know, if being trustworthy or being, you know, having humility, if these are values of the company and they're your values and other people don't have those values, you can learn to work around them.

They will cause a little bit of conflict, but not really that bad. But if you know what those are, then you can kind of figure out where you belong and what your purpose is. Another concept that's interesting is people will say, I'll hear, um, more mature workers that are kind of towards the end of the career. 

Say what do I want my legacy to be? You know, it's like I think legacies are great, but I don't think it's something you create It's something that's born from the work that you did while you're working on your purpose So just want to clarify right so it's almost like we go on a journey  We find some purpose in that journey.

Eventually we kind of find that purpose We might become self actualized and that if we're lucky right and then the next step would be what what's my legacy? Well your legacy  You know, it's not something that you can construct at that point. It's, it's being constructed for you. So I wouldn't focus so much on the legacy.

I would just, again, focus on the journey. You know, so what are some examples of people? You know, that kind of changed their purpose, right? Uh, Markle, who was the president of Germany for a number of years, has now shifted and she's completely changing her direction and she's getting, and she's kind of finding her new purpose.

Jeff Bezos is, you know, he's not running Amazon anymore. He's going to do other things. There's lots of examples of, of, of, of leaders doing that. Churchill never found his purpose really until the end of his career. He was a failed businessman. Ulysses S. Grant was a, you know, military guy. And if you, if you read anything about Grant, it's, he was really a solid, good, hum, kind human being.

He really was a great guy. When he got into the military, he kind of found what he wanted to do. He retired from the military because of some bad situations that happened. Went into private, he, he failed every business he tried to make. When he finally went back in the military, he found his purpose again. 

He was found by Lincoln because that purpose was being fulfilled for him, right? Even though there was, there was a bad, there was a bad military record, there's all kinds of, you can go look at that whole thing and say, how the heck did he become the general of the Civil War? He, he did it because he was, he knew that's where he belonged and that's where he went.

So, he couldn't necessarily, so when he tried to change, he couldn't, and he went back to what he, what he was good at. You know, it's funny, if I have to think about, You know, stories of people that kind of have, have had to make the change. It kind of looks like this. I started out in a job. I got out of college with a degree in say, you get out of college with a degree in marketing,  and then you find yourself, you know, not wanting to be in sales.

So you decide that you're going to get into finance. You've got an opportunity to be in finance. Even though you flunked accounting in college the first time, you still, now you find yourself in finance at a Fortune 100 company, right? And then you, as you go through that process, you struggle with the numbers and the finance stuff because you don't, you have no background in it.

But you find that you're really good with people. And then they start giving you roles where you have to work with people a lot. Right? And then, and then you, you know, you decide at some point that I'm really good at, I'm really good at this other stuff, I'd really like to go in a different direction, and what usually hits you is a sense of unhappiness, a sense of fear, some, probably anxiety, there's probably some, you know, you're not probably performing at your peak.

Right, or you're over worrying, or you're a perfectionist, or whatever those things are kind of going on. Uh, maybe guilt, right? Loved ones pushing back. All that stuff's happening. What you can do is you can, you can start journaling. You can start practicing mindfulness. You can start reaching out to mentors and asking, and asking people.

You know, I would not ask your friends and I would, you know, I'd be careful about only the closest friends maybe you want to share this stuff with because everybody's going to try to be negative and tell you, you know, what's your backup plan and all that talk to people in the field or in the area you want to go in, start finding out what their journey was, do research on people that have been very successful at certain things and slowly start making that transition.

You know, if you have a certain amount of money that you need, put money aside. Right? Put a, put a note to yourself and address it six months ahead and then kind of, and then six months open it up and see if you've achieved those goals or if you're in the right place in the same place. You know, we live in a society where it's really not,  you know, it's not really hard to find a job.

If you want to find a job, you can find a job. You will be able to feed your family.  You know, you are going to have to make commitments about what the transition is. Can you validate that last statement in 2023? Because I think that sentiment has been true for a long time, but we are seeing inflation.

Groceries are incredibly expensive. Everything seems to be really expensive. Can you validate that to any further extent? Yeah, so the the  this is this is the deal people have been talking about this my whole life  When I was 18 years old Right when I bought my first house the interest rate was 18  During the Carter administration, I mean, inflation was out of control,  but if I had bought a house then it probably would be worth 2 million today.

Right? Like, it's like, you got to put this in perspective. There's an evolving thing. Now we can live in fear that the whole sky is going to fall, but that's not necessarily going to.  So yeah, the answer to the question is, if, if we're allowing, so all those are realities and we want to be smart about what we do with money and how we kind of engage in those things.

But if we're constantly worried about every little thing that's going to happen, we're going to be paralyzed and do nothing. We're just going to sit there and rot and be miserable, you know, and I think the ethos today is a little different. It's not necessarily about the ethos, you know, 30 years ago was.

You know,  let's get a job, let's make some money, let's buy a house, let's retire, let's do all, you know, that, that was kind of the plan. Today the ethos is a little different. People really want to be self actualized. People are kind of paying more attention to happiness, right? Maybe I don't want to work, you know, maybe I thought I wanted to work in, at a marketing agency  and I tried that, it didn't work.

But what I did, did like is I liked really the, you know, the writing part of that. So now I follow the writing part of that. And I find myself getting involved in, now I get a job with writing. And it might not be enough to pay the bills, right, but you have to, you muscle through that until it does pay the bills.

Right? Well, you figure out that that's not part of your journey and you go in another direction. So, I guess  what I'm suggesting is you need to go on that journey. You need to be smart about it. You need to make sure you take care of your priorities first, but, and maybe you have to wait to go on that journey.

Maybe you have to save money in order to do that. But at some point, right,  your life is calling you. To something else you might not know exactly what it is But you need to kind of at least test it and go in that direction Right and be willing and open to accept it So if we're living in fear and we're worried about interest rates and we're worried about what's going on in russia And I mean those things are real things.

I mean, I don't want you to ignore those things But if we're going to be living in that all the time, right? I think that Some of the best successes come from adversity,  right?  You know,  I think the best time to start a business is in recession. Why? Cause everybody's struggling and it's like, and, and, and, and things are going to have to change and you can kind of really be innovative about where the value is.

Right. And the people that say, well, you know, the, the, the economy sucks. So therefore I'm, I'm going to freeze up and do nothing. Right? It's gonna come out of that economy with people that were hungry and their backs against the wall and figured out new things to do and went out and did it. You see what I'm saying?

Right? It's like, it's like the adversity is the good thing. It's the, it's the fire. It's the motivation, right? If our mindset is, oh, things are tough, I'm going to hunker down. That's okay too if that, if you have the means and that's makes you happy,  you know, don't use it as an excuse to do nothing, especially if you're not happy.

So, you know, people say, you know, there's, there's lots of resources, resources you can go find and look at regarding, you know, fulfillment and self actualization. And I, you know, my advice is. Study all the ones that interest you. It's all, it's all good stuff, but you know, certain, there's certain key moments in our lives when we find, you know, we find things that are important to us regarding the purpose and might give us a little fire.

You know, I read a book, Viktor Frankl, and this is a book written after the Holocaust. He was, when he, when he went into the camps. As a Jewish person, he had his doctoral dissertation in his hand. He had it with him  and they took it from him. And this scholar, this would be scholar, used the time in the camps to study what was going on with people.

It's truly an amazing, and I think there's a lot of really good stuff in there. But my takeaway from that is basically for me, it was that we have choice, we make choices, right? And that was his thesis. His thesis was, we have a choice to make, even though he didn't feel like he made, he made many choices, the choices he, he, he did make choices when he could.

There's one example, we were standing in two lines and he had to choose which line to get in. And they were kind of. Making him go in one line and somehow he said, no, I want to go on the other line. He made the choice and went in the other line. And he only did that because he wanted to make a choice.

That's all he wanted to do. He just wanted to make a choice. We made the choice that turned out to be, and I won't tell you the punchline. He made the choice that was in his benefit. And his, the lesson to me was we all have choices. We make choices every day. It's not so much you make the right choice, just make a choice.

You're good. You're in control of your life, right? Go on that journey, make those choices as you go and enjoy it. So thanks for spending some time today. Listen to this. If you want to hear more and you want to learn more about your personal power, your personal agency, your personal success,  and your professional success, please subscribe.

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