High Performance Mindset | Learn from World-Class Leaders, Consultants, Athletes & Coaches about Mindset - 333: The Power of Purpose with Richard Leider, Bestselling Author & Keynote Speaker

Episode Date: May 2, 2020

“Why do you get up in the morning?” For more than four decades, Richard has pioneered the way we answer that question. From fast-growing start-ups, to established organizations, universities, summits, and conferences, his message has taken him as a keynote speaker to all 50 states, Canada, and four continents. Along the way, Richard has written ten books, including three best sellers, which have sold over one million copies and have been translated into 20 languages. Repacking Your Bags and The Power of Purpose are considered classics in the personal growth field. Richard is founder of Inventure – The Purpose Company and a Senior Fellow at the University of Minnesota’s acclaimed Center for Spirituality and Healing. He is ranked by Forbes as one of the “Top 5” most respected coaches, and by the Conference Board as a “legend in coaching.” Richard holds a Master’s Degree in Counseling and is a National Certified Counselor. Widely viewed as a pioneer of the global purpose movement, his work is featured regularly in many media sources including PBS public television and NPR public radio. His PBS Special – The Power of Purpose – was viewed by millions of people across the U.S. Combining cutting-edge science with positive psychology, Richard works with leaders and people of all ages of life to help them unlock the power of purpose. In this podcast, Cindra and Richard talk: · The first place to start when searching for your purpose · How purpose helps us live 7-10 years longer · Our default purpose · The Napkin Test we can use to find our gifts, passion and values · What he learned when he met Steven Covey about the 8th habit · How we have 1441 purpose moments in one day

Hey, my name is Cindra Campoff and I'm a small-town Minnesota gal, Minnesota nice as we like to say it, who followed her big dreams. I spent the last four years working as a mental coach for the Minnesota Vikings, working one-on-one with the players. I wrote a best-selling book about the mindset of the world's best and I'm a keynote speaker and national leader in the field of sport and performance psychology. And I am obsessed with showing you exactly how to develop the mindset of the world's best so you can accomplish all your goals and dreams. So I'm over here following my big dreams and I'm here to inspire you and practically show you how to do the same. And you know, when I'm not working, you'll find me playing Ms. Pac-Man.

Yes, the 1980s game Ms. Pac-Man. So take your notepad out, buckle up, and let's go. This is the high performance mindset. That purpose is not a luxury. Purpose is fundamental to health, to healing, to happiness, to longevity even. People with purpose tend to live seven to 10 years longer. The science of purpose is very clear now. And also to high performance. People who have a clear why tend to do better on the how. Welcome to episode 333 with Richard Leiter. This is your host, Dr. Sindra Kampoff, and I'm grateful that you are here. If you know that mindset is essential to your success,

then you are in the right place. And with all that we are facing in the world today, it is essential that we train our minds to stay gritty, present, and purposeful. And I think it's possible to thrive during this time, not just survive. But you need to make sure your basic needs are met. Sleep, eating well, exercise daily,

and your social needs are being met. And I've given several virtual presentations recently, one tomorrow morning for Northwestern Mutual, so I'm giving them a shout out, and last week for iHeartRadio. And that's been my message, that we can thrive during this time period, not just survive. But it starts with our mindset, which is really the only thing that we can control. And our purpose is part of that.

And this is a great time to reflect and consider your purpose. And I have a phenomenal guest for you today, and a special one to me. In 2013, I was at the Boston Marathon bombing, and I remember sitting in my hotel room after the bomb. I wasn't sure if there was a bomb in our hotel, and I remember asking myself three really powerful questions. Why am I still here? What difference do I make? And why do I do what I do? And it was life-changing for me. When I got home, I first read this book by Richard Leiter called The Power of Purpose. Because I was really searching for my purpose and what it was.

And I remember reading it, laying on my couch on a Saturday morning, searching for my purpose. This book and this man today fundamentally changed my life. And he is on with me today. Talk about a pinch me moment. And as I was listening, I was taking notes like a crazy person. So take your notebook out. This is the man to listen to and learn from related to purpose. Why do you get up in the morning?

For more than four decades, Richard has pioneered the way that we answer that question. From fast-growing startups to established organizations, universities, summits, and conferences, his message has been taken him as a keynote speaker to all 50 states, Canada, and four continents. Along the way, Richard has written 10 books, including three bestsellers, which have sold over 1 million copies and have been translated into 20 languages. Repacking Your Bags and The Power of Purpose are considered classic in the personal growth field. Richard is the founder of InVenture, the purpose company, and a senior fellow at the University of Minnesota's acclaimed Center for Spirituality and Healing. He is ranked by Forbes as one of the top five most respected coaches and by the

conference board as a legend in coaching. Richard holds a master's degree in counseling and is a national certified counselor. So in this podcast, Richard and I talk about the first place to start when you're searching for your purpose. How purpose helps us live 7 to 10 years longer. He describes the napkin test that we can use to find our gifts, passion, and values. What he learned when he met Stephen Covey and Viktor Frankl. And how we have 1,441 purpose moments in one day and what to do about that. If you enjoyed today's episode, wherever you're listening,

subscribe and give us a five-star rating and review. I would love to read your comment next week. And this is the podcast comment of the week. This is from Tabor Nagy of the Mindset Horizon podcast. He says, one of my favorite personal development podcasts ever. I know if I tune into the show, I'm going to get the tips and strategies to master my mindset and become the best version of myself. Thank you, Dr. Cinder Kampoff, for creating such an amazing show.

Keep it up. Tibor, thank you so much for your comment over there. I would love to read your comment next week. Wherever you're listening, head over and give us a rating and review. And without further ado, here is Richard. Richard, I am so grateful to have you on the podcast today. How are you doing over there near the St. Croix River? Well, like you probably, I'm hunkering down and I'm writing a new book and therefore the hunkering is, there's some real active good that's coming out of it. Oh, wow. Well, I can't wait to read that. So I look forward to hearing more about what you're working on.

And I want to give people just a little snapshot of your work and describe how I came to see it and to read more about it. And so you have three bestsellers, sold over a million copies in 20 languages. So give us a little insight into your passion and what you do. Well, my passion since the mid-60s, so I've been at this a long time, is the question, why do we do what we do? And so the whole purpose is the answer to the question, why do you get up in the morning? Yeah. And I had many fortuitous encounters that sort of awakened me to this kind of thing. And like your experience at the Boston Marathon, for example, that we chatted about briefly, right out of graduate school, I met Viktor Frankl, who wrote Man's Search for Meaning. And I spent a week with him.

I wasn't one-on-one with him. I was in a group. But I mean, I was transformed in that meeting. Because Man's Search for Meaning, he was in a concentration camp. And he said, you know, the key, not the A key to survival was having a reason to get up in the morning, be on yourself, be on your own survival. And I was so moved by that, I decided that was my life's work at that point. And so that was a fortuitous encounter that led me to my passion of helping others unlock the power of purpose. What was that like to, I mean, I've read his book, I've studied

his book and his work. What was it like to be impacted by that and to be in his presence? Well, I mean, he's, I don't even know what to, it's so transformative because, you know, his book's been sold in how many languages and has influenced so many people. But I think what really struck me was the deep credibility of having, he said, don't ask what is your purpose? Ask this question. What is life asking of me now? Like right now in this situation. So he would get up in the morning and give somebody else a kind word, a hug or crust of bread. And he was also rewriting his own book, which his wife had sewn into the lining of his coat. And the coat, of course, was gone. They didn't know where they were going or what was up for them. So when they got shipped in a boxcar, his whole family was killed, by the way,

Cindy, his whole family. He's the only one who survived. And when he was liberated from Auschwitz, he weighed 87 pounds. He went back to Vienna, Austria, where he was a psychiatrist slash neurologist. When he healed, he sat down and wrote Man's Search for Meaning in nine days. And he said this, and this is the key to the mindset and i know you're all about mindset performance mindset and he said the key to this is uh the last of the human freedoms is choice it's to choose what you want the next moment or your life to be about and so that that human freedom that choice is what you and I both deal with. And that's the choice between stimulus and response. We decide what that response is going

to be. And our mindset has everything to do with that. And that's what he would say as well. And think about the dire circumstances though, which he, that was revealed to him. Wow. Powerful. You know, so we have so many commonalities. I know you went to Gustavus Adolphus. What a great college. Yeah. And some work there with their tennis team and football team. Just great people. At what point did this happen in your, you know, where you already graduated? Actually, I'm a distinguished alumnus from there. And I was a hockey player. And wonderful. But while I was there, I was, I've written about this, actually, in The Power of Purpose. I wrote the story of my advisor at Gustavus. I read, yeah. Yeah. So I was not clear about purpose at that point in the way that we're talking about it today.

But I was a psychology major and a theology minor, a religion minor. And somewhere between those two, there was the question of why are we here? What are we doing? What's the point of the exercise? So experimental psychology and all those other things were, I had to do, but what really got me going was the bigger questions. So I started there, but I went to graduate school in counseling psychology and I actually studied Frankel, but not, I mean, he was more on a mini-mini. And so when I got out, I was trying to figure out what to do with the rest of my life. You know, you'd think you'd figure that out between psychology undergrad and a counseling psychology graduate degree,

but it's always about other people, right? So I saw that Frankel was speaking or doing a seminar in San Diego where they were thinking of creating a Viktor Frankel Institute, which never happened. But anyway, that's how I got there. And I went on from there to, in 1969, I met Abraham Maslow and the Maslow hierarchy of needs and all of that, which you probably are very familiar with and your listeners might be. But Frankl and Maslow actually, before Maslow died a year later, and before he died, he admitted that the top of the pyramid was not self-actualization. It was in fact purpose. And so his wife went on to write a book called The Farther Reaches of Human Nature, which sort of admitted that everybody quotes, in terms right now with COVID-19, everyone quotes the Maslow hierarchy, but they miss the fact that purpose is at the top, self-transcendence. Right. Yeah. I didn't know that either. So I appreciate you just describing that. You know how I came to read your book. It was a very pivotal moment in my life. I had heard about

your book before I went to the Boston Marathon in 2013. I was in a workshop with a coach and she was describing your work. Her name is Diana Gabriel. I think maybe she had attended a workshop that you were in. And the Boston Marathon experience was, I think, really a defining moment in my life for me to understand my purpose. So I'm a marathoner and ran the race in 2013. It was one of the best performances I've ever had. And I was down near the finish line, my hotel was a block away from the finish line. And so I was right in the middle of the bombing. So 45 minutes earlier. And it I remember just quietly sitting in my hotel room when we didn't know if there was another bomb in our hotel. Right? You know,

I didn't literally I didn't know if I was going to get home to Minnesota to see my boys and they were kindergarten and for second grade at that point. And my race didn't matter, Richard. It didn't matter that I had just ran a personal best. I remember these questions just running through my mind and it's like, you know, why am I still here? What am I meant to do? Am I living really on purpose? And do I need to make changes with what I'm doing right now? And it was a moment in my life that it was deeply connected to my purpose and it changed the trajectory of my career. I wouldn't be doing, I wouldn't have a conversation with you right now. I wouldn't be a keynote speaker. I worked with the Vikings for four years and it was something that I always

wanted to do, but that was really scary. Yeah. Yeah. Out to that, that moment. And when I got back, I was reading everything I possibly could about purpose. And your book was the first book I read, I remember like laying on my couch on a Saturday reading your book, right. And I'm grateful I found it because it gave me a lot of clarity on where my life was supposed to go. So I'm incredibly grateful for your contribution to the world, because it really helped me in that moment, just get clarity on what I was doing and where I was supposed to go next. So well, the crucibles of life, of which that was one are often the times wake up where we're awakened to our larger questions. And so that's a great story.

Not a great story, but it's a great example of purpose. I did a PBS special a few years ago, and the PBS special was based on the book, The Power of Purpose. And it was shown in hundreds of cities across the country. And part of doing a PBS special, which is a fundraiser, is you get to go out to these cities, six of the cities, not all of them. And you get to do, you know, if people pledge at a certain level, they get a workshop with you, in addition to a DVD and a book and things like that.

Whole families, Cindy, would show up at the workshop. The grandparents, the parents, the kids, et cetera, even the grandkids at some point, they were all at a crucible or a purpose moment in one way or another, because I said, what are you all doing here? And they said, well, I'm retiring and I got fired or laid off and I'm trying to figure out what to do with the rest of my life. And so it was, I think what you point out here and what I would suggest to you is this, that purpose is not a luxury. Purpose is fundamental to health, to healing, to happiness, to longevity even. People with purpose tend to live seven to ten years longer. The science of purpose is very clear now. And also to high performance.

People who have a clear why tend to do better on the how. Yes, I see that. I see that from my observations of the best performers, you know, in particularly in sport. But I appreciate what you said is like, it's not a luxury. It's fundamental. So let's dive in. So this is the book that I read. And you have several others. There's a whole new third edition of that book out now, by the way. I know, I saw that. And the new edition, the last chapter is, Can Science Explain Purpose? And the statement I just made about it being fundamental, I can now back that up.

I could before, but hugely because the neuroscience labs, purpose in the brain, purpose in health and healing, et cetera, it's self-evident now. It's no longer like just anecdotal it'd be a good idea to have a purpose it is now like you want to live longer you want to be healthier you want to be all these things uh you want to sleep better have a reason to go to bed and a reason to wake up so i i hear a lot of people who are searching for their purpose and maybe aren't really clear. So what advice would you give to people who are maybe feeling that way and want to just get started understanding what their purpose might be? Great question. And here's the practice.

You take out a post-it and you put two words on the post-it, grow and give. And you put that post-it on your mirror. That, Cindy, is the universal default purpose. If you're growing and giving every day for a week, you'll know at the end of the week, what your purpose is. Because grow and give is a purpose. And so if I get up in the morning and say to myself, what is my intention for today? My aim, how am I going to grow? And how am I going to give today? And then at the end of the day, before you go to bed at night, you look at that post again and say, it's like any good trainer. How did you do? Did you show up at the gym today? Did you do your exercises? Well, the purpose exercise or the purpose practice at the end of the day is,

how did I grow and how did I give today? And you'll note that purpose is a feeling. It's not just an abstract concept that I felt better when I grew and gave, when I practiced growing and giving today. And so I know that you're all about grit and grit and grit is really, to me, it starts with why am I doing what I'm doing? Do I have a reason for grit? Yes. That's what I think too, that this purpose is part of grit. And if you're not sure why you're doing it, you can't really stick with it, which is what grit really is. And there's one other purpose practice. So if that doesn't work, here's a second simple one. And that is that, I call it the two minute practice. Before you get out of bed in the morning, don't reach for your phone.

In other words, so step one is pause. Step two is take three deep breaths. Breathing is important, as we know, to performance. Take three deep breaths, which will center you, and ask yourself, how am I going to make a difference in one person's life today? And who is that person? So before you get up and say, I'm going to make a difference in blank's life today, how? And then you get up and you deliver on that intention.

So eventually, that becomes a way of living. It's not something that, oh, I have to do this. I have to go to the gym. I have to work out. I have to. It's like, this is what I'm here to do. I'm here to make a difference. How do I contribute? It starts with your intention every morning. So the two minute practice and the post-it practice are two simple ways that can get there. We can go into more detail about, you know, the whole

business of the power of purpose. How do you name it and how do you do that? But you start with practices. Yes, okay. I think those are really tangible and I really appreciate that because people have some clear direction on like how to get started. Yep. So when you think about what you just said

about like maybe writing it down or inking it or writing a purpose statement. So if you do those practices, tell us maybe what the next step is. Well, the way there's a formula that I have written about and speak about, and it's, I call it the napkin test because oftentimes people, and I call it the got a minute school of coaching because people say, got a minute. Can you tell me what I should do with the rest of my life? Because they're busy, they're busy or they're hijacked by technology or something like that. So write this down on a napkin. G plus P plus V equals P equals purpose. So gifts are the G plus passions are the P plus values are the V. If you get up in the morning and you're clear about those questions you asked yourself in Boston,

what am I here to do? What are my gifts? What do I have to contribute? And so what people really need to understand is what are the gifts they love, the gifts that they really enjoy? And P is passions. What do they want to use those gifts in the service of? What are they curious about? What do they care about? What do they want to connect their gifts to? And the V is values. You could call that the team if you wanted to or the environment. But if you use your gifts on something

you feel passionate about, where do you do that? That's the culture, the team, the organization, the values. Many times people feel like they've got their gifts and passions clear, but where they're doing it, not a good place, not a good team, not a good organization, not a good school. And does it really align with you? Do you have a voice? And I used to teach all the time with the late Stephen Covey who wrote Seven Habits of Highly Effective People which most of us have heard of or read at one point but I used to teach teach with him all the time but what most people don't know is that he wrote a book called The Eighth

Habit yeah and The Eighth Habit he said before he died was his most important book because it informed and framed the other seven habits okay And so what the eighth habit is, is basically, he said, he said, this is to find your voice and help others do the same. He said, that's the key to life. And that's really what purpose is about. That formula is about finding your voice. And if you're a leader or a coach or a trainer or a speaker, helping others do the same, helping others find their voice, not your voice. You want them to be authentically them. And so how do you do that? Well, you help them. And I cannot tell you how many people line up after I give a speech when I used to give

speeches. I still do, but I'm hunkering down at the moment, so I'm not doing podcasts. But the point is that people will line up and say, do you do this for kids? Because I got a great kid, but clueless about what to do with his or her gifts, passions, and values. They haven't had any guidance on that. So we need guidance at all stages of our life, not just early. We needed it from cradle to grave. Yeah, cradle to grave. So G plus P plus V equals purpose. Again, really tangible. Thanks for breaking it down. Yeah. The starting point then is if you just look at what you love to do and you say, well, how do I do that every day?

And how do I make a contribution to others? Because purpose is always, and I underline always, outside of yourself. That's the distinction with goals. There's many ways. It's your aim. It's your direction. It's the contribution you want to make. There are goals along the way to help you get there.

But goals for the sake of what? That's what I always ask. Yeah. For the sake of what are you doing this? And then they'll start to, so that's another formula, F-T-S-O-W. F-T-S-O-W. For the sake of what? For the sake of what are you doing this?

And if it's your own ego all the time, you're not on purpose. So when you think about, you know, how purpose you needed to birth to grave, I think that's what you said, right? Yeah. Cradle to grave. Yep. Cradle to grave in, um, in the power of purpose, you talk about like the purpose spiral. And I think that's something to connect about. And then maybe we can come back to G plus P plus V. But I'd like to hear how you think that, how our purpose evolves.

Or it just is what you said. It's so important that we're connecting with this purpose. So tell us a bit about that spiral. Well, the life spiral or the purpose spiral is from birth to death, you find yourself along the way with these kinds of things happening. Periodically, you're on a plateau and the plateau can be a good period. Things could be stable and good, or it could be boredom on the plateau, but along will come a trigger. Those are the crucibles we talked about earlier. A trigger is something that knocks you, pushes you, or pulls you off your plateau. And a trigger can be anything. It can be a divorce. It can be a positive trigger,

like a graduation. But a trigger signals a change and often a big game changer. And what happens, what's core to that spiral is that it knocks us into a state of limbo. And limbo is that period that you were in your hotel room trying to figure out what's next, what wants to happen from here. And so limbo is a period between an ending and a new beginning. But there's the chaos. And we are in limbo right now as a society with COVID-19, for example, many, you know, what does that feel like? People feeling overwhelmed, people feeling scared, clueless about the future,

all those things. That's what it's like being between two trapezes. And we haven't let go of one and we haven't grabbed the other. We're in kind of free fall. And so the chaos is that feeling of limbo. To get out of limbo, we need to have certain practices. We need to figure out who we are and how we're going to do this. And so I call that next phase unpacking. I wrote a bestseller, Repacking Your Bags, is a book that sold over a million copies itself. And Repacking Your Bags is all about what do I need to do to repack for the next stage of my career, my relationship, my health, whatever it is. First, I need to unpack. I need to look at where I am now and what's going on. And then repack means moving forward. So one of

the things that I would suggest that your listeners might find to be very helpful is don't go it alone. Isolation is fatal. And we know that now because people are feeling isolated and loneliness and aloneness is fatal. It's a death knell for people in terms of their spirit and maybe their lives in certain ways. So how to get out of that is you create a sounding board. A sounding board is like your kitchen cabinet. And for many years of coaching and counseling others, I wouldn't coach them unless they had a sounding board, somebody that they would talk with beyond me, their professional listeners. So who's on your sounding board? No matter how successful you are, don't go it alone.

No matter how isolated you are, don't go it alone. And so on your sounding board, there are at least four different people. One is a wise elder, somebody who's a little older than you who can help you step back and look at the big picture. This too shall pass, you know, kind of a person. Secondly is a wise younger. And a wise younger is somebody who's younger than you that asks you why questions or why, you know, youth when they're born, why, why, why? And eventually, hopefully we don't lose the why part of our curiosity. But the third person is your committed listener. Who is your committed listener? Who's your go-to person when that isn't going to fix you? They practice care

versus cure. Care means they care enough to listen. Tell me more about that experience in Boston. Give me some more insight. And they ask good questions because they're interested, not just interested in pushing their story on you or their solutions on you. And the fourth is kind of an open agenda, but it's somebody who holds your feet to the fire. You could call it your performance coach, if you will, or your personal trainer, but it doesn't, if it's not that, it's somebody who says, well, you said you were committed to writing your book.

What did you do this week about? What did you do today about it? And they ask you because they care enough and you've made it. And so at least those are four people that will help you move through limbo and help you unpack and repack for the future. I think right now you're right that there are so many people who are feeling in limbo and I appreciate what you're saying about like these four types of people on your sounding board. Make sure you're reaching out to them. And as you're listening, you can even write down what you think those four people are to you. And with purpose, the question to ask yourself, like Frankel would say, is what is life asking of me now, not what am I asking of them?

So the question is, who would put you on their sounding board? And oftentimes, even spouses don't put each other on the sounding board because they're all about the solution, not about the listening. So a sounding board is what it sounds like. It's a listening board, if you will. And there may be solutions that come out of that. But the key is every human being wants their life to matter. There's two things. We want to belong and we want to matter. And I have a colleague who has on his answering machine when you call him and he's not there. And he says, his message is at the sound of the tone please leave your answer to life's two eternal questions

who are you and what do you want that's awesome i think i'm going to change my answer machine to that too but you should but the question is what do we want yes universally what we want are two things without exception we want to belong and we want to matter. We want to matter to those that we belong with. So if you look at to belong and to matter, the question is when you wake up in the morning, how are you going to belong and how are you going to matter? So powerful.

When you think about people putting this into practice, like do you think it's helpful for people to write a purpose statement I do I think it's like a mantra or anything else something that's that you can remember that that eventually becomes in your members you know you it's just who you are to unlock the power of purpose in myself and others is my purpose statement. Well, people say, well, that's great. That's your brand. Well, it didn't originally become. It evolved over time to become basically what I really care about

and what I'm really curious about. And it has me. I don't have it. But it came from writing it down and looking at it and saying, it's not really it. And it's not something fancy that goes on the wall. Purpose is a verb. Let me say it again. Purpose is a verb.

It's something we do. And so the statement activates what we do. Did I help you and your listeners unlock the power of purpose today? And if I did, then it'll be a purposeful day. So the equation G plus P plus V equals purpose. Yeah. I think from my perspective and like how I've applied your work to my life and like I think it's important for me

to connect with those regularly. Like what are my gifts? What are my passions? What are my values? How do you suggest people connecting with those and do you agree with that? Like? And do you agree with that? Like how often should you connect with that? Yeah, there's a lot of ways to do it,

but I created a tool, shameless commercialization here, but I created a tool called calling cards. Yes, I saw that. And calling cards you can get on Amazon for a very low price, like $8 in some sense, but it will unlock that purpose for you.

And it's a card deck that I developed 25 years ago to answer that formula, to help people do that. Now, you can do it. There's other tools out there, StrengthsFinder and multiples of tools, but this is an intuitive one because of this. So let me share with you, what is a gift? A gift has four characteristics, has more, but these are the top four, the way that I look at it. A gift is something that you really enjoy doing. You love to do it.

You'd get up and you'd want to do it rather than be just paid to do it or forced to do it. You'd get up and you'd want to do it rather than be just paid to do it or forced to do it. So you observe yourself. If I was coaching you and you did the calling cards or we're using this formula, I'd say, tell me about a gift. And then I would find out, and I would watch your body to see if you were really on it or you're phoning it in. Well, I think one of my guesses, I said, well, you really enjoy doing that. Well, not. And so I'd look for the enjoyment factor. Secondly, others observe it more readily often than you do. They observe you enjoying it and doing it pretty well as well. Why do they observe it more than you? Because oftentimes they don't have the same gift and they give value to something they don't have and they see you having it and they say, oh, you're so good at blank. Third, this is a big

number three, should be probably number one, but number three is can't recall learning it. It's not your degree. It's not your certification. It's not your, it's just something when I develop calling cards, I went back and I interviewed people who are parents, teachers, siblings, et cetera. And I'd say, well, Cindy, what was she like? And was she like this? Oh, yes. And so do you have brothers and sisters? I have two sisters. Are their gifts the same as yours? No.

Why? There's some overlap. Of course. But you were raised in the same culture, the same family. How did you get different? Well, we're born different. And we have different gifts and we develop or observe those. And sometimes we don't get onto those till later in life. And all of a sudden we say, well,

no wonder I don't like this. This isn't what I really love to do. And what I really love to do is blank. And so, you know, we experiment and we learn along the way, hopefully. So the third thing is I can't recall learning it. I just, my hands turned to it naturally since I was young. And the fourth thing is you love learning and practicing it. You love doing it more. And so, you know, if you take those four together, that's, and you look at your top five gifts, particularly your number one gift my number one gift yes full disclosure here is awakening spirit yeah now how i do that because people say well why don't you do this with young people i said my passion is midlife and beyond i've been a student of midlife and in aging for 40 years. And I'm aging, as are you, but I'm much older. And so my passion is using my gift of awakening spirit through writing, teaching, coaching, doing things, my gifts to awaken spirit. So unlocking the power of purpose is really about awakening spirit.

So you can dive down as deep as you want or not into this, but calling cards is a tool to help you do that. But you can do it intuitively. You could ask someone over a cup of tea or a cup of coffee or a glass of wine, what are your gifts, passions, and values? And they'll be able to tell you. And even if they're stuck, you can ask a little bit more, and it'll come out and it'll

start to be a clear lens on purpose. Yeah. What powerful four questions that you just provided us. I'm thinking about some of my clients and I feel like I am, what do I want to say, grateful that I can live my passion in what I do and I think early on I think my dad gave me some like he you know kept on asking me things like these kind of things like what do you really enjoy so I study sports psychology and I absolutely know it's my passion it is my is and it's what when you said all these things like yeah I could spend like all day just doing this right and studying and learning about performance and peak performance. You know, I work with CEOs and teams and so it's, it's sports

performance. It's a different kind of sport, but I think you and I are on the same page in terms of our passion for peak performance and peak performance comes from purpose for me. It's not just about winning. It's not just about succeeding. It's about for the sake of why am I doing this? And it's my own development as a human being, but it's also so for other reasons. Give us a little sense of like people

who might feel stuck, you know, like maybe they're in a job that they don't really enjoy. And I think that's the value. That's the environment piece that you're talking about. What advice would you give to them? Yeah. Well, start where you are for one thing. I used to have a side hustle when I was in HR.

And it was called Lunch Hour Limited. And Lunch Hour Limited, you buy me lunch and I'll coach you over lunch, even though my job was as the head of HR for a big organization. And I found that with Lunch Hour Limited, number one, I had an 80% success ratio. 80% of the people I coached quit. However, before you go off on that one, they did a very small percentage quit and left.

They quit, meaning they went back and reinvented their job around their gifts. It's to bring more of their gifts to work every day. And I say, first step is to try, if you're aware of what they are, try right where you are. You see people today bringing their gifts to work at Walgreens when they're in the middle of COVID-19. And some are bringing a sense of purpose and gifts to work and others are, know having to do it so so to speak and so they would go back or they would find another place within the organization that was a better

fit for their gifts passions and and values or to answer your question if it's really if they're really stuck then maybe they'll find something in the evening to do. For example, I wrote a book. The last book I wrote was called Work Reimagined. And the opening chapter is, it's the end of work as we know it, which is fairly prescient in terms of what's going on right now, because it is the end of work as we know it post COVID-19. Things are going to really change for a lot of people.

And so in that book, the beginning of every chapter is an interview with a taxi cab driver. Because behind every person, no matter what their role is or their title or their job, are gifts, passions, and values. So I would interview cab drivers just as an example. And I would find cab drivers who say, well, I'm just driving a cab to pay the bills. But at night when I'm coaching soccer and helping young people, that's where my purpose really comes to life. So maybe it's not in your job per se. But I would say take a close look because there's a distinction between a job, a career, and a calling. A job is something that pays the bills. A career is something that maybe advances your pay the bills plus your own development. But a calling is gifts, passions,

and values. And what Frankel taught me way back to the beginning of our discussion, Cindy, is that a calling is that everyone wants success with fulfillment, not just success. Because you could be successful and find that your success ladder is against the long wall. You get there and it's like, why doesn't it feel better? Where are the bands? Where are the... But success with fulfillment comes from using your gifts on things you feel passionate about in healthy environments, in healthy teams, so to speak. So you see in the sports world, you see people all the time who move their gifts and passions to another team with another coach and shine. What happened? Well, the culture maybe wasn't the right culture. The V, the values, wasn't the right place for them at the time.

And so it wasn't maybe bad, but it wasn't a good fit. So we constantly need to be students of our own gifts, passions, and values. And so if you're feeling stuck, start where you are. Yeah. That provides a lot of hope for people. And I appreciate what you said is like, it's constant, right? To connect with those.

I got a few more questions, but one question before I kind of go back to what I've prepared is I think about the equation, gifts, passions, and values, and how you gave us an example of your purpose statement. What advice would you give for people who have done some work about gifts, passion, and values? And how does that then connect to their purpose statement and actually, you know, coming to have like a guiding statement?

Well, take the gifts and passions and turn it into 140 words or less, characters or less, characters rather, not words or less. And that is just draft a statement or use the default. People say, oh, I came here thinking I would get my purpose. And I said, well, I gave you a purpose and I gave you a practice. Start today using grow and give. And ask yourself that every day for a week. And out of that will come, well, that's not exactly what, you know, lights me up. That gives me aliveness. Well,

what does and write it down as just a phrase, something, a draft, but put it on a post-it, put it on a practice, something you can do. I said, purpose is a verb. And, you know, purpose is not a legacy. It's ultimately a legacy. But there are 1,440 purpose moments every day. 1,440? Purpose moments every day.

Okay. Times for you to step up and say, is it about me or is it about you? And in every situation where there's real purpose, it's really about you. It's giving you a kind word. It's listening to you. It's offering something of value, a contribution. So purpose is always your contribution that you make to others. And you don't have to be Mother Teresa or a saint. You just have to be awake to the purpose moments in life. And so if you're awake to that on a day-to-day basis, well, what did I just do there? Well, I listened. Well, maybe listening to others is your

purpose. I mean, just start with the simplest possible way of doing things. As I said, it's fundamental. And here's the quote I love that I want your listeners to hear. It's very short, but it's from the American essayist and writer E.B. White, who said this, I arise in the morning torn between a desire to save the world and a desire to savor the world. This makes it hard to plan the day. That's great. I love that. Well, saving and savoring, we want both. Savoring life means enjoying it for what it is. Saving means what's my contribution to it. So if I belong, whatever, family, what's my contribution?

What's community, faith organization, whatever, team, whatever it is. The people that we really, really like are the people that aren't narcissists, aren't self-absorbed, aren't, whether they're athletes or others. And I won't go any further than that. And I would just say in summary that, um, uh, you, you're a speaker and I'm a speaker and I gave a speaker, I gave a speech at 3M company recently. Okay. And, uh, I talked about the 3Ms. They thought I made it up just for them, but it's in the book you held up. And the three M's are what we really need in life are money, medicine, and meaning. Money means, you know, how much is enough. Medicine is not, I'm not talking about vaccines or I'm talking about health here. So, but you know, people who have got enough money and enough health or medicine, but no meaning, they're lost. They're lost no matter how successful they are,

no matter how much money or how much health they have without meaning life. We're human beings are tribal animals. We need meaning. We need to matter. And so we need all three M's, money, medicine, and meaning to live a successful life. Richard, our time has gone by so fast. Well, let's do it again. We'll do phase two. That would be amazing. You get some feedback and questions from people on purpose and just have them say, well, what is their purpose or what are their practices or what are their questions? And then you and I'll take them on in a second podcast. That sounds phenomenal. I'm just sitting here absorbing everything.

I'm learning from you. And I'm so grateful for this opportunity to talk to you. And I'm thinking to myself, okay, I need to keep learning from Richard. Do you have any, you say the three, you have lots of different books, but the three bestselling books that you already mentioned, I have The Power of Purpose right here. The other ones that you have. Yeah. Repacking Your Bags and Life Reimagined are the others that are the three bestsellers. And Repacking is a runaway bestseller that is in its third edition now, as is The Power of Purpose. And the new book that's coming out May 15th of 2021.

Got it. Is Who Do You Want to Be When You Grow Old? The Art of Aging on Purpose. Amazing. So it's all about the baby boomers, not really, but it's about the post-50, how do you keep growing and giving in the second half of life? And so that book will be out, and it'll be in the wake of these others. My website, richardleiter.com, has everything's free. And there's tons of videos, there's tons of, including the PBS special, there's blogs that are, and there's several brand new blogs I wrote just now in the last couple of weeks that are up about how to survive

and thrive during COVID-19. Wonderful. And so one is called How to Hunker Down on Purpose. And like we're doing. Yeah, like we're doing. Yeah. So anyway, those are all places that you can find out if you're interested in what I'm doing and what I've written about lately. Do you do any online workshops, virtual workshops, or live workshops that people can attend?

I do them all the time, but I don't distribute them myself. Okay. In other words, I do them for organizations. I'm a senior fellow in the academic health center at the University of Minnesota I had something called it's like the medical school

but it's called the purpose project and I'm doing a webinar a free webinar if you go to Center for Spirituality and Healing it's www.csh.umn.edu you'll get a free webinar about what we just talked about with slides and q a and and that kind of thing and there'll be a lot of people on that and so i do those kinds of things but they're always distributed by an organization that I partner

with. Absolutely love it. If you want to do a webinar for the Vikings, I would do it with you, not, I wouldn't offer it myself as an example. Yeah. That sounds amazing. Okay. So here's just a quick snapshot of some of the things that we've talked about. I always like to summarize it. So if people haven't taken notes during it, they can now. So I'm grateful that you shared your experience with Viktor Frankl and learning from him. And I appreciated the question that he said that you repeated is what is life asking me right now in this moment? And just like your presence today and how you awakened my spirit, I can feel that. So I'm grateful just for you to be here. You gave us two great examples to help us start thinking about our purpose, post-it note practice, and then the two-minute practice, and then G plus P plus V

equals purpose. And you gave us four questions for us to consider our gifts and just a little bit more direction on how to write a statement. Richard, I'm so grateful. I want to, I'm grateful for the questions that you pitched, which are deep questions and we could go for a long, long time, but you're all about a high performance mindset. Yes. And I'm all about a high performance mindset. Yes. And I'm all about a high purpose mindset. Nice. Because purpose is a mindset. Yes. It's a mindset about what you want your life to be about. And then you have to have practices and goals to back that up. And I think you're all

about that. And that's what grit's all about. So I applaud what you're doing and your own purpose, journey in many ways. And so I would just end by saying I've interviewed people over the age of 65 for years, asking them if they could live their life over again. And three things have come up over and over and over. They said, if I could live my life over again, I would be more reflective, which is what we just did in the last hour. I would take more risks, particularly in the area of career and our work and relationship. And I would find out my purpose earlier in life because purpose is where aliveness is, is what life's all about. It's the ultimate question. Why am I here?

What's the point of the exercise? The earlier I get onto that, the more my life matters. And so at the end of those interviews, I would say anything else, and they would say, don't let people off the hook with the tough questions. Make sure that they don't say, oh, well, purpose, I'll get around to that someday. That someday may not come. And then they will live somebody else's life, not their own. So you want to live an authentic life, figure out your purpose earlier and keep working it, drafting it. It's not perfect. Life isn't that way, but it is a verb and it does demand practices. So thank you

for inviting me in here. And I look forward to whatever wants to happen next. Thank you, Richard. I'm so grateful for you. I appreciate you. Thank you. Okay. You're welcome. Bye-bye. Way to go for finishing another episode of the High Performance Mindset. I'm giving you a virtual fist pump. Holy cow. Did that go by way too fast for anyone else? If you want more, remember to subscribe and you can head over to Dr. Sindra for show notes and to join my exclusive community for high performers where you get access to videos about mindset each week.

So again, you can head over to Dr. Sindra. That's D-R-I-C-I-N-D-R-A.com. See you next week.