Sense of Soul - Teaching Passion and Purpose for Future Generations

Episode Date: April 19, 2024

Today on Sense of Soul podcast we have, Corey Poirier (aka. That Speaker Guy), he is a Multiple-Time TEDx Speaker, and he is the founder of bLU Talks. Corey Poirier is the host of The Enlightened Passenger podcast, and is a Barnes and Noble, Amazon, Wall Street Journal and USA Today Bestseller. He’s newly released book ‘The Enlightened Passenger’ is a compelling narrative blending self-help wisdom with the art of storytelling. In Corey’s recent TEDx he shared how when his five-year-old son was in kindergarten, he was shocked when the parent teacher conference focused on his son's perceived weakness, that his son still had a slant when he wrote his name. Nothing was said about things he was passionate about or excelled at. Something is going wrong in education, leading to the question. Why don't they teach about passion and finding your purpose in school? Take a listen to his recent TEDx http://www.coreyonpurpose.com

Hello, my soul-seeking friends. It's Shanna. Thank you so much for listening to Sense of Soul podcast. Enlightening conversations with like-minded souls from around the world, sharing their journey of finding their light within, turning pain into purpose, and awakening to their true sense of soul. If you like what you hear, show me some love and rate, like, and subscribe. And consider becoming a Sense of Soul Patreon member, where you will get ad-free episodes, monthly circles, and much more. Now go grab your coffee, open your mind, heart, and soul. It's time to awaken. Today on Sense of Soul, we have Corey Poirier, aka That Speaker Guy. He is an award-winning keynote speaker, multiple-time TEDx speaker, international best-selling author, an entrepreneur,

Blue Talk founder, and a podcast host who has interviewed thousands of influential leaders around the world. Corey just recently released his latest book, The Enlightened Passenger, which is a compelling narrative blending self-help, wisdom, and the art of storytelling, which is also the name of one of his amazing podcasts. Corey also just last year had done an amazing TED Talk here in Colorado where Corey talked about how schools can inspire purpose. Corey questions, why don't they teach about passion and finding your purpose in school? Well, I agree with Corey and ask that same question. So it's my honor today to have my friend Corey with us today.

Hello. How are you? I'm doing fantastic. My friend, how are you doing? I'm doing good. Thanks so. How are you doing? I'm doing good. Thanks so much for coming on again. Absolutely. Corey, your TED Talk that you did last year really hit home with me because it's something that I'm passionate about. And as parents who are so passionate about our children and how they're being influenced right now in the world, we're the experts.

I agree. What inspired you to do this TED Talk? I guess in some ways, what inspired it was my background and how I found my purpose. Well, really passion, which led to my purpose on a stand-up comedy stage one night. But ultimately, it changed my entire life. It helped me battle and get rid of hypochondria and anxiety

generalized anxiety and I thought this changed my life and it was almost like I call it vitamin p but it was almost like the vitamin I couldn't buy in the stores but I took and it literally did what four years of talking to people couldn't do and I mean there's a whole direction a person could go from there because then it makes me think of Viktor Frankl's book, Man's Search for Meaning. It's such a good book. 100%. And the premise really behind it is, he was a talk therapist, you know, you come and talk to me and share your problems. And then he went, survived the Holocaust, because he had found a meaning, realized he was one of the only people that had a sense of meaning that's why he survived then he

brought that into his practice and the rest of his career was basically helping people get rid of their mental health issues anxiety through finding meaning in their life and so for me what really spoke to me is i feel like we're in a mental health crisis and maybe this is one of the answers we're ignoring so anyway that that's what triggered it and then the final piece of the puzzle was when shelly went in for a parent teacher interview and i share this in the talk our son who i think is uber intelligent uber cool like everybody meets him like oh my god he's going to be an intellect who like changes the world and any he knows like how much money he wants to make what he's going to own when he's older. Anyway, but their focus in the class was he spells his name on a slant. He seems far ahead of the norm.

And yet our focus, well, yeah, but he writes his last letter on a slant. To me, is that really the biggest deal? No, I've been going through the same thing recently with my daughter. One in two kids, one in two kids have anxiety or depression right now. That's crazy. The system is broken and they think it's a huge problem. And I'm so glad that you brought light to it. And what was so crazy, Corey, is you were here.

You're in my district. So I'm talking about my child in this district. You were at our main school, Cherry Creek High School, and that's where you gave your TEDx talk. And when I saw I was so jealous. I think I had COVID at that time, too. So tell me about your experience coming here. Well, and it's on me as well, because I forgot that I was going to be that close. I forgot. And I should have because I remember us talking about Red Rocks and how you went to a show there at the time. And anyway, long story short, I didn't clue in. So as far as the talk and why I wanted to, I guess, bring attention to it, you know, as I kind of mentioned, this really,

it speaks to me on multiple levels. It's A, I was somebody that didn't have a purpose or a calling. And when I finally found one, it changed my life in every way possible. And it's, it's changed it at the core ever since it has never gone back. That's one thing. And then, you know, the second thing is, I see so much struggle that people have. And what I find is when I talk to people that are struggling more often than not, when I start talking about purpose or passion, they're like, what does it feel like? What is that? How do we find them? And so I feel like what I'm seeing, at least, is we're struggling right now with people not feeling like they have, I'll call it a sense of purpose, feeling like they have a direction. And at the very same time, we're having record numbers of mental health issues we're dealing with.

And I just wonder, I can't, I know I'm not a doctor, but I just wonder if one could be at least a step towards a solution to the other. So I guess that's why I'm really passionate about this and why I decided to do a TED Talk on this idea. And the talk itself is called How Schools Can Inspire Purpose. And honestly, Shanna, that was very intentional, the wording. It wasn't how schools can deliver your purpose or how schools can give you a purpose. It wasn't that because, for me at least, I very much feel that we all have a purpose the day we're born. And for some of us, our work is finding out what that is. For some, we never find out what that is. But I feel like it's already inside us. So to me, when I say how schools can and also how parents can, I feel it's more encouraging children to follow things they're passionate about. I think it's more

talking about purpose and what that even means. Like, I think it's more just allowing people to explore, giving them some tools to explore and letting them uncover it on their own. So I just want to make it clear. I'm not saying, cause I, even when I posted, I knew people got confused with that. I'm not saying that you can teach a course in school that helps, like that gives me my purpose. Like I'm not saying you can teach a course in school that helps, like that gives me my purpose. Like, I'm not saying you teach a course that I didn't go, oh, this is my purpose. Now, what you can do is you can share stories of other people who found their purpose. You can get people to do exercises to say, what is the thing you do when you don't watch the clock? What is the thing you

did as a kid when money was an issue? If you're already a kid, what is the thing you do now? And you spend love doing? What's the thing that brings a smile to your face? If you won the lottery, what would you do? What's the thing people say? Oh my God, you're so good at that. You seem so excited when you do that. Like you can do that, do that exercise in school and get them to go through that. I'm just simply, I'm not saying that you can sit with a kid and say, this is your purpose because I didn't know what my purpose was until I was mid twenties. And I don't think there's anything anybody could have done to change that. So I hope I explained that well, because I don't want it to come across them saying schools

can give you the purpose. But I think what they can do is make it more possible to allow you to even in a life schools class or life skills class to be an option versus only focusing on your weaknesses and math and English. I know. And then only rewarding you. And if you're able to keep up with, you know, other kids that, you know, that may become more natural to that's just not very fair. It's not a fair game. The system is not designed or set up to support a conscious person. It's really just for the left brain. And not everyone, you know, has that strength. I definitely didn't.

I'm a very creative person. So, you know, any kind of creativity or anything that was hands-on or gave me the ability to experience would have been very good for me. I think there is a huge difference between someone who is knowledgeable and wise. No, it's very true. And honestly, now, it's not for me to say, like, I'm not, it's definitely not a knock on academics. It's not for me to say one is stronger than the other.

But I do believe there's a very strong case for being street wise for, you could be like, what is it? Sir Ken Robinson had a talk called, I think it's, what is it? It's, I always called it how schools kill creativity, but that's strong. Cause I don't think that's what it's called, but it's a similar name, but it's about the concept of what if we taught kids to be creative versus just memorize. And so to your point, yeah, I mean, I went to school with people that were very intellectually smart, very, you know, academia type smart that have done quite well in life.

But I also know people, you know, myself included, who struggled intellectually. And now a lot of people that I went to school with who were very intellectual or focused on grades only and maybe didn't even live in the moment because they were so focused on grades that now say to me I'm so envious look at the life you get to live now I always say though you didn't get to see as Seinfeld you know I look at Seinfeld who took 20 years to work as material and then we see it now and say what a brilliant comic but you didn't see as somebody said recently to me the work done in the dark to get to the light. And so the much the same way, people say to me, you're so lucky, but I would say a lot of work went into becoming lucky. And so having said that, I also will say there was a lot of work involved. And there is a lot of work to get to, I think there doesn't have to be, but there often is to get to a place where you are living

a life of your own choosing. But what I'm getting at really the bigger picture is, as somebody who struggled in school, I didn't end up any worse off than somebody that only focused on intellect and focused on weaknesses and memorizing. Corey, you know what, just listening to you speak, and I've heard you speak plenty of times, I've been a part of your boot camps, which I love. I feel like they are gold. Everyone and anyone should check them out. I mean, honestly, I really do find so much wisdom within your guest and all of your talks. It's just amazing. But one of the reasons why, Corey, is because you're passionate about it because you have connected with that passion.

When I am passionate about something, like if I start talking about ancestry or my children, I mean, I speak from my heart, not from my mind, from my heart, and I don't have any problem in speaking. But if you were to tell me to do a project and get up in front of everybody and talk about math, which I don't know how you can have a presentation about math, but something that was outside of my passion, something that I really wasn't interested in at all, science, some social studies, government, ooh, I can't do it. In fact, I'm going to think I'm a failure and I'm going to go inside. I'm going to stutter. I'm not going to be able to think straight. So I feel like it is really important to connect with your passion. I mean, you have, were you always a good speaker or was it that you had to connect with that light within for you to be able to speak powerfully?

So powerfully, I'll take it. I'll say if not, we've just made one up and that's cool too okay cool powerfully powerful so uh so everything about me is I'll call it self-taught so for instance and I do want to you know share one thing about school and what you just said about when you're passionate about something but in school I enjoyed English and grammar. But I also didn't, nicest way to say this, I don't feel like I walked away with the knowledge I needed from those classes. I had a great teacher, he would teach us about Bob Dylan, and how Bob Dylan wrote music. And so I became really passionate in that class. And I did well, like what we talk grades, like whether you talk percentages or B or

A, I did B's or 80s, 80% in those classes. And I did a lot less than a lot of other classes. So I did enjoy it. And I was somewhat passionate about it. But I left school not knowing the difference between fiction and nonfiction. I didn't know your versus your are like you are and didn't read my first book fully from cover to cover till age 27. So a lot of this stuff, How to and influence people by Dale Carnegie. Second book was thinking real rich by Napoleon Hill. And I always say if you're going to start late, that's a way to start because you

get a head start because you're reading books that you probably wouldn't have read until a later age anyway. Having said all that, all the stuff was self taught. So as somebody who later went and edited books for people, edited my own books, have written multiple books, had a newspaper where I was a publisher editor, it's really self-taught. It was really strange. And so I feel like I did a lot of work to get half decent in English and grammar. Having said all of that, and I'm still self-taught. So I still make mistakes that a person that's like very intellectual would say no you said did that wrong so having said that much the same way I was the same way

with speaking to tag on to what you said about when you're passionate about something the one time I finally excelled in life and I think it changed a lot for me was when I got into business classes so I would go into business class I study, I would do homework because I wanted to, but I would get like almost 100% in like full year long courses in English or business. I mean, rather, that's what I found interesting is that I struggled in courses I didn't like. And I actually graduated with a 49 plus one in one of my classes, which I needed a 50. So the teacher gave me the plus one to allow me to legally graduate. That was my level. But yet when I get in business, I crushed it. Only problem was in high school, there'd be like one business class every year.

And so college though, for two years, I did great in business. So I just wanted to tag into what you said is that when I was passionate about something, I did excel at it. What I found fascinating is people would say to me, you're already good at it. So don't worry about that. Focus on the things you're weak at. But yet what I found interesting is I've interviewed, as you know, thousands of thought leaders. And the one of the common traits that they share is they hire for their weaknesses, no focus on them at all. And they focus on their strengths. It's the exact opposite of what we're taught about in school, which I find also interesting. But speaking for me, started the same way as those other things I shared. I was self-taught. I,

the first time I ever spoke in public, I turned multiple shades of color almost a week. Yeah. Covered in sweat. I never went to school to do a presentation. First presentation I ever did in my life was in a government sponsored entrepreneurship course when I was 23 or 24. So I'd never ever spoken once in front of people until then. Then I started my own business and I spoke once at this event. Don't remember a word of what I said, never prepared to talk and ask people later what they thought. And they said, I don't know what the heck you're talking about, but you were some passion. And so they, they, they, and that, that was a lesson to me too, about speaking because they would rather hear a guy that was talking

nonsense, but really charismatic and dynamic and passionate than somebody who knew what they were talking about, but was boring. So that was a big lesson for me too, Shannon. But the full circle at all, no, I was not comfortable speaking. It is something you can learn. So when people say, I want to learn how to become a better speaker, I'm like, great, you're in good company. So I spent a lot of years being very terrified of getting on a stage. And what happened was I got tricked one night into performing standup comedy at a comedy

club and I was not going to do it. I was going to leave out the window in the bathroom, which I found out there was no window, so I couldn't leave. And I ended up going up first because I was taught in Toastmasters to go up first. And I told two jokes to dead silence, which is worse than getting heckled because dead silence, you can't do nothing with. And then the guy that put on the show called me over the corner of the stage, gave me a schmuck in the back of the head. And he said, you idiot, we haven't even turned the mic on yet.

And that was how I started speaking on stages. And I didn't die on that stage. And I went back the next week. And literally after that, I performed 700 shows in comedy. And then I convinced the local college to let me teach a sales course. And that's after that, I performed 700 shows in comedy. And then I convinced the local college, let me teach a sales course. And that's how I get started speaking. But it was all learned in the trenches. It wasn't I didn't have any mentors either. It was something that came naturally to me. I do believe some people are natural speakers. I do believe I was not one of

them. Did you ever do a talk about something that you weren't passionate about? I'm trying to think, I'm trying to truly think about if I've ever taken on a talk, where they can't, you know, I don't think I did where like, the best example that I know lots of people that do it is they go work for a company or work for somebody. And that company says, here's the curriculum, you need to teach it. I don't think I've ever done that. And if I have, yeah. And there's a lot of speakers that do that, but if I had, yeah. So if I have, I put it out of my mind forever. Uh, and I will say this, uh, if somebody asked me and offered me a hundred thousand dollars to do a 45 minute keynote tomorrow on their topic, I would say no. Well, you know what? And that's very authentic,

Corey. I appreciate that because you know, there are a lot of people, I think who can get there are some people who can, you know, talk about something that they're, they're really not aligned with just for their own, you know, personal gain. Yeah. And I will say this, honestly, Shanna, I've had conversations like this. I've done sessions for groups, like university groups, where which I I always find fascinating too, that I barely graduated high school. And then I started teaching and speaking at universities, professors included, but professors who are along the same lines personality wise as the ones who told me in high school, I was never going to amount to anything, which I always find that kind of cool. Having said that, I remember I did the session one time for this university and it was their computer and IT department and I remember I said I've interviewed people who enough people to know

once you get to the point where you've made a certain amount of money for most it's rarely about the money meaning like they even if it was when they start they discover it's not about material and money but I've had so many people when I've said that say, well, give me the money and I'll give it a try. Like people say that, like, cause I, I saw somebody, so I'll give you a really weird example. But for me, I bring this up because when I say I wouldn't do that talk for a hundred thousand dollars, there's probably people saying bullcrap. Yeah, you would. It's a hundred grand. It's 45 minutes, but I'm saying I wouldn't today. I'm not saying I wouldn't have in the past, what I, but what I'm saying, I know a lot of people don't believe that and I understand that and I can't change that but I know people don't believe that and it's because there's so many different I'm gonna say phases in people's lives and so I saw the other day somebody put showed a picture

of a ten dollar bill in a urinal like so a man man's urinal. And it was just like the water, but it was obviously it was in there. So it means, okay, way saying it or prettier way, somebody urinated on it. And so what would you do next? Like, what would be your next move? Meaning if you showed up and you saw that money, you would not believe how many said, oh, I would pick it out there. And I would would go put it at the dryer. And then I would, you know, I put it in my pocket and then I would go and maybe exchange it for two fives or spend it or whatever. But what I'm saying is it blew my mind how many people said they would pull that $10 bill out. So if somebody would do that, then they're going to think I'm nuts if I say I wouldn't do a talk for $100,000 just because I didn't like it. But what I'm saying is, and I'm saying also, Shanna, I wouldn't have said that even probably 10 years ago. But today I can say that because of how many

times in my life that money proved to me it's not about money. Now, money gives you abundance, travel, freedom, all that stuff. And it could be about that, but it's not about the money itself. And I will say when you lose somebody special in your family, like we just did recently, you realize even more so money doesn't replace that stuff. You know, you can't bring it with you. Honestly, I'm almost 50 and it took me all this long to realize that. So I don't want to act wise or that, that, you know, I would have the same attitude or personality five years or 10 years ago. But I am saying today, long story short, I wouldn't do that talk that I'm not passionate about for a hundred grand. Good for you. That's integrity. I think so. Uh, it's probably, uh, insanity and you know,

I don't think so. I think that's integrity and I think that's priceless. I do agree with you. And I'll tell you the first time in my life, I mean, it's so random, but the first time in my life, I realized it wasn't about money, is I was working in sales and I made decent money, but I was offered this job where basically the starting salary was, if I remember correctly, like 125,000.

And I was living in a small part of Atlantic Canada where the average income is 30 some thousand. So you know, this was like, was that five times? And by the way, that's not including commission or anything. That's just my base salary, five times what I would have made in a year, let's say when I was growing up. So I was like, so it's good money. And I said to her, I said, I need to understand this, because I've worked in sales a lot. And so is this guaranteed money? or do I have to sell enough that it covers that before I start getting paid extra? And she said, no, this is the money you get paid if you wake up and get out of bed and

show up at the office. I was like, OK, that's guaranteed money. So that was huge. That was a big deal to me because I've been in sales my whole life. I always had to work if I wanted to put food on the table. And by the way, I wanted to work. I loved working. But I'm saying I always had to, no matter what, work a certain pace and also maybe stress whether

or not this month you were going to have a good month. So this was exciting to me. And I went to this job and the first day she told me to drop off my stuff at my old office. Like I had to drop off like whatever you call it, your last forms, like my piece of paper to say I no longer work here. And then, so she, well, I had to drop those off, let's say and they opened at eight. And then she wanted me to drop off the agreements I signed to work for them at eight, like they opened at eight as well. And then I had to drive through downtown traffic to get to a training with HP Eula Packard for 830. Now, 99% of the time in any world, that's not possible. Because each place was like a 10 minute drive from each other. And two of them didn't open till eight. And the other one had

to be through downtown traffic, drive across the bridge, park, etc. And so I got there like 830. And I was like, I am like a superhero. Like I'm like, whatever, Superman or Iron Man, like I got here only three minutes behind. And they were still like talking and drinking coffee. They didn't even start the training. So I did my training for three days. I got back to her, the lady who hired me, in the office with maybe my three or four other co-workers.

And she said, by the way, this is my first day working in the office. She said, I heard you were late for Hewlett Packard the first day. Why were you late? And I said, well, I said it it wasn't what I had to do. Wasn't realistic in that amount of time. What have you? And she said, no, that's not the answer I'm looking for. And now I was in front of my three or four new coworkers.

I was just starting to work with. And she, it took her like, she wouldn't let up for it. And it took about 10 minutes because I was given answers. And she said, that's not the answer. Ultimately, she said, the answer is you're not an organized person. This was my first full day working in the office with her. You probably know hearing that, that was also my last full day in my head working for them. I quit that day. I didn't know how I was going to find the replacement job. Meaning I wasn't, I was done with her, but I also wasn't

going to, I felt she treated me poorly and that was a terrible way to start. So I was like, I don't mind. I'm going to find, I'm going to take two weeks to find another job. I'm not going to leave here and you know, and whatever. So I figured I'm going to enjoy this, but I also, now I did work. I did do work. Like I don't, I would never steal in the sense of not do the work. I did work, but I only did the bare minimum and I didn't care if I sold anything. And what I did was I had left a company where I was in sales and there was no chance of going upward because there was no management position in sales in the office I was in. So they want to be really bad. So I went to the branch manager and I said, here's what I'm willing to do.

And we went out for breakfast. And I said, what if you were to create a sales manager role in the office rather than having the one manager managing five offices? What if I managed, this was our biggest office. What if I managed the office and still technically work for him? And then he would actually have somebody taken off some of that weight off him. He wouldn't, it wouldn't change his income. And then basically I would just get an override of the sales that happened at

the local level. Bottom line is I was able to negotiate my way back into a management role at the company I left. And then I went back for that company, but I worked at that other place for almost a month, where she told me I was unorganized. I was a zombie, I could barely drive. I was horrible. And I already knew I was leaving. And it was still that bad. So that to me, long three minute story to say, was the day I realized no amount of money will make pain go away. True. And also that those first impressions of people, it's really funny.

I had a similar experience just at my daughter's school. The first day of school, the guy at the front desk was so rude to me. I was like, oh my God. And you know what, Corey, I really had to sit with myself for a minute. Cause I was like, I'm not going to feel good about this school from here on out because of this one thing. And I was like, what am I going to do? Cause I don't want to feel that way. It's not like I could have quit, you know, like pull my kid out of school, you know, share friends. But I felt that way. And I was just thinking to myself, it's so important, those first meetings with somebody and how you know, they really, really set the stage.

Yeah. And it's hard to go back to. So in other words hard i think if they said that if that question is set it's probably three times as hard to change that whether they try to change it or you in your head try to go let's pretend that didn't happen it's the day i didn't i called the school wow like you were like oh i did and I had a very deep conversation with the principal I said I've had kids go through through the school I have had 23 years in this district and I've never on the first day of school I said if I was a brand new parent I said I I just don't know what that would have been like but I'm'm not. And I know this is a new principle too, but everything changed because I said something. So first of all, grumpy old man wasn't working in the front anymore.

But even after I saw him, he changed. And one of the reasons why was my son, Ethan, who has been to that school, who's on the spectrum. He overheard me talking about this and now Ethan's graduated. He's turning or he just turned 20. And so it's my younger daughter who's at the school. She's 11. And he said, are you talking about that old man, whatever his name is? And I said, yeah, he was jerk, you know? And he goes, oh, he used to walk me across the street to make sure that I got to your car safely,

mom, almost every day. And I was like, really? Well, that humbled me all of a sudden, right? And so the next time I saw him, grumpy old man, I happened to say, hey, my oldest son, I told him the story. I said, he still remembers you all these years, right? 10 years ago or whatever, that you were kind to him. And I just wanted to thank you for that. And now every time I see the dude, he's got this huge smile on his face, but he also did get talked to. So, but you know, you do have to speak up. And I have not been good at that most of my life, Corey.

That's not the Shanna that would have been 10 years ago. It's a long road. I look at my daughter, who's definitely, you know, she's on the quieter side. And this is one of the reasons why I would get her a 504. But my goal for her is to connect with her passion. And I believe that passion leads to purpose. I define it this way. Passion is what you do. And purpose is why you're actually doing it. And I feel passion is the gateway to purpose. So I find it easier to find a passion, a passion, not the passion, because it can change. Purpose, I find rarely changes a lot, but passion changes, you know, over time. It's easier to find a passion than a purpose. But what

I find happens is if you start doing something you're passionate about, eventually, you're like, this is my purpose, not not necessarily the passion. But for me, for instance, today, I feel my purpose is creating a positive, invisible impact or ripple in the lives of other people who share a message with the world. Well, the gateway for me into that was speaking. So I was passionate about speaking. And then eventually I discovered I had a purpose for helping other people get their voice heard.

So what I mean is I wouldn't have found it without comedy. The comedy got me into speaking. The speaking got me into finding a purpose. And so I feel the easiest gateway, the gateway drug that you can take, it's a good one to take is the one, again, vitamin P, of finding a passion in your life. So I do truly believe that. I will say one thing I want to add on to what you said about the gentleman and the circumstance and how it changed your perspective once you heard that is when I said it's hard to change impressions, here's the flip side of that. If people want the strategy for how we can do that on our own, how we can change how we view something, it's called reframing. And reframing has changed everything for me. And so what reframing allows you to do is look at a circumstance

differently and change the meaning. Now, it isn'ting allows you to do is look at a circumstance differently and change the meaning. Now, it isn't always easy, but let me give you a super quick, easy example is and it's from actually a filmmaker that I've worked with for both Blue Talks and also filming other stuff for us, like documentaries and that. But he and his wife, what they do is when somebody cuts them off because they're in a city, Toronto, where you get cut off a lot and people give you the middle thing. You got to deal with all that. So he gets cut off a lot. And what he said they started

doing, which I think it's even the way they do it makes it work. But he said, instead of them getting grumpy and taking that to the office and out on other people, now what they say is, oh, that poor guy, maybe he's got to poop real bad. And that changes everything because now it gets them laughing, funny. It's like, oh, it's no big deal and it changes the the weight and my mother one time we were in a drive-through and the guy was behind us was yelling at us and cursing at us and my mother didn't hear that she's partially deaf we get driving up the road and I said did you hear what that guy was saying and she said what and I told her and she said turn this car around I'm gonna go back and have a talk to that guy and I don't know if I added this or she said it but I always joke that she said I'm gonna go punch

him in the face but I said mom and it was mother's if I added this or she said it, but I always joke that she said, I'm going to go punch him in the face. But I said, Mom, and it was Mother's Day, I should add. I said, Mom, it's Mother's Day. Maybe it's not about us at all. Maybe he sees a mother and a son and maybe he doesn't know his mother. Maybe he never met her. Maybe he was adopted. Maybe she's in the hospital. And maybe it's just how he's feeling on that day. And she said, I never thought of it that way. What he's going through, that poor guy. We should go back and buy that sweetheart a coffee. Reframing. Nothing changed.

The event didn't change, but I changed the way we respond to it and it changed the outcome. So my point is, it is hard to change your first impression. But if you're going to have a chance of doing it at all, you need to change the way you look at the situation called reframing, which I think is game changing if you understand it. It's amazing. I love that so much. Thanks for sharing that story. I love how you often talk about your personal stories. My mother, I share her story a lot. And it's because she played such an important pivotal part in my life because I was raised by a single mother. My father lives any given time, 15,10 minutes away from me. And last time I seen him is probably three years ago. Like I just he lives nearby. I see him.

And so my mother really was kind of my mother and father. My grandfather became like a surrogate father. But my mother was really my mother and father. And so I probably share a lot of stories with her because I want to keep her legacy rolling. That's why I share a lot of personal stories. But also why my mother makes an appearance as a character every now and then. It's because she did play such a big part of my life. Yeah, I think even you talked a lot about her in your last episode that we had. I love that. Giving your mom flowers all the time. I probably did. There's another thing that I think that you do that I find is special to you. And I think that I have the same. I create a safe space for my guest

and you have a very warm, welcoming, friendly space for a person to be themselves. Yeah, well, you know, on one hand, I do think like for me, I really do believe ultimately we're only here for a short amount of time. Honestly, I could this is one interview. And this is you're a person that I could be on here with three hours. And I feel like I still would be, you know, able to keep going because of your great energy. And you're welcome being nature to this. And I'll say it this way,

I want to welcome people in and I want to share the story. I have no vested interest to, you know, dig up the dirt or anything like that. If we call ourselves being a media, because now the world's changed so much that if we're a podcast or if we have other platforms or probably media, I never wanted to be media that was trying to dig up the dirt. So I wanted to be a welcoming, but I also grew up in a small town myself, meat and potatoes. My, you know, my grandfather, carpenter, grade three education. Like, yeah, I grew up with that and all always taught to, you know, to just treat people. Well, I will say that I practice what I call the platinum rule, though I don't practice the golden rule. The golden rule says people as you'd want to be treated. But I think we're in a world now where people want personalization. So I think people want to be treated like they want to be treated. So I call that the platinum rule, treating them like they want to be treated versus how I would want to be treated. So I try to practice that in my life. And at the same time, on the welcoming side, I honestly feel at the end

of the day, life isn't as serious as we make it. But I think I've reached a place in my life, where I just realized we're all human. We're all doing human things. We're, you know, I've learned about personality types over the years and realized that just because you're social, somebody else might be really, you got five minutes go and, and I want to know that it's going to serve me well, and then I'm moving on. Like, some people are busy, I don't have time for this, tell me how benefits me. Other people might be, you know what, I get all the time in the world. I make time trees in my backyard. And I recognize that ultimately there's four personality types really that make the world go round and none of them are bad. It's just different. So I think, again, this is, I know a long, long, long tangent to come back around to the fact that I think for me, I want to be welcoming and warm because I

realize everybody's doing the best they can with what they have. And they're really not trying to attack me personally. So it took me a long time to get here, but I'm just at a point where I don't take things personally. If you want to fight with me, I'll maybe pass you along to somebody else in my life that you can fight with because I don't have any interest in you. I just don't, I don't think life is way too short to be fighting about trivial stuff that really won't. And this is what I always tell people, too. If you're stressed out about something right now, can you just simply ask yourself this one thing?

Will I even remember this in 10 years time? Being able to look at that seriously and answer that question. And there are going to be things that you will remember. So, for instance, when I said we lost somebody close to us, my girlfriend lost her father. And so she lost both her parents now. And then we have a six year old and a three year old that don't understand why their papa can't come and visit them. And there's so many links to that.

Well, I'm not going to say to my girlfriend, will you even remember this in 10 years? Because you she will, like this is something that she needs to grieve. And this is something that will matter in 10 years. But somebody cutting you off in traffic, and you never see them again. Will that honestly matter a month from now? I mean, you might remember it if you're spiteful. But most people won't even remember that a month from now that even happened. All they need to forget it is somebody else to cut them off. And then they'll forget the other person. But what 90% of what we stress about won't matter in the future. Losing a parent will probably matter.

If you know, if you're close to them, losing anybody that you were close with will matter. And you will remember probably for the rest of your life. That's different. The World Trade Center, even if you didn't know anybody personally, that will affect you the rest of your life. And I can understand.

Yeah. And if you live in New York near the place where it happened, every time you walk by there, even 20 years later, it might still impact you. So I'm not saying those things. I'm saying the things that are, again, we're all called trivial. The things that somebody said, I don't like the way you look. And you're still carrying it. Or you're losing your mind over it three months later. I don't know if that makes sense. Because I't want people again to think I'm saying the little, the big things, you know, the big thing matters. And you can ask yourself, will this matter in 10 years?

That can change your whole perspective on things. Absolutely. Again, that reframing, you know, Corey, I've had on a lot of guests who have been a part of Blue Talks. And I must say that, you know, it's pretty amazing the way that, you know, they go through your program. It is a life skill. This is something that you will remember in 10 years. It is big. And I can, I can sense it and you really help them connect with their passions. I used to talk about it and I called it fueled by vitamin P. And I always say it's the one vitamin

you can't buy in the store. And yet it's the most important vitamin you might ever take in your life. Yeah. Simply, when you find a passion to me every day after that, as long as you're still engaging in that passion, or you found a purpose, that's taken vitamin P. And so and why and to be honest, why I related to a pill, it's because a lot of times we're like, what's the pill that can make this go away? And this was the thing that made the stuff go away. Like, again, so I had hypochondria for over two years and anxiety for four years, including those two.

So like I kept the anxiety when I developed the hypochondria. And for people that don't know, hypochondria is like if you read about a disease and the symptoms, you start developing the symptoms and think you have it. And there's nothing that in your mind that'll convince you that you don't. And I always this funny scene from the movie, which I forget the name of the movie. I think it was called The Switch or The Change Up with Jason Bateman and Jennifer Anderson. He had hypochondria and he was talking to the kid and they said, I have hypochondria. And the kid said, what's that? And then he described it to him. And I remember the kid looked over and he said, oh, I think that's what I have.

And he did the same thing. But that's what hypochondria is. And so I actually developed it when I read about Michael J. Fox developing Parkinson's at such a young age. Really? Yeah, literally like a day later, I had tremors and I was going in for MRIs and it didn't stop for two years I will say once I ruled out one of them like Parkinson's let's say then I was like oh maybe

it's MS and then boom symptoms church so funny in your head how you can't do symptoms and the other ones are gone and you can't realize this is in your head and it's fascinating in some ways and terrifying in another my point is I've done that for four years. And I performed stand-up comedy one night. And within two months, it's never happened since. Wow. I'm not a doctor. That's not a claim of, you know, we can make it go away for somebody else.

But that's why I'm passionate about what could we do for people if we could help them find a purpose. But they did a test with rats. And what they showed is they gave them meth and put isolated the rats and if they put meth or water both in the cage and isolated them the rats would choose the meth if they put the rats in cages with other rats running the wheel socializing they would choose the water really so to me yeah they had purpose, whenever they were running the wheel and hanging out and socializing, and then purpose way and they chose the math. Now you can read into that. So to me, even though I can't, I'm a doc, not a doctor, I can't complain this, you look at Viktor Frankl studies that prove that people finding meaning help with their mental health,

you look at that rat study, and then you look at the blue zones by Dan Botner, who showed that he did the blue zones of happiness and the blue zones of longevity. Each had nine traits that these people that lived longer for one group and happier for the other group had in common, or that there are nine things they did. Interestingly enough, the most glaring one that overlapped in both happiness and longevity was that they lived on purpose or with a purpose. Oh. So there's three examples that to me have proven that if we can help people find a purpose in life, a lot of the crap goes away. You know, when people find a passion or purpose,

they're happier, they're sick less often. So let's talk even financially. They literally call in to work sick less often. People want to be around them more. They don't get colds. I mean, I could go and make a list. Whenever you run into that person that's just absolutely passionate, you want to help them. You want to serve them. You want to be a part of what they know. And in fact, 100%, well, we just hired four VAs, virtual assistants in the last week for our new project. And honestly, our judgment call is the

why we hired them when in order of like, who was most passionate to least passionate. And so one girl was, she came on and she was just so passionate, so much energy. We're like, well, what do you want to do with her? And we basically added a role. Like, so we were looking for three, we added a fourth because my event manager really needs help because we're so busy all the time now so we were like talking and she's like well what what what do you think about the idea of you know me having a va for what i'm doing and we hired her so she would have been she would have been one of the three if we didn't create the new position but we're like this is a position we need anyway and she is so passionate our blue

talks people love her but my point is she got the. And she is so passionate. Our blue talks people love her. But my point is she got the job because she was more passionate. Honestly, there was no other like, Oh, she has this skill and they don't, there was no skill involved. Like there was no skills taken into account. It was like, we like this person. And so I always say to people being passionate and having a purpose is going to get you further in life. Corey, thanks so very much for being with me today. You're so fun. You bring so much wisdom. So thanks so much.

Tell everybody where they can find you. Okay. You know, so thank you. As far as if people want to learn more, I know when you tell people here's seven places you can go, people usually go to zero. So I always, I only want to give one typically. So I'm going to make it really easy. If they're up for watching the TED talk that we referenced a couple times, which again is called How Schools Can Inspire Purpose,

I think it's like eight minutes or less. Easiest place to go, I set up an actual URL for this, Corey, C-O-R-E-Y. So Corey on purpose.com. So really easy. And Corey on purpose.com. And what that does is it forwards to the YouTube. I'd be ever so grateful if a person wanted to take the time to watch the video and then ask somebody in their life, maybe a teacher or a parent, do you think we should be helping people find their purpose earlier in life? That would be game changing. Corey, thanks so much for being with me. It's always a pleasure.

A pleasure, my friend. Thank you so much. Have a good one. Thanks for listening to Sense of Soul podcast. And thanks to our special guests for joining me. If you want more of Sense of Soul, check out my website at www.mysenseofsoul.com where you can work with me one on one or help support Sense of Soul podcast by donating to my coffee fund. Thanks for listening.