Sense of Soul - The Meaning of Life

Episode Date: September 7, 2020

Join us as we discuss the meaning of life with author Nathanael Garrett Novosel! That one question led him down a very deep rabbit hole lasting over 20 years of research into human behavior, psychology, and philosophy that concluded with an answer that may surprise you.  Along the journey, he discovered patterns across all world views and uncovered a consistent, repeatable method for how people determine the meaning of their own lives. In his groundbreaking book, The Meaning Of Life, Nate clearly lays out the science-based evidence that reveals the exact process to discovering your life’s purpose. His book is available now!! Learn more about Nate at his website www.yourmeaninginlife.com   Check out website www.mysenseofsoul.com

Welcome to the Sense of Soul podcast. We are your hosts, Shanna and Mamby. Grab your coffee, open your mind, heart, and soul. It's time to awaken. Today with us, we have Nate Novosel. When Nate was a child, he wondered, what is the point of life? And that one question led him down a very deep rabbit hole that lasted over 20 years of research into the human behavior, psychology, and philosophy that concluded with an answer that may surprise you. Along the journey, he discovered patterns all across the world, views and uncovered a consistent, repeatable method for how people determine the meaning of their own lives.

He is with us today to discuss his book, The Meaning of Life, where Nate clearly lays out the science-based evidence that reveals the exact process to discovering your life's purpose. Nate is on a personal mission to give truth seekers the tools they need to figure out the most complex question known to men. Why are we here? Thanks so much for being with us, Nate. Yeah, thank you so much for having me and happy to talk about the insights today. We love having guests on who have turned their pain into purpose. That's how we started our podcast. And unfortunately, I was sad to hear that as a five-year-old child, you had to experience

any sort of suffering. But it seems that that suffering helped you to find your purpose. And your purpose is to help other people find their purpose. Yeah, it's very meta. Very meta. But yeah, that was the story. So my dad disappeared when I was five. I don't really remember how I took that because I was too young. I don't have full memories formed or anything at that point. But I do remember when I was six, would go out and visit him for three weeks and two days.

I'll never forget that amount of time. We went out there and I cried on the plane because I'd never left my mother before. But I did get over it because I was going right back. But when I left, my father came back and I knew I wasn't going to see him for a really long time. And, you know, who knows forever. I have never felt so much emptiness and pain. I would never wish that upon anyone. I don't care what they did. I would never wish for anyone to feel that way. That's the moment it happened. I'm six years old, and I'm sitting there and I'm like, Oh my god, I'm feeling absolute emptiness and worthlessness

and pain. And I'm just sitting there staring at the ceiling. And I go, what is the point of all this? And I asked myself, what is the meaning of life? And I ask myself what is the meaning of life and i joke i have a robot brain it's this like uh kind of stoic intellectual side that doesn't care how i'm feeling just kind of thinks of the most rational answer possible to any question i sit there i'm going that's an interesting question i bet you you can answer that i wonder what that is so and like you know i'm crying and like like, death to despair. And they're part of my brain going, that's interesting. That's real life. I want to dissect that.

I spent 20 years researching all the related fields, right? There's psychology, there's philosophy, there's religion, there's all, even evolutionary psychology, evolutionary biology. I mean, these are all fields that all get to how everything works and why we're here. And it just so happens, I'm a highly functional autistic Asperger's, if you will. I was also taking all the psychology courses to learn human behavior so I could act better around other people so I could learn how it works because I can't understand people's emotions as well as others or how they're feeling or what they're

thinking. So now I can dissect it intellectually because I can't do it intuitively. And so I was doing all that studying for those two reasons, right? And what happened was after about 20 years, about seven or eight years ago now, I finally asked myself after all those years, I said, you know, if I were to teach this to somebody else, everything I learned through those decades of research, what are the things that I would have to explain to them? And obviously, it couldn't take me 20 years to explain it or else they wouldn't listen to it. So if I could do one, like if I could all put it into one book, what would it say? And as soon as I asked that question, a whole list of concepts popped into my head that were universal, that were not only supported by science, which is what, you know, I'm a big, you know, proponent of science and the study of the physical universe and make sure

everything's grounded in factual evidence. But then at the same time that i've read all kinds of spiritual and new age books and religious texts and everything else and that it's actually the same concepts are aligned with what they say and i was like holy crap this is amazing i have to write this down because there are universal set of eight concepts that underlie every single philosophy or belief system. They may not all agree on within those concepts what you should focus on or what you should do or what the actual answers are, but they all agree that those are the eight concepts that are critical to finding meaning in life. And they're psychologically proven to make you feel like you have meaning in life. So therefore it is scientific as well. I call it the unified theory of meaning, but that's where we landed after that

20 years of research. That's freaking awesome. I did some research on my own last night just for fun. I don't know why, but I started putting in what's the meaning of life. I started seeing that too, that a lot of people were saying some of those common words that you used. And a lot of people would jump right to the meaning, right? They'll say it's serving others or it's learning or it's continuing to be a better person or it's finding God or living in God's image or there are a whole list of meanings, but being, you know, the systematic type of person I am, you know,

you have to define your terms first. So what you mean by meaning and so i you know i did all kinds of research and kind of came to a set of conclusions about what the most common definitions of meaning are right and this may sound boring but you know there's a i'll keep this short but there's a general list of like you know i don't know five to seven or something like that so the most common ones are well there's the definition of life right the literal meaning like what does life mean the definitions there's the definition of life, right? The literal meaning, like what does life mean? The definitions. There's the origin. That's what most people usually mean when they're talking in the religious sense. There's the significance of what makes life worth living, you know, significant. There's the purpose or intent, the intention of life. So what it seeks to do, or there's the goal,

which you might say is the same as the intent, but they're actually slightly different. And then there are other things, underlying things. What people mean, meaning they don't literally be meaning. They mean other things. One is ethics, like how to live the good life. That's a very Greek philosophy kind of thing. Like, you know, what is the good life? They weren't saying, hey, try to live the best life possible.

Like it's some sort of game or something. It's not. And then the other one, which is mine, this is my way of defining. I don't think anyone else does. But like, how does life work? Although some people do because they say life doesn't come with an instruction manual and what they mean by that is they want to know how how does it work and how do i therefore use that knowledge of how it works to succeed so here's the thing the goal is subjective so that's why everyone disagrees right because your goal you pick whatever goal you want so that's the subjective part.

So when people say there is no meaning to life or you pick your own meaning, they mean that there's no goal. That's what they mean. There are other people who say, like it's to live with God or whatever. And those things are around where it came from, like Big Bang or God or whatever,

that somehow the origin of life should then therefore tell you how to, you know, ethics and other things. So I separated that out for the book. I said, look, we set that aside. Like what was the origin of life? You can't prove the origin of life if it had a non-physical cause scientifically because science is a study of the physical universe. So we have to set aside if we could find some sort of universal set of,

set of principles. So that's the side, the goal is subjective. So we set that aside. So that leads some of these other things. So how life works, you can prove scientifically, you can test it. The, the, the purpose you can also do if you check like the drives of living organisms, the significance you can test based on what people consider to be significant, you know, you might argue that's subjective, but it's actually there's an objective component to it. And then finally, the, which one am I missing? Oh, the definition, the part of the definition of life is, well, what defines life? You can go look at the dictionary. So when you, when you, when you take all those meanings, so let's get rid of the two that are subjective or that, you know, you can't prove and get to the other three. The answer is actually really simple. It solves all three. The answer is growth. That's the answer. It satisfies all three definitions. The part of the definition of life, if you're welcome to go look at the dictionary, growth

is one of the core primary attributes of human organisms. So that's one. It satisfies that one. It satisfies the intent or purpose because we all have drives to grow. And now some super duper skeptics would say, well, technically correlation is an equal causation or whatever. It's like, well, it doesn't matter how that drive was formed. You can talk about evolution. I talk about it in the book. But the answer is that we all want to grow.

I always ask, someone says, oh, no, it's really this. I'm like, well, do you want to do more of that tomorrow? Or do you want to do less of it tomorrow? And it's always more, right? You want to be more. You want to be a better person. You want to grow and develop or help other people grow. That's a form of growth is to foster others' growth. So there's that. So then that brings me to the third definition, which is the significance. And you can test this. What do people put statues to? What do people award? What do people recognize as being great? They recognize achievement. And how does one achieve anything? They grow to be the person who can achieve said goal. It builds into the system. And yeah,

we recognize the culmination or the end of the growth, but you are really celebrated. That's why they have a lifetime achievement awards, right? You celebrate the entire life journey, all the activity that you took to grow into that, and that's what we consider to be significant. And this isn't a personal judgment saying that people who get awards, a lot of people seem to misinterpret this and say, oh, well, it means if you didn't win an award for something, it means you didn't grow and you're less significant as a human being, that's not the point at all. Everybody has their own growth areas. If your growth is to help your child be a good citizen, and you achieve that goal, then you succeeded and you should get an award or medal, right? I'm not making a judgment. Society is making the judgment on what deserve an award or not. I'm not making any judgment. I'm just saying it's what people generally determine to be significant is the degree to which they grow and contribute to society and help societal growth or help their kids growth or help other people's growth, that that's what's significant. So when

you look at the meaning of life, it's an objective, common meaning. And we'll talk about it, but every philosophy and every belief system could all have that common underlying theme, no matter what that end up goal is, if you want to be a good person or do all that other stuff, growth is the common thread. I absolutely agree. Wow. Mandy had an idea to ask our children, our friends, and get their opinion. And I think that you're right. I think you could probably connect any one of their answers in some way to growth. If you don't mind, I thought it was interesting. I'll just read a few of those. It was pretty fascinating. So we just called people and just asked our families, what do you think is the meaning of life? I think the meaning of life here on earth is to learn lessons. We are here to be tested and to bring others to Christ, to try to create an astral body that allows our soul to maintain our consciousness

into the astral realm and then to help others complete that process too. Then we got happiness as an answer, to have a good life, to accomplish things you didn't accomplish before in a past life, to finding your soul's purpose, soul evolution, to lead people to God through our actions, our truth, and through love and compassion, using the talents we have been given with purpose, even if that purpose is unknown to us, to leave the world around us a better place by loving those around us, constantly growing, even though growth can be incredibly difficult.

All those answers are right so notice how when we define the terms the reason why a lot of people go for the goal right they like to help others or do it to do this or to live in god and the thing is is that the growth centric view of meaning does not negate any of those in fact it's complementary with all those it's it's the underlying theme it's basically life is a journey, not as a destination in scientific form. I mean, that's really what it is. So if your goal is to help others or to do this or do that, and you have to grow into the kind of person who can help more people. And, you know, I mean, Bill Gates is donating billions of dollars and he had to do everything he had to do to be able to

be a philanthropist. So like he had to grow into that. He can't just go and donate billions of dollars if he doesn't have it. So like, that's the idea is that it's the underlying universal principle, every philosophy. I've been listening to a lot of the new age stuff recently. And it's so funny, they keep using the same terms that I use in the book. And I'm just like, well, that's coincidence. But, you know, there are a lot of, you know, mediums and spiritual guides and channels and stuff that are saying, yeah, you know, you exist to grow, you know, through experience and develop.

I'm like, hey, that's, I agree with you. And then even if you look at science, I mean, you can saying, yeah, you know, you, you, you exist to grow through, you know, through experience and develop. I'm like, Hey, that's it. That's what I agree with you. And then even if you look at science, I mean, you can prove that scientifically, you can prove how biological drives work. You can prove how, you know, what, what life is seeking to do in terms of what its drive is. And it goes to growth too. I mean, everyone thinks about survival and reproduction, but reproduction is the most fundamental form of growth. They just don't call it that. And then survival, why do you survive? You survive to grow. You don't play a game to not lose.

You play it to win, right? And it's the same. You don't play the game of life to not get hurt. You play it to thrive. And so the not getting hurt is a key part of it, but it's not the primary part of it. So people who live to not fail or to not risk aren't getting the point. So some people aren't comfortable with change and with growth, that's inevitable. Is this what the eight pillars are helping you get to this growth? Yeah, it's a great question. So the other seven,

so growth is one of the eight concepts. So the other seven are helping you to optimize your growth to live a meaningful life. And let me just rattle them off real fast. I'll explain them, but they're seven. So let's just list them. So growth is number one. So the other seven are experience, desire, belief, emotions, ethics, support, choice. Those are the eight. And there's scientific studies behind each one. There are also philosophical or even spiritual or religious principles that get to all of them. So belief is obvious for the religiously inclined and so forth.

So let me just quickly explain how those work and how they help you to grow. So experience is the medium through which growth occurs. I think Einstein, or at least it was attributed to him, I'm not saying he said it, said that all knowledge is gained through experience. Anything is gained through experience, right? You have to have the experience. And reading a book is an experience. People say, oh, you don't have to experience it. It's like, no, but you have to have the experience of reading about it to learn about it. The experience is medium through which growth occurs, right? Growth requires what? A current state, a future state, and some sort of change, as you were saying, to get

from the current state to the future state. And that change has to occur over a period of time, which is the experience. An experience is something occurring over a period of time. So that's the key. The desire. Desire is the drive that you have to achieve a goal for where you need to grow, right? So if you want to be a great basketball player, then okay. So then you have to grow to be a great basketball player, but you have to want it. If you don't want it, you're not going to go play basketball and you're never going to achieve that

goal. So the desire is the drive to get you to that goal. Belief, this is an interesting one. Belief is life's sustaining mechanism. It's what's required to sustain yourself through adversity to achieve the goal. So if you want something really badly, let's say, oh, I want a million dollars tomorrow. Well, if I don't believe I'm going to get that, am I going to act any way differently to get it? No. You notice how this is aligned with the law of attraction, right? You want something you believe you can have it, you get it, right? Now, I have to stay in, just because I'm trying to unify everybody, I have to stay in the scientific realm. And I won't make a comment on whether that's true or not. But I will say, although comment on whether that's true or not.

But I will say, although there's a lot of actually scientific evidence that supports that, but at least the stuff that you can prove in reality. Because if you want it, you believe it, you actually go do it, and then you get it. But yeah, so whether or not you have to take action or whatever, I'll set aside. But you do have to believe that you will attain it or else you won't do it. It's that simple. If you don't believe that you can lift your arm, you might not lift it. I mean, it's just the way our brains work too. So that's awesome. Yeah. But what's cool is that science can prove that and law of attraction, all these other belief systems also say, yeah, you need desire and belief and you need to have the experience

to get the growth. It's like, it's all both scientifically proven and new age proven, which is to the extent that you can prove that. But yeah, so it's unified. Now, here's my favorite part is emotions. So you can tell at any time, people always ask, and I think even Abraham Hicks is big on that if you're familiar with them, that your emotions are an indicator. And so you mentioned the meaning of life is to be happy. A lot of people believe that. It's slightly untrue. The more accurate term, what most people say when they fix that is the meaning of life is to do what makes you happy. That's more accurate than the meaning of life is to be happy. Happiness or emotions are a signal or an indicator of the alignment between your experience, your desires, and your beliefs. It's a mathematical formula as scientific as two plus two, as mathematical

and certain as two plus two. And I'll give you an example. So let's say you're jealous, right? Let's take jealousy. Why are you jealous? Because you want something or someone, because you believe that you deserve them. You believe that the other person does not deserve them. And then you have the experience of seeing that other, some other person with that person or thing that you want and believe you should have and believe that they shouldn't have. And then you feel jealous. And if any of those three things do not exist, you will not feel jealous.

You could go through each one. If you don't want that thing, you don't care whether that other person has it. Who cares? You don't want it. What's the difference? If you believe that they deserve it, you no longer feel jealousy. You feel what? Admiration.

You're not jealous, you're admiring them. And then experience, if you don't see them and you don't think about it, you're not jealous. But if you're thinking about it or you're experiencing seeing them and then it's making you feel that way, it's the experience. Those three things are the ingredients required to have an emotion. So if you're happy, it tells you that you're having a growth enabling experience. It's one that you want. And that, you know, you believe that this is a good thing. Because if you believed it was a bad thing that was happening to you, then you would feel bad. So you need all three of those things.

And that's why emotions are emotions are an indicator. Now, here's the reason why I say it's not the meaning of life. Because you can hack an indicator, you can hack any indicator, I use this joke at work all the time that imagine you're a help desk and you say that I want to close calls quickly and make sure that their questions are answered. So you track two metrics, right? You track time to close, how long does it take to answer the question, and you track first call resolution. That's a fancy way of saying that you answer their question the first time they don't call back. So you think that if you track those two metrics, you're going to get calls completed on time and you're going to get them answered efficiently. But what you're really going to get is people trying to get their customers off the phone and never call back. So it doesn't matter whether they're happy or not. It doesn't matter whether you answer their question. You can say, hey, you know, go screw yourself, hang up the phone, and then they're never going to call back, and they're never going to buy your product again, and you won't have achieved the outcome. So you hacked the metric. You got the metric. You didn't get the outcome. So you can do that with happiness too. You can take drugs.

They've done studies where they've hooked up electrodes to parts of your brain that generate happiness and you can experience eternal bliss until you die of starvation because you stop eating. You can hack your happiness brain. You can gamble. You can do all kinds of addictive behaviors and that is not meaningful growth and growth enablement it is hacking

happiness and experiencing pleasure not fulfillment so that's why it's important i like that the way you said that whoa are there's there an order to them well i put in in the order i'm rattling them off and make the most use of them you have to learn each one in this order um it's how i do the exercises and questions in the book so that you can, it's like growth. You have to write down areas that you would be interested in improving on like areas that you think would be interesting or valuable. Experience would be, okay, if these are your goals or your areas of interest, then what could you do to have them? And then desires, can you build the desire so you actually are motivated to do them? Belief, can you actually write down what you believe about them to make sure that you have beliefs that are conducive to you actually taking action and doing them? You see how it's all

building up on each other. I like it. Yeah. So then the next one is ethics. The two biggest beefs I have with any self-help book is one, they assume a goal. It's not always their fault. Like, hey, get rich or whatever. It's like, okay, but no one has that goal. But they assume that goal. And then second is that they therefore tell you what ethics to have i jokingly call this the god exists so don't mean to eat meat on fridays and lent uh kind of problem which is like okay how are those two things aligned like and so you don't eat meat on length but lent but uh during limp but you have no idea why i don't know why i'm not to do it and so i didn't want to write a book and then said, well, here are the ethics you should have.

Because most people like how to live the good life. I actually don't like the Greek philosophers who tried to do that. They thought there was like some perfect set of ethics. And honestly, ethics change. You know, if I told you right now, would it be ethical for you to tell your children to go into the same field as you did? And, you know, most 80s movies are built on that, right? Like you want me to live the life you couldn't have as the star football player, you know, like that was the 80s joke. But that seems really unethical, right?

But think about it this way, go back to the 1600s. Where if you build a business, and let's say you're a Smith, like a blacksmith or something. Maybe we have to go further back. I actually don't keep going further back. Let's say you're a blacksmith. And so you make swords or guns or armor or something. Your kids, would it be unethical for you to make them go into your business? Of course not. It'd be actually the highest form of ethic to continue that business. Why? Because my God, was it hard to start a business back then? Was it hard to actually be successful? It was very hard to live. You had a whole family to take care of. You would often take care of extended families. And so the difficulty with which it was to live

made it more ethical for you to continue the business and help feed the people you cared about and help them thrive than it would be for you to go, well, let me go live my own life. You know, let your business fail or go when you die. And then if you fail, everybody is impoverished and starving and they all die. So this is a good point. Things have changed. Ethics change. Yeah. Ethics change. Just like marrying people. I mean, they used to marry off all their children and now we're more open to allow them to make those dumb choices for themselves. Exactly. Yeah. Ethics change. So I took it upon myself not to put any ethics in the book that I say you should have. I talk about what are universal ethics that everybody generally has, but I don't tell you to have them. I just say, hey, this is how it works. So those are the two

things that are important to me. But how does ethics deal with meaning? I can only tell you the simplest approach that if you win a competition, you know, think sports, think recently with the ped investigations and stuff. If you win a sport and then it turns out you cheated, does that person still deserve to be recognized? And you know, the answer to that, as soon as the whole thing came out with the ped scandal with all those baseball players who were juicing. And as soon as, you know, Lance Armstrong admitted that, that he was blood doping and all these other things, the significance or meaning of that achievement goes down. Period, full stop.

That's what ethics, it's about living life following a set of rules that enable the most growth for yourself without harming anyone else. That's the official definition I put. I need that again. Following rules that allow you to optimize or maximize your own growth while minimizing or not harming others. Because ethics require other people. I mean, if there's no other people, I mean, so ethics is how you treat other people. But it's also rules for yourself, right? Like a good work

ethic, right? So like, oh, I work 10 hours a day or whatever. Those are ethics you can follow. But that's the secret is that not having ethics, it takes away the meaning. So therefore, by definition, having ethics ensures that you follow that growth pursuit in a way that has significance and meaning. That's great. Support. So ethics and support work in terms of like growth greater than yourself. So it's cooperating as part of a group. So ethics are don't hurt people. Support is help people, right? So support basically says that you can grow exponentially more with other people than you can yourself. Again, periods, full stop. So if you foster other people's growth and you get other people's help and your growth, then you will grow more. You can't build Stonehenge or

the pyramids or giant buildings or whatever without other people. You can't do it yourself. It would take you an eternity. Like imagine having to invent physics, calculus, metallurgy, and all these other things to build a self-driving car. It would take you, you may never be able to do it by yourself. Like if you had a million years, you may not have been able to do all that stuff because maybe you don't have all the skillset. So support is required to grow more than you would otherwise.

And this is hard for most people, asking for help and allowing that. Everyone asks me, hey Nate, what's the hardest one for you? Like I'll support no doubt. Not even thinking about it because I don't like to ask for help. So well, and then on the flip side, you said emotions was your favorite. Why is that? Emotion is my favorite because it's the most counterintuitive finding like positive psychology is the current is the flavor of the month, you know, Daniel Gilbert, stumbling upon upon happiness and everyone's doing all this happiness research. One of the founders of, or at least the godfathers, if you will, of positive psychology is McKaylee. He wrote the book called Flow. And Flow is basically just a state of optimal growth. That's my definition,

not his. When the challenge and your ability are in the perfect balance, then you experience flow. So if it's too hard for your ability, then you'll be frustrated. And if it's too easy for your ability, like then you're going to be bored. So it's this finding this state between boredom and overwhelm and or frustration is flow. And that's optimal growth. That's all it is. It's just optimal growth. So you can scientifically prove that. But people went off on all this, like what makes people happy? And look, there's nothing wrong with it. I just think that people are going to find that because of the way that the English language is set up, that happiness, people conflate happiness or pleasure and fulfillment. And if you don't distinguish between the two types of happiness, which most scientists end up doing eventually when they explain it to people, if you don't

differentiate between those two things, you'll confuse people and make them think that, oh, I'm going to go chase the next high. And that's just the absolute wrong way to go about it. Temporary. You know, I also thought about Abraham Hicks just now when you were talking about the flow, the path of resistance and the path of least resistance. If you can sit with yourself and have discernment, it's very easy to sense that. Exactly. And that's what the emotions are for. They're there to give you that feedback. If you didn't have emotions, you'd have no idea how you were doing. They use the analogy in the book that there are people who don't have a sense of touch, or at least a sense of pain, I should say. My son has that.

And so if they touch a hot stove, they won't know that they're being hurt. And so I use that analogy because it's like, well, why do you have pain? People are trying to avoid pain all the time. Pain isn't necessarily, I mean, it's something you don't want to have, but it's not something you wish you didn't have. A lot of people say, oh, I wish I didn't have any pain. So, well, that's a terrible thing because if you didn't have it, then you wouldn't know if you were being hurt and to change your behavior. If you feel bad, I mean, as bad as it feels, for someone who's felt the emptiness of emptiness,

I can tell you that while it feels terrible, it is telling you to change your behavior, change your thinking or beliefs or something to make yourself feel better. And that's what people end up doing. Anyway, the last choice, and I have to give credit to my wife for this because I had seven. I was like, am I missing anything? I feel like I'm missing something. What is it? And she's just like, what about choice? Everyone has a choice. I think that's important. And I think you should mention that. And I'm just like, well, I kind of put choice in all the different chapters. And I think I talk about it a lot. And the more I thought about it, the more I was like, oh, God, she's absolutely right. Like helping people to take action is always a good thing to attend your book with. And so I was like,

well, make it the final chapter that ultimately, everything you do in life is a choice that you make. Now, there are things you can control and there are things you can't control. And, you know, everyone, everything from the AA, God grant me the ability to do what I can. And I'm butchering that. Change and the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference. Exactly. So that is exactly what, because you can only control what you can control and you can't control what you can't control so the thing is though that there are two if you if anyone who's a fan of stats out there will know that there's like a type one error and type two error right it's like thinking that's true when it's not and thinking it's not when it's true and so you got to be

careful about thinking that something's outside your control when it when it is in your control because then you don't do anything about it that's one of the false beliefs that hurt you right so if you don't think you can do anything, then you've become a helpless, learned helplessness is what they call it in psychology. So you have to make sure you have agency. But the scientific proof for this is there. They did a very simple study. You might have heard of it. They took a whole group of elderly folks at elderly care centers, and they had two groups. One group, they did nothing, control group. The other group, they gave a plant. Kid you not, that's all they did they gave them a plant the people who received the plant lived much longer

significantly longer than the people who didn't have a plant now you're thinking what the hell does a plant have to do with anything the answer is everybody needs a plant agency control choice because they were they wasn't they weren't given a plant. They were given a responsibility and they were given something to have control over, that they controlled this plant's destiny, right? So they had to water it. They had to make sure it had enough light and all this other stuff. So the difference was that the people who were in an early care center without the plant basically had everything taken care of for them. they had no responsibility and they just kind of sat there and had no real feeling of purpose or meeting or agency and the people with the plant felt a sense of agency by having responsibility

for that plant right so i know responsibility and choice are a little bit you have the responsibility for the choice but i know they're not exactly the same thing but um they are interrelated in the sense that when you have a choice you have a responsibility for the choice, but I know that they're not exactly the same thing, but they are interrelated in the sense that when you have a choice, you have a responsibility to make a good one. And so it's scientifically proven that the feeling of agency, the ability to have control over yourself and your destiny makes you feel more meaning and control over your life. So those are the eight things. If you do all eight of those things, you will find meaningful fulfillment in your life because

you'll be going toward a goal. You'll be feeling good about it. You'll have help. You'll be doing things in the right way so you don't feel guilty about it. And you'll know that you control your own destiny. That's why those are the eight things. Congratulations. Yeah. Amazing. Amazing. I just wanted to say that yesterday. So normally when I'm doing notes for podcasts, I do it in my phone and then I put them out. For some reason yesterday, I doodled like a hundred plants. Like I just kept writing out all of your eight pillars and putting it next to a plant for

some reason. Isn't that funny? Wow. Like I just kept thinking about growth. You did a great job of explaining that. I absolutely am kind of blown away because the way you put it together with the science and really from any direction or area or wherever you come from, it's awesome. I can't wait to get your book. So is your book available now? Yeah, yeah. It came out on january 1st so it's called the

meaning of life of guide to finding your life's purpose it's on amazon barnes and noble all the you know major players and stuff shanna has a son who's um high functioning autistic and he's like these certain things that he just will know everything about and he wants to know everything about and he almost obsesses on it do you think that is kind of another attribute to the reason you really dumped your soul into this for so many years? The short answer is yes. It was an obsession. I love psychology.

I love how things work. It's very Asperger-y thing to care about the how and the mechanisms behind things more than you care about the people and so forth. The reason why is that when you grow up and you can't really make friends very well, and you're trying to figure out, and you see that everyone works differently. And you feel like and you know, the number one trait that people say with Asperger's, they feel like an alien, like they don't feel like they fit in, they don't feel like they act like other people act. And so I'm really smart, though, too, which is that, you know, I'm lucky to be really,

really smart. So I can hide it. And so how I hit it was though, too, which is that, you know, I'm lucky to be really, really smart so I can hide it. And so how I hit it was I studied psychology for 20 years and I learned how to act and behave, even though I don't fully understand or appreciate intuitively why I'm supposed to act this way. I know that I'm supposed to. So I do it. And that was part of the that's one of, two or three reasons, primary reasons why I studied that so much. So, yeah, to answer your questions, yeah. I had a goal in my mind of being the world's greatest advisor. I know that seems kind of, you know, fluffy or whatever, like really ambitious. But I was like, I wonder if I could be, you know, give the best explanation of something to really help see the truth of an idea or something. So when I wrote this book, I was like, well, if I get this right, maybe I'll be as good as I hope to be.

So what about these people that just have no idea even where to start with that? A simple play on words here, but they want to know what they want. That's your first step. So a lot of people, I don't know what I want. It's like, okay, well, you want to know what you want, right? Yeah, okay, good.

Start with that. You want to know what you want. Okay. How do you find out what you want? Not to be biased because I'm a researcher by trade and by and psychological or intellectual knowledge acquisition, physical growth. I talk about a lot of random ones, though, that you wouldn't think of, right? Because I just wanted to make sure that I was trying to be comprehensive. You can't be, but I was trying to be. But I list a whole bunch of different things so that you can figure out what different types of growth areas might be of interest. And then it's really just research and experience.

So you want to have experiences to learn what you want. And a lot of people, I've seen this personally in people in my family, I won't name names, but they didn't know what they wanted, so they did nothing. And it's like, well, how are you going to know what you want until you do something and then find out you don't like it? Like, well, if I, you know, if I pigeonhole myself into a career that I don't like, then I'm never going to be able to get out of it. I'm like, that's ridiculous.

You just quit and you go do something else. This is not hard. You'll be no worse off than you are right now. If you got a job you didn't like, made some money and then quit. And people don't realize this, but what you do, if you don't know, is to do something to earn a living or whatever, or to make progress. If you're in school, it would be like pick a major or something like that. Try it for a little bit. Cause you got that two years of gen ed, I think still in school. And if you don't like it, find out what you like about it. Find out what you don't like about it.

And here's the thing. All you have to do is write down two lists. What I like about it, what I don't like about it. And then for the things you don't like, write down what you would like about it. Usually it's the opposite, but sometimes it's not the opposite. It's just a more nuanced thing. And so you just write down what you would prefer, right? I prefer this because I don't like these things.

I prefer these things. And then go and look for the next step on your journey that lets you keep as much from what you do like and move you more toward what you prefer and get away from what you dislike. Just don't run away from what you dislike. I just make a note of that. I've seen it in my career. I've seen people like move from revenue side of the house to the research side of house on my career. And they've always been running away from sales because they didn't like it. And then they were miserable in research. And it's like, what would you expect? You weren't running toward research,

you were running away from sales. Like you're not going to find what you want by running away from what you do. You got to find what you prefer and move toward it. And that's the secret if you don't know what you want. So what is crisis and meaning? I love this. So people argue that we're in a crisis of meaning these days. And the reason is, is because the like, I don't know, pick millennials or Gen Z or whatever, I'm not going to pick on any generation. But the argument is that, that people are having a crisis of meaning these days. And all that means is that when you are in a society where you're not afraid that a bear is going to come in your house and rip your head off, like you just, it's not a problem. We've solved for that.

So we're generally safe. We can make fun of helicopter parents, people where they make sure all your, every need is met without you having to do a lot of work. So all your needs are met and you don't have any fears or risk. So what happens? You invent them because you have two things. One, you're not striving toward anything because everything's taken care of. You're just handing things. By the way, it's one of the things I appreciate about my background. I appreciate being from a single mother family because I had a strong desire from a young age to be financially secure.

And I make multiple times what my mother ever made. And I appreciate that because I wouldn't have had that same drive if I didn't have that experience. But anyway, for people who have everything taken care of them, and it's just they don't really have a purpose. Because first of all, anytime they even expressed any need or discomfort whatsoever, it was addressed for them. It's like, okay, well, I don't have to do with that. I just need to complain and someone takes care of it. And then the second thing is they didn't explore, they didn't really kind of go out there, they didn't take risks, they didn't have anything to, they didn't see the negative side of the world experience to them. So they didn't explore they didn't really kind of go out there they didn't take risks they didn't have anything to they didn't see the negative side of the world experience to them so they didn't have to say well i don't like that so what do i like i want great things you know i

want wonderful things so that those examples of people whose kids were killed like i think the guy did the was helping uh find kidnapped kids or something that guy yeah yeah yeah he dedicated his life to helping find yeah america's most wanted he dedicated his life to helping find, yeah, America's Most Wanted. He dedicated his life to helping make sure that other families didn't experience what he had. It's the people who went through was met they don't really have a purpose so they turn to drugs they turn to sex you could argue it's generations of people it's a whole group of people who just don't have that sense of purpose or meaning because they don't have to work they don't have to do anything and so they're like well what do i do with my life i want it to mean something and then they have no idea what to do so that's the crisis of meaning um it's it's actually well let's say it's a simple fix it's not an easy fix because it's hard to change behaviors and beliefs and stuff. But it is a simple fix of applying

these eight principles, identifying growth areas, and so on and so forth. But it is a real thing. It's just, I don't mean to sound like I'm mocking you, because it is a real thing. It's just a lot easier to solve than people think. And everyone just kind of makes fun of these people for like being in their parents' basement or whatever. And it's not like that. But people do need to find ways that they can contribute. People unfortunately think too much that like, because the world should be perfect and everyone should kind of like make it work that way, but then they don't really see how they can contribute to it. And then they go out and like, you know, scream for change, but like, well, they could just

go and do some of the change themselves, but they don't seem to know how to do it. So it's about finding that's how they can contribute. Oh my God. Then every single kid I know needs your book. Yeah, I would argue because the safer things get, the more sensitive people get and the harder it is for people to figure this stuff out. Like I said, when all your needs are met, when all your wants are met almost instantaneously, it's hard to really find that long-term goal that you want to strive for. so is these eight colors something you do over and over and over in life yeah the thing is that growth grows uh not to sound redundant but it never stops yeah that's why i said first i'll never tell you what your

goal should be i'll never tell you what your ethics should be because your goals will change your ethics will change there are people who uh who ate meat the first half of their lives and say, you know what, for ethical reasons, not gonna eat meat anymore. And it doesn't mean that they were a bad person before. And now that they're this, you know, wonderful person, although some people act like that, like they like everyone else should now be as ethical as they are, because they came to the, you know, they saw the light. And now everyone else would be that way. And if they don't act that way, they're terrible. It's like, but you were that way. So you had to learn that that was the ethic that you wanted to adopt. Yeah, because when you grow, you change. It's inevitable. Yeah. So your goals will change too. Yeah. So a lot of people I put in the book that it's rare that let's just take

a Peyton Manning, like father was Archie Manning, I believe his name was, was a was a football player. And of course, so he was a football player. And so he that's all you want to want to be was a was a was a quarterback. And he was an NFL quarterback, one of the the greatest of all time if not the greatest in terms of just pure passing then he was done but like he didn't just die when he retired like he still lives so there are other things for him to do he's a good spokesman or pitch man he does great on snl uh he owns businesses and and and supports that he's an analytical mind so he loves mastering things he's a competitive guy you have more than one goal so first of all you have more than one growth area that you want to focus on. So you might want to work out three times a week, but you might also like help your kid read. I mean, those are all, those are different growth

areas. And then secondly, you can always change your mind. Like, you know, maybe one day it turns out I want to go and be a philanthropist or something that makes them up. I don't know. Or maybe I just want to go and just be, I don't know. I mean, you can change your goal whenever you want. So if you feel like it's not working for you anymore, you're welcome to change. Speaking from experience, when I jumped around, got my personal training certificate, then I went to be a certified addictions counselor. Then I wanted to go into broadcasting and public speaking. I mean, real estate, you know, our society kind of put this expectation on me that I was a failure because I wasn't following through with them. But really, all of them led to meaning and purpose because I was figuring out what I didn't like and

what I didn't want to do. So that's not a failure at all. Absolutely. If there were one teaching and you said it better than I'm about to, but don't beat yourself up for the past if what your past led to where you are now. Because oftentimes I go, oh, this is what I always wanted to do. I wish I would have figured this out 15 years ago. I'd be so much further ahead. First of all, you can't go back and change it. So don't even worry about it. Like it's just not,

it's one of those things that are out of your control. So make the choice to ignore it and just let it go. But secondly, you don't know. Maybe you'll be better learning later in life that what it was and you needed to do what you had to do before or how to go through the hardship that you went through before. I always give a good example of Jack Black, the actor. He was part of Tenacious D is the band. And I don't think he started

learning guitar until I was his 20s or something, or maybe even 30s. I don't know. And it's like, well, he could have learned when he was five become a prodigy, but he seemed to be doing pretty well. And maybe he wouldn't have been an actor. You know, when I go back and change how my father left, it's like, well, I'd be a completely different person. Maybe I wouldn't have written this book. Hopefully it helps people. And then if it helps millions of people, can I really go and say, well, I helped people, but it would really be great if I wouldn't have felt like crap when I was six, you know, can you please go back and solve that? But then would I have written a book? Would I have studied for 20 years? The answer is probably not. So it's so hard.

Everyone thinks about the benefits of making a change to their past or to things. Don't think about the negative things. And then they think about how much better it would be. And then they don't realize that maybe it was necessary to go. There was one question that was written out for us that I just can't not talk about. It was how to reconcile your intellect and your intuition. Cause Shannon and I talk a lot about those two things. Oh man, that's a good question. So I'm not an expert in intuition. I don't really feel like I have intuition. I'm trying to see if I can bring something out on that. I, I, cause I was like,

you know, a lot of people say to do that one and I try it. So I'm trying to like, what does my intuition say and see if I'm right. I don't seem to have ever been right with my intuition. So I don't know, but, but what I can tell you is, is balancing intellect and intuition in terms of let's, I'm going to replace the word intuition with feeling just something a little bit that I can talk to with a little bit more expertise. So your emotions are telling you as we follow that mathematical formula experience plus desire plus belief So you can balance the intuition is just feeling the feeling and knowing what to do as a result, right? Like something feels bad stop doing it right good intuition telling you exactly we need to know the intellect

Would be your application of two things first is the analysis of that dissecting it the way I described it by the way That is a universal formula. Anyone on this line, if you learn one thing from this whole conversation, it's to do that formula. And anytime you have a feeling, you'll know what, why you feel it because you can dissect it. It's beautiful. You'll never question your emotions ever again. I hope it changes your life, but you don't have to buy the book. Free advice. The other thing is that you could dissect like, well, what are the situations causing all the context and what you know about what's, you know, probabilities and all this other stuff, right? And you want to add that to your intuition because it'll start to influence,

right? So let's take jealousy. So you want someone or something you believe that you deserve and another person doesn't and then you see the experience of them having it. Okay, so you have that feeling, your intuition is telling you that, oh, I want that, or I want something like that, or I believe that I should have it, but I don't, why don't I have it? So you can, you can use the intuition to kind of make the right decision, but you want, you can inject your intellect onto it where you say, okay, so how would I get that? Right? So what do I like about that thing? And you can start to dissect it. Why I like that person because they're nice. I like that person because they have blonde hair. I like that person because they're nice. I like that person because they have blonde hair.

I like that person because they are funny, you know, whatever it is. And you can start to dissect it and use your intellect to construct what your optimal person would be. And then intellectually say, well, that's not the only person on earth. There are others.

So my point is, is that you can bring the intellect on top of it to help to either think of the right plan, to dissect it, is that you can bring the intellect on top of it to help to either think of the right plan to dissect it, to help you understand it better, and then to act more effectively. First of all, I want to say that you should be extremely proud of yourself. I mean, holy crap, you dumped your like heart and soul into this book. 20 years of research, seven years to write the book. Four or five rewrites, yeah.

I can't even imagine the amount of research that you did. Shanna and I have this thing at the end of every episode that's called Break That Shit Down. And I think that that is what your book does. 99% of humans are asking, what is the meaning meaning of life and you broke that shit down for us holy crap i mean again you should just be so proud of yourself i can tell that this book is going to be life-changing for many people yeah so i'll do your break that shit down and now it's time for break that shit down. And now it's time for break that shit down. Okay. Identify areas where you want to grow.

Identify experiences you can have to grow in those areas. Build the desire for it so that you take action. Build the belief so you sustain that action. Use your emotions as feedback to tell you that you're on the right track. Do things ethically in the best way possible to minimize harm to others and best for yourself. Get help and give help and make the best choices for yourself toward those goals. That's badass. I need that for my refrigerator. I did actually, I started a spreadshirt store or whatever. And I put the beauty of life logo on the front and on the back, I started a spreadshirt store or whatever, and I put the Beauty of Life logo on the front.

And on the back, I put the eight things and one, like a five-word summary of each on the back. I don't know if they're any good. I was just playing around with it. So it's on the site. It's on the store, yourmeaninginlife.com, and then there's a store. You know what? We need some of those for our truck. Can you tell our listeners your website again and where they can find your book?

Sure. Yourmeaninginlife.com. The book is on Amazon, The Meaning of Life, A Guide to Finding Your Life's Purpose. And then I'm on social media on Life the Book or The Meaning of Life Book. Thank you so much. We have a lot of young adults that listen to us and they're searching for the meaning of life and their purpose. And so this is great. Thank you so much. And I appreciate you having me. It's a dense topic. It requires a lot of unpacking. No, it was beautiful because you're passionate about it. And you can feel that and it comes through in your answers and the way you talk about it. And so we appreciate that. I always joke, I'm never going on CNN for a two

minute soundbite. This thing is not adjustable in two minutes. Don't worry, neither Mandy or I either. Thank you so much. I appreciate you having me on it. Thanks for being with us today. We hope you will come back next week. If you like what you hear, don't forget to rate, like, and subscribe. Thank you. We rise to lift you up. Thanks for listening.