The Happiness Lab with Dr. Laurie Santos - How to Find Your Purpose

Episode Date: March 3, 2025

What's your purpose? Jordan Grumet thought that becoming a doctor would give his life meaning and direction... but he was wrong. He spent his days doing things he didn't really enjoy and dreaded waking up in the morning.  Finding a purpose that is authentic to you can be transformative - and it doesn't have to be some grand goal like curing a disease or founding a company. Jordan, author of The Purpose Code, explains how we can all find seemingly small and everyday activities which will fill our lives with joy and fulfillment.  Jordan also hosts the Earn & Invest podcast.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Pushkin What's your life purpose? That is a very big sounding question, which honestly is why most of us shy away from talking about it. Your life's purpose feels like it needs to be important. Curing a disease, saving an endangered species, or founding a billion dollar company. It's supposed to be something big, right? Wrong. Because as we'll hear in this episode,

purpose can be found in something as simple as collecting baseball cards and hanging out with others who share your passion. That's an example taken directly from the life of my guest for this episode. Hi, I'm Jordan Grummet. I am a hospice physician, personal finance podcaster, and author of the book, The Purpose Code.

Jordan's career has taken many detours. At times, he's found himself facing some big dead ends in his lifelong quest for purpose. But today, he's pretty happy where things ended up, which makes him an excellent guide for this concluding episode of our How To Season, where we'll discuss how to find your purpose. Jordan began yearning for purpose at a particularly young age,

but set off to find it in a direction that he later realized was a mistake. It all began with an unexpected bereavement. It pretty much affected everything. I was seven years old and my father was this prominent oncologist, this cancer doctor that everyone looked up to. And he had a brain aneurysm, which meant he was literally rounding at the hospital, got a severe headache, collapsed, went into a coma and died within a day or two. Back then, you know,

there was no talk of these extraordinary measures. The neurosurgeon came in and said, look, he's pretty much brain dead. Uh, and they removed life support. And I was seven years old. And as most seven year olds are, I looked at the world through a very self-centered lens. I told myself that there was something wrong with me. I wasn't enough.

I wasn't good enough. I didn't do things well enough. I wasn't lovable enough. And so at some point, I developed the narrative in my own head that could Cosmically fix the world if I became a doctor like him if I just stepped into his footsteps if I walked his path Everything would be okay and that narrative served me for quite a long time. In fact, I had a learning disability I got over that made my way through college and medical school This was a joyful version of purpose and identity at the time.

I wasn't interested in money or career, any of those things. I just wanted to be like my dad. And it served me until it didn't. So let's talk about the part where it didn't. What happened in your medical career that what started out as kind of this important purpose kind of wound up becoming something else.

Well, what pretty much happened is burnout. And what I eventually realized is this version of purpose, this audacious version of purpose, like I can cosmically save this fact that my father died by just becoming a doctor like him wasn't actually reachable. And so I became a doctor, and it didn't solve any of the problems. I still didn't feel good about this sentinel thing that happened in my life. And yet I was spending my days doing things that I didn't love

and I didn't enjoy and that weren't filling me up. And so I wasn't reaching that big audacious goal I had, but I also wasn't enjoying the process either. And that is the perfect setup to burnout. So what were some of your symptoms when you were going through burnout as a doctor? How did it manifest? It's the Sunday scaries, right?

Sunday night, you're like, I don't wanna go to work. It's the waking up in the morning and instead of being energized, being stressed. I contrast that to my life today where I spend a lot more time doing things that I enjoy the process of doing regardless of the goal. And I kind of jump out of bed at 435 in the morning every morning because I'm so excited to jump in. Whereas I might have still gotten up at 430 or five in the morning then, but it was more

I was so anxious that there were all these things on the table that seemed impossible that I had to get through. And so it really manifests itself very differently. There's a certain amount of optimism and a joy in which I leap into activities now that I just didn't have them. And so how did you break out of this? It must be really hard to kind of train your whole career to become a doctor, you're feeling burned out. What was the next step? It was kind of a happy accident. And I think this happens to a lot of people when they take on big audacious purpose that doesn't suit them.

They actually often try to fit these things in that are more joyful that suit them better around the sides, like when they're not busy doing other things. So I love writing. I love communicating. I love public speaking. And so I was trying to integrate that into my life and I I told myself, well, you can't really do that for a living. Like writing is a hobby, it's something you do for fun. So I was fitting it in during my lunch hour, or at night when my wife and kids were sleeping. And so fortuitously in 2014, I was

writing a blog about medicine, what it felt like to be a doctor. And this guy named Jim Dolly, the white coat investor, sent me his book and he had written a book about physician personal finance and he wanted me to review it from my blog. And I had always had modeled for me beautiful, wonderful financial behavior, but I never had the words to understand what that meant. And so he sent me his book and it described this concept of financial independence, this idea of having enough money so that you didn't have to spend your days doing things you didn't want to do. And within a few hours of reading this, I realized I was doing fine financially.

Like I didn't have to continue doing this thing that wasn't filling me up just because I needed a paycheck, which was amazing and exhilarating for all of about a minute. And then I had a major panic attack because I realized this only thing that I'd ever identified myself as, this only version of purpose I really knew outside of, you know, the basic pedestrian stuff of having a family and kids and that kind of stuff. But my only real sense of purpose was tied to something I realized didn't suit me anymore. And not only that, but it was that singular connection I still had to my father.

And I was talking about walking away and I knew I had to walk away, at least on some level, because of the burnout and the anxiety and the stress. On the other hand, if I was gonna walk away from this only thing that had ever defined me, who would I be? And so that started a process which took years of trying to figure out how to develop

and pursue a life of purpose. And I wasn't ready to throw the baby out with the bathwater So I couldn't just walk away from medicine because I probably could have at that moment said i'm done I quit i'm out, but I didn't have the emotional fortitude. So actually I started with something much more simpler I use what I call the artist subtraction. I started getting rid of what I didn't like in my job I didn't love owning my own practice. I got rid of that I eventually got rid of the working in the nursing home in the nights and the weekends what I didn't like in my job. I didn't love owning my own practice. I got rid of that. I eventually got rid of the working in the nursing home in the nights and the weekends. What I was left with was doing hospice work, taking care of the terminally ill. And strangely enough, I

realized I would do that even if I wasn't being paid for it. That was an anchor for me. I'm like, okay, this job no longer feels purposeful. I don't identify by it. But there's this little piece, being a hospice doctor, which was an anchor of joy and purpose for me. So I could stick with that. But that, of course, opened up a huge amount of space because I was doing that about 10 or 15 hours a week. So the question was, what type of life did I want to lead in all that open space? And that's where I came back to those joys that I'd always submerged things like writing and public speaking and expressing

myself. And since I got there through learning about personal finance, it was a natural place for me to start writing and podcasting about. It also seems like you're switched to spending more time with those in palliative care, sort of to tell you something else about purpose. What was that? Well, interestingly enough, my life had taken two tracks, right? One track was becoming a personal finance expert, doing a blog on that, and eventually a podcast. But the other track was I was still taking care of the terminally ill. And after doing this for 10, 15 years and sitting at people's bedside, I realized that

when I was talking to financial people, they were really good at telling me how to make money or how to invest. But often if I asked them questions like, well, what does enough look like in your life or what is this serving? I got a lot of blank stares. On the other hand, then I go see my hospice patients who would know that the end was coming and all they wanted to do was talk about what was important in their life and specifically about regrets.

What did they regret never having the energy, courage, or time to do? And I started thinking about what if all my financial people had this knowledge? What if they could put themselves in the shoes of someone who is dying and just for a brief period of time, think about those really important things that they hadn't accomplished. And what if we could then flip those around and turn them into anchors of purpose? Like, okay, this is a beckoning, this is an inkling, this is this big important thing to me. If I do nothing for the rest of my life, if I keep on saying I don't have enough time, I don't have enough money, I don't have enough energy, or I'm afraid I'm going to fail, one day a doctor like me will walk into your room and you'll realize it's too late.

And so what I wanted to do was take that feeling, that knowledge, and give it to all these younger people who are trying to figure out their life How do we win the game? How do we die without regrets? So regrets became purpose anchors Something we have to build a life of purpose around they always say this you don't find purpose everyone's like I'm waiting for it It's either gonna fall on my head. I'm gonna be successful and happy in the world is gonna be great or I'm gonna miss it and everything's gonna be horrible The truth of matter is we have these whisperings, but then we have to do the hard work Which is building a life of purpose around it

And I think the dying they have that message to give us don't wait until it's too late So it seems like to find purpose we have to start by knowing what it is What is purpose and as we think about finding it? What are some of the benefits that can come from it psychologically? So this is my favorite question because I think colloquially, we talk about purposes being our why, and I think that's problematic. I think the better way to look at it is

purpose are the actions we take in the present and future that light us up. That's it. Simple, straightforward. Why don't like looking at it as our why is because then it becomes high stakes and we're back to this, I either don't figure it out and all is lost or I figure it out and I live blissfully happy and we all know that's not how it works. And so I think it's a much simpler definition. Why is it important? Well, the

studies are clear. I mean, there are a million studies out there that look at having a purpose in life and what that means. And we know from various studies that it leads to increased health, longevity, and happiness. And so it's really important if we had a pill, if the doctor could give you this pill and say you're going to live 10 or 20 percent longer, you're going to be happier and healthier, of course we would take it. And yet people get so confused about purpose because it seems ephemeral and hard to reach that they give up on it. And in fact, other studies, which seem to contradict those first studies, show that up to 91% of people at some point in their life have what's called purpose anxiety. This idea of finding their purpose actually frustrates them, cause them depression, anxiety.

And so the question is, how can it be both? How can purpose be like the most important thing, but also so anxiety-ridden? And I think part of the reason is because we get this idea of purpose wrong. We've been stuck in that purpose is our why for so long that we make these big audacious dreams often ones we don't have the agency to achieve. And it leaves us frustrated as opposed to focusing on action in the present and future and doing these little things that just light us up, which I think is much more associated with all those good things we see the studies show.

And so you've made this distinction that I find really important between, you know, what you seem to be calling sort of this big P purpose, that kind of big highfalutin kind of scary anxiety inducing purpose, and what you've termed little P purpose. What's the little P purpose? What are we missing? So little P purpose is process oriented instead of goal oriented. And so the idea is doing things that light you up. And why this is good is it's impossible to fail.

I say big P purpose is all or nothing. You either succeed in this really big audacious thing or you don't. Little P purpose is all or all. And so it tends to be very, very abundant. Think about this. What are the million different things we could do that we would enjoy?

Conversely, big p-purpose is much more goal-oriented, and usually we don't love the process of doing the things we do just to get to this goal. And that's problematic for a few reasons. One is we often say things in America like if you can think it you can build it and so We don't just think of purpose, but it's always like this big outsize. I'm gonna be a billionaire. I'm gonna run for president I'm gonna have an eight-figure business and a lot of times we're sold this by social media and society

And so a lot of people like I don't know what my purpose is I can't find it And so what do they do? They go right to their phones and they look at Instagram and TikTok and what are they seeing? They're seeing six pack abs and eight figure businesses and wearing the nicest clothes and traveling to every country in the world. And the problem is a lot of the people putting out those images, whether it's in social media or in marketing, are trying to sell you something. But we co-opt this version of purpose because we don't know what feels purposeful. And

we've been told that it's supposed to be big and impactful and important. But a lot of us don't have agency to actually have six-pack abs or run the eight-figure business. We're not the right person at the right time saying the right things with the right genetics and a whole lot of luck. And so a lot of the times we fail, which makes us feel just lost and anxious, or God forbid, we succeed and we realize that we don't still feel filled up. And so we have to double down and then pick the biggest better thing. So now I have an eight figure business, but I want to be a multiple billionaire. I want to be in the list of top 50 billionaires or what have you.

We know that we tend to habituate back down to a baseline, especially with this goal oriented purpose. If I could, we need to look at other examples, not the kind of folks on social media or the billionaires. Like when we're looking for people who achieve little p-purpose, it's not necessarily the people we expect. You shared the story of someone that you grew up with, this kind of baseball card guy that worked in your neighborhood. You share his story and why was it so powerful for gaining Little P. Purpose? So Roman changed my life and he never ever meant to. But he did anyway and this is I think the importance of Little P. Purpose because not only is it reachable and something we all can do,

but it actually can lead to really big impact and legacy. And so Roman was a baseball player in high school. He blew out his knee, kind of gave up on that dream, decided not to go to college and took over his father's antique shop because he was good at redoing furniture, right? They would bring him armoires and things and he would fix them up, restain them and sell them. And so he's busy in this life running the antique store and a gentleman dropped off an armoire and he saw that he could make an easy profit so he bought it. He was in the back starting to fix it up at his antique store and noticed a box of baseball cards in one of the drawers. So he called the guy up and said, hey, I got your baseball cards.

You want to come pick them up? The guy said, Nat, don't worry about it. So Roman knew nothing about baseball cards. We took them, put them on the counter, didn't even think twice about them. A few days later, a woman came in with her snarky teenager, looking bored as can be at being brought into this antique store, and then he noticed the box of baseball cards and starts flipping through them, and he looks up at Roman and says, hey, how much for the baseball cards? Now, Roman had no idea. This was just something extra, so he was like, huh, 10 bucks. That'll be fine. So the kid plops down $10, and as snarky teenagers do, he spread them out on the table and said, this one, this one, and this one, three of the hundred of cards. He said, these together are worth $100 on their own.

Now, Roman could have been angry, but he wasn't. But instead, he found himself enthralled. A part of his brain lit up that he wasn't expecting, and I don't know why. I don't think he knew why. Maybe it was that he used to remember putting baseball cards in the spokes of his bike, or that he remembered going to Wrigley Field with his dad and sitting in the bleachers when he was a little kid. I'm not sure what it was. And I don't think Roman could have told you, but he felt a spark and that became a purpose anchor for him. Now, this again is the big distinction.

It's not that he found a purpose, although this one day something lit up in his brain, he actually had to build a life of purpose around that. So he decided I'm going to sell baseball cards in my antique store. He wasn't trying to make millions of dollars. He already had a successful antique store. He just said, boy, this sounds fun and interesting. So he hired the snarky teenager right away. He started studying the baseball card market. He started buying inventory. And a few years later, I walked into that antique store. You see, I was an eight, 9, 10 year old. My father had died. I had had a learning disability. I had almost no friends. I was the typical geek or nerd. I had no community, but I loved baseball cards. And so I go to that antique shop and Roman became a mentor.

When I had a bad day, he would counsel me. He'd give me a free pack of baseball cards. We'd open it up and eat the god-awful gum that came in the middle. And it wasn't just me, but it was dozens and dozens of other kids who found community and connections and a sense of confidence all from Roman's little pea purpose. Sadly, Roman eventually got cancer, he had to close the antique shop, and he died. That was like 30 or 40 years ago. But think about all those kids who left that little community that he built, who became doctors and lawyers and maybe they bought and sold things like Roman, but walked in the world with a huge amount of confidence and a feeling like they belonged. 30 years later, those kids are still

changing the world and having their own kids and passing down maybe even the love of baseball cards. And I like to contrast that to Mickey Mantle because when I was a little kid collecting baseball cards, all we wanted was Mickey Mantle cards. Now if I or even Roman for that matter had decided to look at Mickey Mantle and develop a sense of purpose around him, like maybe we want to be major league baseball players and break all sorts of records like him. That's kind of big, audacious purpose. Well, Roman couldn't, he blew out his knee. And me, I just didn't have the talent, the skills, the mentors. I didn't have anything in place to do that.

So if that had been our version of purpose, we probably both would have ended up miserable when we failed. But instead, the guy remembers Roman, this guy who did something that lit him up, and a happy accident of that was that he changed the world, and he still exists. His effect, his impact are still there all these decades later. So how can we follow Roman's example and find our own little pea purpose? We'll hear Jordan's tips right after the break. Ugh, we're so done with New Year, New You. This year, it's more you on Bumble. More of you shamelessly sending playlists, especially that one filled with show tunes. More of you finding Geminis because you know you always like them. More of you dating with intention because you know what you want.

And you know what? We love that for you. Someone else will too. Be more you this year and find them on Bumble. People who get hopelessly lost in the blazing desert sometimes report seeing what looks like life-giving water just over the horizon. But no matter how far they walk towards that shimmering lake, they never reach it. Doctor and podcaster Jordan Gromit says those of us thirsting for purpose often fall for the same thing. We chase after visions that turn out to be what he calls purpose mirages are basically big P purpose that masquerades as being good for us. And so whether this is some net worth, like I want to get to that million dollars or billion dollars or whatever it is, whether it's some career achievement, whatever it is, it's something

that you convince yourself that you will be happy and everything will be perfect once you reach it. Even if you don't basically feel yourself lit up by the process of doing these things you have to do to get there. And so I'll give you a perfect example. I see this all the time in podcasting because I love podcasting. And for me, podcasting is little p-purpose. Something I deeply enjoy the process of doing once I get in front of that microphone to interview someone. It doesn't matter what comes of it

other than I have a really joyful hour of conversation. I could turn that into a mirage. I could kind of say, well, that's fine, but I also want to get a million downloads a month. And so all of a sudden this changes from something I enjoy the process of doing to more of a goal-oriented, goal-centered process. And maybe I realized to get there, I'm going to have to do some things I really don't want to do. Like I don't love social media. I don't love making TikTok videos. Those are things I agonize over and find that when I do them, I'm generally not

happy at the end of the day, but if I really want to get to that million downloads, maybe that's something I need to do. And so what happens is we set ourselves up to not enjoy what we're doing for most of the time, whether we get to that goal or not. And I think this is so important because I've seen, not just in my own life, but especially with my Yale students, right? Where this idea of kind of going after these mirages, whether it's money or accomplishments or grades or whatever, it winds up crowding out the little P purpose that they could have had.

You love your sport and you're sort of, maybe you're a track athlete because of that, but then it's, then it's the wins and the monies and then you start hating it because now you're sort of chasing after these other things. So we can get in these situations where like the part that we hate going after the wrong thing can like literally get rid of the joy that we were getting from something else before. Yeah, I mean, I think happiness contentment is really a marathon, not a sprint. Again, we set ourselves up for burnout because we are doing things we innately don't love to get to this thing we think we will love. But the problem is you spend so much time in the process and so little time in actually achieving the goal.

And again, we're really good as human beings at habituating back down to a certain level of happiness. So even if you think that goal is going to really light you up and you're going to be happy the rest of your life because of it, we all know that it's fleeting, it's transitory. So it makes much more sense to invest in those things we enjoy the process of doing because that's going to actually take up most of our time. And you know, the secret is time passes no matter what you do. It can't be commoditized. You can't buy it, you can't sell it, you can't trade it.

The only thing you can do is control what activities you're involved with as time passes. And so winning the game, in my opinion, is filling up that time with as much purposeful activity you love the process of doing and getting rid of as many things that you loathe Winning the game, in my opinion, is filling up that time with as much purposeful activity you love the process of doing and getting rid of as many things that you loathe as possible. And especially with young people, I love to say it behooves you to start looking at your calendar today and start working towards improving that calendar every week, every month, because time is finite and we have no idea how much we have. And so I want you all to win the game. So I really want you to continuously look at the calendar

and build in things you love, Little P Purpose, and get rid of things you loathe and just wash, rinse, and repeat over and over again. And that gets to your second tip for kind of finding better Little P Purpose, right? Which is that when we kind of look through our calendar, we have to pay attention to what's going on internally. Tip number two is that you can't look for your purpose externally. You need to find it yourself. This is one that I really love because especially

when thinking about my students, I think it's so easy for them and for all of us to just get caught up in other people's ideas of what, you know, our purpose should be. We can kind of co-opt what other people seem to like in ways that sort of really run us astray. How do we fix this? How do we find our purpose internally? There are some great ways to really connect with your sense of purpose, but it is true. The first thing you have to realize is society, marketing, social media, everyone has a version of purpose for you that probably fulfills their needs. So when we think of society marketing, it's obvious they want to make money on you. But also your parents and your family, they have a version of purpose for you and often it

fulfills their needs. Maybe you can make up for the thing they couldn't do or maybe they're worried about your stability. And so they create this version of purpose for you too, which might not align with who you actually are. And so the idea is to let go of other people's version of purpose and get more in touch with yours. And so I often say, we don't find our purpose, we create or build it. But it is true that we need these purpose anchors, which are inklings or beckonings of things that light us up, which we can then build a life of purpose around. And so the best way is to think about number of exercises we actually can do that help us get way more in touch

with what these purpose anchors are. You and I talked about one of them in the beginning, which is the regrets of the dying. I think regret is a wonderful way to start thinking about purpose. Again, people who are dying only have a short period of time left, they don't have a lot of energy,

and so unfortunately, regret is really, really disappointing because they don't have agency to do anything about that. But if we can put you in that mindset of what would you regret at the end of your life, if that was to be in the next week or month, and start thinking, what have I never had the energy, courage, or time to do, we can then turn that into a purpose anchor. That's the easy part, is realizing what's important to us. The hard part is then you've got to do the work.

You've got to actually build a life of purpose around it. So I think regrets are a great way. Another one is joys of childhood. So I always tell people kids are extremely purposeful, right? They haven't co-opted anyone else's version of purpose yet, especially when they're very young. So they go out and they play, they do whatever they want to do. They lose track of time.

They enter what we call right this flow state where they're so lost. They forget to come home for dinner and they're just enjoying the moment. Kids don't worry about some big audacious goal most of the time. They just want to do what they want to do. They love the process of doing it. We let go of those versions of purposes. We get older when we start thinking about career and school and all those other things. So I often tell people, you know, look around to your bedroom, think back to what decorated your bedroom. What were the posters? What were the trophies? What were the drawings?

Often those can be those beckonings that we can then build a life purpose around. Hey, for me, I'm busy, right? I have a lot of things going on. I have a lot of purpose anchors, but if I ever run out of them, I loved baseball cards when I was little. And so every time I'm scrolling through Facebook or looking in the newspaper and I see something about baseball or baseball cards, especially like with the old time photos,

my brain lights up, I feel it. I feel it in my chest, I feel it in my brain. I'm like, I get really excited. So I know that's a joy of childhood. It could be a purpose anchor. And if I find that I really am like, boy, life doesn't feel very purposeful and I have free time, I can start pursuing that.

It seems like what you're doing there is sort of getting to what your tip number three is, right? Which is that we need to notice the process, not the goal. We need to kind of pay attention to these so-called purpose anchors, the stuff that lights us up. You've mentioned purpose anchors before, but I wanted you to kind of give me a quick definition. What are these sorts of things? So purpose anchors are just the inklings.

They are the beckonings of things that you could find joy in. And so the question is, what seems joyful out of the box? And again, a lot of people are like, well, I don't know what that is, but a lot of us do know that there are whisperings in our life. Like I knew when I was training to be a doctor that I also wanted to be a writer. There was just something about it. And that's why I was trying to fit it into these little bits of time

when I wasn't busy with other things. We all know that many of us are trying to fall asleep at night. Sometimes we have these crazy ideas and we get so excited, we stay up all night, we can't fall asleep. And then the next day you are so exhausted. You figure it was crazy.

You move on, you go to work and never think about it again. But sometimes those are the whisperings. Like what keeps you up at night? What excites you? What do your friends and family tell you when you do this thing you were most lit up? Those are those anchors. They're just things that cause you immediate joy. There doesn't need to be an explanation. But it's a great place to start that active process of creating action in the present and future, building what I call these climbs, these purposeful activities. It's just a great starting place and they should be abundant. Most people when they do the work realize that there are actually lots of little things out there that excite them. And when they let go of this idea that has to be this big,

important thing or something other people want to do, or it has to lead to some kind of wealth or fame. When they drop all that and just say, well, what are the things I love to do? It becomes much easier and much more abundant, which is something that people never, they never use that term abundant when they talk about purpose.

It always seems like it's something totally scarce. And so that's why I want to kind of flip that switch. It's time for a quick break. But when we return, Jordan will share a lesson he learned from patients in their final days of life. The Happiness Lab will be right back. Ugh, we're so done with New Year, New You. This year, it's more you on Bumble. More of you shamelessly sending playlists, especially that one filled with show tunes. More of you finding Geminis because you know you always like them.

More of you dating with intention because you know what you want. And you know what? We love that for you. Someone else will too. Be more you this year and find them on Bumble. Be more you this year and find them on Bumble. Dr. Jordan Gromit says he was wrong to think that practicing medicine would give his life purpose, but he did find one part of his profession that was deeply fulfilling.

His work with people at the end of their lives. Working in palliative care taught him another great way to identify that little pea purpose by conducting what's called a life review. So I first heard of a life review as a hospice medical director. And so I started hospice work because I was working with a lot of elderly and I was taking care of them at the end of life. And a hospice nurse said, hey, you're really good at this. Maybe you should work with us.

There's not a huge number of hospice doctors. I started working with them. And a lot of times you learn on your feet, especially doing things like this. And I would go to our weekly meetings and the social workers would keep on talking about, okay, we performed a life review, etc. And you know, the first time or two I heard it, I didn't think much about it. But then I started asking questions. What is this life review and why do we do it? And so in hospice, we have a few main goals. It's not to prolong life. What it is, is to make people comfortable, cover their pain, their nausea, make sure they're dying where they want to die, whether that's home in a nursing home

or assisted living. But another piece of that is helping them come to terms and their family, for that matter, come to terms with this idea that their life is ending. And one thing that social workers, chaplains, doctors, nurses can do with a patient of their family is called a life review. It's a series of structured questions that ask people to really review the important moments in their lives. What were their most important moments? What were their biggest triumphs? What were their biggest failures? Which relationships meant the most to them? And a big part of that too, we often ask is what are their regrets? And so this life review, I found so beneficial in the dying and it helps people find this sense of peace. But I also realized when working with hospice, you know, a lot of people

ask me, how do you have a good death? And so I often say, well, the best way to have a good death is to have a good life. Because we tend to die the way we lived. And so then the question becomes how to have a good life because we tend to die the way we lived. And so then the question becomes how to have a good life. And I was seeing so much benefit with this life review while people were dying. Why not start doing that earlier? Why aren't we doing this on a yearly basis?

Why aren't we doing these life reviews and asking ourselves those big questions? And again, I especially like the regret question because I think it's a great place to start working on those purpose anchors. And so that's sort of tip number four, this idea of a life review. Tip number five is something we mentioned a little bit before, but I want to dig into a bit now, which is this idea of going back to childhood, like literally going back to

your childhood room. When you go back to your childhood room, what do you see and what did it tell you about your little P purpose? Oh my God, there was a mess of baseball cards in every way, shape or form. There were sports posters. There were trophies from Little League. There was probably a few notebooks of papers and pens because I started writing poetry when I was little. There were school books everywhere. Funny enough, there were the hints of what I would eventually become as an adult. I just didn't know it at the time. What there wasn't, there wasn't pictures of famous doctors.

There wasn't toy stethoscopes. Grey's Anatomy, that famous book, was not on my bookshelf. Interestingly enough, there was almost nothing that reflected an interest in medicine. And so many things that suggested an interest in certain types of sports, in collecting, in writing, in communicating, all of that was there. Just nothing about being a doctor. So you had baseball cards, piles of stuff, evidence of your writing, no stethoscopes. What kind of hint is that giving you about your purpose? I was trying to co-opt someone else's version of purpose, my father's. And because I had gone through this really traumatic thing, and I needed as a kid to grasp onto something that made sense so I could move forward.

And so it really made sense that if I became a doctor like him, I would fix everything. But co-opting his version of purpose didn't fit with who I was. And so all you had to do was look around that room to see who I was. But I really built a life around this purpose that wasn't mine, and I would submit that most of us do exactly that. Most of us grab on to some version of purpose that is suggested to us. There are a few really lucky people who don't, who realize what lights them up and pursue that path. But most of us pivot to becoming adults. We're told, okay, playtime

is over. You were a kid then, but now you're becoming a young adult and it's time to get serious about school. It's time to pick one of those main careers that suggests success that's going to provide for you economically. And I think all of us do that. We just jump in. And just forget all the stuff that was on our floor. And you've argued that if you look at your childhood room and there's lots of stuff all over the floor, then that's okay too. That gets us to tip number six, which is what you've called the spaghetti method. What's the spaghetti method and why is it okay if lots of stuff comes up

when you start looking for these small purposes? Well, here's the thing. When discussing little-p purpose, I still get people are resilient. They'll say, look, I thought about regrets in life review. That's not helping me. I've thought about the joys of childhood. That's not helping me. I've looked at my job and there's nothing there that I love. That's not helping me. And so if you are one of those people, if you are kind of resilient to finding these anchors, I think it behooves you to find the spaghetti method, which is you throw a bunch of things against the wall and see what sticks

You say yes to things you normally don't say yes to you talk to people you normally don't talk to you do things that maybe Make you feel a little anxious or uncomfortable and at the end of the day you evaluate and say did that light me up Yes, or no And if the answer is hey I did find some joy in that that might be the beginning of a purpose anchor. And so you kind of do use the spaghetti method and find all these possible purpose anchors by trying these new things. But you've also argued the flip side,

which is like, we can't have little p-purpose in everything, especially if we are busy with all this stuff that's not giving us purpose. And that's what gets us to your final tip, tip number seven, which might be a hard one for a lot of us. We need to embrace the art of subtraction. What's that? So I often talk about the workplace, because this is a hard one for a lot of us, we need to embrace the art of subtraction. What's that? So I often talk about the workplace because this is a question I get all the time. They're

like, look, I've got to do my nine to five. I don't love it, but I need to make money. You're saying find your purpose. I feel stuck. Like this is something that's not purposeful for me, but I've got to do it. And it is what it is. And so what I always tell people is do exactly what I did with being a doctor. I want you to list out the 20 things that are roles and responsibilities of your job. And I want you to take a sharp pencil and start scratching out everyone you don't like, everything you loathe, everything that's boring, etc. Most people, when they do that, will have one or two things left over. For me, it was hospice medicine. And so the goal then is remember we said winning the game, right, is doing as much little people as possible and getting rid

of as many things you load as possible, wash, rinse, repeat. So the goal then is I'm not going to get out of this job, but what levers are available to maybe do more of that stuff I love in the job and do less of stuff I don't love. And so let me give you another example. Think about it this way. Let's say you work at a restaurant and you don't like working up front at the counter and you Spend 90% of your time doing that but the one thing you do love is every Thursday morning you get to stock the stockroom It takes about two hours. You love writing things down. You love organizing you love ordering. That's it well

Maybe the person owns your restaurant owns four restaurants and there's an employee who has to stock for each of those restaurants. And maybe so you go to your boss and say, you know what, I don't really love my time at the counter helping customers. Maybe you allow me to go to all of our different restaurants every day and I'll stock and do the stock room in each one of them. And therefore what I've done is I've increased the time I'm doing something I like and decreased the time of doing something I don't like. And so you're starting to improve things. You're starting to improve that calendar. You're starting to win the game just a little bit. So if we can think about that month to month, year to year, how much change can we bring in? How many things can we subtract? How many joyful things can we add? And how can we improve those numbers? So ultimately,

as we get older and older, we're doing more and more things that we love and less and less things that we loathe So how's following these tips really helped your life? I mean we started this story with you being a very burned-out doctor and you tried some new things Where's your sense of purpose now? I mean I learned That I could walk away from medicine in 2014 It took me till 2018 to subtract out enough to be left with only hospice work and jump into other things. And I find myself a lot happier. And I'll tell you why. I mean, it really comes down to this. When I open the calendar app on my phone, almost everything

on that app, everything in that calendar is something that I put there and I can get rid of at the drop of a dime. I spend a lot of time podcasting and sometimes I edit my own podcast. Okay, that can be painful. But if I decided I didn't want to do it, I could get rid of it and just not put an episode out. I have complete control and agency. I have autonomy. These things allow me to feel in control and that increases my happiness quite a bit.

I've found that I've been able to improve that calculus of my schedule over the years over and over again. And so most of the things I do are things I want to do and that feels deeply fulfilling. And what's really beautiful about that is not only do I really like doing these things, I found that I connect to other people more because when I was a doctor, I didn't love being a doctor. So I kind of didn't like hanging out with doctor people. I didn't tell people I was a doctor. When I'd go to a party, I wouldn't tell anyone what I did for a living because

I was embarrassed. And so I knew doctors for decades, but never connected with them on a deeper level. When I started doing things that lit me up that I loved, not only did I connect with people within minutes, but I also started collaborating with them, having them on my podcast. And then they would have me on their podcast. And then I was writing a book and they'd say, hey, I've got this agent, they helped me, why don't you meet my agent? And so what happened is I ended up building communities around these activities. And that has really led to happiness, not just doing what I want to do, but connecting

with people, collaborating, building, and being part of communities of people who I love doing things that I find deeply interesting. And it seems like you are in a very lucky place, right? You'd had this time as a doctor, you are sort of financially successful enough that you can move certain things around in a way that not everybody could. But it sounds like your message is that this isn't just something for privileged folks who are starting out with the right finances to switch things around. This is something that everybody can do. It is. And so what I often remind people, and this is really the privilege conversation, people look at me and say, well, you were a doctor and you found out that you understood

your finances and everything was great. Well, lucky for you, but that's not me. Like I'm 22, I'm working 50, 60 hours a week. I don't have time to do the things I love and I don't love my job either. Well, there are a few things. Really, time and money are always the biggest reasons why people say they can't do this. So, time, let's talk about that really quickly. First, the Bureau of Labor Statistics does the American Time Survey on a regular basis. They've generally found that most Americans have about five hours of free time a day. And actually those lower socioeconomic classes probably have a little bit more. And so it's probably not time. So then it's money. And I like to say money is a really important tool

to living a life of purpose, but it's only one of many tools. And so often we forget to use our passions, our youth, our energy, our connections, our skills, our communities, all of these things are tools also. And so I like to say, hey, you're 22 and you're working 50 hours a week

and you don't like your job. Can you use the artist's subtraction to do more of what you do like within the job? Or can you use the joy of addition? Maybe you have a lot of energy and you have more free time on the weekends because you don't have a family and you don't have a mortgage and you don't have kids yet. And so you can start doing a purposeful, joyful activity. Maybe you turn it into a side hustle that eventually leads to some economic margin. But even if it doesn't, you've used the joy of addition to add in some purpose

into your life, even if you haven't gotten rid of something you don't love. We have all these other levers that people generally don't think of. If I'm 22 and I live in the same city as my parents, maybe I go live in their basement and don't have to pay rent. Maybe that gives me a little economic margin so I can work four days a week at this job I don't like instead of five days a week. Maybe I can fill that other day with purpose or some money making activity and start controlling things, start improving that schedule.

I think it's easy to say this is an argument of privilege, but we know that there are some tools and some levers that we can use to start bringing purpose into our life. Now, even if that's 15 minutes of me scrolling through Facebook and joining a baseball card or baseball fan pages, those 15 minutes are still adding in something joyful, and that's that little beginning that we start building off of. And I think one of the things we know from the purpose research is that once you open up to that little beginning,

once you try a little bit, you wind up feeling more energized, you wind up getting more community, you wind up getting more opportunities to do this. So in some sense, you grow your purpose pie over time, just by trying this out in little ways. It's momentum. The hardest thing is starting. The hardest thing, and again, we get back to purpose

is action and present and the future. The hardest thing is building the momentum for that first action. But once you start taking these actions building the momentum for that first action. But once you start taking these actions, the momentum builds. And so again, autonomy, agency, this idea that I can actually control what's happening in my life. Once you start feeling that, it almost becomes addictive. You don't want to stop.

You might not want to stop adding purpose to your life, but some good things have to come to an end, like this episode. But let's quickly recap Jordan's tips for finding purpose. Tip number one is to avoid those purpose mirages. Getting rich, becoming famous, winning a Grammy, these aren't realistic goals that are really going to transform your life.

Instead, look for little-p purpose in things you can do right away. Tip number two, your purpose has to be yours and yours alone. Don't do things just to impress your parents, friends, or peers. The third tip is to stop thinking of purpose as a goal you've got to reach. Instead, think of it as a process and engage in joyful activities whenever they present themselves. Tip four is to conduct a life review.

Ask yourself about your regrets and if there's anything you can do about them before it's too late. Children are great at finding purpose, so tip number five is to look back at your childhood passions. Are there any clues to the things that might bring you joy as an adult? And if you draw a blank, tip number six recommends the spaghetti method. Just experiment and try out lots of stuff that might give you more purpose. And the final tip, tip seven, isn't about adding more. It's about subtraction. Remove as many of the bad and boring parts of your life as possible. We've reached the end of Jordan's Tips, the end of this episode, and the end of our how-to season. But not to worry, as we'll have lots more in store for you over the coming weeks. So be sure to return soon for the next episode of the Happiness Lab,

with me, Dr. Lari Santos.