The Lazy Genius Podcast - #47: The Lazy Genius Finds Her Purpose

Episode Date: January 15, 2018

Setting goals is tough without an overall purpose. Practically find yours with a tiny bit of Oprah woo-woo thrown in. Stuff mentioned in the episode: The Lazy Genius Sets Goals How to Set Goals Like a Normal Person A Million Little Ways by Emily P. Freeman (this is an Amazon affiliate link, so thanks for supporting TLGC with your purchase!) Download the transcript of this episode Don't forget to join me on Instagram at 12:15pm EST Thursday, January 18th to talk more about purpose. This podcast is hosted by Kendra Adachi and executive produced by Kendra Adachi, Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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I'm Kendra and I'm here to help you be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't. This is episode 47. The Lazy Genius finds her purpose. It's the middle of January and there's obviously a lot of chatter about goals and resolutions and making changes. We've been talking about it here. We've already established a new framework for setting goals, which I'll link to in the show notes

at the lazy genius collective.com slash lazy slash. purpose, but sometimes we struggle identifying what those goals are. In the post, how to set goals like a normal person, I share the process of identifying who you want to be, not what you want to do. We make goals so focused on tasks instead of who you want to become. And that's often why we fail so often. But what if you're having trouble figuring out who you want to be? What if you want to be 10 different people and can't quite figure out how they all connect. We all need a purpose. And today we're going to start the process of finding it. It's not always easy or obvious. So I'm not promising you're going to leave here with your purpose clear and like easily stitched into a pillow.

What I will promise though is a safe place to think and dream and be okay if you have no idea what your purpose actually is. If you went through that goal setting exercise I mentioned on the blog and a couple of weeks ago on the podcast, the first question was, Who do you want to be? The second question was, why does being this person matter to you? The answer to that question will give you a window into your purpose. First, let's set the stage just a little. Have you ever traveled to a new place and it just felt like home? Maybe you went to Greece on your honeymoon and felt alive and happy and like you just knew where you fit. Or Austin or New York or Savannah, Georgia. some places, even if we don't actually live there, just feel like we belong, like things make sense.

On the other side, have you ever traveled to a place and liked it, but definitely felt a little out of your element? Maybe you just don't feel like you'd be comfortable in your own skin there for very long, vacation or not. Let's use that idea to help us define our purpose. If a goal is a purposeful direction, a path, towards becoming who you want to be. Our overall purpose is the forest or park or downtown we're walking through on that path. It's the bigger place where our goals live. If we don't know where we are, if we don't know our purpose, our goals will be fine, but probably not as clearly defined. Let me give you an example. You might know who you want to be. Let's say you want to be someone who loves to cook.

But knowing why that matters will help you uncover a broader purpose. What are some of the possible reasons why being a cook matters? You want to gather people around the table. You want to try new exotic dishes and learn a lot of skills. You want to become proficient at cooking so you can teach your kids how to do it. You want to have fancy dinner parties once or twice a month and create something fun for your friends to look forward to. You want to be a personal chef. You want to open a restaurant.

Do you see how there are so many different reasons? Like teaching your kids how to cook and opening a restaurant are really, really different reasons. Being someone who loves to cook is a wonderful person to be. But when you ask yourself why that matters, it opens up the door to your inner drive, your inner purpose. To find a deeper purpose, continue asking yourself why. Just dig deeper.

if being a person who loves to cook matters because you want to gather people around the table, why? Why is that important? Maybe because you want to create a safe place for people to be themselves. And food is a great way to do that. Now why is that important? Maybe you have a deep desire to help people feel comfortable wherever you happen to be, food or not. That could be your deeper purpose, kind of your forest or your city where your path is, the place where you're, the place where you feel most at home, no matter what your goals may be, is you want people to feel comfortable. What if cooking matters to you because you want to teach your kids how to do it for themselves? Why does that matter? It may be because you want to show and teach your children the value of

the kitchen, of making something with their own hands, of being self-sufficient and able to make delicious meals without spending a lot of money. Okay? Dig deeper. Why does that matter? Do you find yourself talking to people who aren't your children about like the simple things in life. Do you love inspiring people to go home and roast a chicken? Not just because they can enjoy a chicken, but because it gives them skills that touch their soul and not just their plates. Your deeper purpose might be to live a life that exemplifies simple values and teach them wherever you can. That purpose can give you clarity on how you work, what job you want, how you spend your free time, how to even choose between two cookbooks. You know, you pick the one that's simpler in kind of old fashion, not fancy and

complicated. That one doesn't fit in your purpose. Do you see how going deeper, how continuing to ask why it can really help you define your purpose in life? So if you're having trouble knowing who you want to be, ask yourself why life matters. I know that's kind of broad, but that's a good place to start. Like, why does being around matter? What is important to you? what feelings and perspectives and conversations and relationships are important to you. What makes a day feel like it counted? Now, I'm not saying that days that don't fit your purpose don't count. Not at all.

Your life matters each and every day, no matter how fulfilling or unfulfilling it might have felt. But we are wired to pay attention and respond to how fulfilling things are. Like we assign a greater value to days that means something to us on a deep level. if you can identify that deep level, if you can name that deeper purpose for your life, you'll find that who you want to be becomes more clear, that it makes sense in your daily decisions, and that you feel at home on your path. Just like you feel at home in your local park or in New York City or on a train from London to Paris, your purpose and goals will be so different from everyone else's.

And that's good. That's important. We all don't need to live in the same purposeful space. because a lot of things will fall through the cracks. Like somebody needs to find purpose in coaching kids, in baking bread, in planting trees, in listening to people's stories,

in fixing cards, cars, in prayer, in everything, and all of it. So don't feel like you have to find a certain purpose because there's one deep purpose that everyone is aiming for.

That's not what I'm saying. That's like forcing everyone to feel at home in a small town. It's not going to happen. You get to have your own purpose, your own place and digging deep with why things matter will help you find it. So who do you want to be? But more importantly, for your purpose, why does that matter? Amazon presents Jeff versus Taco Truck Salsa, whether it's Verde, Roja, or the orange one.

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So let's talk about what to do when you name your purpose and know who you want to be. We already talked about how you can take small steps to becoming that person. And you can read about that in the post I mentioned earlier, how to set goals like a normal person. I'll link to it in the show notes. But there are other things to consider as well. First, let's talk about fear. Fear is so fun, right? It stops us from living out what matters to us.

We're afraid that what we want and what makes us feel like ourselves is small and unimportant or that it's so big that we can't possibly think we're enough to do it. There have been many words written about this, mostly in one of my favorite books about the subject called A Million Little Ways by Emily P. Freeman, which I will link to in the show notes. so rather than saying a lot of things that Emily has like already said beautifully, I want to leave you with one thought on fear and then you can just go get the book. Fear is normal. It is so incredibly normal. We all feel it. Even people who seem like they know what they're doing and are living their purpose and have it all together. Intellectually, we know that no one has it all together. But when we feel so insecure and what we have to offer, it's easy to compare, right? It's easy to compare ourselves. And when we compare, we always come up short. Everyone else is always doing it better and smarter and funnier and prettier and all the things. So why even try? But often that dream,

that purpose, that person we want to be, it won't let us go. And it's that place where the fear is so strong. When we are living with a newly formed, fragile purpose and starting to identify those newly awakened dreams, we feel so vulnerable. And it doesn't happen just once. It happens at the beginning of the process, but it will happen at many beginnings of the process because your path is going to have a lot of beginnings. There are always new ideas and circumstances and reasons to look your dream in the face and feel like you're starting over. And that space is really scary. We doubt who we are, what we have to offer, and feel like, naming a purpose is frivolous and unimportant.

You know, it's like, just take your kids to karate practice and cook dinner and be done with it. And those things are good. But we're made for more than daily motions of survival. We see a deeper value in our lives when we assign value to things that matter to us. When we name those things and hold onto them and take small steps and moving towards them with intention. I'm feeling a little Oprah-e right now. apologize for that but amidst all of the practical systems and tangible ways of doing laundry and dinner which i love so very much there has to be a deeper purpose what matters to you what is the

driving undercurrent of your days and if you don't know what might your days look like if you named it and lived it what if you mentally moved to that place where you feel like you belong what if you intentionally forged paths to becoming who you want to be and in a place that makes sense to you, where you feel like you make sense in it. Uncovering your purpose and who you want to be will have so much more impact than setting another goal to walk 30 minutes a day or learning a language or not drinking Diet Coke anymore. Those things are fine and they might be significant in your life, but only if they

fit in a larger picture, if they're a natural step on your path that winds through your purposeful place. So feeling scared and afraid is normal. Feeling small is normal. Feeling unimportant is normal. And when you also know that feeling scared and small are both good things, like they're good things,

you won't feel unimportant anymore. Because fear, it helps us push through to the thing that matters. It's like, like we have to fight through it in order to get to that thing that we really care about. Smallness helps us see how our story is part of a bigger story

that's weeding around us. When we push through the fear with humility, we no longer feel like our voice doesn't matter. It feels important enough to fight the fear. And we're not hung up on our voice being loud enough to quiet a huge room. Being small is okay. And therefore, whatever we have to say on whatever scale is worth saying.

So I, okay, so I am super practical, I'm very pragmatic, super love systems. That is my nature. looking at my life from this perspective is honestly a challenge. It feels a little silly sometimes, but I also have seen the benefits of recognizing where I am,

of seeing the bigger picture and knowing where I fit in the world. We all have a place and a path. We just need to know that feeling scared of that path is normal, and we can still keep walking. So there's your little like woo-woo purpose pep talk, but I hope it shines a light on whatever deep longing you might have. And I really, really encourage you to read a million little ways. It will a million little ways blow you away. It's so fantastic and gives such language to this very, like, nuanced, you know, kind of soul-deep stuff. So please read that book.

I will link to it in the show notes at the lazy genius collective.com slash lazy slash purpose. Okay. Shall we take a swing to the other side for our lazy genius tip of the week? It's super duper practical. If you know you are leaving for a big shopping trip for groceries and you'll come home with like bags and bags of food, make sure your kitchen counters are clean before you leave. It'll make the process of coming home so much easier since there's a place to put everything. Or like you can put your bags on the floor and then unload them onto a clean counter and have space to sort them as you unpack. You can have a fridge pile and a pantry pile and a freezer pile, that kind of thing. And then it's easier to put away.

It's like quicker to put it away that way. So we like we've all carried grocery bags into a dirty kitchen and it's such a discouragement. It's like, wamp. If you hate grocery shopping, do everything you can to lessen that hate. And this is one of those ways. So there you go. All right.

Guys, that's it for today's episode. I'll be on Instagram at the Lazy Genius this Thursday, the 18th, around 1215 Eastern to talk about this episode and any other specific. specific questions that you have. So I'd love for you to join me there. And thanks for sharing the show with your friends and your family and leaving reviews on Apple Podcasts and taking the time to listen every single week. I just appreciate it so much. Have a lovely week. And remember to be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't. I'll see you next week. If you ever felt like you were living just a B or B plus life, it's so dangerous to live that

more dangerous than a B minus or a C plus life because when you're living a B or B plus life, don't change it. You think it's good enough. Is it? I'm Susie Welch. I host a podcast called Becoming You. People think, okay, an A-plus life is not available to me, but there is a way. We are all in the process of becoming ourselves. Listen to Becoming You wherever you get your podcasts.