The Resilient Mind - Find Your Purpose - Robert Greene & Jack Canfield

Episode Date: June 26, 2024

Jack Canfield is an American author, motivational speaker, corporate trainer, and entrepreneur. He is the co-author of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series, which has more than 250 titles and 500 million copies in print in over 40 languages.Robert Greene, is an American author of books on strategy, power, and seduction. He has written six international bestsellers: The 48 Laws of Power, The Art of Seduction, The 33 Strategies of War, The 50th Law, Mastery, and The Laws of Human Nature.Take action and strengthen your mind with The Resilient Mind Journal. Get your free digital copy today: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Download Now⁠⁠ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to the Resilient Mind podcast. In this episode, you will be listening to How to Find Your Life Purpose. Get access to the Resilient Mind Journal by clicking the link in the show notes. Enjoy. The idea of finding your life's task, the reason it is the first one is it's the most important decision in your life. All of your happiness, all of your sense of fulfillment, everything that you get that you really want in life come from making this choice. And so a lot of people do this wrong. They think that what is most important is getting attention, getting a lot of recognition, getting a lot of followers on Instagram, or they think it's about making a lot of money very quickly. They're in a hurry before the age of 30 to become a multimillionaire, etc. And these are recipes for having burnout, for finding yourself in a career that you never intended to go into. And then you're 32 and you're 33. And this is boring. this shit out of me. It has no relation to me personally. And then you get distracted and you get into other bad habits and drugs or whatever, et cetera. And your life can spiral downward. So the key in life is to choose as early as possible. It's never too late because as I've written about it and you'll find out in the book, I didn't discover my life's task until I was essentially 37, which isn't

too young. You know, that's pretty old in life. I mean, I had an inkling, which was I was, I meant to be a writer but the specific way of writing turned into my first books it took me years of pain of wandering of experimenting so it can happen later in life and that's okay but the earlier you go through this process the better and basically what i'm trying to get you to do is connect to who you are connect to yourself because a lot of people i get this a lot of time people will come to me and they say robert i read your chapter and mastery on discovering your your life's task. But I don't understand, I have no clue what mine is. You know, it's very vague to me. How do I find it? Well, the first step is connecting to who you are. A lot of us are very distant

from ourselves. We're so used to listening to other people. We're such conformists. We've spent so much time on social media or so much time we hear our parents or our friends telling us what's cool, what's right, what's the best thing, that we do have no idea who we are. what we love, what makes us happy, what gives us a sense of fulfillment. We've grown distant from it. It's like we're a stranger to ourselves. So you have to go through a process of kind of rediscovery, of getting reacquainted with who you are and what you love in life. And I discuss in the book and in the first month of January many different steps

you can take towards that of seeing the things that affect you strongly. The things that you read about on the internet or in a book, you go, wow, I love that idea. That's so exciting. That's a sign of something that appeals to you in a very primal way. It's an indication of who you are. I also like to direct people to a book by Howard Gardner, a book I found very excellent called The Five Frames of Intelligence, which basically says there are five forms of intelligence. We generally think of intelligence as just being kind of intellectual intelligence, like people who are good with words, or math or physics. But he says that there are five forms of intelligence, and it's very true.

There's patterns, which is what good math and music are about. There's words, which is probably what I was inclined to. There's kinetics, there's movement, body action. There's the social element. And one of these frames of intelligence, that are five, I forget the fifth, is something that you are naturally stronger. You're gifted at, but you're not aware of it.

And so if you become aware of what you are naturally drawn towards that will help you figure out your life's task and once you have clues like that it comes a matter of experimenting taking your time in your 20s when you're young and you're excited and everything is an adventure for you and trying things out not being so rigid i'm going i have to go into banking i have to go and get a job on wall street when i'm 24 and that's the rest of my life have some fun experience Try different things in the areas that appeal to you. And slowly you're going to develop different kinds of skills and ideas that you can combine

into your own business, into your own book, or whatever it is. So a sense of adventure and fun is very important to discovering your life's task. And then if you're older, which it was my case, it's a matter of getting rid of the things, the mistakes that you've done and return. turning to this path that I've talked about. But let's say you're 40 years old and you went into a career in law and it's not working out for you. It's not a matter of quitting your law career and becoming a musician, etc. It's finding a way to combine the things that you've already learned in this career that wasn't suited to you and direct it more towards the things that

you really, really love. You have to be practical and you have to make money. But But thing is, you're not going to learn, you're not going to develop yourself if you're not emotionally engaged with your work. That's something that we've learned from neuroscience, et cetera. To the degree that you're excited and engaged and animated by this project or this work or this business, you're going to learn. You're going to make mistakes, but you're going to have the determination to push past them because you love what you're doing. And it's the key to everything in life, the degree of emotional engagement you have with your work. And that's what the life's task is all about. And it's by far the single most important decision you're going to make in your life.

You know, I began to find my purpose in life when I was in college. I was actually a Chinese history major. And I was thinking I was going to be a diplomat or go to law school, one of the two. And my senior year, I took an elective class. It was supposed to be an easy A called Social Relations 10. And what happened was it was really a group where we sat around and talked about our feelings and got to know each other at a really deep level, much more deeply than anyone I'd ever talked to in college.

And I realized, wow, this is what I want to do. I love human behavior, psychology, how people interact, how they set goals, and what they're about in life. And unfortunately, I had no undergraduate classes in psychology, so I couldn't get into psychology in graduate school. But someone said you taught history in the summer and you took a history major. why don't you go into teaching history? And then through graduate school,

you can sneak into Ed Syke and eventually psychology, which is what I did. And I found that I love to teach and I love to empower people. And what happened was I was teaching in an all-black inner city school in Chicago, and most of my kids were not motivated. And I became more interested in how to motivate them than I was in teaching history. And so I became an expert in motivation and success. And fortunately, I met a man named W. Clement Stone who had a foundation

who was teaching this in Chicago. I started taking weekend workshops with them. They started using them in my classrooms. And eventually they asked me to teach other teachers. And then one day I was teaching and they said, can you do for my company what you just did for these teachers? And I said, I never worked in the company. They said, they're just big kids in suits. So go over and work with them. And I did. And so I discovered that my purpose was inspiring and empowering people to live their highest vision in the context of love and joy. And it's important because my whole life, now has been developed around that purpose. And once I was clear with that, I could align every single behavior, every single goal with my purpose. So literally, one of the most important

challenges we face in our life is figuring out exactly what that purpose is and what we want to do with it. For some people, the answer to this question of who am I and what's my purpose and what do I want to do seems to come easily. There are those who grow up knowing they want to be a doctor or a musician or an engineer or a lawyer or an astronaut, and they just go up and they do it. Now, there are those of us, however, who struggle to find our true purpose. It's for those people, I hope to offer some useful guidance today.

Now, before we can address how you can go about finding what it is you want to commit your life to, it's important to better understand why doing so can be so difficult. There are several factors that can make finding your purpose in life hard. pressure from outside influence is often responsible for leading you down life paths that you don't enjoy. Another factor holding many people back from finding their true purpose is the fact that people often prioritize things such as money and prestige above doing what they love, even though those things will more likely come if a person pursues their true purpose and passion.

Now, oftentimes, people may also feel that it's too late for them to find their true purpose. They believe they're too old or too established in their true purpose. current life. This, however, is rarely ever true. It's never too late to start doing what makes you happy, and the belief that is too late is nothing more than another factor holding you back. Once you've identified the factors that may be keeping you from finding your purpose in life, though, you can go about silencing them and listening to your real calling. Thankfully, we're all born with an inner compass that tells us whether or not we're on the right path to finding our true purpose. Now, that compass is our experience of happiness,

or joy. If you enjoy what you're doing and it fulfills you, you're on the right track. If not, it's time to readjust your course. Now, by listening to this inner compass and learning to ignore any outside influences or factors that point you in the opposite direction, you'll find that discovering your true purpose isn't so hard after all. Now, having identified things that could be holding you back for finding your purpose, let's start discovering what it is you were truly meant to do with your life. To do this, start by following these simple yet extraordinarily helpful steps. First, you have to envision your ideal life. If money was no object, what would you want to do with your life? If you could live anywhere, there were no

expectations and anything you could think of was not a problem, what is it that you would want to do with your life? I want you to really think hard about these questions because the answer to them is really important. If you're able to envision what your ideal life looks like and what it is that you find yourself doing in that ideal life, you'll have a much better understanding of your true purpose. Second, do what makes you happy. Now, even if you envision your ideal life, chances are it's not going to be something

you'll be able to achieve immediately overnight. Now, that's not to say it is impossible, but for most people, it's going to take a little more effort than that. The point, though, is envisioning your ideal life to understand what it is that makes you happy. And once you've identified what makes you, you happy, start doing more of it now. It's really just that simple. Now you may want to start small with a side job or a hobby or you may want to commit to this new direction entirely, but either

way you should be working towards a life where you are always doing the things you enjoy and finding success in doing these things. Proceed in this way and I promise you will eventually end up at the ideal life you first envisioned. Now third, do what you're good at. In most, cases, the things that you're good at and the things you enjoy will be one of the same. Still, it's important to ask yourself, what is it that comes easily to you, effortlessly to you? What things are you better at doing than anybody else? And by pursuing both the things you're good at and the things you enjoy, you maximize your chances of being successful. More importantly, though, you maximize your chances of living a highly rewarding and enjoyable life. There's no better time

to start making the most of your life the now. And whether you're 16 or 60, it's never too late to find and pursue your true purpose. If it feels like your past has been wasted doing things that weren't your true purpose, don't worry. All that means is that it's time to make the rest of your life the best of your life now. And best of all, the wisdom and experience you gain from your past are invaluable resources that you can use to build a better future. And in the end, there's no such thing as wasted efforts, only wasted opportunities. Now, finding the best thing for you to do with your life truly is as simple as finding what you love, finding what you're good at, and pursuing it with a passion. From there, everything else will fall into place and you'll soon find yourself

living a life that is fulfilling, rewarding, and full of joy. Now, I want to leave you with a bit of homework. Think about your true purpose. Assume that the world is perfect right now. What does the world look like. How is everyone interacting with everyone else? What does it feel like? Write down your answer as a statement in the present tense the way you would see a perfect world. And remember that a perfect world is a fun place to be in. And once you determine this, go back and read it every day. Now, your purpose probably has something to do with helping create that world in some way. Maybe in a small way with your friends, your family, in your neighborhood, or your community, or your work group, or maybe on an even grander scale.

So close your eyes and visualize that perfect world for a few minutes every day, and then watch for opportunities to help create more of that world wherever you are. So thanks for watching today, and remember, nothing will change for the better until you do. Thank you for tuning in. Continue strengthening your mind by listening to our other episodes.