The School of Greatness - 160 Find and Follow Your Purpose with Jeff Goins

Episode Date: April 6, 2015

"What makes a life extraordinary is not the chances you get but what you do with them." - Jeff Goins If you enjoyed this episode, check out show notes and more at www.lewishowes.com/160.

This is episode number 160 with Jeff Goins. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin. Welcome back, everyone, to the School of Greatness podcast.

Very excited about today because I get so many messages and emails from people saying, Lewis, I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do with my business, with my life. I'm not sure what my calling is, what my path is, what I'm most excited about. I have no clue. Can you help me? And today we've got a new guest on. His name is Jeff Goins, who is an author out of Nashville.

And he just wrote a book called The Art of Work, which is a proven path to discovering what you were meant to do. And it's all about abandoning the status quo and living a life that matters. And I know that life can sometimes seem challenging and difficult and mysterious and frustrating and confusing, all in the same sentence, as I know it's been for me for a long time in my life. It was that way, and sometimes it still is

that way. And what we're going to talk about today is really if you feel stuck, if you feel like you're not sure what you're supposed to be doing in life or business, you're not sure your purpose for being here, that's completely okay. And I want you guys to know that's okay, and that's why we've got Jeff on to answer some of those questions through the research he's been doing on how to find and discover your path of what you were meant to do. So hopefully if you feel stuck, if you feel like you're just frustrated with the results you're getting or it's not, you know, we should be doing hard work to get great results, but it shouldn't be like this struggling work. You know, there's a difference between hard work and like suffering work where you're just like miserable, where you're not having fun and you're not going towards that thing that makes you so excited and so joyful every single day.

So we are bringing on a new guest to talk about this and I'm pretty pumped about it. And I think you guys are going to like what we talk about today on this episode. So without further ado, guys, let's go ahead and dive into this episode with the one, the only Jeff Goins. Welcome everyone back to the School of Greatness podcast. Very excited about today's guest. We've got the one and only Jeff Goins on. How's it going, Jeff? Hey, Lewis. It's going great. Thanks for having me. Yeah, very excited. You've got a new book out called The Art of Work, A Proven Path to Discovering What You Were Meant to Do. And I'm all about this message. I'm all

about following your purpose. And a lot of people want to follow their purpose, but they have no clue how to actually discover their purpose or what their purpose is. So I think the first question is that I want to ask you is what are you meant to do and how did you discover it yourself? Yeah, I think that's a great question. And, you know, it's probably not a great branding position to put myself in to say, I'm still figuring it out. Right. But that's sort of the argument of the book is that we think that finding your purpose is this like one thing, this epiphany moment that you have, and then the rest of your life

just makes complete sense. Actually, don't think that's true. And I interviewed hundreds of people and tell some of the stories in the art of work. And I think the norm is that discovering your purpose is this lifelong journey. And I do think you can miss out on it. I think you can just kind of, you know, be stuck in a job that you hate and dream of a better life and never actually live it. But I think the people that are on the path, a lot of people that, you know, you feature on your show, Lewis, it's not that they've arrived, but they've kind of discovered

the right road on which to journey. And I would say that's true for myself. I think that in a very simple way, my dream, my calling is to be a writer. And that sort of manifests in terms of me writing books and blog posts and creating online courses that help other writers and creative entrepreneurs get to where they want to go in life. And that's what I find incredibly fulfilling right now. And the way that I got there was sort of this surprising journey, as I think it often tends to be the case. I didn't always want to be a writer, although now that I've gotten to this point, I realize, yep, this makes sense. This is the thing that I was meant to do.

As somebody once said, life is lived forward, but it's understood backward. That's absolutely true for my realizing I was supposed to be a writer. What were you doing before this? I used to be a nonprofit marketing director. I did that for about seven years. That was my first real job out of college. I, uh, I grew up in Illinois and from the Midwest like you and Northern Illinois, DeKalb where, uh, you know, NIU is Northern Illinois University, Chicago area. Yeah. I, uh, I went to college

there, graduated and, um, traveled with a band for a year. I studied Spanish in college. Is he fluent? I'm rusty. You can order food and go to the bathroom in a Spanish-speaking country. Yeah, once I get back there, after a day or so, it kind of comes back. The hardest is vocab. But yeah, grammar is fairly solid. So I traveled with a band for a year and then I started

working at this international nonprofit doing international development and relief work all over the world. And my job was to kind of communicate all of it. I was the marketing director, which I just kind of fell into. They hired me as a copywriter and then I ended up starting this marketing team and I learned all of these skills that I thought – I just thought were like a diversion from the thing that I really wanted to do, which I thought maybe would be music. And then as I kind of went through this process, I realized I really like to write. In fact, for many years that all of these skills with marketing and business and even management, all of these skills were going to be skills that I was going to use every day, which, you know, now that I'm a small business owner, I use those skills all the time.

And that experience now I look at as sort of an apprenticeship preparing me for what I was meant to do. A couple of things I want to mention there that you talked about. One is not trying to figure it all out right now or always feel like you're doing what you're meant to do or you're on your purpose. It's like you've achieved your purpose, I guess. But more you said something about being on the path or on the journey of achieving it. And it's a lifelong journey. That's number one. Number two, the challenge I think some of us get,

let me speak for myself, is when I, my purpose as a kid was to be a professional athlete. And then when I got injured and I had to retire based on the injury, I was kind of in this depression state for a year and a half of like, what's next? You know, is my life over? Is my purpose done now? Or how can I transition this into something else? And I think there's a lot of people listening who can I transition this into something else? And I think there's a lot of people listening who may have experienced something where they've already fulfilled their purpose or they've already did something they wanted to do and then it was over and they're in a transition mode. And I like the fact that you said, you know, it's always in discovery of what we're meant to do and always on that journey. Can you speak more into that? Yeah, I think most people are, they're waiting for clarity, right? Like the people that you and

I talk to every day, if they're, if they're facing some sort of critical decision or they're trying to figure out what they want to do with their lives or they're, they're worried that they peaked, you know, back in their twenties or teens or thirties or whatever. And they're, and they feel like it's all downhill after, after this, a lot of people are waiting for clarity before they're willing to act. And I think that those people who are waiting for clarity are gonna be waiting a long time. I think that clarity tends to come with action,

that as we take the next step, we understand, we can kind of see further down the road and we can understand what life is throwing at us and how to kind of continue on the journey. It's interesting that you mentioned, you know, that you were doing one thing and, and then doing something different. You know, you were an athlete and, and you got hurt and it kind of had to, you had to kind of change your mindset and even your expectation of what your life would look like more and more. I, I find that with, um, you know, I interviewed all these people for this

book, people who are doing meaningful work, not necessarily people who are famous or rich, but people who had meaningful lives. They were making a difference in other people's lives. And they would say the thing that most of us are unwilling to say, which is I found my purpose. I know what I was meant to do and I'm doing it. All of them have a story like yours, Lewis, where they were doing one thing, something unexpected, sometimes catastrophic or tragic happened and it shifted and sent them in a different direction. And I think that at any given point in life, something like that happens to all of us. Maybe we don't get hurt. Maybe we don't have a relative die of cancer, but there is always something that life throws at us that wasn't in the plan.

Yeah. It could be a breakup in a relationship. It could be, you know, lose your job. It could be, you know, something like that. Yeah. I think that's the place where we find our purpose. Not when everything goes according to plan, because that's not the way life works. I think that your purpose is extracted from those moments when the plan goes horribly wrong and you have to go, okay, now what am I supposed to do? I like that. So what's the difference in purpose versus calling and do they always work together or will they always intersect? Yeah. I mean I basically use the words life's work, phrase life's work, calling and purpose

more or less interchangeably. I like the idea of a calling because it's there's a sense of otherness to it. And some people think about that in terms of spiritual terms. Some people don't. You know, I mentioned people in the book that, you know, have all kinds of different ideas of where this calling comes from. Some think it's kind of internal. But I like the idea that the thing that you do with your life is not just about you.

And so whatever term you need, you know, to sort of wrap your mind around that I think is beneficial. But, you know, I don't like the word dream, although I use it a little bit in the book because we understand what that means. But I don't like the word dream, although I use it a little bit in the book because we understand what that means. And even purpose sometimes can – sometimes it can muddy the waters where we think, okay, my purpose is about me. My dream is about me. I got my dream. I became a full-time writer. I quit my job.

I made more money than I ever thought possible. And it made me really, really depressed because I got everything that I wanted in life and I thought that was the end. And it wasn't. Why did you feel it was the end? Well, so if you've got a goal, right, and you work hard and hard. I worked for two years to build an online business, become a published author, and make enough money to replace my wife's income so that she could stay home and raise our son. This was the thing that I had been working for, for two years and created all this momentum to the point that I replaced her income. Then I replaced my income. Then I replaced her income again, and then my income again. And we ended up like tripling our income over the course of a year. And all of these possibilities that I never expected opened up. And I was like, okay, I read the four hour work week. I was like,

I got this, you know, I quit my job on my 30th birthday. And I was like, okay, like I just got to work a few hours a week and then I can do whatever I want. The problem was for me that I really like to work. I like to achieve things. And I didn't have some new goal, some new challenge to tackle. And I love spending time with my family. But after doing this for a couple of months, I was getting on my wife's nerves. She was like, you got to go do something because you're wired to tackle. And I love spending time with my family. But after doing this for a couple of months, I was getting on my wife's nerves. She was like, you got to go do something because you're wired to achieve and accomplish. And your life isn't over once you get your dream. And I realized that in many ways, my dream was too small because it was just about me and my own comfort and security. And I just start dreaming bigger dreams. I like that. Very cool. Now there's a lot of athletes that I know who are friends of mine,

who that was their thing. That was it. They had this one big dream and you know, maybe that got injured. Maybe they got cut or their time was over and they still hold on to not all of them, but some of my friends still onto, um, what could have been if they kept playing, what could have been if they did this, what could have been. They hold on to this, the past. How important is it for us to let go of what could have been? And what's your thoughts on that? One of my favorite stories from the book is the story of Garrett Rush Miller and his dad, Eric Miller. Eric reached out to me, you know, when you're writing a book about, you know, subject people sort of find you,

it's really interesting. And Eric found me and he said, hey, I think you should, you know, listen to my son's story, you know, about how he found his calling. I think it's going to be different from a lot of things that you've heard. And I said, okay. And so we got on the phone and he began to tell me this incredible story where at five years old, Garrett, who is a little boy playing tee ball, approaches the tee one night and his parents just noticed

that he's a little bit wobbly, he's a little bit off. He's just not approaching the tee right. He's not running straight. There is concern. So they take him to the doctor. Then they order a CT scan and they, the scan reveals that there's a golf ball size tumor in Garrett's head. And he's got a brain tumor at five years old. And the doctors say, okay, we're,

we're going to try to remove this. And that night they go into surgery and they remove the tumor. And by the time Garrett wakes up after surgery, he's blind, mute, and paralyzed. And the cancer's not gone. And the doctors gave him five years to live. This was not the plan, right? Like this was not the thing that Garrett's parents or even Garrett at five years old could have conceived for his life.

And so immediately his parents had to start thinking about, you know, how their life was going to change. And, um, and so they, they fight the cancer, they do all this stuff. And one night Eric is sitting in the hospital feeling, you know, justifiably, uh, sorry for his family, for himself, for his son, uh, wishing that this wasn't the way it was. And then all of a sudden he has what he would describe as an epiphany. He just realizes, man, we are waiting for our son to die. We are counting down, uh, the days and years and hours that he has left to his life. Why aren't we doing that for our own

life? Like what's to, you know, what guarantee do we have that we're going to outlive our son? Like who, who says you've got another five years to your life? Who says that you've got another day? We aren't promised that. And he told me, he says, we realized that we needed to be living life to the fullest, all of us right now. And they started to make some radical changes in their lives.

And one of the first things that they did was they took Garrett to visit this guy who used to work for Microsoft and is this world renowned, uh, tandem, uh, bicyclist who's blind. And, uh, Eric, uh, takes his son Garrett to the tandem bicycle and has him touch the pedals. And he just sees something spark in him. He sees a light bulb of hope kind of turn on. And fast forward, you know, almost a year later, Eric and Garrett finished their first triathlon together, you know, using a tandem bike and, you know, and they finish with Eric pushing his son in a wheelchair. Now, here's the fun part of the story. They do that every year for the next 12 years.

And then Garrett goes on to hike Machu Picchu. Uh, he actually recovers a lot of his sight. He, you know, he, he starts to be able to walk and, you know, ride a bicycle on his own. And when I talked to Garrett, he was still alive. He had outlived that five year death sentence. And he, um, spends his time, you know, at school, uh, uh, working at a climbing gym in Colorado Springs and volunteering for, uh, uh, wounded warriors, which is the, you know, at school, uh, uh, working at a climbing gym in Colorado Springs and volunteering for, uh, uh, wounded warriors, which is the, you know, war veterans, uh, charity. And, um, he told me more than anything. And this is the obligation that I have, the commitment that I have to Garrett that when I tell his story, I have to tell everybody that he's looking for a girlfriend.

So if there's any ladies out there. Yeah. So, uh, when I asked Eric, I said, you know, like, do you ever think of what life would be like if this didn't happen? He said, no, we never think about that. And I asked Garrett the same thing. And he said, no, I never think about that. And I was like, surprised, you know, like you don't think about what life would have been like if this had never happened. And Eric said, no, I never do. Uh, we never do because it doesn't matter. He says, who gives a crap? Who cares what could have been? This is what we have. This is the hand that we've been dealt and we have to make the most of it. And the lesson that I learned from Garrett Rush Miller and from his dad, Eric, is that maybe what makes a life extraordinary aren't the chances that

you get, but what you do with them. And I mean, I think we, we can't deny the fact that, uh, many of us have been giving, given greater opportunities than the five-year-old boy who, you know, goes to T-ball one day and comes home with a brain tumor and has to figure out how to make the most of his life with all of those limitations. How much more can we do something extraordinary with what we've been given? Exactly. And I've had a good friend of mine, Kyle Maynard here on the show. He was born without arms and legs. And every time, every time I think about, Oh, you know, something is hurting my body or I stubbed my toe or whatever. I had a hard workout and it's hard to recover. I just think about what would life be like if I wasn't able to walk or didn't have any arms. And he is like, he life you know he's like i'm so grateful he's like

i'm like a rock star everywhere i go and uh you know it's been amazing and he was like it doesn't seem challenging me because it's all i've ever known right so i love that story um so there's a lot of people listening that may be struggling still with, I still don't know what my calling is or what I'm supposed to be doing. I'm frustrated. Maybe I'm just, I'm not where I want to be right now. I'm just not there. And what would you say is the very first step to discovering your calling? And is it the same for everyone? I think the first step is sort of counterintuitive because we're used to hearing successful people say, I just knew what I was supposed to do. I was three and a half years old and I just knew that I was supposed to go do this thing and I went and did it and I went after this goal and I achieved it. And you can do it too if you just have a plan and you follow these seven easy steps.

Right, right, right. And yet when we look at our own lives, we feel like we're just kind of trying to piece together all of these different things that don't seem to quite make sense. Or you had a plan, you wanted to be an athlete or something, uh, and it didn't work out. Right. I mean, that's, that's a very common story as you know. And, and I tell a story in the book about a guy named Matt McWilliams, who was an incredible golfer, uh, then gets hurt and realizes, I don't love this as much as, as I thought he'd won all these championships in high school and college was a professional golfer, uh, and then had to kind of stop and refigure out what, you know, what he wanted his life to look like and went through an entire season of failure, which included his dad firing him from a job,

his own dad, a day after his birthday, uh, for him to kind of figure out, you know, what, what I'm supposed to do with my life. And he would say, and a lot of people I talked to said the same thing that they had to take a moment and listen to their life. Like what, what have I always loved doing? Not, not, you know, how is the plan always gone? Right. But what are the things that I understand about myself and how can I look at, at what I've been given the hand that I've been dealt and try to make the most of it. And, and that is a, you know, a process that I call listening to your life. Um, kind of like Eric did in the hospital, he just kind of had this epiphany where he realized, okay, what can we do? Uh, what are the opportunities that we have available to us?

How can I pay attention to my gifts, my abilities, uh, you know, What are the opportunities that we have available to us? How can I pay attention to my gifts, my abilities, you know, the chances that I have gotten and try to actually do something with them, which is the opposite of wishing for what could have been, right? It's the very opposite of that. So I think the first step in discovering your purpose is to listen to your life, you know, look at the things that you've always loved, the things that you've always done. And don't, you know, don't think that that's what you absolutely have to do. I don't think the past dictates your future, but it does inform it or it can inform it. And the best way for you to figure out what you're supposed to do next is to look back at what you've already done and ask yourself, what's the thread? What's the theme throughout all of this stuff? When I did that at

27 years old as a nonprofit marketing director, you know, having had some level of success, feeling pretty secure in my job, I realized this isn't what I'm supposed to be doing. This is great preparation. I can learn some skills from here, but the thing that I've always done is I've always written in one, you know, form or another, and I've got to start doing this more seriously. Yeah, I like that. The challenge is, when I talk to people about this as well myself, when they're like, I don't know what to do. I think when you can match doing the things that you love that are fun for you in a way that serve others, you can't go wrong there. If you can follow something that you're passionate about,

that you love doing a majority of the time that you have fun with and brings joy to you, and if you can find a way to serve others at the same time, that's a pretty good calling, I would say. Yeah, no, I absolutely agree. I love that Frederick Buechner quote where he says that your vocation is the place where your deepest joy meets the world's deepest need. That is powerful. And I think that's absolutely true because that's why I don't like the idea of just a dream. A dream is a hobby. I can dream of playing guitar for 10,000 people. Um, but you know, there's, the world doesn't owe me anything. Like I, like I might, might just

cause I could imagine it doesn't mean that it's going to come true. Uh, I'm a pretty pragmatic guy. And I think the best way for you to do what you love most of the time is to do exactly what you're describing Lewis. And I, I, I kind of put it into three different circles, find what you love, uh, and then combine it with something that you do really well. So, you know, not, you can't just love it. You have to do it really well and then find a demand for it where those three intersect. You've got a sweet spot. I mean, lots of people have taught about this, a sweet spot where you tend, you know, you can have, that's a business, you know, that's a meaningful life and you can even build that's a business, that's a meaningful life, and you can even build a career around something like that. I like that. And you say there are two types of stories we

typically hear when it comes to pursuing our dreams or our callings. And what are those two different types of stories? So I think we're around the same age. Do you remember growing up with this Michael J. Fox movie, The Secret of My Success? Do you remember that movie? I don't remember that movie. It's a Michael J. Fox movie from the 80s. And he's like this farm boy. And he goes into New York City to become this big shot executive.

And he goes, you know, he's graduated college. Kind of like when I moved to Nashville. I had toured with a band for a year and I had a college degree and I thought, man, I am going to be so hireable. Like this is going to be amazing. And rejection after rejection, after rejection later, I realized, oh, there's a lot of people that have the same qualifications, you know, that I do that are waiting tables. Uh, and same thing happens to, uh, this character, uh, Brantley, I think is his name. And he goes from one rejection after another to another. And eventually he, he finds a way to sort of fake his way. He gets a job as, as a guy in the mail room and then pretends to be an executive one day and gets all of this attention and becomes this,

you know, big shot, but he's, he's faking it. He's lying. And the guy who's running the company is his uncle. So he's always got to find ways to sort of like not run into him as this, you know, fake executive. Uh, anyway, it's called the secret of my success. And at the end of the movie, he realizes that, um, you can do just about anything, you know, you can work hard enough and, and, and realize your dream, but, uh, you have to fake it. You have to become somebody who isn't your true self. And, and eventually that catches up with you. I think the first story of success that we tend to tell is that self-made man or woman story. You can do anything. You just have to believe hard enough and you can make it happen. And that sort of negates all of these obstacles and difficulties, uh, and, and, you know, lack of

opportunity that we face, which I think we tend to think of as weaknesses. And I think more often they're their strengths. Um, you know, I love, uh, Ryan holidays, recent book, you know, I know, you know, Ryan, um, you know, the obstacle is the way, what if you're hidden in your greatest difficulty was actually your greatest opportunity. So, you know, I, I think that we're pretty skeptical of the self-made man and woman story by now, or at least we should be. The other story is kind of the way that, you know, everybody else lives their lives. Um, you know, the ultra successful tend to propagate this myth of, I did it all on my own. And then the other side is like, there's no real purpose. There's no real meaning. Life just is what it is. Whatever happens, happens, whatever will be, will be.

And I think that's, that is letting us off the hook. You know, I think that we do have control over much of, you know, the outcomes in our lives and we can decide for ourselves if we're going to live just a mediocre life or a meaningful life. And so the path of vocation that I described in the art of work is kind of a middle way between those two. You know, you do have difficulties, you do have things that you can't control things that life throws at you. But really, your purpose is what's found when you make the most of those opportunities and those shortcomings and try to do something extraordinary with the life that you've been given. Absolutely. The challenges that I face with a lot of people is that when they get excited about something, they start. They're taking action like you talk about.

And then these fears come up. Fears of, you know, it's not going to work out. I'm not good enough. I'm not educated. I don't want to sell. Whatever it may be, they have fears that come up in their business, in their life, or whatever. How does someone know when to listen to your fears and when not to listen to your fears? What's interesting about all these people whose stories I told, and there's a lot of people's

names that you won't recognize in the book. And that was intentional. I didn't want to just tell all these amazing glamour stories of people who made it and you go, I can never relate to them. I mean, I think there's value in that. I listen to some of the guests on your show and I go, man, I got to get off the couch on your show and I go, man, I gotta get off the couch and do something. You know, like I gotta, I gotta do something. Uh, there's totally, there's, you know, there's a huge benefit in that. But I also think that sometimes when the stories are so extreme, we just disconnect. Like, well, what about me? And I love that, that, you know, this book is full of all these stories of people that I learned from. And one of the things that I learned from all these people, uh, is these people is that if you wait to not

feel afraid to go tackle a dream, to go find your purpose, you're going to be waiting a long time. All these people didn't wait to feel extraordinarily courageous before they acted. They acted in spite of feeling very, very afraid. They did it afraid. And then the courage came. spite of feeling very, very afraid. They did it afraid. And then the courage came, you know, courage, as we've often heard is, is not the, uh, lack of fear. It's really the willingness to, you know, act in spite of, you know, shaking in your boots. And that was absolutely true. And I think that there's a good fear and a bad fear. You know, the, the, um, the good fear is the kind of fear that makes you afraid of living a life that doesn't matter, or even worse, succeeding at the wrong thing.

I think that we're so afraid of failure when we don't completely understand that failure often gets us to success. And what we really ought to be fearing, and I learned this from my friend Jodi Nolan, who found her calling at 58 years old after numerous people in her life died of cancer. And it just woke her up. It's a great story. Yeah. Yeah. It was incredible. And she said, finally, when she woke up, she realized two things. One, nothing in her life was wasted. So, you know, if you're in your forties, fifties, sixties, whatever, and you're going, it's too late for me. I feel like I missed the boat. Jody would say, no, she would say nothing

in your life is wasted. It's all preparation for what's to come. Uh, you know, the other thing that she said is I started moving when, uh, I was no longer afraid of failing, but I was afraid of not trying. So I think the bad failure is being afraid of stuff that you can't control. The good failure is being afraid of what if I don't try this? What if I end my life and I realize I could have at least tried this and I missed it because I was scared? Yeah. And there's a lot of wealthy and quote unquote successful people out there in the world who are completely miserable because they're not doing the thing that's their calling. They're doing something that they think they're supposed to be doing, but it's actually not fulfilling them. And, uh, that's a trap as well. Um, so how did you find these, the people whose stories you tell

in the book and what are the common characteristics you found in all of them? So, um, I asked Chris Gillibeau how he finds all the cool people, you know, for the stories in his books. Cause they're just incredible. I asked around, you know, I, I, I love narrative, you know, I love reading. Um, I love reading biographies. I love reading, uh, novels. And so I asked around, I asked a lot of friends, how do you write a book like this? I, I kind of wrote this guru book. Uh, you know, here are these seven things that you should do. Cause I did them and you should listen to me cause I've read hair. And, um, I think that's pretty solid social proof, the red hair and, uh, you know, it didn't work. I didn't like it. And I realized this is the kind of book that really

needs, you know, it needs characters. It needs other people's stories to be kind of the main focus because we relate to other people's stories. We see our stories in, uh, the story of another person and we tend to relate to other people's struggles. So I did a few things. One, I just asked around, I asked friends of friends and Chris gave me some great advice. He said, try to find people who aren't trying to benefit from their names being in a book because those will be more honest stories than somebody who's got a blog and wants to leverage this for, you know, publicity or whatever. I don't have any problem with that. And, you know, some of the people, you know, uh, uh, whose stories I told, you know, you can find them on the internet and some of them you can't, but I basically found them by directly asking my audience. I've got a blog, email newsletter, and I kind of put it out

there. Um, and then I asked people, you know, Hey, if you've got a story, great. But if you know somebody, cause sometimes some of the best stories are not the ones where people are walking around with megaphone saying, Hey, listen to my story. You know, send me that. And I found probably over half of the stories through that. And I would, you know, when I started interviewing these people, I kind of wanted them to prove my ideas. And then by the end of it, I had completely deconstructed and reconstructed how I understand what it means to live a meaningful life and find your calling. But some of the things I learned from that, they were sort of counterintuitive things. When I started this process, I thought your calling was just one thing. Now I think it's

a few things that you intentionally combine in a portfolio that creates a meaningful life and meaningful work. Another thing I learned was that you don't just know, you have to develop the awareness of what you're supposed to do through intentional action. And the more you act, the more clarity comes. And then, uh, I, you know, the last, one of the other things that I learned, um, is, uh, that, um, we are our most fulfilled when we are, um, doing stuff that's uncomfortable. fulfilled when we are doing stuff that's uncomfortable. And if you are, if you are, you know, if you think a dream is all about you and getting the things that you want, I've done that. It's not fun. It'd make you miserable. Really, there needs to be a certain amount of pain involved in the process, but it needs to be the good kind of pain. And you

understand this as an athlete, right? Like if I'm just going to the gym and I go, Hey, I feel great. I am not doing my job. I am not doing what actually is best for my body. And the same thing is true with your life. You have to push yourself in doing stuff that you love, right? But you have to work through difficulties and pain to make the mark that you're supposed to make and leave an impact on others. And also, it just happens to be the most meaningful way to live our lives when we're challenging ourselves, when we're stretching ourselves to the utter limit. And that's not always a process that's easy or fun, but it's good. Yeah. I think you just gave a lot of relief to people who thought their calling has to be one thing when you said it can be multiple things. You know, what just popped up in my head, I don't know if this is a good example or not, but Arnold Schwarzenegger, you know, his probably his calling was to be the greatest

bodybuilder in the world. But then when that was over and he was no longer a bodybuilder and he won every, you know, competition for 10 years straight or whatever it was, he could have easily said, OK, my life is over. I was the meathead, the best meathead in the world. And, you know, I'm going to live off of that. But then he transitioned into, you know, entertaining people through movies. And then when that career was over, I guess it's still going. He said, you know, how can I serve the state as a governor? And, you know, I'm sure he does a lot

of other things as well. I don't know if he's the best example. He's just what popped in my head as someone who has had many callings and who has continually pushed himself and challenged himself at different stages in his life when he felt called to do that. The question I have is, why do you believe as a society we have such a commitment problem? Yeah. I think that that is the challenge, right? So on one hand, Lewis, you're talking about you can do more than one thing. And I would say somebody like Schwarzenegger or something in your city and say, Hey, I need you to build me a bazooka. Uh, and yet he was what, you know, we call a polymath in the Renaissance, you know, guy who had multiple interests and skills. And I would say all of that really is a calling that, um, you know, his ability to paint and, you know, design weapons like those both influenced each other. And they were, and they were both art to him and very unique in different ways.

And I think that Schwarzenegger is a great example because what happens when you get everything that you want? Do you just kind of live off of that or do you keep going? Now, the other extreme of that is to go, well, everything I do is great. It's all part of my calling. And then you're back to that – one of those extremes that I talked about before where there's no real intentionality, you know, like you don't see Schwarzenegger trying to become, uh, you know, uh, I don't know, a plumber or a baker or something, you know, like he's very intentionally he's in, he's shifted his goal and focus from one thing to the tenacious pursuit of something else. And,

you know, as you go you go throughout your life, you'll have multiple pursuits, but the way that you combine them, I think it has to be intentional. I love this quote by Robert Greene, who wrote a book called Mastery. He said, the future belongs to those who learn more skills and combine them in creative ways.

So the calling, I think, is the way that you combine those skills, which requires commitment. Like you have to commit to something. You can't just, you know, do a job for six months, then do another one for six months and think you're living, you know, some sort of really cool, diverse portfolio, you know, in terms of your career, because you only learn stuff. As I mentioned before, you only learn stuff when you force yourself to do something that's a little bit uncomfortable. And, uh, and that's also where you're, you're most fulfilled. Me checks me high to accept me high, which is super fun to say, talks about this in

his book and Ted talk flow, where he says that, um, really where we need to be when it comes to work, uh, doing meaningful work, that's going to make us happy. So you have to be in the intersection of competency, something that I'm really good at, and challenge, something that's hard enough that it's going to force me to grow. When we don't, when we just do what feels good, when we go from one job to the next, the next, the next, as I see a lot of my peers doing, we never find, you know, we might be pursuing things that we're competent at, but we're not doing things that are challenging. And one of the most challenging things for us as a society to do right now is to stick with something that doesn't feel good, knowing that there is fruit that is born only after, you know, years and years of dedication. I think we need

more of that if we're going to do meaningful work that's going to make a difference, not just in our own lives, but in the lives of others. It can't always be easy. Yeah, I agree to that. Let's talk about the skills and tools and people that you'll need to learn and connect with along the way in order to get the most out of your calling. And I'm a big fan of mentors and finding coaches and people to support you along your journey because I feel like you can't do it alone. No matter what you're trying to do, you can't be at your best if you're doing it on your own. So you talk about accidental apprenticeship. What does that exactly mean? So, Lewis, you're a big fan of mentors and coaches. Do you just have one mentor? I probably have about 100 mentors. And I have people that have mentored me that they don't

even know they mentored me. Yeah, I love that. And I learn from people online. I learn from people just following them on Instagram even. I learn how they're doing what they're doing. I learned from people just following them on Instagram even. I learned how they're doing what they're doing. I learned salsa dancing from a couple, I don't even know their name, from YouTube videos back in 2006 or 2007. So yeah, I learned from everyone. Yeah. I think that's what an accidental apprenticeship is. I think a lot of us, when we talk about mentoring, at least when I heard this term, especially in my early 20s, I was like, okay, I need a mentor.

I need a guide. I need Obi-Wan Kenobi to come find me and raise me up to, you know, be this, you know, mighty man. And after burning through two or three relationships, I just got really disappointed. I thought, man, where's my mentor? Where's the guy that's going to, you know, help me become a man, you know, is really what I wanted. And, uh, all along the way, I was sort of ignoring all these other people in my life that were influencing me going, yeah,

yeah, yeah. But we're not, that's not my mentor. I don't meet with him or her for coffee every week. And we talk about my life and, um, you know, fast forward several years and I look back and I go, wow, I learned this and this and this from all these different people that kind of just showed up in my life at the right time. And when I was, you know, not being an idiot, I acknowledged that I could learn from this person and really try to engage in the relationship. Um, one of the things that surprised me when I was interviewing all these people, um, and it helped me make more sense of my own story, was that there was no one person that, you know, kind of like broke that person's career. It was a bunch of people coming together, even when everybody sort of like seemingly

rejected them. Like, for example, Ginny Pong, who has this TEDx video about how she found her calling to become a doula, a birth coach in Singapore. And she found that through this painful experience of having a baby out of wedlock, her parents kicking her out of the house because she didn't want to have an abortion. She wanted to have the baby. Her boyfriend basically disowning her. And everybody that loved her just kind of slammed their doors on her face. When you look at her story, you go, this looks like a self-made woman. And yet when we dug deeper, she said, well, this person helped me and this person helped me and this person helped me.

And so even when we think you're doing it all on your own, you're not. An accidental apprenticeship, I think, is really about not going and finding the perfect mentor. It's about acknowledging the people around you right now and how you can get the most out of them. And a great example of this is Steve Jobs, who went to Reed College, couldn't afford it. So he dropped out. Then he started auditing classes. One of those classes was a calligraphy class, which he said was instrumental in, you know,

the beautiful typography with the first Mac. He went and worked at Atari and, you know, used his friendship with Steve Wozniak to get a job, ended up going to India. And all of these things could have just been random experiences. But if you read Jobs' story, you see that there's an intentionality that wherever he's going,

he's soaking up every lesson that he can learn from every relationship around him. And he's not going, man, I wish I would have graduated college or man, I wish Hewlett Packard would have hired me. He's just using whatever's around him to kind of create his own education so that he can do the thing that he wants to do. And he's not even quite sure what it is. I mean, I think it's okay to not know why am I learning from this

person and why, you know, why do I, why do I want to talk to this guy down the street and just kind of pick his brain on something? And then, you know, a few years later you realize, well, these people were instrumental in me becoming the person that I am today. And so, you know, a few years later you realize, well, these people were instrumental in me becoming the person that I am today. And so, you know, I wish that we had apprenticeships like they did in the Middle Ages and at the beginning of the Renaissance. It doesn't work that way. And if you are trying to seek out some special mentor that's going to be able to meet with you all the time, that's going to be a really hard road to walk. And I actually don't think it's the best way to learn. I think the best way to do it is the way that you're doing it, Lewis, cobbling together a bunch of relationships, some of which

are people that actually know you and some you just know them, but using every, you know, every opportunity that you have to intentionally engage in lessons that you can learn from watching other people, listening to them and applying it to your own journey. So along your journey, I'm sure you've met lots of people who have supported you. Who's the one person who helped you that you thought would give you that you thought you would never learn anything from but actually taught you a major lesson? And what was the lesson you learned from that person? It would be my boss, Seth Barnes. He saw things in me that I wouldn't see for years after the fact.

And I think it's sadly typical for us to kind of, you know, if we're in a day job and we've got some dreams, something that we want to do to sort of position our bosses as the enemies of our dreams, the antagonists to the thing that we want to do. And sometimes they are, I'm not saying that they're not, I'm not saying that, you know I'm not saying that you should be really grateful to your jerk boss. But they probably have something to teach you. And I didn't have a jerk boss and he was constantly telling me to read books like, hey, check out this book by this guy named Seth book he wrote and learned a lot about marketing and applied a lot of it to the business that I would start one day. And I never expected that, right? For the longest time, I thought that he just wanted me to help him fulfill his vision for his organization.

He didn't care about the dreams and passions that I had. And that wasn't true. And I had a lot that I learned from from him and I continue to learn from him. Uh, I think the biggest thing that I learned from him is he was an entrepreneur. Um, you know, he knew how to take an idea and, you know, bring it into action. And years later when I would start a business and chase a dream and have to take an idea and make it be, I pulled from years and years of watching him do that, learning through helping him do that. And I would not be able to do what I'm doing right now without having had that experience and really being able to work with him and under him in that respect. What has been your biggest adversity, challenge, or failure that you've had along your life that actually maybe at the thought, man, if I could just get published in this magazine or on that website. And, uh, you know, the,

my big break was on my, uh, wedding day. I finished this article and I submitted this national magazine that had a, you know, um, circulation of like 150,000 people. And I was like, this is it, man. I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to be the man after this. And, and they accepted it, which was great. And I ended up finishing the article like hours before my wife walked down the aisle, which was not stressful at all. And then I was like, this is great. I'm going to, I'm going to write articles for them every month. And they never published a piece of mine again. And that pissed me off is what it did. And some of it was just mismanagement of editorial and they just kept having high turnover in their staff. They go, who are you again? But it made me mad enough to build a platform, to kind of create my own way of getting myself published, a blog.

I mean that was – this happened years ago and that was the thing that made me go, screw this. I don't want to have to ask for somebody else's permission to share my words with the world. And yeah, it felt like a blow. I mean, it felt like, man, I'm never going to make it. And, and the, the, the shift for me was why am I, why am I putting this power to say no to something that, uh, you know, in somebody else's hands when, when really I have that power. And that's not always been true. That wasn't true 50 years ago. You can go start a blog and reach, you know, tens of thousands of people. You needed newspapers and magazines and TV to reach people. You don't need that anymore. I'm not opposed to it. I, you know, I think it's great to use other channels of distribution, but I was waiting for somebody

else's permission to share my message. And that failure made me go, I don't need to do this. I can do this on my own. I like that. Okay. We've got a few questions left for you. One of the questions that just came up for me is, since words are really important to you and writing and information is really valuable to you, say at the end of the day. Whether it's today, tomorrow, 100 years from now, it's your last day. You've got three truths to write down. All of your other work has been completely, let's just say it was destroyed and the internet blew up and no one could see your writing and all your books were destroyed. But you have a piece of paper and you can write three truths about life

that you know to be true to you, that you could leave on to your family, your children, your friends, and to the world. What would these three truths be about life? This is a really hard question. But I remember watching a TED video one video one time. Uh, Ted's getting some good sponsorship here. Maybe they'll sponsor the show that, uh, that great video by Sarah K that, that teacher spoken word poet. And, uh, she, she talks about, um, you know,

this letter that she writes to her daughter and, um, and she says at the end, like, I want to challenge you to write, you know, think of three things that you know, to be true. And, um, and she says at the end, like, I want to challenge you to write, you know, think of three things that you know, to be true. And, um, and I wrote that down. Uh, so let me see what I wrote. Uh, these are the things that I believed years ago and I think are still true. And, uh, and I believe these things. Um, one life is not meaningless. You have a purpose. There's, there's something bigger going on. There's a bigger story. And you may not know it. I may not know it. But there's something going on and we are a part of it. art, that beauty is essential. There was this episode of The Walking Dead, not too long, I don't know if you watched that show, where basically this guy had this priceless painting and he found it just kind of discarded on the street in this post-apocalyptic world where he

goes, we don't need art anymore because we're just trying to survive and art isn't about survival, it's about transcendence. I think we always need beauty. We always need something to inspire us to, you know, remember that deeper story. And then the third thing, which, you know, may sound surprising is, um, we are all broken. We are, you know, we all have, uh, weakness and failure and, and things that, that we shame things that we're not proud of. And yet in that brokenness, I think there's beauty. shame, things that we're not proud of. And yet in that brokenness, I think there's beauty. There's something that brings us together. We, we, we, we need to rely on each other and, um, you know, make the most of our lives. So I think I still believe those three things. That's good. Those are great. Three truths. I like it.

What are you most grateful for in your life recently, Jeff? You know, so we just launched this book and, um, I've launched books before. This is actually my fourth book. And, um, I, uh, we were really intentional about, and I, and I use that we not as like the Royal we, you know, as if I'm the Pope or something, but I had this whole team of people, multiple teams helping me launch this book. And I'd never done it, uh, that way before I'd gotten people like blog about it or whatever, but we just had hundreds of people, uh, all on board, um, you know, with the success of this book. And I'm, uh, grateful for the fact that, uh, I, I, I saw this book reaching people that I had never interacted with before. Um, and I mean, this conversation is

sort of, you know, a, a result of that. And I realized I write in the book that every story of success is a story of community. I thought that was a nice idea. That's a great little tweetable. I saw it come true with this book. It's true, man. We're friends of friends of friends of friends were taking this message and they were sharing it. And, and I was grateful for the fact that I got to write a book that I think is true, that's touching people's lives. And I'm grateful for a supportive community that began with blog readers and podcast listeners. But it's just turned into friends of friends of friends of people that I don't even know. And that's exciting to me. I think when I started several years ago and dreamed of being a writer,

that was the big idea. Could I reach people that I'd never otherwise be able to reach and just try to speak some truth into their life and hopefully inspire them or impact them in some way? And I'm grateful that I've been able to do that with this book and really through the power of community. So true. Can't do anything alone. That's worth talking about, actually. What's the next step? I want people to go get this book. Again, I'm going to have it all linked up here on the link at the end. I'll tell you guys where to go to get this book, The Art of Work, Proven Path to Discovering What You Were Meant to Do. What's the next step someone can take in their life, whether they have the book or they don't,

to discover what they're meant to do? I think, I mean, I love that question because the question is the answer. What's the next step? Take a step, do something. I know it sounds stupid obvious, but I have, you know, I had a conversation with a group of friends the other week and, you know, somebody said, hey, who here feels like they know what they're supposed to do with their lives? Who feels like they've found their calling or their purpose? And we had 20 people in the room and two people raised their hand. Uh, I read a study not too long ago that said 87% of the world's workers are disengaged from their work. I don't like these numbers. I don't like these percentages, you know, that, uh, nearly nine out of 10 people, uh, either hate their jobs or just, you know, feeling different about the work that they're doing in the world.

And that at least in my group of friends, you know, one out of 10 people feels like they have any clue of what they're supposed to do. I don't like that. And I think most people are waiting for an epiphany. Most people are waiting for a light to shine down from heaven before they take the first step. And I think, you know, what is the next step? I think it begins with listening to your life, looking at what are some things that you know that you've always done, you know, and we talked about this earlier. What's the intersection between my passion and the world's need and my skill? And then that will give me an idea, a general idea of something I can try

and just see what happens. And, um, I think you can get bogged down with, you know, personality profiles and assessments and all this stuff that tells you what to do, but then you still have to actually do something. And the, you know, the common denominator amongst all the people that I researched in the book and then, you know, biographies I've read, like Walt Disney, Mother Teresa, Steve Jobs, all these people did something. They did things. And I know that sounds obvious, but it's not intuitive to us. I mean, I meet with friends for coffee and lunch and they go, I'm just waiting for clarity. I'm just, I'm just praying. I'm just dreaming. I go, it's not going to happen. You have to do something. You have to take the next step. And that's how you find the path.

I like that. Yeah. I would say that growing up, I never felt analytical or like I analyzed situations. And it's because I didn't feel like I was wise enough at the time to really analyze things. So I was just like, you know what? I'm not afraid of what happens. I'm just going to do this, I'm not afraid of what happens. I'm just going to do this, take action and see what happens. As opposed to I have to do it the perfect way or

I have to have everything set up first to make it happen. I was just like, no, I'm just going to do it and see what happens. And I think that that kind of ignorance that I had as a kid has served me well in my adulthood now too, because a lot of the times I just take action. And if I fail, well in my adulthood now too, because a lot of the times I just take action. And if I fail, then it's feedback for me. It's a lesson. And it's also accumulating skills and information along the way for what's truly going to be my calling for the rest of my life. So I appreciate this. And this is the first time we've connected, Jeff. And I want to acknowledge you for a moment for your commitment to following and being on the journey of your calling. Again, you said you love writing and taking the leap to work for yourself

and to start writing and then to serve others through your work. I'm in the process of editing my book right now, and I know how challenging and demanding and how much energy it takes to really put together a great piece of work. And this book is great. I love the stories. Some of these stories really gave me goosebumps, gave me chills. My assistant was reading it, and she was crying at certain moments in the book

because of some of the stories that you called forth from here and that you brought to the table. So I want to acknowledge you for doing the work, for creating something powerful and meaningful that's going to help shift a lot of people's perspective when they get this information. So thank you for all that you do. It's my pleasure. Thank you for having me, Lewis. And thank you for challenging people to not just live good lives, but great ones. I've been inspired as well. I appreciate it. And I got one final question and it's, what's your definition of greatness? I think, um, that's my biggest fear is, uh, I, um, you know, if I'll just be honest, like, uh, I, I think I'm kind of smart, you know, like I think I know some

things. I think I've had some, I think I've had to fight for certain things in life, but I also think there have been opportunities afforded me and I go, gosh, I don't know where that came from. I'm lucky. And I realize, I acknowledge that I could be successful at more than one thing in life. I just, I know that. And my biggest fear is that I would succeed at the wrong thing. I would succeed at the wrong thing. Um, and, and I think greatness is about, um, you know, living a life that is, uh, not just about you, uh, but it's about, um, finding, you know, your purpose that connects deeply with you and then sharing it in such a way that the legacy you leave is greater than, you know, the work that you ever did. Jackie Robinson said that a life isn't significant except for its impact on others.

And I would define greatness as that. It's not so much what you do with your life as much as it is what you leave behind. And I would measure that in terms of impact in other people's lives. Jeff Goins, thanks so much for coming on today. Thank you. And there you have it, guys.

I hope you enjoyed this. Make sure to go back to the show notes at lewishouse.com slash 160. We're going to give you guys some links, things where you can go and get more tips and more resources on how to discover what you were meant to do. Also, to make sure to check out Jeff's book. We'll have links for that back on the show notes, lewishouse.com slash 160. And everything is linked back on the blog, lewishouse.com slash 160. If you have yet to subscribe to the newsletter where I send free goodies every week and golden nuggets all the time and all the behind the scenes resources and videos and links that you don't get from this episode, make sure to go to lewishouse.com and subscribe to the newsletter.

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away. So again, make sure to go back to lewishouse.com slash 160 for this episode and you can subscribe there. And with that, guys, things are just taking off. And we've got some big announcements that I've been saying coming out here very, very soon. A lot of things we're working on here with team greatness, and I'm so excited to where we're going. So if you guys are enjoying this, leave a comment on the blog. Let

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It's time to go out there and do something great. Thank you. Bye.