5 steps To Find Your Purpose (The Fast Track To Build The Life You Want)

5 steps To Find Your Purpose (The Fast Track To Build The Life You Want)

March 28, 2025 55m

What excites you the most in life?

When do you feel most fulfilled?

What if you could not only live longer but also feel healthier, more energized, and more fulfilled as you age? Today, Jay uncovers the secrets of longevity, sharing wisdom from some of the world’s leading experts in health, wellness, and aging. Recorded at the Longevity Summit, this episode explores groundbreaking insights on how we can extend not just our lifespan but also our health span, ensuring that we live longer, healthier, and more fulfilling lives.  

Jay unpacks the science behind aging, from cellular regeneration to the role of mindset in shaping our physical well-being. He shares compelling research on nutrition, movement, and daily habits that contribute to longevity, emphasizing how small, intentional changes can have a profound impact. Through thought-provoking conversations and personal reflections, Jay helps us understand how to take control of our well-being, cultivate emotional resilience, and prioritize self-care in ways that align with our long-term health goals.

In this episode, you'll learn:

How to Add More Healthy Years to Your Life

How to Strengthen Your Mindset for a Longer Life

How to Reduce Stress and Boost Emotional Resilience

How to Create a Longevity-Focused Morning Routine

How to Use Movement and Exercise to Slow Aging

How to Prioritize Sleep for Long-Term Wellness

The journey to longevity isn’t about drastic changes or chasing the latest health trends, it’s about making small, intentional choices every day that add up over time.

With Love and Gratitude,

Jay Shetty

What We Discuss:

00:00 Intro

03:11 Experience the Grounding Meditation

09:22 The Search for Your Purpose

12:55 What Are You Holding Onto?

17:25 This Isn’t Your Purpose

19:42 Who Found the Most Meaning in Life

32:11 Five Check-In Systems for Envy

32:49 #1: Deep Sense of Belonging 

39:46 #2: Continuous Learning

44:55 #3: Individuality 

47:00 #4: Significance

50:40 #5: Service

53:31 The Biggest Key to Meaning and Purpose

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Listen and Follow Along

Full Transcript

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I'm Emi Olea, host of the podcast Crumbs. For years, I had to rely on other people to tell me my story.

And what I heard wasn't good.

You really f***ed last night.

It felt like I lived most of my life in a blackout.

I was trapped in addiction.

I had to grab the lamp and smash it against the walls.

And then I decided I wanted to tell my own story.

Listen to Crumbs on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey everyone, it's Jay Shetty, and I'm thrilled to announce my podcast tour.
For the first time ever, you can experience On Purpose in person. Join me in a city near you for meaningful, insightful conversations with

surprise guests. It could be a celebrity, top wellness expert, or a CEO or business leader.

We'll dive into experiences designed to experience growth, spark learning, and build real connections.

I can't wait to meet you. There are a limited number of VIP experiences for a private Q&A,

intimate meditation, and a meet and greet with photos. Tickets are on sale now.
Head to jsheddy.me forward slash tour and get yours today. Hey everyone, welcome back to On Purpose.
I'm so grateful you're here and I can't wait to dive into today's episode because we're talking about something that affects all of us. It's trending right now.
It's buzzy right now. The thing that we all think about, longevity.
Can we live a longer, healthier, more meaningful, more energetic life? Longevity isn't just about having more years. It's about having more life in your years.
I recently had the incredible opportunity to speak at the Longevity Summit, where I shared insights on how mindset, habits, and purpose play a crucial role in how we age. In this episode, I'm breaking down the science-backed habits, mindset shifts, and daily routines that can help us not only extend our years, but make those truly the best years of our life.
So whether you're in your 20s, 40s, or beyond, this episode is for you. It's never too early, and it's never too late to start making changes that can transform your future.
I can't wait for you to hear this keynote. Let's get into it.
The number one health and wellness podcast. Jay Shetty.
Jay Shetty. The one, the only Jay Shetty.
We all know that purpose is one of the keys to longevity. There's a 15% reduction in all causes of mortality if you have purpose.
Jay is the expert on purpose. He is the host of one of the top health and wellness podcasts in the world, On Purpose.
If you don't listen to this, you have to download it. He's an entrepreneur, a best-selling author, proud to call you my friend.
And I start every morning with the 5-Minute Daily J and the Calm app. And we are so lucky to have them do this live for us today to kick us off.
And he told me everything we're hearing today is brand new content. No one else has really heard this ever before.
So with that, Shay, thank you. Thank you so much.
Good morning, everyone. It's wonderful to see you all.
It's always relieving when your doctor introduces you on stage. It's a new experience for me, but thank you, Darshan, for being a dear friend and an incredible doctor to me personally.
I'd like to start off, as Darshan said, with a grounding meditation to get us all in this space. How many of you have been traveling lately? Maybe you've got travel plans this summer and you're thinking to yourself, I really hope that I can capture these memories with my loved ones and family, that you want to keep them inside of you, you want to take a mental picture.
So what I'm going to guide you through today is a practice that I love to share that we can use to take a mental picture wherever we are in the world. So when you're with your children, when you're with your partner, when you're with your friends and loved ones, how can you take that experience with you everywhere for the rest of your life? So what I'd love to do is I'd love for you to keep your feet firmly grounded in case you have them crossed over.
I'd love for you to put your phones away. It's not that kind of a meditation.
And I'd love for you to release anything from your hands, whether it's pens, notebooks, whatever else it may be, so that you can truly be free. And I'd like you all to take a moment to just look around this space and bring your awareness to five things that you can see.
And I want you to observe them a bit more deeply than you ordinarily would.

The colors, the shades, the shapes.

Bring your awareness to five different objects in this room

Thank you. to five different objects in this room,

looking at them closer than usual.

And when you've found your five,

take in a deep breath and gently and softly close your eyes. What are four things that you can touch? Maybe the clothes that you're wearing, the seat beneath you, the texture of the floor.
Notice the temperature of the four things that you can touch. Is it cold or warm? Is it harsh or soft?

Bringing your awareness to four things you can touch.

Taking a deep breath.

And out.

What are three things that you can hear?

The sound of your breath.

Something in the background.

No sound is a distraction. only a point of focus.
Taking a deep breath and out.

What are two things you can smell?

A fragrance, a scent,

cleanly washed clothes,

breathe in that scent, becoming present through smell, taking a deep breath and out.

What's one thing you can taste? Maybe some breakfast, morning coffee.

Become present through taste.

And now repeat after me.

I am where my feet are.

I am present in this moment. I am here right now.
With the five things you could see, the four things you could touch, the three things you could hear, the two things you could smell, and the one thing you could taste, you're now truly in this moment. And when you're ready, in your own time, at your own pace, you can gently and softly open your eyes and just experience the moment.
Does that feel good? Yeah. Thank you so much for taking part.
Thank you for holding that space for each other. And thank you for holding on to your coughs.
I know it can be hard. Some of you ruined it a little bit, but the rest of you, thank you so much.
So as Darshan said, today we're talking about searching for purpose. And it's a really interesting quest that we're on, searching for purpose.
and as I was putting this together, I was often thinking about what else do we search for often, and I was thinking about how much time we spend searching for what to watch every night. My wife and I did this yesterday evening, and we sat there and watched roughly two minutes and 29 seconds of seven different shows, and then gave up and went to bed.

And so I googled it this morning, saying, how much time do we spend every morning, or every day, or every year searching for what to watch?

And the answer is 45 hours. 45 hours a year are spent deciding what to watch.
And I was thinking, what if we put that 45 hours into searching for purpose, right? All of us, we're busy people. We don't have time.
It's very hard to find that five minutes. We just did a five-minute meditation.
It can be very challenging. But we spend about seven minutes a day wasted on deciding what to watch, 45 hours a year.
And that time just disappears. What if we were able to redirect that? Now, what's really interesting about the word purpose, and Darsha and I were just talking about this, I think so many of us know what it feels like to chase success.
It felt very tangible. It felt very obvious.
There were clear markers. There were clear things to measure.
There was clear data, the promotion, the company, the exit, right? There were clear points. There were clear milestones as to how we get there.
And I think we know that. We understand that.
We were trained since we were young people to be successful. It was part of our DNA.
It was part of the college you went to, the parents you had, the people you were around. And then at one point, everyone started to talk about happiness.
And that was completely the opposite. There were no milestones, there was no data, there were no metrics, and it was kind of confusing.
And then we started to realize that happiness wasn't as tangible and holdable, and it was a feeling, and maybe happiness was a hard thing to look for in difficult times. Maybe you went through the loss of a loved one.
Maybe you went through a really uncomfortable process giving birth to a child. Maybe there was just loads of discomfort and difficulty and happiness just feels like a very far off, distant thing to even understand.
And I think purpose and what I aim to do today is to start helping define the measurable, the milestones, the formula of what it could be, what it might be. It's not perfect yet.
We're not there yet. We don't have the level of clarity because it's new.
We're still figuring it out. The research is new, but we do know that it helps reduce stress.
We do know that it has positive markers when it comes to inflammation. We do know that people who have purpose in life live longer.
So how can we start to understand what purpose is tangibly in a physical way that we can feel it? Not in a woo-woo way, right? Not in a way that's like, oh yeah, one day it'll be nice, wouldn't it? But no, what does it actually mean?

I want to start off by sharing with you a story that I was often told in the monastery, and it's a story that the Buddha would tell. And the Buddha often shared this story about an individual who was on a journey, an individual just like you and me.
this person on their journey came across their first obstacle.

Now their first obstacle. Now, their first obstacle was not millennials.
Their first obstacle was not annoying board members. And their first obstacle was not how to get investment.
This person's first obstacle was a fast-flowing river. And the person had to cross to the other side to continue their journey.
Now, this person didn't know what to do, but he knew that the river was fast. So he decided to build a raft.
So he got bamboo, he laid it out, put down two rows, tied it up with some rope in the corners. He even managed to make himself an oar.
He got on top and he paddled and paddled and paddled as fast as he could with all his energy and all his strength and all his might. And he finally made it to the other side.
And he thought to himself, this raft saved my life. I'm going to take it with me everywhere I go for the rest of time.
Now, I'm sure you can think of things in your life that feel that way. So he strapped the raft to his back and he decided to walk with this raft on his back forever because this raft saved his life.
And just like us, he came to another challenge. Now his second challenge was not an IPO.
His second challenge was a tall, wooded forest with trees dotted at every step. And as he walked in with his raft, the raft just kept getting stuck and he was trying to maneuver

and he was trying to get through

and he was trying to figure it out

and the raft just kept knocking and chipping

and breaking and falling apart.

And the Buddha says that in this moment,

this person had a really interesting dilemma

and an important decision to make.

The question the person had to answer was,

Thank you. a really interesting dilemma and an important decision to make.
The question the person had to answer was, do they hold on to this raft that saved their life and try and make their way through, knowing that not only will it be harder, but the raft may even break? Or do they leave it on the floor and walk through freely? The Buddha told this story naturally as a metaphor for our lives. All of us may have had so many mindsets, so many habits, so many practices that got us to where we are today, and they saved our life.
There's no doubt about it. They were brilliant.
The mindsets you've developed, the habits you've developed, the patterns, they have been fulfilling and amazing. And I think this is a mistake that successful people often make, is that we judge the skills and habits that got us to where we are.
And what that creates is this critical culture inside of our minds and our hearts where we hate what we became in order to get to where we are.

And then we're in an uncomfortable place because now we're trying to grow from a place of hate.

We're now trying to move forward from a place of pain rather than saying, actually, what got me

here is beautiful. This raft is fantastic.
It's brilliant. It's just not necessary anymore.
And there's a beautiful Zen proverb that says that letting go is hard, but holding on is harder. And so as I walk you through this today, I ask you to reflect on what are you holding on to? What is something that you know doesn't work anymore, but because of habit, because of pattern, because of routine,

because of systems, whatever it may be for you, you've held on to it for maybe six months too long,

maybe three months too long, maybe two years too long. There's something in your life that isn't

letting you move forward because you're holding on to it, not because there's something in front

Thank you. too long, maybe two years too long.
There's something in your life that isn't letting you move forward because you're holding on to it, not because there's something in front of you, but because there's something behind you that you're stuck to and attached to. So before we define what purpose is, I want to define what purpose isn't.
Your purpose does not have to be your job. I think over the last few years, we've seen a lot of research and studies that makes it feel like if you can make money from something and you're good at it, that becomes your purpose.
And I found that to be extremely limiting when I started to look at the research behind purpose. I also found it extremely limiting when I started to think about the number of people in the world who may never be able to achieve that.
It was an idea that actually felt outdated and useless because it wouldn't be scalable. It wouldn't be possible for multiple people to experience purpose that way.
Your purpose does not have to be big. I think a lot of the times there's this pressure, especially if you've already been successful, that the next thing you do has to be bigger.
The next thing you do has to be better. The next thing you do has to be bolder.
And I've seen that waste people's money, time, energy, effort, and life away because the mismanaged resources of wanting to do bigger, better, more leads us down a different path. Your purpose does not have to make you money.
Your purpose does not have to make you famous. And your purpose is not a person.
This one's the hardest one to stomach. And this one I only learned when I was writing my last book, Eight Rules of Love.
I sat down with couples who'd been together for 30 or 40 years. And one of the clearest things I heard was at one point, someone in the relationship prioritized the kids as their purpose.
But then 30 years on, when the kids had moved out, gone to college, started their own lives, felt like they didn't know what their purpose was anymore because their identity was wrapped around a person. And that's the hardest one because a person can become our purpose very easily.
It becomes really easy to get fixated and wrapped up in an individual. Maybe you've even done it in a toxic partnership where the person became your project.
And because you see them as a project, you can see it as a purpose, but a person can't be your purpose. So as we dive into this and we start defining what purpose is, this study stood out to me the most.
And I'm going to go through this with you because this research showed who found the most meaning and purpose in life. The first was people who strongly agreed, which I think will be very easy in this room, people who strongly agreed that hard work is the reward.
Hard work in and of itself. Now, I don't think I need to explain that

to anyone in this room. I feel everyone in this room feels very comfortable with that.
So you can

see that the percentage of people who strongly agree their life has meaning, they strongly agreed

hard work was in itself the reward. The second one, again, very easy in this room, strong belief

in personal agency, that your behaviors and your actions actually make a difference, that you know that what you decide to do, what you choose to do, what you invest in has value. Again, I feel a sense of contentment in this room on those two.
Am I right? Give me a show of hands if you agree that the first two feel like wins. Put your hands up if the first two do not feel like wins.
And put your hand up if you don't put your hand up, no matter what I say. Thank you for the honesty.
There's one honest person in this room. Thank you so much.
First two, we're pretty clear on. Third one, again, highly emphasizes personal responsibility, a sense of personal responsibility.
And the reason why I'm sharing these with you is because for those of you who have children or have young people in your lives, I think these three are often what so many Gen Z and millennials are struggling with, the feeling that personal agency exists, the feeling that responsibility matters, the feeling that hard work can be the reward. You may have mastered it, but the people around you may actually be struggling with this.
And our desire to coddle in society may be losing that effect. So those three may be for people in your life, may not for you.
The last three are my three favourites for this room. The last three are the ones I want you to bring your attention to.
High compassion. People who had more meaning and purpose in their life were highly compassionate.
That's a really fascinating one. And I'll break down what I mean by that.
Often what we find is when we, how many of you have done hard things in your life? Raise your hands if

you believe you've done hard things, right? What often happens is when we do hard things, we become more hard-hearted. As we do harder things, as we break boundaries, as we defy limits, What often happens is we create a sense of a feeling that we've done hard things and other people should be able to do them too.
That often that what we've done, somewhere subtly, subconsciously, there's a belief system that other people need to step up and get their act together. And it may not be as harsh or extreme as that, but there's a subtle feeling of how doing hard things makes us slightly hard-hearted.
But actually what we realize is that the people that are happier and have meaning and purpose in life, they've found that doing hard things made them more soft-hearted. Why? Because they realize how hard it is.
They actually recognize how difficult it is to be disciplined, to be focused, to be organized, to be dedicated, to be committed, to be loyal. That is so challenging.
That when you meet someone who's struggling with those things, you actually feel compassionate

because you realize you take a moment to honor how hard it was for you to do it. And this is a really intricate, subtle point.
The challenge we have with being compassionate to others as high performers is because we struggle with compassion with ourselves. How many of you know that showing

yourself a little more grace and kindness would be a useful asset in your life? How many of you

have said something really critical to yourself in the last 24 hours? Wow, right? So fascinating to me.

As high performers, you are really confident and really critical, right? It's like this crazy in-between that you experience. If you can walk into the room and you can know you can own it, and when you walk out of the room, you're criticizing yourself of how you didn't own it, right? That's what it means to be a high-performing individual.
That's how it works. But the challenge becomes that we lose our compassion with ourselves.
And meaning and purpose are far more tied to compassion than criticism. They're far more tied to collaboration than competition.
They're far more tied to care and kindness than they are to competing with someone else or comparing ourselves to someone else. So high compassion.
And I leave this with you for this section of, think about over the next 24 hours, where you can show some compassion to yourself and where you can show some compassion to anyone else. Try for the next 24 hours, when someone shares their story with you and in your head, you're thinking, come on, get over it.
Come on. It's not that bad.
Come on. It's not that bad.
I'll tell you a story, right? And I'm sure you have legitimate stories. Take a moment to see where in your own heart you've blocked some compassion for yourself.
This one is my favorite point out of all of them. The fifth point on this list, people who had a strong sense of meaning and purpose in their life, low envy.
Envy was extremely low, right? Now I can't wait for a darshan at Next Health to invent a envy marker, right? I'm waiting for a Darshan. You've got to find a way to measure this envy marker inside all of us and give yourself a score.
But it's what we need because you know this better than I do. And, you know, I'm sure you know people.
We know people who've achieved everything you could possibly want to achieve and still feel envious. I remember sitting down with a client who was the number one person in his industry at the time.
And I remember sitting down for my first meeting with him. And when I'm doing my purpose analysis, kind of like what you do with your doctor's analysis and your bloods and everything else, I did my analysis and I often ask the question, who are you envious of? So I don't ask, who's your competition? I ask, who are you envious of? And this person who is number one in their field, global icon, world known, one of the most well-known people in the entire planet, named another person who was number one in their industry, in a completely different industry, not in their field, in a completely different field.
And I was sitting there completely confused. I was thinking, why, how? Like you have everything that that person has, like whether it's finances, whether it's physical appeal, whether it's attracting, you know, a partner, whatever it is, you have all those same superpowers that I see in that individual.
And I asked them, why? Why are you envious of that person? And they said, because I feel that that person is loved fully, that that person is fully loved. And I said, well, you haven't checked Reddit or Twitter for a while.
There's no one who is loved fully in the world. That's just not true.
There's no one. And it was just a really fascinating thing for me about how no matter how high you go, high envy is a cancer that will destroy everything.
It will eat up all the goodness in your life, whether it's a beautiful partner, family, job, work, impact, service. That envy piece destroys all of it.
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That's drinkjuni.com and make sure you use the code ONPURPOSE. Now, it is a tough one because the challenge is we automatically look at it as negative.
And that belief that we have, again, we go into that hypercritical mindset. We judge ourselves for being envious.
We get critical, oh gosh, I've got so much envy inside of me, right? And that mindset, that guilt blocks growth. I think this is a really important point, that guilt blocks growth.

Shame blocks growth. Guilt and shame are not great incentivizers long-term in order for us to experience transformation.
So what do we do with our envy? With our envy, we lean into it. what are we genuinely envious of? Let's actually study our envy.
Let's actually take note of it. Is it a signal? Is it a sign? What is it showing us? What are we specifically envious about that person? Right, my client, going back to them, they were envious of this person because they believed that they were fully loved.
As soon as I started showing them how they weren't, all of a sudden their envy started to break because they'd built up an imagination and a visual and a concept of who this person was beyond the truth. It was an illusion version of who this person was and what they'd achieved.
It wasn't real. What's the illusion that you need to burst to burst your envy? We always talk about that, right? We will say that people on Instagram, it's just their highlight reels.
It's not their real life. We hear that again and again and again.
But internalizing that with the person that we admire, what is it about them that we truly envy? What does that show us about what we want to pursue in our life? Because maybe there's something for us to learn and gain and study. And that leads us onto the last one, which is common.
People with high meaning and purpose admire high achievers. 63% of those people who felt meaning and purpose in their life admire high achievers.
What can our envy teach us? What is your envy exposing as a potential goal for you, as a potential focus for you, as a potential pathway for you that you're actually blocking yourself off from because we're judging ourselves for being envious? So notice these are the shifts. And I think anytime you're not feeling meaning or purpose in life, this is a great marker and metric to come back down to.
Am I feeling high or low envy? Is there a place I can improve my compassion and increase my compassion? How can I study the person I might be envious of? Where is that going to come from? Where am I going to learn that from rather than putting it aside? So what I want to share with you is I looked at this, I looked at some more research, and I came up with five checking systems that each and every one of us can do in our lives. You can do this with your family and friends without asking someone, what's your envy level, which may be a bit intimidating.
Language that may be a bit more palatable and easy to do. And I'm going to give you five markers that you can check.
Check in with yourself, check in with others to see if they're going. And I've been working with people to figure out how many of the five that they have in order to feel a 360 degree level of purpose in their life.
Now I want to start off with belonging. So the first is belonging.
All the people that had purpose in their life had a deep sense of belonging. Now, belonging is something we often turn to our families for, but that's because we become more and more isolated from community living.
We know that, right? Many, many years ago, we would have been surrounded by bigger families, supportive families, would have helped each other out with the kids, would have helped each other out with cooking. There was far more.
Now we're getting more and more isolated. I live a 10-hour flight away from my mom and a 20-hour flight away from my dad, right? I'm in a city.
I lived in New York for two years. I've lived in LA for six years.
I don't have any family in either of these places. I'm isolated.
We have friends, of course, but there was a sense of we've moved away. So belonging on a family level isn't enough when we're looking at the term belonging for purpose.
Belonging was, do I feel a part of something bigger? Do you feel like you're a part of something bigger? YPO is a place of belonging, right? This is a place of belonging. That's why you're here.
And I encourage you to make it a deeper place of belonging by encouraging vulnerable conversation. I recently went on a retreat with around 16 people, mix of industries, athletes, artists, musicians, to Bhutan.
It was an amazing trip, really, really special. If you've not been to Bhutan, I highly recommend it.
It's famously known for measuring GNH, gross national happiness, not GDP. We got to meet the king and understand his vision, got to meet the former prime minister to understand how they've maintained a country that really feels like you're going back in time, but has held on to its cultural values.
You're not allowed to ski on the peaks or try and climb them. They'll always make sure that the ratio of trees on land is 70%.
They won't cut below that because they believe that the trees and the mountains are sacred. There's a really special culture there that they've been able to hold on to.
Remember, Bhutan is landlocked between India and China, right in between a tiny little country, you know, surrounded by these two big powerhouses. And they've really held on to this culture culture and I was asked to lead a session there to help people be more vulnerable and I leave this with you to do throughout the rest of the day with people you're getting closer to but to increase belonging I encourage you to answer this one question with maybe the person sitting next to you afterwards or maybe someone at lunch or wherever it may be.

This, I promise you, will drop the walls, escalate vulnerability and closeness and belonging like no other question. The question is, what is the number one thing in the world that you're scared

of being judged for? What is the number one thing in the world that you fear judgment of? The person you've revealed that to now has a secret weapon, so be careful who you share it with, but it's a really powerful thought. There's an amazing author named Charles Horton Cooley who wrote this in the 1900s.

He said, the challenge today is,

I'm not what I think I am.

I'm not what you think I am.

I am what I think you think I am.

Let that blow your mind for a moment.

He said, the challenge today is,

I'm not what I think I am.

I'm not what you think I am. I'm not what you think I am.

I am what I think you think I am.

Let me break that down.

Which means we live in a perception

of a perception of ourselves.

If I think you think I'm smart, I feel smart.

But if I think you think I'm weak, then I feel weak.

We allow what we think others think of us to define how we think about ourselves.

And we live in what he called the looking glass self. We live in this kind of perception matrix for our whole lives, never really bursting the bubble and breaking out of it.

Thank you. self.
We live in this kind of perception matrix for our whole lives, never really bursting the bubble and breaking out of it. So belonging can only exist when it's not based on fitting in.
Belonging can only exist when we're actually our truest selves. Belonging can only exist if we are truly open and vulnerable because otherwise all you have is a culture of people-pleasing.

So belonging for a lot of us has ended up in people-pleasing because we say the right thing, we do the right thing,

we wear the right thing so that we can fit in.

We say the right thing so that we can fit in.

But we don't feel belonging because we don't feel seen,

heard, and understood because we've never shared that part of ourselves. So that's belonging.
Belonging is feeling a part of something bigger and being a part of something bigger. YPO is a great place to actually experience that and to develop that and to invest in that.
And what's really interesting is a few, probably about 10 years ago, I was reading something that was talking about how what was important in society was defined by the height of a building. So back in the day, a few decades back, the tallest building in a town or a city was the church or a temple or a place of worship.
And that was considered a place of belonging and community, right? No matter our views on religion, that was the hope, or at least that was the goal. That then changed to being the government building, right? The Capitol building, that became the tallest building in town.
That became the thing that we look towards for direction. Again, less belonging, a bit more private.
And then now the tallest building is the businesses, the skyscrapers, no belonging whatsoever. So you can see how society, just by what we've built as the tallest building, is switched in our priority of belonging and community through to business and commerce, and exchange and transaction.
And so in our own lives, we have to ask ourselves, where is my belonging? Where is that tallest building in my life? What is the tallest building in my life? Belonging is feeling a part of something bigger, being a part of something bigger, a place where we can really be ourselves. So that's metric number one.
Give yourself a point or zero points. Up to you.
We were getting where we couldn't pay the bill. PG&E asked customers about their biggest concerns so we could address them one by one.
That's terrifying. That's fair.
Joe, Regional Vice President, PG&E. We have to run the business in a way that...
We'll be right back. customers have to say and what PG&E is doing about it at pge.com slash open dash lines.
Catchy tune, right? But don't let the urge to sing along distract you from the truck drifting towards your lane or that lane splitting biker creeping up beside you. Fortunately, every Hyundai offers advanced safety features that can alert you to potential dangers around you.
And Hyundai has over 120 IIHS Top Safety Awards since 2006.

Because Hyundai is always working to ensure

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You are cordially

invited to...

The Hottest Party in Professional Sports.

I'm Tisha Allen, former

golf professional and the host of

Welcome to the Party. Your new

Thank you. The hottest party in professional sports.
I'm Tisha Allen, former golf professional and the host of Welcome to the Party, your newest obsession about the wonderful world that is women's golf. Featuring interviews with top players on tour like LPGA superstar Angel Yin.
I really just sat myself down at the end of 2022 and I was like, look, either we make it or we quit. Expert tips to help improve your swing and the craziest stories to come out of your friendly neighborhood country club.
The drinks were flowing. They were like twerking all over the place, vaping, they're shotgunning, they're pissing in the middle of the course.
Women's golf is a wild ride full of big personalities, remarkable athleticism, fierce competition, and a generation of women hell-bent on shanking that glass ceiling. Welcome to the Party with Tisha Allen is an iHeart Woman sports production in partnership with Deep Blue Sports and Entertainment.
Listen to Welcome to the Party, that's P-A-R-T-E-E, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Second one, learning.
This one we've heard time and time again, but it's a core part of it. Those who reported a strong sense of purpose in recent spent a significant amount of time cultivating their passions in everything from biology to art.
Further, they did not want for their passions to simply appear one day. They weren't hoping to stumble on something.
They were willing to invest and grow and see how something evolved. Now, who in this room is a brilliant reader of graphs and charts? Raise your hands.
Wow, no one could tell everyone's very scared in this room about what's coming next. That's good because I asked this a couple of weeks ago and everyone put their hands up and then they didn't like what I asked next.
So we've realized that everyone in this room is terrible at reading charts and graphs. Great.
Apart from two people, where were those two people actually? Yes, one and... Okay, two.
What are your names, sir? Both of you. Tristan and...
Kapil. Kapil.
Okay, we're relying on Tristan and Kapil because we have no hope for the rest of the room. Okay, great.
So I'm going to show you this. And what I'm going to ask you is, I want to ask you, this is an analysis by MIT of two employees' Twitter networks at the time.
They expanded this out to networks in general. And the question I have for you, Kuppel and Tristan specifically, is who is more innovative, creative, and impactful inside the organization? Employee A or employee B? Okay, so if you think it's employee B, raise your hands, make some noise.
Okay, and if you think it's employee A, make some noise, raise your hands. And now I'm looking at Tristan and Kapo.
Tristan and Kapo, what do you believe? B and Kapo? B as well. Okay, great.
You're all wrong. B is not the right answer.
A, who said A? There were a few people who said A. Well done, all of you said A.
You're really good at reading graphs and charts. You can now use that.
Employee A is more innovative, creative, and impactful. Now, I'll tell you why.
MIT found that everyone in employee B's Twitter networks, they know people who know people who know them back. So their network is closed.
So if you have a new idea and you reach out to the same three friends every time and ask them, what do you think? On a WhatsApp thread, on an email chain, on an SMS thread, whatever it may be, and you get answers back. It's you know people who know people who know you.
That leads to echo chambers. And that's what you see an employee be.
It's full of mini echo chambers where you just have lots and lots of tight spaces of the same people with the same experiences. Everyone's kids go to the same school.
Everyone goes to the same college. Everyone had the same life experience, everyone went on the same summer vacation this year, everyone wears the same sneakers, right? It's that kind of culture.
And it's very easy to get locked into that, especially as you're growing in your careers and the more successful you get, it gets smaller and smaller and smaller and everyone's doing the exact same thing. So that was employee B.
Employee A knows people who don't know each other. The randomness and the openness of employee A is the strength in the learning space.
So the question I have for you is, which one of your friends is getting uninvited to dinner? Right? The one that looks like you, talks like you, sounds like you, they need to get out of your life, right? They're out. They're out.
They could be your best friend. I don't care.
No, I'm joking. But the question is, if you looked, we've always heard the old adage of you're defined by the five people you spend the most time with.
Genuinely do that for a second, right? We've heard that so many times. I've rarely met people who've actually sat down and done an audit of the five people they spend the most time with, and actually looked at how many of them bring random ideas,

how many of them bring opposing thoughts, how many of them question, challenge, and check us

on our ideas, and how many of them are exposing us to completely new horizons. So this friend that

I recently met who took me to Bhutan was one of those friends that I'd never been to this country. I'd always wanted to go.
Didn't really have any other friends who'd want to go to something like that, but thankfully he took me. And it was one of those experiences that I'll never forget because I learned about a new culture, a new history, a new, it's a new monastic tradition to the one that I lived in.
So I got to study a fully different set of monasteries and with monk teachers that I'd never come across before. It was a really beautiful experience and one that expands my ability to learn and see what's fascinating to me.
So I really want you to think about that. Who is it that you can expand in your network? Who is it that's missing? Who is it that you haven't come across yet? How can you make connections that are surprising, maybe even uncomfortable in the beginning, or maybe even awkward in the beginning? Where can they come from? So that's learning.
Individuality, this one's huge, and I feel everyone in this room may have a strong sense of professional individuality.

And the question is, do you get to be your personal individual self as well?

Our sense of self is an essential ingredient to our success as a species.

But what I mean by that professional versus personal is you may have had to become so many things in order to be successful at work,

but are those the things you want to be outside of work?

Are those the same skills and patterns

that you want to emulate in the personal part of your life?

Because personal individuality is as important,

if not more, than that professional individuality.

Professional individuality has solved our self-worth

Thank you. individuality is as important, if not more, than that professional individuality.
Professional individuality has solved our self-worth professionally, but our self-esteem personally can often conflict with that. I remember a client that I worked with who was an athlete, his coach would always tell him, his athletic coach, not me, his athletic coach would always tell him, you fight how you train.
You fight how you train. And so he used to think of all moments as times of training.
So if he was working with, if he was with his family at a social event, but they were playing a pool game, he would compete because you fight how you train. So everything became training.
His professional expertise spilled over into his personal life where everything was competitive because that's what it took to win at all times, even if that meant beating his nine-year-old son in a game of chess or whatever it may have been.

Where is that professional individuality spilling over into personal individuality

and not allowing us to grow that personal sense

of expression and individuality that we possess?

Two more points.

This one's really fascinating, and it's probably one of my favorite ones. Significance.
I was on a walk, on a hike with my wife around two months ago, maybe six weeks ago, and she had her first ever cookbook launching. So she wrote this beautiful cookbook

and it was coming out around six weeks to two months ago now.

And we were on a hike just around that time.

And I said to her, I said,

we've been together for 11 years, married for eight.

And I said to her, I said, you know,

we've celebrated so many things over these last 11 years,

but you've never written a cookbook.

So I don't know how to celebrate this moment for you. Like I want to celebrate.
You've poured

three years of your life into this. You've put so much energy and heart and effort into this.

I've seen you like for hours, just pour every part of your being and soul into this book.

How do I celebrate this? I don't know. And I'd love to know what you'd like.
Is it a gift? Is

it a this? What is it? Right? Like, I don't know. And she said to me, she said, oh, we just

Thank you. celebrate this? I don't know.
And I'd love to know what you'd like. Is it a gift? Is it a this? What is it? Right? Like, I don't know.
And she said to me, she said, oh, we just celebrated it last night. I was like, what? I wasn't invited.
I was like, what do you mean? And I was trying to think, I was like, what did we do last night? That was like a celebration. I was like, what do we do? And she goes, so I said, what do we do? Like, what are you talking about? And she said, well,, last night our friends came over.
I cooked my favorite dishes from my book and they loved it.

They really enjoyed it.

That felt like a celebration to me.

That felt like the perfect way to celebrate,

to cook what I love for the people that I love.

And I was like, wow, thank you.

I was relieved.

I was like, I was going to go and like throw a big party or like invite everyone over. I'm like, this is easy.
Next time I got it. But it was a really interesting point for me for how my wife likes to be made to feel significant.
I've been with her for 11 years, and I thought I had a pretty good sense of it, and I realized I didn't at all. I was actually pretty far from it.
I would never have said that if you asked me to make a plan of how to celebrate her book. So the question I want to leave you with is, with the people you love in your life, do you know how they like to experience significance? And for you, do you know how you like to experience significance? Because most of us are that person that says, oh no, I don't need anything.
Don't worry about my birthday. It's okay.
And then on the day of your birthday, you're like, wait, why is no one doing anything? Like, you know, what's going on? A lot of us have created this modesty around celebration. As we get older, we're scared to ask for what we want.
We're scared to be open about how we want to be made to feel significant for ourselves, by others, and to others. But a big part of purpose and meaning is knowing how to make people we love significant.
That creates meaning in our lives when we know what's meaningful to them. And how do we make ourselves feel significant? What is it that we truly need to feel a sense of significance in our lives? Don't be shy to at least explore that on your own.
At least explore that internally. I know so many people who after the biggest win of their life didn't know how to celebrate it, right? The day after the biggest win of their life didn't have any clue as to what to do and they just moved on to the next and moved on to the next and moved on to the next.
And we all do that. I've done that too.

And I started to realize at one point that nothing would ever feel like I wanted it to because I didn't know how to experience my own significance and the significance of the people I love. And the final one is service.
There's a beautiful study by Amy Verzniewski and the team at the Yale School of Management. I don't know if I'm allowed to say Yale in this building, but I just did.
Her team in 2019 went out to research what they believed was the most difficult job in the world. Have a guess.
Any guesses? most difficult job in the world? Have a guess.

Any guesses?

Most difficult job in the world, 2019.

Parent.

They were looking for a paid full-time job,

so not parent, although I agree.

Teacher?

Hospice, closer.

Uber driver, Uber driver?

Nurse?

Closer.

President?

President?

No.

Social worker.

Social worker.

All very close.

All in the right.

So healthcare is the right direction.

So the answer is hospital cleaners.

They believe that the most difficult job in the world was to be a hospital cleaner.

Remember, this was 2019, pre-pandemic. So you can only imagine how difficult it was during the pandemic.
So they went and interviewed hospital cleaners. And they sat down with them and asked them, what do you do? And the hospital cleaner said, we clean beds, we clean toilets, we clean plates, we clean up after people use these things, and we clean up after people pass away.
It's an intense job. But they describe themselves as low-skilled labor in their own words.
They then went and interviewed more cleaners, but these cleaners use different words. These cleaners describe themselves as healers, as carers, as servers.
These cleaners, or healers should I say, got paid the exact same amount as the cleaners. They worked the same hours in the same hospitals and had the same shifts.
But somehow they saw themselves as healers when the others saw themselves as cleaners. So they asked the healers, why? Why do you call yourself healers?

And they said, because we believe that keeping the hospital clean is integral to the healing journey of the patient. We believe that if the toilets are clean and the beds are clean, people feel a sense of dignity in difficult times in their life.
We believe that if the hospital rooms are clean, that people's families will spend more time with them in their difficult times. We believe that if the spaces are clean, then overall it boosts the person's morale and confidence in their healing.
I think we'd all agree. They worked the same jobs,

they had the same money, they had the same vacations, everything was the same. Amy Vrasniewski and her team coined a word called job crafting, where they realized that it wasn't what we did,

it's how we felt about what we did. And this is the biggest key to meaning and purpose.
How do we feel our work is improving and benefiting the lives of others? And how closely are we connected to that story in a genuine way? When you look up from your phones and look beyond your spreadsheets and look beyond our laptops and look beyond our flight schedules and everything else, when we really reflect on how is our life having a positive impact on the lives of others, how is it creating opportunities for others? Let me really internalize that. Let it not be a statement on the website or a check I write at the end of the year.
How is that the core compass of how I navigate my entire world? And so I leave you with this. I call it the bliss formula for purpose.
Joseph Campbell famously said, follow your bliss. I've always been struggling to figure out exactly what that meant, that he pointed us in the right direction.
And I feel a bit closer now. Belonging, learning, individuality, significance and service.
Thank you so much. If this year you're trying to live longer, live happier, live healthier, go and check out my conversation with the world's biggest longevity doctor, Peter Attia, on how to slow down aging and why your emotional health is directly impacting your physical health.
Acknowledge that there is surprisingly little known about the relationship between nutrition and health. And people are going to be shocked to hear that because I think most people think the exact opposite.
We were getting where we couldn't pay the bill. PG&E asked customers about their biggest concerns so we could address them one by one.
That's terrifying. That's fair.
Joe, Regional Vice President, PG&E. We have to run the business in a way that keeps people safe, but it starts driving costs down.
I would love to see that. We're on our way.
I hope so. PG&E electricity rates are now lower than they were last year.
Hear what other customers have to say and what PG&E is doing about it at pge.com slash open dash lines. I'm Kristen Davis, host of the podcast, Are You a Charlotte? The incredible Cynthia Nixon joins me this week for a conversation filled with memories and stories I didn't even know.
Cynthia could have been Carrie. When I first read the script, they asked me to read for Carrie, as I think they asked you to read for Carrie.
Did you? I did. And they were like, yeah, not so much.
You can't miss this. Listen to Are You a Charlotte on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey, you guys.

I'm Katherine Legg.

I'm a racing driver who's literally driven everything with four wheels across the planet.

And I've got a new podcast.

It's called Throttle Therapy.

This season, I'm gearing up to make history, competing in some of the world's most notorious racing events.

Tune into my new podcast, Throttle Therapy, with Catherine Legg,

an iHeart Women's Sports production in partnership with Deep Blue Sports and Entertainment.

You can find us on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.