Summary
Joe explains why searching for purpose through mental models never works — you can’t know what something feels like until you actually do it. He shares his own story of spending seven years chasing a career in art/film directing, only to discover it felt exactly like the investment banking he’d fled. Both had one person making decisions, everyone miserable, and nobody present.
The breakthrough came when he stopped trying to find purpose abstractly and instead said yes to whatever was presented, then narrowed down to what excited him most. This experimental approach led him through venture capital for climate and nonprofit work for children, eventually into coaching. Purpose isn’t something you find like a math answer — it’s something you follow in each moment, and it evolves as you evolve.
Joe offers a practical experiment: set an alarm 2-3 times a day for a week and ask “What would living my purpose look like right now?” Purpose shows up like a path in the woods without a map — you can only see the next few steps, not the destination.
Key Concepts
- The mind cannot find your purpose
- Say yes to everything then filter for joy
- Purpose is lived in the present moment not found in the future
- Searching for purpose anxiously pushes it away
- Purpose evolves as you evolve
Key Quotes
“You actually have to go and investigate the thing to understand what the outcome is going to be.”
“I have been running for seven years towards an idea of what I want only to find out that I was running towards the thing I was running away from.”
“What if I just did whatever was presented to me and then say yes to the things I enjoyed and no to the things that I don’t enjoy and not have a preconception of what that would be.”
“Purpose stopped being this abstract. I’m going to find the answer like it’s a math problem. And it started to be something that was experimental.”
“The idea that I had in my head for what I wanted is never as good as what I get.”
Transcript
Most likely you have been on a search for your purpose and it’s been a spin after another spin inside of a cycle of spin. You think that if you look harder or if you look at the right place or if you have the right thought, you’re going to get there and it’s going to just pop up magically and say, “Oh yes, and here you go.” But it never works like that. Which is why so many people like yourself have been stuck in it for so long. And the reason that you can’t find it is because there’s a way in which we look for our purpose that guarantees it doesn’t work. We’re going to give you a little bit of a perspective on purpose. We’re going to talk about some practical ways to approach the search so that it changes all together in a way that’s going to get you exactly where you want to go, even if you don’t know where that’s going to be until after you get there. So the good news is that everybody that I know who’s led a meaningful life has gone through this search for purpose at some point. So you’re not alone in it. It’s not novel. Most of the people that I know have gone through it somewhere in their 20s and 30s. But there are some people I know who were really driven who really understood their purpose at an early age. But then 40s and 50s that chapter of their life was done and now they’re looking for a new chapter of their life. And some even in their 60s when they’re in retirement, they’re like, “Oh, I I knew what I was doing, but now I’m retired. What’s my purpose now? what’s the thing that’s going to drive me to the next level of life or to the next portion of life? And so it happens to all of us. And as soon as you really see what the search of purpose is all about, then the search takes care of itself. It makes it so it’s inevitable for you to get to the place that you want to go. The only thing you have to let go of is that you can actually know where it is that you want to go before you get there. So my 15-year-old daughter is really interested to get into a good college. And so she said to me the other day, “I know I have to do something special to get into a great college, and I’ve been searching my whole life to find out what that special thing is, and I haven’t found it yet.” And so I asked her, I said, “Hey, how are you searching?” She she’s like, “Well, I think about something and then I wonder, “Oh, is that the thing?” And then I realize it might be for a while, but then I’m not inspired by it. And so then that goes away. And then I’m sitting there thinking, looking around, trying to find stuff, and then maybe that’s it. And I think about it, and then it doesn’t work. And I told her, I said, you know, that’s like looking at 10, 5-year-old boys and say, which one is going to be the world champion swimmer? You can’t know until they get in the pool, until you see how they swim, until they have a drive, until you see how if they like water, if they’re scared water, if they have any passion about swimming. Right? you actually have to go and investigate the thing to understand what the outcome is going to be. And so what you’re doing when you’re searching for your purpose is you’re taking it outside of the moment. You’re not actually experimenting with what’s going on in your world. Instead, you’re just running mental model after mental model. And the problem with each one of those mental models is you have no idea what it feels like to do the thing. You only have a thought of what it would be like to do the thing. You don’t actually know what it feels like to do the thing. I got a job in investment banking and I was like, “Wow, I hate it here. I hate I hate this.” There’s one guy who’s in charge. Everybody else is working crazy hours. They don’t want to do what they’re doing. They want to do the next thing. Everybody’s unhappy. They’re a little bit snappy because they’re not getting enough sleep. And nobody feels deeply empowered and everybody’s like chasing after the next thing. It just is miserable. I’m not interested and what I really want to do is be an artist. So I started chasing being an artist and it was seven years of me going ah I got to be an artist and finally I cajol and figured out and managed enough where I was an observing director on a TV show. So that’s a thing where I was observing the director and how the director was handling it and I had done my own short film so hopefully I would then be able to direct an episode or two and then get a job directing television. And I was like this is amazing. So, I do it and I’m there on set and guess what I found out? I found out that everybody’s working hard. Everybody’s miserable. Nobody wants to be in their place. They want to be in the next place. There’s one guy who makes all the decisions. Everybody’s just unhappy. And I looked around. I said, “Holy crap, this is just like investment banking.” And so, I have been running for seven years towards an idea of what I want only to find out that I was running towards the thing I was running away from. So in my story, what I did is I said, “Wow, goodness. If I if I thought I wanted something that would make me happy, only to find out it was not the thing that was going to make me happy. If it was actually the thing I was running away from, then what if I just did whatever was presented to me and then say yes to the things I enjoyed and no to the things that I don’t enjoy and not have a preconception of what that would be.” And so that’s what I did. Any opportunity that was put in front of me, I said yes. And I did metal working, I did woodworking, I did this large-scale video art installation for this rich guy. I did all sorts of crazy things. And and then I got so busy that I could only say yes to the things that were really exciting to me. And that’s what I did. I just kept on saying yes to the things that were exciting and just narrowed down more and more and more. I said yes to this video art installation that took all of the art experience and video experience I had. And then I was talking to this rich guy and I was telling him about what I thought was going to happen with oil and with gold and what what I thought was going to happen in the stock market because of my old experience. And he came to me, he said, “Wow, you know, you really understand money and I would love you to come and work with me.” I said, “No, that doesn’t that’s not exciting to me. So, I can’t say yes to that.” And then he said, “Well, why don’t you think about exactly what would make you excited and then come back to me?” Which is like a huge gift and I’m forever grateful for this man. And so I thought about it and it took me three, four months and I said, “Oh, what would excite me is to make a huge change in climate and in consciousness, particularly with kids.” And I thought would be a huge gift for society if we had a whole bunch of kids that weren’t traumatized. So that’s what I wanted to do. And he said, “Yeah, let’s do that.” And so I did venture capital for climate, so businesses that I thought could change the world. And I thought venture capital was one of the biggest change agents on the planet, especially technologically. And then we did nonprofit for the kids. I ran this foundation and that was the job that I got because I was following exactly what I wanted to do. And so for 15 years after that, I just kept on doing those things, kept on saying yes until one day I was like, “Oh, this isn’t feeling fulfilling anymore. This isn’t actually what I want to be doing.” And at that exact same time, enough people were asking me to coach them that I realized, oh, I want to say yes to this. And that became the next purpose in my life. Because as you evolve, your purpose changes. At an essential level, I always wanted to contribute to society. And I believe most of us do. At a different level, there was just an evolution that was happening. And I was following that purpose. And that changed everything about looking for a purpose because purpose stopped being this abstract. I’m going to find the answer like it’s a math problem. And it started to be something that was experimental. It was something that I could go in and figure out and play with and see what I liked and then go back look around saying, “Oh, now I I like this. This is the exciting thing.” So the other thing that stops you from finding your purpose is that you’re living in the future. So in this moment you can run this little experiment. What is my purpose asking me to do right now? So you can be in a meeting and you can ask what is my purpose asking me to do right now? You can be having dinner and you can ask what is my purpose asking me to do right now? And you’ll notice that there’s an answer that comes through you. Oh, my purpose is to say this. My purpose is to do this. My purpose is to show somebody this thing or to listen really deeply. My purpose is here in this moment. And if you start learning how to follow your purpose in the moment, then it becomes really clear what to do next. And that’s the way the purpose shows up. It’s like a path. If you’re walking on a path in the woods and you don’t have a map, which is the way purpose works, you don’t, it’s not like really clear. This is what you’re going to do and this is how it’s all going to go and you know here’s your six-step manual of having a purpose-driven life. It doesn’t work like that. You’re following your path and you know where to go when you take 10 more steps and then you know where to go where you take 10 more steps. And so that’s how it works. And so to be really in touch with that purpose in the moment is what gets you really good at finding your purpose because if you’re following it really closely, you get to where it wants to bring you right away instead of six years down the road, seven years down the road where you’re in some mental model thinking, “Oh, who am I then? And what will I then be that I don’t understand that wants this other thing that I don’t know what it is?” It just doesn’t work that way. It works with like a deep sense of presence. The final way in which a lot of people, maybe even you, push their purpose away is by making it a really big deal. By really just going, “Oh my gosh, I have to find this thing.” And so, think about it this way. If you meet a really cute person in the bar and you’re attracted to them and you’re like, “I really need you. I really need you. I really need you.” That person kind of backs away, right? they’re like, “Oh, I don’t want that.” And purpose does the same thing. If you’re really, really chasing it, if you’re anxious to get it, there’s a way in which you’re actually pushing it away, just like you’d be pushing away that person at the bar. And so, it’s really important to recognize that it’s your birthright. It’s not something that you have to chase. It’s something that’s already there. It’s in this moment. And you can find it by running experiments. And it’s not even finding it because it’s here in every moment. What you’re actually doing is following it. And as you follow it instead of find it, it leads you to a place where you all of a sudden go, “Holy I’m living my purpose.” And that’s how it worked for me. Every time in my life that I have this moment of, “Oh, here I am.” I look back and I realize everything I did, the video that I did is now helping me in this YouTube video. The venture capital that I did is helping me understand how to build this business. Everything that I did in my past was leading to this moment. And I know that this is not the end. And I’ll have this moment of going, “Oh, wow. Here I am. I’m living my purpose. I know that I feel more fulfilled than I ever have in the rest of my life in this moment.” But I know that if I keep on following it in another 10 years, I’m going to have another moment like that. Maybe even a whole life like that of holy crap. It just keeps on getting better. But it doesn’t get better like, “Oh, I got what I wanted better.” It gets better like, “Holy I had no idea this was possible better.” The idea that I had in my head for what I wanted is never as good as what I get. So, the best way to make this really practical in your life is to just run that experiment I’ve talked about multiple times a day. So set an alarm two or three times a day for a week. Ask yourself in this moment, what would living my purpose look like? What would I need to say or do or listen to or understand to be living my purpose as fully as possible in this moment? And if you do that three times a day for a week, you’ll start noticing your purpose appears. It like comes out of the background and it starts showing up and you realize, oh, it’s here with me always and it’s leading me if I just allow myself to follow it.