Summary
Joe shares his personal story of searching for purpose — leaving a stressful career in international stock lending to pursue filmmaking, only to discover the film industry felt exactly the same. He was running away from one thing and toward the same thing, because the “what” was never the issue. The search itself was the problem.
He offers an experiment: instead of asking “What is my purpose?”, ask “How do I live this moment in my purpose?” Purpose isn’t found in what you do but in how you do it. Whether picking up trash or running a country, the how is the expression of purpose.
Joe also describes how he stumbled into coaching not by planning it but by saying yes to whatever intrigued him, then filtering for what felt most fulfilling. Purpose revealed itself through presence and following enjoyment — not through mental searching.
Key Concepts
- Purpose is in the how, not the what
- Say yes to what intrigues you, then filter for joy
- You can’t stop being present
Key Quotes
“I am running away from the same thing that I was running to.”
“How I do it is more of an expression of my purpose than what I’m doing.”
“I can’t know what my purpose is. I can only find it.”
“Stop being present.” — It totally messed with my head because I couldn’t do it.
“I just kept on saying yes to the stuff that felt the best.”
Transcript
How do you find your purpose is an inherently stressful thought, especially if you’re having it a lot. And in this video, I’m going to tell you my story of trying to find my purpose and how I was really stuck in my head and how it wasn’t working and how I learned just being present with myself revealed the answer I was always looking for. To constantly be in the question of like, how do I find my purpose? That’s an incredibly stressful question. Typically, it’s stressful because we’re looking for it from the wrong place. our mind is searching for, but that’s not how you find your purpose. It’s also incredibly stressful to not be living in your purpose. So, it’s not only stressful because you’re searching for it, but it’s also stressful because you’re not doing it, you know, as it’s happening. So, let me let me tell you a story. So, I was doing international stock lending. It was 5:00 in the morning till like, jeez, like 3:00 or 4 in the afternoon. It was it was brutal. It yelling to people over the phones. They put us in a cage. They called it the cage which was like the soundproof room. And I had this vision. I wanted to I wanted to do art. And but I had to do this for the money blah blah blah blah. And at some point I like broke out in hives from the stress. And I was like, “Yeah, I’m not doing this anymore like this.” So I figured out how to live on less money and I had saved a lot. I’d been really successful in stock lending and so I saved enough money and I went on this seven eight year path to try to make a living as an artist. You know I’m going to do this thing and worked my butt off did everything I could and I ended up shooting a television show. So, I was trying to get into making films and I found myself as an observing director on a television show and I showed up and within a week I just saw, oh, this is the exact same thing as international stock lending. There’s one person who got to make all the calls. Everybody there was working long hours. Everybody there was miserable. Everybody there wanted to be in a different position than they were in. The star of the television show said, “Every time I come to the show, it feels like a little part of my soul is being taken from me.” It dawned on me, I am running away from the same thing that I was running to. And I had no idea that that’s what was happening. And it was in the search for purpose that all this was occurring. Okay, let’s get into an experiment. In this experiment, we’re just going to do some visualization. So, I want you to get yourself comfortable and close your eyes. And I want you to imagine imagine something that you do every day. Maybe it’s having a meeting or it’s programming or it’s talking to your wife. and ask yourself, how do I live this moment in my purpose? And visualize yourself being in your purpose while you’re working at your desk or while you’re in the meeting or while you’re talking to your husband. See what it’s like to be in your purpose in that moment. And now imagine a big deal. One of those big deal moments where you’re making a big pitch or you’re asking for a raise or you’re trying to invent something new. And I want you to be in your purpose while you’re doing it. What is it like to be in your purpose during those big moments? How do you find your purpose in this moment right now? Not in the what, but in the how. How do you right now even do this experiment with that sense of purpose? That’s the experiment. And now your job is to take this experiment into your daily life. Think about how you do whatever you’re doing today, tomorrow, the next day from that sense of purpose and bring that into your consciousness five, six times a day. Use a reminder system if you need to and just constantly be asking yourself in this moment, how do I live in my purpose? I made present being present being in the now. I think I had read like Eckhart Tolle’s Power of Now some other things everybody was pointing to like oh be present be in the now be present be in the now and I made it into a chore. I made it into something to do. It was some step that I had to take to get somewhere. And I thought, “Oh, well, so if that’s a search for purpose in my mind, how else can I search for purpose?” And I thought, “Oh, I’m gonna search for purpose from my heart. How do I do that?” And then I was talking to somebody about it and they said this, which is the coolest thing, right? They said, “Okay, then stop being present.” It totally messed with my head. I’m trying not to swear what I want to say. It totally messed with my head because I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t stop being present. All this thing that I was trying to do to be present and then I couldn’t stop it. And it just flipped my whole brain. It stopped being about, oh, I have to be present and just started being about noticing that I’m present. How do I do whatever I’m doing with my sense of purpose? because I can identify it in the moment really easily if I’m living to my purpose or not. No matter what I’m doing, whether I’m picking up trash for a living or whether I’m the president of the United States, how I do it is more of an expression of my purpose than what I’m doing. The other huge piece was I don’t know. I can’t know what my purpose is. I can only find it. I can have an idea of it, but until I dunk and land in that thing, I’m not going to recognize it. So, what I started doing was just saying yes to anything that intrigued me. I just was like, “Yep, I’m going to do that. Yes, I’m going to do that. Yes, I’m going to do that.” And all of a sudden, my time was too full. I couldn’t do everything that I was being asked to do. And so then I just did the most enjoyable stuff. And it went from whatever I was doing to making large-scale video art installations to working for a big family office to being a venture capitalist to running a philanthropy doing those two things at the same time. And I just kept on saying yes to the stuff that felt the best. And then when I was a venture capitalist, what felt the best was coaching people into the person they wanted to be that they were actually. It’s not even what they wanted to be, but to help people find the success that they wanted and be the person that they were meant to be. And that was, wow, that feels great. I get to do that every day now. But it wasn’t because I thought, I want to be a coach. I didn’t. As a matter of fact, it took a lot to get me to teach the first course. There was multiple people who were pushing me into it because I was like, but I said, oh yeah, yes, this is being asked of me and yes, I see some things that are fulfilling. Yes, I’ll try that. I’ll try it once. Oh, wow. I really dig this. That’s how you find your purpose. But to search for it in your head, it’s just an impossibility. Just causes stress. And to not live it. The amazing thing for me was to realize how much less stress I have now because I’m living my purpose than when I was doing it before. Because before there was this perpetual looking for satisfaction. And that’s incredibly stressful.