Bunny Young (YouTube) argues that finding and living your purpose is crucial for mental, physical, relational, and financial well-being, illustrated by her personal story of a car accident that produced a traumatic brain injury (TBI). She presents a simple framework: purpose = intersection of what you want, what makes you happy, and what you are good at (and that serves the world). Not living your purpose can cost you health, money, and relationships; stress/anxiety are signals directing you to realign. She offers a mindset hack: reframe setbacks with "What if this is happening for me instead of to me?" and describes post-accident neurological recovery as a gift that informed her work.
Questions this video answers
Traumatic brain injury.
Chapters
Hey, Starfish. So how many times have you been told that it's really important to find your purpose and how to find your purpose and heard people talk about a purpose? Well, in this video, I'm going to discuss a little bit about how to find your purpose, but more importantly, why it is so important that you find your purpose and how it could actually save your life. All right, story time first, because I want to put this into context as opposed to just giving you all the information. I want to have a conversation about this. So how do I know that finding your purpose can save your life? Life? Well, because I almost died. And there has been times in my life where I've been unhappy and I have been stressed and I've had anxiety, but it never culminated into a situation where it was like, I have to make a change as much as it did when I got into a car accident. And that's where I really realized that the possibility of having my income depend on my ability to work all day long meant that I was not able to really enjoy my things family. I was not able to really do and have the freedom that I wanted for my life. And so being able to kind of take a step back and say, what do I want out of my life? I was on this cycle of working with the thought that I would eventually work enough that I wouldn't have to work. But meanwhile, the best parts of my life were passing me by. My kids were getting older, my marriage was not in the best shape, and I was letting my own health slip as a result of not prioritizing myself, but thinking that I would just give myself whatever was left over after everything else. Here's the real fact. There's not going to be anything else left over if you give everything, every part of you, every piece of your energy away. And so that's what I was dealing with. So after this car accident, what I realized was, is that by not living in my purpose, I was actually costing myself more money. If you're like, what? I'm going to break it down for you. So when I was living closer to my purpose and in line with my core values, there was actually more value because I was bringing more of my whole self to work. So if I'm at a job where I can only fulfill 20% of my purpose, then I'm only going to be able to earn 20% revenue on that. That's basically the most simple way I can put this. When I was able to wake up in the morning and bring my whole self to work, I was Healthier mentally, spiritually, emotionally, physically. So there was so much benefit in return on investment for my life and financially and all of the areas that I just listed in my own health. And that meant less doctors visits, which meant more time to enjoy my life, which was amazing. And the reality is, is that I have a really amazing life. It's always been there. I just prioritize other things over it. So the first thing is to get really clear on what it is that you want for your life. And a purpose sounds like this big scary thing or this like overwhelming quest to find your purpose. And in reality, your purpose is just what you want to do, what makes you happy, and what brings the most value to the world that, that you're good at, right? So if you just look at those three things so like what you want to do, what makes you happy and what you're good at, that solves a problem in this world, or that makes something that already exists in this world better, then that's really all a purpose is the intersection between those three things. And it's really amazing when you can stop and think about how simple it is. While maybe it's not easy. When was the last time you sat down and asked yourself, what do I want to be when I grow up? And really looked at your life and said, what if I liked every aspect of my life? What would that look like? And it's okay that it doesn't happen tomorrow, but just asking yourself that question and getting that conversation started is so, so important and it's going to carry you so far. Like I said, not living in your purpose will cost you money. So when you're living in that comfort zone of just getting a paycheck but not feeling fulfilled, you are costing yourself money in your health and in your mental health and all your physical health, your spiritual health, you're probably having difficulty sleeping and more issues with your family and you could just be having more issues with your own self. Care because you're being comfortable is not really an indication that something is good for you, right? There's a lot of comfort foods and the comfort foods are known that they're not really good for you, unfortunately. So it means that you can have some once in a while, but not all the time. And so when you're living in that comfort zone and you are doing this all the time and you're not really stretching yourself to your fullest capacity and reaching that purpose, you're not going to feel fulfilled. And that has a domino effect on all aspects of your life. And it's hard to get promoted and earn more money when you're doing something that is not fulfilling you because you're not able to get as passionate about it. And you're also trying to compensate for the skills that you don't necessarily have or don't necessarily want to bring to the table because they're not something that you're passionate about. So you're spending time getting further and further away from your purpose. And that can be really scary. And if you don't stop the train and start asking yourself these questions of what do you want your life to look like? That's when it can be the most dangerous of all, is because you're just waking up like Groundhog Day and doing the same thing over and over again. And then eventually you're going to hit some kind of wall and realize that you've wasted how many years, days, months, weeks of your life on something that wasn't actually your purpose. And if you've ever had the chance, if you can think about a day where you feel like you were completely fulfilled by what you did, what were you doing, and imagine having all your life of those days, it's not to say every day is going to be completely magical, but at least you will have the clarity to know what fulfillment looks like. And when you start to feel unfulfilled, you know how to fix it. And that's such a gift to give to you and to the world. So when you wake up and you're feeling not fulfilled, or you wake up and you feel stressed, you feel anxiety, you feel unhappy, that is your mind, your body, your spirit, your emotions, desperately trying to align your actions, your thoughts, your behaviors and your beliefs with your purpose. That's why you're getting those sensations. And really anxiety is just energy that doesn't know where to go or scared energy. Once you give that energy a really clear direction, then that energy can carry you closer to your goals. But that's when you take a step back and you just look at stress. All stress is energy. And when you can say, okay, this is just stress because I'm not living in my purpose, then you can see clearly what your purpose is and take steps to move closer to that and use that energy that your body's giving you, which is again such a gift. So mind blown stress and anxiety is actually a gift from your body, from your life, in order to make the corrections to live more in your purpose. How cool is that? So here's my last little hack to give you is when bad stuff happens in my life. Because even if I'm living a life full of purpose, it doesn't mean that bad stuff is not going to happen. I'm sorry to deliver that disappointing news. However, it does mean that. That you can give yourself this little mantra that I use when bad stuff does happen. I'm going to put it up here for you. So what if this is happening for me instead of to me? This is a really good question to stop. And when you play the victim card and you're like, oh, my gosh, everything in my life is going to he double hockey sticks in a hand basket. Everything in my life. This was such a draining week. I'm so tired after this week. This is such a bad week. Stop. Take a moment and remember. What if this is happening for me instead of to me? And that should be able to flip your mindset and be able to give yourself the gifts of pulling out why certain things are happening in your life. It's like if you're watching a movie and you can see that all of the bad things that are happening to the main character are pushing that main character closer to the love of their life or closer to their dream job. We can see it as the audience, but I guarantee that that character in the film is not feeling that way. And so take a seat in the audience for a second of your week and look at all of the bad things that happen and assume that they're happening for you. And how does that change the movie for you? How does that change how your week actually was? So I started this with story time, and I'm going to end it with the ending. As it is right now to my car accident is I did end up getting a TBI from the car accident, and that's a traumatic brain injury. For those of you who don't know what TBI stands for, I had to learn it. And one of the gifts that have come from that, because it happened for me, not to me, was the ability to slow down my life. Also this intense study with a bunch of amazing professionals on how the brain works and how to improve my brain's functioning now that I understand better how the brain works, because this wasn't something they taught us in school. I can use the same tools for my neurological recovery and apply them to be able to take the lessons and behaviors and thoughts that I had prior to the accident and actually make them work for me in the work with my brain instead of working against my brain's natural tendencies. So it's actually been such an incredible, incredible exploration and adventure of getting to know my brain a little bit more. And as silly as that sounds, when I'm given this gift of being able to ask professionals and be able to work with professionals to improve my brain function, that means that I can use those same tools with clients or put them out in the world or use them to make what I'm doing even more efficient and more fulfilling for me and get me closer to that purpose and closer to making those dreams come true and really focusing on making the world a better place. So I know that was a lot and to talk about, you know, how you find your purpose, I told you, just write down those those three things and find the intersection of those three things. And if you know or have some ideas, drop them in the comments below because I'd love to read them. I'd love for you to share them with me. So definitely appreciate you being able to share that love. And the biggest thing that I'm appreciative for is you making the world a better place. So thank you for being here in this video. There's going to be a bunch of videos on the side of the screen. If you just want to keep going with making your world a better place, making a difference and your knowledge and us spending time together, I'd encourage you to click the subscribe button or watch one of these videos. So thanks for making the world a better place. Thanks for making a difference and I'll see you in the next video. Bye.
