Defining Purpose

All right, man. Welcome back to the Mantalk Show. I'm Connor Beaton, and today we're going to be talking about purpose. I'm going to take a few different approaches to purpose than I think I've ever seen on the Internet. Maybe that's a big, bold statement. It's not like I've watched every video on the Internet about purpose. And there's also like 400,000 books on purpose on Amazon. Some ridiculous number. It might be 250,000, but either way, it's a lot. There's a lot of content out there about purpose. And the reason for that is that purpose is kind of a nebulous thing. It's not something that's so clear and concise, right? If you look up the definition of purpose, it's the reason for which something is done or the reason for which something exists. So when you think about your purpose as a man, as a human being, that is an astronomically huge concept and question to try and grapple, right? Why do I exist as a man? Why do I exist as a human being? And for most of us, we're not going to really have an answer to this question, and we're not really going to have any kind of assimilation of what that might mean. And so I wanted to take this in a few different veins. I wanted to talk about a popular culture reference in Dune and the reference to purpose there. I want to talk about my definition, how I define purpose. And I want to talk about how you can actually go about beginning to look for and at your own purpose. And I think maybe look for is the wrong way of putting it, right? Because you're not necessarily looking for your purpose. Purpose is an emergence. It's a property or a sort of alchemical trait or characteristic of existence that emerges. It's not something that you go and seek of, right? It's not something that you not like gold, where you sort of walk out into the wilderness and you start to pan for gold. It's not like that. Purpose is something for me, that I've. That I've noticed that I've. As I've studied purpose, as I've interviewed people about purpose, as I've read about purpose, as I've reflected on my own life, which has a very deep sense of purpose within it, and I'm very grateful for that. As I've looked at that, I've started to ask myself, what are some of the qualities and traits of purpose? And one of the things that I want to talk about immediately is that purpose is an Emergence purpose is something that begins to reveal itself out of your actions, out of who you are, out of the circumstances of your life. It starts to emerge out of the sort of primordial soup of your environment. You know, the circumstances of your life, the environment that you've been in, where you were born, the family that you were born into, what the architecture of your family system looked like, what the architecture and the framework of the choices and the decisions that you've made in your life have been. Purpose is a very. There's many different elements that contribute to the emergence of one's purpose. And I think that in our modern culture, because we tend to want things to be sort of spoon fed to us, sort of really in a dumb way explained to us, we've distilled purpose down to this sort of unidimensional or one dimensional definition and we want purpose to be this thing that we do. If I can just find this thing that I can do in the world, then I'll be happy, right? And so a lot of people have placed their happiness, their fulfillment, their sense of contentment, their sense of belonging in the world on their purpose. And they feel and they say things like, when I find my purpose, then I'll be happy, then I'll have all the money that I want, then I'll be able to travel, then I'll yada, yada, yada. So there's this immense amount of pressure that the average person puts onto finding purpose, which is kind of like wanting to find enlightenment, right? It's like the more you go, if you read any Buddhist texts, any Hindu text, any, any text that talks about the concept of enlightenment, what you're going to notice is that in those texts, what they say is the harder you look for enlightenment, the harder it is to find, the more that it will be hidden. And it's in your pursuit of enlightenment, this sort of need or necessity to acquire enlightenment that leads to all kinds of trouble that leads to it hiding from you. And purpose, I found, is the same thing. It's like the more obsessed you are with it, the more you need it, the more that you've placed this sort of supreme value on purpose. And the more that you say things like, or feel or think things like, I'll be happy when I'm living my purpose and my life will be so much better when I'm living my purpose, or, you know, things will be so much better when I'm living my purpose. The more, the more that you fall into that trap, the harder it is to feel like you're living a sense of purpose because it becomes elusive, because it's not something that you can necessarily define into a couple words, you know, it's something that's so much grander than that, so much bigger than that. So I'm going to give you my definition of purpose. I'm going to talk about a popular reference of purpose and I'm going to talk about how we can begin to not necessarily go in search of purpose, but allow purpose to reveal itself to us, to you, right? How? And this is really the question that I would love for you to sit with, to journal on, to contemplate. How does one begin to allow purpose to emerge? How does one. How do I. Maybe this is more of a question that you can ask yourself, how do I begin to allow purpose to emerge in my life? Rather than how do I find purpose? Because that puts you in a seeking mode and it puts you in a scarcity mode. It puts you in a mindset, in a frame of existence, a frame of being, a way of being that says, I don't have this thing and so I need to go and find it, I need to go and acquire it somewhere. And that's a sort of like a modernity take, right, this sort of very modern materialistic take on what purpose is. And it's very common within our culture that we take this notion that purpose, that everyone's entitled to have a purpose, right? Everyone is entitled to it. You should get it, you should have it, you need it. If you don't have it, there's something wrong with you. And until you find it, you're not going to be complete. And so this is the pressure cooker that we put on our necessity and need to find purpose, which ultimately creates a kind of resistance, a magnetic pushing away of our connection to purpose. Because purpose is something that you are, it's something that you have, it's something that exists within you and within your life. And we need to create openings and room for purpose to actually emerge and manifest. And whatever words you want to use, whatever words don't feel woo woo or ridiculous or too like religiously based or whatever have you. We need to create room for purpose to actually reveal itself within our life. And yes, there are certain things that we must do in order to have that revealing be possible. I'm going to talk about that towards the end, but I want to start by just giving you a little bit of my definition. And I've thought about this for a very, very, very long time and maybe that sounds conceited or arrogant from the outside. But purpose is something that I have felt this pull towards or this sort of flowing within myself for a very long time. And I didn't know it at first. I didn't have words to describe what that actually was. So my definition of purpose is that purpose is found at the intersection of using your greatest gifts to positively impact or influence what matters most to you while being or becoming someone that you deeply respect and admire. Right. So I know that's a little bit long, but I'm going to say it again. So purpose is found at the intersection of using your greatest gifts to impact and influence what matters most to you while being or becoming someone that you deeply respect and admire. So as far as I can tell, when I study literature, when I study myths of men that are living their purpose, of individuals who are living this sort of purposeful life, and we can almost interchange purpose with meaning, right? A purposeful life, a meaningful life, those things are somewhat interchangeable, but they have different contexts. When we talk about how we operate as human beings relationally within what we build in the world, within our careers, within how we make money, within how we interact with people, meaning and purpose are oftentimes within our culture, are sometimes interchangeable, but sometimes very different. So I'm going to keep those things separate for right now. So as far as I can tell, people that are living with a sense of purpose, people that you look out in the world and you see as embodying this sense of purpose, and people that talk from this place of purpose, and in my own life, it's generally that they are using gifts that are specific to them. And when I say gifts, I don't mean just a skill or an attribute. I mean something that they are. They're very fluent in, they're very good at, right? You look at somebody like a Joe Rogan, right? I mean, who, from the outside, probably, it looks like he's living his purpose. And he's very good at having conversations with people, at getting information out of people. And I think he does it in a very.

Very sort of natural way that a lot of people resonate with, which is why so many people tune into his show, right? Russell Brand, very funny individual, very charismatic. He has the gift of conversation, but also in a sort of spiritual, existential, esoteric way. So you can see these human beings, Einstein, this intersection of the gift of mathematics and concepts, being able to take these massive concepts and break them down into simple mathematical equations. What a gift that is, right? So you can see that there's A gift emerging from the human, from the person that is being used towards something that they deeply care about, whether that's influencing or impacting individual people, whether it's impacting or influencing something that truly matters to them, like the scientific community or a conversation or a political endeavor. But that gift is being used towards bettering something that matters to that human being. So when you think about this for yourself, you can begin to question and sort of become a sleuth, a detective of what might my gifts be? And your gifts are basically a revealing of the circumstances and the environment of your life, right? If you look back at your story, you can start to see some of the attributes that are unique to you, and you can start to question, how do I want to use these gifts and what do I want to use them towards? And when you start to do that, you begin to. You can sometimes get a glimpse of what might my gifts be? Right? Is it being on stage in front of people, talking to people? Is it writing? Is it building mechanical concepts? Is it writing code for software? You know, what is my gift? What is my talent set? What are my skills? And your skills and your talents. And they aren't necessarily your gifts, but they can point towards it, right? So every once in a while, a skill or a talent will manifest as a gift. It'll turn into something that sort of is super normal, supersedes just being a skill or just being a talent, right? You can see this in, you know, some UFC fighters or certain entrepreneurs where they really, they have a skill for something that. That supersedes the skill. It just turns into something amazing, right? Certain tattoo artists or. Or singers and musicians that are. You know, I look at a musician like Jacob Collier, I don't know if you know him, but he's this phenomenal musician, and that's somebody who has a gift. You know, he really, truly has a gift. So then we have to look at what people, what individuals do we want to influence? And then who do I want to be or become on this journey? Because what many people get lost in is this concept or this notion in modern culture that purpose is just what you do and not who you are. And that's a fallacy. It's an immense, immense fallacy. And I found that for myself, how I actually stumbled across a sense of purpose, a revealing of purpose, was by becoming someone that I deeply respected, was by becoming someone that I could admire more, that the process of bettering myself in some way actually began to open up the possibility of what my purpose might be. So you can start in many different areas on your path to purpose. And you kind of have to discern for yourself what that path might be. See, I was so reckless and out of control that for me, beginning to hone myself in and work on myself and, and develop myself, develop skills, develop traits, develop attributes that I actually respected and liked. That was the first part in revealing some purpose for me. So that's my definition. Hopefully that gives you some sense of what purpose means to me. And I just want to leave you with a couple things. First and foremost, there's a reference in a book called Dune. Frank Herbert wrote it and maybe you saw the movie, but in Dune they talk about the main character's terrible purpose. This notion that.

Your reason for being might be so much bigger than you that you can't even comprehend it. And he sort of alludes to it throughout the book that this character has this terrible purpose and he keeps feeling this terrible purpose. And it's sort of like this ominous experience. And the character is destined for greatness. He's destined to do big things, you know, incredible things. But at the same time, the. There's sort of this notion that he's playing out or a part of a kind of fate oriented or destiny oriented unfolding that he's a part of. And that's the interesting thing about purpose, is that we often look at purpose simply from a known perspective, simply from a rational, logical perspective. But purpose, in my opinion, is much larger than simply what you do and who you are. It's a culmination. It's almost like a spiritual not calling, but a spiritual thrust that you know, river that you're put on and that you start to move down. And the more that you ignore these sort of, shall we say, signs, internal dialogues, the choices that you know you want to make and ought to make, the more that you ignore those, the further away you drift from the flow of purpose and the more that you begin to tune into this sort of unconscious, deeper voice calling, questioning, commentary, again, whatever word you want to put on that is pulling you towards something that you can't quite describe, right? Purpose is not a destination. It's not a mountaintop that you're going to get on. It's not some place that you're going to arrive one day and say, oh, I found my purpose, like this is my purpose. That's not it. It's that your life begins to slowly turn more and more and more and more and more towards congruency and coherence. And the more incoherence you feel in Your choices, decisions, relationships, finances, health, et cetera. The more incoherence you feel, the more purposeful you feel as a human being. And so you're literally attuning yourself mentally, emotionally, spiritually, physically, sexually towards purpose. You're attuning yourself to it. And so the notion here is that it's not. Purpose isn't just something that you acquire one day, right, like in a video game, where you can just level up. It's not like that. It's something that is also asking you to be drawn towards it. So I love this concept in Dune of the terrible purpose, because in some way, the main character, Paul, has this deeper notion. And this is a very complex, big concept that I'm not going to necessarily fully get into. But I just love this notion that purpose is something that you can. That you are drawn towards, that you're pulled towards. And it can be terrifying. You know, it can be really a frightening thing because it can take you into. It can take you into being someone and becoming someone and being in a position and being responsible for things that you never thought were possible. You know, I look at where my life is today, and 10 years ago, 10 years ago, I never thought in a million years that I would be where I am today, that I'd be having these conversations with people, that I would be leading an organization, that I would be responsible for a family that, you know, I mean, just et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So when we start to listen to this deeper coherence and attuning ourselves towards whatever you want to call that the voice, the soul, the unconscious, the intuition, your gut, et cetera, the more that you start to tune yourself towards what that part of you and what that part of life and existence is saying and trying to push you towards or pull you towards. The more your purpose starts to get revealed, but the more frightening it is because the more that you're entering into unknown territory and the less grip and the less stronghold that your rational mind actually has. So purpose is something that forms, and this is how we begin to find it. Purpose is something that forms out of the formless. It's something that forms out of the formless. It's something that manifests as you confront the unknown, as you listen to that intuition, that gut, that soul, voice that says, make this decision, move in this direction, and you start to realize, like, well, if I make that decision, I don't know what's going to happen. I don't know how things are going to unfold. I have no clue what's going to transpire if I move in that direction. And that is deeply terrifying and disturbing for a lot of people. Not knowing is because we cling to the rational mind. We cling to knowing. We cling to needing to know. And so the more that we begin to move in this direction of I don't know what's going to happen, I don't know what's going to unfold, but this sort of higher self, deeper self or intuition or gut is guiding me in this direction. You start to see things unfolding as you move in that direction. You start to bear witness to a deeper quality of satiation and fulfillment. By entering into this unknown territory. It can be quite disrupting because most people want to know what's going to happen. Most people want to know. If I make this decision, then that's the outcome that's going to happen. But when you start to pursue purpose, it is a game in seeing, how much unknown can I tolerate. It's a game in seeing how much formless can I bring into form, how much unknown can I bear, you know, of not knowing how this is going to unfold, not knowing how that relationship's going to go, not knowing how this decision is going to pan out. And trusting this deeper voice, this intuition, this gut, this soul calling, again, whatever verbiage you want to put onto it, but trusting this element that exists within all of us. And if you want to find purpose, I'm going to make this really clear and direct. You have to risk and be willing to start to listen to this voice. You just have to. There's no way around it. There's no. I have never, ever, ever, ever, ever come across any human being or any story or any myth that represents purpose where the individual ignored this deeper calling, this deeper voice, this gut, this intuition, this soul voice, never have I come across that. Because purpose in some ways is intrinsically linked. It's inexorably connected to this voice, to this unknown commentary that you can sometimes tune into. And so you have to be willing to move in that direction, to move into the unknown, because there's a reason. And I'm going to just maybe wrap it up with this. For most of us, purpose is unknown. It is something vague. It is something that we can't define or describe. And when you ask the average person what is purpose, they don't really have a good definition for it. They don't really have a good description of it, because purpose is. Is unknown. And so you as a human being have to Be willing to venture into unknown territory, to begin to find what is purpose and what is not. You know, what. What is going to allow me to feel more coherent, more congruent, more in alignment with what is true for me and how I want to operate and what's meaningful to me and what's fulfilling to me and what brings me joy and what contributes to the world. I have to be willing to move in that direction and to risk not knowing what it's going look like and to risk not knowing how it's going to unfold, whether it's going to work or fall apart or any, anything in between. And so you have to be willing to move in the direction of the unknown, to listen to the gut or the intuition or the soul's voice. And you have to be willing to view the unknown and the formless as something that isn't an enemy, but that is something that's deeply and intrinsically a part of you that is trying to come into being. And when you do that, there's a hope that purpose will start to emerge out of that. Because you don't necessarily know. Likely. You're probably watching this video saying, or listening to this podcast saying, I have no idea what purpose is. I don't really know when I feel it or I can feel it in these moments. And if you really tune in, when you feel a sense of purpose in your life is almost always connected to when you have tuned into your gut, your intuition, the voice of your soul that is moving you in the direction of coherence and congruence. It's not when you've got caught in the rational mind trying to sense, make, or logic yourself into being. That's not how that works. So sit with the question this week of what unknown do I need to venture into? What unknown is calling me? What level of coherence or congruence am I being asked to explore? Maybe it's the coherence of getting sober, of not drinking alcohol anymore, or smoking weed or doing drugs or watching porn. Maybe it's the congruence of treating your body with more respect. Maybe it's the congruence of making a very real career change that you have felt within you for a very long time. Maybe it's the coherence of picking up a spiritual practice like Tai Chi or meditation or whatever it is, prayer, whatever it is for you. Ask the question, what within me is asking me to be more coherent? What am I needing to be more coherent to and more congruent to? And notice if you can feel the and witness a deeper quality of purpose begin to emerge out of that. So I know this is a little bit of a different topic and commentary than I normally make. I know it's a big topic. I would love to hear your thoughts on how you define purpose and I would love to hear your commentary on where you found purpose in your life and anything that you would want to add to what I laid out in today's episode. So thank you so much for joining me. Talk to you next week.