UNfollow your Passion to Find Fulfillment - with Terri Trespicio | The Empowering Neurologist EP.154

But I don't think people look expansively enough at what they could do and contribute. And if we gave ourselves a chance to really master something, then you'd know what you have to contribute.

Well, hi everyone. Dr. David Perlmutter here. Welcome to The Empowering Neurologist. We have an interesting program today and it centers on this notion that we should identify what we're passionate about in life and then do everything we can to make that a reality. And our guest today, Terri Trespicio, challenges that. Her new book is Unfollow Your Passion. Who knew? And it really challenges this notion that we need to identify something that we are passionate about, that we can identify with that passion talk to people about our passion and pursue it as a course for our life, really focusing on the destination and to the extent that we ignore the journey. What she talks about in her book, really interesting, is it really is about the journey. It's not about identifying something we are so compassionate about and then kind of losing sight with respect to all the other things that may present themselves to us along the way. Very interesting young woman, written a terrific book. I very much enjoyed reading it. Let's jump right into our interview. Terri, welcome to the program.

Thank you.

And I'm glad we got to touch base yesterday prior to this time together. You know, it's interesting because I think we could have made a recording out of yesterday. I think we covered a lot of ground, but I'm not sure how your book came to land in my bag. at my home, but I really enjoyed it. And as I said in the introduction, you know, we're all kind of led to believe, follow your passion and everything's gonna be great. Identify your passion, follow it, do what you love, the money will follow. I love that one as well. Not so true. But I need you to tell us your story as you did on your TEDx talk. You know, we could start at the working in the obstetrician's office. Or perhaps as a— it was in the book. That's how you started the book. But your TEDx starts with, I think it's working in the magazine and on the radio. But when, you know, I really want to get to where we began distilling in your mind this notion that, you know, everybody's telling me to seek my passion, find my passion. And you realized that that's not what life's all about. So let's unpack that.

I was Like most people, when they come out of school, if they're lucky enough to go to school, you think that all of that money investment in education and time that you're supposed to somehow know what you're going to do. And unless you go to law school, medical training, very specific job-oriented stuff, you major in English and you leave without a clue as to what to do. And if you're passionate about writing or passionate about reading, That doesn't help you pick what path, and it didn't matter that I loved writing. I had no idea what to do, and so I did nothing for a while—for like a good long while right after graduation. I temped at an OB-GYN. I temped wherever because I was afraid to accept a job. Because if I found a full-time job and I took it, I thought that's it. I'll be locked in for forty years, and what if I don't like it and I can't get out? I was very afraid. I was—I'm not claustrophobia. I'm not claustrophobic, but it was like I was career claustrophobic. I thought if I locked into something, I'd be stuck there forever. And so, I did the opposite, which was equally joyless. I did temp job to temp thing, having no roots anywhere, not having a chance to really explore anything I was good at, and was miserable as a result. And so, that's how I did it. A lot of people do.

Well, the language you used in your book was, we're kind of convinced about this notion of Choosing a major for life.

Right. I was an English major. And so you love to read and write. And there's a million people with English majors who do lots of different interesting work. But I just didn't know where to go. And I'm gonna say there was no internet, which there really wasn't. It was dial-up. That's hardly internet. And it's not like I'm gonna blame the lack of internet. People got jobs before the internet. But I was emotionally just lodged. I just could not move forward until I finally relented and took a full-time job as an admin assistant, like an executive assistant at a company, a regular old job, a great job, and a great one to start in when you don't know what you want to do. And that job was the turning point, not the moment I discovered my passion, but the moment I had somewhere to show up, someone who knew my name and expected me there at 8:30, and where I got to do things and people came to depend on me for those things. When Whether I was passionate about them or not, I was doing PowerPoints. I was booking travel. I was doing all the things an assistant does, learning my way around an office, and that saved me because I got to. I have stuff to do, and so that made me feel oh, I'm capable. I can learn a skill. I can do. I can work in an office. I've worked in one now. I could work in any office, and then I had options. But before I took a job, I had all the options in the world as a privileged woman who had had. the benefit of great education, but I didn't believe I had those options.

So here you are now. You have this job that you— walking into it from your book, you talk about the fact you knew nothing about what this job entailed, but you had a level of confidence. You jumped in and it helped you realize that even though you didn't have passion for it or it wasn't a job that was the manifestation of seeking your passion per se. Nonetheless, the journey was starting to be enjoyable for you.

Well, then at least I knew people. I was just isolated in this idea of I'm supposed to find this perfect thing and these ideal people in this dream job. And none of that was or needed to be true. I needed to meet people and see what it was like to work with and interact with people. And I think there's a lot of people who say, well, I don't want to get that job because I don't know if I want to be in that industry. And That's crazy because you don't give yourself a chance to dig in and sharpen your own skills. Once I had office skills and I did that, I said, okay, now what? Now what? There's always a next, next, next. But most people think, what am I going to do now forever? And there is no forever.

I want to— maybe it's too early to jump into this, but I'm thinking about, you know, later in your book you talk about how this applies to relationships, that we look for that passionate, goal-oriented relationship in life. And we tend to miss things along the way, opportunities, if I can use that term, along the way to opportunities to cultivate relationships with people, though we are, whether it's your knight or maiden in shining armor, that we miss out on opportunities because of that goal-centric kind of mentality that is inculcated into our brains from a very young age.

Oh yes. Especially if we're talking about romantic, long-term romantic partnership, which is important to, let's be honest, a lot of people. And what— and in the fact that they'll say, I need to rearrange everything in order to have that. That's fine. If that's your goal, that's your goal. It wasn't my goal. And yet I was still dating and dated, you know, I'm not married now. I mean, I'm in a relationship now, but I've been, I've been dating for, my God, I think about 30 years. I mean, it's a long time to date. And I realized if I don't want what everyone wants, I don't want, I don't see myself getting married, having kids and doing the traditional thing. Then what am I doing? And that was the question. I said, well, what am I doing? What's the point of getting to know people if it might end? And I said, fact is anything might end. The reason to be in relationship is because you get to learn what it is to be in relationship. Some people married someone they met at 18. They grow up with that person. They learn who they are in the context of that person. I didn't do that. I dated a lot of people, and that shortened my learning curve in other ways because I learned, oh, well, now I've dated a bunch of people. I see a pattern. I understand how I connect with people, and I also know what matters to me. But, you know,

it's— You're taking seemingly people out of their comfort zone. And we are told that if we remain in our comfort zone, that's not going to be good for us. We should push ourselves to be out of our comfort zone. And you challenge that with some neuroscience, actually. Yes, absolutely. The notion that when we're out of our comfort zone, when we're in a situation of sympathetic— those weren't your words, but when we're uncomfortable, we're feeling perhaps a little bit threatened by our paradigm being challenged, if I may, that according to the researchers that you quoted, that our brains are not working as well. We're not as focused. We're not as able to achieve.

Oh, I love that advice. Put yourself out there. Get uncomfortable. You should be uncomfortable every day. If you aim to be uncomfortable every day, guess what you'll be every day? Uncomfortable. I prefer to be comfortable. Maybe I'm a hothouse flower, as my mother says. I'd like to be comfortable. But It's not that I don't think we should stretch. I just don't equate comfort with complacency or laziness or lack of risk. I've never not challenged myself to grow and try things, but I don't find that I do my best work doing that when I'm uncomfortable. And so that, yes, that research from Marcus Buckingham and Ashley Goodall, who published a piece in the Harvard Business Review, a piece called The Feedback Fallacy, where they questioned what helps employees thrive. And in fact, giving feedback and telling people about themselves and what they did wrong isn't actually helpful. In fact, they said people don't need feedback. They need attention to what they do best. That if you want employees to thrive, they need to feel seen for what they're doing right. And I really loved that. It made so much sense to me. And I realized, well, Whenever we're doing the deep, heavy work of any kind of growth, we do it in a comfortable place. Why am I sitting on a comfy couch at a therapist's office? Why, when I go skiing, do I have to pay top dollar for great skiwear that can deal with the elements? We aren't trying to be uncomfortable. You want to be uncomfortable, get soaking wet and stand outside naked. That's uncomfortable. It's not going to equal growth. So I challenge it because I think that Life is hard enough. Why can't we pursue ease? And rather than try to leave the comfort zone every day, look to expand it so we can fit more things in it. I mean, does that jive with what you think about when you—

That's a good question because what was going through my mind just now is, and I wasn't gonna say it, but you asked me, I'm gonna tell you. There is a time, at least physiologically, when we need to stress the system. We call this hormesis, when we can gain benefit from a bit of a stress, caloric restriction, pushing our exercise just a bit, immersion in hot environments, cold environments. So, when we stress the system a little bit, we gain back to where we were plus a little bit more. So, there is a notion that being a little bit uncomfortable may be salubrious in terms of health outcome. And perhaps there is— you know, one step backwards, two steps forward type of gain to be realized in terms of our decisions and our day-to-day activities. But, you know, your mom had a quote about that, you know, that you create life by living it. In fact, several times in the book, your mom seems to offer up some really great wisdom for you.

She is the reason I am who I am, for sure.

Wow. But it seems to me that she, you know, the way you portray it is that there are aphorisms that you've garnered from her, but she didn't necessarily, and I'm reading a lot into it here, she didn't really direct you, but she gave you these notions about things and you took that ball and ran with it. But yeah, she seems like she's been pretty inspirational in your life.

Oh, she's tried to Do what the world tends to undo about us. Like I had one friend who she did not approve of, a friend who just kind of undermined me. She was a little sarcastic. She was a little maybe a little just not as nice as my other friends.

And would that be Leia?

Well, no, no, that girl. I never had her in my house. I'll tell you. Never came to your house. This was another girl in college, and my mother said, "I don't like her," and she never said this about my friends.

Wow!

She said, "The reason I don't like her is because she's trying to undo everything I've tried to do with you." Oh

gosh!

She's making you question. Imagine yourself, she's making— no one has tended to and cared for this hothouse flower like my mother. But I also want to go back here because I don't want it to be the takeaway here that we shouldn't challenge. For instance, I got a Peloton during the pandemic, like a lot of people, but I didn't get it because I wanted to be like, I'm going to be uncomfortable every day and sweaty and make myself feel out of shape. I got it so that I could be more comfortable in my body by stressing. For those of us who feel uncomfortable most of the time, and that would probably be me too, which is why I put comfort as such a priority, I need opportunities to find the comfort, not to find the discomfort. We spend most of our lives fairly uncomfortable.

Yeah,

but maybe I'll just speak for myself.

Yeah, no, no, but we're kind of in an end justifies the means then, and the end to be comfortable justifies the means being uncomfortable. And it is a bit supportive then of the notion that there may be some value in being uncomfortable. In the short run for the ultimate then passion of the goal,

right? But not the goal to be uncomfortable all the time as a okay fair enough motto. You know what I mean? Like that seemed kind of like meh to me. Also, I want to feel easeful in my life and to feel some degree of control, even though I know we have very little, and and master some.

Hold on! You're not gonna let that one just go by us. What does it mean even though we have very little? Where where are we?

I can't control other people. I can't control the world. I can't control the weather. There's so much out there I can't control that, of course, we prize what we control. Did you not— do you think that's a bad idea?

It's, you know, some would argue with that. You know, is there— is this just that fundamental determinism here that, you know, everything ultimately is a manifestation of biochemistry? I don't know. I mean, I think it's a deeper place than I'm prepared to go to right now. But having said that, um, you know, I want to get back to this friend in college who had seemingly an agenda, uh, that your mother was put off by, an agenda for you that your mother recognized, uh, right off the bat and noted that it challenged, you know, some of the, uh, the framework that your mother felt that she had constructed for you. Now, where I want to go with that is, okay, so you bring this point up because your mother built a framework for you. How do you react when you consider that?

Oh, I'm grateful for it just because people say to me now, wow, you're just such a confident blah blah person. How do you get to be that way? I was like, nope. I was afraid of everything. I didn't want to leave the house. I would rather be alone reading in my closet. I made my father put a lamp in the closet so I could hide in there and read. No would bother me. That's how I wanted to live, you know. And it was my mother who helped, you know, yeah, kind of like make me feel a little more comfortable in who I was and who I could be. Absolutely, I credit her with that. But it also takes time. I'm a lot older now, so I got more comfortable being who I am. I think it takes all of us longer than we think.

So then where does your mother's guidance factor into the passion v. no passion kind of Dichotomy.

Well, she was the one who said, oh God, Terry, please just get a job. Like, you can't— when I was temping and I was miserable and I had no idea what I was doing, I was just at sea. And I would call her every night and I would call her. I wouldn't even talk. She'd go, hello? And I would just start to cry. And she said— and I would just cry every night. And then we'd hang up and I'd go to bed and I'd do it again the next day. And she said, you need to get a job. And I said, but I don't want any of these jobs. And she's like, I'm going to be stuck and then I won't be able to get out. And she said, you need to stop. You need to live your life and that's how your life will go. But you can't wait and think you're going to plan it out. So she was the seed of that idea. She wasn't like, why don't you go be a newspaper reporter? You like to write. I was like, I don't want to be a newspaper reporter. Like, she wasn't trying to ever give me career advice. She was like, you go where the opportunities are and you, you will figure it out when you get there kind of thing.

And the passion may follow.

The passion follows because it follows the way electricity follows a lamp around. The lamp doesn't, you know, you plug it in and there's electricity. And that's, that I think is my beef with the passion thing, that we think it's a major or a special gift or calling. You're on God's shortlist and you got your special calling. What about the people who are like, oh, I didn't get that call? I believe we're all—

Was it the window cleaners in your TED Talk?

Yeah. I said, you know, we do jobs because we have to do jobs. Let's not get too uber privileged about it. Like, I only do things that I care about. We need work and we want work that fulfills us, certainly. But let's not pretend we just pick jobs that feel authentic for us all the time. That's not how I pick jobs all the time, right?

Yeah, it's the notion of the passion. I think that there was some description of that you're at a party, people say, hey, what's your passion? And people feel challenged by that question. And, oh, I like to help people. And then the creator of the Dilbert comic strip was, I think, working as a bank loan officer and was told that don't ever give a loan to somebody who says that they're doing this because they have a passion for it, that they should loan money to people who have the most boring business plan imaginable.

I love that part. Yeah, they said don't loan money to someone who has a passion because why? Passion's fickle. Passion's a feeling. It doesn't mean that no one has a purpose. And if you believe you have one, that's great. My feeling My feelings go out to the people who go, oh God, I guess I have no purpose. I'm just this random part that no one needs. And that's not true. I like to look at passion as a capability we all have, that it's a uniquely human experience, not the gift of the privileged few.

So there is a lot of metaphor in your book that's very helpful. One of them is swallowing things. And it dates back to your childhood. Your mother said, why don't you give Leah a call and go and visit your— maybe she was 7, I think, at the time.

Yeah, we were like 7.

Okay, you go to Leah's house and she, uh, I don't know if it's feisty or a pain in the butt or what she was, but somehow Leah convinces you to swallow a, a button that is sewn to her bedspread or blanket or something like that, and you do it. She convinces you to swallow this thing.

And then you have to work very hard.

Well, and you did. I mean, you felt so compelled by this woman, girl, probably. I want to get to where she may be now. But this young, the 7-year-old convinced you to swallow a button off the bed. Who knows how that played out? But you remember that experience and then describe it metaphorically in the book about all of us being forced. How did she force you, by the way? She tricked you into doing

it. Well, no, she didn't. Honestly, I was such a compliant kid. And She was a kind of a, not a bully, but she just had a real strong personality.

She was very persuasive.

Oh, we just did whatever she wanted to do.

You think she would have done well in the MLM selling?

Yeah, I know, right? She would have done— in fact, I think she is in sales. Really?

Do you know what happened to her?

I looked her up on Facebook. Leah's not her real name because I just was like, I'm not in touch with her, but I think she's in sales. I was like, perfect. You can get people to swallow inanimate objects. Perfect. But she, it came loose from her bed. And she handed it to me and she said, eat it. I was like, can I eat it? And she goes, you can eat it. It's, it's, it's something you can eat. And I was like, is it candy? And she's like, yeah. And I knew it wasn't.

You ate it.

Put it in my mouth. I remember the feeling of it between my teeth and being like, oh, she's making me eat something I shouldn't, but I can't say no.

So you took that, that eating, and I dog-eared that page because I thought it was really great. Uh, Here, I took your book apart just so you know, you could see it.

Oh my goodness, that's so great.

But anyhow, you took that metaphor and you describe all the things that we eat. I can't find it right now. Describe metaphorically all the things that we are forced to swallow, criticism, doing things we don't want to do, on and on. And you actually have an exercise for the reader to write, take 10 minutes, no one's going to judge this. to write down the things that they have been forced to swallow over the years. And walk us through that a little bit.

Well, I think— well, I talk about it as being oversubscribed because the goal of the book really is, can we identify the thing that will make us free? Because when we really feel free, then we can do any number of things. But if we're not really free, we can't. And so, the first step of that, that's why it's the first chapter, is To unswallow some of the things we've swallowed, also known as compliance, things that we've said, okay, fine, I'll do that. I believe I should— you believe I should be this or I should do this. Okay, I'll do it. It's the process of accepting other people's expectations as your own goals. And so the exercises at the end of each chapter are meant to give the reader a chance to actually write it down, get it out of your head. And say, what are some of the things I have swallowed, aka agreed to, that I might actually not? You know, people go, well, you're such a this kind of person, or you know, you're like this. Sometimes it's the people closest to us, and you stop and you go, but I'm but I'm not that. How many things are we going to take in, absorb? And the reason swallowing is such a torturous metaphor for me is because someone could hit you in the face, but they can't make you swallow. Swallow requires that you make that ex— you do that, you exercise those muscles to pull something in, and we do it even when we don't want to.

There's a section— no, a sentence in the book about— that you just about touched on, where the good news is that those people don't know what's, I think, best for us. And the bad news is that those people don't know what's best for us. Something like that.

No one knows anything, essentially. Right.

So you move on and start— somebody takes you, I think, to a jewelry—

Yes.

Tupperware party, as it were, a multi-level company. And you walk out of there saying, you know, maybe I could do this. Or maybe the woman reaches out to you to be in her download or however it worked.

Right.

But next thing you know, Terri is selling jewelry to women drinking chardonnay in the book, daiquiris in the TED Talk. So it changed.

They were drinking everything.

Yes. Drinking. Okay. So tell us about that experience.

Well, the fact is I was working as a copywriter at North America's largest distributor of wigs and hairpieces for women. It was my first creative writing job. I got to write the catalog and do all this cool stuff. So I was feeling all grown up and I realized I didn't have any good jewelry and I started to get into it. I like your jewelry. I like your jewelry. My friend said, come over, I'm having a jewelry party. So I went and I was like, I looked at the woman who was selling it and I was like, she's not even doing anything. She's sitting there hanging out. I could do this. And I kind of thought, well, it would be something else to do. But what I didn't realize, I'm glad I sought it out. And by the way, that woman did not work nearly as hard as she should have to make me a rep because I was ready to go. She didn't even call me. I called the company and I said, I think I want to do this. Can you put me with someone with a little bit of energy? And they did. But I—

Interesting.

Yeah, I was, I was like the ideal rep because I'm like, I want in on this thing. So I purchased a kit where you have your jewelry and you get to wear it and you set up parties. Well, Guess what? Liking owning jewelry is not the same as selling jewelry, and I had no idea how to do it. I was a writer. I had just earned my MFA in poetry. I am not cut out for this necessarily. So I go and I do my first party, and I don't sell a thing. I think I sold one pair of earrings, but I was afraid to sell. I realized that when you're selling something, anything, uh, you have an agenda and people know it. And so, I was very shy about it. I didn't want someone to think I was trying to sell, even though that's exactly what I was doing. I said, okay, I'm in this. I've already invested in it. I better learn. And so, I had to, you know, I mean, it was these MLMs, say what you will about them. There's a lot of drama and scandal around them. A lot of people don't make money doing them. But one thing I will say in their defense is that they are a really powerful way for women to learn to build and lead teams outside of the corporate structure. Women who do not have a way in to go work at a big company and don't have that. But these companies can teach you to do that, and the resources are there. So I learned to do it. It's how I learned to sell. It's how I learned to manage a team when I didn't have that as my full-time job. Well, what happened was I got a job offer at a magazine, and I really wanted to work there. But in order to take that job, I had to take a $15,000 pay cut. And that is hard when you're already not making a lot. And so I said, thank God for the jewelry. I better start selling. And so I learned to sell out of necessity. And also because I realized, listen, there's a lot of people doing this. There's no reason I can't do it. You don't need a special skill. Just learn, learn to sell. And I did. I learned to sell this thing and I did it for a few years and I dribbled out like a lot of people do. They let that business go by the wayside. But later, when I got laid off years later from being a magazine editor, and now it's time to sell my own, my own skills as a solopreneur, what did I go back to? The skills I learned selling bracelets, earrings. It's all the same stuff.

But you did well. You went to, you got a trip to St. Thomas out of the deal. So it's not like you were an underachiever.

Oh no. That's what I'm saying. I was like, oh, I get this now. I sold enough to win the free trip. I was named the number 2 rookie recruiter that year. I had recruited a whole team and I learned how much fun it was to lead a team. So I credit MLM with that for sure, but I just didn't stay, you know.

But aren't we all constantly selling our ideas, ourselves, day in and day out in any interaction with another person? Aren't we selling?

Everything is selling. And I think it's funny because it's the one thing that people will tell you proudly that they're bad at. Oh, I'm bad at selling, as if that makes them a nicer or more authentic person. The fact is nothing moves. I wouldn't have a book if I couldn't sell the idea to someone. No one would. Everyone's always getting someone to get on board with their idea, and it's not slimy. And I think, you know, people are like, well, I feel like a used car salesman. I'm starting to think that that's— I do think that's really insulting to used car salesmen who, by the way, are making a lot of money because there aren't enough cars. So I think that sales You know, I think there's something like 5% of the US population is in the sales industry. Redheads are 3%.

Yeah, but, but to generalize, we're always trying to sell our ideas. We're trying to sell our side of a discussion,

always

our view on politics, our view on whatever the discussion is about, the environment, you name it. So we're always trying to convince people to adopt or to more resonate with our position, which is in a sense selling it, right?

Yes. And there's nothing wrong with that. But I think, and I know the discomfort of saying, well, I don't want them to think I'm trying to persuade them. We're living in the age of influence. This is when people are trying to get people to buy this lip balm or, or these shoes or whatever. Everyone is selling all the time. It's not good or bad. It's a neutral thing, but it's also critical if you want anyone to listen to you. Or to buy what you have to offer. I mean, yeah, it's a critical skill. And I think people underestimate or think it's for someone else to do.

I'd like to talk in a moment about some of the skills that you impart, that you challenge people to do in the work, basically, of the book. But there is a quote that I'll put my glasses on. I want to read for our viewers because I really like it. What this means is not worrying about the right move, but discovering what it means to be a sovereign person. To exercise power over your options, decisions, and desires without being ruled by any of them. To realize that you don't need to know exactly where you're headed to start walking, nor do you need permission to do it. So, that's a powerful quote because, again, it does fly in the face of the notion that people kind of pave the way, they choose our destiny. They think they know what's right for us. You know, I'm in, you know, physician in healthcare and, you know, Lord knows the, what we go through, what motivates us. You know, when you look at what motivates doctors to choose this as a profession, the first thing I think by and large is prestige. And second would be that they make good money.

Yep.

When they ask medical students, why are you here? And it's prestige and respect. And the notion of the altruistic goal of serving people, helping people feel better, all that stuff isn't amongst the top 2 or 3. So, kind of interesting. But we all know that what pushes physicians in terms of their levels of achievement, lifelong, been there, done that. And I think what I found very helpful in your book is that it helps to call those things out at this stage in my life. How did I get here? And then where am I going? And this isn't about me, but I would say that what has become really enjoyable, perhaps passionate in my life, is what you and I are doing right now. Yeah. How whatever in my past pursuits has conspired to create a situation whereby I can meet neat individuals like yourself, creative individuals, forward-thinking individuals, and then share their stories with others is an area that I really super enjoy. And the journey opened those doors to make this happen. So again, the idea is not to focus on the goal. That's so good. You know, who would have thought 30 years ago that I would say, you know, there'll be this thing called the internet and I'll be like having a TV show. Never would have considered it.

Right.

So it's about smelling the coffee along the way that, you know, again, I think I'm grateful for your mother's help on that, which through you came to me. So anyway, let's hear some tools that we can give all the viewers that can help them identify what may be going on and help them redirect a little bit away from the goal of this passionate achievement and really allow them to recognize that mistakes are good, that getting on the wrong train happens, and that we should just enjoy the journey.

Yeah. Well, actually, what you're talking about, and I hear it, and certainly, who would've known you would end up doing this, right? You started your journey for one reason, then you end up finding other things that you love about it, right? There's a study that I, that I have long found fascinating that I cite in the book by Amy Wrzesniewski at the Yale School of Management. And she wanted to know whether people saw their work as a job, a career, or a calling. And she defined— they defined the terms and it was self-reported. So it's like, all right, job is something you literally just do for the money. Career is You use one job, trade up for another job in, you know, with a mind of achieving more and having higher status. And calling is something that's integral to your identity, your self-expression, and that it's meaningful. And so you think, well, someone who has a low-paying job just has a job. Someone who gets paid a lot has a career, and someone who just, you know, is feeding the hungry or caring for the sick has a calling. But that's an idea we made up, and that was not how the study panned out. In fact, What they found was that money or rank had very little to do with it. The satisfaction with life and with work, they suggested, was more dependent on how someone sees their work. And one detail in one even smaller subset of that study, they looked at 24 admin assistants. So they all essentially have the same job at a university. And they said, do you have a job, a career, or calling? And there's obviously all these things in a table, a study that I don't know how to read, but there's one that I zoomed in on because it was reported. Reported on, which was the number of years on the job. And the people who called their work a job had on average like a little over 4 years. Career, a little over 6, almost 7 years. And then calling, a little over 9 years. And it would be easy to say, well, they had a calling, so they stayed. But of course, that's causation, not correlation. That's what I know, that we can't prove that's why. But what was interesting to me is The people who were there a little longer tended to see it as a calling. So that's my issue. When people go out shop, don't go out shopping for your calling. You will— the best thing you can do is give yourself a chance to have mastery somewhere, right? Talent, raw talent doesn't mean anything unless it's honed into a skill. So what I ask people is, where have you given yourself a chance to experience progress, to see how, how good you are at something? And How might that skill translate to another industry or another thing? You're not just one job and you're not just one industry unless you want to be. If you're happy in it, great. But I love to look at the ways those things can mix up because I'm a mutt. I've worked in lots of different industries and for lots of different people, and I've found tremendous satisfaction in taking what I know I'm good at and applying it in new situations. That's me. But I don't think people look expansively enough at what they could do and contribute. And if we gave ourselves a chance to really master something, then you'd know what you have to contribute. And I think taking the time to do that is critical. Giving yourself more time. You'll quit a job after 6 months because it wasn't my passion and this wasn't my calling. How do you know? You didn't even stay long enough to remember your login. So, you know,

so one exercise is writing down the things we've been forced to swallow.

One is

to give us a couple more things out of the workbook that we should be doing.

Yes. One of the other things, and I, well, I do have a whole exercise section there where I say write down the skills you use and where you use them. And then you put them on Post-its and put them on the wall. Then you go, okay, you use that skill there. Could you use that skill somewhere else? Are you using that skill somewhere else? What other areas do you want to be working in or to explore? What do you want to learn? And how do the skills you have, how could they lead you there? It's a kind of nonlinear intuitive tool that I've used for all kinds of things to help people figure out their TED Talks, to help them figure out their businesses. And it's about getting off the computer and using an analog, like something you can touch, right? I have all these Post-its. Take the Post-its and move them around and start to see your work in front of you as a movable, changeable thing. I find that really fun because it triggers different connections. That creativity, which we all have, that's where creative synapses fire. Or that's— I'm talking to a famous neurologist. I know that's incorrect, but where we're finding new connections with our work And what we contribute to the world. And so one of the things I walk you through that exercise, but the thing that I bring people back to again and again is the page, is writing. And not because, well, I'm a writer, so everyone has to write. No, I don't care if you're a writer. I use writing exercises with people who never even put so much pen to paper. And I do it because it's the one place you can get out of your head. What you're thinking, feeling, seeing. It's a way to access imagination, intuition, and memory. And how I do it is I give you a prompt, and there's so many in the book, lots of prompts, and a very narrow window in which to write. I do this in live workshops and I, you're on the honor system doing it in the book. Set the timer for 10 minutes. Do not stop. Stop at 10 minutes and that's it. That small window means you don't go, oh, I don't know. And you start thinking about things. You actually prompt it, like you juice it, you juice it, your intuition and your imagination quickly. When I do that with people, they get things out of their head that they— I haven't thought about that in years. You know, it can be a really enlightening process.

So what is your job now?

That's a really good question. I am, I am someone who has had the luxury of making up my job as I go. I essentially been in business for myself for God, over just about a decade now. And yeah, I'm a writer, speaker. I do a lot of public speaking. I imagine I'll be doing that for a long time because I love it so much. But the consulting work I do tends to go into 2 paths. Either I'm working with an organization to get to the heart of what they're trying to say for their brand messaging. Sometimes companies want to rename themselves. I know we know of a few famous ones now. I had nothing to do with those. I'll work with all different organizations to help them. What are they having trouble really connecting around in terms of language? So I'm a messaging expert. It's a made-up word too. So I'll do that for firms, for companies, for individuals. I'll help them figure out what they're trying to say, whether it's for a webpage, whether they're trying to give a public talk. I'm really good at that one thing. And I will whittle them down to the heart and core and the spine of what they're trying to say. I have a gift for that, yes, but also a skill. I have studied language and words. I told you I got an MFA in poetry. I feel that I am a poet A corporate poet in a way who gets paid on commission to help people find kind of the lyricism and the music that will land for their, for their readers, for their customers. Yeah. So it's made up. It's kind of like, what do I feel like doing next? Who needs help with this?

Are you passionate about it?

I am passionate about it, but I don't believe I said I'm passionate about branding. I'm going to go do that. I wasn't passionate about branding. I got that bug Because I was working with people in media training years ago, and I realized people, the most brilliant people, could not get into words what they were trying to say. They were too close to it for their interview tomorrow. And I said, the problem isn't the interview. The problem is you never went through this process of really thinking about what you do and why. And so then I expanded that and I said, what if I help people do that? I literally just listened to the market. I said, what do people need help with? So I do it and I Love it. I'm passionate, meaning I get kind of worked up and excited about doing it because I love the process of discovery with someone else. But I found it there. I didn't, I didn't track it there. You know, I didn't track this career like a snow leopard. I sort of went to where the problems were and what I knew was easy for me to solve.

And like a snow leopard. Oh, wow. So I watched your TEDx talk, and twice, actually. And I just knew there was so much more to learn about you, to unpack. And I'm so glad that we had a chance to connect. Thank you. And this book's going to be great. And I'm very, very hopeful that a lot of our viewers will read it because I think, for me, it's about the day-to-day, enjoying what's going on and not fretting about the fact that we suffer this sense of unrealized expectation or goal achievement based upon what has entered our minds from others. And then we fan those flames that we should be doing X, Y, or Z because that's historically what our family has done, or it's what people think is best for me. So it's so liberating then to read about the tools then to take us away from that, and that we don't have to swallow Any more buttons off the, off the bedspread, as it were, and very, very helpful. So, I wanted to tell you, it's very appreciative. I'm very appreciative that we got to spend time together.

Oh, me too. Thank you so much for having me.

Okay. Well, we'll talk soon.

Thank you.

So, again, it may well be more about the journey than it is about this passion destination that oftentimes is defined for us by others. That we are meant to be goal-directed towards some type of achievement in life that may not necessarily suit us to the extent that we then don't enjoy the journey. And that really is what it's all about. Interesting information today, I thought. And I thank you for joining me here on The Empowering Neurologist. I'm Dr. David Perlmutter, and we'll be back soon.