Micro Class - How to Figure Out Your Mission in Life (5 Big Ideas + 5 Journal Questions + 5 Tips!)

You're listening to Optimize with Bryan Johnson. More wisdom in less time. Hey guys, what's up? This is Bry. I am really excited about today's video. How to figure out your mission. How to figure out your mission. We've got five big ideas, five journal questions and five tips and a shadow. So five big ideas. We're going to distinguish between our purpose and our mission. We're going to make a distinction between intrinsic versus extrinsic goals. We're going to talk about signature strengths, job versus careers versus callings. Then we're going to figure out how to find the nexus of what you love, what you can be great at, and what the world needs. Really, really big concept there that's helped me out a lot of. Then we're going to look at five journal questions. Then we're going to look at five tips all about how to figure out your mission. So we could talk about this for a weekend or a week, but I'm going to see what I can do in a matter of minutes here. So bear with me while I go kind of quickly. We'll unpack each of these ideas in more depth in different videos and I'll just give you an overview right now. And I'm going to talk about this a lot in the class I'm teaching right now on optimal living 101. I'll put a link to that. So we start with purpose versus mission. One of the videos I did earlier was how to discover your purpose in less than five seconds. That was a lot of fun. The basic idea there was there's a difference between your purpose and your mission. We all have the same purpose, which is to connect to our highest selves. We've got to plug into something bigger than ourselves. Kind of like that light bulb like I talked about, right? You. If you're not plugged into something bigger than yourself, none of the other stuff matters. Your mission's irrelevant if you're not living your purpose. You've got to first connect to the highest within yourself. Plug in. Then you can most fully shine and express your unique self most fully in service to your family and the world via your specific mission. But again, we've got to start with our purpose. Check out that video for more. Then we did a video on intrinsic versus extrinsic goals. I want to remind us here, as you create your mission, don't focus on the extrinsic stuff. Most people get lost. They're seduced by our culture, which tells us, oh, it's all about fame and wealth and hotness. No, it's not. If you are going after that predominantly, some of that is fun. But if you're going after that predominantly, you will have the upside down sad face. Ick sauce. Scientists say these people who are going after extrinsic goals are less psychologically stable than people going after intrinsic goals, which include relationships, growth and making a contribution. Happy face. We want to go there. So intrinsic goals, extrinsic. Make sure as you figure out your mission, you're focusing on what's going to serve these intrinsic goals. And check out that video for more there. Now on to another big idea. One of my favorites signature strengths. So we talked about virtue in another video we talked about Arete and Eudaimonia and the classic philosopher's ideas on how to achieve happiness. Well, they say we need to live with virtue. Modern day science agrees we need to live with virtue. And they're helping us figure out how we can put our virtues into into action via signature strengths. So if we want to figure out our mission, we've got to figure out how we put our virtues into action. The scientists identified, and I would agree with this, six primary virtues that they've been broken out into 24 sub virtues. The six primary virtues are wisdom, courage, love, justice, temperance, spirituality, and they break Those out into 24 distinct virtues, what they call signature strengths. My top signature strengths include creativity, hope and optimism, kindness and generosity, courage, energy and enthusiasm and wisdom. Those are some of my signature strengths. Now we want to take time and I'm going to do a whole video on this as well. We want to take the time to understand our signature strengths. We can do that by going to authentichappiness.com or just Google signature strengths virtues in action and take the test. It's in the middle of that page on authentichappiness.com. take the test, discover your strengths. And then what you want to do is you want to create what I call a calling description where you basically rather than a job description, you write out how are you going to use your signature strengths often, right. Which is the cornerstone of positive psychology and the science of happiness and flourishing is you use these strengths often in, in service to something bigger than yourself, giving yourself to the world. Which leads us to the fourth big idea that as we create our mission, we move from having a job where we're just worried about getting money to having a career where we're worried about kind of climbing the corporate ladder and impressing people and getting names after our, what do you call it? Initials after our name Stuff like that to having a real calling. A calling is all about taking these strengths and giving them, using them in service to the world. And what we want to do is create a calling description. We take these strengths and we put them into a calling description. It sounds like I'm going to do a video just on that too, but that's a big idea. Job career calling, right? Figuring out how to find our mission, that's the fourth big idea we want to think about. The fifth one is really cool. This is an exercise I've done a lot. So Jim Collins in a book called Good to Great, tells us what makes great businesses great. And he says they identify what he calls their hedgehog concept, the thing that they focus on. Well, that works for individuals as well as it does for businesses. And it's something that I've used a lot in my journaling in life. And I also want to say that I've journaled a lot. As you can tell, I'm passionate about journaling and I've filled up dozens and dozens and dozens and dozens of these to figure out who I am, what I want to do, how I want to give myself to the world. So I strongly encourage you to spend time in looking at this and these other journal questions I'm going to give you. But anyway, with this concept, we basically have three circles, right? 1, 2, 3. And we want to find the nexus point of these three circles. The first one is what do you love to do? Alright, so what do you love to do? It's an important question. What are you passionate about? Alright, journal on that. That's your first circle. Second one is what can you be great at? There's some things that we love that we're never really going to be great at. But what can you be really, really great at? Perhaps even the best in the world in the way you can express it. It's a powerful concept, right? Second circle is that the third circle is what does the world need? And you could say, what are they willing to pay for? What is the world willing to pay for? So what do you love? What can you be great at? And what does the world need? Now, I've gone through this to give you a quick lens into how I've approached it with what do I love to do? I love to read, I love to think, I love to have inspiring conversations. I love to do things like this. Teach and inspire people to figure out what they're here to do and live their greatest lives. What can I be great at? Well, I think I can get Better and better and better at teaching. I think I can be extraordinary at teaching this stuff as I really immerse myself in it. And what does the world need? I think the world needs grounded virtue based self development, if you will. I think we need more of that and I think the world's willing to pay for it. And in fact the world's demonstrated that it is with philosopher's notes and with the other stuff that we've been doing. And this is really where I'm putting my energy now. I'm also passionate about entrepreneurialism and business and using that as a creative vehicle. And I go through this same analysis when I imagine what we're going to do with our business. What do we love to do? What can we be great at? And what does the world really need? And that leads me to another question that I ask myself often. And I'm gonna now talk about five journal questions. So we just whizzed through five big ideas, right? I know I'm going fast now. Five journal questions. The question that I ask myself often, which is related to this little what do I love? What can I be great at? What does the world need? Is what is it that I know only I can do in the world? There are a lot of people that can do a lot of things and I like to think about it and say, you know what? I don't need to do that. Somebody else can do that at least as well as I can, or much, much better than I can. I'm going to let them do that. What is it that I and only I can do? I want to make a really important point here that starts at home. When we look at our mission, we don't want to get on that Holy Grail chase and get all manic and ambitious and ignore what's most important. When we plug in to our purpose and our highest selves, we realize that it starts at home. I want to be a great husband, I want to be a great father, I want to be a great friend. I want to be a great family member and really start from that center point here and then go out to the world. A lot of people when they get into this self development stuff, they get all manic about it and they get all crazy and they want to be all out and they want to be big and they want to go huge and they want to change the world. They want to be on Oprah and they want to do all these different things. None of those things are wrong per se, but you got to make sure it's grounded in the basic stuff right here. Start with yourself, start at home, start with your family, start with your friends, and then go out. The world doesn't need more people who are being terrible to people most intimate with them. But changing the world, that's not the kind of leadership we need. So what is it that you and only you can do? And that's a Another long philosophical conversation is one big journal question. Another one is how can you use your greatest gifts in greatest service to the world? If you had all the time in all the money in the world, what would you do? I'm not talking about vacationing here. I'm talking about this stuff. Creating, giving yourself to the world. 4. What would you do if you knew you could not fail?

5.

What are you most proud of? What will you be most proud of? Again? We can spend a whole video on any one of those questions. Really, really cool stuff. Journal questions. I highly recommend you journal all those. I've journaled those questions dozens of times over the last 15 years. So we've got five big ideas. We've got five journal questions. Now let's quickly look at five tips. Number one tip on figuring out your mission. Be willing to experiment. Ralph Waldo Emerson says, all life is an experiment. The more experiments, the better. We named our little boy Emerson for a reason, and this has become an even more salient part of our lives. All life is an experiment. As I point to often, all life is a game. Make it fun. Now, when you're willing to make life an experiment, you're willing to make more mistakes. That's huge. Michael Beckwith tells us, when you make a mistake, it's just like a misstep, like you're filming a movie. It's a mistake. It's not a big deal. You don't need to make it all dramatic. Winston Churchill tells us success is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm. So we've got to be willing to experiment. We've got to be willing to make mistakes. And in fact, we want to make more mistakes. Fail more often. Get used to it. Get good at it. Move on, evolve. Don't take yourself so seriously. Number three, Follow your bliss. And your grunt. Joseph Campbell told us, follow your bliss. He wished, he said later in his life that he added, and your grunt. People can get all about the vision boards and the exciting things, and I'm all about vision. I'm all about setting ambitious goals and visualizing things and following my bliss. But I'm also about working hard. You got to follow your grunt. You got to work diligently, patiently and persistently. Now when you put those two together, clear intention and impeccable action, you've got a magic formula. So work diligently, patiently, persistently. As Sn Gwanka, the meditation teacher, says, you're bound to be successful. Number four tip here if you want to stress yourself out while you try to figure out your mission, do two things. 1. Be impatient. 2. Make it all about you. That is a perfect recipe to stressors Stress yourself out you want to deal with to dissolve that stress. Be patient. Serve really simple. 5. Remember your purpose. This is the most important tip here that's ultimately way more important than your mission. Your mission is huge, but you got to start with your purpose. Plug into the highest within yourself. Be that light bulb. Then focus on your intrinsic goals more than your extrinsic goals. Discover your signature strengths. Put your virtues into action. Create a calling description by using your gifts and greatest service to the world. Figure out the nexus point of what you love, what you can be great at, and what the world needs. Ask yourself these journal questions and if you're feeling it, pay attention to these tips. Make your life an experiment. Have fun with the whole process and there you go again. We can talk about this forever. We'll come back to all these ideas in more detail. I hope you dug it. Let me know what else you'd like to see and have another awesome day. Here's to figuring out your mission and giving your greatest gifts in greatest service to the world. See ya.

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