PNTV: Noble Purpose by William Damon (#302)

Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to Philosopher's Notes tv. Today I've got another great book, Noble Purpose by William Damon. Noble Purpose subtitle the Joy of Living a Meaningful Life. This is a tiny little book, but it's packed with wisdom and inspiring big ideas and quotes on leading a life of purpose. A noble purpose where our ends, what we want to do with our lives and our means, how we do it, are both noble. Incredibly inspiring. I was introduced to William Damon and his work from Angela Duckworth in Grit. William Damon is a professor of education at Stanford. He's one of the world's leading experts on human development and the science of morality, which I find incredibly inspiring. I have a couple more books that I'm excited to profile soon. We'll start with this one. Philosopher's Note. Bunch of big ideas. Five of my favorites here, new piece of chalk. Very exciting. First one is noble versus heroic. When we talk about a noble purpose, we want to delineate noble and heroic. Oftentimes when we think of purpose or noble purpose, we may think of kind of the mythical hero fighting mythical dragons, that it needs to be huge and courageous and bold and adventurous for, for it to qualify as an elevated purpose. And he says, no, no, no, no, that's nice. And the history books are filled with courageous acts that made a difference in the world. And it can, you know, our noble purposes can also be heroic. But if we define heroic as only those mythologically huge events, then we're kind of missing the point. The noble purpose can be very mundane. It occurs in the day to day human. He says it's a mother raising a child. It's a doctor working with his patients, a teacher teaching his students, an advocate or a citizen advocating for a candidate to improve society. These are all noble purposes. So we want to step back and see that it doesn't need to be some grand adventure. And oftentimes it's the very mundane. It's right underneath our own feet where the most noble purpose exists. In the note, I talk about the fact that Alexandra, in Mamahood 101, she talked about and described her approach to being a mom as holy work. Too often when we're doing things like being a great mom or a great dad, those aren't the things that society honors and celebrates, right? Those don't show up on your resume. Those are eulogy, virtues, vis a vis your resume virtues, right? But that's holy work. And Alexandra shared that. And there was some great feedback on that from a woman, a Catholic mom, who really resonated with that of yes, raising my children is holy work. I'm committed to this. Let's do this as well as we can. That's noble purpose in a nutshell. Think about your life, think about how you can give yourself and make it such that what you're doing is meaningful for you. And it's making a contribution to your world, whether that's one child or a family or a community or what have you. But that's the difference between noble purpose and heroic. Let's honor the opportunities to show up with nobility in our day to day lives. Think about your own life and the opportunities you have to reshape what you may think as a job into a noble purpose and a calling in a really meaningful way. Here's the formula for the noble purpose. There are three basic attributes that William describes that we come back to again and again and again. I'm excited to come back to these again and again and again because all, all the great teachers do, and we want to solidify this wisdom in our consciousness and then help those around us do the same thing. So he says, look, if you want to find your noble purpose, think about these three things. One, what skills did God or whatever give you? What skills are you endowed with? Two, what needs does the world have? Don't look outside of yourself. Do look outside of yourself and say, what does the world need from me? It's not just about, oh yeah, this is what I want to do, but what is the world asking of me, right? And then the third thing is what do you enjoy? And then he quotes Frederick Buchner who we talked about in the Road to Character, who says, look, what you really need to do, if you want to boil it down to the two things, is figure out where what you most love to do, this joy, meets the world's deepest need. That's your noble purpose. What is yours? What do you most enjoy doing that most fully uses your, your skills that you just need to do, you feel called to do? And how does that intersect with what the world most needs from you? For me, I love reading, I love studying, I love embodying this wisdom and I love sharing it with people. More wisdom and less time. That's my passion. I think there's a skill set there, right? And that meets the world's need. I think the world needs wisdom more than ever and more wisdom in less time. We're busier than ever. So. So can I use my skills and what I most love to do to.

Meet what I think the world most needs?

I've chosen to say, yes, I can, and dedicate my entire life to that. What goal, what noble purpose is worthy of you? Align all of your energy into that. That's our formula. The final section of the book includes nine different tips on how we can cultivate our noble purpose. I share them very briefly in the note. I'll share a few of my favorites now, because obviously, when we get through the theoretical side of it, how do we actually cultivate our noble purpose? One thing is to look at exemplars. Look at people who embody the ideals that you aspire to embody, whether they're alive in your life right now that you can look at and go, wow, that person really inspires me. They're a moral exemplar. They're showing me what's possible. Or maybe it's in reading history books of people you admire or religious texts of spiritual people you really admire. We want to look at these moral exemplars and say, look, if they can do it, I can do it. I aspire to embody these qualities more in my life and then go out and do it. And then another idea in his nine tips was community. You want to engage in the pursuit of these noble purposes with people who are also engaged in pursuit of noble purposes. That community is so important. And in grit, we talked about the fact by Angela Duckworth. We talked about the fact that the fastest way to build your grit, you can build it from the inside out. And we talked about the four ways to do that in that episode. And note, but you can also build grit from the outside in culture, can influence us and help cultivate our grit. And she says, basically, the fastest way to build your grit is to join a community of people who are. Who have high standards, who are living a gritty life, who are living a noble, purposeful life. That's exciting. So find people who share your values while looking at moral exemplars. And this community side of things fires me up, because when I look at my skills and what I love to do with, what the world needs, part of that, which I spent some time on, and now I'm going to reinvest some time on that in another year or two, is the community side of things. My background entrepreneurially is building social communities, right? And I've kind of spent half my time doing that and half my time in the wisdom. We're focused on the wisdom now. But I'm really excited to build a community of people passionate about these ideas. There's Facebook, there's Twitter, there's Instagram. But where's the place you go to hang out with people who just care about this stuff? We're excited to do more on that front, but we're also really focused on our one thing. So that's going to come down the line. Exemplars community. Then the fourth big idea, another one of his nine tips. It's on humility. So sic transit gloria. Go back to ancient Rome. Ancient Rome, you have the Emperor at the height of power. No one's more powerful than the Roman emperor, right, who's cruising through the throngs of his adorers, and they're just cheering lustfully, right? Is what William Damon tells us. And that emperor had an advisor to who sat in his chariot. And while the crowd was cheering, right, he was just kind of celebrating his own awesomeness. This advisor whispered in his ear, sic transit gloria. Sic transit gloria. All glory is fleeting. The emperor had an advisor who reminded him not to take himself so seriously. To have a deep sense of humility. Unbelievably important. If we want to cultivate character and live a life of noble purpose, we need to have humility, which is the number one virtue for character development, which deals with arguably the number one vice of life, which is pridefulness. When we think we're too awesome and we're not willing to look at our shortcomings, then we forget that all glory is transitory, right? It's all fleeting. We need to have the humility to be able to look at what's working and what's not and. And then do something about it. Sick. Transit gloria. William jokes. Oh, if we could all have that advisor whispering in our ear when we find ourselves a little bit too caught up in our own awesomeness. So let's take a few less selfies and post things a little less often on our social media platforms, showing how awesome we are and think about how we can improve. Have the humility to do the work to get a little bit better. Fifth big idea is true happiness. This is a theme we come back to all the time. Again, because it's a universally important idea. The irony is, the paradox is people who go after happiness directly often have it the least, especially in today's culture when we're focused on the beach body, right? We got to be hot and we want to have the huge mansion on the cliffs with the waves crashing in. You got to be super wealthy and you want to be on the COVID of every magazine, right? Or have your own reality TV show.

Or whatever it is.

You want to be famous. That Hotness, that wealth and that fame. Nothing wrong with it per se. But if that's your predominant occupation and that's what you're primarily going after, happiness is going to elude you because happiness does not exist in those things. Happiness exists as a byproduct of giving yourself in your life to a noble purpose, to something bigger than yourself. As Viktor Frankl says, when you give yourself and your life to something bigger than yourself and you don't chase, you don't pursue happiness, you go after something bigger than yourself and you live a life of meaning and purpose, then happiness pursues you and happiness is a byproduct of your commitment to something bigger than your own individual happiness. So check in and see how your rating your priorities right. Is it all the extrinsic stuff or are you focused on how am I going to figure out what I'm here to do and what the world needs from me and do that as passionately as I can? Whether again that's as a mother doing your holy work, noble versus heroic. We've got that formula of what you're good at, what the world needs and what you enjoy doing. Find that nexus point, study the exemplars, take your time. Unplug from reality TV and read stuff about moral exemplars. One of the books that I'm going to profile from William is just about that. It's about, I think it's called the Power of Ideals where he shares stories of moral exemplars as a means to develop our own morality. Huge. Huge. And then surround yourself with people who share your values. Great way to step up who you are and remember all glory is fleeting. Let's not take ourselves that seriously. Let's be passionate, but not so passionate. Become self righteous and a bit obnoxious about our pursuit. Bring in humility to temper the pride that is a quick look at noble purpose. I hope you enjoyed what was your favorite big idea that resonated the most. Think about it, reflect on it, share it with someone and figure out how to embody it just a little bit more in your life today. And I look forward to sharing more soon. Have have another awesome day. Thanks for your support.

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