Why You Need to Understand Your Value — Finding Purpose with Philip McKernan

People say, I want to find my passion. I want to find my purpose. It's not behind some fucking rock in the desert. It's inside of you. It's been inside of you your whole life. It has been influenced by some of the darkest moments you've gone through. It's been influenced by earlier phases in your life. Life leaves clues. You've been lit up by certain things your whole life. It's very easy to get to it if people are willing to take on that journey.

It sounds like what you're saying is the price of admission is vulnerability.

100%.

And that's a value that I can say I've inherited from my work with you and knowing you for all of these years. What does that mean to you and how can people start to access vulnerability?

It means everything to me. It means the world to me. You know, I had the privilege to work with a sports team over the last number of days and there's only so much I can say about this or even want to say. I haven't signed any non-disclosures. It's just my own personal levels of respect or boundaries around respect. But I walked into the dressing room. They gave me the dressing room, which is the most sacred place in sport. And I walked in and I said, I want you to finish this statement. I want you to fill in the gap. A blank team goes further. A blank team goes goes further. And I said, what do you think that word is? What do you think the word is in the blank? And somebody said, united team, and this, and, you know, all these really powerful, you know, words. And I said, for me, it's a connected team. And then I showed them on a board just very quickly, I said, how connection happens between human beings is that you're here at a flat line in your relationship, and ultimately somebody goes first, somebody shares a vulnerability. And it could be something as simple as, how you doing? I said, you know, I'm not, I'm not good. Why not? My cat died this week. Fuck, I love that cat. I just love that cat and I'm missing him so much. And then the person next to you, they go next and they go, you know, I had a dog when I was 6 and I still have never bought a dog ever since because I just never want to re— I never want to revisit that discomfort and pain. And before you know it, you don't even know what's happened, but it's happened. The relationship has dropped a level and you've connected over a shared vulnerability. And then the opportunity is to go again. And you don't have to keep sharing deep, dark secrets. That's not what it's about. But these mini vulnerabilities, and you go and you go, and then one decides, oh, this is getting a bit— oh, hang on, I'm out. And they stop, and you go again, and you're not met in that vulnerability. Then you come back up to that place again, and the relationship either flatlines at that point or regresses back to where it was before. So I said, that's how relationships work. And if you think about— and I looked around the dressing room— I said, if you think about any relationship in your life that's deepened, it has only deepened through the lens of some type of vulnerability, forced Inviters or projected in some capacity. I said, then how do you do that in a room like this? Because you guys don't want to be vulnerable because there's somebody sitting next to you that wants your job. And we hear all this sentiment about, you know, let's let the betterment of the team. Fuck that shit. If I'm a sales rep for a pharmaceutical company and there's two other people on the books that are paid, but they're not working, they're just sitting at home, they're doing a bit of sales training. The minute my sales drop, I'm out and they're in. Do you think I'm really about team? And screw team. I've got to look after myself. And then I created an environment, which you won't get into the details of, where we actually created vulnerability. I asked them about a really tough day and the toughest day of their life and the most beautiful day of their life, and I broke them up into pods and they cried and they laughed and they hugged. And there was a connection that happened in that room that many of the players said they'd never had anything like that with any team, never mind this team, because those environments are not created. I call it team deepening. Not team building. We coined the phrase team deepening. This idea of bringing your team deeper, and every organization in the world, I think it's the future. I think it is absolutely the future. It's not your responsibility to do it, but it's the greatest opportunity. Because when you have a team that is connected, they will walk through fire for each other. Your sense of loyalty goes up. Attrition in an organization reduces. People feel a sense of belonging. And they went out that night and they won 3-nil. But it wasn't the fact that they won 3-nil, it was the way in which they won. They played probably some of the best football they played all season because there was a connection and a connective tissue that hadn't had before. It's all about vulnerability. The challenge with vulnerability is it's, it's used as a tool by certain people, speakers and stuff, and you see it, I see it, but it's all about vulnerability. And so many of us spend so much time trying not to be vulnerable in front of our children. We were chatting about this earlier on with this gentleman over here who's off camera, and you know, vulnerability is— it's inevitable. You can't actually hide from vulnerability. It's going to come after you no matter what. You're going to have your arse wiped when you're 90 sitting in thing and you're going to be feeding through a fucking straw like you were when you were brought into this world. Why not just be vulnerable sooner and allow other people to see the humanity in you? People say to me, and I'll finish here, I know I'm rambling, but somebody said to me once, the one thing you never ever ever do as a speaker is stand on stage and say I'm nervous. That's the golden rule. If I'm nervous and I feel that it's important for me to honor the room and be honest, and I feel compelled to stand on stage, which I've often done, and said, just to clear, I feel really nervous, but please don't mistake that for me not caring. It's because I care so much, I'm nervous that I won't make an impact here today. If people don't like you for that, fuck them, because that is my truth. That is who I am and what I'm feeling in that moment. So vulnerability is everything. It's everything.

That's an amazing answer. And now I'm really nervous because I just want to play a game because you had such a great, you had such a great answer to that question. There are two more words We'll do one at a time that you use often. The first one's loneliness. What does that mean, and maybe how does that tie to vulnerability?

I think loneliness is the greatest pandemic the world has ever seen, without a shadow of a doubt. And most of the loneliness that is prevalent in the world is self-created. I'm sitting in the dressing room the other day, and there's a young man sitting behind me, just to the angle. And I said, is that your station, your locker area, whatever? He goes, no, no, no. And I said, well, why are you sitting over there? 'Oh, it's just a better view.' I said, 'Really? It's just 5 yards.' Those 5 yards make all the difference. So loneliness is something that I've personally struggled with. I think ultimately my, my, my underlying biggest and most painful part of my life is a sense of loneliness. And people who are not vulnerable are the loneliest people in the world. When you're vulnerable, truly vulnerable, the world embraces you. And I've seen this through— probably the greatest example of this I can ever even muster is One Last Talk. And I won't get into all the details of it, but I wrote a book called One Last Talk. And essentially it's like a TED Talk, except you're invited to stand on stage and share the one last talk you'd ever give before you die. And here's what typically happens when you ask somebody to give a one last talk. They go, me? Oh no, geez, no, no, no, no. Now, our friend Claire, she's got an incredible story. She's a brilliant speaker. I said, I didn't ask her, I asked you. And the invitation through one last talk is not to share what you think about global warming, Donald Trump, the education system. It's to share a part of your personal narrative that perhaps the world has never heard. The thing that you're most embarrassed by, the thing that you're most ashamed by. And here's what happens when that happens. When people stand on that stage and they share that, they feel seen, not even heard. There's a seenness that they experience that they've never experienced in the past before. They get off that stage and they feel like they matter more than they've ever done in their life before. I've done this in a maximum security prison. You were there. And I've never felt someone gone, That fucking asshole. Can you believe what they did? It's the opposite. I had a woman walk up to a man in a prison who was a sexual offender. She'd been sexually abused, and her husband looked at me with tears pouring down his face because his wife was distraught because she wanted to save him. She wanted to protect him from going back into the main population because he might be hurt. And he just looked at me and said, I can't imagine, ever imagined seeing this in my wife. When we're vulnerable and we allow people to see all of us, they fall in love with this. And I often say, when it comes to being a star or public figure, I think we have a moral obligation to show, particularly young people, both sides of the coin. My son had an image on his wall once of this footballer called Wayne Rooney, who's an ex-Man United player. And I said, would you like to be a footballer? He goes, yeah, Dad, I'd love to be like Wayne Rooney. And because he just sees the cars and he sees the girls and he sees the money and he sees the fame and he sees there's 70,000 people adoring him. And Wayne is deeply dysfunctional. Do you know why? Not because he's Wayne Rooney, but because he's human. And Wayne's job is not to have to share this. But if Wayne said, hey guys, I struggle with addictions, I get depressed, it's a piece of shit. But most people go, oh my God, Wayne, I didn't realize. And the last thing I'll say this, Mike, is I've seen the simplest way I could describe this is I've seen, I've done one last talk in organizations all around team deepening. And I've seen situations where, say, Johnny in accounts reluctantly does a one last talk, but does it. And Sarah or Jeff in sales goes, Johnny, you know what, if you don't mind me saying, I always thought you were a bit of an asshole, but after hearing your story today, is there any way you and I could go for a cup of coffee next week? Because I'd love to get to know you a bit more.