In this fifth installment of the 30 Days of Encore video series, the host reflects on a powerful quote from the Gospel of Thomas about bringing forth one’s inner gifts, linking it to the concept of vocation and the second half of life. He references Stephen Cope’s work, outlines the purpose of his new book, The Art of Encore Living, and provides a progress update: the book has reached #3 in one of three Amazon bestseller categories and the associated free community now has over 25 members, aiming for 100. The host explains the free Art of Encore Living Community on the SuccessFinders platform, its spam‑free, pitch‑free environment, and the upcoming “Legacy Circle” calls that will dive deeper into discovering and expressing one’s true calling. He offers practical guidance on how to identify core talents by recalling childhood moments of flow and joy, and encourages viewers to comment “guide” to receive purchase information or “community” to join the group. The tone is instructional, motivational, and promotional, emphasizing personal fulfillment, meaning, and the “difference only you can make” in the second half of life.
Chapters
If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you. This is a really powerful quote about hearing and heeding the call of vocation, your life's true calling, your soul's true purpose, from the Gospel of Thomas. And it's a quote that I've been thinking about quite a bit lately. Yesterday— or I'm sorry, earlier today— I shared, um, some Stephen Cope unpacking that quote a little bit further in a discussion we had. Stephen Cope, the author of The Great Work of Your Life, one of my favorite books about hearing and heeding the calling of vocation. And this is day 5 of 30 Days of Encore. What I'm doing is during the series of broadcasts, I am doing an over-the-shoulder look at the launch of my new book, The Art of Encore Living: A Guide to Find Fulfillment, Forge Meaning, and Make a Difference in the Second Half of Life. And sharing our progress about the community of readers that we're building called the Art of Encore Living Community inside the SuccessFinders platform and the series of free calls that we are hosting there around the launch of the book where we're going a little bit further and a little bit deeper with some of the principles and practices discussed in the book. Our first call is coming up this, uh, this early this next week, we're going to actually go into a little bit more about how do we bring forth what is within us. How do we know what it is that we're bringing forth within us? That's going to be the topic of our first call. I'm going to go a little bit more into that just a minute. If you would like to learn more about the Art of Encore Living book, leave guide in the comments and I'll send you a link where you can learn more. And if you're interested in joining a free community of readers that are going to be going further with the principles and practices taught in the book in a series, short series of calls during the launch, during this period of the 30 Days of Encore, then leave "community" in the comments, and I'll send you a link where you can learn more about the community. Here's the thing about the community. It's free to join. You're going to have access to other leaders and their content, all free, curated, powerful, impactful, will serve anyone that is seeking to level up in the difference only they can make. And it's a spam-free, pitch-free zone. You're not going to be joining any kind of a mailing list or mark— you're not going to receive any marketing emails, and nobody's going to be pitching their products or services to you. All you're going to do is have an opportunity to learn and go broader and deeper with the ideas that we're sharing inside The Art of Encore Living. So I hope you'll consider dropping those comments— guide for the book, uh, uh, community for the community, um, and you're free to drop both. So I want to give you a quick update on, uh, the book. I've been trying to be really transparent about sharing the progress with the book sales. Yesterday we had kind of a milestone. As if you've been following these videos, you know that we have been ranking, uh, in 3 different Amazon bestseller categories. And yesterday we had kind of a milestone of sorts. If you look at this screenshot that I'm bringing up right now, you'll see that we have hit number 3 in one of the 3 categories that we are ranking in. So that's kind of exciting. I really appreciate those of you that are sending me messages that you've bought the book, that you're enjoying the book. I would encourage everyone that has purchased a copy on Amazon or been gifted a copy by me or purchased a copy on my site, please consider leaving us a review. It really helps more of the right people collide with the book and potentially join our community and, and help them step into possibility with the difference that they want to make in the second half of life. The other piece of news is that we have crossed a threshold in the community. We have over 25 members now, as you all know. I'm hoping to get 100 people in this community during the 30 Days of Encore. Uh, we're a quarter of the way there, just 5 days into, um, the series of videos. So really excited about all that. Thanks so much to all of you who, um, are trusting yourself enough to go ahead and invest in yourself, uh, and invest a little bit of your valuable time and attention by joining the community. And working through the book on the series of calls so that we can help you dial in the difference only you can make so that you can find more fulfillment and greater meaning and make a bigger difference in the second half of life. So, let's get to the topic today, which is, you know, this idea of, well, you know, I want to bring forth what is within me, but how do I know what that is? And how do I bring it forth? Now, on the very first call in the community, which is happening early next week. Those calls are part of the Legacy Circle series of calls. We're probably looking at about 4 short calls over the course, you know, happening here in this month of March around the launch of the book. Very first call, we're going to, we're going to talk a little bit more, go a little bit deeper. So I've shared um, two different ways that you can approach, uh, clarifying what you really want from the second half of life and what's the difference only you can make in the second half of life. I think those things are very tied together. On the call, I'm going to share a third one, and it has to do with this idea of bringing forth what is within us. The idea— and again, this is validated by ancient philosophical and spiritual traditions, it's time-tested wisdom— that many, that hundreds of thousands of people have found useful in embracing and engaging the difference only they can make, hearing and heeding their life's true calling and living a more joyful life full of more peace of mind and purpose by hearing and heeding the call of vocation. And so the basic idea is that we are born sufficient and whole. We possess everything that we need to thrive and flourish in, in, in this life. And, you know, if that doesn't sound like, you know, if you're not quite sure how that could possibly be, I would just encourage you to reflect back on your earliest memories. You know, there was a point when you were, um, and this is very top of mind with me because we, we provide care for our day our grandson every day is, you know, just watching as he is developing himself, learning how to talk, learning how to walk. We do these things with very little, if any, instruction— hopefully a lot of encouragement— but, you know, we largely have these capacities within us, and we have to bring them forth. And we do this by being fearless creative beings building ourselves from the ground up. We, you know, goo goo and gaga until we can put together some other syllables and put— create, you know, the words from those syllables and create sentences from those words and create paragraphs and start telling stories. We do all this by doing it really, really badly until we learn to do it really, really well. We just have this daily practice of learning to talk, learning to walk, learning to read, learning to write, riding a bike, making a sandwich. These are all things that you did fearlessly, without any self, uh, any concern, without any negotiation with your imposter syndrome or your inner saboteur, without any fear of being judged by others. And then something really interesting happens as we continue in our journey in the first half of life, you know, we end up getting schooled for and occupied by this false promise of the pursuit of happiness, that if we, you know, conform and comply and compete in school, we'll be rewarded with, you know, a salary and some status, and we'll be able to get some stuff. But in the second half of life, some of us wake up to, you know, there must be more to it than this. This first half of life journey of status, stuff, and salary is not really as rewarding. It's not making me as happy as I thought it would. Maybe you've been through some sort of crisis in your life and it's put a really fine point that, you know, with the time you have left, you'd like to have a life that means a little bit more, that feels a little bit more fulfilling, where you are out there making a difference. And so, I think it's going back, like, you know, beyond learning to walk and talk and read and write, like, what are the things that really lit you up in your childhood? You know, what are the activities? You know, what are the sports, the hobbies, the things that you did where you really felt a sense of feeling in flow, inspired, connected, you know, a greater sense of awe, wonder, a greater sense of playfulness and joy? Those aren't necessarily the things that you should be doing in the second half of life. I mean, I love to color as a child, but doesn't mean that I'm I'm supposed to run away to Paris and become a painter in the second half of life. But it does point to some of the values and the talents that have always been within you that you can start to craft and use to create a second half of life endeavor that you can begin to develop and deliver with and for people that you care about so that you can experience that greater sense of fulfillment, joy. Meaningfulness and peace of mind that you seek. And so, I'm sharing that as a little lesson today for you to take away and to start to think about. If you'd like to go further with ideas like this, if you'd like to get more clarity about what you really want from the second half of life and how to close the gap more confidently and quickly, then I would love to see you join us inside the Art of Encore Living Community, where you can join the Legacy Circle calls This is a free community. The calls are absolutely free. They all happen in a very safe environment. There's no spamming, no pitching. There's, you know, nothing is gonna be shared publicly. You have access to replays, but only access inside the community with the people that are participating on the calls with you. If that sounds interesting, leave community in the comments. I'll share information that will help you make a decision about whether this sounds like people like you who want to do things like this. And if you want to catalyze that experience, grab a copy of The Art of Encore Living. You can leave guide in the comments and I'll tell you about, uh, the places where you can go to purchase that. And whatever you decide, I hope that you will consider embracing and engaging The Difference Only You Can Make, the journey to define, develop, and deliver the difference that you were put on this earth to make a life and create a life of greater fulfillment, meaning, purpose, joy, equanimity, and peace of mind. So that's, that's day 5 of the 30 Days of Encore. I hope that this has been valuable to you. I'll look forward to seeing you on day 6. And until then, be well, do good, and have fun.
