The Quest for Clarity: Unveiling Your Meaningful Revolution

What is a meaningful revolution? What's a question you can ask yourself to check if you're on track or not with your personal, meaningful evolution? What is the meaningful matrix that describes that? And what is the one thing that we should all be doing in order to realize and amplify the dreams, the ambitions, the purpose of the meaningful things in our life? That's what we're going to talk about in today's episode of the Meaningful Revolution Podcast. Hey everyone, it's Sean Butner, host of the Meaningful Revolution Podcast and welcome to this almost 100 episode, near 100th episode 99. As a watch of this, and as such, I've been doing a lot of reflection. I had a dream to do the 100th episode live on YouTube, so you can check out my YouTube channel in the show notes below if you want to join me on that next week and we'll take some questions. I'll just, you know, talk a little bit more about things that I've learned and things that are really special in that episode. So stay tuned for that. You should be able to subscribe to it on my YouTube channel as of right now. Anyways, okay. Thinking about a hundred episodes of this thing that I started two years ago. A year and a half ago. Two years ago. It's pretty wild. I think the idea of the Meaningful Revolutions evolved a bit. I know every so often I do these episodes as I'm thinking through and trying to get a little bit clearer on what my personal revolution is and what that means for you guys and gals and folks. So that's what we're going to talk about today. And so I'll just go through those five questions that I posed here at the starting of the episode, tell a couple stories. What is a Meaningful Revolution? The Meaningful Revolution podcast is for people who are for and about creating meaning in their lives to lead, to serve, and to live with more joy and to create positive change out in the world, right? So it's people that are out there really crushing their dreams and realizing they're sharing their messages and purpose out in the world actively and with clarity. It's people dreaming about starting their meaningful revolution. They, they know that what they want to go and accomplish, but they don't know how to to get there or they're not actively taking action towards it. There are folks that are trying tons of things but are not sure what their purpose really is. So they're out there taking a lot of action but trying to shape what that meaningful revolution is. And then there are people that are just not sure and are not taking action or just wandering. Right. And so these are the kinds of folks that I've seen in the audience, and if you identify with any of those, I'm cheering you on. Right. This is a continu or a continuum, not a. It's not meant to discourage or to point my finger at or anything. Right. So I just how I organized folks that are on this meaningful revolution journey. So this could be people that are fed up with not having control of their destiny. So they're maybe they're working in a job that is not helping them grow to. To live fully, to thrive or providing that sense of fulfillment in service to. To helping people or creating a legacy that they want. It's someone who does want to feel more fulfilled every day. And maybe they have obligations that are preventing them from serving with more excellence. It could be people that are burning through all personal development, all of the different hobbies, all the different career development in very desperate attempt in search to find their thing. Or could just be people that just want more out of their life for themselves, for their family, for their organization, community, mission and purpose. And so it's taken me a hundred episodes to get that clear and trying to articulate the kind of people that are on and have joined the meaningful revolution. And hopefully that's you. Um, and the question I have for you is, where in your life are you striving for that sense of more, for that sense of fulfillment, of full expression, meaning that is showing you as a role model for how we should be out in the world. Right? Because I think people that are connected to a passion, are actively pursuing it, growing it, sharing it with other people, have a very more or have a more buoyant energy, and they're actually doing good out in the world. And then that's what the general idea is for this. Because this podcast started as the idea I'm just going to interview, or I'm going to interview people that nerd out about certain topics, explore that, learn how they got into actually taking action on their dream, their passion, or their purpose and their mission, and try to extrapolate what they did so that other people could follow. Right. And if I'm honest with you, in the last hundred episodes, I've not been super great at that particular thing. We've had some amazing guests and tons of amazing insights, and not having this focus, this clear, has prevented maybe some more of that edgy or more of that impactful connection to how you can apply this in your life. So that's something I'm continuing to work on and will continue to work on for the next hundred episodes of the podcast. But yeah, so that this is where we're at right now. So hopefully if I've been doing my job here, you thought, hey, this is for me. And if not, that's totally cool too. It feels like right now the podcast is in a pivot point where I've been maybe too vague on the outcome or why people should listen or how this is helpful to you, and we're going to try to bring that more into clarity. So just wanted to point that out and I thought you guys might like a little bit of the behind the scenes thinking behind this podcast. So which comes to our first question is what is a meaningful revolution? Right? And again, the way I define it at the top of this episode is it's, this is a movement for people that are out there following their meaningful pursuit and are actively taking action to lead more effectively, to serve greater with a greater impact, and to have the joy and confidence that comes with knowing that you're on your path, knowing that you are really getting after the thing that lights your fire in your heart and you're doing it right. So I want to celebrate that for me, my meaningful revolution. And when I look back at my career, which started as a software engineer for a big company, you might know called Walmart, with a small period of trying to start a business and then ending up at Apple as a software engineer, it's, that path is insane to me. And it's insane because I, other than having an interest in computers since I could walk, essentially I didn't have any computer science training, right? I did a programming class in high school. I went to business school for my undergrad and graduate work. And then the, the graduate work, I have another, a semester or two of Java programming, right? That's the extent of software engineering that I had taken in my formal education with a business focus, mind you, and then landing my first job in corporate America as a software developer and getting enough experience at that first job to then work at Apple, right? It's insane to me when this is me following my passion, following something I was really interested in, not giving up on that, even though I didn't really get the formal training behind it and turning it into a successful career over 12, 14 years. I have to do the math in real time as I'm doing this. I'm not going to do that because I'll goof it up. But it's insane to me, right? I can't believe that was my path. And then to get more interested in helping people as a certified high performance coach and helping people discover what their passions are and maybe start businesses on something that they believed in, on principle or something they needed for themselves and their family so that they could be a happy adult. These are things that was also in vain. It's very surprising. I feel very fortunate to have been able to help those folks out and so many others in my coaching practice. And then really just connecting with, oh, I want to serve people and I want to figure out how do I have that impact at a greater scale. Right. Part of that led me to create this podcast. Part of it has led me to try a bunch of doing YouTube videos and stuff, which, looking back, has been very great. Training on how to talk to a camera and not feel like a deer in headlights about to get run over. As someone that's an introvert. It's also helped me manage the habits around content creation so that I have the energy to do these things. And, you know, sometimes it worked out, sometimes my energy seemed really flat, probably, and I'm sure you guys don't notice it, but I do. And it's something I'm striving to get better at and striving to really help deliver more value to you and these podcasts and everything else I do. Because ultimately I want to help people and serve people so that they can help people and serve people, and then they help two people to help and serve better and so on and so forth. You have that crazy triangle, right, of people helping, serving, and leading in their spaces. So that's. That's my dream for my personal, meaningful revolution, is to have that impact out in the world. And, yeah, I love doing this. And it's been really. It's one of the most hardest things I've ever done in my life. But we have to not give up and just keep going. And that's what I've been doing. So if you've been with me for a while, thank you. And if you're one of my friends or family that continually listens to this thing, I see you. I'm eternally grateful and I love it. If you're new to the podcast, welcome. I hope you become one of those people that sticks along with us. And I hope you start your meaningful road. I hope you take action towards your passions, those meaningful pursuits, those things that will help you generate the legacy and abundance and joy for yourself out in the world so that you can be that role model and inspire other people to do the same. So that's the first question. What is the meaningful revolution in general? And then to me personally, and what would your meaningful revolution be? If you could have a greater impact, if you could lead with more excellence and effectiveness, if you could really shift how your day went and could wake up every day and do things that were meaningful, that helped advance your life and helped your family and your community, what would your meaningful revolution be? And I want you to write that down somewhere and I want you to put it up by your computer so you see it every day as a reminder for you to choose to follow that, even if just a little bit. Even if it's just, I'm going to read one article on my mission, my purpose, my interest, the thing that I would nerd out about, no matter what. I would read an article anyways. But now I'm going to be a little bit more intentional behind it. I'm going to make sure that as I drink my morning coffee or my morning tea or have my morning water, whatever the thing you do in the morning, part of that is doing a little thing for yourself, for that mission, that purpose, so that you can be a little bit more effective as a leader. So that's my wish for you. And so I hope, write down your meaningful revolution or the idea you have right now and maybe you'll be like me. You'll do a hundred podcast episodes trying to get clearer and more refined in how you're going about it. That would be cool, too. It's a lot of fun, It's a lot of work. Like I said, it's a lot of work, a lot of stress, a lot of what am I doing with my life sometimes. But it's also the excitement of I'm living the life that I want to and the life that I've. I'm going to die on this hill type thing. Okay, so that was the first thing. What does it mean for revolution? Second question I led with at the top of this episode is what is a question you can ask yourself to see if you're on tracker, right? And this is one of the most powerful personal development questions that was ever asked of me. And I remember sitting in a hotel conference room, air conditioned, blaring, right? And the room being quiet. Because the person who is leading this seminar, this high performance seminar, is Brendan Burchard. He asked the audience to journal for five minutes on are you living your truth? And take a note right now if you're able to, and you're not driving or whatever because of a podcast, but Ask yourself that question and journal on it. Take five minutes. If you're listening to this, pause and journal for five minutes on this, because I'll tell you how you answer this will be very revealing. Right? There are going to be people that say, am I living my truth? And you're like, yes, I am a great parent. I am doing things that I want in life. I have meaning every day. I'm excited to get out of bed and just live my life to the fullest. Right? And awesome. I'm cheering those people on. There are people. Well, you'll be like, ugh, I don't like my response to this. And that was me in that conference room, sitting in that chair, crunched up, writing out in my journal what my truth was at that moment in my life. And I didn't like the fact that I had settled for what I thought was a safe bet at my job at the time. I didn't like that my day to day was filled with a lot of busy work that wasn't really helping me develop as a business professional, as a software engineer, as developing anything I was really interested in. It wasn't really feeling like I was contributing to something that was helping people. I was just the gear going through the motions, Right? And I didn't like that. I thought about in the future, when I have kids someday, because I was a young man at that point, what would my legacy be if I said I did the safe thing that made me unhappy for the good chunk of my life and I did not like that response. And maybe you are someone that doesn't like your response like that. And then the question is, what would my life look like if I was building a legacy, if I was more fulfilled, if I was doing things every day that I believed in and that were making a difference in people's lives? And that shifted everything for me because that led me to make a decision like, okay, I need to change what's going on and I need to do it with urgency because life is short. I need to do it in a way where I'm not going to drop all the obligations I had with like, student loans and things like that. Right? It wasn't a flip the tables, quit your job and hope for the best, right? No, there was planning that needed to go. But from that day forward, it was evident that I needed to change and it was evident that I was going to do it or die. And that led to some amazing things in my life. Right? That decision led to me moving away from that job, starting a business, learning that I'm bad at starting a business and having that fail. But it ultimately landed me at Apple as a software engineer, which was a dream job. Someone who, again, didn't have all the formal training. Being able to work at a organization of that caliber, doing things that were really cool was outside of my. The realm of possibility. But it all became possible when I made that decision. And I had no expectation that that would happen. You know, kind of lucky. And that's a whole other story for a whole other day. But are you living your truth? There might be people that are like, I'm comfortable. Right? Things are good. I don't want to rock the boat. If I was really living my truth, I'd be doing this and this. But things are okay and I'm comfortable and that's fine too. But if you feel restless, if you feel like, ah, there's something more that should be here, like, this is almost a call to action to be like, what, what make your life go from good to great to amazing to inspirational into something that people would admire you for, Right? Not that people wouldn't admire you being comfortable. And yeah, we could totally go through all of the hedges to that statement. But for yourself, if you're not being challenged, if you're not feeling like you're serving or helping people, it's going to get you into a point where you just aren't satisfied or you're anxious and restless. And I've lived that life too, and it's not bad, but it's not good. So what do you want to do? I would encourage you to really think through this question again. Are you living your truth? All right, so with all that said, so the first two questions that we've already talked about out of four that I listed at the top of the episode is what is a meaningful revolution? What is the question you should ask yourself to see if you're on track or not, and that your answer will determine if you are and what you need to do. That is, are you living your truth? The third thing I wanted to talk about is the meaningful matrix, right? So this is basically, if you draw like one line across, it's delay on one side and action on the other. You draw a line vertically, you have clarity at the top and uncertainty at the bottom, right? And if you are not taking action or delaying and you're uncertain about what you want to do, that is in the terms of the meaningful revolution. And I'll probably change these as we move forward, but it's a settler, right? You are going with the flow. Maybe if someone's like, hey, you need to advance up the corporate line because that's what people do. And so you're working to get promoted in an organization that maybe you're not super passionate about, maybe you're lucky and it's a great organization and things are just cooking. Maybe not, but you're just going with the flow and trying to do what you're supposed to do in air quotes, right? You're supposed to go to college, you're supposed to get a good job, you're supposed to meet a good spouse, you're supposed to have kids and have the big house and have the nice cars and so on and so forth. And there's a lack of vision here, right? And so like I said, you could be very comfortable in this subtler part, but it's not something that is really driving a lot of excitement, a lot of fulfillment, a lot of happiness, per se, right? Not intentional. And again, what can happen here is you end up going down a path and you're like, how did I get here? I never wanted to be someone that was pick. You know, okay, here's what I wanted to say. I'm not someone that is hounding people every day to pay debt that they don't have money to pay. Right? You're a debt collector because you just went, followed the money and you didn't say. What I really wanted to do was, you know, lead people and help people with getting the best health insurance they could, right? Something that's more helpful versus following the money is the idea. And so that's the big risk at just settling and going with the flow. If you are trying a lot of things, trying to figure out what your thing is, what your purpose is, what your mission is, I call that the searcher, right? So you're doing a lot of things. You're taking a bunch of classes, you're doing personal development. You're trying a bunch of different hobbies, you're trying to do a bunch of different careers. You're trying to def. You know, trying. Accumulating knowledge and experience, and you haven't found your thing yet, right? And here the. The big risk is you can get caught in that mode of like, the answer is outside of you and you don't have enough experience, right? And certainly if you're young, it might be, it's a little bit more valuable to try a bunch of different things than if you've been trying a bunch of things for the last 20 years and you haven't found your thing yet. Right. At some point you need to make the decision and do the analysis of, like, of everything that I've tried. You put it in a spreadsheet. Like, of everything that I've learned, everything that I've tried. What are the common threads of what I love? Right. In what I've done this exercise in the past is I like helping people excel. It's like leadership type stuff. I really like creating processes and methodologies. I like doing the kind of like, industrial engineer thing. If you take a set of steps, like, how could you do it quicker? How do you optimize it? Like, that stuff really get my head going in the different jobs that I've done. If I'm learning, if I'm collaborating with people, if I'm. Or playing music. Right. That's one of the other things. Right. If I. So it doesn't have to be like a wholly, like, bucketed list. That makes sense. So I like music, I like learning, I like improving processes, analyzing stuff. I'm very methodical in that way. That was what was really helpful throughout my career and all my hobbies and relationships and everything that I was, like, reading and interested in. And so how can I take that and make that into a career? Right. It's maybe if I started a business. You have to create processes in your business. That's fun. You have to always be learning because the market's always changing. So that's cool. And so I took that step. We've taken that step a couple of times. And now I'm in my coaching business and doing this podcast and some other stuff. So. Which is fun. So what is that list for you? If you're. That search, that's the second thing. So if you have. If you're delaying, but you have clarity on what you want to do, so you've figured out, okay, I want to learn, I want to help people, I want to do process improvement and I want to, like, do music, like I just said. But you don't ever change. Right. I call these people reactionary because again, they're going with the flow. You know where you want to go, but you just don't know the way to get there. And this is when people hire coaches or you get into a community of people that are on the path, or you listen to a podcast like this where people are talking about the things that they've done in order to follow those meaningful things in their lives. So back to you again, cheering you on. I just want to appreciate you and respect people that are out there doing that. And the Thing that you have to really do to break through if you're this reactionary type of person, is to commit, like, I'm going to do this. At this point, you set a deadline and you either go or you don't go. But it's more about working in to your life, those things that are going to help you create and grow your personal, meaningful revolution. And then finally, if you're clear and you're taking action on it, I call you the revolutionary. You are the changemaker out in the world. You're a leader. You are, you know, making things happen for yourself, but you're also grounded in service and helping other people. And so that's when you change the world. That's where I hope to be someday. I think I feel like I'm more in that reaction at any point right now, or there's always a ton more I feel like I should be doing for my business, for my mission here, which is, you know, to, to really help people find theorem for revolutions. There's that. So that's the matrix again. It's the settler, the searcher, the reactionary, and the revolutionary based on how clear you are on your meaningful pursuit and if you're delaying or taking action. So just how I've seen people fall through in my business the last five years, so thought I'd share that. Okay, on the four questions at the top of the episode again, we had what is the meaningful revolution? Are you living your truth as the question? Ask yourself to see if you're tracking or not this meaningful matrix with action and clarity based on it. And then finally, I just want to say, if there's one thing you take away from this episode or this podcast or any of the work that I do, it's to have an action bias. To take steps outside of your company, our comfort zone, in order to grow as a person, but also aligned with the things you love. And I believe in this so much because I am someone that will get stuck in my head and I know when I am delaying, when I am thinking about something for too long and I'm like, I really want to learn how to play music, but I don't take lessons. Right. That's when I noticed that in myself. It's okay, sign up for the listen, right? If it's, hey, I've been thinking about really shifting my focus from technology into helping people through coaching. I gotta have a deadline and make a decision and work towards making sure that I'll be fine, my family will be fine when I decide to make that jump. From corporate America into entrepreneurship. And so I am a firm believer in try a bunch of things, Iterate, you learn, don't get stuck in searching for the right answer, but get some experience and start making some educated guesses on how to either get more joy or get more fulfillment or get more service to others through the things you're doing by improving. Right? Again, I'm an introvert, so it can take a lot of energy when it comes to interacting with people sometimes. But it's really, it served me as a software engineer to be like, I have this idea, let me try it, see how it works. Okay, I can iterate it over and over again. That's really like the thing to think about is how could you take action on that meaningful revolution that you hopefully put on a post it note and put by your computer while we were doing this? Because I think if you're living your truth or you know what your truth is, you can take little actions every day that really can snowball into something amazing and great for you and for your family and for the community. So with all of that, folks, if you are interested in engaging a little bit more with the podcast, I do have a soft launch for the community space for the meaningful revolution called the Meaningful Revolution Club where we'll talk about how to find your purpose. We'll talk about how to build a business around an interest if you have that. So these are just things that I'm super interested in, so I'm leading through example. But if that's you, please go to SeanButner.com backslash MrP for Meaningful Revolution podcast and that's in the show notes below. And sign up for the newsletter because when you sign up for that newsletter letter, you'll get an invitation from me to join the soft launch that'll happen this month and then next month we'll go into a more public launch and I'll start charging for the community and stuff for some of the tiers. More on that if you sign up. So if you're curious about what that is, make sure if you're not already on my email list, go to SeanButter.com MRP and get signed up for the newsletter. You get weekly updates on these podcast episodes as they come out, what's going on in my world, and so much more. And you'll get the invitation to the soft launch of the community. So with that said, guys, live with more purpose out there and more meaning in your life and we'll see you in the next episode of the Meaningful Revolution podcast. Sa.