Your Life's Purpose is Found Here

Welcome to the Soul of Innovation podcast. I am Thomas Anglero. I'm trying to figure life out just like the rest of us. It is so confusing most of the time. You think you got everything figured out, but then nothing makes sense. You think there's a path that's laid out for you, and then that path just changes. You think that— you just think. But what do you know? Life— I truly believe that life is not supposed to be meant to go in a straight line. I have never seen my life go in a straight line. And I don't think it's possible to be able to know what's going to happen tomorrow. I saw a video this morning. A guy talked about how he was on his balcony. The guy is 60-something years old. He was on his balcony in Portugal in some vacation home he has or something. And every year he goes down there on Christmas, he goes down in summer and he sees his neighbor who he only sees in summer and Christmas on his balcony and they would say hi. Well, last Christmas he's on the balcony in Portugal and he hears his neighbor like thump full down, the wife screams, the ambulance comes, the neighbor died in front of his eyes. He was watching from his balcony as he had a heart attack, ambulance gave him the The electrical pads didn't resuscitate him. And the guy reflected on how many years, how many moments do we have left in life? What are you trying to achieve in life? What is it that we're trying to do? And what he understood at that moment was that materialistic stuff is not it. I mean, I have a neighbor who just spent a fortune on building a pool in a beautiful huge yard that was full of grass, apple trees, killed everything and replaced it just with the pool and concrete and throws parties late into the night and doesn't ask to inform the neighbors of anything and just— everything is materialistic with the guy. Everything is materialistic with so many people. Everything is about collecting, everything's about looking cool, about having the right clothes, the right brands, the right sunglasses. About having the right image, having the right cut hair, the right color dress, having in-style clothing. My God. And yet when you're dying on a balcony, what the hell is that pool, the right dress, the sunglasses, the right hair gonna help you? What's gonna do for you? Not a damn thing. What is it that is the purpose of this life that we have? This means to make the most out of every single moment. It means that when somebody that stands next to you that you think is attractive, that you think is nothing, you still are polite to them. You still hello. Maybe you even talk to them. Granted, New York City has a zillion problems. Forget a million, forget a billion, it has a zillion problems. The beauty of the culture of New York is that we talk to each other. You just talk to somebody you don't know. Hey, what's up, man? What's going on? Nice shoes. What's that about? We talk, we exist, we live. And that is why that city is the most magnetic city that everybody in the world wants to go to, wants to live, wants to hang out. Even as bad as the crime rate is, it is addictive because it's the culture. The people have figured out that we are so many people that we live amongst each other. We might as well talk to each other and enjoy each other's company. And that's what's missing in life. It's not the materialistic crap. How many dead people have to die to convince you that collecting all the shit that you bought, you don't take it with you. You take with you the memories. The memories come from you opening your mouth, from you communicating and being nice to someone. And you also have memories of you communicating and not being nice to someone. And that you take with you, and you should feel horrible for that. You should feel horrible for the times where you could have helped somebody out and you didn't. You take that with you too. You try to take with you the excuse of saying, oh, I did it for my family. I screwed that company. I took advantage of that founder when he was trying to get, start his startup. God, I see that all the time. I was just talking to an investor the other day, and he go, I asked him, how is the investor market here in, in Norway. I'm in the country of Norway right now. And he goes, "It's finally really good." And I go, "What does that mean?" I said, "I mean, with the tariffs and everything, everything's horrible." He goes, "No, you don't understand." He says, "Because of the tariffs, because the world's going to crap, valuations of company is cheap. So now we're able to get all these startup companies. We could own more than 50% of companies for nothing. We own them for nothing." He was talking about slavery. He goes, "This is the best the market's been in years." He's happy about slavery. You don't tell me that those investors, in their last moments, they should think about that. We're supposed to have abolished slavery centuries ago, and yet we're doing it to people, doing it to young people who have that brightness in their eyes, who want to solve world problems, and the people who have the means are putting them in slavery and think it's good. You have the power to help somebody who's hungry in the street. Give them $5, give them 50 cents, give them your time. Sit down in front of 'em. I remember I took a bunch of kids to New York City to show them the dark side of New York, to show them how bad things are. And I said, you're gonna give dignity to all the homeless. You're gonna give dignity to all the people who have nothing. We're gonna go to food shelters. You're gonna work there. You're gonna smile. You're gonna talk to these people. And these kids did. They were 16, 17 years old, and they changed the lives of adults, children. They saved the lives of families. They gave dignity to people, and they found that life has dignity and has purpose. But here we are, enslaving people. You enslave people when you don't give them a smile when you know you should have. You enslave people when you don't nod your head. You enslave people when you're not nice to people. You enslave people when you don't— aren't who you were meant to be. And you wonder why, why you're so unhappy. You wonder why— what's the purpose of life? The purpose of life is give love. The person likes to be good. If everyone was good, we would not have problems. But no, we have to be number one. No, we have to make a lot of money. You don't take it with you when you're dying on a balcony in Portugal. You don't take anything with you. You don't take your bikes, your carbon fiber Dura-Ace brand new spanky bike. It stays there on the balcony as you're dying dead there. You don't take that haircut. You don't take that brand new clothes. You don't take the new car. You don't take the new wife. You don't take somebody else's husband you've been sneaking around having sex with. You don't take anything. You don't take that fake degree that ChatGPT did for you. Could you cheat on exams? You take with you the interactions with people. You take the interactions with the people in your family. If you have a family that's loving, a lot of people don't. You don't have memories with family, and that's okay. There's nothing wrong with you. Maybe you were just placed in the wrong family. It is possible. No reflection on you. God bless you for making it this far without a family. But I'm talking about family, I'm talking about friends, I'm talking about people that matter. How about moments where it's not people? Moments like walking down the beach. I remember, I'll never forget, it was a fantastic moment. My wife and I, we were driving from San Francisco down to Los Angeles to catch a flight from Los Angeles. So we said, hey, let's take that famous route. I don't know what number it is along the coast of California all the way down to Los Angeles. We stopped along the way and we said, let's go down to the beach. Been driving this long drive. So we walked down to the beach, down these steps, down to the beach early in the morning just to stretch our legs. And we're walking along the water and there's the Pacific Ocean. About to say the Atlantic because I'm an East Coast boy. It's the West Coast. There's the Pacific Ocean. I'm like, holy shit, Pacific Ocean. I haven't seen this. I'm from the East Coast. It was foggy, beautiful beach. And I looked out into the water and I saw this something bobbing in the water. I'm like, what the hell is that? Is that a can or is it a log? And then boom, popped up again and down, but it was coming closer. I'm like, well, the logs don't move that fast. When all of a sudden, right in front of me, maybe a couple of feet, couple of meters in front of me, out popped out of the water was his head. A seal. A damn seal in real life on a beach in the US. In California. This ain't New York. It's not like I'm hanging out on the East River and a seal pops his head. I was like, what? And I jumped back and my wife said, what's wrong with you? I said, it's a goddamn seal. They belong in the zoo. City boy, you know, stupidity kicks in. And then she just laughed at me because, you know, she's brought up properly and I'm not. So we started walking along the water. I said, "That's incredible. That damn seal." Looked at us, and then it slowly swam alongside us in parallel as we walked down the beach. He kept us company. I slowly tiptoed into the water. He came swimming closer to me. He just wanted to hang out. A seal wanted to hang out with me. He has the entire ocean Pacific Ocean to be, play, swim, eat, frolic. And he wanted to walk with me along the shoreline. That's what you take with you. Memories. Memories. Simple moments that just mean everything. Simple moments of smiling to someone, simple moments of helping another person when they need help, simple moments of respecting someone. There you don't have to smile, there you have to do nothing but just give respect. Simple moments of being nice. Putting out some water for a dog that's thirsty, for an animal that needs help. Not crushing an ant when it walks by you or crawls by you. You take that with you. You don't take any of the stuff that you're buying. You're not taking any of the stuff that you're thinking about and worrying about. No one cares. No one cares. They only care about themselves. And in your last moments of your dying breath, like the gentleman on the balcony in Portugal, he only had his wife, who fortunately heard him fall down. And in that last moment, he looked into her eyes. He had his mind, his thoughts, his memories, and his wife's eyes. And that's all you take with you. So why are you disrespecting? Why are you disrespecting others? Why are you disrespecting yourself? Why haven't you been nice to people? Why do you spend so much time thinking you're all that? When really you're spending all your time loving everyone, the exact opposite of being all that. What's it when you're thinking you're all that? That's all the world's about you, the universe is about you. The exact opposite is the universe and it's about everybody else but you. That's what you take with you in your last moments. You take everyone but you. You take all the memories of everyone. You take all the smells of all the different foods, of all different places you've been, of all the different people you've been with, friends, moments, movie theaters, towns, shops. You take all that with you. But you don't take a damn thing you've ever bought with money, or you ever stole, or moments you stole from other people because you didn't help them, and you didn't help— because you didn't help them, they were denied an opportunity to do something good. You denied an opportunity to eat. They were denied opportunity to go to school, denied opportunity to get a scholarship. All these things. And yes, that's from my past. I could keep on rolling. You stole those things from other people. You may not go to jail for it. Nobody may know, but you know because you didn't help someone, you stole their opportunities. You stole a part of their life that they were meant to have. Every time you don't help someone when you know you can and you choose not to, you're stealing from them. And you're stealing from yourself because you could have loved someone, but you chose not to. Go forth and spread beauty and light. I'm recording this podcast from a parking garage, an underground parking garage. I pulled in here because I just had to share. Because I'm thinking about that guy dying on the balcony and I'm like, this is my moment. In this moment I have to speak. In this moment I have to share these thoughts. In this moment I'm not going to steal it from anyone and I'm going to share this because this is how I show love. By sharing my thoughts, my reflections, because I know it means a lot to a lot of people. So I sit alone in my car in a parking lot in the middle of nowhere, and I don't give a shit. Because I was born maybe for this moment to share these thoughts, to change your life. Maybe I was just born just for you, and I'm not gonna stop your destiny. I'm here for you. Always and forever. I'm Thomas Anglero, sitting in a parking lot, not laying down dying in a balcony yet. But until then, I'm gonna love as many people as I can. Using my voice, using what God has given me. And I'm going to take advantage of every moment I have. I can smiling at strangers. They don't have— you don't have to smile back. I don't give a shit. It's what I want to give you that matters. It's the love I want to give you that matters. No cost, 100% free and guaranteed to change your life if you let it into your heart. Take care of yourself. I love you. Until next time. Thank you for listening to that episode. If you want to contact me, you can contact me on my website at anglero.com, and you can also subscribe to the newsletter, or you can find me anywhere on social media with Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and Twitter. Thank you so much, and I hope to hear from you very soon.