How to Find Your Purpose | Robert Greene & Dr. Andrew Huberman
Summary
TLDRThe transcript discusses the challenge of finding one's purpose in life, emphasizing the importance of identifying one's unique strengths and passions from an early age. It highlights the concept of 'life's task' and how it can provide direction and focus, turning a potentially overwhelming array of choices into a meaningful path. The conversation also touches on Howard Gardner's 'Five Frames of Mind', suggesting that recognizing diverse forms of intelligence can help individuals understand their natural inclinations and potential career paths. The narrative encourages embracing both positive and negative experiences as they shape our motivations and ultimately, our life's trajectory.
Takeaways
- 🌟 Finding one's purpose provides direction and concentration of energy, eliminating the feeling of being lost.
- 👶 Childhood experiences and early interests can be strong indicators of one's unique potential and calling.
- 🧠 Gardner's 'Five Frames of Mind' highlights multiple forms of intelligence, suggesting we should recognize and develop our dominant strengths.
- 🌧️ Over time, external pressures and expectations can muffle our inner voice, making it harder to discern our true interests and passions.
- 🚦 Identifying and pursuing one's primal inclination can lead to greater discipline and faster learning, fueled by emotional engagement.
- 🎯 The process of self-discovery involves sifting through life experiences to uncover the 'bones' that point towards our life's task.
- 🌈 Recognizing both positive and negative experiences as formative in shaping our path, whether they inspire us or repel us from certain directions.
- 💡 Emotional engagement with a subject matter significantly enhances learning and retention, as opposed to a dispassionate approach.
- 🌍 The quest for purpose is not about rigidly defining a specific job or role, but rather about finding a guiding framework for life's journey.
- 🛤️ It's never too late to find one's path; even those who discover it later in life can experience a profound sense of fulfillment and direction.
Q & A
What is the main challenge humans face in finding their life's purpose?
-The main challenge is that humans are born without a clear direction, and they have to navigate through various life choices and distractions to eventually find their sense of purpose or 'life's task'.
How does having a sense of purpose affect a person's life?
-Having a sense of purpose gives direction and meaning to a person's life, concentrates their energy, and helps them focus on their path without getting lost in distractions or feeling overwhelmed.
What is the importance of childhood in discovering one's unique potential?
-Childhood is crucial because it is the time when individuals are most connected to their natural interests and inclinations, which can serve as a guide to discovering their unique potential and later, their life's task.
What are 'impulse voices' and how do they help in self-discovery?
-Impulse voices are the internal cues or preferences that guide children towards what they like or dislike. They are essential for self-discovery as they help identify one's natural interests and inclinations.
What is Howard Gardner's 'Five Frames of Mind' and how does it relate to finding one's intelligence type?
-Howard Gardner's 'Five Frames of Mind' is a theory that identifies five forms of intelligence: linguistic, logical-mathematical, bodily-kinesthetic, musical, and interpersonal. It suggests that individuals naturally veer towards one or two of these intelligence types, which can help them find their unique strengths and interests.
How can recalling childhood experiences aid in finding one's life's task?
-Recalling childhood experiences can help individuals identify their early interests and passions, which may have been overshadowed by external influences over time. These memories can provide clues to their natural inclinations and potential life's task.
What is the impact of negative experiences on a person's path in life?
-Negative experiences can sometimes push individuals away from certain paths, but they can also form and shape their preferences and motivations, leading them towards their true calling, as long as there is a balance with positive experiences and a clear sense of what they truly love.
Why is it important to engage emotionally with a subject or task?
-Emotional engagement enhances learning and retention, as the brain learns more effectively when it is emotionally invested in the subject matter. This engagement leads to greater focus, discipline, and motivation.
How can the process of self-discovery be compared to archeology?
-Just like archeology involves digging deep to uncover hidden artifacts, the process of self-discovery requires individuals to delve into their past and uncover their buried interests and passions, which are the 'bones' of their true potential.
What is the significance of having a sense of direction in life?
-A sense of direction provides a framework that guides individuals through the various choices and challenges they face. It offers stability and clarity amidst life's chaos, helping them stay true to their path and avoid getting lost in external influences.
How can one determine whether they are kinesthetically or intellectually oriented?
-One can determine their orientation by observing their natural interests and the types of activities that engage them the most. Those who are kinesthetically oriented may feel more connected to physical activities and 'thinking with their body,' while intellectually oriented individuals may prefer mental pursuits and abstract thinking.
Outlines
🌟 Discovering One's Life's Task
This paragraph discusses the challenges of finding a sense of purpose in life. It emphasizes that while we are born without a predefined direction, discovering our life's task can provide focus and meaning. The speaker suggests that this process is not easy and does not come with an instant formula. The uniqueness of each individual's DNA and experiences is highlighted as a source of power that should not be wasted. The importance of listening to one's 'impulse voices' from childhood, which indicate personal preferences and inclinations, is also discussed, along with the idea that these voices can guide individuals towards their intellectual and career paths.
🎓 Navigating Life's Distractions
The speaker in this paragraph explores how as individuals grow older, external influences such as teachers, parents, and peers can drown out their inner voice. This can lead to a loss of personal direction and a sense of self. The paragraph discusses the impact of societal and familial expectations on personal choices and the importance of reconnecting with one's innate interests and passions. The speaker also emphasizes the significance of emotional engagement in learning and personal development, using personal experiences and the concept of multiple intelligences to illustrate this point.
🌱 Cultivating Self-Discovery
This paragraph delves into the process of self-discovery, likening it to an archeological excavation to unearth one's true potential and calling. The speaker encourages individuals to explore their childhood experiences and emotions to find their life's task. The paragraph also touches on the concept of 'frames of mind' and how different forms of intelligence can shape one's path. The importance of recognizing and nurturing one's unique interests and talents is stressed, as well as the idea that both positive and negative experiences can contribute to one's personal and professional development.
💡 The Role of Emotions in Personal Growth
The final paragraph examines the role of emotions in guiding personal growth and the discovery of one's purpose. It discusses how both love and hate can shape one's path, with the latter potentially leading to a redirection or a stronger determination to avoid certain experiences. The speaker shares personal anecdotes to illustrate how negative experiences in journalism and Hollywood led to a clearer sense of purpose as a writer. The paragraph concludes with a reflection on how both positive and negative emotions can trigger neurochemical changes in the brain, driving personal development and the pursuit of one's true calling.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡direction
💡purpose
💡uniqueness
💡internal radar
💡childhood
💡intelligence
💡emotional engagement
💡self-discovery
💡boredom
💡learning
💡passion
Highlights
The inherent challenge of finding one's life's purpose and direction without an innate guide.
The importance of having a sense of purpose to concentrate one's energy and efforts.
The concept of 'life's task' as a source of direction and purpose in life.
The idea that everyone has a unique DNA and life experience, making them one of a kind.
The power of utilizing one's uniqueness to create a meaningful career path.
Maslow's 'impulse voices' as an early indicator of one's interests and dislikes.
Howard Gardner's 'Five Frames of Mind' as a theory of multiple forms of intelligence.
The natural inclination of the brain towards a dominant form of intelligence.
The importance of following one's natural inclination for maximum potential.
The loss of 'impulse voices' as one grows older due to external influences.
The negative impact of societal and parental expectations on one's true calling.
The critical role of emotional engagement in learning and personal development.
The analogy of discovering one's purpose as akin to discovering one's natural habitat as an animal.
The process of self-discovery as restricting choices to align with one's true interests.
The impact of early 'seed emotions' on later life choices and passions.
The idea that both love and hate can shape one's path and motivations.
The importance of experiencing love for learning to counteract the negative effects of dislikes.
The role of discipline and practice in honing one's natural inclinations and talents.
Transcripts
Being a human being is not easy as opposed to an animal
because we're born and nobody gives us like a direction.
Our parents might be a little bit,
our college teachers, et cetera, mentors,
but generally we're on our own.
And it's a very, very difficult process.
You wake up in the morning
and you don't really know what you can do.
You could choose 12 different paths.
It can be very confusing and very overwhelming.
When you find that sense of purpose,
when you find what I call your life's task,
everything has a direction.
Everything has a purpose.
Your energy is concentrated.
It's not like you're just going down
a single narrow pathway.
It's not like life becomes boring
and it's just about discipline and solving problems.
It's actually the most exciting thing
that can ever happen to you
because you never have that lost feeling.
You wake up in the morning and you go,
"Yeah, this is what I need to accomplish."
People come at you with all kinds of distractions
and boring and irritating things.
You're able to cut it out.
It's just the most marvelous piece of internal radar
that you can have.
So I genuinely wish that everybody can find
that kind of internal radar.
And so it's not easy and I understand that.
There's no instant formula
because we're all about instant formulas.
It's difficult and I want you to know that
so it's not like Robert can give me the answer
in three minutes.
No, I can't.
But there's a process involved.
It's not a mystery.
You can follow a very singular process.
And the idea is you're talking about childhood.
The way I like to frame it is when you were born,
you are a phenomenon.
You are unique.
Your DNA has never occurred in the history of the universe.
Going back billions of years,
it will never occur in the future.
Your life experience with your parents
and everything that you experienced
in your early years going on up is unique.
It's yours.
You're one of a kind, right?
So that is your source of power.
To waste that is just the worst thing
you can do in your life.
And what the power is is finding that uniqueness.
What makes you you and how you can mine that
and how you can go deep into it
and use that to create a career path, right?
And so I tell people when you're a child,
when you're four or five or even younger,
you have what the great psychologist Maslow
called impulse voices.
They're little voices in your head that say,
I love this, I hate that.
I like this food.
I don't like when mommy moves this way.
I like when daddy comes from here.
You're very cued into who you are
and what you like and what you don't like.
And these voices kind of direct you in certain ways, right?
And when you're very young,
they direct you towards intellectual mental pursuits
as well.
And there's a book I recommend for everybody.
It's Howard Gardner's "Five Frames of Mind."
It's helped me immensely.
The idea is he talks about five forms of intelligence.
Our problem is we think of intelligence
as mostly intellectual,
but there are many forms of intelligence.
There's the intelligence that has to do with words.
There's abstract intelligence
that has to do with patterns and mathematics.
There's kinetic intelligence that has to do with the body.
There's social intelligence.
He has five of them.
And the idea is your brain naturally veers
towards one of them.
It can veer towards two of them, that happens.
But generally one of them kind of dominates, right?
And it's like a grain in your brain
that's going in a certain direction.
You want to go with that grain
'cause that's where your power will lie.
So when you're young,
if you go back and think about when you were four or five,
you can maybe get a picture of some kind of direction
or voice inside of you that was impelling you towards this.
I know for me, it was words.
I can remember when I was six years old,
I was just obsessed with words, just the letters in words,
almost like in this almost slightly schizophrenic way.
I would spell words backwards.
I would take them apart.
I would do anagrams.
I love palindromes, right?
So I had a thing about words and language.
It's very primal.
Some people, you know, Albert Einstein,
when he was four years old,
his father gave him a birthday gift of a compass.
And he was just mesmerized by this compass.
The idea that there are invisible forces out there
in the cosmos moving this needle.
And he's obsessed with the idea of invisible forces.
Steve Jobs, when he was like seven or eight
or maybe younger in Burlingame, California,
his father, they passed by a store
with technological devices in the window.
And he was just hypnotized by the design of those devices
and the glass tubes and everything.
So he wanted to go in that direction.
You know, Tiger Woods saw his father hitting golf balls
in the garage and he was just like screaming with joy.
He had to do that, right?
You know, I could give you a million
different examples of this.
Of course, these are people who are famous, obviously.
We can go back and find that.
It's easier.
But what happens to you,
and please cut me off if I'm going on too long.
No, please continue, please.
What happens to you is you're seven.
Now you're getting older
and you're starting to not hear that voice anymore.
You're hearing the voice of your teachers telling you,
you're not good at this field.
You need to get better at math.
You know, you shouldn't be interested in these sports
or anything.
You should be going this way.
Your parents are starting to tell you
this is the career they want for you
or the direction they want you to go in, right?
You start hearing that more than your own voice.
And as you get older, it gets worse and worse and worse.
Then when you're a teenager,
it's all about what other people are doing,
your peers, what's cool, what's not cool, you know?
And that kind of is more,
so all of these noise enters your brain
and you can't hear that anymore.
You don't know who you are.
And so you go to college,
you kind of maybe choose a major
that seems practical that your parents want you to go into.
Maybe you kind of wander around, you're not sure.
And then you enter the work world
without that inner radar that I'm talking about.
And brother, you're lost, right?
Where should I go?
Well, I need to make money, right?
And so you make a choice
based on the need to make a lot of money.
Not everyone, but some people do that.
And I understand that need.
We all need to make a living,
but that can set you off in a very bad path
because you're not connected emotionally.
The thing is when you figure out that primal inclination,
that grain that's inside of you,
then you have the energy to be disciplined,
to go through boring tasks, to learn.
You learn at a faster rate
'cause you're emotionally engaged.
When you're emotionally engaged in a subject,
the brain learns twice, three times, four times as fast
as when you're not.
I always give the example.
In college, I studied foreign languages,
which was kind of a passion of mine.
For three or four years, I studied French.
And then I went to Paris and I couldn't speak a word.
It was useless 'cause it didn't teach me
anything practical, right?
I was totally confused.
And then, but I was in Paris and I loved it
and I wanted to live there, right?
And I had a girlfriend and I needed to speak French to her.
And I can tell you in one month,
I learned more than those four years of university
because I wanted to, because I was engaged.
My emotions were there.
It was like I had to survive to learn French.
Whereas, so most of us, we don't have a need really
to learn this subject.
We're half, we're paying half attention.
But when you find that thing that really connects to you,
you're paying deep attention.
Your emotions are engaged.
You're learning at a much faster rate, okay?
And so the thing is, how do you find that when you're older?
When you're 21, I give people a lot of help
and it's usually not so difficult.
We can go through that process.
It gets harder when you're 30
and you've been wandering around, but it's not impossible.
I didn't really start, find my exact path
until I was 38, 39, to be honest.
So there's hope.
When you get 40 and you get 50,
it gets more and more difficult, right?
And it's very sad if you wasted that seed of uniqueness
that I'm talking about.
And I tell people there are ways of going back
and we go through a process like archeology.
We have to dig and dig and dig
and find those bones from your childhood
that indicated what you were meant to do.
But when you find your life's task, everything opens up.
It doesn't mean you figured out,
okay, I've got to aim for this particular job when I'm 28.
That's not how it works.
It gives you a sense of direction.
You can try different things.
You can experiment.
You can have fun when you're in your 20s.
You're going to learn.
You're going to learn skills,
but it gives you an overall framework
instead of, whoa, all of this confusion,
this chaos, social media, the internet.
I could go here, here, here.
You're lost at sea.
It gives you a very important sense of direction, a compass.
As you describe this, I have this image of,
you mentioned animals that presumably
don't have a lot of flexibility
in terms of the niches they can exist in,
but the way I imagine this process is
that as a human, we're plopped into a environment,
and here I'm using an analogy where
we don't really know if we are an aquatic animal,
a terrestrial animal, or an avian, right?
Or an amphibian. Or an amphibian,
for that matter, and to make the wrong choice,
to be an amphibian who's trying to fly,
although I'm sure they're out there in the animal kingdom,
it's not just a waste of time, it's probably deadly,
and not to over-dramatize the failure
of finding one's purpose, but I see it that way,
whereas perhaps we could just say
that the process of finding one's purpose
is to realize like, ah, I'm an amphibian,
I can go in and out of water,
whereas a bunch of other creatures around me
stop at the water's edge, right?
And this is really cool, and a bunch of these other things,
like these flying things,
that they can't actually even go in the water.
Some of them might be on the surface or dive into it,
but they can't do what I can do,
so the process of self-discovery,
it sounds like it's about restricting one's choices
to a sort of wedge within the full landscape of options,
and for me, I can certainly recall, after reading "Mastery,"
it helped me recall some early seed emotions
that I experienced as a very distinct sensation in my body.
Can you describe that?
Yeah, well, without making it too specific
to my unique tastes, as a kid, I loved flora and fauna.
I loved learning about biology.
Sure. Yeah, no surprise there,
but animals and how they move in particular,
and fish and going to a proper aquarium store
for the first time for me,
and going snorkeling for the first time was like, wow,
and even as I describe it, it's almost like my body floats.
I feel it in my left arm of all things,
and it feels like there's something to do about it.
It's not just that I'm in observation
of things that delight me.
It's like there's an activation state created within me,
like I got to do something with this,
and typically, it's tell everybody about it
until they won't listen anymore,
but oftentimes, it's to also draw those things
to think about them, and I just delight in them.
It's a constant source of delight,
and so seeds such as those,
and there are a few other things in that landscape
of flora and fauna, and learning about animals and biology,
including the human animal,
and then organizing information feels so satisfying to me.
It's like a drug that, and so it just feels like
this eternal spring of life, right?
And so for me, that's what it was,
and in 2015, when I was teaching that course,
the course I loved, but I was feeling a little bit astray
in my scientific career, and then I read "Mastery,"
and I realized, yes, I love running a laboratory.
I love teaching, but there's something else for me,
and it has to do not with a podcast.
I didn't even know what a podcast,
I probably, I knew what a podcast was.
I was listening to podcasts at that time,
but I wasn't on social media.
I had no thoughts of having a podcast,
but what I wanted was that feeling
in its total number of forms.
That's the goal, get that feeling
in as many forms as possible.
Is that about- That's absolutely perfect,
because the connection to what I'm talking about,
it's not an intellectual thing, it's visceral,
it's emotional, it's physical, right?
And you feel it in your body, and when you're doing it,
it's like it's at your level.
It's like you're swimming with the current.
You feel that things are easy, everything clicks together,
there's a delight.
Not everything is going to be delightful,
there's going to be tedium involved,
there's going to be moments of boredom,
but you're able to withstand the moments of boredom
because you feel that deep overall connection.
So yes, that's precisely what I'm talking about.
I mean, for me, it's a little bit similar thing
is I said about words, but the other thing
that I was obsessed with when I was a kid
was early human ancestors.
Don't ask me why, I just was so obsessed
with our ancestors millions of years ago,
and how it's possible to be living here
in the '60s or '70s with cars and everything,
but to come to where we are now.
And I wrote a short story when I was eight years old
about a vulture, it was written from the point of view
of a vulture watching the first humans
kind of emerge on the planet.
I'm sure it was absolutely awful, dreadful,
but the weird thing is I'm writing a new book
and all I'm doing in that book is going into early humans.
And I feel like a kid again, I'm so excited, I'm so happy.
So I can very much relate to your story.
You mentioned these five different forms of intelligence
or frames of mind, as you referred to them.
And I'm certainly aware that I lean towards
a more intellectual interests,
although, as you pointed out, the excitement,
the delight is visceral.
And the actions are actions,
they're of the body ultimately.
One has to draw, speak, write books, et cetera,
to transmute that excitement into something real.
For people that are not as intellectually tuned,
but maybe are kinesthetically tuned, for instance,
I can only wonder what that's like.
I'm not completely uncoordinated,
but I don't think I have a kinesthetic attunement
or frame of mind.
But I, for instance, had a podcast listener mention
that they think in feels,
that they literally experience thought
as sort of a patchwork of bodily sensations.
And that thought for them is not of the stuff
from the neck up, but only from the neck down,
which to me was really intriguing.
And so I only raise this
because there have to be, as you point out,
there's an infinite number of different sort of orientations
based on our unique DNA and experience.
But what do you think explains why these particular seeds
or as you point out,
like the direction that the grain runs in the brain?
I mean, it's partially going to be nature,
it's going to be DNA. For sure.
But we're talking about this as if there's some exciting
or awe-inspiring or delightful thing that captures us.
Can it be the other way too?
Can it be, you know, one has a bad experience as a child
in an intellectual environment and then decides,
you know, I'm going in the, things of the body feel good.
Things of the mind, of intellect feels bad.
And does it matter whether or not we are drawn
to our purpose by recognizing what we love or what we hate
or are both useful?
Oh, they're both very, very useful.
You know, a lot of intelligence is non-verbal.
We think in terms of images,
we're very much infected by the emotions of other people.
So I know for instance,
my mother is very, very interested in history.
She's obsessed with history.
And I probably absorbed her interest in history.
I don't think there's a genetic,
a gene for that interest, you know?
So you're going to absorb things from your parents as well.
So it's not all just genetic.
But yeah, what you hate will have a big thing.
But the problem with doing that is
if you go into a direction
and you're in elementary school, et cetera,
and they force you to learn math and you hate it,
what it tends to do is it turns you off
from learning in general.
You think, I don't want to be disciplined.
I don't want to go through anything
because it's painful.
It doesn't lead anywhere.
It's not immediate frustration.
It turns you off from learning in general.
So it's really, really important for a child
to have the love experience as early as possible
so that they can know what they hate
and why they hate it, right?
And then they can rebel and they can go into that field
as opposed to, I hate learning.
I hate discipline.
I hate studying.
I hate trying things over and over again.
If you're kinesthetically oriented,
and you know, a part of me,
I understand that because I love sports,
is you have to practice.
It's going to take a lot of,
you're not going to instantly be good at something, right?
And that's going to require a love of it, right?
But if your math experience,
'cause I hate learning shit,
you're not, it's going to transfer to sports.
You're going to hate discipline in general.
So it's very important for parents
to let that child have at least glimmers
of that love moment.
I know for me,
when I finished college and I entered the work world,
I had to get a job.
I got worked in journalism.
I hated it.
I hated working for other people.
I hated office politics.
I hated all the egos.
I hated the smarminess.
I hated the lack of quality.
It was all just about, you know,
making money and getting things out there.
And then I worked in Hollywood.
I hated Hollywood.
I hated working in Hollywood.
That formed me very much,
made me go in the direction that I went in,
but only from the basis of,
I knew that I wanted to be a writer.
So, you know, that's very important
that it's not just hate.
It can form you,
but there also has to be that positive,
deep emotional love of something
that also is grounded in you in some way.
What you just said really highlights the fact
that energy and motivation can come from either pressure,
you know, desire for something
or desire to get away from something.
And earlier when you were talking about
how we are so much more engaged
and driven towards things that stir us emotionally,
and actually we know based on the neuroscience,
as you know too, I'm sure,
that only by the release of certain neurochemicals
in the brain and body
would our brain have any reason to change, right?
If you don't feel agitation
and you can do everything that you're trying to do,
of course your brain wouldn't change.
Like, why would it, right?
That agitation is a signature of the neurochemicals
that are saying, "Hey, something's different now."
Right, right, right.
You might need to do something different,
including rewire yourself, right?
And that can come from positive or negative experiences.
Of course.
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