(audience applauding) - Welcome everyone, thanks for being here. My name is Gauri. I'm on the board of the Bogle Center for Financial Literacy. We're happy to have you here. We are thrilled to have Dr. Jordan Grumet speak about finding purpose, balance, and meaning during the accumulation years. Jordan's bio is ubiquitously available, so I'll touch on a few key points.

He's a hospice physician, so he has unique insights into what people regret and don't regret. He's authored over 1,000 blog posts, and he's the author of this book, "Taking Stock, A Hospice Doctor's Advice "on Financial Independence, Building Wealth, "and Living a Regret-Free Life." And he has another book on the way.

In a way, Jordan has been a physician since age seven, and he'll touch on that later. Some quick housekeeping. Folks on chairs and at your tables have notepaper and pens. I'll be walking around collecting questions that when Jordan's done with his primary talk, I'll collect the questions and ask them of Jordan.

So just raise your hand, and I'll walk over to you. With that, I'll turn it over to Jordan. - Thank you, Gauri, for your kind introduction. Chris was on the cusp of his 12th birthday when he arguably made one of the two biggest decisions of his young life. He decided to run away from his foster home.

You see, Chris's parents died when he was four years old when they were in an unfortunate car accident, and he had bounced from foster home to foster home, but this last one wasn't good, it was abusive. So he made this huge decision, and he ran away from home. Now, over the next year, he did whatever he could to find a place to stay, shelter, and to find food.

He lied, he cheated, he stole. He probably did a few other things that we're not gonna talk about here, but it was on the cusp of his 13th birthday, one year later, that he made even a bigger decision, and that was not to commit suicide. Because by that time, he realized he couldn't go on like that anymore, and it was either take his own life, or...

Or... The truth is, he didn't have many options, but one morning, he woke up on a park bench, and another kid was lying next to him, and that kid said, "Hey, there's this guy, "his name is Rabbi Simon, and he has a synagogue "five miles from here in neighboring Waukegan, Illinois, "and if you go there, he will give you support, "give you food, get you some help." So that morning, Chris walked in his shoes, full of holes, the five miles, and found himself sitting in the pews of the synagogue, waiting for Rabbi Simon to come out of his study.

And little did he know that Rabbi Simon was gonna come out of his study, and save his life. And you know how I know that? Because six months earlier, I saved Rabbi Simon's life, and 60 years before that, a gentleman who none of us ever had met, saved all our lives, and he did so without knowing it, by pursuing his unique sense of purpose.

My goal for all of you here today, is to do the same thing, and help you do the same thing. So how did I get here? At the age of seven, my father, a physician, a prominent oncologist, was rounding at the hospital, got a severe headache, collapsed, and died.

He had a brain aneurysm. He bled right there in the hospital. And I was seven years old, and like many seven-year-olds, I looked at life through my own lens. Like, it's a time where we think everything happens because of us. So for me, my father dying must have been my fault.

I wasn't good enough. I wasn't compliant enough. I wasn't lovable enough. And so somewhere in my brain, I decided to, the way I was gonna make up for this, is I was gonna become a doctor just like him. I was gonna walk in his shoes. I was gonna do all the good that he never had the chance to do.

And this became my sense of purpose. This became my identity. And it carried me. It carried me through a learning disability when I was little. It carried me through moving from one middle school to a different high school. It carried me through college when all of my friends were out at the University of Michigan football games, and I was in the law library studying.

I became the student I had to be to become the doctor that I was predestined to become. And that's exactly what I did. But there was a problem. After practicing for a number of years, I realized that this wasn't filling me up. I was feeling exhausted and burned out and all the paperwork and not feeling like I was helping anyone.

And so I did what a lot of people do. I said, "Well, I can't go on being a doctor, "and I don't know how to do anything else to make money. "So what I need to do is make as much money "as possible so that I can never work again "and leave this profession that is no longer filling me up." And so I asked around.

I asked my financial advisor, "Well, how much money do I need?" And he did some kind of Monte Carlo simulation and told me that I needed a lot more than I needed. He forgot to ask me how much I wanted to spend. And then I asked my accountant, who happens to be my mom, and I said, "How much money do I need to never work again?" And she said, "$10 million." And I said, "Okay, I don't have $10 million." So then I went back to work, doing this job that wasn't filling me up.

And then in 2014, something magical happened. I got a phone call from a guy I had never met before. His name was Jim Dolly, and he had written a book called "The White Coat Investor." And at the time, I was writing a medical blog about what it felt like to be a doctor.

And I had a reasonable following, and Jim's book was coming out, and he wanted me to review his book for my blog. So I read his book, and I knew immediately, oh my God, I'm financially independent. You see, he gave me this vocabulary I didn't understand. I didn't know what a safe withdrawal rate was.

And I was just so excited for a moment. And then I had a panic attack. Because the thing is, I had never considered what I could be or what I would do if I wasn't being a doctor. It was the singular thing that connected me to a father who died when I was a little boy.

And so I went down the rabbit hole of depression for about six months. I couldn't leave being a physician, even though it wasn't filling me up. I couldn't throw away the baby with the bath water. So what I started to do is I started to get rid of the things I hated about being a doctor.

I left my private practice. Eventually, I got rid of nights. Then I got rid of weekends. Then I got rid of being on call. And then I got rid of working in nursing homes and what was I left with? Well, I had this part-time thing I did which really filled me up and it was hospice work.

And so I was running teams of nurses and chaplains and certified nursing assistants who were taking care of hospice patients. And I still liked that. And so I knew this is something I would do even if no one was paying me for it. So this feels purposeful. I'm gonna hold on to that.

But the thing is, I was only doing it 10 or 15 hours a week. So the big question became, well, who am I gonna be now? Now I have all this space. What am I gonna fill my time up with? And I realized there were all these things that I loved that I never gave myself permission to pursue.

I loved writing. I mean, I had been writing blogs for years, but I never had time to do it. It wasn't something you did for money or as a living. It was a hobby. So I did it during breaks during lunch or I did it at night when the kids were sleeping.

I loved public speaking. I loved having these deep conversations. So having all this time and finally giving myself permission to start being the person I wanted to be, not some shadow of my father, I started to write about personal finance 'cause that's where my brain was. This is the big epiphany I had.

And eventually I started a podcast. When I did that podcast, I had people on the show who were experts in business and entrepreneurs and financial independence people and authors. And I found that we had these great conversations about how do I get rich? How do I make money? But then when we started talking about why am I getting rich?

And what does living a good life look like after I've accumulated money? We didn't have any good answers. But you know who did have answers? My hospice patients. My hospice patients. That 10 or 15 hours a week, I was still doing hospice medicine. I was sitting with people on their deathbeds and talking to them about what was important.

And you know what? Finding out you're gonna die in the next few weeks or months makes you very clear about what's important to you. And so they didn't tell me I wish I worked longer. And they didn't tell me I wish I made more money. They told me I really regret that I never had the energy or courage or time to, and there was a big blank there 'cause everyone had something different.

But then I started bringing those conversations back to the personal finance people. Bring that back to my podcast. When you are dying and you realize that you have regrets, regret is another word for disappointment because you don't have agency. You can't change your life. But what if you realize your regrets when you're young and you have years ahead of you?

Well, that sounds a lot like me to purpose. And so taking all this information, I wrote my book, "Taking Stock." Everything I had learned from the dying about money and life. And I went to places like this. And I gave talks and I marketed my book and something happened I never expected.

At the end of a conference like this, I would walk out into the hallway and someone would come up to me and instead of a smile, I almost saw a growl, right? They kind of looked, they were sweaty, they were a little bit angry. And I waited patiently afraid of what they were about to say.

And this happened multiple times, mind you. And they would say something to the extent of I get it. You tell me that I should pursue a sense of purpose and then use that purpose to build a financial framework around me. But I don't know what my purpose is. And so how do I find my purpose?

And this led to my second book, "The Purpose Code." And we're gonna talk a bunch about that. But I first want to go back to my book, "Taking Stock" and talk about a few of the major premises around that book. Because really they were three main premises. The first premise was we need to start thinking about purpose, identity and connections before we build our financial framework.

So what does that mean? Well, let's talk about purpose. A lot of us struggle with purpose, but the truth of the matter is I had seen it in my dying patients. I had asked that question. What do you really regret never having the energy, courage or time to do?

And I knew for younger people, this formed the kernel of the answer to that question. So next came identity. Well, how do you know what your identity is supposed to be? And I always tell people we should do this basic exercise. Ask yourself the question I am, say the statement I am, and then fill in the blank.

Now, the first time I did this, I said, I am. And the first thing that came out was I am a doctor, which kind of makes me laugh a little bit 'cause I don't really identify that way anymore. After that, it got more definitional. I am a father. I am a son.

I'm a spouse. All true, but not necessarily unique to me. But eventually when I asked myself this question over and over again, I am, I came up with, I'm a podcaster. I'm a public speaker. I'm a writer. It all coalesced into I'm a communicator. And I knew that this fit me better than that identity of being a doctor.

It just felt right. And so this is a real good chance for you to be aspirational. When you say I am, it's not who you are today, but who do you strive to be? So that's purpose and identity. The last piece was connections. And the thing I found is that when you concentrate on purpose and identity, the connections naturally follow.

So I'd spent all these years trying to become a doctor, but that identity didn't fit my inside. It was an identity I was trying to wear on the outside. And so I'd hang out in doctor places, right? I'd go to the doctor lounge or I'd hang out with my doctor friends.

And I never felt quite myself. But when I recognized this identity of a communicator, a public speaker, a writer, and I'd go to conferences like this, I'd meet bloggers and podcasters and feel comfortable with them immediately. As if I knew them better than I knew these doctors that I had known for decades.

These were my people. So the first premise of the book is purpose, identity, and connections come first. The second premise is then we have to define a path towards financial independence. Now we have an idea of what purpose, identity, and connections are. We have to build a life around that, build the financial life.

And if you've heard me talk about this before, I often talk about the path of three brothers. This is a parable and it just explains some of the financial concerns and the ways we get to financial independence. The eldest brother, this is the one who front loads the sacrifice.

If you're familiar with the traditional FIRE movement, financial independence, retire early. The idea is you work really hard, maybe at a job you don't like. You put purpose, identity, and connections aside for the short term. You accumulate tons of money till you get to some net worth number. We've all talked about safe withdrawal rates and the 25 times rule and all this kind of stuff.

And then you retire as fast as you can and you live the life you wanna live. You start thinking about purpose then. That's path one, the eldest brother. Path two, the middle brother, is more about passive income and side hustles. Instead of waiting until you get to this large net worth, what if you could start some side hustles or get some passive income in such a way that you can make enough money every month to cover your monthly needs?

Might take you a few years. You might have to invest in real estate or become an entrepreneur. You might have to work really hard in the beginning, but a few years into it, maybe you can cover your monthly needs and then you're basically financially independent and you have all the time in the world for purpose, identity, and connections.

And last but not least, finally, the third path, the path of the youngest brother, was the path of the passion play. What if you find something that feels deeply purposeful and exciting to you and you start doing it immediately and you happen to make enough money to cover your monthly or yearly needs, then you're financially independent right away.

So premise one, purpose, identity, and connections. Premise two, defining your path to financial independence. And finally, premise three, asking yourself what scares you most. Are you more afraid that you are going to die young and wealthy or old and broke? And here's why we have to ask this question because none of us know when we're going to die.

If we knew when we were gonna die, we could set the marker for 20 years, six months, and three days, and make sure we spent our money accordingly so that we have exactly zero on our death date or whatever we wanted to pass on to our children. But of course, we can't do that.

So we have to make our best guesstimate. So what scares you most? Are you afraid that you are gonna die young and rich? If that's the case, maybe save a little bit less and spend a little more. Worst comes to worst, you're wrong and you live a great life where you're spending and enjoying yourself and it takes a little longer to get to retirement, no big deal.

On the other hand, if you're afraid that you're gonna live long and go broke, save a lot more and only spend maybe a little bit on YOLO. You only live once. It's a continuum. The point is we can use this question to help us frame whether we should spend more today or we should defer gratification for tomorrow.

So these were the premises of the book and these are the talks I gave. And so I got that worried and anxious and angry response about people not knowing how to find their purpose. And so I went and I did a deep dive on purpose. If this is causing people so much anxiety, what does the scientific literature tell us about purpose?

How do we resolve this problem that telling people to find a purpose makes them feel bad instead of good? Well, I found out two things. Two things that contradict each other. First and foremost, studies show that having a sense of purpose in life is associated with health, happiness, and longevity.

Clearly, tons of studies, very well proven. On the other hand, then I found other studies that show that up to 91% of people at some point in their life have purpose anxiety. This idea of purpose gives them anxiety. They get depressed and they actually feel worse. So this is a paradox.

How can purpose be both the most important thing to us and yet also be amazingly anxiety provoking? What I recognize from my years in hospice, from being a podcaster, from writing books, is I recognize that probably purpose is not just one thing. It's probably at least two phenomena. And one of those causes anxiety and makes us feel bad.

And the other probably more relates to health, happiness, and anxiety. So let's talk about those two different types of purpose. The first one, the one that makes us anxious is what I call big P purpose. Big P purpose is goal oriented. It's very much all or nothing. And it usually is audacious.

I wanna be a billionaire. I wanna become president. I wanna travel to the moon. These are things that most of us cannot accomplish. Why? Because you have to be the right person at the right time, saying the right things with lots of luck and good genetics. Like if I wanna be an all-star basketball player and I was born and I only grew to four foot 10, the likelihood I'm gonna be an all-star basketball player is just very low.

So we don't have a huge amount of agency over big P purpose and therefore it's really easy to fail. And it's usually winner take all, right? If my goal is to be president, only one person at a time can be president, which means everyone else fails. So the problem with big P purpose is it makes us feel bad and anxious because often we don't have agency to accomplish what we're trying to do.

Contrast that to the other type of purpose, little P purpose. Instead of worrying about goals, little P purpose focuses on process. What are the things we love to do regardless of the outcome? What do you do that lights you up? The great thing about little P purpose is it's impossible to fail.

And more importantly, when we think about big P purpose, it's a very scarcity mindset oriented, right? It's very difficult. But little P purpose is very abundance oriented. It's all or all. All you have to do is show up and you've won the game. But here's the thing. Even if you believe me and you're listening and you're saying, aha, big P purpose bad, little P purpose good, we still have the same problem.

Those people who came up to me at the conferences can say, okay, I hear your versions of purpose, but I still don't know how to find my purpose. Well, here's the thing. I don't think you find your purpose. I think you build and create it. But it is also true that you need to have some beckonings or inklings towards what to focus on to build that purpose.

And so what I call that are purpose anchors. So the better question is how do we find our purpose anchors so that we can build or create this life of purpose? And so in my book, "The Purpose Code" that's coming out, I talk about four or five different ones of these.

So let's talk about how you find your purpose anchors so you can build this life of purpose around them. The first way is what I call the life review. I talked about this in my first book, "Taking Stock." We've touched on it briefly here. In the hospice, when we sit with a dying patient and we get their pain controlled and we get them comfortable in their house or the hospital, wherever they are, we do something called the life review.

It's a series of structured questions to ask them what were the most important moments? What were their biggest successes? What were their biggest failures? What were their regrets? This is really an attempt for them to review their life. And as I was talking about before, if we can start doing these life reviews in younger people, you can go to Google and search hospice life review and you'll get a whole series of questions.

You can start thinking about regrets now and regret minimization and also start to turn that regret into purpose. So life review is a really good way to start thinking about finding those purpose anchors. What's another way? I often tell people to use what I call the art of subtraction.

And this is exactly what I did in my job as a doctor. When I realized I was financially independent, there was so much I didn't like about the job. So I started subtracting things out. I got rid of nights and weekends and on-call and got rid of all the things I didn't like.

And what I was left with, which was hospice work, and I love the hospice work, so I knew that this was a purpose anchor. Many of you could do the same with your jobs. Even if you hate your jobs, there's probably a piece or a part of your job, a certain task that you love.

Using the art of subtraction, you can start identifying what you do like about your job, even if it's something you only spend a little bit of your time doing and use that as a purpose anchor. So what are some of the other ways to find purpose anchors? I tell people to go back to the joys of childhood.

Many of us had things we loved when we were kids and we grew out of them. So if you went back to your childhood bedroom and looked at the posters and the awards and trophies and the drawings, what would they show? It's funny because when we're really little, the adults around us support this.

So if you are three years old and you go to your parents, you go to your mom and say, "Hey, mom, "I wanna build a swimming pool in the backyard." What will they do? They will take you outside and you will play all day and giggle the day away and have a blast.

If you do the same thing at the age of 12, your parents will tell you about all the reasons you can't do it, why it wouldn't be up to code, why the soil in the backyard wouldn't support it, how you wouldn't have the time to have someone be a lifeguard.

They'll come up with every reason it doesn't work and society does that to us. At some point, we switch from doing things we love because kids understand purpose and we start doing what we're supposed to. We're supposed to get a job, we're supposed to be professionals, we're supposed to make lots of money.

So a good way to start thinking about your purpose anchors is to go back to your joys of childhood and start thinking about what lit you up then. And last but not least, another technique and one of the last I wanna talk about is the spaghetti method. So let's say you're doing all this, you're using the art of subtraction, you're doing your life review, you're thinking about the joys of childhood and you still can't come up with something that feels purposeful for you, then use the spaghetti method.

Throw a bunch of stuff up against the wall and see what sticks. This means say yes to activities you don't normally say yes to. Hang out with people you don't normally hang out with. Do things you don't normally do. And by doing that, you're opening yourself up to experiencing new things and some of them may be joyful and if they are, that's a beautiful place to start building a life of purpose around some of those things.

So that's how you start finding purpose anchors and build a life of purpose around you. Now I imagine many of you here listening and you're saying, okay, all of this sounds great but what about legacy? What about impact? What about changing the world? So let me tell you about my maternal grandfather.

My maternal grandfather died years before I was born and he loved math. His little P purpose was math and because he loved math so much, he became a CPA. And back in the 1950s when my mom was a little girl, she would sit on his lap and he would have his spreadsheets out because right back then there was no computers.

They were literally spreadsheets and you had a pencil and you had to write everything in the boxes and he would explain to her what went into all the boxes. Now my mom saw her father lit up and excited and so she did what little kids do. She said, hmm, that's an interesting identity.

Maybe I'll try on that identity for myself and see if it fits. And she did and she found that she loved math too. So guess what? My mom became a CPA. And when I was a kid, I tried on that identity and decided I liked math too and this was critical because right around the time my father died, I was diagnosed with a learning disability and I couldn't read.

All my peers were starting on their beginning readers. There were all these reading groups and I was literally coloring in a coloring book and I would have thought I was dumb but there was one thing, one saving grace. See, I was good at math and so I might have been in the lowest reading group but I was in the top math group.

And so this gave me the confidence and courage to realize if I could figure out math, I could figure out reading. So I got a bunch of tutors, eventually did. And if you think about it, I didn't become a CPA like my mom but I went into a highly mathematical field which is medicine and eventually I left medicine to do the financial independence movement to become a personal finance person but understanding that math was critical to figuring out my finances.

But it really hit home one day when I was in the hospital and I was seeing a patient and this guy kept on getting readmitted over and over again. He was getting readmitted and he was totally dehydrated. He was on death's doorstep and it kept happening. And when I met him for the first time in the hospital, I took a look at his labs and I noticed a mathematical relationship between two of his lab results.

And it clicked in my brain because I loved math. And I realized that he had a rare disease, a disease that was actually fairly treatable and we put him on a medicine and he never got readmitted to the hospital again. And you know what his name was? It was Rabbi Simon.

And Rabbi Simon eventually helped Chris. And so if you think about it, like a rock dropped into the ocean, a little bit of water was displaced by my maternal grandfather. And over the years, that displacement grew, added on to other waves and became really big at times. And then at other times it split into a bunch of smaller waves.

And decades and decades later, hundreds of miles away, those waves are still reaching the beach and changing people's lives. And so my goal for all of you is to develop a sense of little p purpose. My goal is for that little p purpose to cause you to change the people around you.

My goal is that you all will create an impact and a legacy that endures far past your lifespans. In closing, my maternal grandfather's name is Morris Adler. It's probably the first time anyone has said his name this year. He died in the 1960s. I was born in 1973. And one of you hearing these stories right now will go out and change your lives.

And Morris Adler's legacy will live. And so can yours. Thank you. (audience applauding) - Thank you. Thank you, Jordan, for sharing your insights. Again, Christine and I are walking around collecting questions that you've written. Feel free to raise your hand, we'll walk over. So some of the questions, Jordan.

What one question from the Hospice Life Review do you think is most helpful for finding a purpose anchor? - So Hospice Life Reviews, there are literally 20, 30 questions. It goes through childhood and young adulthood and et cetera, et cetera. But the one sentencer is if I were to find out tomorrow that I was gonna die within weeks, what would I always regret never having the energy, courage, or time to do?

So it's really the regret question. And again, I wanna encourage all of you to turn the concept of regret around into purpose. Regret and people who have agency and time is deeply purposeful. - Well, and thank you. So a followup, can you share some of the most surprising regrets you've heard, both good and bad?

- You know, it's funny because regret is so variable on the person. So I give you that question. What would you regret never having the energy, courage, or time to do? But the way everyone answers that is so individualized. So for me, I had to face that question myself.

And I knew, and I always knew this, but never would admit to it until I did, is I would have regret not having written a book and published it professionally 'cause I didn't wanna just self-publish it. I wanted to traditionally publish it. So that was for me. For other people, it really spans.

For some people, it's a hobby. It's like, I'm pissed off I never got that 1950 Chevy and fixed it up and spent the summer enjoying myself driving it around. For other people, it's relationships. I regret that I never fixed that relationship that went awry. Sometimes it's big. I wish I wasn't so afraid that I didn't go and try to climb Mount Everest.

The answers are incredibly varied. And the thing is, they're incredibly personal. We have a problem here in the United States. We are sold a vision of purpose, and usually it's sold to us by two different groups. One is influencers, and the other is marketers. And the problem with both influencers and marketers is they're trying to sell us something.

They're trying to tell you you need six-pack abs, or you need to travel the world, or you have to wear designer clothes, or whatever it is, because they wanna make money on you. The problem, however, is that a lot of times it's easier for us to eclipse and to take on other people's sense of purpose than to actually build our own.

But I would guess every single person here, in their heart of hearts, if they were to close their eyes and really think about it, understands what burning wish and desire they really have on the inside, what they really wanna do with themselves, who they really wanna be. And a lot of us are just incredibly afraid to face that.

My message to you is you will regret that if you don't, at some point, try to think about who you really wanna be in this world. But the amazing thing is the way you become that person is by doing the thing. It's not by buying the thing, it's by doing the thing.

The way you become a writer is you write, whether you're successful or you quote-unquote fail. It's not about the goal, it's about the process. The way you become the best you is to do the thing you wanna do and be deeply engaged in the process. And it almost always comes out right.

- So Lynn, thank you. Changing topics, and this doesn't seem to get enough coverage. How should folks consider preparing for cognitive decline? - Here's the thing. Cognitive decline happens. I mean, I'm 51 and I can already tell I can't do things the way I could do them. I love math, but my ability to do math in my head is much worse than it was before.

So cognitive decline is continuous. I don't think besides staying healthy, right? Eating well, exercising, not smoking, taking care of yourself, all the basics, right? It's about all we can do to help with cognitive decline. Keeping our brains engaged, being happy, experiencing love, like all the good, easy stuff. I think the caveat is that since we can't fix cognitive decline, we can surround ourselves with people who know who we are and what we value and will make good decisions for us if we're not able to make those decisions.

Because ultimately, if we ever get to the point where we can't make those good decisions, we want other people to make decisions that reflect the dignity of who we are. And so I think the best thing we can do is have those conversations with our loved ones, show them our sense of purpose and who we are and what our intentions are, and make sure they know that if they ever have to make decisions for us, they can use those intentions so we can experience dignity even when, unfortunately, cognitively, we don't necessarily have that option.

- Thank you. From your experience, what little-p purposes do people arrive at? Why are they so compelling? And how often should we reevaluate our little-p purpose? - So here's the idea. You're born, you die, and you have a certain amount of time. And no matter what you do, you have zero control over the time.

You can't buy it, you can't sell it, you can't exchange it. It just exists and passes. So what can you do? You can fill up that time with as much purposeful activity as possible and get rid of as many things you loathe as possible. So why am I bringing this up?

The truth of the matter is purpose can be anything. All it has to do is light you up. It can be short-term or long-term. It can change the world, but it certainly doesn't have to. Little-p purpose can be anything that lights you up. So I don't think it matters what you decide your little-p purpose is, and I don't think it matters if you do it for a week or a year or a month.

That's completely up to you. But we should always reevaluate it continuously because, again, winning the game is filling up your time with as much purposeful activity that connects you to other people as possible. And to do that, you're always gonna be having to use certain levers, right? We have the joy of addition.

You can add in something purposeful to your life. The art of subtraction, you can get rid of something that you loathe or don't like, or substitution, which means if you are stuck and you can't add or subtract, can you substitute? Can you change one job for another? Can you change one boss for another?

Can you change one location for another? That's all substitution. And so those are our levers. We also have a bunch of tools that help us do this, right? Money is a great tool. We like to talk about money. We think money is the only tool, but it isn't. Our relationships, our communities, our energy, our passions, our skills, those are also tools that we can use along with these levers to start creating the life we wanna live now and not waiting to your financially independent and not waiting to your retired.

- Okay, thank you. Building on that, studies show that nowadays it's becoming more challenging for younger generations to realize the American dream. The net worth target has been raised to $4 million. Do you have any good practical advice for young people they have a higher bar to pass than their parents or grandparents?

- So here's the deal. I hear you. And we love to think the American dream is a net worth, but I don't believe it for one second. Does money buy happiness? Everyone points to a series of studies, right? The Kahneman and Deaton study, the Killingsworth study. We could go through them if you want.

Suggestion that past $70,000 back in 2010 or whatever didn't get you increased happiness. Then Killingsworth said, no, maybe it does. There were some caveats there. If you look at all those studies, a lot of them use data that was already collected, not for that purpose, or use data that was based on like texting someone multiple times a day for multiple weeks.

A lot of times they assessed someone's income only once or someone's net worth. If you really want to answer that question, I suggest you look up the Harvard Adult Health Study or excuse me, Harvard Adult Development Study. I always get the name wrong. Basically this studied people for 70 or 80 years.

It originally started with Harvard students. Eventually they brought in like a thousand, 2,000 other family members. Then they brought in controls from the Boston area. But what they did is they interviewed these people every two years. They did physical exams. Eventually they did MRIs and EEGs. They questioned their family members.

And after 80 years of continuous research on the same people looking at happiness, looking at income, looking at their activities, they found that one thing was majorly associated with happiness. And it wasn't money and it wasn't position and it wasn't your job. And I'm going to spoil it here.

It wasn't even purpose. It was interpersonal connections. Interpersonal connections. So if you want to think that some net worth is going to bring you the American dream, it isn't. It's who you love and who loves you. That's basically the American dream. We can put some kind of net worth number on it.

And yes, I said that purpose doesn't actually make you happy. Here's the thing. Little p purpose causes you to build communities and communities are just another way of saying interpersonal connection. And so I think little p purpose is a great vehicle towards interpersonal connection. And I think that's why we should pursue that kind of purpose.

And so I can go over all sorts of more data. There's something called the Easterlin paradox, which basically shows that if you take underserved areas, people who have no money, and you give them all money, their happiness increases briefly and then falls back down. But if you take a small group of people, give them money and then give everyone else nothing, their happiness shoots up.

So it's actually more comparative even than the money itself. So I get it. We wanna have money, we wanna have safety, we wanna have security. The only thing I can promise you from my own experiences are those are not gonna be the things you think about on your deathbed.

- Excellent, thank you. This may be our last question given time. Some of what you spoke about only comes with time and experience and reflection. How do we improve our capability and receptivity to such wisdom that otherwise only comes with time and experience, decades of time and experience? - So let me answer this by a roundabout way.

Leif Dahlin gave us talk yesterday and he mentioned this idea that happiness is meaning plus purpose. So a lot of people don't know the difference between meaning and purpose. In my opinion, meaning is about the past and it's about how we think about the past. It's the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves.

Happy people tend to tell themselves hero stories where unhappy people tend to tell themselves victim stories. Purpose, on the other hand, is all about the present and future and it's about action. To be happy, we need both. We need to have a great sense of meaning so we tell ourself a hero story so that we can move into the present and future and believe that things will go well and we're gonna be okay.

And so what you're talking about here with that question is about experiences and growing older and getting smarter as we grow old. If I could leave you with one concept, if you wanna be a happier person, if you wanna find pursuing purpose easier, tell yourself better stories about yourself.

It's about the past. Your ability to function in the present and the future is all about your past. Develop a better sense of meaning and it will serve you whether you are 25 years old or 45 years old or 85 years old. - Wonderful, thank you. Any other questions from the audience?

Okay, we're set. Thank you, Jordan. - Thank you so much. (audience applauding) you