Service Archives

Purposeful Aging–Still Growing and Giving

03/24/2025 by Gregg Vanourek

Article Summary:

People today are living much longer, yet we still have the old narrative about aging as decline. We need a new narrative focused on purposeful aging. Excerpts from my conversation with best-selling author, Richard Leider, in the wake of the publication of the 4th edition of The Power of Purpose: To Grow and to Give for Life, with David Shapiro.*

+++

Gregg Vanourek:

Richard, I’ve always been fascinated by your Inventure Expeditions, where you’ve taken groups of people to Tanzania. Tell me about them.

Richard Leider:

I started in 1983. I was on the board of Outward Bound. We climbed Mount Kilimanjaro to raise money for them. I fell in love with Tanzania. It wasn’t just the animals; it was the people and the place.

I started to go back and lead my own trips there in 1985, and I led them every year until COVID hit. I’m planning on going back. My co-leader, who runs a safari company there, and I are looking at what we’re going to do next.

Sitting around the fire with elders over there for decades, I’ve learned a lot about what it means to be an elder and what it takes to survive. The hunter-gatherers I sit around the fire with have survived for 75,000-plus years. How? It’s not through competition and outwitting and outmuscling the other tribes. It’s through sharing, through purpose—and what they do as elders sitting around the fire.

The wisest of the elders sits the closest to the fire. What that means to me is that they have the wisdom to help younger people figure out how to make a difference and how to survive and thrive in the future.

Gregg:

It sounds like there’s a real ethic there of connecting across generations and of elders being honored and sharing wisdom in ways that many of us have lost in this society, where we have more mobile lives, and many narratives about aging that are negative.

You wrote about this in your last book, Who Do You Want to Be When You Grow Old? The Path of Purposeful Aging, with David Shapiro. It’s an excellent book. What else can people in modern societies learn from the Maasai tribe and other things you’ve learned from your time in the Serengeti?

Richard:

I’m a faculty member of the Modern Elder Academy, which Chip Conley created in Baja, Mexico and in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Chip said, What we really need are “menterns”: people who are both mentors and interns. I love that concept.

A mentor is somebody who can give something to younger people. And an intern is a learner. So, wise elders don’t just sit around the fire and pontificate. They’re also learners.

The future belongs to the learners, not the knowers.

I consider myself to be a learner. I know stuff and I can share what I know. But even more than that, I’m a learner. I’m learning all the time. I’m learning from you. You and I have shared ideas together, and we’ve learned from each other. I can mentor you, and you can mentor me. And I can learn from you, and you’re going to learn from me. It’s that combination, I think, that’s required right now in this world.

Take the Traps Test

We all fall into traps in life. Sometimes we’re not even aware of it, and we can’t get out of traps we don’t know we’re in. Evaluate yourself with our Traps Test.

Gregg:

You and I are both very interested in the good life. We’ve talked about this before. In college, I took a philosophy and religion course called “Theories of the Good Life.” We studied it, and I wrote my own essay on what my view of the good life is. And my other philosophy professor encouraged me to live the big questions of life.

I think it was in your book, Repacking Your Bags, where you and David Shapiro gave a powerful definition of the good life: “living in the in the place you belong, with the people you love, doing the right work, on purpose.” Something like that. Can you say a little bit more about the place equation: living in the place you belong? How does place show up in a good life?

Richard:

Place is where you live. Many people move to a warmer place because of the weather. And it’s great for a period of time. But what they really wanted was relationships, work, and purpose. We want health and money.

I talk about the three Ms. When you look at the good life, if you step back from it, there’s money, medicine, and meaning.

Many people have enough money and enough medicine, by which I mean health, to live a good life. But there’s a drag there. They’re unhappy, or they’re depressed, and it’s often because they don’t have enough of the third M, meaning.

Money, medicine, and meaning are fundamental to the good life. My co-author, David Shapiro, is a philosophy professor. We studied Aristotle, Plato, and others, and we looked at the good life from that period of time to now. That’s how we came up with the four factors of place, people, right work, and purpose as the things that are most essential.

Gregg:

There are so many great thought leaders in this space. Viktor Frankl. William Damon. I want to ask you about Emily Esfahani-Smith and her book, The Power of Meaning. It’s a beautiful book. She says that part of that meaning equation is not only purpose but also storytelling and coherence: as we reflect on our life, we see the patterns that give us a sense of meaning in our lives. Do you think that’s a part of the equation here too?

Richard:

Absolutely. I ask people, What’s your narrative? I co-created the Life Reimagined Institute at AARP. We looked at, What’s the narrative on aging, and how do we change it? Because in 1900, people died when they lived to age 47. Now the fastest growing cohort in the U.S. is 85 and over, and people are living well beyond that. So, people are living 20, 30, 40 years longer than they did in the past. What’s the narrative for that? Is it just about playing golf, going fishing, traveling, or being with your grandkids? It’s not. There needs to be a new narrative.

Gregg:

My new body of work is focused on the common traps of living: What are the things that inhibit our happiness, our quality of life, our fulfillment? You’ve written about a “default life.” What’s a default life, and how is it negatively affecting us?

Quality of Life Assessment

Evaluate your quality of life in ten key areas by taking our assessment. Discover your strongest areas, and the areas that need work, then act accordingly.

Richard:

I love that question. The default life is basically what I grew up with, and it goes like this:

Learn, earn, adjourn.

My Dad died at 68, two years after retiring. He had enough money and enough medicine, but I’m not sure he felt he had enough meaning. He worked for the same organization for 40 years, and he retired after that. He was an immigrant, and he had his struggles. He did okay, but then he didn’t, and he died. My mother lived another 10 years to age 78.

Dr. Becca Levy at Yale did a massive study that showed that people who had a positive view of aging live 7.5 years longer than people with a negative view of it. A negative view is like, Oh, this sucks. This is terrible. It’s all about decline.

So, what’s your narrative about aging? Do you think it’s possible that it could be a happier time of life? Or do you see it as a negative? Well, it has to do with health, has to do with place, has to do with people.

Gregg:

What are some other common traps of living that inhibit people’s happiness, quality of life, or fulfillment?

Richard:

The other thing is isolation. It’s fatal. It’s this notion that I can do it myself. I can do it alone, I’m cool, I’ve got it together. Going it alone is an incredibly bad idea. It’s a big trap. How do we get out of that trap?

I’m 80, and my wife is 77. We have a lot of friends and neighbors who are no longer growing and giving. If they’re not growing and giving and they’re not curious, we come home from dinner with them and go, What was that all about? They didn’t ask any questions. They weren’t curious and weren’t growing. They seem to be trapped in the rearview mirror.

I write about the rearview mirror versus the windshield. The windshield is 100 times bigger than the rearview mirror. How do people get out of the trap of the rearview mirror, just looking at the past and how they grew up? How do they let go of that? And how do they focus on the windshield, on what’s right in front of them and where they can go?

Personal Values Exercise

Complete this exercise to identify your personal values. It will help you develop self-awareness, including clarity about what’s most important to you in life and work, and serve as a safe harbor for you to return to when things are tough.

Gregg:

It makes me think, Richard, that some people are postponing the things that they really want to do. They’re deferring their dreams. And some people are thinking it’s too late to do the things they really want to do.

Richard:

Well, it’s never too late to make a difference in the lives of others. It drives me nuts when people just talk about their bucket list. I have bucket lists. I have things I want to do, but that’s not all my life’s all about.

What’s my life all about? It’s about purpose: Why are we here? What’s the point of this exercise called life? We’re here for a reason.

You get to decide, What’s the point? Why are you here, and why are you leading? What I know unequivocally is that why you lead determines how well you lead. Why you live determines how well you live. I know this from 50 years of study.

Gregg:

The subtitle of your new book, the fourth edition of The Power of Purpose, is “To Grow and to Give for Life.” I’m a big believer in growing and learning and developing. I’m just all in for that. It’s changed my life. It fills me with energy and inspiration.

And I see in you, Richard, an example of that. Here you are not “adjourning.” You’re not only giving but also growing. You’re learning, you’re writing new books, you’re updating your thinking, you’re talking to people. And I see the life it brings to you.

So, I just want to honor you, and thank you for that, for the impact you’re having on people, including deeply on me. Is there anything else you want to say about this?

Richard:

What does growing really mean? Growing means curiosity, being curious about self, about others, about the world, and not just knowing.

As people age, they want to remain relevant, even though they don’t know how to say that. And they want to be visible. They want to have a voice in matters. And that comes not just from age or position or role. It comes from curiosity.

The founder of TED, Richard Saul Wurman, said that the core of TED is curiosity. It was founded based on, What are you really curious about? What do you want to know more about? What do you want to connect with? I think choice, curiosity, courage: those are the three Cs that represent what we’ve talked about here today.

Choice: What are your choices?
Curiosity: What are you curious about?
Courage: What are you courageous enough to make a move on?

* Video conversation between Gregg Vanourek and Richard Leider via Zoom, recorded, transcribed by Otter.ai, and then edited by Gregg.

Gregg Vanourek is a writer, teacher, and TEDx speaker on personal development and leadership. He is co-author of three books, including LIFE Entrepreneurs: Ordinary People Creating Extraordinary Lives (a manifesto for living with purpose and passion) and Triple Crown Leadership: Building Excellent, Ethical, and Enduring Organizations (a winner of the International Book Awards). Check out his Best Articles or get his monthly newsletter.

Richard Leider is an internationally best-selling author, coach, and keynote speaker who’s widely viewed as a thought leader of the global purpose movement. His work is featured regularly in many media sources, including PBS and NPR. He is the founder of Inventure—The Purpose Company, a firm created to guide people to live, work, and lead on purpose.

Gregg’s Tools for You

Traps Test (Common Traps of Living) to help you identify what’s getting in the way of your happiness and quality of life
Quality of Life Assessment so you can discover your strongest areas and the areas that need work, then act accordingly
Passions Probe to help you find the things that consume you with palpable emotion over time

Passion Probe

Our passions are the things that consume us with palpable emotion over time. We love doing them and talk about them often. Take this self-assessment to find the ones that resonate most with you.

Postscript: Inspirations on Purposeful Aging

“Retire from your job but never from meaningful projects. If you want to live a long life, you need eustress, that is, a deep sense of meaning and of contribution to worthy projects and causes, particularly, your intergenerational family.” -Stephen R. Covey, educator and author
“Age has given me what I was looking for my entire life. It has given me me.” -Anne Lamott, writer
“Here’s a test to find whether your mission on earth is finished: If you’re alive, it isn’t.” -Richard Bach, writer
“Aging is an extraordinary process whereby you become the person you always should have been.” -David Bowie, musician
“The old … should… have their physical labors reduced; their mental activities should be actually increased. They should endeavor, too, by means of their counsel and practical wisdom to be of as much service as possible to their friends and to the young, and above all to the state.” -Marcus Tullius Cicero, Roman philosopher and statesman
“There are years that ask questions, and years that answer.” -Zora Neale Hurston, author, anthropologist, and filmmaker
“Age puzzles me. I thought it was a quiet time. My seventies were interesting and fairly serene, but my eighties are passionate. I grow more intense as I age…. To my own surprise I burst out with hot conviction.” -Florida Scott-Maxwell, Jungian analyst

“Wholly unprepared, they embark upon the second half of life…. But we cannot live the afternoon of life according to the program of life’s morning; for what was great in the morning will be little at evening, and what in the morning was true will at evening have become a lie.”
-Carl Gustav Jung, Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst

Gregg Vanourek’s Newsletter

Join our rapidly growing community. Sign up now and get monthly inspirations (new articles, opportunities, and resources). Welcome!

The Spiritual Side of Purpose

03/24/202503/17/2025 by Gregg Vanourek

Article Summary:

How are purpose and spirituality related? How about calling? Excerpts from my conversation on purpose and spirituality with best-selling author, Richard Leider, in the wake of the publication of the 4th edition of The Power of Purpose: To Grow and to Give for Life, with David Shapiro.*

+++

Gregg Vanourek:

Richard, I want to ask you about defining moments or phases of your life that have been purposeful. What’s your personal experience with purposeful living?

Richard Leider:

Well, I think we’ve all had fortuitous encounters with people in our life who have made a difference in some way, who have awakened us. In 1968, I spent a week with Viktor Frankl, the author of Man’s Search for Meaning. He was in three different Nazi concentration camps. He was a world-renowned thinker at the time with Sigmund Freud, Alfred Adler, and others. Frankl he was writing about logotherapy, about meaning and purpose in life—that we’re here for a reason.

In the concentration camp, he would get up in the morning and give others what I call a “small p” purpose action: a kind word, a hug, a crust of bread, hope for the future. Out of that came Man’s Search for Meaning.

At that point, I was trained as a counseling psychologist, but I said, This message needs to go somewhere. I’m going to do what I can with it. It was a fortuitous encounter. I didn’t have any money, and I was the youngest person in the room. But I was there for a reason, I think. And here we are today.

So, think about your fortuitous encounters. You’ve had your own, I know, with your father, with others, who are wellsprings of wisdom we can learn from.

Gregg:

You’re one of them in my life, Richard. I think part of that story is being awake and alert. These fortuitous encounters may come to us, but if we’re not ready, if we’re not willing to take action and follow up, then they’re lost.

And here we are with the redemption of suffering. The most unimaginable evil and cruelty in the world, and yet Dr. Frankl turns that into Man’s Search for Meaning and logotherapy.

Richard, you wrote a book called Something to Live For. Frankl had this idea during the darkest days of the Holocaust, being away from his family, of: I have something I want to share with the world. It helps him survive and also be part of the community of fellow prisoners, helping each other survive.

Richard Leider:

And the Foreword to that book was written by Richard Bolles. He said, I had this dream that I had a conversation with God that I wanted to go to Earth and do something. And God being a loving God said, Well, you need something to do and give while you’re there, so I’m going to give you some gifts to give while you’re there.

Richard wakes up from his dream, and he can’t remember the gifts that God gave him. But he said, All of us have gifts. We have to figure them out ourselves, because no one gave us the manual.

So, my work has really been about discerning, What are those gifts, and how do we give them in ways that are about a “purpose and a paycheck”? We need to have a purpose, but we also need to make a living. Look at our vocation and our livelihoods as well as our dreams and other things. I think that, a lot of times, people get off-kilter because they don’t know what their gifts, passions, and values are.

Take the Traps Test

We all fall into traps in life. Sometimes we’re not even aware of it, and we can’t get out of traps we don’t know we’re in. Evaluate yourself with our Traps Test.

Gregg:

Different people have varying conceptualizations and practices when it comes to spirituality. For some, it’s a faith tradition and worship. For others, more of a spiritual outlook or way of being. How do you think about purpose and spirituality? Is spirituality part of the equation of purpose and good living?

Richard:

A while back, I took a year off and went to the seminary for a year to study purpose and world religions, and I found that every religion that I studied basically had the same point of view, and that was: The reason you’re here is to serve. I think serving is central to every faith.

The bottom line is, You’re here for a reason, and that’s to serve. And at the end of your life, when you die, you either did that or you didn’t.

“Is purpose spiritual? Yes! …. Purpose is spiritual wisdom embodied….
Unlocking our purpose is ultimately a spiritual path.”
-Richard Leider and David Shapiro, The Power of Purpose, 4^th edition

Gregg:

It sounds like that implies part of the journey of living is the journey of self-discovery, of asking, Who am I? What’s my place in the world? What are my gifts, my calling? And then, if there’s a calling, it implies something or someone doing the calling or placing a purpose within you.

Richard:

Well, the call is a felt sense, whether it comes from God up above or it comes from within. The call is people feel like they’re here for a reason, and it comes in different ways, often through a crisis. I’ve interviewed people over the age of 65, as you know, for decades, and asked them if they could live their life over again, what would they do differently? There’s three things that always come up, and that is, if I could live my life over again, I would be more reflective about what matters in life. When are you reflective? It’s usually in a crisis: I get cancer, I get a divorce, I get fired, and then I have to step back and look at what really matters.

Secondly, if they live their life over again, what’s authentic? They want to live authentic lives. People say over and over again, I did what my parents wanted, or what my parents would pay for in terms of my education. And I ask, Well, what really matters? And they’ll say, Work and love. I want to do work that fits who I am, and I want to be in relationships that who fit who I am.

And third, mattering matters. I’ll go to my grave saying this. It’ll probably be on my tombstone. Mattering matters. 100% of the people have said, I want my life to matter somehow. I want to leave my footprint. It doesn’t have to be a big deal. It could be just with my family, just with my church, just with my synagogue or temple. But I don’t want to die without some sort of dent.

And so that’s what purpose is all about. Mattering, ultimately, matters. But we all want to do it our own way. In our book, The Power of Purpose, we’re just saying, check it out. Do your homework. Don’t blow it off.

* Video conversation between Gregg Vanourek and Richard Leider via Zoom, recorded, transcribed by Otter.ai, and then edited by Gregg.

Gregg’s Tools for You

Traps Test (Common Traps of Living) to help you identify what’s getting in the way of your happiness and quality of life
Quality of Life Assessment to help you discover your strongest areas and the areas that need work and then act accordingly
Strengths Search to help you identify your core strengths and determine how to use them more in your life and work

Quality of Life Assessment

Evaluate your quality of life in ten key areas by taking our assessment. Discover your strongest areas, and the areas that need work, then act accordingly.

Postscript: Inspirations on Purpose and Spirituality

“I believe that we are put on this earth to live our soul’s purpose. To me, that means using our unique gifts and talents to make a positive impact in the world and help create the world we want to see…. We are all born with an inner compass that tells us whether or not we’re on the right path to finding our true purpose. That compass is our JOY.” -Jack Canfield, author
“You have to build meaning into your life, and you build it through your commitments—whether to your religion, to an ethical order as you conceive it, to your life’s work, to loved ones, to your fellow humans.” -John W. Gardner, author and civic activist
“Everyone has a calling, which is the small, unsettling voice from deep within our souls, an inner urge, which hounds us to live out our purpose in a certain way. A calling is a concern of the spirit. Since a calling implies that someone calls, my belief is that the caller is God.” -Dave Wondra, executive coach
“I believe there’s a calling for all of us. I know that every human being has value and purpose. The real work of our lives is to become aware. And awakened. To answer the call.” -Oprah Winfrey, teacher, author, and entrepreneur
“Purpose is the recognition of the presence of the sacred within us and the choice of work that is consistent with that presence. Purpose defines our contribution to life. It may find expression through family, community, relationship, work, and spiritual activities.” -Richard Leider, author
“As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.” -Isaiah 55:10-11 NIV
Spirituality is “recognizing and celebrating that we are all inextricably connected to each other by a power greater than all of us, and that our connection to that power and to one another is grounded in love and compassion. Practicing spirituality brings a sense of perspective, meaning, and purpose to our lives.” -Brene Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection
“Earlier in my life, I thought the things that mattered were the things that you could see, like your car, your house, your wealth, your property, your office. But as I’ve grown older I’ve become convinced that the things that matter most are the things that you can’t see–the love you share with others, your inner purpose, your comfort with who you are.” -Jimmy Carter
“The deepest desire of our hearts is for union with God. God created us for union with himself: This is the original purpose of our lives.” -Brennan Manning, author
“We have not come into the world to be numbered; we have been created for a purpose; for great things: to love and be loved.” -Mother Teresa of Calcutta
“The purposes of a man’s heart are deep waters, but a man of understanding draws them out.” -Proverbs 20:5

“God is the one who can tell us the reason for our existence, our place in the scheme of things, our real identity.
It is an identity we can’t discover for ourselves and that others can’t discover for us.
How we have chased around the world for answers to this riddle, looked in the eyes of others for some hint, some clue, hunted in the worlds of pleasure and experience and self-fulfillment for some glimpse, some revelation, some wisdom, some authority to tell us our right name and our true destination.
But there was, and is, only One who can tell us this: The Lord Himself. And he wants to tell us, he has made us to know our reason for being and to be led by it. But it is a secret he will entrust to us only when we ask, and then in His own way and His own time. He will whisper it not in the mad rush and fever of our striving and our fierce determination to become someone, but rather when we are content to put our rest in him, to put ourselves in his keeping, into his hands. Most delightfully of all, it is a secret he will tell us slowly and sweetly, when we are willing to spend time with him.” -Emily Griffin, Clinging

Gregg Vanourek’s Newsletter

Join our rapidly growing community. Sign up now and get monthly inspirations (new articles, opportunities, and resources). Welcome!

Unlock Your Purpose–3 Key Elements

03/24/202503/04/2025 by Gregg Vanourek

Article Summary:

Knowing and living your purpose is hard for many. It helps to break it down to the three key elements of purpose. Excerpts from my conversation with best-selling author, Richard Leider.*

+++

Gregg Vanourek:

Richard, you have something you call the “napkin test.” You’ve written that calling, which you sometimes use as a synonym for purpose, is a function of your gifts and your passions and your values:

G + P + V = C

“’Finding your purpose’ is misleading, however, because it’s not something we have to go out and ‘find.’ Rather, purpose is revealed when we turn within and unlock it. We’ve already got it—even if we haven’t clarified it yet! But how do you unlock it? By looking in the most essential places—our individual gifts, passions, and values….
Combining our gifts with our passions and values reveals to us purpose.”
-Richard Leider and David Shapiro, The Power of Purpose, 4^th edition

What if someone comes to you and says, I don’t have any gifts, or, I don’t have any passions? Say a bit more about how you’d respond to that person who’s really struggling and just doesn’t see it.

Richard Leider:

I call it the “Got-a-minute school of coaching,” because people say, Got a minute? Can you tell me what I should do with the rest of my life?

I say, Take out a napkin and write down your gifts, passions, and values. And let’s talk about that after you do some work on it.

I’ve interviewed thousands of people over five decades of life. There’s not one person I’ve ever interviewed who doesn’t ultimately own their gifts. They say, Yeah, I really enjoy that, I love that, I’m good at that. So, a gift is the first thing in the formula.

Gregg:

How do you define a gift?

Richard:

A gift has four characteristics:

First, it’s something you love to do.
Second, your hand turns to it naturally. Others observe you doing it effortlessly and superbly.
Third, you can’t remember learning it. When asked how you learned it, you might say, I don’t know. I don’t have a degree in that, but I just do it effortlessly and well.
Fourth, you say, I love learning more about it and hanging out with people interested in it.

Ask someone, What’s your gift? Ask what they love to do. They come up with it automatically. They know there’s something there.

I created a tool called Calling Cards. It’s available on Amazon, and it helps people to do a deeper dive into that. Sometimes I use that when I’m working with leadership teams, because people are so starved for that.

Strengths Search

We all have core strengths–the things in which we most excel. Take this self-assessment to determine your core strengths so you can integrate them more into your life and work.

Gregg:

What are passions, the second element?

Richard:

Passions are, What do you want to use your gifts in the service of? What do you really care about? What keeps you up at night? But it’s not about your problems. It’s more about your opportunities. What are you reading and thinking about? What do you care about?

I’m 80, and I wake up early in the morning. The first thing I do is write. What I write about is what I’m thinking about, what I care about, and what I read about. It makes me happy. So, What is it that you care about, that you would love to use your gifts in the service of?

Passion Probe

Our passions are the things that consume us with palpable emotion over time. We love doing them and talk about them often. Take this self-assessment to find the ones that resonate most with you.

Gregg:

And what about values, the third element?

Richard:

Values are about where you do what you do. So many people have a good job, but they don’t like where they’re doing it. It doesn’t fit them.

The number-one knockout factor in most career research is this: I don’t like where I’m working. I don’t like the people. It’s not a good fit for me. The job is good, but the place is not. That’s why so many people would rather do their own thing, something on their own.

Personal Values Exercise

* Video conversation between Gregg Vanourek and Richard Leider via Zoom, recorded, transcribed by Otter.ai, and then edited by Gregg.

Gregg’s Tools for You

Strengths Search to help you identify your core strengths and start using them more in your life and work
Passion Probe to help you find the things that consume you with palpable emotion over time
Personal Values Exercise to help you clarify what’s most important to you

Personal Values Exercise

Postscript: Inspirations on Purpose

“Purpose is already within us waiting to be discovered.” -Richard Leider, author
“Respond to every call that excites your spirit.” -Rumi, 13th century poet
“Your life is an opportunity to give the gifts that your soul wants to give.” -Gary Zukav, author
“I believe that we are put on this earth to live our soul’s purpose. To me, that means using our unique gifts and talents to make a positive impact in the world and help create the world we want to see…. We are all born with an inner compass that tells us whether or not we’re on the right path to finding our true purpose. That compass is our JOY.” -Jack Canfield, author
“Purpose is a presence within us all the time. It is a constant presence in our lives that merely needs to be unlocked via reflection and action.” -Richard Leider and David Shapiro, The Power of Purpose, 4^th edition

“If we lack purpose, we lose connection with our true nature and become externally driven, generating discontent or even angst. Because purpose can be so elusive, we often duck the big question and look for ways to bury that discontent, most often through ‘busyness,’ distraction, or worse.”
-Christopher Gergen & Gregg Vanourek,
LIFE Entrepreneurs: Ordinary People Creating Extraordinary Lives

Gregg Vanourek’s Newsletter

Join our rapidly growing community. Sign up now and get monthly inspirations (new articles, opportunities, and resources). Welcome!

Purpose Demystified

03/24/202502/27/2025 by Gregg Vanourek

Article Summary:

Many people resist thinking about their purpose, in part due to common misunderstandings about it. Excerpts from my conversation with best-selling author, Richard Leider.*

++++++++++++

Gregg Vanourek:

Richard, congratulations on your new book, the fourth edition of The Power of Purpose: To Grow and to Give for Life, with David Shapiro. Great to see it doing so well. I want to start at the beginning. Many people, when they think about purpose, might be a little skeptical. They might struggle with it. Some might come to you and say, Purpose sounds a little abstract, Richard. It sounds a bit distant and philosophical. I live in the real world. What would you say to them?

Richard Leider:

Well, the quick answer is, I talk about “Big P” purpose and “little p” purpose. Big P purpose is what they’re struggling with when they say that. It’s like, I need to save the planet. So, it’s having a cause or being committed to something you care about. Little P purpose is what you do when you arise this morning to make a difference in one person’s life. It can take 10 seconds. You can give a hug, a kind word. There are 1,440 purpose moments in a day. Can’t you find just one purpose moment to make a difference in another person’s life? That is the power of purpose.

Gregg:

I love it. There are 1,440 minutes in a day, and you can use even just a few of them for little P purpose. You don’t always have to get caught up in Big P purpose.

Richard:

Yes, Big P is good, but mostly, it’s not what I talk about these days. What I talk about is that people live the lives they need to. As you said, Gregg, I live in the real world. Well, the real world is 1,440 purpose moments.

Take the Traps Test

We all fall into traps in life. Sometimes we’re not even aware of it, and we can’t get out of traps we don’t know we’re in. Evaluate yourself with our Traps Test.

Gregg:

What would be an example of a Big P purpose versus a little P purpose?

Richard:

Well, my Big P purpose is to help others unlock the power of purpose. That’s how I make a living. It’s my vocation. That’s what I’m known for. But my little P purpose, right now, is what we’re doing to make a difference in one person’s life today—and then again tomorrow.

Gregg:

And you can do that in so many different ways that are much more accessible. It can be a nice conversation with somebody. Recognizing someone. Thanking the barista. Holding doors open for someone.

Richard:

Exactly, but you have to be intentional. This is who we are as human beings. It’s in our DNA to be part of a group or community. How do we do that? We do that through what you just said, with the barista, at the gas station or the store. We turn to somebody and say, Oh, you look great, or, Thank you. And out of that comes a felt sense. The bottom line here is that purpose is a felt sense. You feel it because it is who we are as human beings.

Quality of Life Assessment

Evaluate your quality of life in ten key areas by taking our assessment. Discover your strongest areas, and the areas that need work, then act accordingly.

Gregg:

It sounds like it’s something that, instead of being distant and abstract, you end up living into with your day-to-day actions and mindset. You come back home to that DNA that’s your heritage. You come back into it, as opposed to being separate from it.

Richard:

Purpose is age-agnostic. It can be young people, it can be mid-life people, it can be retired people. Often, we hear from retired people, Well, I’ve had my career, I’ve done my job, I’ve done my role. And I say, You haven’t done your life. Your life still exists as part of the community. What’s your reason to arise?

“Purpose is age-agnostic. It can be young people, it can be mid-life people, it can be retired people.”
-Richard Leider

Gregg:

What are some other things that people often don’t understand or get right about purpose?

Richard:

My favorite quote about purpose is from the American essayist, E.B. White, who says this:

“I arise in the morning torn between a desire to save the world and a desire to savor the world.
This makes it hard to plan the day.”
-E.B. White

He got it right. It’s about both saving and savoring. You want to savor life. Yes, you want to do the things you love to do and enjoy. You don’t have to be Mother Teresa, or Martin Luther King, Jr., or some Big P purpose person. What you have to do, though, is not just be about you. The dark side of purpose is self-absorption. When we’re around narcissists, self-absorbed people, we don’t like that.

Purpose is always about serving others.

But you don’t have to have your whole life be about that. It can be just a few minutes a day. It’s about the balance between saving and savoring.

Personal Values Exercise

Gregg:

I think many people can have this mistaken idea that purpose sounds like navel-gazing, that it’s all about me, sitting around thinking, What’s my purpose? You’re saying it’s not. It’s serving. And giving is fundamental to living on purpose. The subtitle of the new edition of The Power of Purpose is “To Grow and to Give for Life.”

Richard:

One of the examples of that is a story about a man named Ed Rapp. He was one of the presidents of the three big units within Caterpillar Inc., and he was about to become the CEO of Caterpillar worldwide. He was out running with his son, and his son noticed his foot was dragging. Long story short, he was diagnosed with ALS (Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease).

Ed is from a farm community in Missouri. There were 30 kids in his high school class. He was the first in his family and class to go to the University of Missouri, get a business degree, etc. Here he is about to ascend to the higher levels of leading on purpose, and he has to resign because he’s got ALS.

I talk to him regularly, and he has the Big P purpose and the little P purpose. His Big P purpose is to make a difference with the science and research of ALS. He created an organization, Stay Strong vs. ALS. I think they’ve raised about $20 million. Every day, five days a week, he gets up and he coaches somebody just diagnosed with ALS, someone who’s scared and wants to know, What can I do?

He said, Richard, I get more juice out of that. It’s not going to save my life. I’m going to die from this. But it brings more aliveness to me than almost anything else, that ability to make a difference in one person’s life.

Gregg:

I love that, and it raises the issue of suffering in the world. Part of the human journey is that we all suffer. Many people today are concerned about the state of the world. There’s a lot of pain and concerning things happening, but purpose is something that can redeem suffering. Ed’s story is also interesting because it’s not this abstract thing. He found purpose in a way that was personal for him, and ways in which he could really connect with the people who are newly diagnosed, because it’s been part of his story—his story of making the best of it and doing good with it. That’s the personal piece.

* Video conversation between Gregg Vanourek and Richard Leider via Zoom, recorded, transcribed by Otter.ai, and then edited by Gregg.

++++++++++++

Gregg’s Tools for You

Traps Test (Common Traps of Living) to help you identify what’s getting in the way of your happiness and quality of life
Quality of Life Assessment so you can discover your strongest areas and the areas that need work, then act accordingly
Passions Probe to help you find the things that consume you with palpable emotion over time

Postscript: Inspirations on Purpose

“When we are clear about our purpose, or at least working toward it, our lives come together in powerful ways.” -Christopher Gergen & Gregg Vanourek, LIFE Entrepreneurs: Ordinary People Creating Extraordinary Lives
“Purpose reveals itself when we stop being afraid and start being ourselves.” -Richard Leider, “An Incomplete Manifesto for Purpose”
“If there’s just one habit you can create to help you find your purpose, it would be helping others.” -Amy Morin

Gregg Vanourek’s Newsletter

Join our rapidly growing community. Sign up now and get monthly inspirations (new articles, opportunities, and resources). Welcome!

How Advice Gets Ruined by Cognitive Biases

08/30/2024 by Gregg Vanourek

When it comes to giving and receiving good advice, your brain may be getting in the way.

Daniel Kahneman, author of the blockbuster book, Thinking, Fast & Slow, is famous for his work on the psychology of decision-making. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences. An enormous body of research from Kahneman and his colleagues over decades suggests the following:

You’re not as rational as you think.
Emotions, automatic responses, and mental shortcuts are much bigger drivers of our decisions than you might think.
Facts matter much less than you might think when you’re making decisions.

Kahneman and his long-time colleague, Amos Tversky, report that humans are prone to “severe and systematic errors” in their thinking because of the way their brains work. Much of that flows from cognitive biases, which are systematic errors in thinking that influence (and degrade) your decisions. Unfortunately, these cognitive biases can degrade or even ruin both the giving and receiving of advice. We address each of those in turn below.

Take the Traps Test

We all fall into traps in life. Sometimes we’re not even aware of it, and we can’t get out of traps we don’t know we’re in. Evaluate yourself with our Traps Test.

How Cognitive Biases Can Affect GIVING Advice

Here are several examples of how cognitive biases can degrade the thinking of advice givers and thus the quality and helpfulness of their advice:

Overconfidence Bias (when your confidence in your own knowledge or abilities exceeds the actual accuracy or skill you possess). You’re likely overestimating the probability your advice will work while also downplaying the potential difficulties. For example, if you’ve had some successful investments in the stock market, you might become overconfident in your ability to pick stocks or predict market trends. You might suggest risky investments without fully accounting for the risks and complexities involved. Big pain may follow for your friend.

Anchoring (when you rely too heavily on the first piece of information you encounter—the “anchor”—when making decisions, even if that information is irrelevant or incorrect). People tend to weight information more heavily when it appears early in a series, even when order isn’t important. For example, you might advise a colleague to accept a job offer based on the salary figure mentioned, which is higher than their current salary. Your colleague may end up overlooking other important factors like benefits, job security, flextime, and career growth opportunities.

Illusion of Control (overestimating your ability to control events). When giving advice, you’re likely forgetting many of the things that helped you address a similar situation. You may focus on your approach while downplaying the role of other key factors, such as other helpers and mentors, outside events, or even blind luck. Maybe you have navigated a few personal conflicts in your own marriage or with your team, and you start to believe you have a special knack for resolving relationship issues. You might give advice to friends experiencing relationship troubles, recommending specific approaches that worked for you. However, overestimating your ability to control and influence relationship dynamics can lead to poor advice, as each relationship is unique and influenced by complex factors that may not be addressed by the advice.

Framing (reacting to a choice differently depending on how it’s presented, whether as a loss or as a gain). For example, perhaps a business mentor advises a colleague to accept a job offer because it includes a significant annual bonus. Meanwhile, that framing is focused solely on the bonus without considering that it’s conditional on meeting challenging or even unrealistic performance targets—or that the base salary is lower than industry standards. Because of the framing, the mentee might overlook other less favorable aspects of the offer, resulting in a decision that doesn’t fully align with their current context and career goals.

Selective Recall (when you more accurately remember information or messages that are closer to your interests, values, and beliefs than those that contrast with them). You might recall more recent instances when taking an aggressive approach with your boss resulted in a big pay increase, forgetting about less successful times. Or you might be reminiscing about how a broad job search strategy worked well for you. As an investor, you might better recall the times when your stock picks were successful, conveniently forgetting the duds.

Curse of Knowledge (when you assume others also know what you know about a subject). If you have expertise in a field, you may struggle to simplify complex information for others who lack that specialized knowledge. It’s likely that you’ve known some things for so long that you forgot what it was like not to know them and thus have a hard time remembering that not everyone else knows them as well. For example, you might advise a junior employee to quit a job because you’re confident they can quickly find a better position. Perhaps you’ve been through multiple resignations and firings. Meanwhile, you’re taking for granted your own extensive network and industry knowledge. You may be overlooking the junior employee’s less extensive network and their limited experience and job market understanding. Not to mention how overwhelmed or even terrified they may be feeling about the changes.

“Skillful performance and skillful teaching are not always the same thing,
so we shouldn’t expect the best performers to necessarily be the best teachers as well.”
-David Levari

“Hammers and Nails” (if you’re good with a tool, you may want to use it more often than is warranted). Example: If you’ve analyzed a problem in depth, you can end up exaggerating the importance of that problem. Recall that no one tool is good for everything. If your favorite tool is a hammer, look for colleagues with screwdrivers and wrenches. As a CEO, maybe you’ve used drastic cost-cutting in the past and now over-rely on that as a strategy. Or as a manager, maybe conflict-resolution training has worked well for you in the past but isn’t appropriate in the current context. As a founder, maybe you believe your inspirational speeches in front of the whole company are more impactful than they really are. (Source for the “hammer and nails” term and concept: Hans Rosling, Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About The World–And Why Things Are Better Than You Think.)

“We are skeptical that advisers can rid themselves of the cognitive and motivational biases that skew advice.” -Jason Dana and Daylian Cain, “Advice Versus Choice”, Current Opinion in Psychology, Volume 6, December 2015

Quality of Life Assessment

Evaluate your quality of life in ten key areas by taking our assessment. Discover your strongest areas, and the areas that need work, then act accordingly.

How Cognitive Biases Can Affect RECEIVING Advice

Unfortunately, cognitive biases can also downgrade or corrupt the thinking of the person receiving advice, compounding the problem even further. Here are examples:

Confirmation bias (your tendency to favor information that confirms your pre-existing beliefs and to ignore information that contradicts them). The person receiving your advice is likely not getting the message you’re trying to send. Instead, they’re subconsciously hyping the things you’re saying that fit with their existing beliefs while downplaying or even ignoring the ones that go against their beliefs. Common career beliefs that might bias their thinking include:

changing careers is a sign of instability or failure
a successful career must follow a straightforward, linear progression
advanced degrees or prestigious educational institutions automatically lead to better job opportunities and faster career progression

“Confirmation bias is probably the single biggest problem in business, because even the most sophisticated people get it wrong. People go out and they’re collecting the data, and they don’t realize they’re cooking the books.” -Dan Lovallo, decision-making researcher and professor

Halo Effect (when your overall positive impression of someone influences your judgments about their specific traits or advice). For example, you might get advice from a respected professor with an engaging teaching style but who has expertise in a different field. Because you admire the professor, you might follow her advice on career choices or thesis research methods that are outside her area of expertise. Meanwhile, you might be downplaying your own goals or not letting your core values guide you.

Positive Illusion (when you have unrealistically favorable attitudes about yourself or your future.) Did you know that the vast majority of us consider ourselves above average when it comes to leading, driving, getting along with others, and, yes, giving out helpful advice? Example: as an entrepreneur, you might believe that your new startup is destined for success despite numerous warning signs and market challenges. Your overconfidence can lead you to ignore critical feedback or warnings, ultimately jeopardizing your venture’s success.

Mere Exposure Effect (the tendency to develop a preference for things simply because they’re familiar). As a hiring manager, maybe you’ve repeatedly heard the name of a candidate from colleagues or advisors. This repeated exposure can lead you to favor (perhaps subconsciously) this candidate over others, even if other applicants are more qualified.

Personal Values Exercise

How Cognitive Biases Can Affect BOTH GIVING & RECEIVING Advice

Sometimes, the problem with cognitive biases and advice works in both directions—degrading the thinking of both the advice giver and receiver. A few examples:

Planning Fallacy (the tendency to underestimate the time, costs, and risks of future actions and to overestimate their benefits). For example, you might advise someone to set an ambitious deadline for a new project, underestimating the time required for research, development, and testing. Meanwhile, they’re overestimating the benefits of the work while downplaying the challenges. Ouch.

WYSIATI (“What You See Is All There Is”—the tendency to ignore the possibility that there’s missing information in a scenario). Here you might not consider that your current knowledge might be incomplete and that missing information could significantly impact your decisions. For example, if you traveled somewhere years ago, you might recommend that place based on your positive experience there, overlooking potential issues like crime, safety, seasonal weather differences, or new political problems. The person hearing about it may assume they don’t need to do their own checking based on your effusive recommendation.

Strengths Search

We all have core strengths–the things in which we most excel. Take this self-assessment to determine your core strengths so you can integrate them more into your life and work.

Conclusion

Clearly, advice comes with many challenges due to the way our minds work. You’re wise to be mindful of those challenges when giving and receiving advice—noting that many of these factors can be at work in a single advice session. Why not consider other ways of giving and receiving help that don’t have these pitfalls?

(This article is third in a three-part series on advice. Check out the other articles: “The Hazards of Advice” and “Don’t Give Advice. Do This Instead.”)

Tools for You

Traps Test (Common Traps of Living) to help you identify what’s getting in the way of your happiness and quality of life
Quality of Life Assessment to help you discover your strongest areas and the areas that need work and then act accordingly
Strengths Search to help you identify your core strengths and determine how to use them more in your life and work

Appendix: Quantity vs. Quality of Advice

Another problem comes with the quantity of advice given. Assistant Professor David Levari of Brown University and his colleagues found, across several studies, that top performers give more advance than others, but don’t give better advice.

“In our experiments, people given advice by top performers thought that it helped them more, even though it usually didn’t…. Top performers didn’t write more helpful advice, but they did write more of it, and people in our experiments mistook quantity for quality.”
-David Levari

In a 2022 Psychological Science article, the researchers concluded the following: “People seem to mistake quantity for quality. Our studies suggest that in at least in some instances, people may overvalue advice from top performers.” (Source: David E. Levari, Daniel T. Gilbert, Timothy D. Wilson. Tips From the Top: Do the Best Performers Really Give the Best Advice? Psychological Science, 2022; 33 (5).)

Gregg Vanourek’s Newsletter

Join our rapidly growing community. Sign up now and get monthly inspirations (new articles, opportunities, and resources). Welcome!

+++++++++++++++++

Don’t Give Advice. Do This Instead

08/30/202408/21/2024 by Gregg Vanourek

We often take for granted that advice is beneficial, but it has several hazards that are frequently overlooked. Often, it’s resisted or resented. Sometimes, it does more harm than good.

What to do, then, instead of giving advice? Here are 18 suggestions for how to help people without giving them advice:

1. Ask and listen. When people come to you seeking help, ask questions—ideally guiding questions that allow them to tap into their intuition, judgment, and deeper wisdom. Avoid jumping in to fill the silence. Give their thoughts and ideas time to percolate.

2. Clarify. Ask many questions to clarify the situation, people involved, and the relevant factors. How can you help if you don’t understand the context?

3. Invite their ideas. Don’t just leave room in the conversation for their initiative and creative ideas. Invite and celebrate them. Here are some things you could say:

What do you think?
If you had to get started on this right now, what would you do?
How could you make this work?
What are some possibilities to consider?

Focus on tapping into their inner wisdom and soliciting answers from them instead of handing down your own proclamations.

4. Detach from the results. Offer your help without attachment to what the person decides to do, or to the results. Guard against the sneaky arrival of your ego in the conversation, because it will place the focus on you instead of the person you’re trying to help.

5. Engage your heart. Share from your heart, not from a place of wanting to be right or needing to save or persuade the person. Invite their heart and wisdom into the conversation as well.

6. Provide space. Give the person space to express their own perspective, including concerns and fears.

Take the Traps Test

We all fall into traps in life. Sometimes we’re not even aware of it, and we can’t get out of traps we don’t know we’re in. Evaluate yourself with our Traps Test.

7. Be humble. Approach the situation with humility. Share your ideas and perspectives when appropriate (especially when asked), but allow for the fact that you may be missing something and that there may be multiple ways to address it. Recall that you don’t have all the facts and may be missing essential parts of the puzzle. Keep in mind that smart and experienced people often disagree about what to do with many situations.*

8. Focus on exploration, not certainty. Preface any input you provide by acknowledging you’re in exploration mode, not in certainty mode. For example:

Let’s bounce some ideas off each other.
This may be off but…
One idea could be…
What would you think about…

9. Empathize and offer emotional support. Don’t jump in without first pausing to observe how difficult this must be for them. Show them you recognize that—and that you care.

10. Walk alongside. Emphasize collaboration, not instruction or direction. Consider actually going for a walk so you’re literally side by side instead of facing each other.

11. Show loyalty. Have the person’s back and be totally committed to their success.

12. Show respect. Show the person deep respect with your presence and attention while acknowledging the difficulty and complexity of the situation at hand.

Quality of Life Assessment

Evaluate your quality of life in ten key areas by taking our assessment. Discover your strongest areas, and the areas that need work, then act accordingly.

13. Demonstrate belief. Show them you believe in them and trust them to solve the problem. Express your confidence in them.

14. Place them in the starring role—and keep them there. It’s their challenge and their life, so the solution should come from them. Will you be the Samwise Gamgee to their Frodo? The Peeta to their Katniss Everdeen? The Mr. Miyagi to their Karate Kid? The Minions to their Gru?

15. Determine the most valuable form of help in the situation. There are many different forms of help beyond advice: input, reactions, feedback, constructive criticism, guidance, coaching, mentoring, dialogue, reframing, and more. Even playing the devil’s advocate or setting a good example. Don’t assume that because someone comes to you asking for advice that advice-giving is warranted. Read the person and the situation. Maybe they need help seeing the big picture? Or a deep dive on the root causes? Maybe they need wisdom and discernment instead of a quick fix? Perhaps they really need encouragement, motivation, or inspiration and not “the answer” handed to them on a silver platter. Or maybe they just need a sounding board—or an opportunity to brainstorm together without judgment. Or empathy and understanding. In most cases, guiding and coaching are much more helpful than giving advice.

16. Accept them as they are. Don’t try to change or control them. Help them find their own way through their travails given their personality, preferences, passions, and values, not yours.

17. Share your personal experience when appropriate. Let them draw their own conclusions. Don’t assume that because something worked out for you that it means they need to do things the way you did. Different person, different situation.

18. Lead by example. Perhaps most important of all, focus on setting a good example by what you do instead of doling out advice. Your example is your most influential tool.

“A good example has twice the value of good advice.”
-Albert Schweitzer, humanitarian, philosopher, and physician

Conclusion

Yes, advice can help sometimes, but too often it’s lame and ineffective, an ego boost for the giver but a downer for the receiver. Why not up your game by really thinking through how to support someone without stepping on them?

(This article is second in a three-part series on advice. Check out the other articles: “The Hazards of Advice” and “How Advice Gets Ruined by Cognitive Biases.”)

Tools for You

Traps Test (Common Traps of Living) to help you identify what’s getting in the way of your happiness and quality of life
Quality of Life Assessment to help you discover your strongest areas and the areas that need work and then act accordingly
Strengths Search to help you identify your core strengths and determine how to use them more in your life and work

Strengths Search

We all have core strengths–the things in which we most excel. Take this self-assessment to determine your core strengths so you can integrate them more into your life and work.

Postscript: Inspirations on “Don’t Give Advice”

“Nobody can give you wiser advice than yourself.” -Cicero, ancient Roman poet and philosopher
“As much as we love advice, we often don’t need it. The answer already lies within us.” -Bruce Feiler, The Search
“Let us not underestimate how hard it is to be compassionate. Compassion is hard because it requires the inner disposition to go with others to the place where they are weak, vulnerable, lonely, and broken. But this is not our spontaneous response to suffering. What we desire most is to do away with suffering by fleeing from it or finding a quick cure for it. As busy, active, relevant ministers, we want to earn our bread by making a real contribution. This means first and foremost doing something to show that our presence makes a difference. And so we ignore our greatest gift, which is our ability to enter into solidarity with those who suffer.” -Henri Nouwen, The Way of the Heart
“We stand with simple attentiveness at the borders of their solitude—trusting that they have within themselves whatever resources they need and that our attentiveness can help bring those resources into play.” -Parker Palmer, A Hidden Wholeness

* Think of all the conflicting advice out there. For example, should you plan in detail or go with the flow and be agile? Should you specialize or diversify? Start strong and make your mark or spend the first 100 days on a listening tour? Exude confidence or demonstrate humility? Stay the course or cut your losses?

Gregg Vanourek’s Newsletter

Join our rapidly growing community. Sign up now and get monthly inspirations (new articles, opportunities, and resources). Welcome!

+++++++++++++++++

The Hazards of Advice

08/30/202408/16/2024 by Gregg Vanourek

Article Summary:

Advice is common, and we tend to assume it’s helpful, but there are many hazards of advice that we fail to account for. 18 risks and flaws that come with advice.

++++++

Advice. It’s all around you. You may be drowning in it.

“You should do XYZ.”
“You need to get started on ABC, pronto.”

It comes from everywhere. From family, friends, colleagues, managers.

In most cases, their intent is good. They’re trying to help.

But many people don’t pay nearly enough attention to the negative unintended consequences of doling out advice. Sometimes advice does more harm than good.

Do you give unsolicited advice?
Are you, like so many of us, great at dishing out advice but terrible at taking it in?*
Have you ever shared a frustration with someone, really just wanting to vent about it, only to be on the receiving end of a tirade of advice from them?

Take the Traps Test

We all fall into traps in life. Sometimes we’re not even aware of it, and we can’t get out of traps we don’t know we’re in. Evaluate yourself with our Traps Test.

The Problem with Advice: 18 Risks and Flaws

Most people think of advice as helpful, and in some cases it is. But in many cases it misses the mark or even causes unexpected problems.

Yet, the advice train keeps rolling, in part because people haven’t taken the time to consider its downsides.

Here are 18 risks and flaws that come with advice:

1. While giving advice can feel great to the giver, receiving it can feel awful. Have you ever felt smothered by advice? Does it sometimes feel intrusive? It can put you on the defensive and make you feel put down or judged.

2. Giving advice can signal to the other person that you lack faith in their abilities. It can send the subtle message—even if unintended—that they need you or can’t get by on their own.

“It’s so counterproductive to think you can solve anyone else’s issues, because what it says is that they are not capable. It’s about the worst thing you can do for another human being.”
–Karin Weber, author and life coach

3. Giving advice can undermine the other person’s confidence. Over time, that can impair their ability to address their own issues going forward.

4. Giving advice can create a cycle of dependency. It may feel good to have all the answers and be needed when people seek your advice. But you may be creating dependency on your expertise. They may start coming to you more and more. Meanwhile, you’re inadvertently preventing them from learning how to address things on their own.

5. Giving advice can be more about our own need to be helpful or to be seen as an expert or hero than about the other person’s needs. For many, giving advice can feel gratifying. It can make you feel smarter. Important and accomplished. Ask this: How much of it is really about you and your ego or control?

Quality of Life Assessment

Evaluate your quality of life in ten key areas by taking our assessment. Discover your strongest areas, and the areas that need work, then act accordingly.

6. Advice often comes at the wrong time. In many cases, people go out looking for advice at precisely the times they’re least able to receive it—the times when they’re down, confused, or frustrated. Similarly, when you see someone struggling, you may jump in with advice without even considering their receptivity to it.

“To rush in with success formulas when someone is emotionally low or fatigued or under a lot of pressure
is comparable to trying to teach a drowning man to swim.”
-Stephen R. Covey, Primary Greatness

7. The actual value of advice is rarely put to the test. Giving advice is easy not only because it’s quick and cost-free but also because you don’t have to stick around and implement it—and suffer the consequences if things don’t go as planned. Most people have no clue about the success or failure rate of their advice. (How could they?) And they probably overestimate their success rate by wide margins. (More on that in a coming article.) Many times, you never find out what happened after you gave your advice. What’s more, you don’t know if things worked out because of or in spite of your advice (versus other possible factors). In truth, there are many variables at play, so it’s overly simplistic to think it’s the advice that made all the difference.

8. Your advice may work for you but that doesn’t mean it will work for them. When you’re giving advice, you’re doing so from your current perspective, from your levels of consciousness and awareness. You’re doing so from a certain level of understanding and experience. You come with your own history, outlook, strengths, weaknesses, personality, passions, and predispositions. Maybe your advice would work brilliantly for you, but it’s unrealistic for them, with their personality, skills, and background.

9. Context is essential, and often it’s incomplete or flawed. Sometimes, the person seeking or getting advice hasn’t done a good job of explaining the context and the core problem, setting the stage for incomplete or faulty advice. Or you jump in without a deep dive on the situation and all the players and factors.

“There are reasons why your ideas are often not that great. To start with, you don’t have the full picture. You’ve got a few facts, a delightful collection of baggage, a robust serving of opinion, and an ocean of assumption. You think you understand what’s happening. Your brain is designed to find patterns and make connections that reassure you that you know what’s going on. Trust me, you don’t. What you’ve got is one part truth and about six parts conjecture.”
-Michael Bungay Stanier, The Advice Trap

10. People asking you for advice may not have a good sense of what you really know well and what you don’t. They may have unrealistic expectations about the things you can speak about with authority. Many young entrepreneurs, for example, are hungry for advice as they build their new venture. Makes sense. When they approach a seasoned entrepreneur, they can have questions about a hundred things. Hiring. Onboarding. Tech platforms. Stock options. Cap tables. Seed rounds. Product launches. Sales. Pricing. Strategy. Business models. Customer development. Leadership. Culture-building. A.I. Can most entrepreneurs, even if successful, address all these issues with authority and conviction, tailored to all the markets and industries of the advice-seeking young founders?

11. Nobody wants to tell someone their baby is ugly. If someone comes to you seeking advice about their new idea (e.g., for a startup or a new approach), they’re unknowingly making it exceedingly awkward for you to give forthright input. Why? Because we humans are wired to avoid conflict and have difficult conversations. You might be tempted to place negative feedback in a “sandwich” of positives (as is commonly recommended), but that risks having the recipient miss the “meat” of what they really need to hear.

12. Most advice is woefully incomplete. Think about common advice you’ve heard a hundred times: Follow your passion. Find your purpose. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Go the extra mile. Drink a lot of water. Network. Meditate. Be grateful. Don’t go to bed angry. Etc. Etc. True, in many cases. Even helpful. But wretchedly oversimplified and missing essential elements. For example, how do you discover your passion? Do you have just one? What is purpose, and how do you find it? What to do after diversifying? And so on.

13. Advice can easily become overwhelming. All the aspects and steps may be clear to you, because you’ve been in a similar situation before. But it may all be new, daunting, and even confounding to them.

Personal Values Exercise

14. Giving advice can put distance in relationships. People may stop sharing concerns or problems with you because they know you’ll be too quick to jump in with your thoughts on what they need to do.

15. Advice can lead to resentment, which can poison relationships. Have you ever given advice and then felt frustrated that the person didn’t do what you said? In your mind, it may be perfectly clear and settled that they’ll go out and dutifully do exactly what you said. But maybe they had reservations about your advice based on their own experiences? Maybe they weren’t comfortable handling things your way, given their personality or values? Perhaps they got vastly different advice from someone else they trust? Maybe they didn’t know how to follow through on what you said or lost their motivation? Or something changed in the interim? When people don’t follow your advice, do you take it personally and get agitated? That can damage the relationship, and it’s often a sign that it’s become more about you than them.

16. Recall that “I was only trying to help” is often a cop-out (even when your intentions are in fact pure). True help often requires a smarter and more nuanced approach than dishing out advice. It may be easy to hide behind the “only trying to help” rationalization, but that doesn’t wash away your sins or address all the risks and flaws of giving advice.

“’I was only trying to help’ sounds like a positive statement born of caring,
but how often does it mask unwelcome intrusion?”
-Deepak Chopra, The Shadow Effect

17. Advice can shut them down. Sometimes, while the advice giver gets on a roll with ideas and solutions, it can cause the person receiving advice to become passive. The exchange becomes one-sided. Worse, it can silence their inner voice and take them away from their deeper wisdom by engaging their self-consciousness and ego, with status games suddenly afoot. According to Professor Richard Boyatzis of Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University, when people hear critical feedback, they tend to experience strong negative emotion, inhibiting their access to certain neural circuits in their brain and invoking “cognitive, emotional, and perceptual impairment.”

18. Advice is often a poor substitute for what’s really needed. Do they need to be told what to do? Fixed? Or do they need to be seen and heard, to be witnessed? Often, what people really need is connection, solidarity, and support—and to tap into their own brilliance and power.

Conclusion

Of course, advice isn’t all bad. Sometimes it really helps. In many cases, you might be missing something important that another person can bring to the table with advice.

Yes, it’s folly to try to go it alone. And yes, we sometimes need help and input from others. But often, the last thing people need is the kind of advice we’re all awash in.

When it comes to advice, we can and must do better.

(This article is first in a three-part series on advice. Check out the other articles: “Don’t Give Advice. Do This Instead” and “How Advice Gets Ruined by Cognitive Biases.”)

Reflection Questions

Are you giving this kind of unsolicited or one-sided advice too often?
Have you stopped to notice that it may not be as helpful as you think and that it may come with more risks and flaws than you’re accounting for?
What other kinds of exchanges might be more helpful?

Tools for You

Traps Test (Common Traps of Living) to help you identify what’s getting in the way of your happiness and quality of life
Quality of Life Assessment to help you discover your strongest areas and the areas that need work and then act accordingly
Strengths Search to help you identify your core strengths and determine how to use them more in your life and work

Strengths Search

We all have core strengths–the things in which we most excel. Take this self-assessment to determine your core strengths so you can integrate them more into your life and work.

“Don’t Give Advice. Do This Instead”
“How Advice Gets Ruined by Cognitive Biases”
“How to Give Effective Feedback—A Communication Superpower”
“Why We Need More Coaching Leaders”
“The Hidden Trap Catching Many High-Achievers”
“The Three Most Important Things Leaders Can Say to Their Teams”
“Escaping the Trap of Our Ego”
“Great Questions Leaders Should Be Asking”
“The Power of Reframing to Change Our Outlook”
Parker J. Palmer, “The Gift of Presence, the Perils of Advice,” On Being, April 27, 2016

Postscript: Quotations on Advice

“A good example has twice the value of good advice.” -Albert Schweitzer, physician, philosopher, and humanitarian
“…some people walk around giving unsolicited advice. The assumption is that they’re right, others are wrong, others need correcting, and the act of doling out advice is like a gift from above. More often, though, it trounces on people’s feelings and makes things worse. People don’t want to be fixed. They want to feel supported and valued as they go through their own journey, including wins, losses, and learnings. We all want to be the heroes of our own story.” -Gregg Vanourek, “How to Give Feedback—A Communication Superpower”
“…all advice can only be a product of the man who gives it. What is truth to one may be disaster to another. I do not see life through your eyes, nor you through mine.” -Hunter S. Thompson (Thompson was 22 years old when he wrote this letter to his friend Hume Logan in response to a request for life advice)
“One of the hardest things we must do sometimes is to be present to another person’s pain without trying to ‘fix’ it, to simply stand respectfully at the edge of that person’s mystery and misery. Standing there, we feel useless and powerless…. In an effort to avoid those feelings, I give advice, which sets me, not you, free.” -Parker Palmer, Let Your Life Speak
“Anyone who tries to force-feed you advice isn’t likely to be a competent soul guide.” -Martha Beck, The Way of Integrity: Finding the Path to True Self
“The human soul doesn’t want to be advised or fixed or saved. It simply wants to be witnessed—to be seen, heard, and companioned exactly as it is. When we make that kind of deep bow to the soul of a suffering person, our respect reinforces the soul’s healing resources, the only resources that can help the sufferer make it through.” -Parker Palmer, “The Gift of Presence, the Perils of Advice”

* Admittedly, part of the problem is that some people are promiscuous about soliciting advice. Sometimes, they have an ulterior motive. What they really want is for you to do something for them (go to bat for them at work or introduce them to an important person), and they’re using your vanity as a way in (e.g., making you feel smart and important by nodding breathlessly as you dispense your brilliant advice).

Gregg Vanourek’s Newsletter

Join our rapidly growing community. Sign up now and get monthly inspirations (new articles, opportunities, and resources). Welcome!

+++++++++++++++++

The Importance of Service in Living a Good Life

06/07/202410/12/2023 by Gregg Vanourek

These days, it’s easy to become self-involved. So much is coming at us so quickly. We live in a world of speed and busyness in an age of social media, celebrities, and influencers.

These cultural influences are strong, pulling our egos toward a certain way of living that can become superficial and materialistic. We can be obsessed with climbing professionally, with chasing success. And we can take all that we have for granted, as we’re so focused on chasing more.

This may keep us occupied (if not overloaded), but it’s not a recipe for good living. In all the chase, with all its focus on success, we can miss out on one of the great gifts and joys of life: serving.

Service is a remarkable thing because it allows us to help others while also helping ourselves.

Take the Traps Test

We all fall into traps in life. Sometimes we’re not even aware of it, and we can’t get out of traps we don’t know we’re in. Evaluate yourself with our Traps Test.

The Benefits of Serving Others

There are many benefits of serving and helping others, according to the research. Here are some of the main ones:

Helping others feels good. Researchers call it a “warm glow.” Even small acts of kindness can bring emotional rewards to the helper. (1)

“I don’t think there’s anything as wonderful in life as being able to help someone else.”
-Betty Ford, activist, former U.S. first lady, and founder, Betty Ford Center

Service is a powerful contributor to our happiness, fulfillment, and overall life satisfaction. According to a large and growing body of research, helping others is often associated with and can lead to higher levels of happiness. Volunteering leads to a boost in our mental health and happiness, especially among people who volunteer more often (e.g., at least once a month), and people who volunteered in the last year were more satisfied with their lives.

Service can help our life and work be more meaningful. And it can help us discover our purpose and core values.

Serving others can help us discover who we are. It’s an important part of what I call “discover mode”: learning about who we are (including our core values, strengths, passions, and aspirations) and what we can do in the world.

“The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.”
-Mahatma Gandhi, Indian lawyer and transformational leader

Helping others can help us transcend our egos. When we’re helping others, it’s hard to remain preoccupied with our own petty dramas.

Serving people can help us feel more grateful for what we have. We may begin to glimpse how fortunate or privileged we’ve been. It may give us a sharper perspective.

Serving others can be a powerful source of motivation. If we take the time to discover our core values and excavate our convictions, we’ll find that we long to contribute to some people, groups, or causes. We have a lot of energy to activate if we’ll only get started on it.

Serving other people with commitment and skill can help boost our confidence. As we help and have impact, we develop a greater belief in our capacities and conviction that we can add even more value.

Helping others builds our character. It may help us develop generosity, humility, empathy, trustworthiness, responsibility, loyalty, and even moral excellence.

Helping people can help us heal from deep wounds and traumatic experiences. There’s an intriguing expression: “When you feel sad, serve.” Too often, we get lost in our own wallowing and don’t see how readily we could change the dynamic if we’d only reach out and try to help someone else.

“…if you’re hurting, you need to help somebody ease their hurt. If you’re in pain, help somebody else’s pain. And when you’re in a mess, you get yourself out of the mess helping somebody out of theirs. And in the process, you get to become a member of what I call the greatest fellowship of all, the sorority of compassion and the fraternity of service.”
-Oprah Winfrey, media entrepreneur, philanthropist, and author

Serving people can bring us out of isolation and back into relationship and a sense of belonging in community. This could include spiritual communities that promote service or a focus on something larger than the self.

Serving others can help us create new or stronger friendships. We can befriend the people we’re serving or the people we’re serving alongside. These can become some of the most important relationships in our lives.

Helping others can warm up our cold hearts. Our hearts sometimes take a beating in today’s world. Our heart may be asleep, closed, or cold from pain, suffering, or isolation. Enter the warm glow of serving others.

Service can help us redeem some of the wrongs we’ve done and some of the pain we’ve inflicted on others. Let’s face it: we’ve all made mistakes and hurt people, including our loved ones. Too often, those are the ones we’ve hurt the most. Service can be an agent of redemption in our lives.

Helping others can have positive effects on our own health. According to the research, it can lead to lower stress and inflammation, reduced pain, healthier hearts, and even protection against anxiety, burnout, and depression.

Service can be inspiring and contagious. When people see someone serving others, it summons their better angels and makes them want to join in or follow suit. As this phenomenon spreads, it can help uplift communities.

Personal Values Exercise

How to Go About Serving Others

Service doesn’t have to be complicated. In fact, it’s often best when we keep it simple, heart to heart. Still, here are a few tips for going about it:

Developing self-awareness can be a great place to start. If we know our strengths, we can look for ways to use them when serving others, giving us a double win because it feels good to use our strengths on something important. The same holds true for our purpose, values, and passions.

If we pause to consider how we’re uniquely or powerfully qualified or positioned to help some people, groups, organizations, or causes—based on our knowledge, skills, experiences, or even our wounds—it can help us target our service efforts more effectively.

When we take time to discover what people, groups, or causes we feel called to serve, it can elevate our motivation and make it more likely we’ll stick with it.

Pervasive Service

In our book, LIFE Entrepreneurs: Ordinary People Creating Extraordinary Lives, Christopher Gergen and I wrote about something that intentional people who integrate their purpose and passions do well: “pervasive service,” which is “an ethic of contribution as a defining feature of our lives.”

Can we build service into our daily habits? Can we creatively find ways to serve—in ways big and small—our spouse or partner, family, friends, neighbors, colleagues, workplace, and community? What if we walked around with our helping antenna up, scanning for ways to respond to needs around us?

Service and giving shouldn’t be relegated to an occasional good deed—or to an annual tax write-off. What if we looked to bring them into each of our days—thus adding up to a lifetime of contribution? Viewed this way, service can become an organizing principle of our lives, a habit that permeates our personal lives and work and community endeavors.

Ideally, our acts of service evolve into deeper commitments that ripen us and enhance our inner life.

“There are occasions and opportunities for service that will vary throughout anyone’s life. The initial gate is that you understand that that’s a piece of being a full person. It’s a matter of saying yes to the opportunity when it appropriately appears. Every day is a preparation for serving something.”
-Buie Seawell, attorney and professor, University of Denver

Quality of Life Assessment

Evaluate your quality of life in ten key areas by taking our assessment. Discover your strongest areas, and the areas that need work, then act accordingly.

Some Cautions about Service

As with many things in life, there are some important nuances and even potential traps here.

First, let’s not make this about giving and expecting something in return. Not everything has to be transactional or come with an expectation or obligation. That just cheapens it.

Second, serving others doesn’t make us better than them. We all have dignity and potential. And we all have ups and downs and our unique context and challenges.

Third, there’s an ego risk that can come with serving. Let’s not let serving morph into a savior syndrome, and let’s not become self-righteous and smug about it.

Fourth, let’s watch out for the trap of being too focused on others—and giving ourselves away in the process. As the flight attendants wisely advise, let’s put on our own oxygen masks first. (See my article, “Are You Focusing Too Much on Others’ Needs.”)

“If takers are selfish and failed givers are selfless, successful givers are otherish: they care about benefiting others, but they also have ambitious goals for advancing their own interests…. Selfless giving, in the absence of self-preservation instincts, easily becomes overwhelming. Being otherish means being willing to give more than you receive, but still keeping your own interests in sight, using them as a guide for choosing when, where, how, and to whom you give.”
-Adam Grant, Give and Take

Conclusion

Service, while remarkable in its own ways and often uplifting, as we’ve seen, doesn’t have to be grandiose and world-changing. Our little acts of contribution can make a real difference day to day and add up over time to big sums.

So, yes, let’s dedicate ourselves to worthy and mighty causes, if we can. Let’s follow in the footsteps of great servants through the ages, if we can. But let’s also focus on what’s right in front of us: Raising our kids as best we can. Holding the door open for someone. Being kind to people we encounter on the street. Thanking the barista with a kind word and a smile. Stopping to see if someone needs help. Giving someone a ride. Checking in on a friend or colleague.

We’re likely to regret it if we don’t build service into our lives. If we do serve and serve often, it’s a beautiful gift both to the world and ourselves—and a way for us to honor the lives we’ve been given.

Reflection Questions

To what extent are you helping and serving?
What more could you do?
What will you start with, right now?

Tools for You

Traps Test (Common Traps of Living) to help you identify what’s getting in the way of your happiness and quality of life
Quality of Life Assessment to help you discover your strongest areas and the areas that need work and then act accordingly
Personal Values Exercise to help you clarify what’s most important to you
Strengths Search Tool to help you identify your core strengths and integrate them more into your life and work

Take the Traps Test

We all fall into traps in life. Sometimes we’re not even aware of it, and we can’t get out of traps we don’t know we’re in. Evaluate yourself with our Traps Test.

“Escaping the Trap of Our Ego”
“Are You Focused Too Much on Yourself?”
“Are You Trapped by Success?”
“Are We More Materialistic than We’d Like to Admit?”
“Bucket Filler or Bucket Dipper?”
“The Power of Relationships in Our Lives“
“Ten Keys to Self-Leadership”
“On Spirituality and the Good Life“
“The Urgency of Sustainable Leadership—And the Promise of Social Entrepreneurship”
“How to Become a Better Servant Leader”
See also our Servant Leadership Series on the Triple Crown Leadership website

Related Books

Tom Rath, Life’s Great Question: Discover How You Contribute to the World
Billy Shore, The Cathedral Within: Transforming Your Life by Giving Something Back
Adam Grant, Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success
Stephen Trzeciak and Anthony Mazzarelli, Wonder Drug: 7 Scientifically Proven Ways that Serving Others Is the Best Medicine for Yourself

Postscript: Inspirations on Serving Others

“Life’s most urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?’” -Martin Luther King, Jr.
“It is high time the ideal of success should be replaced with the ideal of service.” -Albert Einstein, German-born theoretical physicist
“Service is the very purpose of life. It is the rent we pay for living on the planet.” -Marian Wright Edelman, activist for civil rights and children’s rights
“…taking care of others, helping others, ultimately is the way to discover your own joy and to have a happy life.” -Dalai Lama
“Not everybody can be famous. But everybody can be great, because greatness is determined by service. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You don’t have to know about Plato or Aristotle to serve. You don’t have to know Einstein’s theory of relativity to serve. You don’t have to know the second theory of thermodynamics in physics to serve. You only need a heart full of grace and a soul generated by love.” -Martin Luther King, Jr.
“…the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who have sought and found how to serve.” -Albert Schweitzer, humanitarian, philosopher, and physician
“…when you choose the paradigm of service, looking at life through that paradigm, it turns everything you do from a job into a gift.” -Oprah Winfrey, media entrepreneur, philanthropist, and author
“A growing body of evidence suggests that the single greatest driver of both achievement and wellbeing is understanding how your daily efforts enhance the lives of others.” -Tom Rath, Life’s Great Question
“Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.” -Martin Luther King, Jr.
“Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.” -John F. Kennedy, former U.S. president
“I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted, and behold, service was joy.” -Rabindranath Tagore, Indian poet, writer, and social reformer
“Every now and then I think about my own death, and I think about my own funeral. And if you get somebody to deliver the eulogy, tell them not to talk too long…. I’d like for somebody to say some day that Martin Luther King Jr. tried to give his life serving others…. I just want to leave a committed life behind.” -Martin Luther King, Jr.
“The old… should, it seems, have their physical labors reduced; their mental activities should be actually increased. They should endeavor, too, by means of their counsel and practical wisdom to be of as much service as possible to their friends and to the young, and above all to the state.” -Cicero, De Officiis

(1) Serving others is a form of what researchers call “prosocial behavior” (including giving money to charity, volunteering, sharing food, donating blood or an organ, or otherwise voluntarily helping others). Researchers have discovered that people derive pleasure from helping others. Lara B. Aknin and Ashley V. Whillans found that it matters how people go about helping. Looking at the evidence on helping using self-determination theory, Aknin and Whillans discovered that prosocial behavior is more likely to lead to happiness when people have autonomy and choice over who and how they help, when they see the impacts of their help, and when they have opportunities to connect with people while helping. (Source: Lara B. Aknin and Ashley V. Whillans, “Helping and Happiness: A Review and Guide for Public Policy,” Social Issues and Policy Review, Vol. 15, No. 1, 2021)

“Human beings are exceptionally prosocial.
Not only do we go out of our way to help other people, but we often feel good when we do.”
-Lara B. Aknin and Ashley V. Whillans

Gregg Vanourek’s Newsletter

Join our rapidly growing community. Sign up now and get monthly inspirations (new articles, opportunities, and resources). Welcome!

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Gregg Vanourek is a writer, teacher, TEDx speaker, and coach on personal development and leadership. He is co-author of three books, including LIFE Entrepreneurs: Ordinary People Creating Extraordinary Lives (a manifesto for integrating our life and work with purpose, passion, and contribution) and Triple Crown Leadership: Building Excellent, Ethical, and Enduring Organizations (a winner of the International Book Awards). Check out his Best Articles or get his monthly newsletter. If you found value in this article, please forward it to a friend. Every little bit helps!

Article Summary:

Gregg Vanourek:

Richard Leider:

Gregg:

Richard:

The future belongs to the learners, not the knowers.

Take the Traps Test

Gregg:

Richard:

Gregg:

Richard:

Gregg:

Quality of Life Assessment

Richard:

Learn, earn, adjourn.

Gregg:

Richard:

Personal Values Exercise

Gregg:

Richard:

Gregg:

Richard:

Choice: What are your choices? Curiosity: What are you curious about? Courage: What are you courageous enough to make a move on?

Gregg’s Tools for You

Passion Probe

Related Articles & Books

Postscript: Inspirations on Purposeful Aging

Gregg Vanourek’s Newsletter

Article Summary:

Gregg Vanourek:

Richard Leider:

Gregg:

Richard Leider:

Take the Traps Test

Gregg:

Richard:

“Is purpose spiritual? Yes! …. Purpose is spiritual wisdom embodied…. Unlocking our purpose is ultimately a spiritual path.” -Richard Leider and David Shapiro, The Power of Purpose, 4th edition

Gregg:

Richard:

Gregg’s Tools for You

Quality of Life Assessment

Related Articles & Books

Postscript: Inspirations on Purpose and Spirituality

Gregg Vanourek’s Newsletter

Article Summary:

Gregg Vanourek:

G + P + V = C

Richard Leider:

Gregg:

Richard:

Strengths Search

Gregg:

Richard:

Passion Probe

Gregg:

Richard:

Personal Values Exercise

Gregg’s Tools for You

Personal Values Exercise

Related Articles & Books

Postscript: Inspirations on Purpose

Gregg Vanourek’s Newsletter

Article Summary:

Gregg Vanourek:

Richard Leider:

Gregg:

Richard:

Take the Traps Test

Gregg:

Richard:

Gregg:

Richard:

Quality of Life Assessment

Gregg:

Richard:

“Purpose is age-agnostic. It can be young people, it can be mid-life people, it can be retired people.” -Richard Leider

Gregg:

Richard:

“I arise in the morning torn between a desire to save the world and a desire to savor the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.” -E.B. White

Purpose is always about serving others.

Choice: What are your choices?
Curiosity: What are you curious about?
Courage: What are you courageous enough to make a move on?

“Is purpose spiritual? Yes! …. Purpose is spiritual wisdom embodied….
Unlocking our purpose is ultimately a spiritual path.”
-Richard Leider and David Shapiro, The Power of Purpose, 4^th edition

“Purpose is age-agnostic. It can be young people, it can be mid-life people, it can be retired people.”
-Richard Leider

“I arise in the morning torn between a desire to save the world and a desire to savor the world.
This makes it hard to plan the day.”
-E.B. White

“Skillful performance and skillful teaching are not always the same thing,
so we shouldn’t expect the best performers to necessarily be the best teachers as well.”
-David Levari

“In our experiments, people given advice by top performers thought that it helped them more, even though it usually didn’t…. Top performers didn’t write more helpful advice, but they did write more of it, and people in our experiments mistook quantity for quality.”
-David Levari

What do you think?
If you had to get started on this right now, what would you do?
How could you make this work?
What are some possibilities to consider?

Let’s bounce some ideas off each other.
This may be off but…
One idea could be…
What would you think about…

“A good example has twice the value of good advice.”
-Albert Schweitzer, humanitarian, philosopher, and physician

“You should do XYZ.”
“You need to get started on ABC, pronto.”

Do you give unsolicited advice?
Are you, like so many of us, great at dishing out advice but terrible at taking it in?*
Have you ever shared a frustration with someone, really just wanting to vent about it, only to be on the receiving end of a tirade of advice from them?

“It’s so counterproductive to think you can solve anyone else’s issues, because what it says is that they are not capable. It’s about the worst thing you can do for another human being.”
–Karin Weber, author and life coach

“To rush in with success formulas when someone is emotionally low or fatigued or under a lot of pressure
is comparable to trying to teach a drowning man to swim.”
-Stephen R. Covey, Primary Greatness

“’I was only trying to help’ sounds like a positive statement born of caring,
but how often does it mask unwelcome intrusion?”
-Deepak Chopra, The Shadow Effect

“I don’t think there’s anything as wonderful in life as being able to help someone else.”
-Betty Ford, activist, former U.S. first lady, and founder, Betty Ford Center

“The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.”
-Mahatma Gandhi, Indian lawyer and transformational leader