traps of living 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.*

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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

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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.*

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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

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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.*

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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.*

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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.

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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

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The Problem with Not Having Boundaries

02/10/2025 by Gregg Vanourek

How well have you been setting boundaries lately? Have you been proactively defining how others should treat you? How about establishing limits for yourself that you commit to respecting? Are you clear on what you’re willing to accept or tolerate—and consistent in enforcing it?

Having boundaries is essential for both your personal and professional wellbeing. Boundaries serve to protect you, enhance your wellbeing, and provide a sense of control over your life.

Unfortunately, it’s not easy—at least not for most of us. Setting and maintaining boundaries can be difficult because it often requires saying no, risking conflict, or disappointing others. This is a problem at work, among managers and workers, in relationships (from parents and children to couples), and in many other settings.

According to a 2022 survey, 58% Americans have trouble saying “no” to others. While this is an issue for both men and women, it was women who reported struggling with it more: 65% of women versus 49% of men admitted to struggling with this. (1) My work with people in different countries leads me to believe that this is a universal struggle.

The Problem with Not Having Boundaries

Here’s the problem: Not having or maintaining boundaries can lead to many negative consequences for you. (2) Here are ten problems with not having boundaries:

1. Negative emotions. When you don’t have boundaries, it can cause you anxiety, overwhelm, frustration, resentment, and other forms of emotional distress. It can harm your mental health.

2. Overcommitment and a sense of “time poverty.” Do you often feel that you have too many things to do and not enough time to do them?

3. Overwork or workaholism. Without clear boundaries, you may struggle to say no, take on excessive responsibilities, and feel pressured to always be available.

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.

4. Exhaustion and burnout. Without boundaries, constant demands and lack of rest can drain your energy. Are you feeling not only fatigued but depleted? Like you have little or nothing left to give?

5. Numbing behaviors. Are you falling into the habit of escaping from your thoughts and feelings by doing other things like binge-watching, doom-scrolling, shopping recklessly, or eating mindlessly?

6. Difficulty making decisions. If you’re so focused on meeting other people’s needs, how can you decide what’s best for you, much less prioritize it?

7. Lower self-esteem. Without boundaries, you may place others’ needs over your own, leading to feelings of being undervalued.

“When we fail to set boundaries and hold people accountable, we feel used and mistreated.”
-Brené Brown, researcher and author

8. Strained or unhealthy relationships. It’s hard to have healthy relationships when your needs or expectations are unclear.

9. Higher potential for people to manipulate or take advantage of you. Without proper boundaries, others may exploit your willingness to accommodate them.

10. Losing yourself of self and your control over your life. When you constantly prioritize others’ expectations over your own needs and desires, you might disappear from the picture or at least fade into the background.

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.

Conclusion

If you struggle with setting and maintaining boundaries, like so many of us do, you might try reframing them: by setting and enforcing boundaries, you create space for what you truly want and need.

Having boundaries frees up your time and energy to live the life you want.

Finally, setting and maintaining boundaries is a continuous process. The issue of boundaries will keep coming up repeatedly in your life and work. Better to face the situation and improve it now.

Handling boundaries well requires ongoing judgment to determine when to stay firm and when to allow flexibility, adjusting as new circumstances arise.

Wishing you well with it. Let me know if I can help.
–Gregg

Reflection Questions

Which boundaries have you struggled with?
Why do you think that is?
Is there a pattern involving certain people or situations?
What more will you do to set and maintain healthy boundaries for yourself, starting today?

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.
Leadership Derailers Assessment to help you identify what’s inhibiting your leadership effectiveness

Personal Values Exercise

Postscript: Inspirations on Boundaries

“Love yourself enough to set boundaries. Your time and energy are precious. You get to choose how you use it. You teach people how to treat you by deciding what you will and won’t accept.” –Anna Taylor, author
“Givers need to set limits because takers rarely do.” –Rachel Wolchin, author
“Half of the troubles of this life can be traced to saying yes too quickly and not saying no soon enough.” -Josh Billings, American humorist
“Setting boundaries is a way of caring for myself. It doesn’t make me mean, selfish, or uncaring (just) because I don’t do things your way.” –Christine Morgan, psychotherapist

References

(1) Source: Thriving Center of Psychology October 2022 survey of 1,001 people

(2) As you navigate this process, it’s important to recall that people have diverse needs and will make varying—sometimes vastly different—choices about their boundaries. What works for others may not suit you at all. Therefore, you must set your own boundaries while also supporting others in setting theirs.

Gregg Vanourek’s Newsletter

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The Power of Authentic Alignment in Your Life

12/17/202410/28/2024 by Gregg Vanourek

Article Summary:

Many of us lack authentic alignment in our life and work. We don’t have a good fit between who we are and how we live. On the problem with lacking authentic alignment, why it happens, and what to do about it.

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Are you being true to yourself? Is there a good fit between how you live and who you really are? In other words, do you have authentic alignment in your life?

If you’re living in authentic alignment (1), there’s a good match between your inner world of your thoughts, hopes, and dreams and the outer world of what you’re doing with your life. There’s coherence between your core values, beliefs, priorities, and actions. With authentic alignment, you’re more likely to have not only physical but also mental, emotional, and even spiritual health and wellness.

There’s great power in the integrity of what author Kevin Cashman calls “total congruence” between who you are and what you do. As well as in the wholeness of what educator and author Parker Palmer calls “an undivided life.”

“A happy life is one which is in accordance with its own nature.”
-Lucius Annaeus Seneca, ancient Roman Stoic philosopher

The Problem of Lacking Authentic Alignment in Your Life

There are many instances in which we can see the problem with misalignment. If your car tires are out of alignment, for example, you can have poor handling, uneven tire wear, reduced fuel efficiency, and suspension problems. What happens when the players on a team are all over the place instead of acting as a disciplined unit? How will it go if a married couple isn’t on the same page about children and finances? What happens to organizations when they’re not aligned?

There’s also a cost to lacking authentic alignment in your life. When it’s missing, you tend to:

spend a lot of time doing things you don’t really want to do
feel inauthentic, like a fraud
fall into the trap of people-pleasing
feel stuck in your life or work
feel sad or disappointed that you’ve given up on yourself or your dreams
risk forgetting who you truly are because you’ve been pretending to be something you’re not for so long
be disconnected or cut off from yourself, making you feel off kilter
suspect that you’re going through the motions of life
be anxious, frustrated, or overwhelmed more often
feel lethargic or exhausted

What’s more, misalignment undermines your ability to do good work and perform at your highest levels.

“…there can be no greater suffering than living a lifelong lie….
in the end what will matter most is knowing that we stayed true to ourselves.”
-Parker Palmer, educator and writer

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.

Why We Do It

Lacking authentic alignment is common. But why? There are many factors that can disrupt the rhythm of marching to the beat of your own drummer, as the expression goes. For example, you may drift away from your core because you:

don’t know who you are (or have forgotten it)
feel a need to please others or feel beholden to other people’s expectations
take too many things on because you’re overambitious about what you can do
feel trapped in commitments you’ve made in the past
have become a prisoner of success, perhaps due to an excessive need for recognition

Sometimes, an external shock can create misalignment. It can be moving to a new community, losing a job, having a health crisis, or losing a loved one.

Benefits of Authentic Alignment

When you’re playing your own tune in life, it can bring you many benefits, including:

a sense of wellness, including inner peace and harmony
more freedom
more balance in your life
a sense of gratitude
more joy
a sense of fulfillment

When you have authentic alignment, you’re more likely to feel content and secure. You’re better able to move on and let go of things that aren’t good for you. And you’re able to tap into your inner voice and intuition.

With authentic alignment, you’re also better at setting boundaries and bolder in doing the things you really want to do. You’re likely to develop and maintain better relationships because you’re no longer hiding yourself. People will get to know the real you as you show up in the world with more honesty and vulnerability, in turn fostering connection and intimacy. You’ll tend to attract people who are a better fit for you in things like friendships or romantic relationships.

When you have authentic alignment, you don’t fret about wasting time because you’re intentionally engaging in good things in your life. This can help you move from a vexing sense of doubt about whether you’re living well to a sense of clarity, satisfaction, and serenity.

Living in authentic alignment can bring you a sense of profound satisfaction, with no need to keep chasing things because you already feel whole. Finally, it can help you avoid the common regret of living your life according to other people’s expectations instead of a life true to yourself.

“Of all of the regrets and lessons shared with me as I sat beside their beds, the regret of not having lived a life true to themselves was the most common of all. It was also the one that caused the most frustration” (since their realization came too late)…. “It is a pity that being who we truly are requires so much courage, but it does. It takes enormous courage at times.”
-Bronnie Ware, The Top Five Regrets of the Dying

How to Create and Maintain Authentic Alignment

How to go about creating more authentic alignment in your life? Here are 14 approaches:

1. Develop your self-awareness. Know yourself so well and deeply that you feel a sense of clarity and comfort about who you are and what makes you tick, helping you feel more comfortable in your own skin.

2. Strip away your ego, pride, and ambition. Set aside the expectations of others. Tap into your heart instead of your ego.

3. Remove your mask in front of those you love the most, deepening connection. Stop pretending to be something you’re not. Let them see the real you and invite them to reciprocate.

4. Explore the root causes that led you to want to avoid being yourself. Perhaps it was outside expectations? Or fear of judgment or failure? Fear of rejection, or of being hurt? Afraid to be seen for who you truly are? Sometimes, your life may be overly full, cluttered with too many commitments and too much “busyness.”

5. Return to your center by finding or creating sanctuary in your life. Sanctuary is a place or practice of peace in which you can leave the distractions, interruptions, and chaos behind and be present in silent, deep reflection. It could be a quiet room at home, a place of worship, or a quiet and solitary spot in nature.

6. Notice when you’re becoming misaligned. Pay attention to how you’re feeling. Is it frustration? Shame? Something else? Tune into your body and your emotions. Also, pay attention to the situations where it’s common: what are you doing and who are you with? See if there are patterns.

7. Practice disciplined self-care regularly. It’s easy to become misaligned when you’re tired, overworked, or burned out. Maintain healthy habits and rituals so you don’t fall into traps that get you out of alignment.

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.

8. Discover your core values. Your values are what you consider most important in life, what’s most worthy and valuable to you. Are you living in accordance with your values?

9. Discover your strengths. What are the things you’re good at and that make you feel powerful when you’re engaging in them? Make sure that you’re using them often.

10. Discover your passions. What are the things that consume you with palpable emotion over time? How can you integrate them into your days more often?

11. Discover your purpose. Think about why you’re here and what feels purposeful and meaningful to you. Are you living purposefully? This can be a tough one for people. Author Richard Leider points out that there are two types of purpose. First, is a “BIG P” Purpose (a noble cause or something you can dedicate your life to). But you can also have a “little p” purpose (daily choices of how to contribute to others). Leider notes that “little p” actions are just as worthy. Also, they can add up over time into something potent.

12. Craft a vision of the good life. Think about how you want to live. What’s a bold and vivid picture of that? Make sure you’re working toward living it.

13. Be vigilant in declining activities that aren’t a good fit while agreeing to ones that are in alignment. When opportunities and requests come your way, do you have a good way to screen them? Without some sort of criteria or filter, you can end up with days filled with things are far afield from what you want to do.

14. Pay attention to when you need to interrupt the pattern and make a more radical shift. In a Harvard Business Review article, Donald Sull and Dominic Houlder point out that you may need to break the cycle with a catalyst like a course or sabbatical so you can spot unhealthy patterns and give yourself time to make needed changes.

Conclusion

Though authentic alignment may sound straightforward, it’s common for people to drift out of alignment.

It’s essential to be honest with yourself. If you can’t admit to yourself that you’re out of alignment, you’re unlikely to get it back.

It won’t help if you’re too hard on yourself when you drift. A little self-compassion can go a long way. Misalignment is common. If you find yourself judging yourself harshly and engaging in negative self-talk, change the channel and flip toward ideas for how to bring alignment back into your life.

It’s also important to have your own back. Go to bat for yourself just as you would your best friend. Finally, recall that authentic alignment is an ongoing process. Expect to have ups and downs. That’s okay, as long as you work to bring it back when you drift.

Wishing you well with it, and please reach out if you think I can help.
–Gregg

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
Leadership Derailers Assessment to help you identify what’s inhibiting your leadership effectiveness

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.

Postscript: Inspirations on Authentic Alignment

“To thine own self be true.” -William Shakespeare, English poet, playwright, and actor
“To be nobody-but-yourself—in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else—means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.” -e.e. cummings, poet, painter, and playwright
“I know who I am. The more we try to be something we’re not, the less successful we’ll be…. I don’t care what I do as long as I adhere to certain values.” -Jael Kampfe, from our LIFE Entrepreneurs interview
“Some time when the river is ice ask me mistakes I have made. Ask me whether what I have done is my life.” -William Stafford, from his poem, “Ask Me”
“I think I’ve always had a strong sense of who I am, but allowing myself to be that person is more recent.” -Bridget Bradley Gray, from our LIFE Entrepreneurs interview
“Being true to who you really are can be one of the hardest things to do in life.” -Carlii Lyon, Australian executive
“Even if all these needs are satisfied, we may still often (if not always) expect that a new discontent and restlessness will soon develop, unless the individual is doing what he is fitted for. A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately happy. What a man can be, he must This need we may call self-actualization.” -Abraham Maslow, psychologist
“The thing that is really hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself.” -Anna Quindlen, writer
“…the secret of career satisfaction lies in doing what you enjoy most. A few lucky people discover this secret early in life, but most of us are caught in a kind of psychological wrestling match, torn between what we think we can do, what we (or others) feel we ought to do, and what we think we want to do. Our advice? Concentrate instead on who you are, and the rest will fall into place.” -Paul D. Tieger, Barbara Barron, and Kelly Tieger, Do What You Are
“I can’t think of a sadder way to die than with the knowledge that I never showed up in this world as who I really am. I can’t think of a more graced way to die than with the knowledge that I showed up here as my true self, the best I knew how, able to engage life freely and lovingly because I had become fierce with reality.” -Parker Palmer, On the Brink of Everything
“The ultimate goal in life is not to be successful or loved, but to become the truest expression of ourselves, to live into authentic selfhood, to honor our birthright gifts and callings, and be of service to humanity and our world… life is seen as a journey of personal and collective unfolding toward our true nature.” -Frederic Laloux in Reinventing Organizations
“Afraid that our inner light will be extinguished or our inner darkness exposed, we hide our true identities from each other. In the process, we become separated from our own souls. We end up living divided lives, so far removed from the truth we hold within that we cannot know the integrity that comes from being what you are.” -Parker Palmer, A Hidden Wholeness
“Trying to live someone else’s life, or to live by an abstract norm, will invariably fail—and may even do great damage.” -Parker Palmer, Let Your Life Speak
“If you are experiencing unease or demotivation in your life, it is probably because you are not living according to your values.” -Andrew Bryant and Ana Kazan, Self-Leadership
“Before I can tell my life what I want to do with it, I must listen to my life telling me who I am. I must listen for the truths and values at the heart of my own identity, not the standards by which I must live—but the standards by which I cannot help but live if I am living my own life.” -Parker Palmer, Let Your Life Speak
“That’s who I am at my core, what I love. I mean, if a young person calls me and says, ‘Hey, can you help me? Can you listen to me?’ I can’t say no to that. It’s almost physically impossible for me to say no.” -Gerald Chertavian, from our LIFE Entrepreneurs interview
“One dwells with God by being faithful to one’s nature. One crosses God by trying to be something one is not.” -Parker Palmer, Let Your Life Speak
“I was dying inside. I was so possessed by trying to make you love me for my achievements that I was actually creating this identity that was disconnected from myself. I wanted people to love me for the hologram I created of myself.” -Chip Conley, author and entrepreneur, from our LIFE Entrepreneurs interview

Appendix: Related Concepts

There are several concepts related to authentic alignment that can help us understand it better.

Authenticity. When you’re authentic, it means you’re genuine, real, and true. Researcher and author Brene Brown defines authenticity as “the daily practice of letting go of who we think we’re supposed to be and embracing who we are.” Other researchers describe it as “the degree to which a particular behavior is congruent with a person’s attitudes, beliefs, values, motives, and other dispositions.” (Source: Jongman-Sereno, K. P., & Leary, M. R. (2019). The enigma of being yourself: A critical examination of the concept of authenticity. Review of General Psychology, 23(1), 133–142.)

Authentic Integrity. In our book, LIFE Entrepreneurs: Ordinary People Creating Extraordinary Lives, Christopher Gergen and I noted the importance of “authentic integrity”: “integration of all aspects of our lives in a way that coheres with our true nature.” It means living in alignment with our “core identity,” including our purpose, values, strengths, and aspirations.

“I just felt like I’ve lived a life that was true to itself…. Anybody who’s ever hung out in an ‘old man bar’—you know what I’m talking about—sees what happens when you don’t let that part of yourself do its thing.”
-Mary Cutrufello, musician and songwriter, in our LIFE Entrepreneurs interview

Self-concordance. Originally, researchers thought of self-concordance as being in touch with your deeper self. More recently, researchers are conceptualizing it as congruence between your implicit motives (unconscious, automatic drives) and explicit motives (conscious drives like personal goals). When you’re self-concordant, you tend to choose goals that are more personally productive and fulfilling. It enhances your ability to grow, achieve your goals, and feel happy. Researchers measure self-concordance via the relative autonomy index, with a continuum ranging from external to internal motivation. (Source: Kennon M. Sheldon and Erica A. Holberg, “Chapter Four—Using free will wisely: The importance of self-concordant goal pursuit,” Advances in Motivation Science, Vol. 10, 2023.)

Self-congruence. When you have self-congruence, you tend to behave consistently with who you really are and what you’re really like, according to researchers. This can include things like your “true self” or your attitudes, beliefs, and values.

True North. Authors Bill George and Peter Sims define your true north as “the internal compass that guides you successfully through life. It represents who you are as a human being at your deepest level. It is your orienting point.”

Critiques. Not surprisingly, there are also critiques of concepts like “authenticity” and “true self” in the research literature. For example, in their article, “The Enigma of Being Yourself,” Katrina P. Jongman-Sereno and Mark R. Leary write: “the human personality invariably contains myriad personality dispositions, emotional tendencies, values, attitudes, beliefs, and motives that are often contradictory and incompatible even though they are genuine aspects of the person’s psychological make-up…. People are genuinely multifaceted.”

“Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.)”
-Walt Whitman, poet

Do we truly understand ourselves, including our behaviors, and the reasons behind them? Are our self-perceptions biased, incomplete, selective, or even inaccurate, as some researchers suggest? Additionally, how much does nonconscious mental functioning drive our behavior?

Researchers have noted that there’s ambiguity and variability in the definitions of terms like “authenticity,” not to mention cultural differences. They also warn against having an idealized version of the self, because it’s unattainable, leading to potential feelings of inadequacy or failure. For some, the pressure to “be authentic” can result in significant anxiety and stress.

Jongman-Sereno and Leary also note that our ability to adapt our behavior to suit different situations is generally beneficial for our psychological wellbeing and social relationships. We often find ourselves playing various roles at home and work, and that’s normal. (But there’s a significant difference between making small adjustments to ease interactions and wearing a mask to disguise who we really are.)

(1) Dr. Asha Prasad wrote about this topic in her 2016 book, Authentic Alignment: How Ancient Wisdom And Modern Science Can Revitalize Your Health, Happiness and Potential. Others have written about “inner alignment” and related terms.

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17 Signs Your Monkey Mind Is Running Wild

09/03/2024 by Gregg Vanourek

Are you racing through life with a restless and easily distracted “monkey mind” that jumps from one thought to another? Do your thoughts swing wildly in different directions?

If so, you’re not alone. But here’s the issue: mental chaos often leads to disruption in your life and work. It can make you anxious—and make it harder to accomplish your goals.

17 Signs Your Monkey Mind Is Running Wild

How to know if you struggle with this? When you’re in monkey mind, you tend to:

have scattered or frequently wandering thoughts
be easily distracted
have a hard time focusing on one task
feel restless, anxious, or unsettled
find your mind wandering after just a short while of doing something
struggle to prioritize effectively
feel impatient often
have a near-constant need for activity or stimulation
experience mental fatigue
make hasty decisions or take actions without thorough consideration
have difficulty listening and struggle to fully engage in conversations because you’re preoccupied
frequently forget details, appointments, or tasks
have trouble making decisions because you’re caught between conflicting thoughts
spend a lot of time thinking about the past or the future, making it hard to enjoy the present moment
dwell on worries that are hard to control
revisit the same thought loops over and over again (rumination)
have trouble falling or staying asleep due to an overactive mind

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.

Monkey mind, while common, isn’t harmless. It comes with a host of problems. For one, it can elevate your stress levels and make it hard to concentrate. The constant mental chatter can inhibit your mental clarity and prevent you from being fully present with others or concentrating on the task before you. In short, it can downgrade many things in your life and work.

“What your future holds for you depends on your state of consciousness now.”
-Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

Conclusion

Monkey mind can be a big disruptor. It can diminish your happiness, sap your potential, and degrade your leadership.

Thankfully, there’s hope. Your brain has a remarkable ability to rewire itself. By engaging in regular practices that enhance your focus and attention, you can start taming your monkey mind.

Here’s to directing your attention towards what truly matters and in the process experiencing greater clarity and fulfillment.

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.

Reflection Questions

Are you finding it hard to handle the chaos caused by your monkey mind?
In what ways is it impacting the quality of your life and work, as well as your productivity and performance?
What will you do about it, starting today?

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

Personal Values Exercise

Postscript: Quotations on Monkey Mind

“The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.” -John Milton, Paradise Lost
“I am burdened with what the Buddhists call the monkey mind. The thoughts that swing from limb to limb, stopping only to scratch themselves, spit, and howl. My mind swings wildly through time, touching on dozens of ideas a minute, unharnessed and undisciplined.” -Elizabeth Gilbert, writer
“As you walk and eat and travel, be where you are. Otherwise you will miss most of your life.” -Jack Kornfield, American Buddhist monk, teacher, and writer
“Learn to watch your drama unfold while at the same time knowing you are more than your drama.” -Ram Dass, psychologist, spiritual teacher, and writer
“The greater part of most people’s thinking is involuntary automatic, and repetitive. It is no more than a kind of mental static and fulfills no real purpose. Strictly speaking, you don’t think: Thinking happens to you.” -Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

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How to Stop Blaming Others: 10 Tips

09/25/202407/24/2024 by Gregg Vanourek

Blaming.

It’s a common trap—and more damaging than you think.

Focusing on what your parents did wrong instead of owning up to your own issues.
Chiding your spouse for XYZ while you yourself have been dropping the ball on ABC.
Blaming another department in your organization for product, service, or hiring delays.
Attacking the other side for their faults instead of working together to solve the problem.

It’s tempting to shift blame onto others. Blaming might bring temporary satisfaction, but it ultimately stalls progress and even moves you backwards.

The Problem with Blaming

Blaming, despite feeling oddly good in the moment, comes with many pitfalls. It leaves things unresolved. Often, it backfires, exacerbating problems by damaging relationships.

Also, blaming undermines your own sense of agency and triggers defensiveness in those on the receiving end of your condemnation. (Who doesn’t resent being blamed?) Furthermore, blaming tends to escalate minor issues into larger conflicts. And it can be contagious, perpetuating a cycle of negativity in your family or work team. In the end, it diminishes your effectiveness.

Meanwhile, blaming often involves a degree of deception—distorting facts to evade responsibility while magnifying others’ faults—which erodes your credibility. Ultimately, you bear the brunt of these consequences, not those you blame.

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 to Stop Blaming: 10 Tips

The downsides of blaming are clear, but it’s hard to stop because it can feel so darn satisfying. Here are 10 tips for how to stop blaming others:

#1. Stop ruminating on your problems. Fix your attention instead on something more positive and productive.

#2. Shift your attention to what you’re grateful for. You’re much more likely to thrive when practicing gratitude than when you’re casting blame.

#3. Consider why you’re blaming. With a little self-reflection, including focused attention on the situation, you may discover that you’re trying to avoid shame or pain by externalizing the situation, at least in part. Look for a richer and truer picture of the situation than what comes with the simplistic focus on a guilty or offending party. This, of course, requires character and self-awareness.

Are you honest and strong enough to see your own hand in this?

#4. Consider whether you’ve become subconsciously attached to the problem and its associated drama. It may be feeding you with energy—albeit negative and unproductive energy—that makes you feel vindicated or superior.

#5. Practice empathy and try to understand the context, motivations, and feelings of the person you’re blaming. Put yourself in their shoes. Ask questions and explore their perspective and rationale. Which will serve you better: understanding or blaming?

#6. Look for a lesson that you might learn if you focus on understanding instead of blaming. Instead of using it as an opportunity to stroke your ego and attack someone else, why not reframe it as an opportunity for you to learn, grow, and avoid similar problems in the future?

#7. Focus on finding a solution, not a scapegoat. In the end, what you really want is resolution and progress.

#8. Instead of allocating all the blame to somebody else, try assuming joint responsibility. In the end, the assignment of blame matters much less than resolving the issues well. Take note: You want to avoid too much externalization of the problem but also too much internalization of it. In most cases, both sides played a part in letting things slide.

#9. Focus on collaboration instead of blame. Explore ways in which joining forces to address the issues may benefit you both and sidestep potholes.

#10. Take full responsibility for your life, including your choices, behaviors, and outcomes. Sure, there are always outside factors present. But assuming responsibility restores your agency.

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 to Make This Happen in Conversation

When in conversation with someone you’re tempted to blame, take a deep breath, regain your composure, and try to remain nonjudgmental, curious, and open-hearted. Focus on jointly exploring the situation and finding solutions instead of attacking each other.

In an article, podcaster and former lawyer Jordan Harbinger recommends avoiding statements like “It’s all your fault” and “I can’t believe you did that.” Instead, ask questions like the following:

“Help me understand why you made that decision.”
“Did I do anything to make you react that way?”
“Is there something I’m missing about my role here?”
“Here’s how I see things. How do you see things?”
“What should each of us have done to make this situation as productive as possible?”

Final Thoughts

Sometimes you may unconsciously resort to blaming. It can be automatic (and thus difficult to stop).

It’s important to recognize blaming as a trap that tends to make things much worse. Why not rise above it and in the process find solutions while building trust?

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
Passion Probe to help you identify your top passions and start integrating them more into your life and work

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 How to Stop Blaming Others

“The blame game is a waste of time. Any time you’re busy fixing blame, you’re wasting energy and not fixing the problem.” -Rick Warren, Baptist evangelical Christian pastor and author
“Blame… can be poisonous, hurtful, or devastating for its victims. It can tear apart marriages and fracture work relationships; it can disable major social programs; it can inflict damage on powerful corporations; it can bring down governments; it can start wars and justify genocides.” -Stephen Fineman, The Blame Business
“It’s always easy to blame others. You can spend your entire life blaming the world, but your successes or failures are entirely your own responsibility.” -Paolo Coelho, Brazilian novelist
“Wherever you find a problem, you will usually find the finger-pointing of blame.” -Stephen R. Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
“You become a victim when you blame yourself or others for some problem or error.” -Jay Fiset, Reframe Your Blame, How to Be Personally Accountable
“Blame is the demonstrated lack of self-respect choosing to deposit one’s negative actions onto others to reinforce one’s view of being of good, fair, and approved.” -Byron R. Pulsifer, author
“To grow up is to stop putting blame on parents.” -Maya Angelou, poet and civil-rights activist

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How to Be More Action-Oriented

01/18/202401/18/2024 by Gregg Vanourek

One of the biggest mistakes many people make is waiting too long before taking action. Not having enough of an action orientation.

What good are dreams, visions, and plans if we don’t act on them? To live well, we must get good at taking action. We have to stop hesitating. We have to stop waiting too long before acting.

12 Benefits of Being Action-Oriented

There are many benefits of being action-oriented. For example, it:

helps us learn and develop
builds our confidence
helps develop our courage
changes our self-identity to someone with greater power and agency
helps us learn about ourselves
expands our sense of possibility
builds momentum
positions us as a doer and leader—and people respond to that.
yields better results over time and increases our probability of success
invites serendipity
gives us more chances at breakthroughs
helps us avoid the cost of regret for not trying

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 to Be More Action-Oriented: Five Key Factors

While there are many benefits to being action-oriented, that doesn’t mean it’s easy. It requires five key factors:

1. Motivation.

We must tap into our desire for a better future and summon our drive to achieve. Yes, that means getting off the couch and getting to work.

2. Courage.

Becoming more action-oriented requires a willingness to act in spite of our fears. It requires a willingness to go for it despite the obstacles and risks.

3. A willingness to pounce when opportunities arise.

Becoming more action-oriented means becoming more willing to strike, even when the picture isn’t fully clear. We must tap into our warrior spirit.

4. A growth mindset.

According to Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck, a growth mindset is a belief that we can develop our intelligence, abilities, and talents. If we have a fixed mindset, by contrast, we believe those things are static, and we’ll be preoccupied with the prospect of looking bad or being wrong and thus less likely to take action.

5. Clarity about what we want and where we’re going.

We can fuel our action orientation with a compelling vision of success, an inspiring dream of a better future.

Goal-Setting Template

Goals are the desired results we hope to achieve—the object of our effort and ambition. Goals are common in our life and work, but that doesn’t mean we’re good at setting and achieving them. Use this Goal-Setting Template to set your goals properly, based on the research and best practice.

Conclusion

When we move from hesitation mode to an action orientation, powerful forces start swirling.

Also, isn’t it more fun to be in the game than on the sidelines, not knowing the ultimate outcome but engaging in the pursuit and struggle?

Truth be told, we never really know the perfect time for things, so we might as well get started sooner rather than later. Where does waiting get us?

What are you waiting for?

Reflection Questions

Do you have enough of an action orientation?
Or are you hesitating too much?
What more will you do to start taking bold action?

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
Goal-Setting Template (Beyond SMART Goals) to help you set goals you can achieve based on best practices
Quality of Life Assessment to help you discover your strongest areas and the areas that need work and then act accordingly

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: Quotations on Being Action-Oriented

“The price of inaction is far greater than the cost of making a mistake.” -Meister Eckhart, German mystic
“An ounce of action can crush a ton of fear.” -Tim Fargo, author, angel investor, and entrepreneur
“Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.” -Dale Carnegie , writer and lecturer
“Often the difference between a successful man and a failure is not one’s better abilities or ideas, but the courage that one has to bet on his ideas, to take a calculated risk—and to act.” -Maxwell Maltz, surgeon and author
“Action is the foundational key to all success.” -Pablo Picasso, Spanish painter and sculptor
“The path to success is to take massive, determined action.” -Tony Robbins, author
“The world has the habit of making room for the man whose actions show that he knows where he is going.” -Napoleon Hill, author
“You miss 100 percent of the shots you never take.” -Wayne Gretzky, legendary hockey player
“Do not wait till the iron is hot; but make it hot by striking.” -William B. Sprague, clergyman and biographer
“I think the number one advice I can give is: you just have to start it. Just get your feet in the water and do it. I learned a lot from just trying it out.” -Yoshikazu Tanaka, Japanese entrepreneur

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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!

Are You Feeling Empty Inside?

09/20/202401/03/2023 by Gregg Vanourek

Article Summary:

Many people feel empty inside, even if it’s hard to admit for some. This article contains the signs and causes of feeling empty—and what to do about it.

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The feeling may be virtually undetectable, but if we’d pause to notice we may discover an inner emptiness sometimes. A silent question about whether all we’re doing is really worth it.

We may be feeling hollow or numb, or living without passion or joy. Are we racing quickly but getting nowhere in a hurry?

“Part of the problem… is that everyone is in such a hurry…. People haven’t found meaning in their lives, so they’re running all the time looking for it. They think the next car, the next house, the next job. Then they find these things are empty, too, and they keep running.” -Mitch Albom, Tuesdays with Morrie

Such a feeling may be hard to admit. We may pride ourselves on being a go-getter, a producer. Maybe we’re a committed spouse or parent. Or a hard-charging professional or executive. But the feeling is what it is, regardless of whether we acknowledge or resist it.

We all feel empty sometimes. That’s common. The problem comes when it’s a persistent feeling that gnaws at us and that inhibits healthy relationships and our productive functioning in the world.

In our age of plenty, with grand technological advancements and material comforts for so many, many have warned about a crisis of meaning. The pandemic called the question about our relationship to work and our priorities.

The Signs of Feeling Empty

What are the signs of feeling empty inside? Here are eight of the most common signs:

lacking motivation or enthusiasm for our life and work
feeling disconnected from ourselves or our feelings
feeling distant from others, with a tendency to withdraw from others or an inability to form close relationships
feeling unfulfilled and purposeless
lacking energy
losing interest in activities that we once found enjoyable
feeling like we’re a spectator to our life and not a full and active participant in it
having a sense of dissatisfaction with our lives

Such feelings may get scrambled in cognitive dissonance because we don’t like to think of ourselves as the kind of person who has them. We may feel ashamed of such feelings, as if they’re beneath us, even though they’re natural and common.

We may also be trying to cover up feelings of emptiness with other things—things like entertainment, social media, gaming, overwork, shopping, gambling, food, sugar, alcohol, etc. (See my article, “Are We Numbing Our Lives Away?“) These, of course, are only temporary salves. They may work for a while, but then the emptiness returns.

At a deeper level, feeling empty can be a defense mechanism keeping us from re-experiencing trauma, or it can be a sign of depression. (If you suspect it may be one of these, check out the mental health and emotional support resources listed at the end of this article.)

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.

Different Kinds of Emptiness

We should also distinguish between an inner emptiness stemming from disconnection and a kind of spiritual emptiness praised in Taoism and Zen Buddhism that allows us to free ourselves from unhealthy attachments to things like success, wealth, beauty, and certain desired outcomes. The idea is that even such good things can cause us suffering because they’re fleeting and beyond our control.

“Become totally empty / Quiet the restlessness of the mind /
Only then will you witness everything unfolding from emptiness”
-Lao Tzu (Laozi), ancient Chinese philosopher

We may want to empty ourselves of the illusion that painful things are permanent and fixed versus fluid and in flux.

We can also empty ourselves of our attachments to our thoughts. With mindfulness practice, we can merely observe our thoughts and let them come and go instead of conflating ourselves with our thoughts. (So it very much depends on the kind of emptiness we’re talking about, whether it’s an emptiness of distress or enlightenment.)

The Causes of Feeling Empty

There are many things that can cause the distressing feeling of emptiness. One of the most common causes is physical and mental exhaustion. This can come from many thing—often a combination of things—including insufficient sleep, poor self-care (e.g., neglecting regular exercise and movement and good nutrition and sleep habits), racing around to family activities, or a stressful job with a demanding boss. Such things can snowball into burnout.

In his wonderful little book, Let Your Life Speak, educator and author Parker Palmer describes a deeper form of burnout:

“Though usually regarded as the result of trying to give too much, burnout in my experience results from trying to give what I do not possess—the ultimate in giving too little! Burnout is a state of emptiness, to be sure, but it does not result from giving all I have: it merely reveals the nothingness from which I was trying to give in the first place.”
-Parker Palmer, educator and author

Feeling empty can also be caused by many other things, including:

loneliness
repressing our emotions
losing ourselves in an all-consuming relationship that leaves precious little time for ourselves
spending too much time on social media, streaming sites, or gaming
feeling exhausted from mental rumination about painful thoughts and the associated negative self-talk
suspecting that we may need a different job or career, or that we’re settling for something that’s just okay
lack of clarity about our purpose, values, vision, or goals (see my related articles, “The Problem of Not Being Clear About Our Purpose” and “The Problem of Not Being Clear About Our Values”)
losing touch with ourselves and our inner life
living a divided life, with a lack of coherence between our inner and outer self, or living in ways that violate our core values or that don’t center us in our purpose
lacking self-awareness (e.g., about our purpose, values, strengths, passions, and the traps we’re in)
not having enough clarity about or movement toward our goals and dreams

At a deeper level, feeling emptiness can also come from experiencing trauma, with our mind and body wanting us to emotionally detach from the pain, thereby making us feel empty inside as we struggle to access our feelings.

According to Dr. Margaret Paul, psychologist and author, ultimately there’s only one root cause of feeling inner emptiness: a lack of love. She notes that it’s not a lack of someone else’s love, but rather a lack of love of ourselves, or what she calls “self-abandonment.” This often comes from an ego that draws the wrong conclusion from our experiences in the world, making us believe that we’re not worthy of love when in fact we are.

Personal Values Exercise

What to Do About It

Fortunately, there are many things we can do to address prolonged feelings of emptiness that inhibit our quality of life. Here are some practices and mindset shifts:

stop ignoring the feeling of emptiness and acknowledge it, giving ourselves grace and not judging ourselves harshly for feeling that way, instead allowing the feelings to flow through us and then letting go
resolve to identify and address the root causes of our pain and anxiety, since avoiding them only brings a temporary reprieve and ends up harming our emotional well-being over time
notice when we feel empty and what we’re doing and with whom, so we can avoid these emptiness triggers
reframe our mindset from a sense of dread that we’re flawed to a helpful signal that there’s something in our life that needs attention
figure out what self-care practices work best for us and double down on those
make a list of fun, engaging, and fulfilling activities and people and build them into our schedule
reinvest in learning and growing (e.g., via courses, books, podcasts, TED talks, etc.)
learn a new skill or develop a current skill further
engage in a creative practice such as songwriting or dance
limit our time on social media, email, streaming, gaming, etc.
reach out to family, friends, and loved ones, or make new friends
get clarity about our purpose and core values, then creatively building them into our life and work
write down our goals, aspirations, and vision of the good life to give us a sense of where we’d like to go in our life
seek people and situations that help us feel loved, supported, and whole (and avoid people and situations that make us feel empty)
recruit an accountability partner to help us do things that fill us up or challenge us
form a small group where we can be open and vulnerable and lean on each other for support
establish a daily spiritual practice, such as prayer, worship, contemplation, reading, meditation, or yoga
stop avoiding responsibility for our current situation
get in the habit of journaling for self-expression and self-awareness or writing a gratitude journal (see also this list from Lifehack of 32 things to be grateful for)
seek professional help from a therapist our counselor, if needed (see the resources listed at the end of this article)

The point is not to do all, or even most, of these things. Rather, the point is to start with one or two that seem most promising or intriguing and build from there, paying attention to what’s most helpful and what isn’t.

Ultimately, feeling empty may signal that we’re becoming more aware and conscious of what’s important in our lives—and the deeper experiences we may be missing. That can be a very good thing if we have the foresight and courage to do something about it.

Reflection Questions

Are you feeling empty inside?
Is it an occasional feeling or something that’s been persistent and that has started to detract from your life and work?
If the latter, what will you do about it?

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
Passion Probe to help you find the things that consume you with palpable emotion over time

“The Trap of Neglecting Our Inner Life”
“The Trap of Losing Yourself”
“The Mental Prisons We Build for Ourselves”
“Are We Numbing Our Lives Away?“
“Time to Check the Path You’re On?“
“Are You Living a Divided Life?”
“Breaking the ‘Trance of Unworthiness’”
“The Trap of Dissatisfaction”
“Burnout and the Great Resignation”
“Golden Handcuffs: Stuck in a Job You Don’t Like?”
“Tired of Settling?”
“Personal Resilience and Self-Care Practices in Hard Times”
“Why Happiness Is the Wrong Goal”
“The Problem of Going It Alone”
“The Trap of Not Being Grateful for What We Have”
“On Spirituality and the Good Life“
“Is This It? On the Disappointment of Success“
“The Most Common Myths about Happiness“

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.

Postscript: Inspirations on Emptiness

“Formerly, his heart had been as a locked casket with its treasure inside; but now the casket was empty, and the lock was broken.” -George Eliot, English novelist
“Feeling empty is often a sign that you’re disconnected from something—whether that be your soul, a lack of meaning/purpose, or your emotions.” -Aletheia Luna, writer and educator
“You’re an interesting species. An interesting mix. You’re capable of such beautiful dreams, and such horrible nightmares. You feel so lost, so cut off, so alone, only you’re not. See, in all our searching, the only thing we’ve found that makes the emptiness bearable, is each other.” -Carl Sagan
“The hard work of sowing seed in what looks like perfectly empty earth has, as every farmer knows, a time of harvest. All suffering, all pain, all emptiness, all disappointment is seed: sow it in God and he will, finally, bring a crop of joy from it.” -Eugene Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction

“I have met too many people who suffer from an empty self. They have a bottomless pit where their identity should be—an inner void they try to fill with competitive success, consumerism, sexism, racism, or anything that might give them the illusion of being better than others. We embrace attitudes and practices such as these not because we regard ourselves superior but because we have no sense of self at all. Putting others down becomes a path to identity, a path we would not need to walk if we knew who we were…. as community is torn apart by various political and economic forces, more and more people suffer from the empty self syndrome.”
-Parker Palmer, A Hidden Wholeness

Resources for Mental Health and Crisis Prevention

Consult a mental health professional if you believe it may be depression or if your feelings are debilitating and not merely occasional. Here are some support resources:

BetterHelp (online network of licensed therapists)
SonderMind (connecting people with therapists)
7cups (a free help network)
Mental Health Mates (U.K. support groups)
Befrienders Worldwide (helplines outside the U.S.)
988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline (text 988 or call 1-888-628-9454)
Crisis Text Line (text “HOME” to 741741)
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) National Helpline, 800-662-HELP (4357)
Alcoholics Anonymous
Narcotics Anonymous

Featured image source: Adobe Stock

Gregg Vanourek’s Newsletter

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

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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 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. 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

“When we fail to set boundaries and hold people accountable, we feel used and mistreated.”
-Brené Brown, researcher and author

“A happy life is one which is in accordance with its own nature.”
-Lucius Annaeus Seneca, ancient Roman Stoic philosopher

“…there can be no greater suffering than living a lifelong lie….
in the end what will matter most is knowing that we stayed true to ourselves.”
-Parker Palmer, educator and writer

“Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.)”
-Walt Whitman, poet

“What your future holds for you depends on your state of consciousness now.”
-Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth