Identity of a person with a purposeUncovering Your Purpose
Upgrading Your Vision, Motivation, and Drive to Succeed
As I walked around the creek that wove its way through the family farm, I was hit with an epiphany. I knew I was destined for something meaningful—I just didn’t know what. I was a spry ten-year-old farm boy at the time, and that was my earliest memory of longing for a life with meaning. Something to live for, stand by, and leave as a legacy. The shape it was going to take eluded me until my early 30s.
I had tried everything: metal sculpture, writing, music, fitness, life coaching, hosting monthly business-to-business events, consulting, and professional speaking. I went to the buffet of life and tasted everything to see what I loved and what I didn’t care for. Each new challenge brought new excitement and experiences along with it, as well as a hit of dopamine each time. After a while, though, that excitement faded, and I was left with a lack of focus, drive, and motivation again. It took me many years to understand that purpose isn’t fixed; it’s fluid. Sometimes it flows freely, while other times it’s a trickle.
Clinging to the idea that we are meant to do one thing for the rest of our lives is as absurd as walking around in the same pair of shoes until we die. The soles are going to wear thin until our feet are bare and bleeding, and we need to put on a new pair, get back up, and continue on our way.
We live in a society that expects each of us to name, claim, and die by one path alone. This can create great internal conflict and lead to frustration when we experience lulls where nothing excites us and happiness is elusive. At this point, we require a new way of thinking when it comes to finding purpose and meaning that evolves as we do and helps us achieve new levels of success. To do so, we must understand how identity, happiness, and purpose intersect and shape our daily experiences, driving us to achieve new goals.
To become a Catalyst, we know we must recharge our batteries with both biochemical and psychological/spiritual energy to light our vision. Purpose underpins psychological energy and helps reignite sparks that may have faded to an ember.
In March 2017, my spark was ready to go out. I didn’t know what I wanted anymore, and I was ready to give up on everything. I kept asking myself the same question: “What’s the point of all this?” It was going to take more than just a biochemical shift. I also needed to remind myself of my purpose, become aware of the identity I had taken on, and realize the identity I wanted to evolve into.
Our identity, the person we believe ourselves to be, dictates what we strive for and how we strive for it. Our purpose also dictates how our identity shifts. Even if you know what your purpose is, you must still shed old identities that no longer serve you. This is the never-ending cycle of life: a sudden shift of attitude and a longing for something more. Old goals and identities become no longer as relevant or meaningful to us as they once were.
This is the identity gap in action. When we finally evolve into the person we always hoped we would become, we may experience sadness because one journey has come to an end. It is the completion of a chapter in our lives. We may feel restless because we have nothing left to strive for. We experience our greatest happiness in this process of unfolding and becoming, in the beautiful gray area between who you are right now and who you are becoming. This is the area in which we must choose to consciously revel in and allow ourselves to be unapologetic creators of our own lives. When one journey ends, another must begin, otherwise we’re struck with a lack of motivation, drive, and will to succeed.
Finding your purpose is like slipping on a brand-new pair of shoes, lacing them up, and taking them out for a test drive. You may wear them for a while, but if it’s not the right fit, you exchange them for a new pair. When it comes to your purpose, this process can take many years. But with each new pair you try on, you’re adding to the cumulative experience that will lead you to your next adventure.
Every one of us comes to a crossroads multiple times in our lives when we will, once again, question whether our life has any meaning. The moment we feel stuck is the moment we end up standing at a crossroads. At this point, you will hold one of two identities that will influence how long you remain stuck there:
Identity of a person with a purpose
Identity of a person without a purpose
To completely transform into a Catalyst, we must clarify our current purpose and determine what meaning we ascribe to it. A Catalyst has a strong sense of purpose, as does a Synergist. That’s not to say Defenders and Guardians don’t have a purpose, but their biochemistry wants to turn left when their soul is desperately trying to turn right. This is the reason for the identity gap formula’s existence. It recharges your battery when you’re low on energy and lights up various goals (light bulbs) so you can narrow your focus toward them. It is the intangible momentum that pulls you forward, especially when your biochemistry is dragging you down into being a Defender or Guardian.
Without a purpose, you just plod along, like the countless millions living in limbo. People who hold the identity of an individual without a purpose have, consciously or unconsciously, chosen this identity. They’ve pushed their purpose so far down that all they can say to themselves is, “I don’t know what I want to do.” This gets stuck on repeat and becomes habitual. So despite opportunities landing in their lap that would be perfect for them, they repeat their preprogrammed response. This is the blind spot of their life. This response could have been triggered by any one of the following reasons:
1. The new goal requires significant change and energy, so it gets eliminated, especially when they are in Guardian or Defender mode and their brain is preserving any energy it has left over for vital bodily functions. This is why I didn’t talk about purpose at the start of the book. Until we clear your path from any biochemical and cognitive challenges that may prevent your purpose from revealing itself, it can be incredibly hard for you to find it. Your brain hides your purpose out of fear that it will cost you your life, no matter how ridiculous that may seem to your logical/rational mind.
2. They are too scared to claim the goal. They can see or have seen what is possible, but because the goal sits so far outside their comfort zone, their fight/flight response is triggered, and they snap back into their current identity, in which they feel safe.
3. They are in a state of contraction, not expansion. When we’re on a mission, every element of our being is geared toward expansion, or becoming more of who we are. At other times, we need to contract, cull whatever isn’t important, and withdraw from life. This allows us to take stock of who we are, what we want, and where we’re going next. Simply recognizing that you’re in a state of contraction can give you the breathing space for your next project to reveal itself to you. The only time it doesn’t is when you’re too busy beating yourself up for not knowing what you want.
In the final stages of becoming unstoppable and closing the identity gap, we must first recognize we are constantly in a state of personal evolution. When we are born, we have twice as many synaptic connections in our brain as we have when we’re grown. Our brain prunes our synaptic connections back to become more efficient (contraction). Children’s brains are far more creative because they’re experimenting with different configurations before settling on a specific structure. This reflects how we uncover our life purpose, through self-exploration and never-ending pruning, until we finally get to the essence of what we want to experience.
People with Purpose Are More Optimistic, Achieve Their Goals More Often, and Are Less Likely to Fail
Social studies have shown that people with a greater sense of purpose sleep better, have better sex, and live longer.
A year-long study showed that alcoholics were less likely to return to heavy drinking six months post-treatment if their sense of purpose increased during treatment. In addition, people experienced fewer sleep disturbances if they had a higher sense of purpose.1, 2
In a second survey of 999 entrepreneurs we conducted internationally, we found that people who had a strong sense of purpose achieved their goals 70 percent of the time as opposed to those who didn’t have a sense of purpose, who said they only achieved their goals 6 percent of the time. I suspect this is because individuals with an overarching purpose were clearer on their overall direction each day and knew what they wanted to do. This increased the likelihood of success by narrowing their focus. Furthermore, we also uncovered the following intriguing findings (see Figure 9.1 on page 184).
People who had a strong sense of purpose vs. those who didn’t:
Were afraid of failing: 56 percent vs. 87 percent
Doubted themselves: 52 percent vs. 87 percent
Agreed to procrastinating: 72 percent vs. 95 percent
Were optimistic about reaching their goals: 96 percent vs. 69 percent
Had the mental stamina required to reach their goals: 93 percent vs. 59 percent
While this doesn’t prove cause and effect, it does indicate a relationship between a strong sense of purpose and fear of failure, doubt, procrastination, optimism, and mental stamina. I hypothesize that people without a clear purpose have no real beacon through which to channel their energy, making them more susceptible to doubting themselves, procrastinating, being less optimistic about reaching their goals, and lacking the required mental stamina to achieve them.
What Type of Well-Being Is Your Purpose Derived From? It Matters More Than You Think
It isn’t just the psychological benefits we gain from having a strong sense of purpose that matter; it’s the biological ones as well. In fact, a 2013 study by Steven Cole at the University of California, Los Angeles, delved into how having a purpose can affect our gene expression. To study this, Cole focused on two types of well-being:3
1. Hedonic: Derived from pleasure and rewards. This is based on how often an individual felt happy.
2. Eudaemonic: Derived from having a purpose beyond self-gratification; e.g., having a good sense of direction.
Cole measured this by having participants write down their well-being over the previous week, how often they felt happy (hedonic), or when their life had a sense of direction (eudaemonic). He found that even though individuals who scored highly on one area often scored highly on the other, both correlated to people having lower levels of depression.
But people with hedonic well-being had high expression of inflammatory genes and lower expression of genes for disease-fighting antibodies. This pattern is also seen in individuals who experience loneliness and stress. For individuals deriving eudaemonic well-being from an overall sense of direction in life, their biology looked completely different. Cole suspects eudaemonia, with its focus on purpose, decreases our nervous system’s fight/flight response. This could be because when people are told to focus on something of value, the brain region called the ventral striatum is activated. This can help inhibit the amygdala, which promotes the fight/flight response. Research has also shown higher scores on a scale of purpose correlated with less amygdala activation.4
What does all this mean for you to ensure you reach your outcomes? There are greater health benefits from deriving purpose beyond self-gratification and having an overall sense of direction. In other words, reaching for something greater than yourself and having a clearer direction in life can decrease the fight/flight response and help us lead a life with less fear. As we’ve discovered, managing this aspect of the brain can help us experience greater mental clarity, become less emotional, and think strategically through situations and challenges, leading to better outcomes.
All the entrepreneurs and experts I interviewed on this journey had strong senses of purpose that drove them to pursue their goals. All of them, initially born out of an individual need to feel better (hedonic), evolved into a mission to help others succeed (eudaemonic). It is as if the only way we can find our sense of direction is first by focusing on ourselves. Once we’re happy, we have enough energy to help others. Our sense of well-being flips into an identity that’s biologically healthier for us. When we’re not nourished, there’s barely enough energy for us to function, let alone focus on assisting others for the greater good.
Is this evolution’s way of driving us to help others by providing biological benefits to altruism? Who knows? What we do know is that you must pass through the first phase of helping yourself to get to the second phase of helping others. It’s all part of learning who we are and what we stand for.
Some of us may already be clear on what our purpose is; others, not. Whichever camp you fit into, to achieve success and light a magnetic beacon that draws you in, you must have clarity on what that vision looks like and what underpins it. In the identity gap framework, the filament in the light bulb is the underlying purpose, the essence of how you want to feel. The goals (the light emitted) are an expression of your purpose. This light radiates in all directions, with different goals representing each beam. We have many beams of light shining from us because it is human nature to express the essence of who we are in many different ways. Goals will evolve over time, but as long as they are an expression of our purpose, we’ll be on task and in powerful alignment. (See Figure 9.2.)
We often feel torn in two directions when the goal doesn’t match the underlying purpose. Something feels off, but we can’t always put our finger on what that is. To align these two elements, we use a combination of NLP techniques to tease it out and amplify it so we’re strongly drawn to it. If you already know your purpose and your goals, I want you to pay even closer attention. We’re going to turn up the volume on them so that you experience spontaneous behavior changes and overcome any challenges that may be holding you back from a psychological standpoint. If you’re completely unsure of what your purpose is, by doing the following activities, you should gain a sense of relief and become clearer on what your purpose is and what you stand for. It is only through this experience that you switch from hedonic to eudaemonic well-being. When and how you do it is part of your personal journey. There are no set rules. You’ll get there when you’re good and ready.
The Tipping Point of Knowing
The “tipping point of knowing” is a mental state in which you may or may not have some idea about your purpose. It’s bubbling just under the surface of the water. We need to free that bubble so it floats to the top and expresses itself.
Before we can uncover your purpose or find greater meaning in the sense of direction some of us already have, we need to get into a calm state so we can access our rational mind. We want to avoid engaging our fight/flight response, as that will affect the way you see your desires. If fight/flight is engaged, you may begin telling yourself, it will never happen/It’s too hard/I don’t have the money/I haven’t got the resources/I’m not smart enough.
By proactively putting yourself into your logical/rational mind, you’ll give your creative mind the space to explore so you can get to the essence of who you are and what you want. Your mind will be open and you’ll access your intuition, free from fear and mistrust, where things will unfold exactly how they need to. Check out the sidebar on page 188 for another great exercise you can try, this time to uncover your purpose.
You could do a thousand different things, and as long as your goals are an expression of your purpose, you’ll be on purpose, happy, and connected. The form and name your purpose takes in your life is unimportant. You can call it whatever you want, and you can allow it to take many different forms—in fact, I encourage it. To limit yourself is to deprive yourself of experiences that will lead you to a greater understanding of who you are becoming. I haven’t named my purpose because my purpose is to experience my core emotions, including adventure, generosity, abundance, and challenges that allow me to grow. How I express those emotions can come through in a myriad of ways and take countless shapes throughout my lifetime. Becoming fixated on only one way of expressing yourself does a disservice to who you are as an individual. Ask yourself: Am I ready for my purpose to reveal itself? When you can answer with a resounding yes, it will hit you with a blinding flash of the obvious that you knew what it was all along.
UNCOVERING YOUR PURPOSE AND LIGHTING YOUR BEACON
(Illuminate the Path Ahead of You)
STEP 1: Begin by doing the Quickfire Visualization you learned in Chapter 8. You want to reprogram your mind so it is open to the possibility of knowing your purpose, goals, and next project. This includes refining an existing goal to amplify it so it is intensely desirable and drives unconscious behavior change. You can do this by visualizing yourself coming to an awareness, acknowledging that you knew your purpose all along. You need to visualize that light bulb moment in which you have a blinding flash of the obvious.
When you do this visualization, see what you see, hear what you hear, and feel what you feel. Describe what this light bulb moment looks like. What are you wearing? Where are you when it hits you? What colors do you see? Who else is with you? What are you doing? What can you smell? How do you feel? Where do you feel it within your body? What facial expression do you have?
Be playful here. Allow your soul to take you wherever it wants to go in your mind’s eye. Put your favorite music on in the background. Music can make us feel sexy, liberated, free, relaxed, or powerful. Pick something that perfectly suits how you want to feel when your purpose is revealed to you. Use this music to help you evolve into a person who knows what their purpose is; or, if you already know, allow it to give you an even stronger sense of power and meaning.
STEP 2: Once you’ve visualized yourself becoming aware of what your purpose/next project is, in a place free from distractions, ask yourself:
How do you want to feel on a daily/weekly/monthly/yearly basis? Some examples for how you might want to feel include: empowered, adventurous, challenged, entrepreneurial, rebellious, connected, freed, unstoppable, unleashed, motivated, driven, abundant, rich, happy, connected, accomplished, generous, creative, calm, relaxed.
Revel in these feelings and turn up the volume on them until you hit 10 out of 10. What is it like to experience these feelings? Let them guide you to where you need to go. They are your road map to awareness.
Now list the top four emotions you want to experience on a daily/weekly/monthly/yearly basis. This is your purpose. Write them down here:
1. _______________________________________
2. _______________________________________
3. _______________________________________
4. _______________________________________
STEP 3: While you’re in a state of flow, answer the following questions. Don’t think, just write as quickly as you can. This is how you express your purpose. Allow your higher self to take over.
What motivates you?
What are you drawn to?
What makes you excited?
What can’t you stop thinking about?
Where are your thoughts guiding you to?
What can you see, hear, feel, taste, or touch?
If you could do anything you wanted to do next, what would it be? What else? Just keep writing as long as you can.
What skills do you have or would love to have that light a fire inside you?
How are you expressing yourself through the skills you are applying?
How does the application of these skills make you feel?
If you get stuck on any of these questions, ask yourself: If I did know, what would the answer be?
STEP 4: Now we’re going to combine the previous two steps.
When you look at the top four emotions you would like to experience on a regular basis and the skills you would like to express through your work, do they align?
Can you experience those feelings through those skills? If not, answer the questions again until the feelings you most want to embody at your core can be produced via your current skills, or the skills you plan to acquire.
Finally, think of a time you felt really dissatisfied with your work: Were you experiencing those four emotions? No? Interesting.
When I realized this, I was finally free. Everything I had ever experienced culminated in the work I do today. The music I used to create on the computer gave me the skills I use to edit my cinematic videos. Developing online educational programs for entrepreneurs nurtured my creative side and allowed me to grow my brand and continually educate myself. Studying fitness at a young age has applied to this entire project, especially the four-week CrossFit challenge. Writing allows me to express myself in various ways that challenge me, give me a sense of abundance, and allow me to be generous by providing practical information that other people can use to make their lives better. This has expanded in recent years to helping others freely and without fee to reach their goals.
The medium in which I express my four core emotions will continue to evolve. Just because music was played on vinyl, then cassette, then CD, and now digital, doesn’t mean it fundamentally changes what it is at its core. The essence of the expression of art through the artist remains the same. The medium through which it is expressed simply changes.
As long as my goals are an expression of my purpose, I will feel that I’m doing what I’m meant to do. I know that whenever I feel offpurpose, all I need to ask myself is: Am I expressing myself through my four core emotions? If I’m not, it’s time for a reboot and a rethink. This might include a new project that will fulfill them, likely in an exciting new way that I have not tried before.
How to Use Progressive Overload to Become an Upgraded Version of Yourself
When people first realize that their emotions are at the core of their being and the guiding hand for their beacon, they can become overwhelmed. Suddenly a state of panic ensues. What if I can’t make this work? I don’t have the money to get this business off the ground! I don’t know if I’ve got what it takes to do what I have to do! This is a normal part of growing as an individual. And, just like we discussed in Chapter 2 about preventing the snapback effect of getting thrown back into your old routine and your old identity, we need a new technique to stop it in its tracks. This is where progressive overload (PO) comes into play. PO is a technique used in strength training where you periodically increase the weight, intensity, or duration of an exercise to stimulate new muscle growth. You do it gradually over a period of time so the body has time to rest, recover, and grow. The body adapts to the change over time, so the increase doesn’t cause a shock to the system or inflict real muscle damage. I have applied this same technique when I am in the process of evolving into a new identity. Here’s how it works.
1. Choose your next three major projects or goals. I work in 13-week increments and focus on three major goals in that period. It’s short enough to remain excited and not so long that momentum is lost. Focusing on three goals during this process is manageable. I break them down into smaller goals on a weekly basis.
2. Identify the “educational gaps” you need to fill to make this project possible. For example, online marketing, public speaking, health, well-being, writing, product creation, starting a business, improving a relationship.
3. Pick your educational resources. Search for the top podcasts, YouTube videos, authors, educators, and experts within these educational gaps and then make a list you can reference. Listen to one podcast per day while showering, driving to work, or going for a walk. Sign up for online or in-person courses. Watch YouTube videos to fill a gap in knowledge and read or listen to books when you’re working out. Keep a notebook close at hand so you can jot down ideas on the go or record them on a recording app on your cell phone. Do this weeks or even months before you start your project. This way, you will be progressively overloading your brain with new information that will force you to grow, and you will be primed to bring your project/goal to life. Once your educational gaps are filled, the fear of not knowing how to bring your goal to fruition suddenly disappears, excuses fade away, and you act without needing willpower to overcome fear. That doesn’t mean you won’t still occasionally be afraid, but now you’ll have the techniques to deal with it.
4. Decide who you need to become to reach these goals. Do you need to be educated, empowered, fulfilled, confident, self-assured, motivated, driven?
5. Do the Quickfire Visualization on a daily basis to prime your brain for the overall direction you are heading in. Visualize the person you are becoming, the attainment of your goals, and the ease and joy you will experience along the way. Visualize as well any challenges you may encounter and effectively manage with style and grace. This allows you to grow into the person you’re becoming and prime your mind for the changes you need to make, instead of throwing yourself out there, only to return right back to where you started like a boomerang. For my first book, I would stand in front of the mirror nightly for months before I ever began writing and hold someone else’s book in my hands with my eyes closed, visualizing it was my completed book. It mentally prepared me for the work ahead.
Enjoy this experience. This is the consolidation phase before the expansion phase, where everything you’ve learned will get put to practical use. At that point you cross the threshold from your old self to your new self, but thanks to progressive overload, the transition will feel natural and easy.
What Will Make Your Soul Happy Today?
I was staring at a dead body!
In February 2017, I visited New York for two months at the height of winter to get a feel for what it would be like to live in this incredible city. Having lived through Hurricane Sandy, I already knew it wasn’t always going to be easy, but I was still excited about fulfilling a lifelong goal of relocating from Australia to the Big Apple. One day as I was walking through Bryant Park to grab lunch, I heard sirens from the emergency trucks screaming down the street on the other side of the park. On my way back to the co-working office, I came across the dead man. Five emergency personnel were standing a meter back from a middle-aged man face up on the freezing cold ground dusted with the previous day’s snowfall. He was dressed in a gray suit, and his skin was blue; all color had drained from his face. It was clear they had given up trying to resuscitate him. It took me a while to shake this picture from my mind. It’s not every day you see a dead body.
As we work toward our goals, there will be experiences that will catch us by surprise and possibly derail us from our journey. It is up to each of us to choose the right time to either pursue our goals or fall back and consolidate. Now isn’t always the right time. When you are living in a state of constant fight/flight it becomes impossible to function normally, let alone access your intuition and trust that everything will work out perfectly. You will make decisions from fear, not logic. There will be times when you are faced with a challenge, and you have to ask yourself if it’s worth it to keep going or if you should take a breather and reboot. The only person who has the answer to this question is you. Remember, while fortune may favor the bold, it doesn’t favor the dead. A purpose worth living for shouldn’t put you in an early grave; it should nourish every part of your being. At times, it will challenge, test, and yes, even break you.
But there’s only one question I want you to ask yourself: What will make your soul happy today? If the answer is rest, then rest. If it is to passionately pursue your goal, then pursue it. Just don’t force yourself to do something when your gut is telling you now is not the right time, because there will be a right time. That time is when everything aligns and the need for willpower disappears. In our culture that applauds people working to the point of collapse, we need to follow our intuition and do what is right for us, not for others.
And, keeping that in mind, it’s time to come up with your personalized 90-day plan to biohack your way to an unstoppable you, on your terms—no one else’s.
