“I always tell people, ‘You can’t find purpose; you create it.’ But it is true that we have to understand the, you know, the ‘beckonings’ — the things in our life that we might want to build purpose around.”
Hospice doctor, podcaster, and author Jordan Grumet was just 7 years old when his father passed away suddenly.
“I thought the best way to make up for that cosmic thing that happened to me was to become a physician just like him,” said Grumet on an episode of our podcast, Common Cents on the Prairie™.
“And that’s exactly what I did.”
According to Grumet, he loved his chosen profession for a short time but then quickly burned out.
“[It] caused me to do a deep dive into finances, where I realized that I probably had enough money,” Grumet recalled, “but what I didn’t have is enough purpose and identity.”
So, he set out on a years-long journey of self-discovery.
“I drew back from medicine, and I started doing other things that started to feel like purpose,” he said. “For me, that was writing about personal finance. Eventually, podcasting. In the meantime, at work, I started doing only hospice work; it was the one piece of medicine that kind of filled me up, is dealing with the terminally ill and dying.”
Then, Grumet’s search to understand purpose and identity intersected with his hospice work.
Although through his podcasting and blogging he could never seem to properly answer the question of purpose, Grumet began to find what he was looking for in the lives of his hospice patients.
His findings were the premise for his first book, Taking Stock: A Hospice Doctor’s Advice on Financial Independence, Building Wealth, and Living a Regret-Free Life.
“I went on the road to market that book,” Grumet said, “and I got a lot of angry people.”
After giving his talks, he said, they “would come up to me and say, ‘You tell me to find my purpose, but I have no idea how to do that. I’ve been trying, and, in fact, it’s making me anxious. Please stop telling me to find my purpose.’”
Thus came the inspiration for Grumet’s second book, The Purpose Code: How to Unlock Meaning, Maximize Happiness, and Leave a Lasting Legacy.
What is purpose?
“It’s about [the] present and future, not about the past,” Grumet said. “And it’s all about actions. So, these are the joyful activities we fill our days, months, and years with.”
While we can’t all save puppies or play Major League Baseball for a living, we can still find a sense of purpose in our lives — and there are some major benefits to doing so.
“When I got so much anger coming at me when I suggested people should get a sense of purpose, I did a deep dive into the literature,” Grumet said. “And it is 100% clear: study after study after study shows that people who have a sense of purpose in life live longer, are happier, and are healthier.”
What does purpose look like?
Oftentimes, we struggle with finding purpose in our lives because we make it out to be this abstract concept or unattainable goal.
According to Grumet, that’s the part where we might be going wrong.
“In a lot of ways, purpose is process,” he said. “It’s not a goal. It’s not getting to the top. Purpose is those actions we fill up our present and future with, so it’s a very active thing.”
As an example, Grumet points to a time in his childhood shortly after his father passed away.
“When I was a little kid, I didn’t have much community,” he said. “I had a learning disability, my father had just died, and I felt very much alone. But one of the places I found solace was an antique store.”
A man named Roman owned the store, and he would buy and sell antiques and fix up furniture.
“One day,” Grumet said, “he discovered baseball cards and realized he loved baseball cards. And it was something that was a big part of his purpose.”
According to Grumet, Roman wasn’t out to make a lot of money from his newfound interest.
“But by deciding to sell baseball cards at his antique store — something he just deeply loved — he created a community for a lot of people like me,” Grumet said. “People who felt like they were geeks or nerds or misfits. And all of us kids would go to his store, and we immediately had a community.”
By finding his purpose in baseball cards, Roman set an example not only for Grumet, but for all of us who might struggle with identity.
“I collected lots of baseball cards, including Mickey Mantle,” Grumet said. “Mickey Mantle is a guy who people are like, ‘Wow, that was a purposeful guy. He changed the world. He was like the greatest baseball player ever.’ But Mickey Mantle never changed my life for the better. This guy, Roman, did. And he did so by pursuing his own joy and passion — by pursuing his own version of purpose.”
How do I find my purpose?
“A lot of people think that money will get them to happiness, and a lot of times I don’t think that’s really the truth,” Grumet said.
But how do we find purpose if not by earning six figures?
To answer that question, Grumet points to the Harvard Study of Adult Development: a study that began in 1938 and eventually expanded to include more than 1,000 participants and an additional control group, according to “The Harvard Gazette.”
“They studied these people over 80, 90 years, and they tried to connect what makes people happy,” Grumet said. “And so, they found it wasn’t money. They found it wasn’t your job. It wasn’t your achievements. It wasn’t even, per se, purpose. What really made people happy were interpersonal connections.”
Just as Roman built a community through baseball cards, there lies the answer to the question of purpose.
“I believe when you fill your day up with things you’re truly intentional [about] and love doing, you become like a light that attracts other people,” Grumet said, “and like a moth to a flame, they want to collaborate with you. They want to join communities with you. They want to get to know you better. They want to teach you, if they have something to teach you. And they want to learn from you, if they have something to learn from you.”
To hear more from Jordan Grumet about purpose and how to find yours, watch his episode of Common Cents on the Prairie below.
And if you’re ready to take the next step in finding your purpose but have questions about how your finances will affect the journey, reach out to our team at First National Wealth Management. We’d be happy to have a conversation!
Any comments, insights, or strategies discussed in this article are intended to be general in nature and, therefore, may not be suitable for you and your situation, whatever that may be. Before acting on anything written here, please consult with your attorney, CPA, and/or your financial advisor.
