Why Finding Purpose Is SO HARD Today

so it seems to me like more and more people are starting to try to figure out like what are we doing here like in on this planet on this earth like what's the purpose of life I sort of see this manifest in kind of the antiwork crowd where people are like is this what life is supposed to be I'm supposed to wake up every day at 7 a.m. I commute for an hour work until 5:00 commute home I exercise for 30 minutes cook for this amount of time and then I have to get in bed

so I'm not burnt out the next day and it's just like rinse and repeat until I die is this really what life is about and on the flip side we have like the sigma grind set folks right these are the people that are kind of like okay like I'm going to grind and like you got to you got to grind to get ahead and you got to be in Alpha and you got to go Sigma grind set you know that's really how you like you make it in life is you have the side hustle and

you grow your side hustle then you have your side side hustle and you try to hustle as much as you can and then if you hustle a lot then you can become successful and you can get lots of money and then like you can retire early right there's the fire folks which is financial Independence and retire early so these are people who are kind of thinking okay since Life starts with retirement the goal of life is to like step out of that grind as quickly as possible make your Millions so that you can enjoy life

so instead of retiring at the age of 60 what I'm going to do is try to figure out how can I retire at the age of 45 or 46 or 46 and a half and then I can start living life so I'm going to sacrifice the best years of my life so that I can enjoy enjoy the latter years of my life and so I'm kind of listening to this stuff and I'm I'm trying to really figure out what's the point of all of this is life really about going to work every day and kind

of taking care of yourself and working on your mental health and working on your physical health and learning how to cook and eating nutritious food and then going keto and going paleo and all this kind of stuff until you die or is it about grinding right is it like side hustles and hustles and hustles and hustling your way to an early retirement so that you can really like start living life to the fullest at the age of 52 is this what's going on like what are we what's happening here and these are two different solutions

either mentally checking out of the capitalistic Society because I reject this thing or capitalizing on the capitalistic society and leaning into that and I'm going to try to maximize it and get ahead but both these groups of people in my opinion share one problem which is they don't know what they're doing right there's no like purpose there's no sense of purpose in life people don't know what we're on this Earth to do and so they don't really know like how to live this life and there's good actual data to support this so if we look

at for example pornography addiction pornography addiction is on the rise and more and more people are consuming pornography more people are getting addicted to pornography and you may say well what does that have to do with life purpose well it turns out that the variable that correlates the most with being addicted to pornography is a sense of meaninglessness so as our life becomes meaningless we start to consume more pornography cuz like we don't really know what we're doing so I might as well watch some porn and get some dopamine and then I'll kind of like

you know it sort of passes the time that's one example another example which is really scary is actually suicide is on the rise so we know that suicide is correlated with a sense of purposelessness in life right like what am I doing with life there's really no point in being here I'm suffering some right now and there's no like end goal that makes the suffering worth it so why not just check out a life so it's kind of scary but suicide is the number one cause of uh death amongst asian-americans between the ages of 18

and 24 which is crazy right so if you're like an Asian-American kind of like I was or I mean I still am but I'm not 18 to 24 anymore the the most dangerous thing to you in life is actually you and why is suicide the the number one cause of of death for asian-americans between the age of 18 and 24 it's because this is a group of people that is getting crushed by expectation they don't really know what's what they're doing in life right so if you if you've grown up in the Asian-American diaspora you'll

be kind of familiar with this that you're essentially crushed by expectations the whole world usually your parents and your you know friend group and stuff like that they tell you hey this is what life is about they're like look in order to be successful you got to do this you got to do this you got to do this you got to do this they've got the formula figure out out you got to major in stem you got to work really hard you got to get into a good college you got to be at the top

of your class in college you got to go work at these really prestigious companies or become a doctor or whatever and then you will be happy and despite the fact that these Asian parents are pushing stuff on them so much this pushing this formula for Success what we actually see is that asian-americans are killing themselves at an alarming R and so our society has lost sight of what purpose like we don't really know like what we're doing here and so since we don't know what we're doing here we have these like Sigma grind set kind

of people that are like I'm going to do all my grinding up front but is that really the point of life no one knows what we're doing here and why is that so the first thing that we have to understand is that a sense of purpose can't be given to you right it has to come from within and if it could be given to you then all the Asian-American kids would be doing great because their parents are clearly giving them a sense of purpose they're handing it to them on silver platter they're shoving it down

their throat they're saying this is what you should do this is what you should do this is what you should do but that doesn't work fundamentally it doesn't work right and so then the question is okay like so if it comes from within like what do we mean by that right so if if if a sense of purpose comes from like look within yourself are we talk in kind of like Oprah book club like oh you got to like look within yourself and like you got to like oh like look so far within yourself and

see you find your purpose you know is that kind of what we're talking about well sort of but I think it's way more scientific and way more like simple than that it's not some weird deep spiritual journey we'll talk a little bit about that but it's like literally our sense of purpose comes from within if our sense of purpose comes from within then why is it that more and more people are losing sight of that well what's changed in the last 20 years let's take a look at it so what's changed in the last 20

years is essentially an acceleration of techn technology and what does technology actually do so if we kind of think about it what's happening in our society right now the most fundamental major change that has happened in our society is that we have externalized our attention so I don't know if you're like me but this is something that I absolutely used to do so when I was in med school I needed to optimize things right so I had audio books I had like audio lectures on my my my MP3 player right cuz back then I had

an MP3 player back in the day 12 years ago and so what I would do is I wake up in the morning and i' turn on some kind of audio book or something like that right like podcast or something and then I'd be like cooking and listening to something then I'd walk to the train and I'm listening to something and then I get on the train and I'm like reading something or maybe I'm on my Kindle or something like that then I'm at class and I'm paying attention there and so every moment of my day

my attention is externalized I'm listening to a podcast I'm on social media I'm playing a video game I'm watching something even when I'm on the toilet like the scariest thing in the world is going to the toilet without your phone right cuz like oh my God what are we going to do then so if we really look at it fundamentally what is the change in technology what changes technology rought in our brains and on society it has externalized our attention so a hundred years ago we used to be like more attentional to our internal stimuli

and what's really interesting is there are some places where even technology has not figured out how to break into so a great example of this is shower thoughts right the shower is the one place because if things get wet then we can't take our technology in there where we have these really profound thoughts we think so much in the shower and we start to make all these like amazing realizations in the shower and why is that is the shower is there something biochemical or physiological about the Heat and the water or maybe you take cold

showers you know that that sort of triggers all these profound thoughts no it's actually like this is the only time that able to be with oursel this is the only time of the day that we're actually able to pay attention to ourselves and so since we've lost touch with our inner voice we don't really know what we think we've struggled to find purpose and how does that work so let me give youall an example so let's say I'm trying to figure out what I want to eat and I'm trying to figure out what kind of

food I like like what kind of food do I want to eat in this world but imagine for a moment that my tongue was was completely numb and I couldn't taste anything or my nose was clogged because 70% of taste actually comes from your olfactory nerves but whatever all that stuff is numb I got some Co got some old factory problems whatever right I can't taste anything and so then how do you imagine I'm going to try to figure out what food I like so what I end up doing if if my internal senses are

numb I'm going to look at someone else I'm going to see someone else I see oh wow they're eating a hamburger that that looks great I'm going to eat that look at that L enjoying their hamburger they're taking these big bites it's so juicy it looks amazing aming and then I decid okay I'm going to eat a hamburger so I take a first bite of a hamburger I don't taste anything I finished the hamburger I'm like you know what that doesn't really work for me so I'm going to look at someone else I see oh

wow that person's got some ice cream look at that they're like licking the ice cream it t it looks really awesome it's so colorful it's got sprinkles on top that looks totally lit let me do that and then I try the ice cream but I'm numb so I can't taste anything and so what ends up happening I go through life looking at what other people makes other people happy and then I try to do duplicate it hoping that I myself will become happy not happy I'll enjoy the food right this is what happens and if

we look at literally there's like Neuroscience evidence of this that if you look at what technology usage does it doesn't matter if it's social media video games whatever it numbs our emotional circuitry it literally shuts down our ability to like be in touch with ourselves so we know that playing a video game for even a brief period of time will suppress our amydala in our lyic system the emotional circuits of our brain we will like literally suppress those internal signals which is exactly why we use the internet so when I'm feeling bad about myself and

I have too much work to do and I'm feeling overwhelmed what am I going to do to fix that I'm going to go look at cat videos as the second I open up a cat video I suppress all of my internal signals and this is precisely What's Going On We're Going through life trying to figure out what we want to do we're looking outside of ourselves for possible answers we see this person is enjoying a burger we see that person is enjoying ice cream but the whole time we are actively numbing our tongue in our

old factory senses so none of it seems to work and when none of it seems to work this is how we end up with people developing the sigma grind set think about this for a second okay people who are doing the sigma Sigma grind set and want to retire early what are they actually saying they don't even know what they're going to do after they retire they don't even know that they're going to enjoy retirement like think about that right cuz you haven't retired you don't know what it's like to be retired for 5 years

you think it's going to be great cuz you imagine all of these freedoms and stuff but you don't actually know how how that's going to work I've worked with a ton of people who have actually retired and then what do they do after 2 or three years they get bored and they come out of retirement so we end up going through life looking at what appears to make other people happy and then chasing after that all the while numbing ourselves and this is where we're we're particularly vulnerable because if we look at things like social

media and influencers they play completely into that right so how do you become a successful influencer how do you become successful on social media you live the good life you demonstrate to other people that I'm going to be in shape and look at me and I'm doing all this stuff and like I'm ripped and like I'm going to like have lots of fun with my friends and we're going to go to the beach and we're going to do this and we're going to do this and like everyone's laughing and everyone's like yeah like oh my

God they're living the high life and then you're sitting at home you're watching that you're like I want that too those people are happy social media completely amplifies this this sort of idea that I can look at other people and they are showing me the recipe for happiness they are showing me how to find purpose but it doesn't work because we try to monkey see monkey do we try to replicate what we see but it doesn't seem to work for us why because we're numb so the next question becomes how do we unnumb ourselves and

once we're able to do that life will change drastically right so if you can start to taste again it can be really really easy to figure out what you enjoy eating all you need to do is be able to taste so how do we actually go about doing that so this is where we've got to talk for a second about boredom okay so the first thing to understand is like what is the purpose of boredom so if we think about it when we start to feel bored what is our antidote to boredom our antidote to

boredom is usually some kind of external stimulation so what is boredom actually boredom is a stimulation SE seing emotional state so our mind has figured out hey if we're not getting the stimulation that we want what I'm going to do is make this person feel bored and once they start to feel bored we are going to seek some kind of external stimulation which will then relieve the boredom because as long as we're getting stimulated from the outside we won't feel bored furthermore if we're getting stimulated from the outside what we're going to be doing is

suppressing all of our internal signals so then the question kind of becomes okay how can I start reconnecting with my internal signals and this is where if you want to start listening to your internal voice what you actually need to do is Stop drowning it out from the outside so this is where we have to understand a little bit about where thoughts come from right so the thoughts in our mind come from two places they can either come from our sensory organs or something like internally memory or things like that so if you kind of

think about you know what are you excited about today are you excited about seeing a particular movie or playing a particular game or eating a particular food how did you have that excitement where did that thought come from chances are came from a sensory organ and as long as we are being bombarded by the sensory organs it's going to be very hard for our internal thoughts to actually arise this is further compounded by the fact that often times when our internal thoughts arise they kind of like arise in a negative way so the first thing

that comes out of our mind tends to be kind of negative so if I'm sitting sitting there laying awake at night and like you know trying to go to sleep I I'm not going to think happy thoughts at the beginning right I'm going to start to think a little bit about how much I have to do I'm going to start to feel overwhelmed so the other reason that we want to numb ourselves is the first layer of internal voice is usually unpleasant it's negative emotions that we've suppressed and so what do we kind of do

about this and this is what's kind of interesting is we kind of know societally that like people will go and find their purpose right and how do they do that well they go like on these journeys of self-discovery and they find themselves so we know like this is not only a Trope like people actually go and do this I kind of did it right so I went to India and I spent three months in an asham and we know that people will go on these like year-long Wanderlust you know sabatical kind of things sometimes people

will take a gap year and what do they do in their Gap year they like go travel the world and they hike and they go mountain climbing and all this kind of stuff and we know that once people do this kind of thing they come back to life 6 months later a year later their hair has grown out they have a beard presumably if they're a dude sometimes women you know and then they've got this like piercing look in their eyes and they're like rugged and they've like discovered themselves and so let's understand that for

a second scientifically like wait a minute so we know this kind of happens and even within you there may be a yearning to go find yourself and then the question kind of okay hold on like what what's the mechanism to this what's the science behind this why do you have to travel in the Himalayas to go find yourself because aren't you with you all the time well the answer is actually no right so in the world that we actually exist in you're not with you in fact you have so much digital stimulation that you're far

far far away from you which also explains why you can go find yourself in the himas so when you go hiking for 6 months what happens to your indria your sense organs what happens to your sensory input when you're hiking for 8 hours like you're not getting constant sensory input right like you just can't so sure you're seeing things like maybe there's a beautiful mountain somewhere or a lake or whatever but for the most part you're kind of walking and just being with yourself and so the process of finding yourself involves reducing external stimulation and

as you start to reduce external stimulation stuff starts to come up you get ATT tuned to your inner voice exactly what happened to me in the asham so I sit there and I meditate for like eight hours and like stuff starts to come up stuff starts to come up stuff starts to come up and and this is also why people like going on meditation Retreats because when you go on a Meditation Retreat you are with yourself and you are away from the rest of the world you've unplugged and when you unplug from the rest of

the world that's when you hear your inner voice and so it's kind of interesting because even this tropes sort of makes sense right so what is the mechanism through which going on a self-discovery journey helps you find purpose because there's got to be a scientific mechanism right it's not just like a literary Trope that is glorified in movies like people actually go and do this and the mechanism is that we get away from this external stimuli so we can hear our internal voice and so if you're kind of sitting at home and thinking to yourself

well like what am I supposed to do am I supposed to go understand myself by going on a hiking Journey if you want to go for it go for it you can do like silent meditation Retreats or whatever but we're going to teach y'all just a very simple technique today which is to reach the end of thought you may say like what does that mean what is the end of thought so if you close your eyes what's going to happen is you'll have thoughts right thoughts will arise thoughts will arise thoughts will arise and you'll

notice a particular pattern to the thoughts most of the thoughts will be related to something external to you they're not anything about what you want they're about things that you're going to need to do or they manifest as desires which you may think is what you want but that desire will also be born of an external stimulus it's not something that you care about you may say I want to eat this or I want to play this or whatever then what you're going to notice is there's a period of intense bordedom where your mind is

struggling for stimulation and so you'll feel very very very very intense ly bored and remember what is boredom boredom is an attempt by your brain to get that hit of dopamine this is why it makes boredom so damn uncomfortable so if we think about the sensations within ourselves that prompt us to action that Force us into action all of those Sensations are uncomfortable hunger is uncomfortable thirst is uncomfortable and so why does our body make us feel uncomfortable to bludgeon us into acting and what's the biggest Club it's got It's actually boredom so the second

phase that you're going to experience is intense intense boredom but then something magical will happen if you can make it through that phase if you cannot give into the boredom and once you know what the boredom is trying to do you can start to have some power over it you will find that the thoughts are going to be very rapid at the beginning and then they'll start to slow down slow down slow down slow down and if you're lucky you will reach the end of thought so how long does it take to reach the end

of thought it kind of depends but once you reach the end of thought because remember thoughts can come from the outside then all you will be left with are the internal impulses what you will have done is stopped numbing yourself and actually will be hyper sensitive to internal drivers internal goals internal values and the cool thing is once you get centered in those then you can start crafting a life around them right once I know from within me what I am looking for from Life once I stop listening to influencers or my Asian-American parents or

looking at other people like my friends or older siblings or whatever and what they've done with their life and instead of trying to duplicate that I'm listening to myself then I can start to align a life out of my values and something really magical happens there which is that once you discover what you want from life it's not about what is the purpose of life this is also a nomer there is not a purpose or what is the purpose of life this is kind of wild but it's my belief that the purpose of life is

not in life it's in you it's individualized and this is like the the big scam is that we are like what's the purpose of life like let's go ask someone really wise right because if we ask someone really wise they'll be able to give us the answer but the whole point is that you're an individual that you are living your life and so if you want to make the most of it you have to understand what you want out of it and so in order to do that reach the end of thought right you may

say well practically how do I do that do I sit there for a while you can sit there for a while you can go on a long hike if you want to you don't have to reach the end of thought all at once so you can sit there and go on a 10day silent Meditation Retreat if you want to you can go on a hiking trip those are fantastic or you can just sit down with yourself you know for half an hour hour whatever do I have to stay in Lotus posture no you don't have

to stay in Lotus posture go for a walk and just let the thoughts run out they will run out of Ste they'll be boredom and then after that you'll discover what you want and once you discover your purpose then you can start to align your life around it and once you start aligning your life out of purpose a couple of things happen the first thing that happens is that you are able to tolerate the difficulties of life so why is it that it's hard to do hard things it's because it's not worth it right anytime

there's a challenge if you really listen to people what's their resistance I I don't know if it's worth it or not but once you're aligned with your purpose it will actually become worth it right cuz now you know why you're doing it now you can afford to wake up at 6:00 a.m. every day because you actually care about what you're studying this is caring for life makes it so much easier to live and so much more enjoyable so in order to really figure out how to make life easy I don't think you should adopt the

anti-work view of is this all life is I think it's a good question and I don't think you should adopt the sigma grind view which is just hey let me work and work and work and work and work so that I can be successful later and then I can have this gravy train like this pot of gold at the end of the rainbow I don't think it works I've worked with those people they reach the end of the rainbow they enjoy themselves for a couple years and they they come into my office and they're like

I don't know what I'm doing with life and then we go on this journey the thing is you don't have to wait until you don't have to sacrifice the best years of your life to discover that purpose is not Financial Security that purpose is so much more you can actually start that today in fact you need to start it today and if you can discover what your purpose is through this technique if you can understand this then so many things will become easy I know it's not practical for people to go to an usham in

India or go hiking in the mountains for 10 days which is exactly why we built a coaching program our program is actually designed to help people find a sense of purpose and what we tend to see is about a 58% increase in a client's sense of purpose in life at about 12 weeks and what we've really found in our Central hypothesis is that once you find a reason to get out of bed in the morning once you find a reason to get off of the internet once you find a reason to actually be motivated to

do things that are difficult for you that's what actually makes it easy for you to accomplish your goals