This episode critically examines common advice on finding meaning and purpose in life, highlighting the pitfalls of quick fixes and superficial lists. It emphasizes the importance of deep, personalized exploration and ongoing effort in the pursuit of a meaningful life.

Key Topics

• Common misconceptions about purpose and meaning
• Critique of quick-fix solutions like Ikigai and purpose lists
• The importance of personalized, deep reflection
• Limitations of happiness and positivity strategies
• Research insights on meaningful living

Sound Bites

• "Quick fixes don't lead to lasting purpose"
• "Happiness is a poor proxy for meaning"
• "Research shows most lists are superficial"

Chapters
00:00
Exploring Bad Advice on Finding Meaning
05:44
The Complexity of Happiness and Meaning
08:25
The Misconceptions of Ikigai and Modern Advice
09:57
Exploring Ikigai and Its Challenges
13:15
The Depth of Purpose Finding
15:19
Critique of Purpose-Finding Resources
19:20
The Complexity of Meaning and Purpose
23:59
Navigating the Journey of Purpose
28:55
Practical Steps Towards Meaning
31:54

TRANSCRIPT
Jodi Wellman 00:00
Welcome to this could be it. Glad you're back. The podcast where we talk about how challenging and difficult it could be to live like we really mean it when life can be sometimes hard. But we try to make sense of it and we have fun along the way while we're doing it. And today we're going to have a quickie topic, which means it's super fast and furious. And what is our topic today, mr. Michael Steger?

Mike Steger 00:18
Well, you know, we all hope that this podcast evolves into a ever growing owner's manual for the kind of life that doesn't give you any useful owner's manual. And one reason is because there is a lot of bad advice about finding meaning and purpose in your life, and that's we're going to tackle. What's some of the bad advice that's out there?

Jodi Wellman 00:38
Ooh, like the what not to do or the review of the gory stuff that we've been told and shouldn't follow, or both.

Mike Steger 00:47
Yeah, the gory stuff, right? Because like it's very easy to go onto you know online and say, "What should I do to find meaning in my life? People are asking this question quite a lot, right? Like they're even asking AI, "How do I find meaning in my life? What's my purpose? Please tell me. Yeah, and so I think we're going to find out that people are very happy to tell you, very happy to give you long lists of things that I'm going to tell you right now. Mostly, is made up ridiculousness.

Jodi Wellman 01:19
So excited!

Mike Steger 01:20
Yeah,

Jodi Wellman 01:20
I think we all should be. And what we have to make sure of is that none of the things you come up with that you have authored, okay? I know as a meaning researcher, it's possible.

Mike Steger 01:30
Yeah, no threat. Nothing that I've written is on here. Don't worry. That seems fair. You can trust this.

Jodi Wellman 01:38
Okay, so words of horrible wisdom and advice about meaning in life. Absolutely, what's what one jumps out at you the most?

Mike Steger 01:47
Oh my gosh, where to start?

Jodi Wellman 01:49
Okay,

Mike Steger 01:49
now one thing that you can look for right away is anything that seems very very straightforward and obvious, right? So I I did a TEDx talk on how to find meaning in life at one point, and one of that when I was watching that to try and figure out how embarrassing it was, embarrassment to wisdom ratio, I kept getting suggested this other one, like something like how to find your life purpose in seven minutes or less, like that is clearly ridiculous, right? Because you can't do it. Otherwise, it would be so easy. No one would be thinking about this question anymore. But basically, it was the old tried and true. Get out a cocktail napkin. Write down what you're good at. Write down what you like. Write down what the world will pay you for, and that's your life purpose.

Jodi Wellman 02:39
All

Mike Steger 02:40
right. Anything that that is that fast and has like a plug and play is not going to be great. The other thing to look out for is very very long lists of things that all individually sound great. Okay.

Jodi Wellman 02:51
Okay.

Mike Steger 02:51
So there's lots of these out there. There's one like brainy psychology popped up on the top of the list. Almost anything that pops up at the top of the list for a query like this is going to be useless, just you know, right? But it's like the the thing is, it's going to be a little bit of a blend. And so here's why. Here's what I think is my contributing gift today is to how to think a little bit more complexly about these long list of things, all of which sound great, but very few of which actually link to meaning and purpose in life. Okay, so brain psychology says figure out your values and beliefs, set meaningful goals, cultivate gratitude, practice mindfulness, seek connection. Right. All that sounds great, right? But there's not that much research on how to do those things correctly. So, if you just think about your values, that's not going to give you meaning in life. If you decide to align yourself with your values by having meaningful goals that are value rooted or values congruent, that sounds great. But how do you make sure you're doing that? How do you make sure that those are the right values? What do you do when values conflict? What do you do when one set of meaningful goals pulls you one direction and another set of meaningful goals says you never get to see your kids, right? So again, the complexity is is very deep. Things like gratitude and mindfulness; those are greatest hits, right? Those boost well being. They'll make you feel good, but do they actually lead to durable changes in meaning and purpose in life? Maybe, maybe they do, but it's not really a great list. So, this is where we start to to find that a lot of these lists are populated with generic happy stuff. Right?

Jodi Wellman 04:28
It's just

Mike Steger 04:29
it's a little bit like a sugar boost. You'll like you'll like all of it. If I keep going on, there's like live with intention, of course. But that's the hard part. The hard part isn't knowing you're supposed to live with intention. The hard part is actually doing it,

Jodi Wellman 04:42
right? Right. If you want to find meaning, live meaningfully. Yes.

Mike Steger 04:46
Commit yourself to your life purpose, and then your life will be meaningful. Just do that, right? So there's some really good ones, though, right? But essentially, what happens is a lot of these lists just start to name check or concept check the trendy stuff, and there's. Not a lot of thought put into these, I don't think. Yeah, you know. So anything that Brene Brown said, or Simon Sinek said, or Adam Grant said, or Hugh Grant said, or Lou Grant said, or Grant Robinson from Charlotte Hornets, whoever said, right? Like it's all going to show up on this list as long as they were famous and got a lot of likes and views, and their pages are successful, right? So that's a problematic thing. Now another thing is that now this stuff is starting to show up as AI-generated dribble, and here again, you're going to find a lot of famous names. I looked at one called "Find Your Life Purpose. Please don't go there. Clearly, it's almost 100% written by AI cites almost no actual research. Why? Why just make stuff up? Humanity's been doing that for 1000s of years. We can actually do research now and find out what really works, but AI doesn't really lean in that direction because it leans in what's popular and most common on the internet. And what's popular and most common are people like Brene Brown, Tony Robbins, Mark Manson, Marilyn Manson, whoever's famous, right? And it's again just a pastiche of things that sound great but are tricky to do. Self reflection, self reflection will lead you to meaning. Well, of course, but how do you know that the reflection that you're doing is productive. That the topics that pop up are important. That the ones that seem important are worth implementing into your life. That the ones that seem worth implementing into your life are worth sacrificing for. Right. So this is the problem that we face. It's not really a process. It's just a grab bag of good-sounding happiness juice, yeah,

Jodi Wellman 06:43
brain juice, yeah, brain juice. Can we pause for a sec? Because you made a comment a minute ago about how some of these things sound like they're happy things,

Mike Steger 06:51
yeah.

Jodi Wellman 06:52
Because you must bristle in some ways where you're like, guys, that stuff that is over here in order to build happiness. Which happiness? How's your view? Just super quick, like how happiness and meaning play together in the part.

Mike Steger 07:05
Yeah. Okay. So happiness is pretty poorly defined. That that's one big issue that we have. So we we'll create different types of well-being to try to be a little bit more scientifically precise. But happiness is, are you happy? And often we mean, are you happy with your life? But it can also be measured with how happy do you feel right now, and if you do fun things, guess what? You feel happier. And also, guess what? When you feel happier, your life seems more meaningful, even if it's not. So there's a there's a famous experiment. There's a little computer game called the Cyberball, and it's a it's a pretend playing catch game, and you're playing this little mitten hand on the bottom of the screen, and two little, you know, ghost-looking dudes are throwing a ball back and forth. And if they throw the ball to you, versus ignore you, your life feels meaningful. Is your life meaningful because two fake people pretend to throw a pretend ball to you on a dumb computer game, versus the fake people didn't. No, it hasn't changed your life at all. But we feel worse if we are rejected, and we feel better if we're included. So that they call that a positively positivity halo effect, and that's one of the things that is very very seductive about a lot of this advice. Suddenly we read it and we're like, oh, I've got a list. Now I'm going to be able to find purpose. All I need to do is get my icky guy, right? Yeah. Or now I'm going to be thankful for three things, and it will boost positive mood when you do it. And over the long term, something like a rigorous gratitude practice can definitely improve well-being, even if we define a little bit more rigorously, like a balance of positive emotions and negative emotions over time, in a sense that life is going the way you want it to, right? So that is closely related to happiness. But the problem with a lot of this advice is just reading it and thinking you have a list makes us feel good, like we've done something.

Jodi Wellman 08:54
Yeah.

Mike Steger 08:55
And if you do some of the stuff on the list, it's just a sugar high.

Jodi Wellman 08:58
Yeah. Okay. All right. I'll let you get back, and then I have a question about the sugar high. Go

Mike Steger 09:02
okay. So some of the advice ikigai. Now you know you've stumbled into ridiculousness if you see something that has a visual little circle for ikigai because it was completely made up, right? So there's actually a big literature from Japan during the 1960s on ikigai. We could learn from that, or we could just make up stuff that entrepreneurs have have made, so that their the Venn

Jodi Wellman 09:26
diagram is has lots of pretty colors. It's easy to look at.

Mike Steger 09:29
Yeah, you know what? Who's also good at making pretty colors? Japanese culture. Yeah. Plus, we could actually get their wisdom and what they're talking about in the first place, which is more complicated, but also more beautiful, right? So the thing that you typically see is overlapping circles. What are you good at? What do you care about? What does the world need from you? What will they pay you for? In the middle is icky guy. That's actually not from icky guy at all. That's just from other consulting, entrepreneurial-based stuff. You know, but they've put Ikigai on because it was trending. Now they're icky guy experts, so now they're they're making bank, right? So this is part of the problem, but also, what are you good at? How are you supposed to find that out? What do you value? What's important to you? Again, it's it's a little bit tricky. What's the world going to pay you for? Like, does that is that what the world needs? What it's going to pay you for, right? So some people can get paid to traffic drugs. Is that what what the world needs? What if you can't get paid for something that you think the world needs, which is like saving the environment? So again, it leads to more questions, but it makes you feel good to go through that little exercise and all of the implementation, the roadblocks, the confusion, potential isolation of trying to work on something so important but not getting anywhere-all that stuff's kicked down the road to someone else's list, right? I don't know what you think about that.

Jodi Wellman 10:50
Yeah, I wondered if you were going to bring up Ikey Guy, and I think it's a perfect example of how it gives us something that does feel like a process, because so much of what you're talking about is like things that you can be reflective on, and then oh great, I've got a thing, and now it's oh, it's like a category of things. I could spend the afternoon here, maybe more than seven minutes, but I think some of us are aware it's going to take a little more of an investment. But if we if we spend 70 minutes, what could that lead to? And then I guess I'm I'm curious too about the risk. So we someone sits and tries to look at the icky guy. Like I've done this when I first saw it years back, and I thought, well, I don't have answers to this, which actually made me feel worse in that moment. I didn't actually have a way out. And then, of course, you you know you slam your journal shut, and then you I don't know you go and you watch TV or you take a drink. Anyway, yeah, it's misleading in that it looks so cool, and that it leaves you leaves you astray.

Mike Steger 11:44
Yeah, yeah. I mean, one of the that is one of the hallmarks of this area stuff that looks deep, but it kind of leaves you either stranded or is actually just super shallow and kind of silly, right? So one of the one of the things this AI generated list says is ask yourself deep purpose finding questions. That's a step, but then it just I've never heard of any of the people that you know they're they're named as purpose experts. I mean, I only I know I know a lot of purpose experts in the world after 20 something years of doing this research. Not that I don't not that I know all of them, but I've never heard of these folks. And basically, the the things that you're supposed to ask yourself are: What do you love? What would you do if you didn't have to work for money? Right? All that sort of stuff, which is, I guess, supposed to be passion related, or interests related, or strengths and values related. It kind of all goes back to the same thing. If you really knew yourself really, really well, and knew exactly what you do if you won the lottery, a lot of these folks will also say, like, "What would you do if you won the lottery? And it's deferring some hard work, right? Because then you can think, "Well, if I did win the lottery, I would spend all my time healing sick children and saving the rainforest, but I didn't win the lottery. So, what are some things I could do? I could send $5 to save the rainforest. You know, like it's not. It leaves you hanging between the profundity of what we're really searching for for meaning and purpose in life, and the the shallowness of some of these quick fixes. So you're probably sensing already. I'm not a big fan of quick fixes.

Jodi Wellman 13:28
I I could barely tell, but thanks for pointing that out. Yep.

Mike Steger 13:31
Yeah, yeah. So things things so far, if we're keeping score, things I don't like, things that create just a positivity halo effect where it makes you feel good in the moment. You feel like you did something, but you didn't2. deceptively problematic steps described simply identify your values. People don't know how to do that, in my experience, very often, and it takes a little while for them to start to sink into that process. And three things that are actually rather shallow but require time. So, for example, you'll be told to create your purpose statement. Yeah, so that's fantastic. I typically spend two days with people. I have a two-day purpose statement workshop, and people find it to be briskly paced. If that tells you anything, smart people, people with degrees, leaders in industry, like they find it to be quickly paced to have two days to have to cram this thing out, and this thing says just just crank it out by adding some again random scooping from

Jodi Wellman 14:33
fill in the blanks,

Mike Steger 14:34
fill fill in the blanks exactly, and I love it. They always say like apply, now you do it, you got this, now you do it, but you might think that this is just going to be the random stuff that people pop websites up to funnel traffic into who knows what. But there's also a site that I want to call. There's going to be only two more things I'm going to really go after here. One is a research study that I think portrays. Another tricky element, and then the other is a is a for profit place that that feels like it's giving you a lot, but maybe isn't so much.

Jodi Wellman 15:08
Okay,

Mike Steger 15:09
so the first is it was created as a for profit enterprise. Initially, marketing workshops like well constructed workshops starts off with great intentions, great rigor, and tries to keep as much of that as possible, but also has to create a you know sales funnel and all these sorts of things. So you start to see like there's a little bit more of a imprimatur or like a again a halo of legitimacy because you can get a lot of free things. It's very cool, right? Like you can get notes. It has two PhD people who are involved in their how to find purpose thing, and you can even get like it says you can download workbooks and things like that. Okay, so it sounds like they're giving you a lot, which is potentially true. But what happens when someone like me, a scientist, workshop facilitator, former therapist, right, someone who's like on the hook for backing up what I say? What if I go through it? Right. Okay. So it looks like a lot. It's a good read, 1314, minute read, designed by a PhD. Starts with philosophy, but it kind of feels like the amount of philosophy you can get if you go to like brainy quotes or good reads. It's like statements by philosophers.

Jodi Wellman 16:21
Yeah, like a really cool quote you could maybe write on a sticky.

Mike Steger 16:24
Folks that I have tried and failed to read, so maybe you would say this is sour grapes, but like Heidegger, you know, like it's easy to pull a quote that sounds awesome from a Heidegger, but like reading through the whole thing is

Jodi Wellman 16:36
wrong. Slog.

Mike Steger 16:37
It's a slog, right? The research isn't up to date. Like this is a 2020 entry, and most of the research is previous to 2010. Right, relies a lot on on simple sounding theories that have a hard time being replicated in actual research, right? Like terror management theory. We've talked about that. The core tenets seem to be there, but a lot of the extensions seem to be pretty shaky, but they pull some stuff that is not necessarily founded, right? Like meaning and purpose might stave off death anxiety. Okay, that's both easy to show from some research, but also like so what, right? Yeah, that's literally the theory.

Jodi Wellman 17:20
Yeah. Oh, but then how do we do that?

Mike Steger 17:23
Yeah, how do we do that? You just accept death, or if you don't, if you can't do that, then you just get meaning and purpose. You got two great choices there.

Jodi Wellman 17:32
That's cool.

Mike Steger 17:32
Yeah. So you keep reading. They do differentiate meaning from purpose. They don't really cite anything, but it's still nice to do that. And then they have this like list of suggestions that start to make me a little bonkers. And you can see they're going for something experiential, maybe, but they're tying in a lot of stuff. So watch Carl Sagan's pale blue dot video.

Jodi Wellman 17:52
Yes,

Mike Steger 17:54
that's enough. You should be good by then. Broaden your mind by reading books, talking with positive people, and learn scientific thinking, which my snarky quote, parenthetical to myself, was that would be great if you would do that, right? But then it starts talking about growth mindset. There's not really research on that. It's a trendy topic. They cite one tourism study and then a blog entry. That's not encouraging. But then they go on and on and on, right? Like they mean from growth mindset, they mean a bunch of things that have nothing to do most of the time with growth mindset, right? Explore your strengths, identify and accept your weaknesses that hold you back. These are all good. See that meaning is subjective. Accept your mistakes. Learn to be intrinsically motivated. Yeah, that's hard. There's an entire theory that tries to help people do that: help other people experience awe, gratitude, and altruism, and listen to the positive things that people say to you, and then write about your personal experiences. That got a little weird for growth mindset, right? And then they come up with 10 techniques, and here's where we're trying to we're passing into the realm of like where people use research incorrectly, so they cite Itai Itsan, who's a a friend of mine that has done lots of great applied work, fantastic mindfulness teacher, all that sort of stuff. But he reviewed the field and found sources of meaning. These are answers to what when people we ask people, where does meaning in life come from? Very interesting stuff, but does a greatest hits list of where people find meaning automatically translate into how you can find meaning? There's really no guarantee for that. So they have a good list, like it's some classic stuff. Support others by joining clubs. Like that's not even a source of meaning most of the time, but it's a little bit like connection. For work on your relationships, that's the water of well-being science. It's everywhere. It's like feel better, you know. Just feel better, have better relationships, find something great to do with your life. Meaning will follow. You know, focus on yourself to try to transcend yourself. Great advice, classic, super hard. Increase intimacy. I mean, I guess you could buy Sonya Lubomirski and Harry Reese's book, How to Feel Loved. That's a great guide. But a lot of this stuff is hard, and some greatest hitsy stuff. Align your goals with your values. Accept yourself. Express and experience kindness and fairness. Like this is a hodgepodge then of multiple different approaches to this topic. But how do you experience respect? And then it says this is where it really gets dangerous. Again, this isn't what Itai was saying. Ibsen wasn't saying. This is this is how they use this research. For some people, materialistic desires can be significant, but most people, it's bad for them. Right, fewer than 2% on the research I've done say that materialism or materialistic concerns like wealth, beauty, power, having cool stuff, shopping, luxury, fewer than 2% say that that's meaningful to them, but now we're telling everyone give it a whirl. So that's and then for most of the research, we show that that's not good for people. Anyway, so it keeps going and going, and so the real solution when you get to the bottom is to subscribe to their toolkit.

Speaker 1 21:20
Right.

Jodi Wellman 21:21
Well, I mean, and

Mike Steger 21:24
then is it

Jodi Wellman 21:24
in bold? Yeah,

Mike Steger 21:25
yeah, and the worksheet. I mean, which fine. I mean, but I wouldn't say there's going to be a ton of confidence behind what they're offering if this is their gateway. So it's just really hard. Like this is this is hard, and I don't know. What do you think about what do you think about what I'm dishing out right now?

Jodi Wellman 21:42
Okay, yeah, this is so interesting because as a practitioner who has in the past worked with individuals and/or groups, depending how much time there is, you've alluded to a two-day workshop at a fast, fast pace. Sometimes there are these pieces. So on one hand, I go, well, is it about the old adage in research for like person activity fit, right? So if someone is coming, maybe even from a baseline of not being clued in at all, like they're not, they've never even, they don't know the definition of the word values. Yeah, that exercise to spend 30 minutes on may be interesting. And so for some people, is it the collection of dabbling into these things that could lead to some awareness, that could lead to something, because I also so on one hand I think that what one person might find meaning in awe, the next person's like, yeah, I don't care about the stars, like the blue dot, I got whatever, like it's just another blue dot, thanks Earth, but I find meaning in you know my relationships with my loved ones, so and that may not float anyone else's boat. So, I do think what you're talking about-it's like there's a prescription that is often dished up and out, and it's not going to work for everyone. It's also occurring to me the degree to which you're talking about being thorough with it, and I think that's really important. I haven't really heard this before, so you're you're discerning between. You could try to identify your values, but then so what? Or you could try to identify your strengths, or what? You've gone taking it to another level of like, how do you know that those are the right quote unquote right ones that could lead you to meaning? And that sounds like a way deeper excavation than even just the again surface that I think even well meant good practitioners have done that. Quite frankly, I've done in in different times over the years. So I think it sounds to me like it's variety and depth.

Mike Steger 23:28
I know you've done it the right way 100% of the time. I mean, now now part of it is like I'm literally writing a book on how to find purpose, right? And so bumping up again. What's that?

Jodi Wellman 23:40
You're all hopped up.

Mike Steger 23:42
I'm all hopped up. I'm fired up because there's this tricky balance of like giving people what they can use and not trying to overwhelm anybody. Like there's a certain level where all of this is guesswork, right? Because you know, do I know someone listening to this right now or reading my book later is going to really get a full, true, and rich meaning and purpose in life from what I'm providing. I mean, we don't really know because the research isn't on every single person who's alive. It tends to like smush people together, and then the things that work most often in the research, we we you know bump up in our list of priorities, and there's tons of that already. Like this is what's one of the things that's so frustrating about these lists is that there's so much research out there, they could actually give good advice specific to meaning, and they don't. They just recycle generic advice, right? If you, yeah, if you're curious, if there's going to be a book that has excellent advice written by two people, me and myself and Todd Cashion, who like built the field, yeah, there's going to be a book about that, right? But you you point to a trickier thing in addition, right? Which is people. Different places, really different places, and have different tastes for what they want to engage in. Exactly what you just said, right? So, so where my critique of the worst purpose slice I've ever heard is, is that it repeats a lot of things that make people feel comfortable,

Jodi Wellman 25:17
right? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You touch. You said the greatest hits a minute ago, and I think we people like, even though you're maybe gagging sick of it, like okay, gratitude journal, like we're done with it, done with it. But it's also that is a heck of a lot easier and doable than it is to stop and think about like really going through the hardship you've you've experienced and trying to understand lessons learned out of grief or out of sorrow or loss and rejection and failure and other scintillatingly great emotions, right?

Mike Steger 25:53
Yeah, absolutely. And part of it is that it it gives us the sense that we can get the right answer and then just go nuts, which I think also sets people up a little bit for some combination of shattered hopes and dreams.

Jodi Wellman 26:11
Yeah,

Mike Steger 26:12
and I don't get what all the fuss is about.

Jodi Wellman 26:14
Well, can I ask you? Okay, so let's just say the promise is delivered in some way. Yeah, someone is able to follow one of these little snippets. Ooh, I read Mansearch for meaning, or ooh, I looked at this TED talk, or ooh, I did this thing, and I somehow feel plugged into my purpose.

Mike Steger 26:31
Yeah.

Jodi Wellman 26:32
Then what?

Mike Steger 26:33
Yeah. Well, I think this is a great way to wrap up, right? Because we can dive into the wrinkles of the research. The the biggest again one of the biggest problems I see is that people just label whatever they're interested in as meaning and purpose. You know what? You can be interested in your thing. If your thing is mindfulness, you can be really interested in mindfulness. Just call it mindfulness. It doesn't have to be purpose. If you want people to just feel content in their skin and not have to strive and push and feel pressure. That's great. Call it something, but don't call it purpose, right? Like we have to be a little bit precise about the words, because if we define purpose as whatever we think is great and meaning as whatever we think is being comforting, then we don't have research anymore that tells us what to actually do, right? So we want to we want to learn the real definitions. We want to stick to the research that tells us something about those definitions, right? So, you know, I guess I would say the number one thing is then that this is going to take time and it's going to take experimentation. There's a reason that that our podcast is going to go for 600,000 episodes, Jodi. Because again, it takes time. Takes time to water. Yeah,

Jodi Wellman 27:48
yeah. I was just going to say, true or false, the pursuit of purpose slash meaning is a lifetime affair.

Mike Steger 27:57
I mean, for most people, yeah, because life keeps changing. If you didn't think five years ago that you're going to be worried about what a robot thinks of you, well, now we worry about robots and what they think of us and whether they want to kill us with drones, right? So it's like that.

Jodi Wellman 28:11
Well, great. See, now here's the thing. Before this conversation, I actually wasn't worried about it, and now I have a new thing to worry about. Yeah. Super.

Mike Steger 28:16
Well, don't worry, because there's more coming your way, right? So there's there has to be something that we can do as we go along. So, number one bit of advice: let's be pretty clear about what we're talking about. Meaning, purpose isn't everything. It doesn't have to be. It is finding a path through life that makes it feel worth living. Let's start with that, right? Number two, the world is confusing. This whole podcast exists to try to help us understand how to live a life that feels worth living and meaningful in a world that is bonkers and changing all the time doesn't really give us a good owner's manual. Number three, the process is going to be asking a bit of you over time. It's not a set it and forget it thing, meaning and purpose. Almost nothing is really right. Like, imagine having a great relationship. It's harder than just picking up someone you think is hot and cool, right? And then the final one I would say is for folks who are entering from a point where they're not going to be even going to Goodreads to steal a Kirkyard quote, right? Or who got through the first half of my inserts from meaning, feeling super inspired, and then tried to read the second half are like, "What is what is this guy talking about? Right, like it's just there's an entry level for everyone, right? And this is where, this is where you can do more with a little bit. So someone says we should be offering people a few options, kind of like these lists, but they should be clearly menu choices. This is how I run my classes when I don't have individual time with people or don't have two days to really work with individually people. Like, here's some choices. Number one, wonder: Can you recapture that sense of curiosity, openness, child? Like wonder for the world. Number two, relationships and closeness. That could be gratitude. That could be forgiveness. That could be vulnerability. Number three, turn inside. Get introspective. Understand your values. Try to figure out what you think of the world. All that sort of stuff. Number four, what's something that bugs you that you wish you could fix? Right. Pick whatever one is screaming to you. Engage in that. Feel good about that, and then make a plan to do something about that every day for a week, for two weeks, for a month. Right. That's the kind of thing that makes life a little bit more meaningful. Is finding a path that feels right for us to get started with, and then committing to do something about it over time, not just scribble on a cocktail napkin, pat yourself on the back, and then go, you know, stream something online that turns your brain off.

Jodi Wellman 30:53
I have a question for you: Is your book with Todd clearly can't be called "How to Find Meaning in Seven Minutes" So, is it how to find meaning and purpose in like 12 minutes?

Mike Steger 31:05
No, six minutes. We're super fast. Yeah, how to find meaning, purpose even before you get to the to the checkout at the bookstore. That because that's a great sales policy. That's a big promise. You know, it's a system. We're proposing a system based on research, based on our experience and based on our knowledge of what trips people up. So we'd rather sell one great book on purpose that people won't need to buy another book. They won't need to buy a book every year. They'll have everything in place, and we'll show them how to use those pieces, put them together, and put them into action, and use it again and again until they reach their deathbed, which is where you come in. On that note, do you think this could be it? I think this could be it. Thanks for the quickie, Mike.