In this episode, Darius and Peter explore the concept of finding purpose and how it contributes to a meaningful and fulfilling life. They discuss how purpose evolves over time, extending beyond professional success to personal growth, community service, and societal impact. Through personal stories, they reflect on how purpose shifted for them during career transitions and retirement. The conversation highlights the importance of passion, self-awareness, and aligning actions with core values. The episode encourages listeners to reflect on their own sense of purpose and reminds them that even small contributions can create meaningful change.
Key Points
- Purpose evolves over time and extends beyond professional success to personal and societal impact.
- Passion and self-awareness are essential in aligning with one’s purpose. Effort alone won’t lead to fulfillment, finding purpose requires aligning your actions with what feels natural and right for you.
- Pursuing a purpose greater than yourself may not directly benefit you, but it can have a lasting positive impact on your family and community and bring a deeper sense of fulfillment.
Darius
Hello everyone. And welcome to another episode of 50 to 70. Meaningful conversations between men. I'm Darius. I'm here with my co-host, Peter Calin. Peter, good to see you.
Peter
Delight. Always a delight to be here with you, Darius. And spend time with our audience and share these conversations.
Darius
Conversations that you and I have had once, twice, sometimes.
Peter
Many times.
Darius
Many, many times. And today's one is of particular interest to you. I think both of us. That being purpose and how to mindfully and meaningfully infuse purpose to create fulfilling lives for men.
Peter
Yes. Yes. A man without purpose, is challenged. I believe that finding purpose provides guidance. It provides direction on the things that men have created. Men create people. Humans create. It's finding purpose that drives that energy. And so we're going to talk about that today and how to perhaps consider purpose in living a meaningful and fulfilled life. And just our own experiences with it and what we might suggest to the audience that might be helpful to them.
Darius
And so what is purpose? How do you find purpose? The impact of purpose. How does purpose evolve? Are the key themes that I think over the next half hour, we're going to be winding through and sharing our own personal experiences and how we got there. Yeah. So let's start off with a basic question. I'm sure we have people in the audience listening right now and saying purpose.
Darius
What are the what are these two guys talking about? So how would we define purpose, Peter, for someone naive or someone new to the construct?
Peter
It's in its most basic. It's why you do the things you do in your life. What is your reason or purpose? I use the term purpose to better describe that you're you and I. Most of us, we're we're in this continuous process of creation, of building, of growing. And most of the time it's just an intentionality. And that intentionality has a purpose behind it.
Peter
You're you have a reason or a purpose for creating or working on something. But most of the time I would say that purpose is, is instilled embedded in us, not independently arrived at. And sometimes we have a passion for it, sometimes we don't, sometimes we just on autopilot, engaging in what we believe or think is a purposeful activity.
Peter
And when I say finding purpose again, it's it's it's overlapping with the reason for engage in creating living. And here we're talking about maybe sharing a different view of what engaging in a life that's fulfilling, in a life that's purposeful has a different kind of orientation in a different way.
Darius
So it's that deep sense of direction that guiding force that gives meaning to our actions and to our decisions.
Peter
Yes. Exactly.
Darius
So how do you find your purpose?
Peter
I believe you don't find your purpose without a passion for what you're doing or what you're creating. Purpose could, should, lead to a meaningful endeavor. And a sense of fulfillment in your life. And if you're not passionate about what you're doing, then perhaps, and this is what the audience might take a look at. Perhaps you're not pursuing something that's purposeful or your purpose.
Peter
You're just going through the motions. Maybe.
Darius
So agreed. There has to be an element of passion. But it seems like there's, there's more than just passion. There has to be something that brings you joy while you are doing it. There has to be something that allows us to have that sense of fulfillment and accomplishment. Going back to what you were raising about. The point you were raising about constantly growing and building.
Darius
So it seems like it's all of those things. Plus, whatever your intuition is telling you as well, because that little voice in the back of your head or your gut feeling, I think is important in finding what your purpose in life is.
Peter
And I think we should differentiate for our audience purpose from effort.
Darius
Agreed.
Peter
Exertion.
Peter
Because I spent a great deal of my life working in the work environment and the lead that that was purposeful. From what I had learned, the purpose was to make money. And grow in my career. So there was growth to that. And there was also remuneration which I can't deny was pleasing. And I guess satisfying isn't the right word, but it satisfied what I understood were the requirements of my adulthood and fatherhood and being head of a family.
Peter
But was it the work itself, the endeavor, the activity, the creation? Was it purposeful? I, I believe I arrived at that a little bit later on where the focus wasn't on what I was, what I had learned, what I had been conditioned to think was the reason for living. In our modern culture, which is to attain a certain wealth, a certain status and maybe purpose is much more than that.
Peter
That's what I've learned, as I've aged. And it's what I hope to share today.
Darius
Yeah. Reminds me of the old, Socrates quote. The unexamined life is not worth living. Yeah. So if I think about finding my purpose, completely agree with everything you're saying. Purpose and effort are not hand in hand. You can exert an inordinate amount of effort. But if it's not in alignment with your purpose, you will know. You will feel it.
Darius
The results will be telling you that you're not doing what you need to do. How I found mine was everything we did. Plus I would watch my actions and see which actions felt like they were in harmony with what I was supposed to be doing versus which actions felt foreign and unnatural. The second thing I did is I started reading voraciously and give me a book.
Darius
I'll read it. And I've learned that the book finds you when you're ready for the message within the book.
Peter
So true.
Darius
All the other book that sits on my desktop for three years, and then one day I'll just pick it up and it'll be devoured in two days. Yeah. And then the last thing is just speaking with people. And I always tell my sons the difference between knowledge and wisdom. Knowledge is figure it out yourself. Yeah. Wisdom is learning it from somebody else.
Darius
You don't have to learn it the hard way. And you take all of those factors, and you listen to what's being said, and you'll figure out what your purpose is. Yeah.
Peter
What did you mean when you said having the sense of what feels foreign versus what feels natural?
Darius
Yeah. I give you an example. I was, running a consulting company, by all intentions, very successful. And I was writing a statement of work.
Darius
There's a big project. I had no desire to write that statement of work. None. And that was the sign. All right. You've done this for 20 years. You're done. Now let's orchestrate an outcome and get out of this.
Peter
Understood. But, how does that or does it relate to whether you had lost your passion for what you were doing? And did you would you have said to yourself, well, yeah, I'm leading a very purposeful life right now. I have this consultancy firm, a very successful. Everybody thinks I'm successful. I'm achieving great goals. I'm making good money.
Peter
So what was the difference from that moment where it became foreign and you're.
Darius
Question I think purpose requires I think you were the one who said this, the deep and authentic connection to something greater than yourself. And so the example you shared about being a successful corporate executive, being well compensated just didn't feel right. Same thing. It just didn't feel like that's what I had meant to do. I was very good at what I did for 20 years. Impact
Darius
I helped launch dozens, if not hundreds of different biopharma medicines, and I started looking at the broader problems and saying, well, I'm trying to fix symptom by symptom here, but not actually addressing the root of some of these issues. And the skills I've learned have been wonderful. They're transferable. Time for you to move on.
Peter
Were you passionate?
Darius
About what?
Peter
The development of all these prescriptions and pharmaceutical remedies that,
Darius
Some cases. Yeah. If the drug was good.
Peter
Yeah.
Darius
And if it represented a significant advance on an unmet need. Other times, it was a drug that was marginally differentiated, means it was just a little bit better, if at all. And I had to find ways to make it better. And then my passion switched to be less about the drugs and more about the people that I was coaching and mentoring and watching their careers prosper, either with me or elsewhere.
Darius
So the past, the purpose had changed from, you know, launching these medicines, building a consulting company to helping people that were working with me and my clients.
Peter
So I'm having this conversation with you because there may be people in the audience who are in the midst of their career or in that mid career, or even maybe approaching retirement. And I don't believe either one of us want them to feel like they haven't been serving career purpose. You know, you said something greater than yourself.
Peter
And maybe there are elements in many jobs that people are in for me.
Darius
I think we have to be careful of tying purpose directly to jobs, because yes, your job is a big part of what you do because you're spending 40-50 hours a week there. However, there's still a lot of other hours, and if your purpose is to coach, your purpose is to practice peace. Your purpose is to help develop the next generation.
Darius
You can do that at your job. You can do that in community based activities. You can do that with your friends and family. There's lots of other ways for you to authentically live your purpose other than in your work setting. So I think we have to expand our construct. It's not just about what you're doing for work, and if you're in a job where you have to stay in it and you know, you have to stay in it, but you know, your purpose is slightly left of that job, will then find ways to infuse your purpose into your job, and find ways to infuse your purpose into other aspects of your life.
Peter
Okay, let's talk about that, because other purposes in your life, perhaps a greater extension beyond just your needs or your accomplishments, maybe affecting humanity, affecting your community, like you just said. How when you get to midlife, when you got to midlife, how did you start unraveling what your purpose might look like and how it might be more fulfilling than what you had been engaging in and more impactful with, perhaps people in your community or in the world.
Peter
What resonated for you?
Darius
They're talking about how did I find my purpose?
Peter
Yes.
Darius
Yeah, it was the summer of Covid. I'm sitting on a beach and a book calls to me like, I'm going to read this book this week. But a week off the book was Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl, one that I know you're familiar with. It's one of those foundational, groundbreaking books that you just read, and it changes your perspective and for those unfamiliar with the construct, he was a Holocaust survivor who did a study as to why some people survived and why others didn't.
Darius
And obviously he just counted for the or he counted for the there's some random malady in there. Yeah, there's some things that were beyond his control. But then what he learned is those people that had a reason to live, that had purpose and had that passion, were more likely to survive that horrific experience. So I read that and it started me thinking, what is my purpose and my purpose?
Darius
I don't know how everyone finds it. I can tell you how I found mine. Mine just basically came to me and said, all right, your purpose is to do good. You're going to agree with this? And I said, yeah, this seems like an honorable purpose. Like anything that's simple, it becomes really complex. Pretty fast.
Peter
Yes.
Darius
Do good. Well, good is a very subjective nature.
Peter
Yes it is.
Darius
Who am I doing good for? What is actually good? Where is the good being deployed? How do I do good for myself? What if somebody needs me but I don't have the energy to be able to deploy there? So it became a, a wonderful learning experience in how to live out that purpose. And this is an outcome of that, right?
Darius
The ethos of our show is really simple. If we can help just one person, one person listens to this episode on purpose and walks away and says, I'm going to read Victor's book. I'm going to live my life and align with my purpose, which is be kind. Be compassionate. Be loving. Be the best parent I possibly can. Whatever that call is inside of you, that you know it.
Darius
Then we've done our job.
Peter
Yeah. Do you find. And I'm sorry for asking all these questions. Are you finding more satisfaction, more fulfillment, more vitality in your life?
Darius
What I find when I'm living in flow is that things happen easily.
Peter
Yes. Synchronicity.
Darius
It just connects. It's like doors open, that you hadn't even seen before. When you are not living in your flow. It's like pushing. It's like syphilis or a lot of stuff with that release. Pushing the pebble or the rock up the hill gets to the top, or to watch it fall back down and get to do it all over again.
Darius
It's like the universe is trying to point you in a different direction.
Peter
Yes.
Darius
And to your point about effort, you can put all the effort you want in. You can double your efforts, you can triple your effort. It's not going to work. To answer your question about vitality night and day.
Peter
Yes, I would, I would agree. My experience has been that, I reached the point where I was in search of more than my corporate pursuits and purpose, and I was looking for something bigger than myself to lend my efforts to. And, I was working at the time with American Express, and this initiative came up on Miami Beach, where they were looking to, open the door to African American ownership in resort hotel business because there wasn't any.
Peter
And I happened to be in a place where I thought it was time for me to lend my efforts, my skills, to try to move this social justice initiative forward and put together a group. And it, eventually wound up in the construction, the building of a hotel. It was African American owned. The group I put together, we were a small piece of it.
Peter
We had we had had our interests diluted. That's a long story. I don't want to get into a whole lot, but the social justice initiative was accomplished. It felt purposeful to me.
Peter
The more important it opened the door of fulfillment and satisfaction and led me to a path that wasn't obvious initially. As a matter of fact, I thought I had failed because we weren't principle owners. I wasn't the one in control. Our group wasn't in control, so I had gone down wrong path, and I hadn't really affected anybody except for myself and my family adversely.
Peter
This is what I thought at the time. But years later,
Peter
The effects of just moving in the direction of more purpose, without having a clear awareness of it, has been that you impact others. And it's now not uncommon for minority ownership of resort hotels across the country. It's an organization that was formed out of it of, African-American hotel or minority, hotel ownership. I was at a function with my wife, and, an executive in our company who was African-American said, yeah, you you your group opened the eyes and the doors that led to others saying, oh, this can be accomplished in Miami.
Peter
Well, maybe we can do it here. And so, I was fortunate to get feedback on how the pursuits of, purpose greater than yourself sometimes doesn't benefit you, but it does achieve a benefit for the greater humanity or just the greater community. And that can be quite fulfilling. Even though it's not the same kind of fulfillment that maybe work and jobs and money.
Darius
And.
Peter
I share that because the first instance would have led me to believe that finding purpose, passionate pursuit of purpose, can be quite adverse, but maybe not. Maybe not. Maybe the realization comes down the road because eventually leads me to where I'm engaged in mindfulness and I'm engaged in meditation. And my own personal evolution is significance and my fulfillment sense of fulfillment.
Peter
My peace now is very different, and so I would say the pursuit of purpose can't always be linear to what you've been doing. It leaves space for what might evolve in synchronicity, like you said, things coming to you and informing you, or this is perhaps a way for you.
Darius
Yeah. So I think about purpose it people who have that sense of purpose that I've seen in my life, they handle stress better. They're more resilient. They're more motivated. And things seem to happen the way they're meant to happen. It's like the old country song by Garth Brooks. You know, sometimes God's greatest gifts are unanswered prayers. We think we want X, but that's not the path that we need to go on.
Darius
And we need to experience a quote unquote failure, which is obviously a judgment in how it's perceived. It's just an event that is hot. It's true. It's not a failure. It's an event. It's not a success. It's an event to move forward. Let me ask you a question. Your purpose doesn't stay consistent throughout your life. You've went through retirement.
Darius
Let's talk about finding purpose at retirement because many of our audience is going to be in that know range where they're thinking about transitioning. Can you share some thoughts on that? One?
Peter
The I'll share that there was a realization that came to that, a purpose that serves the greater good. That extends beyond just your own personal desires, contributes to an incredible clarity and focus, a certain vitality for the.
Peter
For life. And maybe even a greater intentionality to live your life with vitality and and and a sense of service that goes beyond yourself and beyond your family. Let's say. And it engender maybe greater self care, because now you have a purpose greater than yourself, to serve. But you can't serve that unless you are practicing self-care of yourself.
Peter
And so it's it's opened up doors that I could not have imagined. If I had continued to follow my understanding of what retirement should look like and what your purpose might be at that point in time, and this is not a judgment on anybody who has chosen differently. I just have witnessed experience how having a purpose that serves others can be so invigorating.
Peter
So, create so much vitality for life and the essence of life. And, I hope to share that. I think we are sharing it here with this episode and, and with what we're trying to do with, 50 to 70 and age differently.
Darius
So purpose to summarize what you just explained. So important purpose helps you personally and it helps you better serve those around you. Yeah. And knowing what that is also allows you I look at it like an engine and a navigation system all in one. It motivates you to get going and also tells you when you are doing activities, behaviors, good words, good thoughts, good deeds in alignment with your purpose versus when you need to course correct and get back in alignment.
Peter
Yes.
Darius
So for those that have retired, how do they stay sharp? How do they find that purpose as they're going through this major transition? Anything different from what we've talked about in the, throughout the episode already?
Peter
It's just the how would I would suggest is being mindful of and aware of. Of their effect.
Peter
They're the effect of their skills or talents, the wisdom that, that gates have created for them. Decades of experience is for most if not all men, women. Generated wisdom and that wisdom can serve others.
Peter
And so approaching retirement, maybe it's not just about your own self-care and looking out for yourself. Maybe it's trying to figure out how and what you might contribute from your wisdom, from your abilities to serve you. Vanity. And that doesn't have to be a regal or large.
Darius
It could be your child. It could be your neighbor. It could be your community.
Peter
Thank you.
Darius
Could be anything. Thank you. If I think about those that are still in the workforce, my advice is simple: find your purpose. Live your purpose. And there's always that moment where you might have to take a scary jump. But if it's in alignment with your purpose, odds are it's going to work out. Yeah, yeah, I but don't do it.
Darius
I didn't sacrifice yourself physically for the sake of something. Sake of a company that wasn't in alignment with my purpose.
Peter
Although, you know, not to debate this with you, but that may be part of the Odyssey, right?
Darius
It probably is.
Peter
You know, part of the process of getting to serving your true purpose may be challenges like that. And, you know, you mentioned it earlier, failures that, look bad at that moment, as I, as I related about my experience with Miami Beach, it looked horrendous. But yet it leads to where here I am with you. Where I need to be.
Peter
Exactly.
Darius
Instead of me sitting at your hotel watching you walk by running the big corporate empire and me sitting on the beach, missing each other. One last question before we get too close. And that's something you mentioned earlier. Passion. You lead with passion. And I wove a number of factors around it. But let's go back to passion and finding your passion at this, you know, 50 to 70 age mark any guidance, any advice, any thoughts on that one?
Peter
Yes, it would be. Direct your efforts to what you feel helps you evolve and continue to grow as, as a human being, as a human being being. And so that encompasses so much of what we've covered in several episodes about being it's not limited. It's an evolution, it's a process. It's a continuous growth. And so a purpose that serves that, makes it easier to identify that purpose.
Peter
No.
Darius
Yeah. So our call to action, Peter.
Peter
Our call to action is identify what you're passionate about, whether it's personal or it's your family could be your children or if it's your community. Or maybe it's a social justice initiative, or maybe it's just something that you would like to see changed. It's done differently by humanity. And you remember even a small pebble creates a ripple in the lake.
Darius
Yeah, I would challenge for those who are feeling a little more adventurous to build on what Peter said and actually write what you think your purpose is on a piece of paper. Write it down, not just in your head. Put it down. Put it away for a week. Two weeks. Pull it out and see how it resonates. See if it feels good.
Darius
And then once you know your purpose, then the next step becomes obvious. Am I living my life in alignment? Or how can I better live my life in alignment with this purpose?
Peter
Yeah, I love it.
Darius
So I got a poem for us to close.
Peter
Oh, can't wait.
Darius
And it's by Sri Chinmoy. Life is given to each human being for a very special purpose. The secret each human being must discover for himself. And I think purpose is a huge part of that journey.
Peter
It is, it is. I'm glad we had a chance to talk about this and I hope again, we hope one person out there in the audience was positively affected by this, or maybe affected in a way where it appears negative today, but.
Peter
Looks and becomes positive later.
Darius
Gets somebody thinking, thank you everyone for listening. As always, the podcast will be up on page, definitely.com as well. Go there, leave us your feedback. And for this one, if you're so inclined to share, write down the purpose that you've come up with. We'd love to hear.
Peter
We'd love to hear that.
Darius
And provide feedback. And that's, the ripple analogy is huge. Yeah. And the purpose amplifies the magnitude of those ripples.
Peter
Yes.
Darius
Wonderful. Thank you Peter. Thank you everyone.
Peter
Thank you Darius, and thanks to our audience again for sharing this with us. Take care.
Darius
Wonderful.
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