Does every single person ever created have a purpose in life is it just for a special few? How does a sense of purpose relate to how we manage our time?
In today’s episode we explore more insights from Marcus Aurelius and also from Randy Pausch who reminds us that the barriers and blockages in life may be there for a reason we may have not fully realised – a reason that can help us press on when things get tough.
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Transcript
Well, Hey everybody, Jonathan Doyle with you.
Speaker:Once again, welcome back friends to the daily podcast.
Speaker:So good to have the pleasure of your company.
Speaker:We've got a lot of great stuff to get through today.
Speaker:I'm going to bring you some really interesting bits and pieces that
Speaker:I hope we get to thinking about life and where you're heading.
Speaker:As always, please make sure you've subscribed.
Speaker:It's a, it's a great blessing.
Speaker:If you could do that, hit that subscribe button, share this with some other people.
Speaker:And underneath here, you will find a whole bunch of links and stuff.
Speaker:In the description notes, you can get free access to my book, bridging the gap.
Speaker:You can book me to speak.
Speaker:It is all there.
Speaker:So check out those description notes.
Speaker:After you have subscribed today, friends.
Speaker:We can do a few bits and pieces.
Speaker:We're going to keep talking together about purpose.
Speaker:It seems to me that the podcast has been courtesy of people like Marcus
Speaker:Aurelius, the great Roman stoic philosopher and emperor on this
Speaker:journey of thinking deeply about life.
Speaker:I think we live in a very surface oriented culture.
Speaker:That I'm getting the silence, the time, the space to think deeply about where
Speaker:we are, where we're going, where we're traveling on this journey of life is
Speaker:something that is under a lot of pressure.
Speaker:It's a very surface world.
Speaker:It's a very distracted world.
Speaker:So yesterday my daughter walked into a, into sort of the living
Speaker:room and I was sitting there.
Speaker:Staring out the window at the mountains.
Speaker:She walked in.
Speaker:She looked at me, he's like, what are you doing?
Speaker:I said, I'm thinking.
Speaker:And she's like, oh, okay.
Speaker:She was like, uh, you know, we're so used to seeing everybody with a phone in their
Speaker:hand or headphones on or doing something.
Speaker:And the idea that somebody might just be sitting in thinking.
Speaker:Is a, is quite a good can of cultural revolutionary act to these days.
Speaker:You know, Aristotle famously said that the unexamined life is not worth living.
Speaker:So, what we're trying to do here is constantly examined the life that we're
Speaker:living, what we're doing, what we're thinking about, where we're traveling.
Speaker:And today we're going to start with Marcus earliest, but then I'm going to give you
Speaker:a really interesting quote from somebody whose anniversary of death that is today.
Speaker:But, um, This is a from we're in book two of Marcus Aurelius has meditation.
Speaker:This is paragraph seven.
Speaker:He's talking about.
Speaker:He says there's people who labor all their lives, but have no purpose.
Speaker:To direct every thought and impulse toward are wasting their time.
Speaker:Even when hard at work.
Speaker:People who labor all their lives, but have no purpose to direct
Speaker:every thought and impulse toward.
Speaker:Are wasting their time, even when hard at work.
Speaker:I've got a few things on this first, before we jump into the other stuff.
Speaker:This is interesting, right?
Speaker:Like he's I guess some of you were thinking, hang on.
Speaker:We really supposed to be doing what markets are really assess here we are.
Speaker:We literally supposed to be living every moment of every day,
Speaker:every impulse, every thought.
Speaker:Directed toward one overarching purpose.
Speaker:And if we're not doing that, we're wasting our time.
Speaker:What are we just having fun?
Speaker:What have we.
Speaker:Oh, the theme park on a roller coaster.
Speaker:I mean, and we directing every impulse there and every thought at that moment
Speaker:to some overarching life purpose.
Speaker:No.
Speaker:So what, what do we make of this?
Speaker:I would say that he is directing us towards a global operative principle, a
Speaker:global operative principle, sort of a.
Speaker:A guiding star, a sense of, do we have an overarching sense of purpose
Speaker:of what we're trying to accomplish?
Speaker:What we're trying to do?
Speaker:In life, you know, I'll give you some examples.
Speaker:So.
Speaker:As many of you know, for my many sins, I've been coaching under 16 girls division
Speaker:two soccer this year, my daughter's in the team and I've been coaching.
Speaker:And it's been a really interesting journey.
Speaker:I've learned a great deal.
Speaker:Um, it's been a humbling I've had to learn.
Speaker:I've had to change approaches and I come from an education background.
Speaker:So I thought I had the chops, but it's been really interesting to learn and grow.
Speaker:But you know, there's been times when I've turned up and I'm like,
Speaker:you know, this is difficult.
Speaker:How am I going to really bring everybody onto the same page?
Speaker:And what I've learned is that if my fundamental disposition, my
Speaker:general purpose is aligned to what I'm generally trying to do in life.
Speaker:And.
Speaker:Regular listeners know that my life motto, my purpose is liberate people's potential.
Speaker:Liberate people's potential.
Speaker:Why am I doing a podcast?
Speaker:Because I hope it helps to liberate some people's potential.
Speaker:Why do I speak on stage?
Speaker:Because it helps to liberate people's potential.
Speaker:Why do I invest so much in my kids and try to be the best father I can
Speaker:be because I want to release that potential that's inside them and help
Speaker:them to grow and to love and to develop with a unique abilities and gifts.
Speaker:So, I guess for me, I can say that as much as life has its
Speaker:challenges and difficulties.
Speaker:I get what Marcus Aurelius is saying here.
Speaker:If I got to the end of my life and I had been, for example, An accountant, no
Speaker:critique of accountants or accountancy.
Speaker:It's an incredibly important task.
Speaker:And it's definitely a, you can definitely have it as a life vocation.
Speaker:You can definitely.
Speaker:You know, the purpose of your life, wouldn't be accountancy.
Speaker:The purpose of your life would be to help people.
Speaker:You might have a love of mathematics, so you can definitely have a life
Speaker:purpose behind being an accountant.
Speaker:But my point is.
Speaker:That I think he's right.
Speaker:I think that if we live our lives without some sense of an operative principle of
Speaker:a overarching goal and direction, then.
Speaker:I think he could be right.
Speaker:We waste our time.
Speaker:We even, when we're hard at work, we're hard, we're doing the wrong thing.
Speaker:Then time is precious and that's going to lead us into our second thing.
Speaker:I've become really aware of this.
Speaker:Um, you know, it's, it's funny, there's times in your life when you kind
Speaker:of feel that time is endless, that you're just going to have lots of it.
Speaker:But many of us listening to this know right now that it's,
Speaker:uh, it's really not the case.
Speaker:It's the one commodity that is universal, right?
Speaker:Like it doesn't matter how much money you have, how much
Speaker:influence or power you have.
Speaker:This thing that unites us all is time.
Speaker:Every single person, whether you're a multi-billionaire.
Speaker:I think Elon Musk's personal fortunes.
Speaker:Yeah, 241 billion at the moment, something like that, or whether you're living.
Speaker:In absolute poverty, somewhere in the world.
Speaker:Then the one thing that unites us, we're all getting exactly
Speaker:the same 24 hours in a day.
Speaker:And I can, you know, can share this with many of you that you'll
Speaker:know what I'm talking about.
Speaker:Woke up this morning.
Speaker:Early Karen's a away she's running a, a.
Speaker:A master class in, um, near Sydney.
Speaker:And, you know, I've got three kids and it's a question of getting them
Speaker:up, getting them, fed, getting the dog, fed, getting, you know, school
Speaker:organized for the day, getting them out the door and dressed and ties on
Speaker:and jackets and blazers and uniforms.
Speaker:And.
Speaker:Wow.
Speaker:It's like, it makes the Normandy landings of, uh, you know, 1944
Speaker:looked pretty straightforward.
Speaker:I've often said that.
Speaker:But what I'm aware of when I do those things is just the time
Speaker:pressure, the pressure of time.
Speaker:It's a, it's just this one thing that seems to be.
Speaker:Just under so much pressure these days with the complexity of our lives.
Speaker:So let's talk a little bit more about that.
Speaker:I want to give you a quote today from, um, Randy Porsche, Randy
Speaker:Porsche, spelled P a U S C.
Speaker:Hate somebody.
Speaker:You'd be familiar with Randy pushy.
Speaker:Gave an incredibly famous lecture.
Speaker:He was an American academic university.
Speaker:Uh, Lecturer who was diagnosed with terminal cancer and he gave
Speaker:what's known, I think it's called the last lecture and he gives this.
Speaker:You know, phenomenal last electrical, try and put a link in here because.
Speaker:He's a guy that realized that he was going to die.
Speaker:There was no chance that he was going to survive.
Speaker:So he, you know, speaks about what he's learned and his whole, you know, very
Speaker:courageous and I hope you'll take the time to try and find the, or put the
Speaker:links here, but try and watch this.
Speaker:Uh, quite remarkable presentation, but he says this, the key question
Speaker:to keep asking is, are you spending your time on the right things?
Speaker:Because time is all you have the key question to keep asking is, are you
Speaker:spending your time on the right things?
Speaker:Because time is all you have.
Speaker:So I've been on a bit of a crusade, as you know, in recent episodes
Speaker:talking about distractions and.
Speaker:And the social media distractions, the news websites, all the stuff
Speaker:that keeps grabbing our attention and time where the key question is,
Speaker:he's spending it on the right things.
Speaker:Are you spending it on the right things?
Speaker:Are you.
Speaker:Are you doing things with your time?
Speaker:Is there an overarching purpose to what you're trying to do?
Speaker:Because eventually.
Speaker:The clock stops, the music stops and the time runs out.
Speaker:And there's another quote here that I just came across from Randy Porsche
Speaker:that I wanted to share with you.
Speaker:I really like it.
Speaker:He says this, the brick walls are there for a reason.
Speaker:He's talking about the brick walls that we encounter in life.
Speaker:The things we run into that are just so difficult and challenging, he says
Speaker:the brick walls are there for a reason.
Speaker:The brick walls are not there to keep us out.
Speaker:The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show
Speaker:how badly we want something.
Speaker:Because the brick walls are there to stop the people who don't want it badly enough.
Speaker:They're there to stop the other people.
Speaker:I really like it.
Speaker:Often said to my kids and often sit on the stage that.
Speaker:You know, I, in my book bridging the gap, I wrote about, um, the
Speaker:concept of obstacles and how for many people in the hit obstacles.
Speaker:It just, uh, it just becomes too much and they kind of think, well,
Speaker:if there's an obstacle, then it means that it wasn't meant to be.
Speaker:And I just need to move on to something else.
Speaker:Whereas, you know, you look at Ryan holiday's book, the obstacle
Speaker:is the way it's sometimes it's the obstacle and the challenge.
Speaker:That is the thing that's going to move us forward.
Speaker:So, Randy Porsche in this final lecture is saying that when we encounter
Speaker:these brick walls in our life,
Speaker:It's not necessarily a no, it's just there to give us a chance to prove how
Speaker:much we specifically want something.
Speaker:So can we tie this together?
Speaker:That.
Speaker:I think a good way to live our lives is with a profound sense of time.
Speaker:And a respect for time and using our time really well.
Speaker:And to do that, we need what markets are really, this is talking
Speaker:about this overarching sense of purpose, because if we are not.
Speaker:Attuned to a sense of purpose in our lives, and we're going to be wasting time.
Speaker:And finally that if we put those things together, respect
Speaker:for time, a sense of purpose.
Speaker:Then when we encounter these brick walls that Randy Portia's talking about.
Speaker:Then we're going to have a different attitude to them.
Speaker:We're going to have a dog determination to keep pushing through the boundaries
Speaker:and the barriers and the difficulties that can hold us back so easily.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:My friends is a lot there as usual.
Speaker:I hope it's an encouragement to you to think about how you're living,
Speaker:where you're heading, what the Victor of aspiration is in your life, your
Speaker:interface with time, your capacity for distraction, and what you do when you're
Speaker:faced with the brick walls of adversity.
Speaker:So let's.
Speaker:Um, keep these things in mind as we go throughout our day.
Speaker:Karen's back later today, which is very exciting.
Speaker:These kids will stop eating breakfast cereal three times a day.
Speaker:And, um, but, uh, it'd be great to have a back.
Speaker:A home is not the same without, um, The lady of the house.
Speaker:So friends, God bless you, everybody.
Speaker:Uh, please make sure you've subscribed.
Speaker:I would love it.
Speaker:If you could share this with somebody, go check out those description notes.
Speaker:My name's Jonathan Doyle.
Speaker:This has been the daily podcast and you and I are going to talk again tomorrow.
