How Do You Design a Meaningful Life | Bill Burnett & Dave Evans - EP 755

22:53Bill Burnett:Well, just a quick on that. And absolutely, because it's really interesting that eight out of 10 people still think the top of the pyramid of self-actualization is private notes before he died, but never published our self-transcendency. The result of which is meaning making, by the way, not fulfillment. And he's still wrong because he made it hierarchical. And it's not. Why is it that refugees in war camps in Afghanistan are experiencing self-transcendency? They're only on level two. They're not allowed to get to level seven. Sure, because self-transcendency stripes through all the layers. That's fundamentally a different way of thinking about being a person.

23:26And it shows up in all the wisdom traditions. It would be called compassion. It would be called selflessness. And we know that meaning comes primarily from relationships, right? The Harvard study shows that relationships is the number one predictor of longevity and happiness and fulfilling, thinking your life was meaningful. And all of that is about doing something for somebody other than yourself, transcending. If you think of self-actualization as the ego, fully realizing itself, and then self-transcendence is beyond the ego and recognizing that we're connected to a much, much larger system than ourselves.

24:04That's where meaning comes from. So you got it right in thinking of it that way.

24:08Bill Burnett:The lovely irony is the best way to feel just like yourself is be having an experience this bigger than you. It can be service. It could be nature. It could be a mystical experience. It could be a variety of things. Dr. Keltner's eight versions of awe. They all work, but it's about transcendence, not about fulfillment. So I'm glad you brought Dacher up because I probably quote him more than anyone because I love his concept of moral beauty. And I actually just released a children's book a number of weeks ago, and I actually built something off the back of it based on his work. I was just chatting with him the other day called Pass the Ripple.

24:42You know, I was hanging out last week. That's all. That's great. I think you guys will like this idea because past the ripple is all about how do you get children to start practicing acts of kindness and then watch to see that kindness grow? Because as you just framed it, we don't experience awe enough if you think about it only through the big moments. But if you think about it through the acts that we do on an everyday basis and how much that fulfills you and actually causes you to live longer, it really becomes a compelling thing to think about that or compassion. I'm going to tie this in because in the book, you guys really write about that meaning isn't discovered, it's designed.

25:23And it arises in these moments that we're talking about, these micro moments. And I often think whether it's meaning or what I like to call mattering, that the way we lose either is through a series of micro erasures. And so the way you have to build it back is through a number of micro moments or micro gains. And you explicitly frame life as, quote unquote, a wicked problem with no single solution. What did you mean by if you design for meaning, you will find it everywhere? And I'll turn that to Bill. in the book we call it the scandal of particularity that the finite human mind cannot experience the infinite love of god the infinite beauty of the universe or anything infinite but we do recognize it in these moments a beautiful sunset a connection with someone you love so the scandal particularly suggests that it is scandalous it's crazy that you can't have the infinite thing but But the infinite thing shows up all over the place in these finite moments, particularly people will experience it in nature.

26:29They'll experience it in connection with other people. Those are the two places where we find the most meaningful moments. So that's where we, that's where both the neuroscience of things like flow, we talk a lot about the transaction world and the flow world living just underneath all these transactions. And we expand the idea of flow to be more than just these peak experience, but flow experiences are moments where time stands still, you're fully engaged in the activity, and those are intrinsically meaningful moments. So all the things that we can experience in moments, and we can design them, or we can recognize them when they arrive, right, are the things that will make us, will make us more human.

27:11And you talked to the beginning of people being either exhausted or just overwhelmed. I think we are overwhelmed, media and everything else are overwhelming us and stealing our attention. And those are the little microaggressions against meaning, right? That, oh, there's another thing in my Instagram feed. Oh, there's another thing in my YouTube feed. So if we can help people get back to discovering those moments and then designing the moments so that they have the experience of flow, of wonder, of awe, that's where the good stuff is. And again, it's not about adding another practice. I got to learn mindfulness.

27:43I got to learn some new practice. I got to learn fire breathing or whatever. It's just about getting more out of the moments that are already available to you right now.

27:53Bill Burnett:John, by asking that question, you've revealed that you really got it. Because the subtle little trick we're trying to play in this book is frankly just flipping the question from stop waiting to find it and start choosing to design it. It flips from, boy, I hope some of that meaning stardust falls on me today, as opposed to, I'm going to go get it. I mean, you actually can be an agent of it. You're not going to fantasize. It's not magical thinking, but it's actually your intention realizing itself by taking steps that you can take. And we flip the micro erasures that you're talking about people not noticing and letting life get away from them into inking it down.

28:33Bill Burnett:That's why one of our exercises is the savoring exercise. Try to pay attention while you're living life. But if life goes by at real 1x speed, if I'm watching this on stream, I could 1.2x or I could 0.7x. Life is 1.0x all the time. And it's too fast to fully appreciate it. So grab some of those moments, come back to them later and do a deep savoring exercise. Then you not only don't erase it, you get to keep it. So Dave, I'm going to come back to you. And I wanted to say I was so sorry to hear about your wife. And why I'm connecting this is I lost my sister about 18 months ago to pancreatic cancer.

29:12Oh, so sorry. And as I've heard -

29:15Bill Burnett:That's a bad choice. Pancreatic cancer is a bad one to pick. It really is a bad one. But if you catch it early enough and you can do the Whipple surgery, many people are living decades and decades beyond it. But you're right. It's a difficult one to get thrown at you. But something that I heard you talk about with your wife and something that Carolyn really decided to do in her last years of her life were very similar. She decided that for her, she didn't want it to be a death sentence. She wanted to still live out fulfillment in her life. And so she designed it in a way that she had always wanted to become a counselor.

29:56And so once she got her diagnosis, she actually went back to University of Texas and got her degree, her master's degree in social work and was actually practicing it. And she told me in the last couple of years of her life, she found more fulfillment than she had in the decades before as a result. And she told us as a family, I don't want you to live through me like I'm dying. I want you to live like I'm completely present with you because that's how I'm trying to live my life. I'm still here. Yes, I think it goes to the decision you made with your wife as well.

30:31Bill Burnett:for those of you listening what john's referring to i lost my beloved wife claudia to cancer five years ago and though in the amazing generosity of the universe the other side of that door is the woman i'm going to marry later this year somebody else has signed up for the outrageous project i never would which is living with me but nonetheless so we had this fabulous marriage and at 69 she contracts terrible cancer and then dies at 79 months later but we framed that we held the news of her terminal diagnosis. First day into the doctor, she's terminal. Four metastases, dead woman walking, picked a really bad cancer.

31:04Bill Burnett:And we said, okay. She goes, okay, it's sad, not tragic. So thing one is it's sad that I'm dying 15 years ahead of the plan, but I'm almost 70 and I've done a lot of things and there's really nothing left on the list I need to do so we can live well into what remains. And so thing one is it's sad, not tragic. So don't let this thing overwhelm you. And thing two is there's nothing I really need, but there are a couple of second helpings I wouldn't mind. So let's live into the second helix. And we did that as well as we could. And it really did work. Because again, what your sister's doing is living in the present tense.

31:36Bill Burnett:I'm the theist and Bill's the atheist, but I go down to this monastery for 26 years with a bunch of splinter group Benedictine guys. And part of their rule is to daily contemplate the hour of your death, which I used to think was astonishingly morbid. And then after going through death intimately, I've been through a lot of death, but never the intimacy of death with my wife and the intimacy of the grief you're following it in 2021 and then i got it like oh being reminded of your finite particularity which this death thing brings front and center really makes right now animated so your ability to be present so your sister did a really good job of saying how can i live here and not be stuck in this oh i had in mind living to 80 and now how old is she when she died?

32:24Bill Burnett:She was just about to turn 50. Oh man. So I get to 50 and all this thing that I had in mind, I'm not going to get. So I'm not going to spend the last year of my life suffering the loss of this thing that doesn't exist called the age 50 to 80. As opposed to, no, I'm assuming the last year of my life living my 49th year. So am I here in reality or here in this magical space called what I had in mind, which the Buddhists call suffering? So it's just about being here. Bill, I'm going to take that and throw this to you. When I think about what you were just saying, Dave, and I think about Carolyn's life, to me, she is an example of someone who prototyped her life because she was experimenting because she was like, what do I have to lose?

33:09I'm going to try to do everything I've always wanted to do. So I live without regret. For a listener, we started this conversation talking about idea flow, which is really about prototyping. And what does it really mean to prototype a life? And how can a listener experiment without blowing everything up in their life? Yeah, well, that's the beauty of prototyping is our mantra, set the bar low and clear it. I'm very sorry to hear about your sisters. That's way too young to die. But she gets this diagnosis and she says, all right, screw it. I'm going to do what I really wanted to do was be a counselor.

33:41And then she is one. And she reports that as the most meaningful years of her life. God, for God's sakes, let's not wait till we get cancer. stop now and say, what is it I'm really supposed to be doing with my life? And if you have this, like you said, this sort of moment where you're realizing I'm not that fulfilled, I'm crushing it, CIO, big company, but I'm not that fulfilled. There's a signal in there from your gut, from whatever, some part of your intuition that's saying there's something you're not paying attention to or something you leave it on the table. So maybe you want to make a change, come to a decision, I need to make a change.

34:16Prototyping is the way of making it really simple and really less scary, right? I just saw a neuroscience report. They put people in a scanner and they make them contemplate a problem that's really painful for them that they currently have, and then they contemplate changing it and doing something new in the future. And it turns out the brain is far more afraid of changing something in the future than it is of holding onto something that might even really be painful, right? We like our problems and it's hard to change so prototyping is a way to change which is really low threat and anything can be a conversation maybe if i woke up one day and i said yeah maybe i want to be we run we train coaches on our stuff and we run into people say i want to be a coach i think being a coach would be a good thing i'm going to help people maybe executive coach life coach something well you don't quit your job and then try to start a coaching practice that's crazy do a prototype talk to a coach talk to two or three coaches you can find them there are people who like to talk to people that's what they do for a living.

35:13Find out what it's like to be a coach. Find out what it's like to market coaching services. Maybe do a ride-along with a coach. Take one session with a coach and just be, hey, I'm Harrison and Zerber. I'm a trainee or whatever. So prototype things to see both to get the information. You can do a lot of research, but talking to somebody is way more powerful. Dave can talk about surrogation versus research. But do the research. Do the prototypes. Have the felt experience of what it might be like to be that person and slowly this is about building your way forward every prototype is a mini build when we were i was at apple we were inventing laptops and i went into what a laptop looked like we built 350 prototypes roughly of small subsections and systems to see how do we sneak up on this thing so prototyping is about sneaking up in the future low risk setting the bar low and you can prototype anything in prototype a birthday party, you can prototype a career change, but it's all about taking small measured experiments.

36:14We call them prototypes to discover what does it feel like to maybe be a person moving in that direction? My first book I wrote titled Passion Struck. Right. Last third of the book, I introduced something called the deliberate action process. And the first two parts of the book really focused on prototyping techniques to build a life of significance. And I came up about this deliberate action process because I have done so much agile development. I wondered, could you apply this to designing your life? And in fact, it actually works. So the first phase for me is you prototype all these things and then you got to prioritize it.

37:00But the biggest stuck point that I see with people is after they do some prototyping and then they prioritize, they don't do anything. They get so stuck, they don't take that next action. They don't have that momentum. What have you guys found gets someone to go from the prototyping phase to the action phase?

37:21Bill Burnett:Two things come to mind. First of all, keep the prototype going. So if you did one prototype, I went and met with a coach, I liked it. I think I probably want to do that. What you really did there was a test, not a prototype. So in design language, you prototype to learn something experientially rather than conceptually. You go and have the bias to action, lived experience. It's an empirical, bottom-up, reality-based approach to innovation. And so do it again, because I'm not just prototyping. I'm not just doing these things to answer the question, what does it cost or should I do it? Those are transactional questions.

37:58Bill Burnett:It's the narrative. What's it really? Does it really matter? I noticed, I think it's probably the right thing to do, but I'm not yet animated enough to overcome my own inertia. So apparently I need more activation energy to get over the speed bump to get into that parking lot. So go talk to some more people or go find somebody else who's go, oh, I need to go prototype somebody who stalled or somebody who is in regret. And five years later, it's too late. I wish I had done it. That's the product. I should go prototype what it's like to be that person. So part of it is keep the prototyping going and keep the questioning going until there's enough momentum that you can't not.

38:32Bill Burnett:You're going for the can't not momentum build. That's thing one. Thing two is stop doing this by yourself. This is where the community thing, have a design team. Even if two counts of teams, one, we're all doing something like this together and supporting one another. That's a preferred team. Or just it's my support team. The spotters on my equipment. And these three people are checking into me every three weeks and like, how's it going, Dave? And they're there to support what I'm trying to do. And they can call me on my stuff, including, well, gee, I notice you're still learning that you want to do this and you're not taking any action.

39:04Bill Burnett:What's going on there? Do you want us to go with you while you assign the form to take the coach certification training? What does it take? So two things are keep the prototype going and get some friends involved to hold you accountable. That'll help pull you over the bone. Bill, do you have any other inertia overcoming ideas? Well, the number one, one of the mindsets, big mindsets in both books is curiosity. We take curiosity up a notch and call it wonder by adding mystery. But curiosity is the thing that will overcome the fear. It's all about fear. The reason I'm stuck is that I'm afraid to try something new.

39:37And the reason we break it into really small steps is that's doable. I can see going from one step to another. I can't see going from here to running a full marathon. That's too much. Or quitting my job. That's too much. but curiosity in these conversations you should get deeply curious about why people do are doing what they're doing and i would ask i would also i would ask i'm thinking about coaching i ask coach what's the most frustrating part oh i'm coaching people and they're not making any progress how does that happen yeah they just and then so there's just get curious deeply curious because the other thing is you're asking people to have a conversation with you about their lives And people are pretty willing to tell the story of their lives.

40:18But don't call somebody and say, what's it like being a coach? That's not a curious question. You can look that up on the internet. Find out about the person, their practice, where they came from, what the transformation in their life was. Nobody graduated from college with a coaching major, as far as I know. So there's always a transformation. Get curious. And that curiosity is just an intrinsic human thing. you might have had to turn it off because jobs and people don't like a lot of curiosity schools don't like a lot of curiosity it turns out but if you're curious it will animate you past the fear of trying something and if you're stuck suck i'll bet you're trying to do something too hard we talked about your prototyping is something that's available like it's available this week well i need to talk to the coo of microsoft or i can't move forward well i happen to know the other one she's in my class mary ellen but if you want to talk to the current one that's a pretty heavy lift unless your dad's roommate's best friend happens to be that guy yeah you're not going to get that prototype so trust me if you're stuck you're trying something too hard probably and i can't believe you'll ever run out of curiosity because once you start i got a they just got a bunch of grandkids i've got five-year-old connor And when I hang out with Connor, I remember what curiosity is really all about.

41:43Because when you're five, the world is a really cool place. And he asks questions about everything. I am going to have to send you guys both a copy of You Matter Luma because it targets three to eight year olds. Yeah, absolutely. I'd love it. So Dave, I'm going to turn this to you. One of the things that I really enjoyed about the book was the whole section where you talk about meaning is not a solo project. And you've alluded to this already, but you emphasize the role of formative communities, groups where people become better together. And I talked to Greg Walton about this when I had him on the podcast last year.

42:22Why is belonging, or what I like to call mattering, so central to a meaningful life?

42:29Bill Burnett:For a variety of reasons. First of all, it's fundamental to the human person. So we're big fans of Dan Siegel's work, the Mindsight Institute, and Dan was a psychiatrist and a faculty member at UCLA working in attachment theory primarily. He wrote a bunch of books on child development, very highly regarded in whole, no drama discipline, whole brain child. He's great at that stuff. But as time went by, he goes, oh, this thing I'm observing is not just this temporary weirdness between a small child and a lactating woman. This is a person to a person. This is people. This isn't just what's going on and infants.

43:04Bill Burnett:And he zooms back to start studying consciousness and recognizes that consciousness is in fact social. So Dan would say the myth of the autonomous self is at best a scientific error, more honestly, a terrible mistake, and quite candidly, a profoundly toxic lie. We are truly members of one another. He's trying to invent a new word, by the way, called MWE, M-W-E. Well, good luck with that, Dan. It's hard to install a new word, but yeah, particularly when you can't pronounce. But the whole idea, you are an entity, but you're an entity in fundamental structural neurophysiological mirror neuron based experiential consciousness grounded communal reality so we are part of one another that's thing one thing two bill and i will often say we put people in small groups because it's almost impossible to hear yourself by yourself bill mentioned the compass exercise the little essays we'll have people read their essays back and forth to each other and just hearing your own words in the presence of these other supportive of souls reflecting you back without saying a word, you actually get insights about yourself you didn't have before.

44:07So that's the nature of reality.

44:11Bill Burnett:And so now if I spend all my time in a social gathering to have a good time, lovely, but that's just that. If in a collaborative gathering to get something done together, which is hugely bonding, hence, I want to go back to my college reunion. I want to go back to my military reunion, but it's not the whole story. If I'm a becoming and Bill and I's, Bill and my shortest definition of a human person is you're a becoming, a never ending story. So if you take responsibility for that becoming and living deeply into that is a meta purpose of what it means to be alive, you're, what is meaningful? Becoming your realized self as best you possibly can and choosing which one of those you're going to get around to because you're not going to get around all of them.

44:51Bill Burnett:So that, that meta purpose moves us along. If we do that in concert with other people who are also becoming and in conversations that nurture that and articulate that it's profoundly generative life-making and reaffirming and it allows me to grow into my more meaningful version of myself much more easily so we've seen this time and again and so that shift from a content-centric community which is around oh we all like bowling we all like pickleball. That's a content centric. We all want to go build Microsoft software. We all want to go make cowboy boots. We all want to go paint the fence for Huckleberry Finn or whatever.

45:31Bill Burnett:We're all doing a content-based thing, solving climate change, as opposed to an intent-based thing, which is I want to become a more authentic version of Dave. Bill wants to be a more authentic version of Bill. John wants to be a more authentic version of John's into passion. Bill's into art. Dave's into sailing. Oh, you can't help me because you don't know anything about sailing. No, no. Me being in the presence of John becoming more John, even if it's for a different reason, that harmonic frequency, literally, of your soul beating more precisely to who you really are becoming, animates my own becoming.

46:06Bill Burnett:And so being in the presence of other people actively growing into their selves enables you to do the same thing. We've seen it time and time again. So surprisingly, even strangers with cultural gaps can do this in almost no time at all, as long as they're aligned on the intent. And we have a rubric behaviorally amongst ourselves that's generous and inclusive, which is pretty easy to do. So Bill, I want to take what Dave was just saying, and I want to go into chapter three, because I thought out of the whole book, this was one of the most important chapters. One of the things I had been thinking about, and I use different terms than you do, is I think so much of us are experiencing what I call systematic unmattering.

46:53And the reason I say that is because we live, as you guys suggest, in a transactional world where all these things, goals, outcomes, performance, status, are really the erasures that are taking our mattering from us. And I was having a really interesting conversation with Jamil Zaki about this because it really is a marketplace of unmattering that the world has become. But you introduce the other side of this, which you've alluded to before, which is the flow world. And I wanted to build on what Dave was just talking about. What does a community experience look like in a flow type of world? How does it change the community?

47:38How does it change our experience in it? And I'd like your answer and then we can hear Dave's. Yeah, I think, first of all, like the community Dave just described, wouldn't that be fun to be in that community? People who really care about your becoming, which is not about the transactions you've done. It's not about your job title. It's not about your recent promotion. It's about you growing into the kind of a person that you wish to become. So I think we talk about in the chapter called Tale of Two Worlds, we say there's two worlds. Obviously, there's one world, but there's two worlds that we occupy cognitively.

48:12One is the transaction world. And we're in that world almost all the time, getting stuff done. Nothing wrong with that, but we get stuff done. But you're right. It systematically drives us towards transactions, towards accomplishments, towards extrinsically measurable outcomes. And it does not recognize the things that matter, that matter in terms of the human growing into their best self. So there's the transaction world. And right below that, like an aquifer of water, right below that is the flow world and you can drill down to it anytime the traditional idea of flow is that it's a peak experience this is a peak experience when the the challenge and your skills just match but actually if you look at more recent neuroscience than the czechs and my stuff there's 21 triggers for flow and flow is really a state of your brain where you are in the present moment and you are in in the meaningful particular and you're experiencing time as a standing still and you're experiencing yourself as a whole human being, both sides of your brain.

49:16There's the awakened brain and the achieving brain from Lisa Miller at Columbia. She's great, isn't she? Yeah, she's great. Achieving brain is the transaction brain, getting stuff done. It's an update in the left-right brain model. And the achieving brain and the awakened brain is the brain that's in the moment and having potentially transcendent experiences. So that's why we believe you can have those simultaneously. But we know from all the other psychology that you only see what you're looking for. You don't really see what you're looking at. So you have to start looking for moments of flow, for moments of transcendence.

49:56And we have a simple exercise called flip the switch. You're in a staff meeting. You're in a kind of a regular transactional environment. People are talking about what needs to get done. people are talking about budgets schedules whatever and you can be in that and you can fully participate in that and make your contribution that's great but you can also flip the switch and just stop looking for the transactions and looking for what else is going on in the room and what else is going on in the room is all the human human stuff it's all the little moments where somebody said something and somebody shut them down and you can just notice how bad they feel or somebody said something and everybody said hey that's really a great idea and you can look at how the energy in the room changes.

50:37So you have the ability to be in the flow world, if you practice, almost any time, because it's always available. It's not just in peak moments. And I think that's one of the big reframes in the book is that if transactions and flow exist simultaneously, what you pay attention to is the thing you end up experiencing. And you can experience, if you can experience more flow and more particular moments of meaning, you're going going to, you're going to, your life is fundamentally going to change. And then that, that little nagging thing in the back of your mind that says, maybe I'm not fulfilled enough that the information about where to go next, it's in that, it's in those moments.

51:16It's in that flow experience. Cause you can tell what feels good and what doesn't. Dave, I want to build on this. So you were talking about task groups where you get things done and there's social groups where you have fun. I want to focus on formative communities. And I want to give a couple different examples of what I think a formative community is. Sure. One example for me would be Toastmasters because everyone who's in Toastmasters is trying to be part of the community because they want to become a better speaker and the whole group builds each other. Another community that I've been part of where I find we all get better together is improv.

51:56and I love doing short and long form improv. Another one, I was talking to Daniel Coyle about his new book, Flourish, and he brought up the Chilean miners. And he basically, without, he didn't use your words, but he basically said that when they had the mine collapse on them, they basically went from a task group focused on getting coal out of it to a formative community where they were trying to survive together. Can you talk a little bit about how these formative communities work and why they help us to become better together?

52:30Bill Burnett:And I think at least two out of three of those examples, if not three out of three, are hybrid groups, really, because in Toastmasters, we're here to improve our public presentation skills. I'm supposed to exit Toastmasters a better presenter than I walked in. And that's a skill formation, which is a transaction. But what's really going on, of course, in a really effective presentation isn't just I wrote a good script and I mouthed well i learned how to lip sync what an effective presenter would have done i'm actually grounded in myself and i'm able to what happens in the presentation is not the delivery of an except exceptional presentation but it's an experience of a person who is presenting themselves well which means i've got to bring a grounded person to that so toastmasters has this quality of of caring about the person who is the embodiment of what actually the presentation feels like.

53:24Bill Burnett:So these people are moving into that. So what's really going on there is when the other people are not just a resource on the way to the transactional outcome desired, but they are a person. I'm looking at John, so John, what's going on with John and how can we help you with that. That's the core of a formative community. And it has to do with the who much more than the what. And it can flip in a second. I'll give you a quick example of my four part-time jobs. One is I'm a venture partner in a social impact venture acceleration group based out of New York City that's very global called Praxis.

54:02Bill Burnett:I've been doing it for 14 years. I'm the discernment lead, which means I'm the oldest venture partner they've got. And we do a thing called a discovery session, which is for serial entrepreneurs who are in between companies, not sure what the next thing is, all doing very different things. Anywhere from 10 to 15 of them at a time, just did one. And for three days, we get around and have this intensive experience with really lovely people who never saw each other before. And they all give a 10 minute talk about what's going on with them. Might be a personal talk, might be a venture idea, might be all over the place.

54:32Bill Burnett:And then they hear from one another in this incredibly desperate group. And we hope that they move forward on becoming whatever they need to become to make the next moves they're going to make. And at the end of the 10-minute talk, they can ask questions. And most of the questions, well, tell me more about this. Have you heard about this guy? It's helpful stuff, but it's pretty much collaborative. And during one of those talks, one woman had just shared for 10 minutes and a bunch of those questions came along and I raised my hand. She goes, what's your question? I said, well, I don't really have a question other than And that part where you were talking about seems to me that's really important to you.

55:09Bill Burnett:Is there more we need to know? And she goes, well. And then she drops down into what's really going on. And the room changes. And from that minute on, we were in a different place. It's right there. Here's what I'm doing. Here's who I'm being. It's not as quite, I don't want to overdo the being doing dichotomy. That's not a good way to position it. But nonetheless, a formative community is committed to what you're becoming. Love it. So I have two last questions for you, gentlemen. Bill, many people chase impact as the ultimate path to meaning. But you both argue that impact is fleeting. If not impact, what should listeners be aiming for?

55:52Look, go out and have impact. Have all the impact you want to have. Impact is in the transactional world. Hey, we launched the product. We did the marketing campaign. We got 2 ,000 more followers, whatever the goal was. But it is a transaction. And after it's done, it's okay. Two, three, four, five, six. All right, now what? What's the next impact? The other thing is my students all want to have impact. I want to start up having a bank. You don't always get to decide whether the world wants your impact. So you could work really hard. And for situations outside of your control, maybe you don't end up having the impact you wanted.

56:27Dave would say, don't put all your meaning-making eggs in the impact basket because it is a transactional thing. So I have impact, but have impact for the right reason. Dave's question to the woman who just presented, I noticed, and this is a prompt we have for our students, when they're in their threes and they're talking about their worldview or their life view, what's my big picture of life? We'll say, notice when the speaker was the most authentic. And you can hear it. It's in the voice, it's in the body language. And then you go, so what's, you said you want to have impact, but you talked about this thing.

56:58What's, tell me more. What's really going on? That's when you sounded the most authentic. Because again, we can't hear ourselves by ourselves. Sometimes someone has to reflect back to us the thing that we didn't even know was the most important thing until somebody said, I think that's it. Tell me more. So impact is great. It's a transaction. Remember, you can't get meaning in the transaction world. You get meaning from the flow world. So look behind the impact. what's going on there what are you what's the bigger question what are you trying to heal in the world or what is going on find those moments and you can keep impact from just becoming another hedonic treadmill got to have more got to have more got to have more and dave i want to end here i started out the beginning of this conversation talking about lori santos talking about how we're all exhausted etc yeah and one of the core things i got from reading the book is meaning is not somewhere else.

57:51It's not in the future. It's not after achievement like I thought it was. It's not after clarity. You guys say it's through attention, action, and connection. So if someone's listening today and they feel exhausted or unseen, whatever term you might want to use, where's the best place for them to start this journey?

58:10Bill Burnett:Right in front of you. So my 92-year-old mentor, now dying slowly in Colorado, sadly, was really good at this stuff. And he'd be sitting and people came to know that talking to Ken was probably going to be helpful. So people in very difficult, dire, confusing, demanding situations, often exhausted and overwhelmed, like you're describing, would sit with Ken and try to work it out. And he would listen and listen and go, boy, I don't know. That sounds pretty tough, John. I can see why you're upset. It's hard. How's the coffee? And they go, what? And he goes, that coffee cup in your hands. How's the coffee?

58:46Bill Burnett:He goes, it's fine. He says, no. no, how's the coffee? Taste it. And they go, this guy goes, no, taste it. It's pretty good. Oh, good. And the point of that exercise was, look, I know it's hard, but you're not dead yet. And what's currently going on? So if you're in a difficult situation, you feel cornered, you're at the end of a cul-de-sac, there is still something in front of you you're still alive here and okay maybe i need to work myself through this i was complaining to bill yesterday we're podcasting our little fannies off i've traveled five out of six weeks i haven't got my taxes done like did i sign up for that i was whining and it's not gonna last forever but oh by the way all that stuff i'm not doing right now i'm talking to john john miles really look this guy used to be cio of delt by the way del as a client.

59:43Bill Burnett:I really like the company. And he cares deeply. He's read our book thoroughly. Are you going to enjoy that or not? So there's something in front of you right now that may not solve the big problem, but if you give your attention to it, it could allow you to tap into that thing that Joseph Campbell meant in his interview on the PBS Power of Myth, which was, yeah, meaning is important, but at the end of the day, is it really that what we're really after? What are people really after? The rapture of being alive and becoming more human. The becoming thing is simply leaning more deeply into becoming more fully alive.

1:00:22Bill Burnett:The guy I respect a lot named Jesus didn't say, I came that you might have life and have it more abundant. He didn't say, I came that you might stop that sinning and cut that nonsense out. I came that you would understand who I really am. I came to you and get a lot of things done and fix the world quickly so I can come back. Didn't say any of that stuff. Said, have a life. I'm so glad you ended on Joseph Campbell. And if you guys haven't read it yet, a great new book that just came out that kind of parallels Campbell is by Martin Shaw called Liturgies in the Wild, which was a great book. Oh yeah, I just saw that.

1:00:56It looks great. It's a fantastic read. And if you want to go back a couple episodes, I had them on, so that'll give you a teaser. Well, gentlemen, it was such an honor to have you both on this show. And you have impacted millions through your work. So I just feel truly humbled to have a chance to speak to you. And I thoroughly love this book and highly encourage the readers get a copy of it. So thank you so much for joining us on Passion Struck. Yeah, thanks for saying nice things. That's really lovely. And thanks for your commitment to what your calling pulled you into.

1:01:31Bill Burnett:Good work, John. And it was, I think, a universe calling me to serve a group of people who need it now desperately. And I think we're best positioned to help the people we once were. And so that's, I think, I'm uniquely positioned to do it. Well, I'm glad when passion struck, you paid attention. All righty. Thank you. Take care. Take care. That brings us to the end of today's conversation with Bill and Dave. What stood out most to me is this. So many people are waiting for their life to make sense before they start living it. But what Bill and Dave remind us is something deeply freeing. You don't need certainty to move forward.

1:02:10You need curiosity because life isn't something you figure out once. It's something you continuously design through small experiments, through conversations, through trying things that might not work. And in that process, you begin to discover something powerful. That meaning isn't waiting somewhere in the future. it's created in the way you engage with what's in front of you, in your attention, your actions, and your connections with others. And maybe that's the biggest shift of all. You don't have to find your life, you just have to start building it. And that insight leads directly into our next conversation, because if today's episode is about how you design a life, next week we explore how the systems around us shape the choices we make within it.

1:02:49I'm joined by Nobel laureate Alvin Roth. In his new book, Moral Economics, Alvin explores a fascinating question, How do markets and the rules that govern them shape human behavior? And more importantly, how do we design those systems to better reflect our values? If Bill and Dave help us understand how to design our lives, Alvin Roth helps us understand how the world we live in is designed and how it shapes us in return. You won't want to miss it.

1:03:13Bill Burnett:So in the 1920s, we passed a constitutional amendment that forbid most sales of alcohol, alcoholic beverages. And a dozen years later, we repealed it. And the reason was prohibition didn't actually limit consumption of alcohol by all that much. And it gave rise to organized crime. Now, having repealed prohibition, we now have legal markets for alcohol. That doesn't mean the problems of alcohol went away. There's still alcoholism. There's still driving under the influence. But one thing you can't do anymore is buy moonshine whiskey from gangsters. We've taken a lot of the crime out of alcohol. we still have alcoholism and the birth of Alcoholics Anonymous came just around the time of the repeal of Prohibition.

1:03:58If this episode resonated with you, share it with someone who might need it. Leave a five-star rating or review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and pre-order The Mattering Effect coming October 6th. Until next time, remember, you don't need a perfect plan. You need the courage to take the next step. I'm John Miles and you've been passion-struck.

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