Finding Purpose: How to find your purpose (w/ Master Fixer Molly Graham) | from Fixable

0:00Hi listeners, it's Madhupe, the host of TED Business. On this show, we talk about the business of business and the why of it all. A sense of purpose is often at the heart of successful, impactful work. And these are the big questions that we're constantly asking on TED Business. How do you seek out meaningful work? How do you locate meaning in your work? What does the word purpose even mean? Well, I'm not the only one in the extended TED family asking these questions. Over on the podcast Fixable, leadership coaches Frances Fry and Anne Morris have done a four-part series on finding purpose, and I'm sharing each part of it with you today.

0:43I just know you guys are going to love it. So without further ado, Frances and Anne are going to take it from here.

0:55Hey, this is Elise Hu, host of TED Talks Daily. This episode is supported in part by Choiceology, an original podcast from Charles Schwab. Hosted by Katie Milkman, an award-winning behavioral scientist and author of the best-selling book, How to Change, Choiceology is a show about the psychology and economics behind our decisions. Hear true stories from Nobel laureates, authors, athletes, and everyday people about why we do the things we do. Listen to Choiceology at schwab.com slash podcast or wherever you listen.

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2:44I think that I spent a lot of my early career fighting to be remembered, like fighting to do work that was so important it would be in a history book or written down or something like that. And I had to confront, no one's going to remember you. Like, no one gives a shit about you. Like, the work you do is for you, not for other people. Hello, everyone. Welcome to Fixable, a show where we take the problems at work that feel unfixable and prove that they are not. I'm Anne Morris. And I'm Frances Fry. This month, we're going deep on this very powerful variable in work and life, Frances, which is purpose.

3:30We see a hunger for purpose everywhere we go. We see it from young people just starting out in their careers, but also from people reinventing themselves and embracing purpose at work in new ways. So in this series, we're going to ask all the hard questions. How do you find purpose? How do you create it? What do you do if you've lost it? What do you do if you've never had it at all? You know, people often think purpose is a soft idea, and maybe there are soft contours to it. But we should be clear, it can provide incredible advantage in the workplace. It's a source of resilience. It's a source of ambition.

4:07It's a source of focus. and teams and organizations with a clear purpose go further, faster. Oh, absolutely. We see it all the time. It can be a bit slippery as a concept. So the practical definition of purpose that we're going to use in these conversations is simply the why behind the choices we make. And I can't wait. We have some really terrific guests lined up. Oh, they're amazing. Thinkers, leaders, builders, people who have done the hard work of figuring out this purpose thing, sometimes after spectacular detours. Our goal with this series is to help you, our listeners, build a roadmap to finding and unleashing your own purpose at work.

4:48So today on the show to kick off this series is a guest who is a very familiar face and voice here at TED. Her TED Talk has over a million and a half views. She's the new host of the Work Life podcast. It's the wildly talented, multifaceted Molly Graham. Before Molly became what she describes as a company and community builder, she worked at tech companies like Google and Facebook, where she became an expert in scaling. She also has a sub stack called Lessons and is the co founder of a leadership peer group called the Glue Club. And what I appreciate most about the wildly talented, multifaceted Molly Graham is that she takes the multi and knits it together so that one plus one plus one is way more than three.

5:35And I learned so much from her privately, and I'm really looking forward to our listeners learning from her collectively. She is a renaissance woman for the digital age, and I'm really looking forward to this discussion.

5:53Molly Graham, welcome to Fixable. Thanks for having me, Anne. I'm happy to be here. We're thrilled to have you on the show. Frances is devastated to miss this conversation, so she sends her regrets. Well, tell her I say hi. We want to congratulate you right off the bat on a new season of Work Life. Thanks. I'm finding my podcast legs learning from the two of you. This is really your first swing at this format? I've been on a lot of other people's podcasts, but this is my first time as a host. And it's, as you know, very different. It's very different, but you appear to be a total natural. Oh, that's very nice.

6:32I don't feel that way, but I'm glad I'm faking it well. This month on the show, we're tackling this big, messy theme of purpose at work. And based on my deep, deep reporting, you said yes to Ted's offer to host the show in the first conversation that you had about it. What was the why behind that yes? And I'm curious how it's connected to how you understand your own purpose at this point in your career. Yeah, I did say yes on the first call. I mean, I'm sure I said, let me think about it. But I basically said, yeah, yeah, I would do that. For me, my life took a big turn, you know, let's call it three and a half years ago, where I, you know, I've spent sort of 18 years building companies and being the right hand of, you know, various CEOs.

7:27I was a COO for a lot of the last part of my career. And I got to a point where basically that was the job everyone was trying to hire me for. And it was like, yeah, you know, people would call me and say, hey, do you want this job? And I'd be like, you know, I'd be really good at that job. You called the right person. I am absolutely one of the best people on earth to help you build your company and deal with all your weird. And I'm going to be miserable. I'm going to be miserable doing that. I love weird as a noun. It is part of the job description. Yeah, but I just realized that the Venn diagram between what I was great at and what I loved doing had changed, which was really scary.

8:03And it took me on this three and a half year journey, just to cut it all a little short of like, what is the work I want to do? And what, you know, if it's not building companies, if it's not doing this thing that I'm now well known for, what is it? And that was a very scary, hard journey for me. But I arrived at realizing that what I love doing is creating spaces where people can learn and grow, but also feel safe and feel seen to talk about just the hard part of work. I basically love making people feel both more seen and more confident at work. And I think those are some of the tools that give you grounding to sort of do your best work.

8:43And a lot of people travel through work feeling lonely, feeling confused, feeling insane. Like they're like, is it supposed to be this hard? And so I think when they offered me work life, I was like, this feels like a much bigger, incredible space to be able to do this work, which is to try to reach people that I'm never going to meet and say, hey, it's going to be OK, you know, and the thing that you're going through, other people have gone through. And here's some tools to help you out and some stories to make you feel a little more grounded. And your impact is no longer limited by the walls of an organization.

9:21You get to blow out those walls in this kind of a format. We wanted you to help kick off this series because you've done a lot in your career that from the outside feels very purposeful. So you led excursions into the wild as a young adult. You've made these very brave and intentional career jumps. You've talked and written very openly about your own experiences of work. I'm wondering about this idea of purpose in your own life? Does it resonate for you? Do you see a thread of purpose that connects all of these decisions? I see the thread of learning. Yeah, absolutely. What's been meaningful to me has changed a lot over the years.

10:07My first job out of college was leading wilderness trips for this school called Knowles, the National Outdoor Leadership School. And I was a little puppy instructor, but that was essentially a teaching. I was scared of going on all those trips. So was I. And yet you did it. I know we're going to go back to this. You did it and the rest of us stayed home. Yeah, I was like, I don't know if I can carry a 90 pound backpack up a mountain. And I was like, let's go try it. And then I came out the other side and was an instructor. So that does tell you something about me. But I loved it. I learned a ton and it felt too small to me.

10:42I remember talking to someone that had been an instructor for 20 years or longer. when I was a new instructor and he was talking about how much he loved work and why he loved it. I remember listening to him and thinking, gosh, this sounds too small to me. Like, I want to have a bigger impact than that. Like, I want my work to touch as many people as possible. This is when I was 22. Oh, I had the same ridiculous thoughts at the same age. So then I spent a bunch of years, you know, 10 or 15 years working in tech and Facebook in particular and Google as well. Like you were working on a product that touched everyone in the world, right?

11:18Everyone had an opinion. Everyone had used it. Everyone had a lot to say. And that felt impactful to me at the time. Facebook is obviously a very controversial company and product, but you cannot deny that it had an impact, whether you see that as bad or good. And that felt very meaningful to me at the time. Then this wild right turn happened where I just realized I didn't care anymore, that I really cared about depth over breadth. And again, this is summarizing sort of three or four years of a lot of hard work, but just realizing that what mattered to me was these deeper conversations with people.

11:56And sometimes it's only 30 minutes, but feeling like something I've done has meaningfully changed the trajectory of someone's life is now what feeds me. And that is so wildly different from caring about working on something that, you know, touches millions or billions of people. Do you feel like your purpose evolved over time or did it reveal itself to you more clearly over time? Well, it's interesting. So when I think about the work that I was doing in my 20s and my early 30s, I'm not sure I was doing it because it was like the highest and best use of me. I think it was like, I need to show people that I can like do this, like that I can be great in this world of business and, you know, competitive companies and things like that.

12:44Like sometimes I feel like people, generally the people I work with have a sort of a proving phase where you're like, I need to show myself, my parents, my someone, I don't know. It's in my... Well, that's what I'm going to ask. Who were you, in the beginning, who were you proving yourself to? The answer is I was proving myself both to my dad, I think, and to myself because, you know, my dad was a successful business person and I have a family biography with a lot of success in it. And I think that I really set out on a journey at a pretty young age to be like, I got to prove that I'm good separate from this biography.

13:21And I think originally I set out to be like, I'm as good as them. Like I can do. I deserve to be in this tribe. Yeah, exactly. And I think everybody, you know, whatever biography you come from, you end up with something that you're fighting against or fighting towards, but it's not entirely about you. Do you know what I mean? Like when I look back on it, I'm like, I just see a lot of energy to show other people what I was good at, but not really the question. What is it that really feeds you? And, and for me, I, I proved and proved and proved, and I got to a job that, you know, most people in the world would be like, wow, that's the job.

14:00And I just realized it wasn't the job for me. You know, it wasn't my work. Was there a point at which it was not about proving yourself to these other people? And it was about the highest and best use of you? Yeah, that's basically what happened. When was this eight years ago? Eight years ago, eight years ago, back to the point of this realization. A lot of people describe this as like you put the ladder up against a wall, You climb up the ladder and then you're like, oh, wrong wall. I basically had that experience where I was like climbing and climbing and climbing and pushing and pushing and pushing and got the job sort of I thought I'd always wanted.

14:36And it's actually no offense to the job. Like, great. Can you talk about which job that was? So I became the head of operations at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, and it literally on paper was the job that I thought I'd always wanted. It was a global organization with a mission. The mission is so meaningful. You would go to cocktail parties and people would be like, every day you get to change the world. And just to say it, I love Mark and Priscilla. I think they're extraordinary humans trying to do good in the world with that organization and with their work. And this is literally not to do with them.

15:07It was like all of a sudden I was just like, oh, this isn't my job. And if I had told you like one of my greatest mentors in the world who was my first episode of Work Life is the woman who ran the Gates Foundation for 10 years and was the first CEO. So I was like, I want to be like Patty when I grow up. And I was like, and so then I got the Chan Zuckerberg job and I was like, oh, this is it. I did it. And I got there and I was like, oh, shoot, for a bunch of reasons. I've never felt more lost in my career. It was like being in a dark, dark hole. They gave me an executive coach at the time. And I remember my first meeting with her.

15:40I was just like, I feel so like lost, sad, no idea what to do, you know. And again, I just didn't think it was fixable. And she was like, oh, I think I can sort you out in five sessions. Like, we're going to solve this. And I was like, you think this is solvable? but she did literally five sessions later it was like you gotta go because this is not your work and she helped me realize that I had work to do on like what it was that I wanted to do um but I had to step away in order to do that work and I had to sort of step off that path that was the moment that like was sort of a right turn

16:29Hey, this is Elise Hu, host of TED Talks Daily. This episode is supported in part by Choiceology, an original podcast from Charles Schwab. Hosted by Katie Milkman, an award-winning behavioral scientist and author of the best-selling book, How to Change. Choiceology is a show about the psychology and economics behind our decisions. Hear true stories from Nobel laureates, authors, athletes, and everyday people about why we do the things we do. Listen to Choiceology at schwab.com slash podcast or wherever you listen. Hi there, it's Adam Grant from Ted's Rethinking Podcast, and this episode is brought to you by ServiceNow.

17:10I get to spend my days studying how people think and what it actually takes to change our minds. It's work I find deeply meaningful. But even in meaningful work, there's still busy work. The admin, the repetitive processes, the invisible load that pulls attention away from what really matters. That's where ServiceNow's AI specialists come in. They don't just tell you what you should do about your busy work. They actually do it. Start to finish. Cases closed. Requests handled. No extra work for you. To learn how to put AI to work for people, visit servicenow.com.

17:48Well, I want to get into the press because that's one of the big questions we're asking in the series is how do people figure this out? I've been that coach, by the way. Apologies to the organizations that have hired me. So then where do you go next with this insight? Oh, man. so basically I told her I was like I feel like if I leave I'm just gonna be lost and she was like all right reframe like gotta find a different way to describe what's gonna happen when you leave uh because you you need to take this leap to figure out what's right for you next and so she was like you're gonna go on an adventure to like figure out what and she was like you like adventure you know and you're gonna get to learn and like all these things so so there was partially just reframing like a feeling of adriftness and identity crisis into like, all right, next adventure.

18:37And I think sometimes the language we use really prevents us from being willing to do that, you know, willing to like jump off whatever cliff or step out of this place where we feel safe and clear, even if we're miserable. So it was helpful to be like, okay, adventures I can do. So give me a couple of plot points. So, and I'm trying to channel our listeners, some of whom are like, oh God, I am having these feelings and I'm not ready to confront them. Give us some of the plot points in how you found your way back to connecting your sense of purpose and reason for being here with the work you're doing.

19:12Were there therapists involved? Were their long walk with friends? Was there journaling? Like give us some tactics here on just what worked for you. Yeah, totally. So I basically, the year after I took a couple of months just to kind of come back to myself from that job. And all I was doing was seeing friends and family. And it had been a very intense job. So I just needed a minute to recover. And Maggie, my coach, was like, you pick a date, you put it on the calendar. And on that date, you can start to think about work again. But before that date, you get to only do things that remind you who you are outside of work.

19:46How far away is that date from your exit? So it was three months. So I took three months off and I just saw my family and I saw my friends. And then I basically, then we designed a second phase that was starting the journey of asking what is work for you, like what gives you energy. And my agreement with myself was any idea that I got energetic about, I wasn't allowed to judge it. I was only allowed to be excited about it. And that could be a job working for someone else. It could be a idea for a startup or whatever, but it was just like, okay, if you get excited about it, like write it down, get all excited and then let it go.

20:23You know, I did a very intensive therapy workshop called the Hoffman process, which thankfully for, I guess, me, I will go on almost any experience with sort of an open heart and an open mind. And it was one of the best things I've ever done in my life. But it really sends you on a journey to ask yourself a lot of pretty fundamental questions about why you are the way you are and why you do the things you do. And in it, I basically found this question, which is what would you do if you believed you were already enough? And it was, you know, that proving energy we were talking about. I think it really put a spotlight on the idea that I was trying to fill up a void or something that I only felt like I would be worthy or loved if I did all these things at work.

21:07And I came out of it sort of with that question of just like, if you believed you were already enough, what would you choose to do? Such a powerful question. Then I started off on what I would say has been an eight-year journey, if we're being honest, to figure out what that work was. And the first thing I did was found a company with a friend. We thought we were going to be like private equity people. We were ready to like buy startups that were sort of struggling and turn them around and had all these like ideas. And I think we both realized about a year or two into that, that we didn't love that work.

21:39One of my biggest journeys has been realizing that I love being pretty intimate with the impact that I'm having. And it's part of why philanthropy doesn't feed me is like philanthropy is sitting very far away from the people's lives that you actually impact, or at least most philanthropies. And same with this company I started with a friend was like, you were pretty far away from the sort of impact that you were having. So again, that was another one where like two years into it, I was like, oh, not my work. And part of the reason why I tell you this story is just because like, when I've watched friends and folks that I work with go on these journeys, like they're just not a straight line.

22:13They're not a straight line. And I always say, Like sometimes you need to take the interview to remind yourself that like, oops, not going to do that again. Or sometimes you need to take a whole ass job to be like, yep, really done with this, you know? And I feel like for me, the last eight years have been working and working and working both on like being better at fighting the fights and winning. Like there's just different parts of myself that I've discovered through all of this therapy and all of this coaching work where there's certain parts of myself that are like, yeah, let's take that cool job that everyone's going to think is awesome.

22:45And I've had to work really hard to listen to the parts of myself that are like, you've done this before. The stove is hot. Do you really need to touch it again? And find like that voice that says, what does this get you that you don't already have? And what is the work that you're meant to be doing right now, Molly? You know, and is that it? Is this really it? Is this the best use of you and your time? Do you feel like on that arc, do you feel like you have arrived with both clarity and a canvas to kind of express this purpose? So three and a half years ago, I started on this journey that I mentioned, which is, OK, I'm not going to take another job.

23:22I'm not going to take a CEO job of a turnaround company. I'm not going to take a COO job working, you know, for somebody else. So it was like, what do I want to do? OK, Molly, you're building something yourself. myself. And I basically said, okay, in six months, I'm going to have an answer of like, what am I doing? And I was like, you know, I'm going to be able to go to cocktail parties. People are going to be like, what are you doing? I'm going to have like a actual job, capital J. And it really took me a six months or a year to realize that I was never going to have an answer, that this was like a journey that I was perpetually going to be on and that I just needed to really embrace that journey as like a step-by-step process.

24:00And so it's not what is my life's work, it's what's the right work for me next. And that has evolved wildly over the last three and a half years, I would say. Before I got this work-life offer from TED, I was like feeling very peaceful and aligned because what I have arrived at is building communities where people can feel safe, connected and supported, where they can grow and become more confident in their work and in their life. And I've done that, you know, I built two communities. One is called the Glue Club, and it is for sort of mid-career leaders leading companies and trying to find growth and sanity in the face of, you know, walls and a ceiling that are moving.

24:40And then the second community is called the Guild, and it's a small community, an intimate community for women leaders in the middle of their lives who are grappling with a very particular moment in life and career and work and all that. And then this work-life offer showed up, which, again, I could not have designed that offer, but it really reframed for me that there was a way to continue to do the work with these communities, but add on this sort of like higher level conversation with a broader audience that is, again, pretty similar to what I do in my communities, but just a bigger platform.

25:16So again, I'm like, people are like, what do you think you're gonna be doing in five years? I'm like, no idea. But I can probably tell you what I'm gonna be doing in six months. I can tell you what I might be doing in a year. But I think, again, to the adventure point, I've really embraced the idea that just, it's all about finding the right next step and trying things and then trusting that it's going to take you somewhere great if you're listening to like right parts of yourself, you know? Amazing. You have shared a lot of wisdom with the world in various forms about how to find meaningful purpose-driven work.

25:51And you just, you mentioned it in this story to some of the metrics you have used with yourself and some of the metrics you have seen other people use as indicators that we're getting closer. So this idea of peace, this idea of alignment, You've talked about happiness as this important personal indicator for you. You set your own goal, which was astonishing for me to read. I'm feeling happy at work 90 % of the time. I imagine this is a big umbrella of happiness. It's not just experiencing joy 90 % of the workday. So what do you mean by that? So one of the things I did when I was on my journey, and this coincided, by the way, with turning 40, which for me was a moment to sort of say, I think I might be halfway through my life if I'm lucky.

26:40And, you know, what have I done with my last 40 years? And what do I want to do with my next 40? And one of the things that I did over the last couple of years is read a lot of books about death. I was very curious, like, what do people wish they'd known? Like memoirs, books about death. Tell us what's in this category. So for sure, memoirs, like When Breath Becomes Air and all the ones of people that get life taken away from them shorter than they wish they had. But also one of my favorites is The Five Regrets of the Dying, which is by a hospice helper in Australia named Bronnie Ware. And she sort of has had so many experiences with death that, you know, it's an aggregate view of just like what are the things that people say they wish they'd known.

27:23But one of my like big takeaways from that is it's the journey, not the destination, which sounds so simple and like lame, like something somebody would put on a bumper sticker when you were 20 and you'd be like, boring. But I think that I spent a lot of my early career fighting to be remembered, like fighting to do work that was so important. It would be in a history book or written down or something like that. And I had to confront no one's going to remember you. Like, no, no one gives a shit about you. Like, no one, the work you do is for you, not for other people. And I look around me in life and I see people still fighting for that and no judgment to other people.

28:07But I do think that you spend a huge amount of your life at work. And you also, you know, you get to choose at some point how that time feels and what it's for and whether that's done consciously or unconsciously. And for me, I was like, I got 40 years left. I'm not planning to work all of those 40 years. So let's say there's 10 or 20 left that I want to really bust my ass for. What do I want to do with that time? And I would say that one of the things that I had to come to grips with is like, again, no one's going to remember you. So like, why not be happy while you're doing the work, right? Like it's about the work and the steps and the day to day and the reps, not about the destination or I hope I will have changed some lives with the work that I do, but I'm going to enjoy the work itself every day as much as possible.

28:59And so like you said, you know, my bar is, I don't think everybody's happy all the time. That's not a thing, right? So, but that I can look back on a given week or a given month or year and say, I really loved what I was doing most of the time. And for me, that number is 90%. And by the way, that is true. My work today brings me joy every day. And a lot of it is like, I fucking love my team. I know going to a one on one with my team brings me great joy. Like, I love problem solving with them. I love these communities when I get to spend time with folks. And I love when I write a sub stack, and I get an email back from somebody saying, hey, this really helped me that brings me joy.

29:38I actually love the process of writing. I love the process of building these podcast episodes. So I don't know, I'm the luckiest person because I love most of my hours of my day. And that definitely was not true when I was in my proving phase. Like I took misery as part of what work was that you had to crush. And part of that was kind of crushing yourself, you know, you do not have to be good. One of the most distinctive things about your career is your comfort with fear and risk taking. So you've also written and talked in a very nuanced way about distinguishing real threats from imagined threats.

30:17So what are the negative metrics that we should be paying attention to in this search for meaning and purpose? You argue persuasively that fear is not a reliable indicator of right track, wrong track. What should we be paying attention to? To me, what you should be paying attention to is energy. You know, when I was in one of my last jobs, Maggie, my coach, who I mentioned. We're going to get Maggie on this podcast. She's great. I've had two coaches in my life, and they've both just been unbelievable resources for me. But Maggie basically is so good at making you do exercises that really shine a light on what's actually going on.

30:59So one of the exercises she made me do was for an entire week. She made me rate every single meeting on a scale from one to 10 in terms of how energized I was coming out the other side of it. And it was just like very wild because I had ones and tens. Like I think a lot of people would be like five, five, five, six, eight, four, two. I was like one, ten. And the tens were actually all one on ones with people or moments when I got to like really connect with someone and help them. And so it was it was very eye opening for me about what energized me, you know, and I feel like I come from I was raised Facebook built a strengths based framework for how we coached and grew people.

31:42And that means that, well, you know, if you believe in strengths based, it means that you should focus on what you're great at and what you love doing, not trying to get better at what you're bad at. And I really believe that, like, I really believe that what the most powerful signals in your life are what do you naturally love? What do you naturally want to spend time doing? And, you know, some of those questions that I ask people when I'm like coaching them about what they might want to do next is look backwards and say, OK, if you think back over the last couple of years, like what is what are the things you're proudest of?

32:11What are the things where you're like, I would do that 100 times? Like if you gave me that as a job, I would the time passed and I didn't even notice when I was doing that. Those are the kinds of things that are telling you something about your natural strengths. And then there's like what you love doing, which sometimes is like a slightly different list. I would say there's a Venn diagram between the two of like, what are you good at and what do you love doing? And you're looking for that Venn diagram, you know? And then the third part of the Venn diagram is obviously like, what will people pay you a lot of money to do?

32:41So somewhere between like, what do I love doing? What am I great at? And what will people pay me money for is like the highest and best use of you. I love all of that. And the metric that has been most useful to me, and I have to get sometimes a little quiet to pay attention to it properly, but is this vitality question of when do I feel most alive? How do you get connected to it? I have learned to pay attention to which parts of me show up in which situations, which kinds of conversations. So one of the most reliable tells for me is if that playful part shows up. I don't know that it's always about vitality, because I think that playful part probably needs to feel safe enough to reveal herself.

33:32But it is an indicator that a whole bunch of me wants to be in the room or in the situation or solving the problem. And so, and I see the patterns. And so like doing hard creative things with a team of people, that's almost like a hack to feeling fully alive for me. And listeners will are tired of me using this quote, but I think what first got my attention is Howard Thurman, who was this great 20th century theologian said, don't ask what the world needs, which for a young Anne and I bet a young Molly was like a shocking start, right? Because don't we, aren't we obligated to meet the world's needs?

34:16Ask what makes you come alive because what the world needs is people who have come alive. And there was so much challenge and permission in that, that I have never forgotten the first time I read it and I returned to it constantly. And in this work with myself and with other people trying to find their way towards meaning and purpose. I find that idea of vitality, paying attention to it, understanding, paying attention to yourself. And I love the simplicity of like, rate the meeting one to 10. How much of you was in the meeting? How much of you wanted to be in the meeting? I found very helpful for me personally.

34:53Yeah, you got to find the right tools for you. And it's different for everyone. But what I've really found, again, as I've like seen a lot of this, and it sounds like you have too, is just, this is about you finding the tool that gets you to sit down and be like, okay, who should I be listening to? And what are the things and the signals and the signs and the metrics that I want to orient my life around instead of sort of like letting myself drive blindly or letting my biography drive? Yeah.

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37:46All right, Molly, so it's graduation season and young people everywhere are applying for jobs and trying to figure out what they're going to do with their lives. We wanted to hear directly from some of these graduates. So our producing team went to Washington Square Park in New York City, the famed Washington Square Park, to talk to people who had just graduated from NYU about how they're thinking about purpose as they enter the workforce. So let's hear from one of them. My name is Sam. My passion is really around higher education and making sure that everyone has access to it. I think a lot of people either think I need to find my purpose in my work or I need a job that doesn't necessarily fulfill my purpose, but then I can do that outside of work.

38:31I'd love to know how to merge those things, how people can really look at how do I make this a core part of every part of my life, not just work or at home. Molly, we hear a version of this question a lot. You know, should I be looking for a purpose in my work or my life? And how do you see this working in practice? How has it worked for you? And how do you see it working for the people around you? Well, listen, man, you got one life, you know what I mean? And your life is a set of hours. And, you know, at the end of the day, you know, I said I spent some time thinking about death and it's like your journey is ours.

39:10Right. And we spend some number of those hours earning money in order to take care of our needs and our family's needs. And that is work. Right. Right. Careers are long and the journey is the point. You know, you're going to go on a journey. And it's not to say that any of it is wrong. Like all of it is just a journey to find yourself. And that's really powerful. Like, I think part of what bums me out is that we send kids into like high school now and it's like, you're supposed to know what you want to major in and then you're supposed to get to college and you're supposed to know exactly what job you want.

39:44And it's like, no, man, like you are supposed to go on a journey. And actually your career will be better the more you embrace and really focus on loving the journey as much as you can. Because the quest to figure out like who you are, and what you're really great at is not a straight line, right? It's a winding path. And you're going to make a bunch of mistakes and find some stuff you hate doing that you're great at, but drains you and also find some stuff that you love doing that will surprise you. But I feel like the main thing that I wish I had understood earlier is that not knowing is fine, right?

40:22Not knowing is actually honestly the point and the state of most people in the world. And you have time, like you have time to figure it out. So just try stuff, you know, just go learn about yourself. And through that learning, you'll find a path, whatever that path is. I love it. What is one thing our listeners can do this week to honor or activate their own purpose? Well, I'll give you the two. One is like, I think that like rate all the meetings in just one week is a great exercise and I'd give it to people a lot. And the second is do the exercise of looking back over the last three to five years and ask yourself like three moments that are like the standout moments where you're like, I was so proud of the work that I did.

41:06I felt energized by it, meaning like I would do it a hundred times over time passed really quickly and, and describe them. You know, if you have a friend that you could storytell this to and let them ask you questions, that's often the most helpful because what you really want to draw out are just patterns of like, Oh, it turns out that you're really energized when you're solving a problem that's really messy. And, you know, it doesn't, it isn't about the job title or it being in marketing or product or, you know, finance, it's about the state of the problem or the people you're working with. But drawing out those patterns are what tell you what to listen to.

41:41You know, that that's what tells you like, okay, you're looking for a job that looks like this, you know, and it's it could have a lot of different titles and a lot of different organizations. But this kind of work is what energizes you. Beautiful. All right. A final question we ask all of our guests, what's something you're currently fixated on outside of work? Ooh, my answer to that is depressing. We can take it. We can take it. You know, to be honest, my brother works in Hollywood and I love TikTok. So Will, my brother would say that the power of Hollywood is creating cultural conversations.

42:22And I'm like, Like you are missing all the cultural conversations that are happening because of this art form that is short form video. TikTok and YouTube and Instagram, like there are these incredible cultural moments that happen. And I'm just fascinated by it. I don't understand it. I don't pretend to be an expert, but I find it fascinating. The fabulous Molly Graham. Thank you for coming on Fixable. What a pleasure it has been to have this conversation with you. Same, Anne. I really loved it. Thank you.

42:53And if you're enjoying this show, make sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and tell a friend to check us out.

43:09Fixable is a podcast brought to you by Ted and Pushkin Industries. It's hosted by me, Anne Morris. And me, Frances Fry. This episode was produced by Trina Menino. Our team includes Constanza Gallardo, Banban Chang, Daniela Baloresso, and Roxanne Hilash. Our show is mixed by Louis at Story Yard.

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