How To Discover Your Life’s Mission | Donald Miller EP 832

0:00Hi, my name is Lewis Howes and welcome to the Daily Motivation Show.

0:11I believe there's something fundamentally broken in the nature of the world. It's easy to not think that if you live in America, but leave the country for a little bit. Right. You know, there's something fundamentally broken in the world. So I don't think in this world you're going to get away from suffering. And then there's also just something fundamentally broken in our hearts, right? Because we need more than we are capable of getting. And so there's a deficiency in all of us. And so for us to say, gosh, this hurts. Let me turn around and help other people not have to experience pain as much.

0:47Those are the very people that we call heroes. That's the characteristic. Without suffering, you have no opportunity to be a hero. Without pain, there's no story. Without conflict, there's no story. A buddy of mine, he lives here in L.A., loves to play volleyball. And he gets a call and he says, hey, come down to the beach. We're playing volleyball. All your buddies are here. Let's go. He's like, can't believe this. Walks out, looks down, sees his buddies playing volleyball down at the beach. Goes down, starts playing volleyball with them. They play a few games. Each game ends in a tie. And somebody says, well, I'm hungry.

1:16It's Tuesday. It's Taco Tuesday. Let's go to the Taco Truck. They go to the Taco. They get some brisket tacos. They get some brisket. Is this story interesting? You're sitting there going, when is this story going to get started? Right. What you're actually saying is, where's the problem? So let's say my buddy gets a call. They're playing volleyball down at the beach. He walks down at the beach. He's looking down at him and an earthquake hits. The ground opens up. Half his friends fall. Now we got a story. So until there is a challenge in your life or until you actually engage or even dream up a challenge, I'm going to run a marathon.

1:47I'm going to ask this girl out. I'm going to start a business. I'm going to write a book. I'm going to lose 100 pounds. Until you say, that's something I don't think I can do, but I'm going to try. Your life is boring. And what do we do? We seek comfort. We actually run the opposite direction. Once we engage this idea that suffering, it actually benefits us, it transforms us, and it's good, all of life suddenly has this different perspective. A morning ritual with Emmeline. She's six months old. For the last six months, I'm the guy who gets her out of bed, changes the diaper, and does the first bottle.

2:27because Betsy's got to do some mom things, and it's best if Betsy eats breakfast and I can hand her off and I go write. So I've pushed back my writing hour by one hour so that I can do this. And every morning, almost without fail, Emmaline and I walk to the front door and we greet the day. We open the door, we step out on the porch, and we point out three or four things that are beautiful. That's it. We just go light on the hills. Those leaves are moving. June Carter, our dog, is chasing a squirrel. That's hilarious. That's cool. snow on the fence you know whatever it is and some days it's just completely gray and it's actually a bit challenging for me what's beautiful and what i say to emeline is i say emeline how beautiful is it that today is going to make tomorrow special oh that's cool right and so even the hurt the suffering that we feel even a bad relationship i would not be so grateful for if i had not had my heart broken i just wouldn't yeah and so pain actually serves us tremendously I don't think two people should spend their life metaphorically looking into each other's eyes.

3:32I think they should be shoulder to shoulder looking at something to do. And I think what so many relationships are missing is a story. We are going to start a business. We are going to start a grocery store where we give away the food to people for free. We are going to build a retreat center. We are going to write a book together. We are going to stop this. Stop this, because this isn't what life is about. What we need is a partner. What a family is, is a group protagonist story. And what a story has to have is an objective, something hard to do. And then here's the next dangerous part. When you overcome it and you accomplish it, if you don't get another story started, you're going to hit what Viktor Frankl calls the existential vacuum.

4:17It's a narrative void. Again, it's a blank screen that I'm looking at and nothing is happening on the screen. What's the meaning? What am I supposed to be doing in my life now? Yeah. about 10 of us rode our bicycles from Los Angeles to Delaware. Wow. We did it one summer. How long did that take? Partly how I'd lost weight. It took seven weeks. Wow. I'd lived enough stories, you know, written some books, that I knew once we got to Washington, D.C., we had one more day. You can cross Delaware in a day. It's about 75 miles. I knew, man, two weeks from now, I'm going to be clinically depressed. Because you have no mission next.

4:49Well, not only that, but, you know, we're eating 7 ,000 to 10 ,000 calories a day. Our bodies are completely jacked up. They're just screwed up. We're with each other. We're giggling and laughing. We're experiencing pain every day. We're doing, you know, it's a story. And as soon as the story's over, I realized I'm going to be sitting in the theory. And I picked up Viktor Frankl's book in the Holocaust Museum because, you know, he was a survivor of the Holocaust. I picked it up and I read it on the flight home. And basically that book screamed at me, get involved in another story now. Now, do not go home and sit down.

5:23I got a call saying, Dom, will you come do a little prayer at the Democratic National Convention? Well, I'm a Republican. And I said, yeah, I'll do it. I went in and I'd known about Barack Obama. He was a senator. He had some great fatherlessness legislation. And to the group there, I said, hey, listen, what's he going to do on fatherhood? And they outlined this whole plan. I said, can I go around the country and just say what this man's going to do if he's elected president on one of our critical issues in this country? They said yes. So I just became a surrogate speaker. I lived, there were about three of us.

5:53We basically lived in our cars and changed into suits in airports. And I would fly back between all the swing states. And I was doing it partly because I wanted this guy to be president. He's a pretty moderate, reasonable guy. But I was also doing it because I didn't want to have an existential vacuum. I needed something exciting to involve myself in. And it worked. And while I was on the campaign trail, I'm getting text messages from friends who were on the trip saying, I've never been so depressed. And I don't know what to do. Who are on the bike trip. Exactly. Do you guys want to meet in Delaware and ride back?

6:23I think a lot of people who are listening to this conversation and they're feeling like their life is going nowhere. I would say to you, get yourself involved in a story. If you don't have a mission, find somebody with a mission and join them. Get involved. Get involved.

6:45Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of The Daily Motivation, and I hope you have an amazing rest of your day. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to click the link in the description. That will take you to the full episode of our main podcast on The School of Greatness. And if you are loving The Daily Motivation, please follow us over on Apple Podcasts and Spotify and leave us a review over on Apple podcast right now. And if you want more exclusive content and ad free listening experience, make sure to subscribe to our greatness plus channel on Apple podcast right now. And if you want to get even more inspiration from our world-class guests and learn how to improve your life and take it to the next level, then make sure to sign up for the greatness newsletter and get it delivered right to your inbox over at greatness.com slash newsletter.

7:35Again, have an amazing day and I'll see you tomorrow with another episode of the Daily Motivation Show.