The Importance Of Finding Your Purpose | Payal Kadakia EP 227

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

0:10I firmly believe that taking charge of your mindset allows you to be in the driver's seat of your life and unlock your potential. And that's why I'm thrilled to share that my new book is out right now. It's called The Greatness Mindset. In it, you'll learn how to build a plan for greatness through powerful exercises and toolkits designed to propel your life forward. This is the book that I wish I had 20 years ago. It's everything I've learned in the last decade with the research and the science to help you unlock your mind. Make sure to go to lewishouse.com slash 2023mindset to pick up your copy of my book, The Greatness Mindset, today.

0:51Sometimes it's the smallest things that we do that teach us those lessons for these great things that we do. ClassPass would not exist if I didn't learn how to dance in a small basement when I was five. Really? Yeah, because so many of the lessons of how do you have discipline? How do you show up on time? How do you be prepared for something? How do you work through something when you can't do the step? Those are the same mentalities that you need when you're an entrepreneur who wants to go and build something big. What's more important in your mind? Is it the belief in yourself? Is it being clear in your identity?

1:22Or is it learning how to master goal setting? It's the belief in yourself, but I'm going to change that a little to the why too. I think it's the belief in what you're doing, ultimately. It is the passion in your reason for partaking in anything that you do that's going to push you through all those challenges, right? It's the energy that gets people to join you in the battle. It's the energy that gets you to keep going when you lose part of the battle. And that, to me, is the crux of it, is caring enough about what that impact is. And it's not just about you, right? If it's just about you, it doesn't resonate, you'll quit.

2:02And if it's something about being famous or having money, that's not worthy enough. Your soul will feel that. And you'll know that it's not worth to keep fighting. So to keep fighting, you just need that deep, deep why. So it's a belief in what you're creating, why you're doing it. Absolutely. Not just a belief that I want this for myself, but there's a deeper meaning behind it. 100%. My life revolved around dance shows, dance performance, dance rehearsals. If I wasn't doing my homework, I was dancing. And everyone knew that. There was only like two things that were important in my life. And I've always really been clear about that.

2:34And I think that's okay to be very, very clear on your priorities. So you go after that. And I didn't let anything else bother me. And I missed family things. I missed friends' birthdays. But I was very clear on what my priorities were. And I knew I had to fight to dance my whole life. And ultimately, and I think people don't always realize this, ClassPass came out of that because I wanted to take that fight for everyone else. Because people were fighting to have fitness in their life, right? Movement in their life. And I knew I had to solve that problem because I saw what my fight looked like.

3:06And I wanted to make it easier for other people. Interesting. What happens when we choose a plan B or C versus going for what we feel like is our calling or what we feel like keeps speaking to us inside, which we think is plan A. Maybe it's not, but we think it is. what happens to us spiritually, emotionally, physically when we're living plan B. I mean, you're not living what you were meant to do and put on this earth for, right? At the end of the day, like whatever your dharma is, right? Your calling is, you were meant to be doing something. And honestly, like once I started going for it, and I think this happens to other people as well, the world will guide you through it.

3:42The universe helps you when you're there. And when you keep pushing it away, it's actually harder to feel any of the signs. and back to like feeling of stuck or whatever anyone might be feeling. When you are in motion in place of going to where you're supposed to, the world will lift you up, right? Like the signs of even like when people are like, how did you build ClassPass? And part of it was sometimes I felt like the universe was just opening the right doors for me. You know, I had to walk through and do the work, but I also felt that the things that were meant to happen happened because I knew I was meant to build this company.

4:15You were on the right path. Totally. And I was doing what was like set my soul on fire, you know, at that time. And I think, you know, while I was still dancing on the side, all of that, I knew I had to fight this battle for the world, you know. And that was, you know, what my gift of ClassPass really was in doing that. Our identities are shaped from such a young age, right? And whoever we're around, the communities we build, all of that. But first of all, I think for me, like I go back to the youngest phase of my life where I faced a lot of adversity for being Indian. And it's scarring, right?

4:50Like it was one of those things for me where I never wanted my American friends to see my Indian side. And in front of my Indian friends, I was completely Indian, right? So it was totally two different people. It's split personality. Totally. Absolutely. And I think that also happens with your plan B. Back to that, right? It's you just start going through your life because you don't know what success looks like anymore, right? When you're living your plan B, success is someone else's success. You're living inherently based on someone else's expectation of you. And therefore, you don't know what the end is.

5:23When you're living your own life, you know where you're going. And every part of the journey feels a little bit more like you're achieving something. And success is the journey. It's not about actually getting to an end point. And I think that's the difference. So people are always like, how are you so happy? I'm like, because every day I feel fulfilled because I am moving closer to something I wanted to do. If I was in a day job that I did not like, I'd want to what? Only want a promotion, right? Or only want a salary raise because there was no other way to sort of reward me for how I was feeling.

5:55From the daily work of meaningful work, of being in the right place. We forget the importance of money. Like it is important. Yes. It shouldn't guide our decisions. meaning, you know, I really believe in this idea that, you know, you have to make money work for you. You don't work for money. Yeah. What does that look like? That means that you put a plan together. You know what your budget looks like and you make your life and plan for the future work to that. I, you know, was making great money. I had great jobs, right? I was so frugal. And the reason I was, I knew that in the future I wanted to take a leap.

6:29I actually at that point had no idea I was going to go and be an entrepreneur. I didn't know if it was this idea of dance, but because I was so inspired from when I was younger to like impact people, I knew there was going to be a point in my life where I was going to do something. And I didn't want money to feel like a constraint because I saw the way it constrained my parents, right? I've seen it in so many of my friends. And I'm like, I don't ever want to spend a dollar if it's not giving me something. Like, of course I needed to sleep. I needed to eat. I needed to get to work. Like That was what I needed to do.

6:58I didn't travel. I didn't go shopping because I was like, I'm saving this to either put on a dance show or take a big leap in my life. Right. And that's what I did. So make your money work for your dreams. Right. And sometimes it's in the future, right? I did that for six years. And by the time I got to the point when I wanted to start my company, I sat down with my dad. We went through my entire savings. We put down a budget of what I was spending my money on. And we both realized that I had three years to go after my dreams. And that's amazing, right? On one way. A runway of three years before I would be like dead zero.

7:29Yeah, I mean, my apartment was like$800. Yeah, you're living frugal on that three years. It's fine though, but I mean, I made it work because the idea of being able to have freedom from money to go after my dreams for three years was incredible, right? And think about people who also, and this happens all the time, you might start a company, but you need to still make money on the side. That mental distraction is also really hard. When you're building a company. You need to go all in. You need to go all in. When you're in environments that don't make your identity thrive, you end up losing your confidence a little bit.

8:00And that is sometimes the worst spiraling effect that happens. And I think I've been always really good about starting myself with either my dance friends or people I really love and I know are going to support me. And I'm very okay with, like, getting rid of the people who don't serve me and my future. And I think that's a very hard thing to do. But you have to protect yourself in order to be able to create the impact in the world. It's not about being selfish. It's about actually protecting your mission so you can impact other people and give greatness to the world. Absolutely.

8:40Thank 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 Podcasts 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 Podcasts 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.

9:30Again, have an amazing day and I'll see you tomorrow with another episode of the Daily Motivation Show.