How to Live a Meaningful Life & Design the Future You Want

13:33Dave Evans:Yeah.

13:34Mel Robbins:Given some of the factual research about the cost of living and changes that are happening and the headlines.

13:39Bill Burnett:First of all, if you're 20.

13:41Mel Robbins:Yes.

13:43Bill Burnett:Be encouraged by the following fact. Your neocortex, which is the part of your brain that allows you to have an executive function and actually allows you to have full empathy for other people, isn't formed until 27 or 28, a little later in men. Big surprise there. So if you're 20, 21, 22, you're not even here yet. We remind our graduating seniors, you're not broken, you're 22. Your 22-year-old job is not to figure it out because the you that's ever maybe even going to have a shot at figuring it out is six or eight years away from you. So your 20-year-old self's job is to give your 28-year-old self some interesting options.

14:22Bill Burnett:Now, don't mean sit on the couch at mom and dad's house and wait for something to land in your lap. Get out there, start living, do things, learn your way forward, all that stuff we talk about in all our books. But if you're 20 something, it's going to get more interesting. So don't give up yet. Now, externally, the macro situation we're all living in, I mean, the macro situation I was living in in 1976 when I graduated It's pretty radically different from what's going on right now 50 years later. People are feeling powerless for a good reason because people with power are hanging onto it and exercising it pretty egregiously right now, personal point of view.

14:59That being said, okay, there are systems that are bigger than you.

15:03Bill Burnett:The question then says, do you want to spend your time working on those systems? Bill's got a son named Ben who's currently working, you know, in Congress. He's going to go directly after the problem. You know, I'm not going directly after the problem. I'm writing books about meaning-making for everybody else in the meantime. I hope that leaves the campground a little better than I found it. So find what you can do within the constraints of reality. Maybe it's different than your parents' generation. Who cares? That was then, this is now. What world are you in? What is available to you? How can we make the most of what is, not complain about what isn't?

15:39Bill Burnett:But I get that it's hard.

15:40Dave Evans:It is hard. It's hard. And I see this in lots and lots of our students. People say, oh, the Gen Zs don't want to work hard and they want to be pampered. It's like, not the ones we know. The ones I know, they'll do a startup. They'll work 100 hours a week if they believe in something. And so I'm very optimistic about the generation coming up and the generation that's already out there and say, well, you know, what can I do?

16:03Mel Robbins:You know, a lot of people feel like they don't even know what they want. But there's this other exercise that you are world famous for called the Odyssey. plan. Can you just walk the listener through a little bit? Because it can help you see other lives in yourself and how to live a meaningful life to lean into.

16:22Bill Burnett:So we know you have to have more ideas to get your best ideas. And if you get stuck on the one idea, you're going to get stuck on a corner. So if we're going to plan the future possibilities, we got to hear from more than one of you. Three is kind of a magic number because it really gives you some freedom. And one of them is probably the life you're already in. The other one is if you can't do that, what else would you do? And the third one, the wild card, if money were no object, you know, and nobody would laugh at you, what would you do? That's the wild card. Well, maybe I would open the Beanie Baby store, or I'd start the button shop, whatever the crazy thing is.

16:53Bill Burnett:The reason we ask people to have a crazy idea is not because the crazy idea is a good idea. It's because we need to train you to

17:00Dave Evans:quiet the internal critic.

17:02Bill Burnett:So as soon as you say, well, you know, the 54-year-old woman says, I mean, I'm thinking about going back to medical school. I always wanted to do that. I don't think it's too late, but my friends say I'm all crazy. What do you think? So her internal critic is being encouraged by all of her friends' internal critic going, well, that's crazy. You can't do that. And that's the part of evolution that keeps you from being eaten by the saber-toothed tiger. So there's a negative bias built into your brain evolutionarily, lest you be eaten. So you have to learn how to overcome that critic. So the Odyssey plan helps you imagine there's more than one way you can live, and it helps train you to quiet your internal critic so you get the rest of your ideas back.

17:40Mel Robbins:So I want to make sure that you really got that. So the way that you help yourself imagine different possibilities in your life is through the Odyssey planning, you ask yourself three questions. What happens in my life if I change absolutely nothing? Where am I for five years from now? And assuming it goes well. Yeah. Well, I thank you for that. Like, let's just assume it goes well. Let's assume it goes well. What happens in five years? What is my life? Who am I?

18:06Bill Burnett:Who am

18:06Mel Robbins:Okay. Second one is all of this disappears.

18:10Bill Burnett:Yep. Can't do that.

18:11Mel Robbins:Can't do that, but I got to pay my bills. You got to have a plan B. Five years. What am I doing?

18:16Bill Burnett:Yep.

18:17Mel Robbins:What am I doing? And the third is money's no object.

18:20Bill Burnett:Yep. Whatever you want.

18:21Mel Robbins:Whatever you want. Nobody's going to laugh.

18:22Bill Burnett:Yep.

18:23Mel Robbins:It's going to work out. Yep. What are you going to do?

18:25Bill Burnett:If you do those three, and we've done this with, I mean, tens of thousands of people, including people like, I'm not doing this. And we give them 12 minutes. 12 minutes? 12 minutes, sometimes 15. And absolutely, I mean, 99.7 % of the people do it just fine. I'm standing behind this 57-year-old chiropractor. We had 600 people in the room. This one guy's sitting back from the room, just looking at the paper going,

18:54Dave Evans:mmm, mmm.

18:56Bill Burnett:So I come up to him and say, so how's it going? I'm fine. I go, you're just going to sit this one out? He goes, no, no, I'm doing it. I go, well, you're not doing much. You've got to pick up the pen. He goes, yeah, I'm a little stuck. I go, well, what do you do? I'm a chiropractor. Okay, great. You like it? I like it a lot. How long have you been doing that? 27 years. Okay. You want to die doing that? I said, what? I said, by the time you die, do you want to still be doing this? He kind of goes, well, I don't think so. I said, oh, then at some point you're going to do something else. He goes, well, I guess so.

19:27Bill Burnett:I go, and what might that be? He goes, oh, I guess I am going to do something else, aren't I? I said, yes, you are. Write that down. He goes, oh, okay. I mean, he had it in him. He just had to get over himself.

19:40Mel Robbins:I love this. And I'm going to encourage you as you're listening, unless you're driving a car, do this right now. Think about it. If nothing changes, it goes well. What does life look like five years? If everything disappears and you've got to go to plan B, what does life look like in five years? And what are you doing? What's the something else? And what is the crazy wild thing that you don't need money and nobody's going to laugh at you? What is that thing?

20:05Dave Evans:Classes and lectures, it's a series of these little workshop things and design exercises. So then people get in threes and they read each other. I read my Odyssey plan to the other two people and we teach them to listen very generatively. In tens and tens of thousands of these, the last question I ask when I'm debriefing the class, I say, You know, those wildcard plans that you heard from everybody in the class of the listeners, how many of you think that person could actually do the wildcard? It's not nearly as crazy as they think. 100%. 100%. It's not as crazy as you think. And again, we're not trying to get people to quit their jobs and, you know, Join the circus.

20:40Dave Evans:Join the circus. It's just that it's proof there's more life in you than you think. There's more possibilities than you think. When you think in threes, not binaries or ones.

20:49Mel Robbins:You know, you light up like the sicko sign in Boston when you talk about this. What is your wild card the last time you did this?

20:58Dave Evans:Artist.

20:58Mel Robbins:Being art, like a painter?

21:00Dave Evans:I am a painter. I have been a painter. So I went off to Stanford. It was even back when I did it. It was kind of expensive. And I wanted to be an art major. My dad was a pretty practical guy. And he said, look, if you want to be an art major, you need to come back and go to UMass. I'm not paying for Stanford. But I found this design thing. And that was pretty cool. because our design major was a combination of art, engineering, and psychology. But I did make a promise to that 18-year-old kid that someday I'd be an artist. And so I have a studio, a painting is my thing. And when I'm in the studio painting, that is, I don't know if I'm any good, I don't care.

21:33Dave Evans:Robert Henry is a famous painting school in New York in the 1920s. His phrase was, the goal isn't to make art. The goal is to be in that marvelous state of mind that makes art inevitable. Do you know that's the mission of how we do work here? Yeah.

21:50Mel Robbins:That quote.

21:51Dave Evans:Cool. I can tell. So that's on the door of my studio. And to be in that marvelous state of mind, yeah, it's a very special place. And so I promised myself that that will be my, that is my wild card and that is coming up.

22:06Bill Burnett:Dave, what's yours? Well, there are a bunch of them. One probably came very close to becoming an actor. But there's a particular version of performance art that I've long thought would be really fun to try, which is to be a waiter in an extremely elite restaurant.

22:21Mel Robbins:Really?

22:22Dave Evans:Yeah.

22:22Bill Burnett:Which I think is absolutely performance art.

22:25Dave Evans:First time I've ever heard this. So tell me more.

22:27Bill Burnett:How to read the room. I mean, so, you know, that people are coming in, their expectations are incredibly high, and this couple's having an argument, and that, you know, family is celebrating the kid's graduation. And can you read the room? Can you maximize this incredible experience? Because you go to a fine dining experience for a particular kind of celebration or a particular kind of, you know, outing. And the right wait service catalyzes it beautifully. The wrong wait service wrecks it. And can I deliver the improv performance that has nine different stages at the same time called tables playing nine different parts, having every one of those people have an amazing experience in real time?

23:09Bill Burnett:Can I pull that off? I mean, running a really, really amazing restaurant is a really, really, really hard thing. It's really hard.

23:15Mel Robbins:That's definitely not on my fantasy list. My fantasy list—

23:17Bill Burnett:I don't want to be in the kitchen. It's too scary.

23:19Mel Robbins:Mine for sure is I want to write a fantasy trilogy.

23:23Bill Burnett:Oh, okay.

23:24Mel Robbins:Yes. All about angels that are among us and the theme of are you born— How might we imagine a world where Mel is a fantasy trilogy writer?

23:31Bill Burnett:Right. Are you born good or bad?

23:32Mel Robbins:And I have this whole—I've been thinking about it for 10 years. And I'm going to do it. Yeah, yeah. Right. I'm going to. But it's always in there. And I love that you shared that. And for you listening or watching, I want you to share your wild card, either with us or put it in the review or the comment of this show. Or when you share this episode with somebody that you care about, be a little cryptic and say, my wild card is this. And you'll know exactly what I mean when you listen to this and then I want you to tell me yours.

24:09Bill Burnett:Yeah. You know, Bill and I, we talk about the stuff we've been doing for a long time. We often say at the end of the day, what we're really doing, we're just giving people permission to live their lives. It's really just giving, yes, you can. You do know how to do this. You have it in you. You may not have it in you to be an Olympian, but you have it in you to be something.

24:28Dave Evans:And because right after the Odyssey plans comes prototyping, what on your plan do you want to learn about? And then they prototype.

24:34Mel Robbins:Oh, that's the next step.

24:35Dave Evans:They come back to the next class and they go, did you know you can actually make a living in the circus? I had one student who was a gymnast at Stanford and she wanted to go to medical school. Her parents wanted to go to medical school. She cut a deal. Can I do something before I go to medical school? She's now in Cirque du Soleil in China and she is a circus clown, which was on her odyssey plan. She's having a great time. But people have a hard time even imagining something so wild it's not possible. And when they talk about plan one, it's kind of like, yeah, well, so I'm going to just keep bringing it to them and I'm going to do this thing.

25:10Dave Evans:And, you know, I'm pretty good at it. But when they talk about their wild card, they're like, you know, I really love diving and underwater photography. And I'm wondering if I could be a dive instructor who does photography, maybe for National Geographic. And I said, well, I happen to know a guy who started a company building underwater cameras. Would you like to have a prototype interview. And they're like, really? I go, yeah.

25:32Bill Burnett:When you know that you don't know what you're doing, right, the competence of, you have to be competent at your incompetence. You have to be good at knowing when you don't know what you're doing called the future I haven't figured out yet. Yes. So you make a move, then learn something, make a move, learn something, then go back, you know, keep making moves until you finally iterate your way forward through prototyping. That's what we teach. Life is a series of incremental prototypes. You find your way by living into your life. You build your way forward, we keep saying. There is no knowing. There is only doing, learning, and growing.

26:05Mel Robbins:Bill and Dave, I am so happy that you're here. I hate to say this, but I gotta hit the pause button real quick. I know you're loving Bill and Dave too, but let's give our sponsors a chance to share a few words. And I wanna give you a chance to share this episode with somebody who needs to hear it. Because we all deserve the permission and we also need the frameworks to design the life we truly want to be living. Don't go anywhere because there's so much more to dig into, and we've got a really cool exercise that we're going to do when we return. So stay with us.

26:46Mel Robbins:Welcome back. It's your friend Mel Robbins, and today, Stanford University professors. Bill Burnett and Dave Evans are here for our first ever double guest episode. We're talking about how to create a meaningful life. And I am loving it. I know you are too. So let's jump back in. So I know I'm going to get a ton of questions about this. Can you guys give a couple examples of what actually a prototype looks like?

27:12Bill Burnett:Clowning. Clowning is actually a thing. And is it the Shriners? is there's some outfit where they train the members and they do clowning in hospitals to visit kids. Oh, so you can probably call the local hospitals and does anybody do clowning with the children? Oh, great. Do they have a training for that? So you could go, trust me, there's somebody who will train you to be a clown, to be a little bit of clowning that you could go into the children's ward and try cheering somebody. Maybe just ride along with them. Watch them. You know, I mean, there are ways to get at the thing that you think you're thinking about.

27:45Mel Robbins:So you're a 20-something. You see your friends living in Montana. Should I live in New York? Should I go to Montana? Should I go into iBanking? Should I be a ski bum? Like, I don't know what to do with my... You're 28. What's an example of a prototype? Here's another one. A stay-at-home mom. The kids are gone. Now it's my turn. What am I doing? Am I going back to nursing school? Am I finishing my degree?

28:09Dave Evans:Am I writing that novel?

28:10Mel Robbins:Am I writing that novel that I'm thinking about? Like, what does that mean in terms of just a couple specific things that you've seen people do to give the person listening an idea?

28:19Bill Burnett:So I'm sitting with the 57-year-old suddenly empty-nested mom who left a couple of things behind, doesn't know what to do. Great. So let's quickly come up with your list of things that might be at all interesting.

28:30Mel Robbins:Okay.

28:30Bill Burnett:Oh, yeah. I'm thinking about being a ski bum. I'm thinking about going back to medical school. I actually talked to a 54-year-old about that. And I'm thinking about being a novelist. Okay, fine. Now, maybe I should, oh, I'm going to go back and get a master's degree in creative writing and spend three years and$30 ,000 and then write one blog and I didn't like it that much. Terrible idea. That's jumping way off the cliff. So the prototype I do is say, talk to people, try stuff. So go out and have a bunch of narrative conversations, not with, oh, you're a novelist and how much do you make and what school did you go to?

28:59Bill Burnett:Those are transactional conversations, not narrative conversations. Like, what's it like to be you? And what do you enjoy? And what do you not enjoy? And tell me all about that.

29:07Dave Evans:And I have these narrative conversations with people in the world I'm thinking about being in, which is what Dan Gilbert at Harvard, not a bad school, would say is surrogation, not simulation.

29:18Bill Burnett:Quit reading about it. Go talk to people about it because you're a person. And when you encounter a person who tells that story, that story becomes real. You'll actually learn more from persons in the world you're thinking about than reading about it. You'll feel something. You'll feel something. You'll experience something. And then maybe some of them can get you a ride along and a visit. You can do some experimentation, try stuff long before you overcommit. And then eventually after enough iterations, you'll make a better decision.

29:43Mel Robbins:You know what's interesting? Because I want to build on this.

29:45Bill Burnett:Yeah.

29:46Mel Robbins:Because so many people probably say to you, well, I have no idea. I have no idea what I want to do. That's almost never true. I agree with you. And if you're saying that right now, like, I don't know what my life's about. I don't know what I like. I love this 14 % thing and this idea and the invitation you gave us to step into a time machine accelerator thingy. And the average person says, I've imagined eight lives. Yeah. So you're in one of them.

30:11Bill Burnett:Right.

30:11Mel Robbins:You've got another seven.

30:13Dave Evans:Yep.

30:13Mel Robbins:What are the other seven lives you would imagine in the fantasy of your mind?

30:17Dave Evans:Right.

30:17Mel Robbins:And those are the things to then lean into and get curious about, correct? Absolutely.

30:22Dave Evans:I always wanted to be a dive instructor. I love diving, but I always want to be a photographer. I want to have a podcast. Okay. Before you. jump into the podcast, try writing, you know, a 2000 word essay every day for five days. See how that feels. Oh, that was really hard. It was really lonely. Dave hates writing because it's lonely. I'm the introvert. He's the extrovert. I love sitting in a room talking to myself all day long. It's wonderful. And he can't stand it. So like try the trying stuff and the talking to people. You talk to writers, they'll say writing is very lonely. If you can't handle that, it's not going to be a good thing for you.

30:55Dave Evans:And you wouldn't know that unless you talk to somebody fantastic so it's almost like time travel you can have a little experience of talking to somebody who's the person you think you might want to be they're already 10 years down the road doing it and that experience that but that conversation is so much more powerful than oh i'm going to look up on the google how many how many writing hacks are there you know when when did the five most famous writers write you know they wrote in the morning they wrote in the afternoon there's no patterns in you that stuff so uh you can prototype anything and and the lack of the lack of curiosity isn't really true.

31:28Dave Evans:I have no ideas. You really have no ideas. Okay. You know, what did you, what was the last show you watched that you thought was interesting? Pick something simple. We're not talking about the thing you'll do for the rest of your life. We're talking about what do you want to do next week?

31:42Mel Robbins:So as all of this opens up for somebody and they have this sense of what might create more meaning, right? And I want to get curious. I want to prototype. the fear of failure and the fear of what other people are going to think probably comes in like a sledgehammer. What do you say to people in your classes when they get this moment of clarity and then it's like...

32:06Bill Burnett:Start really small. I mean, cut yourself some slack, for God's sake. We talk about failure immunity because the purpose of a prototype is to learn something, not to succeed. We don't prototype to make sure, oh, will it work? No, just what do I need to know more about? I'm going to go right along, you know, and be an auditor of the children's clowns, you know, at the hospital, you know, and I might say the wrong thing. I mean, did I blow it? No, no, no. I'm just trying to learn what it's like here. So, first of all, have your prototypes not bet the farm. You know, like maybe my, maybe what I'll do is I'll go to Chez Panisse in Berkeley, you know, one of the most expensive restaurants in all of California.

32:44Bill Burnett:And see, because I know a friend who's really close friends with Alice Waters, and she could probably get me in as the waiter. So my first night as a waiter is in front of Alice Waters in Chez Panisse. That is not a prototype. That's a performance. So cut yourself some slack. It's okay.

32:57Mel Robbins:And I'm likely to fail. I probably wouldn't even want to serve the bread there.

33:01Bill Burnett:Yeah, I mean, so make it easy. Make it small where almost nothing is at stake, of which there are plenty of opportunities. Give yourself a break. Make it interesting. Make it fun. Cut it down small. Don't shoot too high.

33:14Dave Evans:We're really big on Set the Barlow. You know, Set the Barlow and Clear it. This is the whole psychology behavior change. You're not going to change if you make something so big.

33:23Bill Burnett:This is the new year and people have made their resolutions.

33:25Dave Evans:I'm going to run a marathon this year. It's like, no, probably unless you break that into very, very small steps, it's not going to happen. And so we really go for super simple things. And then that builds up your confidence, too. If you try something and you address some prototypes, you learn some stuff, you get a little more confident. And eventually, you know, when you flip into this designer's mindset, you realize, oh, I can prototype anything. There's really no failure here. You know, failure is just a rule I made up in my head. And once I get rid of that rule, I'm much more free. But yeah, fear drives a lot of people to not try.

34:01Mel Robbins:Yeah. Is it ever too late? I think there's a big fear that it's too late. I've blown it too much.

34:05Dave Evans:No, it's never too late.

34:07Bill Burnett:I mean, coming out of a talk, a 54-year-old woman has asked me about, you know, Am I crazy to go to medical school? And I said, look, let's just run the numbers really quickly. Okay, based on the DNA of the gene pool you were born into, what's the likelihood of when you're going to die? She kind of goes, I'm probably going to make it to my late 80s, early 90s. I said, great. Let's say I make it healthy to 85, 88. How long do you want to work? Well, probably to 80. I said, okay, great. So we got 26 years to go. And, you know, so you applied. probably going to spend a year going to, you know, a medical school application preparatory program, you know, called a post-bac program.

34:44Bill Burnett:Spend a year on that. Spend a year trying to get in. That's two. Four years to get through medical school. Now you're in residency, by the way. 90 % of medicine is done by residents. So you're already a doctor. You're now practicing medicine six years into the program. Eventually, you finish your specialty. You know, we're now eight years into the program. That puts you at 64. You got 11 to 12 years to go before even backing off, maybe 15. cut out the crap of all this conventional thinking and just ask yourself the question, what's happening? What might it be? I mean, I'm about to get married for the third time

35:17Dave Evans:because, you know, my wife died on me,

35:19Bill Burnett:which was not the plan. And a lot of my friends, they make it like,

35:23Dave Evans:oh, it's too hard. It's too much work. I don't, do you really want to go through that again? I go, sure.

35:29Bill Burnett:It's terrific. It's a ton of work. It's an absolute amount of work, you know, but I mean, what else am I doing? it. Dave, thank you so much for saying that.

35:38Mel Robbins:There are so many more things I have to ask you. I've been waiting for this moment since I started this podcast. I need to give our sponsors a chance to share a few words. So let's just hit the pause button for a moment. And they've given you so much to think about. And I know as you've been imagining, imagining all these possibilities, all these lives that you could be living, somebody's popping in your mind. There's somebody in your life who's stuck, somebody who needs this framework, text them this episode, share this episode, because this episode is proof that creating a happy, meaningful life doesn't have to be a guessing game or a pipe dream.

36:14Mel Robbins:You don't have to do this alone. There are proven tools and strategies and frameworks that can help you and the people you care about do it. So share this and don't go anywhere because we'll be right back. Stay with me.

36:35Mel Robbins:Welcome back. It's your friend Mel Robbins. And today you and I are spending time with professors Bill Burnett and Dave Evans, the brilliant minds behind Stanford University's incredible course called Designing Your Life. And today they're here to teach you and I how to create more meaning in our lives. Here's another thing I was wondering about. When you go to a funeral, it's very interesting.

36:58Bill Burnett:Oh, yeah.

36:59Mel Robbins:The second you walk out of the funeral, you feel more alive and you have more urgency to do what you came here to do, Dave and Bill. You said, we want to give people permission to live their lives. And especially right now when the world feels so overwhelming and people are exhausted and there are very big problems, it's easy to go. It doesn't matter. and when you start to do the math, whether you're telling me that you have seven different lives you could do, you're going to die with shit on your to-do list and things you never achieved. You're 50, so what? You got 40, you're 70. You probably got 20 more years left.

37:39Mel Robbins:What are you doing?

37:40Bill Burnett:Yeah, my next milestone is death. I haven't gotten to waste.

37:45Dave Evans:But David and I have been in wonderful communities. I've been in this group of men, a men's group for 32 years because I started when my son got born and I needed to figure out how to raise a son. And we end up, we've been around long enough that we've had some guys die and gone to their funerals and said wonderful things about them. And then we decided, why do we wait till we die before we say wonderful things about each other? So we have a protocol in our men's group where you can say, I'm going to die next week. I'd like everybody to write a eulogy. And then you come in and then lay there quietly and you listen to people say the most wonderful things about you, right?

38:18Dave Evans:Because eulogies are not about, oh, well, you know, Dave had a big to-do list. he crashed off lots of things. His PowerPoints were very well done and he always got his budget set on time. Nobody says that. They say he was a good man. He was a wonderful husband. He was a great father. So do that. Have your friends write your eulogy and find out what you really mean to people. It's amazing.

38:39Mel Robbins:You could also, you do that exercise thinking about what you hope or wish is being said about how you lived your life.

38:48Dave Evans:Because what you don't want it to be is,

38:52Mel Robbins:well, he got to be 70 and had the love of his life and just turned down the opportunity to get married again and do it. And she wanted to go to medical school, but talked herself out of it for 30 years.

39:02Bill Burnett:Right, no, I'm in a small group of guys for 51 years, formed in 1974, called TD3, Tom and Three Daves. I'm the founding Dave.

39:10Dave Evans:And, you know, we just went through this exercise

39:14Bill Burnett:of moving into our 70s. And so we said, okay, let's all, first of all, announce what age we think we're going to die at. And then write the eulogy you hope will be true by then. And make sure that the eulogy includes things that aren't true yet. So you can live aspirationally into that. And we really do believe that a human being is a becoming. And that becoming should be a nonstop program. Don't quit early. Now, you might have some constraints physically, circumstantially otherwise. But there's always more you can become into. So which questions do you want to live into? And by the way, preferably, it does really help to have some people around that you're asking these questions with.

39:57Bill Burnett:Yeah.

39:57Mel Robbins:So how old did you say you were going to be when you died? And what was the thing that you haven't done yet that was on the list?

40:03Bill Burnett:85. I'm guessing I'll make it to 85.

40:06Mel Robbins:I'd like you to live a little longer.

40:07Bill Burnett:Well, I'm thinking I may work for an extension to the contract. But nonetheless, I said at the time, I said 85. And the way I put what I'm aspiring to was when I get to heaven, I want to be recognized as somebody who's already been there, meaning I've already stepped into profound acceptance and universal love and welcome to all persons at all times. I want to look like I'm already doing that by the time I get there.

40:28Mel Robbins:I think there's a huge power, and you know this based on the way the brain works, in really embracing the truth of everything that you just said in terms of giving yourself permission to not just live a meaningful life now and find moments of meaning. But to really think about what you want to accomplish by the end. I'm thinking about this text. Who do you want to become? Yeah, who do you want to become? I'm thinking about my mother-in-law who's 89. I think she's 89. She's 88? I don't know. But she texted in the family-wide group chat. I'm going to be here another 10 years. Okay. Because I want to see all the grandkids get married if they choose to get married.

41:08Mel Robbins:Right. And I was like, wow. She's in the game. She's in the game. Yeah. She knows what she's doing.

41:15Bill Burnett:Yeah.

41:15Mel Robbins:And I think there's an invitation to all of us. And so I love that construct of what age do you think you're dying? And what are all the things that you want to accomplish that you haven't done yet? And what do you hope?

41:28Bill Burnett:Yeah. The specific tool in the book for that is called the focus question. We actually encourage you to come up with the focus question. is what focuses your attention on what you're trying to become at this particular moment or season of your life. So can you write down the question that not like, well, I have enough money to retire by then. Those are transactional questions, but you know, a year from now, two years from now, three years from now, if you live well into the invitation to become more yourself, what question do you hope to be able to answer by the end of the next year, two or three that you're thinking about.

42:04So in my case, it was, you know, how will I learn

42:09Bill Burnett:to live out of get to, not got to? Because I think that's a more generous position that might allow me to hit heaven in the right point of view. And so that's the focus question I've got. How do I live deeply into get to, not got to? That's my focus question for now. And preferably having some people around you that can help you with that question.

42:28Dave Evans:And by the way, I don't think anybody writing their eulogy or those questions says, I wish I had more, I think I want to have more money by the time I'm X. Because you get to the second half of life, assuming that money is enough and everybody is not, but, or whatever, but it's hard. You start to realize that those kinds of transactional accomplishments, while important and interesting ways of keeping score, aren't the things that are going to make you happy when you, when you, yeah, I know when you're trying to get to that point. So I think, you know, I really encourage the folks who are thinking about this stuff, think a little, you know, give yourself a little bit of time, turn off the phone and give yourself a little bit of time to think about, you know, what would I hope people say about me?

43:18Dave Evans:And how do I become the person that deserves them to say that? And that stuff comes up and this is it could be connected to your wild card it could be just connected to you know where you are in your journey if that stuff comes up where you'll you know a lot of times when i do these actually because you know one of the first things i said to dave when we set this up is you know we got to do everything we put in the books otherwise they're the biggest civic race on the planet so we do all this stuff and every once in a while i do this stuff i lean

43:48Bill Burnett:back and i go oh wow where did that come from you know that's a good like that's that's an idea

43:53Dave Evans:Where did that come from? And, you know, it came from some part of me, you know, just needed a little bit of quiet to, you know, to find its voice. So I hope people can do that because it's really.

44:04Bill Burnett:Yeah. If you're paying attention, life is full of invitations. I think life is full of invitations to your becoming self if you're paying attention.

44:14Mel Robbins:Yeah. You said turn off the phone and take the time for the person that says, well, I just can't. I'm overwhelmed. I have no time. What do you want to say directly to them, Bill?

44:22Dave Evans:I'll bet if I looked at your phone and tell me how much time you spent on Instagram, how much time you spent on TikTok, how much time you spent scrolling mindlessly, you know, through reels or short videos on YouTube. I do it too. And every once in a while I look at that and go, I can't believe I spent an hour on this crap. So give yourself a pause and, you know, go look at the phone. It'll tell you how much time you spent just doom scrolling through stuff. And I always ask people, tell me the last video you watched. They go, I don't know. Tell me the last really, I don't know. Tell me the last text you read or the last thing you read on X.

44:58Dave Evans:I don't know. I said, so if you're doing it and you can't even remember what it was, would you like to reallocate that time to something more interesting? I'm only talking about 20 minutes here. Can you give me 20 minutes that you would have spent and just be present with yourself and see what comes up. You know, standing in front of a big blank canvas, And I'm going, oh, the world really needs an older white guy painter because we need more painters in the world. And I'm going to paint something and no one's going to care. So I go through all that stuff in my head. And then if I quiet down for a little while and I, you know, just stare at this thing, I get an idea.

45:38Dave Evans:Then I get another idea and I get another idea. And pretty soon the painting is painting itself and everything is wonderful. But boy, everybody's got that moment where I go like, oh, this isn't going to work or this is stupid or this is useless. I have that all the time.

45:53Mel Robbins:Well, that's the moment.

45:55Dave Evans:Yeah.

45:56Mel Robbins:That's what it all comes down to. Because you can stay there or you can lean into the other world

46:02Dave Evans:you've taught us about. Pick up a brush. And put something on the canvas.

46:05Bill Burnett:And again, set the bar alone. Like, oh, I really need to start meditating. So I should do 20 minutes every morning between 6 and 6.20. I got to get up at 5.30, you know, and eat some really pure yogurt first. Like, whoa, dude, lighten up. we've got a thing called the seventh day savoring. Once a week, sit down and pick a moment during the week when you felt deeply alive, go back and savor it because you didn't have time to fully experience it in real time. You know, you could just go back there and like linger over it. I mean, put that, let it sit on your tongue and really get the most out of it.

46:37Bill Burnett:Okay, it's five minutes a week. And your prototype is, I'll do that twice. Okay, so two, five minutes on a Sunday afternoon and then ask the question, Was that worth it? Did I enjoy that? Want to do a little bit more? It's okay. You don't have to jump over your head. If you're moving, you know, that's moving toward a meaning-making practice. So you're designing your way forward.

47:01Mel Robbins:I want to read to you from your blockbuster bestseller, How to Live a Meaningful Life. And this is page eight. All of us. This longing for more meaning may be one of the most universal things that all humans want. Lives that are generative and joyful, fulfilling and connected. Lives that are about more than just getting through each day, paying the bills, maybe taking a vacation now and then. And too many people are finding too few an answer for how to get what their hearts keep telling them they were made for. The meaning and purpose that they need. The quest for meaning can seem too big and too overwhelming.

47:44Mel Robbins:But here's the thing. There is something you can do, really actually do, to experience a more meaningful life today, right now, in this exact moment. So Dave. Yes. What is that one thing?

48:02Bill Burnett:Well, the first thing is you got to reframe. You know, in design, we do problem finding before we do problem solving. One of the reasons people fail is they're working on the wrong thing.

48:10Mel Robbins:Problem finding.

48:12Bill Burnett:Finding precedes problem solving.

48:14Mel Robbins:Okay.

48:14Bill Burnett:So the question, oh, how do I live a more meaningful life? Usually frames itself as what is the meaning of my life? I have not yet found my purpose. What is the one true thing that really is what I'm here to do? And we think those are all the wrong question. Because they all treat you as a transaction, as a problem to be solved, for which there is a correct answer.

48:34Mel Robbins:Okay.

48:35Bill Burnett:So instead of working on the what is the meaning of life, we're here to give you tools to design more meaning in life.

48:43Mel Robbins:Okay, I want to make sure the person listening got this. One of the reasons why I get stuck and you get stuck and the people that you love get stuck is, number one, we're asking the wrong question, which is how do I find meaning? The ultimate answer to life.

48:55Bill Burnett:The ultimate, is this really it? Have I found it? No, you haven't found it because you're going to keep growing and it's going to change. So stop worrying about it and let's work on this.

49:07Mel Robbins:Well, what I love about it is, and, you know, look, this is why you guys are brilliant, okay? I'm just going to say, it's because as I've been sitting here going, you know, I got to find it, that statement in and of itself says it's out there.

49:20Bill Burnett:Right.

49:21Mel Robbins:How do I create more meaning right here?

49:24Bill Burnett:Yes. So don't wait for the ultimate answer. By the way, we have both in different ways have worked on the big questions for a long time. And we think the big questions really matter. I'm not saying never think about that. What I'm saying is don't defer life is good and worthwhile until you find those answers. what you can do is start living into the moment that you're in. So the first reframe is, how do I find more meaning now? And then the second thing is, and where might I find it?

49:51Mel Robbins:Well, I'm glad you said there was a second question. Here's the thing. As somebody who's really screwed up her life for large stretches of it, there are times if you had instructed me, Mel, the answer is to find more meaning where you are right now. You know what I would have said? Probably F you. Because I don't like where I am right now, and there is nothing meaningful about this, which is why I want something else. Do you know what I mean? What do you say to the person that's feeling that right? Like there is no way to find meaning where I am right now.

50:21Bill Burnett:That's probably because the thing that's not working, there's something about the job is not working, the marriage isn't working. There's something I'm really unhappy about. Yes. I'm not getting what I wanted from this particular aspect of my life. And so then you say, well, find more meaning. You're trying to tell me how to make a bad thing good. This is the old, Well, when life gives you lemons, make lemonade. Okay, the problem with the lemonade idea is let's take a bad thing and make a good thing of it. No, no, no, no. Okay, there's something that's not working. I get that. But that doesn't mean there aren't other parts of your life where more meaning and more aliveness are lurking latently waiting for you to discover them.

50:57Bill Burnett:Don't let those go. Now, meanwhile, we might want to have some projects, too. Maybe your job is a bad situation. When we got asked over and over again, why isn't it more fulfilling? I thought I did everything you guys said, and it still isn't working for me. We're hearing that skyrocket as a question in the last two years. I'm just not having the impact I want to. Well, impact is important, but it's only one form of meaning-making, and it's got a very short half-life. Right after you finish doing something successful, three, two, one, what have you done for us lately? So there are other ways to experience meaning, which happen in this place we call the flow world, not in this busy world we're all in most of the time, but we call the transactional world.

51:37Bill Burnett:So our big invitation for where that more meaning is, is spending more time in the flow world, which is right here, by the way. But there's a lot more in front of you than you think. This is easier than they told you.

51:48Mel Robbins:Okay, that's the part I want to hang on to.

51:50Bill Burnett:Yeah.

51:51Mel Robbins:This is easier than they told you, and this is also easier than what you're currently doing.

51:57Dave Evans:So flow is that state where time stands still, you're in the moment by definition, because that's where you are fully engaged. and it's a moment where actually you're making energy. Psychologists will say it's an energy generating moment because it just feels so good. You know, dopamine and other good chemicals going in the brain. And some of this comes from the work of Dr. Lisa Miller, you know, from Columbia. She kind of updated the left brain, right brain model. We said the right brain was the creative brain and the left brain was the analytical brain. It's more nuanced than that. And her model is there's the achieving brain, the transactional brain.

52:38Dave Evans:And the awakened brain is where we experience flow, where we experience spirituality, where we experience a connection to something bigger than ourselves. And so all we're arguing for is recognize that there's two things, the transactional, the flow world, the achieving brain, the awakened brain, and get a little more into building your whole brain, which is having a balance between the two. And being in the flow world and experiencing this awakened sense of yourself connected to the world, that's when we're more human, right? So we need both sides of the brain. We need both awakened and achieving.

53:13Dave Evans:We need to be in the transaction world and the flow world. And we're underpracticed, right, at getting into the flow world.

53:19Mel Robbins:Can you give me some examples in day-to-day life that really help illustrate for the person listening who has never even considered that there's a second world to live in other than the one in your head. Right. What does it feel like to be in flow or what's an example that you might find in somebody's everyday life that you could hold on to and go, oh, I've experienced this. Okay, I understand this difference.

53:46Dave Evans:If you're an athlete, you felt that you're in the zone. You're in that place where you just know where the ball's going to be. If you're a runner, it's the runner's high where your brain goes quiet and you're just on the run. I like to cook. For me, it can be as simple as You know, I'm chopping onions, I'm doing my mise en place and preparing everything before I cook and put on some good music and just be in that state. And then I'm not thinking about school. I'm not thinking about, you know, the budget. I'm not thinking about other things. I have a lot of voices in this head that are talking to me all the time.

54:19Dave Evans:And so learning to just kind of quiet them down and do an activity, running, cooking, something that you enjoy doing, but really being all in, totally present. and being available to what the experience can be.

54:36Mel Robbins:I keep coming back to this 14 % thing. I think your next book should be the 14 % mindset because I just feel this sense of the invitation of the unlived life, that there's these two lives that we have. You talk about unfinished business, yeah. Yeah, the one you're living and the one you have yet to create. Sure. And one of the things that you two write about is that you can boil a design your life process into a post-it note.

55:05Dave Evans:Right.

55:05Mel Robbins:Bill, what's on the post-it note?

55:07Dave Evans:This is hard. Professors don't like to boil their things down to something so simple that anybody can do it.

55:12Mel Robbins:Actually, everybody says anybody, any idiot can make it complicated. It takes a genius to make it simple.

55:17Dave Evans:Exactly. Those Mark Twain's, if I had more time, I'd have written a shorter letter. Yeah.

55:22Bill Burnett:It happened on Canadian live TV. We were running out of time. The producer goes, we're just about out of time. can you do the book in a sentence? I said, dude, we're Stanford professors. We don't give short answers to hard questions. He goes, oh, then you're off the air. I said, give me a minute. I was a marketing guy. Get curious, talk to people, try stuff, tell your story. So it's 10 words. It's really not one sentence, but it's get curious, lean in, lean into the availability, talk to people, go out and engage with the world, because the narrative story is where it's at. Try stuff, prototype your way forward, then tell the story of what you're learning.

55:53Bill Burnett:You're becoming, pay attention, reflect on what you're learning. you know, hey, how's it going? Oh yeah, I binge watched Game of Thrones all night last night again. What'd you do? That's not that interesting. It's like, well, I was talking about Robin. She's talking about there's 14 % of the lives I'm living as well as the ones I'm not. I'm really thinking about that.

56:12Dave Evans:And they kind of go, oh, say more.

56:13Bill Burnett:What's going on with that? So if you're leaning into and living your life and paying attention to it, get curious, talk to people, try stuff, tell your story.

56:22Dave Evans:The circular pattern, I'm telling stuff, I'm telling my story. People say, that's very interesting. I've thought about talking to so-and-so or this, trying this or this, and it just keeps going. You know, your curiosity leads to more engagement, which leads to more prototypes, which leads to more stories. Once you get that flywheel running, you know, it runs by itself and it feels like, hey, I'm making progress. I'm going somewhere. I'm not exactly sure where it is, but I'm pretty sure I'm going in the right direction.

56:47Mel Robbins:Well, I think it's really cool to just allow yourself to imagine that there are all of these things that you can do. Yeah. And you're going to die with the to-do list and the experiences and all of the things that you could have become regardless of whether you mope on the couch or you use these principles.

57:09Bill Burnett:You got to move from FOMO to JOMO, from the fear of missing out to the joy of missing out. So people think the reason I have FOMO, right? Fear of missing out. Some cool thing goes by like, you know, oh, oh, wow, oh, we should have done that instead. Shoot, I missed it, says the person who has FOMO. The phrase, I missed it, acts as though the world is a scarce place and there's barely enough to make an it of your life. And if you missed a little bit of an it, you are now diminished. Wrong. Seeing something cool go by you haven't got time to do just reminds you the world is a target-rich place, and you're a highly capacious creature who could be interested in so many more things than you have time for.

57:50Bill Burnett:Isn't that great? So get used to, get a comfortable attitude toward wonderful things passing you by. Just remind you the world is a cool place to live and enjoy that which is in front of you. Look, he talks me into writing a book. Again, we just wrote this third book, and I said, oh my God, if I do that, the next four years of my life are completely spoken for? Do I really want to do that from 71 to 75? It's a year or two to write a book, and I get a year or two to talk to Mel about it. I feel like, do I really want to do that at this point in my life? Well, sure. And it comes in packages of yes or no.

58:29Bill Burnett:And the yes to this book has got about 75 no's in it for things I'm not doing right now. And I'm perfectly happy living into the life I've chosen. Choose your life.

58:40Mel Robbins:Bill Burnett and Dave Evans, what are your parting words? You can do this, and I really hope you do.

58:49Dave Evans:You deserve it. My wish for folks is just try something. Try something really small and see if you can find that little piece of joy or that just like a pointer towards something that wakes you up. And we know you can do it.

59:04Mel Robbins:Well, my wish for you is that I'm at the table at the night that you do your waitering and that when you have your opening exhibit for the paintings, you don't think the world cares about that we're all there to clap for you.

59:17Dave Evans:I will absolutely invite you. Okay.

59:19Mel Robbins:I'm going to make you. I'm going to be there whether I'm invited tonight. Now I know Dave will text me and tell me even if you don't. No, seriously. I love you too. I love the work you do. Thank you for the difference that you make in all of our lives. Thank you for coming today. Thank you for writing. this blockbuster of a book now more than ever, I know we are all searching for more meaning. And I really am grateful that you're giving us the blueprint to find it where we are. Thank you. Thank you.

59:52Bill Burnett:You're a dear woman. This was really sweet.

59:54Dave Evans:Yeah, we really appreciate the opportunity. It was a great conversation.

59:58Mel Robbins:It really was. And thank you. I want to thank you for spending time with us and for making the time to invest in yourself, to listen to something that's going to open up possibilities for your life and your future, because you deserve, as Bill and Dave said, to live a meaningful life. And this conversation has given you not just tools, but the permission and the encouragement to do so. And in case no one else tells you today as your friend, I want to tell you that I love you and I believe in you. And I believe in your ability to create a better life. And as Bill and Dave said, do it for crying out loud.

1:00:35Mel Robbins:All right. I'm going to welcome you into the next episode the moment you hit play. I'll see you there.

1:00:44Mel Robbins:You a motorcycle rider?

1:00:45Dave Evans:No. I had one motorcycle. I crashed it and then I decided I don't have the reflexes for this thing. So I stopped.

1:00:53Bill Burnett:I chant a little Stephen Stills every time I walk into a room and I don't know what I'm going to find. Love the one you're with.

1:00:58Mel Robbins:Love the one you're with. Yeah. That's your next book. That's how to find meaning in your marriage.

1:01:05Bill Burnett:It's a ton of work. It's an absolute amount of work. You know, but I mean, what else am I doing? You know, come on, people. Sorry.

1:01:16Mel Robbins:No, I... This is your life.

1:01:18Bill Burnett:I mean, come on.

1:01:19Mel Robbins:You guys are so good.

1:01:21Bill Burnett:Oh, man. You can do this for a living. You're actually pretty good at that. I mean, I think you ought to seriously consider doing this. Yeah. This was great.

1:01:32Mel Robbins:Oh, and one more thing. And no, this is not a blooper. This is the legal language. You know what the lawyers write and what I need to read to you. This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. I'm just your friend. I am not a licensed therapist. And this podcast is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, professional coach, psychotherapist, or other qualified professional. Got it? Good. I'll see you in the next episode.

1:02:14Mel Robbins:This segment is sponsored by Microsoft Copilot. So I've been away from home on a work trip for almost a week. And while I was gone, I'm trying to juggle work and meetings and exercising and eating right and keeping tabs on everybody in the family all while living out of my suitcase. It's been a lot. And you want to know the first thing I did when I walked through my front door? First, I kissed my husband, Chris. Then I said hi to our dogs. I picked up the cat and petted him for a minute. And then I plunked down in my favorite chair. And immediately I started to think about all the stuff I needed to get done.

1:02:49Mel Robbins:What is wrong with me? My inbox was full of messages that I'd been meaning to answer for weeks. I still had to book flights to go out to Los Angeles to see our daughter. Our fridge looked like a wasteland. Next thing I know, I'm out of that chair, feeling overwhelmed, wondering where to begin. I needed help. I grabbed my phone and I opened up Microsoft Copilot. I think of Copilot as my little AI companion because it helps me take care of the million things that are on my mind so that I can be more present. And it helps me do it in so much less time. But I also love Copilot because it's so simple to use.

1:03:27Mel Robbins:All you do is open it up and ask it a question. You give it a problem to solve. And within seconds, it's working with you to come up with answers that work for you and your life. For example, that flight to Los Angeles that I have to book. Do you know how long I had been thinking about that? Okay, should I go? Here's what I did. I just gave Copilot the non-negotiables. Okay, here's the dates. Here's the airports. And I asked it to find the best deals. Then I said, okay, now that you have the best deals, could you explain all the trade-offs of picking one over the other? This was all done in a couple minutes.

1:04:00Mel Robbins:Flight booked. Then I had co-pilot help me reply to a work email. I knew the gist of what I wanted my response to be. And here's what I love about it. I was unloading the dishwasher as I was telling at how I wanted to come across to be professional and firm, but in a kind tone. A few seconds later, I had a draft. I read it. I made a few adjustments. And before I knew it, inbox cleared. And how about that sad empty fridge? I opened up the door. I snapped a photo. And Copilot built a simple meal plan and grocery list for the week. It gave me new recipes. It told me exactly what ingredients I needed to buy at the store and gave me cooking instructions.

1:04:43Mel Robbins:I didn't have to carry all this stuff around with me anymore in my head, draining my energy because co-pilot had my back. I felt the tension lift from my shoulders. And I realized why. The overwhelm that you and I feel, it doesn't come from doing all the things that we need to do. It comes from carrying those things around in our heads. The planning, the coordinating, the remembering, the checking back, the thinking about it, the strategizing, the mental to-do list, it never shuts off. There's a term for that in science. It's called cognitive load. There's a lot of research around this, but I'm going to tell you what researchers in China found not too long ago.

1:05:23Mel Robbins:And this research was published in the Journal of Humanities, Arts, and Social Science. When you're trying to keep too many things in your head, your thinking gets slower, your emotions get louder, everything starts to feel heavier than it really is. Your brain has a limited amount of mental bandwidth. It can only hold so much at one time. So when you've got a million open tabs in your head, your brain isn't just stressed, it's over capacity. That's why even the tiniest things start to feel huge because it's not the fridge, it's not even the work email. It's the fact that you and I carry all the planning and decision-making for these things around in your head all day long.

1:06:02Mel Robbins:You're getting up every day. You're taking care of yourself. You're taking care of your family. You're caring for people. You're doing the best to take care of your health. You're trying to be all these things. You're doing so much, but it's time to stop doing it all alone. You have to get this out of your head. That could mean doing what I call a brain dump. Just jot all these mental drains on a sheet of paper so you don't have to hold onto them. Or talking them out with a close friend. Or what it's meant for me more and more is I open up Copilot. And what I've found is Copilot is just like the perfect partner.

1:06:33Mel Robbins:It helps you stop all those little mental drains and leaves you feeling empowered. See, when I sit down with Chris for dinner tonight, I'm not going to be replaying everything I need to get done because Copilot helped me figure it all out. I can be present in a moment that really matters to me. And there's nothing better than that. Thanks, Copilot. If you want to try it for yourself, visit Microsoft.com backslash Mel Robbins to download the Copilot app. Get started with Copilot today for free and see how handing off all the small stuff gives you more energy and more time to be present for the moments that matter.

1:07:11Mel Robbins:That's microsoft.com backslash Mel Robbins.