1010. I Have No Idea What I Want to Do With My Life

What is your purpose in life? Boy, that's a heavy question, right? I mean, if, if y- if you wanna hear forks hit the plate, just ask somebody in conversation, "What's your purpose in life?" And most people are gonna stumble through it. The reason why they stumble through it is because, truthfully, most of us don't know. And if you don't know, that's okay. That's like 99% of us don't know what our purpose is Look, I'm the poster child for going damn near his whole life not knowing what my purpose was. And I'm 52, about to be 53, and I can tell you my purpose is just now formulated. And I w- I wanna say fully formulated, but it's, it's, it's pretty bookend. I know the alpha and the, the omega to it. Now, how it goes, where it goes, hey, I'm flexible, and I'm open to how it, how it actually goes I do believe this, your purpose isn't found, it's revealed. It's not just gonna fall into your lap. It's going to be revealed through action And the action that you take is gonna be predicated based on what you don't want. See, you may be at a point in life, and I… Dude, I don't care what age you are. You could be 18 or you could be 68, and you may not know what the answer is yet. That's okay. You still have plenty of time. So you may not know what you want in life, but I bet you know what you don't want in life. So head opposite of what you don't want in life. You may be looking at your situation right now in life and be like, "I don't like the, where I'm at right now." Okay, so you know what you don't want. Head opposite of that toward what you do want, and it will reveal itself through action what really matters, what piques your curiosity and your creativity, what makes you go down the rabbit hole, what could you talk about for hours and just get lost in. It's gonna come together. But it's not gonna come together sitting there. You've gotta take action. And this makes me think of Jimmy Iovine. Jimmy Iovine is the co-founder of Beats, Beats by Dre, the headphones that they sold for billions of dollars to, uh, Apple. And Jimmy Iovine said, , "I, I didn't choose to become a producer in the record industry." He said, "I didn't really know what I wanted, but I knew what I didn't want, and that was to be working on the docks like my father as a longshoreman." So he just started trying things and stumbled into the record business and had an aptitude toward it, and he just perfected his skills. Now, he bumbled and stumbled along the way so head opposite of what you don't want,"I, look, I don't want this life." Okay? So work away from that. And don't worry about trying to stick the landing the first try. It may take three tries. It may take 30 tries. It may take 70 tries. It doesn't matter. It's an iteration. So just keep heading opposite of what you don't want in life, and along the way, you're gonna, you're gonna hit some dead-end jobs. Dead-end jobs give you essential skills later in life. You don't realize it then. So you may be in a dead-end job. The job may end, but the skills transfer forever, and there are skills that I worked in dead-end jobs in the past, waiting tables, working in surveillance at a casino, even my sports background. You know, I, I wasn't gonna be a professional athlete but the ability to be able to handle pressure and think clearly in those last few seconds of a game have transferred into sales. The ability to read body language from surveillance, because we didn't have sound. We had to watch for irregularities in body language. That transferred into sales. Waiting tables. When a table stiffs you, you got a whole table full of people with crushed up crackers ground into the carpet, and they leave you a dollar tip, and it was a 15 top. But you gotta be able to just let go of that and go on to the next table because it's a new experience. Totally transfers over to sales. See, all of those jobs, Athlete, surveillance, waiter, all those jobs ended, but I still use those skills today And you have to take stock in that because there are skills that you could be using right now that you haven't even considered because you thought they were a part of your old job. No, skills transfer forever. That's why I tell salespeople," look, if you don't make it in sales, the skills that you learn in sales, they're transferable. They can transfer into any other profession that you wanna do." Try things. Take your approach to this very seriously, but be playful with it too. Don't take the end result so serious. Don't take it like it's just, this has gotta be the gold watch, I retire here for the rest of my life kinda moment. It's, it's not necessarily gonna be that way for you Like for me I got into sales. I didn't choose sales, I stumbled in it, and it was born out of frustration, and that's where your purpose will become revealed, is either out of your frustration or your pain. For me, it was in my frustration. I was working at a casino in surveillance, and I started thinking, I'm like,"There's gotta be more to life than this." It's just, just not what I wanted to do. But I also took stock in where I was. I didn't have a college degree. I dropped out 18 hours before graduating, even though I had a full scholarship. I just gaffed that up, man I didn't take care of that. I could have went back to school. I just didn't want to. So I was like, "What can I do that I can make good money at that doesn't require a college degree?" I tried sales. 28 years later, I'm still trying sales. I got into sales and had no idea I was gonna love it the way that I do. I sell cars. I don't have a passion for cars. I love the art and the psychology of sales. I love being able to tell a story based on my customer's needs and talking to them, being able to create a story that's beneficial for them. That's the art form of it. And then I love the psychology part, where they're coming in with natural resistance, but we work together to get a solution. I love that See, that's what I'm talking about for you Now, I didn't know that 19 years later I was gonna need those skills more than ever. I got into sales in 1998. I hit rock bottom in 2017, and when I was at rock bottom, I was like, man, why is it I do so well in sales, I have a great professional life, but my personal life is terrible? What made me successful in sales Communication you have to be able to communicate and understand one another. Curiosity. Um, I stay curious when I'm working with people. I'm curious about my product. I'm curious about the person I'm talking to and what's going on in their life. You gotta be creative 'cause you don't always have the right vehicles in stock, You gotta, you gotta tap around a little bit and see, like, what are must-haves and what do they not necessarily have to have. So you gotta be creative and give them other options to consider when they shut you down and they reject you, that you actually pull in other ways of looking at it. That's, that's creativity. And then you gotta be a continuous learner. You gotta constantly be learning because the technology is changing, the products are changing, the economy is changing, buyer habits change. And then confrontation. I mean, you gotta, you gotta be able to confront. Customers are conditioned to tell you no. You're in a rejection-based business, so you've gotta get real familiar with hearing no and being able to work past that, because if you back off at no, you're, you're gonna end up out of the business. And so I figured out, those five skills that made me successful in sales are the same five skills that I can be successful in life, and I used those skills to get myself out of the ditch again. This is why when I started the podcast in 2017, I called it The Sales Life, because the skills that you learn in sales are the same skills that you need in life. Selling is a life skill see, it took 19 years for that to bubble up, Now that I'm talking this out, I got into sales out of frustration. I saved my life out of pain. Your purpose is revealed out of your frustration and your pain, and mine were 19 years apart So with that, the five skills, I said, "What are the three problems salespeople always face?" Adversity. Things happen. I mean, you gotta be able to recover. Uncertainty. I mean, every day, man, we're walking into uncertainty as salespeople. And complacency. You have a great month, you tend to let up. You have the don't wants. Well, those are the same three problems that we all face in life. And then probably about a year ago, okay, took this long, about a year ago, I said, "Man, just sometimes I feel kinda hollow in certain areas of my life." Like, what is a full-bodied life? Well, you gotta have faith. You gotta have family, which is also relationships. You gotta have fitness, and that's physical fitness and emotional, mental fitness. You gotta take care of your finances. I've wrecked my credit, and so I had to build it back and get it great again. And then fulfillment. Both creative fulfillment, like side projects that you do away from work, and then professional fulfillment, continuously educating yourself and moving up and getting proficient, even if you don't wanna move up, like you're just highly skilled, highly valuable. So, see, this is what I'm talking about, this is how my purpose was revealed Now, if I would've known this going into it and said, "Hey, it's gonna take you 19 to 20 years, 27 if you add it all together, for you to find your purpose," I'd been like, "Well, that's garbage." But I didn't, I didn't know. And so sometimes it's that naiveness of not knowing and not putting some sort of rigid timeline on it, but also staying open and curious and asking yourself questions. I remember the day I was running down the road. I remember which road I was running down when I came across the five skills. I think they started off as, like, seven skills, and I pared them down. I said, "It's really five," because the other two, I think it was coaching and consistency, those really fold into the other five anyway. And so I pared it down after kinda playing this through. But see, those things got revealed to me. And so you have to just be open to it. Let it just, let it just come to you, and don't get in this condemnation mode of, like, you missed the bus. I'm living proof that you haven't. It, it… Some people know their purpose at age five. Other people, like me and you, it takes us a lot longer. It maybe take decades. But when that is It's a beautiful thing. It's a freeing thing because then you begin to know what you're rising for. You know why you're here and what your aptitude and your talent and then your skill set that you continuously work on You become a contributor into the world and you contribute your special gift to life, to others. Sometimes it's on a microphone. Other times it may be in a painting. Sometimes it may be in a blog. Sometimes it may just be local who knows? You'll find that. But you're not gonna find it out of a book. Books will pique your curiosity and make you begin to ask questions about yourself, and they should, but the answers come through taking action. And you start in heading the opposite direction of what you don't want. If you don't like where you are right now and you don't like your situation, okay, there are other directions. There's not just south in life. There's due north, there's northeast, there's northwest. There's east, there's west. There's all kind of different directions And it's your trip. Now you just need to go on it. All right, let's get out of here. Keep it simple. Keep it moving. Never settle. Stay tough. Peace