Finding Your Passion & Purpose In Life

Without a purpose or passion in life, we often live lives of "quiet desperation." But how do we find our purpose in life, and when we find our joy, how will this help me to live a happier life? Explore the beauty and charm in finding our passion in life.

Transcript

Welcome to the Happiness Podcast.

I'm Dr.

Robert Puff.

Recently I was watching a documentary on Rembrandt.

I don't know if you like art,

But Rembrandt is one of my favorite artists.

Because I've liked him for so long,

I knew a lot about his life,

But I learned something new in this video.

He's from the Netherlands,

And he became one of the greatest artists of all time.

Even in his lifetime,

He was esteemed for being an incredible artist.

But,

Later in his life,

He had some very serious tragedies.

First,

He went bankrupt and lost everything that he'd accumulated over the years.

Then,

His wife,

Who he painted often,

Died.

And finally,

His son,

His only son who made it to adulthood,

Died before he did.

And as you can imagine,

It was incredibly tragic and upsetting to him.

So what did he do?

I think many,

If not most of us,

When severe,

Life-altering tragedies come,

Would give up.

We'd say,

We're done.

I can't do this anymore.

We'd find ways to numb ourselves,

And then just wait to die.

Particularly when it's towards the end of our life already.

We would just give up.

But what did Rembrandt do?

He did not do this.

Do you know what he did?

He kept painting.

He created beautiful pieces of art that we all now get to enjoy.

And he kept doing it until the day he died.

He had his passion.

His passion was to create beautiful pieces of art.

And he did it,

Not even knowing if he'd be remembered,

Or people would even like his work in the future.

But that was his passion.

Much of it drove him.

And he kept doing it until he took his last breath.

And did you know,

Throughout history,

There are so many examples of this.

Of people that have passions,

And they do it until they take their last breath.

Recently I talked about Marcel Proust,

Who wrote In Search of Lost Time.

And he wrote his book,

His magnum opus,

Which is considered one of the greatest novels that ever was written,

Though at the time wasn't even finished.

But he finished it from his bed as he was slowly dying.

Now of course there are countless,

And I do mean countless,

People that have their passion too,

That we don't know about.

This isn't about being famous,

About being remembered.

This today I want to talk about is finding our passion,

So that when we do take our last breath,

We'll say,

That was a good life.

Because I think without some sort of passion,

Without something that drives us,

That wakes us up in the morning and says,

I'm going to do this.

That we don't have as good as lives.

And we're here,

I believe,

Listening to this podcast,

To find a way to have a good life.

And today we're going to talk about how to do that,

By finding our passion and our purpose in life.

Because when we don't have some form of passion,

Some sort of purpose in life,

We just wander through life.

And now,

Because of the incredible influence of external factors,

Like the media,

That we follow that route,

Whichever way it takes us,

We're not purposefully choosing which way to live our lives.

We're letting the externals of life dictate how we live.

And those dictates aren't there to make us happy.

They're often there to keep us entertained,

So that we'll keep coming back and buy products.

It really is often that.

And it doesn't leave us happier.

It often leaves us depressed.

I mean,

Don't we all know people who finally made it to retirement?

Or maybe because of health reasons,

They just can't work anymore.

So what do some of them do?

They stay home and they watch shows all day long,

Or perhaps even the news.

And you know what comes from that?

Is a numbness,

Is a depression that can come from what we watch,

What we expose ourselves to.

If we watch the news,

We can get pretty riled up about what's happening in the world that we have very little influence over.

And yet we can spend hours,

Hours every day,

Exposing ourselves to these very negative,

Caustic images and stories.

And that leads us down a path of despair.

And with despair,

We turn towards addictions,

Because we just can't stand that depressiveness anymore.

So we try to numb it through substances,

Through food,

Through so many different forms of addictions.

And then that leads us down a deeper,

Darker place.

But I need to stop,

Because I don't want us to see a picture that's despairing.

This is a happiness podcast.

This is about hope.

And we can have beautiful lives.

I say that so often.

But it doesn't come by accident.

It comes by effort,

By doing very specific things.

And one of those things is finding our passion and purpose in life.

So for the remainder of this podcast,

I want to talk about how we do that.

And the first thing we have to do is find our passion,

Our passions in life.

So let's talk about how do we find ours?

Because without purpose,

Without passion in life,

We will go down a path that others will be leading us down.

And we won't be hearing our voice singing throughout the day.

We'll be hearing the thoughts and the control of others in our head.

But we're here to have beautiful lives.

So we may be asking,

Dr.

Puff,

How do I find my passion?

The first thing I want to say is it doesn't have to be one thing throughout our lives.

It can change.

It can morph.

We may,

When we're younger,

Have one passion.

And when we get older,

Change to something completely different.

Or we may have multiple passions at the same time.

Several things that we do throughout the day that we're very excited about.

But they're different things.

But right now,

I want to explore how do we find our purpose and passion in life?

Well,

What do we typically do with our kids when they're younger?

We don't know what they like.

We don't know their passions.

So you know what we do if we're a good parent?

We sign them up for a variety of activities that they can try,

They can explore,

They can do.

And perhaps they get into chess.

Perhaps they dive into music.

Perhaps they really like a sport.

And because they get to try different things,

They discover,

Oh,

I really like that.

That creates meaning.

That creates purpose for me.

I'm going to get into that.

But if they hadn't been exposed to it,

They wouldn't know.

So if right now you say,

Dr.

Buff,

I don't know what my passion is,

Then your job is to try different things.

In a sense,

You're going to be a good parent to yourself.

You're going to sign yourself up for things and check things out.

See if you like that.

See if you could get excited about it.

Try a variety of things.

And through that experimentation,

You'll find that,

Oh,

I kind of like this.

Maybe I want to learn more about it.

Maybe I want to explore it more.

And every once in a while,

You'll say,

Oh,

I really like this.

This I could sink my teeth into and get excited about.

And then you spend more energy towards it.

Perhaps,

Like I said,

Even two or three things.

But having that sense of purpose and that sense of passion in life has to come through exploration.

If you don't spend time exploring,

You're not going to know what it is.

I mean,

Like I said,

I think almost all parents get this.

When they have kids,

They're probably going to sign them up for a variety of things.

Or if you're in high school or college right now,

You'd probably take a variety of courses just to see what interests you,

What gets you excited.

And if you get excited about something,

Then when you go off to university,

You can learn more about it and perhaps even make a career out of it.

Or it could become an avocation,

A hobby that you do on the side,

That you're just excited about and enjoy.

But we're not going to find out what that is unless we take the time to explore.

I'm always flummoxed by how parents will spend so much time and energy on helping their kids discover what they like,

But they won't do it themselves.

I mean,

You matter too.

And it's good modeling for the kids to see you excited about something,

Not just attending everything they do,

But they want to see you passionate about something too.

I think that's good modeling,

But I also think that's just good living.

I mean,

If we make all our focus just our kids,

Only the kids will have good lives and the rest of us will struggle.

I mean,

Of course,

A lot of parents don't do this.

A lot of people don't do this,

But it is something to consider.

Why do so many parents put their life on hold for years,

Sometimes decades,

When they're raising their kids?

Can't they do both?

When I was a kid,

My parents signed me up for lots of things,

But my dad actually really enjoyed astronomy.

He found it fascinating and he would talk to me about astronomy even though he didn't have a degree in it.

He shared with me what he knew and we would ask questions about what we thought the universe was like.

And I really felt his excitement and energy so that when I went to university,

I almost got my PhD in astrophysics because I was so passionate about learning about the universe.

His energy,

His passion influenced me.

And that's the other benefit of having a passion.

If we're a parent,

We may positively impact our own children.

I mean,

I think we know that,

But what do they see?

Do they see us just grinding every day,

Doing work to get by?

Or do they see us excited about something,

Passionate about something?

And mind you,

Many of us don't have children.

We may never have children,

But isn't it exciting or just wonderful feeling the energy of someone who is passionate about something?

Recently,

One of my friends who's an author has written a book about something that happened during World War II.

I didn't know much about it,

But I attended her lecture and she was so passionate about it that I got excited about it and asked her all kinds of questions.

And it was just a thrilling talk because I could feel her passion and it excited me.

And you know what could be really exciting about our passions is when we get to share our passions with other people.

I don't know if any of you follow me on Instagram,

But you can find my link in the notes of this podcast,

But I love art.

I truly do.

I have been to museums around the world because I've seen so many different paintings.

I post a new painting that I've seen and talk about it every day on Instagram.

So because I do that,

I've met some really great people who are equally passionate about art as I am.

And we share our stories.

We talk about what we've seen.

We make recommendations to each other.

I mean,

I know if you've ever had a passion in life,

Something you're just truly excited about,

You discover,

Oh,

There's a lot of other people out there that like this too.

And you make friends that way.

You create communities and you just get to be connected with other people and share your passion and your purpose in life with them.

Now you may end up being like me where you end up having a lot of passions.

I won't share all of them with you,

But I have a lot of things that I find pretty exciting and interesting.

So if you're going to find yours,

You have to be an explorer,

Not explore so much of our world,

But explore of you and say,

Okay,

What can I be excited about?

Because usually our passions,

Our purpose in life is good for us.

I mean,

Yeah,

There are some dark things we could get into,

But we know what those are and we're going to stay away from those.

I'm talking about things that bring us joy and perhaps even bring joy to other people.

I mean,

Most of the things that we're passionate about are going to bring us joy,

But also joy to others.

Because as I said,

We'll meet friends or we'll entice others to learn about it.

Or perhaps our purpose will be in helping people.

My parents,

When they got older in life,

Got really involved with helping the homeless in Arizona.

They moved to Arizona and it's hot there in the summer.

So they would go out every day to the homeless,

Helping them,

Making their lives a little bit better.

And they found great joy and purpose in that.

And they did it for years and got great joy and happiness from that.

So if right now we just don't know what that is,

Then we have to become an explorer,

Explorer of our world,

But mostly an explorer of ourself and say,

Okay,

Could I sink my teeth into this?

Could I try this out and learn more about it?

And if it sticks,

If it's something like,

Yeah,

I'm like this,

And I like the people that are into this,

Then we'll get more into it.

But when we don't do that,

I think it leads to a life often of depression.

A lot of people,

When they retire,

If they don't have purpose and if they don't have passion in life,

They get pretty severely depressed.

It's quite a problem here and throughout the world that people retire and now they're depressed.

Let's not let that happen.

Let's find our purpose and passion in life so that we will find that happiness isn't something that eludes us,

But happiness is something that we get to experience each and every day because of our passion,

Because of our purpose.

We will discover that each and every day is a beautiful and wonderful adventure that we get to savor and enjoy every day of our lives.

And when we take that last breath,

We'll say,

That was a good life.

Thank you for joining me on the Happiness Podcast.

Until next time,

Accept what is,

Love what is.

Reviews

Very inspiring and practical advice. Thank you

Great

I loved this so much. I stress myself into finding a purpose but I’m already doing it. I’m engaged in so many activities that I love that I feel I don’t have enough hours to do it all. I also volunteered for years at my local hospice and stopped when my 7 year client passed away. From this talk, I realized that I need to find a new way to serve my community and be passionate about that. That has been the missing piece to feeling truly happy the last 2 years. Thanks for sharing your wisdom.

I have found all your talks valuable.
Pay peace be with you
Robert

Thank you Dr. Puff for a great talk. Filled with inspiration and hope. One of my passions is birding. I love being outdoors. Time is filled with wonder and surprises.

Thank you 🙏

Thank you 🙏

Inspiring, thank you 🙏🏻

Thank you 🙏