Hey, everyone, welcome back to you on purpose. The number one health podcast in the world, thanks to each and every single one of you that come back to listen, learn and grow.

Now, how many of you have felt a bit of pressure towards the start of this year already? Maybe you've been thinking. I thought he was going to be a fresh new start, but it feels like the same year. It says 20, 21 on the calendar, but it feels like twenty twenty. And how many of you have been struggling to find your purpose? Maybe you're worried you're on the wrong path. How many of you look around at the success to the satisfaction of others and feel like you're falling behind because you just know experiencing that for yourself and you're not sure how to get there?

If so, then today's episodes for you. And also you're totally not alone. So many of you asked me questions about figuring out your purpose or how to know if you're on the right path. So, again, this is for you. I'm so excited about what I'm going to be sharing with you today, because it's going to help take a lot of pressure off you. It's going to help ease some of the exhaustion, anxiety and burnout you may be feeling over trying to figure out how to find your passion and whether you're on track with your career.

So after all that buildup, let's get going. Let's dive in. I want to start with a story.

It's about a guy named Rich Rich attended Stanford University, which you probably know is a prestigious and competitive school. When Rich was there, most of his friends would spend hours every night studying at the campus library. Rich says the curriculum was so demanding they'd be up there for around four to six hours at a time. Now Rich had a friend named Bob. Bob was like the poster person for focus. Every night he would cram his backpack with soda and plant himself at one of the desks and just work and work.

Probably not surprisingly, Bob went on to graduate with top honors and then he went on to Stanford Law and became a successful corporate lawyer. Rich? Well, let's just say he was not born. He tried. He went to the library and put in the hours, but he struggled to focus. He'd look over and watch Bob scribble page after page of notes. But when he turned to his own work, he had trouble sticking with it for more than fifteen minutes at a time.

Eventually he'd wander over to the periodical section and pick up a copy of Sports Illustrated magazine and read it cover to cover, which did OK at Stanford. He got mostly BS after school. He spent a short time as an editorial assistant at a sports magazine, then worked as a security guard, then as a dishwasher. Compared to Bob, most people would say Rich failed, that he had wasted his Stanford education. Maybe you're thinking the same thing, but let's fast forward 12 years.

At that point, Rich was working as a technical copywriter and he had a family and an OK salary. One day, his friend Tony saw Rich creating a newsletter on his desktop computer. Tony was ambitious and had been looking for a great idea that would land him fame and fortune. He asked Rich if Rich could design a magazine for him. Tony's idea was to create Silicon Valley's first business magazine. He took Rich's initial designs to a venture capitalist who funded the idea and they were rolling.

But then they were faced with the challenge how to turn their idea into a magazine people would actually want to read. And to do that, Rich opened his mental file cabinet and turned his brain all the way back to those issues of Sports Illustrated. He had read at Stanford. And I mean it it was a lot of Sports Illustrated and Rich hadn't just read them. He devoured them. You see all that time with the library, which wasn't just procrastinating, it was actually learning.

He was observing and digesting in all of the elements of what made a great, compelling magazine. Only he didn't know that at the time. It was only later when he was called on to create a great, compelling magazine, that he looked back on that experience and realized how much he learned. As Rich later wrote those hours reading Sports Illustrated might have wrecked my grades, but Curiosity made my career. By the way the rich have been talking about is Rich Karlgaard, the publisher of Forbes magazine and author of the book Late Bloomers The Power of Patience in a World Obsessed with Early Achievement.

If you're feeling pressure to hurry up and find your passion or to find the one thing that drives you and to double down on it as fast as possible, you're not alone. And sometimes this pressure has tragic consequences. At Gunn High School in Palo Alto, which is where Stanford is located in the 2014 2015 school year, 42 gun students had been hospitalized or treated for suicidal thoughts. And this is a new, as Karlgaard writes in late bloomers for the last 50 years, rates of anxiety and depression among young people in the U.S. have been on the rise.

A 2014 survey from the World Health Organization identified depression as the top cause of illness and disability among adolescents. Now, this data is from six or seven years ago, and that means that a number of you adolescents, then, even if you're a bit older, I bet those figures don't exactly surprise you. The pressure to find that one thing you're great at and to do it fast is something most of us feel. It's not wrong to want to find your purpose.

It's to want to discover with that speed and pace. Think about it. What do we ask kids all the time? What do you want to be when you grow up? We're already being at that age told that we have to pick just one thing and pick it soon. And until we find that thing, we're failing. We're falling behind. But guess what? That's not true. Check out this study. An economist looked at the higher education systems in Scotland and England.

In England, you've got to decide in your teens what you want to specialize in so that you can apply to university specifically for that. Scotland has a similar base level education system, except that you don't have to pick a specialization or a major soorley. You can take a few extra years to try out and sample different areas of study. That means that in Scotland, students potentially get fewer years of focused, specialised study. So who performed better? The early specialise is right.

That's what logic would tell us. But no, at least not in the long term. Indeed, those who had to pick a specialised area of study earlier were off to a faster start and experienced greater early career success, including financial success. But the catch was that late specialties were better at something called match quality. That's how well the work we do matches the work we want to do. When we have better match quality, we're more motivated and so we engage more deeply and are more successful as a result.

And that's what the study showed. Those who waited longer to choose their area chose better, and after about an average of six years, they caught up with early specialises in terms of financial earnings and then passed them. And they also stayed in those roles longer than early specialises. Interestingly, we're seeing this now with the trend of millennials choosing to get married later. They're still dating and living together, but getting married later. According to anthropologist Helen Fisher, that creates better match quality.

Only this time, instead of between you and a job, it's between you and a partner. Later, marriages are less likely to end in divorce. And in addition to match quality, there's a concept called sampling. That's what you're doing when you date, right? You're doing sampling, finding out what qualities are most important to you and discovering who and how you act in relationships that typically results in better match quality. And the same thing is true for careers.

But first, here's the big takeaway I want you to get today. If you're not sure what your passion is, if you're not sure what your purpose is, if you think you may have two passions or twelve passions, or if you think your purpose may change over time, good. Please hear this by trying different things or pursuing multiple paths. You are not failing. You are sampling, you're not falling behind your learning and you are not off the path.

Your path just doesn't travel in a straight line. And that's a good thing. It's not necessarily better than specializing early, but both are totally fine. Now, I can relate to this because I spend my whole 20s in one sense sampling. I started off in business. I lived as a monk for three years, which of course is formed such a foundation for the rest of my life. I then went on to work back in management consulting, strategy consulting, digital strategy.

I then went into working as a senior host and producer at Huff Post. I then moved into the world I'm in today. I got trained and qualified as a life coach and a purpose coach and a relationship coach and a meditation coach. And so I've sampled so much of my 20s and my 30s have become a real place of feeling real focused and purpose. But if you spoke to me in my 20s, I was simply sampling and it looked like I was failing.

My friends were making more money than me. My friends were more in in long term relationships. My friends were getting mortgages on homes. But it's different now I'm addressing this because I have a program called Live Your Passion, Build an Income, where I help you discover this, and I've created a really healthy program in which to help you along your journey. And that's what I'm trying to release. The pressure off from you is that your purpose will change.

It will evolve that you don't have to feel the speed of having to find it now, but you can start the process. That's how I want you to approach it. One of the reasons why we feel pressure is the people we put a spotlight on. If you take someone like Mark Zuckerberg, who started Facebook while still at university, was one of the richest people in the world at age 30, or Katrina Lake, who is the youngest woman ever to take a company public.

Now, Mark Zuckerberg is the exception, not the rule, as it turns out. According to research out of the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, among the fastest growing tech companies, the average age of the founders was 45 at the time. The founding plus a 40 year old is more than twice as likely to have a startup be a success as someone who's 25. And when it comes to Katrina Lake, she was successful as a young entrepreneur.

But that's not the whole story. She initially went to school intending to study premed when she found that life at a hospital wasn't for her. She switched to economics because she loved data. After school, she wasn't sure what to do. So she took a job as a consultant at a practice where she became interested in the ways that technology might shape the retail world. From there, she went to work at a venture capital firm, then on to business school.

And it was there after multiple career turns that she got the idea for Stitch Fix, which uses a combination of complex data analysis and actual human personal shoppers to send clothing pics directly to customers like created the retail experience of the future. And she did it by combining information and ideas she gained during years of sampling. There's a view out there that the world is kind of fixed, it's like a pre written show, a scripted show, and we all have to discover our part in it as soon as possible.

The reality is that life is more like improv. We actually create and shape our experience as we live it. We talk about discovering ourselves and our passion, and that's not totally off base. But the full picture is that a satisfied, successful life is also about making ourselves, about exposing ourselves to new and different things and seeing what captures our imagination or our focus. But how do we do that today? I'm going to share with you two tactics to develop your range, whether you're already in a career you love or you've been in a long term career you definitely don't love and you're still searching for your passion and your purpose.

The first thing we need to do is try and reprogram our thinking about achievement and what our career path is supposed to look like. That's no small task. I know, but we can do it. As David Epstein writes, most specialist parts look more like a straight line from point A to point B, whereas generalist parts tend to be squiggly. Maybe they have a few loops and curves and travel from point A to point Z, which stops at many points in between.

But those multiple stops weren't diversions and they definitely weren't failures. They were part of learning and sampling at each of those stops, generally learned or did something that broaden their thinking or reasoning and their ability to work across disciplines where they realized it or not. So where we can start with all of this is by stopping comparing ourselves with others. Perhaps one or more of your friends are early specialists and you're still searching. Great. But don't confuse efficiency with effectiveness.

And as David Epstein and Rich Karlgaard report, lots of people who experience early success either end up switching careers later because they're not fully satisfied or because they've gone as far as they are happy going in their current career. Many of them even take a step or a few steps back to start over in another area. The Gallup organization reports that nearly 70 percent of us are disengaged at work. The outside world may see us as successful, but we're not fulfilled.

So instead of scrutinizing other's success and comparing how you measure up, focus on your own experience and what you're learning, the key to that is to make your experiences meaningful. Meaning equals learning and learning equals value. Let me repeat that again and write this down. Meaning equals learning and learning equals value.

The first strategy to create range in your life is to shift your mindset about sampling and to do it you're going to write down three jobs you've had or activities you've done that you don't think apply to your current or desired profession.

Maybe it's a hobby like reading or woodworking or a posh job, like waiting tables list out three of these things now for each list, one skill or piece of information you learned from that hobby or interest or that job that could be broadly applied. So I'll give you an example. One of my first ever jobs was work experience at an organization called the Business Design Center in London. It was an advertising, marketing and events company. And it was the first time I learned how to cold call.

It was an incredible experience. I was about 16 years old. I remember having to pick up the phone to executives, pick up the phone to seasoned business people and explain to them what we were doing. I got such amazing training and what it really gave me was the confidence to reach out to people I didn't know. Right now, maybe waiting tables help you learn to interact with all kinds of people more effectively or helped you learn more about human behavior.

Maybe reading has helped improve your focus. Maybe woodworking helped you learn how to solve problems creatively or it's helped you develop patience. Those are all valuable skills and qualities that I could see being really useful. So again, three hobbies, interests or jobs. And one thing you learned from each. Another job that I had earlier on in life was working at Morison's. Morison's is a grocery store like Wal-Mart or Trader Joe's. And one of the things that really helped me with was being able to remember where things were and compartmentalize things when people would ask for bread.

I knew it was an aisle 12 when people would ask for cheese and use aisle six or whatever it may be. So I was so aware of where things were and it really helped me get organized and systematic in my memory. This is going to get you reflecting on all the broad skills. You may not realize you've developed or started to develop and start to reprogram how you assign value to different experiences. What do you interpret as meaningful and useful?

Strategy number two for building your range is also simple. It's one word sample and my word for sampling is experiment and keep sampling and keep experimenting, trying new things. But for this purpose to expand your range, I don't just want you to try any new things like coloring your hair orange. I want you to try something you're generally interested in. Try something you're curious about.

It can be learning a skill, learning, knitting or how to play the guitar. But I'm going to give you a real framework for how to do this every month. Take one weekend that is dedicated to trying something you're interested in. You may enroll for an online course. You may try a Zune class may be in your area. You're able to go to a physical class, allow yourself to go and experience something with a coach, an expert, a teacher, a community, a group, a guide.

Do one of this every month and you will have tried and sampled twelve things in 2000 and twenty one now. You may say, gee, I actually have more time for this. I'm going to sample every other weekend or I'm going to sample every weekend. That's what I've tried to do for so many years, where I'll adopt a new skill or a new hobby by sampling, experimenting with the weekends that I have available. If you allow yourself to experiment every month with a new thing that you're fascinated by, a new thing that you're interested in, and you're going to experience it with a coach, I'll give you an example.

Last year I really wanted to work on my fitness, and so I was trying to find what worked for me. I went on hikes, I went on runs. I tried to work with a personal trainer. I did online classes. I worked with equipment in my home. And then I discovered tennis and I realized tennis has become my favorite way to exercise. But it was through sampling and experimenting that I recognized that I had no clue that tennis was going to be the way that I like to exercise.

And that's the point that you don't know yet, but you have to sample in a systematic, strategic way. So you take one weekend and the Saturday and Sunday or even just the Saturday are dedicated to this new activity. Now, what are you looking out for when you do this new activity? The first thing that you're looking at is how much enjoyment and how much happiness you get from doing this activity. The second thing you're looking at, do you have a natural skill set?

Can you pick this up? Is this something that you could actually do? And of course, with tennis, I'm not trying to play at Wimbledon. I don't have those skills. But if you're talking about finding your passion, you wanted to be something that you're determined to get good at, right? That's what you're looking for. The key is, are you determined to become a pro at this thing that you're really excited about? At one point in my life, I was very new to social media.

I didn't know anything about social media. And I spent hours on weekends studying social media and understanding how it works. Today, I'm considered an expert in the field, but it wasn't always that way. So you have to give it that time and the energy and focus to really try and build it up. Now, after you've done that sampling, you're going to do this, you're going to take your list of all the things you've sampled, but you're going to choose one, just one, because I know most of you are busy and you want to be able to explore this tropical hobby in a meaningful way.

So choose one and spend at least 30 minutes per week for the next month doing it. That's two hours over the month. Then at the end of the month, ask yourself, am I interested enough in this that I want to explore it more? And if so, spend 30 minutes per week for the next month exploring it and ask yourself that question again. Am I still interested enough to keep going? Maybe you are. Or maybe you've gone as far as you want to, in which case you can switch to something else on your list.

Or maybe you've developed a new curiosity and you can switch to that. But at each stage before switching, you want to reflect on what you've learned to go back to tactic number one and write down at least one broad idea or skill or concept you learned in your exploration. So when I tell you to take a weekend in a month and you try it out, if that becomes your thing, you don't have to do a new thing. Every month you take that, you do 30 minutes per month, then you do 30 minutes for a week.

And at one point you start doing 30 minutes per day.

I have a friend who always wanted to learn Arabic. No particular reason for that. She's just always been curious to try it. But she was so busy with work and then raising young kids, it just never happened. Then Duolingo announced it was adding Arabic and she thought, hey, I can find 10 to 15 minutes a day. And she did that by cutting out the time she spent scrolling on social media. Instead, when she had a few minutes, she opened Duolingo.

Recently, she hit 500 days in a row of Arabic lessons and she couldn't be happier. Learning Arabic doesn't have an immediate payoff in her life in terms of career or finances, but it gives us something that's in some ways more important. She's doing something just for herself, just for the joy of it. And you know what? That's causing her to enjoy other things in her life more as well. Plus, she's growing up brain literally. That's another huge benefit of sampling.

We're literally creating new neural pathways in our brains and that improves our brains. Overall cognitive health.

If you're not sure what to pursue or what you're interested in, go to library. It may be a virtual library and you start looking around until something catches your eye or go to a bookstore, go on Amazon and just look at some books and see which areas pique your interest.

Or go to a site like Master Class, where they have loads of instructors and topics and see if anything catches your attention or think back to something you used to do that you enjoyed and just don't make time for now. Like one of my friends used to play the cello and just picked it up again after about a 25 year break. The point is that you do not need to know where any of these things are going to lead. And I don't want you to fall into a trap of thinking that your curiosity has to be monetized, though the reality is that with exploration, this may even start shaping your future.

So those two to three tactics are not only about broadening your horizons and expanding your skills, but also loving and embracing who you are right now and the path you've traveled to this point, no matter how indirect and looped and curved it may be, you are creating a masterpiece out of your life. Today, I've wanted to share with you the statistics and data approach to a wide range is so important from this incredible book that I've been sharing from. It's really important to realize this.

And I keep sharing science and insights and ideas with you because I want to show you that these aren't just ideas and concepts. These are proven when you're looking at human behavior, when you're looking at our lives and you're looking at the way we function now.

I'd love to hear what you come up with, what skills, your abilities did you realize you learned. So tag me on Instagram at Jayshree, makes you leave a review. It makes a huge difference. We have over fourteen thousand five star reviews. I'd love you to leave one as well. And I can't wait to see you again next week.

Thank you, everyone. Hey, guys, this is Jay again, just a few more quick things before you leave. I know we try to focus on the good every day, and I want to make that easier for you. Would you like to get a short email from me every week that gives you an extra dose of positivity? Weekly Wisdom is my newsletter. Write down whatever's on my mind that I think may uplift your week. Basically little bits of goodness that are going to improve your well-being.

The short newsletter is all about growth and sending positivity straight to your inbox. Read it with a cup of tea forwarded to a friend and let these words brighten your day to sign up. Just go to getI, dot me and drop your email in the pop up. If you have trouble finding it, just scroll to the very bottom of the page and you'll see the sign up. Thank you so much and I hope you enjoy my weekly wisdom newsletter.

This podcast was produced by Dust Light Productions, our executive producer from Duss lt is Meesha Yousef. Our senior producer is Juleanna Bradley. Our associate producer is Jacqueline Castillo. Valentino Rivera is our engineer. Our music is from Blue Dot Sessions and special thanks to Rachel Garcia, the dust like development and operations coordinator.