On Finding and Living from Purpose

0:05 There are some people that make their work just another thing they have to do, and there are those that make their work something that they want to do. Welcome to Working on Purpose with your host Elise Cortes. In our program, we provide guidance and inspiration from those people who have found deeper meaning and personal connection to their work life. It's beyond nine to five. It's working on purpose. Now Here is your host, Elise Cortes. I'm your host, Elise Cortes, joining you now. Live from Dallas, Texas, which is home base for me. This program is all about helping people more meaningfully and productively connect with their work and equipping leaders to cultivate meaning and purpose in the workplace to elicit passion inspired contribution, innovation, and persevering performance. So I seek out and bring on guests of a particular perspective, experience, or expertise that I think contributes to or expands this conversation. And as a management consultant and social scientist, I draw on the meeting and work and identity research I've been doing over the last fifteen years, as well as from my own experience consulting, speaking and developing workforces across the Globe. I hope you caught the show with us. Last week we were on the air with Rebecca Bales.

1:11 She is a global partner with Lumina Learning, a talent development organization with leading ed solutions and people development through personal, leadership, organizational and sales assessments and programs. As I am a certified Lumina practitioner, and I use these assessments myself and my leadership development and coaching work. Rebecca and I shared several examples of how we each use the assessments in our work to bring together and catalyze team performance. I appreciate diversity and strength and communication and relationships as well as developing leaders' careers. Fun just talking with another colleague about the work that we get to do together. With us this week is Sean Anderson, who is a motivational author, unlimited thinker, and lifetime entrepreneur with the history of inspiring others. He's a six time author with the latest book. That's not the latest book, This is one coming out as well, but one of his latest books is called Amicus one oh one, a story about the pursuit of purpose and overcoming life's chaos. Is also the Human Spark plug behind the extra mile day, the day recognizing the power we have to create positive change when we go the extra mile. We'll be talking today about how we each came upon our own purpose in life and work. You joined us today from Marina del Rey, California, Sean, Welcome back to working on purpose.

2:19 Perfect to be here at least today. How are you? I'm great, I'm with you. How bad could it be? Excellent? You know, I have to first tell our listeners a little submitted about how we met. So some time ago, maybe I think about a year and a half ago now is when we actually cross paths when I first had you on the show, and I absolutely fell in love with your message and your energy and your vision and your franklier just willingness to always want to lift other people up. Not willingness. I think it's that's your purpose and I just have never been able to let that go. And so I reached out to you a few months after that first show and I said, you know, I think you can help me get further along in my life if you would maybe consider being my coach. Do you remember that I do? And that has been now almost a year ago, and you've been with me on my journey and it has been even more splendid and divine because of it. So let's start with a big, fat thank you. Well, how was life going for you these days? It's fantastic And I want to talk a little bit more about that, about the whole purpose here, journey, the journey purpose itself.

3:29 But before we get into that, if we can, I want to share something splendid about you with our listeners that will kind of help give us a context about why purpose can be such a great way to go about living a life and working. And that is you just came back from walking through Italy north to south. Yeah, right, or maybe south to north. People asked me, was it was it east to west or was it north to south? Which way was it? But would you share a little bit about why you do that? And I know you've done this five or six times now. Yes, Actually this is the I had walked from Milan to Rome north to south, and this is actually the sixth country I've now walked across in the last four years. And the reason that I do it at least one, I have a tremendous passion for international travel. Two, I love the day to day spontaneity of just meeting and seeing things that are so unpredictable.

4:20 And three, I do it as major league acts sharpening tools for myself. You know, we go through life and life starts to wear us down. We start to lose our sharpness, We lose our sharpness and passion, We lose our sharpness in purpose. So when you go walk carrying a twenty five plus pound backpack on your back every day, not knowing how far you can go or where you're going to end up, you regain your passion for life and your purpose for living it at your highest levels. I am so glad we started with that. Wow okay so, and I also know that every time you do that, Sean, you get to a new level for yourself. Yes, or at least I get myself back to my best level.

5:00 You know. I we live either our best version of ourself or our second best version, and God help us all if we ever fall down to our third best version of ourself. But you know, it's just doing the right things that get us back to being our best, being, our best in purpose and passion and health and life and relationships and dreams and goals and careers, all of that and so you know that's what I go do. I just I just I just go and re light myself on fire about why I'm here, how lucky I'm be here, and what do I want to do next. So the reason I wanted to have you back on the show again to talk about this, Sean, is that I meet all the time, and I know you do too. Unfortunately, people who literally are wandering like a zombie Monday through Friday, waiting for the weekend to begin so they can actually live, and they're squandering their precious lives. And so of course a big reason that I do the work that I do is because I want to wake up those souls to the beauty of their own lives and certainly the venture that the work can actually be for them. And I was fortunate because I had parents who were entrepreneurs. There are first farmers, and there were restaurant tours, and they taught me a really strong work ethic that became really just a way of living. It's not something I have to do, that was the start of it, right, It's something I get to do.

6:16 And I think that when we can awaken people to how amazing and beautiful their overall lives can be and get them into their purpose. Everybody wins, right, They win because they're much much more fulfilled. They bring that home to their families, so their families win and they're empowered. Their communities win because they cascade and want to do something back. Their organization certainly win, and I think you can make an argument for the cascading out into the communities into their state across the nation. Everybody wins when we're working from purpose and really living our best lives. Absolutely. You know, when we walk into the world and we're happy, it's hard not to share happy everywhere we go.

6:56 When we walk into the world with purpose, it's hard not to share purpose with everywhere we go. When we walk into the world with passion, it's hard not for people to catch it and say, I just want a little bit more of what she's got. And you know, it's up to us. It's up to us to really create that in ourselves. And when we start to let ourselves get too dull, when we work in jobs that we don't like, when we are in relationships that are unedifying, when we're not as healthy as we could be and we're carrying that extra weight that we don't want to carry all of that is taking us away from being our best self. And every time that we take an inch away from being our best self, we take an inch away from sharing our best self with the world. I couldn't agree more absolutely, we were totally in lockstep on that. And another reason again that I wanted to have you on the show is people ask me all the time, and now I've been incorporating into my own leadership programs about how can they find and discover their own purpose, And so that'd be kind of fun for us to share a bit about how we got to our own and say a little bit about what that takes along the way. And the first thing that I want to say about that is that for me and I do I think the experience is different for a lot of different people.

8:01 There's different ways to get into to find your purpose, to discover it. But those whispers from the universe that you keep ignoring, I think for me, those were some of the things that I finally kept paying attention to and kept steering the divining rod in the right direction. And I do consider it for me, Sean, it's been like an unfolding, and it unfolds more and more, and I get bigger and stronger as I continue into my path of purpose. But it's kind of been like I feel like pulling the layers away of protection from that purpose that maybe was there for the longest time, but I kind of stuffed it down or didn't recognize it that's what it was, and didn't treat it with respect that it deserved. What about you?

8:43 What was what was some of your path? You know, I've I've been really blessed to be living my purpose for a while and I just really identified what it was that turned me on what my juice in life was. And my purpose is even in a statement, to empower one million people, power one million people to lead a more passionate, positive, and purposeful existence. So everything that I do, all my big decisions are made looking back at that purpose. All my little decisions are made at looking at my purpose. If I choose whether or not to move forward with the project or not, I just simply I just simply weigh it against my purpose. How does this meet that purpose to empower one million people to lead a more passionate, positive and purposeful existence. And how long has that been with you? On that understanding that that was your purpose? When did that happen for you? It actually became a written purpose. It's been a written purpose now for over twenty years. And you know the words might have been tweaked here or there, but you know, I think to lead a powerful life, you have to know what a powerful life is for you. To lead a passionate life, you have to know what a passionate life means to you. To lead a purposeful life, you have to know what those mean. You know, if you go in and you speak to one hundred people in a room and you say how many of you want to be happy in life? Almost one hundred of them are going to raise their hand. But then we ask what it is that makes you happy and being able to define that specifically what makes you happy? That's the big question. And so when you find what makes you

10:13 happy, it's also going to be tied somewhat to what your purpose is as well. Mm hmmm mmmmm yeah. And when I look at that space, I go into the meaning and fulfillment space. And that's really kind of if I look back on my journey, so much of it was into the inquiry of meaning and then absolutely identity too. For me, that's that's been a lifelong fascination. And so some of the research that I've done around this to make sure that I'm as as on top of this game as I can be is looking at some of those things that delighted us when we were young. So you had that, it sounds like, and those things that give us a mini year fascination and meaning and purpose and identity. Was that for me, and I not let it go, and I don't imagine I'm going to let it go. It's just going to be something I continue to be in inquiry in, you know. For me, I think it was really coming to the realization that life is really hard, and life really can punch you in the gut, and there are a thousand voices around you that keep telling you that you can't do it, that you're you're not good enough, you're not fast enough, you're not attractive enough, you don't have enough money, that you're not good enough for that job, you're not going to get into that school. There's just so many reasons for us not to pursue what it is that we want in life. And I just chose at a young age, after realizing that all these voices are coming at me. I chose to be the opposite voice for other people. I chose to be the one that said, you know what, if that's what you want, let's build a plan and help you get there, because you can do it. I always

11:45 chose the one to believe in people, and so my purpose came just really started to be melted around the idea of being the cheerleader, being the clapper, being the one that says, you go a lease, you do it. Man. You know what's so funny about that, John, is I've gone through my own exercises to really start to trace where this began. And I too, have always been a cheerleader. And here's what's really fascinating about that. I can tell you unequivocally that when I was in high school, and no offense to the people out there in the crowd who have been cheerleaders, but that was the last thing I wanted to do was be the person with pom poms going go Team Go. I just didn't that old images didn't work for me. But if I look at my life, Sean, that's exactly what I've been doing my whole entire life was telling people, oh, you can do this, even when I'm doing a race. We've talked about this, and I passed somebody in a race, I give them encouragement because I don't want them to feel bad because they got passed, right, I want them to feel great about what they're doing in their effort. And so we have that in common. Yeah, you know, it's so many times that we walk through the day and just life can get hard, and we can get discouraged, and we can get frustrated, and we can start to lose faith in ourselves and on our dreams and our goal And I just wish that everybody had one big item on their goal list every day, and that's to encourage one other person, because I think if everybody just encouraged one other person every day, I believe that so many more people would truly find they're

13:18 happy. I completely believe that, and I try to walk that talk, and in many ways I can't help but walk that talk because it just kind of governs me. But really quick, I'll share with you that back in two thousand and two, when I first moved to Dallas with my then husband, he was doing his first half iron Man in Hawaii and we coerced his father, who's a doctor, to come with us and be part of the whole tiering committee and such. And we meete him swear that he couldn't ask his son, you know, are you okay? Do you need to quit? But so he and I, his father and I kind of leap frog the race in the car and we kept stopping. I had him to stop every few miles so I could jump out of the car and yell out or yell out the window over his shoulder at people that passed to give them encouragement.

14:01 And he said to me. My father in law said to me, I am so glad. I am not called to do that, but I see you are. You know. But he even just use those words, I'm not called to do that, but you are. You know. That's really interesting because I feel that I found my best person when I started to really help other people be their best person. I feel that when we really start to live the message outwardly, that we become the person inwardly. And so for people who feel like they might just be a little introverted and not be able to share that kind of encouragement or empowerment with other people, I say, just push yourself just a little bit, push yourself, just a little bit and say say, you can do it in a silent way.

14:48 I mean, maybe you don't have to do it with your words, but you can do it with an email. You can do it with the text message. You can do it with your smile, you can do it with wow. I'm just proud of you, because when you start to push yourself a little to be an courager, you are going to find that you become more encouraged for your own events, moments, experiences, and activities too. Mm hmm. I read somewhere and this resonated with me Sean along those very lines that where where do we where do we feel the best? And when when we're working with someone or interacting with someone? Is it what is it that when there may be vulnerable and need our help and we're giving it, Or is it when you know we're somehow shining in some other way. I really saw that the power of being able to help somebody, to really extend your hand and reach over and pull somebody up, that is so much more meaningful, at least for me. I then, but there is something about that. It's about the pulling up, It's about the realizing of potential, It's about the becoming your best that really calls calls me, Yeah, I believe that, you know, I feel in my very soul that my life is going to become a difference making life, not not by having a million dollars in the bank, but by possibly planting and watering seeds in a million people's lives. You know, that's what's going to live on after I'm gone.

16:08 That's what's going to make a difference. That's what's going to make a human being better, a family better, an organization better, a community better, the world better. It's just me planting a seed of maybe a word that they haven't heard. Maybe it was something that they heard a long time ago. So it's me watering that idea once again so that it starts to resonate and say, oh, yeah, I remember that. Yes I want to do that. But it's becoming that that seed planter, in that seed water that is going to at the end of your life, make your life way way bigger than trying to see how many things you can get in life. Just see what kind of cars you drove, how big your houses were, and how much money you have. Those are all empty. When you have a chance to really change the world I completely concur and what a beautiful way to take us into our first break Sean host Elise Cortes. We're on the air with Sean Anderson, who is a human spark plug behind the Extra Mile Day and the author of Amicus one oh one, a story about the pursuit of purpose and overcoming life's chaos. He joined today from Rina del Rey, California. We've been talking a bit about the things that have contributed to our own purpose. After the break, greenishire each a little bit about really the journey of our purpose and the specific elements that got us to where we are today. Stay with us, We'll be right back. Alis Cortes is a speaker and engagement and development catalyst. She designs and delivers professional development,

17:40 leadership and engagement workshops and can bring her expertise to your organization. She will help ignite meaningful development within your workforce that will increase employee engagement, performance and retention. To learn more or to invite Elise to speak to your organization, please visit her at www dot Elisecortes dot com. She would welcome the opportunity to help get your employees working on purpose. This is working on purpose with Elise Cortes. To reach our program today, send an email to a lease Alise at Aliscortes dot com. Now back to working on purpose if you're just joining us. My guest is motivational author, unlimited thinker, and lifetime entrepreneur Sean Anderson. He's a six time author with the latest book or one of his books called Amicus one oh one, a story about the pursuit of purpose and overcoming life's chaos. He is also the human sparkplug behind the Extra Mile Day, a day of recognizing the power we have to create positive change when we go the extra mile. I'm your host, Alis Cortes. So before the Breakshan, we were talking a bit about really some of the key things that go into or have gone into us working on discovering our purpose and now living it and working it. And I thought it would be of fun to share a little bit with our listeners more specifically some of those elements, so that you know the trucks along the way that got us onto the path you gain sure, let's go, Okay, So I'm going to sketch here.

19:12 I did a little bit. I've done a little bit of this work for myself and I do I do have people do this kind of work in my workshops. I want to sketch a little bit. I think it's sometimes easier for people to start from the present because and when we ask them, well you go back to when you were a kid, when you were four or five, that seems overwhelmed, overwhelming and daunting. But if I start today with what is it that I love? And I do happen to know my purpose And I'm so grateful that I do, because I have spent a lot of time and effort working at it. And I'll peel that back for us. But you know, for me, the world of work is my domain, and of course that cascades in the other parts of my life as our lives, as I said before, and so my purpose is to be able to activate and catalyze people across the globe, to be able to realize their potential, realize meaning and their own purpose in the work that they do, and bring their best along the way. And so that really happens as a management consultant in my leadership programs and the various other cultural assessment work that I do. And so that's present day. So if I peel that back, Sean and I start to look at where that all kind of come from.

20:15 It's amazing how you can kind of stitch us together and it all just makes perfect sense. And listeners, I really encourage you to really go through this exercise for yourself because I think it will yield some dividends. And we want to hear about what you come up with. By the way, so if I peel that back a little bit and I look at you know, just a year ago when you and I met, I was doing some really good work at a firm, another management consulting firm, and I loved the work, but it didn't allow me to really really express my own unique message about purpose and passion. And that's when you and I started working together, Sean, and you really helped me. Thank you so much for this to really turn my lens and go, well, hold on, Cortes. You know, aren't you looking to create an overall life for yourself, not just do this work. Aren't you looking to become your best self and create an overall life that you love? You remember remember all those conversations. Yes, okay, so that was a big catalyst for me, Sean, and I just want to really recognize the power of having a great coach, because that just has been all the difference for me. So that really got me thinking about, well we hold on here? Am I? Why am I not running after and really really putting and working to develop my message? I mean I was looking at franchise opportunity Sean, remember, and all kinds of things like why would I spend money on somebody else's concept when I know I have my own concept and I would just to express my purpose. And so then that led me down to the path, all right, let me go ahead and separate from this and let's just start afresh and renew my own offering because I had been on my own for twelve years prior to that, and then just

21:48 really started to develop that whole where I've been the last fifteen years around meaning and identity and purpose. And so that is what I've done over the last I guess eight months now, developing these leadership programs, purpose driven leadership programs for organizations and also a twelve month series for women. That's how that all came about. I would have never done that before. If I wasn't standing in my purpose Sean, right, that would have never happened. I would not have had the space to do that right, right, So you know, if I go back from that, so you know, I was always doing leadership development work for the previous five years and companies, and that was really important to be able to see people literally transform in front of my eyes.

22:29 Right, That's the most amazing feeling for me to be let into somebody's personal space and watch them grow before my eyes. That to me is the biggest, greatest privilege that anybody could ever have. So if I look back from there, I mean I then I did my PhD. I got in my PhD program in like nineteen ninety nine, and really, Sean, you know what that was. It was an answer, it was it was that was my midlife crisis. By the way, get a new car, didn't buy a new house. I didn't have an affair. But I did my PhD, and it was a crisis of meaning. I wanted so much more in my life. And so what did I do. I went after a PhD in human development, so that's psychology and sociology, and that's when I actually began my research around modes of engagement and meaning, etc. And how people were connecting with their work. And well, if I then cast that back. I actually fell into the human capitol field right about that time, and I'm like, oh my gosh, so again all the little pieces are finding into place, and I'm just kind of opting in and trying to listen to see where that win in the universe is blowing me. But before that, John, when I lived in Brazil and I was doing my bachelor's and my masters, I came across Field and Graduate University, which is where I got my PhD. And I said, someday I'm going to go there.

23:47 Now I was in the mid That was nineteen ninety three, And if I peel that back even further, I can go back and all the international travel that I got to do when I was living in Spain and Brazil, that just blew my mind wide open and really got me into this great place of growth and energy and effort and coming into my own and learning Spanish and Portuguese and French and Italian and living in the other other countries. That was also that whole thing about human growth. What can humans actually do when they lean into this and take a chance and you know, let himselves go. And then finally I'll say, you know, then I go back to high school. And way back when I was in high school, Sean, I knew that I was going to study psychology, and I didn't do it. Took me a little while to do it. I took me actually getting to Portland and taking a job as an admitsisative assistant, and eighteen months in getting fired by that man. Remember that. So if I didn't get fired from Roland and he didn't say you got to get out of here and go do something with yourself, see the world and get an education, that would that's, you know, the ongoing spark if you will, to the journey. So if I put that all together, it makes the most sense. But I can say, and you know this, Sean, I have never been more convicted in my whole entire life of the work that I'm doing and why it's important. And it does make me feel vulnerable, of course, right I put myself out there, But I have never been more convicted in my entire life of what I'm doing and why it's important and why I'm willing to fight

25:18 every day to get to do this work. Well, you're really you're really lucky to to not only be able to trace your journey and to be aware of all the transitions that you've gone through to get you where you are. But it's it's it's amazing that you're happy with where you are, that all of the decisions that have been made have brought you to this place now, this place now where you feel as if you have a chance to be the most powerful at least Cortes, that you ever were. Yeah, and I will tell you what's fascinating about the whole journey is it shows up in an impact. Right. You talked about making a difference in a million lives, and I can tell you that when I now show up and go out to speak, how people receive me is different than it was last year, the year before, the year before that. There's just so much more connection and they're going into action because of what they hear. And I think that's because I am standing in a stronger place of purpose and what I talk about, right, because you've received yourself in a different place. I mean, if we don't believe who we are what we are, how can we ever project to someone else who we are and what we are? Yeah, the authenticity that comes from living in your purpose. People talk a lot about authentic leadership, and that is very, very fantastic. The thing that I really appreciate

26:48 about living in the space, and this is what I work on for the programs that I've developed, is really letting getting people to a place where they discover their own purpose as we have, so that they can really live in that authentic space. Because when they can generally show up like that, I think what happens is we become that energy becomes irresistible. You said something earlier about people opting into that. I think that's exactly what happens. I've seen it happen with other people as well. When they're really standing in their purpose, they're really inspiring, and that is it's an incredibly effective way to lead in to live. There's a story of an English pastor and he would have his sermons every Sunday outside and the people every week kept on coming and coming and coming, and it was an overpacked courtyard where he would speak. And someone asked him, pastor, why is it that the crowd keeps getting bigger and bigger? And he said, because when you set yourself on fire, the people will always come and watch. And I believe that when we live our lives with fire another word for passion when we live our lives like that, people are going to be drawn. Businesses are going to be drawn to wanting us to work with them. People are going to be drawn to wanting to have a relationship with us. And and and that's where it all begins, being able to set yourself on fire. And you know, and one thing I didn't really say enough and what I just narrated for my own story, there's two other really important elements here that I have to really surface for

28:21 our listeners. And one is, you know, I struggled with this. I mean, I had this inkling that I was on the right path, but I didn't I didn't recognize it as the right path at the time. I was just on it and it was, you know, it was taking me. I just didn't understand that. And I struggled, Sean, with that. I wrestled with that. I kept saying, I should know what I want to be, I should know what I want to be, and I don't. And I just was so you know, overtaken by that. And I met many people that tell me the same thing, Sean. They're just so perplexed and upset and frustrated that they don't know what their purpose is, and it's understandable. I felt that before, and I know when I had Zach mccurio on the show, he said that's how he got into the same space if working with purpose too, because he had been lost and wanted to find himself and that was mine too, and then the other piece of it. And I just yesterday spoke to a gentleman named Phil Sodok who's going to be in my show in a couple of weeks, and I asked him about how it was that he really found his purpose and he said, you know, at least for me, it was that I had had various jobs and I just a lot of them were just really pretty crappy, thank you very much, and I wasn't feeling good about the world of work or myself.

29:27 And I really just said, well, I can't find what I'm looking for out there working for someone else, so I'm going to just go out and create it for myself. And he said, you know, I didn't even have a product, I didn't even have an offering. But it was a matter of creating the life that I wanted to live and that the person that I could be proud of. And that's also been part of my journey too well, and a challenge, I challenge everyone to think on a little bigger picture. Are we ever on the wrong path? Because everything that we've gone through, every path that we've stumbled across, has brought us to this point. And if you're satisfied in your life at all, then all the little excursions that you went on that didn't feel great, they were the right path for you to be on at that moment. And for everybody right now who's maybe not as happy with her life, it's because, man, you're still on the path you're supposed to be on, because you're trying to find what it is that you really love in life. We're all on this, we all have these journeys, and I just I've always believed that that it's always just been my path. It's just my path, and there might be parts of my path that I don't like, parts of my path I do like, But all of the parts of my path make me and have made me who I am, and I'm grateful for all the parts. I completely concur with that. In fact, a couple of pieces in there that you surface that I do want to address for our listeners, especially when you talked about maybe, you know, is it maybe could you be on the right

31:00 path the whole time? I can look at it back on you and the work that I've done in various parts of my career that you know, we're not very meaningful. I didn't like them, but they were still I think, part of my right path because they really helped me clarify what it was I didn't want. Absolutely, I call that the anti role model, right, So thank you for showing me what I don't want. And absolutely, and frankly you know for me now that I get to create my own life where i'm you know, I'm a single person and I get to do and be anything that I want to be, I'm so grateful for that. And does that mean I that my years of being married were not on my path? Absolutely not. But they allowed me to develop the person that I became, and then when I left that part of my life to come into a whole new space where I could create something totally new and fresh that I couldn't probably have done when I was in when I was married. You know, that's right. Being on the right path doesn't mean we're always to experience victory, because that's just not life. Life is life is winning, Life is losing, life is falling down, life is getting up, Life is experiencing, experiencing tragedy, life is experiencing celebration, and and and every one, and just because we feel great about our life right now, at this moment, at this hour, at this on this day, it doesn't mean that that that everything is going to be great because we're on this right path now.

32:27 Again, I I just argue that that our whole life is this path that we walk, and everything that we've experienced makes this wiser, sharper, better able to handle whatever's gonna come next. Because I can assure you that over the next three years, you're going to experience some amazing victories. At least, you're gonna have some celebrations and some crazy moments that are gonna go, oh my god, this is the most amazing day of my life. This is my most amazing success. On the other hand, there's gonna be some days that life is gonna punch you in the stomach. You're gonna gough because that's just life, man, that's life. And I think the more that we're aware, that we develop an awareness that that that we have the ability to to think and process, to and to feel, to understand, and to cause cause and effect on our path as we walk through. That's when we can make our longer day, our better days longer, and our our less happy days shorter. Well. And the other thing that I'm very, very very convinced of, and you've alluded to it as well, Sean, and that is the importance of navigating and embracing adversity. In fact, I had somebody on my show a few weeks ago, Steve Gapatorta, talking about this that you know, when we embrace adversity, it helps us become the people we are meant to become, and frankly, probably can't become absent that adversity. And so to your point, I don't think and we I don't think it's it would be healthy to always look to be happy. In fact, I think it's better to look to always find meaning and fulfillment than

33:59 it is to be happy. But happiness is a nice side product that comes along the way when you're when you're when you're living well. And I think too, I really want to make sure that our listeners here that you know it. Going after a life of purpose and working with purpose is is is a is a hard journey. It's well worth every single piece of effort. However, it is hard, and you know the result the reward for that is the beautiful fruit that you get for that hard work. But you know it's it does require you to step into unknown territory a lot of times, and that's scary for a lot of people. It has been for me. And now I've been doing more and more of it, and you know, it gets easier every time you do it. That's really important to say, and that there's something about it, and I love the way you do these you know, when you walk across the country, the fact that you live in such a spontaneous place shot, I think that is so magical. I actually didn't really understand that about how you were doing those things before. I got it sort of from the background, but I didn't understand that was part of the key ingredient and the intentionality piece of it. But something about you know, when we go out looking for our purpose, we are stepping into the unknown A lot of the times. We don't know what's around the corner at how long we can walk that day. And I think that was, boy, what a great way to start the show talking about looking for and discovering our purpose. Well, really, every single day when we wake up, who really knows what's going to happen every day. I mean, sure, you might have the same process as getting you know, you get up, you go get your coffee, you go brush your teeth, you get

35:30 the kids off, you take the dogs out. I mean the little steps that every single day begins. But then all of a sudden things just happen as we go. And I think when we embrace the spontaneity of life, when we go, wow, that was an amazing day. Look at all the things that happened. That was so cool. Because you can't be afraid of spontanady and you can't be afraid of what's next, because if you're afraid of both of them, then your life's going to be absolutely miserable because every single day, both of them are going to come at you like a locomotive. Better just to jump on the train, right, Sean, Well, yeah, I mean really, there's just things that happen. Man. You know what, I honestly will say to myself as I wake up in the morning, Man, I wonder what's gonna happen today? And I don't say it like, oh my god, I wonder what's gonna happen today. I don't know. It's not like that because if I if I go out looking for the grouse, so I'm gonna find the gruesome, if I look for the bad, if I look for the ugly, if I look for the dark, I guarantee you find fine. Fine. But if I go, man, what adventure's gonna happen today? What cool thing's gonna happen today?

36:36 What miracle is gonna happen today? I swear that every night I go to bed, I go, well, that was a great adventure. WHOA, that was a cool miracle? Wow? Because we will find what we look for. So embrace the spontaneity, embrace those spontaneous moments and realize that their chances are they gonna be good if you look for them. M that's the framing and that I love to talk about. Took hold that thought, Shawn, our last break. I'm your host, Elise Cortes. We on the YIR with Sean Anderson, who is the human spark plug behind the Extra Mile Day and the author of Amicus one oh one, a story about the pursuit of purpose and overcoming life's chaos. He joined you today from Marina del Rey, California. Stay with us, We'll be right back. Alis Cortes is a speaker and engagement and development catalyst. She designs and delivers professional development, leadership and engagement workshops and can bring her expertise to your organization. She will help ignite meaningful development within your workforce that will increase employee engagement, performance and retention. To learn more or to invite Elise to speak to your organization, please visit her at www dot Elisecortes dot com. She would welcome the opportunity to help get your employees working on purpose. This is working on Purpose with Elise Cortes. To reach our program today, send an email to a lease

38:09 Alise at aliscortes dot com. Now back to working on purpose. If you're just tuning in, my guest is motivational author, unlimited thinker, and lifetime entrepreneur Sean Anderson. He's a six time author, including the book called Amicus one oh one, a story about the pursuit of purpose and overcoming life's chaos. He's also the human spark plug behind the Extra Mile day a day, recognizing the power we have to create positive change when we go the extra mile. I'm your host, Alise Cortes, so Sean in our last little bit of time together here, it's amazing how fast time evaporates when we talk about passion and purpose. But I shared in the last segment a little bit about some of the stops along the way that piece together my path to purpose.

38:55 I know yours is you found it. It was maybe it in a different way for you. Will you sketch a little bit about how you came upon your purpose? You know, instead of instead of talking about the stops, let me just go and talk about one start. You want to know. You want to know the most profound, profound lesson and thought that ever changed my life. I do pink bubble gum. Okay, do tell well, back in the olden days I had when I was a little boy, I loved baseball cards. And inside you'd open up these packs of baseball cards and there'd be these hard, pink sticks of bubble gum. And so I want to I wanted these baseball cards so badly, and I realized back then that you know, you just can't walk into Uncle Happy's toy shop and grab as many baseball packs as you want, but there was a process that you had to You had to pick them out, you had to walk to the cashier, you had to take something called money out of your pocket and pay for the cards, and you could walk out with however many packs you bought these packs with pink bubble gum. So I said, well, you know what, if I love baseball cards, I've got to find a way to be able to get those baseball cards. And so that at that point I became an entrepreneur. And when one becomes an entrepreneur, they really learned the basics that you've got the power to create the results, to create the life that you want. So I started my first business, and I was no more than maybe a ten year old boy who again loved pink bubblegum, who decided that the way he could make money was to drown his parents' backyard flood it

40:29 in water. Because when the backyard was flooded, the giant nightcrawler worms came to the top. And when I picked up all those giant nightcrawler worms and I put him in big peat barrels. I then figured out that if I advertised in the Reno Evening Gazette, newspaper on Saturdays and Sundays and sat in my front yard with my big peat barrels with worms that the fishermen would come and they would get. They would buy my worms by the dozens every Saturday and Sunday. Now I then got money. I then took my money and I went and bought pink bubble Gum. That's how it started, because I just realized that life is cause and effect. Now as I became older and the whole concept evolved more that life has cause and effect in relationships, life has cause and effect in dreams and goals and in health. I just understood that what I do is what I will get. And so you know, everything else always came. It came from pink bubble Gum. I love that story. I've never heard that before. I think that's just shall we say yummy. I just love it and it reminds me. And this is something else I hope that our listeners are getting from this exchanges. You know, what are they getting for themselves in this conversation? So I can tell you that you now have sparked for me. I remember, and this goes to really my approach to leadership, and it's been with me since and it's part of since I was young, and it's part of you know, my purpose

42:00 journey as well, and that is that when I was about that age, we lived in this cul de sac in a place called Hermiston, Oregon. That's where I grew up, small northeastern town, and I had this thing where I've always had this thing about gathering people together, bringing us together, and uniting us into some common cause and scrapping it through kind of thing or just pulling it off, and you know, casting a vision. So on either after school days or the weekends, I'd get this idea that I'd like, you wanted money for something, and so I think, well, today's a gooday to wash cars or to rick leaves. And so I'd go and knock on the doors and grab my neighbors that other kids out of their their slumber or TV time, and say, come on, let's go. Don't you want to make some money so you can buy whatever it is They loved, right, the baseball cards, et cetera. And they would like okay.

42:52 So a lot of times here we are got to imagine the crowd, you know, the the gaggle of kids. Most of us don't have shoes on, and I go knock on the door and say, hey, you know, we'd like to wash your car for whatever X amount of dollars. And almost every time they said yes, so we would we would wash the cars, or we would break the leaves, and then I would pay the pay the help, and then they'd send them, send them back on their way. But it's something very similar, Sean. But that whole thing for me, it's about bringing disparate groups of people together, seeing how they can play in that space together, where are they strong, where can they contribute, and doing something together that we could never do individually. I love that.

43:32 Yeah, that's that's absolutely right. You know, we talk a lot and it almost becomes cliche when we talk about creating one's own life, but that it is so real. Okay, it's it's it's it's it's so much more of a cliche to me and to you when we understand that, you know, everything that we do is going to have an effect. If if we go out for the next six weeks, five days a week and we exercise, the chances are well, the effect is that we're going to we're going to be more fit, we're going to be more healthy, and we created that. If we go home to our relationship tonight with no other reason but just to say, man, thank you, you are so amazing, and we bring home some flowers, the effect of that is probably going to be a big giant smile and a thank you so much and you're pretty awesome.

44:25 We created that. When we go to our boss and we say, you know what, I'm grateful for being here and I want to know what more can I do to add to our mission? What you've done is you've created a stronger bond with your boss and you've helped make that company stronger again. We always will. We have this power to create what we want. Dreams are not They're not things that are supposed to just be Oh, I wish this could happen. Dreams are dreams. To me, are ideas and thoughts that I say that's what I want, and then we figure out a plan to give them wings and legs and we make the dreams become real.

45:13 It might have been baseball cards, it might have been organizing people in our neighborhood, but we all have that power. Every single human being out there has that power. The question is are you going to choose to use your power or are you going to choose to lose your power? And when you consider, and this is where I really stand from my place of purposes, when you consider, as far as we know, we only get one shot at this thing called life, and we don't know when is our last day. In fact, in the near future, Sean, I'm going to have a funeral director on the show and we're going to talk about what do we do between now and our undetermined expiration date to really live our best life.

45:55 She is uniquely qualified to answer that question give us a perspective on it, right. And So that's a big reason why I'm doing the work that I'm doing, is because I want to awaken those people who are walking through life dead to the magic and possibility of what their life and their work can be for them. Well, I you know, maybe I've shared this with you before, maybe I haven't, But every single time I go on one of these great adventures across the country, or anytime I travel to another country, or even the very first time that I peddle the bike across the United States, one of the things that I always do is I seek out the small cemetery. So, for example, I'm walking across Italy and as you're coming through a small town, I see the small cemetery and maybe maybe it's been unkept, maybe there's weeds growing out of the rocks that surround the fence, whatever. But I put my backpack down and I solemnly walk into it and I read the headstones. And when I was in Italy, I was blessed because in Italy, when they in the cemeteries, not only are there the names of the people and when they live, but there's also a picture of what that person look like. And as I'm looking, and I'm going, man, that was a real person. She was really here. Look at her smile. God, I wonder what she was celebrating on that day.

47:09 She looks really happy there. She's not here anymore. Wow. To me, what it brings back is the fact that all of us are on an egg timer and the sand is running through. That's just life. None of us have the ability to stop that egg timer, none of us have the ability to ever stop where the stand from eventually running out. And I think that it's a powerful thought, and for me, it's a life changing thought to know that, And that's why I keep repeating this to remember that my time is now, My time is now to dream, my time is now to do great things. My time is now because someday it's not going to be my time again. And that's the urgency that I want to be able to get in, to get across for myself and for my listeners, because you're right, we don't have forever, and every single day and moment is precious to run after our purpose. Yeah, it's uh, And it's amazing how fast time, how life goes, you know, all of us, everybody here, you, me, the listeners. We can think back on just moments in the past, they just they don't seem like they were that long ago. But yet five years past, ten years past, twenty years past, thirty years past. And sometimes we might even look in the mirror, for many of us and we go, oh my god, what's my parent doing staring back at me? Or what's whatever? Because life just goes so fast, and it seems like the older you get, the faster it goes. And so it's with that sort of intention all the time that we

48:42 can't leave dreams and conversations on the table. We can't say I'm going to do this tomorrow I'm gonna do this next year. I'm going to plan this later because now is your time, man, this is your time. And when you realize that it's your time, that should take all the fear out of doing everything, because sometimes some days it's not going to even matter. So go do it now. Quit being afraid, Get on the ship, take the cruise, make the phone call of the relationship that you've wanted to talk to in twenty years that you haven't. Just live now while you still have this beautiful, amazing opportunity to live m HM. And that is the way we will finish the show. Sean Anderson, Holy goodness, gracious, thank you so very much for coming back and sharing your beautiful soul with us and your purpose with us. It's been an honor and a privilege. Thank you. It's always my blessing to be with you at least. Thank you so much. If you want to learn more about Sean Anderson, any of his books is Extra Mile Work, or have him come speak to you and your audience, visit his website. It's Sean Anderson dot com, that's shaw N Anderson dot com. Join us next week when we talk with doctor Lance Sacraton of the Segraton Center, and he is the author of the Bellweather Effect.

49:55 We'll be talking about a few of the eight points he writes about in his book that companies that are stations are firmly entrenched in practice but are completely delivering the opposite of the promised value result that they want. See you there, and remember that work is at least one thirt our lives. So let's work on purpose. Well, we hope you've enjoyed this week's program. Be sure to tune in to Working on Purpose featuring your host Alis Cortes, each week on the Voice America Empowerment Channel. This week, find your life's purpose at work.