At The Money: Living a Life of Purpose

**SPEAKER_1** (0:02)
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio, news.

**Barry Ritholtz** (0:32)
What is the value of money? What does it mean for your life, satisfaction and legacy? To help us unpack all of this, let's bring in Dr. Jordan Grumet. He's a physician whose niche is the intersection of money, mortality, purpose and regret. He's worked in internal medicine and hospice care. His book, The Purpose Code, helps people understand their purpose, connection and legacy.
So, let's begin very basically, what do people get wrong when they say they're searching for purpose?

**Jordan Grumet** (1:10)
Oh my God, so much. So first and foremost, most people think of purpose as their why.
And I actually think this is very dangerous because when you think of your purpose as your why, it becomes this big, audacious thing, like a needle in the haystack.
And there are high stakes in getting it right. I actually define purpose as something completely different. I think purpose are the things we do that light us up in the present and future. That is it. Very easy, very easy to control, not a needle in the haystack. They really confuse what I call purpose and meaning. A lot of people think they're the same thing, but meaning gets more to our why. It's more about our past. But purpose is really straightforward. And when you look at it as straightforward, it becomes just much easier. What can I do today that lights me up and is exciting?

**Barry Ritholtz** (1:58)
And you distinguish between purpose that creates anxiety and the kinds of purpose that creates meaning. Explain the difference.

**Jordan Grumet** (2:10)
So when I wrote my first book, Taking Stock, I made the point that we should be putting purpose, identity and connections before wealth building. Not that we should put wealth building aside, but we need to think about those things so we can then build a framework of wealth around them. And I went to talk about this book at conferences and people would look at me and I'd always get one in the crowd would come up to me afterwards and they'd be angry. They'd be sweaty and they'd say, will you stop telling me to find my purpose? I've been searching forever. I don't know what it is. I'm totally frustrated and anxious. I don't even think there is a purpose. Please stop people telling people to find their purpose. So me being a physician, I'm like, I need to do some research on this.
And what I found was a paradox. When I did the research, there's so many studies out there that say that having a sense of purpose increases our happiness, our health and our longevity. There are tons and tons of papers.
But then I saw other research, especially by this lady named Larissa Rainey, who found that up to 91% of people at some point in their life feel purpose anxiety. This idea that finding their purpose causes them to be depressed and anxious and feel like they can't actually connect to what the role in the world is. And so in my mind, I kind of said, well, how does this paradox work? How can purpose be both the most important and also so anxiety provoking? And this is how I kind of realized, we kind of get purpose wrong. We think it's one thing, but it's probably two, what I call big P purpose and little P purpose. The big P purpose is that kind of big audacious why, like how am I gonna make a legacy and define myself? And I think that makes people anxious. What I define purpose as little P purpose is more those process oriented things you do that light you up.

**Barry Ritholtz** (3:53)
Really, really interesting.
So when we're talking about whether it's big P or little P purpose, is it something that we happen on to and discover? Is it something we build or is it something that we practice or some combination of the three?

**Jordan Grumet** (4:12)
People always ask me, they say, how do I find my purpose? And the first thing I kind of say is, well, you don't find your purpose, you build or create it. It's a very active process.
But it is true, you have to have some idea of what lights you up. I call these purpose anchors. This idea of, well, what kind of excites me, what lights me up. In the book, I talk about all sorts of ways and exercises we can do that are very, very simple that help us figure out what our purpose anchors are. But the easy thing is finding what lights you up. Then the hard thing is you have to build a life of purpose around those anchors, which means you have to take action and do something. I'll give you a perfect example.