How To Find Meaning When Life Feels Overwhelming - Simon Sinek - #964

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
Do you think we're in a crisis of purpose right now?

**Simon Sinek** (0:04)
I mean, I think it's pretty obvious that we are. I mean, it's embarrassing that I have a career, right? There should be no demand for my work.
Yeah, I think that in general, I think people would admit it. I think that, you know, who can say whether it's a- that it's the first time it's ever happened? But I think people are more open to say that they either wanted or were missing it. So, but I think we've definitely seen the workplace change over the past few decades. We've definitely seen the decline in church membership over the past few decades. We've definitely seen, you know, increased rates of loneliness and anxiety and depression. So, and I think there's a lot of- and the significant rise of sort of retreats and purpose, you know, events and things like that. So, yeah, yeah, so I think there's a- I think it's safe to say yes. Yeah.

**Chris Williamson** (0:59)
Where- what are the areas that have fallen away? You mentioned work, you mentioned church, community. These are things that perhaps 50 years ago, 100 years ago would have been more prevalent?

**Simon Sinek** (1:11)
Well, what's interesting is the- what we've seen in the world, like we- people used to get their sense of purpose from church, you know, or things like that. We had bowling leagues and, you know, extracurricular activities where people would have their friends' group. You socialized with your neighbors. And work was a place you went to make a living. It wasn't supposed to be this end all, be all of everything. And as those things fell away, we started to put more and more pressure on the workplace to provide those things. And now we're looking for our work to provide our sense of purpose, to provide our sense of community, to provide our social life. And now we're also saying that work should be the place that agrees with my politics. That never used to happen. And so for better or for worse, there's a tremendous amount of pressure on the workplace and leaders in the workplace to be able to successfully offer all of those things. And people are quitting their jobs because they're not getting those things.
And it never used to be a thing. I think also we're doing the same thing in our relationships. There's a correlation, which is you had your friends, you had your spouse or your girlfriend, your boyfriend, and you didn't expect your partner, your romantic partner to be able to provide everything. Be my rock, be my best friend, be my lover, be my stability, be the person. And yet now we put overwhelming amounts of pressure on one person to be everything, the same way we're putting overwhelming amounts of pressure on our workplaces to be everything. We're setting both up to fail by the way, which I think leaves us in a malaise and loss. So I think all of these weird concoctions are contributing to that sense of lost or looking.

**Chris Williamson** (2:57)
Interesting that it's not necessarily that we're applying more pressure just to work and relationships because of some pivot in culture, but that the previous other contributors have fallen away.

**Simon Sinek** (3:10)
Yeah.

**Chris Williamson** (3:11)
When there's less of a hedged market in that regard, you've got all of your money into a couple of stocks, one of the stocks being work and another one of the stocks being your partner.

**Simon Sinek** (3:23)
Yeah.

**Chris Williamson** (3:23)
That's an amount of pressure that is going to be very difficult for them to fulfill. Also, not necessarily what they were entirely designed to fulfill.

**Simon Sinek** (3:30)
Yeah. One person can't be everything. Otherwise, we'd have no need for friends.
One person can't be everything, one place can't be everything. Now, having said that, we can't argue against it. It's the way of the world. We can talk about how we got here. That might be a little bit useful, maybe not. Technology definitely played a role. For me to get entertainment, there wasn't that much TV. I had to leave the house. Now, all of our entertainment is right at our fingertips, on television or on our phones. I mean, there's no reason to leave the house. We're now at a point where you don't even have to go to the movies anymore because you can just wait a week or zero and start streaming whatever you want to watch. So there's no reason to leave the house.

**Chris Williamson** (4:15)
How do you come to think about people deliberately cultivating meaning in their life? Is this a process that you can go through? Is this a... Is it emergent or is it something that you can decide to try and achieve to cultivate?