Jordan Grumet — Breaking the Mirage: How to Find True Purpose Beyond Wealth with Jordan Grumet

Working Edit

[00:00:00] Jordan Grumet: We talk about generational trauma in the money world. We talk about money scripts, and so we know how important previous generations are to us when it comes to bad stuff, but we rarely talk about the opposite, which is what I’m talking about, which is generational growth. That those other generations before us can also pass on these great things, these things that help build us these wonderful things that make us better people and carry us into the future.

[00:00:29] Intro: Do you think money takes up more life space than it should? On this show, we discuss with and share stories from artists, authors, entrepreneurs, and advisors about how they mindfully minimize the time and energies. Spent thinking about money. Join your host, Jonathan DeYoe, and learn how to put money in its place and get more out of [00:01:00] life.

[00:01:03] Jonathan DeYoe: Hey, welcome back. On this episode of the Mindful Money Podcast I’m chatting with Dr. Jordan Grumet. Jordan was born in Evanston, Illinois in 1973. You put that in your bio. I’m gonna put it, I’m gonna, definitely gonna use it. , age everybody. The unexpected loss of his father who was an oncologist ignited in him the desire to practice medicine, and it also gave him a unique vantage point to, to merge and meld with financial expertise. So presently he serves as the Associate Medical Director of Unity Hospice, and he unveiled his thoughts on medicine and personal finance through blogging, specifically on the financial independence and the wellness space. , his passion for personal finance culminated in the launch of the Earn and Invest Podcast in 2018, and for the next three years, he won the Plutus Award , and nominations for the best Financial Personal Finance podcast two years in a row. I interviewed Jordan in 2022 for his first book. [00:02:00] Second book is published The Purpose Code by Herriman House, January of 2025. I’m super excited to chat with him today about the coming book. I hope and expect that Jordan’s thoughts are gonna resonate with a lot of our audience and anyone seeking a balanced, meaningful life.

[00:02:17] Jonathan DeYoe: Jordan, welcome back to the Mindful Money Podcast.

[00:02:19] Jordan Grumet: Thank you so much for having me. I’m excited for the conversation.

[00:02:21] Jonathan DeYoe: So first remind us where you call home.

[00:02:24] Jordan Grumet: So I live in Evanston, Illinois. It’s right by Northwestern, right on Lake Michigan. It’s actually a really wonderful place to live except in the winter.

[00:02:33] Jonathan DeYoe: So my, uh, Father-in-Law when I visited him at his house the very first time it was in Evanson. My wife grew up in northern North Chicago as well. She’s. I think born in 71. So two years older than you are. , as aM I. , so you grew up there and you still live there. Did you travel about first?

[00:02:51] Jordan Grumet: I’ve lived in many places in the Midwest, so I spent some time in Michigan. I spent some time in St. Louis, , but no, mostly

[00:02:59] Jordan Grumet: lived here.

[00:02:59] Jonathan DeYoe: It’s [00:03:00] a beautiful area except as you say, in winter it’s cold. , we have this core set of questions and the first time you’re on the podcast you answered them all. So, I wanna just call a quick call back. Everyone go back to Mindful Money Podcast number 36 to get I.

[00:03:12] Jonathan DeYoe: , Jordan’s details, , if you want to, you know, listen to , the traditional core set of questions, we’re gonna go a little bit different direction today. So to start, just give us a thumbnail sketch of your origin story.

[00:03:24] Jordan Grumet: So basically at the age of seven years old, my father died. He was 40. Suddenly he had a brain aneurysm. No one has expected it. And he was a doctor. He actually collapsed while he is rounding at the hospital. And I somehow convinced myself because I was a 7-year-old, and we tend to see things through our own lens at that age because that’s all we know. So I told myself that he died because I did something wrong. And the way to make up for that was to become a doctor like him. And then everything cosmically would be right in the world. And that sounds negative, but it was a very. Big sense of purpose in my [00:04:00] life. It felt right. I had a learning disability at the time.

[00:04:03] Jordan Grumet: It took me a while to get over that. I studied , really hard. Went to college, eventually medical school, residency, and then I became the physician I had always dreamed of becoming, but unfortunately burned out within a number of years. , lots of paperwork, not feeling like I was helping people as much as I had dreamed of the world had changed the respect for doctor, his doctors had gone down. And I found myself looking for a way out. And at that time, serendipitously, a guy named Jim Dolley sent me his book to review for my medical blog. I was writing about medicine at the time. I. And it was called the White Coat Investor, and it was all about personal finance and financial independence. And I read his book and I’m like, boom, I am there.

[00:04:44] Jordan Grumet: I actually have had these really good financial behaviors that I modeled from my parents. I had enough money I could leave medicine. Everything was great. And then I had a huge panic attack when I realized that if I left medicine, the only identity and purpose I had ever known, well, [00:05:00] who would I be? So , I could have thrown out the baby with the bath water and just left medicine, but been lost.

[00:05:06] Jordan Grumet: But instead, I slowly paired down my practice over years and eventually started replacing my medical activities with things I really loved doing them. One was a medical activity, hospice work, which I decided to keep doing because I realized I would do it even if I wasn’t being paid for it. But then I started writing more first about personal finance, eventually podcasting about personal finance, doing public speaking. One of the things that I really realized is that my people I was having on my podcast to talk about personal finance were really good. These, you know, masters at business, these financial independence people, these amazing entrepreneurs, these authors were really great at telling me how to make money and how to organize my finances. But a lot of them couldn’t tell me what enough looks like or why they were doing it or what a good life looked like outside of the money. And strangely enough, I realized that I was getting some of those answers from my hospice patients. My hospice patients [00:06:00] were telling me about what they regretted in life and what was really important, and now that the end was in sight, they gave me all sorts of insights about what I should be looking at or should be looking for. That became my first book taking stock. And when I marketed that book and started talking to people about it, one of the main premises was we should be putting purpose, identity connections before our finances and then building a financial framework around it. But I gave a bunch of talks about this and I’d have angry people come up to me after the talk and they’d be sweaty and pissed off.

[00:06:30] Jordan Grumet: And it really surprised me. They said, you know what? Your story resonates with me, but stop telling me to find

[00:06:36] Jordan Grumet: my purpose because I can’t find my purpose. I’ve been looking for it for years, and it’s really upsetting me. I feel really lost. I don’t think there is a purpose, so please stop telling people to find their purpose. The first time someone said this, I kind of discounted it. But after three or four or five times, I actually went to the literature and started looking this up. I’m saying, okay, is purpose good or

[00:06:57] Jordan Grumet: bad? And the studies tend to show that having [00:07:00] a sense of purpose in life increases our health, longevity and happiness.

[00:07:03] Jordan Grumet: It is very clear. On the other hand, I found other studies, one by Larissa Rainey, who actually coined the term purpose anxiety, she said. Up to 91% of people at some point in their life actually feel stressed or even distressed about finding their purpose. And so to me, this was this big paradox, like how can we both have, purpose is the most important thing to us, but also cause us stress and anxiety.

[00:07:29] Jordan Grumet: And that’s what came

[00:07:29] Jordan Grumet: the book, the

[00:07:30] Jordan Grumet: Purpose Code.

[00:07:31] Jonathan DeYoe: I’m gonna skip to the middle and then come back, but, , so I’m gonna grant you something at the outset. I totally agree. I think this is a lovely little equation you created that, , and this is in part two of the book that, , meaning plus purpose equals happiness. I, I, I love it,

[00:07:43] Jordan Grumet: Yes.

[00:07:44] Jonathan DeYoe: but , I wanna start with something cultural that, and I told you it’d go down this rabbit hole.

[00:07:47] Jonathan DeYoe: Now, , you say in the book. This hit me square in the forehead when I read it. You say, even those who have seen past the mirage of wealth and start searching for what really is important in life, find [00:08:00] themselves facing a larger and even more frightening obstacle. And we’ll get to the larger obstacle in a second.

[00:08:06] Jonathan DeYoe: But the first obstacle, the one that I think many people are still dealing with is that overcoming the mirage of wealth. So can you tell us about the mirage? It sounds like you’ve overcome that , in what you’ve already said. , I’ve worked. So hard to overcome this myself, but tell us about the Mirage of Wealth.

[00:08:24] Jordan Grumet: Well, I think there’s a few ways to look at it. One is focusing on money is easy, and then the reason why is, although maybe making lots of money, we don’t consider easy. The truth is the steps are knowable. Like I can plot a path to making more money in my job. I can plot a path to getting higher and higher positions with better salaries.

[00:08:46] Jordan Grumet: I can talk about entrepreneurship and plot a path to starting a business. It’s all knowable. we can find blogs and podcasts. It’s learnable, but ask someone or tell someone. Okay? I want you to really get connected to your sense of purpose, identity, and [00:09:00] connections. It feels very ephemeral, like we don’t know how to do that, and often people have trouble telling us exactly how to do that.

[00:09:08] Jordan Grumet: So as opposed to going with the ephemeral and the scary and the anxiety provoking, it’s really easy to just go with the low hanging fruit, and so it creates a mirage. I can deal with my own anxiety about these things by just ignoring them and going for what’s right in front of me, which is how do I make a lot of money? I also think. Part of the problem about worrying about purpose and identity is it connects us with our own sense of mortality to say, I need to start working on the bigger things like purpose and identity. Now what you’re really saying is that life is finite, and if I wait too long, it might be too late, and that freaks me out. So easier than even thinking about that. Let’s just go ahead and focus on money because it’s easier. So I think that’s one way to look at it. The other way has to do with meaning and purpose. I think a [00:10:00] lot of us don’t feel enough when we grew up. And this has all to do with meaning. Meaning is about how we cognitively look at our past.

[00:10:07] Jordan Grumet: It’s the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves. And a lot of people see a past where they felt like victims. They felt like they never had enough or never were enough, and so it’s really easy to translate that into if I just make enough money, I’ll feel enough. Right. If I just have the things that other people define themselves by, I’ll feel good.

[00:10:29] Jordan Grumet: That can be money, that can be nice cars, it can be nice houses. Go to Instagram and what are people posting? If I just had all that stuff, which money is clearly the way to get there, I’m gonna be okay. Now, my argument, and I say this over and over again is you can’t purpose your way to enough. Purpose is about present and future and actions, and so. Devoting your life to wearing nice clothes or having six-pack abs, or those kind of things are all about purpose, but it’s not necessarily a

[00:10:57] Jordan Grumet: healthy version of purpose, [00:11:00] especially if you’re trying to do those things to feel enough on the inside,

[00:11:04] Jordan Grumet: because most likely you’re not gonna get six pack abs most likely.

[00:11:07] Jordan Grumet: You’re not going to be an influencer who spends their life traveling . The world every day, most likely you’re not gonna be president or a billionaire. So those things are a little bit outta your reach, so you’re setting yourself up to feel even more, not enough. When you don’t reach those things, the healthier thing to do is to try to address your past and figure out why you didn’t feel enough in the first place. And once you do that, it’s much easier to go forward and do purposeful

[00:11:32] Jonathan DeYoe: I, There’s so much here to unpack because, , so I think 30 years ago, more people attended church, more people had deeper beliefs.

[00:11:42] Jonathan DeYoe: Family unit was closer together. There was. Purpose and meaning was something that’s much more talked about. And I actually think that some of it’s coming back with Gen Z.

[00:11:50] Jonathan DeYoe: Gen Z is pushing back away, you know, on the, gotta have the promotion, gotta work in the office, gotta, you know, fast pace. But we lost something in the last 30 years. We lost [00:12:00] something in the financialization of everything. We lost something. Do you, have you looked into this?

[00:12:06] Jordan Grumet: Well, you know, I think it really plays into some of what I talk about in the book. I kind of let the cat out of the bag and say, I’ve been talking about purpose this whole time, but by the time I get to the end of the book I say, well, look, it isn’t even purpose, it’s community and connections. But pursuing what I call your little p purpose is a great way to build community

[00:12:25] Jordan Grumet: and connections. I think what’s changed is community. I mean, just as you were talking about, people were more religious 20 years ago. I’m not a majorly religious person, but it’s easy to see the benefits that religion brings to people’s lives. Specifically the community of people who support you and you support and you collaborate with and you feel connected to. We partially have a crisis of happiness. We call it a purpose crisis, but a lot of ways it’s a community and connections crisis. And of course, social

[00:12:58] Jordan Grumet: media and the [00:13:00] financialization of our lives have pushed us away from connecting to people and have pushed us towards standing out, right? You need the six pack abs because that’s gonna make you better than everyone else.

[00:13:12] Jordan Grumet: You need the really nice clothes. You need the high paying job. You need to be an influencer who’s traveling. You know the world. All the time making money being an influencer because that’s gonna make you stand out. Whereas I think 20 or 30 years ago, it was more like, if I’m my best me, maybe I can fit into a community and connect to other people.

[00:13:31] Jordan Grumet: And we’ve lost a lot of that.

[00:13:33] Jonathan DeYoe: And, and just , the two that you highlight are the, you know, driving the right, you know, the fast car, the, the right clothes and all that. And we know that that’s all rented. The

[00:13:41] Jonathan DeYoe: stuff that you see , on Instagram, those are rented cars and rented planes and rented that made people look like they have, and the abs are spray painted on.

[00:13:49] Jonathan DeYoe: Like, it’s not even, we’re not even real in our presentations because we’re all trying to outdo each other.

[00:13:55] Jordan Grumet: What’s interesting is society, for lots of reasons, [00:14:00] wants to co-opt our sense of purpose and replace it with these more shallow things. In the book, I call it Big P

[00:14:08] Jordan Grumet: purpose, they’re these really hard to accomplish things that influencers want to sell to us because they make money. Advertisers want to sell to us because they make money, and a lot of times society wants to sell it to us. You know, because it’s what we think we’re supposed to be doing. And because of that we tend to isolate. These are very scarcity oriented versions of purpose, right? Because again, it tends to be all or nothing. If your goal is to be a billionaire, you have to be one of few. If your goal is to be the most successful influencer, you have to knock other influencers down or surpass them, right?

[00:14:48] Jordan Grumet: And so these are very scarcity, mindset oriented goals. And because most of us don’t actually have the agency or ability or genetics or time or even drive to do [00:15:00] these things, we’re setting ourselves up for feeling more isolated, more lonely. More anxious. , and I, yeah, I mean, I think our culture has really pushed this forward in the United States.

[00:15:11] Jonathan DeYoe: Specifically in the United States. I think we’re, we’re driving this. This is where the Facebook and it’s all here. So how do we push back against that cultural drive? , , how do we seek the small P and disregard the large P? How do we do that? I.

[00:15:28] Jordan Grumet: Right, so what we’re talking about is the difference between little P purpose and Big P purpose, and to define the difference between them. Big P purpose is often goal oriented, right? I want the six pack abs, or I want the influencer lifestyle, or I want to be a billionaire. It’s often all or nothing.

[00:15:46] Jordan Grumet: You either make it or you don’t, right? You’re the billionaire or you’re not. , very easy to fail. , and so leave us feeling very scarcity mindset oriented. Whereas little p purpose doesn’t worry about goals as much and is more interested in [00:16:00] process. Like, what are the things I can do that light me up regardless of what I accomplish at the end? This is very abundance mindset oriented. because there could be a million things that I like to do., it’s not all or nothing. It’s all or all. I do it and I like it, so I keep doing it or I don’t like what I’m doing, and so I move on to the next thing. So it’s really hard to fail. And so the question you’re saying is how do we not fall prey to the big P purpose?

[00:16:28] Jordan Grumet: Well, a big part of that is instead of letting others tell us what purpose should be. We need to get more in tune what we think our real purpose is. And so people tell me, well, but how do I find my purpose? And I always say, well, you don’t really find purpose, you build it. But we do have to recognize what are called purpose

[00:16:46] Jordan Grumet: anchors. These are inklings or beckonings toward something that could be purposeful for us. And then we build a life of purpose around it. And so a better question is what lights us up? And in the book I talk [00:17:00] about several ways we can go through and start thinking about those things. But I think that’s the first step is as opposed to looking on the outside for what purpose should be, we have to start looking inside at what really fulfills us, what lights us up.

[00:17:15] Jordan Grumet: And if we start then building based on that. , not only do I think we can be happier, I actually think we can have a bigger legacy and impact on the world.

[00:17:23] Jonathan DeYoe: , so I, and that’s a really important point. , so you can be the billionaire, but if you set out the target to be a billionaire, then it’s, it gets kind of gross. But if you find that inkling, that purpose, that little small p thing inside you, that’s like exciting. I. And you do lots of it, and you’re really good at it, and you get better at it, and people see you’re good at it, and they love the fact that you do it and you’re just engaged with them and they’re engaged with you.

[00:17:43] Jonathan DeYoe: You build a community around it. It just, it sort of is , self-fulfilling. Right? It’s self-propelling, and self-fulfilling.

[00:17:48] Jordan Grumet: And infinite, and this is what I really like. You know, you are a billionaire and you give a million dollars to philanthropy. You can pat yourself on the back and be like, I made a big difference. I gave those million [00:18:00] dollars. But

[00:18:00] Jordan Grumet: the truth of the matter is the effect of that million dollars ends at some point. But if you go out there and practice this sense of little p purpose and build a community of people around you. And you affect their lives. You become teacher and student mentor and mentee. You collaborate on projects. The effect you have on those people and the effect those people have on other people can be infinite.

[00:18:24] Jordan Grumet: And I tell a story in the book about my maternal grandfather, , who loved math and the short of the story is he died before I was born. But his love of math translated down to my mom, which translated down to me. I eventually became a physician and used some of my excitement and joy for math. To help save a person’s life. And that person was a pastor at a church that brought in homeless people. And so when we talk about that infinite legacy, that infinite impact we can have on the world, my maternal grandfather, a guy who died in the 1960s who I never met, and remember, I was born in [00:19:00] 1973. His life still has meaning today.

[00:19:04] Jordan Grumet: People are still benefiting from who he was. People are benefiting from his joy of math, which is very much what I call little p purpose. And that’s how we changed the world, and that’s exciting to me that feels a lot more exciting than becoming a billionaire and giving someone a million

[00:19:21] Jonathan DeYoe: Uh, well, and if you, if you do all that and you don’t get to a billion, you’re actually happy.

[00:19:27] Jonathan DeYoe: You’re happier than the guy that set out the billion and gets the billion because it’s the billion. I like, it’s not the, it’s not the impact. It’s not the community, , it’s not the oomph doesn’t have the same, you know, juice for life.

[00:19:37] Jonathan DeYoe: I love it.

[00:19:37] Jordan Grumet: and a lot of times we’re not satisfied, right? Because a lot of the people who go for that billion are doing it because they feel deeply and profoundly not enough inside. I mean, I would look to someone like Elon Musk or Steve Jobs, or. You know, you look at all these people who are exceedingly, exceedingly successful and died of drug overdoses like Michael Jackson and Prince, you, we’ve got all these exceedingly successful, talented people, [00:20:00] and it’s not enough for them.

[00:20:01] Jordan Grumet: , it doesn’t make them feel good inside. It doesn’t make them calm, it doesn’t make happy. and so even those people who have the ability to have a huge impact on the rest of the world don’t necessarily feel so good.

[00:20:14] Jonathan DeYoe: I just, it just dawned on me though, that you, you, the, the example that you gave of your grandfather who was excited about math. He never saw the impact.

[00:20:25] Jonathan DeYoe: So how important is it to see and know that you have the impact? , or are you just doing what you love and trusting that the universe will create the impact because of it?

[00:20:34] Jordan Grumet: I believe the universe will create the impact because of it and I, I. You know, here’s the problem, and it goes the other way too. So another story I tell in the book is about an antique store owner who ended up meaning a lot in my life because he was an antique store owner, but he started selling baseball cards because it felt very purposeful to him.

[00:20:53] Jordan Grumet: He created a community of young kids, nerdy kids like me who didn’t have any friends. And the impact of that community [00:21:00] changed my life. And he died many, many, many years ago. But the impact his life had on me. Was huge. Why am I bringing this up? Well, I collected baseball cards and I loved Mickey Mantle baseball cards.

[00:21:16] Jordan Grumet: I wanted to have as many as possible. I think about the impact this guy who ran the antique store had on me was huge. The impact Mickey Mantle had on me was zero. Like besides liking his baseball cards, he didn’t help me in any way, shape, or form. Now, there are many, many people out there who looked up to Mickey Mantle and in fact. Developed a sense of Big P purpose based on him wanting to be a baseball player, just like him wanted to be as successful as him, and they never made it right. They basically failed and found themselves having purpose, anxiety, or disappointed because they couldn’t be like this great man. So here’s the thing. I think sometimes when you are all these things that are big P purpose, the likelihood is you can impact people in a bad way, just [00:22:00] as well as in a good way. And so. Interestingly enough, even if you don’t know the effects, I think sometimes little P purpose actually has a more positive effect and less negative effects long term.

[00:22:12] Jonathan DeYoe: I guess I’m trying to. And this is just me. I’m from the West. , I am a goal oriented kind of person. I’m sort of approaching the area or , the time of my career when I’m thinking about things like legacy impact and I’m, I’ve read two or three articles in the last articles books in the last like three months about no one’s gonna remember you a hundred years after you’re gone.

[00:22:34] Jonathan DeYoe: No one. That hits me. So the story you tell about your grandfather, who, you know, probably wasn’t setting out to be remembered, he just loved the thing

[00:22:45] Jonathan DeYoe: and he is remembered and there’s something to that and I, I don’t have time to develop it, but it’s like there’s something there that’s really, really important.

[00:22:52] Jonathan DeYoe: He just did what he loved

[00:22:54] Jordan Grumet: changed the world.

[00:22:55] Jonathan DeYoe: it changed the world.

[00:22:56] Jordan Grumet: Here’s the funny thing. I gave a talk based on this book the other [00:23:00] day, and at the end of the talk I said, oh, by the way, my grandfather’s name is Morris Adler. No one’s probably said his name all year. The number of people who knew him or interacted with him are long gone, and it’s kind of a strange idea.

[00:23:16] Jordan Grumet: He’s written in no history

[00:23:17] Jordan Grumet: books and yet his existence mattered and is still affecting people 60 some years later, and hundreds and hundreds of miles away from where he lived.

[00:23:30] Jonathan DeYoe: We all have this, , this core goal of impact in the influencer community impact. Instead of saying, and this, this

[00:23:37] Jonathan DeYoe: actually, I don’t know if you get the same thing, but somebody asked me, Jonathan, , what kind of impact do you wanna have? And in perens un unmentioned, is it, it’s how much money do you wanna make?

[00:23:46] Jonathan DeYoe: And that’s kind of what I get when I see all the influencers

[00:23:48] Jonathan DeYoe: on, on Facebook or wherever trying to build a following. And I, I just feel like it’s all financially motivated, which is gross, but that’s the feeling I get. What you’re saying is just live a life [00:24:00] true to yourself, true to your goals,

[00:24:03] Jonathan DeYoe: true to your heart, true to your community, and just let the chips fall where they may like quit stressing about these big P purposes.

[00:24:11] Jordan Grumet: Listen, if we think about it, we always talk about the opposite. We talk about generational trauma in the money world. We talk about money scripts, and so we know how important previous generations are to us when it comes to bad stuff, but we rarely talk about the opposite, which is what I’m talking about, which is generational growth that those. Other generations before us can also pass on these great things, these things that help build us these wonderful things that make us better people and carry us into the future. , we don’t talk about that that often, , but if we give our past generations credit for the trauma, , we should also give ’em credit for the growth. We should aspire to pass that growth on. I mean, the best [00:25:00] way to break generational trauma is to recognize it and replace it with generational growth. Right? Instead of having, for instance, again, back to the financial world, instead of having anxiety and stress about money, it’s recognizing what was handed to you from your childhood experiences and from your forebearers experiences. And breaking that cycle and then creating a new better model for the generations that come after you.

[00:25:26] Jonathan DeYoe: , do you think , this idea that we’re focused so much on the trauma. I think, I think you’re right. I think we focus a lot on the trauma more today than we did 10 years ago or 20 years ago or 30. Where do you think that comes from? Like why is it, it’s almost competitive, like my trauma is bigger than your trauma.

[00:25:42] Jonathan DeYoe: Do you get that?

[00:25:43]

[00:25:43] Jordan Grumet: yes, and here’s the funny thing. In my experience, all trauma is equivalent in the sense that you can only, you can only experience your trauma. And so it doesn’t matter , where it falls in the severity scale. So. I’ve known people who’ve had horrendous childhoods [00:26:00] where family members died, where they were beaten or hurt or put in jail.

[00:26:03] Jordan Grumet: Horrible things, right? And then I know people who grew up in these nice, comfy, middle class families, but will tell you about how they never felt enough and these horrible things that happened to them. Like their parents expected too much and these things that, you know, on one level you’d be like, oh, you know, you shouldn’t complain.

[00:26:20] Jordan Grumet: You should see this other person. But what I’ve actually learned is we only know our own experiences. So our trauma is just as real, no matter how severe it is, based on some. Objective severity scale. And so what I found is it’s really up to us to evaluate those stories about our childhood, those things we tell ourselves about ourselves, and really come to terms with whether that was a heroic story or a victim story.

[00:26:45] Jordan Grumet: Again, we’re getting back to meaning our cognitive beliefs of our past. We all have trauma. We either have generational trauma or lived trauma or sometimes both. And that lived trauma, you can call it if you want. So to use my [00:27:00] terminology, you can call it big T trauma if you want, which is kind of like I saw someone get killed right in front of my face.

[00:27:06] Jordan Grumet: Or you can call it little T Trauma. The kids made fun of me ’cause I got a B. So after that I got A’s in everything else, it doesn’t matter what you call it, but the point is that trauma is just as real for each one of us, regardless of how severe it is.

[00:27:19] Jonathan DeYoe: So, , I wanna simplify it here a little bit. So, given all the noise and sort of your, your deep familiarity with purpose creation, how was it done? , and I know it’s not create, it’s built. I, I know that, or, or discovered. What’d you say?

[00:27:32] Jordan Grumet: It’s, I said, it’s not found, It’s created. or

[00:27:34] Jordan Grumet: built. So you, you were

[00:27:36] Jonathan DeYoe: So , what is one thing that I can do today that’s gonna help me discover, create, engage my purpose?

[00:27:43] Jordan Grumet: So first and foremost. We need to start being aware of these purpose anchors. So I talk about this in the book. There are four or five easy ways to start thinking about purpose anchors. I talk about the life review, I talk about the art of subtraction. I talk about going back to childhood, the things you loved. , we talked [00:28:00] about the spaghetti methods. So these are all different ways of basically identifying purpose anchors. Once you have the anchor, it’s all a matter of building a life of purpose around it. I call that the climb in my book, but basically it’s taking an anchor. And thinking, okay, that’s something that’s important to me.

[00:28:17] Jordan Grumet: What are the abundant ways in which I can start building on that anchor that I enjoy the process of doing? So, for example, I loved baseball cards when I was young. I actually don’t have time for it right now. But if I was looking to build more purpose in my life. I know immediately I loved baseball cards.

[00:28:35] Jordan Grumet: I loved collecting them. I loved talking about them. I loved looking at old pictures of sports. So if I was really hankering for, boy, I don’t feel like I have enough purpose in my life. I could start going to baseball card conventions. I could look for more antique stores like the one I went to as a kid. I could start collecting photos of old baseball players. I could start a blog on baseball cards. I could start reading blogs on baseball cards. I could start a [00:29:00] podcast. I could go out and play baseball. I could coach a little league team. I mean, , the amount of things is just so huge. Once you understand what the anchor is, then it’s just a matter of what sounds more exciting or less exciting to me.

[00:29:14] Jordan Grumet: And then having the courage to follow through. Right. Taking action.

[00:29:17] Jonathan DeYoe: Take one of those five, , anchors and just develop it.

[00:29:21] Jordan Grumet: So I think what you meant is one of those techniques for, for discovering your purpose

[00:29:25] Jordan Grumet: anchor. Um, okay. So what I did with the baseball cards is that was a joy of childhood. So one of those ways is to look at what excited you as a kid that you no longer do. I often tell people, like in your mind, revisit your childhood room.

[00:29:39] Jordan Grumet: What were the posters? What were the trophies? I had a person I talk about in my book when we did a life review, that’s the hospice technique of asking these deep questions about kind of. What excited you? What were your accomplishments? What were your biggest failures of childhood? All these things, and we focused around some childhood [00:30:00] things, and she realized that a big joy of childhood for her was horseback

[00:30:04] Jordan Grumet: riding. I. And when she went to college, she no longer had access to the horses and she got busy at school and she became a journalist and moved to the city and she had thought about going back to horseback riding, but it was too expensive and there were no stables in the city. She would have to go a few cities over and she didn’t have the time.

[00:30:20] Jordan Grumet: And she found herself at a point in life where she wasn’t loving work anymore and feeling very purposeless. And we started doing this life review and then thinking about her joys of childhood, and she’s like, I love horses. And I completely forgot about it. And she’s like, I then went and talked to my mom, and my mom was like, of course you loved horses.

[00:30:38] Jordan Grumet: When we packed up your room years ago, I had to take all the trophies and put ’em away. I had to fold up all your posters of horses, et cetera. So I. That is a great way that she could identify a purpose anchor, but then she had to decide how to build a life of purpose around it.

[00:30:51] Jordan Grumet: You know what, she was working all week. She wasn’t gonna quit her job to start doing something involved with horses to make a living, [00:31:00] but she started visiting a local stable and started taking, you know, riding lessons again and those kind of things. And she was a writer and was in journalism, so she could have started thinking about, Hmm, well, I like journalism and I don’t like my job.

[00:31:13] Jordan Grumet: I wonder if there’s an equestrian magazine I could write for. And so these are all ways of starting to take that anchor and then expanding and saying, well, how do I then start a climb or build activity around

[00:31:26] Jordan Grumet: that sense of purpose that is fulfilling. And the only rules, the rules are easy, right? A, it has to be process focused and not goal focused, right?

[00:31:36] Jordan Grumet: So if the goal is I need to leave my journalism job and make money training horses, you know, you’re either gonna get there and be excited or won’t get there and be upset. Better yet, I wanna spend more time around horses. I’m gonna take this horse training course and start volunteering my time, and if I happen to make some money at it, great, but if I don’t, I’m still really enjoying the process of doing this.

[00:31:57] Jordan Grumet: I’m growing and I’m learning, and [00:32:00] so. You know, process oriented, not goal oriented, something you can’t really fail, something that feels abundant, that lights you up and something that you can ditch tomorrow if it’s not filling you up and build a different version of, , a climb around,, either the same purpose anchor or

[00:32:17] Jordan Grumet: a

[00:32:17] Jonathan DeYoe: one.

[00:32:17] Jonathan DeYoe: What is just the flip side of that is we all are deep into our habits. , so what’s something that we might be doing that’s keeping us from engaging that purpose or, or keeping us from creating that purpose?

[00:32:28] Jordan Grumet: I think. Often what we do , that keeps us from engaging that purpose is we co-opt other people’s version of purpose and then try to pursue it. And again, this gets back to the social media game. My best friend from high school has this job as an agent for the stars. I should go do that. And then they start looking into that and they realize, as you were saying, that it’s gonna be a lot of work.

[00:32:51] Jordan Grumet: Maybe they’re gonna need money to start a new educational process, or they start doing what they need to do. Like maybe they find someone who does that and [00:33:00] spend some days in the office with them and realize they don’t like it. And so they love the idea of what it could bring to them and the flashiness and what it looks like on social media, but it doesn’t actually.

[00:33:10] Jordan Grumet: Fill them up. So the biggest mistake we make is let other people define what purpose should look like for us, and then try to take on their sense of purpose instead of really creating our own around things that light us

[00:33:21] Jonathan DeYoe: So I’m, I’m just curious, social media’s come up like four or five times. What are your social media habits? How do you sort of hold that at bay?

[00:33:27] Jordan Grumet: So for me, you know, it’s pretty easy because I don’t really use social media for anything but my businesses, right? So I put up things that have to do with my podcast. , I put up blog posts and things like that because I wanna share them, but I don’t really use it to see what other people are doing. I don’t really use it in search of purpose.

[00:33:47] Jordan Grumet: , I don’t personally use it much for social. I use it really as a business tool.

[00:33:53] Jordan Grumet: , there are ways of dealing with that. , I just had Fritz Gilbert from the Retirement Manifesto on my podcast, and we talked about the dopamine [00:34:00] cartel, right? This idea that social. Media actually causes these quick dopamine hits that get us addicted and make us feel bad in the end. And so he talked about this process of binding, right? And so there’s different types of binding you can do, like time binding, like I will do social media, but I will limit it to one hour a day. Or there’s other types of binding where you’re like, I will do social media, but I’m gonna take the app off my phone.

[00:34:22] Jordan Grumet: So to do it, I’m gonna have to go to my computer. , or. I’m gonna take a one month sabbatical from social media, right? So these different versions of binding that help us get off of that dopamine train, it’s that quick hit addiction, , that generally leaves us more unhappy than happy. And so I think those are some techniques people can use.

[00:34:43] Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. And I then highly advise all of them just as much as you can limit it. , that’s great. , I find myself in the YouTube hole, like, , you know,

[00:34:51] Jonathan DeYoe: Video, video. video. Thankfully, mine’s comedy, so I’m just laughing, which is usually healthy.

[00:34:56] Jordan Grumet: Which, which is a

[00:34:56] Jordan Grumet: good thing.

[00:34:57] Jonathan DeYoe: a good thing. It’s a good thing. So, Jordan, , just a couple more sort of [00:35:00] personal, , elements. I dunno if you remember this from the last time. What was the last thing you changed your mind about?

[00:35:04] Jordan Grumet: Wow. What was the last thing I changed my mind about? Something very significant that sticks out is the older I get, the more I realize how important financial advice is. So I started in the financial independence, retire early movement, and a lot of that was DIY, do it all yourself. You know, all advisors are doing is taking money from you.

[00:35:25] Jordan Grumet: And that was something even. Maybe to a year or two ago, I still was holding onto not as strongly because I knew so many good advisors and I’d seen what they had done for other people. And I kind of reasoned, well, other people don’t have the strength to not sell at the wrong time, so an advisor can fix that problem.

[00:35:41] Jordan Grumet: It makes a lot of sense. As I get older, and especially as I start thinking about deaccumulation, this process of spending down, I realize how flippant complicated our tax system is, how complicated our investment system, our retirement investment system is, and I realize that having good [00:36:00] advice behind you can make your life easier, can probably save you lots of money. , and it’s probably just the wisest use of your time and energy and your cash on some level. And so that’s something that’s a big enduring change. I think that’s happened over the last few years is I realized , DIY sounds great and for a lot of people it brings them joy, but I think that pressure to do everything yourself is unnecessary and other people who are experts, if you curate a good group of experts around you, it can really make a huge difference in your

[00:36:32] Jonathan DeYoe: So, So, I. I actually think that, , two things have happened there. Your stuff has probably gotten a little more complex, so it’s more valuable and you’re getting closer to accumulation. That makes sense. Also, I think the whole, the whole space has changed. I think the last five to 10 years.

[00:36:47] Jonathan DeYoe: It’s a different space than the space that developed the fire Do it yourself group. , I think the space is

[00:36:53] Jonathan DeYoe: much more focused on planning. It’s much more focused on all these big questions. And there’s not really many advisors [00:37:00] anymore that are saying, yeah, I’m gonna outperform the s and p for you.

[00:37:02] Jonathan DeYoe: ’cause they can’t. Right. They right. That’s not the thing

[00:37:04] Jonathan DeYoe: anymore. It’s not the product anymore. So I, I think that, you know, maybe that’s less of a change in you and more of a change in the world.

[00:37:11] Jonathan DeYoe: If you could get the truth to any question in your life, I’m, I can’t give you the answer, but if you could get the truth, what would the question be?

[00:37:20] Jonathan DeYoe: What would you ask?

[00:37:21] Jordan Grumet: I would love to know if there’s such thing as. Living the best moral and ethical life like I’d like to know if above and beyond what religion tells us or what society tells us. If there’s a true right way to be. Like, I found peace in finding my version, but I love to know , if there really is a right, if there really is a right way to be.

[00:37:47] Jordan Grumet: If there really is an ethical, if there really is. If these are just mores that we’ve placed on ourselves ’cause we live in societies, or is there really a, you know, [00:38:00] a way

[00:38:01] Jonathan DeYoe: Hmm.

[00:38:02] Jordan Grumet: to be correct in the universe, to be a good steward of the little time we’re here. I’d love that. I’d love it. I’d love there to be something definitive and I know that there never will be.

[00:38:12] Jordan Grumet: There’s only our best version of what we think is important. And I guess I’ve come to terms with. Being very intentional about being my best self and pushing that into the world. Right. but I’d love to know if there’s something even greater than that.

[00:38:28] Jonathan DeYoe: If there is a right, if there is a path, if there is a true, I

[00:38:33] Jonathan DeYoe: I want the same answer. I don’t think we’re

[00:38:36] Jonathan DeYoe: gonna get it.

[00:38:38] Jordan Grumet: cause I’m devoted. I’m devoted to the idea that if I knew what that was, I’d probably pursue it.

[00:38:45] Jonathan DeYoe: For sure. I’m sure that you would, I think you win as that’s the, I think that’s the deepest answer I’ve gotten on that question e ever. So incredible tell everyone how they can connect with you.

[00:38:56] Jordan Grumet: So the easiest way is to go to Jordan grumet.com. [00:39:00] That’s J-O-R-D-A-N-G-R-U-M-E t.com. There you will see links to both of my books, as well as the other places I create content, the Earn and Invest podcast. There is a personal finance blog and a substack called The Purpose Code, which mimics the book and talks about a lot of things that are there.

[00:39:16] Jordan Grumet: So that’s the easiest way to find me.

[00:39:18] Jonathan DeYoe: And I would ask everyone to go buy Jordan’s books, both of ’em, and then look forward to his next one. Well, not the next one. The next one’s a medical one. That may not be the right one, but keep, keep in tune. He’s writing more. Jordan, thanks so much for coming on. It’s literally always a pleasure to speak to you, man.

[00:39:31] Jonathan DeYoe: I.

[00:39:32] Jordan Grumet: Thank you for the great conversation.

[00:39:33] Outro: Thanks for listening. Full show notes for each episode, which includes a summary, key takeaways, quotes, and any resources mentioned are available at Mindful Money. Be sure to follow and subscribe wherever you listen to your favorite podcast. And if you’re enjoying the content and getting value from these episodes, please leave us a rating and review at ratethispodcast.com/mindfulmoney. We’ll be sure to read those out on future episodes.