How to Create Purpose and Live a Fulfilling Life with Dr. Jordan Grumet | 036

This is an extra EXTREME show today, I’m thrilled to be joined by Dr. Jordan Grumet or Doc G, author of the new book The Purpose Code. In it, Doc G shifts our focus from chasing massive, often overwhelming goals to finding the everyday actions and personal passions that spark genuine joy and build lasting fulfillment.

In our discussion, we dive into how generational trauma, money scripts, and negative patterns can obscure our sense of purpose—and more importantly, how we can break free. Dr. Grumet also shares strategies like life reviews, therapy, and simply experimenting with new activities to discover your unique path. If you’re ready to make small but powerful changes toward a happier and more meaningful life, you won’t want to miss this conversation. LFG!

Contact Chris:

https://heavymetal.money

⁠https://www.facebook.com/MoneyHeavyMetal⁠

https://x.com/MoneyHeavyMetal

⁠https://www.instagram.com/chrisluger⁠

⁠https://www.tiktok.com/@heavymetalmoney⁠

email: chris at heavymetal.money

Contact Dan:

email: dan at corepln.com

https://www.corepln.com/dan-hine

Resources and Links:

About Dr. Jordan Grumet

https://jordangrumet.com

Earn and Invest Podcast

https://www.earnandinvest.com/episodes-9

Order His Book, The Purpose Code Today!
https://amzn.to/3BOJnn0

His previous book, Taking Stock: A Hospice Doctor's Advice on Financial Independence, Building Wealth, and Living a Regret-Free Life

https://amzn.to/4gDfULK

Leave Doc G a Voicemail:

https://www.speakpipe.com/EarnandInvest

Doc G’s CampFI Presentation - 3 Paths to FI and Finding You Purpose:
https://youtu.be/zkXmsIE3iq8?si=Wc36X8XsRrihTIFZ

Subscribe to Jordan’s Substack
https://jordangrumet.substack.com/subscribe

Stacking Benjamins Podcast
https://www.stackingbenjamins.com/listen/

Please Like, subscribe and share wherever you get your podcasts and on YouTube! 

Contact Chris:
https://heavymetal.money

https://www.instagram.com/heavy_metal_money/

https://www.youtube.com/@heavymetalmoney

https://www.facebook.com/chrisluger

email: chris at heavymetal.money

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

How to create purpose and live your life to the fullest with Dr. Jordan Grummet this week on The Extreme Personal Finance Show. Welcome to an extra extreme episode of The Extreme Personal Finance Show. Um, because I'm super excited to be joined by Dr. Jordan Grummett or Doc G, author of his new book, The Purpose Code. In it, Doc G shifts our focus from chasing these massive, crazy, and sometimes overwhelming goals, finding those everyday actions and those personal passions that can really spark genuine joy and fulfillment in our lives. In our discussion, we kind of dive into things like generational trauma, our past money scripts, and negative patterns can kind of obscure our sense of purpose. And more importantly, what we can do to break free from those negative patterns. DrG also shares some strategies like doing things like life reviews and simply experimenting with new activities to discover our own unique path. If you're ready to make those small but yet super powerful changes toward a happier and more meaningful life, you won't want to miss this discussion with Doc G. I'm really excited for a very special episode of the Extreme Personal Finance Show. My guest today is Dr. Jordan Grummit, or sometimes referred to as Doc G. He's a physician. He's the host of the award-winning Earn and Invest podcast, and he's often a contributor on the Stocking Benjamin Show. He's an author. And his first book, Taking Stock, a Hospice Doctor's Advice on Financial Independence, Building Wealth, and Living a Regret-Free Life, was awesome. And I encourage everyone to go check out his first book. But his new book that'll be released in January of next year, called The Purpose Code, is all about finding happiness and a sense of purpose that really emphasizes the importance in finding joy and meaning in the small things that we all do each and every day. And he helps us learn how to break free from negative patterns, but really most importantly, really embrace the positive ones as well. And I'm super excited to talk with Jock G today, to hear his insight and his wisdom uh and how to seek a balanced, happy, meaningful life. Welcome to the show, Doc G. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_00 2:36

I'm really excited for this conversation.

SPEAKER_01 2:39

Awesome. Well, again, I really appreciate you uh joining me today. Now, I was fortunate to uh see one of your talks at a campfi meetup, and you had talked about a big P purpose and a little P purpose. And so the foundation of this new book that's coming out um January of 2025, the foundation of that book focuses on like two types of purpose. So, what are the main differences between what you call big P purpose and little P purpose? But most importantly, how do they affect like one's happiness?

SPEAKER_00 3:16

So let me give you some background. I wrote my first book Taking Stock about how we should put purpose before our financial lives and build a financial framework around it. I went to go give talks about this book Taking Stock, and a lot of people actually got angry, which really surprised me. People would come up to me at the end of conferences and say, Look, you've been talking this whole time about finding purpose, but I can't find my purpose. And in fact, I don't think there is one. I've been looking for years, and it's really frustrating me. And this confused me because I had never heard this before about purpose. So I did a deep dive into the literature and I found two things that seem to be paradoxical. The first was that a having a sense of purpose is associated with health, happiness, and longevity, like tons of studies showing this. On the other hand, I found other studies that showed up to 91% of people have something called purpose anxiety at some point in their life. In other words, this idea of purpose makes them anxious, frustrated, or even depressed. And so what I came up with is this idea that we probably get purpose wrong, that it's not just one thing, it's probably two things. And one is associated with anxiety, and the other is associated with that health, longevity, and happiness that we're searching for. And so I called them big P purpose, that's kind of the bad one, and little P purpose, which is the good one. And here's the difference Big P purpose is all about goals. And it's usually big and audacious here in America. We say, if you can think it, you can build it. It's the idea that we need to become billionaires, we need to cure cancer, we need to become president of the United States. The problem is most of us don't have agency to actually do those things. We're not the right person at the right time saying the right things, and we don't have the right genetics or even a good deal of luck. And so if we aim that high, the likelihood is we're going to fail. And so it's very much all or nothing, and it's very much winner take all, because usually there can only be a few billionaires out there. There can only be one president at a time, etc. Let's contrast that to little P Purpose. The one I think is more associated with health, happiness, and longevity. Little P Purpose is not about goals, it's actually about process. So it's doing things that light us up that we enjoy the process of doing. There's really no way to fail these things as long as you go do something you like. And if you don't like it, you try something else. So whereas big P purpose is very scarce, only a few people can actually reach it. Little P purpose is abundant. It isn't all or nothing. It's all or all. It's not win or take all. Almost anyone can go out and do their sense of purpose, enjoy the process of what they're doing, and be much happier. And so that's my version of what I think purpose is. The big P purpose is probably not the good one. And the little P purpose is more associated with that stuff we really want in our life.

SPEAKER_01 5:50

Got it, got it. And I think so. You mentioned um purpose anxiety. And so, you know, you said what what you said 91% of people.

SPEAKER_00 6:00

Up to 91% of people at some point in their life. So Larissa Rainey was the researcher who originally came up with this term. And when she was studying purpose, she found that a lot of people actually get tons of stress having to do with purpose.

SPEAKER_01 6:13

Yeah. So so the fear of not knowing your purpose in life, or or you know, it can manifest in a lot of different ways. Um, I mean, I've experienced this, right? Having feelings of stress, guilt, worry, fear. What are some common signs that people may be experiencing purpose anxiety? And and again, we'll kind of get through what your thoughts are on how to help, I guess, not only like alleviate that, but really kind of create our own purpose. So, uh, what are some of the common signs that people may be experiencing purpose anxiety?

SPEAKER_00 6:48

So there's the obvious one and the not so obvious one. So the obvious one is this idea that we have one sense of purpose and we either find it and live a happy life, or we miss it and everything is lost. And so that's a huge version of purpose anxiety. This idea that there's this one thing, and maybe if we miss it, we're gonna totally, you know, never be happy. That that's the first. The not-so obvious signs are actually a lot about how we live life and especially how we deal with careers. So job hopping can be a sign of purpose anxiety. Idea that feel like we're lacking purpose, we go find a job. We think the job's gonna fill us up, we eventually burn out and realize we don't like it. So we job, we hop from job to job to job. Now, granted, some people just do that to make more money, but a lot of people think they're gonna find the sense of purpose and they don't, and so they keep going. Another one is imposter syndrome. This idea that we go take a job and we're not professional enough at it, or we don't know enough, so we feel like we don't fit in the job. I think that's actually not it. I think sometimes we don't feel like we fit in the job because it doesn't feel purposeful or exciting to us. So we're like, I'm just not ready, I'm not prepared. And so we call it imposter syndrome, but actually it's purpose anxiety. So those are a few real obvious ways we can kind of see it, but we don't necessarily attribute the last two to purpose anxiety. But I think they're a sign of purpose anxiety.

SPEAKER_01 8:07

I I can see that, I can understand that. And I think, you know, one of the things that you mentioned earlier too was about finding purpose, and um you mention it in the book too, is that there's there's differences between meaning and purpose. And this one is something that really interested me because many of us, I mean, including me, like I just used meaning and purpose interchangeably for years, right? But that's really not the case. So what really kind of is the difference between, you know, living a purposeful life, but also doing it with meaning, finding meaning in what you do. And then again, you know, how that relates to our overall happiness.

SPEAKER_00 8:44

And the first thing I want to say is we always talk about finding purpose. And I don't think we find purpose. I think we build or create our version of purpose. But let's jump to the meaning and purpose question. So, in my estimation, happiness is actually made up of meaning and purpose. And a lot of people think they're the same thing, but they're actually very different. And you need both, I believe, to truly be happy. So, meaning is our cognitive way of looking at our past. So it's all about thoughts and it's all about our past, and it's the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves. And so happy people tend to tell themselves heroic stories. They say, When I was little, I went through this trauma. And because of that trauma, I grew and became the person I am today, and I'm successful today. And so they feel like they're enough because meaning is really a journey to enough. And so they say, I feel like I'm enough. I tell myself this heroic story, and it's likely I'm gonna move into the present and future and be enough then too. Those are happy people. Unhappy people tend to tell themselves a victim journey or a victim story. I had all this trauma when I was younger and I got thwarted and wasn't able to become the person I want to be. And that's why I am here today, and I don't feel like enough. And in the present and future, I'll probably continue not being enough. So, again, meaning is about the past, it's about our thoughts, and it's a journey to enough. Purpose is about the present and future, and it's not about our thoughts, it's about our actions. So it's basically what are the daily activities we do that fill us up, that light us up, and that bring us joy. Here's where we get problems. Like I said, meaning and purpose are both necessary for happiness. A lot of people have a meaning problem. They don't feel like they're enough, they haven't dealt with the trauma, they're not telling themselves great stories, but they want to skip the whole meaning thing and move to purpose. And they're like, well, if I just do purposeful activities, if I just achieve, if I just become a partner, or if I make a million dollars, or if I have that really successful business, I'm gonna feel enough and I'm gonna be happy. But the problem is you can't purpose your way to enough, you can't purpose your way to happiness. You have to go back and deal with meaning.

SPEAKER_01 10:46

I need to pause right there because that was just a profound statement. You can't purpose yourself. Let me say that again.

SPEAKER_00 10:52

You can't purpose yourself to enough and you can't purpose your way to happiness. It doesn't work. Got it. And I I always give the examples of like Steve Jobs and Elon Musk, two of the most successful, richest people out there. Did they did amazing things, and yet neither of them looked particularly or look particularly happy. And the reason why is they're trying to achieve. They're like, if I just achieve enough, I'm gonna feel good about myself. But probably what they need to do is go back and look at their childhood, see what those traumas were, and get a better sense of meaning. Wow.

SPEAKER_01 11:23

Wow, this is this is amazing. So one of the things you mentioned as far as processing, you know, your childhood or your past and and and what are some key things that you know listeners can do or readers can do to really help us rewrite the script? Like, let's go ahead and kind of change like how do we actually what are those action items we can do to help ourselves if we're kind of stuck in that trying to process our meaning going forward?

SPEAKER_00 11:54

I love how you just said rewrite the script because that's exactly it. So there's this thing called narrative therapy, and it's a process. And so you go back and you identify the major narratives in your life based on often the major traumas, you assess that trauma and you separate yourself from the thing that happened. You kind of realize, okay, a bad thing happened to me, but that doesn't mean I'm a bad person. I was probably a good person who a bad thing happened to. And then you contextualize that as if you were looking at someone else, right? If you were looking at someone else who is brought up in an unloving family or someone else who is brought up and a parrot died and they were in a war zone and had to move somewhere else, right? You would look at that person from the outside and say, Oh, they were a great person. They just grew up in bad circumstances. Well, a lot of times we don't give ourselves permission to think about our own story that way. So it's contextualizing your story, taking yourself out of the narrative, realizing that you're a good person and not a bad person, and then rewriting that story. Like, wow, how brave was I that my parent died and we left that war zone and I was able to thrive and go to school and meet someone, get married, and have kids. And of course, sometimes I feel like a victim, but actually I was the hero. And so it's rewriting that story, forming a new narrative in which you feel enough. And then once that enoughness sets in, it's much easier to look at the present and future, which again is purpose and it's activities.

SPEAKER_01 13:22

That's awesome. That's awesome. I love that. And so as we look back to the to the future and we look at purpose, right? You mentioned earlier about how it's not something that we find, right? So I like how you talk about purpose can be something that is created, right? Rather than like we forever like we just like wander searching for this magical thing until we find it.

SPEAKER_00 13:46

If we're lucky, we find it. And if we don't, oh well.

SPEAKER_01 13:50

Exactly. So um you refer to something in the book called like the spaghetti method and like helping create one's purpose, and there are other methods too. Help us like just what are some things that we can do to help create our purpose?

SPEAKER_00 14:06

So I like the way you said that again. So we definitely create purpose. And the reason why I think it's important that we look at it that way is it's again action-based, it's something we actually have agency over. It's not that we're sitting here waiting for it to fall on our head. We actually can build it, but it is gonna be work. And so you don't find your purpose, you create or build it. But it is true you have to have some inklings, some beckonings, some things that you want to build a life of purpose around. I call those purpose anchors. And so, what we're really asking is not how we find our purpose because we know we create it, but how do we identify those purpose anchors to build a life of purpose around? And so there's several mechanisms to do that. The spaghetti method is one. Let me mention a few others just to kind of be complete. So we can do something called the life of review and look at regrets. And so, regrets in a person who has a lot of life to live, we could flip it around and turn that into a purpose anchor and build a life of purpose around that regret. So, regrets are one way. I always talk about the art of subtraction. Take what we hate about our job, get rid of everything we hate. And is there a nucleus of something we like? Like every Thursday, I do stock room inventory and I'm there and I have my pen and paper and I'm looking at the stock and I love organizing and I hate my job. But those that hour I spend doing stockroom inventory, I love, okay. Well, maybe that's a purpose anchor and we can build a life of purpose around that. Um, another one is the joys of childhood. Like go back to your childhood room. What were the posters? What were the trophies? What were the drawings? A lot of times in childhood, we're given the freedom to just pursue what we love regardless of the goal, but we lose that as we get older and start thinking about professions and getting serious about school, et cetera. So those are three good ways. The spaghetti method is the fourth. Let's say nothing else is working. You can throw a bunch of stuff against the wall and see what sticks. What that means is volunteering for things you don't normally do, trying activities you don't normally try, hanging out or saying yes to people you don't normally don't say yes to, maybe putting yourself in a little bit of an uncomfortable position to see what happens. And then after the day is over, if we enjoyed that process, or if it was a day well spent, that might be a purpose anchor and we can start building a life of purpose around that. And so that's kind of how we start thinking about what those purpose anchors are in our life. And I'll tell you, after coaching lots of people, after writing this book, after dealing with people in hospice, after running my own mastermind, I've generally found that it's not much of a stretch to find people's purpose anchors. Like deep down inside, when people are about to fall asleep at night and they're thinking about that last important thing of the day, they have a dream of some kind, something that just sparks enjoyment in them. Most of us have this. And if we just give ourselves permission to listen to it, even if it doesn't sound important, even if it doesn't seem like it's going to be impactful. But if we give ourselves permission to pay attention to those things, we can start building purpose around them. And I think that's where the spark of joy really comes from.

SPEAKER_01 17:02

That's awesome. I think more people need to uh find that the joy in just doing the thing rather than focusing on this huge goal at the end. But if you can just be happy in doing it day to day, man.

SPEAKER_00 17:20

And and here's the secret. And and if you can do the thing, you become the person. And this is where everyone gets it wrong. They're like, how do I become a marathoner? I run a marathon. No, you become a runner. And how do you become a runner? By running. You don't do it by buying the shoes, you don't do it by buying the fancy shorts, you do it by running. How do you become an author? You don't write a book, you write. And so if you do the thing, you become the person you want to be. And I think that's where the joy really resides.

SPEAKER_01 17:49

Yeah, it's almost like uh it's almost like you want to identify as that that that thing, whatever you're doing.

SPEAKER_00 17:56

And that's all about purpose. That's all about action. It's not about titles, it's not about goals. It's not if I write that novel that's a bestseller. It's that every day I sit down, pen to paper, and write that makes me the author, makes me the writer. And if I enjoy the process of doing that, it doesn't matter if I ever actually write the book or not.

SPEAKER_01 18:16

I am I'm really excited for others to read this book. It's gonna be so awesome. So as we kind of wrap up, where so your book's gonna be coming out um the beginning of next year. Tell people where they can find it, how they can pre-order all of the things.

SPEAKER_00 18:33

So it's coming out January 2025. So depending on when this goes live, it might be this year, might not be next year. Um, and the best way to learn about me or the book is to go to jordangrummet.com. That's J-O-R-D-A-N, G-R-U-M-E-T.com. There you can see links to both of my books, taking stock, and the purpose code. You can buy them there, as well as you can see all the other places I create content, including the Earn and Invest Podcast, the Purpose Code Substack, where I talk about these things in blog format, as well as a financial and a medical blog that I used to write at. All those links, JordanGrummet.com.

SPEAKER_01 19:06

Awesome. Uh Dr. G, again, I really appreciate all your time today. I'm really excited about your new book. I can't wait for others to read it. Thank you so much. And um, we're gonna see you next time on the Extreme Personal Finance Show.